Monica Lewinsky, a former interns of the White House who was once central in one of the most notorious political scandals in American history, said that former US President Bill Clinton should have resigned from the Oval Office when the congress voted to accuse him of lying about his affair with her. In an interview on the podcast ‘Call Her Daddy’, Mrs. Lewinsky explained why the 42nd American president should have resigned from his position instead of throwing her “under the bus” after their affair became public in 1998.
Mrs. Lewinsky said that the “right way” for Mr. Clinton to have handled the fall-out of their affair when she was a 22-year-old trainee, either would be “to step off” or to have found a way not to throw a young person “under the bus”.
“I think the right way to tackle such a situation would probably have been to say that it was no one and to resign. Or to find a way to stay in office and did not throw a younger one who just started in the world under the bus,” said Mrs. Lewinsky on “Call her father” Podcast, organized by Alex Cooper.
“And at the same time I hear myself say that, and it is, ok, we are also talking about the most powerful office in the world. I don’t want to be naive either,” Mrs Lewinsky, 51, added.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3ByisU53YQ
Mrs. Lewinsky’s comments came in response to Mrs. Cooper who asked her to think about the scandal of the nineties and how the press and the White House should have navigated the situation when it came to light. “It is really complicated because you are talking about issues and situations in which so many people are affected,” she said.
She acknowledged that she “made mistakes”, but she called Bill Clinton’s mistakes “more more reprehensible” than her. Mrs. Lewinsky also said that her relationship with Mr. Clinton was not “sexual abuse” because it included “a level of consensuality”. But she continued to clarify that it was Mr. Clinton’s “responsibility” to never “put her in that position” as the most powerful man in the country.
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Bill Clinton was 49 at the time of the scandal. He initially denied that he had a sexual relationship with Mrs. Lewinsky. Later, however, he admitted that it took place and remained in office.
Mr. Clinton’s denial, Mrs. Lewinsky said, felt like “Gaslighting … on a large scale.”
“I think there was so much additional damage for women of my generation to see a young woman to be bumped on a world stage – to be torn apart for my sexuality, for my mistakes, for my everything,” she noticed.
“I was lucky to hold a part of my true self, but I lost my future,” said Mrs. Lewinsky. “I am so grateful for how my life has changed in the last 10 years … But that was certainly not a fact,” she added.