Bill Clinton, the former US president, has written of his “frustration” at being questioned about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky while acknowledging that he has never apologized to her directly.
Clinton became embroiled in one of the biggest political scandals in history when it emerged in 1998 that he had a sexual relationship with the then 22-year-old Lewinsky. The president, who initially lied before apologizing, was impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate.
In a new book, Citizen, a chronicle of his post-presidential years obtained by the Guardian, Clinton recalls an uncomfortable 2018 interview on the NBC network’s Today show in which he was “caught off guard”.
The interview was ostensibly about a novel that Clinton had co-authored with thriller writer James Patterson. But citing the MeToo movement, host Craig Melvin asked if the same thing that triggered his impeachment happened today, would Clinton resign?
The former president insisted no because, he reasoned, the impeachment was illegitimate and had to be fought. Then Melvin read from a Lewinsky column about how the MeToo reckoning changed her view of sexual harassment and asked if Clinton felt differently now.
In Citizen, the 78-year-old writes: “I said, ‘No, I felt terrible then.’ ‘Did you ever apologize to her?’ I said that I had apologized to her and everybody else I wronged. I was caught off guard by what came next. ‘But you didn’t apologize to her, at least according to folks that we’ve talked to.’ I fought to contain my frustration as I replied that while I’d never talked to her directly, I did say publicly on more than [one] occasion I was sorry.”
Clinton admits in Citizen that the interview “was not my finest hour”, adding that he was prepared to be asked why he had not apologized to Lewinsky in person but not to be accused of not apologizing at all. He also takes a swipe at Melvin, who was “barely in his teens when all this happened, and probably hadn’t been properly briefed”.
The Democrat reflects: “Regardless, it’s always better to save your anger for what happens to other people, not yourself.”
He notes that NBC soon added a clip of him speaking to faith leaders at the White House in 1999 and apologizing to his family, Lewinsky and her family and the American people. “I meant it then and I mean it today,” he writes.
“I live with it all the time. Monica’s done a lot of good and important work over the last few years in her campaign against bullying, earning her well-deserved recognition in the United States and abroad. I wish her nothing but the best.”
Lewinsky is now an anti-bullying activist, public speaker and writer. In 2021 the Today show asked her whether she feels that Clinton owes her an apology. She said: “I don’t need it. He should wanna apologize, in the same way that I wanna apologize any chance I get to people that I’ve hurt and my actions have hurt.”
Clinton’s wife, Hillary, was beaten by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. The fallout of the #MeToo movement did not prevent him addressing this year’s Democratic national convention or campaigning for Vice-president Kamala Harris in the race for the White House.