Newsman: Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky said in a new podcast interview that former President Bill Clinton should have resigned from office after his affair with her.
Monica Lewinsky an anti-bullying advocate, opened up about the scandal in an appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast and told host Alex Cooper how she feels Clinton should have handled it.
“The right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say ‘it was nobody’s business’ and to resign,” she said. “Or to find a way of staying in office that was not lying, and not throwing a young person, who was just starting out in the world, under the bus.”
Although Lewinsky suggested she may be “naive” to imply this could ever have been possible, Cooper, 30, told her, “I agree with you. That is exactly how it should have been handled.”
Monica Lewinskysays she’s ‘reclaiming’ fallout from Bill Clinton scandal on new podcast
Lewinsky was 22 when she began having a sexual relationship with Clinton, who was 49. Clinton initially insisted he did “not have sexual relations with” Lewinsky but later admitted he did have an inappropriate relationship with her. The House of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton, but he was acquitted in the Senate and remained in office.
Lewinsky faced relentless media scrutiny when news of her affair with Clinton broke, and she recalled on the podcast being portrayed as a “stalker” and a “bimbo.” Since then, many have viewed Lewinsky more sympathetically amid renewed scrutiny over the age gap and power imbalance between her and Clinton.
Monica Lewinsky overcame ‘excruciating shame and pain.’ Now, she’s a voice for anti-bullying.
Lewinsky credited this to young people, who did not live through the scandal, looking back at it years later.
“It was the younger generations that really insisted on reevaluating this story because you were all coming to it with just the facts, not having gone through the brainwashing or lived through that media lens,” she said, adding, “It was the younger women journalists who were starting to say, ‘Hold up.'”
Reflecting on the aftermath of the scandal, Lewinsky said she was not angry about it until about 10 years later, when she finished graduate school and was unable to get a job. It was at this point that she realized “how much I had lost,” she said.
In the years since, Lewinsky told Cooper that a “handful of people who were involved” in the scandal have told her “that they wish they had made different choices,” but she has never received an apology from any of the major names. “I’m at a place where I don’t need it anymore,” she said.
Lewinsky recently launched a podcast titled “Reclaiming,” on which she has so far interviewed Olivia Munn, Kara Swisher and Alan Cumming. In an episode last week, she said, “I lost my anonymity, I lost my future, I lost my sense of self, I think I lost trusting myself in many ways” in the scandal.
On “Call Her Daddy,” Lewinsky told Cooper that the title “Reclaiming” reflects her effort to “open a path that not a lot of women have been able to go through before, which is to be a fallen woman and to rise.”
