Former President Bill Clinton wants America to know that in spite of the recent #MeToo movement, he doesn’t believe he owes Monica Lewinsky an apology for the reported sexual encounter between the then-44-year-old president and Lewinsky, then a 22-year-old White House intern.
Speaking to Today, Clinton defended his decision to remain in office following the scandal, even after the former president was impeached for obstruction of justice and perjury.
“A lot of the facts have been conveniently omitted to make the story work,” Clinton said, according to CNN. “I think partly because they’re frustrated that they got all these serious allegations against the current occupant of the Oval Office and his voters don’t seem to care,” Clinton added, pointing the finger at current President Grab ’Em by the Pussy.
“I think I did the right thing,” Clinton continued. “I defended the Constitution.”
NBC’s Craig Melvin asked Clinton if he owed Lewinsky an apology, considering that he pretty much altered the direction of her life at 22. Clinton responded: “No, I do not—I have never talked to her. But I did say publicly on more than one occasion that I was sorry. That’s very different. The apology was public.”
In an essay for Vanity Fair published earlier this year, Lewinsky explained that now that she’s 44, she’s just now beginning to understand the power dynamic that was at play when she was still a young adult.
“Now, at 44, I’m beginning (just beginning) to consider the implications of power differentials that were so vast between a president and a White House intern,” she wrote. “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot.”
Clinton publicly acknowledged at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1998 that he’d “sinned”: “I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned. It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine—first and most important, my family, also my friends, my staff, my Cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people.”
Clinton added during the NBC interview with Melvin that his tryst with the then-intern was old news and “this was litigated 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the American people sided with me.”
Oh, he also added, “I felt terrible then and I came to grips with it,” The Observer reports. Clinton also made it a point to note: “Nobody believes I got out of that for free. I left the White House $16 million in debt.”
The debt Clinton is referring to is legal fees he endured because of his affair while in office, which he didn’t have to have and was totally his fault. So yeah, good luck, Bill, revising history to make yourself out to be the victim.