Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, said during an interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast Wednesday that the right thing for former President Bill Clinton to do when their affair went public would have been “to resign.”
“I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody’s business and to resign,” Lewinsky told host Alex Cooper after revealing that she had never been asked about how the situation should have been handled. “Or to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who is just starting out in the world under the bus.”
Clinton admitted to having an affair with Lewinsky while he was president, which ultimately led to his impeachment in 1998. “At the same time, I hear myself say that and it’s like ‘Okay, but we’re also talking about the most powerful office in the world,'” she said. “I don’t want to be naive either.”
Asked about her portrayal in the media, Lewinsky discussed how much coverage the affair got at the time, and how she was painted by outlets. “I think for five seconds, it was sympathetic and maybe after about a week, once the White House got in gear, I was very quickly painted as a stalker, a whore, mentally unstable, a bimbo, I was very quickly painted as both the pursuer in this and also not attractive enough to be pursued,” she said. “There was a creation of a version of me that I didn’t recognize.”
Lewinsky also reflected on the White House response, including when Clinton denied the affair by saying, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Cooper asked Lewinsky to reconcile what people were saying about their relationship, and what she knew to be true. “It was gaslighting,” she said. “I think that was what I experienced on a pretty large scale. It was devastating.”
“I don’t think the White House’s intention was to gaslight me, I think the intention was to stay in power and to get out of legal jeopardy,” she said. “I think that is the core of being gas-lit.” Lewinsky also said that while she felt Clinton’s behavior was worse, she still made her own mistakes.
“Let’s recognize that while there were so many ways that Bill’s behavior was more reprehensible than mine, I did make mistakes,” she said. Lewinsky, who has become an anti-bully activist in the aftermath of the affair with Clinton, also spoke about her new podcast, “Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.”
Clinton, who helped campaign for former President Biden prior to him dropping out of the 2024 race, as well as for former Vice President Kamala Harris, recently released a memoir titled “Citizens,” which mentions Lewinsky. “I live with it all the time,” Clinton wrote of the scandal, complimenting her work on bullying. “I wish her nothing but the best.”
