Bill Clinton should have stepped down as president when their affair was exposed 27 years ago, Monica Lewinsky says. In an interview on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, Lewinsky put it like this: "The right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say 'it was nobody's business' and to resign," she told host Alex Cooper. "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." Lewinsky was a 22-year-old White House intern when the sexual relationship with the 49-year-old president began in 1995, USA Today reports.
Clinton, who initially lied about the relationship, was impeached in 1998 but was acquitted in a Senate trial and remained in office. On the podcast, Lewinsky recalled being described as a "bimbo" and a "stalker" at the time. "I think there was so much collateral damage for women of my generation to watch a young woman to be pilloried on the world stage, to be torn apart for my sexuality, for my mistakes, for my everything," she told Cooper. Lewinsky, now 51, said she didn't become angry about the scandal until 10 years later, when she finished grad school and couldn't get a job.
In other interviews, Lewinsky has spoken about the power imbalance between her and Clinton, CNN reports. "It was wholly inappropriate as the most powerful man, my boss, 49 years old. I was 22, literally just out of college," she told Jake Tapper in 2021. She told Cooper that a "handful" of people involved in the scandal have told her "that they wish they had made different choices," but no major figures have apologized. Lewinsky, an anti-bullying advocate, recently launched her own podcast, "Reclaiming With Monica Lewinsky." She told Rolling Stone earlier this month that she was "excited but terrified" about the project. (More Monica Lewinsky stories.)
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