“Monica Lewinsky, revisiting the events with Bill Clinton that propelled her into the media spotlight over 25 years ago, believes the former president should have resigned from office at the time.
In an interview with “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper, Lewinsky discussed how the situation should have been handled by the media and the White House after news broke of her affair with the former president during her White House internship.
“I think 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 Cooper. “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.”
In a clip released by CNN, Lewinsky expressed that other young women suffered due to the treatment she received during the scandal.
“I think there was so much collateral damage for women of my generation to watch a young woman to be pilloried on a world stage – to be torn apart for my sexuality, for my mistakes, for my everything.”
CNN has sought comment from Clinton’s representative.
Lewinsky appeared on Cooper’s podcast to promote her own podcast, “Reclaiming,” which she launched earlier this month.
In recent years, Lewinsky has addressed the power imbalance between herself and Clinton and criticized the misogynistic media coverage she endured.
In 2021, she told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Clinton’s role in their affair was “wholly inappropriate.”
“I think what’s really important to remember in today’s world is that we never should have even gotten to a place where consent was a question,” Lewinsky told Tapper.
“So it was wholly inappropriate as the most powerful man, my boss, 49 years old. I was 22, literally just out of college. And I think that the power differentials there are something that I couldn’t ever fathom consequences at 22 that I understand obviously so differently at 48.”
Lewinsky told Variety in 2021 that she hopes young women in similar situations would be treated differently in the post-#MeToo era.
“I would hope that we would be having a different kind of conversation,” she said. “I would hope that most of the blame would not have rested on my shoulders, and most of the consequences.”
In the 2020 documentary “Hillary,” Bill Clinton said he felt “terrible about the fact that Monica Lewinsky’s life was defined” by their affair, “unfairly I think.”
“Over the years I have watched her trying to get a normal life back again,” he said.
Clinton has previously stated that he “disagreed” with the idea that he should have resigned.
Cooper, the world’s most listened-to female podcaster, signed a $125 million deal with SiriusXM for “Call Her Daddy.”
