The way we look at Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky has changed a lot in 20 years. But Hillary Clinton still refuses to call it an abuse of power.
During the 2016 Election, Donald Trump tried to make an issue out of former President Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs. But it’s not just Republicans who were suddenly trying to reignite the debate over Clinton’s morality nearly two decades after he left office.
In July 2018, Hillary Clinton’s successor in the Senate, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said that Bill Clinton should have resigned from the White House after the Lewinsky affair.
And earlier this year, Lewinsky herself wrote an article for Vanity Fair in which she said she now considers Clinton’s sexual pursuit of her an “abuse of power.”
But one person who disagrees with that assessment is Hillary Clinton herself. And not everyone is happy with her recent comments on the subject.
In a new interview, Hillary dismissed Lewinsky’s claim. Did she go too far? Or, is it the media who is going too far by continuing to ask her to share her opinion on the actions of her husband as president, rather than asking him those questions directly?
In her interview with “CBS Sunday Morning,” Clinton was asked if her husband should have resigned and responded:
Clinton: “Absolutely not.”
Reporter: “It wasn’t an abuse of power?”
Clinton: “No. No.”
The reporter then begins saying that some people argue there’s no way someone with as much power as a president could have a consensual relationship with an intern, before Clinton cuts him off to say: “Who was an adult.”
Clinton then tries to pivot the conversation into her own question about why people aren’t investigating the allegations of sexual misconduct against Trump.
It was a tense and awkward moment. And former Obama adviser David Axelrod may have put it best:
Hillary doesn’t have to attack Bill. But she shouldn’t be required to defend or speak for him either.
Her defense of Bill Clinton’s actions stirred up a passionate controversy online with fair points being all around:
