Bill Clinton snapped at NBC News’ Craig Melvin after he was “caught off guard” during a 2018 interview on the network’s Today show when Melvin questioned the former president about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
As president, Clinton became embroiled in one of the most notorious political sex scandals, when it was revealed in 1998 that he had an affair with the 22-year-old White House intern. He first lied about the sexual relationship before apologizing, but was ultimately impeached by the House of Representatives. He was ultimately acquitted by the Senate.
The tense exchange between Melvin and the former president, two decades after the scandal, is detailed in the former president’s coming memoir, Citizen, which focuses on his life since leaving the Oval Office.
According to Clinton, during an interview about a novel co-authored by the former president and thriller writer James Patterson, Melvin pivoted the conversation toward the #MeToo movement. He asked Clinton whether he would have resigned had the sex scandal that led to his impeachment happened in 2018.
Clinton argued that he would not have resigned, calling the impeachment illegitimate. Melvin then read from a column written by Lewinsky about how the #MeToo movement shifted her perspective of sexual harassment and asked whether, after hearing this, the former president felt differently.
“I said, ‘No, I felt terrible then.’ ‘Did you ever apologize to her?’ I said that I had apologized to her and everybody else I wronged. I was caught off guard by what came next,” Clinton writes in Citizen. “‘But you didn’t apologize to her, at least according to folks that we’ve talked to.’ I fought to contain my frustration as I replied that while I’d never talked to her directly, I did say publicly on more than [one] occasion I was sorry.”
While Clinton did not apologize to Lewinsky personally, during a 1999 White House meeting with faith leaders he apologized to the former intern, her family, and the American people.
During the interview, Clinton is seen becoming increasingly defensive, namely about his record on gender equality, and accuses Melvin of failing to understand the Lewinsky case.
“You, typically, have ignored gaping facts in describing this and I bet you don’t even know them,” he said to Melvin. “This was litigated 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the American people sided with me.”
In what the former president calls “not my finest hour,” he admits in Citizen that he was not prepared to be accused of failing to apologize to Lewinsky. Despite this acknowledgement, Clinton recycled his claim that Melvin was uninformed on the scandal, writing that the host was “barely in his teens when all this happened, and probably hadn’t been properly briefed.”
“Regardless,” he continues, “it’s always better to save your anger for what happens to other people, not yourself.”
