‘Crueler to come clean’: Hillary Clinton defends husband Bill over affair with Monica Lewinski
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: One of the most controversial scandals involving a US president was the one about 42nd President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Clinton-Lewinsky sex scandal eventually led to Clinton's impeachment. People have often witnessed Clinton defending himself in the controversial scandal but now, his wife Hillary appeared to make excuses for her husband to keep a secret extramarital affair with his 22-year-old intern.
Hillary said in a clip from her new series 'Gutsy' that the secret affair between her husband and Lewinsky would have never come out if the couple were ‘not in the public eye’. She also appeared to be defending her husband while claiming "sometimes it was crueler to come clean."
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The clip was played on ‘The View’ as part of a trailer to promote the show which is slated to debut on Friday, September 9 on Apple TV+. The show also features Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea as executive producers. In the clip, Rev Whitney Ijanaten, a chaplain at UCLA Health, asks Hillary, "You have said the gutsiest thing you have ever done is deciding to stay in your marriage. If you were not in the public eye, do you think he would have told you?"
To which the former first lady immediately replies, "Oh no, no, because he was so embarrassed, and, you know, really ashamed about it." Ijanaten then asks, "Do you think we deserve to know?" to which Hillary responds, "You know, I think that's one of the age-old questions. There are circumstances where telling is crueler than not telling."
Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, who moved to Washington DC in 1995 as an unpaid White House intern. The duo shared a relationship from 1995 to 1997. During the affair, Monica was between 22 while Bill was 48. Calling the allegations as a "vast right-wing conspiracy," he said that he never had a sexual relationship with Lewisnky. "I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people," he had said.
In 1998, Clinton admitted to being engaged in an "improper physical relationship" with Lewinsky in a taped grand jury testimony on August 17, 1998. That night he offered a nationally televised statement admitting that his relationship with the intern was "not appropriate." Lewinsky said she had sexual encounters with Clinton nine times over the course of two years. Lying about his extramarital affair with his intern led to the destruction of his political career and the House impeached him in 1998.
Clinton was held in civil contempt of court by Judge Susan Webber Wright for giving false testimony in a case where Paula Jones accused him of sexual assault. Despite the court punishing CLinton and his extramarital affair coming out in public, Hillary was struck by her husband. When asked why she was struck by her husband after he cheated and lied, Hillary said, "I just could not believe it. I was just so personally hurt and. It was—anyways, horrible. And I said, 'If this is going to be public, you've got to go tell Chelsea.'"
Hillary opened up about learning of the infidelity in a 2020 TV series. "I defended and stood by him because I thought the impeachment process was wrong, but that wasn't the necessary answer to what I would do with my marriage," she said. "It was not—to me—the same. I still had to decide whether I wanted to stay in the marriage, whether I thought it was worth saving," she added.
In the documentary, Clinton also talked about the force that led to the decision of cheating on his wife. "It's ... you feel like you're staggering around. You've been in a 15-round prize fight that's been extended to 30 rounds and here's something that will take your mind off it for a while. Everybody's life has pressures and disappointments, terrors and fears of whatever. Things I did to manage my anxieties for years."