Monica Lewinsky said former President Bill Clinton should have either resigned or found a way to handle the fallout from their affair without sacrificing her future, revisiting the scandal that defined both of their public lives.
"I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody's business and to resign," Lewinsky said on the Call Her Daddy podcast, which aired Tuesday. "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, now 51, was 22 when she began a sexual relationship with Clinton, who was 49 and serving his first term in office. Clinton initially denied the relationship before later admitting to it, leading to his impeachment in 1998. He was acquitted by the Senate and remained in office.
During the podcast interview, Lewinsky reflected on how the scandal unfolded publicly and how both the White House and the press handled it. "It's really complicated because you are talking about issues and situations where so many people are impacted," she said.
She described how the media's portrayal of her had long-lasting effects on her personal and professional life. "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 said.
Lewinsky credited younger generations with pushing for a reassessment of how the scandal was framed. "It was the younger generations that really insisted on reevaluating this story because you were all coming to it with just the facts, not having gone through the brainwashing or lived through that media lens," she said. "It was the younger women journalists who were starting to say, 'Hold up.'"
She also said that in the years since, some people involved in the scandal have privately expressed regret to her. A "handful of people who were involved" have said "that they wish they had made different choices," she said, but she has never received an apology from Clinton or other major figures. "I'm at a place where I don't need it anymore," she added.
Lewinsky has spent the past decade working as an anti-bullying advocate, delivering a TED Talk in 2015 and producing the 2021 documentary 15 Minutes of Shame. She recently launched a podcast titled Reclaiming, where she has interviewed public figures such as Olivia Munn and Kara Swisher.
Reflecting on the scandal's impact, Lewinsky told host Alex Cooper that the title Reclaiming represents her effort to reshape her narrative. "I lost my anonymity, I lost my future, I lost my sense of self, I think I lost trusting myself in many ways," she said.
