In a new interview set to air this weekend on CBS Sunday Morning, former President Bill Clinton will respond for the first time to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-NY) assertion that he should have resigned over the Lewinsky affair.
“You have to—really ignore what the context was,” Clinton says, according to a CBS transcript. “But, you know, she’s living in a different context. And she did it for different reasons. So, I—but I just disagree with her."
Gillibrand, who enthusiastically endorsed Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and has longstanding ties to the Clinton family, told The New York Times last November that the “appropriate response” to the scandal over his White House affair with intern Monica Lewinsky would have been for Bill Clinton to resign.
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“Things have changed today, and I think under those circumstances there should be a very different reaction,” Gillibrand continued. “And I think in light of this conversation, we should have a very different conversation about President Trump, and a very different conversation about allegations against him.”
Gillibrand has been on the vanguard of confronting sexual harassment as a senator and was one of the first to call for fellow Democratic senator Al Franken’s resignation over allegations of sexual misconduct.
A Gillibrand spokesperson went on to clarify that Clinton’s actions should have led him to resign if they occurred in the current era.
Speaking about the impeachment proceedings against him two decades ago, Clinton said during the soon-to-air CBS interview: “Well, I knew it wouldn’t succeed. It wasn't a pleasant experience. But it was a fight that I was glad to undertake after the elections, when the people had solidly told, by two-thirds or more, the Republicans to stop it. They knew there was nothing impeachable. And so, we fought it to the end. And I’m glad.”
