Bill Clinton has revealed his fury at NBC News’ Craig Melvin daring to ask him why he had not personally apologized to Monica Lewinsky in a new memoir.
The book, Citizen, was obtained by The Guardian, and includes a passage in which he goes on offense against Melvin, the Today Show anchor who quizzed him on his affair with the 22-year-old White House intern in a 2018 interview.
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 1998 sex scandal happened in 2018.
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Clinton argued that he would not have resigned, and blasted the impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives, over him initially lying about the sexual relationship, as 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.”
Melvin, now 45, was 20-years-old when Clinton’s affair was exposed.
“Regardless,” the former president continues, “it’s always better to save your anger for what happens to other people, not yourself.”
The forthcoming memoir was timed for after the Nov. 5 election, for which he was a highly-visible presence on the campaign trail. The book focuses on Clinton’s life after leaving the Oval Office. It will be published on Nov. 19.
