Bill Clinton, former president of America, says he has no plans to directly ask Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness.
In 1998, the news of an affair between Clinton, who was then president, and Lewinsky, a 21-year-old intern at the White House, went viral.
Clinton had at first denied his affair with Lewinsky. He, however, later admitted to it with an apology.
The scandal led to his impeachment trial, though he was acquitted.
Clinton publicly acknowledged at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1998 that he had “sinned.”
“I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned. It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine — first and most important, my family, also my friends, my staff, my cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family, and the American people,” he had said.
But Clinton told Today in an interviewthat he does not owe Lewinsky an apology.
“I do not. I have never talked to her. But I did say, publicly, on more than one occasion, that I was sorry,” he said.
“That’s very different. The apology was public. I apologized to everybody in the world. I have not talked to her. I never talked to her.”
Reacting to comments that he should have resigned at the time, Clinton defended his decision to instead fight impeachment charges.
He said he would not have changed his approach, in light of #MeToo movement, a group asking women to break the silence of abuse.
“I think I did the right thing,” he said.
Clinton said he did not feel any more responsibility about the affair now than he did when the scandal surfaced two decades ago.
“I felt terrible then. And I came to grips with it,” he said.
“And nobody believes that I got out of that for free. I left the White House $16 million in debt.
“But you typically have ignored gaping facts in describing this. And I bet you don’t even know them. This was litigated 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the American people sided with me and they were not insensitive to that.”
