The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative
Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other
shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org.
June 5, 2018

Bill Clinton Faces Criticism After He Says He Doesn't Owe Monica Lewinsky an Apology
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Former President Bill Clinton is facing criticism after he told NBC's
Craig Melvin that he did not owe an apology to former White House intern
Monica Lewinsky.

Craig Melvin: "I asked if you'd ever apologized, and you said you had."

Bill Clinton: "I have."

Craig Melvin: "You've apologized to her?"

Bill Clinton: "I apologized to everybody in the world."

President Bill Clinton: "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, Monica Lewinsky and her family."

Craig Melvin: "But you didn't apologize to her."

Bill Clinton: "I have not talked to her. I-I thought it-"

Craig Melvin: "Do you feel like you owe her an apology?"

Bill Clinton: "No, I do-I do not. I've never talked to her. But I did
say, publicly, on more than one occasion, that I was sorry. That's very
different. The apology was public."

After widespread outrage about these comments, Clinton said he had
apologized publicly, speaking at the Schomburg Center in New York City
Monday night. In the late 1990s, President Clinton had a sexual affair
with Lewinsky, who was at the time a 21-year-old unpaid intern at the
White House. In a Vanity Fair essay published earlier this year,
Lewinsky wrote, "I now see how problematic it was that the two of us
even got to a place where there was a question of consent. Instead, the
road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority,
station, and privilege."