Hillary Clinton appears to defend Bill over Lewinsky affair: ‘He was really ashamed about it’

The former Secretary of State said her husband never would have revealed the affair if the couple was not in the public eye

Former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton appeared to defend her husband, former President Bill Clinton, over the affair got him impeached in 1998.

In a clip from her forthcoming television programme Gutsy, UCLA Health chaplain Rev Whittney Ijanaten asked Ms Clinton whether her husband would have revealed his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky had the couple not been in the public eye.

“Oh no,” Ms Clinton responded. “No. Becasue he was so embarrassed and really ashamed about it.”

Mr Clinton has indeed expressed remorse for the affair with Ms Lewinsky on a number of occasions over the years, though only after the revelation of the affair and Mr Clinton’s dishonesty about it threatened to end his political career during his second term as president.

Mr Clinton denied that he had carried on a sexual relationship with Ms Lewinsky, who is 27 years his junior, and Ms Clinton famously said that rumors about an affair where part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky (Getty Images)

But after Mr Clinton was forced to admit the affair during a deposition to a grand jury in August of 1998, he apologised to the nation. In a series on her life titled Hillary that premiered in 2020, Ms Clinton said that she was “devastated” by the affair and said that she “could not believe it.”

The relationship with Ms Lewinsky was not the first time Mr Clinton had been accused of marital infidelity. He was ultimately impeached by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, but acquitted by the US Senate and allowed to finish the remainder of his term in office.

Nearly two decades later, Ms Clinton was defeated in her own bid for the White House by Donald Trump despite winning the popular vote. In the years since, she has remained an active advocate for liberal issues and routinely expressed grievances with Mr Trump, other political rivals like Sen Bernie Sanders, and the way the media treated her during the 2016 campaign.

Ms Clinton opposed the impeachment, but said that the gutsiest decision of her own life was her decision to remain in her marriage.

Ms Clinton appeared on The View to promote her new show, which is she is executive producing alongside her daughter Chelsea Clinton and is scheduled to debut on Apple TV+ on September 9. In it, Ms Clinton will be in conversation with a number of other prominent female leaders and celebrities including Gloria Steinem and Megan Thee Stallion.

In the clip on the Lewinsky affair, Rev Ijanaten asks Ms Clinton whether she believes the public had a right to know about Mr Clinton’s affair.

“You know, I think that’s one of the age-old questions,” Ms Clinton responded. “I think that there are circumstances where telling is crueller than not telling.”