Clinton feels sorry for Lewinsky
Former US president Bill Clinton said today he feels sorry for Monica Lewinsky and hopes ”she won't be trapped in what Andy Warhol called everybody’s 15 minutes of fame”.
Continuing a series of TV interviews to promote sales of his memoirs, Clinton said: ”I feel sorry because, as she said herself, she was betrayed by her friend.”
“And none of it would have happened if I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I feel sorry about it,” Clinton said on NBC’s Today show.
He called Lewinsky “a really intelligent person and a fundamentally good person”.
When his White House relationship with her was first revealed he infamously denied having sex “with that woman”.
Clinton acknowledged he had had an affair with Lewinsky when he came under pressure from US special prosecutor Kenneth Starr.
Part of the pressure came from Lewinsky's friend Linda Tripp, who tape-recorded telephone conversations that Lewinsky had with the president.
Asked if he thought the writing of his book, My Life, was a way of settling political scores, Clinton said, “In the context of calling Hillary before the grand jury, that was a cheap, sleazy publicity stunt, a sorry thing to do.”
“People don’t like prosecutors who prosecute people instead of crimes,” he said, charging that Starr ”believed it violated a natural order for me to be elected president".
