Sunday on MSNBC’s “Kasie DC,” longtime Clinton confidant and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) said former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did “a horrible thing” in the way they attacked former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, who had an affair with Bill Clinton.
Partial transcript as follows:
HUNT: Given what we know now and the way this movement has unfolded, should Bill Clinton have resigned over the Monica Lewinsky scandal?
MCAULIFFE: This was 25 years ago, it was difficult—different standards. I think people looked at it in totality.
HUNT: Why were they different standards?
MCAULIFFE: I’m saying at the time we dealt with this 25 years ago, it wasn’t the standards we have today. I think if it happened today, I don’t think you’d be having the same argument that would go on with the new #MeToo movement. But 25 years ago, as I say, it was a different standard.
HUNT: Do you think the Clintons victimized Monica Lewinsky in that, do you think the way they dealt with her would be tolerable today?
MCAULIFFE: No, I don’t. I think it was a horrible thing 25 years ago. As you know, we’re very good friends. I told the president back then it was a horrible thing. I wrote about it in my book. He paid a horrible price. He paid a horrible personal price. He paid a horrible political price. But people looked at the totality, the things he accomplished when he was in office, people made a decision back then—they had gone too far. As you know, we picked up a Senate seat in 1998 because they felt the Republicans had way overstepped their bounds with Ken Starr and all the different things that had gone on, too. But clearly the behavior was horrible and wrong, and I told the president it was wrong.
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