Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich admitted on Thursday that it was “a mistake” to impeach President Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Gingrich's Change of Heart
“I think it was a mistake, because the real problem wasn’t Lewinsky, the real problem was he had committed perjury in a case involving sexual harassment, while he was governor, and perjury is a felony,” Gingrich told the New York Post’s Miranda Devine, on her podcast “Pod Force One.”
Clinton was embroiled in controversy after being accused by several women of various forms of sexual misconduct. Paula Jones filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the former president in 1998, which would result in an investigation. The lawsuit would also lead to Clinton’s impeachment as well as expose his affair with Lewinsky, who was in her early 20s at the time and an intern at the White House.
Clinton initially denied allegations of an affair with Lewinsky, but eventually admitted to it. He was then accused of committing perjury, but was eventually acquitted.
Cultural Misunderstanding
“I always argued the question, ‘Is he allowed to commit felonies?’ But by allowing, and this is partly the way the report was written, by allowing it to be about sex, it trivialized it,” Gingrich said.
He told Devine about the moment when he realized he had “completely misunderstood how the culture was evolving.”
“I realized that we were really off course in August of that year, when I was at the OK Cafe in Atlanta with my two daughters, who at that time were, I guess, in their early 20s, and they both said to me, ‘If our friends lose money on their 401(k) because of some stupid intern, we are going to be mad at you,’” Gingrich recalled.
The former House speaker told Devine that Clinton “left office at the high point of his popularity.”
Lewinsky, who was ridiculed following the scandal, has since worked on reclaiming her story, now suggesting that Clinton abused his power during their affair and afterward.
