Monica Lewinsky says Bill Clinton should’ve resigned from office after affair in new podcast interview

By CNN Newsource

Published February 25, 2025 8:22 PM

By Elizabeth Wagmeister, CNN

(CNN) — Monica Lewinsky is revisiting the events involving Bill Clinton that first put her in the media spotlight over 25 years ago, saying that the former president should have resigned from office at the time.

Sitting down with “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper, Lewinsky responded to a question on how she thought the matter should have been handled by the media and the White House once the news broke that the former president had an affair with her when she was a White House intern.

“I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody’s business and to resign,” Lewinsky told Cooper. “Or to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who is just starting out in the world under the bus.”

In a clip of the latest episode of “Call Her Daddy,” first released by CNN, Lewinsky told Cooper that she believes other young women suffered because of the treatment she endured at the time of the political scandal.

“I think there was so much collateral damage for women of my generation to watch a young woman to be pilloried on a world stage – to be torn apart for my sexuality, for my mistakes, for my everything.”

CNN has reached out to a representative for Clinton for comment.

Lewinsky appeared on Cooper’s podcast for a wide-ranging discussion to promote her own podcast, “Reclaiming,” which Lewinsky began hosting earlier this month. (So far, guests on Lewinsky’s new podcast have included Olivia Munn and Alan Cumming.)

Lewinsky has spoken in recent years about the power imbalance between her and Clinton, and has been candid about misogyny in the media that she has said unfairly covered her as a young woman.

In 2021, Lewinsky told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Clinton’s role in their affair, which captured the nation’s attention for years and eventually led to his impeachment, was “wholly inappropriate.”

“I think what’s really important to remember in today’s world is that we never should have even gotten to a place where consent was a question,” Lewinsky told Tapper.

“So it was wholly inappropriate as the most powerful man, my boss, 49 years old. I was 22, literally just out of college. And I think that the power differentials there are something that I couldn’t ever fathom consequences at 22 that I understand obviously so differently at 48.”

Lewinsky told Variety in 2021 that in a post-#MeToo era, she hopes young women in her same position would not be judged so harshly by the media and in society.

“I would hope that we would be having a different kind of conversation,” she said. “I would hope that most of the blame would not have rested on my shoulders, and most of the consequences.”

In the 2020 documentary “Hillary,” Bill Clinton said he felt “terrible about the fact that Monica Lewinsky’s life was defined” by their affair, “unfairly I think.”

“Over the years I have watched her trying to get a normal life back again,” he said at the time.

Clinton has also previously stated that he “disagreed” with the sentiment that he should have resigned over the affair.

Cooper – who is the most listened-to female podcaster in the world – signed a $125 million deal with SiriusXM last year, sources previously told CNN, for “Call Her Daddy,” which is a popular podcast focused on sex, relationships and pop culture.

CNN’s Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this story.