Monica Lewinsky Thinks Bill Clinton Should’ve Resigned After Scandal, But It Would’ve Been ‘Harder’ on Her

Monica Lewinsky thinks things should have played out differently.

More than 30 years after the activist, now 52, began a sexual relationship with former United States president Bill Clinton — who is 27 years her senior — she told British newspaper The Times that the politician should have stepped down after the scandal rocked the White House.

When asked if Clinton, now 79, should have resigned, the Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky podcast host said, “If we pull out the personal — this being my story and it being that particular president — and look at it objectively, I think probably yes.”

However, she admitted, it may have been “harder on me, in some ways, emotionally,” adding: “I already felt an enormous amount of guilt, so I don’t know how I would have weathered that heavy guilt.”

Lewinsky pointed out how things would have played out differently, though. Clinton initially denied the affair, but upon further investigation, he was impeached. Details of their sexual encounters were made public in the Starr Report, a federal government report by independent counsel Ken Starr concerning his investigation of Clinton.

Clinton was eventually acquitted on both articles of impeachment.

“I wouldn’t have had to testify under oath, going through every intimate encounter,” Lewinsky told The Times. “By the fact that the Starr Report would not have been written or come out.”

She also told the publication that she descended into a “dark decade” following the affair, even though she tried to start over at the London School of Economics.

“I suddenly understood the impact of people having called me a dumb bimbo and stupid,” she recalled. “I hadn’t realised how deeply that had seared into my psyche and my soul. I couldn’t get up and give a presentation in class; I was afraid to go to the help centre for advice on an essay.”

“We all know imposter syndrome,” she added, “but it felt different to me because I’d been dissected on a world stage.”

The sex scandal rocked the White House in 1998, when Lewinsky was 24.

These days, she said, “It has got a lot easier the more I’ve been able to fill out my own life, with me as my true self.”

Clinton is still married to wife Hillary Clinton, whom he wed in 1975.