Former President Bill Clinton was given a mulligan from host Stephen Colbert when he appeared on CBS’s “The Late Show” with his co-author James Patterson on Tuesday night following a contentious interview with NBC the previous day.
“I notice you did not enjoy that entire interview. I want you to enjoy this one, but I do want to ask you something: Would you like a do-over on that answer?” Colbert said. “Do you understand why some people thought it was a tone-deaf response?”
Clinton responded, “When I saw the interview, I thought that because they had to distill it, it looked like I was saying I didn’t apologize and I had no intention to, and I was mad at me.”
“Here’s what I want to say, it wasn’t my finest hour, but the important thing is that was a very painful thing that happened 20 years ago and I apologized to my family, to Monica Lewinsky and her family, to the American people,” he added. “I meant it then, I mean it now. I’ve had to live with the consequences every day since. I still believe this #MeToo movement is long overdue, necessary, and should be supported.”
TONIGHT: Stephen offers @BillClinton the opportunity for a do-over regarding a question he was asked in an interview earlier this week. #LSSC #BillClinton pic.twitter.com/vgHSWOpY6N
— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) June 5, 2018
In that NBC “Today” interview, Craig Melvin engaged in a lengthy back and forth with Clinton on his extramarital affair with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky where he suggested that he didn’t owe her a private apology.
“I have never talked to her,” Clinton said. “But I did say publicly, on more than one occasion, that I was sorry. That’s very different. The apology was public. I apologized to everybody in the world.”
He also said in the same interview, “I dealt with it 20 years ago. And the American people, two-thirds of them, stayed with me.”
As my colleague Emily Jashinsky points out, Clinton is correct with respect to the people sticking with him, but the #MeToo movement is supposed to prevent men and women, particularly powerful ones, from getting a pass for bad behavior.
Clinton made it a full day before a late night comic with a large platform essentially gave him a pass for his bad behavior.
And in receiving that do-over, Clinton expressed how painful the whole ordeal was for him.
Clinton took advantage of a woman 27 years younger than him, lied under oath about the affair, and is now trying to paint himself as the victim.
It’s the type of dishonest retelling of history that allows this bad behavior to continue in society. If we embrace and celebrate people who engage in this sort of behavior, where’s the incentive to want to change?
