On a day when Hillary Rodham Clinton is winning headlines for calling President Trump a “creep” in excerpts of her upcoming book released to MSNBC, another book set for release next week said she put up with Bill Clinton’s creepy groping of women.
Biographer Craig Shirley, who’s written several authoritative histories on former President Ronald Reagan, pored over Clinton’s womanizing and its impact on his early presidency in his latest book about former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Citizen Newt, the Making of a Reagan Conservative.
In the first authorized biography about Gingrich since he has emerged at Trump’s top outside advisor, Shirley details his influence and fights over the past four decades in Washington, many coming during the Clinton years when the Republican became speaker.
While focused on Gingrich, Citizen Newt is also a well-told and engaging history of recent Washington politics, including the Clinton White House.
“Everybody knew somebody who had a story about Clinton grabbing or groping a woman,” Shirley wrote in Citizen Newt, provided to Secrets in advance of its August 29 release.
“The astonishing thing was not just that he got away with it, repeatedly, without being sued, but that Hillary put up with it, as did the American people. But Clinton had perfected the talent of ‘getting away with it’ since his childhood. He could, as they say, charm the pants off of you. Or her,” he penned on page 357 of the book published by Thomas Nelson Press, a branch of HarperCollins Christian Publishing Inc.
He referenced an American Spectator story about how Arkansas troopers “essentially acted as pimps for Clinton,” and how, according to Time, the then-Arkansas governor would sometimes return home to an angry wife who would just yell.
Wrote Shirley: “Time magazine called him a ‘reckless, obsessive womanizer.’ If Hillary was awakened in the wee hours by her glandular husband, according to Time’s report, she would greet him with a ‘mouthful of four-letter words.'”
Or worse. After noting how Paula Jones made the first official charges of sexual harassment against Clinton, Shirley wrote, “Jokes even made the rounds about impeachment, and there always seemed to be fresh stories of discord in the White House. Hillary threw a lamp at Bill. Hillary Clinton threw an ashtray at Bill. Hillary threw obscenities at Bill.”
His book ends with Gingrich’s election as speaker and doesn’t tread deeper into Clinton’s affairs, including with Monica Lewinsky, which led to his impeachment in the House on Dec. 19, 1998, on a charge of perjury and one of obstruction of justice.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
