Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that he feels bad for former President Bill Clinton, who still seems to be trapped by his extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
“I feel sorry for Bill Clinton,” Gingrich said on Fox News.
“This is a guy who rose to the highest office in America, who … first of all has to now be with Hillary after her second defeat, and that whole arrangement didn’t quite work out the way it should have, from their standpoint,” he said.
Gingrich spoke after a series of interviews Clinton gave this week to promote his new novel, but which quickly turned to his affair with Lewinsky. Clinton said he didn’t owe her a private apology for what happened, which led to criticism and commentary and that Clinton was too defensive and looked out of place in the age of the #MeToo movement.
“He is going to spend the rest of his life in this cloud, and doesn’t seem to be able to get to closure and just move on,” said Gingrich, who worked closely with Clinton at times in the 1990s when they were both in power.
Gingrich agreed that Clinton created his own problems, but said the scandal still seems to have lowered Clinton’s status.
“I’m not defending him, I’m just saying, when you watch him, you’re watching somebody who clearly is so much less than he wanted to be,” Gingrich said.
