Monica Lewinsky believes President Bill Clinton took advantage of his power both during their affair and in the media fallout that ensued after.
Looking back on the relationship during Wednesday’s episode of the “How to Fail” podcast, Lewinsky said that while she thought she was in love with Clinton at the time, she now also knows she was taken advantage of.
“It was [a] 22- to 24-year-old young woman’s love. ... The way we see love evolves with every relationship we have,” she told host Elizabeth Day, later adding, “That’s what I felt. I think there was some limerence there and all sorts of other things, but that’s how I saw it then. And I think it was also an abuse of power.”
When the extramarital relationship was made public in 1998, Lewinsky had to contend with being ridiculed as a “dumb bimbo,” a label she says she thinks the White House helped push.
“I think that was a narrative that was crafted and put out by the White House, so I think it was picked up, that mantle was picked up by a lot of women,” she told Day.
The author previously spoke about the power imbalance between her and Clinton in a 2021 CNN interview where she described Clinton’s actions as “wholly inappropriate” for someone who was “the most powerful man, my boss,” and nearly three decades older.
“I was 22, literally just out of college,” she said. “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.”