Clinton rows back on comments over affair with Lewinsky

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has said his combative response this week to questions about former White House intern Monica Lewinsky wasn’t his “finest hour.”

However, Clinton said, “it was a very painful thing that happened 20 years ago,” adding that he had to “live with the consequences every day since.”

In an interview with NBC’s Today released Monday, Clinton bristled at questions over whether he should have resigned 20 years ago because of his sexual relationship with Lewinsky.

Clinton was asked Tuesday by the host of CBS’ Late Show, Stephen Colbert, if he realized why some people thought his response was “tone-deaf” in light of the MeToo movement. Clinton replied: “It wasn’t my finest hour. I was mad at me — not for the first time.”

In the Today show interview, Clinton said his critics were “omitting facts” to lump him in with other men accused of sexual assault and harassment.

Clinton told NBC: “I dealt with it 20 years ago, plus. And I’ve tried to do a good job since then, and with my life and with my work. That’s all I have to say.”

Lewinsky has said their relationship “was not sexual assault,” but “constituted a gross abuse of power.”

Clinton is promoting his book The President is Missing, written with author James Patterson. The plot of the fictional work involves a president dealing with a cyber-terror plot against the U.S.