Former US president Bill Clinton said he has not spoken to Monica Lewinsky since the revelation of their affair and that while he has apologized to her publicly he does not think a private apology is necessary at this point.
In a testy interview with NBC's "Today" show aired on Monday, the 71-year-old Clinton was also asked for his thoughts on the #MeToo movement.
The 42nd US president is on a book tour to promote a new thriller, "The President Is Missing," co-written with best-selling author James Patterson. But it's his time in the Oval Office -- specifically his affair with Lewinsky -- that is drawing scrutiny.
"I apologised to everybody in the world," Clinton said when asked if he had apologized to Lewinsky for his affair with the then 22-year-old White House intern.
"I have not talked to her," Clinton said. "I have never talked to her." Asked if he felt he should apologize privately to Lewinsky, Clinton said "No, I do not."
Asked if President Donald Trump has been "given a pass" regarding claims of sexual harassment made against him, Clinton said, "No, but it hasn't gotten anything like the coverage that you would expect." Lewinsky said in an article published in Vanity Fair in February that she had been reexamining her affair with Clinton through the "new lens" of the #MeToo movement and has concluded it constituted a "gross abuse of power."
"He was my boss. He was the most powerful man on the planet," Lewinsky wrote. "He was 27 years my senior, with enough life experience to know better. "I now see how problematic it was that the two of us even got to a place where there was a question of consent," she said. "Instead, the road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege."
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