Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Monica Lewinsky Says She Still Feels ‘Trauma’ From Bill Clinton #MeToo Interviews

Monica Lewinsky has stated that she still experiences “trauma” in response to the backlash she has experienced since her 90’s affair with then-President Bill Clinton.

“Despite the amount of trauma work I’ve done for the past 20 years, there’s still a pattern that gets tapped into or triggered,” Lewinsky told InStyle on Tuesday.

The so-called Lewinsky affair has been resurfacing in media lately, though under a banner of a different name this time: #MeToo. In recent interviews on his book tour for new mystery novel “The President Is Missing,” the former President has been dogged by questions about the way he handled his relationship with Monica Lewinsky when she interned for his White House.

In one particularly charged interview, Clinton admitted that he has never directly apologized to Lewinsky for the international condemnation, blame and cyberbullying that Lewinsky is still dealing with two decades later. Rather, he feels that he has “apologized to everybody in the world.” That, he suggests, is sufficient.

In response to this outbursts and other comments about her on the book tour, Lewinsky has vocalized the sentiment that her “trauma” is triggered by comments such as this, and that over 20 years later, she still feels vulnerable and ridiculed every time the scandal is brought up. She says she turns to psychology techniques and, when necessary, Xanax, to deal with the stress.

It’s an inevitable reality that whatever Bill Clinton does relates back to the notorious story of his affair with White House intern. The real question is why he thought the topic would not be revived on his book tour, given the popularity of the #MeToo campaign.

During the immediate years following the scandal, the whole world seemed to blame the then-22-year-old Lewinsky for seducing the president, a married man and key public figure. But in recent years, perception has shifted in some quarters. This polarizing shift parallels the growing #MeToo campaign. New Lewinsky supporters seem to feel that in hindsight the issue was one of sexual manipulation and playing on female vulnerability in the face of a society that still has patriarchal control.

The topic of Lewinsky’s personal experiences of trauma are overtly addressed in her 2015 TED Talk, “Monica Lewinsky: The price of shame”, where she reveals the elevated experiences of self-hatred and blame that she was made to feel as a result of the scandal. We don’t doubt that the issues of wrongful blame in this scandal will continue to be discussed amidst the conversation manipulation in the workplace.

_Nicola Lewis is a summer intern at the Forward, writing for the lifestyle section. You can reach her at [email protected] _

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.