Former President Clinton said his comments on “Today” on Monday “wasn’t my finest hour,” but he said he felt NBC had “distilled” the interview. Mr. Clinton appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” with his co-author, James Patterson.
“Here’s what I want to say: It wasn’t my finest hour – but the important thing is, that was a very painful thing, 20 years ago, I apologized to my family, to Monica Lewinsky and her family, to the American people – I meant it then and I meant it now, and I’ve had to live with the consequences ever since,” Mr. Clinton said.
Mr. Clinton has been criticized since the “Today” interview aired, especially when he said his critics are “omitting facts” to lump him in with other men accused of sexual assault and harassment. On “The Late Show,” Mr. Clinton repeated that the #MeToo movement is “long overdue.”
Mr. Clinton insisted he isn’t “surprised” when people bring up his affair with Lewinsky, and he said he “didn’t like this one” because he felt it began with the assertion that he hadn’t apologized and hadn’t been held accountable, which he disputes.
Mr. Clinton and Patterson also appeared at a TimesTalk event on Tuesday, where Mr. Clinton said called the “Today” interviewer, Craig Melvin, “that young man.”
“I should have remembered that that man is young enough to be my son,” Mr. Clinton said about Melvin, who is 39. Along those lines, Mr. Clinton said “The Late Show” that he realizes now there are “a lot of people who don’t have a lot of memory of that.”
Mr. Clinton and Patterson wrote a thriller together called “The President Is Missing,” and they are on the second day of their book tour.
On CBS “Sunday Morning,” Mo Rocca asked Mr. Clinton about Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s comments that he should have resigned.
“Well, I just disagree with her,” Mr. Clinton said. “I mean, you have to really ignore what the context was. But you know, she’s living in a different context. And she did it for different reasons. So, I just disagree with her.”
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