Video: 'Clinton about his relationship with Lewinsky 8-17-1998'
(Monday, August 17, 1998, at 10:02 p.m. EDT; during the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal) — U.S. President Bill Clinton acknowledged tonight during a live television address that he had an inappropriate relationship with onetime intern Monica S. Lewinsky and deceived the American people about it, but he defiantly challenged independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to stop “prying into private lives.”
Seven months after he wagged his finger and sternly told a national audience that he did not have sex with “that woman,” the president said that he had not been candid because he wanted to protect himself and his family from embarrassment.
“I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate,” Clinton said from the historic Map Room at the White House, where he had testified to a federal grand jury for more than four hours earlier in the day. “In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.”
“I know that my public comments and my silence about this matter gave a false impression,” he added, although he did not say directly that he had had sex with Lewinsky. “I misled people, including even my wife. I deeply regret that.”
But the president’s tone during his five-minute statement was flavored with as much anger as remorse as he lashed out at Starr and called for a halt to the investigation of whether he perjured himself in the Paula Jones lawsuit or encouraged others to do so.
“I intend to reclaim my family life for my family,” he said. “It’s nobody’s business but ours. Even presidents have private lives. It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life.”
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who held her husband’s hand at church Sunday morning (Aug. 16, 1998) and whose staunch defense of him through sex scandals in the past has been so critical to his political survival, did not join him for tonight’s statement.
