Bill Clinton on the Daily Show: 'You know I regret very much what I did all those years ago'

Last Friday Bill Clinton and James Patterson took the book tour for their co-written thriller, “The President is Missing,” to the Daily Show. Host Trevor Noah spent most of the interview talking about the book, but eventually asked Clinton about an awkward previous stop on the book tour when Clinton erupted over a question about Monica Lewinsky.

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In case you’ve already forgotten, last month NBC News’ Craig Melvin asked Clinton if he’d ever apologized to Lewinsky. Clinton dodged, saying he’d apologized to “everybody in the world” but then admitted he’d never apologized specifically to Lewinsky. Throughout the exchange, Clinton was grinning and wagging his finger as if he were the aggrieved party. He then went into a discourse about the sexual harassment policy he had in Arkansas and the fact that he was “broke” when he left the White House. It was a shameful display which Erin Gloria Ryan at the Daily Beast labeled “sleazy obfuscation.”

Clearly, Clinton has been coached since then. When Trevor Noah recalled that previous interview, Clinton immediately admitted it was not his “best hour.” A bit later he struck an apologetic tone and then immediately stepped on it by once again claiming the facts were on his side.

“You know I regret very much what I did all those years ago and I tried to pay for it and tried to atone for it and try to do right,” Clinton said. Then he continued, “But that’s—if somebody doesn’t remember what the facts are I can hardly be angry, it was a long time ago and so I shouldn’t have been angry.”

The “somebody” Clinton is referring to here is NBC’s Craig Melvin. During that previous interview, Clinton got upset with Melvin, saying, “You, typically, have ignored gaping facts in describing this and I bet that you don’t even know them.”

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So I guess what Clinton has learned is that he shouldn’t get upset with people who don’t remember that he was the real victim of the Lewinsky scandal. I’m not sure how else you could interpret what he’s saying to Trevor Noah. What apparently still does not exist for Bill Clinton is any sense that maybe people know the facts and remember then correctly and still think he’s not a great guy.

Naturally, this being the Daily Show, Noah doesn’t press on any of that. Noah also doesn’t bring up Juanita Broaddrick because that would make things really awkward. Instead, this was a friendly attempt to give Clinton a second (or is it a third?) bite at the #MeToo apple and Clinton barely managed to feign a few seconds of remorse. Most of his answer is about people not remembering what happened and how everyone should realize there’s still a lot of people struggling because of “objectification” and “disrespect” as if Clinton himself isn’t the poster-child for both of those.

Here’s the full interview. I’ve cued this up to the part near the end when #MeToo comes up.

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