Jay Leno Hits Back at Monica Lewinsky After She Claimed He 'Targeted Her' Over Her Affair With President Bill Clinton: Source

Former Tonight Show host Jay Leno defended himself after Monica Lewinsky claimed he "targeted her" over her affair with President Bill Clinton.

Lewinsky's infamous relationship with the former president started when she was only 22 and he was 49, eventually leading to his impeachment in December 1998.

During a recent episode of the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, Lewinsky was asked about the difference in the way women and men treated her after the affair became publicly known.

"I think what was interesting that I started to see in the public arena was that it, very sadly, it was a lot of women who said worse things about me than the men," she told host Alex Cooper.

"The men told a lot of jokes, right? So the late-night hosts… I think when Jay Leno retired, some media organization had done a study and listed the top 10 targets, his top 10 targets of his late night show, and I was on that list," Lewinsky continued. "I was the only person who wasn’t a public figure."

Sources close to Leno claim he didn't target Lewinsky personally and clarified that she was "just an easy punchline and fair game" due to being "everywhere in the news."

The source added that Leno wouldn't call his comments unfair, claiming "she was often the butt of the jokes, but no one was out to get her personally."

They said every host at the time was making jokes about the affair scandal, and there was no point in singling out Leno.

According to insiders, Leno understands why Lewinsky is upset and claims he would not make the same jokes about her today and has not joked about her in 30 years.

Later in the podcast, Lewinsky revealed that she believes Clinton should have stepped down after the news of their affair got out.

"I think the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody’s business and to resign," she explained.

"Or, to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person that was just starting out in the world under the bus," the former White House intern continued.

Lewinsky initially retreated from the public eye, admitting she was left feeling suicidal after being hounded by reporters and ridiculed on talk shows.

"I just couldn't see a way out, and I thought that maybe was the solution," she said soon after the scandal went public.

She admitted she was "terrified" to step back into the public eye but said it has helped her to "reclaim" the narrative about her life, even becoming a producer of the Ryan Murphy bio-series about the scandal, Impeachment: American Crime Story.