Monica Lewinsky Suggests Bill Clinton Should Have Resigned or Found a Way Not to 'Throw' Her 'Under the Bus' After Affair Scandal

Monica Lewinsky opened up on the backlash she received after her sexual relationship with former President Bill Clinton went public and what she believed could have been done differently at the time.

On a recent installment of "Call Her Daddy" with host Alex Cooper, Lewinsky admitted she felt "so guilty" after Clinton made a public statement insisting he'd never "had sexual relations" with her.

"I felt like this having become public was my fault. Because I had confided in Linda [Tripp]. And so if I had not confided in her, I felt as if this wouldn't have become public," she continued. "There was an enormous amount of guilt. I didn't want him to lose his job."

"Then there was a part of me that was so humiliated and to kind of have the most powerful man in the world saying that, you know, basically you’re damaged goods, like is not something, not something you want as a 51-year-old woman and not something you want as a 24-year-old woman," Lewinsky added.

When asked how the scandal could have been handled differently, the activist had a few ideas. "I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody's business and to resign, or to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who is just starting out in the world under the bus," she explained.

"At the same time, I'm hearing myself say that and it's like, 'Okay, but we're also talking about the most powerful office in the world,'" she admitted. "I don't want to be naïve either."

As for if she's ever received any apologies for how she was treated, Lewinsky confessed there were a "handful of people" claimed they'd wished they made different choices, but she was "grateful" to be in a place where she didn't feel she needed apologies any longer.

"As my life changed, as people saw me more and more as my true self, as I was able to have more agency, that those things became less important because I have been able to, even though I will always be defined in some way by my history, I am also defined by my present and that's, it's important," she shared.

The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal made headlines in the late '90s when it was revealed the former POTUS, who was in his late 40s and early 50s at the time, had a sexual relationship with an intern in her early 20s.

Clinton was impeached in 1998, but he remained in office for the remainder of his term.