Thread by @thetimes

When the Monica Lewinsky scandal finally erupted, Bill Clinton’s presidency was very nearly destroyed, and the course of US politics was changed forever.

Former US correspondent @mfletchertimes, who witnessed the scandal first-hand, recalls what happened
thetimes.co.uk/article/monica…

The scandal contributed to Al Gore’s wafer-thin defeat by George W Bush in the presidential election of 2000, fuelled the bitter partisan warfare that has since crippled America, and almost certainly played a role in Hillary Clinton’s narrow defeat by Donald Trump in 2016.

By choosing to brazen out the scandal instead of resigning, Clinton also set an example that has since been followed by numerous other politicians – among them Trump, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and various British ministers.

The Monica Lewinsky affair raised moral and cultural issues that reverberate with greater force today.

Issues that will inevitably be revisited by Impeachment: American Crime Story, a ten-part dramatisation of the whole squalid saga of adultery, betrayal and political conspiracy

At the time, Clinton and Lewinsky both insisted their affair was consensual, and Hillary not only stood by her husband but appeared complicit in a surreptitious White House campaign to portray Lewinsky as a star-struck bimbo who had set out to seduce the president.

With the rise of the #MeToo movement and the Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew scandals, Clinton’s conduct looks much more like that of an unscrupulous and powerful older man exploiting an infatuated junior employee for his own sexual gratification.

Lewinsky’s views have changed. Writing in 2014, she said: “Sure my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat to protect his powerful position.”

You can read the full story here:
thetimes.co.uk/article/monica…