New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman panned Bill Clinton's continued defensiveness over questions about the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the wake of the #MeToo movement, saying Wednesday it showed why "people don't really want him around."
Clinton reacted testily to NBC News reporter Craig Melvin's questions about Lewinsky, the White House intern he had a series of sexual encounters with during his presidency. He accused Melvin of "omitting facts" and said "nobody believes that I got out of that for free."
When he was given a "do-over" by CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert Tuesday night, Clinton said, "It wasn't my finest hour."
"The important thing is that was a very painful thing that happened 20 years ago, and I apologized to my family, to Monica Lewinsky and her family, and to the American people," he said. "I meant it then, I meant it now. I've had to live with the consequences every day since."
Asked by CNN host John Berman where those kinds of answers left Clinton as a political commodity, Haberman said there was a reason Democrats didn't want him on the campaign trail.
"His answer even there, it was all about himself. It was all about his own pain, and it was all about what a hard thing was for him," she said.
Haberman said Lewinsky's life was "ruined" over the scandal, and Clinton didn't address that in his responses.
"It shows you as to why people don't really want him around," she said. "There is just a disconnect from where voters are right now and where the conversation about the MeToo movement is right now."