Giuliani digs up Lewinsky scandal to bash Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton in 1998, Rudy Giuliani in 2016 and Monica Lewinsky in 1998.
Hillary Clinton in 1998, Rudy Giuliani in 2016 and Monica Lewinsky in 1998. (Photos: Joyce Naltchayan/AFP/Getty Images, Ida Mae Astute/ABC via Getty Images Roberto Borea/AP)

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Monday night that Donald Trump is too much of a gentleman to dig up the Lewinsky scandal to attack his political opponent. But Giuliani isn’t.

After the presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., Giuliani delivered a litany of reasons he considers Trump to be a feminist despite frequent accusations of chauvinism against the GOP nominee, including about fair treatment of women at his organization.

“Donald Trump is an honest person, and he was too reserved and gentlemanly in the end to say what I would’ve said about Hillary Clinton’s attack on him about not being a feminist,” Giuliani told reporters in a video shot by Alexandra Svokos of Elite Daily.

“What would you have said?” one journalist asked.

“I’m not sure I should tell you what I would’ve said. I sure would’ve talked about what she did to Monica Lewinsky,” he said. “What that woman standing there did to Monica Lewinsky, trying to paint her as an insane young woman, when in fact Monica Lewinsky was an intern.”

Giuliani said that former President Bill Clinton disgraced the United States with his indiscretion in the Oval Office. The former mayor further accused Hillary Clinton of disparaging the White House intern.

“She didn’t just stand by him. She attacked Monica Lewinsky,” he said. “And after being married to Bill Clinton for 20 years, if you didn’t know the moment Monica Lewinsky said that Bill Clinton violated her that she was telling the truth, then you’re too stupid to be president.”

Leading up to the debate, Trump hinted strongly that another one of Clinton’s sex scandals would be fair game. The GOP nominee threatened to invite Gennifer Flowers, with whom Clinton has admitted to conducting an affair, to sit in the front row of the audience. His campaign subsequently walked back the invite, but after the debate, Trump told Yahoo News he only avoided bringing up Clinton’s scandal out of respect for Chelsea Clinton, who was also in the audience.

According to a journal entry from Clinton’s close friend, Diane Blair, who died in 2000, the former first lady called Lewinsky a “narcissistic loony yoon” in private conversation when dealing with the fallout from her husband’s infidelity.

In this image taken from video, Monica Lewinsky embraces President Clinton as he greeted well-wishers at a White House lawn party, Nov. 6, 1996.
In this image taken from video, Monica Lewinsky embraces President Bill Clinton as he greeted well-wishers at a White House lawn party, Nov. 6, 1996. (Photo: APTV/AP)

In recent years, Lewinsky has reemerged in public life as an anti-bullying activist. She opened up about her experiences in a May 2014 essay for Vanity Fair and gave a TED talk about the harm of cyberbullying in March 2015.

After the essay appeared, ABC News journalist Diane Sawyer asked Clinton how she felt about Lewinsky’s being back in the news.

“She’s perfectly free to do that. She is in my view an American who is free to express herself however she chooses, but that’s not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about.”

When addressing the topic in the past, Clinton has said she dealt with the scandal at the time, wrote about it in her book “Living History,” and has since moved on. She has said she wishes Lewinsky well.