Bill Clinton claims the affair with Monica Lewinsky that almost destroyed his presidency was one of the “things I did to manage my anxieties.”
Clinton, 73, says in the new documentary, “Hillary” that the pressure of being in the White House made him feel like a boxer who had gone 30 rounds and his affair was “something that will take your mind off it for a while.”
“Nobody thinks they’re taking a risk,” he says in the four-hour doc set to stream on Hulu from Friday. “That’s not why we do stupid things.”
The affair with then-intern Lewinsky led to Clinton’s impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1998, before he was ultimately acquitted.
He admitted that he initially lied to wife Hillary and denied the affair — recalling how he finally had to sit her down and confess when it was too obvious that he was lying.
“I went and sat on the bed and talked to her. I told her exactly what happened, when it happened. I said I feel terrible about it,” he tells the doc.
“We’ve been through quite a bit in the last few years. I said I have no defense, it’s inexcusable what I did.”
Hillary admits that she was “devastated.” “I could not believe it. I was so personally just hurt and I can’t believe this, I can’t believe you lied,” she said.
Hillary described the marriage counseling sessions they went through afterward as “painful, painful discussions.”
Bill called the sessions “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do but it was necessary.”
“She deserved it, Chelsea deserved it and I needed it,” he says.
“I feel terrible about the fact that Monica Lewinsky’s life was defined by it, unfairly I think.”
Still, he suggested it was time for her to move on.
“Over the years I’ve watched her trying to get a normal life back again, but you’ve got to decide how to define normal,” he said.
The documentary, directed by Nanette Burstein, follows Hillary being interviewed for 35 hours as well as many members of her campaign staff from her doomed 2016 presidential bid.
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