President Bill Clinton was so furious about the treatment of his wife, Hillary, during his failed presidential bid that he couldn’t sleep for two years, he now admits, or stop complaining about the shocking defeat.
In his new memoir, an emotional Clinton apologizes to all those who found it difficult in the years following the 2016 election, won by Donald Trump, which he describes as “the darkest possible election in America.”
Clinton, president from 1991 to 2001, still blames Hillary’s defeat on a toxic combination of Russian propaganda, an unprecedented investigation into her use of emails by James Comey, then director of the FBI, and a lazy political press that , according to him, took more interest in the email controversy than the merits of the candidates.
“It is difficult for me to write all this,” he says in Citizen – My Life After The White House. ‘I couldn’t sleep for two years after the election. He was so angry that he was in no condition to be around.
“I apologize to all those who endured my angry outbursts, which lasted for years and annoyed or bored people who thought it was useless to repeat things that could not be changed.”
Referring to his wife’s calamitous loss of a six-point lead in the polls, he writes that: “Almost two years after the election, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a highly respected social scientist, said that Russia’s cyberattacks, coupled with Comey’s interventions were effective enough to persuade voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to vote third party or stay home.
“If so, Putin’s enablers were Comey and the political press.”
Clinton makes a series of confessions in the memoir, including comments about her relationship with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his affair with Monica Lewinksy, which led to his 1996 impeachment by the House of Representatives.
Bill and Hillary Clinton photographed in Washington DC during the state dinner of Kenyan President William Ruto’s official state visit to the United States.
In his new book Citizen, to be published next week, Clinton, now 78, described his interactions with the convicted pedophile.
He also addresses a bizarre claim that his staff deliberately ripped the letter “W” off White House keyboards to hinder his successor, President George W. Bush, and admits the long-standing allegation may be true.
Clinton, 78, recalls how a media ‘frenzy’ marred the handover to Bush in 2001 amid accusations that outgoing staff had trashed the West Wing. At that time, filing cabinets were said to be glued shut, obscene messages were left on answering machines, and pornographic photographs were placed on office printers.
The presidential entourage was accused of destroying the dishes on Airforce One. Bill and Hillary Clinton themselves were involved in the theft of bedroom furniture.
But nothing caught the public’s attention more than the claim that official keyboards were systematically defaced to remove the letter ‘W’, the incoming president’s middle initial and the name by which he was often known.
On January 26, 1998, Bill Clinton addressed his affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, famously saying, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
Clinton claims in her memoirs that Epstein, seen here with associate Ghislaine Maxwell, had offered the plane in support of her foundation.
A photograph showing former White House intern Monica Lewinsky meeting with President Bill Clinton at a White House function presented as evidence in documents from the Starr investigation and released by the House Judiciary Committee on the 21st September 1998.
“There are dozens, if not hundreds, of keyboards that are missing these keys,” a White House source said at the time. ‘In some cases, ‘W’ keys have been taped to the top of doors, which measure 12 feet high. In other cases, they were glued with Superglue, face up or face down.
Clinton states in the new book that: ‘The White House staff asked me to take the tables saying they didn’t want to keep or store them. And no one on Airforce One destroyed government merchandise.
But the keyboards were defaced?
“Within a few days, some people finally went on record to say that either no damage had been done or that ‘W’s accusations of mischief were greatly exaggerated,” he concludes, an open-ended comment that most will interpret as an admission that the claims were in fact true.
A year-long investigation by the General Accounting Committee later found that Clinton staff had caused about $15,000 worth of “damage, theft, vandalism and hoaxes,” although there was no prosecution.
Clinton’s new memoir was published in November
Clinton has long faced questions about her partner with Jeffrey Epstein, who took his own life in 2009 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking of minors.
In her book, she admits to flying on Epstein’s private jet, the Lolita Express, in 2002 and 2003, but dismisses accusations that she ever visited the disgraced financier’s private island, Little Saint James, in the Virgin Islands. USA.
Clinton claims that Epstein had offered the plane in support of his foundation and that they talked about economics and politics.
He writes: ‘The bottom line is that, although it allowed me to visit my foundation’s work, traveling on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of subsequent questioning. I wish I had never met him.
Clinton adds: “I always thought Epstein was weird, but I had no idea what crimes he was committing.
“He hurt a lot of people, but I didn’t know anything about it, and when he was first arrested in 2005, I had stopped having contact with him. I have never visited his island.
The former president also spoke about his romance with Monica Lewinsky.
In his book he recalled an interview on NBC’s ‘Today Show’ in 2018 where he was asked if he had ever apologized to Lewinsky.
Clinton writes: “I said, ‘No, then I felt terrible.'”
“Did you ever apologize to her?” I told her I had apologized to her and everyone else I had hurt. What came next took me by surprise.
“But you didn’t apologize to her, at least according to people we’ve talked to.”
“I struggled to contain my frustration as I responded that while I had never spoken to her directly, I had said publicly on more than (one) occasion that I was sorry.”
The 42nd president admitted that the interview “wasn’t my finest moment.”