Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton celebrated her nearly 50-year marriage to former President Bill Clinton despite “dark periods” throughout their relationship.
“I’ve said this for many years, nobody really knows what happens in a marriage except the two people in it. And every marriage I’m aware of has ups and downs – not public, hopefully for everyone else – and you have to make the decisions that are right for you. And I would never tell anybody else, ‘stay in a marriage, leave a marriage,’ whatever the easy answer is. And you know, for me and for us, I think it’s fair to say we are so grateful that at this stage of our life, we have our grandchildren. We have our time together,” Clinton told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired Sunday morning.
Clinton recently published her new memoir, “Something Lost, Something Gained,” which included excerpts on how “both my marriage and Bill’s presidency were imperiled” at the end of the 1990s. Bill Clinton’s presidency was rocked by a sex scandal in 1998, with the 42nd president admitting to having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky later that year.
Hillary Clinton did not cite Monica Lewinsky by name in her memoir or during her interview that aired Sunday, only referring to “dark periods” that threatened her marriage or “a very unfortunate” incident.
Former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton arrive at the White House for a state dinner on May 23, 2024. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
“I write about how we start the morning playing spelling bee in bed. And, you know, Bill is like such a great player. He gets to Queen Bee almost immediately it feels like. We just have a good time. We have a good time sharing this life that we’ve lived together for now nearly 50 years of marriage. That’s what is right for us, and that’s really my, my message,” Clinton shared of her marriage during the interview.
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The couple married on Oct. 11, 1975, meaning they will celebrate their 50th anniversary next year.
President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton sit together durirng an event on health care. (Dirck Halstead/Getty Images)
Bill Clinton was ultimately impeached over his affair with Lewinsky, charging him with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice.
Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky meets President Bill Clinton at the White House. (Getty Images)
Hillary Clinton said that during “one of the darkest periods” of the impeachment, she felt “deeply hurt” by the scandal, while “on the other hand,” she saw the incident as a “political ploy” to force her husband out of office.
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“I had to almost have a binary view of the world that I was living in my reality,” she reflected of how she was feeling during the impeachment. “My reality, on the one hand, I was deeply hurt, deeply confused, really upset, angry. And on the other hand, I knew that this was a political ploy to try to drive, you know, Bill out of office, and I thought he’d been a really good president, and I resented that as an American citizen, that these hypocrites, who, you know, had all kinds of their own stories about, you know, marriage and everything else, were going after him because of a very unfortunate, you know, incident in his life.
President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton at the White House. (Cynthia Johnson/Getty Images)
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“So on the one hand, I’m trying to make a decision about my life, my marriage, my future, my child, my family, which only I could make. On the other hand, I saw the hypocrisy and cruelty of what those Republican, you know, members of Congress were doing, and that that is a reality that people on the outside could never have understood.
“And you know, obviously I got tons of unsolicited advice from all sorts of observers, but my friends – and I have a whole chapter in there about how incredibly grateful I am to my friends – friends of a lifetime, friends you know, that have stood with me, have supported me, who, during that dark period showed up at the White House to be with me,” she said.
