Ex-Clinton aide: ‘Strange’ it took Gillibrand 20 years to call for Bill to resign

A former senior aide to Hillary Clinton said Friday it was “strange” that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) waited nearly 20 years to say that former President Bill Clinton should have resigned as a result of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

“Her point was strange to me because she probably didn’t come to this feeling and thought and position yesterday,” Philippe Reines said on Fox News’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”

“Why she wouldn’t have in the last 20 years vocalized it is strange to me. Nothing was stopping her.”

Reines’s comments were the latest in a back-and-forth between the former Clinton aide and Gillibrand after the Democratic senator told The New York Times that Bill Clinton should have stepped down after his relationship with Lewinsky, then a White House intern, came to light.

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In her interview with the Times, however, Gillibrand said that the controversy may have been overlooked in the 1990s, and said that sexual harassment and assault allegations against President Trump should be looked at.

“Things have changed today, and I think under those circumstances there should be a very different reaction,” she said. “And I think in light of this conversation, we should have a very different conversation about President Trump, and a very different conversation about allegations against him.”

Reines’s comments on Fox News echoed a tweet he posted on Thursday, in which he called Gillibrand a “hypocrite” and accused her of accepting the Clintons’ support for 20 years in spite of the Lewinsky scandal. Gillibrand later told MSNBC that Reines’s assertion was “ridiculous” and “wrong.”

“Bill Clinton did very important things for this country. But my point is about this conversation we are having today, and that we need to have the highest standards for elected leaders, and we have to change what’s happening throughout society, and we have to allow people to tell their stories,” she said.

Gillibrand’s comments came as a growing number of sexual misconduct allegations against prominent figures in politics, business and beyond come to light.

On Thursday, a Los Angeles morning show host accused Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) of forcibly kissing and groping her in 2006. He has since apologized for his behavior. 

Numerous women have accused Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore of pursuing sexual and romantic relations with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Moore has denied the allegations, and has resisted calls from Republican lawmakers and officials to withdraw from the election.