Left-wing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that former President Bill Clinton would have to resign if the Lewinsky scandal happened today — his remarks coming days after a New York Democrat senator said Clinton should have resigned at the time.
“If it happened today there would have been a very different reaction. No question,” de Blasio said at a press conference, according to the New York Post. “I don’t think you can rework history. I think if it happened today — if any president did that today — they would have to resign.”
De Blasio was weighing in on Sen. Kristen Gillibrand’s remarks last week, in which she said Clinton should have resigned over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
“Yes I think that is the appropriate response,” Gillibrand told the New York Times when asked if Clinton should have stepped down.
It marks the latest in a growing re-evaluation of Clinton’s behavior by Democrats and left-wing media in the wake of a series of sexual harassment scandals to hit a number of Hollywood celebrities, politicians, and journalists.
According to the Post, De Blasio was also asked about allegations about comedian Louis CK. De Blasio had called on politicians to return money to Harvey Weinstein after he was accused of harassment, so de Blasio was asked if he would do the same with money he received at a fundraiser headlined by Louis CK — who recently admitted to inappropriate sexual behavior.
“I don’t think you can say money raised off of an event is the same standard,” he said. “A donation from someone who did something wrong is one question. The fact that hundreds of people went to an event that someone appeared at before anyone knew he had done anything inappropriate — I think that that’s just not the same scenario.”
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.