Gingrich Concedes Impeaching Clinton Over Lewinsky Was a ‘Mistake’ — but Not for the Reason You’d Think
In a striking admission that upends decades of partisan lore, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told the New York Post’s Miranda Devine on her Pod Force One podcast Wednesday that impeaching Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal was a “mistake.”
Devine asked Gingrich roughly an hour into the episode whether he regretted the impeachment push. “I think it was a mistake,” Gingrich replied. “The real problem wasn’t Lewinsky. The real problem was he committed perjury in a case involving sexual harassment when he was governor. Perjury’s a felony.”
He was referring to the 1994 lawsuit filed by Paula Jones, who alleged Clinton propositioned her, exposed himself and requested oral sex while he was Arkansas governor. Clinton denied the claims and the case was settled out of court in 1998. The Lewinsky affair emerged during discovery in the Jones case, leading Clinton to deny the relationship under oath — the perjury at the heart of the impeachment.
Gingrich’s reflection echoes an earlier moment of doubt he says he experienced in the summer of 1998, while dining with his two daughters at a cafe. They warned him that if their friends lost money in their 401(k)s “because of some stupid intern,” they’d be furious. “I realized at that point I had completely misunderstood how the culture was evolving,” he said.
The political fallout was immediate and lasting. Clinton left office in January 2001 with a 67% approval rating, according to Gallup — near his all-time high. Democrats seized the narrative that Republicans had impeached a popular president over “a triviality,” a talking point Devine herself acknowledged during the interview. Gingrich pushed back, noting that Democrats did not attempt to impeach George W. Bush during his tenure.
Still, Gingrich’s admission underscores a broader reevaluation of the 1990s political wars, now seen by some historians as a precursor to the hyper-partisan impeachment cycles of the Trump era. While Gingrich did not fully disavow the underlying perjury case, he conceded that elevating the Lewinsky affair to a constitutional crisis was a strategic blunder — one that ultimately backfired by handing Democrats a rallying cry and boosting Clinton’s popularity.
“You know that you didn’t necessarily want your daughter to go out on a date with him,” Gingrich said with a shrug, “but that didn’t matter.”
The interview, excerpted by the New York Post and later posted on YouTube, has already reignited debate about the legacy of one of the most divisive episodes in modern American politics.