Hillary Clinton says she has “no regrets” about choosing to stay in her marriage to former President Bill Clinton.
The 42nd president’s affair with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s ignited a media firestorm and launched the already heavily scrutinized Clinton marriage back into the spotlight.
Asked about previous comments she’s made that choosing to stay wedded to her husband was the “gutsiest” thing she’s ever done, Clinton told CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell the decision rocked her personal life.
“I guess I was surprised that you said that staying in your marriage was gutsier than running for president,” O’Donnell, the anchor of “CBS Evening News,” said to Clinton in a preview clip from an interview airing Friday and obtained exclusively by ITK.
“Well, it was, in terms of my private life, it was really hard. And as you know, everybody had an opinion about it. People who I never met had very strong opinions about it,” the former secretary of State replied.
The ex-first lady, who tied the knot with her husband in 1975, sat down with O’Donnell and daughter Chelsea Clinton to promote the pair’s forthcoming Apple TV+ docuseries, “Gutsy.”
“And it took a lot of, honestly, prayer, and thoughtfulness, and talking to people I totally trusted, to really think through — because it was all being done in public,” Clinton, 74, said.
“So it made it even more painful and difficult,” Clinton continued.
“But I have no regrets,” she said.
More of the interview with Clinton is poised to air on “CBS Sunday Morning,” as well as on Tuesday on “CBS Evening News” and O’Donnell’s new streaming show, “Person to Person.”
— Updated at 7:45 p.m.