Mika Brzezinski: Why wasn’t there more sympathy for Monica Lewinsky ‘even from Hillary?’

MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski said Friday that Monica Lewinsky deserved more sympathy from the media and the American public after her affair with then-President Clinton became public.

In an interview with Blair Foster, the director of A&E network’s limited documentary series “The Clinton Affair” on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Brzezinski said she “can’t even imagine” how Lewinsky managed the public backlash following news of her affair.

{mosads}”As a mother of a daughter the same age that Monica Lewinsky was right now, [I] can’t even imagine her surviving the experience,” Brzezinski said.

“I’m sort of trying to think back of the women in the White House at the time,” Brzezinski added. “And why there wasn’t more sympathy. Even, I think, from Hillary [Clinton]. Is that going too far? It just seems that [Lewinsky] was so young, and to be put in this position, so scared.”

Brzezinski’s comments come months after former President Clinton forcefully defended the fact that he has never personally apologized to Lewinsky over his role in the 1998 scandal.

Asked in June whether he owed Lewinsky an apology, Clinton responded, “No, I do not.”

“I have never talked to her,” Clinton continued. “But I did say publicly on more than one occasion that I was sorry. That’s very different. The apology was public.”

On Tuesday, Lewinksy wrote in Vanity Fair that she felt the former president “should want to apologize” for his role in the affair.

“What feels more important to me than whether I am owed or deserving of a personal apology is my belief that Bill Clinton should want to apologize,” she wrote. “I’m less disappointed by him, and more disappointed for him. He would be a better man for it … and we, in turn, a better society.”