Steve Bannon, the head of Breitbart News and former White House strategist, said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s comments that former President Bill Clinton should have resigned over the Monica Lewinsky scandal set off an “earthquake in the Democratic Party.”
“Kirsten Gillibrand’s comment about Bill Clinton I think is an earthquake in the Democratic Party, because the Wall Street-Clinton junta that controls the Democratic Party has really been bulletproof,” Bannon told John Catsimatidis on AM970’s “The Answer” in an interview that aired Sunday.
“And I think you saw the first opening shot of the 2020 primary with Gillibrand, who clearly has presidential aspirations. She put a shot right across the bow of the Clintons,” Bannon said of the New York Democrat.
Gillibrand, who holds Hillary Clinton’s old Senate seat, in an interview with the New York Times last week was asked if Bill Clinton should have resigned after the affair with Lewinsky came to light.
“Yes, I think that is the appropriate response,” she said, adding that the times and how people react to sexual assault has changed since the 1990s.
“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.”
Clinton was impeached over the sex claims, but acquitted in the Senate in 1999, and went on to finish his second term.
At least 13 women have come forward to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct before he became president.
Trump also boasted in an “Access Hollywood” tape released in October 2016 that he would grope women’s genitals because “when you’re a star, they let you do it.”
Gillibrand’s comments on Thursday came just after a Los Angeles radio host and former model accused Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) of forcibly kissing and groping her during a USO tour in 2006, two years before he was elected to the Senate.
In Alabama, Roy Moore, a Republican Senate candidate, has been accused of sexual misconduct during the 1970s.
Many GOP leaders are calling for Moore, 70, to drop out of the Dec. 12 election, but he has denied the charged as “fake news.”
Bannon said Moore’s fate should be left up to the voters.
“I think President Trump summed it up best: Let the people in Alabama weigh and measure these allegations versus a radical like [Democratic] Doug Jones,” he said.