Tim Kaine called for Bill Clinton's resignation after the Lewinsky scandal

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 18 August 2016

Sen. Tim Kaine is Hillary Clinton's running mate, so presumably he's on fairly good terms with the Clinton family these days. In the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, however, the Democrat, who was then serving as Virginia's lieutenant governor, expressed public disapproval of Bill Clinton's infidelity and fitness for office.

Speaking in response to a sexual harassment scandal in the Virginia State House in 2002, Kaine told the Richmond Times-Dispatch he believed the embroiled Virginia politician should resign from public office — and President Clinton, then just two years out of the White House, should have too:

"If the allegations are true, he should definitely resign," Kaine said, adding he held the same view about President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

"That is an intolerable way to treat women and it's not something that the state should be dragged through." [The Daily Beast]

At the time, Kaine made similar comments to The Washington Post and The Associated Press. A Kaine representative told The Daily Beast, whose report uncovered these remarks, that the candidate believes this election should focus on Hillary Clinton's policy agenda, "not re-litigating personal issues from the distant past."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.