Former President Barack Obama enjoyed better press coverage than other presidents partly because of his race, former President Bill Clinton said on "CBS Sunday Morning."
Clinton also admitted the media favored Obama more than President Donald Trump and "other Democrats and Republicans."
“They did treat him [Obama] differently than other Democrats and Republicans,” Clinton said in the interview. “It was the political press.
“I don’t know. They liked him. And they liked having the first African-American president, and he was a good president I think. I don’t agree with President Trump’s assessment of his service," he explained.
Clinton went on to say that a Democratic president would have already been impeached if faced with the same accusations as Trump. He was referring to the more than year-long investigation into the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race.
“I think if the roles were reversed — now it’s me just talking, but based on my experience — if there were a Democratic president and these facts were present, most people I know in Washington believe impeachment hearings would have begun already," Clinton said.
Impeachment proceedings began against Clinton impeachment began in 1998 and were driven by his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year-old White House intern at the time.
Eleven grounds were raised against Clinton, including perjury, obstruction of justice, witness-tampering and abuse of power.
Clinton also said he was confident the 1999 that impeachment proceedings against him would not succeed.
“It wasn’t a pleasant experience,” Clinton said. “But it was a fight that I was glad to undertake after the elections, when the people had solidly told, by two-thirds or more, the Republicans to stop it. They knew there was nothing impeachable. And so we fought it to the end. And I’m glad.”
Clinton also spoke about Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat. In November, Gillibrand told the New York Times Clinton should have resigned over his relationship with Lewinsky.
“You have to really ignore what the context was,” Clinton said. “But you know, she’s living in a different context. And she did it for different reasons. So, I — but I just disagree with her.”
Gillibrand told the New York Times that it would have been appropriate for Clinton to step down over the extramarital affair.
“But I think things have changed today, and I thin under those circumstances, there should be a very different reaction,” Clinton said.
Clinton appeared on the show as part of a book tour a political thriller, “The President is Missing,” which he wrote with bestselling author James Patterson.
