Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that it was a “mistake” to impeach ex-President Bill Clinton (D) over his affair with Monica Lewinsky back in 1998.

Gingrich made the admission during an interview with the New York Post reporter Miranda Devine on her Pod Force One podcast. Devine asked him if it “was a mistake to impeach [Clinton] over the” scandal about an hour into the show.

“I think it was a mistake, because the real problem wasn’t Lewinsky,” Gingrich said. “The real problem was he committed perjury in a case involving sexual harassment when he was governor. And perjury’s a felony.”

He was referring to the situation involving Paula Jones, who accused Clinton of propositioning her in a hotel room in 1991, exposing himself, and asking her to perform oral sex; she sued him in 1994 for sexual harassment and the case was later settled out of court in 1998. Clinton denied the allegations.

Gingrich said he knew the impeachment of Clinton over Lewinsky was a bad move during the summer of ’98, when he was eating with his two daughters at a cafe.

He said they told him, “If our friends lose money on their 401K because of some stupid intern, we are going to be mad at you, because frankly it ain’t a big enough deal for us to lose a lot of money.”

“I realized at that point I had completely misunderstood how the culture was evolving,” Gingrich added.

“Wow,” Devine said, before adding, “and I guess also it meant that the Democrats had a talking point, which was you impeached our president over a triviality, therefore anything goes in the future.”

Gingrich said he didn’t really agree with that, considering the Democrats didn’t try to impeach George W. Bush (R) when he was in office.

He said the impeachment backfired and led to Clinton leaving office “at the high point of his popularity.” The numbers largely back up Gingrich’s assertion. A poll in late 2000 found Clinton had a 67% approval rating — which was close to his all-time high.

“You know that you didn’t necessarily want your daughter to go out on a date with him, but that didn’t matter,” Gingrich added.

Watch above via YouTube.

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