Who was Bill Clinton Staring at? This was the question on everyone’s mind after the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Numerous videos show Bill Clinton staring at someone out of the frame, biting his lip, then muttering a few words.
Americans quickly jumped to speculations, primarily because of Bill Clinton’s past. Hillary Clinton noticed the stare, and her reaction made the video even more viral.
So, who was the magnet pulling Bill Clinton’s attention on national television? Let’s find out;
Who Was Bill Clinton Staring At?
Bill Clinton was staring at President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. Various cameras with a wider angle of the event clearly show where his vision was focused and how it went there when Ivanka walked in.
Most people figured the former president was back to his old habits, and the day’s events turned into a joke.
Bill Clinton’s Biggest Scandal
Bill Clinton staring at Ivanka Trump was not exactly shocking news to any American that follows politics.
He has had an adventurous past regarding sexual activity and scandals in that area, and most people almost expected that it would happen again.
Shows like Family Guy and other cartoons have had their time to poke at Bill Clinton’s past, mostly because of the famous case of Monica Lewinsky.
This case would eventually lead to Bill Clinton’s impeachment, the biggest scandal in recent history.
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal involved the then-president of the United States, Bill Clinton, and Monica Lewinsky, a White House aide.
Their sexual relationship began in 1995 when Clinton was 49, and Lewinsky was 22, and lasted 18 months until ending in 1997.
Clinton gave a broadcast speech in late January 1998 with the now-famous words, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.”
Additional investigation led to perjury charges and Clinton’s impeachment by the United States House of Representatives in 1998.
In a 21-day Senate trial, he was cleared of all impeachment accusations of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Judge Susan Webber Wright found Clinton in civil contempt of court for delivering false testimony in the Paula Jones lawsuit on Monica Lewinsky, and Wright fined him $90,000.
His Arkansas law license was suspended for five years, and he was prevented from presenting matters before the United States Supreme Court shortly after.
Lewinsky attended Lewis & Clark College. She was hired as an intern at the White House during Clinton’s first term in 1995 through the White House Internship Program and eventually worked in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs.
Clinton is thought to have started a personal relationship with her while working at the White House, details of which she later revealed to Linda Tripp, a Defense Department coworker who secretly taped their phone talks.
Tripp found in January 1998 that Lewinsky had submitted an affidavit in the Paula Jones lawsuit denying any relationship with Clinton.
She gave the tapes to Ken Starr, the independent counsel looking into Clinton on various issues, including the Whitewater scandal, the White House FBI files controversy, and the White House travel office incident.
During the grand jury testimony, Clinton’s replies were carefully drafted, and he argued that the honesty of his statement that “there is no sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship, or any other kind of improper relationship” depended on “what the meaning of the word is.”
Following the “-gate” structure used since the Watergate incident, this scandal has been dubbed “Monicagate,” “Lewinskygate,” “Tailgate,” “Sexgate,” and “Zippergate.”
From November 1995 through March 1997, Lewinsky said she had nine sexual encounters with Bill Clinton. Her schedule shows Hillary Clinton was at the White House for over seven days.
Because she was spending a great deal of time around Clinton, Lewinsky’s bosses moved her work to the Pentagon in April 1996.
According to his autobiography, the White House invited then-United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson in 1997 to interview Lewinsky for a position on his staff at the U.N. Richardson did so and offered her a job, which she turned down.
According to the American Spectator, Richardson knew more about the Lewinsky affair than he told the grand jury.
Lewinsky told Linda Tripp about her affair with Clinton. Tripp urged Lewinsky to keep the items Clinton had given her instead of dry cleaning a soiled blue dress as an “insurance policy.”
Tripp informed literary agent Lucianne Goldberg of their chats, who urged her to secretly record them, which Tripp began doing in September 1997.
Goldberg also advised Tripp to take the tapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and bring them to the attention of those working on the Paula Jones case.
In the fall of 1997, Goldberg began speaking to reporters about the tapes, including Michael Isikoff of Newsweek.
In the Paula Jones lawsuit, Lewinsky filed an affidavit denying sexual contact with Clinton. She attempted to encourage Tripp to commit perjury in the Jones case in January 1998.
Instead, Tripp submitted the tapes to Starr, who was looking into the Whitewater scandal and other issues. Armed with proof of Lewinsky’s admission of a physical relationship with Clinton, Starr expanded the probe to encompass Lewinsky and her possible perjury in the Jones case.
The Lewinsky case would open Bill Clinton up to more scrutiny, eventually leading to his impeachment from the presidency.
Neither of them went to jail, but the case and publicity damaged their reputations to a great extent.
The Life of Bill Clinton Post-Presidency
Bill Clinton’s presidency was cut short by his impeachment, but this was not the end of his career.
It was the end of politics and his attempts to take public office, but he still had major roles to play in the background for others.
After a while, America seemed to have forgiven him, and he took up an active role in helping various candidates, including his wife.
As Clinton’s presidency ended, his wife’s political career began. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the first wife of a U.S. president to be elected to the United States Senate, representing New York in 2000.
She narrowly lost the Democratic Party’s presidential candidacy to Barack Obama in 2008, but Obama named her secretary of state during his presidency. Bill Clinton remained politically active and a popular lecturer on the lecture circuit.
In 2001, he set up the William J. Clinton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that addressed global issues through initiatives like the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative, the Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the Clinton Climate Initiative.
2004, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum opened in Little Rock.
Following the destruction caused by a tsunami in the Indian Ocean the following year, Bill Clinton was selected by the U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to serve as a special envoy for recovery operations, a role he retained until 2007.
Clinton took over as chairman of the National Constitution Center, a history museum in Philadelphia, from former President George H.W. Bush in 2009. Later that year, he was appointed a United Nations special envoy to Haiti.
Following the terrible earthquake that rocked Haiti in January 2010, Clinton’s U.N. portfolio was expanded to include oversight of assistance and rehabilitation efforts.
Clinton campaigned for Obama during the 2012 general election in the United States, assisting him in winning a second term in the White House. In 2013, Clinton was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Hillary Clinton declared in 2015 that she would run for President of the United States in 2016, and Bill was an ardent supporter of her campaign.
During the 2016 presidential election, Clinton encouraged voters to vote for her again, and she spoke on the campaign trail.
Then-President-elect Donald Trump critiqued his ability to get people to vote in tweets. Clinton was a member of the state of New York’s Electoral College.
He supported the Democratic ticket, which included his wife, Hillary, and her running mate, Tim Kaine.
She won the Democratic nomination, becoming the first woman to lead a major party’s presidential ticket in the United States, but lost the election to Donald Trump.
In 2017, Bill and the four other living former presidents (Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama) launched the One America Appeal.
It was initially aimed to aid Hurricane Harvey victims but later expanded its mission to include those affected by several subsequent hurricanes.
Clinton was a United States Electoral College member from New York again in 2020, voting for the winning Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The two would go on to win the presidency in the U.S., further adding to Clinton’s background role in modern politics.
Conclusion
You now know who Bill Clinton was staring at during the inauguration ceremony. Most videos show that he was looking at Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter.
Clinton never made any public statement about the stare, but Americans went crazy with the story. Bill Clinton is not new to scandals relating to sexual advances or affairs.
He has been subject to numerous T.V. shows and comedic bits because of his past, but this didn’t stop his career. Even after impeachment, he still works in the background to help other candidates in his party.
