Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky had her life ruined and reputation smeared by Democrats and the media following the public revelation of her extramarital affair with then-President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s.

Lewinsky recently shared how she'd believed at the time that her illicit relationship with the president was based on "love," but now realizes that it was an "abuse of power" on Clinton's part, according to the Daily Mail.

She also pushed back against the horrible treatment she'd received from Democrats and the media and the "bimbo" narrative they parroted from the Clinton White House that destroyed her career, sent her into hiding for years, and even had her contemplating suicide.

She thought it was "love" but realized it was an "abuse of power"

During an appearance this week on Elizabeth Day's "How to Fail" podcast, Lewinsky opened up about the her thoughts on the affair with former President Clinton and the dramatic way it altered her life, for better and worse, over the past three decades.

Of how she felt about the secret relationship at the time, Lewinsky, 51, said, "It was 22- to 24-year-old young woman's love."

"I think there was some limerence there and all sorts of other things, but that's how I saw it then," she continued of the intense infatuation she shared with the president.

As for Clinton's part in the whole thing, who was nearly 30 years older than her and the leader of the free world at the time, Lewinsky added, "I think it was also an abuse of power."

Falsely portrayed as a "dumb bimbo"

Lewinsky also spoke with Day about the demeaning way she was treated by the Clinton White House and the Democrat-allied media in the wake of the scandalous relationship, which led to an embarrassing impeachment trial for the president after he was caught lying about the sordid affair.

She pushed back particularly against the narrative that she was some sort of "dumb bimbo" who'd slept her way to the White House, which discounted or ignored the fact that she'd earned her White House internship by merit and hard work.

"My very first job out of college was working in the White House. I don't think that that's the kind of trajectory that someone thinks then 10, 12 years later, that person's not going to be able to get hired," she explained. "Then I worked in the Pentagon as well and travelled the world with my boss, who is the Pentagon spokesman, and we travelled with the Secretary of Defense."

"I'm by no means a genius, by no means going to be the cream of the crop, but I wasn't a bimbo. I wasn't a dumb bimbo," Lewinsky said. "So I was portrayed to be, and that was a big struggle for me to deal with that."

Day pointed out that Lewinsky was "often portrayed as that by other women," to which Lewinsky replied, "Often by other women, but I think that that was a narrative that was crafted and put out by the White House, so I think that mantle was picked up by a lot of women."

Lewinsky said she was "pilloried on the world stage"

This is certainly not the first time that Lewinsky has talked about the post-affair mistreatment she received from Democrats and the media, as earlier this year she appeared on Alex Cooper's "Call Her Daddy" podcast and said of the Clinton scandal's aftermath, "'I was very quickly painted as a stalker, mentally unstable, not attractive enough."

"Because of the power dynamics, and the power differential, I never should've been in that f--king position," she added. "There was so much collateral damage for women of my generation to watch a young woman to be pilloried on the world stage, to be torn apart for my sexuality, for my mistakes, for my everything."