Jenny Sanford: No Way Was I Standing By Him

South Carolina's first lady gives an interview to Barbara Walters
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 8, 2009 3:35 PM CST
Jenny Sanford: No Way Was I Standing By Him
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, left, and first lady Jenny Sanford, right, welcome guests at the Governor's Mansion in Columbia, S.C., for a Christmas Open House on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009.   (AP Photo/Brett Flashnick)

Jenny Sanford tells Barbara Walters that her philandering husband didn't ask her to play the faithful wife at his mea culpa press conference, and she wouldn't have considered it anyway. "If he had asked me, I would have said no," said South Carolina's first lady. "Certainly his actions hurt me, and they caused consequences for me, but they don't in any way take away my own self-esteem. They reflect poorly on him."

Sanford says she knew her husband was having an affair weeks before his infamous trip to Argentina. "What people didn't know was that I had asked Mark to leave," she says in the ABC interview to air tomorrow. "And he was to have no contact with the boys or myself for 30 days. And my hope was that he would wake up from whatever he was in the throes of and maybe see what he might lose." (More Jenny Sanford stories.)

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