Doomed to Fail - Ep 53: Unintended consequence of a government shutdown: The Monica Lewinsky Story

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

We're in Government Shutdown mode, reminiscing about the 90s when the Clinton Government shut down. When paid employees can't work, guess who can?! Unpaid interns. It's a wild ride that includes Newt Gingrich getting ostracized off of Air Force One, The Clintons in a potentially shady land deal, office gossip, and an impeachment trial.We also encourage you to google "Public Shaming: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)" and watch John Oliver's interview with Monica Lewinsky - she's amazing and has been through so much.Pictures via the Creative Commons & Midjourney (that's the Newt ones) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for... Approved. Yay. Sweet Taylor, how are you? Good. How are you? I'm good. I'm my third beer, so I'm feeling pretty good.

Good for you. It's 6 o'clock here, though. I'm taking coffee and wine. I know, but it's Sunday. I don't know. That's fun. That sounds fun. I've had a beer in a long time.

I put beer on my grocery list because I imagine that there's some like October Fest available these days. And I love Sam Adams October Fest. So that's what I'm hoping. My husband will come back with. There are a lot more exotic varieties these days than that one. I know. I'm talking about my Walmart, my local Walmart.

And I just want to see them. There is actually a convenience store here that allegedly has, like, a secret beer room that, like, has a bunch of cool beers. So I guess I could go there, but we could also just go to the Walmart and get to Sam Adams. I mean, how do you ask? You can't just say I want into the secret room, you know, you got to find a more creative way to get in there. Maybe you just show with a bunch of cocaine, show with a bunch of blow and say, how I'll trade you this blow for, you know, some exotic beers. Maybe it'll let you in that way. And they'd be like, ma'am, we take debit cards and credit cards.

Also, this powder sugar, ma'am. Yeah, no, I'm getting into it because now in our local stores, you can start finding the pumpkin spice variants of different kinds of beers. It is a glass. I love it. Absolutely. Well, let's go ahead and kick things off. welcome to doom to fail the podcast we cover two sort one historical one true crime story about something that is doomed to fail i'm far joined by taylor who is getting excited about

october and october fest and october fest beers and i'm trying to get her to take powder sugar to the grocery store in exchange for beers that's where we're at now so i don't know i don't know we'll figure that out well let's workshop that idea Mortchle that idea a little bit. So, Taylor, today I think true crime goes first. Is that right? It does. Indeed.

Okay. Do you want to let me know where you're drinking coffee and red wine? Is that what the flavor is? No. And you know what I'm talking about today, kind of. I'm talking about a couple things, but because I gave you some homework. So we'll talk about that later. But I am drinking, imagine a beautiful crystal decanter.

that's empty, and then you turn around and look in the mirror, and in the mirror, it's full. Taylor's topic today is like the most interesting, dope, cool thing ever, which you won't hear until Wednesday, but I'm, this is the only time I've ever actually kind of know what Taylor's going to talk about, and I have to admit, it is awesome. I was going to say, if you know anything about it. me you know that I love this but we'll get there there you go there you go I on the other hand so I was drinking a pumpkiny spice variant of a beer and I ran out of them I drank I it said I drank all of them I said there wasn't have any left because I drank earlier this week so now I'm drinking a voodoo ranger which is a juice force it is an IPA that tastes very fruity that's awesome

All these fancy beers that you have. Nothing to do. Yeah, all the fancy beers. Nothing to do with the story whatsoever, but I wanted to just let you all know that I do enjoy a nice beer. So, let me start. Are you ready, Taylor? I'm so ready.

I can't wait. Are you ready for this? I'm like super excited. I don't know why. I've been like all done today. Just kind of like fuck around the house and pick up trash that's on the floor on the house and work on this. I'm just like, I'm ready.

I had a great Sunday. It's like a nothing day. So, so the same. Also, maybe this is like foolish pride coming into effect, but I think we're getting better at this. Because I'm like finding things. Well, we've been doing it a long time. I'm like, things come up and like, oh, that's the story. Like you don't mean like your brain connects it with things a little bit differently now. Mine does. I love it. That's awesome. And I'll, yeah, we have, I hopefully have some new listeners that I'm going to talk to at the end of that episode. you go keep going i'll go i'll go so one of the outline so my topic today is not even remotely obscure it is incredibly well covered it is a little oldish sort of and it's also not really a crime but so it hits on nothing i'm ready absolutely nothing but it is kind of topical so as some of you have heard, the federal government was about to shut down at midnight today, this is Sunday, if Congress didn't increase the debt ceiling or issue a stopgap emergency funding until

the debt ceiling could be raised. Congress avoided this by passing the stopgap funding bill and the president signed into law and so now the shutdown has been avoided for about 45 days from now. This guy me thinking back to another situation where the government actually did shut down and it had huge unintended consequences for the country and history at large taylor do you know which situation i'm talking about not at the top of my head are you talking about the one of the 90s yes wait are you talking about the air traffic controllers no but i did listen to that daily episode as well okay fine that was the 80s by the way It was not the 90s.

I know, I know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I do remember in the 90s when the government shut down, my dad was like, let's go to a national park. So we went to one and like jumped over the fence. I love the ingenuity. A very mind-dead thing to do.

Yeah. Ingenuity of a parent. Yeah, I totally, totally get that. So the story that I'm talking about and the story I'm going to be covering, which I want to do in a way that's not boring. So when I say the topic, don't shut off the podcast. Because I won't do it in a boring way, I promise. think. The story I'm talking about is the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the downstream consequences that occurred as a result of it. And I'm going to compartmentalize my story

yet again into acts. So much like my contemporary William Shakespeare, his plays were all five-act stories, not three-acts. So mine's going to be five-acts. So in case you're going to come at me saying there's no such things as a five-act story, William Shakespeare did it. So why the fuck can't I? So I'm going to do a five-ex toy. Do you know what the word? Go ahead. With the word, what?

Not the contemporary is the right word. Keep going. Is he my contemporary or am I his contemporary? Contemporary means like at the same time, doesn't it? Oh, does it? We're both artists. That's the main factor. Yeah, that's living or occurring at the same time.

But you're both artists and you both wear really fancy color is. So I think that's also a thing. Thanks. I'm just kidding for us. wearing a tank top farce is barely dressed i have no i have no proof that you're wearing pants but that's fine i don't yeah there you go um so my act again has five parts act one is a setup act two is the deed act three is the conversions of 100 investigations act four is the impact act five is re-examining the events 30 years later so that's what we're getting into

Again. I'm so excited. I love the story. It's wonderful. It is, have you, tell the head, when was the last time you went back and revisited this story? I mean, I feel like, well, Monica Lewinsky is on Twitter and she's hilarious. And I did not watch the American crime story, Monica Lewinsky one. I didn't see you there.

But I wanted to. And I, I don't know, I think about everyone so well. out it's fascinating it's actually really interesting so we were young so Taylor I think you so long I would have been 11 years old so you've been like 13 so like we were old enough to kind of know and pay attention what was going on but the details of it you don't really understand what's really funny is like as I was going through this whole thing I'll explain this in a minute when I get to a part four no part three did you totally can see all the crazy shit Trump said about Hillary Clinton and how people who were older back then would

have looked at this in this situation and like just zoned it on her completely because like 17 different scales are happening. It's totally unfair and there's 17 skills having the exact same time. And like us when we're kids were like oh the president got a blow shop so who gives a shit, right? But then you look like if you're old enough you're like oh there all this other stuff is kind of wrapped them into it. Let me get into it. I'm going to hit the details. So. Okay, I'm ready. Act one, when you're William Shakespeare, the setup. In 1995, Bill Clinton was president,

and Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House. Do you remember when we met Newt Gingrich? I was going to say, I do. That was probably the weirdest 15 seconds of my life. Dude, I thought he was like kind of charming. He was. He was like, hey, guys, keep doing what you're doing. And we were like, what is happening?

We're trying to dismantle the seat of power and you are the seat of power. Oh, my God. Yeah, no, that was, it was bizarre. Random, random ship. Yeah. So obviously, Bill Clinton, a Democrat, Newt Gingrich, or Republican. Newtonville were obviously at odds with each other, given the partisan difference. And also, for an incredibly petty thing that ended up happening to Newt, that basically spurred all of this.

I'm going like, I'm going super back in time here. So in early November of 1995, Bill Clinton, boarded air force one along with delegates and other american leaders including newt gingrich and they took off to israel to attend the funeral the prime minister of israel up to that point it's like we're being during this flight bill would not talk to new he's the speaker of the house he's third in line for the fucking presidency and they won't even talk to you like he won't even give an audience talking about in the middle of a budget battle that has through the dead ceiling goes like nope you can hang out in the back i'm going to be in my executive suite go fuck

yourself don't want to talk to talk to you at all they landed in is i love that it is so petty they land this story reminded me that like we're all humans and we all do shit like this they all land in israel and bill won't let newt come down the stairs he has to go out with the cargo in the back of the fucking plane. Like, it is so obvious that this guy's trying to show that I'm the president and you're fucking nothing to me, even though he's literally third in line to be president. Which I just was re-reminded of this week, the Speaker of the House was third in line and like, okay, great to know.

And two, I love it. I love that. This is my favorite story. I love doing that to someone. Being like, you're important enough to be on air first one with me to this like, really important thing but also fuck you it's like it's like i wish i one day have the privilege to flex like that on somebody which i never will but so it's really fun so but i love it this came out like years and years later that new because of this experience this fucking funeral for it's

second we're being had this ax to grind with bill clinton and the debt ceiling discussion was coming due in november and he was like you know what this is going to make him look worse than it's going to make us look i'm going to put preposterous expectations in our debt ceiling discussions and if he doesn't meet them we're not going to approve it so he started doing things like we have to slash the budget for education for medicare for medicaid all standard typical reagan-era republican stuff right and obviously bill's like i'm not signing this like no way there's no choice i'm going to sign this and so bill calls the bluff doesn't sign it and the government shuts down so the idea that nude had was that the public would hate bill for this will look like

heroes because we tried to negotiate all that right it's all politicking right so yeah at that point what that means is that federal employees are not asked to come to work because the government shut down and if they did come to work anyways it would get paid but do you know who could come to work interns yes interns unpaid interns come to work is that way okay first of all unpaid internships are bro are bullshit that's unbelievably ridiculous and only rich people get them because only rich people only fucking money, don't need money. Which I thought, I think it's just incredibly annoying and incredibly unfair. Like, I had people that I knew that, like, oh, yeah, I worked in the Obama campaign the whole

entire time for free. And I'm like, well, fuck you because I have to eat. And I don't have a fucking trust fund. So, continue. So speaking of which, I put very, really the third sentence in here is going to talk about this. So thanks for the precursor. But we're going to move on to.

I'm passionate about it because I'm mad because growing up poor, I didn't have those opportunities. And it pisses me off. Continue. Yeah, same. Okay, so we're on to act to Shakespeare The Deed. So we're going to start by introducing the most famous intern in U.S. history, Monica Lewinsky, okay? So this literally goes to exactly what Taylor just said. Monica was born to a wealthy family and grew up in Los Angeles.

She attended Bell-era prep with fucking Will Smith and Carlton. Like, that's what she came from. Like, she is not going to be like casual, chill, like upbringing, right? And then after she graduated, she went on to Lewis and Clark College, which in my mind means that she basically went to a nothing college, learn, get a nothing degree, which we all did. I got a political science degree. It's a nothing degree. We all know with this. Art history.

No big deal. Keep going. You know art really well, though. You actually do still pay attention to it. So it did come in handy somehow. One time we were on the elevator in an art history in a art museum and wanting. asked me a question and i was like there are other people on the elevator and i was like i don't want to answer that question he goes but you have art history degree and i was like

you're embarrassing me in front of these strangers on this elevator it was like i i wasn't happy keep going taylor this was like decades before i met you and we didn't know each other but i recall that moment in the elevator and was like that people does not know her art history at all no idea yeah okay continue um so her parents were friends with a guy this taylor stories like this when you have like a fleeting memory of something it takes you down so many rabbit holes because you kind of remember this you kind of remember that thing okay so her parents had a friend named walter k walter was a retired insurance executive fucking millionaire somehow who donated prominently to democratic campaigns i i use the

way back machine to find a CNN article from 1997 like literally the start of the internet like the first article probably published on the fucking internet i found a cnn article about walter and it said that he donated somewhere around 300 000 or so the um open fcc doesn't go back that far so i just have to go off of like their word that like that's what what it was it was like over 300 000 which today doesn't really sound like a lot of money i did the math on it it comes up about 690 000 in today's cash but that's actually not the important part the important part is that in 1986 as an example the average u.s house race only cost 493 000 to win in 96 dude those are like i mean i didn't know what that is like today

an average house was actually like a three four five million dollar race this guy was able to contribute on its own enough to get like almost someone elected the u.s house so like here's a big deal right and her parents or monica's parents were friends with this guy And that's what happened. Walter made a few phone calls to D.C. and got Monica an internship in the White House working for Leon Panetta. Do you remember that guy? I don't, but I feel like I should. He was he was director of the CIA under Obama. Oh my God, amazing. But at a time under Clinton, he was chief of staff, so he was like the equivalent of like Rahm Emanuel under Obama, basically.

Yeah, yeah. I do. It's so incestuous. I love that. reading this show because all these names come up you're like oh yeah i remember that i remember that so um i have a great rama manual story do you want to hear it yeah please always he used to come when i worked at a hedge fund he used to come to the office because my the hedge fund owner was like a democratic donor so he would like talk to polosi on the phone and like whatever rama manual came one time in the woman i worked with you know you're supposed to be like do you like coffee or water or anything you know to the people who come into the office you know

And Ram Emanuel says, yes, I'll take a fruit salad, please. And she was like, okay. So she went into the kitchen, found some fruit, chopped it up, put it in a bowl. And she brings it into this meeting. And our, like, our hedge fund CEO is like, what is this? She's like, here's your fruit salad, Mr. Emanuel. It was just like so freaking funny that she'd like make one. And that was like not an option.

She's like, you know, coffee. He was like, yes, it's like a fruit salad. That's awesome. Like, you can do that when you're rich. You can just ask for anything. Whatever you want. And later he was like, he needed a room to like have a private phone call. So I put him in a room.

And, like, nine secret service people were like, what did you do with him? And I was like, I put him in that room so we could have a quiet conversation. He asked me to you. And they were like, okay, everybody freaked out. And I was like, I didn't murder him. I just put him in a room. He asked him to go somewhere by himself. Hey, could you see that he didn't have fingers?

He doesn't know. Does he not have fingers? Oh, he may be missing one finger. I forgot what it is. I think he's missing at least one finger because he worked at, like, his parents, like, butchery or something. And he cut his finger off. Did you not notice that? I guess not.

I did not know. I wish I would have known in advance. I could have looked for it. We started with Newt being rich being slided on Air Force One to Leon Panetta to Romo Emmanuel. Like we are, this is exactly where the direction I was hoping this conversation would go. Because it's all interconnected. It's all interconnected.

I love this. I keep going. Okay. So we're talking about July of 1995. Walter, who is Monica's parents' friends, calls Leon Panetta, says, I need to get this person, a internship in. We do it. Four months later, the government shuts down. And hilariously, like, Bill has nothing to do. Like, he's just, like, wandering around the Oval Office, wandering around the White House.

Because, like, there's, Congress isn't in session. There's nobody. There's nobody there. It's just him, the president of the United States, because he lives in the White House and all these unpaid interns who have nowhere else to be but the White House. That's how it all happened. Oh, my God. I'm laughing up. Do you also remember a throwback to your Phil Hartman episode? because remember the Phil Hartman where he's like at the McDonald's and he's like trying for his food yes we got to re-release that one it is so funny well I'm gonna get there but it's gonna take me a year to re-release whatever keep going I know I know but that's just amazing please watch that so that's basically he just

wandered on the White House like he has no work to do and he would never interact with staffers normally but there's nobody else there so he's interacting with staffers Given that there is nothing to do, he starts to interact with Monica, and they start to develop a relationship. Look, I am not going to the sexual stuff because, like, I really do not want to say blowjob 50 times. But, like, they start a sexual relationship. It was like, yeah, we all know what happened. He's 49 at this point.

She's 22. So let's keep that out of mind. Power dynamic. He's the most powerful man in the world. Yeah, it's, yes, it's not good. It's not a good look. There's a slight power dynamic differential here. Yeah.

Yeah. So, again, we all know what happened from here. The relationship lasts about 18 months. It lasted from like 1995, late 1995 to 1997. By all accounts, she and Hermine thought she was in a very real relationship with the President of the United States. Yeah. It's worth noting that she did this before.

So for four years when she was 18. until this moment she was also in a relationship with another married man who was one of our professors in college or something so like she does like to you know mess around married people and older people it seems like so anyways we we all do we all we all do i get it in april 1986 those around bill noticed that he and monica were too friendly and spending way too much time together and they arranged she have her transferred to other departments in the cabinet and she ended going to work for the Pentagon. Do you remember Bill Richardson? He literally just died. Remember him? I do. He was a governor of New Mexico. He was also, yeah, but under the Clinton administration, he was also the

director of some other agency. It's all interconnected. It's so crazy to me. Wait, how is Bill Richardson connected to this? Because he offered her. Yeah, no, because, because um he offered her a job because um uh the other guy i mentioned earlier oh god what was his name leon panetta leon panetta asked bill to give her a job in his cabinet because he was like the president's just like way too flurry of this 22 year old and she offered or bill offered her a job and she refused later they were like no this isn't optional you are being transferred to the pentagon or you can not be in the federal government at all and she's like fine i'll go to the Pentagon. It does have to be a lot for them to be like, this is too much flirting for you,

Mr. President. Dude, people notice. Like, it was like, it was, it's creepy. Like, he's actually a little boy. The Bill Clinton flirtation scale is like the Richter scale and like the volcanic explosivity index. Like, it is ridiculously high. And then it gets higher and higher that people die. It ramps up fast. We are now at Act 3, which is entitled, because. convergence of a hundred investigations. Okay, again, I didn't write this in the outline. So when Mueller took on the Trump investigation, do you remember the constant calling it of a, of a witch hunt?

Mm-hmm. Okay. By Trump. Well, in every Republican, right? Sure. But like, the reason for that kind of approach to it is this. It is what ended up happening. with Bill Clinton because you know what i'm going to get into it okay we're in act three the investigations

so it's at the pentagon when monica starts working there that she meets someone who i fucking hate like i think she's one of the worst human beings that ever existed her name's linda tripp before i get into her i'm going to start with the investigations in nineteen eighty four before any sexual relationship started with monica lewinski in ten star a guy named Kent, sorry, Michael Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, an investigation was started by a lawyer in D.C. named Ken Starr, who was appointed special counsel or independent counsel to investigate the Clintons. He was going to take over. Also a piece of shit.

Actually, Taylor, just so we're clear, Ken Starr's also, he was also Trump's lawyer during the, some one of his many indictments i actually don't i it's hard to you track like dude it's crazy how interwoven all this all this stuff is so can start took over an investigation into a thing called whitewater from another guy i it's incredible whitewater is basically the gateway drug to every clean conspiracy theory you start at whitewater you end in jeffrey ever hearing that word like it is there's so much shit in the middle there's a lot of shit in the middle but like that's the starting point so i'm going to really quickly do an overview of whitewater because that is the that is the other reason why all this ended up happening so in 1978 bill is the governor of

arkansas and a guy named jim mcdougal and his wife susan proposed to the clitons to buy about 230 acres of land in arkansas together so they could develop it into vacation homes they'd already done other real estate dealings they had a pre-existing relationship all that like it was it was already established but shortly after they started after they bought the land before they started the economy stagnated and interest rates spiked 20 percent for home so nobody's buying a vacation home obviously so here's part of like the mystery like nobody knows what happened nobody knows i'm just telling you what is like roughly out there okay the tlDR is that the way it looks is is that the Clintons lost about $40,000

on like a multimillion dollar land deal. And the McDougal's lost like everything. And so the assumption is that the Clintons gave them something because it was a 50-50 joint partnership. So in a joint partnership, you each give 50-50 or something. And what they provided was political back in the favors and access to additional loans for interest payments to the McDougal so they weren't in the hole

for the entire half that they owed. That's... Was it while he was president or while he was governor of Arkansas? Governor. There's a book that... This is a book about Hillary Clinton. It's a kid's book. And Miles told me I'm not allowed to read it anymore because I cry the entire time.

Because I'm just like, I'm so inspired by her. I love her so much. I'm so sorry she's not president. And they started to cry. And I remember how I woke up after she lost to Trump and I had like, my face was like red and I was pregnant and I was like covered in tears. Florence was like two years old as she was like wiping my tears off my face and I was like I'm so sorry Florence okay so here's here's one thing as I went further down this rabbit

hole was I kind of see the genesis of all the Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories see where my dad has one yeah uh yeah totally because she because she was like fairly powerful as a first lady and like I'm going to get I'm going to get to this in a second so so So the white water, or white water, white, is that what it, what was it called white, white house? What was it called? Whitewater. Yeah, white water. So white water is the genesis of everything.

So in 1984, they're like, the clans did something shitty, which like, honestly, you'd, like, there's no evidence. Nothing's been proven. But you'd have to be, like, insane to think that, like, there wasn't something happening there because, like, there's, like, it's just weird. The dynamics weird. so something probably happened there but because of that that's what the whole witch hunt thing with trump like becomes like a reality is like they used whitewater to explore anything involving the clans which is the witch hunt part of it right so in addition to whitewater that one land deal segue into the death of a guy named Vince foster who apparently was he committed suicide and then and then people on the right thing the clince had him killed that's one guy there's a thing called the white house travel office controversy this is where hillary gets like super involved which is like basically it's called travel gate the clans basically

fired a shitload of people in the travel office the white house and just like installed their own family and friends and paid them to like work there's a white house FBI foul controversy hillary's also involved in this one apparently so that was called file gate and that's where senior white house staff granted access to the background reports pulled by the fPI for previous staffers that worked the administration nobody knows why they're like about three to four hundred were exposed for reasons that they can't justify basically and then finally the thing that actually matters in this case and where ken stores investigation led him to was the paula jones case so paul jones was a staffer worker for the government of arkansas while bill was the governor and at some

point bill was his dick out bill's just like i don't know what the there was no for he just whipped it out in front of her and then ultimately uh the clinton settled with paul jones for eight hundred fifty thousand dollars and then later on paul jones is very famously trucked into the debates with hillary clinton by donald trump which is like absolutely ludicrous you remember this taylor wait did trump invite her yes yes she sat with his daughter that is so hilarious of course That's hilarious. I can't with that. I keep going.

We are the Jerry Springer of countries. I love that for us. Every country is a Jerry Springer of countries. I just feel like if you think people are inherently perfect, you're wrong. I think I'm inherently perfect, but others are wrong when they disagree. With the exception of you. With the exception of me, thank you. So that is the winding trail that Ken Stewart's investigation took that led us ultimately to Monicaula

we're still on act three people act three is the is is is going to be a it's only like two more paragraphs lawyers for paula jones wanted to show a pattern of behavior on the part of bill clinn that demonstrated he had a habit of propositioning women who worked for him so during depositions obviously it's like you know jennifer flowers there's a there's a whole other side lawsuit with Jennifer Floss. Do you remember that name? Yeah, remember the war room? Did you watch the war room? No, that's not dope.

That documentary with George Stephanopoulos, where it's like the end of the, it's like the very, very end of the thing, it's where like the raging Cajun, what's his name does like, it's the economy. Carville, James Carvel. Yeah, and then, but in the, in the end, like, when it's like election night, someone calls and that, like, we have all this proof that Bill Clinton is having all these affairs. And George Stephanopoulos is like, is this how you want to be remembered as the person who stopped this Democratic president from being president,

like you look at yourself right now and you decide if you want to release this and the person didn't, and it was, it's great. Was it accurate? Yeah, of course. I mean, I'm sure. I mean, I don't know. Well, okay. So I'm going to talk about this too because Larry Flint of Hustler fame also got

hyper-invested in this. I'll talk about that in a minute. So the lawyers wanted to show that Bill had this propensity. So during depositions, they basically named off a bunch of people that work, like, relatively close with him, including Monica saying, have you ever had a sexual relation with this woman? And Bill said he had not. That was under deposition, which means that he fucking perjured himself. And this is basically where we can reintroduce Linda Tripp. So in 1997, Linda Tripp is 49 years old and she works for the Pentagon.

I know you hate that I bring age under this Taylor, but it's important that Linda Tripp was fucking 49. and the girl she's talking to is like 21 years old or 22 that part is relevant no totally i definitely like i'm i'm 41 but there's kids kids people at my work who are like 22 and i'm like i could be your mom but we're fine but yeah but and like we hang out but i don't like you know what i mean linda trip was like being a creep she was a total total absolutely creep so i i will uniformly hate her no matter what so her and monica became work friends because they both worked to the Pentagon. And that's when Monica did, they had a little lunch get together, would take a break and go out and lunch together. And Monica confided in Linda that she had

had a sexual relationship with Bill. Actually, the relation was ongoing because it'd been going off about eight months after she got transferred to the Pentagon, that she would go over there, they would do stuff, and then she would go home. Linda, somehow, some way, I don't know why but she knew that during a deposition bill had said that he had not had a sexual relationship with monica lewinski and so what ended up happening is that linda had been in touch to literary agent because she wanted to write a book and the literary agent when she found out about the monica lewinski situation said record monoclewinsky and you have your book and so she recorded her private conversations with total bitch she recorded her private conversation with this

fucking 22 year old talking about like i mean she wasn't love she was in love of the president of the united states like it she recorded these conversations and then she took them to ken star and hand them over and then boom there you have it the first allegations by the way long story short is that he gets impeached everybody knows that but this is the only time that anybody has been impeached at the federal level whether it's judges senators congress anything any position is the only time that someone's been impeached for a thing that was unrelated to the thing that was being investigated they were investigating whitewater they ended up in on perjury on a fucking sexual harassment claim there was a civil case that had no criminal element too crazy i'm not thinking

his side i'm not thinking his side but i still think that he got railroaded a little bit but that's my personal opinion yeah he couldn't say like yes i did that because like americans don't love that fine but like your wife's not going to be happy either so she's not happy she knows no she's an idiot i know she she married bill she knew what was she was getting you're getting into um yeah so yeah so the house impeaches him he's the first president in like 200 years or whatever to get impeached uh there was a 21 day trial held in the senate he was acquitted he remained in office and all the good stuff act four is called the impact less than two years after the impeachment was the 2000 election, which at the presidential level

was Al Gore, who was Clinton's vice president versus George L.B. Bush. This is all speculation. But there is a thing that researchers came up with, which is called Clinton fatigue, which Taylor, I feel like we lived through because our equivalent today is Trump fatigue, which is hearing about this guy constantly, never having a moment to kind of rest. Back then, there was a phenomenon known as clinton fatigue which was their way of delineating like people were just tired of hearing about it and when you think about like what got bush into office it's like a few hundred votes like it was like nothing like it is very very possible that just being associated with bill was enough to get people to like move away from from uh gore and towards either not voting or towards um

towards bush also you wouldn't remember this i doubt but like gore asked bill not to stump for him which is like incredibly rare it is incredibly rare to not have your running like the the foreign president stump for you for your party like it's incredible like but that was part of the catalyst that gorme it was like you were tired of hearing about you so the impact of it is that we might have not had george will be bush which is like crazy to think like what would that have meant for Obama and then Trump and then everything else that came downstream for that the other side of this is that Larry Flint of the the Hustler magazine fame he put out a a million dollar bounty because he was he was so anti-Republican he put a million dollar bounty on any number if you

could provide evidence that anybody who was in office the federal level on the Republican side was in an affair he would give you a million dollars for that information And it worked. Oh, nice. It worked. So that is part of the reason why Newt Gingrich, when he was up for re-election, decided to walk away because he was having an affair with some random woman while his wife had cancer and was dying.

And then if you remember that, yeah, it was pretty, and there was another guy whose name I forget, but he was supposed to be next in line after Newt Gingrich studied. down the speakership for the for the for the for the speaker of the house role and dennis has forgot the guy who like is like a known pedophile and rapist of like little like not i mean he was like a what was he like a wrestling coach or something i think horrible sex offender basically like so much weird shit happened as a result of this and so many people came into office and into power that probably shouldn't have the impact on monica was in my opinion way worse than that on bill so she ended up writing a book with a biographer for

five hundred thousand dollars which was the advance and then she made about a million dollars doing a barbara walters interview for 2020 she would do random sponsorship she did a um jenny crag sponsorship um where she was supposed to get paid a million dollars people didn't like her as the folks person so she only she only made like 300 000 she ended up like bouncing around from place to place she ended up moving to london one thing i would say this is a really bad situation like it is horrible to be like that is your reputation like your name is monica loewinsky you are forever known as this person right it could have happened to someone in worst circumstances because again she came from the college background where like

money really wasn't a thing it was more like it's one thing when you're like oh i really had ambitions of being like this successful person and now i can't really accomplish that it's another where it's like i really wish i could feed myself and have a house but i can't even afford those things like she was never in that kind of a position like she was covered like she was good as far as that was concerned it's just like from a reputational perspective it wasn't great well i think so i don't know how much you're going to talk about this but like i also think that like she did not obviously like deserve all of the shit that everyone gave her and did you did you see the john oliver where he

apologized to her no it's really beautiful because he's he's amazing obviously and he was like she he was like why didn't you change your name and she was like bill clinton had didn't have to change his name you know like why would i have to like that's not fair like you know this happened and like i was a kid essentially and and all these things and then um john oliver he shows clips of what when he was on the daily show like talking about it and making fun of her and he apologizes and he says like i'm really sorry he's like you didn't deserve the stuff that we said about you like you were the victim and she accepts his apology and it's very nice that's awesome but like one thing i would say like i don't think that she necessarily see herself

as a victim no she's fine and she's she's doing like she says does funny things like when if her friends had like a 90s party and she came wearing a beret because that's funny you know and like she's she's trying to like you know she's she's fine like you said like she's not someone who had to like work at McDonald's because her name was sullied she yeah was fine yeah yeah yeah and now it's not fair but she's also fine right right like now you go on twitter her tweets are fucking hilarious like she's actually like she seems like a pretty cool person which indicates like a lack or a um a level of fortitude that i think most of wouldn't have i think if like that was your name for the rest of eternity like that would be kind of tough for most people

i think it took her a while but i think she like is around to it yeah yeah totally so i am rounding the corner for act five which is reexamining the events 30 years later so i was reading a political article about the uh creator of a podcast called slow burn where he was interviewing linda tripp to get our account of everything that was going on have you heard of slow burn i have wait i didn't listen to that one i listened to the one before um It might have been the Nixon one that I listened to. That one was really good. Yeah.

He does a lot of political stuff. But she was asking, or he was asking Linda about the Monica Lewinsky situation. And this is a quote from Linda Tripp during that interview, which was, to this day, I don't believe she's accepted her victimhood. He was just using and playing with her and then disposing of a human being. And I heard that part. Someone on the switch jealous. I heard that was like, Linda, you did the exact same thing. You were 24 years the senior of a girl that you faked a relationship with, a friendship with,

to record for your own benefit, to publish a book that you never wrote. You know, it's just like so tone deaf about, like, who she is as a person and what she ends up doing here that, I don't know. I have, like, weird mixed feelings about Linda Tripp as a human. I think that she's probably, well, she's dead, so it doesn't really matter. but like she's she good fucking awful person she's terrible no she's terrible i think she's a smidge jealous of like the fame and the attention that monica got and i think she just wanted to like get in someone's business well it's also word noting so she actually really hated the clinton so like that part that's not a conspiracy there she actually like was really she got into politics

or she got into government because she was a really interested in in it obviously so she cared deeply in that article that political article she mentioned nothing that she wanted to happen was accomplished she was supposed to get like some super expensive exclusive book deal that she never got she was supposed to get the clinton's out of office which she never got like you really like she had her own agendas that had nothing to do with i'm just trying to help some poor girl who's 24 years my dream like no no exactly she probably was i mean exactly exactly that was gross and so yeah she ended up dying

she's an unredeemable character she's awful 100% 100% um but like I don't know the story itself was just really really compelling it was really interesting it was so interesting because it starts with

the government shut down or it starts with it's act where beans death goes to the government shut down goes to a land deal from the 1970s goes to apologize it's just crazy how at all happened and the doom to fell part is

if you're a 50 year 49 year old president don't have sex with your 21 year old intern pretty simple yeah please wait how old was he again 49 he was 49 when they started uh that's young young for a president these days hey can i ask question like i don't know if it's going to sound sexist it's a good way to start she also like i mentioned when she was 18 to like 22 she was also in a sexual relationship with a mayor um like instructor at a university who is also in his like 40s like is there like is that like i mean i never i was never attracted to my professors but i do know women who were and who like would date their professors but i think but i mean i mean more like like it plays

into like my perception that she's not a victim it's like that's just what you like like you like men in power who are much older than you like are you a victim sure I mean she let I think she's a little bit of both like I think well yes she's probably a victim then as well you know what I'm saying you know what I mean like that power dynamic makes it hard to be a hundred percent equal because like you're like oh this is like an older person who has a lot of power and they're you know whatever trying to make me feel special right so yeah They deserve more blame than she does. I think in both of those scenarios, I don't think she's, I think she's more of a victim of the U.S. government, you know, and the media and, like, this shit that they did to her with, like, Clinton, like, whatever, you know, but if it hadn't been, you know, that perjury,

it hadn't been, like, the lying about it. And if that wouldn't, I mean, presidents have had affairs for all time. Like, you know, FDR, his problem wasn't that he was having. having affairs you know whatever like it's not grace but it's not like the end of the world and it got to this point because of the lying but because they like made it such a big deal and like the weird 90s where people were trying to like i don't know the 90s were weird right i think so i think so uh news wasn't entertainment yet and this helped launch that um yeah but yeah that's uh that's my story um um

And we have ordered a government shut down. So we're all good on that front. But yeah, just respect the power dynamics. And don't fucking hang out Bill Clinton. That's kind of fair. I like him until we find him on the Epstein flight list and get some deets on that. You know. I mean, it's funny because, like, you don't have to make even a.

single leap in judgment to put him on fc island with bill gates you have to like you have to be like oh yeah hard to believe like with bill he was there absolutely i don't have to question anything like he could sure was it probably so much there was like oh 100 percent there was some like another meme where i saw where it was like republicans were like what if what would happen if if Bill Clinton was on Epstein Island and it's like Democrats are like throw Bill Clinton into the sun like if he did it but I'm in jail you know like yeah throw him to the sun we don't care um but yeah yeah it's wild that was a wild time to be around I definitely think that's when we went to the national park and jumped over the fence oh yeah oh yeah um so the next budget

shutdown is going to be in mid-november so yeah keep an eye out which is exactly the time wait that this happened so joe biden ends up having sexual a 21-year-old um you'll know that you'll come back and listen to this podcast and know exactly why honestly we'd all be a little bit impressed that would be amazing but um but i don't think yes i think that we're probably fine there other things maybe but not that yeah yeah fair enough um so do you have anything you want you want to read off for the for the listener I am hoping I'm hoping

when we have some new listeners because I boosted one of our reels and it got a ton of views and we have a ton of new followers

on Instagram and I boosted a reel about your last episode about Sarah and John Makin and that one's been listened to a ton

so I'm super excited that new people are listening and I hope you're still here with us today. Thank you. We are at

Doom to Fell Pod on all the social media and also on YouTube. You can find us there. And you can send us an email. It's Doomed to FailPod at Gmail. And we will answer your questions.

You have questions, ideas, thoughts. Let us know. We'd love to hear from you. One caveat. There are assistants will answer your questions. Those letters usually don't reach me and Taylor directly. But, you know, keep trying. Keep trying.

Keep trying. Sure, sure. Um, sweet. Well, we'll go ahead and cut the, yeah, thanks. We'll go ahead and cut this off and we'll rejoin you on Wednesday. Thanks, everyone. Thanks.