Monica Lewinsky
00:00Hey, you're wrong abouters. Mike here. Just want to let you know that about 22 minutes into this episode my microphone breaksSo that's why I sound like I'm underwater for most of the episode. I'm sorryI hope it won't happen again. Thank you for listening and on with the showWelcome to your wrong about a show where we tell you what you're wrong about. I'm trying a new taglineThat's a better tagline than any of the ones I've come up withAnd my name is Sarah Marshall and I've written for the New Republic and BuzzFeed and The BelieverAnd usually about what things that I feel people to be wrong about and I'm Michael HobbsI write for the Huffington Post and speaking of things that we are wrong about we've both been researching the
00:55The funny thing is that we don't even have a unified title for this like I think of it asMonica gate. She actually doesn't like that term. Oh, that I'll stop saying itShe has mentioned that she is she really resents the term like the Lewinsky scandal or Monica gate or any of these things that putHer at the center of it, right? Because it makes it seem like she was the one that made the scandal when in factIt was the president of a large country who decided to do many things and brought the scandal on himselfBut then I've also heard journalists say that they're not trying to like be dicks about itBut basically there were so many Clinton scandalsThat you couldn't just say like the Clinton scandal or even the sexual harassment scandal because there were like nine of those
01:41It was like naming comments or somethingSo anyway, I am thinking of this as you're wrong about the Clinton Lewinsky scandal. There you goLet's let's put his name first because that's where it would go if it were an invitationAnd yeah, we're doing this differently this week that usually one of usResearches and the other asks and we're both so obsessed with thisBoth read this week. So I spent all week reading the entire star reportWhich is four hundred and something pages long and isDarkly fascinating in ways that I will get into
02:15What were you reading this week Sarah this week? I was listening to the audiobook of Jeffrey Tubin's a vast conspiracyIt's mainly the background of the star report and of how this scandal came about and alsoYou know sitting there in the car thinking aboutWhy does Jeffrey Tubin seem to genuinely dislike Monica Lewinsky so much and while we're on the subjectWhy did America dislike Monica Lewinsky so much? Why is it that when scandals?Implicate extremely powerful men taking crazy risks that no logic in the world could explain awayAre we like the intern is the problem the 22 year old the 22 year oldDo you want to help us get into the background sir?
03:01How did this how did the investigation come about because all I know is the beginning of the star reportwe should get into this by talking about Ken star because the sense that I got from Tubin's book and also from myMemories of this as it was happening in the conversations that I were hearing and that I was hearing adults have around meyou know we're raised in political bubbles andThe the only culture I knew was this idea of like the right is has it out for Bill Clinton and it's his business and this is silliness andIt's silly and and the Republicans need to leave him alone and at the time when this was actually happeningI think that if I were an adult in 1998I would be taking that tone, but also yeah this idea that at the time liberals were put in a position of having to defend Bill Clinton against
03:45really egregiously self-interested attacks by the right that were claiming to be attacks in the name ofMoral rectitude and having a decent president, but really were clearly partisan and agenda-driven and how that led us to view the sexualPolitics of what was happening because when Bill Clinton was presidentMany prominent and powerful Republicans tried to create scandals around his administrationAnd so there was travel gate. They're so boring that I can't even really remember the details and I'm gonna get them slightly wrongI think but travel gate was basically soon afterBill Clinton became president a fewLong-standing White House staffers whose work had something to do with travel were fired and the right tried to turn it into the Clinton
04:28Administration is sweeping in and they're firing everyone and it's a gateI mean do you remember hearing about white water when you're growing up?I feel like that word was always in the newsConstantly right when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. I was a 16 year old boy, so I was veryempathic toward women's issuesBut you were also able to understand why someone wouldPotentially drastically alter the fate of the whole country to get oral sex at workLike I feel like as a 16 year old boy
04:56You're very in touch with that and understand itI think the consensus in the Hobbes household and like among my super Lefty liberal Seattle public schoolUpbringing was that the French president has a mistress. So why are we all freaking out about Clinton?Kind of having a mistress that was basically the consensusIt wasn't even necessarily a witch hunt, but it was like this is just an overblown thing like it's gross and he's an idiotObviously, I don't think anybody was defending him as like a paragon of virtue, right?But it was like this is just totally out of proportionYeah, I was vaguely aware of things like white water and Vince Foster and there's all these like weird things that remain
05:34Like little shibboleths right that there's like an entire portion of the electorate that if you say Vince FosterThey're like, oh, it's a murder and there's a basement and there's a huge vast conspiracy and helicopters flying around. Yeah, there's a basementLike Benghazi has this weird symbolic load as well, too, right that these these have all become these like clarion callsYeah, the tip of an iceberg of this deep horriblepowerful Illuminati level corruption of the Clintons and it only manifests itself in these likeextremely mundaneExtremely paperworkTechnicalities, I mean when you think about all of these scandals as far as the political corruption stuff, not the sex stuff because that stuff is true
06:18But the political corruption stuff, it's all procedural. Yeah, it's like oh Clinton might haveaccidentally released classified information orWhitewater was something with a land deal, right? Like a boring land deal in ArkansasBill Clinton allegedly had a conversation with a very crooked real estate developer andpart-time church pew manufacturer in1986 where he allegedlyPressured this guy or advised him told him in some way to give a$300,000 loan to a couple who are business associates of the Clintons who they had gone on in with on the Whitewater
06:56deal in 1978 and it was just I supposed to be some sort ofHousing development and it never worked because they were betting on real estate development in an area of ArkansasThat wasn't really developed. What could be more mundane, right? It's it's not a Scorsese movieSo how did Kenneth Starr like how did the Whitewater investigation happen?so Janet Renoappointed him asIndependent counsel what that reflects is Janet Reno as attorney general making the decision tocredit the Whitewater
07:29Controversy we will bring in an independent investigatorwho is not a part of this administration anddo our due diligence and look at all the Whitewater stuff andshow that this is all going to beimpartially and professionally handled by having it be a bipartisan blah blah blah andhe'ssomeone who hasMaintained an aura of bipartisanship for his career in Washington
07:59He was actually nominated to be a Supreme Court justice when he was quite youngyou would have been in his 40s and he was theSolicitor general which is the the lawyer who speaks on behalf of the US government and Supreme Court casesSo he was an insider's insider. YeahHe had some very right-wing leanings, but he had managed to maintain a reputation as asExurus whose decisions were not guided by partisanship. He's like a law-and-order guyYeah, I think that was his reputation and he'd had you knowHe had the chops to do what he did and he also hated Bill Clinton
08:39Why was that was it for the sexual stuff was it for the policy stuff?What was it there was a tell-all that came out in the mid 90s called unlimited access which was written by a formerrelatively low-level White House staffer andClaimed to have salacious information about the Clinton White House andYou know mainly it was it was fairly boring, but it had all of these all of these strange and later ondebunked details about like the ClintonsStaffers put up pornographic Christmas tree ornaments and it was an attitude of casual sexAnd I think the description was that it was like Berkeley with an Appalachian twist, which does that sound great?
09:23Like a lot ofCedar cabins and stuff and there was this idea that I guess put forth in that book and that people seem to have that thePresidency had previously under Reagan and Bush been this distinguishedAmericanYou know, I guess I have so little concept of this as a thing that doesn't exist except as a myth that I have a hard timePutting my finger on it, but you know men wore suits and haircuts and women had manicures and not important policy jobs andyou just drank scotch and looked out a window like all the time and then Bill Clinton came in andtheir fear of his
10:01Politics was to some degree expressed in in their sense of him turning the White House into like a swingers club because I'm obsessed with thisSee everything through a like generational warfare lensAnd I think it's useful to note that Clinton was the first Boomer presidentRight one thing that we don't talk about in America very muchAnd we should is the fact that we've never had an older population than we do right nowLife expectancy is getting longer and birth rates are fallingSo it's the first time that we've had an older electorate the first time we've had a generation that remains in power as it agesEvery previous generation was very rapidly outnumbered
10:40So even if there's these like cantankerous old people, they're outnumbered and this kind of new bloodSloshes into the politicalAnd that did actually happen when the boomers came in that there were more boomers than there were greatest generationsBut I wonder if this is the beginning of the greatest generation really having this backlash against younger peopleThe Clintons become an emblem of yeah Berkeley rock-throwing Jane Fonda free speechBeatniks are taking over the government and that was one step too far right and that Clinton would had been a draft DodgerExactly, and it's it's these proxy wars for the Vietnam protestsWhich a lot of people are still really sore about and what they perceive as no patriotism, right?
11:23That the boomers just don't care about America and are spitting at troops when they come back from VietnamAnd yes boomers the original Millennials every generation thinks that the following generation is uniquelyDriving the country into the ocean. Oh, yeah, but this is the first time that we've had a generation that is still in powerI mean, it's amazing to me reading through the star report the names that come upI mean Jennifer Paul Miri Leon Panetta all these people are still around that makes sense to meI also think Hillary played into it hugely people have always hated her. It's truly it's like our national pastimeIt's fascinatingI can't get over this detail that when she was the wife of Bill when he was the governor of Arkansas
12:05She kept her last name. Mm-hmm. And this was considered totallyAnathema even in Arkansas even locally even all the way back then she was aPolarizing figure because she stayed Hillary Rodham and it was like a how dare she kind of toneI mean it was extremely controversialAnd I think that had already sort of poisoned the waters against her and then she comes in and she's a lawyerAnd she's accomplished and she represents everything about this women's lib stuff that our grandparents generation just cannotStand these women who are like not wearing dressesFighting back against sexual harassment
12:44Not staying home to raise the kids not supporting their husbands equally my grandmotherStill hates Hillary Clinton with a fiery passion. Why because she didn't leave Bill when he ran around on herHmm. This is why my grandmother voted for Donald TrumpWell, I'm cheating on his wife is fineBut Hillary Clinton not leaving her husband for cheating on her is not fineAnd I think that huh Hillary personifies a lot of the way that the roles of women had changed from generation to generationThat was very easy to cast her as this shrillambitious
13:20Harpy who's trying to meddle in policy things that she has no expertise in she's trying to pass universal health care and she justBecame this lightning rod for again this completelyDisproportionate hatred one of the things that I came across in one of the articles that I read was about how Ken starReally wanted to go after Hillary for the whitewater thing. He was more interested in Hillary than BillShe's the only first lady in American history so far to have been subpoenaedOh, wow, which she was about whitewaterLike she had to go in and testify like any other citizen and that was a big dealAnd that was and I think that they knew in advance that they really like the best
13:59They had going for them was connecting the Clintons to a conspiracy charge about dodgyFinancial dealings and really didn't have the grounds to do thatSo I think he knew at this point that he just like getting her to come in and have to testify and sort ofIt was just a power move and that was kind of all they could do with her. So they did itSo let's get us to the Lewinsky investigation. What happens between whitewater and Lewinsky?Well, so Ken star is appointed to investigate whitewater. He does his due diligenceHe does his best. He's subpoenaed the first lady and she testifies before a grand jury andUltimately, he can't do anything with it and he's poured I think three years
14:41into it at this point and just hasn't really found anything andHe is offered a job teaching at Pepperdine like a law school deanship or something like that a nice cushy jobHe can go and sit on the beach and be surrounded by conservatives and eat shrimp, you knowAnd he's like, yes, take me to Pepperdine and then the conservative mediaLaunches this attack on Ken star and if all these conservative commentators are like Ken star isAbandoning his party in a time of moral reckoning. Blah. Blah. Blah. NoAnd it's just all so performative and it's just this this operetta where he's beenDigging and digging and digging and just not getting anywhere and is like what if
15:26What if I didn't continue on this fruitless road to nowhere for spite?And he tries, you know, and it's like his moment of grace and then the right is like, how dare you and he's like never mindand so he stays andDuring the whitewater investigation for several years for for three yearsPaula Jones has been attempting to sue the president based on her allegations that on May 8th1991 when he was the governor of ArkansasWhat she claims happened is that she was at a conference at a hotelHe saw her in the lobby and liked the cut of her jib. She was in her early 20s at the time
16:07She had grown up very conservativeChristian and had sort of rebelled in her teen years, but was a very shelteredverypolitically naive young woman who always wore bows Pam Smart also theWoman in New Hampshire who went to trial for allegedly conspiring to have her husband killedShe was known for always wearing bows like the early 90s was just like womenFruitlessly putting on bows to try and protect themselves from the forces of American power didn't workBut so Paula Jones was at this conference Bill Clinton the governor of Arkansas sees her likes her
16:44asks his security to tail toBring her to a room in the hotel for him to meet with herAnd so she agrees and they bring her up and he comes in and according to herHe is talking to her and touching her and coming on to her and she sort of you know tries toput the brakes on things andWalks away and then he comes over and exposes himself to her and asks if she would kiss it and she says noI'm not that kind of girl andIn one of the many moments when
17:17The integrity of the case hinges on past sexual transactions and like legal attempts to understand a woman's reputationPollock Jones's husband who is really the person who is the seems to have been the driving force in her filingSuit before the statute of limitations expired three years after the incidentHe says to Jeffrey to Ben according to Jeffrey to Ben's bookAnd I knew that that was true because she wouldn't do that for meLike I don't want you to feel sorry for me, but she doesn't do that. Oh my godand then one of thebombshell pieces of investigation that
17:51Clinton's counsel ultimately comes up with when Pollock Jones's legal team file suit is that actuallyAccording to this guy from a small town in ArkansasHe was at a party with her once right before she met her husband and she gave him a blowjobAnd then she gave all these other guys blowjobSo therefore etc and it's just so weird because it's like just this idea of all itYou know all of these men with their suits and their haircuts and briefcases and these just millions of dollars worth of government time and money ultimatelytrying toObjectively say well if Pollock Jones was giving blowjobs in 1987
18:27I think she must have been like happy to give blowjobs in 1991 right to some dudeShe's never met at like 11 in the morning. I'm sure that's completely right keeping with her characterYeah, and it's like I guess this idea of this attempt to sort of to legally block out sexuality in that wayAnd especially ideas around what consent means to a youngChristian raised woman at different times in her life and this idea that if you gave a blowjob at a party onceYou can never not want to give a blowjob again for the rest of your lifeThis came up with me reading the star report to that first of all I hate how much I've read the word blowjob this weekI
19:07Do notDetails of like his wife doesn't give him blowjobs, so she must be telling the truthI hate knowing this shit about people. It's none of my businessYou're such a good journalist like we just need like a hundred more height Michael Hobbes is in AmericaYes, we would have a better infrastructure, but I do think though first of all, there's no reason not to believe Pollock JonesRight in a way, it's like Anita Hill in that not believing her requires you to doMental acrobatics, I think you can't think about this whole thingWithout coming to the conclusion that Clinton is a giant fucking sleaze ball and he never should have been a presidential candidate
19:45I mean, it's amazing to me that he even made it as far as he did when it was clearEverybody around him knew that he was a huge ticking time bomb with this shitAnd like do you think that he was a sex addict? I don't know. I don't careIf he I just don't find any of this like pathologizing stuffUseful, maybe he was maybe he wasn't anytime you're trying to explain awayIt's something that happened politically or just you know in a narrative by saying someone is a blank category of person like that doesn't really helpYeah, I mean, there's lots of reasons why you can't be president, right?Like being under 45 or like being born in Canada. I just think that being kind of a
20:30Semi-rapist should be one of those reasons if you know that about yourself if you know that about your bossYou should just be like dude. It's not your turn. There's all kinds of other things in the world that you can doYou just can't run for president. I mean the Paula Jones thing will get into this with LewinskyBut the Lewinsky case is obviously way lower on like the Harvey scale of sexioSociopathology the con the sexual contact that he had with Monica Lewinsky seems to have beenUncharacteristically consensual. Yeah, like for him. It's weird. YeahBecause the Paula Jones stuff is legitimately like Harvey ish like that's a super fucked up thing to do. Yeah, it's badYeah, and the reason she comes forward is because the American spectator
21:11published an articleBy a guy who we know. What do you who do you think?David fucking Brock my least favorite person ourNemesis like what if in in so many of the key scandals of the 90sDavid Brock turns out to have been like the spider, you know in the middle of the webBut yes, David BrockPreviously the author of was it was the real Anita Hill the real Anita Hill which in which he smeared in the hill and then 10 yearsLater admitted to basically fabricating the whole thing and faced no consequences whatsoever. What if we do?
21:46Like a documentaryThat's like kill Bill, but it's David Brock and all of the women in the 90s whose lives he destroyed that music playsYes, yeah, that'll be our next we'll start. We'll do a Kickstarter for thatSo are you saying he smeared Paula Jones, too? In a way what happened was that he did an article for the American spectatorbased oninterviews with Clinton'sSecurity guys who were known collectively as the Bubbas. He interviews the BubbasHe gets all these stories and one of them is that Clinton had seen Paula Jones and
22:23They had brought her up to meet him and she hadPropositions him and asked to be his regular girlfriend and he said okayThe article coming out is what prompts her againIt's seemingly with the urging of her husbandEspecially like I don't think without him that he that she necessarily would have done this comes forward in file suitAnd should then they want a cash settlement and it never seems to be in the carts for them to get anything bigShe has this idea that she's been smeared. Yeah, she was smeared. YeahI think that's a perfectly accurate term like people continue to talk about her looks which are completely irrelevant
22:57People continue to use the word bimbo, which is like we don't even fucking use the word bimbo anymoreUnless we're talking about Clinton accusersThat's the only legacy of this weird slang term that nobody uses anymoreBut as soon as Clinton's involved, we all use the word bimbo. I can see why she would be really mad about thisI also think David Brock is terrible and he probably did set out to smear herHe's he smears women without even knowing who they are or that it would be advantageous to smear themYou know, he just sort of it's this thing. She did eventually settle thoughI mean, that's one of the things that I think is really interesting is that her
23:33Case against Clinton is what gives us the Monica Lewinsky caseBut then sort of in the midst of the Lewinsky madnessShe just quietly settles out of court with Bill Clinton and I think there's some sort of NDASomething something and like she gets I think850,000 in the endBut so it's weird that there's Supreme Court decisions and there's his personal lawyers and the presidential lawyersAnd it's this whole big thing and then it just kind of like goes awayYeah, and it's weird as a scandal because it's I mean she filed suit in
24:061994 andShe had a press conference that no one paid attention toNobody cared. Oh, yeah, you know, there would be little squibs here and there about itBut it was a long time before the American public was really concerned about thisI think there was a feeling on the left of like, oh, whatever. It's just Republican opportunismWhich the thing is I mean the Republicans had been crying wolfFree for years at this point and just the file gate travel gate Vince Foster whitewater all of that stuff like by the timeserious allegations
24:39Came forward it makes sense that we would be jaded about that that leads the left to treat polyjones as aPond who's being used by the right which she is but that also means that nobody's treating her as a human beingI read an article about how the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal represents the loss of media gatekeepersSo they actually go through every single one of Bill Clinton's accusersAnd they talk about how the media changes between accusers because there's been so manyWhich is just like a really dark methodology to begin with for his first accuser a woman named Connie HamseyWhich I've never even heard of her before I was reading this article from like 2004She came forward
25:17There was a little tiny blip on CNN where they mentioned like oh this random woman came forward to accuse Bill Clinton ofGroping her and it showed up in this one story George StephanopoulosGets on the phone and he's like how dare you run this? This is hearsay. This is ridiculousCNN capitulates never runs anything about it againThe other networks see that CNN has capitulated and they decide not to run it Wow the way that StephanopoulosSo he describes it as we survived our first bimbo eruption. Oh my godWhat again? Why are these people still in public life? This guy sucksWhy is everyone talking like we're in a strip club in 1963?
25:56I mean my godAnd so he manages to quash this and this article traces then Paula Jones her case bounces aroundFor something like three years and everyone in the media knows about itBut like you said they can't really tell is this something we should take seriously is this woman credibleAnd you know what's amazing is that there were constitutional issues at stake in this because the questionJeffrey Tubin really goes to town on this you can tell this is when he's like happiest just romping around talking aboutConstitutional issues and the issue that would came up in this is can the president of the United States be sued asA private citizen would be for something that happened before he was president and unconnected to his presidency
26:38Which is very relevant now, really?I mean, I actually think as a principleIt is a little weird that someone can bring a personal suit against the president for something quote-unquoteunrelated to their presidential conduct and have the case go forwardSo I know that this case winded its way through the courts for ages and eventually the Supreme Court ruled yeah that it could go forwardBut I also see the concern about that procedurally because you can't have people taking the president to like judge JudyUnlike a bunch of random small boar shit because it just takes up the president's time andIt is an avenue through which you can pursue a witch hunt
27:18Yeah, or as we see in the Paula Jones caseIt's been a vehicle that you can use to pursue all kinds of other insane shit like once you get the president onThe record and under oathThen you can just start asking him all kinds of stuff and then go after him just for the like proceduralPerjury obstruction of justice stuff that they eventually got Clinton on yeah, if there's this funny thing where we have these longsoap operascandals they just go on and on and then what we end up with is like someone got a perjury convictionSo all of this Paula Jones stuff is happening in 1997, right?
27:52Mm-hmm. I want to rewind to 1995 and talk about how the whole Clinton-Lewinsky thing beganOkay, so you read the star report and you know all the details that I have some questions for you about thatbut IWould like to start with something. I know and find veryInteresting and atmospheric which is that the scene for all this beginning is a shutdown andinterns White House interns are doing the jobs ofNon-essential staffers and so it's like the adults aren't around and there's pizza involvedThey're like Jennifer Calmeri orders everybody pizza and that like plays a central role in like their second sexual encounter
28:33all right, but soMonica Lewinsky gets hired as an intern in the White House in July of 1995Mm-hmm, and I love the ways in which worseCorruption than what Clinton is actually on trial for like shows up in the star report casuallyso the way that the way that Monica gets theinternship is aFriend of her parents named Walter Kay is a prominent contributor to Bill Clinton's campaignSo he makes a call and she gets an internship
29:07And so I realize that like this is the way that the world works and like humans are tribalSocial creatures and like we all use nepotism to get ahead, but like they're just something gross about itYeah, and also speaking of the shutdown so a month into her internshipThere's this shutdown the star report also mentions very casually that oh well because the interns are unpaidThey don't technically count as employees so they can stay around so the White House is running like a startupYeah, exactlySo it's like what kind of people do you think you're gonna get as White House interns if they're not paid?You know this is a very good point about right about the structural forces at play here to get into your tubing zone
29:51One of the reasons that calling for diversity and hiring something like a class of White House interns isImportant and isn't just a liberal PC talking point is that if you actually hire people who are qualifiedAnd they're gonna come from a rainbow of backgroundsAnd they'll be focused on their work and they won't just be trying to fuck the president the whole timeI like who you're already blaming her. You're already in the frame where she's at fault here. Here's the thingI'm not I think that she did a great job. I think Monica Lewinsky from what I knowI don't think that she really cared about American politicsThat's much that much which is fine because like why
30:32Why would you as a 22 year old?Honestly, like that's a little bit weird and went in was making flirty eye contact with the president and was likeI think I can make this happen and then did and like good for herI couldn't have done that when I was 22 like she really seemed to have been a pretty calmOperator who got what she wanted to get and didn't care that much aboutrunning governmentHowever, if they had hired someone who was more focused on it the fair might not have happenedSo that's yeah, you only hire like model UN nerds. This will never happen again. That is my policy prescription
31:08Yeah, but it is I mean one of the surprising things about the star report actually is howAggressive she was right. I mean, I think it's fair to use that term that sheReally pursued him. She was cruising him. Yeah, and so I mean according to the star report. She gets hired in JulyThey are making eyes and flirty eye contact at variousFunctions and she kind of eyes him across the room. She tells her mother at one pointI think I have a crush on the presidentReally finds him sexy and then the shutdown happens and you're right. It's like summer campThere's like no adults around the interns are like walking around the nuclear codes
31:45And so this is the description from the star report of their first sexual encounter on route to the restroom at around 8 p.mShe passed George Stephanopoulos's office. The president was inside alone and he beckoned her to enterShe told him that she had a crush on himHe laughed then asked if she would like to see his private office through a connecting door in MrStephanopoulos's officeThey went through the president's private dining room toward the study off the Oval OfficeMrs. Lewinsky testified we talked briefly and sort of acknowledged that there had been a chemistry that was there before and that we were bothAttracted to each other and then he asked me if he could kiss me
32:21Miss Lewinsky said yes in the windowless hallway adjacent to the study they kissed before returning to her deskMiss Lewinsky wrote down her name and telephone number for the presidentSo first of all, there's not a lot of detailI don't knowIt's it's kind of weird to like walk into somebody's room and be like wowI have a crush on you. We're both attracted to each otherLike I would not do that to my boss even if that was trueFor seeming to be actually pretty well matched as people who just were very sexual and inappropriate
32:49Situated that's the way I imagine Bill Clinton like going into some you know woman's dorm room at collegeHe's being like wow, I feel a chemistry with youYeah, let's make this happenBut I mean there's there's so many weird aspects of this like one of one of the things one of the details that I keep thinking about is that inThis entire20 month period in which they were fooling around and they had more than 50 phone conversationsThey had 10 sexual encounters. It's this long thing. They're talking like two times a week at one pointThey never see each other undressed really the entire yeah the entire relationship
33:21relationship takes place in this back room behind the Oval Office andHe is not allowed to close the door of that office for I don't know what reason soHappens constantly that they're fooling around in thereAnd then somebody comes in to the Oval Office and he can hear them like knock knock mr. President and he has like dash out ofThis office. This is why you have to let your chief of staff in on your affairs so they can be I mean like be strategicYeah, and also, I mean just the extent to which it's basically just a lot of oral sex and also okayHow many orgasms were there in this whole affair? This is actually really interesting this again? I hate thisI hate that I know this
34:06People know this about the president. I hate this thing that I know this about anybody first of allIt's six sexual encounters before they have a real conversation yikesIt's like depressing in all the ways that sex in America in the 90s was depressing like nobody gets undressedNobody has a conversation. It's like she goes into his officeShe gives him oral sex and then it's over in five or ten minutesSo it's the sixth time they have sex with each other by the time they spend more than five or ten minutes together, right?OhAlso for the first again, I hate that I know this for the first eight blowjobs
34:39He does not orgasm and so she is giving him a blowjob. He says hey, hey, hey stop. I don't trust you enough for this yetI don't know you well enoughAnd it's clear that in his headIt's like not cheating if you don'tLike it's clear that he thinks of this as like there's some threshold that you crosswhen the orgasm happens soThis is like a year and a half later once he finally orgasmsThat's when he decides to break it off and starts feeling bad about it. Wow
35:15He does try he kind of he breaks it off around like they fool around two or three timesHe breaks it off, but then like two weeks later. He's like, what are you doing at midnight tonight?Oh my godHe really breaks it off and it really takes it seriously after he orgasmsAnd that's when he even says this in like the depositions later that like that's when he felt that he had done something wrongWhich is like wow just shows. I mean what an idiot he isAs if like I mean he knows there is this vast right-wing conspiracy that will look at like his fucking land dealsThey will spend three years
35:49Investigating does he really think that someone's gonna investigate the blowjob he gets from a 20-year-old intern to goOh, he didn't orgasm never mind. I think that's the exact magical thinking that people who doStuff that they know that they're gonna get caught doing and that they know the consequencesYou know, it's like, you know, if I don't snort coke if I'm only like rubbing it on my gumsThen I'm not addicted to it or like if I'm you know, if I'm not injecting heroinThen I'm not really a heroin addict and also that yeah, do you think that he felt likeLike not just that it wasn't really like a white house affair of the kind that he could get penalized for but also that it wasn't aMoral transgression on his part like in his compact with his wife and the American public and everybody
36:38I mean, that's what it feels like that it doesn't feel like he has a lot of remorse orThat he even takes it all that seriously before the ejaculation. What's really interesting is sheLewinsky she's testifying to all she eventually flips right so starComes to her through answer with perjury tells her he'll give her immunity if she gives up everythingAnd so she has like detailed descriptions of their conversations. She has detailed descriptions of every giftThey've given each other every conversation. They've hadClinton doesn't seem like he remembers anything Clinton doesn't seem like she has really registered on his radar like as a person at allSo in their second sexual encounter, it's also it's still during the shutdown Jennifer Pomeri gets pizza
37:20Lewinsky kind of sneaks back into this back officewith him and they like kiss for a little while and thenThis is from the star report after a few minutes in miss Lewinsky's recollectionShe told him she needed to get back to her desk. The president suggested that she bring him some slices of pizzaIt's it's like the lock-in like post high school graduation that high schools do now that my high school did where you got locked inOvernight at the Y so you don't do any mischief and they're like have a party. It's just so high schoolYeah, and so this is like years later when he's doing the Paula Jones depositionThey ask him about this exact incident and so again from the star report in his Jones deposition
38:00President Clinton said he was unable to recall most of his encounters with miss LewinskyHe did remember her back there with a pizza during the government shutdown back there with a pizzaYeah, testifying before the grand jury on August 17th 1998The president said that his first real conversation with miss Lewinsky occurred during the furlough. He testified one nightShe brought me some pizza. We had some remarksAnd so the pattern that is established from like minute one is that Clinton obviously does notThink of her as a person very much and thinks of her as kind of like a booty call at bestEventually she starts giving him shit and she's like
38:41You realize you've never asked me anything about myselfLike you've never shown any interest in me as a person and I guess at that was after they flew around six timesApparently he feels somewhat bad about itAnd so he asked like what are you gonna major in or whatever?But the whole time he just kind of like doesn't give a shit and you can tell that like it isn't even like aNotch on his belt back there with a pizzamembers the pizza much more fitter than anything elseThat's the thing he remembers that they talked about something, but he knows there was a pizza. Yeah, it wasn't sushi
39:15It wasn't burritos. He knowsI mean, hasn't everyone had like a relationship in their early 20s where like you really felt like you were givingLike your your heart and soul to someone and they remembered that you had a pizzaThis is like me reading the entire star report. I'm just like, oh, sweetieHe's not into you at all, sweetieI'm just about myself in my 20s and all the terrible men that I somehow convinced myself were into me and like I did allOf the Monica shit like I'm just reading this and like, ohNo, don't don't call him again. Like he doesn't
39:53Don't go in the basement. Yeah, it's like watching a slasher movieBut I feel like there's also the sense that maybeYou could connect more broadly to just someone not caring about youBut like needing the service that you offer or needing the releaseBut I don't know I wonder if that was at play in this relationship tooThis thing of like you don't know anything about me. You don't ask me any questions about myselfYou don't think of this as a real thingBut you need it and in a way like I'm one of the most important people
40:26In this administration because of thatI mean, I think that that's probably the story that she tells herselfBut what's interesting is to me. This is his signal failure that when you have powerPeople find power sexy and people are going to come on to you and people are going to find your confidence, whateverattractive to themAnd it's easy to look at all this and be like, oh, she was the aggressorShe's a homewrecker that home had already been wrecked torched and strewn with stalt that home was already in ashes. YesAnd then we're talking about a 49 year old man who's the leader of the free world. Is it really?
41:03Too much to ask for him to not be in a room aloneWith 22 year olds like the levels of responsibilityI feel like we put her and him on the same planeWhen her moral jurisdiction is much lower because she's not the married oneShe's not the person who's breaking a contract with their partnerAnd he this is not the first 22 year old to come on to youWhy can't you just hey this intern clearly has like a little thing for me?Knowing who I am
41:35Let's make sure that there's no opportunityFor me to take advantageLike it's the same reason why I don't have like fucking orios in my house because I will fucking eat them allI know that about myself. Well, you know what else I find interesting is thatwasn't he on the phone like with members of congress andWhite house officials and stuff during some of thisPartial oral sex that he was receiving like the majority of their sexual encounters like there's something else going onI mean, this is one of the other
42:03Sad and weird aspects of this because again the door to the stupid office is always a jar and he's the presidentHe's constantly gettingHis phone calls are people stopping by and like at one point one of their dates gets canceled because he has a state dinnerWith the president of mexicoYou can't run a relationship when one of the people is the presidentYou just can't and so this to me actually illustratesThe weird and ridiculous overreach of the star reportThat the description of the factual narrative description of the relationship takes up something like 115 pages
42:38And it is excruciatingly detailedIs it just like getting texts from your friend who's in a shitty relationship and you're just like wow every detailYeah, it's like literally every single thing and there's details likeMonica let's you say, you know asAs I was performing oral sex. He received a phone call. I think it was from a member of congressI think he had some nickname and then the star report will be like white house logs show that president received a call fromsunnySmith the delegate from Delaware or whatever and it's like this is a perjury investigation
43:14This was originally about a real estate deal in arkansas in 1978I think the worst example of this of just these details these lurid details that are clearly meant toHumiliate the president the worst example of this is that after she does oral sex on himIt's like pillow talk. They're like 45 seconds of pillow talk before she's like hustled out of there isHe says oh, thank you for thatNo one's done that for me in a long time, which is like a weird dig at hillaryYeah, like I mean first of all it's weird that Monica lulinski gets cast as a skank for giving blowjobsBut then hillary is also like a frigid witch for not giving blowjobs
43:55I mean there's no way to be sexual or not sexual as a woman without doing it wrong and destroying americaThis is just a thing and then also it's just this little quote at the end of the paragraphAnd it's like why did you need that like maybe his wife is not blowing him and it's also hearsay, right?It's also from lulinski. So it's not even legally valid orShouldn't be included. Yeah, it's just like this weird shitty detailThat is supposed to like cast aspersionsOn his marriage and basically embarrass him and from the entire countryI mean the level of detail this goes into
44:27About you know ejaculation and like she touched his genitals and he touched hers and the cigar thingThat you know at one point he puts a cigar in her vagina and then he puts it in his mouth afterwards and he says oh, it tastes goodWhich is againNot like perjury. It's not it's not a perjury. It's not really and the funny thing too is that it's it's actually I think quitenice becauseWe really still do live in a culture in america where men are quite afraid of vaginas and soYou know the fact that he it's kind of an it's a sort of dumb body cute vagina positive thing to do that unfortunatelyBecause of the context had to be spun as like the scan because I was 10 when the bulk of this was in the news
45:11And just knew that I heard about cigarsEuphemistically for years without knowing what had actually happened to a cigarYeah, the dig at hillaryThat seems to connect with our current political philosophy in this country of if only womenWere continually sexually available men wouldn't commit mass murdersQuite as much and this idea that like sexualAvailability to the point of non-agency on behalf of women is like the secret glueThat's holding america together, you know and like I'm sure that there's a sort of republican idea
45:44Subconsciously present in that of you know, if only he'd had like a normalChristian marriage where the woman has the big hairdo and is totally complacent to all of her husband's sexual needsThen he wouldn't you know, he could be going home every night for home cooking and he wouldn't have to go out for fast foodYeah, and this so eventually she is transferred to the pentagon becausePeople are starting to notice like in every in every spy novel they start out really carefulRight about their little pecadillos. Yeah, then everyone always gets sloppy, right? Yeah, and the white house isA building where people wander around their secret service agents everywhereSo of course the secret service agents are seeing this his personal secretary is seeing this
46:32Leon Panetta the chief of staff who she's working forAlso sees this there's kind of rumors about her and soPanetta behind Clinton's backtransfers her to the pentagonAnd this of course shows that there's like an open secret like this is not the first time this has happenedRight, so they transfer her to the pentagon. He's like, oh man, this really sucks. Like I'm sorry. We're not gonna see each other as much anymoreLet me see if I can try to get you a job. It would be great to bring you backHe doesn't really understand why this is done. I think Panetta sort of tells him like, oh, yeah, you know her internship was up and
47:06Blah blah blah like he acts like there's some sort of logistical reason for thisSo Clinton is like, well, you know, let me see what I can do about getting you a job. He of course does nothingYeah, but that's like that's you know, that's what you say when in his headHe's probably like, oh like my my little trysts with moniker over. I'll have to find somebody else to have trystDidn't he also give her a hat pin as a gift? Oh my god, the fucking gifts dude. Jesus ChristThat's why it's like 80% gift. It's the most tediousI mean they are they give each other a ridiculous amount of giftsLike she gives him like 10 neckties and leaves of grass
47:37Which apparently hit the bestseller lists again after the star report came out because everyone's like oh leaves of grassLike oh my god, it must be like rife with meaning. WowThe big thing with the giftsIt's a low maintenance strategy for him to stay in contact with her because he can just have his personal secretaryPick some stuff up and send it to her apartmentLike it's no it's literally no effort for him. It's like just a sentence, right?But then she sees all these gifts as super meaningfulSo she's like, oh, I am still in his heart. And so she keeps sending him more gifts. It's also it's an excuse
48:08For her to go visit him. So once she gets transferred to the pentagonShe manages to come in there one or two more timesUnder the pretense of like, oh, I have a gift that I need to deliver to the president or I need to deliverShe uses I need to deliver papers to him quite a bit. So isn't it amazing that relationship bullshit is the sameLike no matter even if you're having an affair with the president, you're like, oh, I left my shirt at your placeI have to come overYeah, exactly that she becomes increasingly desperate to sort of engineer these run-ins and she has noticedThat he will kind of forget about her and then
48:48He'll see her at like a public eventThey'll go to some gala or whatever a thing and he'll see her across the room and then that nightHe will then give her a call. So he just has a short attention spanYeah, it's like a normal again from your 30s. You can look back on this and be likeOh, he clearly does not give a shit about her and like she has not achieved object permanence in his mindWhen he when she is away from him, he thinks that she has ceased to existHe does not think about her. She has not achieved personhood. But then he sees her and he's like, oh, yeah, I likedFooling around with her. I'm gonna call her again. But in her head, she's like, oh, he's just busy
49:24God, it's like high school. It really is and again, all of us have been this personBut of course from a distance you can always look at it and be like, oh, no, don't don't shake his hand in an eventAnd introduce him to your mom. Like that's not that's not a strategic thing. Yeah, she does that at one pointIt's really it's it's interesting that she told her momLike what a weird position to be in to be Monica'sLewinsky to be Monica Lewinsky's mom and to know about this for like months and months before it became newsAnd to be having to give your daughter advice. She gave up the dress the mom did yeah in exchange for immunityBecause star was trying to get her on some obstruction of justice lying under oath thing. Wow
50:03So, I mean this all gets very ugly laterThis is when things start to get like complicated and bad is she gets transferred to the pentagonShe tries to keep seeing him, but it's hard. It's also it's barely mentioned in the star reportThis is also an election year 96 an election yearSo obviously clinton is not just like waiting around for his former intern to visit like they don't so they don't sleep together for 11 monthsShe is getting more angry. She's trying to orchestrate more meet-ups. She's doing this like gift exchangeThey're calling each other. They're having some phone sexShe really kept on it. Does the star report go into what her feelings were for him?
50:39I mean did they ask her about it? YeahOne of the mean things that the star report does is it tracks from the white house logsAll of his calls to her and how long they were and it cross references those with hillary clinton's whereaboutsOh, god. Yeah, exactly. So it's like on october 17th clinton had a 36 minute call with lawinskymrs. Clinton was in birmingham, alabamaOn the following thursday when mrs. Clinton was in athens greeceHe had a 26 minute call like and she was probably reading a feminist book and that's how she manifested thatmrs. Clinton was burning bras at the time. So she wasn't able to be around
51:17So he's clearly bored and whatever like he really only calls her when hillary's out of townOf course, monica doesn't know this right. She just knows that the president keeps calling herBut then so she hasn't seen him in a long time. This is super fucked up february 14th 1997This is when things kind of like crescendo apogy of their affairs in february of 97February 14th 97 monica places an ad in the washington postBecause before the internet when they were like classified ads and papers still ran like announcementsYou know job announcements and marriage announcements and whatever one of the things they did was they had valentine's dayAnnouncements so you could put a little square in there. This is like steve. I love you from samantha
52:00so she placesAn ad in the washington post that says handsome with loves light wings. Did I over perched these walls?Firstoni limits cannot hold love out and what love can do that dares love attempt. It's a quote from romeo and juliaI don't know what it means because i'm not functionally literateAnd then it just says m at the end. Wow. So this is like the levelThat she's at now. She hasConvinced herself that she is in love with him and that he is in love with herThat reminds me of a review that laury moore wrote of titanic and talks about
52:39Young women and their machoCupidity is the phrase that she uses for like the spectacle, you know of like rose jumping off of the lifeboat and back onto the sinking shipAnd guess this amazed like the machonessOf a young woman totally in love just like going for it in a crazyPotentially death drive kind of a wayAnd i mean i love it. She quoted romeo in that like she's like you're trapped and it's okayand the force of my love willGet through all of everything and and we're gonna make it, you know, I mean that's really
53:15Like i'm in charge. I know how to handle this situation. I'm just gonna keep sending you giftsWow, you do have an mfaNice you knew who to quote was from wowAhSo this is valentine's dayShe arranges to see him two more times. These are the two events where he ejaculatesI hate that wordBut anyway, these are the two there are two final sexual encounters in which she goes and sees him
53:42She's performing oral sex on him. He pulls her awayHe's like, hey, hey, hey, we don't do that and she's like, no, but I really want to here we goAnd I continued to perform oral sex and then he pushed me awayKind of as he always did before he came and then I stood up and I said I care about you so muchI don't understand why you won't let me make you come. It's important to meI mean, it just doesn't feel complete. It doesn't seem rightMs. Lewinsky testified that she and the president hugged and he said he didn't want to get addicted to meAnd he didn't want to get me addicted to him. They looked at each other for a moment
54:16Then saying I don't want to disappoint you the president consentedOh godAh, that's yeah, that's such a sex proof that he was not in touch with realityIt's like you don't want to get addicted to each other like the horse is already out of the barnThey've literally had 50 phone calls by this point, right? It's like, oh, but it's not realLike you're not wearing my class ring. So we're not really datingSo this happens they flew around one more time and then march 24th 1997 according to the star report the president ends itThis is another one of those details that why is this in the report earlier in his marriage?
54:54He told her he had had hundreds of affairsBut since turning 40, he had made a concerted effort to be faithful since turning 49 years agoYeah, and since having sex with her for the last 18 months. He's all of a sudden like, oh, I want to try to be faithfulYeah, so anyway, he breaks up with her in may 97She keeps wanting to see him and she's getting increasingly frustrated that he hasn't gotten her a jobEventually she sends him a dear sir letter in which she obliquely threatensTo disclose the relationship. So she says if I can't come back to work at the white houseI'm gonna need to tell my parents. Why not?
55:31Which of course is kind of hilarious because she's already told her mom everything by this pointRight and it's like she's never attempted to use leverage before because she just doesn't want to have to apply pressureBut so he's trying to placate her he's like look we're looking into itWe're trying to get you a job. She eventually tells kind of star. I left that day emotionally scarredI just knew he was in love with me. Hmm. And of course, this is like the most23 years oldSaddest part of it that it's so obvious reading this that he only shows interest in herWhen he wants to have sex or when she threatens him and yet in her head
56:10It's become this star crossed lover type situation. So, I mean does sheIs there a timeWhen she's finally just like this isn't gonna work out between us like I give up or does she remain a believerUntil you know things start to get legally complicatedYeah, things are already getting a little complicated because now Catherine will he comes forward and says that the president groped her in the Oval OfficeAnd Linda tripped is wrapped up in all this somehowLinda tripped worked at the white house at the time of the willy incident and she was used as aShe was used as a serf by michael isikoff who at the time was at news week and was trying to
56:51Figure out trying to write about the willy assault and right and willy said that the president hadKissed her and touched her breast and put his hand put her hand on his penisIn an unconsensual way. He said none of it had happened and Linda tripped saidShe came out of the of her meeting with bill clinton looking flushedAnd like something had happened but also happy. So she was used as a source and that is like, yeahlike sheGave ammunition to opponents of clinton's while also taking away the question or attempting to take away the question of consent and assaultAnd just making it like the bedroom farce version. Yeah, so it's like
57:31All of this is happening and it feels like the heat is being turned up on clinton, right? Because he's getting depositionsfor this jones thingKatherine willyAllegations are also getting wrapped up in this thing because ken and star at this point just taking anything he can getAnd so lewinsky now is threatening to come forward with their you know, 18 month affairso heFast tracks this thing of getting her a job and he especially wants to get her job in new yorkAnd I think he thinks that like if she's not in town
58:02She will like latch on to somebody else and I don't have to I don't have to do anythingSo again, this is like where the like intenseJust like 1800s level corruption comes in. So he assigns vernon jordan. Who's a friend of his and a lawyerHe's like get her a job and then lewinsky startsHectoring vernon jordan. Like why haven't you got me a job yet?Why haven't you got me a job? Why don't I have any interviews lined up?Again, if the clintons were killing people who made things inconvenient for them, this would be the momentAnd also, I mean, wasn't she a white house intern and working at the department of defense like go get a job?
58:38It would go send out your cv. You've gotten some impressive90s the economy is boomingShe's got a great resumeShe's got parents that have paid to put her up in the watergate hotel for this entire timeShe was staying at the watergate hotelsShe has a she has a single like a one bedroom apartment in the watergate hotel for this entire 18 month periodSo it's like why are you just waiting for this guy to get you a job?It's so I mean she could have made five phone calls and gotten two job offers
59:05She didn't know how good the economy was back now. I mean none of us did uh, he he arrangesShe's like saying she wants to get a job at the unHe arranges in this extremely corrupt wayTo get like some higher up person at the un to give her an interviewThat goes well the un offers her a job, which I have applied for jobs at the unI know people that work at the un getting a job at the un is like a fucking six month long processYou have to fill out like 10 personality forms. Everything's anonymizedSo when you send in your application, they don't even see your name because it might cause a bias
59:38So just see like a five digit number like getting a job at the un is a huge dealAnd now we've just got verna jordan friend of the president calling someone upAnd getting her a job offer which that is worseLike the actual perjury that the president did it's so bad. Yeah, but it's not a sexy scandalYou can't really put a gate on it. So just boring and human, but it's so gross tooSo she gets offered a job at the un she turns it down. She's likeWell since working at the white house with you she says this in a letterShe's like since working in in the white house with you has kind of turned me off to working at the white house at all
01:00:16I think you know other institutions like the un maybe they won't be as good as I think eitherSo I'd actually rather get a job in the private sector. So thenShe starts hectoring again. I like monica. She's a nice personI like her for doing those things, but it's it's it's inappropriate job applicant behaviorSo she turns up that job. She then says like hounding him to get her jobs in new york in the private sectorHe sends out things to like whatever kpmg and like the kind of the usual suspectsThis is from the star report on january 8th. She interviewed for a job in new york cityAfter the interview went poorly
01:00:50Mr. Jordan placed a phone call to the company's chairman on her behalf and miss lewinsky was given a second interviewIt's proof that a really a good way to get job placement is just to becomedeeply inconvenient to someone who has the resources to maneuver you to a different citySo she's trying to work at the conglomerate that doesn't work. She ends up getting a job at red lawnWhich is one of the companies that this conglomerate ownsso finallyShe gets a job, but then so this is like whereEverything starts to just like snowball. I don't think lewinsky ever had a moment where she like gave up
01:01:25I think what happened was this stuff all went publicandThat was it and then you know, she's getting immunity and she's in with kind of star and everything. I meanThe way that it all happens and i'm sure tuban does this in his book too is that basically likeLinda trip is terribleLinda trip and monica lewinsky are colleaguesFor a year and a half at the pentagonLinda trip is mad because she thinks that monica is quote unquote a bimbo, of course
01:01:56And never would have gotten a job there if it wasn't for just president bow and strings, which is trueI don't know. Linda trip got a job at the pentagonI mean linda trip is in her late 40s, right?So she's basically the same age as the president and she hates the presidentSo if this is at any point a witch huntIt isn't witch hunt by linda trip linda trip is the shawneck art of this where it's like she's theThe look the forgotten person who was really at the center of all this and did all the leg workI mean one of the newsbreak articles I read was that
01:02:27Basically, they were in negotiations with kathleen willies lawyers and with paula jones lawyersAnd they were about to come to a settlement and that they had come to a settlementThere would have been no reason for clinton to be under oath and there would have been no reason for monica to be under oathBut before the settlement could be signed the story came outThat was what created the opportunity for them to then put lewinsky on the standwas linda tripMaking this a public thing. So how did she do that at this point monica has told 11 peopleThat she and the president had an affair. It's amazing how many people you can tell about your affair with the president before it becomes public knowledge
01:03:07It's wild. So her mom knows her boyfriend knowsTrip hates the president and doesn't think very highly of monica because of this idea that she got her job unjustlySo a year and a half goes byIn which monica and linda are talking about the affairBut linda isn't writing anything down recording anything in this interview with the daily mailLast year trip. She says that her biggest regret is not acting soonerHad i taken notes during that year and a half he would have been impeached successfullyWhat did we learn linda? She also i also love this so this interview has been done with her in 2017
01:03:44And she says it's her husband who encouraged her to speak out about this nowBecause they were watching the election results in 2016She was watching the results usher in hillary's defeatTrip turned to him and said the nation will never know what a bullet it dodged tonightShe still hates the clinton'sJust to a like incendiaryDegree so basically it's kind of funny because what actually happened with tripSounds like the caricature of like a woman who wants to ruin a man, right?
01:04:14Like she talks to a literary agent the literary agent recommends that she start recordingShe then takes the recordings to news weekWhich doesn't do anythingWith them. Why didn't they do any like did they not think it was credible?I mean, this is the whole gatekeepers thing. They couldn't confirm right back when you didn't run news that you couldn't independently conferExactlySo she gives it to kena star because she knows he's investigating white water linda trip emerges from this like manWe should have been like meaner to linda trip
01:04:45It's like everyone else in the 90sWe needed to be nicer to you knowExtenuating circumstances linda trip and david brock though. Hmm. So this is how the whole thingHappened so then it's not clear if she gives it to polygons as lawyers or kena star gives it to polygons as lawyersBut somehow polygons as lawyers get thisThing that there's a former white house intern that has had a sexual affair with the presidentThey are doing discovery for their case in which they're trying to prove that clinton has aHistory of sexually harassing women
01:05:20So they want to do discovery and get him on the record for all of the other women that he's ever slept with in his lifeThis is of course like a huge fight that they're having procedurally at the courtso they callmonica lewinskyand this is whenKind of everything goes insane right that as soon as they call her then it's likeWell, do we lie about it?Do we not lie about it?
01:05:44She tells the president the president of course invites her to the white house and then it becomes this whole swirling messwhereDid he tell her to lie did he not tell her to lie the the evidence is still pretty weak that he told her to lieIt was like he said something like well say what you always saySomething like that and of course it's only from her side the only participant in that conversationWho's testimony we have is herI mean one of the other things I came away from this with is like I kind of wantedTo reclaim lewinsky as like a feminist hero and like a total victim of all this and obviously she is
01:06:18But it's also amazing to me just like she did some really stupid shitlike sheShe was calling him 20 times a day at the end. She had convinced herself that he was in love with herI don't likeI don't think that the punishment fits the crime like I think what she went through in the 90s is wildlywildly disproportionate that's like the punishment that we attempt to engineer forSex offenders right where everyone in your community knows you and hates you and thinks that everything is your faultAnd I just happened to her on a national scale. Yeah
01:06:49I think and I think she has admitted it's like in her essay that she publishedWhat was it two years ago in vanity fair? She talked about how she made a mistake andEvery 22 year old is allowed to have some mistakes and I think that's that like she did some stupid shitBut it's really difficult for us to be like, well, yeah, she did andLet's all tone it down a little bit or let's focus on the guy who did way stupid or shitI mean, like I said, he really should have known better than to get involved at allLike one of the things that is just amazing to me is that it's clear that in his headHe thinks clinton thinks that this is like just a fling
01:07:29Just a fun booty call fun timesBut it's like, well, what if you think she was thinking like do you thinkThat people are capable of havingJust a fling with people way more powerful than they are at the age of 22To which I say what I say to my friends when I'm getting texts of this natureWhich is I don't think he was thinking for a second about what she was thinkingIt's funny too because that, you know, tuban kind ofHe has a lot of moments where he's like surely, you know, bill clinton had to be aware of the potential consequences, blah, blah, blah
01:08:04And the thing is though, I mean, they're they're just there hadn't been consequences for himLike this before like I don't think it was really possibleTo imagine these consequencesuntil they actuallyManifested in this way because presidents had been having affairs forever and they'd been fucking around with internsAnd so had other white house officials forever. Although I will sayIn this article about the media gatekeepers, they do mention that after jennifer flowers came forwardbill and hillary did a one hour long interview with 60 minutes
01:08:38In which they talked about his history with women andStephanopoulos, this is kind of the beginning of the end of the gatekeepers, right?That this story that was just tabloid fodderActually makes it onto 60 minutes, which is a new thing, right? Because before Stephanopoulos could justQuash the quote-unquote bimbo explosion here. They have to actually cover it. They have to actually address itAnd Stephanopoulos calls this chemotherapyThat they go on 60 minutes and it just burns everything downbut
01:09:08You that kind of stopped the story, right that it didn't metastasize from thereBut by the time we get to LewinskyWe're in like the drudge universeWhere newsweek knows about the story for months doesn't do anything about it drudge finds out about it and like 10 minutes laterIt's on his website and the entire country is talking about itAnd then the mainstream media is like according to the drudge reportThe president slept with an intern and that gives them the coverTo publish this story that none of them have great
01:09:35Because they can publish about the publication of the story enough the story that's interesting is that there's mountingConsequences for Clinton right that he had been able to dodge this stuff beforeHe then has to go on 60 minutes. He has to address this stuff. I think he should have known I thinkPolitically, I actually think at this point impeaching him would have beenOr like if he had resignedIn 98 two years into his presidency would have actually been better in that Al Gore would have been a perfectly fine presidentHe doesn't seem to have any huge liabilities that we know ofThat's his greatest asset is that he's just not terrible in any pronounced way
01:10:12And he could have run as an incumbent in 2000Which would have been better than running as a vice president when you didn't have much policy stuff behind itAnd you know, who knows, maybe he would have lost like even more blah, blah, blah, we never knowBut it is weird how much Clinton held onTo his office and how much the party held on to Clinton like he still speaks at stuffHe's still around his wife ran for president. He's stillSomeone who's seen as kind of like the keeper of the flame in the partyWell, yeah, and I think he's seen much more positively now than Hillary is still yeah
01:10:46He's one of these like elder statesmen. Yeah whenI think they should have just like scorched earthed him outAnd kept the moral high ground somehowWell, this is another diversity thing, right where we just have this idea like there's this idea in both partiesI'm just like, well, you know, we only have like five guys. We have fivesomewhat adequate white guys, which are the only kinds of people that we can really put so we just we have to protect them and it's likeUh, what if I mean really are there only five? It's like it's like a town where all ofThe non insane men between ages 15 and 65 are off at the civil war
01:11:27What why do you stupid hate Monica so much? I don't know. I think partly he really does not likeMany of the people that he writes about which is sort of an issue as a journalistLike he mentions that you know that Monica Lewinsky went to a not very hard collegeLewis and Clark Portland. Yay. I went to a worse college than Lewis and ClarkLike he said, I hope that doesn't become like a smear on meEven like oh, well, you know, he went to a regional public collegeI went to Portland State University, which doesn't even sound like a real school. It's like Portland is not a stateSo Monica Lewinsky and I both went to
01:12:06Colleges in Portland, Oregon that you know that can be used to make us seemMore deserving of getting nationally smeared if it ever comes to that. So when you get smeared the Portland State thing will be leadingThat's gonna be the first fun fact, you know, she went to Portland StateShe didHow did you end up feeling about Monica? I mean, I was really impressed byHer abilities as a seducer and it's funny to me becauseDozens of times I've read or researched or tried to rewrite accounts of like the seductive woman who made it happenAnd it's it's always some woman who is just sitting there
01:12:42And was like I will just sort of go along with this weird thing that's happening if I have to but I amYou know, it's like that if a woman isn't actively physically strugglingIn america we tend to see her asAn enthusiastic participant of whatever is happening to her sexuallySo I found it really refreshing to actually read about a scandalThat purported to be about a woman expressing sexual agency in which she actually hadSo yeah, I think the view the main thing that changed in my understanding of what happened during the affair itself was justRealizing that she you know, not only consented but enthusiastically participated
01:13:23And lobbied for his participationAnd it's it's interesting to me that that's something that at the timeThat that just had to be treated as proof of her badness and the fact that she had sort of colludedWith this very with the most powerful person in the worldI don't think she didn't do anything to americayou knowAnd this question of what happened to america because I you knowSomething happened. This is the perfect lead-in to next week. Something happened to america
01:13:56So we're doing volume two of this podcast is going to be the clinton impeachmentAnd you're wrong about it. Yes. We're gonna go into it's extremely detailed, but I'm excited to not talk about oral sexWe're going to get away from the the grinding workaday world of oral sex discussion and into the excitingFantasia of constitutional precedent and legal debate and it's going to be good
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