You're Wrong About - Monica Lewinsky

Episode Date: June 2, 2018

Sarah and Mike talk about what America forgot — and never learned — about history’s most famous intern. Digressions include generational resentments, 1990s fashion and off-brand colleges. Also, Mike’s microphone breaks about 25 minutes in, so he sounds like he’s recording in a submarine. Sorry! Continue reading →Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

Hey, you're wrong abouters. Mike here. Just want to let you know that about 22 minutes into this episode my microphone breaks So that's why I sound like I'm underwater for most of the episode. I'm sorry I hope it won't happen again. Thank you for listening and on with the show Welcome to your wrong about a show where we tell you what you're wrong about. I'm trying a new tagline That's a better tagline than any of the ones I've come up with And my name is Sarah Marshall and I've written for the New Republic and BuzzFeed and The Believer And usually about what things that I feel people to be wrong about and I'm Michael Hobbs I write for the Huffington Post and speaking of things that we are wrong about we've both been researching the

The funny thing is that we don't even have a unified title for this like I think of it as Monica gate. She actually doesn't like that term. Oh, that I'll stop saying it She has mentioned that she is she really resents the term like the Lewinsky scandal or Monica gate or any of these things that put Her at the center of it, right? Because it makes it seem like she was the one that made the scandal when in fact It was the president of a large country who decided to do many things and brought the scandal on himself But then I've also heard journalists say that they're not trying to like be dicks about it But basically there were so many Clinton scandals That you couldn't just say like the Clinton scandal or even the sexual harassment scandal because there were like nine of those

It was like naming comments or something So anyway, I am thinking of this as you're wrong about the Clinton Lewinsky scandal. There you go Let's let's put his name first because that's where it would go if it were an invitation And yeah, we're doing this differently this week that usually one of us Researches and the other asks and we're both so obsessed with this Both read this week. So I spent all week reading the entire star report Which is four hundred and something pages long and is Darkly fascinating in ways that I will get into

What were you reading this week Sarah this week? I was listening to the audiobook of Jeffrey Tubin's a vast conspiracy It's mainly the background of the star report and of how this scandal came about and also You know sitting there in the car thinking about Why does Jeffrey Tubin seem to genuinely dislike Monica Lewinsky so much and while we're on the subject Why 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 away Are we like the intern is the problem the 22 year old the 22 year old Do you want to help us get into the background sir?

How did this how did the investigation come about because all I know is the beginning of the star report we should get into this by talking about Ken star because the sense that I got from Tubin's book and also from my Memories of this as it was happening in the conversations that I were hearing and that I was hearing adults have around me you know we're raised in political bubbles and The 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 and It's silly and and the Republicans need to leave him alone and at the time when this was actually happening I think that if I were an adult in 1998 I 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

really egregiously self-interested attacks by the right that were claiming to be attacks in the name of Moral rectitude and having a decent president, but really were clearly partisan and agenda-driven and how that led us to view the sexual Politics of what was happening because when Bill Clinton was president Many prominent and powerful Republicans tried to create scandals around his administration And 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 wrong I think but travel gate was basically soon after Bill Clinton became president a few Long-standing White House staffers whose work had something to do with travel were fired and the right tried to turn it into the Clinton

Administration is sweeping in and they're firing everyone and it's a gate I mean do you remember hearing about white water when you're growing up? I feel like that word was always in the news Constantly right when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. I was a 16 year old boy, so I was very empathic toward women's issues But you were also able to understand why someone would Potentially drastically alter the fate of the whole country to get oral sex at work Like I feel like as a 16 year old boy

You're very in touch with that and understand it I think the consensus in the Hobbes household and like among my super Lefty liberal Seattle public school Upbringing 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 consensus It 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 idiot Obviously, 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 proportion Yeah, I was vaguely aware of things like white water and Vince Foster and there's all these like weird things that remain

Like little shibboleths right that there's like an entire portion of the electorate that if you say Vince Foster They'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 basement Like Benghazi has this weird symbolic load as well, too, right that these these have all become these like clarion calls Yeah, the tip of an iceberg of this deep horrible powerful Illuminati level corruption of the Clintons and it only manifests itself in these like extremely mundane Extremely paperwork Technicalities, 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

But the political corruption stuff, it's all procedural. Yeah, it's like oh Clinton might have accidentally released classified information or Whitewater was something with a land deal, right? Like a boring land deal in Arkansas Bill Clinton allegedly had a conversation with a very crooked real estate developer and part-time church pew manufacturer in 1986 where he allegedly Pressured 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

deal in 1978 and it was just I supposed to be some sort of Housing development and it never worked because they were betting on real estate development in an area of Arkansas That wasn't really developed. What could be more mundane, right? It's it's not a Scorsese movie So how did Kenneth Starr like how did the Whitewater investigation happen? so Janet Reno appointed him as Independent counsel what that reflects is Janet Reno as attorney general making the decision to credit the Whitewater

Controversy we will bring in an independent investigator who is not a part of this administration and do our due diligence and look at all the Whitewater stuff and show that this is all going to be impartially and professionally handled by having it be a bipartisan blah blah blah and he's someone who has Maintained an aura of bipartisanship for his career in Washington

He was actually nominated to be a Supreme Court justice when he was quite young you would have been in his 40s and he was the Solicitor general which is the the lawyer who speaks on behalf of the US government and Supreme Court cases So he was an insider's insider. Yeah He had some very right-wing leanings, but he had managed to maintain a reputation as as Exurus whose decisions were not guided by partisanship. He's like a law-and-order guy Yeah, I think that was his reputation and he'd had you know He had the chops to do what he did and he also hated Bill Clinton

Why 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 former relatively low-level White House staffer and Claimed to have salacious information about the Clinton White House and You know mainly it was it was fairly boring, but it had all of these all of these strange and later on debunked details about like the Clintons Staffers put up pornographic Christmas tree ornaments and it was an attitude of casual sex And I think the description was that it was like Berkeley with an Appalachian twist, which does that sound great?

Like a lot of Cedar cabins and stuff and there was this idea that I guess put forth in that book and that people seem to have that the Presidency had previously under Reagan and Bush been this distinguished American You 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 time Putting my finger on it, but you know men wore suits and haircuts and women had manicures and not important policy jobs and you just drank scotch and looked out a window like all the time and then Bill Clinton came in and their fear of his

Politics 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 this See everything through a like generational warfare lens And I think it's useful to note that Clinton was the first Boomer president Right one thing that we don't talk about in America very much And we should is the fact that we've never had an older population than we do right now Life expectancy is getting longer and birth rates are falling So 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 ages Every previous generation was very rapidly outnumbered

So even if there's these like cantankerous old people, they're outnumbered and this kind of new blood Sloshes into the political And that did actually happen when the boomers came in that there were more boomers than there were greatest generations But I wonder if this is the beginning of the greatest generation really having this backlash against younger people The Clintons become an emblem of yeah Berkeley rock-throwing Jane Fonda free speech Beatniks are taking over the government and that was one step too far right and that Clinton would had been a draft Dodger Exactly, and it's it's these proxy wars for the Vietnam protests Which a lot of people are still really sore about and what they perceive as no patriotism, right?

That the boomers just don't care about America and are spitting at troops when they come back from Vietnam And yes boomers the original Millennials every generation thinks that the following generation is uniquely Driving the country into the ocean. Oh, yeah, but this is the first time that we've had a generation that is still in power I mean, it's amazing to me reading through the star report the names that come up I mean Jennifer Paul Miri Leon Panetta all these people are still around that makes sense to me I also think Hillary played into it hugely people have always hated her. It's truly it's like our national pastime It's fascinating I can't get over this detail that when she was the wife of Bill when he was the governor of Arkansas

She kept her last name. Mm-hmm. And this was considered totally Anathema even in Arkansas even locally even all the way back then she was a Polarizing figure because she stayed Hillary Rodham and it was like a how dare she kind of tone I mean it was extremely controversial And I think that had already sort of poisoned the waters against her and then she comes in and she's a lawyer And she's accomplished and she represents everything about this women's lib stuff that our grandparents generation just cannot Stand these women who are like not wearing dresses Fighting back against sexual harassment

Not staying home to raise the kids not supporting their husbands equally my grandmother Still hates Hillary Clinton with a fiery passion. Why because she didn't leave Bill when he ran around on her Hmm. This is why my grandmother voted for Donald Trump Well, I'm cheating on his wife is fine But Hillary Clinton not leaving her husband for cheating on her is not fine And I think that huh Hillary personifies a lot of the way that the roles of women had changed from generation to generation That was very easy to cast her as this shrill ambitious

Harpy who's trying to meddle in policy things that she has no expertise in she's trying to pass universal health care and she just Became this lightning rod for again this completely Disproportionate hatred one of the things that I came across in one of the articles that I read was about how Ken star Really wanted to go after Hillary for the whitewater thing. He was more interested in Hillary than Bill She's the only first lady in American history so far to have been subpoenaed Oh, wow, which she was about whitewater Like she had to go in and testify like any other citizen and that was a big deal And that was and I think that they knew in advance that they really like the best

They had going for them was connecting the Clintons to a conspiracy charge about dodgy Financial dealings and really didn't have the grounds to do that So I think he knew at this point that he just like getting her to come in and have to testify and sort of It was just a power move and that was kind of all they could do with her. So they did it So 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 diligence He does his best. He's subpoenaed the first lady and she testifies before a grand jury and Ultimately, he can't do anything with it and he's poured I think three years

into it at this point and just hasn't really found anything and He is offered a job teaching at Pepperdine like a law school deanship or something like that a nice cushy job He can go and sit on the beach and be surrounded by conservatives and eat shrimp, you know And he's like, yes, take me to Pepperdine and then the conservative media Launches this attack on Ken star and if all these conservative commentators are like Ken star is Abandoning his party in a time of moral reckoning. Blah. Blah. Blah. No And it's just all so performative and it's just this this operetta where he's been Digging and digging and digging and just not getting anywhere and is like what if

What 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 mind and so he stays and During the whitewater investigation for several years for for three years Paula Jones has been attempting to sue the president based on her allegations that on May 8th 1991 when he was the governor of Arkansas What she claims happened is that she was at a conference at a hotel He saw her in the lobby and liked the cut of her jib. She was in her early 20s at the time

She had grown up very conservative Christian and had sort of rebelled in her teen years, but was a very sheltered very politically naive young woman who always wore bows Pam Smart also the Woman in New Hampshire who went to trial for allegedly conspiring to have her husband killed She was known for always wearing bows like the early 90s was just like women Fruitlessly putting on bows to try and protect themselves from the forces of American power didn't work But so Paula Jones was at this conference Bill Clinton the governor of Arkansas sees her likes her

asks his security to tail to Bring her to a room in the hotel for him to meet with her And so she agrees and they bring her up and he comes in and according to her He is talking to her and touching her and coming on to her and she sort of you know tries to put the brakes on things and Walks away and then he comes over and exposes himself to her and asks if she would kiss it and she says no I'm not that kind of girl and In one of the many moments when

The integrity of the case hinges on past sexual transactions and like legal attempts to understand a woman's reputation Pollock Jones's husband who is really the person who is the seems to have been the driving force in her filing Suit before the statute of limitations expired three years after the incident He says to Jeffrey to Ben according to Jeffrey to Ben's book And I knew that that was true because she wouldn't do that for me Like I don't want you to feel sorry for me, but she doesn't do that. Oh my god and then one of the bombshell pieces of investigation that

Clinton's counsel ultimately comes up with when Pollock Jones's legal team file suit is that actually According to this guy from a small town in Arkansas He was at a party with her once right before she met her husband and she gave him a blowjob And then she gave all these other guys blowjob So therefore etc and it's just so weird because it's like just this idea of all it You 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 ultimately trying to Objectively say well if Pollock Jones was giving blowjobs in 1987

I think she must have been like happy to give blowjobs in 1991 right to some dude She's never met at like 11 in the morning. I'm sure that's completely right keeping with her character Yeah, and it's like I guess this idea of this attempt to sort of to legally block out sexuality in that way And especially ideas around what consent means to a young Christian raised woman at different times in her life and this idea that if you gave a blowjob at a party once You can never not want to give a blowjob again for the rest of your life This came up with me reading the star report to that first of all I hate how much I've read the word blowjob this week I

Do not Details of like his wife doesn't give him blowjobs, so she must be telling the truth I hate knowing this shit about people. It's none of my business You're such a good journalist like we just need like a hundred more height Michael Hobbes is in America Yes, we would have a better infrastructure, but I do think though first of all, there's no reason not to believe Pollock Jones Right in a way, it's like Anita Hill in that not believing her requires you to do Mental acrobatics, I think you can't think about this whole thing Without coming to the conclusion that Clinton is a giant fucking sleaze ball and he never should have been a presidential candidate

I mean, it's amazing to me that he even made it as far as he did when it was clear Everybody around him knew that he was a huge ticking time bomb with this shit And like do you think that he was a sex addict? I don't know. I don't care If he I just don't find any of this like pathologizing stuff Useful, maybe he was maybe he wasn't anytime you're trying to explain away It'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 help Yeah, 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

Semi-rapist should be one of those reasons if you know that about yourself if you know that about your boss You should just be like dude. It's not your turn. There's all kinds of other things in the world that you can do You just can't run for president. I mean the Paula Jones thing will get into this with Lewinsky But the Lewinsky case is obviously way lower on like the Harvey scale of sexio Sociopathology the con the sexual contact that he had with Monica Lewinsky seems to have been Uncharacteristically consensual. Yeah, like for him. It's weird. Yeah Because the Paula Jones stuff is legitimately like Harvey ish like that's a super fucked up thing to do. Yeah, it's bad Yeah, and the reason she comes forward is because the American spectator

published an article By a guy who we know. What do you who do you think? David fucking Brock my least favorite person our Nemesis like what if in in so many of the key scandals of the 90s David Brock turns out to have been like the spider, you know in the middle of the web But yes, David Brock Previously 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 years Later admitted to basically fabricating the whole thing and faced no consequences whatsoever. What if we do?

Like a documentary That's like kill Bill, but it's David Brock and all of the women in the 90s whose lives he destroyed that music plays Yes, yeah, that'll be our next we'll start. We'll do a Kickstarter for that So are you saying he smeared Paula Jones, too? In a way what happened was that he did an article for the American spectator based on interviews with Clinton's Security guys who were known collectively as the Bubbas. He interviews the Bubbas He gets all these stories and one of them is that Clinton had seen Paula Jones and

They had brought her up to meet him and she had Propositions him and asked to be his regular girlfriend and he said okay The article coming out is what prompts her again It's seemingly with the urging of her husband Especially like I don't think without him that he that she necessarily would have done this comes forward in file suit And should then they want a cash settlement and it never seems to be in the carts for them to get anything big She has this idea that she's been smeared. Yeah, she was smeared. Yeah I think that's a perfectly accurate term like people continue to talk about her looks which are completely irrelevant

People continue to use the word bimbo, which is like we don't even fucking use the word bimbo anymore Unless we're talking about Clinton accusers That's the only legacy of this weird slang term that nobody uses anymore But as soon as Clinton's involved, we all use the word bimbo. I can see why she would be really mad about this I also think David Brock is terrible and he probably did set out to smear her He's he smears women without even knowing who they are or that it would be advantageous to smear them You know, he just sort of it's this thing. She did eventually settle though I mean, that's one of the things that I think is really interesting is that her

Case against Clinton is what gives us the Monica Lewinsky case But then sort of in the midst of the Lewinsky madness She just quietly settles out of court with Bill Clinton and I think there's some sort of NDA Something something and like she gets I think 850,000 in the end But so it's weird that there's Supreme Court decisions and there's his personal lawyers and the presidential lawyers And it's this whole big thing and then it just kind of like goes away Yeah, and it's weird as a scandal because it's I mean she filed suit in

1994 and She had a press conference that no one paid attention to Nobody cared. Oh, yeah, you know, there would be little squibs here and there about it But it was a long time before the American public was really concerned about this I think there was a feeling on the left of like, oh, whatever. It's just Republican opportunism Which the thing is I mean the Republicans had been crying wolf Free for years at this point and just the file gate travel gate Vince Foster whitewater all of that stuff like by the time serious allegations

Came forward it makes sense that we would be jaded about that that leads the left to treat polyjones as a Pond who's being used by the right which she is but that also means that nobody's treating her as a human being I read an article about how the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal represents the loss of media gatekeepers So they actually go through every single one of Bill Clinton's accusers And they talk about how the media changes between accusers because there's been so many Which is just like a really dark methodology to begin with for his first accuser a woman named Connie Hamsey Which I've never even heard of her before I was reading this article from like 2004 She came forward

There was a little tiny blip on CNN where they mentioned like oh this random woman came forward to accuse Bill Clinton of Groping her and it showed up in this one story George Stephanopoulos Gets on the phone and he's like how dare you run this? This is hearsay. This is ridiculous CNN capitulates never runs anything about it again The other networks see that CNN has capitulated and they decide not to run it Wow the way that Stephanopoulos So he describes it as we survived our first bimbo eruption. Oh my god What again? Why are these people still in public life? This guy sucks Why is everyone talking like we're in a strip club in 1963?

I mean my god And so he manages to quash this and this article traces then Paula Jones her case bounces around For something like three years and everyone in the media knows about it But like you said they can't really tell is this something we should take seriously is this woman credible And you know what's amazing is that there were constitutional issues at stake in this because the question Jeffrey Tubin really goes to town on this you can tell this is when he's like happiest just romping around talking about Constitutional issues and the issue that would came up in this is can the president of the United States be sued as A private citizen would be for something that happened before he was president and unconnected to his presidency

Which is very relevant now, really? I mean, I actually think as a principle It is a little weird that someone can bring a personal suit against the president for something quote-unquote unrelated to their presidential conduct and have the case go forward So I know that this case winded its way through the courts for ages and eventually the Supreme Court ruled yeah that it could go forward But I also see the concern about that procedurally because you can't have people taking the president to like judge Judy Unlike a bunch of random small boar shit because it just takes up the president's time and It is an avenue through which you can pursue a witch hunt

Yeah, or as we see in the Paula Jones case It's been a vehicle that you can use to pursue all kinds of other insane shit like once you get the president on The record and under oath Then you can just start asking him all kinds of stuff and then go after him just for the like procedural Perjury obstruction of justice stuff that they eventually got Clinton on yeah, if there's this funny thing where we have these long soap opera scandals they just go on and on and then what we end up with is like someone got a perjury conviction So all of this Paula Jones stuff is happening in 1997, right?

Mm-hmm. I want to rewind to 1995 and talk about how the whole Clinton-Lewinsky thing began Okay, so you read the star report and you know all the details that I have some questions for you about that but I Would like to start with something. I know and find very Interesting and atmospheric which is that the scene for all this beginning is a shutdown and interns White House interns are doing the jobs of Non-essential staffers and so it's like the adults aren't around and there's pizza involved They're like Jennifer Calmeri orders everybody pizza and that like plays a central role in like their second sexual encounter

all right, but so Monica Lewinsky gets hired as an intern in the White House in July of 1995 Mm-hmm, and I love the ways in which worse Corruption than what Clinton is actually on trial for like shows up in the star report casually so the way that the way that Monica gets the internship is a Friend of her parents named Walter Kay is a prominent contributor to Bill Clinton's campaign So he makes a call and she gets an internship

And so I realize that like this is the way that the world works and like humans are tribal Social creatures and like we all use nepotism to get ahead, but like they're just something gross about it Yeah, and also speaking of the shutdown so a month into her internship There's this shutdown the star report also mentions very casually that oh well because the interns are unpaid They don't technically count as employees so they can stay around so the White House is running like a startup Yeah, exactly So 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

One of the reasons that calling for diversity and hiring something like a class of White House interns is Important and isn't just a liberal PC talking point is that if you actually hire people who are qualified And they're gonna come from a rainbow of backgrounds And they'll be focused on their work and they won't just be trying to fuck the president the whole time I like who you're already blaming her. You're already in the frame where she's at fault here. Here's the thing I'm not I think that she did a great job. I think Monica Lewinsky from what I know I don't think that she really cared about American politics That's much that much which is fine because like why

Why 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 like I think I can make this happen and then did and like good for her I couldn't have done that when I was 22 like she really seemed to have been a pretty calm Operator who got what she wanted to get and didn't care that much about running government However, if they had hired someone who was more focused on it the fair might not have happened So that's yeah, you only hire like model UN nerds. This will never happen again. That is my policy prescription

Yeah, but it is I mean one of the surprising things about the star report actually is how Aggressive she was right. I mean, I think it's fair to use that term that she Really pursued him. She was cruising him. Yeah, and so I mean according to the star report. She gets hired in July They are making eyes and flirty eye contact at various Functions and she kind of eyes him across the room. She tells her mother at one point I think I have a crush on the president Really finds him sexy and then the shutdown happens and you're right. It's like summer camp There's like no adults around the interns are like walking around the nuclear codes

And so this is the description from the star report of their first sexual encounter on route to the restroom at around 8 p.m She passed George Stephanopoulos's office. The president was inside alone and he beckoned her to enter She told him that she had a crush on him He laughed then asked if she would like to see his private office through a connecting door in Mr Stephanopoulos's office They went through the president's private dining room toward the study off the Oval Office Mrs. Lewinsky testified we talked briefly and sort of acknowledged that there had been a chemistry that was there before and that we were both Attracted to each other and then he asked me if he could kiss me

Miss Lewinsky said yes in the windowless hallway adjacent to the study they kissed before returning to her desk Miss Lewinsky wrote down her name and telephone number for the president So first of all, there's not a lot of detail I don't know It's it's kind of weird to like walk into somebody's room and be like wow I have a crush on you. We're both attracted to each other Like I would not do that to my boss even if that was true For seeming to be actually pretty well matched as people who just were very sexual and inappropriate

Situated that's the way I imagine Bill Clinton like going into some you know woman's dorm room at college He's being like wow, I feel a chemistry with you Yeah, let's make this happen But 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 in This entire 20 month period in which they were fooling around and they had more than 50 phone conversations They had 10 sexual encounters. It's this long thing. They're talking like two times a week at one point They never see each other undressed really the entire yeah the entire relationship

relationship takes place in this back room behind the Oval Office and He is not allowed to close the door of that office for I don't know what reason so Happens constantly that they're fooling around in there And then somebody comes in to the Oval Office and he can hear them like knock knock mr. President and he has like dash out of This office. This is why you have to let your chief of staff in on your affairs so they can be I mean like be strategic Yeah, and also, I mean just the extent to which it's basically just a lot of oral sex and also okay How many orgasms were there in this whole affair? This is actually really interesting this again? I hate this I hate that I know this

People know this about the president. I hate this thing that I know this about anybody first of all It's six sexual encounters before they have a real conversation yikes It's like depressing in all the ways that sex in America in the 90s was depressing like nobody gets undressed Nobody has a conversation. It's like she goes into his office She gives him oral sex and then it's over in five or ten minutes So it's the sixth time they have sex with each other by the time they spend more than five or ten minutes together, right? Oh Also for the first again, I hate that I know this for the first eight blowjobs

He 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 yet I don't know you well enough And it's clear that in his head It's like not cheating if you don't Like it's clear that he thinks of this as like there's some threshold that you cross when the orgasm happens so This is like a year and a half later once he finally orgasms That's when he decides to break it off and starts feeling bad about it. Wow

He does try he kind of he breaks it off around like they fool around two or three times He breaks it off, but then like two weeks later. He's like, what are you doing at midnight tonight? Oh my god He really breaks it off and it really takes it seriously after he orgasms And that's when he even says this in like the depositions later that like that's when he felt that he had done something wrong Which is like wow just shows. I mean what an idiot he is As if like I mean he knows there is this vast right-wing conspiracy that will look at like his fucking land deals They will spend three years

Investigating does he really think that someone's gonna investigate the blowjob he gets from a 20-year-old intern to go Oh, he didn't orgasm never mind. I think that's the exact magical thinking that people who do Stuff that they know that they're gonna get caught doing and that they know the consequences You know, it's like, you know, if I don't snort coke if I'm only like rubbing it on my gums Then I'm not addicted to it or like if I'm you know, if I'm not injecting heroin Then I'm not really a heroin addict and also that yeah, do you think that he felt like Like 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 a Moral transgression on his part like in his compact with his wife and the American public and everybody

I mean, that's what it feels like that it doesn't feel like he has a lot of remorse or That he even takes it all that seriously before the ejaculation. What's really interesting is she Lewinsky she's testifying to all she eventually flips right so star Comes to her through answer with perjury tells her he'll give her immunity if she gives up everything And so she has like detailed descriptions of their conversations. She has detailed descriptions of every gift They've given each other every conversation. They've had Clinton doesn't seem like he remembers anything Clinton doesn't seem like she has really registered on his radar like as a person at all So in their second sexual encounter, it's also it's still during the shutdown Jennifer Pomeri gets pizza

Lewinsky kind of sneaks back into this back office with him and they like kiss for a little while and then This is from the star report after a few minutes in miss Lewinsky's recollection She told him she needed to get back to her desk. The president suggested that she bring him some slices of pizza It'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 in Overnight at the Y so you don't do any mischief and they're like have a party. It's just so high school Yeah, and so this is like years later when he's doing the Paula Jones deposition They ask him about this exact incident and so again from the star report in his Jones deposition

President Clinton said he was unable to recall most of his encounters with miss Lewinsky He did remember her back there with a pizza during the government shutdown back there with a pizza Yeah, testifying before the grand jury on August 17th 1998 The president said that his first real conversation with miss Lewinsky occurred during the furlough. He testified one night She brought me some pizza. We had some remarks And so the pattern that is established from like minute one is that Clinton obviously does not Think of her as a person very much and thinks of her as kind of like a booty call at best Eventually she starts giving him shit and she's like

You realize you've never asked me anything about myself Like you've never shown any interest in me as a person and I guess at that was after they flew around six times Apparently he feels somewhat bad about it And 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 a Notch on his belt back there with a pizza members the pizza much more fitter than anything else That's the thing he remembers that they talked about something, but he knows there was a pizza. Yeah, it wasn't sushi

It wasn't burritos. He knows I mean, hasn't everyone had like a relationship in their early 20s where like you really felt like you were giving Like your your heart and soul to someone and they remembered that you had a pizza This is like me reading the entire star report. I'm just like, oh, sweetie He's not into you at all, sweetie I'm just about myself in my 20s and all the terrible men that I somehow convinced myself were into me and like I did all Of the Monica shit like I'm just reading this and like, oh No, don't don't call him again. Like he doesn't

Don't go in the basement. Yeah, it's like watching a slasher movie But I feel like there's also the sense that maybe You could connect more broadly to just someone not caring about you But like needing the service that you offer or needing the release But I don't know I wonder if that was at play in this relationship too This thing of like you don't know anything about me. You don't ask me any questions about myself You don't think of this as a real thing But you need it and in a way like I'm one of the most important people

In this administration because of that I mean, I think that that's probably the story that she tells herself But what's interesting is to me. This is his signal failure that when you have power People find power sexy and people are going to come on to you and people are going to find your confidence, whatever attractive to them And it's easy to look at all this and be like, oh, she was the aggressor She's a homewrecker that home had already been wrecked torched and strewn with stalt that home was already in ashes. Yes And then we're talking about a 49 year old man who's the leader of the free world. Is it really?

Too much to ask for him to not be in a room alone With 22 year olds like the levels of responsibility I feel like we put her and him on the same plane When her moral jurisdiction is much lower because she's not the married one She's not the person who's breaking a contract with their partner And he this is not the first 22 year old to come on to you Why can't you just hey this intern clearly has like a little thing for me? Knowing who I am

Let's make sure that there's no opportunity For me to take advantage Like it's the same reason why I don't have like fucking orios in my house because I will fucking eat them all I know that about myself. Well, you know what else I find interesting is that wasn't he on the phone like with members of congress and White house officials and stuff during some of this Partial oral sex that he was receiving like the majority of their sexual encounters like there's something else going on I mean, this is one of the other

Sad and weird aspects of this because again the door to the stupid office is always a jar and he's the president He's constantly getting His phone calls are people stopping by and like at one point one of their dates gets canceled because he has a state dinner With the president of mexico You can't run a relationship when one of the people is the president You just can't and so this to me actually illustrates The weird and ridiculous overreach of the star report That the description of the factual narrative description of the relationship takes up something like 115 pages

And it is excruciatingly detailed Is it just like getting texts from your friend who's in a shitty relationship and you're just like wow every detail Yeah, it's like literally every single thing and there's details like Monica let's you say, you know as As I was performing oral sex. He received a phone call. I think it was from a member of congress I think he had some nickname and then the star report will be like white house logs show that president received a call from sunny Smith the delegate from Delaware or whatever and it's like this is a perjury investigation

This was originally about a real estate deal in arkansas in 1978 I think the worst example of this of just these details these lurid details that are clearly meant to Humiliate the president the worst example of this is that after she does oral sex on him It's like pillow talk. They're like 45 seconds of pillow talk before she's like hustled out of there is He says oh, thank you for that No one's done that for me in a long time, which is like a weird dig at hillary Yeah, like I mean first of all it's weird that Monica lulinski gets cast as a skank for giving blowjobs But then hillary is also like a frigid witch for not giving blowjobs

I mean there's no way to be sexual or not sexual as a woman without doing it wrong and destroying america This is just a thing and then also it's just this little quote at the end of the paragraph And 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 or Shouldn't be included. Yeah, it's just like this weird shitty detail That is supposed to like cast aspersions On his marriage and basically embarrass him and from the entire country I mean the level of detail this goes into

About you know ejaculation and like she touched his genitals and he touched hers and the cigar thing That 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 good Which is again Not 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 quite nice because We really still do live in a culture in america where men are quite afraid of vaginas and so You know the fact that he it's kind of an it's a sort of dumb body cute vagina positive thing to do that unfortunately Because of the context had to be spun as like the scan because I was 10 when the bulk of this was in the news

And just knew that I heard about cigars Euphemistically for years without knowing what had actually happened to a cigar Yeah, the dig at hillary That seems to connect with our current political philosophy in this country of if only women Were continually sexually available men wouldn't commit mass murders Quite as much and this idea that like sexual Availability to the point of non-agency on behalf of women is like the secret glue That's holding america together, you know and like I'm sure that there's a sort of republican idea

Subconsciously present in that of you know, if only he'd had like a normal Christian marriage where the woman has the big hairdo and is totally complacent to all of her husband's sexual needs Then 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 food Yeah, and this so eventually she is transferred to the pentagon because People are starting to notice like in every in every spy novel they start out really careful Right about their little pecadillos. Yeah, then everyone always gets sloppy, right? Yeah, and the white house is A building where people wander around their secret service agents everywhere So of course the secret service agents are seeing this his personal secretary is seeing this

Leon Panetta the chief of staff who she's working for Also sees this there's kind of rumors about her and so Panetta behind Clinton's back transfers her to the pentagon And this of course shows that there's like an open secret like this is not the first time this has happened Right, 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 anymore Let me see if I can try to get you a job. It would be great to bring you back He 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

Blah blah blah like he acts like there's some sort of logistical reason for this So Clinton is like, well, you know, let me see what I can do about getting you a job. He of course does nothing Yeah, but that's like that's you know, that's what you say when in his head He's probably like, oh like my my little trysts with moniker over. I'll have to find somebody else to have tryst Didn't he also give her a hat pin as a gift? Oh my god, the fucking gifts dude. Jesus Christ That's why it's like 80% gift. It's the most tedious I mean they are they give each other a ridiculous amount of gifts Like she gives him like 10 neckties and leaves of grass

Which apparently hit the bestseller lists again after the star report came out because everyone's like oh leaves of grass Like oh my god, it must be like rife with meaning. Wow The big thing with the gifts It's a low maintenance strategy for him to stay in contact with her because he can just have his personal secretary Pick some stuff up and send it to her apartment Like 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 meaningful So 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

For her to go visit him. So once she gets transferred to the pentagon She manages to come in there one or two more times Under the pretense of like, oh, I have a gift that I need to deliver to the president or I need to deliver She uses I need to deliver papers to him quite a bit. So isn't it amazing that relationship bullshit is the same Like no matter even if you're having an affair with the president, you're like, oh, I left my shirt at your place I have to come over Yeah, exactly that she becomes increasingly desperate to sort of engineer these run-ins and she has noticed That he will kind of forget about her and then

He'll see her at like a public event They'll go to some gala or whatever a thing and he'll see her across the room and then that night He will then give her a call. So he just has a short attention span Yeah, it's like a normal again from your 30s. You can look back on this and be like Oh, he clearly does not give a shit about her and like she has not achieved object permanence in his mind When he when she is away from him, he thinks that she has ceased to exist He does not think about her. She has not achieved personhood. But then he sees her and he's like, oh, yeah, I liked Fooling around with her. I'm gonna call her again. But in her head, she's like, oh, he's just busy

God, it's like high school. It really is and again, all of us have been this person But 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 event And introduce him to your mom. Like that's not that's not a strategic thing. Yeah, she does that at one point It's really it's it's interesting that she told her mom Like what a weird position to be in to be Monica's Lewinsky to be Monica Lewinsky's mom and to know about this for like months and months before it became news And to be having to give your daughter advice. She gave up the dress the mom did yeah in exchange for immunity Because star was trying to get her on some obstruction of justice lying under oath thing. Wow

So, I mean this all gets very ugly later This is when things start to get like complicated and bad is she gets transferred to the pentagon She tries to keep seeing him, but it's hard. It's also it's barely mentioned in the star report This is also an election year 96 an election year So 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 months She is getting more angry. She's trying to orchestrate more meet-ups. She's doing this like gift exchange They're calling each other. They're having some phone sex She really kept on it. Does the star report go into what her feelings were for him?

I mean did they ask her about it? Yeah One of the mean things that the star report does is it tracks from the white house logs All of his calls to her and how long they were and it cross references those with hillary clinton's whereabouts Oh, god. Yeah, exactly. So it's like on october 17th clinton had a 36 minute call with lawinsky mrs. Clinton was in birmingham, alabama On the following thursday when mrs. Clinton was in athens greece He had a 26 minute call like and she was probably reading a feminist book and that's how she manifested that mrs. Clinton was burning bras at the time. So she wasn't able to be around

So he's clearly bored and whatever like he really only calls her when hillary's out of town Of course, monica doesn't know this right. She just knows that the president keeps calling her But then so she hasn't seen him in a long time. This is super fucked up february 14th 1997 This is when things kind of like crescendo apogy of their affairs in february of 97 February 14th 97 monica places an ad in the washington post Because before the internet when they were like classified ads and papers still ran like announcements You know job announcements and marriage announcements and whatever one of the things they did was they had valentine's day Announcements so you could put a little square in there. This is like steve. I love you from samantha

so she places An 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 julia I don't know what it means because i'm not functionally literate And then it just says m at the end. Wow. So this is like the level That she's at now. She has Convinced herself that she is in love with him and that he is in love with her That reminds me of a review that laury moore wrote of titanic and talks about

Young women and their macho Cupidity 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 ship And guess this amazed like the machoness Of a young woman totally in love just like going for it in a crazy Potentially death drive kind of a way And i mean i love it. She quoted romeo in that like she's like you're trapped and it's okay and the force of my love will Get through all of everything and and we're gonna make it, you know, I mean that's really

Like i'm in charge. I know how to handle this situation. I'm just gonna keep sending you gifts Wow, you do have an mfa Nice you knew who to quote was from wow Ah So this is valentine's day She arranges to see him two more times. These are the two events where he ejaculates I hate that word But anyway, these are the two there are two final sexual encounters in which she goes and sees him

She's performing oral sex on him. He pulls her away He's like, hey, hey, hey, we don't do that and she's like, no, but I really want to here we go And I continued to perform oral sex and then he pushed me away Kind of as he always did before he came and then I stood up and I said I care about you so much I don't understand why you won't let me make you come. It's important to me I mean, it just doesn't feel complete. It doesn't seem right Ms. Lewinsky testified that she and the president hugged and he said he didn't want to get addicted to me And he didn't want to get me addicted to him. They looked at each other for a moment

Then saying I don't want to disappoint you the president consented Oh god Ah, that's yeah, that's such a sex proof that he was not in touch with reality It's like you don't want to get addicted to each other like the horse is already out of the barn They've literally had 50 phone calls by this point, right? It's like, oh, but it's not real Like you're not wearing my class ring. So we're not really dating So this happens they flew around one more time and then march 24th 1997 according to the star report the president ends it This is another one of those details that why is this in the report earlier in his marriage?

He told her he had had hundreds of affairs But since turning 40, he had made a concerted effort to be faithful since turning 49 years ago Yeah, 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 faithful Yeah, so anyway, he breaks up with her in may 97 She keeps wanting to see him and she's getting increasingly frustrated that he hasn't gotten her a job Eventually she sends him a dear sir letter in which she obliquely threatens To disclose the relationship. So she says if I can't come back to work at the white house I'm gonna need to tell my parents. Why not?

Which of course is kind of hilarious because she's already told her mom everything by this point Right and it's like she's never attempted to use leverage before because she just doesn't want to have to apply pressure But so he's trying to placate her he's like look we're looking into it We're trying to get you a job. She eventually tells kind of star. I left that day emotionally scarred I just knew he was in love with me. Hmm. And of course, this is like the most 23 years old Saddest part of it that it's so obvious reading this that he only shows interest in her When he wants to have sex or when she threatens him and yet in her head

It's become this star crossed lover type situation. So, I mean does she Is there a time When she's finally just like this isn't gonna work out between us like I give up or does she remain a believer Until you know things start to get legally complicated Yeah, things are already getting a little complicated because now Catherine will he comes forward and says that the president groped her in the Oval Office And Linda tripped is wrapped up in all this somehow Linda tripped worked at the white house at the time of the willy incident and she was used as a She was used as a serf by michael isikoff who at the time was at news week and was trying to

Figure out trying to write about the willy assault and right and willy said that the president had Kissed her and touched her breast and put his hand put her hand on his penis In an unconsensual way. He said none of it had happened and Linda tripped said She came out of the of her meeting with bill clinton looking flushed And like something had happened but also happy. So she was used as a source and that is like, yeah like she Gave ammunition to opponents of clinton's while also taking away the question or attempting to take away the question of consent and assault And just making it like the bedroom farce version. Yeah, so it's like

All of this is happening and it feels like the heat is being turned up on clinton, right? Because he's getting depositions for this jones thing Katherine willy Allegations are also getting wrapped up in this thing because ken and star at this point just taking anything he can get And so lewinsky now is threatening to come forward with their you know, 18 month affair so he Fast tracks this thing of getting her a job and he especially wants to get her job in new york And I think he thinks that like if she's not in town

She will like latch on to somebody else and I don't have to I don't have to do anything So again, this is like where the like intense Just like 1800s level corruption comes in. So he assigns vernon jordan. Who's a friend of his and a lawyer He's like get her a job and then lewinsky starts Hectoring 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 moment And also, I mean, wasn't she a white house intern and working at the department of defense like go get a job?

It would go send out your cv. You've gotten some impressive 90s the economy is booming She's got a great resume She's got parents that have paid to put her up in the watergate hotel for this entire time She was staying at the watergate hotels She has a she has a single like a one bedroom apartment in the watergate hotel for this entire 18 month period So 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

She didn't know how good the economy was back now. I mean none of us did uh, he he arranges She's like saying she wants to get a job at the un He arranges in this extremely corrupt way To get like some higher up person at the un to give her an interview That goes well the un offers her a job, which I have applied for jobs at the un I know people that work at the un getting a job at the un is like a fucking six month long process You have to fill out like 10 personality forms. Everything's anonymized So when you send in your application, they don't even see your name because it might cause a bias

So just see like a five digit number like getting a job at the un is a huge deal And now we've just got verna jordan friend of the president calling someone up And getting her a job offer which that is worse Like the actual perjury that the president did it's so bad. Yeah, but it's not a sexy scandal You can't really put a gate on it. So just boring and human, but it's so gross too So she gets offered a job at the un she turns it down. She's like Well since working at the white house with you she says this in a letter She'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

I think you know other institutions like the un maybe they won't be as good as I think either So I'd actually rather get a job in the private sector. So then She starts hectoring again. I like monica. She's a nice person I like her for doing those things, but it's it's it's inappropriate job applicant behavior So she turns up that job. She then says like hounding him to get her jobs in new york in the private sector He sends out things to like whatever kpmg and like the kind of the usual suspects This is from the star report on january 8th. She interviewed for a job in new york city After the interview went poorly

Mr. Jordan placed a phone call to the company's chairman on her behalf and miss lewinsky was given a second interview It's proof that a really a good way to get job placement is just to become deeply inconvenient to someone who has the resources to maneuver you to a different city So she's trying to work at the conglomerate that doesn't work. She ends up getting a job at red lawn Which is one of the companies that this conglomerate owns so finally She gets a job, but then so this is like where Everything starts to just like snowball. I don't think lewinsky ever had a moment where she like gave up

I think what happened was this stuff all went public and That was it and then you know, she's getting immunity and she's in with kind of star and everything. I mean The way that it all happens and i'm sure tuban does this in his book too is that basically like Linda trip is terrible Linda trip and monica lewinsky are colleagues For a year and a half at the pentagon Linda trip is mad because she thinks that monica is quote unquote a bimbo, of course

And never would have gotten a job there if it wasn't for just president bow and strings, which is true I don't know. Linda trip got a job at the pentagon I mean linda trip is in her late 40s, right? So she's basically the same age as the president and she hates the president So if this is at any point a witch hunt It isn't witch hunt by linda trip linda trip is the shawneck art of this where it's like she's the The look the forgotten person who was really at the center of all this and did all the leg work I mean one of the newsbreak articles I read was that

Basically, they were in negotiations with kathleen willies lawyers and with paula jones lawyers And they were about to come to a settlement and that they had come to a settlement There would have been no reason for clinton to be under oath and there would have been no reason for monica to be under oath But before the settlement could be signed the story came out That was what created the opportunity for them to then put lewinsky on the stand was linda trip Making this a public thing. So how did she do that at this point monica has told 11 people That 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

It's wild. So her mom knows her boyfriend knows Trip hates the president and doesn't think very highly of monica because of this idea that she got her job unjustly So a year and a half goes by In which monica and linda are talking about the affair But linda isn't writing anything down recording anything in this interview with the daily mail Last year trip. She says that her biggest regret is not acting sooner Had i taken notes during that year and a half he would have been impeached successfully What did we learn linda? She also i also love this so this interview has been done with her in 2017

And she says it's her husband who encouraged her to speak out about this now Because they were watching the election results in 2016 She was watching the results usher in hillary's defeat Trip turned to him and said the nation will never know what a bullet it dodged tonight She still hates the clinton's Just to a like incendiary Degree so basically it's kind of funny because what actually happened with trip Sounds like the caricature of like a woman who wants to ruin a man, right?

Like she talks to a literary agent the literary agent recommends that she start recording She then takes the recordings to news week Which doesn't do anything With 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 confer Exactly So she gives it to kena star because she knows he's investigating white water linda trip emerges from this like man We should have been like meaner to linda trip

It's like everyone else in the 90s We needed to be nicer to you know Extenuating circumstances linda trip and david brock though. Hmm. So this is how the whole thing Happened so then it's not clear if she gives it to polygons as lawyers or kena star gives it to polygons as lawyers But somehow polygons as lawyers get this Thing that there's a former white house intern that has had a sexual affair with the president They are doing discovery for their case in which they're trying to prove that clinton has a History of sexually harassing women

So 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 life This is of course like a huge fight that they're having procedurally at the court so they call monica lewinsky and this is when Kind of everything goes insane right that as soon as they call her then it's like Well, do we lie about it? Do we not lie about it?

She tells the president the president of course invites her to the white house and then it becomes this whole swirling mess where Did he tell her to lie did he not tell her to lie the the evidence is still pretty weak that he told her to lie It was like he said something like well say what you always say Something like that and of course it's only from her side the only participant in that conversation Who's testimony we have is her I mean one of the other things I came away from this with is like I kind of wanted To reclaim lewinsky as like a feminist hero and like a total victim of all this and obviously she is

But it's also amazing to me just like she did some really stupid shit like she She was calling him 20 times a day at the end. She had convinced herself that he was in love with her I don't like I don't think that the punishment fits the crime like I think what she went through in the 90s is wildly wildly disproportionate that's like the punishment that we attempt to engineer for Sex offenders right where everyone in your community knows you and hates you and thinks that everything is your fault And I just happened to her on a national scale. Yeah

I think and I think she has admitted it's like in her essay that she published What was it two years ago in vanity fair? She talked about how she made a mistake and Every 22 year old is allowed to have some mistakes and I think that's that like she did some stupid shit But it's really difficult for us to be like, well, yeah, she did and Let's all tone it down a little bit or let's focus on the guy who did way stupid or shit I mean, like I said, he really should have known better than to get involved at all Like one of the things that is just amazing to me is that it's clear that in his head He thinks clinton thinks that this is like just a fling

Just a fun booty call fun times But it's like, well, what if you think she was thinking like do you think That people are capable of having Just a fling with people way more powerful than they are at the age of 22 To which I say what I say to my friends when I'm getting texts of this nature Which is I don't think he was thinking for a second about what she was thinking It's funny too because that, you know, tuban kind of He 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

And the thing is though, I mean, they're they're just there hadn't been consequences for him Like this before like I don't think it was really possible To imagine these consequences until they actually Manifested in this way because presidents had been having affairs forever and they'd been fucking around with interns And so had other white house officials forever. Although I will say In this article about the media gatekeepers, they do mention that after jennifer flowers came forward bill and hillary did a one hour long interview with 60 minutes

In which they talked about his history with women and Stephanopoulos, this is kind of the beginning of the end of the gatekeepers, right? That this story that was just tabloid fodder Actually makes it onto 60 minutes, which is a new thing, right? Because before Stephanopoulos could just Quash the quote-unquote bimbo explosion here. They have to actually cover it. They have to actually address it And Stephanopoulos calls this chemotherapy That they go on 60 minutes and it just burns everything down but

You that kind of stopped the story, right that it didn't metastasize from there But by the time we get to Lewinsky We're in like the drudge universe Where newsweek knows about the story for months doesn't do anything about it drudge finds out about it and like 10 minutes later It's on his website and the entire country is talking about it And then the mainstream media is like according to the drudge report The president slept with an intern and that gives them the cover To publish this story that none of them have great

Because they can publish about the publication of the story enough the story that's interesting is that there's mounting Consequences for Clinton right that he had been able to dodge this stuff before He then has to go on 60 minutes. He has to address this stuff. I think he should have known I think Politically, I actually think at this point impeaching him would have been Or like if he had resigned In 98 two years into his presidency would have actually been better in that Al Gore would have been a perfectly fine president He doesn't seem to have any huge liabilities that we know of That's his greatest asset is that he's just not terrible in any pronounced way

And he could have run as an incumbent in 2000 Which would have been better than running as a vice president when you didn't have much policy stuff behind it And you know, who knows, maybe he would have lost like even more blah, blah, blah, we never know But it is weird how much Clinton held on To his office and how much the party held on to Clinton like he still speaks at stuff He's still around his wife ran for president. He's still Someone who's seen as kind of like the keeper of the flame in the party Well, yeah, and I think he's seen much more positively now than Hillary is still yeah

He's one of these like elder statesmen. Yeah when I think they should have just like scorched earthed him out And kept the moral high ground somehow Well, this is another diversity thing, right where we just have this idea like there's this idea in both parties I'm just like, well, you know, we only have like five guys. We have five somewhat 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 like Uh, what if I mean really are there only five? It's like it's like a town where all of The non insane men between ages 15 and 65 are off at the civil war

What why do you stupid hate Monica so much? I don't know. I think partly he really does not like Many of the people that he writes about which is sort of an issue as a journalist Like he mentions that you know that Monica Lewinsky went to a not very hard college Lewis and Clark Portland. Yay. I went to a worse college than Lewis and Clark Like he said, I hope that doesn't become like a smear on me Even like oh, well, you know, he went to a regional public college I went to Portland State University, which doesn't even sound like a real school. It's like Portland is not a state So Monica Lewinsky and I both went to

Colleges in Portland, Oregon that you know that can be used to make us seem More deserving of getting nationally smeared if it ever comes to that. So when you get smeared the Portland State thing will be leading That's gonna be the first fun fact, you know, she went to Portland State She did How did you end up feeling about Monica? I mean, I was really impressed by Her abilities as a seducer and it's funny to me because Dozens of times I've read or researched or tried to rewrite accounts of like the seductive woman who made it happen And it's it's always some woman who is just sitting there

And was like I will just sort of go along with this weird thing that's happening if I have to but I am You know, it's like that if a woman isn't actively physically struggling In america we tend to see her as An enthusiastic participant of whatever is happening to her sexually So I found it really refreshing to actually read about a scandal That purported to be about a woman expressing sexual agency in which she actually had So yeah, I think the view the main thing that changed in my understanding of what happened during the affair itself was just Realizing that she you know, not only consented but enthusiastically participated

And lobbied for his participation And it's it's interesting to me that that's something that at the time That that just had to be treated as proof of her badness and the fact that she had sort of colluded With this very with the most powerful person in the world I don't think she didn't do anything to america you know And this question of what happened to america because I you know Something happened. This is the perfect lead-in to next week. Something happened to america

So we're doing volume two of this podcast is going to be the clinton impeachment And you're wrong about it. Yes. We're gonna go into it's extremely detailed, but I'm excited to not talk about oral sex We're going to get away from the the grinding workaday world of oral sex discussion and into the exciting Fantasia of constitutional precedent and legal debate and it's going to be good