May 17, 2022 • 40 mins
Remember that time the whole world scapegoated a 20-something-year-old intern but not her very married, much older, very presidential secret lover?
You might sort of know what happened between former US President Bill Clinton and White House intern Monica Lewinsky. But the story’s taken on mythical status over the years, blurring the memories of those who watched it unfold on TV, and making it a confusing mess for those who didn’t.
Britt and Laura take you into an understaffed White House where the interns are working late, and the world is wondering about the inappropriate actions of the President. Why did Monica have to hand her blue Gap dress over to the FBI? How did they get together in the first place? And how different does the whole love affair look with the benefit of hindsight, in a post-Me-Too world?
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Hooked, Hitched and Hung Up is a podcast from iHeartPodcasts Australia, Deadset Studios and The KIIS Network.
Hosted by Laura Byrne and Britt Hockley.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hooked, Hitched and Hung Up acknowledges the traditional custodians of
country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community.
We pay our respect to their elders past and present
and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples today. This episode was recorded on Wella Medical Land.
(00:22):
Hi guys, and welcome to.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Our very first episode of our brand spanking new series, Hooked,
Hitched and Hung Up.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm Laura and I'm Brittany, and yes that is right.
Just when you thought you couldn't get enough of us
or any more love stories, we're back with a complete
standalone series.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I mean, if you are a listener of Life on
cart you know how much Britain I love talking about
relationships and giving relationship advice. But one thing that we've
never done before is we've never really unpacked the relationships
that have existed in the past, and that is exactly
what this whole series is. We are looking deep at
some of the most famous celebrity couples, their relationships, what
makes them tick, and looking at the reasons why they
(01:01):
broke down, whether they made up all the juicy details
that you may have forgotten.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
But also I think it's so interesting to look back
on some of these relationships with a twenty twenty two
lens and how maybe we would have viewed some of
these stories differently at the time. But how could we
start this series with anything but the love affair that
stopped the entire world. I'm talking about a twenty one
year old woman and literally the most powerful man on
(01:26):
the planet. Just a heads up, guys, this episode does
have a bit of swearing in it, so maybe don't
play it around the little kiddies. So I want to
talk to you today, Laura, about the biggest, most famous
(01:46):
affair of all time, not just political affair, but I
think and I would love someone to tell me if
there is a more famous affair of all time, but
Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I feel like this is
really I mean, it is one from the archives because
it's that quite a while. But do you remember how
old you were when this all went down. I don't remember,
(02:07):
but I don't remember a time that I didn't know
about the Monicola Whinsky affair. And I never knew the details,
but you always knew that there was a president that
did the dirty with this bombshell called Monticola Whinsky, and
growing up, you always knew that it was wrong, and
you knew it was this big, infamous story. She was
famous for probably the wrong reasons. But I never knew
the details.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, I remember, I will never forget. I was sitting
in the car and I remember the conversation around the
dress on the radio and me in my mind being.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Like, what like it was on that dress? Like I
was absolutely fucking disgusted because I was ten, but I
understood what it meant because it happened so long ago.
I never really fully understand the details of it, Like
I need to know. I want to know, why is
there a dress? Where did it come from? Why did
she still have it? There's so much here. I didn't
know actually about the dressing all honesty. I just literally
(02:56):
knew that there was this hectic affair and the president
did the dirty But I think when you back at
this affair, relationship, whatever you want to call it, there's
two ways you can look at it. You can almost
look at it like is this or was this a
love affair? Was it two people that genuinely loved each
other that obviously had these other extenuating circumstances like you know,
being the president of the United States and being married.
(03:18):
I mean like probably not, probably a lot more sinister
than that. Or wa way, way, way, way, way way,
let's not drop behavior. Do we look at it that
it was a complete misuse of power. Was this a predator?
Was this it was an older man that was the
president of the United States. You cannot get you cannot
get more powerful in the whole world that was taking
(03:40):
advantage of literally a twenty one year old female that
worked for him and worked for him for free. Do
you know The.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Crazy thing about this as well? And the thing I'm
so looking forward to unpacking is that how victimized Warnica
was in that time. But if we were to look
at it with a twenty twenty two legs, what that
would look like and how this story would have played
out so differently when it came to media.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I want to start by showing your photo. And if
anyone that's listening doesn't know the photo, it's a very
very famous photo. I'm going to describe it to you, Laura,
I'm actually going to show you, but everyone I want
you to google it. But it's a photo from nineteen
ninety six. It's Bill and Monica. They're on the lawn
of the White House. There's a crowd of people around.
Bill is hugging Monica, Monica's hugging inside. I here happening
(04:27):
as well. Sign Monica's hugging him back. And this is
in the public in the middle of the day. Everyone's
milling around and they are embracing each other. She's got
this little bereon. She looks very cute. She looks like
she's the happiest woman in the world. This photo is very,
very famous because in this photo they were already an item, right,
they were already canoodling in the White House. But obviously
no one knew that. No, well, that's the whole point
(04:48):
of having a secret fair for two is no one
knew that. Spoiler alert, Laura, at this what's a secret?
I went out. They weren't talking about it. Monica had
gotten an internship. So she's only twenty one years old,
she's only fresh out of college. She'd got an internship
that was unpaid, so she was just volunteering through like
some family connections that she had. Now I don't know
what those family connections are, but she's she's turned up
(05:10):
to the White House for free. She's got a huge
crush on Bill Clinton. Turns out Bill Clinton has a
bit of crush on her back. So in this photo
they've already seen each other. But my question is, if
you were trying to hide an affair, why would you
publicly embrace the woman you're having an affair with. When
does he walk along with the White House stuff and
hug every single person? He's so like blinded by how
(05:34):
powerful he is, by how much he can get away with,
and that he probably thinks he can. He won't get
caught out like he thinks he's above it because he
is so powerful. Well, the other thing is he's been
president at this point for three years and nine months.
I've done the mask, so that sounds very specise. He said,
Monica's twenty one, But how old is he at this point?
He was in his late forties. He's been president for
nearly four years, just under four years. Could be her dad?
(05:55):
Hundred Yeah, that's that's exactly what it was. Okay, So
what else do we know about Monica? The story came
out that Monica it wasn't the first time she'd had
an affair with someone that was married, it wasn't the
first time she had a fair with someone was powerful
or in a position of power, And it wasn't the
first time she had an affair with someone that was
quite a lot older. So Monica had had an affair
(06:17):
with her high school teacher, but it wasn't when she
was at high school. So the story goes, when they
finished high school and she went on to college, she
started an affair with that teacher. Now he was a
lot older than her. His name's Andy Bleiler, so she
was like eighteen or nineteen, and he was a lot older.
He was married. They had an affair for years. Wait,
so if she was eighteen, she had to have just
(06:39):
left school, which in my books is kind of still
not her fault. Like a seventeen year old who's just
finished school, the most powerful person in your life are
your school teachers, other people who decide whether you do
or don't pass and get to go to university. Like,
there is already such a mismatch in that relationship dynamic
one hundred percent. And the only person that has actually
(07:02):
come out and said that this affair happened when she
was in college, when she had left school was him.
So the testimony's coming for me. So he's never gonna
put his hand up and say, oh, right, I admit it.
I was taking advantage of someone that was in high school,
my student. Like, he's never gonna say that. So we can't.
We can speculate for sure, but the only facts that
we have is that the affairs started afterwards. So whether
(07:24):
they're lying and there was a very big mismatching power
and he was doing the wrong thing and taking advantage
of his student, or maybe they just had this crush
on each other. And you know, I think I had
a crush on my teacher whennother school I had like
a hot surfit teacher. You're not gonna have sex with
your teacher, aren't, okay.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The thing with this, though, is like in today's day
and age, even if it had been a few years,
like a teacher can't have a relationship with an ex
student at all.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
You'll be fired. It doesn't matter if they're all seventeens
out of bounds, but eighteens, that's okay. Eighteen in the States,
you can't even drink alcohol. But this interesting thing is
that her affair with Andy the old teacher actually crossed
over with the affair with Bill Clinton. She really went
up and notched, didn't you. Well. Yeah, And this is
why this is interesting, because she wanted to make Andy jealous,
(08:09):
because Andy ended up coming out saying she used to
call me like she was still calling me multiple times
a day, four or five times a day. But she
made a joke apparently to him. And I'm saying allegedly
and apparently because this is all testimony coming from him,
and I don't know how much you can believe someone
that was obviously doing the wrong thing with his student,
but he said that She even called up saying I
need to invest in some white house kneepaz, referring to
(08:33):
blowjobs that she was giving them present. Yeah, So a
lot of stuff ended up coming out. But if this
happened now, if there was a young woman twenty years
old eighteen nineteen, twenty twenty one that a teacher had
had an affair with her and then the president had
an affair with her, there is no way she would
be being blamed and dragged through the media like Monica
(08:55):
or Winsky was then. Because she was the start, she
was the epitome. She was ground zero for cancel culture.
It's just that back then they didn't have social media,
but the whole world publicly canceled her on news articles
and radio and everyone knew her name. Everything was dragged
through the mud, but it was always about her. So
(09:16):
what did Monica actually do at the White House? What
was her actual role apart from just being an intern?
I mean, basically she was the male girl. That's how
she started. She worked in the Office of Legislative Affairs,
so she was just an unpaid male girl, but that
eventually escalated to a few different jobs when she she
did become a paid intern eventually, But he's like, I
probably should pay her anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
So often, so from like how long did this span?
Like how long did this affair go for? And like
what was the intensity or the frequency of it?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I mean, they saw each other every day because they
worked together. The affair went over approximately two years. But
the really crazy thing about that, and I don't know
whether I or the world believes it, but apparently over
that two years they only ever had sexual relation in
Bill Clinton's terms, nine times, And do you know what,
the little fucker nine times. She had to blow him
(10:10):
every time and he never did it back. That is
a self time, what a waste of time. Yeah, did
she get anything out of it? Like, okay, that's anything
out of this, But I mean, like, surely she wasn't
just going to his office, giving in pizza and giving
him blowing and leaving for the day, Like that's a
terrible job. Think back to how obsessively in love you
(10:31):
were with your first person at twenty years old, like
when you fall in love to when you fall in love,
you fall in love so hard. And this is the president.
He's so powerful, he's so charismatic. She was obsessed with him.
She would have done and she did. She would have
done anything that he wanted. And at the time twenty
I don't know what her sexual experience was other than that,
but she probably didn't really care about get anything back
because she's like, well, it just blew the president. Well.
(10:53):
I think it also just kind of plays into that
whole age dynamic and how like eager you are to
please at that age, like when you really want to
be when you really want to be like fully accepted.
Like I think that we sometimes can go way above
and beyond because we want to please so much. And
like in this case, girlfriend, I would be waiting for
something and return, but I find it hard to believe
that when they were both apparently in love, like he
(11:15):
was in love with her as well, when you're by
having these relationships and you'll see each other every day,
I find it hard to believe that it was only
nine times over two years.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Well, also, if it's only nine times over two years,
and how did it unfold? Like how did it come out?
Like why were people so suspicious that there was something
untoward going on? Because I feel like nine times in
two years, you'd be able to hide that, whereas like
there must have been so many other telltale signs that
were happening in the office.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
People must have been aware that there was some energy
or flirtation or something going on. Good question, Laura, Yeah,
they thank you, thank for give me a plus student.
So Bill and Monica started getting close during this big
government shutdown that was in around ninety five, when a
bunch of the staff at the White House had to
stop working for a while. So this meant the number
of people that worked there each day went from around
(11:57):
fall thirty to only ninety people, four hundred and three
people down to ninety. This is why people started to
fill in for other people. This is when they started
to do job shares, and everyone was picking up little
extra jobs. This meant that it was a little bit
less suspect for people to be places where they probably
wouldn't usually be, and that, my friend includes Monica Lewinsky,
(12:17):
the unpaid intern, because they could still work during the shutdown,
so she didn't have to leave. She was still there
and she was picking up all the other jobs. So
basically it was all right for Monica to spend a
bit more time with the president than usual. No one
turned an eye to it. So one night, everyone's working
lay doing all their fancy, pancy white house stuff. They
order pizza. Someone accidentally knocks a pizza onto Monica, so
(12:40):
she gets up goes to the bathroom to clean it up.
When she's coming out, Bill is actually standing in the
doorway and he tells her, you should bring me some
pizza to my office, So he walks away. She does
what she told. She goes back to the pizza box,
She gets some pizza, and she strides on up to
the over office and she knocks on the door. The
(13:01):
secretary answers the president asked us and pizza. So Bill's
secretary opens the door and lets her in. Because she's
there with the pizza. She goes inside and then as
was customary for them, they go into his private study
and I guess they study privately, but that is what
you did, then you would it was so normal talk
(13:23):
into the president's office and go into like the little
side office, the little private study, so that not everyone
was watching it. He used to take presidential phone calls
while she was giving him a head job in his office.
He would just take a call like it was nothing
while she was on her knees with a knee pads.
But don't you also, thing like that is just plays
into like the full level of disrespect, like taking important
(13:45):
phone calls that probably like a dictating the course of
the future of America. Release the bomb, yeah, whilst whilst
I released my bomb You're cooked, No, you're cooked. No,
Bill Clinton's cooked, whilst only had sex and I times
over the allegedly allegedly over the two years. I think
this part makes it worse. They acted like a couple.
(14:08):
They the way that they spoke together, the things they
spoke about the future, their ideas. She would give him
ideas for how to run the office, which she says
is like silly, but she's like I have I have
ideas about how things could run. They used to speak
about their childhoods. They had an emotional connection, which, as
we know, can be a lot worse than just a
physical connection. So they had both. And Monque said, this
(14:30):
wasn't just like a fling, this wasn't anaffair. I was
in love. We were in a relationship. And she felt
like he was in love as well. Placed by each
other presence. He bought her like a really romantic book.
One of the gifts that she got him was she
bought him these like really cute little neckties, so he
would wear them and then they would make little you know,
make eyes at each other. So it was it was
(14:51):
a symbol. There was always these constant symbols of like
I'm here, I'm thinking of you, I'm doing this for you,
but you know publicly never gonna be with you. So
I guess at this point they are already both not
just physically but also emotionally entwined. And it is a
fucking dumbster fire of a situation. But what is it
that raises suspicion? Up until now, no one's really thought
(15:11):
much of seeing, you know, the sporadic times that they
saw Bill and Montigan together. But this is the messed
up thing. The reason it came out is because Bill
Clinton had to get lawyered up. Okay, bad boy, bad
boy Bill, bad boy Billy. But before bad Boy Billy
was president, he was the governor of Arkansas. Okay, so
(15:34):
bear with me. There was a conference in a city
called Little Rock, and there was this woman named Paula Jones. Now,
Paula Jones works for the government, so basically she was
working for Bill Clinton at the time. She was working
directly for bad Boy Belly. Yes, that's correct, gotcha. Okay,
I'm glad you're staying with me. So Paula's in her
hotel room one night, probably just having a really nice
time reading a book, having a tea. I don't know.
(15:55):
I don't have facts on that, but that's what I
imagine she's doing in the hotel room. Bill summons her
tea his hotel room, and I mean, he's her boss.
So she's like, yeah, okay, sure, Well of course the president.
He's not the president. He's the governor of Arkansas. But
when anyone summons you, when your boss summons you somewhere,
I guess you go, right, Sure, even though I've summoned
you a few times. I'm not gonna go. When I've
got my tea in my face mask on, I'm not
going you have room at nine thirty. At nine, She's like, okay, cool,
(16:19):
the Governor's asked me. Of course I'm gonna go. I'm
not gonna fight this. She had no idea what was
about to happen, and she had no idea what was
going to follow them around after this moment for years
to come. Paula says, when she gets into Bill's room,
he exposes himself like he whips it out. He whipped
it out. No God, She's like, ah h, I am
not that kind of person. Put that away, and she
(16:40):
leaves the room. So it's important to note here Bill
always denied this. Of course he would. Yeah, I mean,
you're not gonna be like well mackay sprung, especially not
when you're the president. No. But at the end of
the day, they reached a settlement out of court. So
long story short, he paid her off. He's like, he
paid her silence. He was like, let's just pretend this
never happened. Here's a whole lot of money, okay, So
obviously this is a huge head for Bill Clinton. But
(17:01):
the worst thing about this is the timing of it
all because all of this hectic stuff with Paula went
down in nineteen ninety one, but she didn't bring the
lawsuit until nineteen ninety four. Now by this time, Bill is,
of course the President of the United States. So all
of that happened when he was governor of Arkansas. Now
he is the president. So this is a really, really
(17:22):
big fricking deal. This court case is where people start
sniffing around. So this has come back up, This is resurfaced,
and everyone's like, hang on, I've got some questions to ask.
And this is where it all begins to unravel.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
So this is obviously what's made everybody so suspicious of
him as a person. And now they're starting to connect
the dots between him and Monica. They're like, Oh, who's
this hot young thing who's always in his office? Yeah,
why is this young thing always got pizza in his office?
Something doesn't add up. It is seven am in.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
The morning, so after that, I'm guessing that is where
the rest of the dirty laundry is brought out. Okay,
so I'm gonna just I want you to sit with
me for a second year. This is literally sitting next
to you, Yeah, okay, sit with me, po metlhorically, literally physically.
This happened in nineteen ninety four, but in nineteen ninety two,
so two years prior when he was running for presidency.
(18:09):
And now the woman came out. Now her name is
Jennifer Flowers. She came forward whilst he was running for
presidency and she said, hey, we've been having a twelve
year affair. Oh my god. Now she didn't come and
say that he had sexually assaulted her or abuse, so
that's a consensual affair. This was just a consensual affair.
(18:30):
So Paula Jones was the first person that publicly came
out and said, hey, this is not a good person.
But it wasn't the first time that his presidency or
campaign has been rocked. It almost derailed his campaign, but
it didn't because the tabloid that picked it up to
run the story and be like, hey, look, the president's
having this twel year affair. They're a pretty trashy nothing tabloid,
and it was sort of I guess the presidency. The
president went and said, you know, like this, let's just
(18:51):
can this. No one's going to believe this. It's trashy gossip.
I would never have an affair, So no one really
believed it. It didn't really have an impact. Everyone was like,
the president would never do that. Where is Hillary in
all of this? Like did she believe him or did
she believe what was being reported in the news. I mean,
if you were Hillary, you're wondering what's up. You're sniffing around,
You're like, something doesn't add up here. But the interesting
(19:11):
thing is what she has to say after the whole
Jennifer Flowers thing came out. This is it. You know,
I'm not sitting here as some little woman standing by
my man like Tammy, Whyett. I'm sitting here because I
love him and I respect him, and I honor what
he's been through and what we've been through together.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
And you know, if that's not enough for people, then heck,
don't vote for him.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
So it's very clear that Hillary is well and truly
standing by Bill Clinton. She's one hundred percent by his side.
You're probably wondering why I'm talking about all these other
women in the past. It's not just background, but it
all links to how this whole monochrome Bill affair came
to light. Because all these things are coming out of
(20:01):
the woodwork. People are like, well, is there something more
than we thought that we've seen this young girl floating
around Bill's office. More so, Bill's own team have obviously
gone into like Christ's damage control. They're like, you out.
They've picked up Monica Lewinsky. They've thrown out of the
White House, but they've thrown it into the Pentagon. She's
still employed, but they're like, mate, you can't keep you
(20:22):
dick in your pants. We're not going to keep these
young attractive women around you right now while everything's happening.
So she's gone over to the Pentagon. They're still calling
each other, they're still talking. They're still in this relationship,
and he says, you know, as soon as everything's calmed down,
I'm going to bring you back like fear not. So
it wasn't the end of the relationship. It's still continued.
And now this is where the plot dickens and the
(20:43):
story unravels. This is where Monica Lewinsky meets another woman
that works at the Pentacon named Linda Tripp. Now, Linda
Tripp is pretty much the icing on the cake. This
is what this is how this whole thing comes out.
They actually become really good friends, and Monica finally starts
to fired in somebody because until now she's never told anybody.
(21:03):
She's alluded to the idea before, where you know, like
I have been with someone quite powerful, you know, but
she's never said I'm having an affair with present.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
She probably also was probably getting close to her wits
ends with her like this has been going on for
so long now, she's been pushed out and pushed away.
There might have even been a part of her that
was like, well, I want to tell someone that's real
because he's here denying everything as well.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
There's maybe in that there was a little bit of
her that kind of, you know, she felt like she
needed to talk to someone about it. Yeah, And while
these other court cases are going on about sexual harassment,
Monica Lewinsky is actually asked to sign an affidavit to
say that she never had any sexual relationship with Bill Clinton.
They're investigating Bill to see if there is a pattern
(21:44):
in this, so they go to Monica, but she's still
besotted with him. She's still in love with him. She
still thinks he's in love with her. So they're trying
to bring her into these other court cases to say,
come on, like, this isn't the first time he's done this,
and she's like, well, there's got nothing to do with me.
I haven't done anything with him. So she signs a
life way and says that she's never had sexual relations
and there's a really famous quote that everyone knows from
Bill Clinton. But he's like, I did.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Not have sexual relations with that woman, miss Lewinsky. I
never told anybody to lie, not a single time.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Never.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
These allegations are false, and I need to go back
to work for the American people.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Okay, So the sexual harassment case is going on, and
you've got to bear with me here. Bill had to
make he had to sign an AFFIDATEPHT, he had to
make a statement. Monica signed the affidatephit and made a
statement which is then made public because this court case
is public, which means the next day this story breaks
and everybody knows about it.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
So when you say it breaks, they know that she's
signed it saying that they've not had any relations. They
know that, like he's denying it, she's denying it. But
then there's these other infidelities that are going on as well.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yes, so Linda Tripp this new person that she's just
met at the Pentagon. They become friends, She starts to
confide in her, They become really close. I guess it's like,
think of how many people you work with that you've
become close with, and you start to tell things like
in all day, every day you're with the same sort
of person. You develop a relationship. But was Linda actually
a genuine friend or was she somebody who had been
like was she like a mole, like she'd been put
(23:11):
in there to specifically get this information out? Or was
it kind of done in an opportunistic way. I did
wonder that. Now I don't know how to look at
Linda Tripp. Because they genuinely were friends, yes, like they
genuinely met at work and formed a friendship. But when
Monica started to confide in her, I guess this is
where we look at Linda as a bit of a
good two shoes, because she's like, well, well, fuck, this
(23:32):
is not something that should be happening. I'm going to
start to record these conversations. So even though she was
a friend, she started to record what Monica was telling
her about their relationship. Now they ended up with twenty
hours of recordings that this is. I don't know how
you view this, but it's a bit of a betrayal
of friendship a bit. But also imagine talking about your
(23:53):
relationship of twenty hours to your work colleagues. You'd be
dying about it by the end. All right, that's what
we do all day. Better I don't have sex and job.
I talk about how many times I haven't blown Matt
in the last year and a half two years? True,
because not even nine times. You're like, this actually could
be accurate, because I also have a relationship of two
years where we've blown each other nine times. Got a
pair of beepads that are going free if anyone wants them.
(24:17):
So so she's done twenty hours of recordings against her friend.
I'd be like, bro, what was his friendship that we've had?
No But also you've got to think about it from
Linda Tripp's perspective, like she probably felt like she needed
to take part in this and take him down absolutely,
Like you said, she she didn't have the rose colored
glasses on, she wasn't young in love. She was like,
this is a complete, completely inappropriate relationship, a complete abuse
(24:37):
of power. So she did what any normal person would do.
When she went to the FBI. She took her recordings
to the FBI. I don't even know how is there
a like hotline? Is it like twenty hundred FBI like
one eight hundred? The president's fucking someone? How do you
call that? How do you do that? There probably is
a hot line like that. Now you know he's probably
set the president the president resident. What happened?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Like does she just like because it's not like you're
walking around with an iPhone back then going voice memo?
Like did she get wider or was she had a
little tape recorder in her pocket, like how do you
do this back in the nineties, the whole boom box
on her shoulder.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
She's like, just let me press record. She she obviously
had a recorder, and she probably at that point didn't
know what she's gonna do with it. She probably just
thought I'm just gonna take this and like see where
it goes, or it's like that gonna be worth something
one day, I'm gonna bribe. Someone's gonna bribe the fuck
out of someone at some point. So she started to record.
She got all these hours and then she's like, this
is way deeper than I thought, because you know, once
she starts spilling, and you Monica's kept this inside for
(25:27):
so long, so now she's finally found someone she can trust.
So she's just vomited out so much stuff. They got
like twenty hours of detailed information about what happened between
Bill and Monica. And obviously because Linda and she's like
taken upon herself to be this like saving gratilante like,
but she's mining for that information too. It's probably not
(25:47):
like I'm like paying out Monica saying, like she's talking
about her life like for twenty hours. Linda's like asking
the question. She's doing the mining. She's like her friendship.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
She's getting that information out of her, and finally Monica
has someone she can confine in.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I'm so sorry, so so old, mate. Linda's taken you know,
she's got he two shoed away to the FBI. She's
given them information, so then they're strapped her with a
wire and sent her back in. So now she's like
a spy, like you said, Now she's like a mole
and she's trying to get more information because the FBI,
everyone's trying to build a case against Bill because there's
all these things coming out of the woodworks, and there
are more. There are actually so many more allegations.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Is this investigation because they're trying to pin him with
an assault?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Are they trying to pin him with rape?
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Like?
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Are they trying to take him down for being predatory?
Or are they trying to take him down for just
being like a bad husband?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Like?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Where is the onus in this? No, they are trying
to completely bring him down for being a bad human.
They're trying to bring him down for harassment. That's what
this is. It's not just like he had an affair.
They were trying to They were trying to prove sexual
harassment and wrongdoing within a position of power. What ends
up bringing Bill down the actual bit of proof. Okay,
so at the end of the day, you've only really
got he said, She said, That's what it's coming down to.
(26:53):
We've got all these tapes. But I mean, who knows.
She could have made whatever up in a hedge. She
could have been a fantasy. There's this one very famous
blue dress that everyone speaks about. It's from the Gap,
the gap of the blue dress. Yes, but she actually
really openly says that Bill never used to finish in
in quotations. He never used to come he and I
guess there was a part of him that's like I'm
going to try and keep as much evidence to myself
(27:15):
as possible, Like I'm not going to sprain my little
babies around the room. I'm going to keep my evidence inside. Also,
like that's just a lot of work for not much reward.
Put it that way totally. One time, in this famous
gap blue dress, he decides for whatever reason to come,
so he comes on her dress. But she doesn't know
that at the time she goes out to dinner in
(27:35):
the dress. She she keeps the dress for presidents come
on her, Yeah, with the presidents come on her. Yeah,
she went out for dinner covered and come Yeah. But
she didn't know, and no one told her that. There
was like sitting at dinner is like, hey, you've got
some yogurt or the president's come on your dress. Put
your hand up. Also, where's it landing? Like we all know,
like let's come on, think about it, like we all
(27:56):
go on your back on your trade back. Well, I
don't know, maybe it was just a little bit, could
have even been dribbleed. I don't know. I don't have
the diameter of the caum that's stained on the dress.
I don't have the circumference. But the story goes she
had this dried semen on her dress, but she says
she didn't know at the time she goes out to dinner.
It wasn't until Thanksgiving a little while later that she
noticed that she had it. But she's a bit kinky
that she likes souvenirs, like she likes to keep things
(28:17):
from each other, and she's like, oh, this is a
bit cute, Like I'll keep that.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
She kept the dress with the cum. She didn't go,
I'm gonna go get this gap dress like dry clean.
She was like, I'm going to keep it in my
sock draw Yes, probably.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Got to bed with it, yep. She So she kept
the dress. But that is eventually the undoing because the
FBI ended up having all this information. They had enough
information to subpoena the dress. They tested the dress. The FBI,
They're probably like, I can't believe I'm testing you know,
I've got bigger fish to fry. I'm testing a blue
gap dress for come from the president, like let me
go and save some walls or something.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
But that's what they did know is like how did
they get the dress from the mums? Like, imagine being
that person to go pick the dress up and then
drive a dress covered and coum out to the FBI
to get tested.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Like imagine that day they put them. Had it, that
dress would have had a whole security team. That would
have been like the most in demand dress in the
country at that time.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
And So the reason why this dress is so significant
is because this dress is proof of him lying. This
is literal, solid, dry, hard evidence that he has lied right, crusty.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Dry, crusty out of it. But it's true. That's what
it is. This is what this entire case hangs on,
is this blue dress.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
And the craziest thing here is that Monica ended up
telling her friend Linda Tripp. She ended up telling her
about the dress. She's like, oh, yeah, like I also
got his k came on my dress and it's still
in there, and I didn't know and it would have
been funny, like you know. She's like, I didn't know
for two weeks and I wore it, Oh my god.
And then Linda was taping the whole thing, and then
she started to encourage her to keep the dress. Like
Linda is a smart cookie, She's like, oh my god,
(29:42):
like you should totally keep that dress, but really so
she could go and tell the FBI that there was
some physical proof that this had happened. So Linda completely
threw under the bus and betrayed her. But I can't
hate on Linda because at the end of the day,
I think I don't know, like, yes, this is what
I'm the whole thing, and everyoneed Monica's life for a
very long time. But I think there'd be most people
(30:05):
do the same thing in that situation. If you're looking
at the president taking advantage, having an affair, taking advantage
of a young woman, I think you'd do the same thing.
I think you'd be like, Okay, this is cooked. I'm
going to do something about it. Yeah, And I guess
like the big part of that, though, is like not
that when you say it, like, I don't blame Linda.
I don't blame Linda for the way that the media
treated Monica like she would not have not her fault
(30:27):
that everybody treated her so badly, because because at the
end of the day, the takedown was the takedown of
the president. The takedown wasn't supposed to be the takedown
of Monica. But I mean, we know how much.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
The media hates women, and so it was all spun
especially in that day and age. You know, like I
think we've made leads and bounds, but there is such
inherent and deeply seated misogyny.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
In the media.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
And like, like we said earlier, like this whole the
whole framing around the president was around him just like
you know, not upholding the standards of being a good
family guy. But at the same time, where is Hillary
and all this, Like how has she heard about all
this stuff happening? How has she seen?
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Like I would understand why you would maybe not want
to believe one thing, like maybe you would deny or
like turn a blind eye to one or two allegations,
because I would think that a man in power probably
may experience this regardless of whether they have done something,
not like to this level bla any means, but there
may be some like media claims of infidelity or you know,
(31:25):
like oh that person's cheating. I mean, fuck, like even
Matt and I there's been articles once before that have
said like maybe Matt cheated. Obviously not true, but like
you just you know, there's always going to be speculation
about someone's fidelity. So I understand why Hillary would kind
of go like, I'm not going to believe it at
the start. But when the evidence is so undeniably clear
and there are so many levels, when it's dry and
(31:48):
hard and really set in there, my question is is, like,
why did she stay? Like where were they at at
this point? I guess at the start and like, you know,
I've been cheated on in my relationship. We all know that. Well,
you all don't know my day to the sociopath for
the two years with a double life that was marrying
someone else simultaneously. You didn't stay, no, But I did
at the start when there were signs that he was cheating,
and I confronted him at the start, and I didn't
(32:10):
know the level of the depth. But but when you're
in love with someone, you're so obsessed with him and
you think you know someoney, if you're marrying someone, it's
because you think you know them, or if you're married
to them, you think you know them. So when signs
come up at the start of cheating or someone has
said something, and I know that this is the presidency.
This affair is like on steroids. But if you go
to your partner and you question them and they come
back to you and say, I would never have done that.
(32:31):
I would never do this. Of course you're going to
be like, you want to believe it, So you're like, oh,
I'm gonna let that slightly, And I'm not saying like
at the point in time where you want to believe it,
where you're believing this is like you can't. It's undeniable,
Like she knows it's fact. Now, Yeah, the seeming is there,
it's yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
And it's been like scientifically proven fact, case and point,
which also then I think reaffirms so many of the
other cases and so many of the other allegations. Like
if one thing that he's lied on so clearly to
the public to her has come out true, you would
then be like, Okay, cool, well then all of these
other things are also probably true. What was her response
to all this at that time?
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, that's really interesting because I think the world was
looking at her then being like, come on, Hillary, like
get out of there, what are you doing? And I
don't know at the end of the day, if it
was more important to her to have this power couple
relationship to stay in it because they both wanted to
be in the public eye and have a very political
impact on the world, and they thought they had to
do that together. I don't know why she stayed by him.
(33:33):
So after the Blue Dress was uncovered, after they had
absolute solid evidence that it was the president and that
they were having an affair, at what point did Monica
come out and say, yes, this is true? And then
did Bill was he forced into into like did he
continue to lie? Like at what point did he say, yeah,
I lied, like this happened, so this is and this
(33:53):
is it's embraced yourself. Yeah, So I'm taking it back
because yes, Monica did come out and say that. She
came out and told the whole truth. She was made
to sit down. The FBI brought her in and they
played the twenty hours of tape store and they made
her listen back to all of them and it got
to the point where they were like, you don't have
anywhere to go, and you're in really big trouble. So
I haven't mentioned this man's name yet, but his name
is Kenna Starr and he hates Bill Clinton like he's
(34:15):
got a later river this far into the episode, Well,
he's the man that really worked tirelessly to bring Bill down.
He's an independent counsel. He was the person that was
driving this whole thing. He was the one that was
lay seen with Linda Tripp who got wired up to
get the information from Monica. So that was his role
in this whole situation. So Paul Monica at this point
is she's got nowhere to go. He has taken her
(34:39):
into listen to all these tapes and they've told Monica
they're like, I don't know if you understand, but like
it is very obvious now because Monica, if you're a member,
she signed the affidavit to say that she never had
any sexual relations with Bill. So they've said to her,
you will go to jail like you had done the
wrong thing. You have no out, but if you admit
it publicly in the quarter of law that was a
(35:00):
line that you had relations with Bill. Clinton will protect you.
You're not going to go to jail, but you need
to admit this. So this is how it all came out.
She was in a rock and a hard place. She
was going to prison or she was supposed to protect
someone to throw could not care less about her. So
were there literally any consequences for Bill?
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So he was.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Eventually impeached, but he didn't lose his presidency. There was
a slap on the wrist. There was no like, you've
done the wrong thing, You're out. It was literally, what
can we do? I know, you can't as the president
practice law for five years because he was in fact
a lawyer. Hillary and Bill were both lawyers. But that
was his punishment. You can't practice law for five years.
Fucking cool, I'm the president. You can still run the country.
(35:38):
Did he step down or did he stay and finish
out his full tenure? He stayed and he finished his term,
and I feel like he got off scot free, he says.
You know, he goes on and say, oh, well with me.
I had to leave in debt because all the legal
things and all the payouts, and I mean, like, get
a grip, Bill Clinton. Monica Lewinsky left not only in
debt but humiliated. She speaks openly about being on suicide
(35:59):
Walter and what that did to her. And thank god
that was not in today's society where we have social media.
The trolling in the harassment that she would have received,
I can't imagine like it is. It's probably actually so
beneficial that it did happen in the day and age
that it did happen in because I cannot. I don't
even want to think about what would happen now where
she became a laughing stock. Like I remember, and I
(36:21):
actually saw when I was doing a little bit of
research for this, like Jay Leno had a whole segment
that they had created on their show which was like
a fake like satire Doctor Seuss situation, and it was
called the slut in a Hat because obviously she had
the beareret from that very first, like the cat and
a hat slut and hat. Could you imagine.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I know, obviously the controversy around it was not positive
for either of them, but she's the one who had
to carry that for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Oh absolutely, her name became synonymous with a sex act
and her humiliation became the most public thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
When awful things happen. At least with social media, there's
a much more even skew. And I think that social
media is actually what's brought forward the whole me Toio movement.
It's what's forced media. It's what's forced like public channels
to actually reassess the way that they treat people so
maybe had social media existed, then we would have thought
about this differently. But because back in that time it
(37:15):
was purely just the magazines, the news, the talk shows
that they are the ones who were able to push
the public opinion. They were the ones that were able
to report on it. And I'm sure that like the
presidency and the politics have a tie into those newspapers,
and so there would have been some sway in that,
There's some sway in being like, well, we'll let this
woman take the fall for this.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
So ultimately President Clinton, he was acquitted of perjury and
obstruction of justice. That was in nineteen ninety nine. He
was impeached, but as mentioned before, he did get to
keep his presidency, He kept his wife Hillary, he pretty
much kept his reputation somehow, like people still laughed at him.
But at the end of the day, nothing really happened
(37:59):
to President Clinton's life and everything changed for Monica la Winskin.
Imagine that level of speculation, the proof, the actual proof
that like this is all unfolded during someone's presidency term
and them continuing to be the president. I mean, actually,
I take that back, because we all know that Donald
Trump said grab them by the pussy and still became
the president. So like, maybe we haven't. Maybe we haven't
(38:20):
moved as far as we think we have. I mean,
we almost had Kanye West. What have been disaster? The
world's a mess. But right now, like Monica is absolutely thriving.
She it took a long time and there was a
it was a very rough trot there, but she is
a motivational speaker. She does a lot of amazing ted talks.
She's finally found her groove. She quite often makes jokes
about what happened because I think, after all this time,
(38:42):
that is how she deals with it. And I mean,
you and I are the same, Laura. Like anything stressful, confrontational,
let's loss the pain by making jokes about it. So
she'll she'll often make jokes about it. And she has
just recently produced a well it's a docudrama. It's a
fictional sort of look at what her story was with
her and Bill, which is pretty credible. But she's jumped
on board to produce that. It's called American Crime Story Impeachment.
(39:04):
And I think that is a boss move to be like,
you know what, I'm just going to I'm going to
show the world exactly what happened by being a producer
on this show. I just think, like, what a great
comeback for Monica Lewinsky. But also to think that it's
taken two decades for her to be able to properly
share her story and to share her story in a
climate that's going to receive it well, like now is
the time. I love her now absolutely.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
And also I when I did a deep dive yesterday,
there is this one quote which I thought was great.
She is, she's a presence on Twitter. She's got, as
you said, brit like, she's got such a great sense
of humor. And there was this like tax debarcle that
happened with a guy named Marco Rubio. Not going to
even pretend like I know who the guy is, but
I'm assuming that he works in politics, and he had
written something along the lines of as a tweet although
(39:46):
written by the intern at Politico, this article reminds me
of blah blah blah blah. And then she writes, Hey,
guess what blaming the intern is so nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I was literally about to read you that quote, and
she's like, fucking best, and it's so true, Like this
whole massive case everything that happened around Bill Clinton, around Monica,
the way that she was treated. It all comes back
to this idea that as a society, it was blamed
on the twenty one year old intern Wild and that,
my friend, is the story of Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky
(40:17):
and the Pepperoni pizza, and also the kneepads and the
gap dress with the cup. I wonder where it is now,
probably like in a museum somewhere. Hooked, Hitched and hung
Up is a podcast from iHeart Podcast Australia, dead Set
Studios and the Kiss Network. Make sure you hit follow
in your podcast app or click the little plus sign
(40:40):
because there are some juicy episodes headed your way. You
do not want to miss it. See you next time
for some more breakups and makeups and sex and romance. Bye.
Hooked, Hitched and Hung Up acknowledges the traditional custodians of
country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community.
We pay our respect to their elders past and present
and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples today. This episode was recorded on Wella Medical Land.
(00:22):
Hi guys, and welcome to.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Our very first episode of our brand spanking new series, Hooked,
Hitched and Hung Up.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm Laura and I'm Brittany, and yes that is right.
Just when you thought you couldn't get enough of us
or any more love stories, we're back with a complete
standalone series.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I mean, if you are a listener of Life on
cart you know how much Britain I love talking about
relationships and giving relationship advice. But one thing that we've
never done before is we've never really unpacked the relationships
that have existed in the past, and that is exactly
what this whole series is. We are looking deep at
some of the most famous celebrity couples, their relationships, what
makes them tick, and looking at the reasons why they
(01:01):
broke down, whether they made up all the juicy details
that you may have forgotten.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
But also I think it's so interesting to look back
on some of these relationships with a twenty twenty two
lens and how maybe we would have viewed some of
these stories differently at the time. But how could we
start this series with anything but the love affair that
stopped the entire world. I'm talking about a twenty one
year old woman and literally the most powerful man on
(01:26):
the planet. Just a heads up, guys, this episode does
have a bit of swearing in it, so maybe don't
play it around the little kiddies. So I want to
talk to you today, Laura, about the biggest, most famous
(01:46):
affair of all time, not just political affair, but I
think and I would love someone to tell me if
there is a more famous affair of all time, but
Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I feel like this is
really I mean, it is one from the archives because
it's that quite a while. But do you remember how
old you were when this all went down. I don't remember,
(02:07):
but I don't remember a time that I didn't know
about the Monicola Whinsky affair. And I never knew the details,
but you always knew that there was a president that
did the dirty with this bombshell called Monticola Whinsky, and
growing up, you always knew that it was wrong, and
you knew it was this big, infamous story. She was
famous for probably the wrong reasons. But I never knew
the details.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, I remember, I will never forget. I was sitting
in the car and I remember the conversation around the
dress on the radio and me in my mind being.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Like, what like it was on that dress? Like I
was absolutely fucking disgusted because I was ten, but I
understood what it meant because it happened so long ago.
I never really fully understand the details of it, Like
I need to know. I want to know, why is
there a dress? Where did it come from? Why did
she still have it? There's so much here. I didn't
know actually about the dressing all honesty. I just literally
(02:56):
knew that there was this hectic affair and the president
did the dirty But I think when you back at
this affair, relationship, whatever you want to call it, there's
two ways you can look at it. You can almost
look at it like is this or was this a
love affair? Was it two people that genuinely loved each
other that obviously had these other extenuating circumstances like you know,
being the president of the United States and being married.
(03:18):
I mean like probably not, probably a lot more sinister
than that. Or wa way, way, way, way, way way,
let's not drop behavior. Do we look at it that
it was a complete misuse of power. Was this a predator?
Was this it was an older man that was the
president of the United States. You cannot get you cannot
get more powerful in the whole world that was taking
(03:40):
advantage of literally a twenty one year old female that
worked for him and worked for him for free. Do
you know The.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Crazy thing about this as well? And the thing I'm
so looking forward to unpacking is that how victimized Warnica
was in that time. But if we were to look
at it with a twenty twenty two legs, what that
would look like and how this story would have played
out so differently when it came to media.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
I want to start by showing your photo. And if
anyone that's listening doesn't know the photo, it's a very
very famous photo. I'm going to describe it to you, Laura,
I'm actually going to show you, but everyone I want
you to google it. But it's a photo from nineteen
ninety six. It's Bill and Monica. They're on the lawn
of the White House. There's a crowd of people around.
Bill is hugging Monica, Monica's hugging inside. I here happening
(04:27):
as well. Sign Monica's hugging him back. And this is
in the public in the middle of the day. Everyone's
milling around and they are embracing each other. She's got
this little bereon. She looks very cute. She looks like
she's the happiest woman in the world. This photo is very,
very famous because in this photo they were already an item, right,
they were already canoodling in the White House. But obviously
no one knew that. No, well, that's the whole point
(04:48):
of having a secret fair for two is no one
knew that. Spoiler alert, Laura, at this what's a secret?
I went out. They weren't talking about it. Monica had
gotten an internship. So she's only twenty one years old,
she's only fresh out of college. She'd got an internship
that was unpaid, so she was just volunteering through like
some family connections that she had. Now I don't know
what those family connections are, but she's she's turned up
(05:10):
to the White House for free. She's got a huge
crush on Bill Clinton. Turns out Bill Clinton has a
bit of crush on her back. So in this photo
they've already seen each other. But my question is, if
you were trying to hide an affair, why would you
publicly embrace the woman you're having an affair with. When
does he walk along with the White House stuff and
hug every single person? He's so like blinded by how
(05:34):
powerful he is, by how much he can get away with,
and that he probably thinks he can. He won't get
caught out like he thinks he's above it because he
is so powerful. Well, the other thing is he's been
president at this point for three years and nine months.
I've done the mask, so that sounds very specise. He said,
Monica's twenty one, But how old is he at this point?
He was in his late forties. He's been president for
nearly four years, just under four years. Could be her dad?
(05:55):
Hundred Yeah, that's that's exactly what it was. Okay, So
what else do we know about Monica? The story came
out that Monica it wasn't the first time she'd had
an affair with someone that was married, it wasn't the
first time she had a fair with someone was powerful
or in a position of power, And it wasn't the
first time she had an affair with someone that was
quite a lot older. So Monica had had an affair
(06:17):
with her high school teacher, but it wasn't when she
was at high school. So the story goes, when they
finished high school and she went on to college, she
started an affair with that teacher. Now he was a
lot older than her. His name's Andy Bleiler, so she
was like eighteen or nineteen, and he was a lot older.
He was married. They had an affair for years. Wait,
so if she was eighteen, she had to have just
(06:39):
left school, which in my books is kind of still
not her fault. Like a seventeen year old who's just
finished school, the most powerful person in your life are
your school teachers, other people who decide whether you do
or don't pass and get to go to university. Like,
there is already such a mismatch in that relationship dynamic
one hundred percent. And the only person that has actually
(07:02):
come out and said that this affair happened when she
was in college, when she had left school was him.
So the testimony's coming for me. So he's never gonna
put his hand up and say, oh, right, I admit it.
I was taking advantage of someone that was in high school,
my student. Like, he's never gonna say that. So we can't.
We can speculate for sure, but the only facts that
we have is that the affairs started afterwards. So whether
(07:24):
they're lying and there was a very big mismatching power
and he was doing the wrong thing and taking advantage
of his student, or maybe they just had this crush
on each other. And you know, I think I had
a crush on my teacher whennother school I had like
a hot surfit teacher. You're not gonna have sex with
your teacher, aren't, okay.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
The thing with this, though, is like in today's day
and age, even if it had been a few years,
like a teacher can't have a relationship with an ex
student at all.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
You'll be fired. It doesn't matter if they're all seventeens
out of bounds, but eighteens, that's okay. Eighteen in the States,
you can't even drink alcohol. But this interesting thing is
that her affair with Andy the old teacher actually crossed
over with the affair with Bill Clinton. She really went
up and notched, didn't you. Well. Yeah, And this is
why this is interesting, because she wanted to make Andy jealous,
(08:09):
because Andy ended up coming out saying she used to
call me like she was still calling me multiple times
a day, four or five times a day. But she
made a joke apparently to him. And I'm saying allegedly
and apparently because this is all testimony coming from him,
and I don't know how much you can believe someone
that was obviously doing the wrong thing with his student,
but he said that She even called up saying I
need to invest in some white house kneepaz, referring to
(08:33):
blowjobs that she was giving them present. Yeah, So a
lot of stuff ended up coming out. But if this
happened now, if there was a young woman twenty years
old eighteen nineteen, twenty twenty one that a teacher had
had an affair with her and then the president had
an affair with her, there is no way she would
be being blamed and dragged through the media like Monica
(08:55):
or Winsky was then. Because she was the start, she
was the epitome. She was ground zero for cancel culture.
It's just that back then they didn't have social media,
but the whole world publicly canceled her on news articles
and radio and everyone knew her name. Everything was dragged
through the mud, but it was always about her. So
(09:16):
what did Monica actually do at the White House? What
was her actual role apart from just being an intern?
I mean, basically she was the male girl. That's how
she started. She worked in the Office of Legislative Affairs,
so she was just an unpaid male girl, but that
eventually escalated to a few different jobs when she she
did become a paid intern eventually, But he's like, I
probably should pay her anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
So often, so from like how long did this span?
Like how long did this affair go for? And like
what was the intensity or the frequency of it?
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I mean, they saw each other every day because they
worked together. The affair went over approximately two years. But
the really crazy thing about that, and I don't know
whether I or the world believes it, but apparently over
that two years they only ever had sexual relation in
Bill Clinton's terms, nine times, And do you know what,
the little fucker nine times. She had to blow him
(10:10):
every time and he never did it back. That is
a self time, what a waste of time. Yeah, did
she get anything out of it? Like, okay, that's anything
out of this, But I mean, like, surely she wasn't
just going to his office, giving in pizza and giving
him blowing and leaving for the day, Like that's a
terrible job. Think back to how obsessively in love you
(10:31):
were with your first person at twenty years old, like
when you fall in love to when you fall in love,
you fall in love so hard. And this is the president.
He's so powerful, he's so charismatic. She was obsessed with him.
She would have done and she did. She would have
done anything that he wanted. And at the time twenty
I don't know what her sexual experience was other than that,
but she probably didn't really care about get anything back
because she's like, well, it just blew the president. Well.
(10:53):
I think it also just kind of plays into that
whole age dynamic and how like eager you are to
please at that age, like when you really want to
be when you really want to be like fully accepted.
Like I think that we sometimes can go way above
and beyond because we want to please so much. And
like in this case, girlfriend, I would be waiting for
something and return, but I find it hard to believe
that when they were both apparently in love, like he
(11:15):
was in love with her as well, when you're by
having these relationships and you'll see each other every day,
I find it hard to believe that it was only
nine times over two years.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Well, also, if it's only nine times over two years,
and how did it unfold? Like how did it come out?
Like why were people so suspicious that there was something
untoward going on? Because I feel like nine times in
two years, you'd be able to hide that, whereas like
there must have been so many other telltale signs that
were happening in the office.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
People must have been aware that there was some energy
or flirtation or something going on. Good question, Laura, Yeah,
they thank you, thank for give me a plus student.
So Bill and Monica started getting close during this big
government shutdown that was in around ninety five, when a
bunch of the staff at the White House had to
stop working for a while. So this meant the number
of people that worked there each day went from around
(11:57):
fall thirty to only ninety people, four hundred and three
people down to ninety. This is why people started to
fill in for other people. This is when they started
to do job shares, and everyone was picking up little
extra jobs. This meant that it was a little bit
less suspect for people to be places where they probably
wouldn't usually be, and that, my friend includes Monica Lewinsky,
(12:17):
the unpaid intern, because they could still work during the shutdown,
so she didn't have to leave. She was still there
and she was picking up all the other jobs. So
basically it was all right for Monica to spend a
bit more time with the president than usual. No one
turned an eye to it. So one night, everyone's working
lay doing all their fancy, pancy white house stuff. They
order pizza. Someone accidentally knocks a pizza onto Monica, so
(12:40):
she gets up goes to the bathroom to clean it up.
When she's coming out, Bill is actually standing in the
doorway and he tells her, you should bring me some
pizza to my office, So he walks away. She does
what she told. She goes back to the pizza box,
She gets some pizza, and she strides on up to
the over office and she knocks on the door. The
(13:01):
secretary answers the president asked us and pizza. So Bill's
secretary opens the door and lets her in. Because she's
there with the pizza. She goes inside and then as
was customary for them, they go into his private study
and I guess they study privately, but that is what
you did, then you would it was so normal talk
(13:23):
into the president's office and go into like the little
side office, the little private study, so that not everyone
was watching it. He used to take presidential phone calls
while she was giving him a head job in his office.
He would just take a call like it was nothing
while she was on her knees with a knee pads.
But don't you also, thing like that is just plays
into like the full level of disrespect, like taking important
(13:45):
phone calls that probably like a dictating the course of
the future of America. Release the bomb, yeah, whilst whilst
I released my bomb You're cooked, No, you're cooked. No,
Bill Clinton's cooked, whilst only had sex and I times
over the allegedly allegedly over the two years. I think
this part makes it worse. They acted like a couple.
(14:08):
They the way that they spoke together, the things they
spoke about the future, their ideas. She would give him
ideas for how to run the office, which she says
is like silly, but she's like I have I have
ideas about how things could run. They used to speak
about their childhoods. They had an emotional connection, which, as
we know, can be a lot worse than just a
physical connection. So they had both. And Monque said, this
(14:30):
wasn't just like a fling, this wasn't anaffair. I was
in love. We were in a relationship. And she felt
like he was in love as well. Placed by each
other presence. He bought her like a really romantic book.
One of the gifts that she got him was she
bought him these like really cute little neckties, so he
would wear them and then they would make little you know,
make eyes at each other. So it was it was
(14:51):
a symbol. There was always these constant symbols of like
I'm here, I'm thinking of you, I'm doing this for you,
but you know publicly never gonna be with you. So
I guess at this point they are already both not
just physically but also emotionally entwined. And it is a
fucking dumbster fire of a situation. But what is it
that raises suspicion? Up until now, no one's really thought
(15:11):
much of seeing, you know, the sporadic times that they
saw Bill and Montigan together. But this is the messed
up thing. The reason it came out is because Bill
Clinton had to get lawyered up. Okay, bad boy, bad
boy Bill, bad boy Billy. But before bad Boy Billy
was president, he was the governor of Arkansas. Okay, so
(15:34):
bear with me. There was a conference in a city
called Little Rock, and there was this woman named Paula Jones. Now,
Paula Jones works for the government, so basically she was
working for Bill Clinton at the time. She was working
directly for bad Boy Belly. Yes, that's correct, gotcha. Okay,
I'm glad you're staying with me. So Paula's in her
hotel room one night, probably just having a really nice
time reading a book, having a tea. I don't know.
(15:55):
I don't have facts on that, but that's what I
imagine she's doing in the hotel room. Bill summons her
tea his hotel room, and I mean, he's her boss.
So she's like, yeah, okay, sure, Well of course the president.
He's not the president. He's the governor of Arkansas. But
when anyone summons you, when your boss summons you somewhere,
I guess you go, right, Sure, even though I've summoned
you a few times. I'm not gonna go. When I've
got my tea in my face mask on, I'm not
going you have room at nine thirty. At nine, She's like, okay, cool,
(16:19):
the Governor's asked me. Of course I'm gonna go. I'm
not gonna fight this. She had no idea what was
about to happen, and she had no idea what was
going to follow them around after this moment for years
to come. Paula says, when she gets into Bill's room,
he exposes himself like he whips it out. He whipped
it out. No God, She's like, ah h, I am
not that kind of person. Put that away, and she
(16:40):
leaves the room. So it's important to note here Bill
always denied this. Of course he would. Yeah, I mean,
you're not gonna be like well mackay sprung, especially not
when you're the president. No. But at the end of
the day, they reached a settlement out of court. So
long story short, he paid her off. He's like, he
paid her silence. He was like, let's just pretend this
never happened. Here's a whole lot of money, okay, So
obviously this is a huge head for Bill Clinton. But
(17:01):
the worst thing about this is the timing of it
all because all of this hectic stuff with Paula went
down in nineteen ninety one, but she didn't bring the
lawsuit until nineteen ninety four. Now by this time, Bill is,
of course the President of the United States. So all
of that happened when he was governor of Arkansas. Now
he is the president. So this is a really, really
(17:22):
big fricking deal. This court case is where people start
sniffing around. So this has come back up, This is resurfaced,
and everyone's like, hang on, I've got some questions to ask.
And this is where it all begins to unravel.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
So this is obviously what's made everybody so suspicious of
him as a person. And now they're starting to connect
the dots between him and Monica. They're like, Oh, who's
this hot young thing who's always in his office? Yeah,
why is this young thing always got pizza in his office?
Something doesn't add up. It is seven am in.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
The morning, so after that, I'm guessing that is where
the rest of the dirty laundry is brought out. Okay,
so I'm gonna just I want you to sit with
me for a second year. This is literally sitting next
to you, Yeah, okay, sit with me, po metlhorically, literally physically.
This happened in nineteen ninety four, but in nineteen ninety two,
so two years prior when he was running for presidency.
(18:09):
And now the woman came out. Now her name is
Jennifer Flowers. She came forward whilst he was running for
presidency and she said, hey, we've been having a twelve
year affair. Oh my god. Now she didn't come and
say that he had sexually assaulted her or abuse, so
that's a consensual affair. This was just a consensual affair.
(18:30):
So Paula Jones was the first person that publicly came
out and said, hey, this is not a good person.
But it wasn't the first time that his presidency or
campaign has been rocked. It almost derailed his campaign, but
it didn't because the tabloid that picked it up to
run the story and be like, hey, look, the president's
having this twel year affair. They're a pretty trashy nothing tabloid,
and it was sort of I guess the presidency. The
president went and said, you know, like this, let's just
(18:51):
can this. No one's going to believe this. It's trashy gossip.
I would never have an affair, So no one really
believed it. It didn't really have an impact. Everyone was like,
the president would never do that. Where is Hillary in
all of this? Like did she believe him or did
she believe what was being reported in the news. I mean,
if you were Hillary, you're wondering what's up. You're sniffing around,
You're like, something doesn't add up here. But the interesting
(19:11):
thing is what she has to say after the whole
Jennifer Flowers thing came out. This is it. You know,
I'm not sitting here as some little woman standing by
my man like Tammy, Whyett. I'm sitting here because I
love him and I respect him, and I honor what
he's been through and what we've been through together.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
And you know, if that's not enough for people, then heck,
don't vote for him.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
So it's very clear that Hillary is well and truly
standing by Bill Clinton. She's one hundred percent by his side.
You're probably wondering why I'm talking about all these other
women in the past. It's not just background, but it
all links to how this whole monochrome Bill affair came
to light. Because all these things are coming out of
(20:01):
the woodwork. People are like, well, is there something more
than we thought that we've seen this young girl floating
around Bill's office. More so, Bill's own team have obviously
gone into like Christ's damage control. They're like, you out.
They've picked up Monica Lewinsky. They've thrown out of the
White House, but they've thrown it into the Pentagon. She's
still employed, but they're like, mate, you can't keep you
(20:22):
dick in your pants. We're not going to keep these
young attractive women around you right now while everything's happening.
So she's gone over to the Pentagon. They're still calling
each other, they're still talking. They're still in this relationship,
and he says, you know, as soon as everything's calmed down,
I'm going to bring you back like fear not. So
it wasn't the end of the relationship. It's still continued.
And now this is where the plot dickens and the
(20:43):
story unravels. This is where Monica Lewinsky meets another woman
that works at the Pentacon named Linda Tripp. Now, Linda
Tripp is pretty much the icing on the cake. This
is what this is how this whole thing comes out.
They actually become really good friends, and Monica finally starts
to fired in somebody because until now she's never told anybody.
(21:03):
She's alluded to the idea before, where you know, like
I have been with someone quite powerful, you know, but
she's never said I'm having an affair with present.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
She probably also was probably getting close to her wits
ends with her like this has been going on for
so long now, she's been pushed out and pushed away.
There might have even been a part of her that
was like, well, I want to tell someone that's real
because he's here denying everything as well.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
There's maybe in that there was a little bit of
her that kind of, you know, she felt like she
needed to talk to someone about it. Yeah, And while
these other court cases are going on about sexual harassment,
Monica Lewinsky is actually asked to sign an affidavit to
say that she never had any sexual relationship with Bill Clinton.
They're investigating Bill to see if there is a pattern
(21:44):
in this, so they go to Monica, but she's still
besotted with him. She's still in love with him. She
still thinks he's in love with her. So they're trying
to bring her into these other court cases to say,
come on, like, this isn't the first time he's done this,
and she's like, well, there's got nothing to do with me.
I haven't done anything with him. So she signs a
life way and says that she's never had sexual relations
and there's a really famous quote that everyone knows from
Bill Clinton. But he's like, I did.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Not have sexual relations with that woman, miss Lewinsky. I
never told anybody to lie, not a single time.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Never.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
These allegations are false, and I need to go back
to work for the American people.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
Okay, So the sexual harassment case is going on, and
you've got to bear with me here. Bill had to
make he had to sign an AFFIDATEPHT, he had to
make a statement. Monica signed the affidatephit and made a
statement which is then made public because this court case
is public, which means the next day this story breaks
and everybody knows about it.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
So when you say it breaks, they know that she's
signed it saying that they've not had any relations. They
know that, like he's denying it, she's denying it. But
then there's these other infidelities that are going on as well.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Yes, so Linda Tripp this new person that she's just
met at the Pentagon. They become friends, She starts to
confide in her, They become really close. I guess it's like,
think of how many people you work with that you've
become close with, and you start to tell things like
in all day, every day you're with the same sort
of person. You develop a relationship. But was Linda actually
a genuine friend or was she somebody who had been
like was she like a mole, like she'd been put
(23:11):
in there to specifically get this information out? Or was
it kind of done in an opportunistic way. I did
wonder that. Now I don't know how to look at
Linda Tripp. Because they genuinely were friends, yes, like they
genuinely met at work and formed a friendship. But when
Monica started to confide in her, I guess this is
where we look at Linda as a bit of a
good two shoes, because she's like, well, well, fuck, this
(23:32):
is not something that should be happening. I'm going to
start to record these conversations. So even though she was
a friend, she started to record what Monica was telling
her about their relationship. Now they ended up with twenty
hours of recordings that this is. I don't know how
you view this, but it's a bit of a betrayal
of friendship a bit. But also imagine talking about your
(23:53):
relationship of twenty hours to your work colleagues. You'd be
dying about it by the end. All right, that's what
we do all day. Better I don't have sex and job.
I talk about how many times I haven't blown Matt
in the last year and a half two years? True,
because not even nine times. You're like, this actually could
be accurate, because I also have a relationship of two
years where we've blown each other nine times. Got a
pair of beepads that are going free if anyone wants them.
(24:17):
So so she's done twenty hours of recordings against her friend.
I'd be like, bro, what was his friendship that we've had?
No But also you've got to think about it from
Linda Tripp's perspective, like she probably felt like she needed
to take part in this and take him down absolutely,
Like you said, she she didn't have the rose colored
glasses on, she wasn't young in love. She was like,
this is a complete, completely inappropriate relationship, a complete abuse
(24:37):
of power. So she did what any normal person would do.
When she went to the FBI. She took her recordings
to the FBI. I don't even know how is there
a like hotline? Is it like twenty hundred FBI like
one eight hundred? The president's fucking someone? How do you
call that? How do you do that? There probably is
a hot line like that. Now you know he's probably
set the president the president resident. What happened?
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Like does she just like because it's not like you're
walking around with an iPhone back then going voice memo?
Like did she get wider or was she had a
little tape recorder in her pocket, like how do you
do this back in the nineties, the whole boom box
on her shoulder.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
She's like, just let me press record. She she obviously
had a recorder, and she probably at that point didn't
know what she's gonna do with it. She probably just
thought I'm just gonna take this and like see where
it goes, or it's like that gonna be worth something
one day, I'm gonna bribe. Someone's gonna bribe the fuck
out of someone at some point. So she started to record.
She got all these hours and then she's like, this
is way deeper than I thought, because you know, once
she starts spilling, and you Monica's kept this inside for
(25:27):
so long, so now she's finally found someone she can trust.
So she's just vomited out so much stuff. They got
like twenty hours of detailed information about what happened between
Bill and Monica. And obviously because Linda and she's like
taken upon herself to be this like saving gratilante like,
but she's mining for that information too. It's probably not
(25:47):
like I'm like paying out Monica saying, like she's talking
about her life like for twenty hours. Linda's like asking
the question. She's doing the mining. She's like her friendship.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
She's getting that information out of her, and finally Monica
has someone she can confine in.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I'm so sorry, so so old, mate. Linda's taken you know,
she's got he two shoed away to the FBI. She's
given them information, so then they're strapped her with a
wire and sent her back in. So now she's like
a spy, like you said, Now she's like a mole
and she's trying to get more information because the FBI,
everyone's trying to build a case against Bill because there's
all these things coming out of the woodworks, and there
are more. There are actually so many more allegations.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Is this investigation because they're trying to pin him with
an assault?
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Are they trying to pin him with rape?
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Like?
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Are they trying to take him down for being predatory?
Or are they trying to take him down for just
being like a bad husband?
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Like?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Where is the onus in this? No, they are trying
to completely bring him down for being a bad human.
They're trying to bring him down for harassment. That's what
this is. It's not just like he had an affair.
They were trying to They were trying to prove sexual
harassment and wrongdoing within a position of power. What ends
up bringing Bill down the actual bit of proof. Okay,
so at the end of the day, you've only really
got he said, She said, That's what it's coming down to.
(26:53):
We've got all these tapes. But I mean, who knows.
She could have made whatever up in a hedge. She
could have been a fantasy. There's this one very famous
blue dress that everyone speaks about. It's from the Gap,
the gap of the blue dress. Yes, but she actually
really openly says that Bill never used to finish in
in quotations. He never used to come he and I
guess there was a part of him that's like I'm
going to try and keep as much evidence to myself
(27:15):
as possible, Like I'm not going to sprain my little
babies around the room. I'm going to keep my evidence inside. Also,
like that's just a lot of work for not much reward.
Put it that way totally. One time, in this famous
gap blue dress, he decides for whatever reason to come,
so he comes on her dress. But she doesn't know
that at the time she goes out to dinner in
(27:35):
the dress. She she keeps the dress for presidents come
on her, Yeah, with the presidents come on her. Yeah,
she went out for dinner covered and come Yeah. But
she didn't know, and no one told her that. There
was like sitting at dinner is like, hey, you've got
some yogurt or the president's come on your dress. Put
your hand up. Also, where's it landing? Like we all know,
like let's come on, think about it, like we all
(27:56):
go on your back on your trade back. Well, I
don't know, maybe it was just a little bit, could
have even been dribbleed. I don't know. I don't have
the diameter of the caum that's stained on the dress.
I don't have the circumference. But the story goes she
had this dried semen on her dress, but she says
she didn't know at the time she goes out to dinner.
It wasn't until Thanksgiving a little while later that she
noticed that she had it. But she's a bit kinky
that she likes souvenirs, like she likes to keep things
(28:17):
from each other, and she's like, oh, this is a
bit cute, Like I'll keep that.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
She kept the dress with the cum. She didn't go,
I'm gonna go get this gap dress like dry clean.
She was like, I'm going to keep it in my
sock draw Yes, probably.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Got to bed with it, yep. She So she kept
the dress. But that is eventually the undoing because the
FBI ended up having all this information. They had enough
information to subpoena the dress. They tested the dress. The FBI,
They're probably like, I can't believe I'm testing you know,
I've got bigger fish to fry. I'm testing a blue
gap dress for come from the president, like let me
go and save some walls or something.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
But that's what they did know is like how did
they get the dress from the mums? Like, imagine being
that person to go pick the dress up and then
drive a dress covered and coum out to the FBI
to get tested.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Like imagine that day they put them. Had it, that
dress would have had a whole security team. That would
have been like the most in demand dress in the
country at that time.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
And So the reason why this dress is so significant
is because this dress is proof of him lying. This
is literal, solid, dry, hard evidence that he has lied right, crusty.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Dry, crusty out of it. But it's true. That's what
it is. This is what this entire case hangs on,
is this blue dress.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
And the craziest thing here is that Monica ended up
telling her friend Linda Tripp. She ended up telling her
about the dress. She's like, oh, yeah, like I also
got his k came on my dress and it's still
in there, and I didn't know and it would have
been funny, like you know. She's like, I didn't know
for two weeks and I wore it, Oh my god.
And then Linda was taping the whole thing, and then
she started to encourage her to keep the dress. Like
Linda is a smart cookie, She's like, oh my god,
(29:42):
like you should totally keep that dress, but really so
she could go and tell the FBI that there was
some physical proof that this had happened. So Linda completely
threw under the bus and betrayed her. But I can't
hate on Linda because at the end of the day,
I think I don't know, like, yes, this is what
I'm the whole thing, and everyoneed Monica's life for a
very long time. But I think there'd be most people
(30:05):
do the same thing in that situation. If you're looking
at the president taking advantage, having an affair, taking advantage
of a young woman, I think you'd do the same thing.
I think you'd be like, Okay, this is cooked. I'm
going to do something about it. Yeah, And I guess
like the big part of that, though, is like not
that when you say it, like, I don't blame Linda.
I don't blame Linda for the way that the media
treated Monica like she would not have not her fault
(30:27):
that everybody treated her so badly, because because at the
end of the day, the takedown was the takedown of
the president. The takedown wasn't supposed to be the takedown
of Monica. But I mean, we know how much.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
The media hates women, and so it was all spun
especially in that day and age. You know, like I
think we've made leads and bounds, but there is such
inherent and deeply seated misogyny.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
In the media.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
And like, like we said earlier, like this whole the
whole framing around the president was around him just like
you know, not upholding the standards of being a good
family guy. But at the same time, where is Hillary
and all this, Like how has she heard about all
this stuff happening? How has she seen?
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Like I would understand why you would maybe not want
to believe one thing, like maybe you would deny or
like turn a blind eye to one or two allegations,
because I would think that a man in power probably
may experience this regardless of whether they have done something,
not like to this level bla any means, but there
may be some like media claims of infidelity or you know,
(31:25):
like oh that person's cheating. I mean, fuck, like even
Matt and I there's been articles once before that have
said like maybe Matt cheated. Obviously not true, but like
you just you know, there's always going to be speculation
about someone's fidelity. So I understand why Hillary would kind
of go like, I'm not going to believe it at
the start. But when the evidence is so undeniably clear
and there are so many levels, when it's dry and
(31:48):
hard and really set in there, my question is is, like,
why did she stay? Like where were they at at
this point? I guess at the start and like, you know,
I've been cheated on in my relationship. We all know that. Well,
you all don't know my day to the sociopath for
the two years with a double life that was marrying
someone else simultaneously. You didn't stay, no, But I did
at the start when there were signs that he was cheating,
and I confronted him at the start, and I didn't
(32:10):
know the level of the depth. But but when you're
in love with someone, you're so obsessed with him and
you think you know someoney, if you're marrying someone, it's
because you think you know them, or if you're married
to them, you think you know them. So when signs
come up at the start of cheating or someone has
said something, and I know that this is the presidency.
This affair is like on steroids. But if you go
to your partner and you question them and they come
back to you and say, I would never have done that.
(32:31):
I would never do this. Of course you're going to
be like, you want to believe it, So you're like, oh,
I'm gonna let that slightly, And I'm not saying like
at the point in time where you want to believe it,
where you're believing this is like you can't. It's undeniable,
Like she knows it's fact. Now, Yeah, the seeming is there,
it's yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
And it's been like scientifically proven fact, case and point,
which also then I think reaffirms so many of the
other cases and so many of the other allegations. Like
if one thing that he's lied on so clearly to
the public to her has come out true, you would
then be like, Okay, cool, well then all of these
other things are also probably true. What was her response
to all this at that time?
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, that's really interesting because I think the world was
looking at her then being like, come on, Hillary, like
get out of there, what are you doing? And I
don't know at the end of the day, if it
was more important to her to have this power couple
relationship to stay in it because they both wanted to
be in the public eye and have a very political
impact on the world, and they thought they had to
do that together. I don't know why she stayed by him.
(33:33):
So after the Blue Dress was uncovered, after they had
absolute solid evidence that it was the president and that
they were having an affair, at what point did Monica
come out and say, yes, this is true? And then
did Bill was he forced into into like did he
continue to lie? Like at what point did he say, yeah,
I lied, like this happened, so this is and this
(33:53):
is it's embraced yourself. Yeah, So I'm taking it back
because yes, Monica did come out and say that. She
came out and told the whole truth. She was made
to sit down. The FBI brought her in and they
played the twenty hours of tape store and they made
her listen back to all of them and it got
to the point where they were like, you don't have
anywhere to go, and you're in really big trouble. So
I haven't mentioned this man's name yet, but his name
is Kenna Starr and he hates Bill Clinton like he's
(34:15):
got a later river this far into the episode, Well,
he's the man that really worked tirelessly to bring Bill down.
He's an independent counsel. He was the person that was
driving this whole thing. He was the one that was
lay seen with Linda Tripp who got wired up to
get the information from Monica. So that was his role
in this whole situation. So Paul Monica at this point
is she's got nowhere to go. He has taken her
(34:39):
into listen to all these tapes and they've told Monica
they're like, I don't know if you understand, but like
it is very obvious now because Monica, if you're a member,
she signed the affidavit to say that she never had
any sexual relations with Bill. So they've said to her,
you will go to jail like you had done the
wrong thing. You have no out, but if you admit
it publicly in the quarter of law that was a
(35:00):
line that you had relations with Bill. Clinton will protect you.
You're not going to go to jail, but you need
to admit this. So this is how it all came out.
She was in a rock and a hard place. She
was going to prison or she was supposed to protect
someone to throw could not care less about her. So
were there literally any consequences for Bill?
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So he was.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Eventually impeached, but he didn't lose his presidency. There was
a slap on the wrist. There was no like, you've
done the wrong thing, You're out. It was literally, what
can we do? I know, you can't as the president
practice law for five years because he was in fact
a lawyer. Hillary and Bill were both lawyers. But that
was his punishment. You can't practice law for five years.
Fucking cool, I'm the president. You can still run the country.
(35:38):
Did he step down or did he stay and finish
out his full tenure? He stayed and he finished his term,
and I feel like he got off scot free, he says.
You know, he goes on and say, oh, well with me.
I had to leave in debt because all the legal
things and all the payouts, and I mean, like, get
a grip, Bill Clinton. Monica Lewinsky left not only in
debt but humiliated. She speaks openly about being on suicide
(35:59):
Walter and what that did to her. And thank god
that was not in today's society where we have social media.
The trolling in the harassment that she would have received,
I can't imagine like it is. It's probably actually so
beneficial that it did happen in the day and age
that it did happen in because I cannot. I don't
even want to think about what would happen now where
she became a laughing stock. Like I remember, and I
(36:21):
actually saw when I was doing a little bit of
research for this, like Jay Leno had a whole segment
that they had created on their show which was like
a fake like satire Doctor Seuss situation, and it was
called the slut in a Hat because obviously she had
the beareret from that very first, like the cat and
a hat slut and hat. Could you imagine.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
I know, obviously the controversy around it was not positive
for either of them, but she's the one who had
to carry that for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Oh absolutely, her name became synonymous with a sex act
and her humiliation became the most public thing in the world.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
When awful things happen. At least with social media, there's
a much more even skew. And I think that social
media is actually what's brought forward the whole me Toio movement.
It's what's forced media. It's what's forced like public channels
to actually reassess the way that they treat people so
maybe had social media existed, then we would have thought
about this differently. But because back in that time it
(37:15):
was purely just the magazines, the news, the talk shows
that they are the ones who were able to push
the public opinion. They were the ones that were able
to report on it. And I'm sure that like the
presidency and the politics have a tie into those newspapers,
and so there would have been some sway in that,
There's some sway in being like, well, we'll let this
woman take the fall for this.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
So ultimately President Clinton, he was acquitted of perjury and
obstruction of justice. That was in nineteen ninety nine. He
was impeached, but as mentioned before, he did get to
keep his presidency, He kept his wife Hillary, he pretty
much kept his reputation somehow, like people still laughed at him.
But at the end of the day, nothing really happened
(37:59):
to President Clinton's life and everything changed for Monica la Winskin.
Imagine that level of speculation, the proof, the actual proof
that like this is all unfolded during someone's presidency term
and them continuing to be the president. I mean, actually,
I take that back, because we all know that Donald
Trump said grab them by the pussy and still became
the president. So like, maybe we haven't. Maybe we haven't
(38:20):
moved as far as we think we have. I mean,
we almost had Kanye West. What have been disaster? The
world's a mess. But right now, like Monica is absolutely thriving.
She it took a long time and there was a
it was a very rough trot there, but she is
a motivational speaker. She does a lot of amazing ted talks.
She's finally found her groove. She quite often makes jokes
about what happened because I think, after all this time,
(38:42):
that is how she deals with it. And I mean,
you and I are the same, Laura. Like anything stressful, confrontational,
let's loss the pain by making jokes about it. So
she'll she'll often make jokes about it. And she has
just recently produced a well it's a docudrama. It's a
fictional sort of look at what her story was with
her and Bill, which is pretty credible. But she's jumped
on board to produce that. It's called American Crime Story Impeachment.
(39:04):
And I think that is a boss move to be like,
you know what, I'm just going to I'm going to
show the world exactly what happened by being a producer
on this show. I just think, like, what a great
comeback for Monica Lewinsky. But also to think that it's
taken two decades for her to be able to properly
share her story and to share her story in a
climate that's going to receive it well, like now is
the time. I love her now absolutely.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
And also I when I did a deep dive yesterday,
there is this one quote which I thought was great.
She is, she's a presence on Twitter. She's got, as
you said, brit like, she's got such a great sense
of humor. And there was this like tax debarcle that
happened with a guy named Marco Rubio. Not going to
even pretend like I know who the guy is, but
I'm assuming that he works in politics, and he had
written something along the lines of as a tweet although
(39:46):
written by the intern at Politico, this article reminds me
of blah blah blah blah. And then she writes, Hey,
guess what blaming the intern is so nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
I was literally about to read you that quote, and
she's like, fucking best, and it's so true, Like this
whole massive case everything that happened around Bill Clinton, around Monica,
the way that she was treated. It all comes back
to this idea that as a society, it was blamed
on the twenty one year old intern Wild and that,
my friend, is the story of Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky
(40:17):
and the Pepperoni pizza, and also the kneepads and the
gap dress with the cup. I wonder where it is now,
probably like in a museum somewhere. Hooked, Hitched and hung
Up is a podcast from iHeart Podcast Australia, dead Set
Studios and the Kiss Network. Make sure you hit follow
in your podcast app or click the little plus sign
(40:40):
because there are some juicy episodes headed your way. You
do not want to miss it. See you next time
for some more breakups and makeups and sex and romance. Bye.
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