Monica Lewinsky: An Intern vs. The President

0:00Daddy gang, picture this. You just got one of the most prestigious internships in the country and you feel like your career is about to take off. You're so excited to be working alongside your boss who is without a doubt the most important person and everyone loves and admires this man. One day he starts to show you attention. He even begins to flirt with you and one thing leads to another and you guys end up in a full-blown secret relationship. For a while, everything's great. He's giving you gifts. He's making you feel special. And you confide in your co-worker telling her everything about the relationship.

0:44But then one day, you're at the mall and the FBI surrounds you. They know about you and your boss's relationship because your co-worker secretly recorded your conversations and turned them over to the FBI. They tell you if you don't cooperate, you will go to jail. Suddenly, every explicit detail of you and your married boss's relationship is released to the public. Next thing you know, your face is on the cover of every newspaper and every news channel is talking about you. They call you a slut and a whore. They criticize your body and they embarrass you every single day for decades to come. You're not allowed to talk to your friends about it.

1:33You can barely leave your house. Your name and reputation are completely ruined and your life crumbles before your eyes. Daddy gang, this is a true story. This is Monica Lewinsky's story. When Monica Lewinsky was 22 years old, she was an intern at the White House, and she ended up in a two-year relationship with her boss, the President of the United States, Bill Clinton. Their relationship was exposed to the public after Linda Tripp, a woman Monica trusted as a close friend, secretly recorded their phone calls and handed them over to the FBI. After that moment, Monica's life was changed forever.

2:22She became the sole focus of a massive investigation that resulted in Bill Clinton's impeachment and her very public downfall. despite and I want to emphasize this despite the 27 year age gap and a clear abuse of power from the president Monica was the one who was ripped apart in the media her name became synonymous with blowjobs and she was relentlessly slut shamed body shamed and publicly humiliated for years. Daddy gang, unfortunately, as women, we are way too familiar with the double standards of how men get treated in this world versus how women get treated. While Bill Clinton still gets to embrace and enjoy his life in the public eye, Monica has spent years working through the lasting effects of this trauma.

3:26So now, it is Monica's turn to reclaim her name and share her side of the story.

3:35What is up, Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper, with Call Her Daddy. Monica Lewinsky, welcome to Call Her Daddy. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. I am so happy we're finally meeting. It's been a long time coming. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a very, very long time. I think there's so much that we're going to talk about today that a lot of the women that listen to my show will be able to resonate with and also learn from. So thank you for taking the time. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm a little nervous. I still get nervous with these kinds of things. But in general, I'm good.

4:16I'm excited. It's a very busy, as you know, launching a podcast. It's a lot more than I ever could have imagined. That's what I was going to say. Congratulations. Thank you. You are launching this podcast, obviously. First, you survived being the face of a global scandal when you were 24 years old. Now you're launching this podcast called Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky. and basically you're discussing what it means to take back your name. Why did you want to do this now? Well, it felt, it kind of felt for me like it was the next step for my own reclaiming and my own experiences of having lost my narrative, almost my life at 24 and what that journey or process has been like to come back, that in many ways that's in the bones of the show.

5:16I think this idea of losing something and getting it back. Let's talk about it. Your life completely changed once the news broke of your relationship with President Clinton. Can you take me to the day the world finds out about this? You find out that the world knows where were you and how did you find out? So just to reel it back a few days, I found out about the investigation several days before the rest of the world did. There was a sting operation that happened in a shopping mall. And then I was up in – there was a Ritz-Carlton attached to the shopping mall. And I was in the hotel room really realizing that what felt like my life was over.

6:06certainly my life was going to change and that I was threatened with jail and essentially told if I didn't cooperate and wear a wire that I would go to jail for 27 years. So, and so I kind of saw this train starting to barrel down the tracks and I really felt like the 21st, January 21st, opening the door. I was living in the Watergate apartment complex with my mom. And so I remember opening the door. And these were in the days where people would get a newspaper delivered. And in DC, it was always several, like the Post and the New York Times. And I remember seeing my name above the fold and the investigation and looking down the hall and seeing the exact same newspaper outside everybody else's door.

7:09And it was shocking. It was terrifying. And I didn't actually know how to process anything. And really, it was a moment where life as I knew it was over.

7:44One, my heart just breaks for you because I'm thinking about myself when I was 24. And I'm thinking about all the women that are watching when you're 24 years old. Like your frontal lobe is still not fully developed. A hundred percent. You are in a situation that like, how would you know how to respond that you're saying they're coming to you and saying, if you don't wear this wire, you're going to go to jail. Like, were you able to confide in at least like your mom? Did you have to hold all of this by yourself in that moment? Well, I think the moment in the hotel room, they wouldn't let me call anybody at first.

8:25And I had a pager. So my mom kept paging me. And eventually, I said, I was like, look, if you don't let me call my mom, she's going to really start to worry. So they finally, you know, they all huddled. There were a whole bunch of them. And they were in this connecting room to the hotel. The room I was in, the connecting hotel room, had a whole bunch of other FBI agents in it and lawyers from the independent counsel's office. And so they finally said, okay, you can call your mom. And these are in the days of a handheld phone. So I'm holding the phone and the agent had his finger over the hang up button.

9:12And so it was this, you know, you just begin to understand subtly, maybe not so subtle, but the kind of nonverbal ways that you're starting to understand how much trouble you're in. When I had to go to the bathroom, they went in because there was a phone in the bathroom, they took the receiver out of the wall. So it was, but eventually I was allowed to go ask for my mom because they wouldn't, there was a point where they all came in the room. This had been a few hours and I had kind of refused to cooperate still at that point. And they had really, they sort of sent in the heavy. and at that point it was the kind of the pressure tactics and so I basically said I can't make a decision unless I talk to my mom so they let me finally let me call my mom and and then she came down from New York and and was so I was waiting for her to come down and then she called my dad who was at a medical conference and with his best friend who was a malpractice attorney, which is how I ended up with a malpractice attorney as my first attorney.

10:37There's a level of like, we can't fathom what, as a young woman, you were feeling in that pretty terrifying experience of all these people telling you what you needed to do. You don't have a chance to think for yourself. I couldn't call a lawyer. I had asked to call a lawyer from moment one because I think we all know from TV and the movies, right? Like when it happens in TV and the movies, usually a man comes and flashes their badge. You're like, I'm not talking to you without my lawyer. And they said, well, that's fine, but you won't be able to get as much information and help yourself as much.

11:12And then I was actively discouraged from getting a lawyer. And I mean, I remember very distinctly the moment of of it sinking in about what it would mean for this to come out and impact my family you know so I had a younger brother in college my dad's upstanding doctor in the community you know my my mom is um has her own world too and my stepmom and um and so that and the and the kind of shame and knowing that I had felt very responsible in that point too, because I knew I had talked about things that it was expected I would not have talked about them. So the media attention, there's paparazzi outside at all times.

12:09Like, what were you doing every day? Like, were you going stir crazy? Oh, yeah. I mean, it was, I was, well, first I was obsessed with the case. I think too, just to paint a little bit of a landscape of what the media life was like, because we have a sense of how things are today with how we can get inundated with a story online with social media. Now there are eight bajillion outlets. But what it meant back then was this story was actually, instead of a story having legs for a week, which is considered a long time in today's world. I mean, it was a year, you know, it was a year of coverage. In the first 10 days of the investigation, the Washington Post alone had published 127 articles.

13:00So that's like 12 articles a day on just this story. So it was, and that was one news outlet, and this was global. Can you explain initially, once this all broke, how right off the bat was the media portraying you? Oh, I think for five seconds, it was sympathetic. And maybe after about a week, once the White House got in gear, I was very quickly painted as a stalker, a whore, mentally unstable, a bimbo.

13:50both the pursuer in this and also not attractive enough to be pursued. And really, there was a creation of a version of me that I didn't recognize and my friends and family didn't recognize. and that's that's what happens when you have a power imbalance in a story a story where media is so integral to to it unfolding I can't imagine the feeling of like for a second being like well that's yeah I guess that's what happened oh my god we that that's not me how are they how are they why are they calling me a whore why are they calling me a slatter how am I the pursuer like I What can you explain how you're the name calling and the slut shaming slowly started to chip away at the way you felt about yourself?

14:48Yeah. Well, I think I can't say this for, you know, for everybody who gets involved in a relationship with someone who's, I'm trying to think of the right way to say it, but it's like, I think not everybody who has an affair feels this way. But I think a lot of people, especially young women who get involved in affairs, it already starts with a lack of self-esteem and self-worth. So I already had issues. It was this, it's kind of your worst nightmare of like all the worst things that you think about yourself and say to yourself, you then start to have reflected and amplified by the whole world.

15:33And so it was, if it hadn't been for my family, continuing to remind me of my true self. And then eventually when I was able to have my friends come in, I don't think I would have been able to make it through. I think there were really sort of two parts of me. There was both this more damaged younger part of me who was soaking up all the negativity. and it was like a tsunami and just making a bad situation worse. And then there was maybe a future version of me or a higher self or whatever who was angry, who started to get angry. So there were times that I was angry or frustrated. I was so humiliated.

16:27Once you got out of this isolation, essentially, I guess we could call it, right? how did people in your life treat you and did you see a difference in the way that like men versus women treated you like was there a difference i i think what was interesting that i i started to see um in the public arena was that it very sadly it was a lot of women who said worse things about me than the men. The men told a lot of jokes, right? So the late night hosts. I think when Jay Leno retired, some media boop-de-boop, whatever organization, had done a study and listed the top 10 targets, his top 10 targets of his late night show.

17:27and I was on that list. And so, and I was the only person who wasn't a public figure in this, you know, these are, so it was, I think the men told the jokes, the women sort of eviscerated me. And look, also let's recognize that while there were so many ways that I think Bill's behavior was more reprehensible than mine, I did make mistakes. So I, you know, I think we see it very differently now. And even through that lens, I still made mistakes. I still did things that were wrong. I think I've recognized and I think a lot of women can experience too, especially with media now, it's like, which we'll get to about the double standard, because yes, you made the mistake.

18:21But I I feel like there's also a conversation online of just like, but the person within the marriage is the one that truly has the right and is supposed to be the loyal one. And I find that we are always crucifying the other woman. And then there's a level of complexity of there is a power imbalance of you are 22 and this man is 49. So there's so much complexity of it makes me sad for you that women tearing you down. I get it with an affair. I think it's a trigger point for a lot of women. Yeah. The way that they could identify whether they had been cheated on by their husbands. You know what I mean?

18:59Everyone's coming at it from the angle that they can personally relate to or their fears or their insecurities. But the outbreak essentially from all these women towards you, in my opinion, like it's devastating because now I think hopefully, like do you feel a difference when women talk to you about it today versus back then? Absolutely. Well, I mean, it was, I think that it really was the younger generation. When I wrote my first person essay for Vanity Fair in 2014, it was, you know, your generation and the younger generations that really insisted on reevaluating this story, because you were all coming to it with just the facts, not having gone through the brainwashing or lived through that media lens and bringing different perspectives.

19:50that happen throughout generations, right? From generations. And so it was really interesting to have this front row seat to observe in the very beginning of the article coming out, it was sort of the same voices saying the same thing. Oh, you know, go away. You had your 15 minutes. And then it was the younger generation, the younger journalists, the younger women journalists who were starting to say, hold up, you know, all the things that you just said about the power differentials on both from age and within the resources, resources of both money and power and kind of, I don't know, people who work for you who are able to disseminate information.

20:37I had to, you know, hire lawyers. I'd never done any of those things.

20:57The White House basically left you out to dry after the president made a public statement claiming he never had sexual relations with you. How did you feel having to watch that and hear him say that? You know, in the moment, I was split because I felt so guilty. I felt so guilty for everything. I felt like this having become public was my fault. Why? Because I had confided in Linda. And so if I had not confided in her, I felt as if this wouldn't have become public. And so there was an enormous amount of guilt. I didn't want him to lose his job. So there was a part of me that felt, good, deny it.

21:55This is what you should do, that sort of a thing. And then there was a part of me that was so humiliated and to kind of have the most powerful man in the world saying that, you know, basically your damaged goods like is not something not something you want as a 51 year old woman and not something you want as a 24 year old woman. the white house like you referenced earlier tried to frame you as this like unstable stalker but what the evidence then went on to reveal was the president called you often gave you gifts how did you at the end of the day during all this reconcile what people were saying about your relationship and then what you knew to be true and what you lived with this person It was, well, it was gaslighting, you know, so I, you know, I think that was what I experienced on a pretty large scale.

23:02And it was, it was devastating, you know, it was devastating at the time. And I think what, you know, what we see now in today's world and as a grown woman, I hate to break it to any 24-year-olds listening to this because I know from 21 to 20, like 25, you think you know everything. You're like, I'm a fucking adult now. I know everything. I'm so sorry to tell you. You will look back on this time and be like, oh, little 20-year-old me. Little girl. Yeah, no. So I, you know, I thought it was something it wasn't. And I, my feelings were real. And it, it was very frustrating and painful.

24:05to have people talking about this in a way that was untrue. In the midst of all of this, we're talking about how you're reading things online about yourself. You're watching the news. They're calling you a whore and they're slut shaming you and they're calling you unstable and mentally unstable. And you're seeing all of this. Did you ever have a moment during all of this where you started to doubt yourself and you started to feel like you were going a little crazy? Oh, 100 percent. I think that there were, you know, right. That's the whole the whole goal of gaslighting. Right. So, I mean, I don't think the White House's intention was to gaslight me.

24:50I think the intention was to stay in power and to get out of legal jeopardy. but that's you know i i think that is the core of being gaslit is you do start to doubt yourself i also think what i want to get into talking about too is like as a young person when you're going through something traumatic your understanding of it in the moment is that and then you're also somewhat in fight or flight and you're like trying to digest it in any capacity you can And then as time goes on, you're able to, with time in a beautiful way, start to actually look at it a little bit more objectively as time goes on because you're farther away from it.

25:32So I can imagine like the way that you felt about it in the moment, you now have different perspectives and that's okay. And I think there's like a lot of shame of people who go through these traumatic moments in their life where people are like, well, how did you feel in that exact moment? You're like, I don't know. I need to process it. I need time to think. and I can imagine people asking you questions paparazzi being outside it's like oh yeah being up on a stand it's like you didn't you knew the truth but you also had to protect your like mental sanity of like I need time to heal and to digest the fact that I thought I was in this relationship now it's out to the world what is happening right like it's a lot yeah um what was your rock bottom moment in all of this?

26:14Oh my gosh, there were many. It's interesting. In the moment, the rock bottom moment was probably, it was several months into the investigation. And I guess whatever the layering of whatever had come out in the news that day, whatever it was, It was just too much. And I had remembered thinking, okay, I was able to, the first two weeks of the investigation, I didn't have a therapist. I couldn't go on medication. And eventually I was able to get a therapist who had to be a forensic psychologist who was amazing, Dr. Susan. I'm still grateful to her today. And I remember thinking, okay, I'm going to call her.

27:10And if she answers, then I'm staying. And if she doesn't, I'm out. So I think for me, that was rock bottom. And that, again, just kind of the maelstrom of media and 24-hour news and the internet, you know, the report coming out was the first time that you missed history being made if you didn't have access to the internet. Like Google had just launched, web traffic doubled overnight. Like it's just, those are the kinds of things that we just can't even fathom now, right? I mean, and this was all pre-social media, but all the news outlets had like www representation and comment sections and things like that.

28:02So that was a moment where I think, I don't know, sorry, I'm babbling a bit. You're doing great. I don't know if you ever had anything like this when you were growing up, but I had a couple of different moments in grade school where it was like, I did something embarrassing and that feeling of like, I don't want to go to school. The whole class knows. The whole grade knows. Everybody's going to this and that. And so that's one level of what we experienced. Or if I'm at a dinner party and I knock over, I don't drink anymore, but if I knocked over a glass of red wine on the white tablecloth, you're mortified in front of this group.

28:41And you're able to draw a mental perimeter around that. And what I experienced and now why I care so much about anti-bullying with young people, because I understand what this is online and with social media, there is no border. and you literally, it literally feels like the entire world is laughing at you and it is devastating. I appreciate you explaining it like that because I never thought about it. Like when you're in that restaurant and you spill the wine, you go home that night and you envision those exact faces at that table and you're like, oh my God, I hope they forget this. I hope that like, but you have a visual.

29:23Right. And what you're describing, if anything, yeah, you have like the most real horrific lived experience of what now so many kids are living online which is this like unseen beast out there that is talking about you that is taunting you that is speaking about you and they've never met you they don't know you they don't know your character they're just taking what they've seen glimpses online like didn't they even just like use your passport photo when they oh my god my work passport photo jesus it was the worst all manipulated right like who wants their passport but it's all but that's so right media of to train someone to believe something about yourself in those rock bottom moments that you just shared with me like having the weight of truly the world on you of people talking about you and you were contemplating is it easier to just not be here what kept you going me?

30:25I call them moments of grace. And so I think if you have that moment of grace, and I don't know that beauty is the right word, but the beauty of having one moment of grace is that somewhere lodged in the back of your mind will always be that experience of having had that grace. You get through the moment and things get better. It doesn't always just continue better and better for the rest of your life. But once you've, you know, and that's, it's especially why I worry so much about young people because they haven't had enough life experience to like now at 51, when something, you know, bad happens and feels devastating.

31:09I have a whole folder of times that I've had fucked up thing happen. I'm devastated, whatever it is. And then it got better, you know, And now I panic even less and less, which is amazing. I'm so grateful for that. So yeah, young people listening, don't let anybody tell you it is not great to get older because your 50s are fucking amazing. Yeah. You have a long time to get there, girl, but it's amazing to feel so comfortable with yourself. Right. And to know what to expect, know how you react, know what upsets you, know what you can get through. like your threshold, you start to learn more and more.

31:50Boy, I think you, I think really, and maybe women of older generations weren't able to do this, but at least how I feel is, I know the operating manual to me, you know? And that is one of the most empowering things I think anybody can have, but especially a woman. It is so heartbreaking because you weren't the only one that participated in this relationship. And yet you were the one who objectively took the hardest hit. Yeah. Did you ever enter the anger stage where you were like, fuck this? It took me a really long time. And like I was not until 2010. So this 1998 to 2010, there were, I would have moments of being angry.