I’m watching The Clinton Affair on A&E, all about Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey and Monica and impeachment. The parallels with that witch hunt and the current witch hunt are striking. Both independent counsel investigations are totally partisan efforts to get the President by any means necessary, and both are perpetrated by a cabal of the President’s enemies.
The main difference between then and now is that then the press was largely on Clinton’s side, doing their best to portray Paula Jones as an ignorant trailer trash hick, and Monica Lewinsky as a psychotic slut. Whereas now it’s all orange man bad all the time, no benefit of the doubt allowed. The mainstream press, which was the only press there was at that time, didn’t print the Monica story. So guess who did? Drudge Report. It was the beginning of the internet alternative.
But the similarities are uncanny. The special counsel can’t make a case on the original target, the Whitewater real estate deal and the Madison Guaranty Bank, all stuff that happened in Arkansas when Bill Clinton was Governor and Hillary was at the Rose Law Firm. So they start going after people for other things, mostly lying about this or that. They are desperate to have something to show for the year that they have wasted, and then the Paula Jones civil suit happens. And then, mirabile dictu, Linda Tripp calls on the phone, out of nowhere, with some hot info about a young intern named Monica Lewinsky.
Lucianne Goldberg (the mother of Jonah Goldberg, well known conservative writer for National Review, and virulent anti-Trumper) is managing Linda Tripp, who is managing Monica Lewinsky, and the magic dress is preserved. Linda has a collection of tapes of her phone conversations with Monica, which are illegal in Maryland, but the Starr team grants her immunity. Linda Tripp is like a very evil person.
Bill Clinton was arguably doing a pretty good job as President. None of this had anything to do with his Presidential duties. And, as it turned out, the American people didn’t give a shit who he had sex with, and they didn’t care if he lied about it.
I hated what they tried to do to that sleazy sexual predator President Clinton, and I hate what they are trying to do to President Trump.