Linda Tripp on the left's reassessment of Bill Clinton: 'They have nothing to lose, and this is now permissible'

At the Weekly Standard, Peter Boyer has published a piece based on an interview with Linda Tripp, i.e. the woman who convinced Monica Lewinsky to save the blue dress. Tripp was long ago branded the villain of the Lewinsky scandal, and the recent flood of stories reassessing Clinton’s legacy in light of his sexual behavior strikes her as too little, too late:

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“It’s a day late, and it’s a dollar short,” says Linda Tripp, who, 20 years ago, was thrust into the center of the sex scandal that led to Clinton’s impeachment. It was Tripp who revealed the president’s sexual relationship with a 21-year-old White House intern and, for her troubles, was painted as the villain of the sordid episode.

Tripp has a quiet life in Northern Virginia horse country, avoiding the public attention that was so unwelcome in the late 1990s. But the unending flow of headlines about the bad behavior of powerful men, she says, “is forcing me to relive a lot of it.” She’s unconvinced by recent calls in the press for Clinton’s deeds to be reconsidered in a more critical light. “They have nothing to lose, and this is now permissible,” she says. “The fact that the Clintons are dead in the water gives [the media] tacit approval to act like human beings. . . . It’s disingenuous.”…

“What information do they have at their fingertips today that they didn’t have 20 years ago?” Tripp asks. “What information has changed?”

What has changed? Answer: A Republican accused of similar misbehavior is now in the White House. The attack the left needs to use now is one they can’t really unleash without admitting their own hypocricy. So they are now, awkwardly admitting they were wrong. It costs them very little to do so at this point since Hillary lost the election. But they still don’t care about what Bill did, not really.

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Tripp says she always felt like a mother figure to Monica Lewinsky and when she realized the 22-year-old was acting like a rock groupie and being taken advantage of by President Clinton, she felt she had to say something. Tripp hasn’t spoken to Lewinsky in years but says she understands why Lewinsky is committed to the idea she was the president’s girlfriend:

Tripp says she has not spoken to Lewinsky in all these years but understands why she felt as she did. “Monica absolutely had to be seen, not just to others, but also to herself, as a bona fide girlfriend,” Tripp says. “She could not be seen as an orifice or a party to a situation where you call in someone for servicing and send them on their merry way.”

But that is what happened. As Boyer points out, Lewinsky and Clinton, “had six sexual encounters before they shared any meaningful conversation.” Clinton treated a very junior staffer as an in-house hooker and the left blamed Linda Tripp, Ken Starr, and the vast right-wing conspiracy. It was all a colossal effort at misdirection and it worked.

As recently as August, Amazon studios had announced plans for a movie called “Linda and Monica.” At the time, Tripp said she didn’t care who played her but quipped, “They should check John Goodman’s availability.” In the late 90s, John Goodman played Tripp on SNL in skits mocking her appearance.

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But since August, the head of Amazon studios, Roy Price, quit his job after being suspended over a sexual harassment allegation. On top of that, we’ve now had about two weeks of public reassessments of Bill Clinton. All that to say, Amazon may need to do a page-one rewrite on their “Linda and Monica” project. They should start the revision with this simple premise: Bill Clinton was a lying creep.

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Stephen Moore 8:30 AM | December 15, 2024
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