Some people will think her the worst bestie since Judas, but she’s more of a John Dean figure to her addled mind.īack at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a more consequential family meeting is going down. She warns her kids of the impending media storm without actually telling them what she did. The world is fragmenting into dangerous shards, but instead of following the momentum, we take a drive to suburban Maryland to check on Linda. When Drudge clicks publish, Monica is railroaded into cooperating with Starr, and the president’s perjury is all but confirmed. We’re over halfway through the season, and Impeachment’s story lines are at long last collapsing. What happens next is famous, or at least D.C.-famous: Drudge scoops Newsweek on Newsweek’s own story, literally every outlet picks up the allegations, and the moment that should have been Mike’s instead belongs to Matt. “Sometimes it’s just not worth being first,” says his gutless editor, about 15 seconds before Matt Drudge somehow finds out the story is dead. If I were Mike Isikoff, I would burn down the newsroom, so it seems super-reasonable to me that all he does is yell a little. Plus, Newsweek is planning to finally run Mike Isikoff’s story, after which all deals might be off the table.ĬUT TO: Newsweek decides to spike Isikoff’s story about the president securing a private-sector job for his mistress. They still don’t have Monica’s immunity deal in writing, and tipping off the president doesn’t send peak “cooperating witness” vibes.
He also instructs Betty to give Monica a call, just to check up on her.īut having been scared straight throughout a Georgetown martini lunch with their attorney Bill Ginsburg, Marcia doesn’t let Monica answer Betty’s pages. He somehow wordlessly induces her to lie using nothing but words.
In a move as stealthy as it is chilling, Bill calls Betty into his office to confirm that she also remembers that she never ever ever ever ever left him and Monica alone. A few hours ago, the president was drafting the State of the Union in the Oval Office now, he’s just another bad husband struggling to understand how his 24-year-old girlfriend could have been so indiscreet. The lawyers ask him if the two have exchanged gifts, but Bill says he can’t remember because he gets and gives so many gifts later, he just says “yes.”īill’s confusion here is real, even if it’s not about the questions. Perhaps WJC’s lying when he says he’s never even met Paula Jones, and perhaps he’s lying when he says he didn’t harass Kathleen Willey, but he’s sure as shit lying when he says he’s never been alone with Monica. He swears to tell the whole truth and then proceeds to lie his face off. The president glad-handily thanks a room of suits for giving up their weekend to take his deposition. When the episode begins, though, we’re still in before times - before Drudge, before the beret footage, before Bill calls his mistress “that woman” on national TV. But also anyone who tuned in to watch Molly Shannon skewer her as an airhead on the SNL cold-open. Who’s responsible for “The Assassination of Monica Lewinsky”? Coulter and the Clintons, Linda Tripp and Ken Starr, too. The American media makes the more natural villain, from cable-news producers to late-night talk-show hosts. So it’s intriguing that Coulter’s entirely missing when Monica Lewinsky’s name graduates from the roster of forgotten White House interns to above-the-fold news. She’s there to connect the wrong people at the right moment she’s popping Champagne, the official drink of Schadenfreude, as she devours the Tripp tapes. Across the last few episodes, the character of Ann Coulter has come to typify the conservative mischief-makers that may or may not have been masterminding Bill Clinton’s impeachment (though the existence of such a network is one of the few things that the Clintons and the real Coulter agree on).