Transcript: Monica Lewinsky on Call Her Daddy Podcast: An Intern vs. The President

And it was—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.

Finding Support in Crisis

ALEX COOPER: 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, your frontal lobe is still not fully developed. You are in a situation that, 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. Were you able to confide in at least your mom? Did you have to hold all of this by yourself in that moment?

MONICA LEWINSKY: Well, I think the moment in the hotel—so in the hotel room they wouldn’t let me call anybody at first. And 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. And 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. And 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 pressure tactics.

And so I basically said, I can’t make a decision unless I talk to my mom. So they finally let me call my mom. And then she came down from New York and was—so I was waiting for her to come down and then she called my dad, who was at a medical conference with his best friend who was a malpractice attorney, which is how I ended up with a malpractice attorney as my first attorney.

ALEX COOPER: There’s a level of, we can’t fathom what as a young woman you were feeling. And 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.

MONICA LEWINSKY: 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? 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. And so I was actively discouraged from getting a lawyer. And I mean, I remember very distinctly the moment of it sinking in about what it would mean for this to come out and impact my family.

So I had a younger brother in college. My dad’s an upstanding doctor in the community. My mom has her own world, too, and my stepmom. And so that—and the kind of shame and knowing that I had—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.

Life Under Siege

ALEX COOPER: So the media attention, there’s paparazzi outside at all times. What were you doing every day? Were you going stir crazy?

MONICA LEWINSKY: 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 could 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. So that’s 12 articles a day on just this story. So it was—and that was one news outlet, and this was global.

The Media’s Narrative

ALEX COOPER: Can you explain initially, once this all broke, how right off the bat was the media portraying you?

MONICA LEWINSKY: 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 or mentally unstable, a bimbo. Both 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 what happens when you have a power imbalance in a story where media is so integral to it unfolding.

ALEX COOPER: I can’t imagine the feeling of for a second being like, well, I guess that’s what—oh, my God. Wait, that—that’s not me. How are they—how are they—why are they calling me a whore? Why are they calling me a slut? How am I the pursuer? Can you explain how the name calling and the slut shaming slowly started to chip away at the way you felt about yourself?

The Weight of Public Shame

MONICA LEWINSKY: Yeah, well, I think I can’t say this 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. 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.

And 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 a, you know, maybe a future version of me or a higher self or whatever who was angry, who started to get angry. So it was… there were times that I was angry or frustrated. I was so humiliated.

Women Against Women

ALEX COOPER: Once 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 men versus women treated you? Like, was there a difference?

MONICA LEWINSKY: I think what was interesting that I started to see in the public arena was that 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 organization had done a study and listed the top 10 targets of his late night show. And 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.

ALEX COOPER: 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, but 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 think 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.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Yeah.

ALEX COOPER: The way that they could identify whether they had been cheated on by their husbands. You know, I mean there’s… everyone’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?

A Generational Shift

MONICA LEWINSKY: 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 that happened 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 both from age and within the resources, resources of both money and power.

Kind of people who work for you who are able to disseminate information. I had to hire lawyers. I’d never done any of those things.

“I Never Had Sexual Relations With That Woman”

ALEX COOPER: The 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?

MONICA LEWINSKY: 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 that I had, 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. This is what you should do, you know, 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 you’re damaged goods… is not something, not something you want as a 51-year-old woman and not something you want as a 24-year-old woman.

ALEX COOPER: The White House, like you referenced earlier, tried to frame you as this 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?

Gaslighting on a National Scale

MONICA LEWINSKY: It was, well, it was gaslighting, you know, so I, you know, I think that was what I experienced on a pretty large scale. And 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 25, you think you… nope. Everything. You’re like, I’m a f*ing adult now. I know everything.

I’m so sorry to tell you. You will look back on this time if you’re like, oh, little 20-year-old me. Yeah. No, so I, you know, I thought it was something it wasn’t and I… my feelings were real and was very frustrating and painful to have people talking about this in a way that was untrue.

ALEX COOPER: In the midst of all 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 men 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?

MONICA LEWINSKY: Oh, a hundred percent. I think that there were, you know… right. That’s the whole goal of gaslighting. Right. So, I mean, I don’t think the White House’s intention was to gaslight me. I think the intention was to stay in power and to get out of legal jeopardy. But that’s, you know, I think that is the core of being gaslit, is you do start to doubt yourself.

Processing Trauma Over Time

ALEX COOPER: 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 trying to digest it in any capacity you can.

And then as time goes on, you’re able to, with time and beautiful way, start to actually look at it a little bit more objectively as time goes on because you’re farther away from it. So I can imagine the way that you felt about it in the moment, you now have different perspectives, and that’s okay.

And I think there’s 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… I need time to think. And I can imagine people asking you questions, paparazzi being outside.

MONICA LEWINSKY: It’s like, oh, yeah.

ALEX COOPER: Being up on a stand, it’s like, you didn’t… you knew the truth, but you also had to protect your 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. What was your rock bottom moment in all of this?

Rock Bottom

MONICA LEWINSKY: Oh, 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 and 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. 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 you know, all the news outlets had like WWW representation and comment sections and things like that. So that was, you know, that was a moment where I think, I don’t know, sorry, I’m babbling a bit.

ALEX COOPER: You’re doing great.

The Unbounded Nature of Online Humiliation

MONICA LEWINSKY: 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 experience.

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 know, you’re mortified in front of this group and 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 it literally feels like the entire world is laughing at you. And it is devastating.

The Weight of Public Scrutiny

ALEX COOPER: I appreciate you explaining it like that because I never thought about it. 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. But you have a visual, right?

And what you’re describing, if anything, yeah, you have the most real horrific lived experience of what now so many kids are living online, which is this 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. Didn’t they even just use your passport photo when they…

MONICA LEWINSKY: Oh my God, my work passport photo. Jesus. It was the worst.

ALEX COOPER: It was all manipulated, right? Who wants their passport? No, but it’s all. But that’s so media of. To train someone to believe something about yourself in those rock bottom moments that you just shared with me. 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?

Moments of Grace

MONICA LEWINSKY: I call them moments of grace. And so I think if you have that moment of grace and the, 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. Now at 51, when something bad happens and feels devastating, I have a whole folder of times that I’ve had f*ed 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, don’t let young people listening, don’t let anybody tell you it is not great to get older because your 50s are amazing. Yeah, you’re a long time to get there, girl. But it’s amazing to feel so comfortable.

ALEX COOPER: With yourself and to know what to expect, know how you react, know what upsets you, know what you can get through, your threshold. You start to learn more and more.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Boy, 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.

The Unequal Burden

ALEX COOPER: 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.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Yeah.

ALEX COOPER: Did you ever enter the anger stage where you were like, f* this?

MONICA LEWINSKY: Yeah, took me a really long time. And I was not until 2010. So this 1998 to 2010, there were, I was, I would have moments of being angry, but I didn’t realize how much I had lost until I came out of graduate school and I couldn’t get a job.

And also, I think at the point where I was, because I was in my early 30s, so now all of my friends have gotten married. Most of them have kids. Some of them are even going on to their second marriages, you know, second and third kids. And I’m still, I have nothing, you know, or that feeling of nothing. And, you know, it’s, it very much was. That was the point when I realized how much had been taken from me.

ALEX COOPER: To also be fair. And I think that’s a very normal answer that anyone who has experienced a form of trauma would be. There’s the, I’m not going to say dissociating, but in some capacity, you have to dissociate to keep moving. And then one day it just kind of hits you of your reality because you’ve gone through enough to get yourself back on your feet.

And you said, you graduate, and then you’re like, okay, I’m going to go get a job. This is normal. And then it’s no, you can’t get a job. When you say that, though, Monica, what do you mean? People were literally turning you down in job interviews?

The Job Hunt Nightmare

MONICA LEWINSKY: Oh, yeah. I mean, it was everything from, I wasn’t even allowed to go interview certain places. A place would say, no, we don’t, you can’t even come interview. Even though I was qualified to, because it was 2007, when I was job hunting. I was. And then Hillary was running in 2008, so there was this high likelihood that she would become president or, you know, or could get the nomination.

So I think at that point, she was expected to get the nomination. But of course, Barack Obama did. So at this period of time when I am job hunting, people were saying, well, could you get a letter of indemnity? I can never say this. I had Bell’s palsy a few years ago. Sometimes. Yeah. So sometimes some words are still a little hard for me.

But indemnity, asked me if I could get a letter of indemnification if they hired me because they relied on grants, and so they were worried that they would lose all their funding. So it was, it was. There were a couple places that, you know, were interested to hire me, but would be like, well, you’d be interacting with the media. So, I mean, it’s just, you know.

ALEX COOPER: Was there ever a point that you, not that you should, but was there ever a point that you or anyone in your family thought of changing your name or your last name at all?

Keeping Her Name

MONICA LEWINSKY: Yeah, I mean, I think that there, there was definitely a period of time that I contemplated it, except given the world we lived in, I couldn’t even see a reality of that. Right? How is that really going to work? Right? I’m going to walk down the street in LA where I was raised and run into someone and they’ll say, Monica. And I’ll, you know, oh, my name is Rebecca now. I mean, it just. I didn’t even know how that would, how that would work.

Or people had suggested to me, well, you could put a different name on your CV. And I thought about that. But then, you know, when you play that forward, you just, so what? I’m going to walk into a job interview, the person in their head is, that girl looks a lot like Monica Lewinsky. And, you know, and they’re looking at me and I’m looking at them and, you know, it’s just.

And then you’re also starting out, you know. You know, it’s sort of part of why I haven’t online dated is that whole thing of if you don’t want to use your name, you’re starting something out with a lie, you know, so that doesn’t totally feel right to me either.

But really more than just the practicality, I think as time went on, I also came to feel very strongly that I didn’t want to change my name. Why should I have to change my name? You know, I bet nobody has asked Bill if he needed, you know, did he ever think about changing his. Okay, I get, I get. Because he was most famous person in the world at a moment, and president, et cetera, but just, even the idea would never cross someone’s mind to a man, you know.

And also, too, I’m, you know, I regret a lot of different decisions I’ve made both prior to 98, post 98. I’m a human being, but I’m not ashamed of who I am. And so I think that, that, that was a really important, important thing.

ALEX COOPER: And I, and I hope, you know, in me asking that, I don’t think you should change your name, but hearing what you went through, I understand there may be people around you being like Monica, to get a job, maybe change last name. That is. I interviewed Amanda Knox at one point. Yeah, right. Yeah.

It’s there is this horrible reality that you have to, which we’re going to get to eventually of you have to decide how you’re going to live. Your just keep letting other people dictate it, even though it’s pretty hard because you’re saying I’m walking in places and no one will hire me. And it’s in the grand scheme, how are you not getting a f*ing job? You know what I mean? You’re a qualified.

Understanding Difficult Choices

MONICA LEWINSKY: And I was really, I was so lucky that I came from an upper middle class family that could help support me because I couldn’t earn an income. But you really, you know, when you’re sitting inside a scandal like this, you really come to understand why a lot of times women make the choices they do because those are the only f*ing options they have is to maybe pose nude in a magazine because you will get money and you can pay rent and put food on the table, you know, and so it’s a great point.

ALEX COOPER: It is.

MONICA LEWINSKY: You really come to understand choices people make and how hard it can be. I often think about that. We don’t examine and judge people by the things they don’t do or the things they turn down, you know.

ALEX COOPER: So true.

MONICA LEWINSKY: I mean.

ALEX COOPER: Yeah. To add color for my audience. I just want to read this. You were 22 years old, he was 49. You were an intern. He was the President of the United States. There is a clear power imbalance that they never focused on in the media when all this was coming out. How aware were you of this power imbalance?

Power Dynamics and Consent

MONICA LEWINSKY: I don’t think that was something we talked about, you know, very much back then. In the same way that we didn’t have words like slut shaming and fat shaming. You know, I think the, this story became, it felt very bifurcated. It was most Democrats, whether they believed him or not, were supportive. Most Republicans, whether they, you know, were opposed to. And that wasn’t something that we talked about a lot.

And I think that it was really in the wake of MeToo 2.0 that we really started to look at power imbalances under the umbrella of abuse of power.

ALEX COOPER: Yeah. In 2014 you said the relationship was consensual. In 2018 you said you were just reevaluating how power dynamics impact consent. Now today, where do you stand?

MONICA LEWINSKY: You know, it’s really still. I kind of landed in the place that I landed in 2018, which was this. Which was this sense of, I’m very clear, this was not sexual assault. And therefore, there’s a level of consensuality that was there.

And at the same time, because of the power dynamics and the power differential, I never should have f*ing been in that position. And so that’s where you just can’t even. I think that you can’t even understand what you’re walking into. And that’s where it’s the responsibility of the person with more power.

And that power can be age, it can be their job, it can be their financial resources. There could be myriad reasons that they have that. The tilt towards the power that way.

ALEX COOPER: No, and I appreciate you saying that, because the reality is when you’re, even when I’m going back and reading these headlines, oh, my gosh. The chaos of that people believed, even the people writing it, that you were this person coming, he’s the President of the United States.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Their Secret Service, you can’t.

ALEX COOPER: Through the halls, and you’re going after him.

MONICA LEWINSKY: It’s it doesn’t work that way.

Navigating Double Standards and Media Treatment

ALEX COOPER: You know what I mean? Again, Monica, and why I appreciate you talking with me about this is I see it every day still in media, in different corners of social media, even where a woman is being pinned as something. And when you are a woman that’s had any form of what you’re discussing and what I’m discussing of the slut shaming or the judgment or the double standard, it’s so obvious as a woman where I’m like, there’s just no f*ing… Hold on, hold on. Yeah, he’s the president, and she’s… And I think in a gorgeous way, I hope that we’re making some progress.

MONICA LEWINSKY: I think we have. I think…

ALEX COOPER: I don’t.

MONICA LEWINSKY: So I don’t know that it would be as different as people think it would be if it were with a young, charismatic Democratic president. But I think we have made some strides, just even in the fact that we have language. We now have nomenclature for these kinds of things that allow for more nuanced conversations.

How It Should Have Been Handled

ALEX COOPER: That’s a good point. When you look back once the news broke and how everything was handled by media and the White House, how do you think it should have been handled? Have you thought about…

MONICA LEWINSKY: Oh, my gosh. I think that… I think that he should have said… I’m now thinking this through. I don’t think I’ve answered this question before, but good question. I haven’t been asked that before.

So I think that the right way to handle a situation like that would have been to probably say it was nobody’s business and to resign, you know, or to find a way to find a way of staying in office that was not lying and not throwing a young person who was just starting out in the world under the bus.

And at the same time, I’m hearing myself say that, and it’s like, okay, but we’re also talking about the most powerful office in the world, you know. So I don’t want to be naive either, you know.

ALEX COOPER: Love that answer. Because you’re being honest. You’re like, as a human being, if we take a step back that… I agree with you. That is exactly how it should have been handled. It’s the least they could have done for you. Right. And not even for you, just for anybody.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Right.

ALEX COOPER: It was the truth. Right. But then we’re talking about the White House, and I think this is where it gets complicated, because at what cost? Are you just kind of thrown to the wolves to protect something larger?

MONICA LEWINSKY: I don’t know.

ALEX COOPER: I know we both don’t understand.

MONICA LEWINSKY: It’s complicated. You know, it’s really complicated because you are talking about issues and situations where so many people are impacted, you know. So I don’t know where the right… I don’t know where the right balance is, you know, because there was damage, no matter what.

I think there was so much collateral damage for women of my generation to watch a young woman to be pilloried on the world stage, to be torn apart, you know, from my sexuality, for my mistakes, for my everything.

ALEX COOPER: What you’re saying, though, is… I hear what you’re saying. It’s like this was such a large statement to the world about the way… And I get what you’re saying. At the time, there wasn’t this language, but the double standard. Here’s the example right here. Yeah, right. What we’re talking about. Yeah. Look, what came from all of this for you and for then the other party, it’s just… It’s not.

MONICA LEWINSKY: The consequences were just nowhere. You know, I lost my future. So, I mean, that was… That really was. I was lucky enough to hold on to a strand of my true self, but I lost my future. And so I’m so grateful for how my life has changed in the last 10 years.

ALEX COOPER: Yeah.

MONICA LEWINSKY: But it wasn’t… That certainly was not a given.

Apologies and Accountability

ALEX COOPER: You know, you made many public apologies. Have you ever received one in return?

MONICA LEWINSKY: I have had a handful of people who were involved at the time that I’ve run into in different ways who have acknowledged that they wish they had made different choices. None of the people who were, you know, sort of the above the fold names involved in the investigation. And I’m really grateful that I’m at a place where I don’t need it anymore.

ALEX COOPER: Was there ever a time where you felt like you did?

MONICA LEWINSKY: Oh, sure.

ALEX COOPER: Yeah.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Oh, sure. Well, I think that’s, you know, and that this is sort of something I don’t… I don’t know that I fully unpacked it yet for myself. You know, I think a lot of times with the writing I do, it’s like I have an idea for something and I sort of plant the seed and just let it… I’m like, okay, some version of me, it’s figuring it. It’s like figuring itself out to worm its way out onto a page.

But I think that a lot of that has to do with this… The intersection of… As my life changed, as people saw me more and more as my true self, as I was able to have more agency, that those things became less important because I was been able to… Even though I will always be defined in some way by my history, I am also defined by my present. And that’s… It’s important.

The Dark Decade and Finding Purpose

ALEX COOPER: It’s beautiful because I can imagine the way that you’re talking about being isolated and being trapped and not being able to speak to people for eight months and the emotional trauma that can do to a human being. Like you said, you weren’t prepared for any of this, and it hit you in the face and you had to just run with it because you had no other option to survive. And then you come out of this and it’s like, how many times did you think, like, wow, this… There is a potential. This will stay with me for the rest of my life?

MONICA LEWINSKY: Well, I had a whole… I call it my dark decade. I mean, it was a whole period of floundering and having no purpose. I mean, I’m always lucky. My family’s always been amazing. I’ve always had friends.

ALEX COOPER: Thank God you stepped away for about 10 years. That was my time.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Yeah.

ALEX COOPER: Did you date at all?

MONICA LEWINSKY: Yeah. Okay, so I have always dated. Not very… Not always successfully dated. And I was somebody who had wanted to get married and have kids, and I’m sort of past that point of having kids naturally.

ALEX COOPER: So that…

MONICA LEWINSKY: I think that was a focus for a long time. But it was definitely my… You know, my dating life has… Has been complicated. I think at times, you know, in…

Dating and Intimacy After Trauma

ALEX COOPER: Dating when you were trying to get back to some form of normalcy, did you find in moments that men were kind of in it for the wrong reason?

MONICA LEWINSKY: I’ve had a couple instances like that. I mean, it’s sort of this wide spectrum of… I think my bullshit detector for someone who was there for the wrong reason was… Has been pretty strong, luckily.

But then there have been, you know, there’s a wide spectrum of how intimacy goes after something like this. And it’s, you know, it’s like… I mean, thankfully, no one’s ever asked me to wear a beret in the bedroom. But, you know, I mean, there… There have been… You know, it’s complicated.

Look, I think our comfort level, and it might be generational, but I think comfort level of really feeling like you can own your own sexuality fully…

ALEX COOPER: Can…

MONICA LEWINSKY: Be one layer that many of us go through. When you add on the way I was sexualized and humiliated around sex, you know, it… It makes it more complicated, you know.

ALEX COOPER: So I appreciate you sharing that though. Because I couldn’t help but think, you know, there was this massive focus on your sex life in your 20s. And I’ve even talked about it in the beginning days of my show. It was way more sexual and it was fun. But then I would go on dates and I was like, wait, no, I think you have the wrong idea.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Or that’s one part of me. Yeah, that one part of me. It’s funny because what was amazing to me, I was thinking about coming in and sitting down with you and it was like, oh, you know, thanks to your… I think it was episode three. I’m like, you took the mantle of blowjob queen. I cannot thank you enough, you know, so… Oh my God, what was it? The GG9000.

ALEX COOPER: The Gluck Gluck 9000 girl. But it’s… I’m obsessed that you just said that. But that in itself is like there’s reclaiming of as women to be like, I’m going to own it first before you can own it. But then you talking about, you know, being slut shamed… How did you start to trust people again? Getting into a relationship with a man or going into a bedroom with a man that you think you trust.

Reclaiming Sexuality and Self-Worth

MONICA LEWINSKY: It’s, you know, I think that those… I think that the first handful of years, I was very self conscious because of how I’d been sexualized and because as we were talking before, of having the most powerful man, you know, wag their finger and say, “I didn’t have sex with that woman.”

And George Lakoff wrote this essay where he was talking about how… I wrote about this a little in one of my articles, but how we see… Because we haven’t had a f*ing woman president yet, but we see the male president as a father figure. This idea of the father of the country saying, you know…

And so I had concerns about that and I think that there again, because of my own self esteem issues already, I think that it impacted things. And I don’t drink anymore. I mean, I have champagne on rare… I’m not sober. I just don’t drink. So, you know, but I think that helped for a while.

And then, you know, I mean, I joke now, if I were still drinking, I’d probably have a lot more sex. But you know, because this sort of the moment in the night, you know, the moment in the night was like… Or I should say more casual sex. But that moment in the night where you’re sort of going to lean into this thing, you just start to get more self conscious, you know.

ALEX COOPER: And you start to get more self conscious and then you get in your head and I get what you’re saying. Having a glass of wine, it relaxes you. But I see what you’re saying. It’s like this, is this again the smaller version of what you experienced?

When I think so many women can relate to, whether it’s middle school or high school or college and a guy runs around saying something about a hookup with you, whether it was true or a lie. I’ve had that happen to me where you’re like, that’s not true, and you’re so embarrassed.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Yeah.

ALEX COOPER: And a lot of those moments, I then would replay my exchanges with that person and I don’t know if you had this where you’re self consciously being made fun of. So then you’re like, well, what did I… Do you know, do I make sense a little bit here? You’re just replaying what did I do and what was I like?

And as a woman, so much of our worth people put on us is our sexuality. So then to be publicly put down, you’re like, oh my God. And as a 24 year old woman, then it’s like, what am I worth? And of course you’re worth everything more than that. But at the time your self worth is like, well, and I had…

MONICA LEWINSKY: I had had a lot of… I had had some sexual trauma from when I was younger that, you know, we didn’t even have again, didn’t have language for the kinds of things that, you know, that happened. And so you don’t even know that you’re acting out. You know, you don’t even know. You can’t even piece those things together.

So it is. But I, you know, I’ve also been really lucky in… I haven’t been super successful at a relationship. I haven’t been successful at all at a relationship that goes the full distance. But I have been really lucky and dated some amazing men and those men each in their own way have helped me find a piece of myself again, you know.

Overcoming Shame as a Woman

ALEX COOPER: Can we talk about that for all the young women listening, you have tackled it head on, quite literally. And it is something that I think every woman in our lifetime, we experience it in a way that men just will not understand. Can you talk a little bit? If you have any advice on how to overcome shame as a woman, when someone is putting you down again sexually for not being enough, whatever it be.

MONICA LEWINSKY: I guess my brain’s going in a few places. But I guess the kind of good news and bad news is the good news is that those moments will dissipate. Like that shame spear that stabs you. That wound will heal.

The bad news is that we keep dealing with shame in different ways throughout life. And I think for me, the thing that is, I think of shame almost being like a bacteria in a petri dish, that it’s when you put it into this petri dish and it’s all by itself, it just grows, but it’s still alone.

And that’s the thing to know the most, is that almost everything anybody might feel shame about, somebody else is feeling the same thing. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s, you’re not going to feel some shame, but for it to lessen a bit in some ways. And it is. I wish, wish, wish. You know, we get to a place in our world where women can just sort of shirk the shame, you know, and just. You can’t even be shamed because that’s what we see with some men in the world who are shameless. And that’s, it’s complicated. It is. It’s something I still deal with, you know, so less and less. Yes.

Navigating Double Standards

ALEX COOPER: I want to just kind of conclude on the double standards. Okay, Any advice for women when it comes to navigating double standards in how we are treated versus men? I can only imagine the amount of women listening that have a workplace dynamic with a boss or a relationship or some financial situation. Do you have any advice?

MONICA LEWINSKY: I don’t know how successful I have been in trying to navigate the double standards. I think in some ways my own reclaiming is trying to, has been trying to open a path or continue a path that not a lot of women have been able to go through before, which is to be a fallen woman and to rise.

And so letting many other women know it doesn’t, I’m not the one to say this. This is a well known quote of just, you know, it doesn’t matter how many times you fall down, it matters how many you get up. And so I think that’s the most important thing. So I’m sorry I don’t have a better answer for you on that, Monica.

ALEX COOPER: It’s the most honest answer you can give. Because I have sat with so many people, I literally call my mom about it in moments where I’m frustrated if I see something online or in my real personal life. I grapple with it constantly because I start conversations like this. What do we do, Monica? You experience something on the biggest platform in the world. How do we change this?

Because as much as I would say it wouldn’t happen to another woman again, I do think it could happen to another woman again, looking at what’s going on in our world. And so I do think the reality, as upsetting as it is, is to say, I don’t think there is a solution yet. Yeah.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Because we’re working, you know. And I think the thing that is so important about change, and it’s one of the things I admire about you and I’m so excited for you and grateful to you, is that you are pushing forward in a path in business and podcasts as a young woman. Right up there. Right up there with these men who are valuing what their contribution is and their podcast, and they’re having that reflected to them and what they’ve done sold them for.

And you have done that, Alex. I hope you take that in every day. Because of you, other women are going to be able to have successful podcasts that they then move on to other places for. You know what I mean?

Mutual Admiration and Moving Forward

ALEX COOPER: No, I can’t. First of all, I can’t thank you enough for saying that. But I hope you know I feel the same way about you. The fact that you have chosen to sit here and continue to sit in front of cameras and speak about your experience, it makes me emotional.

It’s like, there are so many women that look at you, and it’s like, if she can get through that, then I can get through this. And it’s not that it should be your job to make people feel more seen and more hopeful, but it is so incredible that you haven’t given up and that you didn’t just go away and just decide to pull back.

You kept your f*ing name, Monica Lewinsky, and you’re not going anywhere. And that’s why I’m so excited for you. Podcasting is so incredible.

MONICA LEWINSKY: It’s so hard.

ALEX COOPER: So hard. But it’s so hard.

MONICA LEWINSKY: It’s so much harder than I thought.

ALEX COOPER: Everyone will give you grace in the fact that you are going on to this new venture.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Okay.

ALEX COOPER: I am so excited for you. I am going to give you my personal number, and I get here. Okay. Thank you. If you need any advice. Okay. Okay, last question.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Okay.

ALEX COOPER: If you could go back and talk to your 22 year old self. What would you tell her?

MONICA LEWINSKY: Do not go to Washington.

ALEX COOPER: Monica, thank you so much for coming on Call Her Daddy.

MONICA LEWINSKY: Thank you, Alex. This is so lovely.

Related Posts

• Scott Ritter: Full-Scale War as Iran Attacks All U.S. Targets (Transcript)
• Seyed M. Marandi: Israel & U.S. Launch Surprise Attack on Iran (Transcript)
• Joe Rogan Podcast: #2461 w/ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Transcript)
• Tucker Carlson Show: w/ Catherine Fitts on Control Grid, Banks’ Role in War (Transcript)
• Megyn Kelly Show: w/ Tucker Carlson on Epstein, Iran, America’s Gender Divide (Transcript)