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The appointment of former independent counsel Ken Starr and constitutional-law professor Alan Dershowitz to President Trump’s impeachment defense team drew many surprised reactions on Friday.
But the most colorful response to the news definitely came from Monica Lewinsky on Twitter TWTR, +0.09% :
‘This is definitely an “are you f—ing kidding me?” kinda day.’
Her apparent reference to this latest impeachment development drew more than 10,000 retweets and approaching 70,000 likes by Friday afternoon.
While Lewinsky didn’t specify that she was reacting to Starr’s appointment, the two of them certainly have a history. Starr and Robert Ray, another lawyer being added to the team, exposed President Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with Lewinsky, then a White House intern, during the counselors’ five-year investigation of the Whitewater land-development deal in Arkansas in which Bill and Hillary Clinton participated. The allegations in the Starr report led to Clinton’s 1998 impeachment.
But while Clinton was acquitted, Lewinsky’s reputation was long tarnished by the affair — which was identified as often as “the Lewinsky scandal” as it was “the Clinton scandal,” as well as Monicagate and Lewinskygate — as she became the butt of late-night jokes.
Related: Monica Lewinsky: ‘Bill Clinton didn’t have to change his name’
Indeed, when the University of Southern California law professor Orin Kerr mused on Twitter last spring about what it would have been like if the Starr report (whose 453 pages were released in full) got the same treatment as the Mueller report (whose disputed four-page summary by Attorney General William Barr predated by several weeks the release of the redacted two-volume, 448-page Mueller report), Lewinsky responded, “if. f—ing. only.” Had the details of her private life been kept secret, that is to say, she might have avoided decades’ worth of crude commentary at her expense.
Related: Monica Lewinsky ‘wins the internet’ with fierce 3-word take on Mueller’s report
She recently noted that Trump’s impeachment had made her a “punchline” again. So she has become an advocate against cyberbullying, and speaks out about her own experience of being harassed, shamed and ridiculed since 1998.
But she’s also showed a flair for witty tweets that win internet accolades. For example, when asked, “What’s the worst career advice you’ve ever received” in July 2019, she tweeted the response that “an internship at the white house will be amazing on your resume,” complemented by an embarrassed-face emoji.
