“The only thing Monica should have ever gotten was a thousand high-fives. She was an intern at the White House who blew the president. She did a great job," the host said of the infamous sex scandal.
Michelle Wolf is coming to
Monica Lewinsky’s defense, following
Bill Clinton’s contentious interview, after which he came under fire for indicating he wouldn't have done anything differently when asked to look back at his famous affair through the lens of the #MeToo movement. He also said he did not privately apologize to Lewinsky personally.
“Everyone is demanding apologies these days, and as I mentioned, I don’t apologize. But I’m happy to help you guys apologize, and I’m going to do it in a way that even the Bill Clintons of the world can get on board with – using a saxophone,” said Wolf in a preview for the June 10 episode of her Netflix series
The Break with Michelle Wolf. Before weighing in on the Clinton scandal, Wolf introduced a new segment dubbed as “Saxophone Apologies," where a saxophone player would accompany her blunt apologetic statements with a musical background. Clinton famously played the saxophone in a 1992 appearance, during his first presidential campaign, on The Arsenio Hall Show.
“People can debate what kind of apologize Bill owes Monica, but one thing he owes her for sure: oral. If someone goes down on you, you go down on them! Standard double down rules,” the late-night host joked.
Reiterating that “Bill didn’t reciprocate,” Wolf explained that the “egregious” act should have “infuriated women.” Wolf further explained: “The connection is so clear to me. The enthusiasm a man shows for cunnilingus is directly proportional to his commitment to public service. In fact, at town halls that’s the first thing we should ask politicians. ‘Do you satisfy your wife? Okay great, quick follow-up: Is he telling the truth? No, didn’t think so.'”
While Clinton was promoting his new novel with author James Patterson, NBC News' Craig Melvin asked the former president about his affair with the then-White House intern Lewinsky. When asked if he would handle the situation differently today, Clinton replied, "If the facts were the same today, I wouldn't." Clinton also said that he had never privately apologized to Lewinsky nor felt as if needed to.
Clinton revisited the interview, and the backlash he received, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert the next night. “When I saw the interview, I thought that because they had to distill it, it looked like I was saying I didn’t apologize and I had no intention to, and I was mad at me,” Clinton told Colbert. The former president then ensured that he hasn’t minded answering questions about the scandal but simply felt his recent comments were misconstrued. “The question had been asked by other people in this context and I didn’t mind at all,” Clinton said. “I didn’t like this one because it started with an assertion that I had never apologized.”
With Clinton coming under fire for his comments amid the #MeToo movement, Wolf took a moment to call out news outlets for being on a “high horse” and too late in their defense of Lewinsky.
To exemplify the contradictions, Wolf referenced news clips where Lewinsky was the subject of crude insults such as The Wall Street Journal formerly calling her “a little tart,” New York Magazine reporting that she went to a weight-loss camp as a child (“Very relevant to the story,” said Wolf) and the New York Times describing Lewinsky as a “ditzy predatory intern who was too tubby to be in the high school ‘in’ crowd.”
“Do you guys write for a newspaper or Regina George?” Wolf joked, making a reference to Rachel McAdams' villainous role in Mean Girls. “The only thing Monica should have ever gotten was a thousand high-fives. She was an intern at the White House who blew the president. She did a great job.”
Wolf then defended herself, saying that she never needs to apologize for she only made jokes about Lewinsky’s beret. “I don’t like berets! Beret is French for, ‘No. Stop. It’s fluffy.”
The full episode of Wolf's weekly half hour variety/sketch series will be available to stream on June 10.