Who was Linda Tripp? Monica Lewinsky whistleblower slams Bill and Hillary Clinton as 'unwashed deplorables' in book
Bill Clinton's affair with White House employee Monica Lewinsky was an epoch-shaping scandal. The lid was blown through tapes from Linda Tripp, who had become close friends with Lewinsky in 1996 while the two worked in the Pentagon’s public affairs office. Lewinsky's whistleblower, Tripp, has labeled Bill Clinton a "registered sex offender", in her explosive new memoir, which recently came to light, after her death in April, this year.
In her posthumous book 'Basket of Deplorables', Tripp slammed the Clintons and accused the former president of being "a serial sexual predator". She also reportedly attacked his wife, and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and compared her to Republican president Richard Nixon. She claimed Hillary lied to stop the fallout from the Clinton scandals and Bill's "private and reckless serial addiction to women," while fostering her own Oval Office ambitions.
Tripp wrote that 22-year old White House summer intern Lewinsky was 'just a phase for Bill and their encounters never last for more than 10 minutes' in the book that is due for release on December 8, 2020. She wrote: "The Clintons are two of the most corrupt political operatives to ever grace the international stage. [They] are the great, unwashed deplorables instead of the American people who are not politically connected that they regard with such contempt."
She worked on the memoir with lawyer and author Dennis Carsten until her death and in which she claimed a bevy of women would slip into the Oval Office to see Bill. Tripp claimed all Hillary needed was to become the president and would "use language that would shock a sailor" to mock her husband when his infidelities got out of hand. "You f**king Jew b*****d," she screamed at him, Tripp claimed, while Bill called Hillary a "c**t."
Tripp said they only held hands for the cameras during the marital power conflict, saying, "They lived in a parallel universe of smoke and mirrors, bimbo eruptions, pay for play, sleazy land deals and private investigation."
She wrote: "[Lewinsky] became a psycho stalker and Bill, the narcissistic sexual predator, could not see what she became – until he tried to dispose of her. [There was] hysterical sobbing and frightening threats of suicide when the hopelessness of her situation with Bill sank in. She was just another in a decades-long string of malleable and eagerly enthusiastic sexual service providers." Tripp claimed Lewinsky schemed her way into an invite to Clinton's big birthday party at Radio City Music Hall and bragged about squeezing "his balls right in the middle of throngs of people."
Born on November 24, 1949, Tripp played a crucial role in the 1998 Bill and Lewinsky scandal. The New Jersey native had spent 20 years as a military secretary, following her Army husband around the globe. After their separation in 1990, she landed a job at the White House. When Bill entered the White House, she Tripp decided to stay on and work for White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum and deputy counsel Vince Foster, states the Washington Post. After two years, she was transferred to the Pentagon’s public affairs office and she was now a political appointee.
At 46, Tripp was 24 years older than Lewinsky, but probably because of her nurturing and understanding nature, the two became close. Lewinsky divulged details of her tortured affair with a married man and that turned out to be a significant revelation indeed. After a year of listening to Lewinsky, Tripp was contacted by a Newsweek reporter digging into allegations about Clinton’s womanizing and she was encouraged to secretly tape her conversations. Tripp recorded 22 hours of Lewinsky’s confessions and encouraged the young intern to save the infamous dress with a stain of presidential semen — just in case she needed evidence of the affair. In January 1998, Tripp called independent counsel Ken Starr and, soon after, agreed to wear a wire to meet Lewinsky at a local hotel, where FBI agents confronted Lewinsky bringing Bill's empire crashing down.
On April 8, 2020, Tripp, an alleged long-time heavy smoker, died after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of 70.