NOTHING is ever as it seems in the Clinton sex scandal. Friday night, a couple of the president’s tormentors, Matt Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg, went uptown to Elaine’s, and what happened there is the subject of dispute.
Cybergossip Drudge had just completed taping an interview with Goldberg, Linda Tripp’s literary agent, for his “Drudge Report” on Fox News Channel. The two decided to unwind at the famous Upper East Side saloon.
According to owner Elaine Kaufman, they came in and asked for a smoking table, There are only five, all were occupied and because Elaine is very, very fastidious about enforcing the city’s draconian laws, she couldn’t accommodate them.
According to Kaufman, Goldberg pointed at a lone diner on table No. 1 and asked why they didn’t get rid of him to make room for her and Drudge. Nothing doing, of course, so the odd couple left the restaurant.
Goldberg yesterday insisted to me that she had made no such demand. “There wasn’t a smoking table, so we left. End of story,” she says. Whatever, Goldberg says she’s enjoying the impeachment trial and expects to be watching it (and puffing away in the privacy of her own home) for at least another six weeks.
Goldberg thinks Monica Lewinsky was showboating when she ran the media gantlet at D.C.’s Mayflower Hotel over the weekend. “Political mistresses have been going in and out of that hotel undetected for a hundred years,” she says. “She could have used the basement elevator, but Monica wants the attention.”
Goldberg expects Lewinsky, Betty Currie and Vernon Jordan to be called as Senate witnesses. “They all lied and their lies are on the record,” she says. As for the eventual verdict: “Who knows? If Clinton beats this rap, it’s OK because we will then be able to confront him with the rest of the scandals.”
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