Monica Lewinsky 'wins the internet' with joke about internship

Monica Lewinsky has made light of her affair with Bill Clinton with a tweet that quickly went viral.

“I have a joke” was trending on Twitter on Friday, prompting users to offer up one-line witticisms. When one user tweeted “I have a Charles Manson joke and it kills”, Lewinsky offered her own take: “I have an intern joke and it … nevermind.”

By Saturday morning, the tweet had been liked more than 350,000 times. “Monica wins the internet,” tweeted Mia Farrow.

Lewinsky was an intern at Bill Clinton’s White House when she had an affair with the president, which led to Clinton’s impeachment after he lied about it.

After an investigation and trial which featured excruciating detail about what Lewinsky and Clinton did, the president was acquitted by the Senate. Clinton was 49 at the time. Lewinsky was 22.

In March, the 42nd president faced criticism after he said the affair was something he did to “manage my anxieties”.

“It’s not a defense,” he said, “it’s an explanation. It was awful. I feel terrible.”

Lewinsky has joked about the affair before. Earlier this month, the comedian Sarah Cooper tweeted: “My advice to the younger generation: make your mistakes now. Because by the time you’re 40, you’ll barely even remember them! And then you get to make the same mistakes all over again [and] it’s really fun.”

Lewinsky shared the tweet with the comment: “Uhhhmmmmmm.”

Lewinsky has also spoken about how she was demonised and humiliated during the scandal, while Clinton was protected by his power and influence.

“I felt like every layer of my skin and my identity were ripped off of me in 1998 and 1999,” she told the Guardian in 2016. “It’s a skinning of sorts … the shame sticks to you like tar.”