What’s perhaps most striking about the conversation, though, are the specific terms of Clinton’s self-defense: the stuff about “women leaders.” His insistence that the story of what transpired between the chief executive and his intern is not complete—is not fully fair—unless one also appreciates how much else Clinton has done. Not to the one woman, but for all the others.

Yes, the woman in question—“that woman, Ms. Lewinsky”—might have described how she suffered from PTSD after the president had suggested to the world that she was a liar. Yes, a modern appreciation for the dynamics of power might lead one to see Clinton, in their affair, as an abuser of the power he wielded. Yes, there is a way in which sex that is consensual can also be sex that is wrong. But according to Bill Clinton, victim of context collapse, an accurate reading of the situation demands that those smaller facts be considered against the backdrop of the greater ones: Clinton, he insists that you remember, has elevated women. He has employed them. He has proven willing to weaponize his charm in order that one of them might get her shot at the greatest office in the land. Remember when Bill Clinton, at the Democrats’ 2016 convention, played with balloons, and the people, weary and in such deep need of levity, pretty much lost their minds? He did that for women—or, rather, for the one woman who said she would work for the many. He made himself childish so that the woman might win.

And that is one of the “gaping facts” Clinton is accusing Melvin of ignoring when the journalist dared to ask about #MeToo. Over his career in public service, Clinton is arguing, he has turned his respect for women into that most crucial of things: a system. “I had a sexual harassment policy when I was governor in the ’80s,” the former president informed Melvin, indignantly, during their exchange. “I had two women chiefs of staff when I was governor.” (At this, Clinton extended two fingers to emphasize the number.) “Women were overrepresented in the attorney general’s office in the ’70s,” he said. He added, seeming to anticipate the fact-check: “For their percentage in the bar.”

None of which, of course, changes the salient facts here: Working on behalf of women in general does not spare a person of accountability for his treatment of women in particular. Eric Schneiderman, in his capacity as New York’s attorney general, advocated for women’s rights; that is a separate matter from the allegations that he assaulted women he knew personally. Harvey Weinstein’s donations to Hillary Clinton’s campaign did nothing to mitigate his alleged monstrosities. And yet the outrage Bill Clinton displayed in his Today interview—how could people not appreciate his contributions to Women, capital W?—is becoming ever more familiar as #MeToo expands and normalizes and tugs at the edges of American culture. His umbrage is the stuff not merely of male victimhood, but also of the greater good, of but it only happened once, of deeply ingrained assumptions about the way power works in this country. Sacrifices must be made. Practicalities must be assessed. “I had two women chiefs of staff when I was governor,” Bill Clinton reminds Craig Melvin, when Melvin asks about Lewinsky, and what he is suggesting is that women, as a group, might be better served if those who have been the victims of abuse would hold their tongues and know their place and do the thing women have long been expected to do: Take one for the team.