In what is certain to qualify as performance art with subpoenas, the Clintons have agreed to testify before Congress.
The question that immediately hit me? Why do we need both Clintons?
I paraphrase the late Tina Turner and ask, “What’s Hill got to do, got to do with it?”
Is she Bill’s moral support dog, there to fetch memories, play dead, and rollover whenever the word “Epstein” is spoken?
Here’s the straight-faced version, as reported by MSN.
Bill and Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify in a House investigation related to Jeffrey Epstein. According to Bill’s spokesperson, Angel Ureña, the Clintons “negotiated in good faith,” while Chairman James Comer apparently did not. The Clintons, we are told, look forward to “setting a precedent that applies to everyone.”
Which is fascinating, because if there is one thing the Clintons are known for, it is their lifelong dedication to rules applying to everyone equally.
We do not yet know when or where the testimony will occur. As for where, I have a modest suggestion. Hold it on the tarmac at Sky Harbor Airport, just for old times’ sake. And maybe for added drama, invite Loretta Lynch?
Back to Hillary’s presence.
Hillary Clinton has not been accused of riding Epstein’s jet to his private island. There is no famous photo of her in a blue dress hanging on anyone’s wall (thankfully). Her role appears to be that of a human footnote, present for symmetry, optics, and possibly to make sure Bill does not answer the wrong question with too much enthusiasm.
Bill, on the other hand, brings a much thicker binder to this meeting.
He has history. He has associations. He has the kind of résumé that makes congressional staffers sharpen their pencils and practice keeping a straight face. If there is anyone who can turn a yes or no question into a twenty-minute seminar on nothing in particular, it is Slick Willie himself. Expect the verbal equivalent of jazz. Notes will be played. A melody may not emerge.
Will anything new come out of this? Doubtful. The Clintons have been doing this dance since flip phones were cool. Their ducks are not just in a row. They are in formation, vaccinated, media-trained, and under non-disclosure agreements. With Epstein dead, the list of people left who can speak freely has gotten shorter than a Clinton apology.
From what has dribbled out of the most recent document dumps, many of the victims have already been paid to keep quiet.
As for others, they have been strongly encouraged to rediscover the joys of silence. That is not cynicism. That is pattern recognition. The Clinton brand has never been about transparency. It has been about survival.
Still, the hearings will accomplish something.
They will suck oxygen out of the news cycle like a Shop-Vac in a broom closet. Democrats will eagerly point to this circus as proof that Republicans are obsessed with the past, conveniently ignoring anything inconvenient happening in the present. World peace negotiations. Economic wins. Miraculous feats like bending inflation without breaking reality. Look over here, not over there.
No matter how this plays out, a few things are already written in stone. We know Bill Clinton enjoyed the company of young women with the enthusiasm of a man who never met a boundary he didn’t want to negotiate. We know Hillary Clinton was not wandering the White House unaware, clutching a clipboard and asking staffers if anyone had seen her husband. And we know that Republicans will stage a grand spectacle, complete with righteous speeches and stern looks, that will end exactly where it began. With everyone claiming victory and nothing actually changing.
So tune in when the cameras roll. Watch two of the most seasoned political survivors in American history testify under oath. It will be polished. It will be evasive. It will be strangely nostalgic. Congress will ask questions. The Clintons will answer different ones. And somewhere, deep in the American psyche, a familiar thought will whisper, again: somehow, they always walk out the same door they walked in through.
