The Clintons Wrote Trump's Playbook.

The Clintons are refusing to testify about Jeffrey Epstein.

Are they being singled out? Yes, but not because of some neutral pursuit of truth. They are being singled out because Donald Trump needs to disappear from the scandal. The spotlight has to land somewhere, and the Clintons are the most familiar, most useful decoy.

Do they have a right not to testify? No.

Both things can be true at the same time, and pretending otherwise is once again the trick.

This is not random scrutiny. This is political misdirection. Trump’s name, his photographs, his recorded praise of Epstein, his long documented proximity to him, all of it is inconvenient. So the story is redirected to the Clintons, where outrage already lives and where fatigue makes people stop asking new questions.

But here is the harder truth. The Clintons helped build the template that makes this maneuver work.

Long before Trump, they perfected the posture. Not illegal, technically. Not required, procedurally. Handled by lawyers. Dismissed as partisan. Every controversy met with the same response, deny, minimize, lawyer up, outlast the news cycle.

Hillary Clinton’s private email server was not a felony, but it was secretive, dismissive, and grounded in the belief that normal rules did not quite apply. It was the insistence that transparency was optional if you were important enough and careful enough.

Bill Clinton’s meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac during the 2016 campaign was not prosecuted, but it was wildly inappropriate. Everyone knew it. The optics were indefensible. The explanation insulted the public’s intelligence. And once again, the response was technical compliance paired with moral shrugging.

And then there was Monica Lewinsky.

What they did to her was devastating. She was young, powerless, and disposable, and they destroyed her to protect power. I participated in that destruction. I fell in line. I swallowed the framing. I mocked, dismissed, minimized. I have apologized for that because she deserved better, and we failed her.

Taken together, this is the pattern. Not one scandal. Not one woman. Not one mistake. A repeated willingness to push ethical boundaries, to rely on legality over legitimacy, and to treat public trust as something to be managed rather than honored.

That pattern did not end with their exit from office.

When Mamdani won his nomination, the Clintons were instrumental in attempting to undermine him. Not through open debate. Not through policy disagreement. Through whispers, delegitimization, and behind the scenes pressure meant to weaken him after the voters had already spoken.

It was the same playbook. Question legitimacy. Sow doubt. Frame the winner as dangerous or unserious. Work the system rather than respect the outcome.

This matters because it shows continuity. These are not retired figures watching the erosion of democratic norms with concern. They are still actively using the same tactics we now condemn when they come from a Trump administration or Republicans in Congress.

Different rhetoric. Same behavior.

That is the most uncomfortable part of this story.

Jeffrey Epstein was a trafficker who fed on elite access. Anyone who moved in his orbit has an obligation to answer questions. Not because the law compels it, but because the moment demands it.

Refusing to testify is not about rights. It is about contempt. It says we will not participate in public reckoning unless forced.

That is not leadership. It never was.

And here is the line we do not get to cross without consequence.

We do not get to say the Clintons can behave this way simply because the behavior is now being weaponized around them by people acting in bad faith. We do not get to excuse it because the people exploiting it are more openly corrupt, more vicious, more destructive.

If this behavior is acceptable, then it is acceptable for everyone. And if it is not acceptable, then it cannot be acceptable for them either.

The only way to defend this refusal is to argue that they are no different from the people we now call evil.

That is not rhetorical.

That is the question that still has to be answered.

Are they?