In the hallowed, mahogany-scented halls of the Capitol, where logic goes to die and the ego is the only currency that hasn't suffered from inflation, we find ourselves once again forced to witness the latest installment of ‘The Great American Distraction.’ James Comer, a man whose primary contribution to modern governance is proving that you can indeed run a committee with the intellectual rigor of a middle-school detention hall, has found a new way to avoid doing anything of substance. He has rejected an offer to interview former President Bill Clinton regarding his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Why? Because the terms were ‘unreasonable.’ In the lexicon of Washington D.C., ‘unreasonable’ is code for ‘this wouldn't look good on a campaign flyer.’

Let us dissect this necrotic carcass of a political maneuver. James Comer, the Republican Chairman of the Oversight Committee, has spent months posturing like a man who has finally found the smoking gun, only to realize he’s holding a water pistol. When the Clinton legal team—a group of individuals who have likely spent more time crafting loopholes than most people spend breathing—offered a deposition under oath, Comer recoiled. One might think a man obsessed with the Epstein saga would leap at the chance to put a former president in the hot seat. But that would require Comer to actually possess the forensic skill to conduct an interview that doesn't immediately devolve into a series of stammering non-sequiturs. Instead, he rejects the offer, setting the stage for a ‘contempt’ vote. Contempt. It is the most honest word used in the beltway, though not for the reasons the politicians think.

On the other side of this pathetic ledger, we have Bill Clinton. The man is a walking relic of the nineties, a decade defined by the very kind of slick, legalistic gymnastics that he is currently employing. His team’s offer to be interviewed was, predictably, wrapped in more layers of protection than a biohazard suit. They offered an interview under oath, but with caveats that likely included things like ‘no questions about anything that happened between 1990 and the present’ or ‘the interviewer must maintain a distance of thirty feet.’ It is a classic Clintonian move: the appearance of cooperation while building a fortress of deniability. It is the ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’ defense, updated for the era of private islands and billionaire pedophiles.

What we are witnessing is a collision of two equally odious forces: the performative outrage of the modern Right and the calcified mendacity of the old-guard Left. Comer doesn’t want the truth about Epstein; if he found it, he might realize that the rot extends into his own social circles. What he wants is a process. He wants the subpoena, the rejection, the vote, and the subsequent appearance on a cable news network to complain about the ‘deep state’ or whatever other buzzword his base is currently salivating over. It is governing as content creation. He isn't an investigator; he's a mediocre YouTuber with a government pension.

And Clinton? He isn't a statesman defending the dignity of the office. He is a man desperate to keep the lid on a past that smells increasingly like a sulfur pit. The fact that the American public is expected to take sides in this slap-fight is perhaps the greatest insult of all. We are asked to choose between a grandstanding partisan hack and a former leader whose name appears on flight logs more frequently than most commercial pilots. It is a choice between a headache and a migraine, between a leak and a flood.

The proposed contempt vote is the cherry on this sundae of stupidity. To hold someone in ‘Contempt of Congress’ suggests that Congress is a body worthy of anything else. It is a performative act of self-importance. Comer will bang his gavel, the committee will vote along party lines, and the media will treat it like a constitutional crisis rather than the bureaucratic tantrum it actually is. Nothing will change. No victims will find peace, no truth will be unearthed, and the Epstein mystery will remain exactly where both parties want it: buried under a mountain of partisan bickering.

We live in a reality where the people in charge have abandoned even the pretense of functionality. They have replaced policy with posture and justice with jargon. Comer’s rejection of the Clinton interview isn’t a tactical move; it’s a confession. It’s a confession that the process is the point. They don’t want answers; they want an enemy. They don't want a resolution; they want a recurring segment on a prime-time talk show. As the world burns, these two-dimensional figures continue to dance their pathetic waltz, secure in the knowledge that the audience is too tired, too distracted, and too divided to demand anything better. Contempt? Yes, I have plenty of it. But it’s not for the person under subpoena—it’s for the entire, rotting stage they’re standing on.