Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.

This past week, the seemingly never-ending Jeffrey Epstein scandal that has dogged President Donald Trump resurfaced with the release of damning emails, hinting at more extensive connections between the two, including a claim that Trump “knew about the girls.”

Ironically, after years of campaigning against LGBTQ+ people and inventing nonexistent connections been transgender people and child abuse, the right has been pushing excuses for Trump’s connections to Epstein—and it’s been down a similarly hypocritical road before.

In the 1990s, conservatives attempted to make political hay out of former President Bill Clinton’s affair with Wh

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