Larry Summers withdraws.
Donald Trump accuses.
Summers feels shame. Trump is shameless.
Larry Summers gave a statement to the Harvard student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson:
I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I take full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr. Epstein.Summers said he was withdrawing from public life by resigning from his various professional and philanthropic associations in order to "to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me."
Larry Summers is an economist. He is a professor at Harvard, teaching graduate students and two large undergraduate courses. He was former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and the former director of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration. He was president of Harvard from 2001 to 2006.
University presidents raise money for their institutions from people who have money and are willing to donate it. Jeffrey Epstein did not attend Harvard, but he liked affiliation with Harvard. It is not a surprise that Larry Summers knew and spent time with Jeffrey Epstein. It was his job.
Epstein donated $9.1 million to Harvard between 1998 and 2008 to support a variety of research and faculty activities, a period that overlaps with Summer's tenure as university president. Harvard accepted no gifts from Epstein following his conviction in 2008.
Harvard has attempted to disassociate from Epstein. In 2019 Harvard President Lawrence Bacow condemned Epstein’s crimes as “utterly abhorrent . . . repulsive and reprehensible,” and expressed "profound" regret about Harvard's past association with him. In 2020 Bacow issued an official report to the Harvard community reviewing the university's relationship with Epstein. The report noted that nearly all of Epstein's donations had been spent, primarily on a Program on Evolutionary Dynamics associated with the Psychology Department. About $201,000 of his donations had not been spent as of 2020; Harvard donated that money to two organizations assisting trafficked young women.
President Trump is using Larry Summers and Harvard as the "whatabout" distraction from his own association with Epstein. It is possible that there is evidence that Summers behaved criminally. Summers is in exactly the same position as Trump, except that Trump's association was far longer and had much closer involvement with young women. Trump also had a massage/spa. People have suspicions and questions. People wonder what each of them did and what evidence there is.
Trump sicced his Justice Department on Summers. There is craft in this. The optics are good for Trump. Trump is taking on symbols of elite privilege. Even better for Trump, the investigation into Summers can be the excuse for not opening up the Epstein files. It is perfect positioning for a Republican voter who gets news from Fox. Trump appears to want release of the Epstein files, but because Democrat Larry Summers is under investigation using material in those files, then the files that might reveal Trump's criminality cannot be released to the public. Clever.
Harvard and Trump are each playing the roles they are known to play. Harvard is associated with what may be a moral lapse, to which Harvard responds with conscientious remorse. Liberal guilt reflects Harvard's Puritan origins. It is the "woke" response, alert to error and privilege, and quick to look inward.
Not Trump. Trump reflects a warrior ethic. He does not feel guilt or shame. HIs goal is triumph, not forgiveness. It is a moment in an endless war. Trump fights by deflecting a threat toward a rival center of power and prestige. If Harvard wants to project guilt, all the better for Trump. The public will not understand the details, but it will understand who appears to act ashamed and who appears to be proud.
I don't blame Summers for courting a donor to the university. If Summers committed crimes, I hope he is prosecuted. I have every belief that this Justice Department will look diligently for anything it can pin on Summers. I have every belief that the Justice Department will hide or ignore anything that implicates Trump. That world reflect the warrior ethic inside the Justice Department. Their goal isn't justice; it is victory for their team.
Harvard would be better off if Summers acted like a warrior here. It would be better if Summers angrily asserted that he did nothing whatsoever wrong, period, and that Donald Trump is a sociopath, an autocrat, a disgusting pedophile, and that he is furious that a pervert like Trump accuses others of committing the very crime he himself did.
That would be a warrior culture response.
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9 comments:
Ouch! Hey Harvard, don’t we vet our donors for criminal activity?
Asking for a friend.
I'm getting tired of this. Every respondent that disagrees with this blog uses Anonymous as their name. What are these people afraid of? It's okay to disagree, but to hide like cowards gives them no credence whatsoever. If I was Peter, I would delete anyone who uses that moniker. They should stay hidden like under the rocks they come from.
I don't blame Larry Summers for knowing Epstein, since it was Summers' job as Harvard President to interface with the public and gather donations. Lots of honest upstanding people knew Epstein. The real issue is if someone knew that Epstein was a pedophile, and they facilitated or participated in Epstein's actions. Only Trump and Summers know if they did or not, which is why the release of the Epstein files will help clarify that issue.
I think that the left intrinsically dislikes the warrior ethic. Too toxically male.
And yet you conceal your last name.
The woman Larry Summers asked for advice on how to get “horizontal” with in emails to Jeffrey Epstein is a high-flying economist, The NY Post revealed.
The ex-Treasury Secretary was referring to Chinese macro-economist Keyu Jin, 43 — then a tenured London School of Economics professor and Harvard graduate — and daughter of a top Chinese associate of President Xi Jinping.
In several messages from 2018 and 2019, married former Harvard president Summers, 70, confided in his “wing man” Epstein about a woman he was chasing and delivered blow-by-blow updates of his pursuit.
Throughout their correspondence, Summers and Epstein referred to the woman as “peril” — never using her name in messages, but he also forwarded some of her emails for commentary, in which Jin’s name is unredacted
In one such exchange, Summers asked Epstein whether it was “meaningful” to talk about the probability of “my getting horizontal w peril”.
“U r better at understanding Chinese women than at probability theory,” Summers told Epstein.
Epstein went on to suggest the probability of Summers ending up in bed with her was “0,” then added: “she is never ever going to find another Larry summers. Probability ZERO.”
Not exactly sex with minors. I guess “toxic masculinity“ is a category that includes any expression of male sexual attitudes/feelings/desires.
“….Trump’s association [with Epstein] was far longer….”
Epstein and Trump’s friendship ran from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. No known emails between Epstein and Trump. Epstein and Summers’s friendship ran from the early 2000s to 2019, with Summers despite Epstein’s sex offense convictions continuing to email Epstein about (desired) sexual conquests.
No new/updated info as yet about Epstein and yet another Harvard luminary, Professor Alan Dershowitz.
Trump is betting that so many “upstanding” wealthy and powerful people will be found to have been complicit in Epstein’s “enterprise”, that he can simply do what he always does: minimize, divert and accuse, which he seems to get away with.
He will survive this. “Sad” (as he always says)
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