Larry Summers Steps Back: Epstein Emails Rock Washington

Larry Summers steps back after Epstein revelation According to the Guardian and all other news organizations, former treasurer, secretary, treasury secretary and Harvard economist Larry Summers says he is stepping back from public life. Probably a good idea after documents released by Congress revealed years of emails with Jeffrey Epstein, including Epstein referring to himself as Summers wingman. Summers says he is deeply ashamed of takes full responsibility for staying in contact with Epstein long after Epstein's conviction for sexually abusing young girls. For right now, and I want to say just for right now. Summers will continue teaching at Harvard, but is pausing other public commitments in an effort to rebuild trust. The center for American Progress has ended its relationship with him and lawmakers from both parties are calling on companies and institutions to cut ties. Senator Elizabeth Warren said Summers willingness to cozy up a convicted sex offender shows profoundly bad judgment. The emails exchanged from 2013 to as late as 2019 show Summers seeking Epstein's thoughts on politics, on relationships, and ready for the ick on how to respond to women in his personal life. The revelations have sparked a Trump ordered investigation and renewed anger among Harvard faculty. Okay, so what's the real message here, Larry Summers? You need to go hide in a cave and nobody wants to see your face anymore. For a long time, maybe forever, you were the Secretary of the treasury for the United States, you were President of Harvard and you're getting advice on dating women from Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein, after the whole world knew he was a pedophile. That's just too much to swallow. There's no crisis communications consultant in the world who going to bring you back from public life death. Let's dig a little deeper here. So these are interesting times we live in and it's never been easier to find out any skeleton in the closet of anyone, any friend, your next door neighbor, colleague, and you can find out good and bad. I mean I moved recently my next door neighbor, I didn't know anything about him. Yeah, I did a Google search, found out he is one of the most successful TikTok superstars ever. So I found out good things about him. You can also find out the bad. Now I don't think that we should ask someone who's invited us to a party, having a dinner party. TJ, you and 12 other interesting people in our community are coming over. I think it would be a bit much for me or you to say to the person host. Okay, give me the full name, full legal name and address of the people coming. I have to do a background search before I can see if it's okay for me to come. I, I don't want to live in a world like that because people can have mistakes when they're younger. They can do stupid things. They can have some sort of rant on Facebook from 16 years ago when they were young and stupid. That shouldn't prevent them from forming new relationships. But this is different. This is someone who was arguably the most famous pedophile in the world, Jeffrey Epstein and Lawrence Summers. Larry is still emailing him back and forth like it's his best friend from college and about women he wants to date, and it's just going too far. Now. The other thing about Larry Summers is he's already been in a lot of hot water with women in general, specifically women at Harvard, because of something that happened during his tenure as the president of Harvard. Again, this is a guy who has been a big shot for a long time. Long time. In 2005, now, 20 years ago, summer suggested that fewer women in top science roles may reflect, quote, innate differences. This created a lot of outrage, a no confidence vote, and it ultimately did lead to his resignation. Harvard, because five years is not that long a time to be president of Harvard. And he was only about 55 at the time. He's now 70 years old and he's already rich, he's already famous. And this is a guy who's in a lot of things. He teaches, he's a part of a hedge fund, he advises people, he's a speaker around the world, he gets to write op EDS for the New York Times. Most of those things are going to fall away. I do think that if you have been given public positions of extreme authority, which, if you're the Secretary of the treasury of the United States, you're pretty powerful. If you are president of the oldest university in the United States and arguably, if not the most prestigious university in the world, one of the top three. If you have positions like that, you do have to be a little more careful about who you hang out with, especially if the person is a convicted pedophile. Maybe you just say delete. They call you, they email you delete. And maybe one email saying, I'm sorry, but we're just going to have to end the friendship and then delete. But there's back and forth, all these emails, oh, what should I say to this girl? I think she likes me. And I don't know. That's just icky at a lot of different levels. But when you combine it with some of this baggage Summers had before, with the fact that he's now getting advice on dating from a convicted pedophile, it's just too much. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, is calling for Harvard to sever ties with him. And she was, before being a senator, a professor at the law school at Harvard. So a lot of people are saying it's just time for him to shuffle off and maybe he should be like, like Spiro Agnew. That's a name, a blast from the past many of you don't remember. He was a disgraced former vice president. He was Richard Nixon's running mate in 1968, was caught basically putting envelopes cash from bribes for tens of thousands of dollars. Sounds quaint now, in the era of your own meme coins, to become a billionaire when you're in the White House. But at the time it was considered sleazy, sleazy behavior. And Agnew had to sort of skedaddle off the national stage. And to his credit, he acted like he was ashamed. He moved to Rancho Mirage, a fluent part of Southern California, and played golf the rest of his life. He didn't go on redemption tours. He didn't try to start his own TV talk show. He just sort of slumped off. That may very well be the best strategy for Larry Summer. Now, before I write him off, it's important to realize that a lot of people wrote off Donald Trump when the whole Access Hollywood, arguably that's worse than this. But Summers is in a different party with different values, different standards. I think it's going to be very hard for him to come back from this, especially at his age and especially considering the wealth, all the good things that have happened to him in his life. Could he remake himself with charitable works, donating to charities, doing things where no one could say, look, he's just doing this for publicity purposes, possibly. What's the real lesson for you and me? No, I don't think we have to hire a background private investigator to look into every single person we're friends with. But at some point, especially if you're a public figure or aspire to be a public figure, if you're spending a lot of time around someone where most people have now heard this person is a sex offender or done other, been convicted of some other heinous crime, you're going to need to cut off ties. Otherwise, you seriously run the risk of destroying your own reputation and making yourself unemployable. And we can't all be Larry Summers and be fabulously wealthy and have eight different jobs and hedge fund positions and have that nice cushion. So that's why it's even more important for you and for me.