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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

In related news, Harvard is also launching its own investigation into its former president Summers: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/11/19/harvard-opens-...

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I find it hard to believe that they’re only finding out now.

The thing to understand about Summers is that he is basically the guy that charted the course to where America is today.

Enormously influential, he provided the intellectual gravitas as well as the raw policymaking muscle for a version of the US economy that was financialized, globalized, and monopolized.

If you're broke in 2025, Larry Summers probably had something to do with it.

Anything that will knock this guy down many many pegs is worthwhile imo.

I don't think anybody knew the extent of relationships with Epstein that were revealed when 20k email messages were dumped onto the world.

I have long been a hater of Summers, but had no indication that he was involved with Epstein like this. I could understand others at Harvard not knowing, unless they had access to Summers' personal email somehow.

Chomsky, another person who I have long hated (for setting back linguistics with his extreme bullying, the dominance of bad theory, and the resistance to actually studying languages before they go extinct, etc etc etc). And though I knew there was some connection to Epstein, as many intellectuals had connections to him, I had no idea it was to that extent.

All this is to say that even opponents of Epstein's confidants didn't know the extent of connection, and I'm not surprised that others are Harvard didn't know.

I mean, there are other harward people making very similar consultations with Epstein. It seems to be more of "influencial harward people support each other" situation.

Plus, there are harward people who complained about these harward people for years and claim to not be surprised.

Better to be _seen_ to be doing something later, than to have it pointed out.

OMG the correspondence described there is disgusting: Summers seeking advice from Epstein on how to turn a mentoring relationship into a romantic one.

MIT and NYT need to get back on it, too. Lots of people still not feeling any consequences, much like Epstein during life. The girls were threatened more than he ever was (and still are.)

It seems like the NYT was cackling in glee just a couple months ago, saying that even Trump had to finally buck the conspiracy theories of his evil, ignorant MAGA followers and admit that there was absolutely nothing to see and nothing interesting about the Epstein case and it's actually silly that you would think there was. Nice that MAGA demands accountability from Trump in a way Democrats don't from their leaders.

It's also telling that the NYT is the only major outlet to consistently be reticent to state unequivocally that Epstein killed himself. Always said "found to have committed suicide." Somebody there with editorial veto control knows that flimsy story isn't going to last forever. Even if he hadn't been made cellmates with an insane strangler murder cop with nothing to lose, hadn't said that the "suicide attempt" was insane murder cop trying to kill him, and was taken off suicide watch one day after that "suicide attempt."

The night Jeffrey Epstein claimed his cellmate tried to kill him, CBS News 2025/09/22

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-claimed-cellmat...

Nicholas Tartaglione

https://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2019/09/23/feds-how-n...

[edit: re Tartaglione, who never had the slightest chance of ever getting out of prison. Has anybody checked if the financial situation of his family changed for the better since the incident?]

> It's also telling that the NYT is the only major outlet to consistently be reticent to state unequivocally that Epstein killed himself. Always said "found to have committed suicide."

Nonsense. "...Mr. Epstein, who died by suicide... [0] "...disgraced financier who died by suicide...[1] etc.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/us/politics/trump-epstein... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/us/politics/trump-epstein...

> Nice that MAGA demands accountability from Trump in a way Democrats don't from their leaders.

What planet do you live on?? I don't see any blowback against Trump himself from MAGA followers. It's always "he's getting bad advice", or they blame his sycophants like Bondi. If MAGA demanded accountability from Trump they seemed to be totally fine when he was caught boasting on tape of committing sexual assault.

not sure where you are looking but Rasmussen polls have been showing Trump hemorrhaging support since June among his base. if you visit X this is where many of them converse, and they are quite openly unhappy with the admin lately

I believe it has nothing to do with sexual offense and that the higher prices of goods is really affecting people.

So he's still immune the anything that's horrendous.

I think most people are talking to the core 30-40% of his voters see him as messianic that will go down with the titanic no matter what

guess you can believe what you want but data shows the Epstein topic has been damaging his base support

Some indicators suggest that, but we don't really know until the rubber meets the road.

The real test is how people vote. With this much confusion I think it is perfectly valid to take a few opinion polls with a grain of salt.

Much like how Dems rate their party poorly but still turn it against Trump, I'm not sure MAGA discontent with have any real impact on elections.

MAGA will follow Trump off a bridge. The America First collective pushed for this and many of them have given up on Trump.

This is what I expect as well, the cultish members will never see him for what he is no matter what happens. I've seen similar sentiment toward dictators in other countries as well, especially if you talk to the older civilians who really bought into the system, even years after the dictator was overthrown.

There has been a very public split between MTG and Trump in the past week or so over the Epstein issue. It has been causing a rift in the MAGA base for a while though, it seems to be coming to a head now though.

> Trump had to finally buck the conspiracy theories of his evil, ignorant MAGA followers and admit that there was absolutely nothing to see and nothing interesting about the Epstein case and it's actually silly that you would think there was.

Didn't Bondi say there was thousands of hours of video of sex abuse? Was that made up?

> Nice that MAGA demands accountability from Trump in a way Democrats don't from their leaders.

This doesn't accord with experience. MAGA is notorious for rationalizing anything Trump says or does.

The uniparty is a rotten, spiraling race to the bottom.

Then you're in a bubble.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you both are in a bubble.

They're just different bubbles.

Liberals and conservatives have methodically and deliberately avoided holding their leaders accountable for decades. The only people who can't see that, are, frankly, liberals and conservatives.

What we have now is an opportunity to sweep everyone from Trump on down out of office. Anyone who would work for Trump or Clinton should have their judgement questioned at a minimum. And they should pray we don't look any further into what they've been getting up to.

This is a golden opportunity to scrub the walls clean and put in new people en masse. But I'm not naive. I know the corruption of the incumbent power brokers and parties will undoubtedly win the day. You can bet your bottom dollar that conservatives and liberals are cooperating and they've got the courts, Homeland security, CIA, everything.. out cleaning up for them. I just wish they'd get what's coming to them for once.

The Dems have the progressive caucus primarying moderate candidates constantly. The GOP has Massey and Paul

Thank you!

Cannot count the number of times people forget how powerful algorithmic bubble making is. It isnt a “you are in a bubble so ur dumb” it is more of, “all of our information is algorithmically fed to us be aware!”

To add to this, I have a friend who has two kids. One is lefty trans and the other is becoming a christian conservative. They are Indian zoomers. Two totally different algorithms at work. One got the Charlie and the other got Hassan. Really makes one wonder what is in your own information feed.

> you both are in a bubble.

I did say the "uniparty", right? So on what basis do you make this claim?

In case you're not familiar with the term, it refers to both the Republicans and the Democrats, viewing them as effectively one party with two factions (with the former merely trailing behind the latter, typically).

In this particular case, MAGA is showing that it's okay with hypocrisy, because, hey, didn't Democrats rationalize Clinton's misdeeds and throw his victims under the bus for the sake of the party?

So, yes, the uniparty is rotten.

Isn’t NYT complicit and sat on a lot of Epstein files before the 2016 election.

Um..

Just throwing it out there, but forget Epstein, I'm sure most of us would not believe what NYT is sitting on in general. This is effectively a defacto global intelligence gathering service. I bet if we could read through a lot of that we'd all be gobsmacked and just stop believing in humanity altogether.

I understand most of what we haven't seen is uncorroborated, but it would still make for interesting reading if we didn't have to worry about falling down an elevator shaft onto some bullets.

The one-time head of the most elite academic institution as well as the US Treasury is an insecure 12 year old boy at heart. Summers clearly saw Epstein as aspirational for his "success" with "women". But this isn't really new information about him. In 2005 he went in front of an audience including top women scientists at the National Bureau of Economic Research and essentially said the lack of women at the top of science was mostly about their lack of innate aptitude, not discrimination [1] (he gave multiple alternate "theories" but it was clear which one he actually believed). People immediately saw that for what it was: a powerful guy projecting his own hang-ups about women. That he's maintained his status over the last 20 years does not speak well of the US's most prestigious institutions.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/2/18/full-transcript...

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