When the Democratic establishment’s favorite oracle turns out to be workshopping his love life with Jeffrey Epstein, maybe the problem isn’t “optics” but the ecosystem that thought this was normal.
Every so often, a cache of documents drops that does not merely indict individuals but reveals the entire architecture of American elite culture as a compost heap of entitlement, delusion and relationship networking that smells like privilege left out in the sun. The newly released Jeffrey Epstein emails did not just tell us what Epstein was doing. They told us who kept coming back. Who still wanted something. Who, even after the 2008 conviction, treated him as a consigliere, a fixer, a problem solver. Which brings us to Larry Summers, the man who believed himself too brilliant to fall into absurdity and somehow managed to face plant into it anyway.
Summers, former Treasury secretary, former Harvard president, Democratic whisperer, austerity evangelist, the man whose name lives rent free in every Excel spreadsheet built in Washington, emerges from these emails not as the hard nosed technocrat his admirers describe but as a case study in elite rot so pure it could be preserved in a museum. The messages span 2013 to 2019. This does not place them in the murky pre conviction era. This places them squarely in the after times, long after Epstein’s guilt was known, long after any reasonable person would have run in the opposite direction.
Instead, Summers ran toward him.
The emails show Summers asking Epstein for “small scale philanthropy advice” for his wife’s Verse Video Education nonprofit, as if the charitable wisdom of a man fresh out of jail for exploiting minors was the secret ingredient missing from Harvard adjacent philanthropy. He workshopped an entire romance with a younger woman he code named “Peril,” an ominous choice that future historians will spend years unpacking. He asked Epstein for tips on how to “pursue” her, transforming one of the world’s most notorious predators into his personal wing man.
A wing man. Epstein. The convicted child sex offender. The man whose crimes were covered in international headlines. The man whose entire public identity was “do not go near this man.” Summers treated him like a late night relationship coach. A fixer. A confidant. A sounding board for romantic angst. Every part of this is absurd. Every part of this is morally radioactive. Yet Summers typed these messages with the serene confidence of a man accustomed to living in a world where the rules and consequences never quite stick to him.
And why wouldn’t he feel that way. Summers has spent decades being invited to Davos, Aspen, closed door strategy summits, intervention brainstorming sessions, shadow realm donor retreats. The Democratic establishment has spent years treating him as an indispensable mind, a torch bearer of economic prudence, a man whose warnings about deficits were treated like scripture. You could not turn on a Sunday political show without seeing Summers perched in a chair, explaining the complexities of macroeconomics with the energy of someone grading a freshman’s homework.
What he did not explain was why, in a world full of economists, philanthropists, and advisers, he chose Jeffrey Epstein as his relationship consultant.
This is the core of the rot. Not just the emails, but the ecosystem that enabled them. The elite class performs judgment publicly while outsourcing their private lives to the least trustworthy people available. Summers lectured the country on prudence, risk management, and institutional integrity while sliding into the inbox of a man with the most notorious moral and legal record on the planet.
When Harvard faculty and students read the emails, the campus reaction was immediate and volcanic. Students marched, professors demanded accountability, and the Crimson ran editorials pointing out the obvious: seeking emotional counsel, philanthropic guidance, and dating advice from “literally the most infamous pedophile on the planet” is not a lapse. It is a moral failure so total it radiates outward into the institutions that tolerated it.
Elizabeth Warren, who has sparred with Summers for years over economic policy, responded in the most devastating way possible: by stating the obvious. Someone who cannot distance himself from Epstein cannot be trusted to teach or advise policymakers. Translation: if you knew who Epstein was and still treated him like a mentor, why should anyone trust your judgment on matters that affect millions.
Wall Street, which built Summers into a kind of folk hero for deregulation, is suddenly performing wide eyed shock. Big tech firms, which embraced him as an elder economist who could lend gravitas to their expansion fantasies, are scrambling to decide whether they can still put his name on panels without hemorrhaging credibility. Harvard, which once tolerated his habit of antagonizing whole demographic groups with offhand theorizing, is being forced to confront the embarrassment of having a former president who thought Epstein was ideal for career, relationship, and philanthropic consultation.
You can almost hear the conference room conversations. They sound like disaster movie dialogue but with worse ethics.
“Could we have known.”
“Yes.”
“Should we have ended this relationship ten years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Is this a reputational crisis.”
“Yes.”
“Should we maybe stop hiring men who treat convicted sex offenders like trusted advisers.”
Silence.
The absurdity is the point. The emails read like satire written by someone who believes elite hypocrisy should be exaggerated for effect. Instead, they are simply the elite hypocrisy itself. Summers joked about women’s IQs. Epstein played the role of wing man. Together they treated the world as their private cocktail party, insulated by influence, appointments, boards, fellowships, endowed chairs, and the endless recycling of the same fifty names through positions of power.
And while Summers leaned on Epstein as a fixer, he leaned on the rest of us as an audience. He framed himself as the grown up in the room, the man who could steer Democrats away from overspending, overpromising, or overreacting. He played the role of America’s responsible economic adult. Which, in retrospect, makes asking Jeffrey Epstein for dating advice the most on brand thing he has ever done. It reveals the secret truth of America’s meritocratic myth. The kingdom is run by men who believe their brilliance cushions them from their own decisions. Men who cannot imagine consequences applying to them.
So, yes, the fallout is messy. It should be.
Harvard faculty want him out. Students want him out. Alumni who spent years pretending that proximity to powerful economists conferred wisdom want him out. Progressive lawmakers want him out. Even usually cautious institutional leaders have realized that defending Summers at this point would be an act of self harm. The only people still asking whether he should stay are the ones who think elite brilliance should be judged only by how often you are quoted in Politico Playbook.
This moment should also force a larger reckoning. Summers did not exist in a vacuum. He is not an anomaly. He is a symbol of how American institutions treat certain men as irreplaceable no matter how many ethical sinkholes open beneath them. The revolving door between government, academia, Wall Street and think tanks is lined with people who would never survive scrutiny if they did not speak the dialect of power. Summers was beloved because he spoke it fluently.
Now we learn he also spoke the dialect of Epstein’s inbox.
This is the heart of the satire. The man who helped design financial deregulation asked a sex offender for philanthropic strategy. The man who scolded Congress about deficits sought relationship coaching from a predator. The man who lectured the public about risk management confided in someone whose entire public existence was a warning sign. Summers has spent decades telling America to trust him on the big questions. These emails are the answer: absolutely not.
Institutions are scrambling because they know what this means. The myth of elite exceptionalism cannot survive the reality that one of their most celebrated minds was out here treating Epstein like a cross between a lifestyle guru and a spiritual advisor. If this is the judgment of the brilliant, what does that say about the system that keeps putting them in charge.
The most devastating part of the emails is not what Summers asked Epstein. It is that Summers trusted Epstein at all. That he maintained the relationship after the conviction. That he saw Epstein as someone who could help with anything. That he felt so secure in his place in the hierarchy that he could ask Epstein for help with philanthropy and romance in the same breath. That he believed this was normal.
And perhaps it was. Perhaps that is the entire indictment. The elite world Summers moved through did not view these relationships as dangerous. They viewed them as useful. Epstein’s network persisted not because people were fooled but because people chose to look away. Summers is not an outlier. Summers is the rule.
This is not a scandal about one economist. It is a scandal about an ecosystem. An ecosystem where power shields itself. An ecosystem where reputation is treated as a renewable resource. An ecosystem where a man can spend years shaping national economic policy while quietly texting Epstein about IQ jokes and romantic escapades.
The Beast They Pretend They Didn’t Feed
This is where the story stops being about Larry Summers and starts being about us.
Because while Republicans circle the wagons around Donald Trump, a man whose name appears more than fifteen hundred times in the first batch of Epstein emails alone, Democrats do not get the luxury of shrugging. We do not get to pretend this is all happening in a distant orbit. We do not get to moralize about the moral failures of the right if we keep stuffing our own under the nearest institutional rug.
Republicans already showed the country what their standard is. Absolute loyalty. Absolute denial. Absolute insulation. Trump’s allies call the whole thing a hoax. They attack the victims. They attack the transparency bill. They attack the institutions trying to release the documents. They are doing everything possible to turn one of the worst child exploitation networks in modern history into a partisan game of dodgeball.
Democrats cannot do that. Democrats do not get to do that.
If this country is going to crawl out of the swamp Epstein built, someone has to behave like adults. Someone has to stop pretending that accountability is optional. Someone has to understand that powerful men exploiting minors is not a partisan hobby. It is a crime. It is a moral sickness. It is a rot that grows when institutions nod politely and continue writing speaking fees.
Summers was not the only Democrat who wandered into Epstein’s orbit long after the conviction. He is only the most embarrassing current example. And here is the brutal truth. If Democrats want to distinguish themselves from a Republican Party that protects Trump at all costs, they cannot treat Summers or anyone like him as an unfortunate footnote. They must treat it as disqualifying.
Not temporarily. Not when politically convenient. Fully.
Republicans are out here defending a man who shows up in the Epstein files more often than punctuation. They lie for him. They block transparency for him. They scream “witch hunt” at anyone who tries to expose the truth. Democrats cannot imitate that energy. They cannot coddle their own elites. They cannot pretend the problem disappears if the offender has the right resume or the correct donor Rolodex.
The standard has to be higher.
If a Democratic lawmaker or adviser or university president or think tank oracle abused children, facilitated abuse, covered for abuse, or kept a known predator close because it was professionally useful, they do not belong in public life. They do not belong in classroom leadership. They do not belong in advisory roles. They do not belong anywhere near power.
That should not be a radical statement.
Yet the political world keeps treating accountability like a PR crisis instead of the moral baseline for civilization. This is how rot spreads. This is how predators flourish. This is how institutions lose their legitimacy while pretending to guard it.
Republicans are making their choice in real time. They are choosing Trump. They are choosing denial. They are choosing to attack transparency. They are choosing to protect the man who appears in the emails more than any figure from either party. They are choosing to shield him at the expense of the victims.
Democrats must choose the opposite.
If the Epstein files implicate a Democrat, remove them. Immediately. No hand wringing. No nostalgia for their policy accomplishments. No op eds about complexity. Justice does not care about tax policy. Accountability does not care about reputations. Victims do not care whether their abusers attended Davos or Aspen or Harvard or Mar-a-Lago.
And the survivors of Epstein’s network deserve something this country has never given them. They deserve a political class willing to burn its own rotten branches instead of grafting them back onto the tree.
If Democrats want to be credible when they call out Republicans for covering up Trump’s role in this scandal, they have to be brave enough to clean their own house. Summers is not an outlier. He is a warning. And if Democrats fail to heed it, they are no better than the people screaming “hoax” while shoving the files into a locked drawer.
The truth is simple. Accountability is not partisan. It is moral.
And if one party refuses to offer it, the other has an obligation to show the country what it looks like.