The Telegraph – Larry Summers’ disgrace is an illustration of the dangers of Left-wing hubris.
“I am deeply ashamed of my actions and recognise the pain they have caused,” confessed the former US Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers this week. Documents released by the House Oversight committee had revealed that Summers, a Democrat who served in Bill Clinton’s cabinet before a controversial five-year tenure as president of Harvard University and a stint as director of Barack Obama’s national economic council, had a closer relationship with the deceased paedophile Jeffrey Epstein than was originally thought.
For months, commentators have speculated over the damage the Epstein scandal might cause Donald Trump. They have pored over the documents that have already been published, searching in vain for a smoking gun. They have pointed to the president’s grudging support for a congressional vote on the release of files held by the department of justice as evidence that he has been defeated politically, and is running scared of his base.
Trump has called this speculation a “scam” and a “Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics”, and denies there is anything incriminating. He has now demanded that the justice department investigate alleged ties between Epstein and prominent Democrats, including Summers and Bill Clinton. US Attorney General Pam Bondi speedily assigned the matter to Manhattan’s US attorney Jay Clayton, whose office pursued the charges against Epstein and secured the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
There is, of course, no evidence that Summers or the other Democrats named by Trump were involved in Epstein’s criminal activities. We can only guess at exactly what point in the 17 years since Epstein’s conviction Summers truly felt “ashamed”, as he now works to “rebuild trust and repair relationships”. But we are already seeing that the lazy progressive narrative that the scandal would be uniquely damaging to the president is completely wrong.
Summers is stepping back from public life, effectively consenting to his own cancellation. According to media reports, his roles at multiple Leftist organisations, including the Brookings Institution, the Centre for American Progress, and Yale Budget Lab, have ended, while calls are mounting for his removal from the faculty of Harvard. The New York Times, where Summers is a contributing opinion writer, announced on Tuesday that it will not renew his contract beyond its expiration at the end of the year. He also resigned from the board of OpenAI.
Less than a month ago, Summers received an award for “outstanding contributions to liberal arts education” from the American Council of Teachers and Alumni. Now, with every puffed up board seat, fellowship, and advisory post the disgraced Summers vacates, he is providing instruction to his fellow progressives on the dangers of hubris.
At present, Trump is winning the battle to shift the Epstein narrative onto the Democrats. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Epstein was a Democrat donor, after all.