Bulwark Takes - Why Would You Get DATING Advice From Jeffrey Epstein?!

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

JVL and Sam Stein take on Larry Summers’ embarrassing Epstein emails, Summers’ long-running influence in Democratic circles, the fallout inside Harvard and CAP, and the absurdity of a Treasury Secretary asking a convicted predator for dating tips. Take our quick listener survey and help us make The Bulwark even better. https://bit.ly/bulwarkaudio

Hey, everybody. You're about to watch a video on Larry Summers, the former Treasurer's Tech who's caught up in the Epstein file scandal because he basically was corresponding with the guy for a lot of time, even after the first trouble. Before you watch us, I just want you know, we recorded this earlier in the day, JVL and I, to talk about whether or not institutions should separate ties with the guy. And it turns out by the time that this thing was about to publish, Larry Somers had put out a statement saying he was going to step back from public life. Here's what it read. It says, I'm deeply shamed of my actions and recognize the pain they have caused. I took full responsibility for my misguided decision to continue communicating with Mr.

Epstein. While continuing to fulfill my teaching obligations, I will be stepping back from public commitments as one part of my broader effort to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me. Larry Summers, stepping back from public life, what you're about to watch is a conversation I had with JVL prior to that statement in which we talk about why the hell. He was communicating with Jeffrey Epstein many, many years after Epstein first got in trouble. Hope you enjoy. Hey, everyone. I'm JVL here with the bulwark Sam Stein, and nobody is taking it on the chin harder in the wake of the Epstein emails than Larry Summers. I think Donald Trump, Donald Trump. But Trump isn't actually emailing back and forth. The emails are all about Trump.

And Larry Summers is emailing back and forth with Jeffrey Epstein long before he is convicted of sex crimes, long after he is convicted of sex crimes, and up to like 12 hours before he's arrested for the final time. That was the best. 12 hours before he's arrested for the final time. And they're not just talking about economics. No. Larry Summers is coming to him for romantic advice. asking somebody who's been convicted of sex crimes for advice about women wow it's not just that he's asking he's trying to like pick up his mentee there's like something really inappropriate about

the pursuit itself and then he turns to geoffrey epstein for advice again this is not pre-discovery geoffrey epstein this is we know this dude's bad and i'm still going to associate with the guy he's married the whole time i mean yeah it's i think maybe worth saying it maybe it's not even worth saying maybe the fact that he's married doesn't even like register once you're going to Jeffrey Epstein for romantic advice it's it registers so a couple things here one is um just to dispense the trump trump stuff because i think um it's irrelevant to this but i do think it's kind of funny to note no one actually's noticed but donald trump is saved to a large degree here by the fact that he religiously does not use email he hasn't used it and he apparently had not used it for a decade

starting in the aughts and doesn't text so there may have may not have been correspondence with that but they're not digitized that you never take notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy a clear wire fan um so let's put trump aside larry larry somers i think look the man has a very um how would you describe his legacy at this point in time it's rocky almost julianiish i would almost he doesn't have like the yeah he wasn't caught by like borat and doesn't have the hair-dye stuff but he's got issues he obviously famously had issues talking about female academics while at Harvard. People in Democratic circles find him both brilliant and incredibly insufferably arrogant.

And his policy and politics is pretty outdated in Democratic circles at this point in time. But this is bringing it to a very personalized level that makes him, or at least threatens to make him incredibly irredeemably toxic and probably will, I think. This is such a good question because, I mean, the reality is Larry, Summers was a phenomenally successful Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton boom years. Very, very widely respected economist. And not a great president of Harvard because he wasn't really good at being, like, doing leadership and dealing with other people because he's not a likable person. Yeah, he's not a likable guy.

But again, very, very smart, very good economist. Not a lot of people who don't have access to grind, who are not willing to say, yeah, no, he's a serious economist. We, you know, we listen to the stuff Larry Wrights. And the more you see of him outside of, like, economic analysis, the more he looks like a fool. Yeah. Is that fair to say? Well, 100%. Well, first of all, I quibble a tiny bit with the economist stuff. I mean, obviously brilliant man, but like his record on deregulation has, towards the end of the Clinton years had really rankled a lot of folks who think he went way too far. That's on the liberal side of the agenda. Now, to your point about looking like a fool in the non-political economic realm. Yeah, I mean, 100%. Again, the arrogance, this stuff, he does not have a lot of friends in these circles, precisely because he thinks he's the smartest man in the room. And he might be, but like it doesn't really ingratiate yourself. So people forget, like, during the Obama years, he was, there was constantly this buzz about whether Larry was going to come back into the fold, and then there's a question about whether he's

going to be made Fed chairman and all this stuff. And there was a question about whether he's going to be made Fed chairman and all the stuff. And there was a whole host of people in Democratic circles who were like, absolutely not. They had no willingness to even entertain the idea. Among them was Elizabeth Warren who did not want him involved. And they've been sort of pushing him to the periphery of these discussions forever. But he doesn't go away. He comments. He's on the Sunday shows. He does this stuff. He still has a relationship with Harvard. And so he's tied to like the, you know, he's tied to Cap, which is the Democratic think tank, which means that now that it's been revealed this type of proximity he had with Jeffrey Epstein, all these institutions are going

to face really difficult questions about whether you continue to have this association with someone. Yeah, I think it's important. We should actually go through what's going on here. So he and Jeffrey are going back and forth over the course of years. Yeah. About, in this case, specifically about a woman that he refers to as somebody he had once mentored. So the best reporting we have on this is from Harvard Crimson who has identified the woman they believe to be it. She's a Chinese economist now at LSE, I think. And what isn't clear to me from the way Summers is writing to Epstein is whether they had a romantic relationship and then she drifted away from him and he was trying to get back in or whether

he was trying to start a romantic relationship and he's worried that he's being friend zoned or in this case, like, connections zoned because he's worried that she's only using him for his connections. And so it is like he's writing into Dan Savage, you know, looking for relationship advice or something. He like re-reads the text

that they sent or the messages. And he writes Epstein, he's like, she must be very confused or maybe wants to cut me off, but wants professional connections a lot. And so holds to it. And like Epstein's giving him a little tidbits of advice. She sounds needy. He writes back and he gives a little smile emoji. You know, I write it as him. Pickup artist bullshit. But like the saddest pickup artist ever. He's like, hey, Jeffrey, you seem to have a lot of women around. And I'm kind of this academic nerd. And I really am

interested in this person who I'm a mentor for. Can you like give me some advice on how to score? And it's just like I'm I got to be honest. Like the whole thing about and this gets to the broader issue about the upscene stuff. Like obviously the whole conspiracy was. This is a cabal of elites who are just going weird places and, in fact, criminal places with young women. And I was like, could have possibly been that? And then the more you see of these emails and these texts, the more you're like, actually, yeah, it is the most powerful people in the world all interconnected with this one guy. It's wild. So another important tidbit here is they used a code name for this woman.

They referred to her as peril, which if you remember the birthday book and, Donald Trump's bizarre use of the word enigma, I think could be significant if referring to women my code names is a thing that Jeffrey Epstein did with his friends. It appears so, yeah. All of a sudden, the birthday poem makes more sense from Trump. So here, Epstein jokes, quote, the probability of you in bed again with peril was zero. But then, he says to Larry, she is never, ever going to find another Larry Summers. probability zero hey bro got you bro like it is can you imagine being a 60-something year old man

and this is your life you are such a failure as a human being that you don't know how to have conversations with women or relationships and you wind up in a place where you go for advice about romance to a sex criminal? Well, someone said it, like, very interesting where they're like, it's remarkable to reach which the men who have reached the most power and have accumulated the most respect from their peers, still in their hearts are, like, kind of pubescent boys, right?

Like, just trying to figure it out deeply insecure around women, which probably drives a lot of their behavior. And just looking for, like, comfort or answers or anything to get through the insecurity. And Jeffrey Epstein, who clearly was a master manipulator, played off of this stuff incredibly well. Obviously, entertaining Larry Summers' worst fears in saying, no, no, no, don't worry, this is what you have to do. And it's just so weirdly, like, I don't know, it's creepy, obviously. But it does give you an insight into the incredible insecurities that these people have, even when they hit incredible power levels.

They're all 12 years old, as somebody said on the Internet, like a couple weeks got. Right? This is the deep insight is they're all 12. You got to get to the kicker of this story, though. It's the best part of the entire story. Throughout June, Summers Fed, I'm just reading from the Harvard Crimson. This is 2019, okay? Epstein is already very much in trouble. They're still talking.

Okay, go ahead. Summers Fed Epstein updates about the women's workload and continued contact. He's just like texting at Epstein is like, you know, hey, you know, she's got a lot of work right now. that Epstein urged him to play the quote long game and keep her in what he called a forced holding pattern

oh I get it man yeah I'm the one who's got the hand in this relationship this is pickup artist it is it really is yeah the final messages dated July 5th 2019

show Summers still in regular contact with Epstein that morning Summers wrote he was in Cape Cod with his family bit of an Ibson play he joked and the two men exchanged a brief flurry of literary one-liners. The thread ends at 1.27 p.m. Epstein was arrested the next day. Unreal.

Unreal. I guess that's the end of the text relationship. On the question of whether or not Larry Summers should be canceled or something like this, I think this hits a real gray area. Okay. Because nothing in this seems to be illegal. Nothing seems to be unethical in the, I was hitting on my grad student, right? I mean, it's unethical in all the other ways.

Like, it's, don't get me wrong. It's unethical, but not within, like, the strict dynamics of, like, professional relationships. Yeah. What do you have as a guy whose judgment is so bad, you can't even believe it, and who's an asshole? And so if you're the kind of shop that has a no assholes policy, which I believe is the only kind of shop to have, I like aren't you within your rights just to say you know what get lost I'm sorry sure like we're not doing we're just not doing this we're not doing this with you and it isn't it doesn't have to be some grand like oh we're canceling your side but is that wrong maybe that

would make the free press very upset maybe Barry Weiss is going to wind up defending because that we got to be prepared if that all happens Larry Summers winds up with the free press I'm sure he's written for the free press already but yeah good question so like you don't have to cancel him for this although it's unclear if she was a student or a mente, but I think it was enough that it's not like a cancelable offense. But you also don't have to employ the guy. Like there's got to be a place in between where you're like, I'm not firing you, but also I don't want to renew my contract with you. Right. Like you don't, there's no obligation to employ this man. What he's providing you as a service does have to include what you think he's

bringing to the table in terms of his character, his expertise and his judgment, his judgment. Imagine having to share like a faculty lunchroom with this guy? No. And in fact, I, I, you know, I, I, I would not want to. I would think, again, his judgment in corresponding with Jeffrey Epstein in 2017, when everyone knew about this stuff, and certainly he should have. He should have known about the stuff if he didn't. You know, I think that's real, I think that's really problematic. And I don't think Harvard would be wrong to say, hey, I appreciate everything you've done,

you know, work through the end of the year or whatever. But like, you know, let's go our own ways. It's fine. That would maybe be interpreted as being canceled in some quarters, but every employer has the right to make assessments about the people they employ. And they don't have to fire them, but they don't have to continue working with them forever because they just happen to be employed. And so, like, again, I just find it icky. I find it troubling. I don't think he should necessarily be working on anything related to, you know, women's issues or women in the economy or anything like that because his judgment on this stuff is very suspect.

You know, as the internet joke goes, men will do anything to avoid going to therapy. Click, and even text with Jeffrey Epstein. Boy, howdy. Yeah. Larry, just go get a therapist. Yeah. I mean, you could talk with a therapist about your romantic. A therapist who isn't even going to jail.

Probably. All right. Sam Stein, good talk. Always good being with you, sort of. Oh, come on. on, don't feed this bread. Hit like. Jesus.

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