If, like me, to make ends meet, you've had to severely economize by letting your subscription to "Tufthunters and Toffs Quarterly" lapse, you might have missed this press release from June, 2025:
WASHINGTON — In advance of Independence Day, a group of prominent Americans, led by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and New York Times columnist David Brooks, is coming together to provide advice and recommendations about how schools and colleges can best transmit American traditions and civic ideals to the next generation.
The group is seeking to address four related challenges:
- Social cohesion is eroding on both sides of the political spectrum. Right-wing white nationalists see some citizens as more American than others, while left-wing race essentialists undermine what we have in common as Americans...
This is perfection. If you had paid me to write a press release about how the old, 1990s triangulation politics/"Third Way" plague ship was still afloat, still flush with unlimited funds, and still pressing its wingtips on the throat of American politics, I could not have done a better job.
But if, like me, you still have an internet connection where you can get news -- or at least headlines -- for free, I'll bet you didn't miss headlines like these.
From The Washington Post:
After decades of power, Washington shuns Larry Summers over Epstein ties
From the Financial Times:
Lawrence Summers’ extraordinary fall from grace
From NBC:
Larry Summers' years of emails with Jeffrey Epstein roil Harvard
Harvard faculty members and students expressed unease with the correspondence between Summers and Epstein included in the House’s recent document release.
From Politico:
Larry Summers steps down from OpenAI
Politico again:
How Could Larry Summers Be So Stupid?
From Harvard Magazine:
Summers Takes Leave Amid Harvard Probe
From David Brooks' former employer, the Wall Street Journal.
How Larry Summers’s Power Delayed the Reckoning Over His Epstein Ties
The former Treasury secretary and Harvard president’s enormous network and clout kept him immune from past Jeffrey Epstein revelations. But this time was just too much.
From the Guardian, regarding David Brooks' current employer:
New York Times cuts ties with Larry Summers over Epstein emails
Publication said it will not renew former treasury secretary’s contract in latest fallout after release of emails
And just yesterday, in the very same paper where David Brooks works:
Lawrence Summers Came Back From Scandals. Will Epstein Emails Prevent That?
The former Harvard president has come back from controversy before, but revelations in new Epstein emails are threatening his omnipresence in public life.
First of all, New York Times...
And second, am I now going to imply that just because Larry Summers' ties to Jeffrey Epstein were unceremoniously and humiliatingly dumped into public view in November of 2025, that this is the reason why his friend David Brooks (with whom he was very reverentially conjoined in June of 2025) has, just days later, fled any and all discussion of the Epstein Files like a scalded dog?
David Brooks, November 21, 2025:
The Epstein Story? Count Me Out.
Of course not. I would never suggest that merely because of this one incident.
I would, however, point out that, among the most influential members of the media elite, there has been no more loyal handmaiden to America's most pampered and privileged oligarchs and power-brokers than David Brooks.
Perhaps you remember when billionaire despot statue aficionado Harlan Crow got publicly crosswise over one of his minor purchases -- Supreme Court associate justice Clarence Thomas -- it was David Brooks who rose unhesitatingly to Crow's defense, telling the PBS News Hour audience:
Brooks: Yes, first, I should say I have been friends with Harlan Crow for about 20 years. I find him a wonderful man. He's hosted me at his home in Dallas and in New York. So, reader — viewers should know that that's my connection to Harlan.
And so that's disclosure. And that's what I wish Clarence Thomas had done in this case.
I think viewers are smart enough to know. I'm probably biased in Harlan. I really like Harlan. I think he's a wonderful guy.
Or perhaps you remember David Brooks' Sad Bastard Divorcé years, during which Mr. "Marriage Is The Bedrock of Civilization" never told anyone he was dumping/had dumped his wife, and during which he wrote barely-sublimated Sad Bastard columns about being alone in hotels ... about working so fucking hard to make you happy, Sarah, and give you everything you ever wanted ... about buying a home that led your humble scrivener to interpret it thusly: "Something tells me that Mr. David Brooks' J-Date profile -- "Most Ubiquitous Conservative Public Intellectual in America seeks 30-something exotic dancer who is into Burke, TED talks, humility and long, pointless walks right down the middle of everything" -- might not be yielding the kind of results the brochures had promised, and that he has now moved down-market to a more realistic price range."
Or perhaps you remember when lonely divorcé David Brooks went full Humbert-Humbert staring up at a dance studio full of athletic young women.
Or perhaps you remember that during the middle of his Sad Bastard Era, perhaps to perk up their most well-known op-ed spinner of oligarch-friendly fairy tales, someone at the Times thought it would be an excellent idea to send Brooks on an all-expenses-paid $120,000 vacation so he could [checks notes] report back on what rich people do on vacation.
The unmistakable through line of David Brooks' career is that he likes rich and powerful people. He likes them a lot and has always aspired to be one of them. He likes to rub elbows with them, glean exciting, insider rich-person insights from them, serve on boards with them and generally get invited past the velvet rope used to keep the hoi polloi out, and participate in rich-person stuff with them.Brooks: Yes, first, I should say I have been friends with Harlan Crow for about 20 years. I find him a wonderful man. He's hosted me at his home in Dallas and in New York. So, reader — viewers should know that that's my connection to Harlan.And so, once again, I would never suggest that merely because Lawrence Summers has bellyflopped onto the hard pavement of the Epstein scandal, his friend David Brooks now dismisses the whole thing as old news so let's just move along here people!
Never before have I been so uncertain about the future. Think of all the giant issues that confront us: artificial intelligence, potential financial bubbles, the decline of democracy, the rise of global authoritarianism, the collapse of reading scores and general literacy, China’s sudden scientific and technological dominance, Russian advances in Ukraine. … I could go on and on. So what has America’s political class decided to obsess about over the last several months?
Jeffrey Epstein.
This is a guy who has been dead for six years and who last was in touch with Donald Trump 21 years ago, Trump has said.
Although I might be forgiven if I notice that the fact that his friend is teetering up on the windy gibbet of professional, personal and legal catastrophe just happens to coincide with Brooks hand-having the entire Epstein File scandal away as just QAnon madness, which has "taken over America" and no one except David Brooks is immune:
But the most important reason the Epstein story tops our national agenda is that the QAnon mentality has taken over America. The QAnon mentality is based on the assumption that the American elite is totally evil and that American institutions are totally corrupt.
I also cannot ignore the fact that Brooks is clearly so desperate to shut this all down that he hauls out his oldest, most despicable and most toxic responsibility dispersion weapon -- his Both Sides Do It razor-in-the-apple -- and lobs it into the middle of this grotesque and growing scandal:
I can kind of understand why Machiavellian Republicans would spew conspiracy theories. Those theories stoke cynicism, which serves Republican ends: The government can never be trusted; politicians are all liars. Cynicism causes people to check out of politics. Or, to be more precise, it causes them to care only about politics when they can destroy something. As The Economist noted in an editorial in 2019, “Cynical politicians denigrate institutions, then vandalize them.” It’s a straight line from Candace Owens to Russell Vought.
What I don’t understand is why some Democrats are hopping on this bandwagon. They may believe that the Epstein file release will somehow hurt Trump. But they are undermining public trust and sowing public cynicism in ways that make the entire progressive project impossible. They are contributing to a public atmosphere in which right-wing populism naturally thrives.
If I thought for one minute that Brooks' idiotic opinion grew out of infantile naivete and cluelessness, I'd direct him to any of the many, many times we have explained the difference between the thousands of everyday, ludicrous, quotidian lies he spews to keep the media off balance and his meathead MAGA base on-side, and a load-bearing lie upon which the entire structure and all the other lies depend.
For example, "Both Sides Do It" is the load-bearing lie that props up David Brooks' career. With it, and with an army of fellow media travelers to evangelize it, his position at the top of the legacy media shitpile is unassailable. But without it, he is nothing, he has nothing, and it all falls apart because it eliminates the last refuge of the worst people. Which is why, for 21 years on this blog, and for going on 16 years on our Professional Left podcast, I have said over and over again, if you take out the Both Sides Do It Center, the Right will fall.
Similarly, the QAnon Epstein Files lie is perhaps the most critical of the load-bearing lies propping up the Trump administration. Releasing the files and bringing a global pedophile network to book wasn't just another empty promise Trump made to stupid people to get their votes, and which those stupid people are willing to forget the next day.
The load-bearing lie of QAnon is that Donald Trump – the Dear Leader – has been sent by God to clean up this wicked world. Which is why most of them go right on believing him no matter what, and releasing the Epstein Files was a sacred vow. These are the lies that the base is most deeply invested in defending.
Brooks should understand this dynamic extremely well, because during the reign of George W. Bush, Brooks was in the business of selling just such load-bearing lies to the rubes. Bush was sold to the base as a Man of Faith and Business, whose sound judgment could be trusted because he was surrounded by foreign and domestic policy experts.
Brooks also knows damn well what happens when load-bearing lies fail. With Bush, those lies were destroyed by Iraq, Katrina, Terri Schiavo and the collapse of the global economy. Yes, there were many, many other lies, but in the decades since, when a Democratic president is having some trouble, no one asks, “Is this Obama’s Harriet Miers?” They all ask, “Is this Obama’s Katrina”. Those four, major, public catastrophes blew every one of Bush’s load-bearing lies away.
All Epstein, all the time.
What Major General Alfred Terry and Rear Admiral David Porter did with shot and shell to take Fort Fisher in January 1865, we must do to the Trump administration with words, pictures, music, video, formal speeches, letters to the editor, protests, signs, buttons and votes in the House, the Senate and statehouses across the country.
Continuous, relentless bombardment.
From Newsweek:
Donald Trump's Name in Jeffrey Epstein Files Redacted by FBI: Report
Lincoln once said, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
I'm sure Trump's ham-fisted, panic-sweat-soaked shenanigans will continue to fool most of MAGA idiots because the Republican base has always been the "some of the people" who can be fooled all of the time.
From Forbes:
Ghislaine Maxwell’s Lawyer Tells Congress She’ll Only Testify After Appeal Is Over—Or If Trump Pardons Her
