Last week’s livestream was another feast of politics, economics, and current events. Let’s get into it.
We begin with Mark Sussman and I talking about our respective struggles with the holiday blues: existential despair for him, irrational resentment for me. But we don’t wallow too long. I recount my recent conversation with development economist Patricia Agupusi, who got me up to speed on the complexities of Nigerian politics and ethnic tension. I learned a ton about the country and why we should be interested in it—I’ll be posting our discussion soon as an episode of The Glenn Show.
TGS Contributor Robert Patton-Spruill and I talk about Trump’s recent moves against Venezuela. What does Trump want from Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro? He says he wants to stop the flow of drugs and undocumented immigrants from the south, and he wants to reinforce the US’s self-proclaimed right as the regional hegemon. But are we really going to invade Venezuela over these issues? And wouldn’t that inflame relations with other South American nations?
From there we move through a list of some of the week’s major topic: bipartisan concern over the legality and morality of Pete Hegseth’s boat strikes, further deterioration in Gaza as flooding and winter weather batter survivors sheltering in little more than tents, and Senator Bernie Sanders’s call for heavy-handed government regulation of AI.
In the second half of the show, Rob and I get into recent revelations that Larry Summers maintained a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein even after Epstein pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor in 2008. Summers has stepped back from teaching responsibilities at Harvard pending a university investigation, and he resigned from, and then was slapped with a lifetime ban by, the American Economics Association. I happen to be a distinguished fellow of that organization. While I cannot condone Summers’s friendship with Epstein, neither do I approve of the AEA’s ban. They’re allowing splashy headlines to determine their policy, and I believe they’re acting rashly.
I know how it feels to be a pariah. While I’ve never done anything in the same galaxy as what Jeffrey Epstein did, readers of Late Admissions will know that I’ve had my own encounters with public disgrace. I certainly did some things I should not have done, and I hurt people close to me as a consequence. Back in the ‘80s, an affair with a younger woman was made public, as were the (false) charges of abuse she leveled against me. Even after the charges were dropped, it took a long time to repair the damage I did to my reputation. I will always be grateful that I was given the opportunity to rehabilitate myself. I was given grace, and so I cannot in good conscience withhold it from those who would demonstrate that they’ve learned from their errors and seek to make amends. That requires time. As I often say, especially after I err, God’s not finished with me yet. I believe the same is true of everyone, even Larry Summers.
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