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Three of The New Yorker’s politics writers agreed that Donald Trump’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein could be contributing to the president’s historically low approval rating at an Institute of Politics forum on Wednesday.
Harvard IOP fellow Susan B. Glasser ’90 and her New Yorker colleagues Evan Osnos ’98 and Jane Mayer hosted a taping of “The Political Scene” podcast in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, where they discussed national politics and the looming release of the Justice Department’s files on Epstein.
Democrats and Republicans alike have pressured Trump to release the Epstein files for months. But the administration has been slow to heed the call from legislators and constituents — something Mayer said might be contributing to his low approval ratings.
“Is Epstein really an issue that affects the overall popularity of the president? I think that it is,” Glasser said.
“It has this strangely personal quality,” Osnos said of the Epstein case. “It is, in the end, something that Americans find deeply offensive. It transcends politics. It’s visceral.”
The House of Representatives voted last week to partially release the Epstein files, and voted to release the complete files yesterday evening. But this was only after Trump, who has spent months pressuring Republicans to vote against the measure, released a statement in support of releasing the files.
Late Wednesday, after the forum concluded, Trump signed the bill directing the Department of Justice to release files related to Epstein.
The American public has largely been in favor of releasing the Epstein files. Mayer said that much of the public sees the files as representing a class divide where the wealthy can exploit the working class with impunity — a message some lawmakers reinforced as they pushed for the release of the files.
“It fortifies what is the underlying, most neuralgic issue in American life, which is the idea of rich and powerful people helping one another to take advantage of others,” Osnos said.
Harvard has also found itself entangled in the case. Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers left his role as an instructor at the University on Wednesday while the institution investigates his ties to Epstein. While the panelists did not mention Summers at the forum, Glasser praised Harvard for consistently standing up to the Trump administration.
“I know that lots of people were actually very inspired when Harvard chose to do what a lot of other universities had not chosen, which is, at a certain point to say, ‘Enough is enough, and we’re going to resist,’” Glasser said.
The Trump administration froze $2.2 billion of Harvard’s federal funding at the start of the year, handicapping labs and research at the University. Harvard sued the government in response, claiming the cuts were unconstitutional. As funding has slowly returned, Harvard has yet to accept a settlement deal from the administration.
“It gives people courage,” Glasser added.
As Harvard continues to oppose the Trump administration’s efforts, the New Yorker writers agreed that the president has transitioned to more extreme and unconstrained methods of governance than in his first term — a change they described as “Trump 2.0.”
“Donald Trump is a president operating without visible constraints. And even where there are constraints, he’s essentially bulldozing over them,” Glasser said. “He is a radicalized version of himself.”
