NYT Mourns Lost Glamor of Jeffrey Epstein’s New York

Raina Lipsitz

New York Times (11/16/25): "In those days, print newspapers and magazines still held sway, and Mr. Epstein had close ties to many key players in the news media and adjacent industries."

The late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is best known for having been accused of operating a sex-trafficking ring that supplied elite men with girls as young as 14. Epstein and his associates are believed to have abused hundreds of women and girls on Little Saint James, a private island Epstein owned from 1998 until his death in 2019. But in the New York Times’ telling, it’s not the girls on Epstein’s island but rather President Donald Trump—an Epstein associate many suspect of having participated in the alleged abuse—who is being “held captive” by a “news cycle he can’t avoid or defeat” (New York Times, 11/18/25).

In reporting on Epstein and those in his orbit, the Times has frequently focused on the men and the supposedly bygone era in which they committed their crimes with impunity. “Epstein Emails Reveal a Lost New York,” read one such headline—later changed to “Epstein Emails Reveal a Bygone Elite”—above a story (11/16/25) that expressed nostalgia for “a clubby world that is all but gone.”

Epstein’s emails, reporter Shawn McCreesh wrote, are “like a portal back to a lost Manhattan power scene.” Epstein’s inbox, he added, was “larded with boldface names...that once meant everything to status-obsessed New Yorkers.” These emails, which stretched back decades, “show how that protected realm vanished into the mists of time, pulled under by the rising forces of the internet and the #MeToo movement.”

'They are not mass rapists'

David Brooks (New York Times, 11/21/25) suggests a message for Democratic politicians: "No governing majority will ever form if we’re locked in a permanent class war."

New York Times columnist David Brooks seemed to want to bring back that protected realm, calling for less talk about Epstein's documented ties to members of the global elite, up to and including the president of the United States. Under the headline  “The Epstein Story? Count Me Out” (11/21/25), Brooks suggested that caring about Epstein’s ties to elite figures is the province of conspiracy nuts and social media mobs. “Say what you will about our financial, educational, nonprofit and political elites,” Brooks wrote, “but they are not mass rapists.”

The only other reference to girls, women or rape comes in the form of a quote he included from Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna: “I realized how much the abuse by rich and powerful men of young girls and the sense of a rape island that Epstein had set up for people embodied the corruption of government.”

Brooks thinks this is silly, and that Khanna’s use of the phrase “the Epstein class” is “inaccurate, unfair and irresponsible.” He cautioned against leaping to the conclusion that Epstein was “a typical member of the American establishment,” rather than an “outlier.”

As a female Times reader wrote of Brooks’ column in a letter to the editor (11/24/25), there is “not one word of sympathy for or concern…in Mr. Brooks’s 1,200-word piece” for Epstein’s “largely anonymous and helpless teenage victims.”

To Brooks, it’s elite figures, and even Epstein himself, who are the real victims: After all, far-right commentator Candace Owens sees Epstein not just as a “rancid man,” but “a scheming Jew working on behalf of Israel to control assets via blackmail.”

'Lying low, at least for a while'

New York Times (11/20/25) quotes economist Brad DeLong: “Larry will continue to have worthwhile thoughts.” 

A similar worry about excess Epstein talk seemed to suffuse a recent Times news article (11/20/25) on Epstein associate Larry Summers, a former Harvard president and Clinton era Treasury Secretary. “Lawrence Summers Came Back From Scandals. Will Epstein Emails Prevent That?” read the headline. The subhead characterized evidence of predatory behavior as another potentially survivable controversy: “The former Harvard president has come back from controversy before, but revelations in new Epstein emails are threatening his omnipresence in public life.”

From this article, we learn that Summers has held many “prominent roles,” has long been an “omnipresent public intellectual,” is “one of the country’s best-known economists,” has held positions on “prominent boards,” and is part of

a vast group of powerful men who have faced seemingly career-threatening scandals over comments or actions related to their treatment of women, and yet have maintained a place in public life.

This status is now in jeopardy, thanks to the Epstein emails, which merely revealed Summers’ “chumminess with a notorious sex offender.” The Times even helpfully paraphrased the recommendations of a crisis and reputation management specialist for men in Summers’ position: “lying low, at least for a while, and doing selfless work, such as philanthropy.”

The Times is not the only publication more concerned with the problems of the powerful than the circumstances of their victims. In a story headlined, “After decades of power, Washington shuns Larry Summers over Epstein ties,” the Washington Post  (11/21/25) reported that Summers, who “dominated economic thought, on both sides of the aisle, for the better part of four decades,” is now persona non grata in Washington because he corresponded with Epstein for years and sought advice about an attempt to “court” a woman nearly 30 years his junior. All we learn about the woman Summers was attempting to “court” is that she was decades younger and a fellow economist.

Featured Image: New York Times story (11/18/25)

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