Pinker and Epstein, apparently on the "Lolita Express"
Although Pinker has claimed to be opposed to Trump, the second Trump atrocity has been in some respects very good for Pinker:
- His "woke" enemies in Academia have been fired or intimidated into silence, thanks to the Trump administration
- Legislation targeting trans people is being promoted by the Trump administration
- Pinker is a long-time ally of Bari Weiss.
- She is now controlling CBS News, a result of Trump allies/appeasers wanting to curry favor with Trump. And before Weiss completely destroys CBS News, she's making sure to help boost the career of Pinker by putting him in one of her ill-regarded Town Halls.
Well, I've said it a million times - Pinker is a weasel. He only cares about promoting his career and promoting race pseudoscience, and if ethical consistency is an impediment to either, he will jettison ethical consistency.
A striking aspect of Pinker's intellectual output, long noted by critics, is his habit of promoting two mutually exclusive propositions, or as critics have often called it "wanting to have things both ways."
It seems the only thing that has done any damage to his career at all is his association with Jeffrey Epstein.
When Weiss isn’t suppressing reporting on torture, she is busy transforming CBS into a platform for the fringes of the right. Along with hosting a town hall featuring Erika Kirk, Weiss has tapped noted associates of the deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including the attorney and law professor Alan Dershowitz and psychologist Steven Pinker, for collaborations. This also comes as Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, was spotted this weekend dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago after refusing to defend his agency’s independence in congressional testimony.
So as we see, thanks to Weiss boosting his career, even the Jeffrey Epstein connection has not significantly hindered his career.
Another long-time ally of Pinker, Larry Summers, was an extremely close friend of Epstein, asking him for advice on how best to sexually harass one of his professional colleagues.
Recently someone has shared a brief video clip of Pinker with Epstein on what appears to be the "Lolita Express" (see above.) It's funny how many images of Pinker and Epstein there are, considering Pinker claimed to try to keep his distance.
As Inside Higher Ed wrote:
Pinker’s response begins with what he calls an “annoying irony” about Epstein: that “I could never stand the guy, never took research funding from him and always tried to keep my distance.”“I found him to be a kibitzer and a dilettante -- he would abruptly change the subject, ADD-style, dismiss an observation with an adolescent wisecrack and privilege his own intuitions over systematic data.”Still, he said, because “Epstein had insinuated himself with so many people I intersected with,” and since “I was often the most recognizable person in the room, someone would snap a picture; some of them resurfaced this past week, circulated by people who disagree with me on various topics and apparently believe that the photos are effective arguments.” He said that most joint engagements were before Epstein’s arrest, but one was after he served his sentence.Regarding the 2007 letter, Pinker wrote that Dershowitz is a friend, “and we taught a course together at Harvard. He often asks me questions about syntax and semantics of laws, most recently the impeachment statute.” While he was representing Epstein, Dershowitz “asked me about the natural interpretation of one of the relevant laws, and I offered my opinion; this was cited in a court document.”
Pinker is friends with Trump's "confident" Alan Dershowitz, lately seen encouraging Trump's dreams for a third term. Deshowitz was "part of the legal team that negotiated Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement in Florida and later represented him as allegations mounted in civil suits."
Pinker will be speaking to some of the wackiest crackpots of all, Randroids (aka "Objectivists") at their Summer Conference in 2026.
Back in 2013, on my personal blog, I did a deep dive into the career of Ayn Rand, with a focus on her magnum opus "Atlas Shrugged." I began with a pretty low opinion of Rand, but still, I was stunned by how bad "Atlas Shrugged' was on every level - literary, political, geographical and logical. And also by how much her "philosophy" was shaped by her mother giving away her favorite toy, a mechanical chicken, when she was five years old.
Yes, in spite of the specter of Jeffrey Epstein, and Pinker's alleged dislike of Trump, Pinker and his allies are doing well during the second Trump administration.
