On the “Next Up” podcast with host Mark Halperin, writer and political commentator Andrew Sullivan discussed the “Epstein class” and the societal impact of a super-rich elite living in “almost interplanetary separation” from everyday people. “We do have an Epstein class,” Sullivan said. “They are distorting everything. They do have too much power. You have an argument that you would get from the Gilded Age, against the Gilded Age. And I think you’d make a good argument for that without it seeming as if you’re just becoming a socialist, because what you’re doing is trying to rescue capitalism from itself.” “I do think there comes a point at which if a superclass becomes too powerful, a democracy can bring them to heel,” Sullivan told Halperin. “And someone’s gonna have to do that. It had to happen in the early 20th century. It’s gonna happen now, I think. The question is whether you do that with the least damage to our capitalist system. But we’ve had people in the past, but have we ever had people with the kind of power of Musk and [Peter] Thiel really in the middle of the federal government the way they have been?”

MARK HALPERIN, HOST: No one in the Democratic Party, you’ve named people of the right who’ve stayed principled to conservative values and at times expressed disdain for Trump’s rhetoric and style. Is there no one? And maybe the answer is no. But is there no one, not a member of Congress, not a governor, not a Democratic intellectual? I mean, I’ll give you one. ANDREW SULLIVAN, ‘THE WEEKLY DISH’ EDITOR: Please, help me out. HALPERIN: Bill Galston, who has a column in the Wall Street Journal. Maybe, he’s the kind of person you’d want to see. SULLIVAN: I think of Bill more as a more of a centrist. He does have Democratic leanings, obviously, and he’s democratically affiliated. But I don’t think of him as a left figure. Look, I think that it’s a complicated time, because at the same time, the left has a great populist opportunity right now. And I don’t think the sort of [Keir] Starmer, Kamala Harris [Tony] Blair in the middle is gonna work for them. They do have to have an argument, and I think this is gonna probably become very relevant with AI, which is who is looking out for the middle classes? Who really is? And not the upper middle classes, the middle classes. The 60th percentile. And who are dealing with education costs, healthcare costs, grocery, all of it. And there’s a chance there to say, look, we do have an Epstein class. They are distorting everything. They do have too much power. You have an argument that you would get from the Gilded Age, against the Gilded Age. And I think you’d make a good argument for that without it seeming as if you’re just becoming a socialist, because what you’re doing is trying to rescue capitalism from itself… HALPERIN: All right, Next Up, back with me now, Andrew Sullivan, editor of and writer of “The Weekly Dish.” It’s really, there’s five indispensable sub stacks. That’s one of them. And author of the great works “Virtually Normal” and “The Conservative Soul.” And as I said in my introduction to him originally, there’s just, he’s a singular force and he had to do what he’s done. He’s the Willie Mays of intellectual thought and writing and does it with a sense of humor. Andrew, welcome again. Thank you for being here. You talked about the Epstein class. And I’m not trying to make this argumentative or suggest I disagree with you or others on this, but I just want to try to put it in a little bit of historical context. We’ve had rich elites helping rich elites in Britain, in the United States forever, right? You won’t find an older story than this. And we are now in a populist moment on the left and the right. So I understand the heightened focus on rich people. Leaving aside whether anybody committed crimes connected to Jeffrey Epstein, which so far there’s been no clear evidence of, leaving aside that, what do people mean now when they say the Epstein class? How is that defined? That’s distinctive from just rich people talk to each other and have a lot of benefits. SULLIVAN: Well, I think the concentration of wealth in the last 25 years has meant that the very, very, very, very wealthy have reached a new level of almost interplanetary separation from the rest of us. And you see this everywhere. You know, it’s not just a healthy upper middle class. It is a super, super, super rich that have begun to put their money into, whether it be real estate and preventing people from affording to live anywhere in the big cities, or whether it’s from their big AI ventures, which are pushing up people’s electricity bills. So I do, here’s what I’ll say. There was no child rape conspiracy that I can see. There’s a disgusting human being and probably a handful of people involved in his horrible schemes. Then you have the classic, and you’re right, it’s been there forever, hobnobbing and networking and back-slapping and all that that I find distasteful and I think most people find pretty awful, but is there. I think, I do think that the fact that they are that much wealthier than they used to be and that people are struggling and also that social media allows gossip and paranoia and conspiracies to have greater traction than they might otherwise been. But I do think the notion that there is a group of people, we see this in California with this proposed tax on billionaires, 5% tax on billionaires. The money they do have is so ridiculous and so out of proportion to anything any individual could ever possibly spend or that I do, I’m a right-winger. I’ve always been a classical economist. I do think there comes a point at which if a superclass becomes too powerful, a democracy can bring them to heel. And someone’s gonna have to do that. It had to happen in the early 20th century. It’s gonna happen now, I think. The question is whether you do that with the least damage to our capitalist system. But we’ve had people in the past, but have we ever had people with the kind of power of Musk and [Peter] Thiel really in the middle of the federal government the way they have been? HALPERIN: Maybe not, maybe not. I mean, but there’ve been big industrialists who’ve come into the government before.

RealClearPolitics Videos