Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Called Dinesh D’Souza “A Dick” For Outing Gay Students

In one of those strange coincidences that dog life, Timothy Geithner, the future Treasury Secretary, and Dinesh D’Souza, the future conservative pundit and current indictee, attended Dartmouth at the same time.

They did not get along, in no small part because of D’Souza’s cavalier attitude toward gay students.

In his new memoir, Stress Test, Geithner reveals his disdain for D’Souza for outing fellow Dartmouth students who were members of the school’s Gay-Student Alliance. The outings took place in the early 1980s, at a time when coming out was more fraught than it is today. (D’Souza also published excerpts of the students’ letters, which, along with the names, had “disappeared” from the Alliance files.)

Geithner, at the time a registered Republican, thought that D’Souza’s decision to publish the “McCarthy-style list” of names from the Alliance in the conservative Dartmouth Review was wrong, and he had no problem telling D’Souza’s so.

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According to Buzzfeed, Geithner reports that he ran into D’Souza “at a coffee shop and asked him how it felt to be such a dick.” Buzzfeed speculates that Geithner, who is known for his prolific use of profanity, may have used stronger language than that.

Geithner certainly had D’Souza pegged. His decision to out people without their consent led at least one student to consider suicide. 

Of course, D’Souza’s career path led to his being indicted on federal charges for trying to hide campaign finance contributions. Geithner’s led to his presiding over salvaging the U.S. economy from the brink of total ruin. In short, not all that hard to predict from their college actions.

Photo credit: Treasury Department