The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson

Trump, Summers, Spacey, and Markle: Who Owned It and Who Faked It

• www.mollymcpherson.com • Episode 339

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This week’s episode dives into a crowded lineup of public figures who all managed to confuse PR maneuvering with actual accountability: President Trump’s “quiet piggy” moment on Air Force One and the broader pattern behind his attacks on women in the press, Larry Summers’ fog-filled non-apology after his Epstein emails resurfaced, Pope Leo XIV’s straightforward call for human dignity contrasted with a White House response that dodged the moral point entirely, Kevin Spacey’s nightclub comeback performance and his ongoing attempt to swap personal suffering for responsibility, and Meghan Markle’s Harper’s Bazaar profile, complete with an Upper East Side house manager announcing “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex” to an empty room. It’s a week full of case studies in what happens when leaders and celebrities choose optics over truth, and why audiences, voters, and stakeholders are paying closer attention to who names their missteps and who tries to PR their way out of them.

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Molly McPherson:

This week, let's look at some case studies showing things that should be obvious, but somehow they never are. We're putting a handful of big stories on the table and asking the same blunt question every time. Was this actual accountability or just slick PR dressed up as virtue? And the lineup is crowded. We have Trump, the Epstein Files. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know. The quiet piggy moment that did not land softly. We have a former Harvard president with an apology that floated away like a balloon. We have a certain usual suspect who wants sympathy, who still does not have a single ounce of introspection. We have our Pope with a very simple message. And because the universe knew I was getting ready to record, I got an email showing Megan Markle has a new profile in Harper's Bazaar. I read the entire article before this recording, and there was one part that dying, we just, I just have to talk about that briefly. Because here's why all of this matters. If you manage a brand, a campaign, or a crisis, you get judged the same way many of these public figures do. People pay attention to who you protect, whose dignity you acknowledge, and whether you choose truth over convenience. That's the whole game. Hey there, everyone. Welcome to the PR Breakdown. I'm your host, Molly McPherson. I am a crisis manager by day and always looking to be that human lie detector by night. And then, of course, I put all of it on social media. But right now, we're with the podcast and we have to get to all these case studies. Let's start with the loudest one because when someone loses control of their narrative, you can practically hear the gears grinding. And in President Trump's case, those gears are grinding loud enough to show in the data. Real clear polling has him at a 55% disapproval rating at the time of this recording. This is what happens when you keep picking fights that makes the public and your mega public wince. I know you all saw the headlines, you probably saw the video. Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucy, you probably didn't know the name before, like many of us, but we do now because she's in the press, because she was part of a press gaggle on Air Force One, and she was pressing President Trump about the Epstein files, and this is what he had to say. Yes, completely reprehensible, but apparently not to his own team. The White House defended him. They released a statement saying that the reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way. If you're gonna give it, you have to take it. And that wasn't just one person in defense of what Trump did. There was Representative Maria Elvira Salazar. She was on Jake Tapper's program, The Lead on CNN, and she as well was trying to justify President Trump's behavior. Take a listen.

Rep. Maria Salazar :

President Trump is a very picturesque and difficult and different type of politician.

Molly McPherson:

If you saw the clip, Jake Tapper was just sitting there in stunned belief. And the Quiet Piggy comment wasn't a one-off. In the Oval Office, I'm sure many of you saw this headline as well. ABC's Mary Bruce asked the Saudi Crown Prince about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist, a fellow journalist. Then Trump jumped in and scolded her. What does this show? Two things. One, Trump has a long-standing problem with the press. But two, when the journalist is a woman, that problem becomes a pattern. The National Press Club weighed in fast, reminding the public that minimizing the murder of a journalist is not just bad optics. It's dangerous. Their words, quote, statements like these undermine the principle that journalists must be able to work without fear. Here's the kicker. Every single time he lashes out like this, he is not winning the moment. He's confirming the suspicion baked into that 55% disapproval rating. People do not trust leaders who attack the person asking the question instead of answering it. He still has his base, but the strength of that base is starting to fissure. That quiet piggy insult gave us a glimpse into the panic, into the White House. It gives us, and that quiet piggy insult, some people could say it's part of the ongoing distraction of Trump flooding the zone with all the different distractions to distract away from the Epstein files. Some could argue that, but watching it, the lashing of it, particularly for people who've been there on the other side of that lashing, you felt it. We all were Catherine Lucy from Bloomberg when that happened. Some may say, okay, it shifts the story from why won't you release the files to, hey, look at these rude journalists. He certainly wants that to be a part of the narrative, to replace the Epstein Files conversation as the reminder of where this whole altercation started. But a tactic only works when you're driving the narrative. And he's not driving any narrative right now. He is scrambling. So let's put this in your zone, in your workplace, or even in your life. One lane, always one lane. If you are dealing with an organization or with a leader who is under heavy, heavy scrutiny, your job in communications as the strategic advisor is to get them to take one lane, always one lane, that you support X, that transparency matters. In this case, I don't think there's any convincing President Trump that we need to support releasing the files. I don't think there's ever going to be a way that anyone can convince Trump that this is the right thing to do, even though he's now coming out and saying that he supports releasing it. Of course, he's switching the narrative that he wants to highlight the other people in there, like former president Bill Clinton and Larry Summers. There's so much flailing and so many insults. And here's a lesson if you're in the position of managing a reputation, whether it's your own or working for an organization, when you attack the messenger, the public stakeholders, your constituents, are going to assume that the person delivering the message is the problem. It's never who they're pointing to, it's always the opposite. So if the first instinct is to insult the person asking the question, you've already answered it, haven't you? And speaking of one of the people who President Trump was trying to use as a deflection, we have Larry Summers. Last week we had a number of things happen around him. We haven't heard much. Larry Summers resigned from the OpenAI board after emails showed a long correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein. One email had Summers asking Epstein for advice about a young woman who he called a mentee. She was affiliated with him at Harvard. And I don't even want to bring her her name into the mix because she shouldn't be the one who's being dragged into any of it. But Larry Summers was looking for a wingman. And that wingman was Jeffrey Epstein. Oh, and by the way, Larry Summers was married as he was doing all this. Of course, his name is going to come out. So his name is in the emails. It's not surprising his name has been attached to these emails before, but this was the time that he had to come out and make statements. He issued two of them. The first one that came out earlier last week, the simple language that we, it's the language we always see in these types of statements. I'm deeply ashamed. I take full responsibility, and I'm stepping back from public commitments. It's the same script. But one of the things he didn't do is step back from his teaching at Harvard. It was his tie to that institution which gives him power. He was going to let go of a lot of things, but that he wasn't going to let go of. But in that statement, he never names what he did. He never names who he harmed. He never names the power imbalance. Instead, he centers on his feelings, his shame, his burden, which is how you get the fog apology. Plenty of emotion, but there's no information. Here's what a better move would have looked like. It's I maintained a relationship with a convicted offender. I involved someone I had a responsibility to protect. That was wrong. And here are the steps I will take to repair the harm. It's direct, it's human, it's hard to wriggle out of. If you saw online, there was a student in his Harvard class who filmed his apology. This is what it sounds like.

Larry Summers:

Uh with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein.

Molly McPherson:

Could you imagine sitting in that class trying to take him seriously with authority? This is why people have to leave. It's not a cancel culture. It's that without accountability, people lose credibility. You can't sit in that seat anymore. So here's the lesson for managing a reputation. Vague apologies don't close a crisis, they fertilize it. If you cannot name what you did, the public will assume it is worse than what they already know. So let's flip to a totally different dynamic. Someone raising a moral point and an institution trying to answer it with now. Let's flip to a totally different dynamic. I'm talking about Pope Leo XIV, our guy from Chicago, Chi Town. He is publicly backing the U.S. Catholic bishops after they condemned the Trump administration's mass deportation policies. And he did not mince words. His message was plain and simple. Treat people with dignity. Treat immigrants humanely. This is what he said. He added that recent anti-migrant measures in the U.S. are treating people in a way that is extremely disrespectful. And he's urging that migrants be treated with humanity and dignity. In other words, he said the quiet moral premise out loud. People are not policy lovers or victims to be used to get your political agenda out there. They are people. She said, I would reject that there is inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the United States under this administration. You know what? As a Catholic, I could not say that. I would think that I would be struck down. Oh, that's dangerous.

Karoline Leavitt:

I would reject there is inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the United States under this administration. There was, however, uh significant inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the previous administration as they were being trafficked and raped and beaten, and in many cases killed over our United States southern border.

Molly McPherson:

Now let's say you're in a position where it's something similar. You work for an organization that is going against humanity. Statements that should be written should sound something more like this. We agree dignities matter, and we are reviewing enforcement practices to ensure proportionality and safety. You don't have to rewrite the entire immigration system to acknowledge humanity. You just have to show you heard the criticism and that the moral stakes means frustration that leverages this fear that you put into immigrants, that you're leveraging all of it for political gain to speak to your base. Okay, now let's take a hard turn because we're going to get back into the whole world of redemption and what it looks like when you have not earned it. Now, I recently read a profile in the Telegraph about Kevin Spacey. Remember him? And he is not the usual suspect when it comes to him and his crisis that is going to stick to him forever unless he acknowledges this. But you know what? I gotta tell you, I feel sorry for the guy. I still love him as an actor. I wish I could see him in things, but he can't be in anything when he still does and says the things that he says. So picture this. He is on stage in a Cyprus nightclub. The reporter, Mick Brown from the Telegraph, is interviewing him in person. Oh, how far the mighty have fallen. He is crooning songs like That's Life and Bridge Over Troubled Water to an audience paying up to 1,200 euros for the privilege. So the event is called Kevin Spacey Songs and Stories. There is a VIP meet and greet, and cocktail attire is required, but it promises a night of memories with one of the most iconic performers of our times. Wow. He is iconic, but not for being a performer, I don't think. So he's insisting that this is not a comeback tour, which makes sense because he does not think he deserved to be pushed out. So it's fascinating. I'm going to include a link to the article in the show notes. But the moment the piece gets into the past seven years, the narrative definitely shifts. He talks about the actor Anthony Rapp and the allegation that was made in 2017 and the immediate collapse of his career, the lawsuits, the cancellations, the trials. He reminds us that he was acquitted. Okay, and he reminds people in the story that he was acquitted in London and that a jury needed barely an hour to reject Rapp's claim. And then he pivots to the theme he clearly prefers, that there is a cloud over his life, that there is unfairness in the industry, and how Holly would abandon him, but regular people still stop him on the street with kindness, which I absolutely believe that is the case, that people do that. But the closest he gets to any introspection is the word reflection about how he was too secretive, about how he may have come across as a jerk and even asked himself why he played villains so well. And he calls this self-inquiry accountability, but he never touches what true accountability is. Not once does he address the pattern of allegations, not once does he confront the power dynamics that defined his career, and not once does he articulate what accountability would require from him beyond the suffering. Instead, his story is this familiar one. You know, he lost his house, he lost his money, he's bouncing between hotels and Airbnbs, and he's comparing himself to the blacklisted artists of the 50s during the Red Scare, as if the public, you know, simply misunderstood him. That was a completely different time and a completely different misunderstanding because what he did and what he's accused of is not a misunderstanding. So he's still casting himself as misunderstood, mistreated, and ready for redemption. And he is trying so hard, but it's not the same as narrative rehabilitation because the hardship that he's dealing with is not the same as taking responsibility for it. Spacey is doing the kind of emotional storytelling people often reach for when they want sympathy to stand in for accountability. And the problem is that accountability requires more moral inventory, not a career retrospective. And he still hasn't done that inventory. So Kevin Spacey and anyone else, if you are working with someone, whether it's in entertainment or any other sector where they're just not getting it. Suffering is not accountability. You do not get a bypass for the hard part and earn your way back with nostalgia or swooning or VIP packages. Oh, Kevin. Oh, Kevin. Lastly, let's pivot to something slightly different, but it's still about accountability, kind of sort of. It's slightly different. It's still about accountability, kind of sorta. But I just have to mention it because of the timing of this article, because it's a big article. It's the Harper's Bizarre Moment for Megan Markle. They ran a big profile of her. She has a special coming out in Netflix. Perhaps you've seen some of the promos. It's Meghan Markle during the holiday season. There's one part of the article that just jumped out. I'm neither a fan nor a hater of Meghan Markle. I fall right down the middle with her. I have empathy for her. I have sympathy for her with what she managed in the royal family, but I think she made so many mistakes, and I have been saying this for years about her. I usually chronicle them in posts and podcasts. I'm neither a fan nor a hater of Megan Markle. I fall right down the middle with her. I have empathy for her. I have sympathy for her with what she managed in the royal family, but I think she made so many mistakes, and I have been saying this for years about her. It's like every move she makes is the wrong move. I think she's now slowly getting into the place where she needed to get into influencing, into products and styling and the whole world that she's in right now. And I think all the stuff she's doing on Netflix, even though I find it incredibly boring, I still think it's cool. You know, I like it. But her persona is still so off. It is so off. And when you read this article in Harper's Bazaar, it really comes out because there is this truly bizarre piece of the article. And I'm not even going to bore you with all of it, but again, it's kind of the same narrative about Megan growing up. But there is this moment where the second half of the interview, she's in New York City and she arrives at a grand Upper East State brownstone, owned by one of Megan's friends, which friend we do not know. But a house manager announces her as she arrives. Megan, Duchess of Sussex, and the reporter doesn't miss a trick, writes it in the article that they're the only two people in the house. So they announce it to no one. It's things like that, just no. And she's in the swanky. So Megan wants to be so relatable, but she's living in a very unrelatable world. But there's a lot of people who look at her and say, But do you deserve this world? Like, what are you? But she's still living in this kind of hierarchy world and she's struggling with identity and placement. She just doesn't know where to go. So she still hasn't really had her accountability moment where she really comes clean and says, Oh my gosh, you know what? This has been a messy path for us. And there are a lot of things we would have done differently. But she can't do that. She's always going to stick to this kind of higher royal pedigree. The whole article, as well, tries to label her as this incredibly authentic person and interviews other people who all say she's authentic, but she truly isn't. That's her problem. That's the problem with Megan Markle. She's not authentic. If she were, I think she'd be fantastic. But she just can't let go of that because I think she thinks it's their calling card and it's how they're going to pay the bills. All right. So that wraps up this episode of the podcast. You can join me typically every Friday. I hop on Substack. I do a live chat. It's open to anyone. You can just follow the link. I send out a weekly email that always comes with that link. If you want to sign up for that, I have a link in the show notes for you to sign up. But head on over to Substack. Bring your own examples. If it's a statement, apology, or a meltdown that caught your attention, go ahead and throw it in the chat and we will all dissect it together, figure out what worked, what fizzled, and what a smarter move would have looked like. So I hope you can join me there. If you want to be a member, we have our members-only monthly trainings as well as our members-only vault sessions, where everything that is said in the vault stays in the vault. And I will tell you, on December 17th, I am bringing back Dr. Abby Medcalf. And we are going to do a breakdown on Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Justin Baldone, because it is one year, it's a year ago, December, where Blake Lively filed that civil complaint against Justin Baldone. We are going to break it all down. This is for members of my Substack. You can find out more information in the show notes. That's all for this week. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.

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Molly McPherson

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