The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson

Two coaches. Two losses. Two press conferences.  Same signal.  Villanova's Kevin Willard threatened to fire his staff on live television, doubled down in the post-game press conference, then called it a joke when the backlash hit. UCLA's Mick Cronin dismissed a reporter's question, called it the worst he'd ever been asked, then accused him of raising his voice — on camera — in...

Your reputation isn't being shaped by what you say anymore. It's being shaped by everything everyone else says, organized by AI, before you've had a chance to respond. Crisis communication has a new first mover, and it isn't you. Molly McPherson breaks down the shift that most leaders still haven't internalized: waiting is no longer a strategy, it's a surrender. Using...

What actually breaks first in a scandal? Not the headline. Not the viral clip. Not the backlash. It's trust. In this episode, Molly McPherson breaks down three stories where trust was fractured long before the public ever reacted. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos keeps inserting himself into the news cycle while Nancy Guthrie is still missing. Oprah scores a viral interview with Kristin Cabot...

Molly McPherson opens this episode not with a scandal, but with a pair of pants. It’s a disarming entry point into a much bigger question: what happens to trust when an expert starts to monetize? Drawing on her own decision to join the affiliate platform LTK as a mirror, Molly unpacks a real client crisis involving a content creator whose audience turned on them—not because of what they did, but b...

Episode Summary When Ryan Murphy's Love Story dropped in 2026, it didn't just revive a 25-year-old story; it rewrote the reputation of two women for a streaming audience of millions. Molly McPherson breaks down what the show got wrong, what the sourced record actually says, and why Daryl Hannah's New York Times op-ed was a textbook crisis communications move. This is a case study in...

Kristi Noem sat before a congressional committee and was asked a yes-or-no question. She talked for four minutes without saying yes or no. That non-answer told us everything we needed to know — not about the question, but about her judgment. In this episode: Why the hearing room was already loaded before the question was asked, and how a fired Coast Guard pilot, a missing bag, and a cover story ab...

Prince Andrew was arrested on his 66th birthday on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released hours later, but this investigation is far from over. Today I'm breaking down what actually happened, what it means legally, and what a decade of crisis avoidance looks like when it finally runs out of road. In this episode: What "released under investigation" means in the U....

Thirteen days into a missing persons case that has captivated national media, the story isn't the search anymore—it's the searchers. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos has turned a crisis investigation into a reputational implosion, and former ABC News correspondent Clayton Sandell walks me through exactly how it happened. Guest: Clayton Sandell covered high-profile missing persons and mass...

When law enforcement calls a press conference, they're supposed to provide clarity and control the narrative. Last week's Pima County Sheriff's press conference about missing 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie—mother of Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie—did the opposite. I brought on Emmy-winning former network correspondent Clayton Sandell to break down what went wrong. He spoke with me du...

Breaking down Peter Attia’s public PR response after his name appears more than 1,700 times in recently released Epstein-related documents. The documents include emails and calendar references tying Attia to Jeffrey Epstein over multiple years. While the files do not allege Attia participated in Epstein’s criminal sexual conduct, the relationship and tone of the correspondence raise serious questi...

Most leaders hide behind surprise when disaster strikes. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara did the opposite. In a January 2025 interview with The New York Times' Michael Barbaro, O'Hara said the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent was "predictable and entirely preventable"—and that he'd said so publicly the day before it happened. Days after I recorded this epis...

Brooklyn Beckham just torched his parents on Instagram, and the timing? Impeccable. Devastating. Strategic. In this episode, breaking down the Beckham family crisis as it unfolded in real time (Literally! Molly was doing a live BBC interview about the drama while it was still erupting). From Brooklyn's calculated Instagram story to David Beckham's suspiciously polished CNBC damage contro...

When Renee Goode was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, two completely different stories emerged from the same event. One side called her a domestic terrorist who weaponized her Honda Pilot, while the other saw a mother trying to escape. As a crisis manager from the Twin Cities, I break down the competing narratives from President Trump, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor Jaco...

This week, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz abruptly ended his bid for a third term. This episode was recorded four days earlier during a live conversation and, in hindsight, it explains exactly why this outcome was almost inevitable.  Amid a sprawling welfare fraud crisis that Republicans and former President Donald Trump turned into a national political flashpoint, the pressure escalated, division de...

This is the most downloaded episode of the year, resurfaced for the holiday week because the fallout is still unfolding in real time. Breaking down the Hollywood power struggle between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, with Ryan Reynolds playing a pivotal and controversial role, all sparked by a single voicemail that cracked open a much larger conversation about control, narrative management, and r...

This is the main event of Molly's Top PR Wins and Fails of 2025 series, recorded live on Substack (aired Friday, December 19) and built around the stories that truly owned the year: culture-war outrage that turned into real market impact, celebrity reputations getting torched (sometimes by their own silence), late-night becoming a political battleground, and the kind of persona erosion that t...

This week’s episode kicks off Part One of The Top PR Wins and Fails of 2025 by pulling straight from the headlines and social media feeds that dominated the year. Instead of rehashing scandals, it digs into the decisions behind them: who understood the moment they were in, who badly misread their audience, and who confused being everywhere online with being trusted. From cultural power plays to ce...

This week’s episode gives you a front row seat to my Friday live sessions, where culture, crisis, and community collide in the best possible way. Think of it as a sampler plate of reputational highs and lows. Some hits. Some misses. A few absolute disasters. And plenty of sharp commentary from the people who show up ready to spar. We dug into the stories bubbling across media, politics, entertainm...

A close look at Tatiana Schlossberg's viral New Yorker essay, A Battle with My Blood . It is an emotional piece that blends grief, legacy, and quiet fury, and it signals a deeper shift inside the Kennedy family. The episode walks through the layers of the essay and the choices behind it. From the shock of Schlossberg's leukemia diagnosis, to the way she describes the strained healthcare...

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 wi...

This episode starts with a line that should make anyone in communications sit up a little straighter. Michael Wolff, a bestselling Trump biographer and longtime access journalist, emailed Jeffrey Epstein with strategic advice about how Epstein could handle questions about Donald Trump. Not expose him. Not confront him. Advise him. And now, those emails are a crisis in themselves. Today’s episode f...

You saw “GEO” in the title and almost tuned out, didn’t you? Hold that thought. If you work in communications, PR, media, or journalism, this episode might just change how you think about your job. GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization , is not another passing buzzword. It is the next major shift in how information is found, shared, and trusted. It shapes how AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, an...

This episode goes behind the polished words of Buckingham Palace to unpack the public relations machinery that managed the downfall of Prince Andrew. In October 2025, King Charles III formally removed all of Andrew’s titles and evicted him from his Windsor residence. On the surface, it looked like accountability. But beneath the royal phrasing lay a carefully timed communications plan. We’ll walk...

When your marriage becomes a media strategy, what do you say—and what do you not say? In this episode, Molly McPherson breaks down Cheryl Hines’ carefully crafted response to rumors surrounding her husband, RFK Jr., and journalist Olivia Nuzzi. Fresh off her appearance on the Katie Miller Podcast , Hines offered a masterclass in polished PR talk, leaning on trust, communication, and a dash of Kenn...

When Politico dropped nearly 3,000 pages of leaked Telegram messages from the Young Republican National Federation, it revealed a disturbing culture behind closed doors. In this episode, Molly McPherson unpacks why private chats are never really private, how weak apologies deepen a crisis, and what this scandal teaches every leader about accountability, ethics, and reputation in the digital age. K...