Melania's Televised Statement: Crisis or Exit Plan?

[MUSIC] We have to talk about Melania. I saw the Melania story and as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh my word, if there's ever been a moly-me first in story, it's this one. And not for the politics of it, because there's so many people online right now who can talk about the politics of it and talk about it much better than I ever could, but I saw it for the PR because you want to know what you guys, that's exactly what it was. It was PR. It was definitely PR. All right, let's go in to my theory. [LAUGH] 2.30 this morning, I got up, my brain just woke up. So I started listening to a podcast. And as I was listening to this podcast, I went, this ties into Melania. It is one more dot that comes in. So I want to first talk about the facts, everything that we all kind of know. I'm going to talk about the statement. I'm going to tell you the molly of it all. There's so many just molly-only type things that you may not find interesting, but as a crisis manager, these things do not go and notice with me. So let's talk about the statement. Talk about the crisis read of it. Then let's get into the politics of it, the legal pressure, the political pressure, other things that are happening. I like looking at the psychology of it. I want people to pull just a life lesson away from it. So let's start with Act 1. It was not a press conference. If it was a press conference, there would be reporters there. There would be people asking her questions. This was a very controlled environment. It was a televised statement. Why does that matter? Because she's in full control of that statement. That's important. She is someone who is clearly in the Trump orbit. The statement isn't just about PR. It's about self-protection. Conventional wisdom tells us it's about self-protection. Anyone online, I think can say that and see that as well. No Q&A, also a lot of press, a lot of media labeling it as rare. The fact that the press is saying it's rare, they're putting their spin on it that it actually is. There were reports. I believe that Trump told MSN now, formerly MSNBC. He was not aware that Melania was doing that. There was some speculation last night that she just cowboyed it out there on her own. It was too produced for her to do it on her own. Did she work in sync with Trump's inner circle, likely not. But as a first lady, she has her own team. So maybe she hastily put it together. Maybe she planned for it and then they put it on the air. So it was definitely planned and produced. We had lighting. We had the podium, but we also had her walking in. The camera didn't go live with her there. She made an entrance. All that matters, all that matters in the optics. All right. So then she starts speaking. Good afternoon is how she started. This statement came out. This Telvi statement came out on Thursday afternoon. You've heard me talk about Friday afternoon press dumps, news dumps. It's a thing. It really originates out of Washington as someone who's participated in them myself. You dump it on a Friday afternoon so no one picks it up because people are done work at the end of the day, skeleton crew over the weekend, and then you might get picked up over Sunday. But with the Thursday afternoon address like this, you are going to get a deep afternoon cycle. So in the afternoon, it's still going to make the networks honestly not as big of a deal as it was back in the 90s when I worked in Washington DC. We could time things around the national news. But still there's a consideration there as well and plenty of time for reporters to hit deadline. Okay. So that was a statement to make news. Then she has all day Friday to own the news cycle. If she wanted to dump this would have been a Saturday afternoon address, but it was Thursday. So she wanted it to land. The statement which she read, I do not believe she wrote the statement. When you look at her reading it, somewhat struggling with it a little, it looked like she was reading someone else's words. Are we going to judge her on that? No. I mean, that's that's part of the game there. The other reason why she didn't write it this week, we had a I had a live a members only monthly session. We kind of do a deep dive on certain areas and we were talking about PR fixers. We talked about Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds. We talked about Melissa Gilbert and talking about her husband Timothy Bussfield and who was who did an interview with George Eppinopolis with her lawyer right there. This statement was crafted and it was crafted by let's call it a fixer. And when I say of fixer, it was someone there looking out for her protection. It was looking out for her legal protection as well as reputational protection. There's no doubt in my mind. So the first line and I said, that eyes linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. And isn't it interesting when you heard that I'm sure many of you saw, you know, that first line. Yes, we've seen her tied in to Jeffrey Epstein, but the bigger person tied in is Donald Trump. And in a lot of other, as she calls, of male executives there, yes, she's part of the narrative certainly because there's been photographs of her with Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump and Galein Maxwell. But is she an above the fold story about Jeffrey Epstein? No, she's not. So then she went on to say the individuals line about me are devoid of ethical standards, humility and respect. Rich. Rich coming from the halls of that White House. Rich. Now here's the other thing. People have mocked me for this, but I have also nailed a crisis and what was behind it from this. You're all going to the game where the statement which was published to the White House, double spaced, period, double space. What does that mean? Some people say, "Pish, posh." That doesn't mean anything. And don't be such grammar police when you do this. But it means that someone over the age of 50 likely wrote that for her. Okay. Now it doesn't matter, not necessarily, but you can ID who wrote it. And if you ID who wrote it, then more about what the intention was. So it shows that someone of this generation, Jen Exor, above wrote it. She's then going on to say, "I've never been friends with Epstein." Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time. To be clear, you know what, you guys? That's legal, fixer, language. That is distancing language. The intent behind this address is to distance her from Epstein, but also people in Snared and Epstein. My email reply to Maxwell, which everyone has seen, cannot be categorized as anything more than casual correspondence, period, double space. My polite reply to her email doesn't amount to anything more than a trivial note. We have a little bit now of contempt in my podcast this week, my podcast episode this week. I talk about March Manus and two coaches in March Manus because I liken it to what I see a lot in my work. Usually, that's what it gets to. It's contempt. People cannot help to show contempt. And this statement is somewhat filled with contempt, but also protection. I am not Epstein's victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met, and not that many people are saying that. So she's denying things that aren't necessarily the accusation. She's addressing other accusations there. Also, this is why I think a lawyer wrote this or a team had a lawyer there, but whoever was sitting down writing was someone older. The first time, oh no, numerous fake images and statements about Epstein and me have been circulating on social media for years now. Do you know who's defense that is? Who is the last one to use the fake image defense that failed wildly? Could you say former Prince Andrew involving the same scandal? People are savvy now. Millennials are now full-fledged agent adults. Gen Z is fully in the ether. People do not believe in fake images. Granted, we have AI, but I don't think there's any narrative out there whatsoever where people are looking at the image of Donald Trump, Melania, Galein and Jeffrey Epstein and Galein's wearing that blue crop top and thinking, oh, that's fake. No one. And she said that she's not a witness or name, witness and connection with any of Epstein's crime. My name is never appeared in court documents, deposition, victim statements. So all this, so if we look at the primary reason why she is making this statement, she's doing it to distance herself. She is distancing herself from her husband, Donald Trump. She is distancing herself from this scandal. Now Trump has been entangled in this for years. So why now? Why now come out with a statement? I believe as everyone else has said this online, that something will drop. This has the pattern of the preemptive statement. Something is coming. And there's other clues that I want to share with you. Why? It's not just Melania speaking now that tells us something is coming. I think there's more things about what else is coming. My false smears about me from mean-spirited and politically motivated individuals and entities. Whenever there is labeling claims in a statement, she's showing contempt in the statement. Melania, I don't think, wrote the statement. So the person writing it on behalf of Melania, lawyer, is showing contempt for everyone. And here, motivated individuals looking to cause damage to my good name. And which I want to know the measuring stick. Now, if she's using the same measuring stick as her husband, I'll give her a good name. Is she incredibly problematic and have done, or no, but she's awfully close to it, right? And also, so she says in here, "To gain financially and client politically must stop." So now the lawyer who's written the statement, if I may be so bold to say that, is pointing the finger insane if anything comes out. So she's speaking about things that are already out, but it's not out. I mean, there's normal conversation about it. Other people have talked about it. Michael Wolfe, who I'll talk about in a second, has a lawsuit out about it. But to say, gain financially, we're starting to label other people for their motivations. The things that are being said about Trump and Epstein, it's not for financial gain. The public just wants to know. And if you look at true social right now, do I go to true social often? No. Did I go last night? Yes. Because I had to see Trump crashing on social media. That's another one of our tells. That tells us that something is happening. And something's going to happen soon. Part of the reason why we can assume that he's crashing. He's losing so many of his allies. Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, which we know in this community, how we feel about Megan Kelly. I can't with her. Candace Owens, the whole list, his murderers row of people who's going against. But when Molly McPherson is sitting there and watching an entire Alex Jones social media post, because he's turning against Trump, when people start to turn against you, people get nervous, okay? And you know this because he's crashing online and he's going against all these people now. Why this is so dangerous? He's not just losing people, his allies. But when you lose your content creators, you lose the public. And Trump's public is MAGA. He can't lose MAGA because that's all he has is MAGA. Because that's the base. The fact that Trump is having trouble with his base is noteworthy. If you go to true social and you look, and I can't remember if it was the New York Times of the Washington Post, I feel like it was the New York Times. They wrote a story yesterday about on true social. They looked at analyze 40,000 truth social posts. I remember that number. I just don't remember who reported it. And I thought, well, that must have been AI. I can't imagine paying a reporter to do that. And people were turning. All these MAGA were turning against Trump. So not only are they disappointed that he didn't, that he's not revealing the upsteam files. He's hiding behind them. He's starting to go against the base there. All right. So that's the biggest there. She is distancing herself and she is fully protecting herself. The last piece now, so it's legal protection, reputation protection. Though I think she's more concerned about legal protection. Why? She has a court case coming up against Michael Wolfe. Michael Wolfe journalist. She did what the Trump White House does and what a lot of people do when they, when people start talking about them, they sick lawyers on other people. Well, Michael Wolfe said, mm, mm, mm, mm, not so fast and came up with the anti-slow. So before I get into that more, let's do the final line here because these two tie together. So now she's saying now is the time for Congress to act. Epstein was not alone. Several prominent male executives resigned from their powerful positions after this matter became widely politicized. Of course, this doesn't amount to guilt, but we must still work openly and transparently to uncover the truth. I call on Congress. To provide the women who've been victimized by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centered around the survivors, give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath. What? The victims came out with a statement and they're like, no, Melania, you're not on our team. It doesn't work that way. Then she ends it with then and only then will we have the truth. Well, so we have the optics. We have just Melania walking, clicking in with her heels in her controlled environment lights everything. Has her statement prepared by I would assume the fixer behind it, lawyer and with her little scrum of people. This was a legal statement. There's no doubt about that. And then trying to shift sentiment there. She also is talking only about herself. She's the first lady. First ladies, oh no, typically their marketing, their branding is co-branding with the president. And then the president's tire statement is about her, her alone. She's calling out male executives. Who's a male executive? Her husband. Granite is a chief executive of the Oval Office, but he was a male executive business executive when he hooked up and got involved with Epstein. She's essentially calling out her husband as a part of this. So make no mistake. Melania is breaking. It's breaking. So now quick PR read on that. So here's a PR read, preemptive framing before something drops. I'll eye along with everyone else on the internet. Think something's dropping soon because you're trying to control the narrative. You're getting ahead of the story because every time whatever drops happens, they can call back to these remarks that she made. So there will be more obscene related documents, coverage, testimony, something. We also have Michael Wolfe's lawsuit, but it also when she speaks, she's establishing such narrow legal points and she's putting them on the record. And instead of showing her relationships with people, she's severing her relationships with people. Male executives like where she only wants to bond are with these females. So think about it. In this statement, she is bonding with the females and the victims. Now think back to the last time you saw those victims or some of them, they were sitting behind Pam Bondy. When Pam Bondy wouldn't even look at them. Imagine that. Imagine that. Trump needed Bondy. And now Melania is trying to team up with the people behind Bond. And they want to pressure Bondy to testify and she's not. But now you've shamed Bondy in which by the way, Molly, I was in Ireland waiting for my car and I read The New York Times and I saw the statement about Pam Bondy and I was like, oh, she'll be out of a job soon. And she was two hours later. Okay. So Wolfe is claiming that Melania's social ties to Epstein run deep. And the reason why he's maneuvering and he's really out maneuvering the White House here, the administration, a Trump playbook when it comes to this. You sue, you sue, you sue. And if you move it from a New York court to a federal court, it drags it until thing comes out. Now it's coming up. The timeline is coming up. And so what Michael Wolfe is pushing is where are we serving you? Where's your home base? Is it Marlago? Because it sure as heck doesn't look like it's Washington DC. It's New York. It's New York City. And if a Melania's been served in New York City, then the mega base is hearing like, oh, she lives in New York. She has a completely separate life from Trump, which reasonable people, I think, can assume that she does. She also in her statements to I love this, that she is protecting her good name as quoted in her own book. She's a source. It's like saying, Molly McPherson is the best crisis manager in the world. As said by Molly McPherson. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. All right. Soon now in. In addition to all of this, Iran, present Trump is stirrugling the jujube going against the Pope. Also the base, Christians, JD Vance. Also the JD ultra conservative evangelical Catholics when the Pope is saying, there's so many conflicting things that are happening here right now. Because of all these messes happening at once, they're all converging. There's also convergence of power that's happening. So with the war and the complication of the war, we also see JD Vance trying to take moves as well. And they're now backing a candidate. Is it hungry? I'm sorry. I think it is. It's the kind of the pro mega candidate who's behind in the polls. Meg it's not just a US thing. It's having problems elsewhere. Okay. So Pam Bondy's not our fixer. So now we have the DOJ and we have Melania separating herself from the DOJ as much as she can. So here we go. Back to Molly at 2.30 in the morning. So I thought, well, maybe I'll just listen to a podcast and fall back asleep. Though I think Stephen Bartlett is a good interviewer. On the episode is Ivanka Trump. Wait a minute. We haven't heard from you in ages. We haven't heard from you since the first run of your dad. You've been dark. Now Jared, who's definitely involved at the run and making how much money off of everything, he's involved. But you, my dear, you have just been home in Florida. So for Ivanka to appear on diary of a CEO, that's a move. That's a tell. I haven't heard anyone say this or even talk about it. But 2.30 a.m. Molly's going to talk about this because I listened to it. And I could not fall asleep because first I said, why the hell is Ivanka on this podcast? Why? Where does my brinkel? There's a reason. So as I'm listening to her, I'm like, what's the reason? What's the reason? What's the reason? It's got to be the same reason as Melania, her stepmother, who she does not have a relationship with. And I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if the same motivation was there? But Ivanka just did it a week earlier. It is very similar to a televised statement in the White House. It's controlled. She can control everything she's saying in a podcast. It was heavily controlled. Ivanka would bring up someone and Stephen Bartlett would say, I have a photo right here. Oh really? I think Ivanka does a very good job press wise when she speaks. She is very measured when she speaks. She's always in control. She speaks with intention. She's so clear in her narrative that I was listening and I thought I could almost predict the next thing that she's going to say. It was that structure. And what I noticed is this, because I was waiting. What are you going to say about Donald Trump? What are you going to say about your father? Because I'm going to assume you're going to distance yourself from your father. Because this is the distancing from Donald Trump. Now a wife can do it a little bit easier. A daughter, not so easy, because that's your parent. And Ivanka doesn't want to publicly shame her father, distance herself from her father, but she's protecting herself. She probably knows her husband is deep into it. Jared Kushner. And she has younger kids. But the psychology lens here is that Jared is deeply entangled in Iran and the Israel diplomacy. And there's a lot of profit stories around golf money coming directly to her husband. This has probably been problematic for her. She's probably been very concerned by it for a while. She also spends the beginning, the whole beginning of this podcast, her talking about her childhood. And what it was like to be raised in that environment. The way that she relays it, you would think that she had this relationship that she had a childhood just like all of us. It weird, similar. It's just that she happened to have a little bit more money in New York City. She was raised by her, I think she called her "bubba." I've never heard of a "bubba." I have never heard of the Trump kids in their bubble. That doesn't mean that she doesn't exist or that it hasn't been important figure in her life, but I thought, wow, that's an interesting person. When your father's a president of the United States and your mother passed away under very weird circumstances, she fell. That's where you're going to go with everything. That was intentional. She is aligning herself with family, but not the family we're accustomed to hearing. So she spent so much time in, she said in her formative years, and she said, I was raised by her. I was raised by my grandmother. Distancy. That is the same thing that Mulani is doing. The same distancing. It's just a little more problematic when you're the daughter. The only story she really told about her father. He would say that was somewhat endearing. Whenever I call, he would pick up the phone. He would be with politicians and other developers. He would tell them, my daughter's on the line. She's getting all straight-ays. He'd brag about her and then he would talk to her. Doesn't seem like he's putting daughter first. It seems like the daughter conversation is very performative. I think that says a lot about their relationship. She went, my mom's a skier. I danced. I connect in it because mom, we got to connect everything to mom. Anything that she could find that would connect to her mom is she told the story that they lived next door to Michael Jackson and Trump Tower. They all got on a elevator at the same time and Trump invited Michael Jackson to Ivanka's performance in the now cracker and he went. That was her endearing story about her father. So that is everything that she was doing was parallel to what Melania was doing. In my work, timing is always a part of what we're looking at in a response. Not just the words. It's not just the optics. It's not just how things were said, how they were structured. It's when they were set. The fact that this podcast is out now in the days before Melania, and what? Melania or someone on her team could have even said, oh Ivanka is going out and coming out and saying something. Maybe that also prompted it as well. Like look at Ivanka is creating a firewall. She created a firewall. It wasn't a televised statement, but it was a podcast and it was a narrative firewall, which essentially said, this is who I am as a person. I am not a part of my father. I am not a part of this war and everything that my husband is doing. Ivanka is doing the same thing that Melania is doing. I think Ivanka and Melania who we hear are not very close. I think they found out what the other's doing and then that's another reason. Here's one more reason. Why? The timing of Melania's statement was interesting. If you remember, Caroline Levitt's brother, who's in New Hampshire, tried to get the mother of his child to port it. I believe they met in a bar in a bar in Sawgess and they had a baby and they lived together. But something happened as things do. Caroline Levitt's brother won a million dollars. I think in a draft King's lottery or some crazy thing like that, I don't know. He was in the press with this mother of his child. They were definitely together. Then the story comes out that she got deported. Parallel to all this, there's another ice weaponization case involving Paulo Zampoly and Amanda Angaro. Zampoly is a Trump ally, an ex-modeling agent and wildly credited with being the person who introduced Donald and Melania together. It so happens that his ex partner, Angaro, was detained and deported by ICE. It was they had a custody battle. I believe in Florida. He contacted officials, senior officials, for his dispute, for personal dispute, just like Caroline Levitt's brother. Now, the reason why I mention this is there are photos of him with Ivanka and Jared. See how the circle gets so very tight. When it happened to Caroline Levitt's family, there was a lot of coverage because the mother of Caroline's niece, Brazilian board, Bruno Ferreira, so she has a 11 year old son. What's interesting is what she did at the time. She went scorched her. She went scorched for an urn and she went straight to the Washington Post to tell her story. She blew it up. I think this has actually happened over the summer. If I remember correctly, someone might be able to look that up for me because I feel like I was in a warm weather place when the story was breaking. So the reason why I mentioned this is the same thing happened to Angaro. So someone within the Trump orbit weaponized ice against them in a custody dispute. And women who are wronged by partners can go one of two ways. They can become very inward and strategic. They just go, because you have those kids there or something they say, I'm just going to contain myself. I'm just going to breathe. And I am not going to burn it all down. But then you have some women who are pushed to the edge and they burn it down. Thus scorched her. Angaro is going scorched her. And maybe she hasn't done it enough yet. But that I believe, if I'm using the psychological triangulation here, that Melania might be worried, that woman is going to say something. Not necessarily against Melania, but in her fight because it's involving a child, their kids, mothers, mother bear, scorched earth. So to weaponize the White House against someone in a custody battle, oh, watch out. So with that happening to Ivanka, Melania are worried that they're going to be collateral damage. And that as well. That's all happening. So the pattern within the Trump world is this. When in the Trump world, things are weaponized against people. If you're in team Trump, if you're in the world, look what happens when you're out. Look at Marjorie Taylor Greene, scorched earth. Pam Bondi hasn't done anything yet because she's still in the mix of everything right now, which she could. Look at Chris Christie. He was in the orbit. Now he's one of the biggest critics. He's online right now telling stories about Jared Kushner. Everything is is pressuring in on them. So this what's happening in the Trump world, you protect men. Pam Bondi's gone. Chrissy Nomes gone. I'd be the first to argue both deserved, but both women. He turned against Marjorie Taylor Greene. He turned against Lisa the Fonic. Initially, she was in New York running for governor against Kathy Hocal. The reason why she did it is she had Trump support until she didn't. Women know this. And for Melania, I think she's seen like a moral taking the temperature here. She's looking at the weather and saying this is one more woman being victimized by Trump's White House against her. So it's another thing against a woman. So now let's move to the White House for optics and control. Again, it was a statement, no Q&A, with the White House podium flags, the institutional backdrop. We have the legitimacy. We have the seriousness. We have the borrowed credibility of the White House. We have the reach of the White House. The statement is officially and the White House website to attach to the White House. It is the same White House that her husband assumes the presidency from. How crazy is that? Now, when you think about storytelling, that's my working theory that this is an East Wing operation, that it was Melania's team, the team without a wing anymore because it was knocked down. It was not tightly integrated within Trump's circle, his inner core. And very possibly they were planning it, but gave Trump's side very limited notes, very, very limited notes. So the takeaway that we can learn from all of it is this. Think about when people come out ahead of stories. Think about times. Let me know if you have examples. Think about times when people try to preempt a drop. What do they do? Can you think of any examples of people trying to preempt a drop? One example would be Tiger Woods, not Tiger Woods when he rolled his car a couple weeks ago, not that Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods back when his wife at the time, Ilan Norgren came after him on Thanksgiving weekend with a golf club. He preemptively had to say things because he was going to lose his sponsors and everything else. And it was just kind of like a one-off. And now look at we have Fast Forward. Tiger right now. I am not a crook. That was preemptive. Guess who was a crook? Richard Nixon. He was a crook. Bill Clinton. I did not have sex with that woman. Destin Sin? Monica Lonsky. Great example. That's a great example. There's been a laundry list of people who have who have tried to preemptively control the narrative where they can in advance and it just doesn't work. Our other tells Trump crashing out on truth social. And I mean crashing. Trump not even knowing that she was doing this statement. That Jared is so involved with Iran. Avaka Distancing herself from not and else on this interview. Not talking about Jared a lot as well. Talking about her kids. So what we did see in Melania, we saw a PR crisis. PR fixer maintained run statement. It was all her. It was written for her by her fixers, her legal fixers to protect her. The timing Trump not knowing about it. The language she knows something Distancing herself from Epstein and Trump interested to see where this goes. Yes. So let's wrap up with this. We all are an agreement that something is dumping. Okay. We always want to look at whenever we see other these types of tells because we don't want to just talk about Trump. We don't want to let him own that much of our headspace and energy. We need to learn something about it as well. What is the takeaway? The takeaway is this is I'll start this at the beginning. When I say I love what I do. I love what I do. I love my work. I love that I'm not a fixer. I love that I don't fix messes of messy people. I love that I fix messes for good people. Want to do the right thing. And the way to do that is to understand why people do it. I love the psychology of it. I love looking for the tells. I love looking for the hints and the clues that tell us more. And this is a story that's too ripping of it. It is too ripping of it. So even think if you're a personal life, make yourself a millennia. And I think I said this somewhere too that this represents I'll I think this will speak to 50% of the population. I'm referring to either women or people have gone through divorce or very specifically women have gone through divorced divorce because a lot of women who've gone through divorce have been have been screwed. Because males not in every case, but they have more power. They just have more power. They have money so many times the women, the mothers, they're victimized. Especially in a divorce time when things are just fraud. This is a relationship story. The small on the piece. Yeah, it's Trump. It's a White House. It's Iran. It's all of it. But at the core of it, it's a relationship story about a couple about a husband and a wife. And the wife in her own way went scorched her by making those statements. That was tell my statements. The distancing of herself. She has created such a problem for Trump because personally, I think she's over.