The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson Michael Wolff’s Messy Attempt to Explain Why He Was Helping Epstein
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 focuses on the messaging behind Wolff’s interactions with Epstein. Not the salacious details, not the conspiracy theories, not the internet rabbit holes. We’re talking about messaging, influence, framing, and the ethical gray zones revealed in more than 20,000 Epstein-related documents released by the House Oversight Committee.
To break this down, we look closely at a long on-air conversation from The Daily Beast’s emergency podcast episode featuring Wolff and host Joanna Coles. She pressed him hard. He tried to explain, defend, and reframe. And what he said on that podcast is, frankly, a crisis-communication case study in real time.
In this episode:
• How Wolff’s emails show him acting less like a journalist and more like a strategist
• The moment Wolff tells Epstein how to "let Trump hang himself"
• Why Wolff’s "I was the lone truth-teller" explanation is classic crisis reframing
• The ethical tension between ingratiation and complicity
• Why these emails matter for media credibility at a moment when Pew Research shows public trust is scraping the floor
• How Wolff’s relationship with Epstein may have shaped four Trump books
• The danger of access journalism becoming influence management
• Why everyone else in Epstein’s orbit is silent, and Wolff is the only one talking
• The deeper question: what happens when the people tasked with revealing power start acting like they’re part of it?
This episode is about messaging and the moral tradeoffs behind it.
It’s about the ugly truth of proximity to power.
And it’s about what happens when a journalist crosses the line from observing a crisis...into participating in one.
Links Mentioned:
• The Daily Beast interview with Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles
• Pew Research Center: "Americans’ Views of the News Media
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