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The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson
The PR Breakdown reveals the moves behind the mess. Crisis communication expert Molly McPherson dissects the viral scandals, celebrity meltdowns, and corporate disasters dominating headlines to show you the strategic mistakes and desperate moves that destroy reputations - so you never make them yourself.
The PR Breakdown with Molly McPherson
When Words Become Weapons: Speech, Consequences, and the Charlie Kirk Fallout
Outrage isn’t random anymore, it’s a playbook. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, what started as shock turned into a communication crisis that exposed how words can either shape narratives or ignite division.
Here’s the problem: in 2025, speech doesn’t live in a vacuum. Every comment, post, and soundbite ricochets through algorithms, institutions, and public opinion. And when words turn into weapons, the fallout is swift—firings, censures, and reputational scars.
This episode explores:
- Nancy Mace’s explosive remarks and how her pivot from tragedy to blame became a masterclass in political narrative-building.
- The response from institutions like NASDAQ, Ole Miss, and the Washington Post as they enforced “zero tolerance” speech policies.
- The Pentagon’s crackdown on service members’ posts—and the chilling gray area between personal opinion and professional consequence.
- Why communicators must recognize that every word carries weight, every platform is a stage, and every policy has teeth.
- The fine line between accountability and overreach—and what fairness actually looks like in a polarized digital age.
The September takeaway? Speech has consequences. Some create clarity. Others create chaos. The difference lies in whether words are used to connect or to divide.
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I'm Ed Lavandera in Orem, utah. The sun is setting here on a horrifically tragic day, where we have seen what some are describing as the political assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
News:Oh my God, Go run run. He was just shot, he was just shot.
Molly McPherson:When news broke of Charlie Kirk's assassination last week while speaking at a Utah Valley University Turning Point USA event, many political leaders rushed to frame the tragedy. House Speaker Mike Johnson led the chamber in a moment of silence in prayer for Charlie Kirk and his family. Speaking to cameras outside the chamber, he condemned the violence and called on political leaders to use their voices.
News:It violates the core principles of our country, our Judeo-Christian heritage, our civil society, our American way of life, and it must stop. We need every political figure, we need everyone who has a platform to say this loudly and clearly.
Molly McPherson:Of course, President Donald Trump spoke from the Oval Office.
News:For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.
Molly McPherson:There was a narrative in play, and nowhere was that narrative more pointed than from Congresswoman Nancy Mace. Of all the media that was happening that day last week, it was these words that stuck out the most for me.
News:Just because you speak your mind on an issue doesn't mean you get shot and killed. In this country we have the First Amendment, we have freedom to speak what's on our mind and shouldn't get shot.
Molly McPherson:Nancy Mace is running for governor of South Carolina in the 2026 election. She launched her campaign last month. She's positioning herself as a pro-Trump candidate, so certainly those words match what we heard from the Oval Office as well. On September 15th, mace filed a resolution to censor Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and remove her from House committees after she made attacks on Charlie Kirk, specifically on a podcast interview on September 11th. She felt the remarks belittled Kirk's grieving family and also remarked that the Minnesota Congresswoman all but blamed Charlie Kirk for his own assassination. And certainly those words weren't much different from a number of people around the country. But it was Mace's comments, though, that really stuck with me. How dangerous words can be. Because when she came out to a scrum of reporters to talk about what had happened to Charlie Kirk, she was one of the first politicians to really jump on the anti-democratic rhetoric. I'm sure you've heard it, but let's continue with Mesa's comments.
News:And I hope that every single Democrat across the country will stand up and acknowledge that they have a problem within their party.
Molly McPherson:Now this is not going to be a political podcast at all. I strictly want to make this about a communication challenge that stem from it. Last Friday I hopped on Substack. I do live chats. I tend to hop on sometime between 9 am and 12 pm just to riff and have a community discussion about communication challenges that are happening there. When I went online at that time it was 11 am Eastern time and that's when we found out who the shooter was. But back to Nancy Mace for a moment the conversation to continue it. There was a measured and perfectly reasonable question coming from the chief Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News, ryan Nobles, when he asked this question and Nancy Mace responded to it.
Molly McPherson:By that logic, do Republicans own the shooting of the two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota? Isn't this?
Molly McPherson:on both sides.
Molly McPherson:Are you kidding? Me, we don't know, what condition Charlie Kirk is in right now. Some raging leftist lunatic put a bullet through his neck. And you want to talk about Republicans right now?
Molly McPherson:No, no, I'm asking you. You said the Democrats Democrats own this.
Molly McPherson:But is there a problem with political violence across the spectrum?
Molly McPherson:Yeah, we're talking about Charlie Kirk right now. That's the subject of this that we're talking about right now.
Molly McPherson:Democrats own this 100 percent. Her remarks highlight a larger issue that collision between political outrage, free speech and institutional responsibility, particularly in the digital age. So those comments hung in the air. They circulated widely across all media channels. As we now know, the shooter was identified as 22-year-old Tyler James Robinson. He fired that single fatal shot from a rooftop of the campus building. He was arrested two days later and he is believed to be the only person involved. His motive is still under ongoing investigation but, as we're all hearing that he had very intense political views and that included animosity towards Kirk.
Molly McPherson:He was a part of the Groeper movement, that he was a member of this far-right white nationalist, christian nationalist activist movement. It's led by Nick Fuentes and if you saw a lot of the photos that they extracted from his mother's Facebook post, there was one she took a photo from Halloween a number of years ago and she's photos of all her kids. It was a photo of Tyler squatting down wearing the Adidas black and white track suit and she said, oh, tyler's acting like some silly meme character or something like that. But it's so haunting to see that because, even though the movement's mascot is this kind of reclining cartoon frog, you've seen them as a variation of the Pepe the Frog meme. But there's so many different memes that are associated with this movement so it's pretty clear a lot of people in this group feel that influencers and activists like Charlie Kirk they call them conservatives Inc that they really don't mean what they're saying. I bring in the Tyler Robinson piece because Nancy Mace's words were so incendiary at that time and for that reporter to bring up the Minnesota assassination was incredibly tragic and jarring. But the outcome of the two you can't even compare the two and understandable from a news media sense of it that nationally most people don't know who Melissa Hortman was. They certainly do now and more people were familiar with Charlie Kirk and what he was about. But still, what happened to both of those people, those families? It was Melissa Hortman and her husband, and also another state representative in Minnesota was shot as well, john Hoffman and his wife.
Molly McPherson:We have a polarized society but when it comes to opinions on Charlie Kirk people sit on one of two sides. It doesn't seem like anyone wavers in the middle. People are sitting on two sides of this matter. I don't want to get into the Charlie Kirk assassination. I don't even want to get into the two sides. I just want to get into the communication that came out of it and what we can learn from it.
Molly McPherson:Very briefly, my take on it. I do think what happened to Charlie Kirk was incredibly tragic. Nobody deserves to be assassinated, but I think how it affected me. Whenever there's a tragedy like this, we always internalize it Our young people that they witness this. I worry for the youth to be desensitized to this type of killing. Both my kids watched it. I found out about it I was driving in Boston in my car when my son Connor texted me because we had been talking about Charlie Kirk in recent weeks simply because they lampooned him on South Park and Charlie Kirk's reaction was quite good, considering they were trolling him and compared to President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who they were lampooning as well in that episode.
Molly McPherson:I'm someone who thinks that he's driven more by being a media mogul and driven by what he was building and organizing. He had tremendous success doing that. But I also think he was bankrolled. I was reading his bio and he loved Rush Limbaugh. I think he was this generation's Rush Limbaugh. I don't think that makes him a saint. That makes him what he is someone who really wanted to be a big media mogul. But that's just my opinion. I also respect other people's opinions and who they follow and who they care about, so I'm not going to demean anyone. But the words of Nancy Mace that struck me as dangerous, incredibly dangerous. Now, as a side note, because I said this was going to be about communication, I don't know if many people know this, but she jumped in the South Carolina governor's race and this happened in August and it happened to be a news story that I picked up because I did a little bit of a dive on Nancy Mace in August, well before any of this happened, and she's been going through some significant stuff, so I might add in there that part of her communication efforts around this.
Molly McPherson:Although she is running as a staunch pro-Trump candidate for governor of South Carolina, she's also potentially deflecting from something that's been following her. In February 2025, mace used a lengthy speech on the US House floor to accuse her ex-fiancé and his associates of really bad charges physical abuse, sex trafficking, recording sexual acts involving her and other women. She said she was going scorched earth and she alleged that in 2023, she accidentally discovered the former fiancé's files and she decided to make it very public. So it is a big situation that she's dealing with and she's also being sued by one of the guys who she because it wasn't her fiancé. It was a group of men, so she's being sued for defamation by one of them. So that's something that she wants to outrun.
Molly McPherson:So, knowing that, for her to come out and make these very, very strong comments about Charlie Kirk, from a political point of view it almost makes sense why she would do that. But it is still very dangerous because our social media algorithm is defined by outrage and her immediate pivot to blame and not just Nancy Mace, president Trump, a lot of Republicans out there is a powerful communication move. It takes control of the narrative at a moment of chaos. They create a narrative, but it also raises a critical question. Specifically, if you're a communicator out there listening, where is the line between strong rhetoric, accountability and fueling division, division? Mace's call-out wasn't just rhetorical.
Molly McPherson:In the days following Kirk's death, several institutions have acted against employees whose social media posts crossed the line. You could Google any local newspaper. Go ahead and Google your local newspaper. Whether you're in a big city, small town, there is going to be an article about someone in your area who was put on suspension or fired for posting about Charlie Kirk. I could almost guarantee it From the National Scope. Nasdaq confirmed it had terminated an employee who made celebratory remarks about the assassination. Ole Miss fired a staff member after they reshared an inappropriate post about Kirk's death and the Washington Post dismissed the columnist for a post that they made on Blue Sky and the paper said it amounted to quote gross misconduct and created safety concerns for SAF.
Molly McPherson:Karen Atiyah came out and defended what she had to say on Blue Sky. She felt her termination was just based on the assassination of Charlie Kirk. However, what she spoke out against was political violence, racial double standards and America's response to gun issues. Now there are plenty of people out there who are criticizing her firing and she pointed out that that leaves the paper without any minority opinion writer at all. This is a troubling state that we're in right now because there are social media policies in place at companies for a reason, but then it also feels like there is a kind of a witch hunt feeling in the air.
Molly McPherson:There have been several people in the US military who've been suspended or fired due to social media posts viewed as mocking or celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and many of these firings trace back to directives from the department from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. At least one Marine and one Army colonel have been publicly confirmed as removed from their positions after making remarks online. The Pentagon has enforced zero-tolerance policies, with dozens of service members reportedly facing disciplinary actions. However, there are also reports that some of these comments were made just in a close network, like friends only, and they weren't in celebration. They were just on the other side of it. They weren't in celebration, they were just on the other side of it.
Molly McPherson:It's a troublesome time because certainly there are social media policies in place, so employees do not say things online that draw negativity back to the company, which is understandable. Every company should have a social media policy. But where does a social media policy run into free speech and opinion? I mean, because we work at a company, are we not allowed to give an opinion? And who decides if there's a post just discussing views on the assassination and the politics that come out of it and celebrating Like who makes that decision? It's a gray area and, frankly, sometimes, many times, well all times I find it frightening. Each of these cases point to the same reality that in the digital age. Social media policies are not just fine print. They are career defining. This is a time to check and see if your company has a communication policy. If you work in comms, you will want to check that. You will need to ask HR. If you are on a board or if you're in an organization that has a board, you'll have to see do they have a social policy as well? But overall, from a communication perspective, we have a communication dilemma.
Molly McPherson:This moment from last week, this moment, sits at an intersection of speech and consequence. On one side, there's a clear need for accountability when posts appear to endorse violence People on staff, people associated with places, companies, institution, government, newspaper print journalism. If people are posting online that can be shared in a public space, institutions cannot be seen as condoning the behavior. That's the problem. I know that there were people thinking okay, a lot of these people are getting fired because they're very pro-conservative and they're anti-liberal or they're anti-democrat and they want to fire these people. In many cases it is a social media policy. But on the other hand, there are legitimate concerns about fairness, proportionality and whether punishment is being applied consistently. And therein lies the rub. Are we firing people around Charlie Kirk or are we also firing people when they say these about other comments? And I bet in a lot of cases, people who were fired I bet they could go through past social media posts from other employees and probably find an argument for why am I getting fired and these people didn't?
Molly McPherson:I have a podcast, I'm on Substack, but also I have a roster of clients and my brain is constantly thinking about lessons learned. And what can I learn? Here's my key takeaway Every word counts and every platform is a stage. One understand the weight of rhetoric. Political figures like Nancy Mace know that language is power. Democrats shaped headlines within minutes. Two know the boundaries of your role. For employees, especially in public-facing organizations, what you say online can be judged as representing your employer. That's why social media policies exist and why they're being enforced more aggressively.
Molly McPherson:Three accountability requires consistency. Institutions must clearly define what is unacceptable free speech. Apply those rules fairly. Without consistency, enforcement risks being seen as political rather than principled. And four balance free expression with organizational reputation. A workplace doesn't have to tolerate speech that celebrates violence, but it should also ensure employees know where the line is drawn before they cross it. Employees should be allowed to comment on Charlie Kirk. They should be allowed to comment on an event that is dominating news story, dominating dialogue and conversation. They should be allowed that, but employees should absolutely know what is allowed and what is not allowed.
Molly McPherson:The Charlie Kirk case shows how speech, responsibility and consequences are entwined in today's communication landscape. Politicians, institution and private individuals all operate under intense scrutiny. Words posted online, words said in media interviews, whether in anger, celebration or thoughtlessness, can bring immediate and severe repercussions. The lesson for communicators from this past week is clear that speech carries weight, accountability matters, but so does proportionality and fairness in response. Navigating that balance between protecting public trust and safeguarding free expression is one of the defining challenges of our digital era.
Molly McPherson:The fallout from Charlie Kirk's death shows how speech, responsibility and consequences are inseparable in today's communication environment, and that includes Charlie Kirk. Politicians, journalists, employees no one is exempt from it. So for the communicators out there, the lesson is simple but urgent Words do carry weight, policies carry teeth and accountability must carry fairness. That balance between protecting safety, preserving reputation and respecting free expression. It's the defining challenge of modern communication, and one that I think about on a daily basis and one that I hope you think about as well. Everything was so incredibly tragic about last week and there was just so many different spindles of tragedy and concern that came out of it. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you can't deny that it shook you. But we have to balance everything and we have to be mindful of our communication. That's all for this week on the podcast. Bye for now.
