115: The ONE Word That Will Stop a Crisis Dead in its Tracks

Did you happen to obsess over this viral clip last week?

We have very few ingredients. We have tomatoes, we have. How do you say anything? Cucumber, cucumbers.

Ay yai yai. If you are one of the many people who dove headlong into the Hilaria Baldwin canard, then muy bien because I have a story for you. Keep listening while I unravel the trending tale of actor Alec Baldwin's wife, who the New York Times pointed out was accused of a decade long grift where she impersonated a Spanish person when it turns out she was born in Boston. At the end, a lesson about how Hilaria could have avoided the crisis. You'll learn the code for staying above the fray and the one word that will stop a crisis dead in its tracks. Without it, as they say in Beantown, it's over. Welcome to the New Year and a new year of podcast episodes where I help you create an indestructible response with the right message at the right time and in the right place. My goal is to help you feel confident when you are communicating on behalf of your business in good times and the not so good times, those moments when you may want to respond in a fear based manner which can make matters far worse. My joy is finding these lessons tucked into breaking news stories, the ones that you'll find in the trending section on Twitter. These stories, often labeled social media crises, often start offline, but social media serves as the accelerant that makes these stories explode into a full blown crisis. I have followed these social media platforms since their inception and by merging my work in crisis and pr, I created a framework for response, leveraging the very platform that is often the root of why an event spirals out of control. It all happens on social media, a place where the real world is the virtual world, a place treacherous to navigate if you don't know what you are doing and your guide is your ego. There is danger at every turn. The crisis will get worse if your response is ill conceived and poorly delivered. Case in point, a little ditty about a woman named Hilaria Baldwin, or now Internet, known forever as Hillary Thomas, who is not, as we've all learned in recent days, is not from Mallorca, Spain, but a transplant to New Yorka from Boston. Now, you may not have heard the story about Illari if you're one of those people, because it's possible you don't care. I had a business call last week with someone asking me to explain my business and I offered up the hilarious story as an example of how I could help a brand in crisis. And the person on the other end of the zoom call, I could just see in her eyes she was lost. She had no idea what I was talking about and she said I missed may have seen the story somewhere. Now I respect people who choose not to spend mental calories on pop culture embroilios, but I just happen to be someone who does. I eat these stories up. One because who doesn't love a juicy pop culture story that plays out online? One that you can follow sitting on a couch or eating a bowl of cereal at the counter? Okay, that's me. But I don't just love these stories for gossip's sake. I love sharing the lesson baked into everything. Every public downfall. I share it with my kids. I share it with my clients. And every week I like to share it with you, the listener. I'll go over the brief timeline of events to help you follow the twisty tale of Elaria because there's so much there. But at the end there is a lesson for all. I will offer up a code for staying above the fray and the one word that will stop a crisis dead in its tracks. An illustration of what life could look like when your response is missing. The actions behind this one word. The absence of it. Disaster. A crisis that you will struggle to recover from for a long time. But even if you do because people do move on. After all, there's always a crisis around the corner. It will leave the Internet stain of regret for not handling it the right way from the get go. This episode is not all about Hilaria. She's just the muse for the lesson at the end. How to create a response that serves to place you or an event in a positive light. I'll share the word, but before that, I'm going to give you three reasons why you should designate this word and pin it to all of your communications in 2021. And by pinned I mean just like on Twitter or Facebook. You can pin a post or tweet at the top of of your timelines so people know how you operate right out of the gate. So the same thing. Pin this action. Let's go way back to the year 2020 when this person's reputation along with her spouse took a massive hit. She had a Milano or a bad year. Here's a basic timeline of Hilaria Baldwin's contradictory public life and how it all blew up when she misled everyone into think she was someone she was not. It all started with a tweet a Twitter thread on December 21st complaining that Hilaria had spent the better part of a decade leading people to believe she was from Spain. The tweet was from Lenny Briscoe. If you watch Law and Order, you'll get the play. In the tweet, she says. You have to admire Laria Baldwin's commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person. That led people going through Baldwin's Instagram post history, her tweets, her family's blog post, and years worth of public interviews to see how her statements on her family's lineage and background have evolved since she entered the public spotlight after marrying Alec Baldwin. Like this rough cut of an interview with the television show Extra a week after her wedding in 2012. By the way, she became an Extra correspondent.

I'm practicing, you know, in front of the mirror when you're alone, you just practice, continually say, Hilaria Baldwin, Hilaria Baldwin. Hilaria Baldwin.

How was it? Was it amazing? You know what?

And I'm not just saying this because it was my wedding, but it was the best party ever. Ever, ever, ever. I had like 35 or 40 of my family members come from Spain.

Hmm. The accent, I wouldn't place it in Bolton. More Spain. As we now know, though, it was not true. She has three people in her immediate family in Spain. Mom, dad and brother. No one has uncovered 30 to 40 relatives. Next, in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America, Hilaria discusses her recent wedding to Alec.

How's married life? Married life is really nice, you know, it feels different. It really feels different. I didn't think it was going to be different, but it feels quite different.

I mean, come on, that accent, you cannot deny she was turning on an accent. In a subsequent ABC News article about this interview, she stated the wedding veil was inspired by her Spanish roots. After the wedding, Hilaria Baldwin started an Instagram account, why not for an influencer. And she would frequently caption photos in both Spanish and English. For example, November 2012, Baldwin posted a throwback photo of her wearing a Spanish soccer jersey, seemingly in response to people starting to doubt her culture, the post said, in case there was any question about Mia Kultura upbringing, the caption read. She added the hashtag. Let's see, hashtag. I'm reading this here. If there were a middle finger emoji would be inserted here. Huh? She's already starting to get a little bit of an edge, and that was in 2012. But the cracks were slowly starting to show in this not so secret secret. The following year, in April, her husband Alec appears on the Late show with David Letterman. Remember when David Letterman had a talk show? Here's the clip.

So, for example, my wife's on the phone with her hairdresser or her friend.

She's like, really?

Okay, I can't wait to see you. That's going to be great. Fantastic.

What time?

12 o'.

Clock.

My wife is from Spain and she said blah blah blah and blah blah. I don't mean to be racist when I put that accent on there, by the way.

Oh boy. See, this is not looking good. All right now. June 2013 Hilaria retweeted a Latina magazine article that listed her as one of the 15 best dressed Latina stars of the week. So more proof she knew exactly what she was doing. Her press was planned. She wanted a more exotic Persona rather than a yoga instructor who hailed from Boston. Now I love this one. September 2013 in an interview with Mom.com Baldwin is asked how she would incorporate Latin culture into her newborn daughter's life. Her daughter Carmen. Hilaria's answer I want her to be bilingual. My parents are here visiting from Spain, so we speak to her in Spanish. That response is a clue to Hilaria's efforts to deflect and to distract while trying to tell the truth. Notice how she didn't lie because it's plausible her parents, who did live in Spain, were visiting. I've read so many reports and accounts about this hilarious story, but my favorite place where there is just so much treasure and information is on Reddit. I went down a subreddit rabbit hole all about Hilaria. So as a side note, if you want the goods on anything or any story, go to Reddit. One post started with Hilaria and Alec Baldwin live in my building. Oh, I had to get comfortable for that one. That was pure gold. Back to the response. It was likely Hilaria knew she'd be called on this ruse at some point. She made sure to be as truthful as possible in almost every interview she gave. She was very careful in her phrasing. She didn't want to lie. She put a lot of effort into not lying, but she lacquered almost every press hit with misleading statements. Sometimes she got a little lazy. Sometimes she got a little confused. For example, another tidbit added to the how do you incorporate Latin culture into your newborn daughter's life? Query from mom.com Hilaria answered, she really likes Ave Maria. I walked down to the aisle to Ave Maria. Ave Maria is in Latin, not in Spanish. So, more clues. March 2014, a Vanity Fair Espana article mentions that Baldwin did not want to provide or confirm her biographical details. Yet in May 2014, Elle magazine profiles Baldwin and says she grew up between Boston and Spain. Again, not quite a lie, but awfully misleading. This trend is consistent for most of the articles about her. Now, in fairness, are these examples and acts of gross dishonesty, odious behavior, a malicious scam? No, no, not at all. But it's the actions behind the words. What was printed, what she said on video, what she said on podcasts. She was framing a false narrative. And she did it for many, many years. For Laria, who is paid for being portrayed a certain way, it's tying dishonesty to profitability. So, like the initial tweet that blew this thing wide open, it's a grift. A small scale one, but still a grift. It's a swindle and it's not cool and it's not appropriate for any brand. Now, why did this happen? Only she knows. Truly, only she knows. But I think after diving down into the story and hey, I have no shame about diving down into stories like this, I think she was trying to can this very recently. It must have been exhausting to keep up with the charade. My guess is that she was trying to assimilate her Latin accent into a new, new American accent, which was based off of her original accent that no one really heard. Now, this is also just my opinion. She may have used it with Alec Baldwin when they first met. The accounts of how they met often changed based on the publication or the interview. And I think she kept it up. Like, I think it was a very personal swindle. Like she didn't think she was going to be a big brand. I think she did it to try and nail Baldwin. Like, she wanted to get Alec Baldwin, and once she did, she had to keep up with it and she really couldn't come clean. She got stuck with it. On Reddit, I read that someone claimed Alec Baldwin was dating a Latin woman before Lauria. And that's the reason why Lauria, like, really kind of laid on the Latin. Who knows? But it fits for me in the story. Hilaria or Hillary. She kind of seems like a gal who wasn't as close to family and friends in both. And she was able to create this new identity because she removed herself from a lot of people who knew her back in the day. She thought she could shift from one identity to another by marrying into power and wealth. And then because she is so powerful, because she's a part of a name, no one would call her out for it until someone on Twitter said enough. LennyBisco's thread came right before Hilaria posted a video on her on her Instagram account responding to a light hearted joke that Amy Schumer had made about her. She grabbed Amy Schumer, swiped a photo of Hilaria in lingerie with her baby to counter how Amy Schumer never looks like that with her son. But anyway. But the broader audience of fans on that Instagram page, Amy Schumer's page, they noticed something interesting, that the Spanish accent she often had was gone. So when people first started spotting this, I'll admit I did not notice it on Twitter because I've been off of Twitter for two weeks. I took a mental break, but that meant I went over to my other eye Candy. I went to TikTok and I saw it on TikTok right as that was happening. So that's why I got in right away. So apparently this has been a well known, known but well kept secret in New York and in Long island where they live in the Hamptons. And a blogger mentioned someone who did stories about Hilaria that a lot of celebrities and well known people were sliding into her dms. That's direct messages on Instagram with the real dirt, you know, about Hilaria. So it sounds like it was bound to happen and it did. So here we are. Where's the lesson? Well, it's in the response. Hilaria had two choices when everything blew open. One, admit or acknowledge or two, blame. This was the choice she made.

Hey guys, how are you? So I wanted to respond to some things that I've been seeing on Twitter and I just want to be very clear just because I think that there's, there's some stuff that needs to be clarified. You know, I've tried in the, the past to be clear, but sometimes people don't always report and write what, what you say. And I've kind of just put my hands up, but, but now we have this great community here, so I can just be straightforward with you.

In this somewhat of a rambling eight minute Instagram video, Hilaria tries to make it seem like she's been trying for years to get people to believe that she was born in Boston and that things had just been misreported, which is all always a red flag. And you've heard me mention it many times on this podcast. People in crisis, they just love to blame the press for getting it wrong. Whenever you hear blame, it is a red flag. So the translation of her video, it's not me, it's you. In PR response speak. This is called blame shifting. Anytime that happens, the person, whether it's in a PR response or directly to your face. This isn't just PR folks, this life, this is psychology. It's human nature. They're placing the blame squarely on someone else. Now, she explains, and she turns and she twists and she maneuvers. She gets as close as she can to the lie to reveal as much truth as she can. So we hear things like, so when I was growing up in this country, I would use the name Hillary, and in Spain, I would use Hilaria. And then she explains that she consolidated the two names together because it was just so much easier to do with documents. And so she consolidated it. So that's why this brand was created, not to influence or to nab Alec Baldwin. It's simply because documents were too difficult to fill out in the end, blame shifting. So here it is again, on full display.

But again, like anybody who's, like, coming out of the woodwork and, like, claiming to, like, know me, I. I'm sure we do probably know each other of some sort. And I'm sure that, you know, when we're at certain phases, when we're trying to be this way, be cool or be that or whatever when we grow up, I mean, nobody wants to go back to those years. I'm sure that we all, you know, tried to be our coolest self as we thought at the time, but, you know, as you get older, you kind of just embrace who you are and you just kind of want to be open about it. And that's what I'm trying to do here, is that this is just who I am and my life story. And it might not fit into your cookie cutter and might not fit into a label, but it's my weird mix of who I am. All right, guys, I hope that cleared out anything up. If you want to talk about it more, I am an open book and I'm so happy to talk about it.

Her husband Alec, jumped in with his own rambling Instagram video post. I'll save you all the time. And just jump right to his response tactic.

There's things that have been said lately about people that I love, that I care about deeply, which are ridiculous. I mean, just ridiculous. Consider the source. Consider the source.

There it is again. Blame shifting. It's when the person does something wrong. And then pins the blame on someone or something else to avoid taking responsibility for their own behavior or their wife's behavior. People use it to manipulate conflicts because admitting fault is not an option to them. Now, what does blame shifting look like in the press, in an official news story? Well, look no further than the New York Times article titled the Hilaria Baldwin Story. I'm living my life. How's that for a subtitle? I don't even know what that means. It came out in the days following the blow up. It was published the day before New Year's Eve, natch. So it could be buried. The article is spin at its finest. Honestly, after I read this story, I mean, during reading the story, the Times went down a few notches. This was just spin and drivel, like this quote. But all these misconceptions are why she agreed to speak to a reporter for 80 minutes as she cuddled and nursed her infant son. There is no chance on earth that Hilaria was winging this interview. She had to have been prepped within an inch of her life because her public life and image and that of her husband's was hanging by a thread. Now, the Times gave her plenty of padding. I mean, this is a puff piece and I'm a little surprised the New York Times did it. But the reporter, Katherine Rosman, she did allow the spin, but she did manage to add some shade like this. One of Hilaria's talking points was boundaries. Now, you'll hear boundaries often from celebrities, people in the press who feel that their lives are so private and important, so they're going to use that boundary excuse as much as you can. But this is what was printed in the New York Times story. Quote, one of the most important places to start is this idea of boundaries, said Ms. Baldwin, who invites social media followers into her home life with Mr. Baldwin and their five fair haired young children by routinely sharing images like her underwear clad workout routines, innumerable pregnancy selfies, and the sponsored diaper ad videos of her infant son. That's cold. And that's what we call shade. But this article, it was loaded with blame shifting, empathetic excuses, and not surprisingly, no comment from her family or husband, Alec. Boundaries, people. And that's where this story comes screeching into my lane and into this episode. Because the New York Times article and everything they've done and will likely do from here on out as it relates to this mess and is the response Hillary and by extension Alec Baldwin are in the crisis of their lives. Now, this story is likely equal to the doozy of a crisis Alec Baldwin found himself in in 2007 after he left a voicemail on likely ex wife Kim Basinger's voicemail to his daughter Ireland, who was 11 years old, where he called her a rude, thoughtless little pig. That went viral. So he's having a rough go of it. But here's, you know, here's the rub in all this. Can we understand Alec and Hilaria Baldwin's frustration about how such a personal, trivial matter can explode online for the hoi polloi to comment and judge? Sure you can understand it. Do they deserve it? Well, yeah, and here's why. It's their response. The fact is that Hillary Baldwin pretended to be an immigrant with English as her second language and a language that's often associated with a life of hardship. She appropriated it and then monetized it. And in the end all she is is just a privileged woman from Beacon Hill who was the daughter of a lawyer and a doctor who happened to retire in Spain after vacationing there. It's wrong and people are rightfully calling them out for it. Now, would it have gone away if she followed my indestructible response framework if she first apologized and admitted to faking her origin? Well, not likely. It definitely would not have gone away. Part of the accelerant is because Alec Baldwin has so many beefs with the press, so they, they're feeding off of this. So it's kind of a crisis in his own making. But the story wouldn't leave the bruise as it is now on them if they would have admitted it, if she would have said, okay, all right, yes, I admit I branded myself as, as this, you know this is true. And then put it into context and then explain all of her time in Spain and also which I read in, in Reddit is that her father was obsessed with Spain. And so it would be likely that a father would leave an impression on a daughter. But Hilaria didn't go there. Instead, they do universally what all people do when they are wrong. They blame shift. People use blame shifting all the time. You don't have to look very hard to find it. You can find it in the news, you can find it in official responses. Heck, you can it in your personal life. It's when people flip the script. It's when they've been caught red handed and their first response is shock and then their second response is to find the quickest way to turn the incident over to someone else because it's not sticking to them. It's going to someone else. When a person is in a crisis, that's the point. It goes off the rails when they blame someone else for their problems. Remember episode 101, how to admit yout Mistakes, with my muse of that week, Ellen DeGeneres. Whom did Ellen blame for addressing the role of allegations in the toxic production environment of her daytime show? Her staff, the press, all the crazy people on Twitter? Anyone but Ellen herself. Folks, we are firmly in the age of distrust. People are skeptical of everything, lies and general dishonesty. It just doesn't fly nowadays. If you try, people will call you out. And if you try and do it online or try and do it in a public space, oh, they'll call you out and they'll do it hard. Now, side note, if you've built a brand, or if someone has built a brand on exaggeration, self aggrandizing, you know the brand. You may win battles, but you'll likely lose the war. Because blame shifting, it's like building your trust with a house of cards. It's going to fall down at some point. It's just unsustainable. People can decode deceit very quickly in this age of distress and they lose patience with people who even try. And this is how we got to the cancel culture. It's from people not owning up to mistakes. Again, it is not for making the mistakes. The cancel culture was born out of people not owning up to them. So here's an alternative approach that can help keep you or your business or anyone who you communicate for out of trouble. Build an indestructible reputation by having a communication code that you follow. It's your philosophy for interacting with the public. It's rooted in these three things. Every time I sit down to work on a communication plan for any client, I'm always thinking like this. One, it's having an open mind, being open to other opinions, being open to other approaches. Two, having a conscious, guided by honesty and just doing the right thing. Do people believe you when you say what you say? When an action happens, will people believe it's believable because you said it? And three, being accountable for actions. Are you accountable when things happen? They don't even need to be big things. They can be little things like raising a price. This means a code to operate that is building trust. And again, that's the foundation you need to get out of any mess. How to whittle it down to three words. Flexibility, believability and accountability. It's a code that starts with your Mind, being flexible moves to your heart, moves to your soul. Be believable and ends with your actions. Accountability. It's what you say and what you do, what you admit to and what you acknowledge. These three actions values, really, they work together to create a beacon to follow. It's a light that shines, the path to an end. Whether it's the end of a crisis or the rehabilitation of your name, follow the code and more than likely, you'll be fine. It's how to become indestructible. If you don't follow it, you're lost, you're vulnerable. You are just waiting to be destroyed. Each news story or Instagram video or tweet reply plunges you further into the dark. You simply cannot see your way out. So for 2021, for you, a resolution for communication. A communication resolution. Be open to other ideas, feedback and opinions. Be open to change. Be trustworthy. Tell the truth and take the lumps when you don't or when you fall short. And lastly, be accountable. And that, dear listener, is the one word that will stop a crisis dead in its tracks. It's how the public moves on from the person mired in crisis. Accountability. The thief of a good reputation is lying. When you lie, dodge, cover, whatever you call it, you become vulnerable. The weapon that destroys you is truth. It's a tweet about your grift. It's multiple interviews. It's blog posts and videos about your parents in Boston. It's friends from high school telling the world that you're just a white girl from Boston whose parents vacationed in Spain. It's multiple Twitter threads, it's subreddits. And then the press picks it up and boom, it's ovah. Whatever happens, if you are managing a crisis and hey, it's business or personal, if you own it, you win it. Remember, flexibility, believability, and the word of the year to guide you. Accountability. The word that will stop a crisis dead in its tracks. That's all for this week on the podcast. It feels good to be back this year. Something new, something better. All week I'm adding tips from the week's podcast to extend the learning for each week's topic. This week, it's all about Hilaria and accountability. You can find me on Twitter Molly McPherson, so please follow and jump in on the conversation. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. Each week I want to help people create indestructible responses with the right message, at the right time and in the right place. I hope to see you again next week. Bye for now.