The First Move Always Reveals the Intent: Eric Swalwell and the Anatomy of a Trust Collapse

I want to start off this episode with something I said on stage at Social Media Week. It was in New York City, sponsored by Adweek, because it applies to directly what's happening right now in a number of news stories, particularly the one with Representative Eric Swalwell. The first move tells you intent, and then they might spin. The first move might be spin or a lie or something else. But when you know intent, you know what's going to happen after that. It's as simple as that. I said those comments in the context of brands, but it applies to politicians just as cleanly, maybe more so, because Swalwell's first move told us everything. Here's what happened. Multiple women came forward with allegations against the California congressman and gubernatorial candidate. Serious allegations, the kind that ends careers. And within hours of the first stories dropping in the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN, Swalwell released a statement. He called the allegations politically timed. He emphasized his record as a protector of women. He promised legal action against his accusers. That's the first move. Not accountability, not acknowledgment. Lawyers and attack. Then came the Instagram video.

These allegations of sexual assault are flat False. They're absolutely false. They did not happen. They have never happened.

His own campaign staff later told reporters he went rogue posting that video. There was internal disagreement about the response strategy, which means the first move wasn't even a unified one. It was a chaotic denial. Within 48 hours, major unions pulled endorsements, Democrat allies went quiet, and Swalwell announced he was suspending his governor's race. And resigning from Congress. Then came the shift that I want you to pay attention to, because this is where the crisis doctrine, my crisis doctrine, lives. After the resignation, Swalwell posted on X that he apologized for, quote, mistakes in judgment, end quote, while still calling the assault allegation a, quote, serious false allegation, end quote. His lawyer sent cease and desist letters to at least two of his accusers, warning of legal consequences if they kept talking. So the arc looks like this: deny, attack, resign, partially concede, keep attacking. That is not a crisis response. That is a trust collapse playing out in real time. Here's what the first move told us about intent. When your opening position is to call your accusers liars and threaten them with lawyers, you are not in accountability mode. You are in survival mode. And survival mode almost never survives because the public can tell the difference. This is my doctrine. Number one, trust is the benchmark of reputation. Swalwell didn't have enough trust in the bank to weather this, and his first move spent whatever was left. Compare this to the leaders who get through a crisis. I mentioned on stage at Social Media Week last week The American Airlines CEO who stepped forward after the crash at Reagan National Airport, even though the flight technically wasn't an American Airlines flight, it was operated by them. He didn't lawyer up publicly. He didn't call out the victims' families, politically motivated. He showed up. That's it. He showed up and took ownership. Swalwell's first move was the opposite of showing up. And here's the part that matters for anyone watching a crisis unfold in real time. Whether it's a politician, a brand, or a leader in your organization, or someone in your life giving you spin. Look for the first move. The first move doesn't just signal intent, it sets the frame for everything that comes after. Once you open with denial and attack, every subsequent statement gets filtered through that frame. The partial concession about, quote, mistakes in judgment, end quote, they don't land as growth. It lands as damage control because the frame has already been set. The public is not naive. They track the sequence. They remember what you said first. And that's the thing about contempt. And I've been talking about this a lot lately because I see it in public statements. I see it in my work. Contempt doesn't always look like hostility. Sometimes it looks like someone in the public threatened with accountability, who immediately reaches for lawyers instead of listening? Who frames accusers as politically motivated before the ink is dry on the first story? Well, someone like Eric Swalwell. Who goes rogue on Instagram because the instinct to fight overrides the instinct to lead? The first move told us intent, and the rest of it told us the rest. If you're in a leadership position and something is coming for your reputation, or you work for someone and you need to write a statement for them or counsel them on their response. Here's what I want you to take from this. Before you do anything else, before you call your lawyer, before you draft a statement, before you post anything, ask yourself one question. What does this first move say about who I am? This also applies to your personal life. If there are people in your life who are trying to spin you, who are trying to talk their way out of things. If you tell someone, "You are not measuring up, and I'm just sharing that with you," look for their first move. Is it for greater understanding? Is it for repair? Is it for protection for themselves? The first move will always tell you the intent, because the public is going to answer that question. So if you are writing that public statement, remember the first move, because the public is going to answer that question for you if you don't. All right, everyone, thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast. We'll see you again next week. Bye for now.