Kelly Clarkson vs Art of Play: Why I Believe Her

0:10Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's chat. I can't believe we're going to be talking about this one today. All right. It is Tuesday, October 13. Thank you for joining me today. Typically, we do these chats on Wednesday. I will be traveling this week. So I wanted to bump it down. on Tuesday. And good thing, because if it were Wednesday, this story would be long gone. Of course, I'm talking about Kelly Clarkson and the Molly Bird story. This story already had its moment. And this is worthy of a chat for us. You know, in this community, we love to hop on every week and we talk about the headline stories, but we want to get into the story behind the headline.

0:54We want to talk about what really is going on here. Honestly, I don't care. I don't care about this story. Now, let me just show you briefly here the context of how people care about this story, because a metric that I look at is the press, the press pickup. A story like this doesn't start with the press. It starts with an incident, but then it starts on social media. And that's where I come in. That's where my work comes in. It's the news aspect of it. I find interesting, But that's well after the fact. I'm in for the messy circus of social media because it is filled with misinformation, nonsense, just craziness.

1:36But it's filled with sentiment. The press sees that sentiment and then takes off from there. Case in point, I was in New York City this weekend. Sunday morning, I wake up, Mariette Marquis. The very first thing delivered to me was Kelly Clarkson. And okay, well, what's Kelly Clarkson up to? We'll start with the tweet. And then I want to show you the news on it. And I'm going to tell you right now, this is not going to be a conversation where we get the magnifying glass out to see if the$15 ,000 sign was there or not. That's the stuff I really, really don't care about. I want to look at the kind of human element of it.

2:13Oh, you probably can't see this that well. My apologies. Kelly Clarkson posting over the weekend, October 10th, 309. Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldn't afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me. Wow, dude, you're an idiot and just lost a huge sale. But y 'all go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman. For sure, check it out. Okay, that is the first, that's the first tweet that I saw about this.

2:46And actually, I probably didn't see the tweet on it because I'm definitely not on X anymore. But my mind went, oh, that's interesting, Kelly Clarkson. So if we look at the news cycle of this happening over the weekend, and I want to show you now the number of stories that came out about this story. And, you know, so these are articles. Again, this is with my media partner, Muckrack. They, you know, I asked them to pull some numbers on this story. So over here on the left is articles over time. So I probably can't see that. But over from 1010 to 1012, you can see the spike. And that ended up on 1012.

3:29It's now October 13th. But over 2000 articles. That's a lot of articles about a former American Idol contestant visiting a store, like a car, a magic store in Brooklyn. I got to give her more credit where credit's due. She's much more than that. Now, look at the sentiment. The red obviously is negative. Green, positive. And then we have neutral is this gray and then unknown. For all the times I show you sentiment, this is probably evenly spaced here. And not fully evenly, but this is where we're seeing really for the first time in our chats here where we have almost as much positive as we do negative.

4:07Usually these stories would be typically they're just negative stories. You know, we just see all the negativity. and the sentiment over time. So positive, and then that started whittled away, and then it was negative. Now, this negative here is where we all intersect because this doesn't mean it's negative towards Kelly Clarkson or Art of Play. It's the context of the stories and the chatter. And that is where, this is where the symbiotic dynamic nature of the story sits. It's because this was a primarily social media driven story. And social media driven stories are driven with opinion. And people had a lot of opinions about this story.

4:54But what I found interesting, most people, I would say just from a general point of view, do you agree with me? Kelly Clarkson has a pretty favorable rating. Would you guys agree with me on that? Even from winning American Idol through, you know, that everybody was all in on Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson was kind of there, but she kept chugging, chugging, chugging, just putting the music out, putting the music out, just bangers, bangers. And she was doing really, really well that she gets her TV show. And I was at NBC doing an interview with Access Hollywood. So it was down the hallway, like Jimmy Fallon was here.

5:27And then Kelly Clarkson was right across the way. And it was right, like her show was starting, like right before that. And I remember passing by the studio thinking, damn, girl, good for you. Good for you. And then we had what happened with her husband. And I was running this morning and there's a Kelly Clarkson song that's on my run playlist called Mine. I haven't heard that song in ages. But as I was running to it, I remembered like, oh, she went through one doozy of a divorce. Now her ex-husband has since passed away. But this girl has been through it. So to see this tweet happen and her kind of exploding like this, thought, oh, this is this is interesting because it's not typical Kelly Clarkson bear out there, but also how it kind of split.

6:14So what's interesting here about the sentiment going back and forth? You definitely have two lines of sentiment. And that's where our conversation is. It's not in Molly Bird itself. And can you get another Molly Bird? And was Molly Bird$15 ,000? And can you buy it or can you sell it? We don't know. Okay, we don't know. But to see the sentiment on both sides like that. But the truth is where it does bring the sentiment kind of to picture, you know, to some clarity here. So October 11th. Yesterday, Kelly Clarkson visited us in Brooklyn, inquiring about buying Molly, a one-of-a-kind singing and dancing bird automation.

6:51It plays an important role in the music shows we host here. So when I found out that the bird's name was Molly, I was like, even when the Kelly Clarkson thing came across my feed, I thought, OK, the Molly of two years ago would be over this, like all over this, like so quickly. But the Molly of 2026 and October, we had, you know, cocktails the night before. I just I didn't have the energy. I just didn't have the energy. And I thought, oh, but now the bird's name is Molly. I've got to say something. So I like how my mind immediately goes to some stack. So now they're describing, you know, Molly is permanently attached to the wall and isn't for sale.

7:26However, however, the negative experience that Kelly described on Twitter would resonate with anyone who ever felt judged in a shop. Now, think about them writing this. Think about them sitting here and figuring out what are we going to say? What are we going to say? Is this written by a local store owner, brick and mortar in Brooklyn? They just have this one store. or they're keeping it going just by, you know, all their revenue is just from this one store. Like, this response is from someone who kind of has been to the rodeo, so to speak, that they're kind of in a bigger universe other than just that street in Brooklyn.

8:03At Art of Play, whether someone comes in to make a purchase or simply look around for a while, they're equally welcome. We greet everyone who walks in the door with an invitation to pick things up and play. And they do, many stay for hours enjoying our puzzles, games, and toys. So now we have within the statement, we are clarifying what happened, but we are also getting an ad for Art of Play. They are explaining to everybody what Art of Play is. And it is a PR Art of Play because they are taking their moment. And I think that's this is a statement that is written by people who know they have a moment.

8:40This is not written by someone just picking up a phone and saying, you know, and like your typical notes apology app. No, there is an art to this statement. Love this line. Imagine our surprise. That framing right there is saying, no, Kelly Clarkson, this never happened. How you think it happened. When our small, small local business, we come back to that, was suddenly attacked by 8 million people who have never visited our store. Context. It's been a surreal experience to be the focus of such widespread outrage after just one mention by a celebrity. Oof. Now, we're coming after Kelly, but artfully written in a way where they are the victims.

9:26Thanks to all our friends for their support and welcome to all the curious folks who have discovered us amidst the drama. No kidding. That should have been the opener. They buried the lead. We're going to keep our heads down and hopefully we can clear things up with Kelly someday. Nice. Diplomatic. As a talented popular singer once said, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Okay. Clever, clever, clever, clever, clever. The art of play. Now, this is a story I am not going to have any emotion attached to it whatsoever. over. Let's only look at the details of it. This is a story that's already trending over the weekend.

10:01And why is it trending over the weekend? Because it's a holiday weekend. Viral stories tend to travel over holiday weekends. That's just how it is. If this happened two weeks from now, if this happened closer to the election, heck, if it even happened a week prior, I don't think we would have this peak. We wouldn't see the numbers from Muckrack go up like this on the coverage. We're getting it because it is a holiday weekend. People are kind of decompressed. People aren't necessarily opening up and reading the headlines or watching television. People are on their phones and people don't want to think.

10:34So that's why a story like this. When I immediately thought back to Labor Day a number of years ago, when remember the whole Jonas Brothers divorce, Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner, that story exploded Labor Day weekend. So there's that. So there's that. But also, you're going to get newsrooms, a little skeleton-y newsrooms over holiday weekends. You're going to get a lot of younger people in there. You're going to get producers who are doing anything they can do to get to a story. It's a store in Brooklyn who clearly now, a lot of people in the U.S. know about this store. So we're going to call this, really, it kind of is a bit of a win-win.

11:11But I just saw this tweet here, and I want to show it to you. Because I think it speaks to when we get into the extra layer of it. But look at this. I wish I could pop this out so you guys could see it better. At Joel McBob, the owners of the Kelly Clarkson drama store are rich celebrity magicians, LMAO. They have a Wikipedia page that breaks about how successful they are. One of their DVD sets made over$2 million in sales. And I noticed that this morning. I did because I looked them up. The owners of the store, you do not see their names in the coverage. That's what I found interesting about it.

11:48Like their names are not attached to it at all. But the store is just one part of their kind of magic card empire, you know, if you will. And so that's why they knew what they were doing here. They knew that they that they had a moment there. So getting into the details. So let's let's go here for a moment. I'm curious. Do you think Kelly Clarkson was snubbed? If you're looking at the responses, let's just look at the responses. Okay? Do you think she's telling the truth? Or do you think the store is telling the truth? I'm going to look at this from my experience, what I think it is. I absolutely think what happened to Kelly Clarkson happened to Kelly Clarkson.

12:32A hundred percent. First, we just have the type of celebrity Kelly Clarkson is. She's not our big entourage celebrity type person. She kind of gives that vibe. Like, I can picture Kelly Clarkson going to Brooklyn, specifically to go to a store like this. I could see that. And she's a mom. She's a single mom of two kids. I absolutely see her on a Saturday traipsing down there and going to the store. And the reason why, and this comes from my experience, the fact that she had that experience where she said she was talked down to, people tend to not misread that. People tend to know precisely the moment that happens.

13:07And I can say that as someone who knows. And I know there's probably other people here. You know when someone is doing that to you. And to get Kelly Clarkson to the point that she had to go to Twitter or into social media about this, we know it happened to her. A hundred percent, we know that that happened to her. And this is not to disparage Kelly Clarkson at all, but she seems like that type of cool chick celeb where she is going to look like your average run-of-a-mill mom running around on a Saturday. You are never going to think when she walks in the door that she's a big-time celebrity. So I absolutely believe something like that could happen to her.

13:46Now, could it have been that they didn't think she had enough money? We don't know that. We don't know that. But dismissed, yeah. So that's the first reason. When people, and when I said in Substack, all crises start from the same place. They start from that grievance. And it wasn't Kelly Clarkson, celebrity, that wrote that. It was Kelly Clarkson, the woman who has been shat on in her life by her ex and probably by other people in the industry growing up, whatever. She knows what she knows in this industry. She's not your atypical looking celebrity. Like she's someone who became a huge celebrity despite, you know, like she's not the typical persona.

14:31So I believe her 100%. When people feel that aggrieved moment, that's where the crisis begins. That's every single crisis we have begins with an aggrieved moment. And then it mobilizes from there. So it's either a group mobilizing over something, an issue. That's what I get hired for usually. Or it's just one person. And in this case, it's one person who had 8 million followers on Twitter behind her. And then social media subsequently where she went there. So I don't think Kelly Clarkson was thinking, I'm Kelly Clarkson. I'm going to punch down at this story, at this store. She was already down here saying, you just punched down to me as a woman, as just a consumer, treated this way.

15:14Now, the lesson, though, is should Kelly Clarkson have done that? And that's where the reputation risk comes in. She could have not mentioned the store. That probably would have been a better move for her just from a reputation point of view. And I should say this, there's probably a part of her who absolutely doesn't care at all. She's like, I said what I said and I'm not backing down from it. And I'm not apologizing. I'm not doing a response. I'm not doing any of that. And frankly, if I advise her, I'll give in the end, I'll give what I would advise on both sides. But she absolutely felt that.

15:53She could have removed the name, but the fact that she didn't remove the name tells me that's why it happened. And some people were punching at Kelly Clarkson saying, well, now coming at her because she was bringing down a small business. Kelly Clarkson probably did not know how big of an empire these guys have in this company. She probably didn't understand that. But she looked at it as a moment of not a small business. And so that's why when she came back with her other clapback of right here. Okay, I'll show this. Even though I know, I know we've all seen this. Okay, cool, cool. Sure, it wasn't for sale.

16:35Because they're explaining in their follow-up with all the details. That's the other point I should say. In all their explanations and their follow-up posts. Explain, explain, explain, explain, explain, explain. We've talked about this. What people, you know, when responses have a lot of explanations. Cool, cool. Sure, it wasn't for sale. That's a narrative Art of Play is going to go with. Thumbs up. So she named the company. She named the store again. So the whole conversation we had when I asked you if it was for sale whilst pointing to the price tag hanging on the wall with the title Singing Bird didn't happen as you elevator eyed me saying in a condescending tone, yes, it's for sale, but it costs$15 ,000.

17:11So if you'd like me to find something comparable for you, I can. I believe that 100%. And here's the other reason why I believe that is because contempt always arrives in a crisis. When there is contempt against another person, they always feel contempt. Contempt never goes unnoticed, ever, or unfelt. Okay, cool. So you're not only rude, you're also a liar. Got it. And I cannot tell you how many times I've said in my clapbacks in dealing with life where I end the sentence with, got it. And by the way, I obviously support small businesses because I was literally at a small business trying to purchase things.

17:51Zoom, bing, bing. I love small businesses and know they are important and always support them, but you don't get a free pass to treat people less than in your store just because you are a small business. It's not that hard to be kind. I never blast people, but you, my friend, are an exception. Your store is really cool. Unfortunately, you aren't. Who can assume that that's not what she was feeling? I think that's, I think what happened, absolutely 100 % happened. It absolutely did. But what Art of Play did is, you know, in their response, here's the reason why I believe Kelly Clarkson and where the tells are with Art of Play, because again, they know what they're doing.

18:34They know what they're doing here. We'd like to clarify one additional detail about Kelly Clarkson's visit during the five minutes she spent in the store. That's framing, right? It was only five minutes. Like, how did all of this happen over five minutes? She inquired about her mechanical bird puppet named Molly. We explained that while Molly is permanently attached to the wall and serves as a de facto mascot for our shop, a nearly identical automation is owned by the creator of the machines, a brilliant artist. So then they name the, you know, drop the name of the artist. He told us he would be willing to part with Molly's twin for$15 ,000.

19:06We explained all this to Kelly Clarkson in five minutes. How did you explain all that in five minutes? How did you contact Bliss in Seattle in five minutes? We also offered to show her a different singing bird automation made by a traditional clockmaking shop in Germany, which is exactly what Kelly Clarkson is saying that you did to her. So in their details, and they are framing it as a misunderstanding, but here's the other tell why I believe Kelly Clarkson is because in responses, in the professional world and in life, when people are wrong, instead of offering accountability, they offer details.

19:46And not just details, explicit precision-like details. And that's what they did. It's the kitchen sink of details. They were just putting everything in there. But they also said it was five minutes. How could all of that have been accomplished in five minutes? But you know what could be accomplished in five minutes? An elevator eye, the side eye, the stink eye, the contempt eye. That absolutely 100 % could have happened in five minutes. So I tend to believe Kelly Clarkson in this whole story. But what's our takeaway in all this? Should Kelly Clarkson have done this? Did Art Play do it? So the crisis management read on all this is we have pro Clarkson, we have pro shop, we have anti-attacking small business, but we have people who are skeptical of the shop because of the price tag was on there, which Kelly Clarkson indeed pointed out.

20:35But let's just pull away crisis management lessons from here. So for Kelly Clarkson, I don't falter. She had her moment and she's probably still pissed about it. And I don't blame her at all because this became such a big thing. It's probably the last thing she wanted to deal with. But I think she had a legitimate grievance and she had a wound that was festering and she needed to heal it. And she did. But it's an example of the reputation management thing that we can pull away. It doesn't matter if you are the art of play, which is all over the news and they have all this publicity, or if you are just a lowly brick and mortar just trying to stay afloat and someone gives you a negative review on Google.

21:15I know from being in the middle of these crises, a negative Google review sends people. They don't like them. They don't like them because that's their reputation out of their hands. And I'm Google. So their reputation is with a Google search engine and people can Google and look at someone's response, especially if they don't agree with it, like that negative review or one star or why they hate the place or that one negative reaction. It really becomes a sticking point with them, a problem. So if you have a Kelly Clarkson moment, like, geez, that is that is a really big thing. So I don't think Kelly Clarkson needs to do a response.

21:51And honestly, if she did, I'd be disappointed. I really would. Because we need justice for people who are contemptuous to us and people who got it wrong. Right? So I don't think she needs to write a response. No way. If I worked with Kelly Clarkson or if this got to Kelly Clarkson, because she is such an affable, positive sentiment type of a celebrity, she also is a very busy one. She pops up everywhere. She's in The Voice. She's doing interviews. She's in shows. She's singing. She's everywhere. This is an anecdote for the future. It's just an anecdote for the future. It can be a direct attribution.

22:33But if you're Kelly Clarkson and you want to do the art of play on this one, you just do you just do a side thing. You talk about mechanical birds. You talk about Molly's or you talk about whatever. You're going to do a side like, got it. Like, I'm going to tell you I'm aware of what happened, whatever. But I'm not backing down on this. They treated me like garbage. And sometimes it's just that acknowledgement. That's part of my framework, Own It, Explain It, Promise It. Part of Own It is just acknowledging. You just acknowledge what happened. I think that's what people want to hear from Kelly Clarkson.

23:04Like, how is she feeling about this? So if I were her, I would not do the response. I would not apologize because she does not need to apologize for very likely contemptuous behavior that happened to him. Also, from the business point of view, you know what they say is all publicity is good publicity, even bad publicity. There's some research that doesn't necessarily support that. There was a study for, well, there's one study for the caution and it came from, and it said a study of 78 social media firestorms found short-term brand perception declines for 58 % of affected brands and long -term negative effects for 40%.

23:44So in general, negative publicity does not help you. It kind of leaves a stink. But a study out of Penn, Berger, Sordson and Rasmussen, and Jonah Berger has written a lot of books about sentiment and content that sticks, found an estimated 45 % sales increase for a study just in books. Like when books got negative reviews and it was an unknown author, the spike in book sales went up. We've talked about this in our chats before with a million little pieces, the Oprah book club choice. It's not going to be a win for them for Art of Play, but sometimes curiosity can be a win for you because now every time someone stops by the store and also it should be said like today or even yesterday, they're back to business as usual on social media.

24:37Now, I would assume the types of posts they had were the types of posts that you bank that were there anyway. But I don't think they won the reputation piece of it, honestly. Because since these guys work in a bigger arena and they do a convention, like they've got other things going on, they're now out there. So if there's anything negative that comes up with them again, that's going to be a headline story. That's the risk of it. That's the risk. So it's not a massive hit to them right now. It's just a potential risk down the road. And for Kelly Clarkson, you know, did she punch down? Well, I would argue she just punched back.

25:17She just punched back. And you want to know what? Art of Play did the same thing. They tried to show it with dignity, but I think we're all smart enough to know there was too much Art of Play in there. Too much Art of Play in there. And also, from a crisis management point of view, the shop's explanation, if there's any lesson that came out of it, is this. The shop's explanation kind of missed the point. It kept talking about the details. This is why we believe Kelly Clarkson. It wasn't$15 ,000. We don't sell this. This is a part of our display. It's all these different things. All the details.

25:51When you get too much in the explanation, own it, explain it, promise it. the true response should have been about Kelly Clarkson's experience. Instead of trying to prove her wrong and call her a liar, which essentially they called her a liar, which is why she said that, they wanted to defend themselves. And that's why defending as your response does not work. So is it a massive hit on them? Not necessarily. But it does lead people to believe Kelly Clarkson and that they probably did side-eye her in there. It feels like Kelly Clarkson tweeted right after it happened. Like that tweet was written before she even hit the crosswalk.

26:29That's my feeling on her post. That's how she felt. And usually in these things, we always tell in the person, like write it down, write it, hit draft before we hit send. Let some time go. And she still could have posted it. Honestly, she still could have posted it. But she maybe would have taken out Art of Play and left all the things in there. And even if she said Brooklyn Heights, People would have figured it out. And honestly, it probably would have been more deadly had she done that. It would have been more damaging had she done that, right? Because people would have figured it out. All right, so let's quickly move on from this and we'll do the last piece of it if you want to stick around for a bit.

27:07Kimberly Guilfoyle just did her first briefing. Substack does not allow me to share video. Shame, because that first press briefing, oh my God, what's her name? Herb Hoogle, I want to say it's Zakaya. Something like that. Oh, here we go. Katie. I feel like it's Zachariah, but it's not. It's Zacharia. Maybe Zacharia. She got up and made Caroline Lovett look like Barack Obama. I don't know. Abraham Lincoln. She was awful. So awful. She had to read from her notes to get up at a press briefing and saying, hey, it's great to be here. I'm your press secretary. She needed notes for that. She even looked up and she was, you could tell her heart was beating.

27:51But it was so bad. So for the White House to have this is your press secretary heading into the midterms. This is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. We are going to have to analyze this. So but I did like her outfit. I'm going to give her this. She had the kind of the military jacket with the with the white blouse, the tie. I did like her. I did like her outfit. But she is full on mega persona. She's got the look, got the blonde hair coming down. Very kirky. than worse than Sean Spicer. Oh, please. Sean Spicer was a PIO, and Sean Spicer had experience. He was just horrible for Trump. Sean Spicer, I would argue, back in the day, which I remember clearly when he was our press secretary, he could have done the job with a different president.

28:37He could have filled, he would have been a good, like a second-run type of a press secretary, like the third press secretary of an administration. He would have been fine. Oh, she is way bad. Sean Spicer had to kind of deal. Remember, he's the one I had to get up and say, oh, yes, it was the most people we've ever seen at an inauguration. You got it wrong. I was at that inauguration, at Trump's inauguration. I know. Shame. We got tickets. But I was high enough at the first Trump inauguration where we could look out and see. And I could see, yeah, there were people there, but not that many people.

29:13Not that many people. And that weekend in D.C. was, ooh. It was because remember all the women marches that we had at the same time? I was there with my kids and I said, let's sit down in this diner and let's talk about what's going on here with lessons. And then we had to get out of town and go to the Red Sox winter weekend. Like, let's get out of here. And now the other piece is Kimberly Guilfoyle. That story is such an interesting story. So Kimberly Guilfoyle, who used to be married to Gavin Newsom, who is a potential presidential candidate. She is now our ambassador to Greece. she was engaged to Don Jr.

29:49Were they engaged or dating? I think they were just dating. I don't think they were engaged. Because when he got engaged to Bettina, he wasn't engaged to Kimberly Guilfoyle. But I could be wrong with that. I could be wrong about that. But she was shipped off to Greece because they needed to get rid of her stat. So Don Jr. could be with Bettina, his now wife, who got married and Donald Trump was not at that wedding. But Kimberly Guilfoyle, to have that donor who was, I don't have it on my notes here, But he was the owner of like Tomato Express or something like this pizza joints who was giving money to Kimberly Guilfoyle.

30:22And she is asking for money,$100 ,000 to pay off her Amex bill so she can have a smooth confirmation hearing to be the ambassador to Greece. And that guy to come out and with those texts, the humility on that is crazy. OK, before we before we head off, let's bring up Kimberly Guilfoyle. Yeah, I'm not surprised over the weekend that she's gone. And it's true, you know, when someone said Kimberly Guilfoyle should thank Kelly Clarkson, just for a moment, because you knew this story was not going away at all. All right. Imagine her life right now. Holy moly. Kimberly Guilfoyle resigns as ambassador to Greece amid ethic scrutiny.

31:04President Donald Trump will hold a rally for GOP candidates in Alaska later today. Once a top campaign surrogate said that she would resign amid misconduct allegations against her, which she has denied. Of course she denied. Guilfoyle's announcement came shortly after the new White House press secretary, Katie Zaccari, told reporters that the ambassador was asked to step down. Her first briefing lasted just 14 minutes. She did start only yesterday. Let me see what she said. Let's go back here. Let's see if we have a statement from her. Let's go to X and see what she has to say. Wow, that's long.

31:44Okay, so this was 11.10 a.m. Serving as a United States ambassador to Greece has been my honor of a lifetime. I'll forever be grateful to Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for entrusting me, blah, blah, blah. I've worked tirelessly. I want to see where she spins here. All the things that she's done, natural gas, reduced dependence on Russian energy, expanded opportunities. I'm especially proud of our role the embassy has played in strengthening. We'll call this the blah, blah. Okay, here we go. Here's the mean. I also want to address the recent allegations against me. These allegations are false, and I intend to vigorously defend my name, my reputation, and my integrity.

32:20I've dedicated my professional life to fighting for justice, standing up for what is right, and defending the values that make America exceptional. I will not allow false accusations to define my decades of public service. My gratitude and respect for President Trump and Secretary Rubio remain unwavering. I am proud of what we accomplished together and will always be a loyal supporter in his mission to make America great again. While my time as ambassador may be coming to an end, my commitment to President Trump, the America First movement, and the country I love will never end. Honor of a lifetime, we already heard that.

32:51God bless the United States of America. Well, what do we think of that? So she starts the first half, the blah, blah. But then, this is what I love. I also want to address the recent allegations. These allegations are false. And I tend to vigorously defend my name, my reputation, my integrity. They're not allegations. He released her text. That's not an allegation. They're her text. Pizza Guy didn't get up and say, Kimberly Guilfoyle asked me for money. He got up and showed everyone that Kimberly Guilfoyle was asking for money. And not just asking for money, admitting that she knew it was wrong.

33:30And how to bypass the scrutiny. if he just wired it to Amex directly and then chastise him for writing this back and forth and not using signal while she writes him. That is the ultimate, ultimate spin. Eric Dieters, there you go. He has the receipts. We love Eric Dieters. When I saw his quote, oh my gosh, he's the best. Oh my gosh. This is a bad midterm look. A bad midterm look. I just want to say, how is she the only person resigning for ethical scrutiny? Josephine, hear, hear on that one. You want to know why? Because maybe it's the receipts are so heavy. And also, she's already been cast aside once to Greece, so it's easier to cast her aside.

34:20That would be my argument on it. Yeah, Carla, first rule PR, never have receipts. Never have receipts. Wow. All right. So it's Tuesday, October 13th. What's coming up next? What is coming up next? I want to thank you all for joining me today. This was a good one. I think this was a good chat. Thank you for jumping in with all your intel. We have to keep watching. I think this might be the last we hear of Kimberly Guilfoyle. I don't know. She'll be, I don't know. She is low-hanging fruit, but is she interesting? I don't know. I think she's going to be banished from Team Mega. I don't think we're going to hear from her again at all, but we're heading into the midterm.

34:57So that's why we're going to see a lot of spin and we're gonna see a lot of things out of the White House right now. We're gonna see a lot of framing, a lot of spin, a lot of defending, whatever we can get. We're gonna see a lot of desperation. And when desperation happens is when we usually start to see these acts. Next Dancing with the Stars season. You know what, Herb? Sounds like a joke, but we all know here it's very well something that could happen. Absolutely. All right, you guys, I wanna thank you for joining me this week. Thanks for coming in on a Tuesday for the PR breakdown where we don't take down, We only break down the PR moves and the spin that we all spot together.

35:35All right, everyone. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.