Spot the Spin: Ramaswamy, Vance and Amy Griffin

0:08Hello, good morning, good afternoon, depending on where you are. Thank you for joining me for our special Tuesday edition of this week. It is another episode of Spot the Spin. But this time, I want to hear from you. Like, this truly is a spot to spin. We are not here to take down people. We're here to break down their responses to things and issues and events that we see happening in the news that are currently trending. So a couple stories. They're kind of all over the place. A little podcast, a little reality television, a little literary. We have a fiction, nonfiction, story that keeps coming up that people ask about.

0:58So here we go. The first one is an older story, but it came up last week. And I want to get your take on it. Of course, the quote we ran in ad about lying in the Ohio governor's race. We're one week away. So it's Democrat Dr. Amy Acton against, wow, one of our favorite candidates to watch, Republican, Vivek Ramaswamy, his campaign has been a little bumpy. His campaign ran an ad featuring Acton's estranged mother, Donna Arthur. None of that is true. She's lied her entire life. It's, I don't know, we all have mothers, right? We all have parents. I don't know if you have a complicated relationship with your parent or not, or your mother or not.

1:49But when she said, quote, she lied her entire life, that was the mother responding to Acton. I felt that. I felt that. I felt that. Now, this is a toxic family situation that, in my opinion, is being optimized for a campaign. There's no doubt about that. Another quote, she said, my daughter needs help and she can't help you if she needs help herself. Oh, my goodness. My goodness. Now, let's just even say for a moment that Amy Acton's mother was a local accountant or she ran a local boutique in town and they just had a complicated relationship. I don't think that would disqualify Amy Acton for being a senator.

2:36Honestly, children of emotionally unregulated parents, I think, likely make very good candidates. If you think about it, you learn how to negotiate that type of behavior and those types of attacks. So we're seeing a lot of these kind of boomerang ads that happen out there. I think this is a great example of it. What the ad leaves out, of course, is that Acton's stepfather, her mother's husband, was charged with sexual assault against Acton as a child and her and Acton's brother removed from custody. I think that pretty much ends it right there. What did you all agree? At first, the campaign wouldn't even confirm that the ad was theirs, saying only Ohioans, quote, deserve to know.

3:23And then later that day, Vivek said that it is an ad from our campaign. He had to mid up to it. He then pledged$4 million to add it. So that is a move. That's a choice. And isn't it funny? Dispelled it. Probably saw the sentiment, said, no, that's not ours. But then when you see Trump on the stump right now, a lot of the attacks that are out there, he had to follow the playbook, and then he had to own it and then double down on it. I haven't mentioned the double down in a long time, come to think of it. But boy, we see double downs and double downs get so dangerous. But is this an ad that's one step too far?

4:06But here's a quote that he that Ramaswamy said, quote, we ran an ad about lying. Amy Acton is lying. She has been lying this entire campaign about me, about her record and about her history in the state. quote, had nothing to do with childhood abuse. Isn't it interesting that the framing that a Republican for Senate race in Ohio is using is lying? So there is a photo, yes, of Trump with the mother. That's the double down. That is the double down. And the double down about the lying, because this is what we need to spot. We need to spot it in these campaigns. We have to see it in these public outings, if you will.

4:58But spot these moves in your life, too, when people double down on one part of it, but not the other. To double down on lying means we can tie it to what Ramaswamy is saying, that Amy Acton is a liar. But what is he conveniently avoiding? The abuse. It's not even part of the framing at all.

5:25and what Acton is doing is made a point. Well, even the brother came out and said something. That is how you counter this. That is incredibly humiliating for a candidate, for a person to put that out there. But sometimes you have to match it. So one move gave us the reveal, and this is what we want to look for. Again, not only in these headlines, but in life. By renaming the topic to abuse, What he also did was a quiet edit of the ad. The line that came out, quote, she lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. So the liar piece stays in, but anything tied into the mother is out.

6:10What you saw in the campaign, and I don't have direct attribution to it, but I know that I saw it was when you do a double down, when you do framing and it doesn't work in the public space, what do people do? They blame them. That's usually the deflect of last resort is when you blame the media. That's when Graham Plattner, the Democratic candidate from Maine, that's how I knew. That's when I pegged. He's done is when he blamed when he blamed the media. Now, J.D. Vance did say, quote, whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern, end quote. Goes on to say, what is my concern is who's going to govern the next generation of American government.

6:59Who is going to win the Senate race in the state of Ohio? Who's going to win the governor's race in the state of Ohio? The deflection and the pivot. Because even J.D. Vance, even J.D. Vance couldn't, couldn't be a part of that framing. But he did say when asked about his own party, quote, I'm a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about the advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America. Politics is tough business. My message to fellow elected Republicans is if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about the advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.

7:48I think we all got a little blowback from that deflection. Wow, talk about a fast turn. Now we're disavowing advertisements when television stations are making the entire year's budget, local TV stations, based on these ads. And later at a rally with Ramaswamy, he said, quote, now the media and the Democrats in the state of Ohio are obsessed because guess what? Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial, which calls it out like it is. Amy Acton's a liar. That's what they want to make stick. And if you think back to Trump's campaign back in the day, you know, little Marco Rubio, it worked for him in the beginning.

8:33It did work. Like those things had a way of sticking. That feels like the same tactic. They want to make that stick. But everything's changed, which things do in an election cycle, but also in a culture cycle. Because culture is so fueled directionally by technology. You know, we had, you know, television. Then we have social media and everything was about Twitter. And that's where Trump really got his footing was Twitter. And then we have social media. But now the social media clap back. It doesn't work for Trump anymore, the Republicans. It's just not working. So some of the moves that J.D. Vance is making around this, quote, not really my concern.

9:16That's when you have nothing to say. You just say, yeah, it's not my concern. I have nothing to talk about it. Because then you don't have to answer. You can refuse to answer. Also, the critics, all the critics out there who complained about that ad, just the idea, the strategy, the objective of the ad, anyone who said something, they're not a critic, they're a complainer. Now, I get this in my job, actually, a lot, a lot, a lot. I hear that in almost every call I get where people are in the social media discourse. It's the critics, the haters, the trolls, the online mob, always. Whenever I hear it, you're not going to see me do this.

9:57But that's what's going on in my head because I just want to tell them, don't do it. Don't do that. It's not going to help you because it doesn't answer the criticism. All you're doing is renaming it to something else. And I promise you, it does not work. It doesn't work. And the last piece on this is also for J.D. Vance is the irony when he said, quote, focus on the facts. That takes a certain amount of nerve coming from someone who's within the administration. Focus on the facts. GOP Governor Mike DeWine called the ad deeply, deeply troubling and said the needs to take it down. And Trump backed Iowa Senate candidate Ashley Hinson called Vance's response ridiculous and absolutely the wrong tone.

10:45That's not partisan. That's reasonable people speaking reasonably. And this is where I lead clients in my work in crisis management. they're feeling all the attacks they're feeling all the criticism and it's not to say that every attack and every critic isn't like in this case partisan or in the case of clients when when people are trolling does that exist of course that absolutely exists but when reasonable people come out and start talking to you like that right as chris says a bridge too far right a bridge too far Here's a story that comes up a lot in the chat, and it's been bouncing around.

11:35A lot of people take me on it. How many of you read the Amy Griffin book, her memoir, The Tale? It's a book about her recovering from memories brought on by MDMA Therapy, which her hedge fund, I believe hedge fund husband eventually invested in. And she's talking about recovering memories of childhood sexual abuse. She's from Amarillo, Texas. Smart girl, hard driving girl. Ran track, I think at UVA. Ended up going to Virginia. She's up in New York now. Money, money, money. But this book became a huge hit. It was kind of everywhere. You saw her with Oprah and all the people, you know, all the power women came out to support her.

12:29I read the book and I got to tell you, it was a DNF for me. I couldn't finish the book. I couldn't finish the book. I had no interest in her book. But a September 2025 New York Times investigation raised the possibility that her memories were borrowed from a classmate. She mentions the classmate in the book. And I don't want to borrow authority on this or that I saw it. But I will. I do remember. I should say I listened to the book. I didn't read it. And I was doing Pilates at the time on the ground as I was listening to it. And she was talking about the friend. And me, who's not really paying attention.

13:07it made me pay attention. I thought, wait, what are the chances here? But then New York Times comes out with that possibility. Then that classmate, her name's Jolene Ultam, sued. Turned out that the classmate did sue. Griffin countered sued for defamation. Now there's a move. This is a crisis PR strategy, legal. Legal gets tossed around a lot. it's usually in that initial stage when someone's been accused of something. I am not going to say that anyone is guilty here, but in my experience in crisis management, when people work with me for help, and we are at the core tension point, and I am trying to find out exactly what happened, and it's a bigger visibility case, not small, but there's something at stake because this is going viral.

14:04When the first move that I hear out of the client's mouth is legal, I know there's something to the story. It doesn't mean that they're 100 % guilty, but I know there's something to the story, which usually happens in crisis. In the culture's discourse, people live and breathe by black and white. In the social media culture, you know, in crisis world, everything is you either have to love someone or you have to hate someone. And that's why we have cancel culture. Honestly, if you go into Reddit Taylor Swift and you're in a Taylor Swift pro Reddit group, anyone that is on the other side of Taylor Swift, they're going to be excoriated or you're going to go into we hate Taylor Swift.

14:50You have to be one or the other. In my work, it's never one or the other like that. I never speak to someone and say you're 100 % guilty, they're 100 % right. No, it's the nuance and that's where the crisis lives. It's, there could be one piece that is so wrong and this person feels so much injustice and they want it to go away. However, it's sitting on a bed of truths and that's what makes this complicated. So whenever legal comes first, that's a tell to me, irony alert, that in this case of the tell, that there might be something to it because Amy Griffin has a lot of money, a lot of money, thanks to her husband, and she has a lot of power and a lot of clout.

15:40To go legal first is a move. I'm not saying anything against her. I'm just saying the move that I see. Now, I read yesterday, Now, I mentioned a lot of people have talked to me about this case and she always goes after people. Right now, she's way went after Billy Bush. Billy Bush was at a wedding in Hawaii, I believe. Yes, Bush says that Griffin confronted him at Jennifer Meyer's wedding. She was married to Tobey Maguire. I think this is the same person, right? And Lanai. He called her unhinged and said, quote, She's threatened to bankrupt media publications and individuals, including me. Now, that's just his account.

16:22But when you see his account and you watch it, you go, hmm. But when he talks about the story about Amy Griffin, I don't know, it has a real bite to it. It has one of those truthful bites. Like, you kind of believe it. But the article that I saw last night, I linked to the article in my substack if you want to see it. So I posted it last night. Semaphore. Never heard of semaphore. But Ben Smith is the writer. And someone might be able to help me out on this. Ben Smith, I believe, used to be at Politico. I've never even seen this publication before. So it's all news to me. So Amy Griffin in Aspen, okay?

17:01So she was at some hoity-toity event. Catherine Rossman, who I spoke to three weeks ago. She's with the New York Times. Her son was apparently chatting with Amy Griffin, a friend of Amy Griffin's daughter. And they were saying back and forth, Amy Griffin was PO'd at the New York Times because Catherine Rossman did a story, I believe with another journalist about this whole Amy Griffin piece. And so Billy Bush, the part of Billy Bush coming in, is saying, this is a woman. He's saying she's unhinged. We don't love people calling other people unhinged. We don't like diagnosing people like that. But to say that there's a lot of energy in Amy Griffin right now for anyone who says anything negative about her, that's another move that kind of just that kind of goes hand in hand with legal moves.

17:50So it makes me feel like smoke fire, Sitch, smoke fire. So but what happened is at these Aspen Institute, I believe it was Aspen Institute, Amy Griffin was bitching about Catherine Rossman and said, allegedly, so quote from the article, at an event shortly after publication, Mrs. Griffin was upset about the impact on her daughter and expressed those feelings in a conversation with a friend. Her words were later taken out of context and mischaracterized as a threat she never made. Okay, that's the response that she said about it. But this friend said that she was talking to Amy Griffin and Amy Griffin was saying, that she was going to call an admissions counselor at the school where Captain Rosman's daughter, I believe, was applying to.

18:40Because this is all New York inner circle, like tight woven. So there was going to be retribution. And retribution, boy, does that come in. Boy, does that come in crisis management. Now, Ben Smith said in the article that Griffin Circle, circle, love that, Hoveri, Upper West Side, I'm assuming Upper West Side, found the alleged threat, quote, wildly out of character. New York Magazine found a classmate whose recollection appeared to support Griffin's account. So let's give Griffin, Amy Griffin, a beat here and say mother to mother. When people come at our kids, so that's understandable. That's reasonable.

19:22But the retribution. The next story, real quick. John Gosselin, Colin Gosselin, Kate Gosselin, I'm not going to go deep on this one, but we're watching this one. We're watching this one because honestly, there's a lot of people going against Kate Gosselin in this. So the story, Colin Gosselin, who's now 22, released a memoir on October 13th called In the Shadow of Eight. I don't know how well it's doing. I hear about it more just on people talking about it on social media. It alleges abuse by his mother, Kate, including being zip-tied, confined in a basement, and institutionalized before he turned 12.

19:59Kate Gosselin denies the abuse. She said placing Colin in the facility followed doctor's advice. In a TikTok comment, she said, quote, anyone who has dealt with mental illness understand what's going on here. So John Gosselin has custody of Colin and Hannah, and he's estranged from the other six. Like, I guess he hasn't spoken to the twins, Maddie and Kara, in like 13 years. So... This is just a sad story. I am not going to fall on either side of this. I'm not. As a mother who had four kids under the age of three to do the math, and I was on my own because it was a military sitch at the time, and I was really on my own.

20:42Like, we just removed remotely. It was just me. I didn't have parents. Me. You got to get through it, you know? So you're not going to be at your best. So Kate's not going to be at her best. So I do have, just from experience, I do have some empathy for Kate Gosselin. That's not easy what she was trying to do. For the John Gosselin piece of it, they were young and they were just trying to figure it out. He was working. They were young. Where they both lose me is they chose to do a reality show. And I get why they did. They needed money. They needed help. They thought it'd be kind of neat. Even I get all that.

21:18But when the money started pouring in, that's when they both lost me. That's when they both lost me. This is a story to me. It's not about parents. It's not about what they say. Like John Gosselin saying, quote, we're perfect strangers now. It's been a long time with Maddie and Carrie, like I said, 13 years. He's reaching out to them via People Magazine. I have a massive problem with this. So I, for the content creators who side, like Kate or John, you are not going to see me go on a side here because they both made the choice to go after the money. And who paid the price are their kids. And that's why we have what we have.

21:55And it's very, very sad. It's very, very sad. So for both. So I'm just not, I'm not going to go on any side there. I want to thank you guys for joining me for this special time. I know I moved it around. So those of you who are in the vault and you're here a lot, I really appreciate you joining me. Look for more lives coming up. We did have a live last week, a Vault only live that was super, super, what's the word? Engaged. The podcast is up right now or a chat about Mel Robbins. I'm off to New York City. I hope you guys have a wonderful week. Hey, Vault, keep looking for the moves in the chat.

22:37Give me the moves. Give us all the moves so we can talk about it every single week. Okay. Okay, you guys, thanks so much for joining me. That's all for now. We'll talk to you again next week. Bye for now.