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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 Journalists Become the Story: Who Really Controls the Narrative?
In this live edition of The PR Breakdown, Molly McPherson is joined by Warren Weeks and John Perenak, the hosts of the Reputation Town podcast, to explore the widening gap between journalism and public trust. The conversation centers on CNN’s Jake Tapper and his new book with Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
Is this book a mea culpa? A career pivot? Or a strategic move to rebuild credibility?
- The reputation strategy behind Tapper’s timing
- Whether journalists should profit from stories they once protected
- How media control is shifting from legacy outlets to podcasters and independent creators
- Why access journalism is losing public trust
- The pressure journalists face when reporting truth conflicts with institutional loyalty
This episode is not just about one book or one anchor. It’s about the changing role of journalism, the rise of independent media, and the challenge of earning trust in today’s media environment.
If you work in communications, follow the news closely, or just want to understand what’s really happening behind the headlines, this conversation is for you.
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Welcome to a live edition of the PR Breakdown, bringing back two of my favorite guests. It is the I think I wrote this today the guys behind the Reputation Town podcast. Briefly, for the new people here listening what do you guys do? Why are you here? Why do I love you guys?
John Perenack:We like to give different takes on PR and communications. You might not hear elsewhere, Certainly in Canada anyway, where Warren and I operate from.
Molly McPherson:Warren, what say you?
Warren Weeks:A media training guy, 30-some years in public relations, and I just love chatting about it, which is why we're here.
Molly McPherson:What's interesting? We've been doing this for a couple years. You two have had your podcast for a while, but I popped in as a guest and you've been a guest on my podcast. I always find that our opinions align, for the most part, not often that we are on other sides of the argument. One was the election, john, and I miscalled it big time. Warren, you, you correctly said that Donald Trump would win the election, but I'm going to tie this into that. Donald Trump would win the election, but I'm going to tie this into, I think, another place where we do not align, and that would be our take on Jake Tapper's book, or co-author of Original Sin, all about Joe Biden, and now it's been a month or two since the publication date and I have to ask you guys what do you think? Should we go with John first on this one, or Warren? Who's going to drop the bomb on this one?
John Perenack:I've got the contrarian take.
Molly McPherson:You think you have the contrarian.
John Perenack:I'll throw that out there and then you can tell me what you think of it. So obviously, the backstory to that book everybody knows Jake Tapper really didn't give a lot of time to the Joe Biden is in decline story and so he was trying to, I think, create a path for him to be able to talk about this going forward. And what's the best way to get past an issue you have? Sometimes it's to embrace it, and I think that's what his strategy was here. He searched out Alex Thompson, who had been reported about Biden's decline, out Alex Thompson who had been reported about Biden's decline, and wrapped himself tightly around him to write this book. And then he's using it as a vehicle to give himself credibility going forward to say you know what? I got it wrong, but now I've made amends and I've written this book that gives all this great detail about what actually did happen and so I can be credible on the subject again. That's the approach I think he's taking here.
Molly McPherson:Okay, so I can't tell. Though, in your answer, do you think he was, do you have a problem with him writing a book like this, or do you understand why some people had problems with him?
John Perenack:This. I don't have a problem with it, particularly because, if he was, if he came to me as a client and said, hi, help me get past this issue I have. This is probably the best way of doing it, giving himself freedom to work past this in the future and have a discussion about this in the future so he isn't constantly being called out. I think there's going to be hearings coming up in the not too distant future in Congress about Biden's decline, so he has given himself a platform to be able to talk about this in a way that he couldn't have otherwise.
Molly McPherson:Okay, warren, what is your take Now? I will say a little backstory here. When I had a podcast about it because I started listening to the book, I was flying to San Francisco and I thought, oh, this is perfect Cross country, perfect time to start listening to the book. I loved it. I looked at it as an insider's view of what was happening in the White House. I was not really thinking about the authors and what they were lacking. It certainly came up, but I didn't have as much of a problem with it because I have my thoughts on journalism nowadays and what it's like to be a journalist and work in media companies I don't even call them news companies anymore and I had posted something and you were the first person to chime in with your thoughts. Warren, share your thoughts on Jake Tapper specifically.
Warren Weeks:My comment was I can't believe you gave Jake Tapper $30.
Molly McPherson:And my honest response was technically, I didn't.
Warren Weeks:On Spotify, which I didn't know. This is great If you have a Spotify membership, you can listen to any audio book, basically.
Molly McPherson:Oh yes.
Warren Weeks:I've been stewing about this for a couple of weeks, so I love that I have an opportunity to vent a little bit now. I think that and this is just one guy's opinion this to me was the most blatant and shameless display of hypocrisy I've seen in the book publishing world and also, on the tail end, probably one of the least successful. If you look at his book, would you call it a success? Do you think it was a great launch? Do you think he sold a bunch of copies? What do you think his numbers have been?
Molly McPherson:Oh, he was on the top of the list when I recorded the podcast. He was number two on the Amazon list behind Mel Robbins, and I don't know if you know who he is. She wrote the Let them Theory. That annoyed me in and of itself, but he was at the top of the New York Times list. There was a pre-sale. I think he did well.
Warren Weeks:Manufactured. I would say that's manufactured by CNN. It was probably one of the most promoted books Every time. Hey guys, my book's coming out next week and they just promote like millions of dollars worth of free promotion. First week he sold 53,000 copies, which is certainly respectable. If you compare that to Bob Woodward Fear, the book he had about Donald Trump, first week 1.1 million books. Mary Trump, right. So Bob Woodward is like you know. Obviously Watergate. Mary Trump's book about Donald Trump that came out a couple years ago 900,000 copies in the first week, and those books also held their sales for a tremendous amount of time. Jake Tabber second week 17,000. And now it's just it's off the list. So, sales aside and I listened to the first two chapters but I started throwing up in my mouth a little bit, so I just like were those the free chapters?
Warren Weeks:I have the whole book. I have it's on Spotify as well. I'm like, oh, I'll listen to it. And as I went for a walk, I'm just like Jesus Christ. So the stories are great. You're right Like, the stories are excellent, it's interesting, you can picture it. You're like, oh, I had a suspicion. It's to me, you have to separate the art from the artist.
Warren Weeks:I just I think he's the wrong messenger for this, because if you look back, as I have, there are many video clips when he's always sharp as a tack. He's the best Joe Biden he's ever been. This guy's I mean Like, how dare you make fun of his stutter? And the dude had clear cognitive decline and like dementia, whatever you want to call it. And for him, the moment when Joe Biden becomes out of power and not useful to him anymore, he stabs him in the back and uses him to climb up, and I found that really, really offensive.
Warren Weeks:So interesting stories in the book, but I was really offended by the balls that this guy had to actually say that he was not complicit. I would say he was one of the top four or five journalists, because of his platform who was actually promoting this. Like he was the guy moderating the debate the terrible debate and he was actually working on this book before all that. So it's not like he had this eureka moment during the debate of oh my God, what's happening. He was writing the book and folks in the journalism and the media world would say if your job is a journalist and you're on CNN, should you maybe not be reporting stuff when you know it?
Molly McPherson:So that's my beef with Jake Tapper, yeah, and that has certainly come up before I'm blanking on the New York Times, maureen O'Dowd, you know it's the same thing. No, not Maureen O'Dowd, but writing, writing about Trump and then coming out with a book about Trump. Yeah, certainly, with journalists, I and something that I had said to you. I think your argument is valid. It is absolutely valid. But my take on it for the Jake Tappers of the world is this is that the media industry is changing. When Bob Woodward was reporting on Watergate newspaper really was king Woodward and Bernstein. They were doing the work, they were hustling. They didn't even have the respect in the newsroom with Ben Bradley, but he gave them the story hustle, hustle because they did it for the love of news. But nowadays, I think it's a combination of journalism, ego, but also how the media world is structured. Now we don't have news businesses, we just have entertainment businesses. So whether it's cable television, if it's news or book, I think it's all the same. It's like content.
John Perenack:The reality is that I think Jake Tava wrote the book to give him the credibility as a journalist. Going forward, and a year from now, when we're more deep into congressional hearings about Joe Biden's competency, he's gonna be able to credibly say you know what? I did get that wrong. I covered it in my book. I laid out like the first clear account of what that decline was like, and he will be able to, I think, have a lot more room to maneuver and talk about these issues than he would have otherwise.
Warren Weeks:So another way down to the reputational play for him. So, 50 years from now, when people don't remember the minutia, they'll remember he was the guy that set the record straight. That's what we'll remember. So yeah, actually still a bullshit move. A couple other things, if I can. Jake Tapper hired a crisis manager. I thought when I first heard that I thought it was you. I'm like, oh my God, molly, please.
Molly McPherson:No, but let's just say, though, that Jake Tapper does follow me and his response what you could tell he was doing crisis management. Then I heard that he did hire someone. It did follow my framework.
Warren Weeks:I'm just saying but go on Having. I'm just saying but go on. Having said all that, if you have to hire a crisis manager to launch a book, like, maybe there's an issue. The other thing is one of your, one of your listeners here said where do we find stories that are true? What do you and here's I'm going to say something that is maybe going to rub people the wrong way, but I actually believe this is the case. The best journalists we have in the world right now are these independent podcasters like Theo Vaughn, which is crazy and I know Joe Rogan is a very polarizing figure, but if you go back and just objectively listen to his podcasts over the past four years, he was asking tough questions of politicians, of health care professionals that no actual journalists were, Got just vilified for it and CNN had him in a yellow filter, made him look all weird but like, why is Theo Vaughn asking harder questions than 60 minutes? That's problematic.
Molly McPherson:And here's your answer. And on this chat before and I should say on this episode we do have the chat going I said my smarty sometimes snarky smart people they chime in and we talked about this issue at great length. I had touched on the fact that the media industry is changing so much. And you bring up 60 Minutes when CBS, owned by Paramount, is brokering a deal to be purchased and then there's pressure on the executive producer of 60 Minutes and then the head of CBS News, wendy McMahon, is asked to leave. Business now forms journalism.
Molly McPherson:So a lot of these journalists, their hands are tied on what they can and cannot report on. But you get content creators the Theo Vons, the Joe Rogans, the oh my gosh, call Her Daddy Alex boys. No, someone in the chat will tell me why am I blanking? I just watched her on Netflix. They can say what they want, they can ask any question what they want, but also they have the ability to go so deep. That's what makes them interesting. And so the question was are they really journalists or not? But they're knowledgeable, that's what people are driven to.
Warren Weeks:How are they not journalists? How are they not?
Molly McPherson:I say this they're not credentialed. But you're right. What makes a journalist? Do they follow ethics and rules? The journalism, the rules of ethics.
Warren Weeks:Do the journalists today like do the MSNBCs and the Fox? It's if you look at what's happened in the media business and I know this was not really our topic that we were going to chat about, but it's I find it depressing what's going on and like to the point where, at this advanced age that I'm at here in this business and I went to journalism school I am credentialed right from way back in the day and a lot of people I would say would think that credential is worth the paper it's written on, because they learn how to do it in a newsroom and they learn how to go out on the street and ask questions. But it makes me actually want to go out and start a program where I ask these people because no one is asking no one is asking.
Molly McPherson:No one's taking these politicians to task and asking them great questions because they're scared of losing their access. Yeah, exactly, if you're comparing, let's say, alex Cooper from Call Her Daddy, which has between her and Joe Rogan, they're at the top and the reason why it's entertaining they ask the questions that a credentialed journalist who is on a media outlet is not going to ask. But then you have Terry Moran being fired from ABC News for the tweet that he posted about Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. Now what do you think about that?
John Perenack:So that strays into. What does a news organization have to do to stay in good stead with the White House to be able to effectively report? We've already seen them kick both AP out of the press pool or out of the White House offices. The thing about the media right now is that there's all these businesses that look like news outlets and from an outsider you would say, oh, that's a news outlet, but they don't actually operate that way. The quote-unquote journalists who run them and who actually do the reporting. They don't operate on the same basis, with the same rules and the same sort of standards that a traditional journalist would.
John Perenack:But at the same time you as an organization are left trying to protect your reputation or maybe get a story accurately reported on those platforms, and it's very difficult because they often have their own interests, their own objectives they don't disclose and often motivated by their own political or financial motivations that again aren't disclosed.
John Perenack:So it is a very complicated environment to be in and this is actually why, to the point about content creators like podcasters, embracing them where you can to get your message out is the better way than trying to just rely on earned media alone, because if you just try and rely on earned media to tell your story.
John Perenack:It is a losing game as far as I'm concerned, because there's not as many, there's not enough opportunity, your audience isn't necessarily there in the first place, and I find that this ties into what you were talking about, molly, about some of the traditional journalists in the White House.
John Perenack:They really get hung up on what they think the storyline should be versus what an objective view of the matter might be. Recording this, it's June 25th and this morning, the dialogue is continually all about who's correct, about the way the White House is portraying the attack on Iran, where things completely obliterated or just partially obliterated, and trying to catch the president out in some way, shape or form. But the reality is, this is the same game they played for four years before and it was a losing game, and it's a losing game now. They're really focused on something so in the weeds that I think they're putting themselves at risk to have them being outstripped even further by these alternative content creators and podcasters, because that's more and more what is going to, I think, drive the narrative when it comes to news in the future.
Molly McPherson:The White House giving press credentials to content creators, friendly content creators, and it's interesting, when you guys went to open the HuffPo the Huffington Post clip that I gave you it was gone, it was already pulled and what I had sent you was Caroline Levitt. She's the press secretary. She was welcoming a room full of online content creators, all very friendly, and so you can imagine what the questions were. The first question was given to a content creator and she said thank you so much for allowing me to ask the first question and to be here. And then everything was fluff, fluff, fluff.
Molly McPherson:It's like how come you guys are so great and how can you be any better? So that's a big problem. They're really skewing it through social media and I'll say last night I was telling Warren, before we came on the air, I was at a show last night in Boston and it was with a bunch of influencers and they needed to invite the old person up there. I totally represented Gen X Offline, offline, when we were chit chatting, the conversation was how much, how much money is flowing to from PAC money coming from both sides, I think is just having the beat on their content creators and influencers who are spreading their messages.
John Perenack:But here's the thing Is that really a problem or is that just reality? And as communicators, you have to adapt to reality and often embrace it in order to get the upper hand with your clients or your organization you're trying to represent.
Molly McPherson:Yeah, but also the White House doesn't want traditional media in there. They're blocking them. So how does traditional media then report on what's happening in the White House? And then that could bring us back right to Jake Tapper. What we know happened on the inside, even with Biden.
Warren Weeks:Maybe try reporting on it. Actually, the Biden administration had their friendly voices and they were MSNBC and CNN. They were doing the same thing that these independent podcasters are doing and the other thing that we haven't really mentioned here, and that is an actual fact. I mean, you sound like a tinfoil hat person, but there are a lot of these media outlets. These big ones in the States especially, are kind of communications arms of the government. There is someone from the government I can't remember if it's the FBI or the CIA who has a desk at Fox News, and I'm sure it's the same in all those other channels. They sit inside the outlet. I heard that the other day. Yeah, that's bananas.
Molly McPherson:Oh, I haven't heard that. That's interesting. We know there's significant cuts to Voice of America, which is putting out propaganda, but we have one of the people in our chat here who is visiting us from Sweden is saying news in the USA looks like a game show and a tabloid in one in one big colors, yelling people over exaggerations and in competition with each other. It's such a setup for divide and untruths and they really nailed it there because it is true. It is like a game show, because it is it's ratings, it's advertising dollars. That's what they need. Truth. I don't know where truth falls.
John Perenack:Yeah. Or in the case of a new content creator, subscriptions, and the more you can deliver content that your audience likes to see, the more subscriptions. You deliver content that your audience likes to see, the more subscriptions you get. Again, communicators aren't going to change all this. We are caught in the current. The current is going this way, and so the question is in my mind how do you use this to your advantage, versus trying to throw your hands up in the air and say, oh, this is terrible, how do we stop it? I don't think it's stoppable. It is what it is. This is the way that the media world is evolving.
Molly McPherson:To wrap up this conversation, I'm going to bring in a comment from the chat and, warren, I'm going to direct this to you. She's a fellow Canadian and she works in politics. She's an operative. She always brings good intel in here. But her question is genuinely curious Do you think Jake Tapper is wrong for withholding the book's content as a reporter or making money off news as a reporter? And I will add or both.
Warren Weeks:I guess it depends on your definition of his role. Is he a journalist or is he an entertainer? And I think he's answered that question for us right. If you're a journalist and you have news that the public should you know that the president can't function? Should you know that there's an auto pen that's signing everything? And what do they call it? Pardoning people? Should you know that?
Warren Weeks:As an American citizen Like I live in a different country and I'm pissed. So I think that it just it's disappointing to me that the and maybe I nostalgize the Walter Cronkite, dan Rather era but like where do you go, where do you go for news? How do you know what's going on? And I would say like the best version of that and it might piss off some of your people here, it's like X for me. It's just it's an unfiltered window into what and that's why I said Trump was going to win the election like I was seeing something dramatically different on there than I was seeing on these different channels and New York Times.
Warren Weeks:You look at the Globe and Mail here, or the Toronto Star, or the New York Times, the Washington Post, and you see that kind of title and I think there's this automatic. You say this is the same paper that existed 10 years ago and 20 years ago and 50 years ago and 80 years ago. But it's not. The cover looks the same, but the people underneath and the motivations are completely different and I think once you scratch below the surface, it's pretty ugly. What's going on in journalism and you have. You obviously have the echo chambers and the squeaky wheels on either side, but I think there are a lot of people in the moderate middle who don't really have a voice and who are super pissed off and super confused.
Molly McPherson:Yeah, and speaking of being super confused, john Pernick, I cannot believe that Warren nailed the calling Trump, but he's saying he only got that from X, which is the most biased version of getting information about Trump. Is it, warren Weeks? Are you telling me X is your go-to social media?
Warren Weeks:It's my go-to news information source. Like I dabble in all, like you have to get it from everywhere, right?
Molly McPherson:Yeah, you do yeah.
Warren Weeks:And myself. Am I part of the problem? Am I in my echo chamber? But I will say, in the lead up to the election I was seeing just as much, if not more, stuff for Kamala Harris than I was seeing for Donald Trump, but it was so polarized from both sides. But I would see his rally and I'm like those people look pretty jazzed up, and I would see hers. I'm like those people look like they're at gunpoint and so on some level it looked the same. Oh yeah, we've got the signs. Beyonce's here for three minutes for $10 million. It looked like my gut instinct told me this is bullshit. That's not real Donald Trump it's. And whether you like him, whether you don't, a lot of people don't. It seemed genuine. And so that's how I made that call, because I was just seeing this content and I was seeing it on both sides. Yeah, money into it. She went. She burned through like a billion and a half dollars in a couple of months.
Molly McPherson:Yeah, getting people like Oprah paying for that? Yeah, and speaking of Oprah, I just want to ask quickly on this one and we're not going to go too deep on it, but this weekend the wedding. John, I know you just came back from Italy and it's a shame that you must've missed it in the mail, your invitation.
John Perenack:My invitation yeah it was lost somewhere.
Molly McPherson:Yeah, To his wedding, to the wedding to Lauren Sanchez. And when I was doing this program last night, Jeff Bezos came up. But there's a lot of people online and he's gets a lot of blowback about just how he conducts himself and their whole branding of the two of them. But what do you guys think? I have an opinion on it, but if you're walking in the shoes of Jeff Bezos, like, what do you think? He's what? How is he putting his perception out there, or his brand out there? What is he trying to do? Is he trying to come off as this ridiculous kind of trope of just oozing of money and they don't care what people think? Or do you think he actually cares what people think?
Warren Weeks:I also want to hear if John got married when he was in Italy, but we'll talk about that later. I think I know what happened to your invitation it got stolen off your porch. That's probably why. So there was another billionaire wedding recently, June 14th. Does anybody know who it was?
Molly McPherson:Wait, is this a quiz or are you asking us Quiz? Wait, a billionaire wedding on June 14th.
Warren Weeks:Billionaire wedding on June 14th oh Soros yeah. Alexander Soros marries Anthony Weiner's ex, which, like there's no amount of money in the world, so I don't remember.
Molly McPherson:I admit that was a great story to follow that was a great. Twitter story.
Warren Weeks:Yeah, I don't remember any protesters at their wedding. So this is the problem, billionaires. Or is the problem billionaires that gave a million dollars to Donald Trump again, and so he keeps coming up as a thread through all the stories. And so he keeps coming up as a thread through all the stories, but I don't I. The most problematic thing to me is, like they're talking about over.
Warren Weeks:Tourism in in Venice is being a huge problem. Do you know how many visitors they get every year? 20 to 30 million visitors, and he has 200 people at his wedding. So that doesn't work for me either. It's not like too many people.
Warren Weeks:The politicians in the area are all saying this is great, bring the money on, we need this. So to me, the biggest problem with this is I don't know of what the third or fourth richest person in the world and this is who he picks no offense, but she's spent millions of dollars to look like a cat and I don't understand the logic. In and again to each his own, but as far as I know, they're doing all their stuff in private venues. I don't think they're shutting anything down. George Clooney got married there and they shut down the canal so they could have their little procession. I don't remember any protesters there as well, because they're on the left. So I don't want to make everything political, but it seems like much ado about nothing. I don't know. To answer your actual question, I don't think Jeff Bezos cares what people think about him.
John Perenack:John, what say you? I think that the amount of news coverage that is happening is more in relation to organizations like Greenpeace, who were organizing some of the protests, using this as an opportunity to get profile for themselves and I had to laugh, though I saw them. I can't remember the name of the tower in Venice they occupied and then released some smoke from and had a big banner hanging off of. But if you think of those people who vandalize or destroy valuable pieces of artwork because they're trying to protest oil prices or something like that, it's on par with that. They're using it as a platform for their own interest and I think often it just backfires. People look at it and say this is ridiculous. You're doing this.
John Perenack:I think Bezos is an easy target because he's made a lot of money. He's got a really successful business. There are questions about labor practices at Amazon over the years, whether or not they're true or not. I don't have that information in front of me to say either way, but I think it is a convenient opportunity for these kind of third parties to try and give a platform for their message, and this is where it goes back to the media thing.
John Perenack:At the end of the day. You could probably count the number of protesters that are involved. There's probably fewer than 100 in total, I would bet, but yet the amount of media attention they're being given by all the major news outlets is enormous. And I would go back to the question of is that really news? Is that the thing that the news organizations should be giving the attention to, or other things that arguably are more newsworthy? But again, this reveals the whole lie behind the curtain is that even the traditional news media is driven by ratings and advertising, and they will put on what gets eyeballs, and Jeff Bezos' wedding is probably going to get more eyeballs than something else.
Molly McPherson:Yeah, I agree with both of you and not just ratings but also the online chatter, because that's where a lot of everything goes well, and the Sanchez-Bezos wedding is a wedding that is just made for social media and for commentary. I had a reporter reach out to me at UK Magazine asking me to comment on it, and I thought I don't want to spend even two minutes thinking about this couple in the middle of my work I have to do strategic comms. And then I said no. And then they came back again and said, could you just write something? And I thought, oh, just how annoying. I like a journalist being a journalist. But then I thought on it because I thought what is this guy thinking? Because I thought, no, let me think about it. I really do want to think about this now, and what it comes down to is I think people are looking at the Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez in a way almost like common people, if you will. They're one of us in a weird way, and so we can chime in on them.
Molly McPherson:I don't think Jeff Bezos cares about anybody because he has so much money. Now Lauren Sanchez, a little bit more of a commoner. She was a on-air reporter anchor but she's still in the normal realm. But I think his currency is relevancy and he wants to be respected. But because he doesn't have it, they have to make a show of everything. And a lot of guests who are there are the people who want to be relevant, the people one transactionally the Kardashians are there, but also Oprah and Gayle, who I find very transactional in their choices of late as well. And then there's other people, certainly in the spectacle of it all, but I just don't think they care and I agree with you 100%. It's ratings, it's chatter and they're just negative now, like they're the villains that people love to talk about, but they have so much money they don't even care.
Warren Weeks:Let's ask this when couldn't he have done his wedding and not had a protest?
Molly McPherson:You're right, you're 100% correct.
Warren Weeks:He could have done it on his little spaceship in space, and they'd be whining about that. Oh, the green emissions, or whatever.
Molly McPherson:On the cusp of space.
Warren Weeks:It's. Ultimately it's people are. I think there's some envy, some jealousy there, and rightly so. And should people have $9 gajillion? I'll just leave that because I'm a capitalist too. Jeff Bezos paid $1.4 billion in taxes last year. A lot of people would say that's low, but it seems probably higher than most, and I would ask a couple of questions. What did the folks who were protesting pay in taxes last year as a percentage of their income Because I would say it's probably lower and have any of them ordered stuff from Amazon and had it shipped to their house in a day? So answer me that.
Molly McPherson:Wow, okay, so Jeff Bezos apologist.
Warren Weeks:I'm not, it's just we. Maybe we should be worried, but less about Jeff Bezos and his wedding, and worry more about our own life and getting a better job and having a better relationship and taking care of our kids and like going to the gym and eating a little better not to get all preachy, but when we're focusing on him what are we really doing to your point?
Molly McPherson:right, it's eyeballs, it's clicks, but at the end of the day, who gives a yeah? And I mean it is a little preachy? I'll say warren, you sound a little freaky. No, but I don't think. Jeff bezos cares.
Molly McPherson:No, I don't think he cares one bit, he doesn't care one bit. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining me and if you guys want more of warren and john, you can check out their podcast reputation town. I am such a fan. All right, everyone. Thanks so much for joining. Bye for now. Thanks warren, thanks john.
