The Republican Party’s actions since President Trump’s reelection had already provided Democrats with strong talking points to emphasize in the 2026 mid-term Congressional election – for example, the failure of President Trump to reduce prices and the failure to enact legislation that could prevent medical insurance from skyrocketing once the Obamacare subsidies expired.
On Dec. 19, the day they were ordered by Congress to release the Epstein files, the Trump administration presented Democrats with a holiday talking-point gift by releasing only 10 percent of the documents, most of it redacted, the rest revealing nothing that was not already known.
The decision not to release all the files, as the law required, and the ubiquitous redactions, provides a lesson in how to prolong a PR crisis.
Below are the reasons it did:
It received negative major news coverage, saying that not releasing all the documents, as required by law, provided Democrats with talking points saying that the Trump administration broke the law.
- It assured that the Epstein files will remain as a news story into the 2026 s mid-term elections.
- It provided Democrats with talking points that will still be newsworthy in the 2028 presidential election.
- Disobeying a Congressional action is a criminal offense, with a five year statute of limitations, a former justice department official said. Thus if the Democrats regain the presidency in 2028, those that participated in the decision to not release all the documents could be prosecuted.
- It broke a cardinal PR crisis rule: Don’t let bad news dribble out.
The Epstein files matter is a self-made PR crisis for the Trump administration. They’ve sat on the files since 2016. If they had released them then, it would have been a dead issue by now. Instead it is an example of how to keep a PR crisis alive and make it worse.
Among the most important lessons PR practitioners should remember during a crisis is that years before PR crisis specialists advised clients to tell the truth, political PR operatives knew that trying to hide the truth often leads to making a situation worse. That’s why it’s surprising that Trump’s brain trust messed up the handling of the Epstein files. Google how President Nixon attempted to conceal the truth during the Watergate scandal. Or how President Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinski. And President Trump was impeached for soliciting foreign interference to help his 2020 re-election and then instructing his colleagues to ignore subpoenas for documents and testimony, obstructing the inquiry. Obviously, not coming clean made these individuals’ problems worse. Telling the truth might have resulted in a mere slap on the hand.
The inept handling of the Epstein files reminds me how the chief execs of Boeing and BP mishandled their PR crisis. By attempting to put the blame on others – Boeing when its 737 planes crashed – and BP during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill — attempting to hide the bad news led to massive negative major coverage.
PR practitioners should remember that everything a person says during a crisis will be fact-checked for truthfulness, and that misleading reporters always leads to continuing negative coverage.
Also, remember the maxim I originated many decades ago, which still makes sense today and has been co-opted by others without giving credit to the originator: “Unlike clothing, there is no one size fits all PR crisis plan; every crisis situation deserves original thinking.”
“This may be the worst managed PR event in history,” said attorney Ty Cobb, who led the Trump White House’s response to a special counsel probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in 2017. “You’ve got multiple mouthpieces, and they’re all covering their own ass now, ” he was quoted saying in the Sept. 26 Wall Street Journal about the Epstein files. I agree.
