- 7 months ago
A left-wing, atheist reality-TV host from Oklahoma is one of the most popular liberal podcasters, channelling outrage with MAGA and with Democrats she views as complacent.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00So you have one of the biggest podcasts out there, and as you know, there are hundreds
00:06of thousands of podcasts. Everybody and their uncle apparently has a podcast at this point.
00:12How did you conceive of this show? Where does it fit in? What is it?
00:17My friend Angie and I were on a reality television show in 2016 to run 2019. Our
00:24politics seeps through a little bit, particularly mine does, in the show because that's what was
00:29the hook for the Bravo executives. There are liberals in Oklahoma.
00:35Right, where you're from.
00:36Right. I'm from Oklahoma City. So the show gets canceled, and I go back to being an interior
00:42designer, and then I'm doing national projects. So that was great fun, and I'm just booming. And
00:47then there was the post-COVID boom where everybody comes out of quarantine wanting to redecorate
00:51everything. And my kids were like, you still have a lot of people that follow you that are interested
00:59in the show. You should do a podcast. So I tell Angie this, and we decide to do it. And
01:04the premise was during the Biden administration, which was, I've had it. I've had it with gender
01:11reveal parties. I've had it with over-celebrating children. Why are we going to kindergarten
01:17graduations? Why?
01:20So there were these relatable grievances that initially, I think, everybody likes to trash
01:27talk, right? And we look, my co-host and I, look somewhat MAGA-coded.
01:32You're MAGA-coded because of where you're from?
01:35The blonde hair, some Botox from time to time, and the Southern accent.
01:43Right? So it's kind of fox-coated, I would say. And I've always been a diehard political
01:50junkie. I was raised in the Bible Belt by two progressive atheists, which is a very,
01:56very strange upbringing.
02:00Was political discussion a big part of your upbringing in Oklahoma?
02:03Yes, with my mother.
02:05Who was pretty left, right?
02:07Very left. My mother is a voracious reader. She was a closet atheist for many years,
02:13because if you came out of the closet as an atheist in a place like Oklahoma, it's about
02:19as bottom of the barrel.
02:22I mean, it's social death for you.
02:23Total.
02:24Yeah.
02:25Total social death. And so she and I would have all of these conversations about, I remember
02:30the first time I ever asked my mother, what is gay? Why would somebody be gay? I'm like
02:35six years old. And my mother would say, well, darling, all you need to know is nobody in
02:40their right damn mind would ever choose to be gay in the middle of the Bible Belt. That
02:45would be insane. It is not a choice.
02:47Right.
02:47So this type of critical thinking juxtaposed with the rigid evangelicals that I went to
02:55school with that were constantly trying to recruit me was a really interesting upbringing.
03:00You've got this podcast now with the background that you've got. What do you see as its
03:06distinguishing feature? What's it about?
03:09We moved on from the petty grievances and we have an additional podcast now called IHIP
03:14News, which is short for I've Had It Podcast News. We have so many people in the middle of
03:20America, blue dots, if you will, that have a different worldview about American politics
03:28than, no offense, you coastal elites do or people inside the beltway do. And there is
03:36a part of beltway politics that is too civilized, that doesn't understand the grit and the fangs
03:46that will draw people in the middle of the country into the fight.
03:51And you're trying to give, at least as I listen to it, give voice to that sense of frustration.
03:58Some of your recent episodes on your podcast have these names and not all of them will be able
04:04to make it on conventional radio. No country for MAGA men, New Year, same assholes, ring out the
04:12bullshit, Merry Griftmas, fascism but stupid, and finally all the presidents morons. I think that's
04:21a different mood, say, than Pod Save America.
04:25Yes. This is the era of FU politics and dark woke.
04:30What is dark woke?
04:32Okay. Dark woke is a reaction to, you have the purest woke people who are policing what everybody
04:40say up in everybody's business, which is similar a bit to conservatives being up in everybody's
04:46business. Dark woke for me is we are fighting for good and for equality and for social justice for
04:54everybody, but we don't mind saying FU. For some of us on the left, it's hard to absorb just how
05:01depraved these people are. But because I grew up in Oklahoma City around degrees of Republicans,
05:07from country club Republicans all the way to diehard MAGA evangelical spiritual warfare type
05:17Republicans, you have to know what you're up against and you have to be ruthless.
05:21Give me some examples and tell me who your allies are in that.
05:25Well, some examples would be we have to go after these MAGA men. One example would be Jesse Waters.
05:31This man talks incessantly about masculinity. Joe Biden is not masculine because he sucks on soup.
05:39What kind of man sucks on a straw? He goes on and on and on so much about the idealized man. And
05:46that's a part of fascism, this propelling this form of toxic masculinity. Why are you so obsessed with
05:52men, Jesse Waters? What's all that about? Why are you so obsessed with trans people? Why are you
05:59thinking about genitals all the time? Kind of flip the script. And some of our allies in this would
06:06be we partner with like we had Joy Reid on. She was fantastic. Some of these corporate news
06:12personalities, once they get away and then they're on their own, you see the totality of their personality.
06:20So when you look at the guys on, and it's almost all guys, on Pod Save America, do you look at them
06:26as very 2016, very 2008, very Obama, and you've left that behind?
06:32We just recently had Jon Favreau on. And I see the situation as being so dire right now that I don't
06:41see any of these people as competitors. I see the whole group as people of building a media ecosystem
06:49that is pro-democracy. And if people that are still stuck in the Obama era need to go listen
06:55to Pod Save, I know that they are pro-democracy and anti-fascist.
07:00But you think it's a form of self-soothing almost?
07:03Yes.
07:03Yeah.
07:04Yes. I think that they're-
07:05And delusional.
07:08Yes.
07:08Explain that to me. Because I would bet, if we're being honest with each other, that on public radio,
07:14there's a lot of that too.
07:14There are some commonalities between the center-left and the far-right that can no longer be
07:19ignored. And it is that you can look at the electorate and you can say, you're being lied
07:26to. These people are lying to you. The center-left movement, the Hillary Clintons, the certain people
07:36in that media echo chamber are still lying to you because they prioritize corporate interest
07:41over the interests of the people. And that is what has left the vacuum for well-meaning people
07:49to just vote against the status quo. And this has been an evolution for me because I was a very good
07:56MSNBC liberal. That's where I got my marching orders. That's where I felt like I was intellectual
08:02and I lived out and I was the most liberal woman in Oklahoma City. And I see the error of my thinking
08:10and not thinking even outside of that box.
08:13Be specific. What were the errors? Because I know that you're obviously very, very tough on the likes
08:19of Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer. Give me a sense of what you think their sins are and what distinguishes
08:26your politics from, say, the more supportive voices that you do hear on Pod Save America or the like.
08:33The error of my way was probably voting for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. And I see now that
08:43there are degrees of Republicans and there are also degrees of Democrats. The person who lives in rural
08:53Oklahoma who is a diehard Trumper, bought the phone they're never going to get, bought the watch they're
08:58never going to get, has Trump Bibles, has been grifted out the wazoo. I kind of understand that
09:03more than I can the country club Republican that in social circles, if they came up to a party in New
09:09York, would act like they're very gay friendly and not racist, but they triple Trumped. They did all
09:15three times for that. Similarly with the Democrats, you have the Hakeem Jeffries, the Cory Bookers,
09:21the Chuck Schumers. There's a condescension to corporate democratic politics with the very long
09:29answers. You probably saw where I asked Cory Booker, do you think Benjamin Netanyahu's a war
09:35criminal? It was a yes or no question. It was a very long answer. Here's where I would get into a
09:42conversation with you. Some things are a yes or no answer. Some things aren't. And some things actually
09:47are complicated. Agree. Some things do have a complicated history. That's not necessarily
09:52both-siderism or all the other derisive terms for it. Is that just weakness in your eyes or what?
09:59I do think that some answers are more complex. There's no question about it. But when you have
10:06somebody like Cory Booker, who has presented himself to all of us as standing for the marginalized,
10:13standing for humanity, standing for civil rights, and you ask him a question about Benjamin Netanyahu,
10:21who has a warrant out for his arrest for being a war criminal, and you see that answer being
10:28duplicitous, this is very damaging to the Democratic Party.
10:33Joe Rogan is the leading podcaster, not only in this country, but in the world, and by a lot.
10:39By a lot. And this is a guy who started out not with politics in mind, but rather with UFOs in mind,
10:50and UFC fighting, and suddenly politics, and big thinkers, and dark web people, and, and, and started
10:58coming to his show. And it became even more important, even more influential. And one of the
11:04biggest lingering questions about Kamala Harris wasn't about this policy question or that.
11:09It was about why the hell she didn't manage to go on Joe Rogan. Now, I know you don't listen
11:14incessantly, but I wonder what your thoughts on Joe Rogan, how you think about him, and what influence
11:23it might or might not have on what you do.
11:25These voices are out there everywhere. And on the right, they have a massive, massive media ecosystem.
11:34To combine this answer with the previous one, the Democrats are too structured. They need to go on
11:43all of these podcasts. Kamala should have gone on Joe Rogan and allow herself to not be so disciplined.
11:51The reason that Joe Rogan and a much smaller podcast, I've had it, are taking off so much is
11:59because this is the way people speak. The news where you're just being reported to, it's kind of
12:05aged. It feels somewhat antiquated. We've become more informal in the way that we live. And to combine
12:13this with my former profession, I still do it, interior design. Think about back in the 50s, the kitchen,
12:19your guests never saw it. It was a very formal way of life. And now the kitchen is the nucleus of the
12:24house and everybody hangs out at the island. As a culture, we've become less and less formal. You
12:29see that in architecture and you see that in the way we consume news. So there's this idea that when
12:36you're listening to a podcast or two people having a conversation, that you know them and they're right
12:42in your ear and it feels intimate versus the presentation of corporate news. What I grew up
12:48and I still like it and I still watch it. Do you? Yeah, I do. Do you think the New York Times is a
12:53reliable purveyor of news? Because it's certainly the dominant newspaper and probably news gathering
12:59organization in this country. I do think they do really good work. There has been some sane
13:08washing headlines pertaining to covering what is actually happening right now that I think is not
13:15just a New York Times problem, but a media problem in general. I saw online, imagine if we covered what
13:22was happening in the United States right now, the way we cover what happens in dictatorships in Africa
13:29or the Middle East. More outraged in a sense. Right. And it would be more realistic as to what's
13:34happened. I think the media has been very complicit because of the corporate ownership of it and it's
13:42been the soft sell of this fascism. I'm not sure I agree if you don't mind my saying. So in the sense,
13:49I get that critique and I hear it all the time. I'm in a corporate media. This week's cover of the
13:54New Yorker is Donald Trump emits lots of explosions, obviously Venezuela, drinking from a gigantic barrel of
14:03oil and the oil is coming all over. A more straight up the, you know, the wazoo political cartoon you
14:11couldn't imagine by Barry Blitt. And there it is. And yet I go to one, you know, panel discussion after
14:19another and get yelled at by one comedian podcast, usually comedian podcasters about, you know, the
14:24corporate media and they're the truth teller. I don't know if it's as simple as all that.
14:29I think you're correct that there are outliers, but it seems like since Fox News, there has been
14:37a trickle down effect of a weakening of journalistic integrity across the board.
14:45You had Rahm Emanuel. Oh, yeah. Rahm Emanuel is pretty clearly either thinking about or already
14:52running for president and you just let him have it. You put it right between his eyes. Why?
15:00When I heard him buy into the narrative that the right wing defines the left wing by, by being
15:08trans obsessed or bathroom obsessed, when they, the right wing, are the people who ran on this,
15:15for him to placate to that narrative. And when he said it, I didn't know he was going to say it.
15:22That was, I felt the adrenaline like come up in me. And I have friends in Oklahoma who have
15:29trans children. And to go back to what my mother said, nobody in their right mind chooses to wake
15:35up and think, you know what? Today I'm going to F with the conservatives. I'm going to switch genders
15:39and I'm going to go try to be a D1 tennis player. That's not what this journey is. And for the
15:45Democrats, we have to be the party of equality. And even if these MAGA people don't understand
15:52what transgenderism is, that's okay. You don't have to understand it, but we're not going to
15:57bully them. We're not going to pick them up and throw them under the bus. And the rights that are
16:02available for me need to be readily available for those people. And I would even go a step further.
16:08Maybe they need a little bit more love and a little bit less throwing under the bus. So when
16:12I hear Democrats do this, it really pisses me off. And that's why the Democrats lose because
16:21average voters sniff that duplicity out. Do you accept the argument that, I hate the word,
16:30but I'll use it anyway, that wokeness got to a point where it did hurt the Democrats on a whole
16:37other range of issues and their efforts to get elected?
16:40I accept that what we're going through right now is a backlash from a lot of that. I remember
16:50on my Instagram feed after Kamala Law, somebody wrote, I hate being white, you know, just very
16:58histrionic about the whole thing. And I thought, oh, fuck's sake, for God's sake, this is ridiculous.
17:02Of course, you still don't even get the point. On the far left, it can go too far, too woke,
17:10which is why I think we have to go dark woke. Don't get mired down. They call me a wine mom
17:15all the time.
17:16Yeah. What is that? And why aren't you more pissed about it?
17:19So I was interviewed by the aforementioned New York Times and they asked me, they referred to me
17:24as the wine mom, you know, and this is within the left that refers to me as this, between you and me.
17:30Yeah. And wine mom is meant to be what?
17:33I think moms that are, you know, have kids in school and get a little buzzed at night
17:40with wine. I think that's what, and I definitely was at one point, I remember my kids were really
17:45little. I was like, God, I can't go through another day sober. I need to have a few glasses of
17:49wine. These kids are a lot, right? So, but between you and me and your listener, I do think it's
17:59reductive to refer to me as a wine mom. And I do think you would never refer to Joe Rogan
18:05as a wine dad or a whiskey dad. I do think women oftentimes get defined in a parental role where
18:13men never do. Like, but here's the difference between being woke and dark woke. Where this comes
18:21from is all the people that are pro-democracy. I'm not going to pitch a fit and say, quit calling me a
18:27wine mom. That's sexist.
18:29And you think that would alienate a potential listener?
18:32I don't care about alienating listeners as much as I do. Is this helpful?
18:36I think part of your show is almost cathartic.
18:39That's exactly right.
18:40I'm going to get this off my chest. And I tune in so I hear you doing it with me so I feel less
18:46lonely.
18:47That's exactly right. And I also think when you are falling prey to abuse and what this government
18:54is doing to us right now is abusing us. We are seeing it every day with ice raids, with God,
19:01just Stephen Miller in a news clip is abusive as all get out. Right. And we need a sense of community.
19:07And I liken it to my husband is in recovery from opioid addiction. And that was an incredibly painful,
19:14isolating, horrible thing that I went through. And I found myself at an Al-Anon meeting. I found
19:20myself with this group of people who were experiencing the same type of gaslighting and
19:28abuse that one suffers from loving an addict. And it depersonalized it for me. It made me realize,
19:36oh, what I'm perceiving as I'm not lovable, or if I just did this, or if I just did that,
19:43then maybe he might be sober. That there is an actual playbook that a lot of addicts do because
19:51it's addiction. Similarly, when you get to IHIP News, we're all experiencing this trauma and we're
19:58being gaslit and we're being propagandized and you feel like you're going crazy.
20:03So you're comparing your show to an Al-Anon meeting in a sense.
20:06Kind of, but in the sense of community that you realize you can go there and go, oh God,
20:14I'm not crazy. And I think a lot of people don't realize how isolated Americans in the middle of
20:22the country are.
20:23What I worry about is the other thing, is exposing people and myself to contrary opinion,
20:31not the same opinion. Am I wrong too? I don't mean exposing myself to
20:38the speech of Donald Trump. I mean people who are sincere conservatives who have concern about,
20:47you know, name the issues, whether it's immigration in a different way than I might,
20:50or the Middle East, or whatever it might be. That sometimes I'll, you know, be at a gathering or
20:58whatever it might be. And everybody's saying the same damn thing. That concerns me too.
21:05I see your point. I think that I approach the podcast with, and I mentioned this a lot,
21:11with my experience in Oklahoma, which has a Republican supermajority and has had a Republican
21:18supermajority for 20 years. The last time we had a Democratic governor, we were ranked 17th in the
21:26country in education. Since we've had a Republican supermajority in the state, meaning the governor,
21:32the state house, the state senate, and the state supreme court, we have fallen from 17th in education
21:37to 50th in education.
21:38No, it's grim. It's grim. Are you getting listened to though in Oklahoma?
21:41Yes. When I go home and I go to Oklahoma City Thunder Games, you wouldn't believe the amount
21:46of people in Oklahoma City.
21:47It's an awfully good team.
21:48God, they're so good.
21:49But they're even better than the Knicks.
21:50Love. Oh, yes. And the Knicks fans are so salty.
21:54Were you too mean to Erica Kirk? And was your timing lousy?
21:57No.
21:58Does it help your cause to call her, particularly in that moment of aftermath,
22:02a grifter and a person who weaponizes her gender to demean women?
22:07Yes, because that's what she did. If people are out trying to fundraise off of his death,
22:18and the message that she's sending to women to marry, younger, breed immediately,
22:27it is a very dangerous message. So I double down on that. And I think her message makes women less
22:32safe.
22:34We've got an election coming up in a year. Who do you like and who do you not like for 2028?
22:39How's Gavin Newsom looking to you?
22:40Okay. Your female listeners will appreciate this. And this is what we get to talk on podcasts,
22:44but not corporate news. He's very easy on the eyeballs, which is a nice component.
22:48Although he looks like a dastardly senator in a movie, doesn't he?
22:51He does.
22:52The haircut, the whole thing.
22:53Out of central casting, yeah. I like his fight. I like how he relentlessly trolls Trump.
22:59Yeah.
23:00I think with the base, he's going to have the same problems that Clinton and Kamala did.
23:05Granted, he is a white male, and historically, they seem to do better in the electorate than women.
23:16Yeah. That seems to be the history of the presidency in this American history.
23:20Much to my chagrin.
23:22And he has time to clean all of this up, but he recently said he opposed a billionaire tax.
23:27And I think he's going to have a very hard time if he doesn't really get in the trenches with
23:33where the base has moved. And I think that's going to be what's the most shocking for the Democratic
23:39establishment candidates is how much the base has moved away from corporate Dems.
23:46So who does that leave you with?
23:49I'll tell you, I love Ro Khanna. I don't think he's going to run for office.
23:52But somebody who I think could be interesting is J.B. Pritzker. He's a billionaire.
23:59And a real one.
24:00A real billionaire.
24:02He is Jewish, which he has an opportunity to speak to what a lot of people in the Democratic
24:08base have issues with, with Palestine. If he can call what is happening a genocide,
24:16if he can call Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, he would be a credible messenger.
24:22Those are litmus tests for you.
24:24I hate the word litmus test, but I'm realistic in the sense that I believe that we have to call
24:35what we're seeing realistically. You cannot gaslight people about it.
24:41Would you have called LBJ or Richard Nixon war criminals?
24:44Probably. I mean, I think that American foreign policy
24:49has been problematic for a long time. And I've had a great awakening about this. But as I see what
24:57happened with Venezuela, when I saw that they were killing fishermen, I had to be really objective
25:04and honest. We didn't really do anything about what George W. Bush did and Abu Ghraib or the CIA
25:11black sites, Obama's drone program. Remember, I love Obama. I'm super nostalgic about him. But if
25:18we are really to be honest about American foreign policy, these provocations that Trump just did,
25:23they're not new.
25:24It seems to me that the people that you're looking at are Ro Khanna, AOC, the new mayor of New York.
25:31Is that the kind of area you're talking about?
25:35Yes, I have...
25:36Economic populism from a democratic view.
25:39Yes.
25:39Yeah.
25:40The last gubernatorial race that we had, we had our governor who was running for a second term,
25:47Kevin Stitt. MAGA, right-wing, Christian nationalist, gets on TV and says,
25:53I dedicate every square inch of the state to my Lord and personal Savior, Jesus Christ.
25:58And then you had Joy Hoffmeister, who ran against him. She was a former Republican,
26:04switched to Democrat, and she ran as Republican light. And Kevin Stitt kicked her ass. And I'm curious,
26:13when you get these Democrats that can run in red areas the way Andy Brashear did,
26:20and you get them to run on a populist message, they use faith to say, your faith may tell you to
26:28bully those kids. But in Andy Brashear's case, he said, I will not bully these trans kids.
26:33Like Tallarico in Texas.
26:34Exactly.
26:35Can we get people in the Democratic Party that speak more to more Americans? And I think an economic
26:44populist message is something that you could see triple Trumpers cross over as we did in the New York
26:53City mayoral race. You have one in 10 triple Trumpers voted for Zoron. That's pretty significant.
27:01But what I'm asking you, can Oklahoma ever become purple or blue?
27:06Maybe I'm an optimist. But I do think if somebody ran in Oklahoma and went to rural Oklahoma and said,
27:16you have been lied to. Look at what the Republican supermajority got you. Look at what the Republican
27:24supermajority got Harold Hamm. Harold Hamm is one of the richest Oklahomans, big billionaire oil guy.
27:31And I think if they really spoke to people and said, we see you.
27:37But forgive me, doesn't your language on your show, does that invite or alienate people who are,
27:44as it were, red?
27:46If I'm honest, it probably alienates them. But I'm not a politician. I'm not trying to get more.
27:53You're not, by the way. You're not running for anything?
27:55No. Oh, God, no. No.
27:57You told Kara Swisher you'd rather make your living on your back than as a politician.
28:02I would.
28:03That's a pretty good Sherman statement.
28:07They need a populist truth teller to go in to these places. Because here's the problem
28:15where the Democrats have messed up. They withdrew from a 50 state strategy. So what you have is an
28:20electorate that gets more and more radicalized versus having robust campaigns. And can the Democrats
28:26win immediately? No. But look at the seeds that Bernie Sanders planted. He never won president,
28:33but he sure did a lot of good work for the country. I now regret my vote for Hillary Clinton
28:39because his message has aged well. I believe during the primary of 2016, Bernie won Oklahoma against
28:46Hillary. And I know these people and they're earnest and well-meaning, even though I bash triple Trumpers
28:58relentlessly with fangs on my podcast all of the time. They need an off-ramp to get off of this
29:06Republican Party bullshit lie of trickle-down economics, of scapegoating marginalized people,
29:13of, you know, this massive wealth gap that we have. So if you take somebody who says I'm going to fight
29:22for you, I believe, not might not happen the first election, but there, if there was footing in the
29:29state of people running based on facts and for Oklahomans over the course of a couple election cycles, I think
29:38you could see change. Jennifer Welsh, thank you so much.
Comments