Jennifer Welch, a co-host of the profanity-soaked liberal show “I’ve Had It Podcast,” aimed a curse-filled tirade at First Lady Melania Trump that spread across social media and was reported Wednesday, September 9, 2026. “I don’t like anything for Melania,” Welch said. “And I wish I could be the bigger person and say that I do, but I don’t. She is, I think, just an absolutely horrific person.”
What set her off was Amazon’s $40 million purchase of rights to the “Melania” documentary. Melania Trump, she said, “cared enough in the bogus $40 million payoff she got to make sure that everybody — not only in the United States, but in the world — knows she does not screw her husband.” She added that the country is “elevating the most dysfunctional family in the United States, and wrapping it up in traditional Christian values.”
None of that was out of character. Alongside co-host Angie “Pumps” Sullivan, Welch has built one of the fastest-growing podcasts in exactly that register, taping above her design studio in Oklahoma City. “You want to go low, we’re gonna go lower,” Welch told The Guardian last year.
Two Oklahoma Moms, One Growing Audience
The show launched in 2022 as entertainment, with a debut episode titled “Toddlers Are Assholes.” The two women, friends for years, had co-starred on the Bravo reality series “Sweet Home Oklahoma” in 2017 and 2018 before they steered the format toward blunt political talk. Mary Trump appeared in October 2023, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in January 2024. In September 2024, the hosts interviewed former President Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Their audience is large and still growing. The two now have about 1.75 million YouTube subscribers and roughly 1.3 million Instagram followers. A year ago, a profile published October 5, 2025, noted that Apple’s weekly rankings put the show second in the society and culture category, with their news offering, “IHIP news,” 18th on YouTube’s podcast charts.
Democrats looking for a counterweight to the right-wing audio ecosystem — male-dominated, and credited with helping propel President Donald Trump to his 2024 victory — now often point to the pair. “Everyone always talking about we need to find the Joe Rogan of the left when they’re right here!” podcaster Gibson Johns wrote on X, posting it with a photo of Welch and Sullivan. Welch has resisted the framing. The hunt for one left-wing figurehead, she has said, misses the point, because no leader anchors the left the way Trump anchors the right.
The podcast was also selling Welch’s next project as of September 14, 2026, with the description of a new episode promoting pre-orders of her book “Not Today, Fascists.” The guest on that episode is Ashley St. Clair, who the description says joined the hosts “to discuss recent claims hurled at her from Elon on Twitter.”
Nicknames, Insults and Chart Success
The insults are the brand. When a weekend of rumors about the president’s health took off, the hosts streamed live on YouTube and joked about his condition, leaning on their nickname for him, “Cankles McTacoTits” — trimmed, they said, to “Canks” for expediency and spite. Vice President JD Vance gets “Lil Smokey,” short for “Smokey Eye Failed Drag Queen.”
Welch defends the method openly. Liberals, she has said, should quit policing themselves toward perfection and go hard after Republicans, since in her view Republicans respond to being bullied. She has also argued the left needs a wide coalition, and she describes the show’s community — a “cult,” as the hosts joke — as gay listeners plus suburban white women who are becoming politically radicalized.
They are hardly alone in the liberal push into online video. Joshua Citarella, an artist and researcher who studies political radicalization among young internet users, launched the YouTube interview program “Doomscroll” in September 2024, and Ezra Klein appeared as a guest the following April.
Readers of the Media Research Center have now handed Welch its “Worst Media Quote of the Week” for a second consecutive week, with results published September 14 giving her 57 percent of the vote. ABC’s Whoopi Goldberg finished second with 31 percent and MS NOW host Peter Alexander third with 12 percent. Welch won for what she said on the podcast on September 1: “There is nothing radical about not taking corporate money. There is nothing radical about wanting health care for everybody. There is nothing radical about having a politics that is more empathetic, inclusive, and accepting. MAGA is none of those things. The only thing they can offer, the American public right now, is fear-mongering, scare-mongering, xenophobia, and racism, and Islamophobia, and it has worked for a very long time since 9/11.”
One Year After the Kirk Assassination
The anniversary of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk brought renewed scrutiny to personal-attack politics. Kirk was shot at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025. Fox News marked the date with an opinion column by Dan Gainor, who argued that Kirk’s death drew out the worst impulses in American media and celebrity culture. Gainor pointed to false claims that circulated online identifying the suspect as a registered Republican, and to the barrage of attacks directed at Kirk, his widow, Erika Kirk, and conservatives generally.
The claims did not hold up. Tyler Robinson, the man charged, was registered as unaffiliated in Utah records and had not voted in the two previous general elections, and a political donation attributed to him belonged to a different Tyler Robinson. A judge ruled on September 1 that Robinson will stand trial, and prosecutors may seek the death penalty; a not guilty plea followed the next day.
The column singled out several media figures: then-MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd, far-left podcaster Hasan Piker, veteran broadcaster Katie Couric and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel lost six days on the air in September 2025 when ABC pulled his show after he charged that Trump’s supporters were trying to deny that Kirk’s killer had come from their own political ranks; weeks later Kimmel said the remarks had been “intentionally, and I think maliciously, mischaracterized.” Dowd lost his MSNBC job over what he said on air the day Kirk was shot, and he later blamed the firing on what he called the right-wing media mob.
Kimmel drew support from much of the press. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes described the suspension as “the most straightforward attack on free speech from state actors I’ve ever seen in my life.” Brian Stelter, the media analyst at CNN, argued that America is a less free place if late-night hosts cannot do and say what they want, and Jake Tapper reported an hour on the subject for CNN, “No Laughing Matter: Free Speech Under Attack.” Coverage of Kirk’s widow came in for criticism in the column too, which cited a Washington Post piece by Ashley Fetters Maloy about her clothes.
Gainor declined to reprint the most venomous commentary about Kirk, writing that repeating it would only enrich those profiting from attacks on a grieving widow. The anniversary itself has turned into a battleground a year on, and Welch’s remarks about the first lady suggest the political insult trade is not cooling.
