First Lady Melania Trump took a profanity-laced beating from Jennifer Welch, a co-host of the liberal “I’ve Had It Podcast,” in a rant that circulated widely online and was reported on 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.”
Setting Welch off was Amazon’s $40 million purchase of rights to the “Melania” documentary. The first lady, 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.” The country, she added, is “elevating the most dysfunctional family in the United States, and wrapping it up in traditional Christian values.”
None of that marked a change of register. Welch and co-host Angie “Pumps” Sullivan have built one of the fastest-growing podcasts on precisely that tone, taping above Welch’s design studio in Oklahoma City. “You want to go low, we’re gonna go lower,” Welch told The Guardian last year.
Two Oklahoma Moms and a Growing Audience
The two old friends, who had co-starred on the Bravo reality series “Sweet Home Oklahoma” in 2017 and 2018, launched the show in 2022 as entertainment fare; the debut episode carried the title “Toddlers Are Assholes.” Blunt political talk came later. Mary Trump came on in October 2023 and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in January 2024, and in September 2024 the hosts interviewed former President Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
An episode posted as of September 14, 2026 featured Ashley St. Clair, billed as an exclusive tied to a tell-all threatening to expose Elon Musk. The conversation, per the episode description, covered “recent claims hurled at her from Elon on Twitter.”
The numbers are big and still rising. The two now have about 1.75 million subscribers on YouTube and roughly 1.3 million followers on Instagram. A year ago, in a profile published October 5, 2025, Apple’s weekly rankings had the show second in the society and culture category, while their news offering, “IHIP news,” ranked 18th on YouTube’s podcast charts.
Welch is also promoting a forthcoming solo book titled “Not Today, Fascists,” with pre-orders advertised in the podcast’s YouTube episode description as of September 14, 2026.
That climb has turned the pair into a stock answer for Democrats hunting a counterweight to the male-dominated right-wing audio ecosystem that is credited with helping propel President Donald Trump to victory in 2024. “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, pairing the post with a photo of Welch and Sullivan. Welch has pushed back, saying the hunt for one left-wing figurehead misreads her side entirely: the right may revolve around Trump, but the left, in her telling, does not organize itself around any single leader.
Insults, Nicknames and Chart Success
The insults are a trademark. Rumors about the president’s health spread over a weekend, and the two responded with a live YouTube stream in which they joked about his condition, deploying their nickname for him, “Cankles McTacoTits” — shortened, they said, to “Canks” for expediency and spite. Vice President JD Vance gets “Lil Smokey,” short for “Smokey Eye Failed Drag Queen.”
Welch defends that approach openly. Liberals, she has said, should quit trying to police themselves into perfection and instead go after Republicans aggressively, because in her view Republicans respond to being bullied. She has also made the case that the left needs a broad coalition, describing the show’s community — a “cult,” as the hosts joke — as gay listeners alongside suburban white women becoming politically radicalized.
A conservative media watchdog group announced on September 14, 2026 that Welch had won its “Worst Media Quote of the Week” poll for a second consecutive week, taking 57 percent of the vote. ABC’s “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg finished second at 31 percent, and MS NOW host Peter Alexander was third at 12 percent. Welch won for what she said on the “I’ve Had It” 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.”
The hosts are one piece of a broader 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 turned up as a guest the following April.
A Year After the Kirk Assassination
The politics of personal attack came under fresh scrutiny at the anniversary of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, shot at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025. Marking the date, an opinion column by Dan Gainor argued that Kirk’s death drew out the worst impulses in American media and celebrity culture, pointing to the false claims, spread online, that identified the suspect as a registered Republican, and to the barrage of attacks directed at Kirk, his widow, Erika Kirk, and conservatives in general.
The claims were false. Tyler Robinson, the man charged, registered as unaffiliated according to Utah records, and those records also show he had not voted in the two previous general elections; a different Tyler Robinson turned out to be the source of a political donation attributed to him. Prosecutors may seek the death penalty and Robinson will stand trial, a judge ruled on September 1. He pleaded not guilty the next day.
Then an MSNBC political analyst, Matthew Dowd was among those the column singled out, along with far-left podcaster Hasan Piker, veteran broadcaster Katie Couric and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel charged that Trump’s supporters were trying to deny that Kirk’s killer had come from their own political ranks, and ABC responded by pulling him off the air for six days in September 2025; weeks later the host said the remarks had been “intentionally, and I think maliciously, mischaracterized.” What Dowd said on air the day Kirk was shot cost him his MSNBC job, a firing he later pinned on what he called the right-wing media mob.
Much of the press closed ranks behind Kimmel. Chris Hayes of MSNBC called the suspension “the most straightforward attack on free speech from state actors I’ve ever seen in my life.” If late-night hosts cannot do and say what they want, America is a less free place, CNN media analyst Brian Stelter said, and the network devoted an hour to the subject, reported by Jake Tapper: “No Laughing Matter: Free Speech Under Attack.” Coverage of Kirk’s widow also drew the column’s criticism, which cited a Washington Post piece by Ashley Fetters Maloy about her clothes.
Gainor wrote that he would not reprint the most venomous commentary about Kirk, arguing that repeating it would only enrich those profiting from attacks on a grieving widow. The anniversary, a year on, has become its own battleground, and Welch’s remarks about the first lady suggest the political insult trade is not cooling.
