“I don’t like anything for Melania,” said Jennifer Welch, a co-host of the profanity-soaked liberal show “I’ve Had It Podcast.” Her curse-laden rant at First Lady Melania Trump ricocheted around the internet and was reported on Wednesday, September 9, 2026. “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.”
Amazon paid $40 million for rights to the “Melania” documentary, and that deal is what set Welch off. 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 was new territory. Alongside co-host Angie “Pumps” Sullivan, Welch has built one of the fastest-growing podcasts in exactly that register, recording 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 Friends and a Growing Audience
The show launched in 2022 as entertainment fare, with a debut episode titled “Toddlers Are Assholes.” The two old friends had co-starred on the Bravo reality series “Sweet Home Oklahoma” in 2017 and 2018, and they later pushed the format toward blunt political talk. Mary Trump came on in October 2023 and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in January 2024; in September 2024 the hosts interviewed former President Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The audience is sizable and still climbing. The hosts count about 1.75 million YouTube subscribers and roughly 1.3 million Instagram followers. A year ago, in a profile published October 5, 2025, Apple’s weekly rankings had the show second in the society and culture category, with the pair’s news offering, “IHIP news,” sitting 18th on YouTube’s podcast charts.
Democrats hunting for a counterweight to the male-dominated right-wing audio ecosystem that is credited with helping propel President Donald Trump to victory in 2024 now point to the duo again and again. “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 on that framing, saying the hunt for one left-wing figurehead is too narrow because the left does not revolve around a leader the way the right revolves around Trump.
Nicknames, Insults and Chart Success
Insults are the hosts’ trademark. After a weekend of rumors about the president’s health, the two went live on YouTube and joked about his condition using 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.”
That formula ran through the show’s latest episode, which as of September 15, 2026 featured comedian Chelsea Handler, who joined for a blistering critique of the Trump administration. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Welch told listeners, is someone “we’ve decided on this podcast is more unfuckable than Ted Cruz.” Handler then asked her to pick the “most unfuckable” among Sen. Ted Cruz, Miller and the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. “You got to go Stephen Miller,” Welch answered.
Welch used the same episode to say MAGA men “are so castrated” over what she called their double standards and their failure to defend their wives. She pointed back to the insults Trump aimed at Heidi Cruz during the 2016 primary and to Ted Cruz’s later endorsement of Trump. “I mean, there’s just no principle, no integrity,” Welch said. Handler replied, “They have no agency.”
She defends the approach openly. Liberals, she has said, should quit trying to police themselves into perfection and instead go after Republicans aggressively, since in her view Republicans respond to being bullied. The left, she has argued, also needs a broad coalition, and she describes the show’s community — a “cult,” as the hosts joke — as gay listeners alongside suburban white women becoming politically radicalized.
The two are one piece of a wider liberal move into online video. Joshua Citarella, an artist and researcher whose work covers political radicalization among young internet users, launched the YouTube interview program “Doomscroll” in September 2024. Ezra Klein appeared as a guest the following April.
One Year After the Kirk Assassination
Personal-attack politics drew renewed scrutiny on the anniversary of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who 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. He cited the false online claims identifying the suspect as a registered Republican, along with the wave of attacks directed at Kirk, his widow, Erika Kirk, and conservatives in general.
Those claims were wrong. Utah records show the man charged, Tyler Robinson, registered as unaffiliated, and he had not voted in the two previous general elections; a political donation attributed to him belonged to a different Tyler Robinson. On September 1, a judge ruled that Robinson will stand trial and that prosecutors may seek the death penalty. Robinson pleaded not guilty the next day.
The column singled out Matthew Dowd, then an MSNBC political analyst; far-left podcaster Hasan Piker; veteran broadcaster Katie Couric; and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. In September 2025, ABC yanked Kimmel off the air for six days after he charged that Trump’s supporters were trying to deny that Kirk’s killer had come out of 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 pinned the firing 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.” Brian Stelter, a CNN media analyst, said America is a less free place if late-night hosts can’t do and say what they want, and CNN devoted an hour, reported by Jake Tapper, to “No Laughing Matter: Free Speech Under Attack.” Coverage of Kirk’s widow drew the column’s fire as well, including a Washington Post piece by Ashley Fetters Maloy about her clothes.
Gainor declined to reprint the most venomous commentary about Kirk in his column, writing that repeating it would only enrich those profiting from attacks on a grieving widow. A year on, the anniversary has become its own battleground — and Welch’s remarks about the first lady suggest the political insult trade is not cooling.