\n<\/p>\n
\n\tJennifer Welch and Angie \u201cPumps\u201d Sullivan know what first draws people into their podcast: shock value.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBefore the two Oklahoma mothers were hosts of the hit series I\u2019ve Had It, <\/em>they were stars on the short lived Bravo reality television series Sweet Home Oklahoma<\/em> and Sweet Home \u2014<\/em> which followed everything from their hijinks in Oklahoma bars to Welch\u2019s interior design jobs. And the two look and sound the part, thick southern accents made complete by their Ann Taylor-coded outfits, sharp red lipstick, and blonde highlighted hair. But listen to one of the two weekly episodes of of I\u2019ve Had It<\/em>, and you might be surprised to hear two white women who grew up in Oklahoma open their mouths and absolutely lambast Republican conservatism, President Donald Trump, xenophobia, racism, and a complacent Democratic establishment all in one breath.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt is a podcast that shows opposition to the toxic positivity movement,\u201d Welch tells Rolling Stone <\/em>over a joint zoom call with Sullivan. \u201cWe talk about grievances, combining that with performative politics and just all around Trump fuckery. It\u2019s so overwhelming living in this fascist regime. The podcast is a great way to make the news somewhat digestible and to help our community that we\u2019ve built stay engaged.\u201d And that old school charm combined with newer social media tricks has helped I\u2019ve Had It<\/em> stand out in a crowded political podcast field. Each of the episodes of I\u2019ve Had It<\/em> \u00a0and IHIP News <\/em>\u2014\u00a0a short-form version of the show which releases three short episodes every day \u2014\u00a0record video as well as audio. Even if people don\u2019t know Welch and Sullivan\u2019s name, their faces may be more recognizable, since clips from both shows constantly go viral online. The hosts have 1.3 million followers on TikTok and just celebrated reaching 1 million subscribers on YouTube.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhen Welch, 51, and Sullivan, 55, launched the podcast in 2022, they generally discussed typical pop culture flare sprinkled with their own blend of Oklahoma charm and foul-mouthed grievances. They\u2019d \u201chad it,\u201d so to speak, with everything from skinny momfluencers to PTA parents that can\u2019t mind their own damn business. But when they started talking politics \u2014 something Welch and Sullivan would often discuss off-air \u2014 their audience exploded. In the three years since I\u2019ve Had It <\/em>began, Sullivan and Welch have carved out a niche place in the political podcast sphere, maintaining that Oklahoma grit all while interviewing political powerhouses like former President Barack Obama, streamer Hasan Piker, Senator Elizabeth Warren, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and former Vice President Kamala Harris. <\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019ve had it with white people, that triple-Trumped, that have the nerve and the audacity to walk into a Mexican restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, an Indian restaurant, go to perhaps their gay hairdresser,\u201d Welch spit in an August episode of I\u2019ve Had It<\/em>, which quickly went viral. \u201cI don\u2019t think you should be able to enjoy anything but Cracker Barrel.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRolling Stone <\/em>spoke with Sullivan and Welch about being true-blue political podcasters recording in a deep red state, their frustration with being called \u201cmom podcasters,\u201d and why sometimes the best answer to a stupid political situation is good shit talk.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tYou guys call the podcast a way to fight back against the toxic positivity movement. What does that mean to you?\u00a0<\/strong> \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tYou started as more of a pop culture podcast, but have since included politics in a lot of your content, even launching IHIP News<\/em>, another show strictly about politics. Why the change?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tWelch: I can\u2019t help but be political. I\u2019ve always been a die hard political junkie. My politics ooze out, even if I\u2019m just at the tennis court with friends. I am very outspoken about my advocacy for human rights. But when two white ladies from a deeply red state started talking about politics, we experienced a lot of sexism. [People said] we shouldn\u2019t be talking about politics, that it wasn\u2019t a smart business move.<\/p>\n \n\tDo you all push back against the description of mom podcasters? What\u2019s the reaction to those kinds of monikers?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tYou guys are very open about this aspect of the way you look being in contrast to what you actually believe. But as people who grew up in the South, how did you get political views so divergent from your neighbors?<\/strong> \n\tWelch: I probably have one of the more bizarre upbringings in the Bible Belt than anybody. I was raised by two atheists. We never went to a church service unless it was a wedding or a funeral. I have had this experience of being raised in the so religious suburbs of Oklahoma City. Like the people that you saw with their hands raised praising at the Charlie Kirk funeral, those are the people I went to high school with. That was [Sullivan] when I first met her.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSullivan: [laughing] I never raised my hands!<\/p>\n \n\tWelch: I went to college and found comfort and companionship with gay men, because they had had to fight the same system that I had to fight, and they just had more grit. They had been persecuted by the same people that told me and my mother and my father and my siblings that we were all going to burn in hell. Having never been indoctrinated, and then living around a bunch of people that have been indoctrinated was a very weird upbringing, and it drove me into a very left, very grounded, very fact based person.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWith these two very distinct childhoods, Angie do you ever find yourself tailoring any of your messaging to other moms or women in red states who might have your kind of background?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tWelch: What\u2019s so crazy about our audience is that the first time we went on tour, our first stop was Atlanta. We had a meet and greet line, and we were, both of us, shocked at how young a lot of our listeners were. The diversity In the group and the sense of belonging and advocacy was a really beautiful unintended consequence of what happens when you believe in something, when you don\u2019t try to make a pick me podcast.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat do you mean when you say pick me podcast?\u00a0<\/strong> \t\t\t\t\tWelch and Sullivan with former President Barack Obama<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Isabella Saratore<\/p>\n \n\tMany of your viral clips lambast Republicans over their stances on everything from immigration to MAGA. But you also are very quick to call out Democrats to inefficiency and silence, something left leaning podcasts have been hesitant to do during the second Trump administration. Why is that important to you?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tSullivan: This makes me want to go hard in the paint for anybody who\u2019s a fighter right now. Zohran [Mamdani] I\u2019m in on. I want somebody that stands up, calls out by hypocrisy, with credibility and actually is like, \u201cFuck no, we\u2019re not going to let you do this\u201d and actually has a plan. Just strongly worded letters are not meeting the moment, in my opinion.<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n \n\tYou all recently had streamer Hasan Piker as a guest on the pod. Who are some of your other dream collabs?\u00a0<\/strong> \n\tWelch: We have been so fortunate. We\u2019ve had Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, I mean, everything to exceed all of our wildest imaginations. Cory Booker, even though I don\u2019t like him very much right now. Elizabeth Warren, who\u2019s from Oklahoma, left me a voicemail the other day congratulating us on our 1 million YouTube subscribers. There\u2019s one person that I want who I know will never come on. He\u2019s always been number one on my list. Larry David. I\u2019m his biggest fan on the planet. I\u2019ve watched every episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/em> at least four times. I have a framed picture on my desk of Larry David. And when my sons come to my office, they say, \u201cWhy do you have a picture of Larry David on your desk and not of me?\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cBecause Larry doesn\u2019t need anything from me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jennifer Welch and Angie \u201cPumps\u201d Sullivan know what first draws people into their podcast: shock value.\u00a0 Before the two Oklahoma mothers were hosts of the hit series I\u2019ve Had It, they were stars on the short lived Bravo reality television series Sweet Home Oklahoma and Sweet Home \u2014 which followed everything from their hijinks in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1285,102,15071,15072,515,1411,199],"class_list":{"0":"post-24885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-big","9":"tag-hits","10":"tag-lefty","11":"tag-moms","12":"tag-podcast","13":"tag-red","14":"tag-state"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Welch: Everybody knows when you get online right now, there is a stay at home mother that makes you feel less-than. She\u2019s smiling and her toddlers are being cooperative. And then there\u2019s the fitness influencer who has the body he\u2019s like \u201cAll you have to do is just four more reps.\u201d It\u2019s this fairy tale that\u2019s being pitched to us via our algorithm, that there are people that are doing what we\u2019re trying to do much better than we are and are doing it with a smile. I say all of that is bullshit. It\u2019s performative. That\u2019s not what real life is like. Basically, it\u2019s fun to shit talk. It\u2019s a way to bond with people. And it seems like all political parties try to police that shit talking. And we\u2019re saying absolutely not. Shit talking is healthy. It\u2019s collaborative. It can be shit talking for good.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
Sullivan: We\u2019re in a unique position because we live in a red state so we see firsthand how that goes. Our perspective has credibility. White women are my number one group that I want to call out every day, all day. And because we are white women, middle aged, in a red state, we can call out the hypocrisy and the lack of empathy, because we live around it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Welch: When I hear people on the right refer to us as mom podcasters, just from a person that believes in gender equality, it really pisses me off. Because you\u2019ve never heard a male podcaster referred to as a dad podcaster. There are people critical of us that want to reduce our voice and use patriarchal messaging to do that. Nobody would ever call Joe Rogan a dad podcaster. Nobody would call the Pod Save America<\/em> guys dad podcasters. It\u2019s a title weaponized against us. But at the same time, we\u2019ve become surrogate moms and aunts to people who have been bullied and oppressed by women that look like us. We give them a sense of hope. Two white women with Southern accents who look like us \u2014 people find comfort and a sense of motherhood in that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sullivan: I was raised by two people that still snort Fox News every single day. Had a super religious, evangelical upbringing, registered Republican immediately. It wasn\u2019t till I got to college and I started kind of thinking for myself that I changed politically. I had to do some reconciliation with the faith that I\u2019d been brought up with and what reality is \u2014\u00a0really delve into the dissonance and the lack of critical thinking and the ability to deny everything and just put on the perfect surface person that I was thought I was supposed to be. Having been one of those bad guys that doesn\u2019t show empathy for people, having been so callous to other people\u2019s needs, it just grosses me out so bad. And I can see it in others because I\u2019ve been it. So that really drives me to call it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sullivan: <\/strong>We try to be really, really honest about struggles and failures, but I don\u2019t sit and think, \u201cOkay, we\u2019re going to tailor this to this group.\u201d I have a lot of people that have come to me and said, \u201cI had the exact same experience growing up\u201d or very similar. So it\u2019s become a byproduct, but it wasn\u2019t a set mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Welch: Like \u201cI want everybody to like me.\u201d When you just stand on business and stand on conviction and then see who comes, it\u2019s crazy. Contrary to what you\u2019d expect, our data behind the scenes shows a pretty even 50\/50 split between male and female listeners. We have Gen Z, we have millennials, we have Gen Xers, and we have boomers, and we have a gay audience, and much to my delight, we have built a really big Black audience. And as somebody who has grown up in privileged white circles and has heard the racism that is just part of everyday language around white people, to know that we\u2019re making a difference calling that out is what I\u2019m most proud of. When we first went viral a couple years ago on Black Twitter, a lot of the comments were just hilarious. My favorite was \u201cWait a minute, before I fuck with these ladies, where were they on Jan. 6?\u201d We never went out of our way to recruit any specific audience, but it\u2019s been such a delight to see the people that now have a sense of community in our podcast.That common ground tells me we\u2019re doing something right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Welch: If you are just a shill, you\u2019re going to have no credibility. If I were to just go with the party line, in my opinion, it\u2019s so inauthentic and intellectually false to do that. We have to realize what created this vacuum for MAGA to exist. It\u2019s because Trump seemed authentic to people. Cory Booker is a prime example I talk about a lot. So much of what he says I like and he is a very passionate speaker. He just did an all nighter on the Senate floor. And then a month later, he\u2019s playing peekaboo in the photo shoot with Benjamin Netanyahu. That is so heartbreaking, that you can have moral clarity here, and then when it gets to Palestinian kids, he can\u2019t speak up for them? For these Democratic establishment candidates to treat us like we\u2019re [uneducated], is so insidious. I hope every single one of them gets primaried. I grew up around MAGA Republicans. I get these people. I know what hypocrites they are. But the Democratic leadership right now \u2014 that\u2019s a heartbreaker.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
Sullivan: I would die to have Dolly Parton on, but I don\u2019t think that would ever happen. I would love to know how she\u2019s navigated fame and advocacy for decades and decades and decades. That would be my one.<\/p>\n