The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Thin-Skinned Trump Is Just Like a Teenage Girl: Welch

Episode Date: February 2, 2026

Jennifer Welch of the hit podcast ‘I’ve Had It’ joins Joanna Coles as the news cycle spins completely out of control—from Don Lemon’s arrest and what Welch calls a chilling test case for silencing independent journalists, to the sudden flood of Epstein files, DOJ lawfare, and Trump’s deep, decades-long vendetta against the press. Welch dissects the masculinity myth at the heart of MAGA, the submissive strongman worship that props it up, and the evangelical culture that looks away from abuse while preaching moral authority. Along the way, Welch connects grift, grievance, and repression into a single operating system powering Trumpism—and asks the question hanging over all of it: If this is Trump’s authoritarian testing phase, what comes next when the guardrails finally give? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I often wonder, what does Donald Trump do when he's on his own in his bedroom? Do you have any thoughts as to how he sort of manages on his own? I think he's in his bed. I think he's eating filet of fish, quarter pounders. There's been reporting that he eats his meals in bed. I think he psycho tweets on lie social, you know, all of this crazy stuff. Like, he has these crazy delusions. He started to believe his own propaganda.

I think he sits there like a little. a junior high school girl with his phone and junk food and probably talks to whichever sycophant he can get on the phone. I mean, this is not a deep person. He's not reading the reports of the next day. Everything is centered around him. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast.

And I don't know where to begin this morning. There's so much going on. Do we start with the 3 million new Epstein files that are dropping? And Todd Blanche, number two, the Justice Department told us about plus 2,000 videos. Do we start with the Georgia raids that Tulsi Gabbard has overseen of their election files? Do we talk about how Melania is still furious that her movie has been overshadowed? Do we talk about Don Lemon, who was arrested on Thursday night?

What is going on in this country? Are we just all distracted? Who knows? But we're going to discuss it all with, I've had it. podcast co-host and founder the brilliant Jen Welsh. Help us through this, Jen Welsh. You and your partner, Pumps, who isn't here with us, but you go through this several times a day.

Your podcast is like self-help for many of us. What the fuck is going on? Okay. So Don Lemon is a personal friend. And this is a really serious issue because I believe that he is the canary and the coal mine for the administration. And a magistrate said, there's not probable cause here. A federal magistrate said no. So then the Justice Department, and they were trying to charge him with a misdemeanor, and this magistrate said no. So then the Justice Department does something very unprecedented.

They appeal the magistrate's ruling that there's no reason to bring charges. And then the appellate court says, no, no charges. So then Pam Bondi, executes lawfare, what they accuse the Democrats of doing all the time, because every accusation is a confession. And then they get a grand jury to indict him on felony charges. My husband, who's a criminal defense attorney, not Don's lawyer, but has been talking to Don about the case. You just never know with this DOJ, because this is clear that they just want to fuck with him. And they want to test the waters as to independent journalists, because all of us, including Don, put a mirror up. to the debauchery and the lawlessness of this regime.

And they are so incredibly thin-skinned, insecure, and diabolical that they want to silence everybody. Don is a very popular independent journalist. He's getting far more views now on his own YouTube channel than he ever was, actually, at the breakfast show or his evening show at CNN. How does this play out for Pam Bondi? I mean, and we love Don too. He's a regular visitor on our podcast. How does this, I mean, what are they thinking?

And when you say Canary and the coal mine, do you think that this is the beginning of them trying to arrest more independent journalists? Or do you think they're testing the water? I think a little bit of both. I think if they can get traction with Don, they want to, I think all of us are on the chopping block. the media has been one of Donald Trump's biggest targets long before he ever descended from the elevator. I think it was the Vanity Fair editor who said he had little hands. Right. It was the spy editor.

It was spy magazine going back all that time, Graydon Carter and Kurt Anderson. Yeah. And so he has constantly been upset. Barbara Walters asking him about reading Mind Comp. And so he has had a be in his bonnet for the media for quite some time. And then when you think about the psychology of somebody this thin-skinned running for such a big seat, such a big boy chair. And if you run for president in the United States, you have to sit there and you've got to take it. And he can't.

He's incapable of doing it. And he's surrounded by obsequious sycophants that are loyal to him. And what's so fascinating to me is this MAGA movement is wrapped in masculinity, this form of masculinity. and all of the people that worship him are so submissive. All of these men, Jady Vance, is submissive, and he worships a man that wears a full face of makeup every single day who throws a fit when the press says something unfavorable. This is such a good take.

This is such a good take. Talk to me about the sort of male verse of the podcaster and all these guys who sort of flex their pickup trucks or they're sort of pickup truck signaling. But in fact, as you say, are just prostate or lie prostate in front of a man who wears makeup and has a sort of acrylic weave. So this type of culture, this type of pickup truck culture I'm very familiar with because I lived in Oklahoma City for 50 years.

And I've noticed that a lot of these men are happiest in homo social relationships. So interesting. So interesting. So you look at the gross fear. It's men interviewing men, talking about working out, talking about cars, talking about tires, and, you know, it's all of this obsession. It's a very homo-social environment. And it's always masking, in my opinion, that they feel so inferior.

You know, they have a narcissistic disorder where they feel they need to compensate. And if they join ICE, then they're going to have a badge and a gun. And they can put a mask on. on and that's somehow going to make them feel like men. And really it's this whole incomplete feeling of masculinity with, I think, a lot of sexual suppression that they live with. And so it's a really fascinating take because what we have been programmed through Disney films, through all of the art and literature, is that the hero stands up for the little guy. And now we have a culture where the villain is beating down the little guy and all of these men are celebrating this,

celebrating the skirting of the system of masculinity, where they're completely even breaking what we thought about that. Can you talk more about the repressed or the suppressed sexuality and what you actually think is going on there? Because I don't think, I mean, I don't think you're implying everybody here is gay. You're implying something else which is much more sort of culturally interesting. Yeah. So in evangelical circles where people are very wrapped up in Christianity and nationalism. So people that live in big swaths of the United States of America, there's not a lot of culture. So they identify with this awesome military that we have and wrap it up in the flag. And then their social life is built in the church. And there's inherently, I wasn't raised with religion, but a lot of my peers growing up, it's this focus from a very young age about you cannot have sex. If you think about sex, it's bad. If you

masturbate, that's the devil. And all of this sexual shaming, which if you think about us as a species, we're genetically hardwired to reproduce. Those hormones come and you can't really suppress them. So this causes a type of psychosis with a lot of peers that I've seen. And I think that there is a lot of shame centering around sex. And so for a lot of these men that happen to be hetero, they want to be misogynist to put women the object of their affection in a bad light so that maybe they'll be less fuckable. Or if they get pregnant, let's make them have an abortion so that everybody knows that they were sledding around before marriage. And then I do think there's a lot of men, this is anecdotal, but I have a lot of gay friends in Oklahoma City and grinders full of married Magamon in red counties and in red cities and smaller cities. And I do think that there is a lot of suppressed homosexuality in this, not all of them, but I do think that's a component of it.

And all you have to do is track grinder. And every time there's a turning point rally, you know, they start reporting outages. And I just think that there's this sexual component to this where the misogyny is we demonize the object of our affection. if they're attracted to men or maybe bi-curious, then let's demonize the LGBTQ plus people. And then maybe that will fix me because they have been inherently propagandized and indoctrinated to believe that sex is shameful and bad. So how does Donald Trump, a man who's had three wives cheated on the first two, you know, had a one-night stand that we know of, with a porn star. How does he, and of course famously talked about grabbing women by the pussy, how does he get to be their cult leader? For me, it always made perfect sense. Because when I was younger,

my friends, I was raised by atheists. And so I was number one on the prayer warrior list. We have to get Jennifer saved. And you have to go to church with us. You have to accept Jesus as your Lord and personal savior. So I went to church with some girls on my cheerleading squad in junior high. We pull up to this big garish church, right? And then the preacher pulls up in this Rolls-Royce. He had a real tacky suit on. And his wife gets out of the car and she has this big white meat coat. All of these allegations that he's been, you know, tapping the secretary and tap in this Bible study teacher.

So this is a cult that gives forgiveness without growth. And they just sweep things under the rug. And Donald Trump is an evangelical preacher. He's a grifter. This is familiar to them. This type of moral rot is familiar because these preachers, their number one goal is to get more money, get more members. They lie to the congregation, and it's all a grift. And so having a grifter as a president, they're accustomed and primed to that style of abuse.

It's familiar to them. But I've always wondered about the disconnect between being a member of a congregation, And having a preacher drive up with a wife in a mink coat in a Rolls Royce, don't people realize that that's a weird disconnect? I would think they would. The people that I wrote up there with, I'll never forget it. The girl, her mother was working class. She was a UPS.

She worked for UPS. And my parents were upper middle class, but they were more working class. And she had a $20 bill in a cup in the car. And we pulled over to get gasoline. And she said, girls, pump $5 worth of gas. And I said, okay, you pump it. I'll go pay. So I grabbed the $20 bill.

And she said, no, no, no. That's for the pastor. Count out the quarters for the gas. They feel like they're pitched this prosperity gospel that if you give your money, then you will be rich like this pastor. And this is where this sect of Christianity intersects with capitalism. that Trump wants with oligarchy, that this overwhelming, like if you give your money, then you will be rewarded. And it also intersects with the simple language that Trump uses like psychological,

I'm sorry, spiritual warfare, like good versus evil, us versus them. Every church I ever went to, it was very, like, it was very scary, all of the recruiting that they did to me. And I really wanted to kind of fit in with my peers, but I always thought it was bullshit because I wasn't indoctrinated at a really young age. But it's a very terrifying atmosphere. But they believe if they don't give, then that's Satan at work. It's a really weird cult, but it's 80% follows Trump. They got him elected evangelical Christians. So how do the evangelicals that you know or that culture, how do they handle the Jeffrey Epstein of it all? We're recording this on Friday morning. And as we're recording, Todd Blanche is the number two in the Justice Department, is giving the latest statement, the latest update on the Epstein files.

They're releasing 2,000 videos and they're releasing 3 million fresh papers on it. How does the evangelical community, as you understand it, deal with Epstein? The way I interpret this is if it were a lot of Democrats that were in the epicenter of it, I think they would be. Guns of blazing. We are pro-life. We stand for children. And then when the camera focus gets put on them, you have to realize, like, a lot of these churches, there's a famous church camp where there was an active pedophile at this church camp that the church organizers covered and covered up and covered up. So again, there's a familiarity with these type of egregious human rights violations. And their coping mechanism is pick up the rug, sweep it under it.

please forgive. And then there's no growth or no work after that. And so there's a familiarity to these type of abuses that are ambient in their lives. Because if you look, there's not one church that hasn't had some sort of pedophile scandal. I mean, Catholic most famously, but you go to the Southern Baptists, the Nazarenes, and on and on, they are ubiquitous in these churches. And do you think that Donald Trump's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, are they, concerned about that or they just assume that this is part of life that everybody has some sort of pedophile in the corner of their life somewhere and it's to be ignored? Number one, I don't know that a lot of them because these are people that freebase Fox News and then when they're not freebase

Fox News. What a great description. Free basing Fox News. Yeah, so good. And then when they're not free basing Fox News, they go in their pastors saying, Jesus wants us to support Donald Trump. So a part of it is, I don't know how much they really know. Now, Pumps, my co-host, she comes from an evangelical family. And her parents, they watch Fox News all of the time and go to like a real hellfire damnation style church. And I don't know that they're even privy to how, I like to say, cancels deep, Trump is in these Epstein files. I don't even know if they're privy to it because they're in such an ecosystem and surrounded by so much pro-regime propaganda that I don't even know if they know. And if they did know, they would immediately go because Trump has primed them.

It's a democratic hoax. This fake news. They're primed to think everything that's said negatively about the strong man is some sort of conspiracy and fake news. It's fascinating. I love your term freebasing Fox News, which I was doing yesterday because, and I know you saw the same thing. the first lady was on talking about, I'll be best, my movie out. You also do a very good first lady impression,

and you've got the hair for it. I don't have the hair for it. She is apparently furious that Minneapolis has overshadowed the rollout of Melania the movie. Are you going to see it? Okay, no, I'm not going to see it, but to be really honest, like, Pumps and I were talking about this.

do you go buy a ticket for something else? Yep. And you're totally in disguise because you don't want to give her a sit and then sneak in. But no, I'm not going to see it. I think that this, Melania, Trump, so many of these forces want to force people to like you. Melania, this was a big shakedown of Amazon. She didn't earn this on merit. This is the woman that plagiarized Michelle Obama.

This is the woman that claims that she speaks seven languages. And every time I see her in an interview, I'm like, how has she lived here for 30 years? And that's her, quote, be best form of English. It's fascinating to me. I think she speaks more languages than her husband has stopped wars. Do you, what kind of marriage do you think they have? Oh, totally transactional. I mean, I think he's a monster and I think she's a monster.

I don't know if she's always been a monster, but I do know this from observational skills. It seems like everybody, once they start capitulating and succumbing to Trump, they become worse. Look at Marco Rubio. Look at Ted Cruz. I never thought that MFR could be worse of a person than he was before Trump. And by God, he has outdone himself. And so I think Melania is now, if you think about, who gives a fuck about the Christmas? And, you know, I don't care.

Do you? And then my husband is an unifier. And my husband doesn't want women raped. And I'm like, who's going to tell her? Who's going to tell her? Who's going to tell her? That's brilliant. And also, we haven't seen her for a year.

We haven't seen her for a year. And lo and behold, now she has something to promote. She's suddenly everywhere. Oh, I just think she's such a thirst trap. And sometimes, you know, we want to, when we're talking about politics or public figures, We want to be intellectual and say deep things. And sometimes it's very simple and very elementary. These are not intelligent people.

These are emotionally stunted, damaged, broken dorks. I mean, like, I think AOC said it best. Like, I thought the villains would be cooler than this. And you have all of these dipshits like Stephen Miller and now his wife Katie and J.D. Vance and Melania Trump. And they're all thirst trappers, narcissistic thirst trappers that are dying for people to like them. And I think it's Donald Trump's niece, Mary Trump, that said, too much is never enough. And I think that relates to all of them. And I think Melania is but hurt because Anna Wintour didn't put her on the cover of Vogue.

And she and her husband have that in common, just petty resentments. And they want to skirt the system and be the most famous and the most. popular and let's just say they were. They're still going to be broken sociopaths, both of them. Broken sociopath. Do you think that Donald Trump will survive this the next three years? I know that you like us at The Daily Beast are close monitors of his cancals going up and down. Your close monitors of the bruises on his hands and the puffiness around his eyes and how much he falls asleep in cabinet meetings often when Marco Rubio is talking at she. So obviously the soothing tones of Marco Rubio, you know, somehow trigger, trigger somnolence.

But do you think he survives the next three years? Do you think his health is up to it? I mean, here's the thing. I keep thinking, no, but I had four grandparents. And the meanest one, I had a grandmother. She was meaner than a rattlesnake. She outlived everybody. She lived at like 90-something.

And she was so insufferable, my maternal grandmother. I mean, just a horrible person. And so I don't know why it is that mean people live so long, but they seem to do so. I read an article recently that he has stopped dying his hair, and I've noticed that it's getting wider. But I'll tell you, I do think it's best if he were to die in office because then he couldn't pardon everybody. And strong men believe they don't think about their deaths. They don't think they're going to die. And of course, he fills it, but nobody around him could do that.

So he plays Marco against J.D. Vance. And there's probably all this, it's probably the most toxic work environment on the planet. Because look at how they treat us. So you know they treat each other just horribly. But if he did die in office, I think it's the best case scenario because there's no pardons for these people. And J.D. Vance has no Riz. Nobody likes him, except for Peter Thiel. And I don't think he could keep the cult together.

And I think Congress might actually grow a pair against him. I say that. I think they will. I keep defaulting to what I think Americans should do. And I keep getting just profoundly disappointed each and every day. Yeah. I know it's very tempting to resort to what should feel normal. And yet we are so not living in normal times. I often wonder about Donald Trump in the White House when he's on his own at night because we know that the First Lady doesn't spend much time there. and when she shows up, she's treated like a guest. Do you ever think about, and perhaps you don't, perhaps this is just my weirdness, but I often wonder, what does Donald Trump do when he's on his own in his bedroom? I'm assuming the room is kind of surrounded by television and he goes to sleep with television and he wakes up with television.

But do you have any thoughts as to how he sort of manages on his own? I think he's in his bed. I think he's eating filet of fish, quarterpals. There's been reporting that he eats his meals in bed. I think he psycho tweets on lie social, you know, all of this crazy stuff. I think last night he was like Tulsi Gabbard has found information about Obama. Like he has these crazy delusions. He started to believe his own propaganda. He's starting to, I mean, I think if it were up to him, he has these ambitions to arrest Obama, to arrest Hillary Clinton, you know, his weird, jealousy.

with Joe Biden, who's like 83, you know. And I think he sits there like a little junior high school girl with his phone and junk food and probably talks to whichever sycophant he can get on the phone. I mean, this is not a deep person. He's not reading the reports of the next day. Everything is centered around him and the most recent conversations he had. I just had Timothy Snyder. He's a scholar on the podcast. And he said he could tell that like every single time Trump has spoken to Putin, the next three days, it's just Russian talking points. And so I just think he probably calls the most toxic people at night. Probably Stephen Miller's just sitting there waiting by the phone nonstop so that he can make sure he stays close to him. It's really, it's really wild.

It is wild. It is wild. How concerned were you about the raids in Georgia? I mean, you mentioned Tulsi Gabbard appeared in one of Donald Trump's tweets. Tulsi Gabbard oversaw the raid that happened in Georgia yesterday. How concerning is that to you? I think it's as serious as it gets. I think that it's twofold. Number one, he is dying to tell everybody. They cheated.

I won 2020. He's dying to say that. And they will cook the books. He's surrounded by immoral freaks. that will manufacture evidence, and he will have, we're a few new cycles away from him marching out to the presidential walk of fame that's now labeled in gold and him removing the immature sophomoric auto-pin portrait that he has in the place of Joe Biden and putting himself up, which then he's going to be like, oh my God, I'm now a third-term president. What are you going to do, Supreme Court? And all of those

you know, fascists are going to say, oh, yeah, okay. Because the problem with Georgia is they took the evidence. They took it. So if there's any claim in the future, the evidence is now in the hands of his corrupt DOJ at the oversight of Tulsi Gabbard, who is widely rumored is a Russian asset. And then number two, everybody needs to wake up to the fact that ICE is being funded like this and sent into a blue state like Minneapolis that has. zero immigration issues at all for the record because this is the going to be the voter suppression

machine on voter day. These people are governing like they will never face consequences and they are going to do everything in their power to make sure that they never face consequences. And so this election thing, I think it's been in the works for a long time. And I think it's a twofold thing. He's going to try to heal his ego, will never be healed about the 2020 election. And then he's going to claim widespread voter fraud. And we have to have ice everywhere to monitor the election day. And they're going to go after black and brown neighborhoods, immigrant neighborhoods. You're going to see immigrants that are going to vote, that they're going to, you know, take away from polling lines and rough up. And this is really serious, horrible shit that we're watching. Jen, just hold on a moment. We're going to take a

break for some ads. And I'm back with Jen Welsh, the co-host of I've Had It. Do you know Trump voters who feel that they voted for one thing and got a fake bill of goods and are now concerned about this? Do you think most people are not that engaged? I mean, I sometimes wonder, why isn't there more of an outcry about what's going on? But the outcry isn't useful until the actual election date. Yeah, I think that there are probably a lot of buyers remorse Trump voters. We're seeing that with like Andrew Schultz, the podcaster, and some of these bro podcasters that are like, oh, even Joe Rogan. Oh, I didn't know that they were going to go to Home Depot. And I'm like, I guess you didn't see the signs at the RNC that said mass deportations now, nor hear Stephen Miller say, yeah, we want to deport 100 million people.

And so I think that there are some. I think there's degrees of Trumpism. There are the diehard, evangelical, holy war. Trump is the second coming of Christ. And they're beyond help. And then you have what I call the country club Republicans that in social circles, like if they're in New York, they're going to be like, oh, I'm a moderate. But every single time, again, free basing Fox News because it feeds the racist kind of default setting and they want to vote for tax breaks.

And I think some of those people might be saying, oh, God, he's, I don't like the personality. I hear this all the time in Oklahoma City. I don't like the personality, but I sure do love his policy. And I think it's escalated to such a point now that his policies are indiscriminate killings of American citizens, turning his Gestapo, in my opinion, that's what it is, on a city that didn't need it there. This is all created. And so I do think that his approval rating is going to continue to plummet. But I think that cult base, like the January 6th, apologists and the January 6thers, I think they eat this shit up. Well, you're right in terms of why didn't people have a bigger understanding of what was going to happen?

I mean, Project 25 laid this out. And everybody was like, oh, he's not really going to do that. The thing I hear most is that I don't like Trump, but you've got to admit he gets things done. And the speed with which he has railroaded through so many things, I mean, so many things to list. And Steve Bannon's whole flood the zone. It's very difficult to cover. As you put your podcast together and you're thinking ahead about who do you want to have on, what do you find the most useful in terms of engaging with the audience?

Lately, I have had experts on, like Professor Ruth Ben-Giott. And she is a historian and she has written a book called Strongman. She has provided information that I think is helpful. She has said she believes the rate at which they have broken this may actually backfire because if they really wanted a autocracy, you would move incrementally. You would make people fill it slowly. But this flood, the zone is actually backfiring. And she calls it the autocratic gamble.

And as they continue to get polling, dropping, and so many scandals, they double and triple down on it. And almost all of these times, the autocrat loses the gamble. And so that's really helpful. Another person talked about an expert that I had on, I think it was Jason Stanley. He talked about the degrees of incompetence. Like you have Stephen Miller, who's pretty competent. And he's a diabolical psychopath, but he's competent about. how he wants to do it. Cash Patel is breathtakingly incompetent. Pam Bondi, breathtakingly incompetent.

That narcissist that runs the defense has all those kids. Pete Hexas. Yeah, Pete Hexas. Signal chatting, you know, bombs and, you know, thumbs up emojis and broculture. So the incompetence combined with the speed and these experts saying these are red flags that tell us that it would be difficult. Another thing that's provided, um, kind of a bombing salve is this country geographically is so spread out. And to spread like in Germany, it was, you know, the size of Texas. It was very concentrated. But to try to get the all of the United States, when we have all of these local governments and state governments and governors, it's going to be a big swing for, again, the majority of these people are incompetent.

So what do you think about the Democratic leadership at the moment then? Who are you seeing emerging? How do you feel the Democrats are using what feels like it should be an opportunity for them? Okay. The Democratic leadership right now infuriates me. It is unacceptable. Unacceptable. I just read online this morning that Chuck Schumer has folded like a cheap suit and he's reached a bipartisan. agreement. I'm like, you should not be using... This is for the shutdown, right? Yes. And to fund DHS. Right. You should not be using the phrase bipartisanship with fascists. It needs to be a resist of the highest order. Quit playing patty cake with these people. They're shooting American citizens. They're arresting journalists. They're covering up for pedophiles. He's tanking the fundamentals of the economy. He's blowing up all of our allies. He's playing patty cake with war criminals, Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin, and screwing around with Canada

and Greenland and all of this American arrogance. And they do all this crap. The Democrats drive me crazy, Joanne, because then you find out that they're polling. And I'm like, that's the problem. Don't crowdsource your morals. Find something, stand in and believe in it. Now, there are Democrats that are rising up around that. I think Ro Khanna recently at the, Hakeem Jeffrey's advice for people not to go to Minneapolis, Rocahanna went anyway. I just recently had Greg Kassar, progressive congressman from Texas on the podcast. Robert Garcia is doing incredible work with the Oversight Committee. And I just think we need a younger generation of Democrats that believe in something and don't crowdsources. I just, I think Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer,

I don't think they're bad people. I think they're wholly unqualified for this moment. I think this is a moment when we're seeing all of the things that we're seeing that the sense of urgency that I feel, that your people watching this right now are feeling, I don't feel like the Democrats are feeling that. And then especially Tulsi Gabbard in Georgia, like what are they? up to, you know it's not good. You know they don't want to give up power. So I think it needs, the Democrats are always outmatched with this, always. I mean, look at how Biden handled Trump and how Merrick Garland handled Trump. I could sit here and talk about it for hours and how mad I am about that, that they didn't handle an insurrection. But that would be regressive

and not healthy. And I'm not going to do that, Joanna. But it just shows you the Democrats need to fight this stuff the way Republicans do. If the Democrats do win the midterms, at least for the House of Representatives, what do you think they should do? What should their attitude be towards the Morinocracy? Do they hold people to account? What should be the plan going forward? I think that they should put their foot on the accelerator and smash it so far down that it pokes a hole through the car and then it starts scuffing up their foot on the street, but they just keep going until they hit the core of the earth. The Democratic Party failed to address this during the Biden regime, and they have to address

every single thing that they've done, every single thing. And Elon Musk recently, I said this with Jim Acosta, and the world's richest, most oppressed man on the planet was tweeting about me because I think they all, I think that they all need to face investigations and if crimes occurred, they need to be tried and we need to have a national reckoning with this. And, you know, they're all going to be like, oh God, Jennifer wants to prosecute us all. And I'll just remind everybody, I'm a podcaster. I don't have subpoena power. I appreciate that you'll like to freak out on social media because you're so submissive and triggered. But it's just They have to be pit bulls.

No disrespect to pit bulls. I know there's a lot of nice pit bulls, but the mean ones that you hear about in the news, they have got to be serious about this. Jen, let's take a break for some sponsors. And I'm back with Jennifer Welsh, and we are discussing, well, we're discussing everything. Are you going to run for something?

I mean, why not? I mean, here's the thing. I don't, I don't. I told Keraswisher, I'd rather earn my money on my back than be a politician. You know, at least it would be super transactional and up front. I don't want to, I like what I'm doing now. I like commenting on it. I like building the community that we're building with our independent media channel.

I don't want to be in Washington, D.C., around Marjorie Taylor Green and Ted Cruz, in complicit Democrats. I think my voice is better reporting on it, gossiping about it, pontificating about it, than I would be in it. Well, your voice is certainly being heard. You've got enormous number of followers on YouTube. Many congratulations. Are you still, because I know you come from an interior design background.

And I know you've just left Oklahoma and you've moved to New York. Are you still doing design? I mean, you're set behind you or your home, which is where I'm assuming your podcasting from is very stylish. Are you still doing that? Yeah, I still have like four projects because these interior design projects take two or three years if somebody's building a home. And I love it.

There are many days where, you know, I get multiple death threats because the five on Fox News is like Jennifer Welch is a radical wine mom that's Antifa. And then I get snail mail, DM. all of it. And then I think to myself, oh my God, I had a great career. I was an interior designer. I didn't have to deal with this crap. I was always a political junkie. I think just living in a red state around Christian nationalists, I felt the urgency to stand up for democracy and human rights long before Trump came down the escalator. I've been fighting these Christian nationalists. I've hosted more fundraisers for losing Democrats in the state of Oklahoma than I care to admit. But I tried. I really, really tried. And so, So some days I think, God, this sucks. This is so hard. And then I'll go into the comment section, which I rarely do of our YouTube. And it's comment after comment.

Thank you. This is my therapy. You're harnessing my anger. Thank you for speaking out. I'm a black woman that lives here. I'm a queer person that lives in this, you know, red county. And it just all different ages, all different colors. And then I think I have to stand up for them.

I have to use my privilege and my skin color. And my socioeconomic standing for good, I have to stand up for these people. I have to stand up for our country. And so that's why I continue to do it, despite now fantasizing about fighting with my clients about paint colors and other petty, frivolous 1% problems, this is where I need to be right now. Well, there's something very soothing about thinking about paint colors and wall hangings and all the things. My co-host on Inside Trump's head's wife designs their home all the time.

And he's constantly podcasting from there. And there's something very soothing about looking at a beautiful interior even while you're hearing the horror of the moment. Agree. I completely agree. I mean, you know, I always thought it was such a cool job because when I would install somebody's home, I would leave. And I would think this is the backdrop of their childhood. or their memories of their Christmases, their Thanksgiving. This is, when I go back to, when I was growing up in the 80s,

I remember the avocado washer and dryer that my mother had and the avocado refrigerator. Do you remember the green appliances? Of course. Yes. And so you remember those things and you're creating this ambient memory. And it is very soothing. And it's a great, and I still do it some, not to the extent. I used to have 20, 25 projects at a time.

So I've really scaled it back. But when I do multiple times a week, I have to check in on my projects and with my clients, it is a very therapeutic profession. Yeah, it's kind of grounding in a way, even if you're dealing with people's hysteria around, you know, very expensive furniture or whatever. What is the secret do you think to a good podcast studio? What are the kind of vibes one should try and create? You know, I, so this is my apartment in New York, and I just rented a space in, uh, uh, uh, uh, Manhattan, and I'm in the process of designing it right now. I'm going to have you in person since you're New York base, and I'll show you what I'm thinking. We'll give you a sneak peek.

So I am obsessed with like calhide textures. And so I'm thinking of doing this as the background, kind of a blush. Okay. Is that left? Yeah, it's a cowhide. Right. Okay. And I, in our Oklahoma City studio, it's kind of blue, which kind of made my hair look kind of brassy. And so I thought, if I went kind of blush. So this is a little sneak peek. But here's the problem. When you're a designer and you're designing something for yourself, I'm as tortured as every client that I've ever hated that's been a thorn in my side. When I have a client, like if you said, Jennifer, come to my apartment, I want you to design it. I would be 100% decisive on every decision. I could design it in my head in record speed. And I would be, have all the confidence in the world. But when it comes to me

personally, it's difficult for me to make the decision, so I understand the torture with it. But podcast studios, it's really interesting because there is an intersection between what I do podcasting and what I do with interior design. And when I first started design, a lot of older homes, the kitchen was isolated from the house, and your guests would never go into the kitchen. And now architecture has changed, and we live more informally. And the kitchen is the nucleus. And likewise, with media, nobody's watching really CNN or MSNBC anymore. Their numbers year after year down and down. And people don't mind that I'm in my living room reporting.

Everything has become less formal. Right. You can look at, you know, the way we used to dress up. I remember when I would go on a trip before, I'd be like, what am I going to wear to the airport? My airport outfit was a big thing. Now it's like, what's the most comfortable thing I can put on to get through this flight? And so there's an informality that is kind of everywhere right now. Well, Sean Duffy, the transport secretary, is trying to bring back people dressing up for the airport, which actually I approve of. I still dress up to travel.

I do too. I will do what, at leisure chic, you know, so I'll wear something comfortable. But if I have on leggings and a tank top, I put a blazer on over it. So at least, because I agree with you. I miss the days where you could look at everybody's airport outfits. Now, here's the thing. I think podcasters, we should be the one saying that, not some. prick that works for Trump telling people that are struggling, you know, to buy airfare. But I agree. I agree. I think we do need to dress a little chicker in airports. Jennifer Welch, thank you so much. I'm dying to come and see your podcast studio. We've sort of got a blush behind us. We should have you back just to do a podcast on Robert Kennedy Jr. I mean, we need to dissect him. We need to dissect him and Cheryl Hines. I mean, the whole thing. The whole thing. I want to dive right into that because my favorite television show, of all time ever is Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Of course. How did she go from that to marrying RFK Jr.? The betrayal that I feel, because I would always have several downloaded in a pinch on a flight. I'm like, I'll watch an episode of Curb. And she's ruined this. It's actually funnier on a flight. I started watching, binge watching it when I was flying back and forth to the West Coast a lot. It's funnier.

Whenever I watched it at home, I was like, this isn't so funny. But on a plane, it's very funny. I know. And then she has to go off and marry RFK Jr. And she just fucked us. Just like every single buddy, every single person in this regime, they just take away every bit of joy that we had. All right. I want to have you. I'll have you in studio.

And I'm so glad to meet you. Let's dine. Let's start a new friendship. Let's do all of it. Let's do all of it. So there you have it. I was quite surprised to hear that Jen was nervous about looking at the comments on YouTube. I love reading your comments on YouTube.

I get the sense of community. I love your responses. I love your suggestions. So feel free to leave a comment on Jen's particular viewpoint on the world, some of which I agree with. And I find her insights into certainly people in Oklahoma and their weird adulation of someone like Donald Trump, who, as she says, wears makeup and has this kind of strange,

confected hair when they're all driving around in pickup trucks, expressing, well, expressing one version of masculinity, truly intriguing. Anyway, leave us a comment. Don't forget to subscribe to The Daily Beast. We are independent media, so we really appreciate your support. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. And I'll be back on Tuesday, inside Trump's head with Michael Wolfe, which is a very strange place to be indeed, but we will be there.

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