Jennifer Welch

Ilana Glazer (0:00)

Woo, I just came off such a hot, incisive conversation with someone I am such a big fan of and turn to truly every day to feel grounded in the insanity of the world, Jennifer Welch of the I've Had It podcast. So Jen Welch is an author, a podcaster and political commentator with her finger on the pulse of American politics. Jen was born in Texas, raised in Oklahoma and worked as an interior designer. And then as an interior designer was the star of Bravo's Sweet Home and now she co-hosts the podcast I've Had It with Angie Pumps Sullivan, her best friend. And she has a new book called Not Today, Fascists, that is coming out on October 6th. She's so brilliant and I had so much fun talking to her. So come on in y'all, it's open.

What's funny to me about the right hating Hassan Piker is that part of it is that he's hot.

Jennifer Welch (0:56)

Totally.

Ilana Glazer (0:58)

Their hatred messaging is connected to their horniness.

Jennifer Welch (1:02)

And they're so horny. On Fox News lately, Laura Ingram keeps talking about how hot Hassan is. She does? How hot AOC is. How hot, why is Abdul wearing these tight t-shirts to a gym workout? I'm like, they are so horny. And then of course, you know, Jesse Waters constantly talking about men and how they eat ice cream or drink soup. He's always talking about masculinity. I think they're just so I think the entire Republican Christian movement, there's just so much repressed sexuality. I can speak to this because I grew up in Oklahoma City and I was raised by two progressive atheists in the middle of the Bible Belt. And purity culture and being modest is still so ubiquitous in these places. And all of my friends were uber, uber Christian, like mega churchers wanted to get me saved. And the biggest thing that their parents put upon them when they were young, wasn't to be a good person, wasn't to be a curious learner.

It was to be a virgin. And the pressure that is put on very young kids before they even have hormones, the parents are already engaging with them about sex in a very young age. And I think it's abuse. I think it's very abusive. And so of course all of these kids, the most religious kids I knew, first cherries to pop. And then they have no education whatsoever about what does consent mean, what are STDs, what are condoms, how do you prevent a pregnancy. And so there is in the evangelical movement, which I attribute so much to what MAGA is, it is a movement that is about forgiveness without accountability. And that's not how the world works. If you want to be forgiven for something, you have to go through a series of accountability, atonement and show the person for whom you're seeking forgiveness.

I have changed, I have evolved, I have learned this, I was wrong here, and I've been in the fetal position, and I've talked to my therapist, blah, blah, blah. Well look at Trump, forgiveness without accountability. And so he is really familiar to these people, because he does all of the bad things that they know their dads do, their pastor does, their mom does, their uncle does.

But he does it out in the open, and it's familiar. It's very familiar to them, this type of abuse from a government, because this is the way their mothers and fathers are in authoritarian homes, and from an authoritarian religion sets the psychological soil for you to fall prey to an authoritarian government. This is comfortable for them. This type of immorality, this type of hypocrisy, they've known it their whole lives.

Ilana Glazer (3:55)

And the idea of not having a public space or how we've been systematically isolated through big tech, there used to be this, a common space for shame, a common space also to have to earn trust, this sort of having to climb the ladder of earning someone's trust back or falling backwards in the shame that you're supposed to feel when you do something shitty.

It's so crazy that it's all out in the open with him, and yet there's really no, there's no shame, there's no common space for shame among us. Or the people, to shame them. However, we've been siloed in an echo chamber to have to share that shame, and it's tough to cross over.

Jennifer Welch (4:42)

But you cannot shame the shameless. They don't feel it.

They don't feel the shame. I think the biggest problem the left makes, or maybe a moderate that is somewhat apolitical, but wants the world to be better and kind of pissed off about Trump in general, is that we project the way we would perceive things onto them.