Jennifer Welch, once a reality television star on Bravo, now a commentator on the political left, releases a podcast episode approximately once every seven hours.
She starts her day at 5 a.m., drinks four shots of espresso, reads the news on her laptop, absorbs more news from her muted television and walks her two French bulldogs to a doggy day care center across the street from her Manhattan apartment. By 9 a.m., she has connected over a webcam with her friend and co-host Angie (Pumps) Sullivan in Oklahoma City, where Ms. Welch lived for most of her life.
“Patriots, gaytriots, theytriots, Blacktriots and browntriots,” is how Ms. Welch greets the listeners of their primary podcast, “I’ve Had It.” Ms. Sullivan makes the sound of an American eagle squawking an expletive at the forces who oppress their fans. They might riff about the Epstein files or interview a congressperson. Then Ms. Welch begins her workday running Jennifer Welch Designs, where she styles residences with seven-figure budgets and offers her own line of performance fabrics.
During President Trump’s first term, Ms. Welch and Ms. Sullivan were the stars of the short-lived Bravo reality show “Sweet Home Oklahoma.” They started “I’ve Had It” in 2022. Initially, it featured banter about petty grievances, but soon their grievances grew to world-historical proportions.
They once railed against the kinds of people who clap when the airplane lands. Now they have had it with fascists, and the “self-hating dweebs” they say power the Make America Great Again movement. There is a trace of the #Resistance in their approach, with their eager obsession with Mr. Trump, and the creatively profane nicknames they invent for him. One of Ms. Welch’s most printable insults for Mr. Trump is “canks,” short for “cankles.”
But this is just one of her rhetorical modes.
When Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, appeared on the show in October, Ms. Welch and Ms. Sullivan chatted him up about his recent engagement. Then Ms. Welch asked, “What do you have to say about the capitulation you’ve participated in?”
She grilled Mr. Booker for 40 minutes about his vote to confirm Charles Kushner as ambassador to France, his recent photo opportunity with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his acceptance of donations from AIPAC, the hard-line pro-Israel lobbying organization. Throughout much of the exchange, Ms. Sullivan could be seen on a split-screen, watching in silent approval. When Mr. Booker appealed to Ms. Welch and her listeners to end the “circular firing squad” of Democrat-on-Democrat sniping, she reloaded.
“I don’t mind taking criticism from folks that don’t necessarily agree with my tactics,” Mr. Booker said. “But on this podcast right now, we share the same aim: cease-fire now, humanitarian aid now, return the hostages now. And — ”
“Do you think he’s a war criminal?” Ms. Welch cut in. “Benjamin Netanyahu. Do you think he’s a war criminal?”
“I — again, these are — these are questions that a lot of people think are the important litmus tests that are loaded and hot,” he replied. So Ms. Welch delivered him a message from what she described as a frustrated Democratic base, one whose skepticism of leaders has grown as its support for Israel’s war on Gaza has plunged. New figures had risen in the party who could answer such questions, she argued, like Zohran Mamdani, who appeared on “I’ve Had It” in September. “They can go on a podcast, and you can say, ‘Do you think Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal?’ And they just say, ‘Yes.’”
In April, when Rahm Emanuel suggested that the party’s members mute their support of transgender rights, she called him a sellout. In June, she accused Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, of being “one of those corporate Democrats” despised by many Americans. A few months later, when he did not appear at a rally in support of Mr. Mamdani, she hopped on their spinoff podcast “IHIP News” and implored him to “get your shit together.”
All of this has made Ms. Welch into the rare figure who appeals to the mainstream liberal, angers the Fox News viewer and thrills the dirtbag left. As she challenges Democrats from a more progressive stance, a portrait of Kate Moss in the frame behind her, she provides the sensation of watching the Overton window shift in real time.
Here is a 51-year-old ex-Bravolebrity from Oklahoma, with shoulders toned on a country club tennis court, who has not one, not two, but three selfies with Bill Clinton posted to her Instagram grid. If she has had it with the Democratic establishment, then who hasn’t?
No More ‘Libbing Out’
When I met Ms. Welch at her apartment one November morning, she opened the door to reveal a four-foot-tall pop-art painting of the former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She offered me a rose-colored glass of water, which I set down atop a coaster of Barack Obama’s face. We sat on her blush velvet couch, which Ms. Welch had reupholstered from its original gray, and I asked her when her political instincts began to evolve.
“I used to be a good MSNBC liberal that libbed out and bought into all of that,” Ms. Welch explained. But “when you lose a political race two times to a moron,” as she put it, referring to Mr. Trump, “you really have to go, ‘OK, what in the actual fuck is going on?’”
Ms. Welch has been a Democrat all her life. She was born in Texas and raised in Oklahoma City, where she lived for several years on the grounds of a funplex owned by her father. She spent her early years running the snow-cone machine and fetching golf balls from the driving range.
In high school, she competed in Lincoln-Douglas debate, but she also honed her argumentative skill on the pom squad, where she coordinated routines with cheerleaders who believed Ms. Welch, an atheist, was doomed to spend an eternity in hell.
This made her a natural ally with Oklahomans who were marginalized for other reasons. When she dropped out of college to start her own design business, she appreciated that it was a field that put her in community with gay men. Design required its own kind of confrontation, including with Ms. Sullivan, whom she met 22 years ago when Ms. Sullivan hired her to redecorate her home.
“She told me I had terrible taste,” Ms. Sullivan remembered. “Her honesty was so refreshing.”
Ms. Welch found herself working on the homes of oil and gas executives, and she liked to style their spaces with copies of “Dreams From My Father” as a joke. On the side, she hosted fund-raisers for losing Democratic candidates. In 2015, she persuaded a Republican design client to open his home for a Bill Clinton meet-and-greet fund-raiser for the Hillary Clinton campaign. She now regrets not voting for Bernie Sanders, but she still has the thank-you voice mail Bill left on her phone.
The version of Ms. Welch and Ms. Sullivan’s lives aired on “Sweet Home Oklahoma” between 2017 and 2018 only flicked at their progressive politics as it portrayed them as unexpected Southern characters. Ms. Welch was cast as the smart-mouthed type-A career woman tasked with managing the antics of Ms. Sullivan along with those of her defense attorney spouse, Josh Welch, and their two sons. The show lasted two seasons.
The pair started “I’ve Had It” in 2022 and shrugged off the constricting tropes of reality TV. Their guests were Peloton instructors and Real Housewives, drag queens and Bachelorettes. In late 2023, a booker pitched them to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “Southern liberals who are strong supporters of underrepresented groups,” and she appeared on the show in January 2024. They booked Kamala Harris in April and Barack Obama in September. Trivial gripes became the bookends of an unfiltered political program.
“I wanted to be polite,” Ms. Welch said of her early interviews with big-name Democrats. “I wanted them to have a good time.”
Then Mr. Trump won a second term. When Mr. Emanuel came on this spring, called the party’s advocacy for trans people “nuts,” then labored to land a prepared joke about Democrats focusing on “kitchen table issues” instead of “bathroom issues,” Ms. Welch felt a surge of adrenaline.
“I just went bananas,” she said. “I physically felt what he was doing — how opportunistic it was, how inauthentic it was and how insincere it was. But most importantly, how dangerous it was.”
The interview hit Fox News and The Daily Mail and made an impression on young leftists. “I was really delighted when I saw Jennifer pop up in my feeds again,” said Matt Bernstein, the host of the podcast “A Bit Fruity” and a member of the Creators for Zohran coalition. “Not just as ‘a Democrat from Oklahoma,’ but for bashing in the skulls of the mainstream Democratic establishment.”
Her red-state pedigree helps sharpen the critique. “To have this woman, who is not a coastal white woman, say that the Democratic Party is failing us — it’s super powerful,” said Nelini Stamp, the director of strategy and outreach for the Working Families Party. “It’s like, you are being schooled by a woman who lives in Oklahoma,” she said.
In September, Ms. Welch and Ms. Sullivan flew to Los Angeles to host an event celebrating “107 Days,” Ms. Harris’s memoir of her failed campaign. But first, Ms. Welch took a detour to visit the leftist streamer Hasan Piker, spent an hour and a half chatting on his livestream and then joined his podcast to talk some more.
Mr. Piker has been a fan for years, and he introduced Ms. Welch on his show as “one of the leaders of the radical wine mom brigade,” a lightly patronizing framing that nevertheless can work to Ms. Welch’s advantage.
His audience, he wrote over email, has been “captivated by the juxtaposition of a tall blonde Anglo-Saxon woman from Oklahoma with seemingly endless empathy for the downtrodden.”
Grateful for the Roasting
When Ms. Welch tears into a political ally-slash-opponent, YouTube creators chop her hits into clips with titles like “Podcaster Drops a Nuclear Truth Bomb on Spineless Democrats.” In the vernacular of these heat-seeking videos, Ms. Welch “slams,” she “eviscerates,” she “barbecues,” she “destroys.” But Ms. Welch sees her confrontation of Democratic leadership as a service to the party.
“At this point, I feel like they need to learn how to go on podcasts,” she said. “In order for the Democrats to advance, we have to push them.”
A life lived in red states has also given her an appreciation for the same Democratic establishment she is now famous for excoriating. The highlight reels of Ms. Welch’s insults, which spread widely online, elide her moments of repair in support of a unified party. After Mr. Jeffries exited the show, she praised him for an answer on corporate donations that was “about as direct as you can get.” At the end of the day, Ms. Welch said, “I would crawl through concrete to vote for Cory Booker.”
Democratic leaders who have been interrogated by Ms. Welch rate the experience positively.
“I really enjoyed the full hour interview,” Mr. Emanuel wrote over email. “A good discussion.” In a statement, Mr. Booker mentioned the importance of having honest conversations and said, “I was happy to do that with Jennifer and Angie.” Justin Chermol, a spokesman for Mr. Jeffries, said: “Leader Jeffries enjoyed his time on the show. He looks forward to continued engagement with Jennifer and others as part of the House Democratic Caucus more is more approach during these perilous times.”
Kiley Josey, the 30-year-old producer of the podcast, said that even after Ms. Welch calls Democrats names, their teams remain in close touch, eager to brief her on their wins. “I don’t think anybody wants to be on our bad side,” she said.
As Democrats scuffle over what they believe, who they should fight and how they can win, Ms. Welch’s influence is also up for debate. Mr. Emanuel said he had not budged on “bathroom issues” after their conversation, and argued that “the results of this month’s elections across the country, with laserlike focus on affordability by every Democratic candidate at the expense of all other issues, bears out my point.”
Others, however, have been moved. Enaas Hamed, who plays tennis with Ms. Welch, said Ms. Welch was the rare Oklahoman who had shown “compassion and interest” in her position as a first-generation Palestinian American. When Ms. Welch started pressing politicians about Israel on her podcast, Ms. Hamed called to thank her. “For someone like Jennifer, who has a huge following in Oklahoma City, it has a very big impact,” she said.
This fall, Ms. Welch and her spouse, Josh, helped their youngest son move into a dorm at the University of Southern California. She knows many women who have felt directionless when their children left home. Instead, she moved out, too. She told Josh that she wanted to experience a “midlife gap year” in the city with her dogs, where she would be well positioned to build her empires of liberal podcasting and interior design. She moved to Manhattan, and soon she was outside Mr. Mamdani’s victory party on election night, getting mobbed for selfies.
She has one note for her new fans.
“Calling us ‘wine moms’ is reductive and somewhat sexist,” Ms. Welch said. But she detests “the language police,” and finds it unhelpful in her project of building a broad coalition on the left.
“If they want to call us ‘wine moms’ because there’s a need to feel maternal care from a group of women that are usually the Karens and the conservatives, that’s fine. I’ll take one for the team,” she said. But for the record: “I don’t drink wine.”
Amanda Hess is a writer at large for The Times.
The post Is This Former Bravo Star Democrats’ Toughest Critic? appeared first on New York Times.
