Jennifer Welch of 'I’ve Had It' Blasts Both MAGA & Centrist Dems

18:43Angie Sullivan:I don't know if Trump is calculating, like, somehow legacy stuff. I mean, he's a lame duck. You know, and I go both ways. Dictators think they're going to cling on to power forever, and they never see them ever leaving, nor is there any plan. There's no succession plan. or is he kind of colluding with, not colluding that Zoran is participating in, but optically saying, okay, you know, there's room in America for all of these places. But as it pertains to the people, Moses Mike Grander Johnson, Little Smokey, the ones that are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic with Kanks, Kara, these people's careers will be over.

19:26Angie Sullivan:I just do not see that there is oxygen. We're 10, 11 months in to this shit show and the wreckage and the carnage already. I don't see that the electorate is even remotely going to allow for any successor that remained loyal to the cult once biology takes care of him or the term limit. Right. So he's

19:49Kara Swisher:getting out before them. He's such a, he is fleeing his ship with this. That's what I thought. I'm like, look what he just did. Like, I liked him slightly more. Like, I know it sounds crazy. I don't like him very much at all. But when he looked up at him, I was like, wow, this guy will do anything to reinvent himself.

20:11Angie Sullivan:Somebody put on Twitter yesterday, I haven't seen Trump this happy since the McDonald's buffet at the White House. And it was a picture of Trump in front of all the McDonald's buffet care, and he's like grinning ear to ear, but the photo of him looking up adoringly at Zoran, that's wild. It is wild. I mean, I don't think, and you heard Fox News when they were giddy. They went back, that one, I can't remember the guy's name, but he's the one who suggested we should euthanize Kilmeade. We should euthanize homeless people. After he sees it, it clicks to him, and he's giddy, and he's giggling. He said, well, J.D.

20:48Angie Sullivan:Vance probably sure is so jealous. Even Fox is throwing little Smokey under the bus, Kara. Yeah, yeah.

20:55Kara Swisher:Smokey is repugnant, so I could see that. I could see that. As you know, Trump knows political popularity, and he just goes right to it. I just am like, I didn't think the first person off the ship would be the captain, but I guess so. Captain does not go down with his ship. That is what I thought. I was like, he's got the rest of them. And he like sails away to his future and stuff. He's got to pay any price whatsoever. And it does knock Epstein off for a second, although that's not going to go away. And let me be clear with people, he might still invade New York with National Guard, even though he's losing everywhere from a legal perspective.

21:32Kara Swisher:But he's still Donald Trump, let's be clear. And you never know where that's going. And all I thought is the meds, everyone's meds have kicked in this week in some fashion.

21:42Angie Sullivan:I'm sure Stephen Miller had some physician on speed dial immediately. I mean, because you picture ketchup being thrown when bad things happen at the White House. And I thought about Stephen Miller just, I mean, just completely on suicide watch. Full-blown suicide watch, because this is the remedy. Multiculturalism, embrace different faiths. faiths. He embraced Zoran in such a loving, adoring way. This is the remedy to all of the white supremacy in which Stephen Miller views his plans for the United States.

22:24Kara Swisher:Okay, last question. What do the Dems do now? You've talked about, what do they do at this point? Because he managed to like, sort of attack the Republicans and the Democrats by doing this. And whatever you think of Marjorie Greene, she's out of his hair, right? For now, at least. I mean, she's out of his hair completely.

22:45Angie Sullivan:The Democrats have got to watch Ro Khanna. He is outflanking every single one of them all the time. He's everywhere. He's on podcast. He's on the news. We need our Democratic establishment to quit focusing on focus groups. It's not focus groups anymore. That is an old, antiquated way of learning about people. You can learn about people by simply listening to podcasts, looking at comments. And the Democrats are going to have to embrace every single Democratic candidate that wins, whether it's a centrist in Virginia or a Democratic socialist in New York. But you know what's interesting? This tells you how bad Hakeem Jeffries' political instincts are.

23:33Angie Sullivan:The vote. While Trump is Krispy Kreme glazing Zoran in the Oval, Hakeem is voting to condemn socialism, just the bullshit performative stuff that they do in Congress that nobody gives a shit about. And Hakeem is doing that, and he's constantly falling into their traps, the Republicans, and he gets outflanked all the time. And this time, he gets outflanked by a fascist who Zoran put on such a charm offensive. Trump said, it's okay.

24:05Kara Swisher:Go ahead. Go ahead.

24:06Angie Sullivan:Call me a fascist.

24:07Kara Swisher:Zoran's like, call me a despot.

24:09Angie Sullivan:Yeah.

24:09Kara Swisher:Okay. I don't mind. Yeah. Because they both look good. I hate to say it, but they both look good. And you're right, Hakeem Jeffries. I was like, are you kidding me? I already think those things are dumb. Anyway, Jennifer, I'm so glad you came back because I was like, I must speak with him about these things. Yes. So I don't know what's going to happen Monday, but let me just say, the only thing I thought of as I was reading all this one thing after the next, it was at dinner, was, you can't go to dinner, first of all, was we are actually in a simulation. And some really bored teenager from the future is like going, oh, here's what I'm going to do today.

24:46Kara Swisher:That's the first time I was like, this is not real. This cannot be real. But it is.

24:49Angie Sullivan:It was wild and a much-needed salve for our tormented brains and hearts of what happens every day being an American and the instability that we feel on a daily basis.

25:04Kara Swisher:Yeah, you felt good for a second. Like, we can get along, I guess. Even a fascist and a socialist can get along.

25:10Angie Sullivan:But like you said, Kara, this could all switch with one true social post the minute we click not to record any longer.

25:17Kara Swisher:If someone else gets to him and then tries to convince him. Anyway, I'm eager to hear your show about what all the Oklahomans think of this. You're there for the next week. So I'm sure it'll be interesting to see their reaction to all this. Anyway, thank you so much, Jennifer. I really appreciate you coming back. Thank you, Kara. Okay, let's get into it.

25:40Angie Sullivan:Jennifer, thanks for coming on on. Thanks for having me, Kara. I think you're very cool. And so I feel cooler being on your podcast. Oh, stop it. You're the cool one right now. You're in like the center of the red hot. Did you expect this success so quickly? No, I did not. We originally started just shit talking, you know, stuff that is a grievance to anybody. But toddlers are assholes. That was the one. They are. I mean, you love them and they're important, but God, they can be assholes. I just had one of those encounters this morning. That's one.

26:13Kara Swisher:Oh, yeah. Over shoes.

26:14Angie Sullivan:As you start seeing what's happening politically, I've always been a diehard political junkie and rather outspoken about it. And I can't help but for these opinions to come out of me. And so I thought maybe it would be kind of a niche political thing, not that I would, we would have this type of platform.

26:38Kara Swisher:Popularity. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you and your co-host, Angie Sullivan, who's not here, how dare her, have two podcasts. She's doing some with her kids. There's a flagship show, I've Had It, and also the shorter daily podcast, iHip News. You've got about 4 million followers across all your platforms, and you've added more than a million subscribers to YouTube since the election. So Democrats have started to realize that they need to be talking to their voters on independent media, but there's a lot of hesitation and fear, and it seems like they still prefer legacy media. I keep saying my podcast is bigger than your show.

27:12Kara Swisher:Like, I'm sorry. I mean, you know what I mean? So talk about your pitch to sort of leery Democrats. They've always talked about creating a left Joe Rogan, and here you are. Like, they wouldn't ever imagine that that's what you are in some ways.

27:26Angie Sullivan:Well, I mean, I don't think I'm the left Joe Rogan, because although I like to trash talk, I don't traffic in conspiracy theories, which I think is really, really dangerous. But I do think that— You know their point. Their point is powerful. Yes. I do think that Democrats have—establishment Democrats have the appearance right now of being a conservative party because they are preserving old tactics that they've used forever. Focus groups, disciplined messaging, word salad, platitudes, and corporate media allows them to go on and non-answer things, and then they go to the next question and the next question.

28:03Angie Sullivan:And they're not evolutionary in following the changing media landscape. The audience. Right. And people want to know the people that deliver their news. They want to know something about me personally. They want to know something about you personally. With these phones, we've gotten a little nosier. And the same goes for politicians. We want to see them off the cuff. If they misstep, no big deal. And so some politicians are great. They come on. I've noticed the politicians, like an example, Ro Khanna. He doesn't take any corporate PAC money. He'll come on anytime. We don't have to have a, you know, what are we going to talk about beforehand?

28:42Angie Sullivan:He's just completely liberated. Yeah, he's promiscuous.

28:44Kara Swisher:I joke with him about it. I said, you have to be promiscuous in this. And speaking of being on your back, you know, you have to really be everywhere, essentially.

28:52Angie Sullivan:Yeah, I agree. And I think it's a great way for Democrats to evolve. And if they misstep to be able to embrace, yeah, I was on there, we were spitballing, what I really mean is this. And look at how the Republicans slash MAGA movement have evolved in that regard. Look at how far they've moved in that regard. And when I think about back in the day, it was the appearance that the liberals controlled all of the news. So the right built this massive media ecosystem. Yeah, they were left out. Yeah, and now you see that the Trump oligarch friends, billionaire buddies are buying up all of the mainstream media.

29:32Angie Sullivan:And we're the left out ones now. And so I'm so happy to collaborate with any podcaster, pro-democracy person on the left, because I see us all as allies that are messaging to a part of the electorate that is hurting, that feels targeted, that is grieving what they thought the promise of America is, not to mention the financial anxiety that so many Americans are struggling from. And I see, and you probably see this with your audience, we're building communities. And it's so important to feel connected when you see so much injustice.

30:09Kara Swisher:Well, it's a parasocial relationship in a weird way, but it isn't. It isn't that it's one way, because we just finished this seven-city and seven-day tours with Pivot. And the community was what the critical part. We sold out everything. And a lot of regular media people called me and they're like, how did you do that? I'm like, how did you not do this? Like, you're sitting in these airless studios broadcasting essentially corporate media and what, especially with the Democrats. I said it's boring. It's not interesting. It's not. But how do you get them to understand that independent media is where audiences?

30:43Kara Swisher:I think they kind of vaguely get it, and then they create these laboratories like, we'll give$100 ,000 to figure it out. I'm like, it's already figured out. It's not, I don't know, it's very frustrating when I'm talking to a lot of them.

30:55Angie Sullivan:Yeah, I've experienced the same thing. When I start, when we have a politician on and I get an email from one of their aides that wants the talking points, I'm like, this is not going to be that great of a guest because you need to be able to come in and have a conversation with our audience, open to anything, just like you and I, we don't have talking points before I came on here. I don't know what you're going to ask me. And that's what garners trust for you with your audience and for my audience that comes over here to be introduced to you if they don't know you yet, which I can't imagine they wouldn't.

31:27Angie Sullivan:But they need to liberate themselves. And I think it goes like this. If they could liberate themselves from corporate donations, they could liberate themselves conversationally. They're so inhibited and they walk on eggshells. And that's why the democratic establishment, to me, feels like the party of preservation. We want to preserve the way it's always been. We want to preserve the status quo instead of evolving and becoming completely unobstructed conversationally. And in turn, they'll become a lot more likable and electable.

32:00Kara Swisher:So you talked about who's getting it right. Who's getting it wrong? I mean, whenever I see a social media thing by either Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries. I want to just cringe. It's like massive, like, what are you doing? You know, unless he really leaned into grandpa, right? I wouldn't mind that as much as what's happening. It's like being grandpa and then pretending you're not grandpa. That really irritates me. But how do they get it wrong? And who else is getting it right?

32:29Angie Sullivan:So I think the people that are getting it wrong are obviously Jeffries, Schumer, Cory Booker came onto our podcast and completely misstepped. What did he do? So, I asked him, what have you had it with? And he said he'd had it with corporate PAC donations. And I said, well, don't you take money from APAC? And then the defenses started coming up. I asked him a very simple yes or no question. Do you think Benjamin Netanyahu's a war criminal? And the answer to that question is yes. And he couldn't answer it. He kept going on and on and on, and we kind of got into it. And if you think about it, there's been three missteps from establishment Democrats on podcasts surrounding this issue.

33:09Angie Sullivan:Gavin Newsom was asked about APAC, and he says the word interesting, interesting, interesting, nine times you counted out. Pete Buttigieg, who is a gifted orator, kind of face plants on Pod Save. And Cory Booker face planted on our podcast, and it went completely viral. And so I think that, again, it goes back to when you're beholden to very few, this is a very transparent media platform. You get exposed very quickly if you start BSing. The bullshit meter is instantly detectable. And so I think it's good that the ones that are getting it wrong right now, come on, see what the base is saying. Quit focus grouping.

33:55Angie Sullivan:Get yourself out into the American public and see how it goes and change and evolve. And as a base, we have to be somewhat forgiving if they misstep and come back and clean up. Because as much as Chuckles and Hakeem drive me crazy, they are the leaders that we have. They are who we have. And so I'm cheering for them to succeed. So if they can clean up their kind of embarrassing, cringy posts and become more relatable, I'm going to cheerlead for them, but I'm also not going to be a sycophant for them and just go along with, boy, they wrote a strongly worded letter. Go get them chuckles. Right. Strongly.

34:33Angie Sullivan:That was chuckles yesterday.

34:35Kara Swisher:Strongly worded letter. I really mean it. And meanwhile, Trump's like knocking down the White House. Let's talk a little about them in just a second, but let's talk about your background. You were born and raised in Oklahoma and lived there up until last month, but you were an odd person out, a liberal atheist in the conservative Bible Belt. Talk about your political isolation as a young person and recently as an adult with kids during the Trump era. Yeah.

35:01Angie Sullivan:So, I was always the skunk at the garden party in the Bible Belt. I was raised by atheists. My mother is a voracious reader, learner. We always had the most stimulating conversations. How'd they get there? So my mother, born in Dallas, Texas, and she had a very mentally ill mother, probably borderline personality disorder. And her mother was really cruel to her. And my mother was around seven years old, and she lost this little purse. And she lost it at church. And my mother just prayed and prayed and prayed, God, please help me find this purse. You know how mean she's going to be to me. This is going to be terrible.

35:46Angie Sullivan:This is going to be terrible. This is going to be terrible. Lo and behold, her prayers went unanswered, and she never found the purse. She paid for it for years because her mother would be the type of person that would bring it up over and over and over and just browbeat her for it. And at her young age, in that kind of Dallas evangelical Christian world, she just sniffed it out that it wasn't real. So then she started taking the bus to the library when she was a teenager and just reading about religion and all of this stuff. And she, at a very young age, became an atheist and never bought into any of it.

36:28Angie Sullivan:And growing up in my house, because when you live in the Bible Belt and your peers are evangelical Christians, their number one goal is not helping the poor, not helping the sick. It is to recruit you. It is to proselytize. Yeah. So it was really difficult for me sometimes as a teenager because all of my friends were really, really, really religious. And I'm talking like spiritual warfare. I would go to slumber parties and a girl that I was at the slumber party would say, I can feel the presence of a demon in the corner of the room. That would be you.

37:10Angie Sullivan:Was it a K-pop demon? Probably. But in all of that just seems so insane. So I would toy. Why did she stay there? Why did your parents stay there? Well, I mean, my dad had business there. And my mother is not super social. Her best friend is cuddled up with a book. My dad does a lot of business in Belgium and Holland. He flies racing pigeons, which is kind of an old, old sport. but it's very, very popular in Belgium and Holland. Very, very popular. And my dad was the world's largest seller and breeder of racing pigeons. So he needed to live on a lot of land because he didn't want, you couldn't have neighbors.

37:53Angie Sullivan:Those racing pigeons need a lot of space. They need a lot of space. And so they would go to Europe multiple times a year. My dad lived over there a lot of the time. They were from Dallas. Both came from working class, middle-class families, entrepreneurs, and they became very successful. We became an upper middle class family, but moving wasn't ever in the cards for them. Right. This is where they were.

38:17Kara Swisher:And so you were subjected to that, but raised by your dad also was not religious, correct? Correct. So here you are stuck here in the middle of nowhere, essentially, for you, from your perspective, doing the same thing, reading, being aware of this. Did you ever think about becoming evangelical?

38:34Angie Sullivan:Yes. So my very first boyfriend. His name was Sean. And I was just madly in love with him, as every teenager is with their first boyfriend. And Sean's dad was a retired Southern Baptist preacher. And Sean's mother was very concerned that he was dating an infidel. So, she bought me a Precious Moments Bible. Now, I've seen that. I have religious relatives. Go ahead. So, I started to read it. My mother was just horrified. I mean, just like, I cannot believe the nerve of this woman, Jennifer, to buy you a Bible. That's just unbelievable. And Sean's dad was retired, but he was only like in his mid-40s, and he just didn't have his life together.

39:16Angie Sullivan:They were broke. The mom had to go back to work. And the whole thing, I mean, they weren't very good representatives of evangelicals. Right. So, my mother was very fascinated by Sean's dad and his kind of economic decline, his mental decline, all of these things. My mother spent, this was before the internet, spent time at the library and comes back. She says, Jennifer, she's real dramatic. She says, darling, I've diagnosed Sean's father. I believe he suffered from religious addiction. Here are these symptoms. And she's printed this article about religious addiction, and she's printed all the symptoms, and he had every single one of them.

39:54Angie Sullivan:Oh, wow. So every turn that I tried to maybe try to fit in, if you're not indoctrinated, it's a really hard pill to swallow. Right, yeah. The creation story and all of that, if that doesn't enter your psyche young.

40:07Kara Swisher:No, my grandmother, on my dad's side, they're all very religious. And my aunt in particular was very religious and always sent me stuff. But we were sent over the summer. I have 10 cousins when we stayed at my grandmother's to Bible camp. and my mom is Catholic and she was horrid. She's like, why are they sending you to Baptist? But it was really fascinating. You know, I found it riveting and they kept trying to get me and it just never stuck. Neither did the Catholics, by the way, and they're much more of a soft sell, right? Yeah, yeah. And at one point when my aunt died, I just thought of this.

40:44Kara Swisher:You know, they did the service. It was very Jesus-y, very. I was in West Virginia and like, fine, this is their way and stuff like that. And, and I, you know, I, I sat there, I put up, I was like, okay, more Jesus, more Jesus. And then we get to the cafeteria where you're going to eat the food afterwards. And I was really hungry. It was a long service. And then the pastor who's standing next to me, again, I didn't realize starts doing more of it. And I said, oh, for goodness sake, have we had enough Jesus? And I said it out loud. And I was like, and then I go, never enough Jesus. Like, it was terrible.

41:17Kara Swisher:But when you met Angie, your co-host, she was a conservative evangelical. And the book you two published earlier this year, Life is a Lazy Susan of Shit Sandwiches, and may I say, the finest title in the land. You wrote about having to put up with a hard boundary to get her to stop recruiting you to the church. And she obviously isn't conservative anymore, but you converted her, I guess. But in the early days, you bonded over other things, your kids, your difficult marriages. And also, it wasn't weird to be friends with people who voted differently than you then. But had you met Angie during the Trump year, would either of those things have outweighed your political differences?

41:51Kara Swisher:Do you see that happening?

41:53Angie Sullivan:Probably it would have, because it was, when I met Angie, we were in the exact same season. We both married two attorneys. Both of these attorneys had a lot of interpersonal problems. We had kids the exact same age, and we had fantastic chemistry, and I really enjoyed her. But sometimes she would recruit me so heavily to go to Bible study and wouldn't respect the boundary because in her, and I'm not picking on her. What would you say? Well, like here's a prime example, Kara. We went to take the kids to toddler gymnastics. Because you're always trying to run the toddlers out so they'll go to sleep at night.

42:28Angie Sullivan:Yes, I get it. So she had asked me to go to Bible study. I said, no, pick me up after Bible study. We'll take the kids to the pizza buffet, and then we'll take them to gymnastics. She picks me up. This is a lawyer. And she pumps us smart. And she said, did you know that people used to live to be 950 years old? And I go, Angie, that never fucking happened. It never happened. People live longer now because of two things, filtered water and modern medications. Those are the two reasons we live longer. Nobody ever lived to be 950. She said, well, there wasn't disease in the Garden of Eden. And I said, according to whom?

43:09Angie Sullivan:She said, well, the Bible. And it was just this insanity. And sometimes after something like that happened, all of my friends in Oklahoma, I had found solace in a gaggle of gay men because they had been kind of picked on and shamed by the same group of evangelicals that had been targeting me. And I'm a decorator and like clothes and, you know, gay men and I just get along perfectly. Yeah, I have a friend in Tennessee, same thing. Yeah. And so sometimes I would pull away from her a little bit because the overt religiosity was so much, but she was so good and finally respected the boundary. And we never got into it.

43:51Angie Sullivan:We never had an adversarial conversation about it. Never. It was all very civilized, but I would just slowly start dropping hints. I remember we went to the Dinosaur Museum in Norman, Oklahoma at the University of Oklahoma. and we took our kids and we're looking at the dates of how long ago these dinosaur bones lived. And I said, isn't that something that this predates the Garden of Eden? And she would kind of chuckle a little bit. So we kind of had this tongue in cheek thing back and forth. But she called me about three years ago and I'll never forget it. I was sitting in my interior design office and she called me and she said, Jennifer I need to tell you something really important I've been talking to my therapist about and Angie's never dramatic like this and I was like okay what is it and she said after my dad died I just don't think that he's in heaven and I said you don't think he's in heaven because he's in hell or you don't think he's in heaven because you don't believe in heaven and she said I don't believe in heaven.

44:58Angie Sullivan:And she started crying because of the grief associated with that. And I just comforted her and said, you know, I love you. I know this has been a huge part of your life. You know, are you, what do you think? She said, I just think so much of this has been bullshit. I did everything I was supposed to do my whole life. I did everything right. And prayer, she was a good little girl and all of the things. And it was just like the title of our book, A Shit Sandwich. And so I called my mother after this and I told her, because my mother would always say, Jennifer, she's in her Dallas accent. She'd say, Jennifer, I think Angie's just darling, but as you all age, she'll become more religious and I'm sure that you're, you know, go a separate way.

45:44Angie Sullivan:So I told my mother that Angie had been in the process unbeknownst to me of deconstructing her faith with her psychotherapist. And my mother was so great. She said, Jennifer, you need to be really supportive because there's a lot of grief involved in this. Like, she's grieving. It's like a death.

45:59Kara Swisher:It is. It is. Yeah, it's a really interesting thing, especially because it's critically important. And I have a lot of respect. My grandmother went to Mass every day, a Catholic, and my aunt was the loveliest person you could meet, but almost constantly trying to recruit. You know, it was a really interesting thing. And at one point, she said, Jesus died for you. And I I said, I didn't ask him. I was joking, obviously, but it was hard. And it definitely gave her comfort. And the same thing with my grandmother, which is why I was respectful of it. And actually, I was confirmed. You know, I did the whole thing, the First Holy Communion, the First Holy Confession.

46:36Kara Swisher:But the day I was confirmed, I walked out of that church at 12, 13 years old. I never walked back in since. We'll be back in a minute.

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49:22Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from The Guardian. Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack these days. Social media feeds, cable news, and subscription-based news outlets might be able to give you one version of the news, but not in the way that you need. You want news fast, but slow enough to actually absorb the information. Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman is here to do just that. The podcast tries to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions regarding the world at large at your own pace. Three times a week, hosts Kai Wright and Carter Sherman bring their expertise together to showcase different and engaging perspectives regarding the world today.

50:01Kara Swisher:They will use their collective knowledge to discuss the news, international affairs, climate, culture, sports, lifestyle, fashion, and wellness. Plus, The Guardian wants to emphasize they're not billionaire-owned, meaning they're free to report the whole picture without interference. Go to theguardian.com slash stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube starting May 13th. You and Angie launched the I've Had It podcast in 2022. And as you said, it didn't start off overly political, but it very much became one. The left-wing Twitch streamer Hassan Piker called I've Had It the most radical progressive podcast in North America.

50:40Kara Swisher:And that's saying a lot from Hassan. As the show became more popular, you're still taking your son to basketball games. You're interacting with a lot of parents in Oklahoma who probably may not know about it or think you're a bad person. You're running your interior design business. Why did you start it and what impact did it have on your lives in Oklahoma as it started to blow up?

51:01Angie Sullivan:You know, it didn't have a whole lot of impact on our lives in Oklahoma. Oklahoma City is an exact microcosm of the whole United States electorate. We voted in our city just one percentage more red than we did blue. And so you have, and you know this from your family and having people in red states, if you're a blue dot in a red state, you're built a little different. You're a tough style of liberal. So I have a lot of fabulous progressive friends in Oklahoma, and I still have the same friends now that I did before the podcast. Now, sometimes at basketball games, parents that I knew were triple Trumpers, that I knew were megachurchers, would say something like, I'm sorry I missed the last game.

51:50Angie Sullivan:I was out of town. They would say, where were you? And I'd say, oh, it's in New York. And they would say, were you scared? Are you okay? and I knew it was an immediate Fox News. But in general terms, people are pretty polite. Nobody has ever said something to my face disparaging in Oklahoma. Oklahomans are very friendly people. I think a lot of the vitriol we see are keyboard warriors more than anything. But it really didn't change my life in Oklahoma much. But here's one thing, a lot of people, a lot of women, a lot of men that really surprised me that I thought for sure were Republicans, come up and they whisper, keep doing what you're doing.

52:33Angie Sullivan:I love every bit of it. Wow.

52:36Kara Swisher:When you were there. But you moved to Manhattan, that scary, terrifying place of wonder and fantasticness, after your youngest son started college in Los Angeles. But in your book, you talked about feeling really conflicted about leaving there. You cited your parents and your friends, these friends you're talking about as a reason for staying. To what extent are you worried that doing a podcast from New York will change how people receive it. Because I think one of the most appealing things was that it wasn't coming from the coastal media bubbles of Washington, D.C. or New York City or Los Angeles.

53:05Kara Swisher:That was something new. Talk about that move.

53:08Angie Sullivan:So I had always wanted to, I'd longed to live in a big city. Every time I would leave Oklahoma City, and I love Oklahoma City, but every time I would leave - Right, because everything's up to date there. Totally. It's gone about as far as they could go. And I just felt like, God, I really want to live in a big city. And there's this stereotype that is thrust upon women. So many things are thrust upon us that roles we have to fill. And one of them is that when you're an empty nester, you're just sent off to the pasture. Your eggs are no longer good. And you're supposed to be somewhat depressed with your chickens out of the nest, et cetera, et cetera.

53:53Angie Sullivan:And I thought, you know what? I'm going to rent an apartment in New York for a year. Why not? Why not have a midlife gap year? Why not do it? Why do I have to do what society has put on me? We started a new career midlife. Why can't I sign a lease for a year and see if I like it or not? I may end up running back to Oklahoma City. I may end up staying and extending it. But why not try to do something different? And I've been up here for six weeks now. and I love it. I absolutely love it. I'm heading— Where are you living? What part of the city? Chelsea. Oh, fantastic. Oh, the game. Yeah, and I brought my dogs, my French Bulldogs up here because I'm happiest in their company.

54:37Angie Sullivan:And it's just been—my husband is going back and forth. He's a criminal defense attorney, and our marriage is very battle-tested. I supported him through his efforts to get sober, and he's been so supportive of me. He's like, it's your turn. And we finally have a big kid relationship. And so that's been really cool. What do you miss about Oklahoma City?

54:59Kara Swisher:Tennis. I play tennis every day. You can play tennis. There's some fan chat. Haven't you seen, I mean, there are tennis courts in New York.

55:06Angie Sullivan:They're so expensive and difficult to get. In Oklahoma City, I can go every day on my lunch hour, podcasting or designing. I would go and play tennis, and there's just something very therapeutic. I'm not that good at it either, but I'd hit with a pro, grunt as I hit the ball, pretend like I'm, you know, a professional and I'm nowhere near that. But I exercise every day. I miss the ease, no traffic. Yeah, of getting in the car. The ease in which you can move about. But in general, I think my personality type, I'm better suited in a big multicultural city. What's been so cool, Kara, yesterday I'm walking to the gym and this guy on a bike, brown-skinned, I don't know, Latino, Arabic or whatever, he turns his bike around and comes.

55:57Angie Sullivan:He goes, hey, lady, lady, I've had it, lady. And this happens like four or five times a day. And he said, can I get a selfie? And I said, yes. And he grabbed my hand and he said, thank you for fighting for us. It means everything. And I just think that's really cool. I get stopped like that a lot.

56:15Kara Swisher:In fact, I was just at the hardware store three times. It was really interesting.

56:19Angie Sullivan:A lesbian at a hardware store. I love a hardware store.

56:21Kara Swisher:I know. I'm not even going to pretend it's not. It's a cliche, but it's true. It's fair. But I don't like sports. Okay. So, you know, I'm just keeping guessing, keeping guessing. But let's talk about the podcast. The tone is, you know, blunt, irreverent, which I think you're exactly the way you are, which is why it works. It's genuine. There's a lot of swearing, which I enjoy. And you have fantastic nicknames for Republicans. President Trump is Kankles McTaco tits, Kanks for short. I actually like Kanks better. I don't know why. House Speaker Mike Johnson is Moses Mike Grindr Johnson. So good.

56:53Kara Swisher:It's funny. Do you care about turning off conservatives or moderate women who might be open to reconsidering people like Angie? There's an old expression that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but you're catching lots of flies with vinegar. I mean, how do you come up with these names? and how do you, they seem very natural. So I'm not, it's not a stunt. This is not, I have a feeling you've made nicknames for lots of people over the many years.

57:19Angie Sullivan:They came, we don't, we have a couple of talking points when we podcast, but we speak extemporaneously. And those just came up in the moment of filming. And, you know, Kangol's McTaco Tits, and then another episode, I shortened it to Kanks and I said, just for spite. And Moses Mike Grinder Johnson, he was originally Moses Mike, because there's this video of him talking about becoming speaker of the house where he says, God woke him up in the middle of the night and said, hey, buddy, wake up. You're going to be Moses. And I'm like, we're acting like this is normal. This is crazy that he thinks he heard the voice of God and that God told him he was Moses.

57:58Angie Sullivan:And then, of course, you know, there are a lot of Grindr allegations about him. And so, I threw that one in because I really love to just browbeat him. As far as turning off conservative women or moderate women, no, I'm not concerned about that because I know these women. And this is the Democrats' fool's errand, that they think that they can get these people to change their votes instead of investing in their base. And if you're ever going to get these people to like you, it is going to be by being authentic and getting on offense and get off of defense. get completely off of defense. Offensively, we should be saying to these women that potentially I could offend.

58:39Angie Sullivan:So you're concerned about trans people? I'm concerned about the Republicans' party obsession with trans people. Y 'all talk about it all the time. I've never seen such trans-obsessed people. And I wish that we would be more offensive in our strategy. And I felt like, and I love Kamala, but I felt like she was going to lose when she started trotting around with Liz Cheney. That's when I first looked at pumps. I said, this is a problem. These women are never going to vote for her, ever. We know these ladies. They're never going to flip because of Liz Cheney. And so I don't worry about that. And I think it's therapeutic to shit talk these bullies.

59:21Kara Swisher:Yeah, I agree. I make fun of people all the time. And is there a new name you're cooking up? Do you have other names for Trump?

59:29Angie Sullivan:No, Kegs is really stuck. I do call J.D. Vance the failed drag queen, smoky-eyed sociopath, and now I've shortened that to little smoky. You know, because he was a failed— A golden couch fucker. Yeah, a couch fucker. But he was a failed drag queen, and I think it's important to point that out. There's the photographs of he just wasn't good at drag.

59:49Kara Swisher:Yeah, no.

59:50Angie Sullivan:Good eyes, though.

59:51Kara Swisher:Speaking of going on the—you got to give it to him. You got to give it to him. Good eyes. You don't hold back in. It's Democrats either. We talked about your viral moment with Cory Booker. You went viral for pushing back hard on former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, which I love to see. I know him pretty well. And who wants Democrats to move away from talking, for example, about trans rights? You said the Democratic Party, these men represent more moderate centrist establishment. I think they take a dive, essentially. I agree with you. More maddening than MAGA. The counterargument is that the big tent party, you have ideological differences.

1:00:22Kara Swisher:So where's the line and compromise? Talk a little bit about these centrists. I find them dickless. That's my way of thinking about it. You know, they're sort of dickless. Like, just say something that's not mean. Or you don't win by being more like Maggie because people go to the OG Maggie if they want that stuff.

1:00:40Angie Sullivan:It's exactly right. And I think I call these politicians, pick me, Democrats. Pick me. I'm not going to say anything that offends anybody. And then in the process, they're just milk toast. And we need to have politicians that we agree with. And let's take the example of Zoran Mamdani. He's probably further left than a lot of mainstream Democrats in the electorate. But a way to handle that is to say, he's a little bit further left than I am, but his electorate in New York City is further left than we are. And one thing that we have in common is this message of affordability. And then if these centrists, the Rahm Emanuel's, and other Democrats that want to pick up the trans community, throw them under the bus, and ride over them, we need to really be crystal clear that we will throw nobody under the bus.

1:01:35Angie Sullivan:And if you have an economic populist message, then you need to say, we believe in equality for everybody, even somebody who is trans. And we will leave nobody behind in our plan. And that's what MAGA does. MAGA leaves people behind. We're not cruel like they are. And I think there's a way that we could message that. But what pisses me off, Kara, is when I see Democrats buy into the right-wing media narrative that we need to move their way. And I think that is so wrong.

1:02:04Kara Swisher:There's a lot of push to be like Rahm or Gavin Newsom did the same thing, a similar thing. Is that a real mistake? Because lately, he's gotten more popular by not doing that, by being quite, you know, out there, ubiquitous, kind of mean, kind of funny, you know, not caring about offending people. He seems to be doing a lot better by being offensive, really. Yeah, I... And I don't mean offensive, I mean on the office. Right. I think that the Democrats,

1:02:33Angie Sullivan:the ones that have some corporate stuff they need to clean up, are going to have to clean it up and they're going to have to go into their base because the autopsy that I see on this, on Kamala's election, was the base didn't show up. And so we have the voters and we have the vote. And if we can wrap up a fuck you brand of politics, we're not leaving anybody behind. Yes, we're compassionate. Yes, we're woke because we're not fucking assholes. And we're going to fight tooth and nail for every single American and leaving no one behind, not one person behind. And we're not going to kiss the ass of these corporations that dick you over, don't have to pay taxes.

1:03:12Angie Sullivan:And I think that is the messaging, whether it's a little bit, you know, not quite as far left as Zoron, but that economic populist message. And think about how much more it's going to be a year from now in the midterm.

1:03:27Kara Swisher:It's a Bernie Sanders message, really. It's kind of a Bernie Sanders message, who's now become adorable. But is there a more centrist Democrat you think isn't out of touch with the electorate, like Congresswoman Marie Glusenkamp Perez from Washington? Is there someone you look to and you like, I like the cut of your jib?

1:03:45Angie Sullivan:So I think a really important lesson for Democrats is Andy Beshear in Kentucky. He is a Democrat that won twice, and he used his faith, which the Republican Party has put faith into the electorate forever now. The Democrats just ignore it. And Andy Beshear used his faith to stand up for trans kids. And he won. And he won. And James Tallarico, similar. Right, and he won twice. And for me, as an atheist, when I hear people talk about religion, any religion, I'm just like, oh, God. But we live in a very religious first world country, and I know that they need to do this. And Andy Brashear isn't some crazy wild-eyed liberal.

1:04:25Angie Sullivan:I would say he's a centrist. But more than anything, in our big tent, my thing is I like to beat Republicans. I like to win. I like for us to win elections because I know that if Republicans win, they will rain hellfire down on their citizens. And these exploitative MAGA Republican politicians use the faith to weaponize against the voters because so many people in Oklahoma, their whole social life is centered around the church. And so, the Christians signal, the same people that accuse us of virtue signaling, I'm going to accuse them of Christian signaling to get them to vote against their own economic interests, but most importantly, to vote against the teachings of their alleged Lord and personal Savior, Jesus Christ, who sounds a lot more like the atheist Jew Bernie Sanders when he speaks than any of these MAGA politicians in these red states.

1:05:21Kara Swisher:If Christ came back today, they'd be like, whoa. It would not like Jesus. You know, Jesus was kind of cool, like the things he was saying. He was quite socialist, too. He's quite a socialist. We'll be back in a minute.

1:05:42When I scraped my car in that parking garage, I was worried that it could be a long process to take care of it, like a landscaper's first day trimming a hedge maze. I have definitely already been here. Now, was it left, right, or right, left? Well, maybe I'll cut a path out and find my way back later. But it wasn't like that. I filed a claim in under two minutes on the Geico app, and they handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened. It feels good to get help quick. It feels good to Geico. Consider the lobster roll. Tender chunks of lobster bathed in butter or mayo sandwiched between two slices of a squishy bread roll.

1:06:23Are you drooling yet? Lobster is a summertime staple in New England, a fixture on casino and cruise ship buffets, and a steady partner for steak in the classic surf and turf. This episode of Gastropod, the American lobster industry is one of the most valuable fisheries in the country, but it wasn't always the case. Just in time for summer, we're cracking the lobster's many mysteries, including how it went from prison fare to fancy food. Find Gastropod and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

1:06:55I'm Seth Matlins. My new show, Create or Destroy, Reimagining Marketing, explores how every decision a company makes, not just the marketing ones, but the HR, IR, pricing, org design, and planning ones, the ones most don't consider marketing at all, contribute to either creating value or destroying it. Each week, I sit down with CMOs, CEOs, founders, cultural thinkers, the people building, breaking, and reimagining how businesses grow or don't for conversations about what creates value and what destroys it. It's a business show. It's a marketing show. The creator destroys the show that argues.

1:07:27They've always been the same thing. From the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdomist Company. New episodes drop weekly on YouTube and your favorite podcast app.

1:07:39Kara Swisher:So let's get to some big news stories right now, because there's so many, like every five seconds. And I think Trump understands that and creates this constant news distraction rage machine, essentially. So this was a bad one. We saw Trump accuse a group of half a dozen Democrats of seditious behavior that could be punishable by death. The Democrats had posted a video telling military leaders to refuse illegal orders, which actually is in their rules. It's one of the top rules of the military. The White House denies he was calling for the execution. He did say hanging. But Trump has desensitized us to that kind of dehumanizing language, I think.

1:08:17Kara Swisher:And when it gets too far, he says it's a joke, essentially. So how do you think the Democrats should be responding to the latest escalation? I think being indignant is—I have a lot of people saying, can you believe he did it? I go, yes. Yeah, me too. Yes, I can. Can you believe that drunk is drunk? I'm like, he's drunk because he's a drunk. Like, I don't know what else to say. How do you keep responding without adding to that feeling of desensitization and also not being constantly aggrieved, right? Which I think is something Trump does, too. He's always aggrieved.

1:08:47Angie Sullivan:So I think that when I look at just mainstream media, the person who's been ubiquitous lately is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Right. I'm going to get to her. Yes, go ahead. And why aren't the Democrats flooding the zone in reverse? Why are we not, and I agree with you, to act shocked that he tweeted what he tweeted yesterday is a level of willful blindness over what's happened in the last 10 years. I mean, this president incited an insurrection. We all saw it. And the Democrats need to be everywhere all of the time, podcasts, mainstream media, saying to the American public, aren't you sick to death of this?

1:09:29Angie Sullivan:another day in America with a man who has dementia, who is cruel as all get out, who has tanked the economy, and they just need to keep hammering it over and over. And I do think the Democrats also need to be forward-looking. Like, they're doing a really good job muddying up J.D. Vance. He's going to be on defense a lot with the couch fucking, the eyeliner, not standing up for his Indian wife or his mixed race kids and seeming to favor white nationalist talking points over the defense of his family. And I think we need to start muddying up any heir apparent of the MAGA movement because they do such a good job branding Democrats a certain way.

1:10:11Angie Sullivan:And I think they should be out nonstop Democrats beating this dementia thing. We know that media has it in them because they did it with Biden. Yeah, I have a message that I used on our podcast tour, which I'm like, look, I don't think he fucked a couch, but he seems like he could be a couch fucker.

1:10:33Kara Swisher:That's all I'm saying. Like, I'm not saying he did. I'm saying if anyone did, I would kick him out of a lineup of couch fuckers, essentially. And I just like the word couch fucker. Oh, it's so good.

1:10:45Angie Sullivan:It's just like kinks. It's super satisfying.

1:10:48Kara Swisher:Yeah, couch fucker. So let's get to Green. You've been talking a lot about it. You think Green and Tucker Carlson, and I agree, are positioning themselves for a post-Trump Republican Party. They're very sad with both of them, especially around U.S. support for Israel and the war in Gaza. You say Democrats aren't taking them seriously enough, and they have learned the lessons of 2016 and 2024. They're assuming voters will think they're too crazy. And, of course, Green has pulled back on the crazy. Suddenly she's very sensible, it seems like. And I just talked to Scott Jennings of all the people, and he's convinced that Vice President J.D.

1:11:20Kara Swisher:Vance will be the Republican nominee in 2028, which I thought, yay, because he's repugnant to voters. How would someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker take over the party? What are your thoughts of what each of them are up to?

1:11:32Angie Sullivan:Okay. Marjorie Taylor Greene, if you look at what she's doing, she's using the Trump playbook. She is coming out of the gates attacking fellow Republicans. That's what Trump did. Lion Ted, Little Marco, Low Energy Jeb. Right. Who advised Trump to do all of this? By the way, all accurate. 100 % spot on. Loved it when he did it at the time. I'm like, finally, somebody is browbeating these horrible soulless Republicans. She's doing the same thing right now. Steve Bannon advised Trump back in the day, and now he's advising Marjorie Taylor Greene. She is doing an America First messaging, which if you're on your algorithm, and you see a cat and you see a hot person and you see, you know, a tennis court and then you see Marjorie Taylor Greene say, why did we give a blank check to Israel?

1:12:25Angie Sullivan:Why are American taxpayers paying for this? They have free health care. They have free higher education. We don't. We know the American electorate is okay with people being crazy and voting for them. They've done it twice with President Trump. And so Marjorie Taylor Greene is doing a slight rebrand too because right now it's so toxic and so horrific. So there's a blending of Biden's 2020 campaign. We're going to bring you back to normal. We're going to lower the temperature. The problem for Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the biggest rise in the country right now, besides anti-immigration bigotry, is a rise of misogyny.

1:13:05Angie Sullivan:So I don't know if that's going to be too big of an uphill climb for her. And I do think Tucker Carlson is really paving the way to make a very crazy racist big tent with an assist now from the Heritage Foundation after he platformed Nick Fuentes. And I didn't think Maggie could move further to the right, but the era parents, I'm going, oh shit, they're going to go even more to the right.

1:13:32Kara Swisher:Right, she certainly is more appealing. You know, she was a man, she'd do a lot better. You're right, you're absolutely right. But she certainly, her modulation is fascinating. And what I want some reporters to do, and I really enjoy her saying some of the things she's saying because I agree with her. But then I want them to say, tell me about what you think of immigrants. Tell me what you think of trans people. Tell me what you, like, let's make sure people realize, as reasonable as she sounds, she's not reasonable. Like, let's let her talk about the things where she's going to go.

1:13:59Angie Sullivan:Gay marriage. Right, yeah. What do you think of my marriage? Just curious. Right. I mean, that's one that we could really ask. What do you think of gay marriage? Do you think these people are going to burn in hell? Do you think the Supreme Court should overturn that? These are very, very, very important questions.

1:14:15Kara Swisher:Right. We're going for the stuff we agree with her on, like, yes, on this. But the split, you know, within the MAGA movement, which I think she is leading, and I think she's a very deft politician, actually. But also apologizing for her conspiracy theories, saying I was indoctrinated and I'm now out of it. QAnon. She's smart that way. And actually, you know what? That might be true, right? I know a lot of people like that, for sure. and it's a very legitimate explanation, if true.

1:14:41Angie Sullivan:And it offers an off-ramp for the people that are still in it, that the Epstein thing, for a lot of people, their identity was this QAnon thing. They formed a sense of community and it's a noble cause to say, we're fighting for the kids against these pedophiles. And then you find out the guy that you thought was going to whistleblow on the whole thing is cankles deep in the epicenter of it, you know? You know? And then she's offering an offerant to say, look, I was in that too, but you still can be a conservative Republican so they don't lose their whole identity.

1:15:15Kara Swisher:And be concerned about the kids and be concerned. So this split, it's really one of the few issues Trump has had to retreat on because of pressure for his own party. Having spent most of your life in bright red state, as you said, why do you think it was the Epstein? I know why it is from being deep in the online spaces that punch through for mega voters and not, you know, not the bevy of billionaires at Trump's second inauguration, which they're starting to pay attention to, for sure. The right is to also the private plane, the tariffs, the rising prices. They are paying attention to that. But why Epstein?

1:15:47Kara Swisher:And what should Democrats be doing right now? Obviously, they passed this bill. So we'll see. And he signed it, how it goes. But from your perspective, what's the strategy around this? Because it sticks.

1:15:58Angie Sullivan:It sticks. I think if I were a Democratic strategist, my number one talking point right now would be the blowjob with Bubba that allegedly Vladimir Putin has evidence of. We know the right wing has a very long attention span surrounding the subject of blowjobs. Look no further than Bill Clinton. That went on and on. Newt Gingrich, Ken Starr, they impeached him for it. So lean into this blowjob where it also ties in national security. And if I were a Democrat on, you know, a Democrat strategist, I would say, you're telling me the President of the United States gave somebody named Bubba a blowjob and Vladimir Putin has evidence of it?

1:16:37Angie Sullivan:Is that why he keeps bending over for Putin all the time? Because, oh, my God, Kara, the big thing that I've heard forever, my whole life living in a red state is, well, I believe in national security. I'm a national security Republican. It's this big thing, support the troops, blah, blah. And the fact that there's so much shit against this guy that Mark Epstein comes back out, Kara, and says, hey, FYI, the Bubba guy wasn't Bill Clinton, but he doesn't deny the blowjob or that Putin has evidence of it. So if I were the Democrats, I would be beating the drum about this blowjob because here's the thing.

1:17:16Angie Sullivan:This dictator is built on this masculinity. And now the dictator is frail. He's no longer a strong man. We're seeing the physical manifestations of his frailty. Tack on him giving a blowjob and also keep pointing to the fact that when he was on the campaign trail, he tried to give a microphone a blowjob with surprising familiarity to the procedure. And that's on tape. Okay. Okay.

1:17:42Kara Swisher:Is that, you know, but is that the way, like, Democrats do like to say that, you know, we're not them, right? We're not going to stoop. We're not them and we lose. Okay. So that's right. That's exactly. So blowjob. All right. That's what I think.

1:17:54Angie Sullivan:I think we have to, that's not very Ezra Klein. We have to stop integrity politics and stop assumption politics. And we have to fight these people with everything in us and quit trying to set some moral high ground that no longer exists in this moment. Hopefully we can get back to that, but in this moment, no. Go dirty, talk about Bubba, blow job. Yeah.

1:18:16Kara Swisher:You're so Lee Atwater. You're Lee Atwatering me all over the place. So every episode we get an expert question. I selected yours very carefully. I'll be right there. Hey, Jennifer, it's Anderson Cooper. I really actually would have some questions about kids because I'm making milk right now and it's 6 a.m. And hey, buddy, they're very ungrateful. But what I'm going to ask you about is just a hypothetical. If, say, you were on a plane and it was your job to ask people questions and you asked somebody a question and they said, quiet piggy, how would you respond?

1:18:52Angie Sullivan:Thank you so much. That is so cool that Anderson Cooper just asked me a question, Kara. See, again, more and in six in the morning, getting milk for his children. More evidence of how cool you are.

1:19:05Kara Swisher:And by proxy, I'm cooler. I heard that's a dream guest for you. Yes, thank you. So here you are with President Trump. He says to you, you ask a question. He says, quiet piggy. What do you say?

1:19:16Angie Sullivan:I'd be like, are you fucking kidding me, you fat ass? You're calling me a piggy? You obese MF-er? With your swollen ankles, are you for real right now? Maybe blend your makeup before you start trying to drag me. Go try to find a fat picture of me, piggy. One doesn't exist. I would just fucking go off. I would be horrible. Horrible. I would get arrested. Kash Patel would arrest me, Kara. I would be arrested. The Secret Service would arrest me.

1:19:47Kara Swisher:See, I told you I had the different thing. You're far more reasonable than I am. No, it wasn't reasonable. He'd say, quiet piggy. I'd say, what? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. And then he'd have to repeat it. And I'd say, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Can you say that again? I'd just make him say it over and over again so that it was just, so creating a viral moment where he just, that would be even worse than just quiet piggy, like lots of quiet piggies. And then he might say, bitch. I'd be too mouthy. I just want him to do it more. I want him, if he's digging the hole, just let him keep digging.

1:20:16Kara Swisher:That's my feeling. It's just, I was sort of surprised nobody said anything. I could see the person being sort of taken aback, but no one around her said anything.

1:20:26Angie Sullivan:I was really surprised at that. I was really, really surprised that nobody came to her defense, that his bullying, particularly of the press, has become so normalized that they just sit there and take that abuse, like Stockholm Syndrome, the people that follow him around. And it should never be normal.

1:20:47Kara Swisher:Well, they want access. They want access. Anyway, I have a couple more questions. We're going to talk about the midterms really quickly. On the podcast, you've been talking a lot lately about how Democrats should not accept money from AIPAC. You just said that. It's a hard line they shouldn't cross. It's an issue you talk about a lot. While it's true that a large majority of Democrats have an unfavorable view of the Israeli government and the war, the party's a lot more divided when it comes to support for Israel more broadly. A poll last month from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that while more than two-thirds of liberal Democrats think the U.S.

1:21:16Kara Swisher:is supporting Israel too much, fewer than three in ten moderate Democrats felt that way. So how do you talk about Israel and the campaign trail without alienating large swaths of this base? Because, you know, they certainly have reasons to be concerned about anti-Semitism at the same time.

1:21:32Angie Sullivan:Well, I think that we have to have moral clarity about this, and we can't speak in any form of double speak. A Democratic politician should very clearly say, we support Jewish people and we stand against all forms of bigotry, period. However, when it comes to the Israeli government, that should not be attached to Jewish people in the same way. Any criticism of the Trump administration doesn't mean an insult to Americans that didn't vote for him. It's a very simple elementary argument that you can criticize Donald Trump, and that doesn't mean you're criticizing Kara Swisher and Jennifer Welch. And as a person who believes in human rights, I welcome the criticism of my government.

1:22:19Angie Sullivan:I wish Switzerland wouldn't have finally picked a side for the first time ever when they've been over and are making trophies for kinks to try to get the tariffs removed. I want countries and journalists to criticize this fascist regime that is kidnapping people off the streets in our country. The same way, I think we should criticize Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, this is according to Israeli press, he had cash driven into Hamas. And we need this whole thing, a spotlight needs to be shown on it. And they can't hold us emotionally hostage by telling us, if you criticize Israel, you're being anti-Semitic.

1:23:01Angie Sullivan:That is bullshit. That is emotional blackmail. That is incredibly toxic. We can see what they're doing. and the United States government is left behind on all of the other world's democracies and criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu. And we're supposed to be a beacon of democracy, but now we have this new alignment where the only time it seems like Kanks gets excited is when he's in the presence of fascist dictators. Look at what just happened with Saudi. Right, the MBS.

1:23:32Kara Swisher:That was a speaking of blowjobs. We also talked about Rom Mell trying to get Democrats to move away from, say, trans issues and saying things like, I'm done with discussion of bathrooms. There's Ezra Klein, who's been doubling down, who's gotten a real glow up, by the way, who's doubling down on the idea the Democrats should run candidates who oppose abortion in some places. It's necessary to win more House and Senate seats. Presumably, these are the kind of candidates they think Democrats should run in places like Oklahoma. What does it look like, a Democrat, that wins in Oklahoma? I think of Laura Kelly of Kansas, for example, very popular Democrat.

1:24:05Kara Swisher:How do you do that? And without, I find a lot of what Evers is doing is incredibly ridiculous compromises and very calculating in a way that's not genuine, right? Like trying to manipulate voters.

1:24:17Angie Sullivan:But how do you do that? So the most recent gubernatorial campaign that we had in Oklahoma, you had Governor Kevin Stitt, who ran. He's a Christian nationalist. He dedicated every square inch of the state to Jesus Christ. Yeah, I've met him. And very polite. Yeah, polite. And then he ran against this woman named Joy Hoffmeister. I can't remember the last name. Anyway, I voted for her, helped campaign for her. And she ran as Magalite, as a Democrat. And it doesn't work because the indoctrination of people in red states to be Republican is very intense. and it's every bit as intense as to be a Christian.

1:25:00Angie Sullivan:And they use this spiritual warfare type thing in churches to also say the Democrats are demons, they're demon rats. So you have to offer something incredibly different and weaponize their faith for good and say, would Jesus want us to fund all of these billionaires? And so that's why I think a candidate like Tallarico or Andy Brashear, who uses their faith in these instances, if you try to be a Magalite, You're not, they want the OG. That's exactly right. So it doesn't work. And the problem with Ezra Klein throwing women under the bus as a person who just moved out of a state that has a total abortion ban.

1:25:38Angie Sullivan:Kara, there are so many women, and this disproportionately affects the poorest, which then becomes the black and brown people of my state, that go to get an ultrasound for their pregnancy, 18, 20 weeks. And there's some debilitating issue with the fetus. and they're told, this baby is, whenever you deliver it, it's not going to live and there's nothing we can do for you. And so if they can afford it, they have to drive to a state where they can get healthcare. And if they can't afford it, then they're risking messing up all of their reproductive parts to deliver this baby and then watch it basically suffocate.

1:26:19And so when I hear liberals

1:26:24Angie Sullivan:that have never lived in a red state try to focus group and workshop how to deal with red states. And part of that plan is to throw trans people under the bus or to throw women under the bus. It really pisses me off. It really, really, really pisses me off.

1:26:43Kara Swisher:Yeah, yeah, it's so compromising. Anyway, in that, two more questions. We had Senator Bernie Sanders on the show a few weeks ago, and one of the things he talked about That was how the Democratic Party had abandoned huge swaths of the country in places like West Virginia, said the party is virtually nonexistent. So what's the biggest thing the party gets wrong about the so-called flyover states like Oklahoma? If you could sit down with the chair of the DNC, what would you tell him?

1:27:06Angie Sullivan:If I could sit down with the chair of the DNC, I would say you have to start a 50-state strategy immediately. Even if you lose several cycles, it will make an impact. Look at the impact that Bernie Sanders has made. Every time he's running for president, he's lost. But his message permeates, and he made the soil ripe for AOC, for Zoran Mamdani. I would tell them what's interesting about a state like Oklahoma and what's interesting about red state people is if you poll them individually on things, are you for gun control? Yes. Majority of red state Oklahomans would say this. Are you for a woman's right to choose?

1:27:42Angie Sullivan:Yes. And so they need to start running progressive candidates that talk about values, progressive values. And I wish that they would send a Democrat to Oklahoma, rural Oklahoma, everywhere and said, you have been lied to. You have been lied to and used by the Republican Party. I would start branding them as liars that exploit people's faith, which is the most diabolical thing you can do and the most unchristian thing to do. I would get so aggressive about rebranding this Republican grift that has happened in red states and speak to them and tell them what you're seeing, what has happened to you is real.

1:28:28Angie Sullivan:You have been lied to. You have been gaslit by this Republican Party. I know it's hard to think about voting for somebody else, but why is Bernie Sanders the atheist Jew? Why does he sound more like Jesus than Kevin Stitt? Why is that? And people are—I believe in people.

1:28:45Kara Swisher:They're smart. I agree. I think voters are smart. I do. I think we talked down to them. I was in a red state and started—I think I told you yesterday—was explaining what was going to happen to their coal mines. And everyone else was making all these pretend things about how they were going to become software and Silicon Holler. And I was like, mm-mm. I said, this guy's going to replace you with a robot. He's not going to tell you that, but I'm telling you that. And so many people came up to me, and they were like, you're a lesbian from San Francisco, but you just told the truth. I'm like, exactly.

1:29:13Kara Swisher:I was like, and I said, I don't really think that it matters. I'm just telling you, you know, I'm telling you what time it is. And these people are lying to you. So, and I know they're your friends, but they're lying to you. And it does permeate. Not with everybody, but it's, I mean, not like my mom, who's like a Fox News propagandized lady. But every now and then it does. It gets through to her sometimes. I don't know. Maybe not. She's too old. It doesn't really matter. So she's only got a few more elections in her. Like, so kind of, but it's really hard once they get that way. But they're certainly reachable.

1:29:46Kara Swisher:Okay. So you end your shows by playing a game with your guests called Had It or Hit It. So since you just moved to New York six weeks, I want to play a game of Would You Rather. I've got a list of things specific to New York City. Here we go. You ready? Mm-hmm. Would you rather sit on a subway next to a rat or someone watching porn on their phone? Oh, the porn, for sure. I would go porn.

1:30:08Angie Sullivan:You'd watch it yourself. You'd be like, hmm, interesting. I don't like rodents.

1:30:13Kara Swisher:I would go with the porn all day, yeah. All right. Eat a Papaya King hot dog or a Zabar's black and white? Papaya King hot dog. Have you had one yet? No. Go. Okay, maybe I will for lunch after we finish this. 86. Where are you? Oh, you're in Chelsea. There's one down there. Yeah. Okay. Buy a king and get the drink too. Okay. Be trapped in an elevator at Trump Tower with Don Jr. or a Dirty Elmo from Triumph Square? Oh, I'm going Elmo for sure. I'm going with Elmo. Have you met Dirty Elmo yet? No, I haven't. Another thing. It's a great New York experience. Do not let them hug you as hard as you can.

1:30:51Kara Swisher:Do not let them touch you. Same thing with John Jr. Okay. Get a drink and an extended hug with Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams.

1:31:00Angie Sullivan:Oh, my God. Sorry. Oh, that's a good one. I know. I try my hardest. I think I'm going to go, oh, I'm really splitting hairs here, Kara. Okay. I think I'm going to go with Eric Adams. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. He wouldn't grope your ass, right?

1:31:18Kara Swisher:Yeah, exactly. Right. Allegedly. I liked it. I did. Ugh, the Cuomas are mad at Kara Swisher because I had Curtis Lee on stage in New York. They're mad.

1:31:28Angie Sullivan:He's hilarious. They're incandescent. He's hilarious.

1:31:32Kara Swisher:Yeah, wasn't he? Yeah. Get him on. He is hilarious. You know, I walked into that theater and my Brooklyn fans were like, what is he doing here? And I'm like, just wait. And then they were like, we love him. I was like, see? I told you. Yeah, he is funny. He likes cats. That's all I need to know. Go to, okay, two more. Go to Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or the New Year's Eve Ball Drop.

1:31:55Angie Sullivan:I'm going to go with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade because I think New Year's Eve is past my bedtime. I like to be asleep by 9 p.m. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Anderson. You just insulted me. I know.

1:32:10Kara Swisher:Sweet Anderson came on and asked me a question. All right. Last one. Jump in the East River or eat a piece of pizza from the subway platform. Oh, my God.

1:32:21Angie Sullivan:I think I'm going to go with the East River.

1:32:23Kara Swisher:Oh, wow.

1:32:25Angie Sullivan:Yeah, because then you can just go home. You're never coming back from that.

1:32:27Kara Swisher:You don't think so? E. coli. Mariska Hardingay is going to come and fish you out. Anyway, I love your show. I think it's great, Jennifer.

1:32:36Angie Sullivan:And thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Kara. You're cool. I love talking with you. And I hope that we continue our budding friendship to many more episodes and collabs on and off the air. Yep, we have to do it.

1:32:50Kara Swisher:were like the nice version of Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson. Exactly. Thank you, Kara.

1:32:59Kara Swisher:Today's show was produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, Michelle Alloy, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Andrea Lopez-Cruzado and Catherine Barner. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get my favorite hot dog, the Papaya King hot dog. If not, you're blowing Bubba. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us.

1:33:37Kara Swisher:We'll be back on Thursday with more.

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