Jennifer Welch: Outspoken, Unapologetic, and Unafraid in Divided America

Guy Kawasaki: This is Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People Podcast, and this is an episode that I have been looking forward to because we have the remarkable Jennifer Welch as a guest. If you looked up in the dictionary what the definition of outspoken is, you might see her picture.
She's the outspoken co-host of the wildly popular podcast, I've Had It, and she and her partner, Angie Pumps Sullivan—basically, they turned cultural and political frustration into hilarious commentary. She's the former star of Bravo's Sweet Home, Oklahoma, and she has an international following. I would say another synonym for Jennifer is unapologetic, to put it mildly. So here comes a dose of her candor, her wit, and her sarcasm as she challenges conservatives and liberals alike. Welcome to the show, Jennifer Welch.
Jennifer Welch: Thank you so much for having me.
Guy Kawasaki: Jennifer, I'm gonna fanboy a little bit first. In my humble opinion, from the outside looking in, what you and Pumps have done is basically bet on yourselves.
So you're not betting on other people, you're not contributing to somebody else's success. Basically, you're just taking the bull by the horns, to use the only cow analogy I have, and you're not sharing their action. You're not the little woman at home. How does it feel to bet on yourself to the extent that you have?
Jennifer Welch: Well, it's very natural because I've always been like this. I am a very progressive person, a non-religious person that was raised in the buckle of the Bible Belt, and that's very challenging when you have a completely different worldview. You don't share their existential religious views. And so I'm not a wallflower, and so my opinions have always kind of come out of me.
So the podcast—I've never really thought about it as betting on myself because I've always been this way, and I've always been taking the bull by the horns, whether it's my interior design career or this career. So it feels natural and normal.
Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, you are the definition of taking the bull by the horns. I just love watching your channel on YouTube. Oh my God. And listen, until last night, did you have any idea that our country is doing so well?
Jennifer Welch: Oh my God. Here's the thing about—I know you're talking about the State of the Union. Donald Trump is a pathological liar, and he has lied his entire life. He's a conman. He's bankrupted casinos. He's bankrupted every business that he's ever touched and lied about the outcome of all of those things his entire life.
So the State of the Union is not new for Donald Trump, but it's new that Americans have embraced a criminal president that has turned his presidency into a crime syndicate.
Guy Kawasaki: Oh my God. Jennifer, I encourage you on this podcast to come out of your shell and truly express how you feel. Don't hold yourself back here. All right, so continuing in that vein, who or what absolutely pisses you off the most right now?
Jennifer Welch: Oh, that's the easiest question on the planet: Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. And you might think, why? Why would she be upset with Democrats? She's a Democrat. And the answer to that is simple. I expect Donald Trump, knowing that he is a criminal, a convicted felon—I expect for him to do illegal things.
I expect for him to do unethical things. I expect for him to do immoral things. So then you look to the opposition, and what is the opposition doing? And the opposition is mired down in writing strongly worded letters, and they are not meeting this moment in the least bit. They're playing patty cake with the same corporate donors that own Donald Trump, which makes them paid, controlled opposition.
And so the people that make me the angriest are the people that are supposed to fight for us.
Guy Kawasaki: So you are more anger with Hakeem and Chuck Schumer than Mike Johnson and John Thune.
Jennifer Welch: A hundred percent.
Guy Kawasaki: Oh.
Jennifer Welch: I have zero expectation of Mike Johnson and John Thune. I know what they are. I know they're Christian nationalists. I know they're liars. I know they have no moral problem working for an adjudicated rapist, working for a convicted felon. Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer have told us differently—that they oppose fascism, that they oppose corporate interest in politics—yet they do not walk the walk and talk the talk.
So I'm very pragmatic about where I put my anger. It would be the definition of insanity for me to wake up every single day and expect for Mike Johnson, Thune, Trump, Stephen Miller to all of a sudden find Jesus and change course. I know that's not gonna happen, but I expect the opposition party to deliver, and I expect for them to oppose fascism.
I expect for them to uphold the rule of law. And what, in turn, what we find out is that these guys take a lot of PAC money. We just recently found out that Hakeem Jefferies took a $25,000 donation from Palantir. And so then you understand why he's funding DHS and why he's funding ICE. And I just think that the corporate Democrats are a real problem to progress.
Guy Kawasaki: Let's just fantasize here and suppose that Hakeem or Chuck are listening to this podcast. So now you know they're listening. Just tell 'em straight to their face—what the hell do you want them to do?
Jennifer Welch: Resign, step out of the way, and let a fighter who is not compromised by corporate money stand up and fight for us. This is a very serious moment. The Trump regime—these guys are not messing around. They are dead serious about dismantling democracy. They are dead serious about purchasing billions of dollars of warehouses across the United States and converting them to concentration camps.
This isn't politics as normal. This isn't back when George W. Bush was president. We're not dealing with a Mitt Romney Republican Party. These people are diabolical, and they're serious, and they're ambitious about their evil intent. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries need to resign and let a fighter step into their position because they are like Neville Chamberlain in this situation.
The appeasement that is going on by this Democratic Party is horrific, and we have fighters and we have politicians that aren't beholden to corporate interests, that have an interest in standing up for the worker, for the American people, for immigrants that oppose bigotry. And what I'm seeing out of Chuck and Hakeem is not really salvageable. They need to resign.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay, so they resign, and who do you put in their place?
Jennifer Welch: Oh, there's so many good ones. I think in the House you could put in Ro Khanna—he's an excellent progressive from California, has crystal-clear moral clarity. He reigns over the wealthiest district in the entire United States in Silicon Valley. He'd be excellent. AOC would be excellent.
Robert Garcia would be excellent. There's a multitude of other progressives. If you go over to the Senate, we've got Elizabeth Warren, we have Chris Van Hollen, we have Chris Murphy. We need the progressive Democrats that do not take PAC money—that when they go to work, they service the American people and don't service corporations.
And with Hakeem and Chuck, every day they go and they do the bidding work for their APAC donors first, and then what other corporations—they do a little bit of harm reduction for marginalized communities, but that's further down on the list, and they just simply do not have the fight in them that this historical moment requires.
Guy Kawasaki: Oh, I don't know if you know this, but Madisun and I just wrote a book about Signal called Everybody Has Something to Hide, and the person who wrote the forward is Ro Khanna.
Jennifer Welch: He’s excellent.
Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. Yeah. We are Khanna believers also. Yes.
Jennifer Welch: I love him. He would be an excellent minority leader, and he'd be an excellent Speaker of the House. He can walk the walk. He can talk the talk. He is a fighter. He has a beautiful story of his family's journey to the United States. And growing up—I think he grew up in Pennsylvania as an immigrant child—looked different and played baseball, and people believed in him, and he had this wonderful experience. And he's watching all of that get dismantled—the aspirational aspect of America.
And so I really am a huge Ro Khanna fan as well.
Guy Kawasaki: And do you think he's presidential material?
Jennifer Welch: I do.
Guy Kawasaki: No. And would your head explode if it's a ticket of Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie.
Jennifer Welch: Probably it would.
Guy Kawasaki: When I say explode, you mean explode good or explode bad?
Jennifer Welch: Explode bad.
Guy Kawasaki: So you don't think that's a good ticket?
Jennifer Welch: No, it's a terrible ticket. Here's the thing: why does the burden always fall on Democrats to bring along homophobic, regressive, misogynist politicians? Now, Ro is finding maverick-style things that they can collaborate on. They both oppose pedophilia, which should obviously be a default setting for every human being on the planet.
But as we can see with the Trump regime, with all of the people that apologize for Donald Trump, pedophilia is not a deal breaker for them. So I appreciate that Ro has found a maverick partner in that. I appreciate that they both believe that Congress is a separate, co-equal branch of government, and they want a war resolution before Trump arbitrarily attacks Iran.
But beyond that, you can find things to partner with. But if they're on a ticket together ideologically, when you get to social issues, they're completely separate. And I think even Ro Khanna would probably say that. I think that that would be a complete insult to a progressive movement to put a conservative—I mean, Massie just recently voted for the Save Act, which is going to make it incredibly difficult for women to vote.
This is a regressive, misogynistic bill. And so, no, I would be furious if a progressive partnered with a misogynist.
Guy Kawasaki: I think Ro will get the message from that little diatribe. All right.
Jennifer Welch: I don't think he would run with him. I think that's more of a media thing than a pragmatic, you know. I think that he would know we're too ideologically different. We're talking about two separate things. Them finding common ground on really pretty obvious issues is how everybody wants Republicans and Democrats to work together.
But Thomas Massie—when it comes to women or when it comes to gay people, when it comes to Black and brown people—there's gonna be a big divide there.
Guy Kawasaki: All right. Okay. Next question about pissing you off: who pisses you off more—Tim Cook or Mark Zuckerberg?
Jennifer Welch: Tim Cook, for sure.
Guy Kawasaki: And why?
Jennifer Welch: Tim Cook, because this is a gay man, and he's standing on the shoulders of the Harvey Milk and the other brave activists that fought before Tim. For Tim to be able to be an out-of-the-closet tech titan and to ride the coattails of brave people that fought for Tim Cook's right to do that—and then for Tim Cook, the evening that Alex Pretti was murdered, he is at the White House watching the horrific documentary of Melania Trump and posting about it.
And I just think that that makes him a fascist collaborator, and it throws away and is disrespectful to all of the hard work of the LGBTQ+ civil rights activists prior to him, who he is enjoying their blood, sweat, and tears only to go be a fascist collaborator with Donald and Melania. I think it's just absolutely disgraceful.
Guy Kawasaki: I don't know if you know about my checkered past, but I worked for Apple from '83 to '87, '95 to '97. I was part of the Macintosh division. And I gotta tell you, I wake up every day right now thinking, man, if there were an alternate to a Macintosh and an iPhone, I would seriously consider that just on an ideological basis.
Jennifer Welch: It is terrible.
Guy Kawasaki: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I can see that you are hitting your stride already, which is not unexpected. I look at people like Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg and Bezos and all that. It seems to me that—first of all, I'm gonna invade your privacy a little bit—are you and Pumps at the level where you know you have enough money, so it's fuck-you-money level?
Jennifer Welch: We have different incomes. I have been an interior designer for 25 years and built my own interior design brand, and pumps didn't work. I mean, she maybe would do two divorce cases a year. So I have always had my own money, my own career, my own business. I do well for myself.
Do I have, like, complete fuck-you money? No, but I have kind of piss-off money, I would say.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay. The reason why I ask is—it seems to me that all these billionaires are at a level of money that nobody can do anything to them. And what I don't understand is, if you've achieved fuck-you-money level, what's the point if you don't tell people to go fuck themselves? Why?
Jennifer Welch: I think about this all the time. I think about, like, it's such a shortsighted thing on their part. Like Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, all of these people, Donald Trump—this guy has dementia. He's a lame duck, so I call him a dementia duck, right? You've got four years with this guy, and you're completely selling your soul, your brand, everything, where you just could have sat out.
You could have just said, you know what, we're gonna ride this out. This guy's a nut. He's completely depraved. Even the people that worked around him in his first term said he was a fascist and Hitler-esque. These are neocons that worked with Trump his first term. We're gonna sit this out.
And I think there's never been an advertisement against the accumulation of wealth more than there is right now. And it's an interesting phenomenon because, if you're raised in America, you're raised with this idea of capitalism, the American hustle—you have to work, work, work, work, work. It's a part of your DNA. I mean, I know it is mine.
And you think, okay, I'm gonna get rich. Or you think, okay, if I win the lottery and I have billions of dollars—is the first thing you're gonna do? You never think about, in that scenario, that you're gonna have to go make up a trophy like Tim Cook did. He made a fucking trophy, and he walked it to the most undeserving toddler on the planet, on national television, humiliated himself, debased himself.
And I just thought, you know, there's not a bank account big enough that I would ever go do that. And so it's an interesting point because the Bernie Sanders message has been percolating and incubating for over a decade now. And, like, my oldest son's 23, and he would talk about unregulated capitalism.
And his generation, and millennials in particular—capitalism has not behooved them. And the ones that didn't fall into the bro podcasting sphere fell into the Bernie messaging, which is a kinder, more pro-worker, more collectivism-style messaging.
And the overt, disgusting wealth of these people and how greedy and immoral they are, right after coming out of the incubation of Bernie Sanders messaging—I think it's a really good time for America to realize we have to reform our financial system. It's not sustainable. It's not fair. It's not good.
And a part of that is difficult because it feels un-American, because we are so programmed to work and make money and be rich. I mean, at least that's been my experience as being an American. Everything can be excused on the planet if you have to go work—if it's for making money.
You can miss anything on the planet. And really, life is a lot more than that, and Americans have kind of missed the bus on that. And our hustle culture has not behooved us, and it has incubated this grotesque individualism, and we've forgotten about each other, and we've forgotten about collectivism. And that has incubated fascism.
Guy Kawasaki: Clearly, you call it as you see it. So what do you think is the most hypocritical thing that liberals do?
Jennifer Welch: Oh, let me think about that. It depends. I can't speak for other liberals, but I can speak for me. I think, in my mind, I'm like, I need to be an environmentalist, but I drive an SUV when I'm in Oklahoma, and then I don't recycle as best I can. I'm not great on all of those things, but I don't lecture other people.
I can tell you, I think one of the more annoying things liberals do is when you see somebody online or somebody in general that's about 90 percent where you are, and then the 10 percent—they misspeak—and then you go in to police that 10 percent. It's like, stop. Quit policing. If the gist of where they are is there and they misspoke or they said “homeless” instead of “unhoused,” pump the brakes and don't be an asshole and have to correct everybody all the time.
I think that is the most self-defeating thing on the left—is the policing within the left. Like, if somebody is pretty much where you want them to be, give it a pass. Don't correct everybody all the time.
Guy Kawasaki: So what's the most hypocritical thing that conservatives do?
Jennifer Welch: Oh, so many. Like, number one, that they're all about a strong national defense. Meanwhile, they're playing patty cake with Vladimir Putin, with Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a, a war criminal. The family value stuff is bullshit. That's total bullshit. The pro-life stuff is total bullshit.
One of the biggest things is they think they're so good with business. You know, we have to vote Republican because these guys are so good with business. Every Republican president gets a national deficit, takes us into war, tanks the economy. And so the Republicans pretty much, I think, under Trump, have been exposed for being complete hypocrites.
Before, a lot of people bought into maybe they were fiscally conservative, but I mean, it's abundantly obvious. They want to get power concentrated and erode democracy. They're very threatened by everybody having the same rights. That's very threatening to these people.
Guy Kawasaki: Can I ask you something? When I first learned about you and Pumps, my head did a little explosion. And how can the two of you even exist in Oklahoma, or is it because I live in a West Coast liberal bubble and I think Oklahoma is deep red and, oh my God, you know that guy who just left your education position—he wants to put a Bible in every classroom, and the world was created in seven days.
I don't know what the hell his doctrine is, but so how do you exist there? Or is it because I just don't understand that it's not black and white, it's not red or blue?
Jennifer Welch: So we have two completely different stories. Pumps and I get lumped together a lot because we're both the co-host of the same podcast, but our paths here are entirely, diametrically opposed. I was raised by liberal atheists in the Bible Belt, and so I was not indoctrinated into religion. My parents were always liberal, voted for Democrats.
Critical thinking was encouraged, curiosity was embraced and complimented. We traveled a lot, and I knew what the world was like outside of Oklahoma. Angie was raised in a very—exactly what you just said. The Earth was invented in seven days. I mean, even ten years ago, Angie—we were talking about the evolution of apes, and she thought I was crazy.
She thought there's no way we evolved from, you know, chimpanzees to human beings. Angie looked at me—I remember when our kids were really little—and she was like, can you believe people used to live to be 950? And I'm like, that never happened. Nobody's ever been 950. It's never happened to Angie.
I've always been political. I've always been outspoken about my atheism, agnosticism, whatever you wanna call it. Angie was always very outspoken about her Christianity. We had kids that were really close friends. And when you have little kids, you hang out with your kids' friends' parents.
And so Angie and I had great chemistry, and we'd laugh as long as we didn't talk about politics and religion. We were fine. Now, I will say this: people on the coast need to understand. So Angie was my only conservative Republican friend. I was her only liberal atheist friend. That was it.
I have a group of fabulous people in Oklahoma City that are gay, that are people of color, that are progressives, that are agnostic, that are maybe like a Christian—like people that always vote Democratic. And there are these beautiful blue dots all over red states.
And these people are tough—to be a liberal in a MAGA supermajority state or Republican supermajority state. You've fought it, and you've seen the destruction that Republican supermajorities do. You see it up close. You talk about that superintendent—imagine living in the state where they're doing that kind of stuff.
And I still have just the most amazing—I have girlfriends that are fighting really hard, have a program to help women access abortion care if they need to. So you have these really amazing, brave people that do these things.
So for Angie and me, when we first started the podcast, she had started to deconstruct her faith. And I was shocked because she was very, very, very, very, very religious. And we had agreed not to talk about religion anymore because she had invited me to Bible study multiple times. I had declined multiple times.
I said, lookI'm never gonna go to Bible study. It's just not gonna happen. And so she told me a few years ago that she had deconstructed her faith and she didn't believe anymore. And I was shocked 'cause she was my most religious friend.
And I was also kinda worried about her because it was such a part of her identity. Like it was so who she was. And then she had evolved her politics as well. The politics started before the religion.
And so when we started the podcast originally, I've Had It, it was just about petty grievances. But anybody who knows me—and I'm not saying this is good, this is what I'm about to tell you is a character defect—but I can't help but talk about politics because what I see happening, I don't see as political. I see it as moral.
Like I would say—you'll say you have a political podcast. In my mind, I would think it's really a moral podcast. Like we oppose separating little kids with cancer away from their families. Like that's a moral thing to me, not a political thing. So then I can't help but talk about politics.
And so it would start coming out and coming out. And it's really been fun watching Pumps get her voice because when you're raised and indoctrinated in an uber, uber, uber religious home, critical thinking is discouraged. You're told it's questioning your faith, and it's blasphemy to God.
And so it's been cool watching her get her voice about her now secularism and her advocacy for marginalized people. It's really cool. And I think to see the evolution in people is what we always want. You want to see people evolve. You want to see people become their self-actualized self.
And so that's a really cool thing that has happened with Pumps. Now, my youngest son just went off to school in California, where you are, and I was like, I'm moving to New York. Like I've lived in the Bible Belt. I've hosted every political fundraiser I can for a Democrat. They've lost. I've done everything I can do here. I want to go live around my people.
And so I've been living in New York the last few months, and it's been awesome. I love it. But I love Oklahoma. I love all of my friends here, but I am definitely the skunk at the garden party most of the time.
Guy Kawasaki: And can you and Pumps, based on your newfound theme, go grocery shopping at Crest Foods or Homeland and you're safe? Or is everybody calling you out, saying there's the two liberal bitches? What's happening when you do that?
Jennifer Welch: So Oklahoma City is not that conservative. Now you get just slightly out of it—oh my God, it's MAGA nightmare shit. But Oklahoma City is a city of a million people. It's incredibly purple. And again, all of my friends and my friend group and my social group are very progressive people.
I have found that keyboard courage doesn't translate to in-person talking. And so, yeah, I can go out in Oklahoma. If anything, I get two things: number one, “Oh my God, I love your podcast, keep going.” Or a, “I love your podcast, keep doing what you're doing”—like some sort of closet liberal or closet atheist that doesn't feel like they can bravely say that in Oklahoma, because there is a suffocating culture of religion and Republicanism overall in the states.
If you get into the suburbs where Pumps lives, it is really MAGA, really, really, really megachurch, hand-raised, tongue-talking style religion. But in Oklahoma City, where I live in the city, it's cool. Like you'd be surprised, Guy. You'd come and you'd be like, okay, all right, okay. See, like I get it.
Guy Kawasaki: If I were to have a conversation with some of these most MAGA people in the suburbs, if we didn't get into politics and stuff, would we find that we probably have more in common than we have different? We want our kids to have a better life, we want our kids to be educated, we want our kids to be happy and healthy, blah, blah, blah. Do we have more in common, or is it just fundamentally we see the world differently?
Jennifer Welch: Well, for the MAGA cultists that have triple-Trumped, you would be friendly with each other, but fundamentally you're different. Fundamentally—and I know this because I've been here before Trump came—one of their big things is to proselytize their faith.
And so they would immediately ask you what church you go to. Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? That would be one of the very first things. And if you said no, you had not, or no, you were Catholic, or no, you were Jewish, or no, you were Buddhist, that would be problem number one, and that would happen within one minute.
Guy Kawasaki: Wow.
Jennifer Welch: Within one minute.
So Oklahoma is an incredibly, incredibly religious state, and there are churches everywhere. And these churches preach this prosperity gospel. Then attached to the prosperity gospel, it dovetails to capitalism plus Republicanism.
And all of these things are very wrapped up together, and there's a very tribal white culture in red states. Racism is still very prevalent. I would say you're fundamentally different.
Guy Kawasaki: Oh wow. Okay.
Jennifer Welch: Now, that's the triple Trumpers. A person that maybe was a Mitt Romney, a John McCain-style Republican—you would've a lot more in common with. But the people who have gone to vote for this man after they've seen what he does and they see how he treats women and they see how he treats human beings and they see how he treats the office of the presidency—and they've done that—you would not have that much in common.
They would look at your skin, Guy, and your last name, Kawasaki, and immediately think that you weren't American. And that kind of tribalism is very, very real in red states.
Not in the cities. Not in the cities, but outside of the cities. It's very, very real. They'll be like, where are you from? So you're not American? That kind of shit.
Guy Kawasaki: This may seem like a loaded question, but Jennifer, does anybody's approval still matter to you? I know there's Pumps, there's Roman, there's Dylan—those three people. Do you care? Do you give a shit anymore?
Jennifer Welch: No, absolutely not, because I think as you get older, what's more my North Star than anything is when my head hits the pillow at night—is me. Like you, you spend a lot of time in your twenties and thirties really worried about what everybody thinks about you and seeking other people's approval to fill you up.
And now I want to approve of myself. I want to be okay with what I'm saying, what I'm doing, walking my own path. And we know as human beings we have intuition. You know when you're like, “Fuck, you were kind of being a bitch there”, or “God, that probably wasn't right.”
God knows I've spent enough money on therapy to know how to regulate myself. And so I think now that I'm 51, it's been liberating to not seek the approval of others. I've really felt unshackled by that because I don't think that's important.
I think it's more important that you judge yourself in a really honest way and quit lying to yourself. And when your head hits the pillow at night, you can take personal inventory and think, “Okay, you could do better there, girl.” Or, “You know, that was great”—and continue and continue.
I think that, for me, at the stage of life that I'm at right now, is more important to me than what other people think.
Guy Kawasaki: Wow. Like I said at the very start, you're just betting on yourself, right? That's at the extreme here. So I also noticed the concept in your book of the gratitude list, so I don't want people to get this impression that you're just calling everybody out and you're had it with everything.
So what's on your gratitude list, Jennifer?
Jennifer Welch: I mean, first and foremost, I'm really grateful that my husband is sober. My husband Josh, like so many Americans, suffered from just really horrible addiction, a really traumatizing childhood. Josh is a wonderful person, but he struggled with alcoholism and then also fell prey to the opioid epidemic.
And sobriety was really hard for him, especially for a lot of opiate addicts. Opiates really get their claws in you, and it was a really difficult time when he was struggling with his addiction because it was a time when I was younger, before I had a husband and kids, that I would fantasize about, like, one day I am gonna be married and I'm gonna be a young mom and I'm gonna have kids.
And in that fantasy, Guy, I always thought about my husband or my love interest of it being this really joyful thing. And for anybody, any of your listeners that have ever loved an addict, it's a real mind fuck when you associate your love with somebody and that love for them causes you pain. It's a really, really difficult thing.
So I went through a lot when my kids were really young in our thirties, 'cause he would, like a lot of addicts—there's no quick fix for addiction. There just isn't. It takes what it takes. He would get sober, he'd be sober a couple of years, the light would come and shine down on all of us, and he is this wonderful, smart, sensitive, amazing person.
And then the dark passenger would come back out again, and he would relapse. And, you know, you have these two young kids that love their dad, but you knew you had to get your kids away from him. And it was really, really difficult. It was excruciating. It really—as tough as I am—it took me to my knees, his addiction.
And he's sober now, and he has a great relationship with me and with our boys. And first and foremost, I'm so grateful for sobriety and that he didn't succumb to the disease of addiction like so many people do and end up dead.
And I always wanna use my platform, when I'm not browbeating the fuck outta Trump, to normalize addiction. Addicts do not choose to be addicts, and we don't really choose who we love. Life is complicated. Addiction is complicated. Relationships are so excruciatingly complicated, and sometimes we find ourselves loving broken people, and that breaks us. Or we were broken when we found them and we tried to, you know, fix ourselves.
And so my biggest gratitude, hands down, is that my husband is sober.
Guy Kawasaki: Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but your status is—I never heard these two words together before—but happily divorced. Is that the current situation?
Jennifer Welch: Yeah. So I think it was 2013. And it's weird—Josh and I just went on vacation together. We went on a Valentine's Day vacation together without our kids, 'cause they're both in college. And he actually brought this up to me, Guy.
He was staying in a hotel, 'cause I kicked him out of the house. It was 2013. He was just so fucked up on drugs and sad. And I begged him to go to rehab. I mean, begged, begged, screamed. Anybody who's tried to talk to an addict, you feel like you're losing your mind. You're just kind of unhinged.
He's like, “No, no, no, no.” So I had Angie Pumps draft divorce papers, and I took the divorce papers to the hotel that he was at, and I said, “I need for you to sign these papers. If you won't go to rehab, I'm gonna divorce you.”
And we got in this big brawl, and he signed them, and he was not very nice. He was really hateful, actually. And so we were just in Mexico for our little Valentine's dinner, and he kind of grabbed my hand—and this is so much growth, I can't even tell you that we're able to do this right now because our relationship's been so tumultuous, but it's a testament to how good his recovery is right now.
And he grabbed my hand and he said, “I'm really sorry for that day that you brought the divorce papers—and all you were trying to do was save our family, and I was such a dick.” And he said, “I think about that all the time.”
And I hadn't thought about it in a while, but when he said that, I could feel like this lump in my throat, and I cried so much about his addiction, I don't cry very often anymore. I just don't—I maybe cry once annually, maybe. It made me really, really emotionally tough, and I could feel that, like, “Oh my God, am I about to cry? Like, maybe I'm not a sociopath anymore.”
And it was really sweet. And so he ended up getting sober after that in probably 2015, and he's been sober since then. And we've been back together, but we haven't, like, legally married. I mean, we call each other husband and wife, but our divorce was a symptom of his disease.
It's like a side effect. Like, if you were to say, okay, if you have cancer, these are the side effects of it—when you have addiction, you lose your job, you lose your wife, you lose your kids. And it was a symptom of his disease. But I consider us very much married, and so does he.
Guy Kawasaki: When you were discussing your husband in the book, you told the story that I was just absolutely floored by, and I'm gonna ask you to tell this story, and I think it shows a great deal of humility on your part. And by now you're probably guessing what the story is, right? So the story is, of course, when he came home one day and said that his therapist suggested ketamine therapy—and tell us what happened after that and what you learned.
Jennifer Welch: Okay, so this is probably about 2019, listener. And so I'd been to family weeks, I'd been to rehabs, I'd done all this shit. I'd been to Al-Anon meetings, and I was like, “I'm so fucking sick of this shit.” I'd been to therapy a bunch myself. Josh was still tortured.
Like, that's the thing—sometimes somebody gets sober and then the numbing is gone, but they're still so tortured. And he was wonderful, but very tortured. So he comes home from his therapy session. He says, hey, Dr. Schafer thinks that I should do ketamine therapy.
And I was like, “Fuck you. I can't believe Dr. Camp Schafer said that. You wanna go fucking take drugs? That's so classic. You fucking addict. No, you piece of shit, blah, blah.” I mean, just went psychotic. Not a great moment for me, right? But anybody who has loved an addict can relate. Like, it can just trigger you like that.
And Josh, to his credit, he was like, “Okay, okay. Like, you're my priority, my sobriety's my priority. I have a book here that he has sent home, if you ever wanna read it.” I was like, “Oh yeah, like hell I'm ever gonna read that.”
And he was really cool about it. Like, he didn't push me, didn't probe me. So then, like, I think it's like a month later, I'm watching 60 Minutes—before Barry Weiss and MAGA took over 60 Minutes, back when it was good—and Anderson Cooper comes on and he's like, “Psychedelics to treat addiction.
It's like this thing, and there's Johns Hopkins University and Harvard and blah, blah, blah.” And I'm just like, “Oh fuck.” And Anderson Cooper goes into this thing. And you have to know, from not being raised with religion, I really revere science and I revere research, and I think that's the gold standard.
And I believe that when you have a body of evidence that always points to something, that's something we need to look at. So Anderson Cooper goes in that people are taking, like, psilocybin or sometimes ketamine. It's treating addiction, it's treating personality disorders, OCD, anxiety. And I'm just like, “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”
And then I creep out to Joshua, like tiptoe out, and I'm like, “I owe you a huge apology.” And he's like, “What?” And I was just like, “The whole thing with you and Dr. Schafer and the ketamine—I was just watching Anderson Cooper. You guys were a hundred percent right. Please give me the book. I'm going to read about it. I want you to be better. I'm sorry I was so psycho.”
And he was so sweet. He was like, “I understand I created that in you. Like, you went to five different family weeks. That's totally normal.” So I read about it, and then Josh went and got ketamine therapy in Oklahoma from a doctor—intravenous ketamine therapy.
And he was able to stop taking SSRIs, and that really, really helped him. Like, it was the one thing I think that has contributed to his sustained sobriety that he has right now because he had so much childhood trauma, he couldn't process it. He couldn't stay sober and process this trauma without feeling debilitating anxiety and depression.
And the psychedelic therapy—there's a great documentary on Netflix that I watched too before he started doing it, and it's called, like, How to Train Your Brain or something like this. It's really excellent for anybody, any of your listeners that knows somebody that suffers from depression or addiction or some sort of personality disorder.
There are a lot of options out there because the thing is, like, Alcoholics Anonymous has like a 7 percent success rate. That's not very good. And so there's a lot of different ways for people to get sober and sustain sobriety.
So yeah, here's the thing about Jennifer Welch: I am a passionate person, but when I'm wrong, I tuck my tail between my legs, put on my big girl panties, and own it. And, you know, I'm glad that he has done ketamine therapy because it's made him more his true self. It really has.
Guy Kawasaki: Yeah, but I gotta tell you, that is one of the most powerful stories I've ever read because it just—the absolute humility—I fully thought it was gonna be, “Yeah, my husband said, I gotta try ketamine”, and you told him “You're crazy, you're a drug addict, you're gonna get on another drug”, and next thing you're Elon Musk or something. But you owned up to it, right?
You owned up to the fact that you were wrong. And I just hope it wasn't Peter Attia that was on the 60 Minutes, but anyway, that's a different story. So I have to say, Jennifer, I say with great pride that the first person to drop an F-bomb on my podcast was Margaret Atwood.
And I thought it was gonna be Gary Vaynerchuk, but it was Margaret Atwood. And without any question, you have broken the record on Remarkable People for the number of times a person has said “fuck.”
Now, and I have a deep question here—so what is your philosophical approach to profanity? Is it like a mark of rebellion? Is it the precision of what you wanna say, or is it performative, or is it just you're 51 and you don't give a fuck anymore?
Jennifer Welch: You know, I wish there was some deep component to it. The fact of the matter is I've always kind of been a cusser. I really have. I enjoy colorful language. I enjoy descriptive language, and sometimes an F-bomb—there's just nothing better than that.
And I've always kind of been a cusser. I can refrain from it, but, like, I heard you drop a couple and I was like, oh, it's green lights. Let's go, baby. And so then it was just like I was unleashed. Like, my host did it, then unleash the beast—it's F-bombs for everybody.
But I like colorful language, I like adjectives, and I love a good F-bomb. It's just that simple. It's like my flavor of speaking.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay, you can sense a kind of baseline level of outrage in me as I can sense a baseline level of outrage in you. Are you ever concerned that, oh my God, this outrage is gonna consume me? Like, I'm gonna define my life as being anti-Trump and saying fuck all the time. Do you ever think about that?
Jennifer Welch: No, because I'm really good about the following…When I come in and film, I am Jennifer the podcaster, and that's how you know me. When I stop filming, I go play tennis, I spend time with my dogs, I talk to my sons, I spend time with my husband. We don't talk about Trump. We don't let it rule our lives.
And of course it'll come up, like, you know, my older son is in law school right now, and he might be like, “Oh my God, you see the Supreme Court did this”, and we'll have a conversation about it. But the rage that you see me and the outrage that I have on the podcast, I don't live in that moment all the time. That's just me doing my job as a podcaster.
My life outside of that character—I believe everything I say and everything I do in that podcast through and through, every molecule, every fiber of me. But I'm not in that state from when I wake until I go to bed. I talk and do a lot of other and enjoy so many other things.
I think that the only regret about any of that is that's the way people are gonna think I am all the time, but I'm really not. Like, my husband always compliments me. He's like, “You're able to just go bitch about all this Trump stuff and you come home and you're in a great mood and we don't even talk about it.”
I'm like, I can't—I couldn't do this job if I was in that state all the time, or I would be in rehab. Like, I don't think I could do it sober if I was that mad all the time.
Madisun and I will send you some mushrooms from California.
Jennifer Welch: Oh yeah—the psilocybin, that's one of the ones. You have to watch this documentary, Guy, called How to Train Your Brain or something like this.
Guy Kawasaki: Jennifer, until about two or three years ago, I always used to wonder, how did the people of Germany let Hitler take over? And then in the last couple years, I say, oh, I get it now. I can see how it can be done. When you see the standing ovations at the State of the Union and you see all these people supporting him, do you think these politicians actually believe the shit they're saying, or they're just saying it to stay in his good graces?
Jennifer Welch: I think some of them do. I think a lot of them—their ambitions are, as stupid as this sounds, to own the libs. Like, they have been raised on Fox News and raised in a church that preaches hellfire, damnation, and black-and-white worldviews.
And some of them do kind of think that. I think a lot of them know he's a piece of shit, but they like power. But I went to Dachau. My sister used to live in Germany, and I went to Dachau when I was probably about 15 or 16—the concentration camp—and it really left an impression upon me.
And so I read a lot about World War II and the Holocaust and watched every documentary there is. And I always thought the same thing as you. And I even dove into the psychology of everyday Germans that went along. You know, we always think Hitler or Goebbels, but the only reason that was possible was because of all of these everyday Germans that went along with it.
And I have to say, living in the Bible Belt has helped me understand how people do this because people associate religion with goodness. Like, these religious people must be good people. We attribute these things to them unfairly.
Some religions are that way, and some religious people are that way, for sure. White evangelicals in the Bible Belt are some of the meanest people you will ever meet. It surprises me zero that they are a hundred percent on board with Trump, a hundred percent on board with the cruelty, because you have to stand—from the time they were very little, they were told “You're not good, you're not worthy. The only way you'll be good is if you accept Jesus.” And then I remember growing up, I had all these religious friends, and they were always paranoid that there were, like, demons in the room and the spiritual warfare stuff going on.
And so it's those people that have been saturated in this uber, uber white culture that feeds their grievances, that feeds their nationality. And when you don't have a lot of culture in, like, some of these vast red states, two things become the dominant cultural items: number one, your faith, and number two, your nationality.
So that's all they have is church and being American. And then you enter this demagogue, and they'll do anything for him. And Trump told us, he said, “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and my supporters would still like me.” And he was a hundred percent spot on on that.
Guy Kawasaki: I'm gonna lighten up to finish this a little. I respect you not only for all those beliefs but also as a podcaster and as a media figure. So I gotta ask you some tactical stuff, right? First of all, where does Jennifer Welch get her news?
Jennifer Welch: Oh my gosh. So I have an app called Ground News—they're a sponsor of our show—and they're great, and it's really helpful. I'm a reader. I don't really watch—like, I have been an interior designer for 25 years, I don't watch design shows. I'm a podcaster now—I do not listen to podcasts at all.
So I scan the news, like, you know how Apple News will aggregate all of the news for you, and then I go to independent news sources like Drop Site News or Zeteo. I'll scan Twitter begrudgingly, but I only have a list that I've made, like, so I don't see Elon's white nationalist feed.
I just see a list of people that I put on a list—journalists and people who are snarky and funny and fighters of the moment. So a potpourri of places that I get my news.
Guy Kawasaki: Do you follow Katie Drummond?
Jennifer Welch: I don't.
Guy Kawasaki: Oh, you must follow Katie Drummond. She's the boss of Wired, and what she's done with Wired is truly amazing. It used to be just a magazine for nerds, but now it's taken on much greater social implications. So Katie Drummond—how about Heather Cox Richardson?
Jennifer Welch: Love.
Guy Kawasaki: I love her. I love her. Which brings me to my next question, which is: if somebody said to me, “Guy, you have a magic bullet, you can get anybody you want,” first I would've said Jennifer Welch, but I got you. So second on my list would be Heather Cox Richardson. I think she's just phenomenal.
So now, who is your dream guest that you haven't had?
Jennifer Welch: Oh my God. Larry David.
Guy Kawasaki: Larry David.
Jennifer Welch: Curb Your Enthusiasm is my absolute favorite television show. I could watch every episode a million times. That kind of dry, irreverent humor is my favorite. I would love to have Larry David on the show.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay, so now, you've had Barack Obama, you've had Sanders—not the football player Barry, but the Senator Sanders. You've had Kamala Harris. You've had Gavin Newsom. How hard could it be to get Larry David?
Jennifer Welch: It is hard.
Guy Kawasaki: Why?
Jennifer Welch: I don't know. He doesn't like to do interviews. And here's the thing—maybe it's good that he said no, because I think I would be so starstruck. I would be nervous. I would be all of the things. And so it's probably good that he has said no, because I would probably completely embarrass myself. But I think he's so smart. Do you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm?
Guy Kawasaki: I am now, but I haven't though.
Jennifer Welch: Oh my God. It's hilarious. It's so good. It's smart, irreverent comedy. It's so good.
Guy Kawasaki: Huh. Jennifer, I don't think you need to worry about freezing up if Larry David came on your show. That is not gonna happen.
Alright, so now opposite question: would you entertain having someone like Mike Johnson or Lindsey Graham or Jim Jordan on your show? Or are they so despicable you wouldn't touch them?
Jennifer Welch: I've thought about this. I really thought about this. I thought about recently Marjorie Taylor Greene, because she's been making this huge rebrand. And I'm mixed on that. I'm mixed on if that's helpful or not helpful. And so I would say my answer to this is TBD.
Like right now, Mike Johnson—I have no interest in talking to, because everything he says is for an audience of one, for Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene's kind of bucked him, and she has said that she was radicalized and indoctrinated. I mean, she said that recently. But then she also still does this, like, “there are two genders,” and, you know, she really still plays patty cake with a lot of bigotry. But I think that could potentially be a good conversation. I don't know about that. I've thought about that, Guy, and I don't have a good answer for that.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay. Opposite question: what happens, God forbid, if Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson calls and says, “Will you come on my show?”
Jennifer Welch: Oh my God, that's a great question. Oh my God. Tucker Carlson—a part of me kind of wants to debate with Tucker. Like, I would kind of like to have that conversation.
Joe Rogan—I don't think Joe Rogan is very smart. He just goes on a really long time. I'm not impressed with Joe Rogan. Tucker Carlson is a complete piece of shit. Let me just say that first and foremost. But Tucker Carlson is very politically savvy, and he's built this incredible audience. So I don't know what I would do there either.
Those are great questions, and I would really have to make a pro and con list. And I would think probably, at the end of the day, I wouldn't. Because when I am featured on Fox News—and it's not good. It's always in a very bad light when they're talking about me, which is fine. I don't care. I'm a big girl. Say what you wanna say about me. But I do get a lot of hate mail and death threats.
And it's a dangerous thing in Trump's America to be a very opinionated woman. And you get a lot of threats of sexual violence, you get a lot of death threats, and it's always when the conservatives are covering me that all of that happens. So probably, for a safety issue and for my sons, as intriguing as it would be, I would probably say no.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay. And what happens if Barry Weiss and 60 Minutes calls and says, “We wanna do a special about you guys because you have done so well”?
Jennifer Welch: I would tell Bari Weiss, “Go fuck yourself” immediately. And I would want a phone call, and I would want to record it so I could then publish that so that she could continue to be publicly humiliated over and over and over and over and over again.
What she has done to CBS and to 60 Minutes, and to all of these brave journalists—and what she spiked, that story about CECOT, about our administration sending people that are not criminals, that had paperwork issues, to be tortured in El Salvador—and she spiked that story. Bari Weiss can go fuck herself. It would be a no, no, no.
Guy Kawasaki: Jennifer, do you have a producer who's holding a sign up out of my view that's saying, “Jennifer, take it easy. Cool it. Shut the fuck up, Jennifer”?
Jennifer Welch: The sign wouldn't help.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay. Just a few more tactical questions.
Number one: are you a Signal believer? Do you Signal?
Jennifer Welch: Signal the app? Yeah, I have people that message me on Signal. I'm fine with Signal, but I also think—I know that I'm sure that I'm on some list somewhere for speaking out against the administration. If they want to hack my phone and see all the tennis videos and French bulldog videos that I like, or that I said, “Yeah, Trump sucks,” then—I mean, I don't really have any secrets. I've already written a book about my husband, you know, all of our shit that we've been through. It's not pretty. So, you know.
Guy Kawasaki: Let me give you a piece of advice. You and Pumps should be communicating with each other on Signal. I promise you—just, we can talk about this offline. You need to embrace Signal. Of all people in the world, you need Signal.
Okay, so now we know that you're doing text messaging with not so much privacy. Personal question, violating all HIPAA: are you still using beta blockers, or now you just go out there and let it rip, so you don't need beta blockers?
Jennifer Welch: No beta blockers. That was just like our first tour.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay, okay. Second-to-the-last question. This is “hit it or had it.”
So, hit it or had it: filibuster rule.
Jennifer Welch: I mean, if the Democrats get the Senate again—I want there to be no filibuster. So I'm kind of like, if it benefits what I want to happen.
I just think there's so much about the federal government that needs to be changed. I think the fact that California has only two senators and you have 60 million people, and Oklahoma has two senators and we have 3 million people—I think that's so stupid. I mean, California is so severely underrepresented.
Guy Kawasaki: Maybe we'll secede. How about the necessity for two-sided journalism?
Jennifer Welch: The problem with that is the way it's being used right now is a false equivalency. They're using it as two-sided journalism as a means to sane-wash and normalize fascism and bigotry and misogyny. And so I think it's a real false equivalency, the way CNN or any other major corporate news outlet uses it. So essentially—you've had it, right?
Jennifer Welch: Oh yes. Had it.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay. How about my last “hit it or had it”? James Talarico.
Jennifer Welch: You know, so I've watched this Texas race a little bit. I haven't really done a story about it between Talarico and Crockett, because fundamentally I think that they're both going to probably vote and do the same.
Talarico's a little bit too religious for my personal taste—his campaign style with all of the quoting of scripture. I think it's because I have so much red-state trauma and living around all of these uber, uber religious people. But I also think it could be a good reminder to these Christians that voted for Trump three times that, hey, the central character of the Bible was kind of like this radical empath. Like, he wasn't the way you're voting.
So James Talarico would be good to do that. I can't either hit it or had it with James Talarico. I think I like him, but there's something—I don't know what it is. I have a spidey sense about him that something is off, and I don't know what that is.
If he is the Democratic nominee, I hope he wins. I hope Texas has a blue senator. I want that more than anything on the planet—just a personal thing. And it's probably just my own religious trauma that causes me to have a little bit of pause about him. But I want him to win. If he beats Jasmine in the primary, I want him to win. If Jasmine beats him, I want her to win.
Guy Kawasaki: All right. Since we're on the topic of Texas, maybe you would appreciate this—I met a woman who started an organization in Texas, and the organization is MAGA, and it stands for Mothers Against Greg Abbott.
Jennifer Welch: Oh yeah.
Guy Kawasaki: So I thought you'd appreciate that, of all people.
Jennifer Welch: And again, there's so many blue dots in Texas. I mean, there's just so many great liberals in red states—so many.
Guy Kawasaki: Jennifer, at the end of your life—God forbid—well, you don't believe in God, so you're not worried about that. But what happens if God does exist and you're up there at the pearly gates, and God is looking at you saying, “Jennifer, you said you don't believe me. You said ‘fuck’ all the time. You did all this.” What are you gonna say to her? Because I think God is a Black woman.
Jennifer Welch: I mean, I just think that would be such a human thing—that God would be like, “Oh, you said, you know, ‘fuck.’” It's such an arbitrary thing, the word “fuck.”
And I just think if that whole notion—I just reject it entirely, because I think when the Bible describes God, it's like all of these jealous, petty—commits genocide—it’s all human. It's all the human things that we have. And I would like to think if there is a higher power, that it's something so much better than humans are—definitely better than that God described in the Old Testament. I mean, that guy's a nut. I mean, a complete unhinged nut—has to send a son on a suicide mission to atone for all the shit he did. It's weird shit, you know?
Jennifer, have you ever had a podcast interview like this, or is this Jennifer Welch as usual?
Jennifer Welch: I'm always like this.
Guy Kawasaki: Okay, this is my absolute last question, and it is a total softball question for you. But it kind of goes back to my first question, which is: what is the significance of the success of you and Pumps? Because you have this whole story about your husband's drug addictions, sex addiction—in her case, you're successful entrepreneurs. Now you're contrarians, you're sticking it to the man, all this. What does all of this symbolize? What do you and Pumps actually stand for in society right now?
Jennifer Welch: I think it's that people want to see women that look like Pumps and me—white, privileged women—stand up for marginalized people. They want to say, “Oh, okay, we are in this together. Oh, they're not trying to oppress us.”
I think it's a story of a thirst for unity in America. And typically you see, you know, the Karen stereotype or the Fox News women or the MAGA women, and they're kind of the oppressors. And I think there's a desire for unity—a unity among different skin colors, different accents, all of the things. And so I think that's my opinion.
Guy Kawasaki: All righty, that's the way to end this. Oh my God. So now I can move on to Heather Cox Richardson, because I've had Jennifer Welch. I can just go down the list. Thank you so much.
Jennifer Welch: Thank you so much, Guy. This has been so enjoyable.
Guy Kawasaki: First of all, I want to thank Madisun Nuismer and Tessa Nuismer, my ace people who helped me. Madisun is co-producer, Tessa is a researcher. Jeff Sieh is my sound design engineer—he's also co-producer. Shannon Hernandez is also sound designer.
We're the Remarkable People team, and that's what we do. We find remarkable people like you, and we kick ass and take names. So this has been a great episode. Thank you so much.
Jennifer Welch: Thank you, and thank you to your team for all of your hard work. I enjoyed the interview so much.