Twenty-one companies severed sponsorship deals with Democrat podcaster Jennifer Welch after she laughed on-air about "digging up Charlie Kirk's corpse" following the assassination attempt on the Turning Point USA founder. Cash App, Chewy, Boll & Branch, Lola Blankets, Zenni Optical, Casper, Honeylove, iRestore, and Monarch Money were among the brands that walked.
By Monday, Welch was on camera asking her audience for money.
"Just to subscribe to YouTube or anywhere you get your podcast is free," Welch said on an episode of her show "I've Had It," titled — and this is real — "Not Today, TPUSA." "If you want to sponsor us financially, you can become a member on YouTube or join us on Substack."
The timeline, as reported by Breitbart, is worth laying out. Welch made the Kirk comments on the episode. Sponsors fled Friday. By Saturday, she posted an apology and announced a donation to Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun-control organization — because when you joke about exhuming a conservative's body, the natural next move is apparently to donate to an anti-gun group. By Monday, she'd pivoted to the donation plea.
Welch's co-host Angie Sullivan, known as "Pumps," was on the episode as well. Welch also called Kirk "a vile, unrepentant racist" during the broadcast — the kind of editorial choice that plays well with a certain audience right up until the finance department calls.
Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet didn't mince the response. "You can blame me or Turning Point all you want, but we're not the reason all your sponsors are fleeing," Kolvet said. "You are."
He added: "Just don't legitimize political violence."
That's the part Welch's apology tour keeps skating past. This wasn't a hot take that aged badly. She laughed about violence against a specific person who'd actually been targeted. Sponsors don't flee over controversy — controversy drives clicks. They flee over liability. When your host is on tape treating assassination as comedy material, your brand's legal team sends an email that starts with "effective immediately."
Welch claimed the blowback actually helped her numbers. "Ever since Turning Point put a target on us, our numbers have grown and they're going to continue to grow all week," she said, claiming nearly 30,000 new followers. "Our brand of fighting fascism and our brand of MAGA-slaying and Turning Point-slaying is not for everybody, but it's for those of you that tune in every single day and support us."
Fascism-slaying. From the woman who joked about digging up someone's corpse because she disagrees with his politics.
The "target on us" framing is doing a lot of heavy lifting. No one put a target on Jennifer Welch. She put herself on a microphone and laughed about a man's murder. Turning Point didn't manufacture the clip. They shared it. The sponsors watched it. The sponsors left. That's not persecution. That's a market correction.
Welch also has a book out called "Not Today, Fascists." The title reads differently now — less battle cry, more ironic prophecy. The fascists she's supposedly fighting didn't cancel her show. Her own sponsors did, after hearing what she actually believes is funny.
Newsweek independently counted more than 10 brands that ended their arrangements with the podcast. Twenty-one is the number that's circulated since the full accounting came in. Either way, the ad reads on "I've Had It" have been replaced with Welch asking viewers to subscribe on YouTube and Substack.
She went from sponsored content to a tip jar in four days.