A standing rule among broadcast professionals is to never minimize or mock domestic violence. 

Over 10 million incidents of domestic abuse are believed to occur annually, with victims seeking help less than 40% of the time. It is also common knowledge among broadcasters that every program that calls serious attention to domestic violence elicits responses from many victims, some of whom seek help. 

To minimize or mock abuse is to add to the burden of the victims desperately trying to figure out an exit from their peril. 

MSNBC’S JEN PSAKI JOKES USHA VANCE SCARED OF HER HUSBAND, RIPPED FOR ‘DISGUSTING’ COMMENTS

This is widely understood, as are other longstanding rules of FCC-licensed broadcasting, most of which were adopted even in the unregulated spaces of cable and within the early iterations of social media and podcasting. The rules against profanity, vulgarity, racist speech and much more migrated to unregulated platforms without the formal command of law and regulation because programming seeking a broad audience had to stay close to the norms in place at the launch of the unregulated era.

Those norms did not stick. Those norms have all dissolved. 

The rise of niche podcasting has wholly destroyed those guardrails as more and more “voices” seek to monetize their opinions into brands which can support podcasts that generate actual revenue. One such offering is the “I’ve Had It” podcast hosted by Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan, two middle-aged ladies from Oklahoma engaged in what appears to be an endless profanity-and vulgarity-laced audition for The View. 

The podcast does have an audience. With 1.3 million YouTube subscribers, there is clearly a demand signal for profane insult comedy from the far left edge. That’s a change. 

This change in broadcast norms has happened quickly. Think about Kathy Griffin’s cancellation after her 2017 photo shoot with a faux severed head of President Donald Trump, a stunt that repulsed enough people to exile Griffin for a few years. Griffin is sort of “back,” and she has new imitators like Welch and Sullivan. Like the MSNBC-now-MSNOW line-up, the magnet for such programming is a pretended anger bordering on rage, mixed with a healthy love of revenue streams. 

After former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki appeared on the most recent episode of “I’ve Had It,” — titled “The Devil Wears MAGA” — backlash erupted, because there are still some unwritten rules, and Psaki violated the one that concerns domestic abuse by asserting she was worried that Second Lady Usha Vance was a victim of abuse. 

Domestic abuse is never funny. It ought never to be used as a political cudgel. Broadcast professionals are supposed to know this. Jen Psaki certainly does know that, but she fell into the trap of trying to please her hosts with an outrageous “jest” about the second lady, urging her to blink her eyes if she needed rescuing from the vice president. 

Second Lady Usha Vance is a graduate of Yale and Yale Law School. She clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts as well as for then Judge and now Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Judge Amul Thapar — a triple crown of taxing clerkships to three of the great legal minds of our time. She navigated her and her children’s way through the tumult of a national campaign. She seems in every way to be an extraordinary person of great accomplishment and poise, married to the very talented and obviously smart vice president of the United States, who excelled, not just campaigning in 2024, but also in carving out a high profile and productive role as VP.

I’m writing this before Psaki issues the inevitable apology. And that apology will be sincere. Psaki is a poised and accomplished Democratic activist and public figure. She probably knew she had crossed the line immediately, but once crossed it cannot be erased. Welch and Sullivan may be thrilled at all the attention, but I am hoping that everyone who reads this column actually goes and listens to the entire episode, which is here: This hour is an excellent representation of the conversation on the fringe that currently drives the Democratic Party. Warning: Explicit and repulsive content is waiting for you there. 

Far-left Democrats hate Vance with a passion previously reserved only for Trump and Senator Tom Cotton. (Cotton broke the New York Times editorial page and has never not been a trigger for the far left. He was also the forerunner of a wave of very smart Republicans with extraordinary credentials and vast reservoirs of knowledge and the calm demeanor that most Americans want in their political leadership.) 

Why the faux rage? President Trump, of course, represents a decade of failed efforts by the left edge of the Democratic Party to derail his ascendancy. Trump “broke” a lot of Manhattan-Beltway media elites, and they still don’t know how to cover him. 

But, why the hatred of Vance? Vance’s domination of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in last fall’s vice presidential debate was a warning shot across the bow of the left that the vast majority of Americans who live normal lives “between the 20s” liked the then-Senator Vance from Ohio quite a lot. Alarms went off. Vance is very much electable and very young. He will be in politics for a long time. 

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And just as the whacky left spent a decade lambasting President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as war criminals who lied to lure America into wars for the benefit of defense companies, they are now turning their fire from Trump to Vance in an effort to demonize him. And now his wife is catching the shrapnel from those attacks. 

This descent into the mire repulses most ordinary Americans. A million YouTube subscribers does not a movement, much less a majority, make. That the Democrats are perilously close to going the way of the Whigs is not in doubt. The candidacy of Zohran Mamdani is a false positive for the appeal of radical politics in America. And just as Jen Psaki did when she chose to dance with fringe podcasters, Democrats who are embracing the Democratic Socialists of America are going to end up marked as outside the mainstream. And unelectable. 

Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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