Former Levi’s CMO Jennifer Sey: “Why I Left, Why I Fought Back & What Brands Don’t Get” | DSH #1635

The wait is over.

Dive into Audible's most anticipated collection, The Best of 2025.

Featuring top audiobooks, podcasts, and originals across all genres, our editors have carefully curated this year's must-listens, from brilliant hidden gems to the buzziest new releases.

Every title in this collection has earned its spot. This is your go-to for the absolute best in 2025 audio entertainment.

Whether you love thrillers, romance, or non-fiction, your next favorite listen awaits. Discover why there's more to imagine when you listen at audible.com slash best of the year.

Parlais tu francais, habla se español, parli italiano.

If you've used Babel, you would. Babel's conversation-based techniques teach you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world.

With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babel today.

Get up to 55% off your Babel subscription right now at babel.com/slash wandery. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash wandery.
Rules and restrictions may apply.

We don't make anything in China. Here's the reason why.
In China, you cannot enter the factories. There's no transparency.
You can't go in and see what's going on.

You can't see how the product is made. You can't see if it's clean.
You can't see if people are treated well. Every place we make stuff, we visit.

If you're not going to let me in, I'm not making stuff.

Respect. So you really value quality control.
Well, I mean, I value quality control, but I also value people being treated with a level of decency and humanity. There's a reason you're not allowed in.

Okay, guys, Jennifer Say here, founder of XXXY Athletics out here in Vegas, wearing the brand, of course. Thanks for coming on.
Thanks. Thanks for having me.
I'm excited.

Yeah, it's a new audience for you. So could you explain actually what your company's about? Absolutely.
I started this brand, XXXY Athletics, about a year ago, a little over.

It's the only athletic brand standing up for the protection of women's sports. We want women's sports to be for women only, which seems sort of obvious, but it's not right now.
Not right now, yeah.

That's what we do. You partnered with the perfect person for this on the recent launch, right? With Riley.
Yeah. Yeah, we worked with Riley Riley since the very beginning.

We launched last March in 2024, and we've continued to work together. She's the spokesperson, really, for the movement, and we just launched a little collection with her that sold out pretty fast.

It's great to see that there's some progress being made, too, because Stanford revoked her opponent's titles, right? Pen. Yeah.
Pended, yeah. Pen, penned.
Yeah, there is progress.

Like, since we started last March, a lot has happened.

President Trump signed an executive order, which isn't, I mean, it acts as law, but it could be overturned and a new one could be written with the next president. So we'd prefer legislation.

But the U.S. Olympic Committee and the NCAA have already now said that the rule is only women and women sports.

But for all the progress, in almost every blue state, you're still seeing boys and girls' sports. And those blue states are saying, Yeah, well, that's our state constitution.

That's what we view Title IX as. They think it's a big win for progress to let boys and men steal opportunities from women.
So we're not done yet.

Yeah, I know Newsom and Trump have been fighting about it, right? Yeah, Newsom is suing the federal government because the federal government is telling him you can't do that.

There's an athlete in California who goes by A.B. Hernandez, a male who won all sorts of state track championships last year.
The school year just started. A.B.

is now on the volleyball team, has never played before, just decided I'm going to be on the volleyball team, made the team, displaced a woman.

But I find this hopeful. The first three games of the season, the other teams forfeited.
Wow. In California.
So everyone's set up.

Yeah, because there were some spikes from males that left some girls with concussions, right? Yeah, that's another athlete we work with, Peyton McNabb.

In 2022, she got smashed in the face with a volleyball permanent. brain injury.
Permanent. Oh my gosh.
That is terrible. I can't believe that's allowed still.

The whole thing is completely psychotic. I mean, the whole purpose of Title IX was to give women their own sports.

And this idea that if you say you're a woman, you are, and you can come into women's sports is just,

it's sheer lunacy. Yeah, I still remember.
I mean, look, how tall are you? I'm 6'6 ⁇ . 6'6.
If you said you were a woman, you could play on the women's volleyball team in California, right?

You would kick ass. And you've made, have you ever played? No, but I bet it's if I competed against woman, I would have to be.
You would stand there and smash me with the ball.

So,

I mean, here's how I look at it. If you look up the world records in track and field, any distance,

there isn't a single distance where the women's time is anywhere close to the men's time. Not one.

I mean, if there was no difference between men's and women's bodies, which is the argument these people make, then there sometimes a woman would win. And in fact,

most

of the women's world records can be beaten by 15-year-old boys. Wow.
Just

high school track. That's how big the gap is.
That's how big the gap is, which isn't to say that women suck. They don't.

Women are amazing at sports in their own right, but they aren't as fast and strong or as tall. Their wingspan, all the things.
They're not.

So we believe women should have their own sports and spaces, and that's what we're standing up for.

And, you know, I started the brand because as I looked around at all the other athletic brands out there, they all make a whole lot of money pretending to champion female athletes, and they really treat them with astonishing disregard.

Really? I didn't know that. Well, Nike in particular, the big one,

there have been very public examples, like public, like on the cover of the New York Times, sexual harassment of female executives,

firing of pregnant athletes who are, you know, athlete endorsers. They fire them when they get pregnant.

And there was another case, a young woman by the name of Mary Kane, who was in their running training program who was abused by the coach to the point of wanting to kill herself. Jeez.

These are all Nike examples within between 2018 and 2019. Wow.
So they don't really champion female athletes. That's not good.

When you were an athlete, did you deal with anything like that, any discrimination?

I was a gymnast. I was on the national team for about eight years, and I dealt with a lot of physical and emotional abuse.
I wrote a book about it that came out in 2008.

It was the first whistleblower account of abuse in the sport, which now everybody knows about because of Larry Nasser. Yeah.
That was the first time someone spoke out? It was. Wow.
2008.

That's not even that long ago. No.
And it didn't go well for me at first.

Yeah, it did. No, no one,

no one. was very open to that.
It was before me too. It was before Believe All Women.
It was very much shut up and be quiet. You are a liar and a grifter.

So that was like a big deal to do it back then. It was, yeah.
Wow. You don't read it, though.
No, I was right.

Did more people start speaking out because of that? They did. It took a while.
You know,

when someone speaks out and everybody comes for them, and when I say everybody, I mean USA Gymnastics, Olympic Committee, and they call you terrible names. That's

dissuades other people. They don't want to be called those names.

I mean, that's the sort of purpose of cancellation overall, right? Is you cancel someone, then no one else will break with the tribe. But I knew I was telling the truth,

so I kept going. I didn't want other children to go through what I went through, and all my coaches were still coaching.
Jeez, they just got banned from the sport for life.

They're all retired because they're old as do we curse on this? Yeah, okay, they're old as fuck. But

yeah, it's been almost 20 years since I wrote the book. I wrote everything they did in terms of the emotional emotional and physical abuse, and it took almost 20 years.
That's insane.

20 years to see them get fired. Yeah.
Wow. That's a long time.
Must feel good for you finally, though. It's a relief.
Yeah. Well, I think it sends a message that style of coaching is not acceptable.

Yeah. I mean, for them, it doesn't matter.
They're old. You know, they're in their 70s.
But for other coaches, because these, my coaches coach some of the best gymnasts in the country.

So for other coaches to see that they're banned,

they might think twice before

behaving the same way, deploying the same tactics. Yeah, I wonder if that's a generational thing because my parents got physically abused too.

I think so, but a lot of the old coaches are still coaching, so they're still doing it the same way. We need a new generation of coaches for sure, right?

Yeah, because there's a whole mental side to sports now that people don't acknowledge.

It's true, and I think in professional sports, the coach coaches are much better about, you know, they want to make their investment last.

If you pay $20 million for a basketball player, you want to get your money's worth. So if he's injured, you are probably going to do all the right rehab.
Whereas with us, it was just go anyway.

I mean, I trained on a broken ankle for two years. Holy crap.
You never got surgery on it? After I left the sport. Jeez.
Did you even tell anyone it was broken?

Well, it was, I didn't know it was broken until I was 40. So here's the, yeah.
So it was this. It was like a fat, like a grapefruit and purple.
And I had a doctor who said, it's fine.

Just, you know, he was very much in cahoots with my coaches. So he would just wave me back out.
He would come to our gym every few weeks and give me shots of cortisone. I was underage.

Didn't ask my parents. He would just shoot me up with cortisone so I could keep going.
Then when I left the sport, that same doctor finally did an MRI and said, well, he didn't say I was broken.

He said, you have bone chips. I'll take them out.
So he took those out. Then when I was 40, and I had continued to deteriorate, I went to a different doctor and he asked me when the car accident was.

He thought I had had a really bad car accident. He had never seen a shattered break.
It was a, my ankle was shattered. He said he could see that many years earlier.

And he'd only seen that kind of break in a car accident before.

That was the first time I learned I'd been training on a broken ankle. Wow.
That is nuts. That's not an easy injury to push through.
No. Well, before that, I broke my femur.
Also, not an easy injury.

Brutal. Yeah, that is brutal.

There was a couple viral marketing campaigns lately. I wanted to get your opinion on some of these.
Would love it. I hope I know what they are.
Go ahead. Yeah, the cracker barrel one, the rebranding.

What did you think of that?

Well, I don't think they wanted it to be viral.

I think it's a pretty typical situation where you have

very elite people from fancy places like New York City and Los Angeles and the Upper East Side. Shout out to today's sponsor, Quince.

As the weather cools, I'm swapping in the pieces that actually gets the job done that are warm, durable, and built to last.

Quince delivers every time with wardrobe staples that'll carry you through the season. They have false staples that you'll actually want to wear, like the 100% Mongolian cashmere for just $60.

They also got classic fit denim and real leather and wool outerwear that looks sharp and holds up.

By partnering directly with ethical factories and top artisans, Quince cuts out the middleman to deliver premium quality at half the cost of similar brands.

They've really become a go-to across the board. You guys know how I love linen and how I've talked about it on previous episodes.
I picked up some linen pants and they feel incredible.

The quality is definitely noticeable compared to other brands. Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look.

Go to quince.com/slash DSH for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. They're also available in Canada, too.

And they are forcing their own views and tastes on the consumer of this brand that is nothing like them.

They don't care. And it's the cardinal sin in brand management, right? Know your customer.

And even if, as I'm sure Cracker Barrel needs to do, you need to bring in new younger customers, you've got to do it in a way that also keeps the traditional customer.

That's the backbone of your business. And they just didn't care.

I think she doesn't like the current customer, the CEO.

I think she doesn't like the brand. I think she probably never ate there before she started working there as the CEO and getting paid $7 million a year.
And she thought

she had no respect for that core customer. And she just thought, I'm going to make it clean and elevated.
So my friends on the Upper East Side will like it. You know what they also did?

They did a pop-up up in the meat packing district.

The meat packing district in New York. Okay, you can buy a Chanel purse on your lunch break for $6,000 and a studio apartment costs $800,000.
This is not the cracker barrel customer.

It's a high-end customer. But she wants that place to be, she wants her friends to think it's cool that she works there.
So she's trying to change the brand.

It has no respect for the current customer, but they retreated.

Did you see this? Yeah, they changed the background. They had to.
The stock was tanking. Yeah.

A lot of people were hating. Yeah.
I think, though, that

sort of elitism and that idea of we know best what you're going to like, it probably infuses all their decisions.

So I guess it remains to be seen, like, are they just retracting the logo because the stock was tanking, but they're not going to do anything else different?

Like, are they going to change the way they think about this business?

I don't know. If they don't, it'll continue to tank.
We'll see. I stopped eating there quite some time ago.
It just doesn't feel the same anymore to me. I mean, admittedly, I've never eaten in one.

Oh, really? Well, I lived in San Francisco. I mean, they don't really have them in San Francisco.
I lived there for 35 years yeah yeah um but if i was gonna work there i would eat there all the time

i was interviewing there i'd eat there all the time yeah you got to be your own customer you got to be the customer you got to love the customer yeah you got to really even if it's not the people you grew up with like you got to get to know them and you got to love them i mean the little bit i've read about that brand there's plenty to love

I do have some nostalgic memories just walking in there. There's cool candy things.
And it's like family, folksy, fun.

People have lots of memories about, you know, eating after the baseball championship there's tons to lean into but she doesn't like the customer it's sort of like the butt light situation yeah that was that one might have been even worse honestly yeah it was worse but i think it came from the same place you know that head of marketing had said just a few days before the dylan mulvaney social media ad she said our current customer is fratty and out of touch that's what she said she didn't like him Well, tough.

Tough shit if you don't like him. He likes Bud Light.

You might want to evolve the brand, but you got to keep that guy. You got to respect him.
Yeah, I think rebranding at a big level, like that's pretty hard, right? It's really hard. Yeah, like Chuck E.

Cheese tried doing it. The mouse looks different now and it's weird.

I don't know any companies at a big level that pulled it off, honestly, other than you guys. No, I did it at Levi's.
Yeah. What did you do there specifically?

Well, when I was at Levi's for 23 years and I became the chief marketing officer in 2013 and the brand had been in decline for 10 years.

And that, what I just described, the Cracker Barrel needed to do, that's what I did.

I went out, I went around the world, I talked to people who were loyal fans of the brand to understand what they loved about it. Because the goal was to take that, whatever they loved about it,

express that in a modern, cool way. So it didn't feel like old guy jeans

and get more people to love that about the brand. I mean, that's like, there's nothing.

smart about that. That's like basic brand management.

And you talk to the customer and you respect the customer um so that's what that's what we did we went around the world i went to 10 different countries and talked to hundreds of people to understand for those that still love this brand what do you love about it and what were the big conclusions what people love about levi's is they feel this sounds like i'm saying this like a marketing this is literally what they there were two things they told me one was i feel like the best most authentic version of myself

not the person that sits home on the couch playing video games or watching television the person that is ready to go out into the world and kick butt. That's how they feel near Levi's.

Like, it's like their second skin. Yeah, that was the first.
And the second was, I wear other things, but I live my life in my Levi's. I have all these memories.
The road trip. I met my girlfriend.

Like,

my life is written in my genes. That's what they told me.
Wow. Yeah.
You guys dominated the gene market, right? Which is pretty cool. Those are two big ideas.
Yeah. Right.

That if you if you honor that, you could

then communicate in a modern way to younger people so they so they are attracted to the denim. Yeah, I mean, it's the biggest denim brand in the world.
Oh, is it the biggest? Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, you must have learned a lot there. Now, now I can see why you're crushing it with this.

I learned a lot. Good, big, iconic brand.
You learn a lot? Yeah, because apparel industry is pretty tough. It's brutal.
Right? The margins aren't as big as others. The margins are decent, but

the cost of goods are high.

It's a very competitive. there's a lot of, you know, back in the day when I started in the denim, in the jeans business, there were like three or four big competitors.

Now there's hundreds of jeans brands to choose from. Yeah.
So it's just really, it's a lot more competitive than it used to be. Did the tariffs eat out your margins a bit?

Now with my current brands,

it's a small hit. It's not terrible for us.
Do you make in Main America or do you? We do some stuff in the U.S. We're looking to do more.

We do a lot of our accessories in the U.S. Got it.
We do a lot of stuff in Peru. Peru.
Wow. I would have thought China or somewhere cheap.
We don't make anything in China. Yeah.
That's my one rule.

You're not a fan of making stuff there.

Here's the reason why.

In China, you cannot enter the factories. There's no transparency.
You can't go in and see what's going on. You can't see how the product is made.
You can't see if it's clean.

You can't see if people are treated well. Every place we make stuff, we visit.

So if you're not going to let me in, I'm I'm not making stuff there. Push back.
So you really value quality control.

Well, I mean, I value quality control, but I also value people being treated with a level of decency and humanity. There's a reason you're not allowed in.

Yeah, I've heard some stuff about China, sweatshops. Yeah, it's bad.
There's forced labor. Uyghur forced labor.
I'm big on energy. So like if I think something's made in a fashion of that manner, then

I mean, obviously it's unavoidable with certain products, but I try to be conscious about buying stuff. It is really hard.
Almost everything comes from China.

And if it's really hard, and it's really hard to make stuff in the U.S. I mean, we don't have the capability in apparel anymore.
We used to. Well, it costs double the price.
What's that?

It costs double the prices if you want to make it overseas. It does.
And we don't even have

the seamstresses. We don't have the talent here.

There haven't been factories in the United States in a meaningful way since the mid to late 90s. Wow.

So there's just not a lot of capacity, which is why it's not that easy for me to move everything here, but we're trying. And it will cost more.
Yeah, I know Trump's trying to bring it back, right?

Well, I mean, that's, I think, at least in part the intent of the tariffs, but it can't happen overnight because you don't have the capacity.

But what he just did with Apple, for instance, where they're actually going to build factories to make the glass on the phone, but that, you know, there's some runtime there. Yeah, it takes some time.

People want everything so quickly. They want it now.
Yeah. So we're trying to make what we can here for now.
Yeah.

um one other campaign i wanted to ask you about was the american eagle sidney sweeney campaign what did you think about that one i loved it you were a fan fan

um

hot girls in jeans it sells it's not complicated people

uh hot girls and jeans sell more than jeans you could sell anything

and i i mean cindy crawford and jeans sold pepsi in the 90s you're probably too young to remember that one i don't i was born in 97. yeah you're you might well you were too young.

Cindy Crawford, you know who Cindy Crawford is? Heard of it. Kai Gerber's mom.
Do you know Kaya Gerber? No. Doesn't matter.
She's a supermodel. Cindy Crawford was the very first supermodel.
Okay.

Super hot. Jeans at a gas station, Pepsi, very sexy.
Anyway, hot girls in jeans sell stuff. To my mind, it's like the return of just the return of the normies.
Yeah.

You know, people weren't buying it. The sort of obese people,

men, hairy-chested men dressed like women. We were supposed to, we were being told that was attractive.
Nobody bought it. The die code.

Nobody wanted it.

Hawk girls and jeans sell product. We buy the aspiration.
Nobody, I don't want to see myself. I want to see someone that's better looking than me.

I think I might look almost a little bit closer to that than I do right now.

So I thought it was great. And I, you know, the best part of it, I thought, was they didn't back down.

A few years ago, they would have apologized.

Well, they were getting a lot of hate. I I think the stock temporarily dipped.
It shot up in the beginning. It shot up at first.
At first, it shot up.

Then it came down a little because there was so much noise and the media was

pretending like this was some sort of Nazi-driven, Nazi-inspired. Yeah, they made it a race thing.
Yeah, eugenics ad.

And it came down a little bit and then it shot back up. Oh, it's back up? It's way back up.
Yeah, it's up about 15%.

Wow. Yeah, pretty significant.
Wow. Well done.
So that campaign did really well for them. Absolutely.
And they didn't apologize.

I think that's the thing is it's a new day. They got all this criticism.
The mainstream media was writing headlines like Nazi eugenics campaign and they just did it more. Yeah.

Shout out to them for not apologizing because you're right. Two years ago under a different president, there would have been no video.

That was the best part is they didn't apologize. Yeah.
No one bent a knee. Sidney Sweeney didn't bend a knee.
The president of American Eagle didn't. They just made bigger billboards.

I think it's awesome. Yeah, they held their ground.
It feels nice being able to voice what we believe in these days. To just say what you think.
And also to say this totally normal thing.

I mean, there is nothing that special about the ad. It's the context they launched it in.
It's a hot girl in jeans. That was every single ad in the 80s and 90s for jeans.

I've made hundreds of them when I was at Levi's in the 90s and early 2000s. It's pretty stock and trade.
But in the world today, when Calvin Klein runs ads with non-binary, hairy-chested men,

overweight, and that that's what's pushed on us. This feels like a revelation.
It feels like an act of rebellion.

And it was in some sense, and people loved it. Yeah.

Shout out to American Eagle, man. Who would have thought? Who would have thought they would be the ones to stand up? You know what I think, though? They're based in Pittsburgh.

Is that pretty liberal? No, I think it's a little bit insulated from Madison Avenue.

okay they probably talk to regular people sometimes that that's good for business yeah yeah not that you should have to talk to regular people to know that pretty girls sell jeans yeah it's pretty obvious well some companies get out of touch with their consumers sometimes right cracker barrel yeah cracker barrel but i'd say a lot of bigger companies that that's an issue a hundred percent i mean the executive

they're they're often quite disconnected from the products they're selling and often i'm a big believer believer that the old phrase in advertising is you have to eat the dog food.

I am a big believer that if you're selling, I mean, I wouldn't eat dog food. You know what I mean? I would give my dog the dog food I worked on.

I wear our product every day. I wore Levi's every day, head to toe, for 23 years.
You have to love the product. You have to know the consumer.

If you're not going to love it and you're not going to wear it, how can you convince other people to?

And I think a lot of these executives, yeah, they're very very disconnected with the customer and the product. Yeah.

I mean, that's why you see people roast Warren Buffett sometimes because, like, he's like, have you ever eaten that fast food or drank that Coke or whatever? Right. You're their biggest investor.

Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. When I worked, I worked at the Gap in the mid-90s and

they had just purchased Banana Republic.

And at the time, I was young. I mean, I couldn't even afford with my discount to buy a Banana Republic every once in a while.
I would when it was on sale, but none of the executives wore it.

They looked down on it. They all wore Prada and Chanel.

I thought it was so weird.

I can't walk with that. I wear my podcast every day.
Like, I'm proud to be doing this. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Some people on my team say, if we have an event, are we wearing our clothes?

I'm like, of course.

That shouldn't even be a question. Yeah, it's not a question.
Stop asking me that. Yeah, you always got to be wrapping your brain.
Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah, you mentioned earlier you grew up pretty left and you were left for a majority of your life. Was it the transit, the men and women sports like the turning point for you? COVID.
COVID.

So before that, men and women stuff. Yeah, COVID.
March 13th, 2020. I went, this is not, no.

And I was against lockdowns from the very beginning and from day one, even before they happened, I saw them coming. I lived in San Francisco at the time.
San Francisco was locked down for 19 months.

Schools were closed 19 months. Playgrounds were called.

Outdoor playgrounds were closed 10 months.

And long after adults got to do everything,

kids were locked at home on screens. And it lasted twice as long, three times as long in blue states, places like San Francisco.
And they did it proudly.

And

the hypocrisy was,

I'll never vote for a Democrat again. Wow.
It was that traumatic. Yeah.
If you lived in California under Gavin Newsome during COVID. I did for five months.
Is it bad?

During COVID? Yeah. I moved to LA during COVID, lasted five months, ended my lease early and drove to Vegas.
When did you get there?

Probably like right when COVID started. Like March or April.
Yeah, March, April. Yeah.
And then you got here and it was normal.

Got here and the casinos were just starting to open within like six months.

Okay.

Yeah. What was done to children,

I can't forgive it. Yeah.
Yeah, they made all the kids get vaccines to go to school. They just kept the schools closed forever.

I mean, people, adults could go to bars in the spring of 21 in San Francisco, packed bars and nightclubs, strip clubs.

My son couldn't go to high school English class. Yeah, all the schools were virtual.
I mean,

it's, it's, it's criminal. And the Democrats wore it as a badge of honor.
You know, they felt they were really virtuous for doing this, for ruining kids.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco and a lot of the blue states that kept stuff closed long, the private schools opened.

So all the fancy elite people sending their kids to $70,000 a year private schools were yelling at everybody else to stay home and stay safe. Yeah.
My kids are in public school.

I don't think I'll send my kids to public school. I can understand that.
Yeah, these days, at least. I think when you went, it was normal.
When I went, it was kind of normal.

Like, there's definitely some weird agendas, but now it's

unacceptable. Yeah, it's tough.
I have two kids in public school now. I guess it depends where you're at, too.
Yeah. You're in

Denver, which is pretty bad.

But they go to a charter school that's Spanish language. It's a little bit of a hack.
Okay, so that's not a public school, is it? It is public. Oh, it is.
But it's all in Spanish.

Interesting. Why do you choose that angle, I guess? We wanted them to be bilingual, and yeah, they speak Spanish.
Wow.

I got to look into that route because I was considering homeschooling, private school. I never heard of a different language school.
Yeah. I mean, this one, we'll see how it goes.

I mean, they're pretty young, so hopefully, but we like it for now. Yeah, I'm sure there's some still good public schools, but I think a majority of them.

I think that's fair.

But homeschooling is rough. It'd be rough if you're not hands-on, if you're just like absent from the house.
Yeah. I mean, if both parents work, it's hard.
I don't know how you do it.

I mean, I guess if one parent's home. Yeah.
Yeah. That's how I'm planning on living.
I know that's tough for most families these days. Yeah.
That's my plan for now.

But these days, it's tough to afford a house, top-one income. It is.
Yeah. I feel for people for sure.
Yeah. It's not easy.

Especially with AI about to wipe out a ton of jobs. All that.
Yeah, it's not easy.

Anyway, COVID turned me. I'll never vote Democrat again.
Wow. I don't think.

And then, of course, once you realize that there are hypocrites about everything, I mean, it's not just keeping the world closed and locking everybody at home, which is,

I mean, none of it was legislated. It was just by decree.
You can't leave the house. You can't go more than three blocks outside of your house radius.

They were stopping people on the street, asking where they were going.

You can't go to the beach. You can't take your kids to the playground.

But then they censored anyone who spoke out. You know, my husband and I were trying to do open the schools rallies.
Every time we put a post up on social media, it would be taken down.

The censor, everything the Democrats said they stood for.

They betrayed all of their own stated values. Yeah.
Yeah, the censorship was nuts. The censorship.

Yeah. You can't even say the word vaccine for like two, three years.
The whole video would get taken down. It's, yeah, it's true.
It was that bad. Yeah, it was bad.

It was and it wasn't just the vaccines. If you were fighting for open schools, you were

put on watch lists. That's crazy.
Moms, like suburban moms, just going to school board meetings. Artuals.
Yeah, I've had gym owners on the show and the gyms were shut down.

And if they opened them, they would get fined a thousand bucks a day.

yeah there was a yoga studio near us that refused to shut and he just boarded up all the windows he he i think generated like a million dollars in fines i don't know what happened there's some kind of lawsuit it's insane it was also

everything

it

Everything that was done harmed the poorest and the most vulnerable the most. It was all the rich people that could handle it.

They could stay at home and order Uber and they had gyms in their house and they had yards for their kids.

And they were pretending it was for the vulnerable, but it wasn't. It was only for them.
The rich got way richer.

I think there's some stat on this, like the top 1% got the most rich they've ever gotten. Yeah.
Yeah. It was a disgusting time.
And I would argue led by the Democrats.

I know Trump was president in the beginning, but the Democrats took it all the way through. I mean, there were restrictions in Democratic states through 2022.

And then as soon as Trump said open the schools, he said open the schools in June 2020. The red states were all open already.
Well, that was the end of that.

The blue states were never going to open them just to do the opposite of what he said.

Yeah, and it was already proven that I think Zuckerberg said like Biden was calling Facebook to censor stuff. Oh, yeah.
So that was crazy.

Well, then we know it at Twitter before Elon took over that Jack Dorsey and that team was,

I mean, they were in direct communication with government officials. Yeah.
to take stuff down. My husband was kicked off for a year.
Jeez. You think they'll ever try something like that again?

Yeah.

That's scary. Don't you? I don't think it'd work again, though.
I think, yeah, it's not out of the cards.

I think it might not. I think, well, that's the other thing that was so disappointing and upsetting about

San Francisco and Democrats is they all just cheered it on. No one resisted.
Who resisted? No one. Everyone was scared of it.
They were calling in on their neighbors.

I mean,

they had a snitch line in San Francisco.

that's crazy there was a snitch line when they finally let us go out of the house it wasn't until june 2020 so we were locked inside for a few months they said you can go out and you can go to the park but you have to only it has to just be your family you can't mix outside

so i was out i have four kids i was at the park with my family eating and whatever

Two of my kids are mixed race, two are not.

So some crazy lady is off to the side side thinking that's not one family. So, she called the police on us

and we had to prove that we all live together. That's insanity.
I can't believe that. It's true.

Wow, crazy times. And that was only five years ago.
That's the left in San Francisco. So, I think you're right.
I think there's a lot more people that would resist next time.

Um,

I don't know if there's enough, and I also think if they scared people in the same way, you're going to die if you leave the house. Yeah.

People will give up their freedom for a sense of safety, I think. Yeah, I don't think it'll be enough on a national and global level, but I think if you pick the right community, I think you're right.

You're local level. I agree with you.
Yeah, so that's the importance of community. Yeah, I might be, I might have to move.
You might have to get out of Denver. It's very liberal over there.

I'm surprised you picked Denver.

Did you know there's a law in Denver now that makes misgendering a crime? It's a criminal act.

And you have this company out there? We're suing the state. Oh, you are? Yeah.

So what happens if you do that?

You literally get hit with a felony?

You can get fined. You can possibly do jail time.
Like if I was doing a, like we do in-person shops sometimes, like pop-up shops, and if some

man who thinks he's a woman came in to provoke me and I said, sir, can I help you?

He could

press charges. Wow.
For emotional distress or something. It's a crime.

That is nuts. Has someone tried like doing that to you yet? Not yet.
Wow. But even the way the law is written,

even

if you misgender in advertising, that is also a criminal and discriminatory act. Oh my God.
The premise is everybody deserves to be sort of

treated in a certain way in public. So the advertising clause, to my mind, is directed at us.
Yeah.

Because we misgender all the time, misgender, I think correctly, gender all the time in advertising and PR. Cause I use biologically correct pronouns.

Do you get transgender people messaging you all the time? Yeah.

Do you even respond or no?

No. I mean, I have one very crazy one that one day I woke up and I had,

I think there were like 300 messages on my sub stack and there were another 50 emails and they were all very violent. Wow.
And all different wording in each email.

But like, kind of, yes, but you could tell it was the same person. I took some time on those.

I don't know how they did it. I mean, they sound like the rantings of a deranged lunatic.
Like, it's like when,

yeah, it was a little scary. I mean, threatening to kill my employees,

kill our children,

slit their throats.

If you saw, you know, it's like those weird ransom notes in movies, you know, with some caps and it's like that. Yeah.
But you're only taking the stance when it comes to sports.

It's not like you hate them. I don't hate anyone.
Yeah. It's like you just don't want men and women's sports.
I don't, but I think it's important to

use proper pronouns. Yeah.
I think it's a mistake

to call Will Thomas, Leah Thomas, a she. Once you grant that, if you say this person is a woman because they think they are, then how do you say you can't come into our sports and spaces? Yeah.

It's just a matter of basic reality. You have to deal in reality.

You can dress how you want. I don't care.

But

we deserve privacy. Yeah, I think the pronoun stuff, it's not as big as it used to be, right? I feel like it used to be.
People are dropping the pronouns.

Yeah, I know certain social media platforms don't use it anymore. Yeah, they're dropping it.
But did you see, okay, there was the terrible shooting yesterday. Yeah.

So have you seen the headlines in the paper? So it came out the person identified as female. Right.
Have you been following that? I saw that, yeah. Yeah.

So all the newscasters, they're so confused, they don't want to know what to do. But as of today, most of the headlines say she.
They don't say trans? No. Huh.
That's interesting, right?

They would exclude that word when it was clearly that case. Yeah.
Yeah, she has a full, like a beard. Yeah.
And there's a lot in the manifesto and the rantings about

becoming a she. And

then there's part that says he regrets it. The whole thing is crazy, but why anyone is concerned about using the correct pronoun? This person murdered two children.

Yeah. I don't really think you get to decide what people call you then.
Yeah.

That was so traumatic for those families involved. Sorry to hear that.
And I think there's 17 that are still in the hospital.

But yeah, so

it's still a thing. I think it's not expected or required in the same way

that we all announce our pronouns.

But

in the media, they still, it's very important that you respect pronouns. Yeah, because I guess from their point of view, they could probably get sued, right?

If they missed gender? I don't know. Can they? I think it's just their style guy in Colorado.
Exactly. I don't know how many other states have that law, but I don't think any.
Oh, Colorado's only one.

Wow. You need

a new leadership over there.

Yeah, we do.

We do.

Yeah, Jared Polis is our governor. And he's pretty.
You guys have a lot. Who's your governor here?

I know it used to be Lombardi or something. I don't pay too much attention.

We're like a swing state, though. Yeah.
I think we tried bun. Yeah, we're purple because everyone from Cali's coming.
Yeah, we're very blue now. Colorado used to be a swing state.

It used to be purple. And in the last four years, it's totally blue.
Because everyone from California came. I guess so.
Yeah, thanks for

my best

they're all leaving for Texas Colorado Vegas yeah Austin is turning blue now yeah crazy see I did not bring my voting habits with me to Colorado I think that's I left them behind that's probably the exception though I feel like most people bring it with them

I guess but why would you do why would you flee to just do the same thing and get the same thing yeah that's my thought process with it but yeah it looks like Newsom's gonna make a run for it in 28 now that he's leading the polls

Nightmare. Yeah, if that happens.
He can't win. He might win the Democratic vote.
I hope he can. He could be the Democrat candidate.
I think he could win Nash. I hope Vance or whoever's running can.

Don't you think? I think the country looks at California as a total disaster. Lately, yeah.
They've handled a lot of things poorly, right?

And he's been in a leadership position in California for like almost 30 years. I mean, he was the mayor in San Francisco for a time when I was there.
How'd he do as mayor? Terrible.

Was it a big homeless issue back then, too? Yeah, and it's like three times as bad now. Yeah.
Just keeps getting worse. I can't believe all the money they got to fix homelessness went away.

Did you see that? No. California got like $5 billion or something to fix homelessness.
And what happened? No one knows where it went. Nor County.
Yeah, I can believe it. No one knows where it went.

I can believe it. Actually, the homeless numbers went up.
They've been going up for 30 years. Gavin Newsom, when he ran,

when he ran for mayor, he was going to end homelessness. Yeah.
I mean, shit, it's so expensive out there. How can you afford it? It's so bad there.
Have you been

every time I go to LA? I get robbed. My car got broken into last time.
Someone was stalking me the time before that. Like, I'm done going there.

My last six weeks in San Francisco, my car was broken into four times. Not the side window, the back window, like the one that's really, really expensive.
Oh, it costs a lot to fix.

And I leave the doors. I didn't lock the car because I just, there was nothing in it.
You know, you want to just...

Let people so they don't break but it's just vandalism. Did you have a backpack in the back seat? No, I never left anything in the backseat.
Really?

Because usually they look for a backpack or something.

Not anymore. Yeah, I made that mistake.
Do it for the vandalizing. It's just sport.
That's crazy. They're just practicing on your car.
Yeah.

There's video of people just going like car to car, smashing the windows, not even going in the car to take anything. That's crazy.
Yeah, there's a little key thing you have these days.

It's super small. You could just break a window in like two seconds.
Yeah.

That's nuts. It's a totally, it's completely unlivable.
Do you see it ever healing San Francisco back to where it used to be when you were growing up? No. That's crazy.

I don't even know what it would take to do that.

They have a new mayor. He's trying.
I don't think he can do it.

Digging too deep. Yeah.

They really fucked themselves during COVID. The entire downtown is destroyed.
So you can't have a thriving city with no downtown.

But

the offices were closed so long. I mean, the new mayor of San Francisco just now, this year, told city workers they had to go back to the office.

They've been working at home for five years and they're all pissed off. They have to go back at the office, back to the office.
So that hauled out the downtown, which means all the restaurants closed.

And then the crime got so bad because it was empty that all the retailers started leaving. So 50% of the storefronts closed downtown.

Like the big fancy retailers, Neiman Market, like all the fancy places. And the offices are still at half capacity.

So you can't have a city with no downtown i mean you can't it's not a city

it is they can't fix it yeah i heard the food's not as good anymore for me that's the main reason i travel that's the best that's the best thing about san francisco but yeah a lot of the restaurants closed they kept everything closed too long and then it just died and people left seven percent of the population left between 20 and 21 and it was all this sort of People with money.

It's really high. I'll say New York City doesn't even feel like the same.
I agree. Yeah, I just was there two weeks ago, and it's still a lot of closed locations.
I agree with that.

And the energy is not the same. I agree.
I was there too. It's still way better than San Francisco, but it's not the same.
Yeah. And look at the coincidence of leadership there.

I mean, these cities, they fucked themselves and people left. And

it just changed the, it changed everything forever. It changed the tenor of the city.
In San Francisco, there were homeless encampments that were the size right in front of City Hall.

It was the size of a couple of football fields. Jeez.
Just open-air drug use right there.

I mean,

that's not a civilized place for people to live.

I just went to San Diego last year, five-star hotel downtown. I did not feel safe.
Every time I walked outside, there was like homeless people shooting up. Yeah.
I was like, oh my God.

I had a pretty high tolerance for it, having lived in San Francisco since 1992 and growing up there, but this was

intolerable. You can't.
I mean, I caught in the last few months I was there, I called the police three times thinking somebody was dead on the street, just walking my daughter to the playground.

And they probably didn't come. They were,

well,

I called them. I didn't stay.
I'll admit. I tried to do the right thing, but I didn't necessarily want.
I mean, I couldn't answer any questions.

But it was drugs. I mean, they were passed out on the ground.
Their kit was right there. You know what it is.
But this is in a residential neighborhood. I'm walking to the playground with my daughter.

You can't raise kids like that. That's awful.
That's probably in a multi-million dollar neighborhood, too. They're all multi-million dollars.
Yeah.

I mean, honestly, in San Francisco, so

it's just, it's uncivilized. It's inhospitable.

I don't know how anyone could live there. It's going to end up being very, very rich people who live in like gated communities who never encounter that and homeless people.
Yeah.

So the no-middle class, basically. Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's the future of the U.S. I grew up middle class.
I think it's going to be wiped by the time I'm having kids. Yeah.

Certainly all the major cities are almost there already. Yeah.
I mean, even Vegas used to get good value out here. Now it's getting kind of questionable, you know?

Yeah, it's pretty brutal. Yeah.
Any major city, it's really hard to live in a decent spot these days. Yeah, there is de-urbanization happening for sure.

Because you can still have a decent life in a place like Oklahoma City. Yeah, but with all the illegals that got in, it's just like there's not enough housing, you know? Yeah.
20 million people. Yes.

They're trying to build housing in San Francisco, but they make it so hard. The Democrats have these regulations that you can never, it's the same in L.A.
Yep. You just can't build the housing.

You got to wait a year, I think, to build on average. I think it's longer.
18 months? It's a long time. Which by the time you wait that long, you're losing money.

There was a famous story in San Francisco because they have these public toilets on Market Street. And I think one toilet cost a million dollars to build.
What?

Because of all the city, like ridiculous regulation and stuff. And some guy was like, some contractor was like, I could build you a toilet for like $20,000.

dollars yeah a million dollars for a million dollar toilet and they're downtown so basically they just get used for homeless people to shoot up in wow it's terrible it's not it's not a good place to live

well um this was an interesting episode i didn't mean to get so dark on people but sorry we could talk about something more cheerful if you want yeah and well what what's been uh brightening your day lately i guess

I am,

that's a good question. Well, my four children always brighten my day, but I think everybody should have more children, more kids, more love.

I think I guess I feel hopeful. I feel like we're making progress on the issue I care about, which is keeping women's sports and spaces for women.

I mean, I care about other things, but I definitely care about that. But I think we shouldn't be complacent because

it's still happening everywhere. And people do it now just to push back on Trump.

Yeah.

Is this a worldwide issue or is this mainly U.S.? It's worldwide. It's worldwide.
Yeah. Wow.
It's worldwide.

Well, you saw at the Olympics last summer, there was two men, two males that won gold in the boxing ring. Yeah, gold and silver, right? But so here's a good development.

World Boxing, there's a new organization leading boxing now.

They have announced that they are going to test for sex. Really? Which they should.
How do they test that? It's a cheek swap. And it tells you if you're a guy or a girl.
Yeah. Wow.

It's much less invasive than drug testing, which they do.

And drug testing, you have to do at every competition, obviously, because you can stop and start. The sex test, you get once at the beginning of your athletic career, and it's done.

So World Boxing has announced that they will test for sex. So Amani Khalif, who's the male who won,

has said he's refusing.

Yeah, that's how he makes a living. She, she makes a living.
Or wait, he?

He, right? He makes a living.

He has refused.

He thinks he's saying it's too invasive. It's an invasion of privacy.
A streak swab is too invasive. Yep.
You can even do it not a swab. You could just spit in a cup.
Yeah, that's too invasive for

that person.

That's crazy. He will not be boxing until they eliminate the tests.
Is that the Olympics or is that a different league?

Well, it's the Olympic movement. So, yeah.
So world boxing, there's like individual sport governing bodies. So only boxing and track and field have said they are going to test for sex.

So you think in the 28 Olympics in LA that we could potentially see some males and female sports? Or do you think by then it'll be banned? Well, the U.S.

Olympic Committee has said no, men and women's sport. The international, it's such a boring, complicated landscape, but the International Olympic Committee has not said that.

So we'll see. We got to look at who funds them.

You always follow the money is what I tell people. Yeah.

You know?

It's true.

There's a new head of the IOC, the International Olympic Committee. She says she cares about protecting women's sports.
She's, as of yet, done nothing. That's not good.
No. They're all afraid.

They're such cowards. It's easy to talk, too.
You know what I mean? It's easy to talk a big game and then push comes to shove.

Well, you remember just a few months ago, Gavin Newsom, when he was talking with Charlie Kirk, said, I think it's deeply unfair for males to compete in girls' sports. Yeah.
And then he did nothing.

No, then he sued the federal government to allow him to continue letting boys to compete in girls' sports in California.

I wonder if that was because he hates Trump or if he actually believes in it, though. He doesn't believe in anything.
That's the vibe I get. I think he's he is so slimy.

He'll take whatever side that he thinks is popular.

Yeah, and he's afraid of the loud, bullying activist minority,

the gender ideologues.

He's afraid of them. Even though the majority of his state, 70% of the people in California,

support Trump's executive order on this. Really? 70%.
80% nationally, but most people are silent. 70%.
Because

you get dragged for saying something so simple as men can't become women. For real?

For me, it's like that's so common sense.

I mean, I've said, I've taken some stands before and I've suffered the consequences. This is madness.
This is the most controversial stance you've taken. The threat?

No, I mean, COVID probably was more

saying open the schools and don't lock down in March of 2020, but the violent threats directed at me for this are way more intense. Well, that's because it's a mental health issue.

That's a good point. Everyone I've met that's like done the procedure, they don't seem like they have a good head on their shoulders.
Also, because they're on a ton of drugs and stuff, too.

I don't know how anybody could think that we could pump people full of wrong sex hormones and that that wouldn't have any sort of impact on their mental state and well-being.

The only one I had a really good conversation with was uh Blair White, if you know her, her, him, I always

her, right?

Well, him, him,

well, Blair White, him started as a man, right, is still a man. So, yeah, Blair was, I thought he was pretty reasonable, but that's about it.

I can't think of anyone else. Yeah.

You've probably talked to hundreds of them at this point. Yeah, I mean, I don't care how reasonable it is.
It's like

I sort of feel like the quote-unquote reasonable ones give cover to the 90% that's completely unreasonable.

Okay.

It's all mental illness. I think most of it is, if not all.

I mean, do you really believe there's such a thing as being born in the wrong body? I don't believe it. Maybe being gay, but wrong body, that's tough.
Yeah, there's no such thing.

There's no evidence that someone could be born in the wrong body.

I mean, I think the, you know, there are some people who present as female that were born male that will say, I have a psychological disorder. I feel more comfortable presenting this way.
Yeah.

Fine. That doesn't mean I need to let

men into women's locker rooms. I missed the innocent days when I was growing up with like tom girls and we thought tom boys or whatever, and we thought that was cool.

Well, that's what's so fucked up about this whole thing is it's so retrograde in terms of gender stereotypes. Because when children are, you know,

now in the culture, in the public schools, this is a good reason for you not to send your kid to public schools.

There's all of this ideology taught. And if a little boy presents as feminine and he likes dolls and he has feminine characteristics and mannerisms.
He will be asked, Do you think you're a girl?

I mean, I grew up thinking, wanting a broader definition of what you could be if you were a girl. I was a tomboy.
I'm very competitive. I'm ambitious.

Those are characteristics that are sort of considered more male.

I feel like today I would be sort of pushed in that direction. 100%.
So it definitely targets the gay kids. Yeah.
Yeah. It makes the gay kids confused, right?

Really?

I mean, a lot of the older, I mean, I'm Gen X, the older gay people I know, the gay men, they say they're so grateful they didn't, they're not growing up now because they were feminine little boys and they would have been sort of ushered down this path and told they were trans.

100%. And some medicalized.
Yeah. And some states will even pay for the surgery, right?

California. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, they, they're, they are trans sanctuary cities.
That's what they call themselves.

You know, in New York, if Mom Donnie wins, he wants to make New York City a sanctuary city for trans and pay for all. You could go there, underage people,

and he would pay for the hormones and the surgery. That's disgusting.
And it looks like he's going to win, too. I think he is going to win.
Yeah, it's looking like he's going to win that.

That is disgusting. New York City is going to be a shit show if that happens.
It's going to be a shit show.

It's going to be such a shit show in so many ways. That city.
Maybe that's what has to happen. That's such a shame.
Cause growing up in Jersey, I really like like used to look up to New York City.

I got

inspired. Went there all the time and you were in North Jersey.
So

yeah, it although there is a part of me that's like, he's not going to get any of that stuff done that he's saying. Hopefully not.
He's not going to get free buses and free grocery stores or public.

What are the grocery stores? Yeah, you walk in and take whatever you want and leave.

So I feel like he can't get it done either. Yeah, because the mayor really doesn't have too much power, I guess.
No, I mean, he should be in charge of sanitation, public transportation. Yeah.

Hopefully, you can make that better. Public schools.
Right now, it costs 50 bucks just to go to New York with all the tolls and everything. It's insane.
Well, they did all that surge pricing. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't think he's very focused on the sanitation and public transportation improvement or safety.
I mean, they are in charge of that.

Don't see too many safety things going on there. No, he wants to defund.
He's a defund the police guy. Are you serious? Yeah.
Oh, my God.

That's crazy. How is this guy even winning? He wants more social workers.
It's all of the,

it's all of the like

upper class young people.

He did not win in the working class boroughs, but the upper class people, the elite educated people, feel they know what's better for those people.

He didn't win in Staten Island and

the Bronx. Those are the two more working class boroughs.
That's interesting. Everywhere else, he won, especially with young people.
That is interesting.

He did, you got to give it to him, did a really good social media campaign. Everybody says it, yeah.
I have two kids that live there. They said they like him.

I mean, I see him every day, and I live in Vegas. Like, he just went nationwide with it.
I feel like he caused a raucous. Oh, you do see it every day.
You just don't so show up. I did, yeah.

I guess I do, too. Exactly, right? You don't really see that with mayor races usually, no matter what city.
No, although I guess it's New York.

i guess new york is it's a bigger market but even so i never saw any new york mayor stuff until him to be honest

yeah i i was just thinking back during covid you had cuomo doing he wasn't the mayor he was the governor but do you remember he was doing those daily briefings yeah he did a briefing every day remember there were people wanting him to run for president yeah the cuomosexuals yep that fell off quick yeah

well all that sexual harassment and killing of old people yeah he yeah he didn't really retain

Although

he ran too. Mom Donnie beat him.
Yeah, pretty easily, too. Handily.
Yeah.

Well, Jennifer, this has been great. We'll link your clothing line in the video.
Awesome. Anything else you want to close off with?

I don't think so. Cool.
Well, thanks for coming. We'll link your socials as well.
And I'll see you at AmericaFest. I'll be there.
We'll be there with the booth. Awesome.
See you guys. Peace.

I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe.
It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.