The Karol Markowicz Show: Brittany Hughes: The Disturbing Culture Behind the Lindsay Clancy Reaction
September 2, 2026 • 20 mins
Conservative commentator and podcaster Brittany Hughes joins Karol Markowicz to discuss motherhood, faith, the culture wars, and what she sees as troubling changes taking place in American society.
Hughes shares her journey from small-town newspaper reporter to political journalism and digital media, and explains why becoming a wife and mother shifted her focus toward cultural issues affecting families and children. She and Karol also discuss how women can pursue meaningful careers while prioritizing family — and why “having it all” doesn't necessarily mean having everything at the same time.
Then, the conversation turns to the Lindsay Clancy trial and the reaction it has generated online. Hughes and Karol examine why some women have publicly identified with or defended Clancy, the difference between acknowledging the difficulties of motherhood and romanticizing extreme behavior, and what the reaction may reveal about attitudes toward motherhood, mental health, and victimhood in the social-media era.
Hughes also sounds the alarm over growing sympathy for socialism and communism among younger Americans, while expressing optimism about the energy she sees among young conservatives. She explains why she believes Americans may need to see some of these political ideas fail in practice before attitudes begin to change.
Finally, Hughes shares the principle she believes can most profoundly improve a person's life: surrendering to Jesus Christ, finding joy through faith, and pursuing a purpose greater than temporary happiness.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Brittany Hughes, conservative commentator and podcaster.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi, Brittany. So nice to have you on. Hi, Carol.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So I only recently started following you and I thought
you were super interesting and I was like, I have
to have her on my show. But I have to admit,
I don't know that much about you. So tell me
about yourself. How did you get into this thing of ours.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Oh, my goodness. That is more of a God story
than a me story, honestly.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
So I got my start really in college as a journalist,
just kind of fell in love with it. Writing for
the student newspaper was something that I just had time
to do and thought it was interesting and immediately knew
that I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Something in that space.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
And so a couple of years out of college, I
ended up landing a job at a newspaper, if you
can believe it.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I know we like don't even know what those things
are anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
It was printed up and delivered to people's doors and
it was this whole big crazy thing.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
And it was in this.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Small little town in southern Virginia. And I was the
business and politics reporter. And I also covered.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Uranium, if you can believe it. There's like a uranium
deposit there. It's very interesting.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
And just absolutely fell in love with it.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
You would not believe the kind of mess and corruption
that can actually go down in a small town.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Of 50,000 people. Where was the small town?
Speaker 4 (01:38):
It was Danville, Virginia, right on the border of North Carolina.
Like you went 15 minutes south and you were in
North Carolina. And it was it was so much fun.
And I absolutely loved it. And after about a year there,
I knew I wanted to make my.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Way to D.C. because that's like.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
That's like the place to go. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
You know, and so I ended up coming across a
job posting for the Media Research Center, which I currently
am still. And I thought there's absolutely no way that
these people are going to ever pick my resume out
of a lineup.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
But I'll just apply, see what happens.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
It was for an investigative reporter covering Capitol Hill, which
as a small town newspaper reporter, that's like that's not
the jump that you make.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Right, right. Yes.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
And so I just threw it out there. And a
couple of days later, I got a call.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
And I ended up coming up for an interview and
landing that job. And I mean, just completely out of nowhere.
And after about a year in that position, I made
the shift to multimedia. Social media was just kind of
becoming a thing. Video platforms were becoming a thing. And
I thought, well, hey, instead of just writing things, maybe
(02:52):
I can say it. And that's where we started doing videos.
And it just kind of took off from there.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So what kind of topics do you feel like are
your beat?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Do you have something in specific that you like to cover?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So that's actually kind of changed over the years.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
So the first the first things that I covered were
primarily strictly political, you know, lots of immigration. I spent
time at the border as an investigative journalist. And so
I felt like I had a lot of things to
say in that space. Very strongly pro-life. That's always been
a topic and a passion of mine. But then as
I've kind of grown and as I became a wife
(03:31):
and I became a mother and Cultural topics really started
to become of even more interest to me, especially how
they intersect with parenting and raising kids in this absolutely
insane world. And so I think that if you kind
of look, I've gravitated more in that direction over the
past few years because I think that's incredibly important.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
And is your audience responsive to that change? Like, do
they expect more like Capitol Hill coverage from you or
is it or are they happy with your cultural shift?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
No, I think they're absolutely happy.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
I mean, the growth that I have seen over my
social media pages over even just the last year has
been really quite astronomical. I think people care about political topics.
It's not that they're not important. They absolutely are. People
care about the economy. They care about immigration.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Deeply, they do.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
But a lot of the cultural things, particularly with this
push on the left towards just more and more radical positions,
they're starting to see the effects of those things in
their own lives and the stores that they go to
and the things.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
That their kids are watching. That's a war that is.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Currently being waged in people's homes. And so people definitely
want to hear about that.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Do you have something specific in the cultural wars that you.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Like to target?
Speaker 4 (04:50):
That kind of depends on the week and sort of
what the hot button issue is. There's not a whole
lot of things that I'm not going to have an
opinion on, honestly. Obviously, the push to erase womanhood and
the push to just make this insane space.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Out of gender and confusing children is.
Incredibly deeply impactful.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
I have a son, I have a daughter, and trying
to navigate that as a parent, I mean, we've already
come up against, just in my own personal life, having
to talk.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
To my four-year-old in preschool because.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
there was a child in class who seemed to be
exploring whether he was a different gender. How do you
explain that to your four year old? If I don't
understand it, how in the world is she going to
understand it?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Right.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
So, you know, those kinds of things, again, as they
start to impact you personally and you start to realize, look,
we need to have these conversations. You know, I think
that's kind of where I've been going over the past
couple of years.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Did you always want to be in journalism? Like when
you were a child or a teenager?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
When I was a child, I wanted to be a
pop star.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I mean, okay.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Nobody, nobody needs that. I'll just put it, I'll just
put it that way. Nobody's asking for that. I think
I've definitely found my bent in another direction. Um, So
I think that after I started writing in college is
where I really decided that that's what I wanted to do.
I originally went to college to study pre-law and for
an abundance of reasons, just decided that that was not
(06:30):
the track. And I graduated with a degree in English.
And I remember thinking, you know, I loved journalism. At
the same time, I wasn't quite sure exactly where I
wanted to take that because thinking ahead... I remember thinking,
I don't really want to start a career that if
I end up having a family later, I'm either going
to have to put it all aside or I'm going
(06:52):
to have to go whole hog into it and never
see my family. And so really the amazing thing about
the track that my life has taken is the ability
to do it from home, which was always a really
important thing to me.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I did a.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Fellowship at Hillsdale like two years ago and I taught
a class of college kids and all the women were asking,
how do you find a job that lets you balance
family and work? I think conservatives need to be ready
with some answers to that because it is very much
also like the women were asking that.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Men were not like, hey, how do I find a
job to work from home? It's just different. But women
want to be home with their kids, but they also
want careers. And it's a time in our history where
that's very possible.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I wish conservatives would kind of talked about that more
to young women.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Do you feel like that?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Absolutely. And I definitely think that where there's a will,
there's a way.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
What I always tell women, because I've had multiple women
ask me, how in the world is it that you
have a career, but you get to.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Work from home? And that has to, first of all,
it has to be intentional.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
You have to know that that's what you want and
you have to make intentional moves in that direction. Now,
you know, the way that it has worked in my
life is there's definitely things that God has brought about
in my life that I can take no credit or
responsibility for. But I did set my feet on a
path for a reason. My husband and I, we made
a decision very early on. This is what we wanted
(08:24):
life to look like. At the same time, if you
do want a career, if you do want to do
something with a degree that I know you worked very
hard for and don't necessarily just want to like leave
it in a pile of dust in a room somewhere.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
You can absolutely find that.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
The other thing I tell women, though, is you can
have it all, but you might not be able to
have it all at once. What a career may look
like in the space when your kids are younger, maybe part-time,
it may be flexible hours. It might not be quite
the money that you would want to make. There may
be elements of it that are not just a whole hog,
(09:00):
a hundred percent, you know, pedal to the metal career,
but you, you can have that.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
You just have to.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Make choices on where your priorities are and where you're
going to put your eggs, so to say.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
What would you be doing if this hadn't worked out?
If MRC hadn't picked your.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Resume out of the pile, what would have been a
plan B?
Speaker 4 (09:21):
That's kind of a harder question because really I've never
spent a whole lot of time thinking about that. My
life follows a plan that was definitely written by somebody
much bigger than me. I know that I was supposed
to get that job. I know that I was supposed
to meet my husband. I know that I was supposed
to have the children that I had. So I don't
think I spend a lot of time thinking about what
(09:43):
I would have done. I did spend a lot of
time thinking about, OK, you know, if I can't work
from home, if this doesn't work out or if I
have to make a choice between family and career, I
can tell you what I would probably be doing is
I would just I would be a stay at home mom,
at least in this stage of my life. I'm very
(10:05):
blessed that I get to do what I do, though,
and to do both.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It's it's very cool.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I love that you phrase it like that, that it
was your it was the path you were supposed to
be on and that God put you here.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And that's just the way it is.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
It's just it's a very interesting answer, because I mean,
people how they have plan B is they're like, oh,
if this hadn't worked out, I would have done this.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
This hadn't worked out. I would have done this. But
you're like, you know, this was the way it was
supposed to be. And I really love the way you
phrase that.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
I'm not, I'm not sure how else I would even
look at it because thinking back, I'm not sure I,
I'm not sure I had a plan B.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I think I just had whatever the next step was
going to be.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah. What are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
My kids.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
100%.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
That's, not even close.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
My kids are the coolest thing that has ever happened
to me. I think that's what's made a lot of
the discourse over the past week or two so incredibly
different or difficult. The internet, for as much time as
I spend on it, because of what I do, as
obviously you know, because you're in much the same space,
it can be a very dark and discouraging place.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
You mean the Clancy trial, right?
Speaker 4 (11:15):
The Clancy trial, but also really not even the Clancy trial.
It's where it went on social media. I think that
you can absolutely have questions concerning that case, concerning, you know,
the legality of, you know, what is insanity? How do
you go about determining that? What is the jury being
asked to do? All of those things. But where it
(11:37):
went on social media was so many women just actively
disparaging motherhood and making it seem like this total nightmare
that you get dragged into and that you have to
like gut your way out throughout the day and it's
so sad for me to watch that and I wish
that I could reach out to women like that and
and you know what is going on in your life
(11:58):
that makes you feel that way because yeah there's some
hard days like I'm not gonna lie my son went
through a heck of a sleep regression around month five
and I mean I don't know seeing pink unicorns or
whatever like you can go through that but I mean
my kids are the greatest joy and the greatest joy
(12:18):
to their dad and they are hands down if they
do if they do something that makes my life absolutely
pale in comparison that is the proudest I will ever be.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
You're so right where the internet and just the general
grotesque behavior around this trial has been surprising to even, I,
you know, I've been around for a while. I've seen
some really terrible things. Um, and this was really something
unique in its awfulness because it also comes on the
heels of like, um, you know, the shooting of Brian
(12:51):
Thompson and, and, uh, his killer becoming a celebrity and,
and all of that. And it's like, what is going
on with our society, especially with women, that these women
are standing outside of Luigi's courthouse, Mangione's courthouse, or outside
Clancy's courthouse, and saying that they're on the murderer's side,
(13:12):
like something deep and dark is going on. And Look, again,
like you said, did I have three kids?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Was it hard when they were little?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Like, do my husband and I have a joke where
I would text him and be like, come get your children?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And I think we've all texted that at some point
or another.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
But it's like, I still would never forget about me
harming them. I would never celebrate or even understand somebody
harming their own children. Like you can't handle your kids.
give them up for adoption, you know, give them to
a family member. Like the idea that like, oh, she
had no choice but to kill, murder her own children.
(13:51):
It's just, it's so sick.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
And it's scary that this is where we are.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
And I think it's sick when you look at her case,
in isolation, it's even more sick when you look at
the number of women that I can't even say are
saying that they relate to her. I mean, you're talking
about a defense of postpartum psychosis, right? Bipolar, over medication,
all of this stuff. You know, that's not something that
the average woman I don't think can relate to. Can
(14:18):
we relate to postpartum struggles, maybe even postpartum depression?
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
But you're talking about deep psychological issues, if you believe her, right,
that she was supposedly struggling with. I think my question
is not so much why do you think you can
relate to her? It's why do you want to be
able to relate to her? Why is this a trend?
This is the new me too. It's really a baffling phenomenon.
And I think what you're seeing with a lot of women,
particularly more left-leaning white women, but I think it can
(14:45):
happen to pretty much any woman, is you have all
of this God designed very natural maternal empathy and compassion
and the desire to nurture and the desire to soothe.
And I think where that's being misdirected, you see it,
whether it's, you know, fighting ice in the street in
defense of, you know, an illegal alien child predator or
(15:06):
the Luigi Mangione's or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
You know, whatever.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
It's this misdirected mothering instinct that makes them think they
have identified a victim of an oppressive system that they
now have to go fight for. And it's a natural
instinct that's being twisted in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
That's absolutely right. Brittany, give us a five-year-out prediction.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
How do you think things are going to go? It
could be about anything, art, music, the world, politics, anything
you want.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
You know, I think that generally speaking, particularly with what
we've been discussing and the things that I tend to
the things that I tend to do my.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Videos on, you.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
I don't mean to be a negative Nancy, because I
do think there's light at the end of the tunnel.
I think that things may have to get worse before
they get better.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
I'm deeply concerned about.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
The rise of socialist sympathies and outright communist sympathies among
many people, particularly the younger generation. I think that a
lot of our higher education institutions have become breeding grounds
for just really terrible things. channels of thought. And so
I'm very concerned about what I see and the fact
(16:22):
that we are so incredibly divided. I mean, as the
Bible says, a house divided against itself cannot stand, right?
There's no way for people to be going in two
opposite directions and yet continue together. At the same time,
I have been so incredibly encouraged by what I've seen
among conservative young people and the passion and the energy
(16:43):
they have for their principles. And they're willing to put
action behind that. And so I definitely think that we
are we're in for a bit of a slog. But
if any country can come through with resilience, it's the
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
So is the prediction things get worse before they get better.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
I think in the next five years, I think that
we're going to have to continue to see flirtations with
socialism and watch it fail abysmally in order for people
to recognize what it is. Because right now, if you
ask young people, what is socialism? What is communism? They're
giving a very idyllic answer that really... is not at
all true at all. And so we're going to have
(17:25):
to look at places like New York City and see
how it all falls apart and be able to point
to that.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
And I think education there is going to be the key.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
There was a joke, like.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
A woman said, socialism is I get to tend my
garden and not go to work or something like that.
And your garden, comrade, you know, they don't really know
what it is. It's not what they think it is.
I also sometimes think this about the right, though, that
I think that a lot of the populist stuff and I,
you know, some of it I approve of, but like
(18:00):
a lot of the economic stuff doesn't make sense either.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
It's it's like.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I want more of an explanation of what people are
trying to say with it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Well, I mean, I'll give you a prime example.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
One of the things that I think doesn't really make
a whole lot of sense to me is the people
on the right who are particularly isolationist. I'm not saying
that there is not merit to a conversation about how
much money we should be sending overseas or, you know,
should we be protecting our interests before we worry about
everybody else's.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I'm talking about this idea that we exist unto ourselves
to the total exclusion of the rest of the world.
And that's just simply not how the planet works. And
so again, I think that when you have these ideas
in your head, but they're not really thought through to
a logical conclusion or weighed against history, that's where you
start getting in trouble.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
Brittany, I have loved this conversation. And where could people
find you? So you can find me over on X.
I've still call it Twitter half the time, but over
at Real Britt Hughes.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
I'm also on Facebook and Instagram under Real Britt Hughes
and I'm over at mrctv.org.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
If there was one thing that I could tell you
that will vastly improve your life above all else, it
is to surrender it to Jesus Christ, 100%. You can
try to get through your life just winging it and
doing the best you can and hoping that it all
works out. But when you turn your life over to
(19:41):
the Lord, he is going to do something with it
that is so much bigger, so much more impactful, so
much more beyond your wild dreams.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You could never do it yourself.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
So as long as you're following his path for you
and not just whatever your instincts are, you know, you
hear all the time, follow your own happiness. Well, happiness
is fleeting. Happiness can be attached to all kinds of
trivial things. That's not joy. Joy comes from following his
purpose for you. And it's an eternal purpose that extends
just beyond this life. So that that's that's where you start.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Everything else on top of that's going to be gravy.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
That's beautiful. She is Brittany Hughes. Thank you so much
for coming on. I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Thanks for having me.
Hi, welcome back to the Carol Markowitz show on iHeartRadio.
My guest today is Brittany Hughes, conservative commentator and podcaster.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi, Brittany. So nice to have you on. Hi, Carol.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So I only recently started following you and I thought
you were super interesting and I was like, I have
to have her on my show. But I have to admit,
I don't know that much about you. So tell me
about yourself. How did you get into this thing of ours.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Oh, my goodness. That is more of a God story
than a me story, honestly.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
So I got my start really in college as a journalist,
just kind of fell in love with it. Writing for
the student newspaper was something that I just had time
to do and thought it was interesting and immediately knew
that I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Something in that space.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
And so a couple of years out of college, I
ended up landing a job at a newspaper, if you
can believe it.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I know we like don't even know what those things
are anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
It was printed up and delivered to people's doors and
it was this whole big crazy thing.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
And it was in this.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Small little town in southern Virginia. And I was the
business and politics reporter. And I also covered.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Uranium, if you can believe it. There's like a uranium
deposit there. It's very interesting.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
And just absolutely fell in love with it.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
You would not believe the kind of mess and corruption
that can actually go down in a small town.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Of 50,000 people. Where was the small town?
Speaker 4 (01:38):
It was Danville, Virginia, right on the border of North Carolina.
Like you went 15 minutes south and you were in
North Carolina. And it was it was so much fun.
And I absolutely loved it. And after about a year there,
I knew I wanted to make my.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Way to D.C. because that's like.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
That's like the place to go. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
You know, and so I ended up coming across a
job posting for the Media Research Center, which I currently
am still. And I thought there's absolutely no way that
these people are going to ever pick my resume out
of a lineup.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
But I'll just apply, see what happens.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
It was for an investigative reporter covering Capitol Hill, which
as a small town newspaper reporter, that's like that's not
the jump that you make.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Right, right. Yes.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
And so I just threw it out there. And a
couple of days later, I got a call.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
And I ended up coming up for an interview and
landing that job. And I mean, just completely out of nowhere.
And after about a year in that position, I made
the shift to multimedia. Social media was just kind of
becoming a thing. Video platforms were becoming a thing. And
I thought, well, hey, instead of just writing things, maybe
(02:52):
I can say it. And that's where we started doing videos.
And it just kind of took off from there.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
So what kind of topics do you feel like are
your beat?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Do you have something in specific that you like to cover?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
So that's actually kind of changed over the years.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
So the first the first things that I covered were
primarily strictly political, you know, lots of immigration. I spent
time at the border as an investigative journalist. And so
I felt like I had a lot of things to
say in that space. Very strongly pro-life. That's always been
a topic and a passion of mine. But then as
I've kind of grown and as I became a wife
(03:31):
and I became a mother and Cultural topics really started
to become of even more interest to me, especially how
they intersect with parenting and raising kids in this absolutely
insane world. And so I think that if you kind
of look, I've gravitated more in that direction over the
past few years because I think that's incredibly important.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
And is your audience responsive to that change? Like, do
they expect more like Capitol Hill coverage from you or
is it or are they happy with your cultural shift?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
No, I think they're absolutely happy.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
I mean, the growth that I have seen over my
social media pages over even just the last year has
been really quite astronomical. I think people care about political topics.
It's not that they're not important. They absolutely are. People
care about the economy. They care about immigration.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Deeply, they do.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
But a lot of the cultural things, particularly with this
push on the left towards just more and more radical positions,
they're starting to see the effects of those things in
their own lives and the stores that they go to
and the things.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
That their kids are watching. That's a war that is.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Currently being waged in people's homes. And so people definitely
want to hear about that.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Do you have something specific in the cultural wars that you.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Like to target?
Speaker 4 (04:50):
That kind of depends on the week and sort of
what the hot button issue is. There's not a whole
lot of things that I'm not going to have an
opinion on, honestly. Obviously, the push to erase womanhood and
the push to just make this insane space.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Out of gender and confusing children is.
Incredibly deeply impactful.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
I have a son, I have a daughter, and trying
to navigate that as a parent, I mean, we've already
come up against, just in my own personal life, having
to talk.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
To my four-year-old in preschool because.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
there was a child in class who seemed to be
exploring whether he was a different gender. How do you
explain that to your four year old? If I don't
understand it, how in the world is she going to
understand it?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Right.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
So, you know, those kinds of things, again, as they
start to impact you personally and you start to realize, look,
we need to have these conversations. You know, I think
that's kind of where I've been going over the past
couple of years.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Did you always want to be in journalism? Like when
you were a child or a teenager?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
When I was a child, I wanted to be a
pop star.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I mean, okay.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Nobody, nobody needs that. I'll just put it, I'll just
put it that way. Nobody's asking for that. I think
I've definitely found my bent in another direction. Um, So
I think that after I started writing in college is
where I really decided that that's what I wanted to do.
I originally went to college to study pre-law and for
an abundance of reasons, just decided that that was not
(06:30):
the track. And I graduated with a degree in English.
And I remember thinking, you know, I loved journalism. At
the same time, I wasn't quite sure exactly where I
wanted to take that because thinking ahead... I remember thinking,
I don't really want to start a career that if
I end up having a family later, I'm either going
to have to put it all aside or I'm going
(06:52):
to have to go whole hog into it and never
see my family. And so really the amazing thing about
the track that my life has taken is the ability
to do it from home, which was always a really
important thing to me.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I did a.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Fellowship at Hillsdale like two years ago and I taught
a class of college kids and all the women were asking,
how do you find a job that lets you balance
family and work? I think conservatives need to be ready
with some answers to that because it is very much
also like the women were asking that.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Men were not like, hey, how do I find a
job to work from home? It's just different. But women
want to be home with their kids, but they also
want careers. And it's a time in our history where
that's very possible.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I wish conservatives would kind of talked about that more
to young women.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Do you feel like that?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Absolutely. And I definitely think that where there's a will,
there's a way.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
What I always tell women, because I've had multiple women
ask me, how in the world is it that you
have a career, but you get to.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Work from home? And that has to, first of all,
it has to be intentional.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
You have to know that that's what you want and
you have to make intentional moves in that direction. Now,
you know, the way that it has worked in my
life is there's definitely things that God has brought about
in my life that I can take no credit or
responsibility for. But I did set my feet on a
path for a reason. My husband and I, we made
a decision very early on. This is what we wanted
(08:24):
life to look like. At the same time, if you
do want a career, if you do want to do
something with a degree that I know you worked very
hard for and don't necessarily just want to like leave
it in a pile of dust in a room somewhere.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
You can absolutely find that.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
The other thing I tell women, though, is you can
have it all, but you might not be able to
have it all at once. What a career may look
like in the space when your kids are younger, maybe part-time,
it may be flexible hours. It might not be quite
the money that you would want to make. There may
be elements of it that are not just a whole hog,
(09:00):
a hundred percent, you know, pedal to the metal career,
but you, you can have that.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
You just have to.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Make choices on where your priorities are and where you're
going to put your eggs, so to say.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
What would you be doing if this hadn't worked out?
If MRC hadn't picked your.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Resume out of the pile, what would have been a
plan B?
Speaker 4 (09:21):
That's kind of a harder question because really I've never
spent a whole lot of time thinking about that. My
life follows a plan that was definitely written by somebody
much bigger than me. I know that I was supposed
to get that job. I know that I was supposed
to meet my husband. I know that I was supposed
to have the children that I had. So I don't
think I spend a lot of time thinking about what
(09:43):
I would have done. I did spend a lot of
time thinking about, OK, you know, if I can't work
from home, if this doesn't work out or if I
have to make a choice between family and career, I
can tell you what I would probably be doing is
I would just I would be a stay at home mom,
at least in this stage of my life. I'm very
(10:05):
blessed that I get to do what I do, though,
and to do both.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
It's it's very cool.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I love that you phrase it like that, that it
was your it was the path you were supposed to
be on and that God put you here.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
And that's just the way it is.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
It's just it's a very interesting answer, because I mean,
people how they have plan B is they're like, oh,
if this hadn't worked out, I would have done this.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
This hadn't worked out. I would have done this. But
you're like, you know, this was the way it was
supposed to be. And I really love the way you
phrase that.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
I'm not, I'm not sure how else I would even
look at it because thinking back, I'm not sure I,
I'm not sure I had a plan B.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
I think I just had whatever the next step was
going to be.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah. What are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
My kids.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
100%.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
That's, not even close.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
My kids are the coolest thing that has ever happened
to me. I think that's what's made a lot of
the discourse over the past week or two so incredibly
different or difficult. The internet, for as much time as
I spend on it, because of what I do, as
obviously you know, because you're in much the same space,
it can be a very dark and discouraging place.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
You mean the Clancy trial, right?
Speaker 4 (11:15):
The Clancy trial, but also really not even the Clancy trial.
It's where it went on social media. I think that
you can absolutely have questions concerning that case, concerning, you know,
the legality of, you know, what is insanity? How do
you go about determining that? What is the jury being
asked to do? All of those things. But where it
(11:37):
went on social media was so many women just actively
disparaging motherhood and making it seem like this total nightmare
that you get dragged into and that you have to
like gut your way out throughout the day and it's
so sad for me to watch that and I wish
that I could reach out to women like that and
and you know what is going on in your life
(11:58):
that makes you feel that way because yeah there's some
hard days like I'm not gonna lie my son went
through a heck of a sleep regression around month five
and I mean I don't know seeing pink unicorns or
whatever like you can go through that but I mean
my kids are the greatest joy and the greatest joy
(12:18):
to their dad and they are hands down if they
do if they do something that makes my life absolutely
pale in comparison that is the proudest I will ever be.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
You're so right where the internet and just the general
grotesque behavior around this trial has been surprising to even, I,
you know, I've been around for a while. I've seen
some really terrible things. Um, and this was really something
unique in its awfulness because it also comes on the
heels of like, um, you know, the shooting of Brian
(12:51):
Thompson and, and, uh, his killer becoming a celebrity and,
and all of that. And it's like, what is going
on with our society, especially with women, that these women
are standing outside of Luigi's courthouse, Mangione's courthouse, or outside
Clancy's courthouse, and saying that they're on the murderer's side,
(13:12):
like something deep and dark is going on. And Look, again,
like you said, did I have three kids?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Was it hard when they were little?
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Like, do my husband and I have a joke where
I would text him and be like, come get your children?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
And I think we've all texted that at some point
or another.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
But it's like, I still would never forget about me
harming them. I would never celebrate or even understand somebody
harming their own children. Like you can't handle your kids.
give them up for adoption, you know, give them to
a family member. Like the idea that like, oh, she
had no choice but to kill, murder her own children.
(13:51):
It's just, it's so sick.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
And it's scary that this is where we are.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah, it is.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
And I think it's sick when you look at her case,
in isolation, it's even more sick when you look at
the number of women that I can't even say are
saying that they relate to her. I mean, you're talking
about a defense of postpartum psychosis, right? Bipolar, over medication,
all of this stuff. You know, that's not something that
the average woman I don't think can relate to. Can
(14:18):
we relate to postpartum struggles, maybe even postpartum depression?
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
But you're talking about deep psychological issues, if you believe her, right,
that she was supposedly struggling with. I think my question
is not so much why do you think you can
relate to her? It's why do you want to be
able to relate to her? Why is this a trend?
This is the new me too. It's really a baffling phenomenon.
And I think what you're seeing with a lot of women,
particularly more left-leaning white women, but I think it can
(14:45):
happen to pretty much any woman, is you have all
of this God designed very natural maternal empathy and compassion
and the desire to nurture and the desire to soothe.
And I think where that's being misdirected, you see it,
whether it's, you know, fighting ice in the street in
defense of, you know, an illegal alien child predator or
(15:06):
the Luigi Mangione's or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
You know, whatever.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
It's this misdirected mothering instinct that makes them think they
have identified a victim of an oppressive system that they
now have to go fight for. And it's a natural
instinct that's being twisted in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
That's absolutely right. Brittany, give us a five-year-out prediction.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
How do you think things are going to go? It
could be about anything, art, music, the world, politics, anything
you want.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
You know, I think that generally speaking, particularly with what
we've been discussing and the things that I tend to
the things that I tend to do my.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Videos on, you.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
I don't mean to be a negative Nancy, because I
do think there's light at the end of the tunnel.
I think that things may have to get worse before
they get better.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
I'm deeply concerned about.
Speaker 4 (15:59):
The rise of socialist sympathies and outright communist sympathies among
many people, particularly the younger generation. I think that a
lot of our higher education institutions have become breeding grounds
for just really terrible things. channels of thought. And so
I'm very concerned about what I see and the fact
(16:22):
that we are so incredibly divided. I mean, as the
Bible says, a house divided against itself cannot stand, right?
There's no way for people to be going in two
opposite directions and yet continue together. At the same time,
I have been so incredibly encouraged by what I've seen
among conservative young people and the passion and the energy
(16:43):
they have for their principles. And they're willing to put
action behind that. And so I definitely think that we
are we're in for a bit of a slog. But
if any country can come through with resilience, it's the
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
So is the prediction things get worse before they get better.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
I think in the next five years, I think that
we're going to have to continue to see flirtations with
socialism and watch it fail abysmally in order for people
to recognize what it is. Because right now, if you
ask young people, what is socialism? What is communism? They're
giving a very idyllic answer that really... is not at
all true at all. And so we're going to have
(17:25):
to look at places like New York City and see
how it all falls apart and be able to point
to that.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
And I think education there is going to be the key.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
There was a joke, like.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
A woman said, socialism is I get to tend my
garden and not go to work or something like that.
And your garden, comrade, you know, they don't really know
what it is. It's not what they think it is.
I also sometimes think this about the right, though, that
I think that a lot of the populist stuff and I,
you know, some of it I approve of, but like
(18:00):
a lot of the economic stuff doesn't make sense either.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
It's it's like.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
I want more of an explanation of what people are
trying to say with it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Well, I mean, I'll give you a prime example.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
One of the things that I think doesn't really make
a whole lot of sense to me is the people
on the right who are particularly isolationist. I'm not saying
that there is not merit to a conversation about how
much money we should be sending overseas or, you know,
should we be protecting our interests before we worry about
everybody else's.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
I'm talking about this idea that we exist unto ourselves
to the total exclusion of the rest of the world.
And that's just simply not how the planet works. And
so again, I think that when you have these ideas
in your head, but they're not really thought through to
a logical conclusion or weighed against history, that's where you
start getting in trouble.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (18:54):
Brittany, I have loved this conversation. And where could people
find you? So you can find me over on X.
I've still call it Twitter half the time, but over
at Real Britt Hughes.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
I'm also on Facebook and Instagram under Real Britt Hughes
and I'm over at mrctv.org.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Love it.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Leave us here with your best tip for my listeners
on how they can improve their lives.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
If there was one thing that I could tell you
that will vastly improve your life above all else, it
is to surrender it to Jesus Christ, 100%. You can
try to get through your life just winging it and
doing the best you can and hoping that it all
works out. But when you turn your life over to
(19:41):
the Lord, he is going to do something with it
that is so much bigger, so much more impactful, so
much more beyond your wild dreams.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
You could never do it yourself.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
So as long as you're following his path for you
and not just whatever your instincts are, you know, you
hear all the time, follow your own happiness. Well, happiness
is fleeting. Happiness can be attached to all kinds of
trivial things. That's not joy. Joy comes from following his
purpose for you. And it's an eternal purpose that extends
just beyond this life. So that that's that's where you start.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
Everything else on top of that's going to be gravy.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
That's beautiful. She is Brittany Hughes. Thank you so much
for coming on. I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
Thanks for having me.
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Buck Sexton
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