“They don’t see what’s wrong with their mother’s ideologies because they really do agree with her and they live in that delusion.” “My theory is that they are performative influencers, catering to a millennial female liberal demographic,” said one former fan, Kristen Landels. It soon went viral among the Toaster community.

Murphy wrote an essay, called “Sincerely a Former Toaster,” outlining what, in her eyes were the sisters’ continued missteps, which finally made her disavow them. More than 100 of the Facebook groups affiliated with The Morning Toast have rebranded to distance themselves from the sisters in the past couple of months. These incidents were the last straw for many Toasters. Many Toast fans were outraged and disappointed when the sisters did not publicly address Geller’s comments. In May, after the sisters hosted a birthday party during New York City’s quarantine, a nurse posted asking them to set a better example - but instead the sister responded by releasing a podcast called “Taking Out the Trash.” When protests erupted nationwide following George Floyd’s death, Geller tweeted a racist comment about Floyd. They have watched some members of the fanbase become toxic, harassing fans who criticized the sisters online. Many women pointed to Claudia and Jackie posting in support of the Black Lives Matter movement to say that the sisters are trying to learn from others and buck their conservative upbringing.īut over the past year, several former Toasters told BuzzFeed News, it has become hard to continue to support the Oshrys and their community. “The Morning Toast changed my life,” another told me over email. “The Morning Toast has truly helped me get through those dark days,” one wrote. Women wrote long emails about how the podcast had made them feel closer to family and friends by giving them something to connect over, and how beautiful and fun the Toaster community is. The fans said they were willing to look past the scandals to continue enjoying a lighthearted podcast about pop culture. They go to the events.Īfter I posted that I was writing about Claudia and the podcast on my Instagram story - The Morning Toast’s Instagram soon after reposted it - I was inundated with hundreds of messages from fans of the podcast. Their devoted fans, known in the community as “Toasters” or “Steens,” have created more than 250 Facebook groups. Claudia’s Girl With No Job Instagram meme account has grown from approximately 2.8 million followers before the 2018 scandal to at least 3.1 million, according to SocialBlade. They relaunched their podcast a month after the Daily Beast story, keeping and adding to their now-huge network of fans. They both deleted their Twitter accounts.īut, since then, Claudia and Jackie have only become more influential. Verizon’s Oath quickly dropped their old podcast and online show, The Morning Breath. In 2018 the Daily Beast revealed that Geller was Claudia and Jackie’s mother - and that the sisters had racist tweets of their own. In fact, it wasn’t two years ago that the sisters were written off by some as canceled. “People were yelling, ‘Oh you’re a queen, we love your outfit!’ Just craziness.”įor Murphy, the incident cemented a growing unease she had felt about what she said was once her “complete stanhood” of the sisters, who have long courted controversy for their own perceived racist and insensitive behavior, and for not publicly disavowing their mother’s most extreme views.

“She was literally paraded through the audience,” Murphy said. The crowd burst into wild cheers, Murphy said, describing it as if Geller were “Justin Bieber or something.” Geller, a former journalist turned blogger, gained prominence in 2010 for her campaign against the so-called Ground Zero mosque and is now known as “one of the most flamboyant anti-Muslim activists” in the US according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. When the show started, Jackie entered the theater with the sisters’ mother, the anti-Muslim, far-right commentator Pamela Geller. Then, in January, she attended Claudia’s comedy show at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. She even paid more than $700, and drove four hours, alone, to rural Pennsylvania for “Camp Toast,” a weekend touted as a chance for fans to hang with the sisters IRL. She joined more than 100 affiliated Facebook groups. The show, hosted by Instagram-famous meme queen and comedian Claudia Oshry and her sister Jackie, is a daily morning show about pop culture. There was a time when Emily Murphy was the ultimate fan of the millennial pop culture podcast The Morning Toast.

The morning toast