North Texas bakery owner faces backlash after Charlie Kirk comments on podcast
The owner of a Flower Mound bakery said social media posts from “right wing” groups called for her exorcism and asked that city officials to arrest her and shut down her business after her family discussed differing views of Charlie Kirk on their podcast.
Hive Bakery owner Hailey Popp, who doesn’t shy away from expressing her views against the Trump administration, said the posts have only served to strengthen her resolve and bring more customers to her shop, at 360 Parker Square Road.
Popp expresses her views on social media, and also when she designs special cookies. For instance, she created cookies supporting women’s rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, and she creates products to celebrate Pride Month. In January, the bakery went viral for cookies depicting Washington National Cathedral’s Bishop Mariann Budde, who pleaded with President Donald Trump to have mercy in her Jan. 21 sermon.
Popp said she was asked if she was going to make cookies with themes against gun violence after Kirk’s murder, and she chose to address that in the podcast she does with her family every Sunday.
Popp said the vitriol against her and her business started when clips from the weekly podcast, The Necessary Conversation, were posted in “right wing” social media groups.
She described how people posted about contacting her landlord and the Flower Mound mayor.
Cheryl Moore, the mayor of Flower Mound, said she received one email calling for the city to shut down the bakery and added that most of the discussion is on social media.
“When emotions run high, then people get reactive on either side,” Moore said. “This is a free speech issue. We can’t shut down a business.”
The podcast episode ran shortly after Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10 during a speech to students at Utah Valley University.
“I feel that using my voice right now is very important given the state of the world,” Popp said. “I just feel that it is so necessary to use your voice at a time when the administration is attacking the First Amendment.”
Popp said she and her brother, Chad Kultgen, and their parents, Bob and Mary Lou Kultgen, started the podcast in 2022 as a way to bring the family together.
The siblings are liberal, and Popp said her parents are “MAGA.”
“In 2016, when Trump was elected, my parents cut me and my brother off,” she said. “There was a rift in my family. After six months of no communication with my parents, we came up with a plan: Let’s do a podcast to hash out our political differences.”
During the episode about Kirk, called “MAGA Martyr,” Popp and her brother describe Kirk’s murder as senseless and horrible, but said he also spread messages of hate, and that he was “homophobic and racist.”
But their parents disagree.
Mary Lou Kultgen said of Kirk, “He brought truth back to college campuses mainly because of his belief in God, family and country, and if you don’t agree with that, then there’s something wrong with you.”
Although Popp and her parents don’t see eye to eye politically, she said the podcast has opened communication with them.
Popp lives in Dallas with her husband and children. Her brother Chad lives in Los Angeles, and her parents are in Oklahoma.
“It’s very difficult. They are my parents. I just can’t like hang them out to dry. My brother and I made the commitment to be there for my mom and dad.”
This story was originally published September 24, 2025 at 9:44 AM.