An elderly woman working at a Target in Chico, California, was berated by a customer for wearing a red “Freedom” shirt in honor of Charlie Kirk earlier this week.
How did the public become aware of the harassment? Because the woman who chastised the employee filmed herself doing so and posted it on TikTok. The video has gone viral, though probably not for the reasons the offender – since identified as Michaela Ponce – assumed.
The outburst led to calls for Ponce, who is a nurse, to be fired, a barrage of “profanity-laced” messages to her employer, and a public apology. But the entire ordeal has a remarkably heartwarming ending thanks to the employee’s grace and the power of social media.
On Thursday’s show, Megyn was joined by Glenn Greenwald, host of Rumble’s System Update, to discuss the story and what it reveals about society today.
The Incident
In the video, Ponce can be heard saying things like, “why are you wearing that shirt? You are working,” “are you fucking stupid,” and “you support a racist.”
All the while, the employee, Jeanie Beeman, maintained her composure. “That’s your opinion, ma’am,” she said politely, before adding “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to stand here and argue with you.” Beeman eventually told the irate customer to “have a nice day” before attempting to walk away, but Ponce wouldn’t drop it. Instead, she threatened to take the issue to management and get her fired.
Seemingly unfazed by her behavior, the perpetrator then posted the video on social media where it quickly racked up millions of views – and criticism.
Ponce’s employer, Enloe Health, has not publicly identified the employee, but president and CEO Mike Wiltermood acknowledged the company had received thousands of “profanity-laced” messages calling for her dismissal.
He also praised the Target worker for keeping her cool. “As a human being, I’m sorry she went through that, and I admire her resilience,” Wiltermood said at a Wednesday press conference. “This isn’t about politics. This is about how we treat each other, and decorum.”
Justice Is Served
When contacted by Action News Now, Ponce expressed remorse for her behavior, but she did not retract anything she said:
“I want to take full responsibility for my actions and say clearly and sincerely that I was wrong. I behaved badly, and I regret it deeply.
I want to directly apologize to Jeannie. I am truly sorry for approaching you at your workplace and putting you in an uncomfortable and unfair position. You did not deserve that, and my behavior was wrong.
I also apologize to Jeannie’s family for the stress and attention my actions caused. I apologize to Target as her employer, I apologize to Enloe, and I apologize to the Chico community. I understand that what I did reflected poorly on myself and disrupted a sense of safety and respect that should exist in a workplace and in our community.
I did not handle the situation the way I should have. I allowed my emotions to take over instead of choosing restraint and empathy. That was my failure, and I own it.
I regret my actions, and I am genuinely sorry for the harm they caused. I wish I can go back and undo what happened, but I can acknowledge it honestly, learn from it, and commit to doing better moving forward.
Again, I apologize to Jeanie and I hope that she and the community can forgive me.”
Beeman, meanwhile, pushed back on calls for Ponce to be fired. “I don’t think that that’s right,” she told Action News Now. “Two wrongs don’t make a right, you know. She wronged me, but I don’t want to wrong her, or I don’t want her — her wrong, because it’s not going to make it right.”
As she did in the initial video, Beeman said Ponce is entitled to her opinion. “That was her opinion, she — but she’s the one that put it on Facebook or put it on — on that,” Beeman said. “So you know, but, I really wouldn’t want to see her, someone lose their job over it.”
In the meantime, social media users who were horrified by Ponce’s behavior set up an online fundraiser for Beeman on GiveSendGo to help her take a vacation to “relax, recharge, and just forget about the ugliness.”
The fundraiser, which started with a $20,000 goal, has since raised $225,000 and counting, as many donors commented that they hope Beeman might be able to retire.
The Lesson
The beauty of this story, Megyn said, is that it has it all. “It’s got the outrage factor. It’s got the benevolent Jeanie… It’s got our villain, Michaela, who was very well forced into issuing an apology. And the great American people who said, ‘We love Jeanine, we’re on her side, and we want her life to be better,’” she noted.
Greenwald agreed. “I want to go donate right when I’m done with this interview, and… it’s not because she wore the Charlie Kirk shirt,” he said. “It’s because imagine the generosity of a spirit… This is a woman who works at Target. That is a hard job… You can be filled with resentment. Obviously, the woman… wanted her fired, so imagine turning around and saying, ‘No, I don’t want her fired just because she did that to me.’ That, already, is such an admirable person.”
But Ponce’s behavior, he noted, reveals an unsettling reality about culture today. “You go into a Target and see some older woman working… and you are going to berate her, and attack her, and film it, and put it on the internet like you’ve done something noble,” he wondered. “That, to me, signifies this very rotted spirit that has entered our discourse based on the idea that anyone who has different political views than us is an evil person who should suffer in every single way.”
His hope, while fleeting, is that this will serve as a lesson to people like Ponce. “The fact that you have this one woman who is supposedly the villain because she is wearing a t-shirt of a ‘racist, evil person’ being so clearly the better person, while you have this other woman so self-righteous, thinking she is so moral, acting in a way that no matter your ideology, is so revolting, I think there’s a lot of lessons in there,” Greenwald said.
Ultimately, he said justice was served in the most satisfying way. “That behavior needs to be scorned, and it was scorned in this case,” Greenwald concluded. “And the cherry on top is that that woman who displayed so much moral kindness and generosity of spirit got a just reward. It’s so rare to have karmic justice like that on every aspect of the story, so it is a really enjoyable one.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Greenwald by tuning in to episode 1,216 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.