Twitch bot crashes every time someone uses emoji like :flushed: in chat

Question

I created a twitch chat bot and added some simple commands, but everytime someone uses an emoji like :flushed: or :speak_no_evil: the bot simply crashes. I guess it understands it as a word and crashes because of that.

My main code is like this:

import cfg
import utils
import socket
import re
import time, thread
from time import sleep
import os

def main():
    s = socket.socket()
    s.connect((cfg.HOST, cfg.PORT))
    s.send("PASS {}\r\n".format(cfg.PASS).encode("utf-8"))
    s.send("NICK {}\r\n".format(cfg.NICK).encode("utf-8"))
    s.send("JOIN #{}\r\n".format(cfg.CHAN).encode("utf-8"))

    CHAT_MSG = re.compile(r"^:\w+!\w+@\w+\.tmi\.twitch\.tv PRIVMSG #\w+ :")

    utils.chat(s, "HeyGuys")

    thread.start_new_thread(utils.threadFillOpList, ())

    while True:
        response = s.recv(1024).decode("utf-8")
        if response == "PING :tmi.twitch.tv\r\n":
            s.send("PONG :tmi.twitch.tv\r\n".encode("utf-8"))
        else:
            username = re.search(r"\w+", response).group(0)
            message = CHAT_MSG.sub("", response)
            print(response)


            if message.strip() == "!time":
                utils.chat(s, "It currently " + time.strftime("%I:%M %p %Z"))


            if "Kappa" in message and not "PogChamp" in message:
                utils.chat(s, "Kappa")



            if "PogChamp" in message and not "Kappa" in message:
                utils.chat(s, "PogChamp")



            if message.strip() == "!kb":
                utils.chat(s, "Razer Blackwidow Tournament Edition.")



            if message.strip() == "!skin":
                utils.chat(s, "https://puu.sh/sjE7I/58820f8c10.osk")



            if message.strip() == "!tablet":
                utils.chat(s, "Wacom CTH490AK")



            if message.strip() == "!area":
                utils.chat(s, "https://puu.sh/sfr9E/1abc132c23.png")



            if message.strip() == "!oldskin":
                utils.chat(s, "https://puu.sh/sjEOD/5923cfabc0.osk")



            if message.strip() == "!profile":
                utils.chat(s, "https://osu.ppy.sh/u/3892208")



            if message.strip() == "!np":
                f = open("C:/Users/Grellheist/Desktop/osu stream/Files/np_playing_DL.txt", "r")
                if(os.stat("C:/Users/Grellheist/Desktop/osu stream/Files/np_playing_DL.txt").st_size == 0):
                    utils.chat(s, "There is no map being played right now!")

            else:
                f = open("C:/Users/Grellheist/Desktop/osu stream/Files/np_playing_DL.txt", "r")
                utils.chat(s, f.read())



            if message.strip() == "!bot":
                utils.chat(s, "I was created by Grellheist and was coded using Python 3.")


        sleep(1)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

How do I get the bot to ignore these types of emoji?