May 20, 2025 • 32 mins
In this episode, Mary Katharine Ham and Karol Markowicz discuss Joe Biden's recent health diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer, the implications of media transparency regarding political figures' health, and the public's perception of accountability in leadership. They explore the political landscape, including the challenges of economic policies and legislative decisions, while also reflecting on personal life choices and marriage dynamics. Normally is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Tuesday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
He yea on a normal In the show with normal,
she takes for when the news gets weird.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I am Mary Katherine here, and I'm Carol Markowitz. What
a weekend, Mary.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Catherine can't stop?
Speaker 4 (00:15):
Won't stop, guy, I won't it just stop? Though on
a weekend, it would be nice if it stopped.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The big story this weekend is Joe Biden's health. And
we went into the weekend having the conversation about how
his mental health was doing in the time of his presidency,
how with it he was, and that sort of thing.
And we came out of the weekend finding out that
he has fairly advanced prostate cancer. This is awful, obviously,
(00:49):
I echo Tim Carney who tweeted former President Biden.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Deserves our prayers. He does not deserve the benefit of
the doubt. Yeah, that's where I am.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
That's a very good way of putting it, because I
truly wish the president a full recovery. Prostate cancer is
a thing that is quite common in older men. It's
something most people have an experience with through a relative
or a dad or whoever. If it's caught early, it
is extremely treatable. This one has metastasized to his bones,
(01:23):
so it is obviously more dangerous. It's in a later stage,
and I hope that his treatment such that it is,
is not painful and that he can get to the
other side of this. And also, just as I would
always say about John Fetterman, Yeah, the fact that his
health event is regrettable and sad does not preclude us
(01:46):
from criticizing a public figure when they deserve to be
criticized period.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I'm sorry, I'm not going to lay off on him.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
In fact, I think there's more reason now to question
what exactly his family and the people suing him and
his staff told us during his presidency, and how many
lies there really were.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
That's absolutely right, And a twenty twenty two clip of
him has gone viral again where he says this.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Let's roll the clip of Joe Biden.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
I just lived up the road. I just an apartment
complex when we moved to Delaware, and because it was
a four lane highway that was accessible, my mother drove
us and rather than us be able to walk and
guess what the first frost you knew what was happening.
It had to put on your windshield wipers to get
(02:35):
literally the oil slick off the window. That's why I
had so damn any other people I grew up had cancer.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
At the time, the White House said that was a
flub and he didn't actually have cancer. But now, of
course the thinking is they knew all along, and they
didn't tell the American people.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Well, and if you have any experience with a relative
or friend who has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, again,
you know that it can be caught with merely blood screening,
not necessarily prostate exams. You would imagine that a man
who has been president and indeed a public figure and
public official for low these many years, would have been
(03:16):
regularly screened for this, that's right, which leads you to think,
how long did they know about this diagnosis before it
became metastatic. Now I was listening to Cole and This
Sapphire this morning on Fox, and she's like, look, there's
an outside possibility that they had stopped screening him, because
later on in life sometimes we stopped screening for lower
(03:37):
level cancers. There's a chance that it metastasized very quickly,
that it went from zero to sixty very quickly after
he left the presidency. But she also noted in twenty
twenty one he was being screened for these things. So
the chances that he wasn't being screened during his presidency
pretty low. And again, these people have lied to us
(03:59):
so many times about his health.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I will not believe it unless I get no.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I need his PSA numbers for every year that he's
been in public office.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
That's what I do.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Nichole's being very charitable about it. There's obviously a lot
of discussion about when they knew. On MSNBC this morning,
doctor Zeke Emanuel said.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
This, You're a noncologist, obviously incredibly respected. You believe that
it is likely, just for those just tuning in, you
believe it is likely, if this prostate cancer has spread
to the bone, that he could have had it for
(04:42):
up to a decade. But certainly it's likely. Would it
be fair to say it's likely to have had this
for at least several years?
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Oh more than several years.
Speaker 7 (04:55):
You don't get prostitions.
Speaker 6 (04:59):
I just want to stop you. So this is this
is not speculation. If you have prostate cancer that has
spread to the bone, then he's most certainly you were saying,
had it when he was president of the United States.
Speaker 7 (05:13):
Oh yeah, he did not develop it in the last
one hundred two hundred days. He had it while he
was president.
Speaker 6 (05:20):
He probably had it at the start of his presidency in.
Speaker 7 (05:24):
Twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Yes, that I don't think there's any disagreement about that.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Oh I want to know.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I want to know why MSNBC is running such irresponsible
conspiracy theories on its network.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I was going to say, this is not Newsmax, it's
not o an, it's MSNBC saying this. It's MSNBC bringing
on a guest to say that we were likely lied
to about the president's health and we know that this
went on. You know, one of my Twitter followers, Jarvis Best, tweeted,
if you don't want people to be conspiracy theorists, stop
(06:02):
engaging in massive conspiracies.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
I don't know what the f to tell you.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And well, and and here this really bothers me because
what this is and again we have both said we
hope he experiences a full recovery. I think it is
highly likely that they knew about this during his presidency,
and even before it. It is vanishingly unlikely that that's
(06:27):
not the case, in which case they lied about it.
And what they're doing now is they are taking a
more sympathetic and smaller lie and announcing it to save
them from the unsympathetic, gigantic lie that they have perpetrated
and gotten caught in. Now, is this uncharitable of me?
Speaker 6 (06:48):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:49):
For this reason, because Biden's mo O for decades has
been to point to his significant and real personal tragedies.
The loss of his white daughter, the recovery times of
his little boys and how he raised them on his
own for a while, the loss of his son Bo.
All of these things he uses regularly during his political
(07:12):
career to get him out of hot water. Yeah, as
soon as he mentions Bo, you're not allowed to ask
him about Afghanistan anymore. That's the pattern it has been
for years. I hate that he does this. He uses
your compassion against you and says, you're not allowed to
talk about my political failings anymore. But we are allowed
(07:33):
to talk about this, And in fact, I think it
makes it worse.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And I think we've gotten to a place where people
are just not having it. David Axelrod actually said out
loud conversations about Biden's mental acuity should be more muted
and set aside for now, as he's struggling through this,
like you're not supposed.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
To say it out loud.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
You're supposed to kind of, you know, nudge the public
in that direction. But they've gotten so desperate because people
are being so kind of blatant about their opinions on this,
which I love that they are saying, please stop talking
about this.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
It's really not nice of you.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, that's what they want.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
They want you to default to being nice to protect
this entire cabal from their own giant scandal.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
And I will not.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I will so will not. Yes.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So is the timing a giant coincidence? Is what people
are wondering. And you know, our old friend Brian Stelter,
he had this to say.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
I'm seeing some prostate cancer survivors, people who have lived
with this disease, who have been through this, expressing support
both condolences but also support and cheering Biden on as
he faces this. The timing, Jessica is just extraordinary. We
know from the statement from his personal spokesman that Biden
learned the diagnosis on Friday. Well, what was the biggest
(08:51):
Biden's story on Friday? It was the release of those
audio excerpts from his conversations with Robert Herr back in
twenty twenty three. This was the audio that Axios obtained
almost certainly from the Trump administration, showing memory lapses. And
you heard a lot of people on Friday talking about
that audio being hard to hear, even excruciating to hear
Biden showing his age on those audio tapes that had
(09:13):
never been heard by the public until now. So on
the day that story was breaking, Biden was facing this
personal news, at least that's according to this statement from
his personal spokesman. So you have that as one element
of the timing here, and then you have, as you
and Paul just acknowledged, this book coming out one of
the biggest political books in several years. Take out our
colleague Jake Taper for a second. This book, no matter who,
(09:37):
no matter where it was coming from, was going to
be a very big, blockbuster book. And it just so
happens two of the best reporters in Washington, Jake Tapper
and now Thompson, are the authors of it. It's already
a best seller based on a number of pre orders.
And so this book comes out in two days, but
some of the excerpts have already come out, and it's
reignited this debate in Washington and beyond within the Democratic
Party about Biden, about whether he should have run for
(09:59):
reelection at all. So it seems to me, Jessica, this
debate doesn't end at all, but it is briefly put
on pause as there's one of today's news.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Extraordinary timing, Mary Catherine, extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
You're telling me the Robert Hurr tapes that we were
all told would reveal that he was just smart as
a whip all the way through, because Robert Hurr was
actually just smearing him for me, of the present Democrats
back then, the day those are finally released and we
all hear that the right wing conspiracy conspiracy theorists were
(10:32):
again just correct, that's the day we get this other
news that is fascinating.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
For extraordinary timing.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I mean, it's like, do you think we believe you,
Brian Stelter, Do you think we think that you believe
the White House that this is extraordinary timing? I mean,
the former White House, come on, now, come on.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It is amazing to me that they almost they almost
flaunted as as it's a feature not a bug, that
that if they're covering a democratic presidency, they are the
most credulous people on the planet. Right, you're a reporter, dude,
You're not supposed to be the most credulous person on
the planet. You're supposed to be like, h, these are
(11:18):
people with access to power and motives that I should consider,
and they just.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Out of their brains. They just.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
The spokesperson said. So how could I possible challenge that?
The spokesperson said.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And surely we have no other evidence that these people
have lied about his health in the past. I mean,
it is actually and this is the problem I think
for Biden and for the press that has covered him credulously,
is that a lot of sort of rational people are
just looking at this, even left leaning people. I think
that the armies of doctors speaking out on x that
are like, ah, that doesn't make me sense that this
(11:55):
would have just appeared. I think that's very interesting that
they're all being pretty vocal about that. But people are
just finally saying this is one of the biggest it's
I think it's the biggest presidential scandal of my lifetime
for sure, And people who are not right leaning people
are noticing that, and I think they just made it worse.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
In another era.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I think you and I would be saying different things.
I think that so much trust has been broken over
the last five years that I think that we know
we can't believe any of this. And I think again,
in a different time, you know, twenty five years ago,
when you and I were starting out in this game,
I think we would have been more trusting. But we've
(12:40):
seen some things and we know that.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
We can't be anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Our friend Buck Sexton posts the people who now admit
they hid Biden's dementia for four years with Soviet level
of ruthlessness, are about to be outraged at anyone who
suggests Biden's inner circle may have also hid his cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, you can't run the same play again, guys.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
You only get to do that once.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
We just saw this.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It's also just it's so disgusting what they did to
the American people, what they did to Democratic voters. They moved,
They did all of this to subvert their own voters,
took the possibility of a primary away from them. And
now there wasn't some great hue and cry, except from
(13:27):
Dean Phillips, but some people certainly probably would have liked
a choice had they been presented with one.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And yet They're just like, nah, opt.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Out when they knew this was the situation, right, and
they knew, by the way, how much do they hate
Kamala that they were like, well, he does have dementia
and cancer, but we cannot hand the reins to her,
like we.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Absolutely did so. And the joke is, of course that
they weren't entirely wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
She was terrible and they knew that she would be,
so that like they accepted that reality, but they were
like going to wing it with viben.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, I mean, this is my greatest of all time analogy.
This is just the worst of all time debate, and
we'll be having it forever more because Biden and Kamala
are so uniquely bad. Yeah, that it's hard to ever
come to a conclusion about it. But I think I
think perhaps two times in a row, Obama and Biden
himself both picked vps that they did not want to
(14:29):
hand off the presidency too, but then ended up being
forced to do so. I don't think Trump made that mistaken.
He didn't for whatever policy differences I have with strety Vance,
he would be a person who's ready to do that, right.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Absolutely. I don't don't think anybody would deny that. I
don't think.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
You know, they could have personal disagreements at the end
of the next four years, and who knows what's going
to happen.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
I mean, Donald Trump, I like to.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Say, I quote my husband, Are you trying to get
into the mind of Donald Trump? You know you really
don't know where he's going to go, but you can
see him obviously feeling.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Like this is my successor.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, I just I.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
It astoundingly gets worse. Yeah, that's what I think.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Like, just when you think they've hit the level that
they can hit.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Nope, right, nope, They're like, let us show you a
new bottom.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And my favorite part about it, as always is the
self congratulatory, like moral grandstanding of all of it. Is like, oh, well,
we're still the better people. Obviously we had to do
this extraordinarily dishonest thing and perpetrate a constitutional crisis.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Here for years and years.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
But because because Trump is like extraordinarily bad, you get it, right,
you get.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
It Hitler right, So.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, trash.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Anyway, We're going to take a short break and come
right back with normally Republicans are obviously taking this crazy.
Speaker 9 (15:59):
Moment to be really good, right, I mean, what else
would they be doing right now except pushing through policies
that conservatives have wanted for decades.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Right, Well, there's a big bill.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I'm told it's beautiful, big beautiful bill.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
And look, this is also ties into your observation about
like trying to get into Trump's head. The House and
Senate Republicans both which must be exactly unified in this
reconciliation bill because that's the only way you can pass it,
and it is the number one priority of the Trump administration.
They have to understand what he wants. Getting in his head.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Is very hard, So the one big beautiful bill.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So they're having to keep the GOP caucus united completely
to do this. Uh, he's over here saying, like, maybe
raise taxes on the highest earners the Republican parties like
this is the last thing we need right now, dude.
The only thing we agree on is that we don't
us taxes.
Speaker 6 (17:00):
On any day.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And the results of the break big beautiful bill, as.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Is almost always the case when the people come together
to hash this stuff out, has a bunch of giveaways
and a bunch of loopholes and a bunch of nonsense
and brings up the baseline of spending of our American
bureaucratic Leviathan, despite all of the messaging to the contrary
from the Trump administration.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah, and I have.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
A very low expectations bar for things like these, and
it still is managing to take me off.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I think it's so bad that I don't think a
lot of Americans realize how bad it is.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
I have to say, I don't follow.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I feel like the spending parts as closely as I should.
I have in the last few years gotten better at it,
but it's complicated. There's so many different avenues to it,
and so I get that the average American doesn't understand
what's happening. I think David Friedberg, he was on the
All In podcast, and he did a really good job
(18:07):
of explaining why this spending bill is so bad. On
his Twitter, he calls it fiscal emergency O clock in America,
and we're going to play just a few minutes of
this All In clip. I think it just explains succinctly
what the problem is.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
You should feel shame that your elected officials are proposing
that this is the bill that gets past that we
vaporize this much money, that we put ourselves this much
further in debt that we do not treat the situation
as the fiscal emergency that it is. The bill ultimately
yields no real change in the annual deficit. The annual
(18:46):
deficit could climb to two zero point five trillion dollars
being added to the federal debt load every single year
going forward. In fact, if you look at the Treasury yields,
the thirty year is now kissing five percent. So the
United States has called thirty seven trillion dollars of debt
at five percent. We're paying close to two trillion dollars
(19:09):
a year just in interest on our debt. As this
debt gets refinanced, the interest rates are going up because
the probability that the US will default on its debt payments,
which is what you're buying when you buy US treasuries.
You're getting the US government to pay you some number
of dollars with interest over time, and the market is
now demanding that that interest rate be as high as
(19:31):
five percent. Because of this fiscal situation that the United
States finds itself in, we are now burning an additional
two point five trillion dollars a year adding to our
debt load. We are in a fiscal crisis, and we're
not willing to admit it. And I've said this from
day one that DOGE can only do so much, and
clearly that's the case where they're now talking about sub
three hundred billion dollars a year in potential annual savings
(19:53):
from DOGE action. At the end of the day, Congress
needs to take action, and this bill from Congress doesn't
take much action. I will tell you that if you
look across the board, all of these programs are still
being proposed to be run at a cost that is
well in excess of their pre COVID levels. And so
I would set two guiding principles if I was to
be the benevolent dictator of the United States of America.
(20:15):
My guiding principal Number one would be that any program
that we intend to continue to persist have its budget
level cut to pre COVID to twenty nineteen levels. Second
would be and if we did that, by the way,
we would be in a much better fiscal situation. The
second would be that we add no new programs in
the moment. There's a whole bunch of you thrown into
the spill. As well as increasing the cost and a
few cuts here and there. I'll just highlight a couple
(20:37):
that I think are worth noting. You know, there's a
cut in the SNAP program, which is the Supplemental Nutrition
and Assistance program that's food stamps, And I talked about
this with Brooke Rowlins in the interview I did a
few weeks ago. You can watch it on YouTube, and
we talked a little bit about how this SNAP program
has absolutely exploded in size from sixty billion a year
in twenty nineteen to one hundred and twenty billion a
(20:58):
year today. So in this budget proposal, they're actually cutting
it back by about thirty billion, so to ninety billion,
So it's still fifty percent higher than it was pre COVID.
And there's a lot of kind of stories we could
go through on what happened during COVID that caused this
thing to blow up the way it did. But political
wrangling pulled money out of the government into people's pockets,
(21:21):
and that is persisting today. I'm a big believer in
cutting taxes. Obviously, I'm probably more libertarian than anyone else
on the show or that we've ever had on the show.
But at the end of the day, you can't just say, hey,
let's cut taxes and spend more than we're making. It
doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I have very low expectations for these things. The problem
to me again, and I understand, they have to keep
everybody together. So they got to buy everybody off with
their little benefits, and they got to make sure that
Trump also has his many random tax decisions he's made
in speeches represented in this bill. So you've got to
have no tax on tips, you've got to have no
(21:57):
tax on overtime. Any idea he had on the camp paintrail,
you got to put it in there.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Now.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I understand how that works from a political point of view,
but when you start trying to do the math, you
end up with some bad math and some bad unintended
consequences in all likelihood, because we're going to incentivize certain
kinds of work over others.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
It's going to be weird.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But the priority from the beginning should have been extend
the twenty seventeen package, period, extend the two thousand and
seventy package. If you do not do that, all the
people who got a tax cut at that time, which
was the majority of Americans, will see their tax.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Liability go up. Period. That's what we're trying to.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Escape, right, and if that's.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Not number one, and you're having a bunch of infighting
about these little side issues, and you're fixing the side
issues by racking up more spending in other areas, in
particular the salt cap discussion, which, let me just say,
this is a thing where people in blue states with
really high property taxes get to deduct their state and
(23:05):
local taxes salt from their federal liabilities bunkers.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Even when I lived in New York, I oppose this.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
It's crazy because what it does is it subsidizes those
local and state politicians who give you those whopping taxes
because you can deduct it elsewhere, and then they don't
pay the price for having raised those taxes on you. Ever,
So there's conservatives who believe in not subsidizing this kind
(23:34):
of behavior are like, hey, there needs to be a
cap on this deduction, and they're negotiating what that cap
should be. Understandably, New York Republicans are like, you can't
make this cap too low because my people are the
people who benefit from this. And I'm like, we're just
the whole part. The whole pitch about systemic change and
(23:56):
how we're going to fix a bunch of things, and
we have all this opportunity to do so. So look,
I didn't expect them to actually do it, but good lord, right.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
This is going in reverse.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I look other things, like you mentioned unintended consequences, things
like no taxing tips. Like in theory that sounds good.
In practice, that's going to lead to all kinds of
I would say, not corruption, but in the vein of
corruption is there's so many, so much opportunity for people
(24:27):
to pretend that money that they're making is tips, And
I just think we're heading in such a bad direction.
I would love and Trump talked about this also on
the trail, so I don't see why this can't be
one of the plans. But I would love a simplified system,
a system with a flat tax, a system that is
fairer to people and just to everyone really, because if
(24:49):
you're paying a flat tax, you're paying a portion of
your income and everybody pays, you know, the same portion.
It's just crazy that we have Republican Congress and it's
somehow going to end up just as bad as it
would with a democratic one.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
With maybe a rise in marginal rates for high earners
like it's wild complexity in the sort, so we're doing here.
Complexity in the system is a subsidy for those who
can afford really good accountants, That's what it is. And
the people who get the people who worry about salt caps,
the people who know what assault cap is. Those people
are not like working class people. Okay, those are the
(25:30):
people they're worried about. Those are the people they're they're serving.
If we had something simpler, you wouldn't have people having
to go to the mats for excusing New York property
tax rates, which is what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I just think we're we're in deep trouble. If the
twenty seventeen package doesn't get extended, it's probably going to
have to be extended as part of this ugly big bill,
and you're going to get a bunch of ugly stuff
with it.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Will be right back on normally.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
All right, let's leave the listeners with something a little lighter.
We have a lot of post weekend complaints, A woman
writes into The New York Times. Yes, they provide a
lot of our content here on normally, she writes, I've
always loved my husband, but now that we are older
and in our sixties, I definitely hate him less. Maybe
(26:22):
I shouldn't have waited, had to wait thirty three years,
a third of a century to hate my husband less.
But time has been good to him. And she goes
on to say that basically he has more time now.
He's making dinner and making her Martinez when she got home,
and he's just looking better and all of this, and
(26:42):
she's enjoying this happy, creative time in his life. But
the thing is, he seemed pretty good the whole way through,
And as I'm reading this piece, I'm waiting to see
how he was like just you know, absent and not
helpful to her. But she tells stories where he absolutely
(27:03):
was a very involved at I mean, like some of
the things that she criticizes him for. Bruce was also
very adept at coming home from work after the kids
had already been tucked into their bunk beds, lights out
and all that, and rousing them so that he could
read books to them.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
I get it.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I understand rousing kids. There's like it's something that you
just don't do. But to read books to them that's
quite nice. I feel like I feel like maybe that's
something that should be applauded.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
It's not like he roused them to watch the next.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Game to.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
Him.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
To my husband, No, he roused them to read to them.
I like it.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah, Okay, So I get where she's coming from with
some of this, because I'm I do not doubt her
that she was probably carrying a lot of the load
when it came to the home and home management and
kids in the prime of those hard years. He's out
as a magazine editor and writer. She says, doing a
lot of events. You know, I get it, networking, it
(28:06):
probably looks like a lot more fun than what you're
doing at home. She has the more flexible schedule, and
so she's picking up a lot of that work, right,
I get that, But like, some of this is just
like the way the cookie crumbles everyone. You can't magically
live in Manhattan as two writers and not have someone
maybe shouldering a little bit more of the kid's stuff
(28:26):
while they're more flexible, while this guy goes out and
has a more traditional nine to five. Like, if you
want something different, you might have to move to a suburb, right,
you might make some cuts in other areas. And some
of this, too, just feels like Season of life stuff,
where like, of course you both feel better now you
(28:47):
have fewer stresses, there's less of a grind every day.
And I would suggest that maybe the fact that she's
written this piece as her way of communicating this and
had him edit it for her is maybe.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Sort of a.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Diagnosis of what was going on in the thick of
things as well, because she says, there's one paragraph, I
wasn't a stay at home mother, but I dropped off
and picked up my kids from school every day, organized
their activities, took them to the doctor, bought their clothes,
kept them fed, homework, bathbad, the whole schmeer. When I
showed my husband this essay, he wrote in the margins,
you weren't totally on your own. I dropped off one
(29:24):
or other of the kids every day, and at least,
in my memory, got them breakfast every morning.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
The former note is sort of true. The latter is
a complete fantasy. Okay.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
If the former note is true and he was dropping
off one or other kid every day, that's a pretty
substantial thing to leave out.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
And also, like, why are we doing it this way?
Why are we slagging our husband for things that happened
twenty five years ago?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
In writing, I feel like he's being pretty nice to like,
very calmly comment in the margins.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
He's letting her have her moment.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I just don't ever see the reverse of this where
her husband's like, I like my wife so much better
than I've ever liked her before, because now that the
kids are out of the house, she gets she goes
to the gym, so she looks better, and she cooks
for me and she makes me martini's, and I'm so
much happier. You know now that now that she's relaxed
a little bit with her career or whatever, we would
(30:24):
kill this guy. He would be just slaughtered on the internet.
And yet this is in the New York Times, like look,
how look how nice this husband became.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah, I just a lot of a lot of this.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
This type of commentary is a little bit like she
wants to have it all, but there's not going to
be a trade off and having it all, even for
a season of life. She didn't want there to be
a trade off for having at all. And the truth is,
I think as you and I embrace, is like, you're
not going to have it all.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
There are gonna have it all.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
There are going to be trade offs, particularly when you're
in the thick of raising children and some more of
it might fall to you and some more of it.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Might fall to your husband. Whatever it is. Like, I
don't want no dead beats in here, but like.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
There are gonna be situations where you're doing more of
the child rearing because you're more flexible, because that's your thing, right, Yeah,
and want to well yeah, I also enjoy doing it.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yeah, so but if you want it all, you kind
of have to accept that some of that's gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
That's absolutely right, including.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
The Manhattan place you live in. You know, it's like, yes,
you made the choices these.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
She even acknowledges like, I know, our life sounds quite rarefied,
and I'm like it.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Indeed does a little bit, lady, little bit.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Two writers living in Manhattan, Like, how can we possibly
make it work?
Speaker 2 (31:45):
She says his industry collapsed at one point, so that's
why that's why they could do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, No, it was, he was.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
This was the heyday of magazine and that was a
cool life and it existed.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah it's gone, guys, it's gone. Well, thanks for joining
us on normally normally airs Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and you
can subscribe.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Anywhere you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally
He yea on a normal In the show with normal,
she takes for when the news gets weird.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I am Mary Katherine here, and I'm Carol Markowitz. What
a weekend, Mary.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Catherine can't stop?
Speaker 4 (00:15):
Won't stop, guy, I won't it just stop? Though on
a weekend, it would be nice if it stopped.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The big story this weekend is Joe Biden's health. And
we went into the weekend having the conversation about how
his mental health was doing in the time of his presidency,
how with it he was, and that sort of thing.
And we came out of the weekend finding out that
he has fairly advanced prostate cancer. This is awful, obviously,
(00:49):
I echo Tim Carney who tweeted former President Biden.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Deserves our prayers. He does not deserve the benefit of
the doubt. Yeah, that's where I am.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
That's a very good way of putting it, because I
truly wish the president a full recovery. Prostate cancer is
a thing that is quite common in older men. It's
something most people have an experience with through a relative
or a dad or whoever. If it's caught early, it
is extremely treatable. This one has metastasized to his bones,
(01:23):
so it is obviously more dangerous. It's in a later stage,
and I hope that his treatment such that it is,
is not painful and that he can get to the
other side of this. And also, just as I would
always say about John Fetterman, Yeah, the fact that his
health event is regrettable and sad does not preclude us
(01:46):
from criticizing a public figure when they deserve to be
criticized period.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I'm sorry, I'm not going to lay off on him.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
In fact, I think there's more reason now to question
what exactly his family and the people suing him and
his staff told us during his presidency, and how many
lies there really were.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
That's absolutely right, And a twenty twenty two clip of
him has gone viral again where he says this.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Let's roll the clip of Joe Biden.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
I just lived up the road. I just an apartment
complex when we moved to Delaware, and because it was
a four lane highway that was accessible, my mother drove
us and rather than us be able to walk and
guess what the first frost you knew what was happening.
It had to put on your windshield wipers to get
(02:35):
literally the oil slick off the window. That's why I
had so damn any other people I grew up had cancer.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
At the time, the White House said that was a
flub and he didn't actually have cancer. But now, of
course the thinking is they knew all along, and they
didn't tell the American people.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Well, and if you have any experience with a relative
or friend who has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, again,
you know that it can be caught with merely blood screening,
not necessarily prostate exams. You would imagine that a man
who has been president and indeed a public figure and
public official for low these many years, would have been
(03:16):
regularly screened for this, that's right, which leads you to think,
how long did they know about this diagnosis before it
became metastatic. Now I was listening to Cole and This
Sapphire this morning on Fox, and she's like, look, there's
an outside possibility that they had stopped screening him, because
later on in life sometimes we stopped screening for lower
(03:37):
level cancers. There's a chance that it metastasized very quickly,
that it went from zero to sixty very quickly after
he left the presidency. But she also noted in twenty
twenty one he was being screened for these things. So
the chances that he wasn't being screened during his presidency
pretty low. And again, these people have lied to us
(03:59):
so many times about his health.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I will not believe it unless I get no.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
I need his PSA numbers for every year that he's
been in public office.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
That's what I do.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Nichole's being very charitable about it. There's obviously a lot
of discussion about when they knew. On MSNBC this morning,
doctor Zeke Emanuel said.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
This, You're a noncologist, obviously incredibly respected. You believe that
it is likely, just for those just tuning in, you
believe it is likely, if this prostate cancer has spread
to the bone, that he could have had it for
(04:42):
up to a decade. But certainly it's likely. Would it
be fair to say it's likely to have had this
for at least several years?
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Oh more than several years.
Speaker 7 (04:55):
You don't get prostitions.
Speaker 6 (04:59):
I just want to stop you. So this is this
is not speculation. If you have prostate cancer that has
spread to the bone, then he's most certainly you were saying,
had it when he was president of the United States.
Speaker 7 (05:13):
Oh yeah, he did not develop it in the last
one hundred two hundred days. He had it while he
was president.
Speaker 6 (05:20):
He probably had it at the start of his presidency in.
Speaker 7 (05:24):
Twenty twenty one.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
Yes, that I don't think there's any disagreement about that.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Oh I want to know.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
I want to know why MSNBC is running such irresponsible
conspiracy theories on its network.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
I was going to say, this is not Newsmax, it's
not o an, it's MSNBC saying this. It's MSNBC bringing
on a guest to say that we were likely lied
to about the president's health and we know that this
went on. You know, one of my Twitter followers, Jarvis Best, tweeted,
if you don't want people to be conspiracy theorists, stop
(06:02):
engaging in massive conspiracies.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
I don't know what the f to tell you.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And well, and and here this really bothers me because
what this is and again we have both said we
hope he experiences a full recovery. I think it is
highly likely that they knew about this during his presidency,
and even before it. It is vanishingly unlikely that that's
(06:27):
not the case, in which case they lied about it.
And what they're doing now is they are taking a
more sympathetic and smaller lie and announcing it to save
them from the unsympathetic, gigantic lie that they have perpetrated
and gotten caught in. Now, is this uncharitable of me?
Speaker 6 (06:48):
No?
Speaker 1 (06:49):
For this reason, because Biden's mo O for decades has
been to point to his significant and real personal tragedies.
The loss of his white daughter, the recovery times of
his little boys and how he raised them on his
own for a while, the loss of his son Bo.
All of these things he uses regularly during his political
(07:12):
career to get him out of hot water. Yeah, as
soon as he mentions Bo, you're not allowed to ask
him about Afghanistan anymore. That's the pattern it has been
for years. I hate that he does this. He uses
your compassion against you and says, you're not allowed to
talk about my political failings anymore. But we are allowed
(07:33):
to talk about this, And in fact, I think it
makes it worse.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
And I think we've gotten to a place where people
are just not having it. David Axelrod actually said out
loud conversations about Biden's mental acuity should be more muted
and set aside for now, as he's struggling through this,
like you're not supposed.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
To say it out loud.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
You're supposed to kind of, you know, nudge the public
in that direction. But they've gotten so desperate because people
are being so kind of blatant about their opinions on this,
which I love that they are saying, please stop talking
about this.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
It's really not nice of you.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah, that's what they want.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
They want you to default to being nice to protect
this entire cabal from their own giant scandal.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
And I will not.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
I will so will not. Yes.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
So is the timing a giant coincidence? Is what people
are wondering. And you know, our old friend Brian Stelter,
he had this to say.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
I'm seeing some prostate cancer survivors, people who have lived
with this disease, who have been through this, expressing support
both condolences but also support and cheering Biden on as
he faces this. The timing, Jessica is just extraordinary. We
know from the statement from his personal spokesman that Biden
learned the diagnosis on Friday. Well, what was the biggest
(08:51):
Biden's story on Friday? It was the release of those
audio excerpts from his conversations with Robert Herr back in
twenty twenty three. This was the audio that Axios obtained
almost certainly from the Trump administration, showing memory lapses. And
you heard a lot of people on Friday talking about
that audio being hard to hear, even excruciating to hear
Biden showing his age on those audio tapes that had
(09:13):
never been heard by the public until now. So on
the day that story was breaking, Biden was facing this
personal news, at least that's according to this statement from
his personal spokesman. So you have that as one element
of the timing here, and then you have, as you
and Paul just acknowledged, this book coming out one of
the biggest political books in several years. Take out our
colleague Jake Taper for a second. This book, no matter who,
(09:37):
no matter where it was coming from, was going to
be a very big, blockbuster book. And it just so
happens two of the best reporters in Washington, Jake Tapper
and now Thompson, are the authors of it. It's already
a best seller based on a number of pre orders.
And so this book comes out in two days, but
some of the excerpts have already come out, and it's
reignited this debate in Washington and beyond within the Democratic
Party about Biden, about whether he should have run for
(09:59):
reelection at all. So it seems to me, Jessica, this
debate doesn't end at all, but it is briefly put
on pause as there's one of today's news.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
Extraordinary timing, Mary Catherine, extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
You're telling me the Robert Hurr tapes that we were
all told would reveal that he was just smart as
a whip all the way through, because Robert Hurr was
actually just smearing him for me, of the present Democrats
back then, the day those are finally released and we
all hear that the right wing conspiracy conspiracy theorists were
(10:32):
again just correct, that's the day we get this other
news that is fascinating.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
For extraordinary timing.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I mean, it's like, do you think we believe you,
Brian Stelter, Do you think we think that you believe
the White House that this is extraordinary timing? I mean,
the former White House, come on, now, come on.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It is amazing to me that they almost they almost
flaunted as as it's a feature not a bug, that
that if they're covering a democratic presidency, they are the
most credulous people on the planet. Right, you're a reporter, dude,
You're not supposed to be the most credulous person on
the planet. You're supposed to be like, h, these are
(11:18):
people with access to power and motives that I should consider,
and they just.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Out of their brains. They just.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
The spokesperson said. So how could I possible challenge that?
The spokesperson said.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And surely we have no other evidence that these people
have lied about his health in the past. I mean,
it is actually and this is the problem I think
for Biden and for the press that has covered him credulously,
is that a lot of sort of rational people are
just looking at this, even left leaning people. I think
that the armies of doctors speaking out on x that
are like, ah, that doesn't make me sense that this
(11:55):
would have just appeared. I think that's very interesting that
they're all being pretty vocal about that. But people are
just finally saying this is one of the biggest it's
I think it's the biggest presidential scandal of my lifetime
for sure, And people who are not right leaning people
are noticing that, and I think they just made it worse.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
In another era.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I think you and I would be saying different things.
I think that so much trust has been broken over
the last five years that I think that we know
we can't believe any of this. And I think again,
in a different time, you know, twenty five years ago,
when you and I were starting out in this game,
I think we would have been more trusting. But we've
(12:40):
seen some things and we know that.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
We can't be anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Our friend Buck Sexton posts the people who now admit
they hid Biden's dementia for four years with Soviet level
of ruthlessness, are about to be outraged at anyone who
suggests Biden's inner circle may have also hid his cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, you can't run the same play again, guys.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
You only get to do that once.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
We just saw this.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It's also just it's so disgusting what they did to
the American people, what they did to Democratic voters. They moved,
They did all of this to subvert their own voters,
took the possibility of a primary away from them. And
now there wasn't some great hue and cry, except from
(13:27):
Dean Phillips, but some people certainly probably would have liked
a choice had they been presented with one.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
And yet They're just like, nah, opt.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Out when they knew this was the situation, right, and
they knew, by the way, how much do they hate
Kamala that they were like, well, he does have dementia
and cancer, but we cannot hand the reins to her,
like we.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Absolutely did so. And the joke is, of course that
they weren't entirely wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
She was terrible and they knew that she would be,
so that like they accepted that reality, but they were
like going to wing it with viben.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, I mean, this is my greatest of all time analogy.
This is just the worst of all time debate, and
we'll be having it forever more because Biden and Kamala
are so uniquely bad. Yeah, that it's hard to ever
come to a conclusion about it. But I think I
think perhaps two times in a row, Obama and Biden
himself both picked vps that they did not want to
(14:29):
hand off the presidency too, but then ended up being
forced to do so. I don't think Trump made that mistaken.
He didn't for whatever policy differences I have with strety Vance,
he would be a person who's ready to do that, right.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Absolutely. I don't don't think anybody would deny that. I
don't think.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
You know, they could have personal disagreements at the end
of the next four years, and who knows what's going
to happen.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
I mean, Donald Trump, I like to.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Say, I quote my husband, Are you trying to get
into the mind of Donald Trump? You know you really
don't know where he's going to go, but you can
see him obviously feeling.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
Like this is my successor.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, I just I.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
It astoundingly gets worse. Yeah, that's what I think.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Like, just when you think they've hit the level that
they can hit.
Speaker 4 (15:19):
Nope, right, nope, They're like, let us show you a
new bottom.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And my favorite part about it, as always is the
self congratulatory, like moral grandstanding of all of it. Is like, oh, well,
we're still the better people. Obviously we had to do
this extraordinarily dishonest thing and perpetrate a constitutional crisis.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Here for years and years.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
But because because Trump is like extraordinarily bad, you get it, right,
you get.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
It Hitler right, So.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
Yeah, trash.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Anyway, We're going to take a short break and come
right back with normally Republicans are obviously taking this crazy.
Speaker 9 (15:59):
Moment to be really good, right, I mean, what else
would they be doing right now except pushing through policies
that conservatives have wanted for decades.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Right, Well, there's a big bill.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I'm told it's beautiful, big beautiful bill.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
And look, this is also ties into your observation about
like trying to get into Trump's head. The House and
Senate Republicans both which must be exactly unified in this
reconciliation bill because that's the only way you can pass it,
and it is the number one priority of the Trump administration.
They have to understand what he wants. Getting in his head.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Is very hard, So the one big beautiful bill.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So they're having to keep the GOP caucus united completely
to do this. Uh, he's over here saying, like, maybe
raise taxes on the highest earners the Republican parties like
this is the last thing we need right now, dude.
The only thing we agree on is that we don't
us taxes.
Speaker 6 (17:00):
On any day.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And the results of the break big beautiful bill, as.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Is almost always the case when the people come together
to hash this stuff out, has a bunch of giveaways
and a bunch of loopholes and a bunch of nonsense
and brings up the baseline of spending of our American
bureaucratic Leviathan, despite all of the messaging to the contrary
from the Trump administration.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah, and I have.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
A very low expectations bar for things like these, and
it still is managing to take me off.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
I think it's so bad that I don't think a
lot of Americans realize how bad it is.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
I have to say, I don't follow.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I feel like the spending parts as closely as I should.
I have in the last few years gotten better at it,
but it's complicated. There's so many different avenues to it,
and so I get that the average American doesn't understand
what's happening. I think David Friedberg, he was on the
All In podcast, and he did a really good job
(18:07):
of explaining why this spending bill is so bad. On
his Twitter, he calls it fiscal emergency O clock in America,
and we're going to play just a few minutes of
this All In clip. I think it just explains succinctly
what the problem is.
Speaker 7 (18:24):
You should feel shame that your elected officials are proposing
that this is the bill that gets past that we
vaporize this much money, that we put ourselves this much
further in debt that we do not treat the situation
as the fiscal emergency that it is. The bill ultimately
yields no real change in the annual deficit. The annual
(18:46):
deficit could climb to two zero point five trillion dollars
being added to the federal debt load every single year
going forward. In fact, if you look at the Treasury yields,
the thirty year is now kissing five percent. So the
United States has called thirty seven trillion dollars of debt
at five percent. We're paying close to two trillion dollars
(19:09):
a year just in interest on our debt. As this
debt gets refinanced, the interest rates are going up because
the probability that the US will default on its debt payments,
which is what you're buying when you buy US treasuries.
You're getting the US government to pay you some number
of dollars with interest over time, and the market is
now demanding that that interest rate be as high as
(19:31):
five percent. Because of this fiscal situation that the United
States finds itself in, we are now burning an additional
two point five trillion dollars a year adding to our
debt load. We are in a fiscal crisis, and we're
not willing to admit it. And I've said this from
day one that DOGE can only do so much, and
clearly that's the case where they're now talking about sub
three hundred billion dollars a year in potential annual savings
(19:53):
from DOGE action. At the end of the day, Congress
needs to take action, and this bill from Congress doesn't
take much action. I will tell you that if you
look across the board, all of these programs are still
being proposed to be run at a cost that is
well in excess of their pre COVID levels. And so
I would set two guiding principles if I was to
be the benevolent dictator of the United States of America.
(20:15):
My guiding principal Number one would be that any program
that we intend to continue to persist have its budget
level cut to pre COVID to twenty nineteen levels. Second
would be and if we did that, by the way,
we would be in a much better fiscal situation. The
second would be that we add no new programs in
the moment. There's a whole bunch of you thrown into
the spill. As well as increasing the cost and a
few cuts here and there. I'll just highlight a couple
(20:37):
that I think are worth noting. You know, there's a
cut in the SNAP program, which is the Supplemental Nutrition
and Assistance program that's food stamps, And I talked about
this with Brooke Rowlins in the interview I did a
few weeks ago. You can watch it on YouTube, and
we talked a little bit about how this SNAP program
has absolutely exploded in size from sixty billion a year
in twenty nineteen to one hundred and twenty billion a
(20:58):
year today. So in this budget proposal, they're actually cutting
it back by about thirty billion, so to ninety billion,
So it's still fifty percent higher than it was pre COVID.
And there's a lot of kind of stories we could
go through on what happened during COVID that caused this
thing to blow up the way it did. But political
wrangling pulled money out of the government into people's pockets,
(21:21):
and that is persisting today. I'm a big believer in
cutting taxes. Obviously, I'm probably more libertarian than anyone else
on the show or that we've ever had on the show.
But at the end of the day, you can't just say, hey,
let's cut taxes and spend more than we're making. It
doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
I have very low expectations for these things. The problem
to me again, and I understand, they have to keep
everybody together. So they got to buy everybody off with
their little benefits, and they got to make sure that
Trump also has his many random tax decisions he's made
in speeches represented in this bill. So you've got to
have no tax on tips, you've got to have no
(21:57):
tax on overtime. Any idea he had on the camp paintrail,
you got to put it in there.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Now.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I understand how that works from a political point of view,
but when you start trying to do the math, you
end up with some bad math and some bad unintended
consequences in all likelihood, because we're going to incentivize certain
kinds of work over others.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
It's going to be weird.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But the priority from the beginning should have been extend
the twenty seventeen package, period, extend the two thousand and
seventy package. If you do not do that, all the
people who got a tax cut at that time, which
was the majority of Americans, will see their tax.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Liability go up. Period. That's what we're trying to.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Escape, right, and if that's.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Not number one, and you're having a bunch of infighting
about these little side issues, and you're fixing the side
issues by racking up more spending in other areas, in
particular the salt cap discussion, which, let me just say,
this is a thing where people in blue states with
really high property taxes get to deduct their state and
(23:05):
local taxes salt from their federal liabilities bunkers.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Even when I lived in New York, I oppose this.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
It's crazy because what it does is it subsidizes those
local and state politicians who give you those whopping taxes
because you can deduct it elsewhere, and then they don't
pay the price for having raised those taxes on you. Ever,
So there's conservatives who believe in not subsidizing this kind
(23:34):
of behavior are like, hey, there needs to be a
cap on this deduction, and they're negotiating what that cap
should be. Understandably, New York Republicans are like, you can't
make this cap too low because my people are the
people who benefit from this. And I'm like, we're just
the whole part. The whole pitch about systemic change and
(23:56):
how we're going to fix a bunch of things, and
we have all this opportunity to do so. So look,
I didn't expect them to actually do it, but good lord, right.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
This is going in reverse.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I look other things, like you mentioned unintended consequences, things
like no taxing tips. Like in theory that sounds good.
In practice, that's going to lead to all kinds of
I would say, not corruption, but in the vein of
corruption is there's so many, so much opportunity for people
(24:27):
to pretend that money that they're making is tips, And
I just think we're heading in such a bad direction.
I would love and Trump talked about this also on
the trail, so I don't see why this can't be
one of the plans. But I would love a simplified system,
a system with a flat tax, a system that is
fairer to people and just to everyone really, because if
(24:49):
you're paying a flat tax, you're paying a portion of
your income and everybody pays, you know, the same portion.
It's just crazy that we have Republican Congress and it's
somehow going to end up just as bad as it
would with a democratic one.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
With maybe a rise in marginal rates for high earners
like it's wild complexity in the sort, so we're doing here.
Complexity in the system is a subsidy for those who
can afford really good accountants, That's what it is. And
the people who get the people who worry about salt caps,
the people who know what assault cap is. Those people
are not like working class people. Okay, those are the
(25:30):
people they're worried about. Those are the people they're they're serving.
If we had something simpler, you wouldn't have people having
to go to the mats for excusing New York property
tax rates, which is what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I just think we're we're in deep trouble. If the
twenty seventeen package doesn't get extended, it's probably going to
have to be extended as part of this ugly big bill,
and you're going to get a bunch of ugly stuff
with it.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Will be right back on normally.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
All right, let's leave the listeners with something a little lighter.
We have a lot of post weekend complaints, A woman
writes into The New York Times. Yes, they provide a
lot of our content here on normally, she writes, I've
always loved my husband, but now that we are older
and in our sixties, I definitely hate him less. Maybe
(26:22):
I shouldn't have waited, had to wait thirty three years,
a third of a century to hate my husband less.
But time has been good to him. And she goes
on to say that basically he has more time now.
He's making dinner and making her Martinez when she got home,
and he's just looking better and all of this, and
(26:42):
she's enjoying this happy, creative time in his life. But
the thing is, he seemed pretty good the whole way through,
And as I'm reading this piece, I'm waiting to see
how he was like just you know, absent and not
helpful to her. But she tells stories where he absolutely
(27:03):
was a very involved at I mean, like some of
the things that she criticizes him for. Bruce was also
very adept at coming home from work after the kids
had already been tucked into their bunk beds, lights out
and all that, and rousing them so that he could
read books to them.
Speaker 4 (27:18):
I get it.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I understand rousing kids. There's like it's something that you
just don't do. But to read books to them that's
quite nice. I feel like I feel like maybe that's
something that should be applauded.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
It's not like he roused them to watch the next.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Game to.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
Him.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
To my husband, No, he roused them to read to them.
I like it.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah, Okay, So I get where she's coming from with
some of this, because I'm I do not doubt her
that she was probably carrying a lot of the load
when it came to the home and home management and
kids in the prime of those hard years. He's out
as a magazine editor and writer. She says, doing a
lot of events. You know, I get it, networking, it
(28:06):
probably looks like a lot more fun than what you're
doing at home. She has the more flexible schedule, and
so she's picking up a lot of that work, right,
I get that, But like, some of this is just
like the way the cookie crumbles everyone. You can't magically
live in Manhattan as two writers and not have someone
maybe shouldering a little bit more of the kid's stuff
(28:26):
while they're more flexible, while this guy goes out and
has a more traditional nine to five. Like, if you
want something different, you might have to move to a suburb, right,
you might make some cuts in other areas. And some
of this, too, just feels like Season of life stuff,
where like, of course you both feel better now you
(28:47):
have fewer stresses, there's less of a grind every day.
And I would suggest that maybe the fact that she's
written this piece as her way of communicating this and
had him edit it for her is maybe.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Sort of a.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Diagnosis of what was going on in the thick of
things as well, because she says, there's one paragraph, I
wasn't a stay at home mother, but I dropped off
and picked up my kids from school every day, organized
their activities, took them to the doctor, bought their clothes,
kept them fed, homework, bathbad, the whole schmeer. When I
showed my husband this essay, he wrote in the margins,
you weren't totally on your own. I dropped off one
(29:24):
or other of the kids every day, and at least,
in my memory, got them breakfast every morning.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
The former note is sort of true. The latter is
a complete fantasy. Okay.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
If the former note is true and he was dropping
off one or other kid every day, that's a pretty
substantial thing to leave out.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
And also, like, why are we doing it this way?
Why are we slagging our husband for things that happened
twenty five years ago?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
In writing, I feel like he's being pretty nice to like,
very calmly comment in the margins.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
He's letting her have her moment.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
I just don't ever see the reverse of this where
her husband's like, I like my wife so much better
than I've ever liked her before, because now that the
kids are out of the house, she gets she goes
to the gym, so she looks better, and she cooks
for me and she makes me martini's, and I'm so
much happier. You know now that now that she's relaxed
a little bit with her career or whatever, we would
(30:24):
kill this guy. He would be just slaughtered on the internet.
And yet this is in the New York Times, like look,
how look how nice this husband became.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah, I just a lot of a lot of this.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
This type of commentary is a little bit like she
wants to have it all, but there's not going to
be a trade off and having it all, even for
a season of life. She didn't want there to be
a trade off for having at all. And the truth is,
I think as you and I embrace, is like, you're
not going to have it all.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
There are gonna have it all.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
There are going to be trade offs, particularly when you're
in the thick of raising children and some more of
it might fall to you and some more of it.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Might fall to your husband. Whatever it is. Like, I
don't want no dead beats in here, but like.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
There are gonna be situations where you're doing more of
the child rearing because you're more flexible, because that's your thing, right, Yeah,
and want to well yeah, I also enjoy doing it.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Yeah, so but if you want it all, you kind
of have to accept that some of that's gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
That's absolutely right, including.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
The Manhattan place you live in. You know, it's like, yes,
you made the choices these.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
She even acknowledges like, I know, our life sounds quite rarefied,
and I'm like it.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
Indeed does a little bit, lady, little bit.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Two writers living in Manhattan, Like, how can we possibly
make it work?
Speaker 2 (31:45):
She says his industry collapsed at one point, so that's
why that's why they could do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, No, it was, he was.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
This was the heyday of magazine and that was a
cool life and it existed.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah it's gone, guys, it's gone. Well, thanks for joining
us on normally normally airs Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and you
can subscribe.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Anywhere you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally
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