September 1, 2026 • 29 mins
Mary Katharine Ham and Karol Markowicz break down the growing controversy surrounding Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and left-wing streamer Hasan Piker. As El-Sayed attempts to distance himself from Piker, his past appearances and campaign events with the controversial streamer are coming under new scrutiny. Mary Katharine and Karol examine what the relationship could mean for El-Sayed’s race against Mike Rogers — and why Piker may become a much bigger problem for Democrats heading into future elections.
Then, they debate the Trump administration’s new Venezuela oil agreement and whether expanding American access to Venezuela’s massive oil reserves represents smart geopolitical strategy or risks crossing the line into government intervention. They also look at renewed economic pressure on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and whether the balance of power in the global oil market could be shifting toward the Western Hemisphere.
Plus, a federal court ruling sparks a major First Amendment and immigration debate: Should non-citizens living in America be protected from deportation over political speech? Mary Katharine and Karol tackle free speech, immigration vetting, constitutional rights, and a legal battle that could ultimately move higher through the federal courts.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey guys, we are back on Normally, the show with
normal-ish takes for when the news gets weird.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Mary Katherine Hamm. And I'm Carol Markowitz. How are you,
Mary Katherine? I'm all right.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I'm doing very mom things this morning, which is tracking
down all the badges I was supposed to put on
my kids' scouting vests and we had all summer to do.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Tonight is the meeting, so obviously now is the time. Well,
at least it's not like 6 p.m., so that would be... No,
I got a real head start on it. Yeah. How
are you guys doing? You know, it's raining a lot
in Florida.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
It's like late August, and most of September is my
least favorite Florida weather, and it's really... It's proving to
be correct that that is the worst time. Yeah, it's
just it's like I don't mind the afternoon rainstorms, but
it's the chaotic, real storming lightning. Everything gets canceled, but
(01:03):
maybe not a situation that I don't deal with well. Like,
I think, you know, all the people that are snowbirds
or whatever, or the people who leave Florida for the summer.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Like, if it were up to me, if my kids
weren't in school, I'd leave Florida for September. Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Noted. But, you know, it wasn't a big newsy weekend,
which I always appreciate. There wasn't a lot to weigh
in on or to read about.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
So that was good. I dwelled on my Dolly grief
and wrote through the free.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Beacon about it, which you can check out. And, you know,
that's what we needed to do. Make my children listen
to a lot of Dolly Parton music.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I love it. That's, you know, that's the right way
to raise them, teach them some Dolly, teach her values.
Love it.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Meanwhile, sort of the opposite of her values up in Michigan.
Shall we? Shall we jump into how into it?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Abdul El-Sayed versus Mike Rogers race is sort of a
symbol for the lay of the land between the Republican
and Democratic parties. not just in this midterm, but in
general and what the Democratic Party is going to become
or not, depending.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
On what they decide.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
So Abdel El-Sayed is running up there and is under
increased pressure to sort of talk about and reject his
alignment with Hassan Piker, who is this very, very extreme
streamer whose entire career like money-making scheme is based on
being as insane as possible, as loudly as possible. So like,
(02:43):
maybe you shouldn't have aligned yourself with him. And when
I say aligned himself with Hassan Piker, I mean, he
was on the trail with him multiple times. It was
on a pre or an election night pool party with him.
He's taking selfies with him. His attempt to be at
arm's length now is not believable. But he basically says,
(03:05):
you know, this is a race about affordability. It's not
a race about a streamer from California.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
And this has been tried, obviously, before when Kamala Harris
had a lot of her old, you know, quote unquote,
woke one comments come up. She would say this is
not what the race is about. And her supporters would
say she's not even running on giving sex change operations
to illegal immigrant criminals in prison. Why are you guys
(03:31):
even mentioning this? But turns out the things that you
believe do come up in the campaign. So that's a
whole thing.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, and Hassan Piker is like a walking embodiment of
not just woke 1.0, but the 2.0, which is the
more militant, more Jew hating, more socialist revolutionary version of woke.
And if you bring him physically to your state, yes,
you have to answer for him. And my theory, of course,
on why El-Sayed doesn't want to jettison him too harshly
(04:01):
is is because he actually agrees with him on too
much of this stuff, uh, which is embodied by the way.
I just saw a, a tweet about his, uh, an
old 9-11 tweet of El-Sayed's, which says, I kid you not,
today I mourn the 3,000 lives, 6,000 injuries, and infrastructural
(04:22):
devastation in New York City perpetrated ignorantly in the name
of my faith. Tomorrow I'll mourn 1 million lives, millions
of injuries, and infrastructural devastation in three countries perpetrated ignorantly
in the name of my country.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That's September 21st.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
2021 thanks bud uh the the the mournful observance of
infrastructural devastation.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
That's right yeah when planes sort of somehow crashed.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah throw on mom donnie said the other day all
the people died they just died they had like unexplained
strokes or something i guess and.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
The canadian broadcasting uh committee also had to walk back
their um planes ended up crashing um.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
So aes or i'll say i had attempted to back
away from his March comments about a terrorist attack in Michigan.
This was a Hezbollah inspired attack on a synagogue that
at the moment had a preschool in it or that
houses a preschool. So about as bad as you can get.
(05:23):
And at the time he was like, you know, hurt people,
hurt people. He gave a very florid speech about, you know,
you got to understand the context. So He, quote, apologizes
for this now, according to the media. But Mark Penn,
who's a, you know, a centrist Democrat hoping to save
them from themselves, points out it's not really such an apology.
He says, my comments may have been misconstrued to justify
(05:46):
something I did not mean to justify, else I had
told reporters after he addressed the caucus at a party
convention in Lansing. To anyone who feels like my comments
might have been hurtful, I'm really sorry. That was not
my intention. He goes on to say he was just giving...
but it wasn't the time for that.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
He didn't mean to tread on anyone's pain. Not really
an apology. Wow, that's not an I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
And it's similar to what Hasan Piker has done about
his own America Deserved 9-11 comments to kind of say
it was taken out of context and never actually apologize
as his fans say, look, he apologized, but he hasn't.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Hassan Piker also does all of us the favor of
never shutting up. And so you can really see through
El-Sayed's attempt to distance from this guy. And why this
is important in a larger context is because everyone on
the left is going to have pressure to align with
this guy to earn his audience such that it.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Is and the energy behind him. And at what cost
is the question. So here's.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Hassan Piker pushing back on this in a clip and saying, like,
it's unfair for all of you guys to say that
we hate America or that we love terrorists. Just like,
you know, the implication is that we're just Islamophobic. But
what we're actually doing is listening because you'll see back
to back. Here's what Hassan Piker has said about America
and whether he hates it.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It is completely ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
It's laughable to say guys like myself, guys like Abdul El-Sayed,
we hate America.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I say I hate America all the time. A lot
of motherfuckers want to kill me over that take. But
at least I say it with my fucking chest. People
will be like, Hasan, you hate America. I'm like, yeah,
I do. I do hate America. He doesn't say it
with his chest anymore. What happened?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I think he's it's almost as if he doesn't realize
that everyone can watch the streams.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Like he'll be mask off and mask on depending on
the day.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
And he's blowing El Sayed's cover here. He has also
been found. Someone put together a super cut of him saying, oh,
you know who you know who had me in Michigan?
Because El Sayed is like, why are y'all keep talking about?
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's not right here.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I'm not interested in him. Well, who invited Hassan Piker
to Michigan? Here's what Hassan Piker says.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
That's the whole point. That's the reason why Abdul asked
me to go.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
The reason why when Abdul asked for me to come
on this journey with him, I said.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So when Abdul asked me to stomp for him, I
was like, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
From the frying pan into the fire moment for me
was when Abdul asked me to do a stomp.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Abdul asked me to... Okay. Well, Abdul asked you to
stomp for him, did he?
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
That's what happened.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
And the fact is that Abdul needed him in the primary.
He wanted his support in the primary. And he's not
going to be the last Democrat to turn to Hassan
Piker in a primary and be like, get your left
wing base out for me. And it's going to be
interesting to see how many presidential.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Candidates on the Democratic side will.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Go on Hassan Piker's show and to rile up their base.
They wanted the Joe Rogan of the left. I guess
they got him.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Well, and this is the thing about them, too, is
that it's partly because of media going easy on them
is Democrats will often get themselves in a situation where
an issue like, I don't know, the trans issue and
trans women in sports or this one, Hassan Piker, get
them into trouble. And then they're so mad that Republicans
are noticing. It's like, you guys made this a thing.
(09:20):
You guys pushed this. There have been untold glowing portraits
of Assan Piker in mainstream media because he's this person
who is going to deliver the left in the ways
that they want them to do. And then you're mad
that we all noticed that he exists and he's running
with your people. On both fronts, Mike Rogers is running
(09:42):
an ad tackling the woke one weirdness of.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And the trans issue. Here's his newest ad.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
My dad was a football coach at Redford Union. I
played football all through high school. On the gridiron, I
learned about teamwork and toughness.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Abdul.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Well, he says football is racist, sexist, and dominated by
toxic masculinity.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So let's get this straight.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Abdul thinks football is bad, but men playing women's sports
is good. That's just not who we are in Michigan.
I'm Mike Rogers, and I approve this message. Common sense
versus crazy. That's Michigan's choice.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
And Democrats aren't dumping women. They are very much lining
up behind him. Chuck Schumer has a Senate majority pack.
They are launching a $ 4. 5 million ad campaign statewide against
Mike Rogers.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I mean, is it really for El-Said? No, they don't
really have that much to say about that.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
But they're coming out against Rogers' support for the Iran
war because... They say that he said it would end quickly,
but it keeps going on. It's interesting that they are
not at all trying to push away that leftist flank.
They might have a couple of words for Assam Piker,
but even that's pretty muted.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, and the hits from Mike Rogers are fair. Those
are fair hits. El Sayed gets mad about it and says, hey,
Mike Rogers, clearly your teammates didn't vote you captain.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
If they did, you would have said it in the ad.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Probably had that beta energy back then.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I was the captain, football, wrestling, lacrosse.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And Mike Rogers replies, nothing screams alpha quite like a
41-year-old desperately reminding everyone he was popular in high school.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Which I... That's that's well done.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
The hits are fair because this is how they have
expressed themselves in public. These are like issues that they
have not backed off of, whether for any of.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
These, you know, sort of woke 1.0 turned one 2.0 candidates.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
There's something also interesting about the whole beta alpha thing
happening in an election like that. Like a Democratic candidate
is calling his opponent a beta. Like that is such
an online thing. And it's just it's it's pathetic, actually.
Like it's it's like what? Normal people will be like,
what are you talking about? And I can't imagine that
(12:10):
playing in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Also, it's almost a footnote at this point, but he
did a whole else. I did a whole video.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
But this is why it's symbolic of where the Democratic
Party is headed about entitlement spending, doing the thing where
it's like we're spending money on the military instead of
spending money on entitlements, which is not true.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
The whole budget. And that's the problem in many cases.
So he's just like straight up lying about it and wrong.
And and that's, I think, going to be their message
moving forward, because no one wants to deal with the
fact that the entitlements are a problem. Also, I am
forced to say that I was wrong about El-Sayed.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
On one point, which is this.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
He was in an interview where he said he was
excited to beat Ohio, and he went to Michigan. And
I thought, that's weird. Ohio State is the rival to Michigan.
But apparently, and I have known so many Michigan people,
but I did not know this. Apparently, the Michiganders, the Wolverines,
refer to Ohio as Ohio as a slur, basically.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
They won't use their full name. Right. I saw this
debate on X, and I obviously sat it out because
what do I know? But it's interesting. We're not even
going to say the full name of your school. Yes.
I was unaware of this, even though I've had a
lot of exposure to Big Ten people. So mea culpa.
I apologize for that. He's just such an alpha, you know,
(13:30):
using the right terminology. I was too beta. I was
too beta. Other than that, he's wrong. Right. Other than
the name of the school, he is incorrect. All right.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
We're going to take a short break and be right
back with more on Normally. We are back on Normally,
where the one kind of big piece of news this
weekend is the U.S. and Venezuela reached an oil agreement
in the last few days, where essentially the U.S. will
get majority control, access to development of about 65 billion
(14:05):
barrels of Venezuelan oil through partnerships with private companies. And
it's intended to last 25 years. So there's been a
lot of kind of hand-wringing about this, even on the right,
because we're not the country that takes your riches and
your goods. But I will say that a lot of
(14:27):
the articles are forgetting to highlight some really important parts
of what was happening to Venezuelan oil before we took
Maduro out. They were selling the oil off-market to China,
to Russia, in accordance with I'm not a big international
law person, but they were violating international law in these
(14:48):
black market sales, and they were using it to harm America, basically.
So here's Francisco Monaldi. He's director of the Latin America
Energy Program at Rice University, Baker's Institute for Public Policy,
talking about how it used to work.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
He says, Venezuela used.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
To be exporting most of its oil, about 80%, to
the black market in China before the U.S.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Blockade in December.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Today, Venezuela is exporting everything to licensed markets by the U.S.,
mostly to the U.S., India, and some to a storage
in the Caribbean.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And all the money is being collected in a U.S.
Treasury account. But then some of it goes back to
Venezuela and companies are coming back to the country to
see business opportunities there. I'm for it.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I think that we are in a situation where we
have freed this country from communist dictatorship and we can
get their country going again and it can help American
commerce as well.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
OK, so, yeah, I'm I'm a little turn on this.
Here's here's Marco Rubio and I'll get into it. But
he says this deal is a huge win for both
the American and Venezuelan people. It demonstrates how President Trump's
bold foreign policy is driving America first wins, securing stable
reserves and low cost oil in our hemisphere and lowering
gas prices globally. here at home for the Venezuelan people.
This deal will bring nearly $ 100 billion in private investment,
(16:03):
support thousands of high-paying jobs, and drive reconstruction of Venezuela's economy.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I'm with you. Obviously, it's a nice side.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Benefit that the oil reserves and such and the supply
chains can be secured in a way that will be
better than they have been in the past. it is
really important to get the economy back online in Venezuela
after devastation by communist cronies. Now, there's the part where
our government is doing it. And there is a private
(16:30):
partner in Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
I don't know who's running that. But I don't want
to do a thing where it's like, Our socialism is.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Like better than your socialism because it's still kind of
socialist if you have a major stake in a company,
as Trump is wont to do taking stakes in companies.
So I want to be super careful about that. And
I am skeptical of it. And also, it's one of
these situations where if you leave the guy there, it's
a communist dictatorship and he's a criminal who's been indicted
(16:57):
in American courts and should be removed.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
We remove him. If you do nothing, you've abandoned Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
If you do something with private actors, you're privateering and profiteering.
If you do something with the U.S. government, you're doing
the socialism and the imperialism. So, yeah, I would hope
we are in a like temporary spot where you can
get these things back online and moving to benefit the
Venezuelan people. And I worry about some of the behind
(17:26):
the scenes and many, many private actors are like, what
are we doing here?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
How this is working.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah. I, that, that's it. If we do nothing, that's
also doing something. So I, I trust Rubio. I think that,
you know, if he says that this is the best
path forward, I sort of believe him. I mean, I'm
not a hundred percent, but like, he's, he's sort of
my guy where if he says it, I'm, I'm, I'm likely.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Going to take it seriously. Um, and, and the.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Fact is that it bothers me that All these news
stories are not telling the whole story.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
They're making it seem like Venezuela was living this amazing life.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
And this is the story that's often told about communist countries,
where if it wasn't for this meddling America, they'd be
doing great. And that's just not the case. So all
the stories leave out these black market sales to China
and to Russia to bolster their economies.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And the fact that we need to step in now
is a result of that.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Well, and also the fact that Venezuela had been utterly
devastated going from one of the most prosperous countries in
the hemisphere to the least, right?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Like that was the work of the commies. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I had been there many times as a child before
the revolution there. My parents were just, you know, big,
weird place travelers. So I've been to places in Venezuela
that you cannot imagine. And yeah, It wasn't a functioning country.
It was a normal-ish functioning country. So it's sad that
(18:58):
the decline has happened in the last, you know, decades.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
And I hope that they turn it around. It can
be a normal country again.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
We flagged this over the weekend, you and I, one
writer saying, I've been highlighting the possibility of basically a
realignment in oil paths that fuel the economy, saying the
Western Hemisphere will be the new OPEC. U.S., Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana, Argentina,
huge strategic shift coming. And look, some of that, this
(19:29):
is like one of those things where... Sometimes Trump things
become 4-D chess, but maybe weren't meant to be 4-D chess.
I don't know about the Don Roe Doctrine and whether
this was intentional, but the Iran War and the Strait
of Hormuz clothing has forced some changes in how people
move oil around the globe. And if you don't want...
(19:50):
to be hostage to Iran, then we must do that.
Two points on Iran. There do seem to be some
developments there. One, there was a big announcement by Besant
of new sanctions, which... You know, China's not listening to
even the UAE is not listening to some of the
these warnings, which is like, dude, they're bombing you guys.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Like Iran is bombing you. Why don't you stop interacting
with them? But but. apparently they're looking.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
For new ways to squeeze Iran. The Navy has reinstituted
the blockade on Iran, on Iranian ports.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So that could put more pressure on this regime whose
currency is at the lowest point of trade or trade
value in, I don't know, ever, I think.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's like 2 million rial to a dollar or something
like that at this point. So there is tremendous pressure.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
The U.S. Navy has also said that.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And Cintcom has said that it has cleared the Strait
of Hormuz of these alleged mines.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
There were probably far fewer functional ones than we were
led to believe. And there may have been more Strait...
tankers going through throughout without their transponders on than we
ever knew. So it's hard to sort truth from fiction
in this conflict. And unfortunately, a lot of the media
seems really intent on telling the story that Iran is
winning at every turn.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
It's bizarre because by what metric is Iran winning? It's
just it makes no sense. And of course, Trump doesn't
add to that very well. He this morning, he put
out a truth. But So he tweets or truths or
whatever it's called. Iran is a failed nation.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
It is dead. All caps. They have no Navy.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
They have no Air Force. They have no currency. They're
not paying their soldiers or police. Inflation is at 300
percent and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable
of properly representing the country. The only thing they have
is fake news from the USA, a willingness to kill
their protesters, now over 100,000 people dead. They must be
tried for war crimes against humanity and a good line
of BS. Thank you for your attention to this matter,
(21:58):
President Donald J.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Trump.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
I'm sure that he is correct on all that, but
this just.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Doesn't come off as... you know, calm, sane, rational. I
wish he would do it in a slightly different way.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, because I think having dived into it this week,
there do seem to be interesting and important points about
the pressure that we're putting on Iran. I would also
ask why there were any sanctions left on the table
when we were actively at war on them. If there
were screws to tighten, tighten them six months ago. I
think part of that is they don't want to square
off with China, which absorbs 90% of Iran's exports. So
(22:34):
that's part of that, that they're sort of trying to
put all this pressure without getting into a real open
fight with China. But hopefully this pressure could actually create
change because, you know, the IRGC and the bad guys
have to be paid to do their work.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
And if you don't have money, you can't pay them.
Sure can't. I do think we're in a really good position.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
I think that The Trump administration, you know, isn't declaring
victory here because they have seen what happens in like
the Bush administration when, you know, mission accomplished and that
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I think this is generally.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Over and I don't know why this is so hard
for people to admit.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Well, and I think starting it, as you and I noted,
with a clearer discussion of what we were trying to
do would have been the way to go. This is just,
I think, useful for thinking about the whole conflict when
we get in our heads and it feels overwhelming. He
talks about it in four acts. One, the intensive airstrikes
that began on February 28th to the April 7th ceasefire
(23:36):
and negotiations. Three, the June 17th memo of understanding, which
is now ended. And now back to Iran targeting the
Strait of Hormuz and us putting economic.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Pressure on Iran. So those are the four segments. And
he thinks that this one means a lot more pressure
for Iran and that they can take less than we can.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
All right.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
We will see what happens and we will keep you
all posted. We're going to take a short break and
be right back with more on Normally. All right.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
We are back on Normally with a First Amendment slash
immigration case in federal courts. It'll probably face appeal, but
just this is from FIRE, an organization which I do support,
by the way, financially and otherwise.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
But they went to court over this.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Today, a federal court ruled that the provisions Secretary of
State Marco Rubio used in an attempt to deport legal
immigrants for their speech are unconstitutional and violate the First Amendment.
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression challenged the provisions in
August 2025. The ruling affirms a bedrock constitutional principle. This
is coming from them. This is not a report.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Rubio and the Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Sought to use immigration law to target foreign university students
and others for deportation based on protected speech, like writing
op-eds and attending protests. This was applied to Mahmoud Khalil
and then Ozturk, who was, I believe, the Rutgers student,
who was, it seems to me, this is why I'm
torn on this one. Ozturk, it does seem to me,
was targeted just for the op-ed.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Mahmoud Khalil did a lot more stuff.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I am less torn on this. I like FIRE. I
like a lot of what they do. I think they're
wrong here. And the reason I think they're wrong here
is because speech can.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Lead to other things.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So if we have somebody who is here on a
green card, they're here conditionally.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
They don't have.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
the right to, for example, say, I want to bring
down America. If you and I did a podcast like, hey,
we need to end America. We want to get rid
of the Constitution. We think this country is a failure.
Let's let's get rid of this country. We're American citizens.
And that is one thing. If you have somebody who's
here conditionally, it's quite another thing to be saying, I
(25:46):
want to destroy this country.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
And yes, that's just speech, but it couldn't lead to
far more. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Someone was tweeting, you know, there's this conflict where it's like, OK,
so is America a propositional nation?
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Are we a nation where you like you sign on
and you assimilate and you believe the things we do?
Or are we just never allowed to test that notion?
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And my my conclusion is, OK, so say this is
and I think there is an argument that this is
consistent with the First Amendment, is that once you get here,
you do have that freedom.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
But what's the what's the next step there?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
The next step is that you have to vet the
intentions of people who come very, very, very, very seriously.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Nothing like we've experienced in the past.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And I would understand totally if various Americans were like, well,
if we can't.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Kick anyone out once they're here, as it's been, you know,
troublesome to do with even a Khalil who was engaged,
I think, in probably criminal behavior many times over, then
why would we let anyone in? That's it. That's really it.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
If you want to argue that you know, once you
step foot here, you have all the rights and privileges
of being an American, then we have to make being
an American so much harder to achieve. And I feel
like the people arguing, and I don't know about Greg
Lukianoff and FIRE specifically, because they do stay in their lane.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
They stay very much on speech. But generally, people who.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Argue that we need to give the rights to every
single person who enters are also the people that want
a lot more people to enter.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Also, what of the lies on the applications, right? If
you come here and in your application, you had said, no,
I don't definitely don't want to destroy America. And then
you get here and that's not true. What do we
do about that? That seems like a bigger issue, not
as much a speech issue.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Because speech can foment revolution.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
And the fact is that we shouldn't let in people
that want to do that here.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Also, I always think about this, like, Every time one
of these things comes up, I'm like, imagine me going
to France. Right. And thinking I could get away with this.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Like they would never.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
It would never occur to me that I can just
go to other countries, overstay my visa, crap on the
country publicly, do a.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Bunch of crimes.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
But apparently that's that's the thing that we're supposed to.
In particular, all the Muslim countries like go.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Try to argue that they should have a different frame
of government, that they should change the way that they
do things and see what happens to you. And the
fact is that they do it here because we allow it.
And I don't know that we should allow quite this
much to go on.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, I think, yeah, it is a privilege to be here.
It's a privilege to be let in. In the past
six years, it has become basically like whatever.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Everyone comes through.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
But if these are the rules and you can't control
after the fact, then you have to control before the
fact very harshly. That'll probably move up in the courts,
but we'll keep you posted.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, that'll likely be appealed and the Ninth Circuit could
uphold or overturn it or make a more narrow decision
on that.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
So we'll see.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
And it might end up at the Supreme Court because
this is something that I think the administration really takes
seriously and wants to pursue.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Well, thanks for joining us on Normally Normally airs.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you can subscribe anywhere you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail.com. Thanks
for listening, and when things get weird, act normally.
Hey guys, we are back on Normally, the show with
normal-ish takes for when the news gets weird.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Mary Katherine Hamm. And I'm Carol Markowitz. How are you,
Mary Katherine? I'm all right.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I'm doing very mom things this morning, which is tracking
down all the badges I was supposed to put on
my kids' scouting vests and we had all summer to do.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Tonight is the meeting, so obviously now is the time. Well,
at least it's not like 6 p.m., so that would be... No,
I got a real head start on it. Yeah. How
are you guys doing? You know, it's raining a lot
in Florida.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
It's like late August, and most of September is my
least favorite Florida weather, and it's really... It's proving to
be correct that that is the worst time. Yeah, it's
just it's like I don't mind the afternoon rainstorms, but
it's the chaotic, real storming lightning. Everything gets canceled, but
(01:03):
maybe not a situation that I don't deal with well. Like,
I think, you know, all the people that are snowbirds
or whatever, or the people who leave Florida for the summer.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Like, if it were up to me, if my kids
weren't in school, I'd leave Florida for September. Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Noted. But, you know, it wasn't a big newsy weekend,
which I always appreciate. There wasn't a lot to weigh
in on or to read about.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
So that was good. I dwelled on my Dolly grief
and wrote through the free.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Beacon about it, which you can check out. And, you know,
that's what we needed to do. Make my children listen
to a lot of Dolly Parton music.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I love it. That's, you know, that's the right way
to raise them, teach them some Dolly, teach her values.
Love it.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Meanwhile, sort of the opposite of her values up in Michigan.
Shall we? Shall we jump into how into it?
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Abdul El-Sayed versus Mike Rogers race is sort of a
symbol for the lay of the land between the Republican
and Democratic parties. not just in this midterm, but in
general and what the Democratic Party is going to become
or not, depending.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
On what they decide.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
So Abdel El-Sayed is running up there and is under
increased pressure to sort of talk about and reject his
alignment with Hassan Piker, who is this very, very extreme
streamer whose entire career like money-making scheme is based on
being as insane as possible, as loudly as possible. So like,
(02:43):
maybe you shouldn't have aligned yourself with him. And when
I say aligned himself with Hassan Piker, I mean, he
was on the trail with him multiple times. It was
on a pre or an election night pool party with him.
He's taking selfies with him. His attempt to be at
arm's length now is not believable. But he basically says,
(03:05):
you know, this is a race about affordability. It's not
a race about a streamer from California.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
And this has been tried, obviously, before when Kamala Harris
had a lot of her old, you know, quote unquote,
woke one comments come up. She would say this is
not what the race is about. And her supporters would
say she's not even running on giving sex change operations
to illegal immigrant criminals in prison. Why are you guys
(03:31):
even mentioning this? But turns out the things that you
believe do come up in the campaign. So that's a
whole thing.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, and Hassan Piker is like a walking embodiment of
not just woke 1.0, but the 2.0, which is the
more militant, more Jew hating, more socialist revolutionary version of woke.
And if you bring him physically to your state, yes,
you have to answer for him. And my theory, of course,
on why El-Sayed doesn't want to jettison him too harshly
(04:01):
is is because he actually agrees with him on too
much of this stuff, uh, which is embodied by the way.
I just saw a, a tweet about his, uh, an
old 9-11 tweet of El-Sayed's, which says, I kid you not,
today I mourn the 3,000 lives, 6,000 injuries, and infrastructural
(04:22):
devastation in New York City perpetrated ignorantly in the name
of my faith. Tomorrow I'll mourn 1 million lives, millions
of injuries, and infrastructural devastation in three countries perpetrated ignorantly
in the name of my country.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
That's September 21st.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
2021 thanks bud uh the the the mournful observance of
infrastructural devastation.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
That's right yeah when planes sort of somehow crashed.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah throw on mom donnie said the other day all
the people died they just died they had like unexplained
strokes or something i guess and.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
The canadian broadcasting uh committee also had to walk back
their um planes ended up crashing um.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
So aes or i'll say i had attempted to back
away from his March comments about a terrorist attack in Michigan.
This was a Hezbollah inspired attack on a synagogue that
at the moment had a preschool in it or that
houses a preschool. So about as bad as you can get.
(05:23):
And at the time he was like, you know, hurt people,
hurt people. He gave a very florid speech about, you know,
you got to understand the context. So He, quote, apologizes
for this now, according to the media. But Mark Penn,
who's a, you know, a centrist Democrat hoping to save
them from themselves, points out it's not really such an apology.
He says, my comments may have been misconstrued to justify
(05:46):
something I did not mean to justify, else I had
told reporters after he addressed the caucus at a party
convention in Lansing. To anyone who feels like my comments
might have been hurtful, I'm really sorry. That was not
my intention. He goes on to say he was just giving...
but it wasn't the time for that.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
He didn't mean to tread on anyone's pain. Not really
an apology. Wow, that's not an I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
And it's similar to what Hasan Piker has done about
his own America Deserved 9-11 comments to kind of say
it was taken out of context and never actually apologize
as his fans say, look, he apologized, but he hasn't.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Hassan Piker also does all of us the favor of
never shutting up. And so you can really see through
El-Sayed's attempt to distance from this guy. And why this
is important in a larger context is because everyone on
the left is going to have pressure to align with
this guy to earn his audience such that it.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Is and the energy behind him. And at what cost
is the question. So here's.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Hassan Piker pushing back on this in a clip and saying, like,
it's unfair for all of you guys to say that
we hate America or that we love terrorists. Just like,
you know, the implication is that we're just Islamophobic. But
what we're actually doing is listening because you'll see back
to back. Here's what Hassan Piker has said about America
and whether he hates it.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
It is completely ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
It's laughable to say guys like myself, guys like Abdul El-Sayed,
we hate America.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
I say I hate America all the time. A lot
of motherfuckers want to kill me over that take. But
at least I say it with my fucking chest. People
will be like, Hasan, you hate America. I'm like, yeah,
I do. I do hate America. He doesn't say it
with his chest anymore. What happened?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
No.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I think he's it's almost as if he doesn't realize
that everyone can watch the streams.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Like he'll be mask off and mask on depending on
the day.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
And he's blowing El Sayed's cover here. He has also
been found. Someone put together a super cut of him saying, oh,
you know who you know who had me in Michigan?
Because El Sayed is like, why are y'all keep talking about?
Speaker 4 (07:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's not right here.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I'm not interested in him. Well, who invited Hassan Piker
to Michigan? Here's what Hassan Piker says.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
That's the whole point. That's the reason why Abdul asked
me to go.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
The reason why when Abdul asked for me to come
on this journey with him, I said.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So when Abdul asked me to stomp for him, I
was like, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
From the frying pan into the fire moment for me
was when Abdul asked me to do a stomp.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Abdul asked me to... Okay. Well, Abdul asked you to
stomp for him, did he?
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
That's what happened.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
And the fact is that Abdul needed him in the primary.
He wanted his support in the primary. And he's not
going to be the last Democrat to turn to Hassan
Piker in a primary and be like, get your left
wing base out for me. And it's going to be
interesting to see how many presidential.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Candidates on the Democratic side will.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Go on Hassan Piker's show and to rile up their base.
They wanted the Joe Rogan of the left. I guess
they got him.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Well, and this is the thing about them, too, is
that it's partly because of media going easy on them
is Democrats will often get themselves in a situation where
an issue like, I don't know, the trans issue and
trans women in sports or this one, Hassan Piker, get
them into trouble. And then they're so mad that Republicans
are noticing. It's like, you guys made this a thing.
(09:20):
You guys pushed this. There have been untold glowing portraits
of Assan Piker in mainstream media because he's this person
who is going to deliver the left in the ways
that they want them to do. And then you're mad
that we all noticed that he exists and he's running
with your people. On both fronts, Mike Rogers is running
(09:42):
an ad tackling the woke one weirdness of.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
And the trans issue. Here's his newest ad.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
My dad was a football coach at Redford Union. I
played football all through high school. On the gridiron, I
learned about teamwork and toughness.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Abdul.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Well, he says football is racist, sexist, and dominated by
toxic masculinity.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So let's get this straight.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Abdul thinks football is bad, but men playing women's sports
is good. That's just not who we are in Michigan.
I'm Mike Rogers, and I approve this message. Common sense
versus crazy. That's Michigan's choice.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
And Democrats aren't dumping women. They are very much lining
up behind him. Chuck Schumer has a Senate majority pack.
They are launching a $ 4. 5 million ad campaign statewide against
Mike Rogers.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I mean, is it really for El-Said? No, they don't
really have that much to say about that.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
But they're coming out against Rogers' support for the Iran
war because... They say that he said it would end quickly,
but it keeps going on. It's interesting that they are
not at all trying to push away that leftist flank.
They might have a couple of words for Assam Piker,
but even that's pretty muted.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah, and the hits from Mike Rogers are fair. Those
are fair hits. El Sayed gets mad about it and says, hey,
Mike Rogers, clearly your teammates didn't vote you captain.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
If they did, you would have said it in the ad.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Probably had that beta energy back then.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I was the captain, football, wrestling, lacrosse.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
And Mike Rogers replies, nothing screams alpha quite like a
41-year-old desperately reminding everyone he was popular in high school.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Which I... That's that's well done.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
The hits are fair because this is how they have
expressed themselves in public. These are like issues that they
have not backed off of, whether for any of.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
These, you know, sort of woke 1.0 turned one 2.0 candidates.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
There's something also interesting about the whole beta alpha thing
happening in an election like that. Like a Democratic candidate
is calling his opponent a beta. Like that is such
an online thing. And it's just it's it's pathetic, actually.
Like it's it's like what? Normal people will be like,
what are you talking about? And I can't imagine that
(12:10):
playing in Michigan.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Also, it's almost a footnote at this point, but he
did a whole else. I did a whole video.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
But this is why it's symbolic of where the Democratic
Party is headed about entitlement spending, doing the thing where
it's like we're spending money on the military instead of
spending money on entitlements, which is not true.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
The whole budget. And that's the problem in many cases.
So he's just like straight up lying about it and wrong.
And and that's, I think, going to be their message
moving forward, because no one wants to deal with the
fact that the entitlements are a problem. Also, I am
forced to say that I was wrong about El-Sayed.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
On one point, which is this.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
He was in an interview where he said he was
excited to beat Ohio, and he went to Michigan. And
I thought, that's weird. Ohio State is the rival to Michigan.
But apparently, and I have known so many Michigan people,
but I did not know this. Apparently, the Michiganders, the Wolverines,
refer to Ohio as Ohio as a slur, basically.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
They won't use their full name. Right. I saw this
debate on X, and I obviously sat it out because
what do I know? But it's interesting. We're not even
going to say the full name of your school. Yes.
I was unaware of this, even though I've had a
lot of exposure to Big Ten people. So mea culpa.
I apologize for that. He's just such an alpha, you know,
(13:30):
using the right terminology. I was too beta. I was
too beta. Other than that, he's wrong. Right. Other than
the name of the school, he is incorrect. All right.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
We're going to take a short break and be right
back with more on Normally. We are back on Normally,
where the one kind of big piece of news this
weekend is the U.S. and Venezuela reached an oil agreement
in the last few days, where essentially the U.S. will
get majority control, access to development of about 65 billion
(14:05):
barrels of Venezuelan oil through partnerships with private companies. And
it's intended to last 25 years. So there's been a
lot of kind of hand-wringing about this, even on the right,
because we're not the country that takes your riches and
your goods. But I will say that a lot of
(14:27):
the articles are forgetting to highlight some really important parts
of what was happening to Venezuelan oil before we took
Maduro out. They were selling the oil off-market to China,
to Russia, in accordance with I'm not a big international
law person, but they were violating international law in these
(14:48):
black market sales, and they were using it to harm America, basically.
So here's Francisco Monaldi. He's director of the Latin America
Energy Program at Rice University, Baker's Institute for Public Policy,
talking about how it used to work.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
He says, Venezuela used.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
To be exporting most of its oil, about 80%, to
the black market in China before the U.S.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Blockade in December.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Today, Venezuela is exporting everything to licensed markets by the U.S.,
mostly to the U.S., India, and some to a storage
in the Caribbean.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
And all the money is being collected in a U.S.
Treasury account. But then some of it goes back to
Venezuela and companies are coming back to the country to
see business opportunities there. I'm for it.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
I think that we are in a situation where we
have freed this country from communist dictatorship and we can
get their country going again and it can help American
commerce as well.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
OK, so, yeah, I'm I'm a little turn on this.
Here's here's Marco Rubio and I'll get into it. But
he says this deal is a huge win for both
the American and Venezuelan people. It demonstrates how President Trump's
bold foreign policy is driving America first wins, securing stable
reserves and low cost oil in our hemisphere and lowering
gas prices globally. here at home for the Venezuelan people.
This deal will bring nearly $ 100 billion in private investment,
(16:03):
support thousands of high-paying jobs, and drive reconstruction of Venezuela's economy.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I'm with you. Obviously, it's a nice side.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Benefit that the oil reserves and such and the supply
chains can be secured in a way that will be
better than they have been in the past. it is
really important to get the economy back online in Venezuela
after devastation by communist cronies. Now, there's the part where
our government is doing it. And there is a private
(16:30):
partner in Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
I don't know who's running that. But I don't want
to do a thing where it's like, Our socialism is.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Like better than your socialism because it's still kind of
socialist if you have a major stake in a company,
as Trump is wont to do taking stakes in companies.
So I want to be super careful about that. And
I am skeptical of it. And also, it's one of
these situations where if you leave the guy there, it's
a communist dictatorship and he's a criminal who's been indicted
(16:57):
in American courts and should be removed.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
We remove him. If you do nothing, you've abandoned Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
If you do something with private actors, you're privateering and profiteering.
If you do something with the U.S. government, you're doing
the socialism and the imperialism. So, yeah, I would hope
we are in a like temporary spot where you can
get these things back online and moving to benefit the
Venezuelan people. And I worry about some of the behind
(17:26):
the scenes and many, many private actors are like, what
are we doing here?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
How this is working.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah. I, that, that's it. If we do nothing, that's
also doing something. So I, I trust Rubio. I think that,
you know, if he says that this is the best
path forward, I sort of believe him. I mean, I'm
not a hundred percent, but like, he's, he's sort of
my guy where if he says it, I'm, I'm, I'm likely.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Going to take it seriously. Um, and, and the.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Fact is that it bothers me that All these news
stories are not telling the whole story.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
They're making it seem like Venezuela was living this amazing life.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
And this is the story that's often told about communist countries,
where if it wasn't for this meddling America, they'd be
doing great. And that's just not the case. So all
the stories leave out these black market sales to China
and to Russia to bolster their economies.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And the fact that we need to step in now
is a result of that.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Well, and also the fact that Venezuela had been utterly
devastated going from one of the most prosperous countries in
the hemisphere to the least, right?
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Like that was the work of the commies. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I had been there many times as a child before
the revolution there. My parents were just, you know, big,
weird place travelers. So I've been to places in Venezuela
that you cannot imagine. And yeah, It wasn't a functioning country.
It was a normal-ish functioning country. So it's sad that
(18:58):
the decline has happened in the last, you know, decades.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
And I hope that they turn it around. It can
be a normal country again.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
We flagged this over the weekend, you and I, one
writer saying, I've been highlighting the possibility of basically a
realignment in oil paths that fuel the economy, saying the
Western Hemisphere will be the new OPEC. U.S., Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana, Argentina,
huge strategic shift coming. And look, some of that, this
(19:29):
is like one of those things where... Sometimes Trump things
become 4-D chess, but maybe weren't meant to be 4-D chess.
I don't know about the Don Roe Doctrine and whether
this was intentional, but the Iran War and the Strait
of Hormuz clothing has forced some changes in how people
move oil around the globe. And if you don't want...
(19:50):
to be hostage to Iran, then we must do that.
Two points on Iran. There do seem to be some
developments there. One, there was a big announcement by Besant
of new sanctions, which... You know, China's not listening to
even the UAE is not listening to some of the
these warnings, which is like, dude, they're bombing you guys.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Like Iran is bombing you. Why don't you stop interacting
with them? But but. apparently they're looking.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
For new ways to squeeze Iran. The Navy has reinstituted
the blockade on Iran, on Iranian ports.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
So that could put more pressure on this regime whose
currency is at the lowest point of trade or trade
value in, I don't know, ever, I think.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's like 2 million rial to a dollar or something
like that at this point. So there is tremendous pressure.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
The U.S. Navy has also said that.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And Cintcom has said that it has cleared the Strait
of Hormuz of these alleged mines.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
There were probably far fewer functional ones than we were
led to believe. And there may have been more Strait...
tankers going through throughout without their transponders on than we
ever knew. So it's hard to sort truth from fiction
in this conflict. And unfortunately, a lot of the media
seems really intent on telling the story that Iran is
winning at every turn.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
It's bizarre because by what metric is Iran winning? It's
just it makes no sense. And of course, Trump doesn't
add to that very well. He this morning, he put
out a truth. But So he tweets or truths or
whatever it's called. Iran is a failed nation.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
It is dead. All caps. They have no Navy.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
They have no Air Force. They have no currency. They're
not paying their soldiers or police. Inflation is at 300
percent and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable
of properly representing the country. The only thing they have
is fake news from the USA, a willingness to kill
their protesters, now over 100,000 people dead. They must be
tried for war crimes against humanity and a good line
of BS. Thank you for your attention to this matter,
(21:58):
President Donald J.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Trump.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
I'm sure that he is correct on all that, but
this just.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Doesn't come off as... you know, calm, sane, rational. I
wish he would do it in a slightly different way.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, because I think having dived into it this week,
there do seem to be interesting and important points about
the pressure that we're putting on Iran. I would also
ask why there were any sanctions left on the table
when we were actively at war on them. If there
were screws to tighten, tighten them six months ago. I
think part of that is they don't want to square
off with China, which absorbs 90% of Iran's exports. So
(22:34):
that's part of that, that they're sort of trying to
put all this pressure without getting into a real open
fight with China. But hopefully this pressure could actually create
change because, you know, the IRGC and the bad guys
have to be paid to do their work.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
And if you don't have money, you can't pay them.
Sure can't. I do think we're in a really good position.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
I think that The Trump administration, you know, isn't declaring
victory here because they have seen what happens in like
the Bush administration when, you know, mission accomplished and that
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I think this is generally.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Over and I don't know why this is so hard
for people to admit.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Well, and I think starting it, as you and I noted,
with a clearer discussion of what we were trying to
do would have been the way to go. This is just,
I think, useful for thinking about the whole conflict when
we get in our heads and it feels overwhelming. He
talks about it in four acts. One, the intensive airstrikes
that began on February 28th to the April 7th ceasefire
(23:36):
and negotiations. Three, the June 17th memo of understanding, which
is now ended. And now back to Iran targeting the
Strait of Hormuz and us putting economic.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Pressure on Iran. So those are the four segments. And
he thinks that this one means a lot more pressure
for Iran and that they can take less than we can.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
All right.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
We will see what happens and we will keep you
all posted. We're going to take a short break and
be right back with more on Normally. All right.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
We are back on Normally with a First Amendment slash
immigration case in federal courts. It'll probably face appeal, but
just this is from FIRE, an organization which I do support,
by the way, financially and otherwise.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
But they went to court over this.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Today, a federal court ruled that the provisions Secretary of
State Marco Rubio used in an attempt to deport legal
immigrants for their speech are unconstitutional and violate the First Amendment.
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression challenged the provisions in
August 2025. The ruling affirms a bedrock constitutional principle. This
is coming from them. This is not a report.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Rubio and the Trump administration.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Sought to use immigration law to target foreign university students
and others for deportation based on protected speech, like writing
op-eds and attending protests. This was applied to Mahmoud Khalil
and then Ozturk, who was, I believe, the Rutgers student,
who was, it seems to me, this is why I'm
torn on this one. Ozturk, it does seem to me,
was targeted just for the op-ed.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Mahmoud Khalil did a lot more stuff.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I am less torn on this. I like FIRE. I
like a lot of what they do. I think they're
wrong here. And the reason I think they're wrong here
is because speech can.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Lead to other things.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So if we have somebody who is here on a
green card, they're here conditionally.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
They don't have.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
the right to, for example, say, I want to bring
down America. If you and I did a podcast like, hey,
we need to end America. We want to get rid
of the Constitution. We think this country is a failure.
Let's let's get rid of this country. We're American citizens.
And that is one thing. If you have somebody who's
here conditionally, it's quite another thing to be saying, I
(25:46):
want to destroy this country.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
And yes, that's just speech, but it couldn't lead to
far more. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Someone was tweeting, you know, there's this conflict where it's like, OK,
so is America a propositional nation?
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Are we a nation where you like you sign on
and you assimilate and you believe the things we do?
Or are we just never allowed to test that notion?
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And my my conclusion is, OK, so say this is
and I think there is an argument that this is
consistent with the First Amendment, is that once you get here,
you do have that freedom.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
But what's the what's the next step there?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
The next step is that you have to vet the
intentions of people who come very, very, very, very seriously.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Nothing like we've experienced in the past.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
And I would understand totally if various Americans were like, well,
if we can't.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Kick anyone out once they're here, as it's been, you know,
troublesome to do with even a Khalil who was engaged,
I think, in probably criminal behavior many times over, then
why would we let anyone in? That's it. That's really it.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
If you want to argue that you know, once you
step foot here, you have all the rights and privileges
of being an American, then we have to make being
an American so much harder to achieve. And I feel
like the people arguing, and I don't know about Greg
Lukianoff and FIRE specifically, because they do stay in their lane.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
They stay very much on speech. But generally, people who.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Argue that we need to give the rights to every
single person who enters are also the people that want
a lot more people to enter.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Also, what of the lies on the applications, right? If
you come here and in your application, you had said, no,
I don't definitely don't want to destroy America. And then
you get here and that's not true. What do we
do about that? That seems like a bigger issue, not
as much a speech issue.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Because speech can foment revolution.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
And the fact is that we shouldn't let in people
that want to do that here.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Also, I always think about this, like, Every time one
of these things comes up, I'm like, imagine me going
to France. Right. And thinking I could get away with this.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Like they would never.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
It would never occur to me that I can just
go to other countries, overstay my visa, crap on the
country publicly, do a.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Bunch of crimes.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
But apparently that's that's the thing that we're supposed to.
In particular, all the Muslim countries like go.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Try to argue that they should have a different frame
of government, that they should change the way that they
do things and see what happens to you. And the
fact is that they do it here because we allow it.
And I don't know that we should allow quite this
much to go on.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Yeah, I think, yeah, it is a privilege to be here.
It's a privilege to be let in. In the past
six years, it has become basically like whatever.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Everyone comes through.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
But if these are the rules and you can't control
after the fact, then you have to control before the
fact very harshly. That'll probably move up in the courts,
but we'll keep you posted.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, that'll likely be appealed and the Ninth Circuit could
uphold or overturn it or make a more narrow decision
on that.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
So we'll see.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
And it might end up at the Supreme Court because
this is something that I think the administration really takes
seriously and wants to pursue.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Well, thanks for joining us on Normally Normally airs.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you can subscribe anywhere you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail.com. Thanks
for listening, and when things get weird, act normally.
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