July 17, 2025 • 29 mins
In this episode, Mary Katharine Ham and Karol Markowicz delve into the complexities surrounding the Epstein investigation, discussing its implications and the public's perception of trust in political figures. They explore the role of Ghislaine Maxwell, the impact of conspiracy theories, and the recent political wins for Trump, including his successes in foreign policy and NATO. The conversation also touches on the importance of maintaining family relationships amidst political differences, concluding with reflections on the nature of friendship and understanding in a polarized environment. Normally is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Tuesday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Oh my guys, we are mad. Normally your show with
normal what she takes for when the news gets weird.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I am Mary Tatham him and I'm Carol Markowitz. We
are going to get into the news getting weird. We
put this topic off, and I want people to understand
we did not discuss Epstein because we're on the Epstein
list and we can we you know, want to hide
our involvement or any of the conspiracy theories around it.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
We have not discussed Epstein because.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
The news changes very quickly, and even as we are
going to record right now for tomorrow's release, Donald Trump
just five minutes ago posted something on truth that we're
going to get into also.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
And you know, it's not that easy.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
To talk about a topic that is rapidly changing when
you record a show when we're not live, even when
you are alive, because so much changes so quickly. So
we wanted to wait on Epstein, and we feel like
we can wait no more.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, here we go, let's do it. Here are my
basic thoughts on Telestine from the beginning is that at
the very least this was investigated from the beginning incompetently
and probably corruptly, because there were so many important people involved,
(01:21):
he got a sweetheart deal and his first charges yep,
and throughout the thing stinks to high heaven.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I don't know what the truth is, but I know
that it is bad. And we know there are all
these very real victims, many many of which signed NDA's
and we may never know anything about, many of which
don't want anything known about them, and they are in
the files. Such that the files are makes it hard
to release some of that without major reactions, which then
(01:52):
lends itself to various other theories. I don't think it's
wrong to think something's afoot. I just don't know what
the thing is other than I think this was slow
rolled or incompetent from the beginning, and I think that
Trump administration, and by the way, that was both sides,
with the slow rolling and the incompetency, I think the
Trump administration stepped in it by promising people things that
(02:14):
they couldn't give, right.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, that's basically where I am. Look.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Our second topic of the day today, which we'll get into,
will be Trump's Scotis wins. And I just want to
say I've had a up and down relationship with the president.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
You know, one side of relationship.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
He doesn't.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
You know, he's not having any relationship with me.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
But you know, my feelings and thoughts on him have
been up and down depending on things that he does
and says, not you know, not out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
But I am like peak Trump love right now.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I think that he is crushing it. I think that
since they I ran attack, maybe even before that, all
of his moves have been in my mind Stella, the
scotuswinds are incredible.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I think he really is on a high.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I've been joking that maybe it's time for me to
get a mega hat like we are in a place
Donald Trump and I having said all that, I blame
him for this. I don't blame PAMBONDI, I don't blame
Cash Ptel or Dan Bungino.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
This buck stops with Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And now when I would say blame, I don't think
he's covering up his own involvement at all.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I've never bought that theory.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I can give you guys a slight piece of insidery information.
A friend of a friend, somebody I really trust, worked
on the obscene investigation hates Donald Trump says he has
nothing to do with it. I mean, like says he
literally has nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Well, so, yeah, this is part of the danger of
all of this information is that he had connections to
many very famous and powerful people, many of which were
normal or innocent or transactional in normal ways that did
not touch the illegal activity. And so you can't just
assume everyone involved was doing this kind of thing. I
also think if this information had existed in any form
(03:54):
or any hint at it, the Biden administration would have
leaked this information.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Somebody who thinks the Biden administration sat on Donald Trump
being involved with Jeffrey Epstein is fooling themselves.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Also the side note to this is I think that
money lets people kind of disregard asking additional questions. You know,
when somebody has a private plane, I think that makes
people be like, oh, well, he's a legitimate person and
he made all his money, and I can go on
his plane.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And so a lot of people were on his plane
a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I know some seedless celebrities that were on his plane
who are not I would just say, not involved in
any way, and nobody has ever mentioned them.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
But you would also bolster that part of it if
you ever watch any of these Netflix like scam artist documentaries.
All of them charter planes and pretend that they have
private planes, because that's the signal that you are of,
you know, like the okay person to associate with. Right.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I hope that I raise my kids to be like,
I don't care if you have a private plane, Like
I'm not going somewhere with someone I don't know. On
a side side note, conservative influencer Lauren Southern yesterday published
a whole thing about how she was sexually assaulted allegedly
by Andrew Tate. And one of the things is like, well,
(05:10):
he had so much money and he was able to
like call me a car, and I went to these
fancy restaurants and I was very poor and blah blah blah.
And she blames herself, which she shouldn't. But that's what happens,
is that people get taken in by wealth or the
illusion of wealth, and kids don't do this. It doesn't
matter how rich someone is, like verify, you know, verify
(05:31):
who they are. You know, really don't trust everyone just
because they have money.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah, So I think to your point about them about
Trump bringing this on himself, you know, there were a
lot of there were promises made, and then people within
the administration were explicit about those promises, like I got
the list on my desk. I don't actually think there's
a list, because generally people don't write down explicitly all
the illegal things that they are doing in a list form,
except for the Ivy League with hiring, which I always
(05:56):
admit that they did it by race, but that's another
issue for another day. Yeah, I don't know if there's
an explicit list. I do know there's more information, right.
I think the easy, clean answer for the Trump administration
was Ghislaine Maxwell has this case in appeals. We can't
do anything until that is resulved. Maxwell was Epstein's right
(06:17):
hand woman who did a lot of the cultivating of
these relationships with these underaged women. That's a lot of
the work of getting people matched up or whatever, discussing
things they were into. She did a lot of that work,
and a lot of people rightly say, why is this
woman convicted and we see no other people who actually
did you know, we're the other side of this transaction
(06:39):
getting punished, And I think that's a fair critique. I
think the administration should have just said until this appeals
case is done, we can't do anything else.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
That's what they should have said.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
We're going to read something from Sonny, right. We mentioned
that account recently on here. But Sonny points out that
the brief of the United States Government before the Supreme
Court of the United States, submitted and signed by Trump's
Solicitor General d John Sower from quote from about nineteen
ninety four to two thousand and four petitioner, and this
is talking about Maxwell coordinated, facilitated, and contributed to the
(07:10):
multi millionaire financers Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of numerous young
women and underage girls. Petitioner and Epstein paid victims large
amount of cash to provide Epstein with sexualized massages. So, yes,
were there other people involved. I'm sure that there were,
But she's actually convicted of getting girls for herself and
(07:32):
for Epstein. Look, I you know, another quote from Sonny
from the brief is moreover and in order to maintain
and increase his supply of victims, Maxwell and Epstein also
paid certain victims to recruit additional girls.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
To be similarly abused by Epstein.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
In this way, Maxwell and Epstein created a network of
underage victims.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
For Epstein's to sexually exploit.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Sonny points out the conviction and sentencing was not at
all based upon notions that she was trafficking them for a.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
List of clients, and that saying.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That does not mean that we don't think there were
additional people involved. It just means this is what the
Cord case was, and I'm sure there were more people involved.
We know there are more people involved. You know, victims
who have spoken out said that there were more people involved.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
That does not mean that that's what they convicted her.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
On or that they could possibly can convict because they
don't have the evidence. I would say, I think this
is a real there is a real rift of sorts here.
I think the people who care most about it are
content creators and influencers and commentators. Yeah, that doesn't mean
it doesn't matter to the base. There are there are
there's a portion of the portion that cares about Epstein
(08:40):
that really believes this is the decoder ring to all
elite corruption, right, And I think I think there's like
there might be a kernel of truth there about how
people are protected and how these systems work. But I
think assuming it's the decoder ring to all this thing,
that you're going to break wide open is a mistake,
but that being said, Trump prefers to it as the Epstein.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Hosts olks, it's big yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That is going to be an interesting take. I think
this tests how much the portion of the portion of
the base that listens to Donald Trump will buy from him. Right,
if they care about this issue. In the past, they
would have said, well, this guy's in on it too.
Here we have it. The deep state won't let us
know the real truth, right, or the influencers and such
(09:23):
might find out that indeed, Maga is what Trump says,
and Maga takes Trump's word for it that they're being
sort of swindled by the left, which is very happy
to make this rift the number one story in the nation.
So we shall see.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I think that Donald Trump and his bass have a
real trust between them, for better or for worse, because
I don't think trusting politicians is the best idea, but
he really does have their sincere trust. So it will
be interesting to see what happens when he calls the
Jeffrey and Epstein hoax.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
A scam, their new scam, and he.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Says, my past supporters have bought into this bullshit hook line,
and Sinker is going to expose a rift. And there's
this additional element where all of the influencers who despise
Israel have decided that this is a Masad plot that
would entail our intelligence services not acting on that Massad plot.
(10:20):
And we're going to need any evidence whatsoever other than
some guy said, which is literally what this evidence is
based on right now, to say that this was an
international plot in any way, or an intelligence plot in anyway,
because the next step, if the people aren't blaming Massad,
they are blaming our own intelligence agencies are saying that
he was a CIA agent. I'm going to need to
(10:42):
see some evidence before you say things like that.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And so also back to the issue of trust. I
trust Dan Bengino.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I know him personally, think that he talked about this
issue for years. He wanted to uncover this. He wanted
to get into the FBI and uncover this. Nobody wanted
to uncover it. More so, when he said like two
months ago that Jeffrey Epstein actually did kill himself, I
believe him. That does not mean that nobody helped, That
does not mean that he didn't pay the guards to
(11:10):
look the other way. I allegedly I'm alleging this. That
does not mean there was no involvement by anybody else
in his suicide. But the medical examiner found that it
was a suicide. And Dan Bengino says so, and I
believe him.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, I mean the truth is the truth could be
that this is the story and this is what the
government could prove, and that he did kill himself, and
that could just be the truth. Right now, that doesn't
settle anything for anyone, I think, no matter how much
information you give them. And this goes to another trust problem,
which is a bigger one than the Trump and his base,
(11:44):
which actually does have a fairly decent trust relationship. It's
the just institutional distrust. Oh yeah, And I was on
Special Report talking about this issue with Guy Benson, who said,
you know, I'm not usually in the market for a
ton of conspiracy theories, but this one has stunk from
day one. And I said, and not only that, I've
been tricked before by assuming that the rational, simple explanation
(12:09):
would be the right thing as opposed to what Russia
Gate actually was, as opposed to COVID disinformation. Yeah, right,
And so I understand people's confusion and anger about it.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, they were lied to. They don't trust anymore, and
I get it. And so that's why Donald Trump, I think,
is saying, yes, you don't trust anymore, but you trust me.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
And I'm telling you this is not a thing.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Whether or not people will accept that is you know,
it really is the tell here.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
It's the question of is this were maga splits?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And there are influencers who are going to kind of
do well, raking in the cash from the people who
turn on Trump, and they build the audience off of that.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
There's so much of that.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Also.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
I wanted to mention there was a story on Monday
that Donald Trump was personally calling influencers to say layoff
Pam Bondi. This is from CNN and it's a little
bit of long quote, but I'm going to read it privately.
Trump has also doubled down on his support for Bondi.
The president called some of the Attorney general's most vocal
critics over the weekend in effort to stem the bleeding
over the Epstein files. Three sources familiar with the matter
(13:13):
told CNN. Trump's calls included one with the conservative activist
Charlie Kirk on Saturday to express his support for Bondi.
The call came as prominent MAGA supporters reportedly criticized the
attorney general at Kirk's Turning Point USA Student Action sum
at a Florida event aimed at mobilizing young conservatives. Members
of the president's inner circle have also reached out to
some of Bondi's critics to essentially ask them to ramp
(13:35):
it down, noting that Trump at this moment was not
getting rid of his attorney general source his caution that
while Trump was currently still supporting Bondi, things could always change.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
To be clear, no one has.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Called us, so we could say whatever we want. But
I don't think it's fair to lay this on Pambondy.
And again, in the world of teams, I'm kind of
team Dan Bongino here, But I don't think this is
Pam Bondi. I think this comes from Donald Trump. So
if you're mad at Pam Bondy, you're actually mad at
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, I think. Look, And then then the question is also,
even if people are mad about it, are they happier
about other things that are happening in the administration? Right
this is maybe not their top priority. What is the
tradical salience of this issue, and that's one of the
things where people who have disagreed with him about other
things like support for Israel, like whatever sort of deal
we're making on Ukrainian arms, that kind of thing. Are
(14:27):
they mad about that? Yes, And that therefore the good
parts of Trump for them are not overriding this, whereas
for other people, the good parts of Trump will easily
override it and they'll move right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I mean Tucker Carlson made a comment at that TPUSA,
you know combab that he said, basically, who cares about
boys playing in girls sports? Like that's just an appetizer
and I want the main dish. I'm sorry to me,
that is a main dish to me, that is one
of the main dishes.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Why I'm buying a Maga hat.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Also, Tucker Carlson, famous culture warrior, is disappointed that we're
winning a culture war in the state in the battleground
for which right now is the state in which he lives,
right where they took a female representative and took her
right to vote on vote and her right to speak
on the House right away from her an elected representative.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
But who cares because she spoke.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Out on this issue that he formerly very much cared about. Yeah,
now it's just nothing, It's just small potatoes.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
And I think you're right that it is these other issues.
I think at Tucker has majorly turned on Israel and
this it disappoints him that Donald Trump hasn't, and that
he's a big Israel supporter. I'm sure there are Ukraine
issues involved there as well, but Trump is crushing it,
absolutely crushing it. And anybody who is on the right
who says otherwise has ulterior motives or ulterior kind of
(15:50):
priorities more than anything else.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, And that's Trump's argument explicitly in his truth post
where he says like, I'm killing it and you guys
are all talking about this others, right. Yeah. I do
think him calling it a hoax is going to be
an interesting test of where people land. And I would
just say for the future on these big issues, be
careful what you make hay out of before you're elected, yep,
and then how you handle said promises after you're elected,
(16:15):
particularly in something that gets this much social media heat.
When you're back on normally, we will talk a little
bit about a lot of those successes.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
We are back on normally, and we are going to
talk Trump wins, because they've been numerous and really far reaching.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Let's just talk about the last month in Scotis.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Victories in June.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
At the end of June, he won on immigration resumed
deportations to third third party countries. Another one in June
birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions case, Court ruled sixty three
that lower courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions, significantly empowering Trump's
executive authority. At July eighth, the mass federal worker layoffs,
(17:02):
the Supreme Court lifted a nationwide injunction blocking Trump's February
executive order permitting large scale terminations across federal agencies, including
state and veteran affairs, without needing congressional approval. Just yesterday,
as we're recording this Education Department downsizing, Scotis lifted a
lower court block enabling the Trump administration to lay off
(17:23):
nearly fourteen hundred staff at the Department of Education. These
are massive, massive victories, and I get why Trump is
a little annoyed that his incredible success is being overshadowed
by Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Well, and then he's also got this the big beautiful
bill through before July force, which I did not predict.
It is a massive victory. To have extended the tax rates,
which we're going to expire at the end of the year,
is the thing that he wanted. Now it comes with
a lot of other stuff that I'm not a huge
fan of, but the part where he got the tax
rates extend, yeah, six months before the actual deadline. Huge.
(18:04):
It's been a long time since I've seen that in government. Yeah,
and now he has, yes, indeed, the power, the boss
has the power to restructure his own agencies and fire
employees that work within them. Down breaking. I can't believe
we have to go to Supreme Court for this, but
this is what you know, law fair, this is.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Where we got to.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, but it's good news that you know. You can
indeed restructure the Department of Education. You can, indeed, let
go a small percentage of the giant number of bureaucrats
we work within it, not working on students educations at all.
By the way, that's not what they do, that's not
their job. So these are really big deals.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, and let's not forget yesterday, just yesterday, since cast
the tie breaking vote to move forward a nine point
four billion dollar Recisions package, which would defund PBS and NPR,
among many many other Dolge priorities.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Three Republicans voted against it, which made no sense to me.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Hey, and that is huge, that's huge. Elon Musk, come back.
They're doing what you asked for.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Can I note? Also, and this is a bit of
a one eighty for me, who was I was very
concerned about Trump's NATO rhetoric back in the day, right
two fifteen sixteen, He's saying I don't know about Article five,
I don't know about defending all these people, because he
is more of a strained restrainer foreign policy guy. And
it made me nervous. Yeah, and then in two this week,
(19:27):
the Secretary General of NATO is in town, Mark Ruta, who,
by the way, kind of a looker, really tall, drink
of water. That guy. He ran into him as special
report this week, so I think I ran into no, no, no,
So he was in town. They do the Oval Office presentation,
and he has I just went back in time and
read some of the coverage from twenty eighteen when Trump
(19:48):
was first engaging with NATO, and it's all so hysterical
about what's going to happen. To NATO and how he's
going to weaken NATO and how he's going to ruin
this huge alliance. Right that asking these countries to pledge
two percent is unthinkable was the word used, right, And
Europe's gonna hate us, Okay. At the time, five of
(20:09):
the countries in NATO were contributing two percent of their
GDP to defense. Not only have they hit the two
percent mark in the world since Donald Trump started suggesting this,
but now all but one have pledged to get to
five percent.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
So it didn't destroy our relationship with them, No, And.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Actually I would argue it's quite clear that NATO is
stronger now with all of the nations contributing more than
it would have been had it stayed as it was
in twenty eighteen. And like, that is a turnaround that
he will not get enough credit for. But it's pretty amazing.
And Secretary General Mark Rute is smart enough to say
(20:47):
he helped us make this happen. Russia helped too by
being a giant a whole, all right, but he helped us
make this happen. And it's good for alliances, it's good
for the Western world, and that is a pretty impressive turnaround.
Since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Did you envision on normally that we would be like,
oh my god, Donald Trump's doing all this amazing stuff,
and conservatives, other conservatives like his MAGA people are not
giving him any credit for it, Like I didn't see
this coming.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
He just people ignore these giant things. Yeah, and I'm like,
do y'all remember the first term? Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah? Donald Trump absolutely crushing it. We love to see it.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Let's take a short break and we'll come back and
tell you how not to destroy your relationship with your
family over politics. You're right back on normally. Welcome back
on normally. We here at normally do not think that
politics should destroy family relationships. It's kind of an easy call. However,
(21:51):
for some reason, people don't make the same one as us.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Why is that, Mary Catherine?
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, well, they're writing about it in the New York Times,
which is to us. There's an hotbed this week that
it explicates some of this. It is entitled is it
Time to Stop Snubbing your right wing family? Written maybe
by David Litt, who is an author and was a
speech writer for Obama. And let's just lay out the
(22:17):
characters in this hotbed. One is David Litt, who hasn't
he This is how he describes himself. I was one
of President Obama's speech writers and had an Ivy League degree.
This is Matt Kapler, his brother in law, who he
met in twenty twelve. He was a huge Joe Rogan
fan and went on to get his electricians license. Okay,
(22:38):
all right, so this is his brother in Law's his
wife's little brother. Yeah. Around the pandemic, he just decides
this guy wasn't willing to get vaccinated, and I therefore
am not going to hang out with him anymore. I'm
not going to talk to him. I'm not even going
to be polite to him. And this is what he admits.
My frostiness wasn't personal, it was strategic. Being unfriendly to
(22:59):
people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right
thing to do. How else could we motivate them to
mend their ways. Even cites historical examples of shunning from
society and puts himself weirdly on the side of the
anti hester Prenne society in the scarlet letter. He's like,
the whole point of hester Pren's scarlet letter was to
show she had violated norms. Is that what we're doing now.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Right, right, I kind of saw her as the hero
of that story.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
I think he missed the point in literature class. This
guy's a jerk, and he's writing about it in the
New York Times.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, it really is something that people like him think
that they're the good guy. He talks about how as
it was on the rare and always outdoor occasions. Of course,
always outdoor because the dirty, dirty relative wasn't vaccinated.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I mean, I'm ad living that.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
And when we saw each other, I spoke in disapproving snippets.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Work's been good. I would never talk to that person again.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I know, I know this is, you know, a segment
about be good to your family, even among politics.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
But I'm not going to be good to people who
are a holes to me.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
And that's really on the you know, on his brother
in law, Matt, still accepting him, still going surfing with him,
still finding a way to be okay with him, find
that Matt is the person I'd want to be friends
with in the story and not oh death, David.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Matt the surfer sounds like a lovely person, right, And
also fixing my electricity is a more useful skill than
writing a New York Times up ed and I say
that as somebody who writes out that the thing is
and this is what Litt believes. He has taken this
man's political actions and actions outside of the family and
(24:38):
turned them into well, he's being a jerk to me, right,
And this is how he expresses it. He doesn't apply
it like he's This is not a personal interaction they're
having again, he's only seeing him outside. And by the way,
the vastly didn't protect you from getting it or passing
it anyway. I'm not sure if David knows that now.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
I don't know. Has it been in the New York
Times yet?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Who knows? But don't use this kind of stuff to
justify your bad behavior and then congratulate yourself still for
being the good guy. By the way, he comes to
this great conclusion, which is the one that we always
teach a little late to the party. Here he says
they become surf buddies because honestly, he's selfish and he
needs somebody to surf with, and Matt's the only person
(25:20):
he knows that he can surf with. And he says
that they look they made connections over things other than politics.
So weird. And then he adds this, and I just
want to say, Matt is a very good person. He
says it helped that in the ocean are places in
the pecking order reversed. Matt's a very good surfer. One
might call him an elite and I am not. According
(25:42):
to surfing's unwritten rules. He had the right to look
down on me, but he never did. His generosity of
spirit in the water made me rethink my own behavior
on land. Matt, you're a really good dude.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Is Matt looking to be set up? Do we have
some friends for Matt?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Right?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Do we know if he's single? We don't. Let's play.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
I have a little comedian clip from gian Marco Sesi
talking about how he's a progressive but he finds his
conservative friend to be a really good person.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Let's roll that I have progressive.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Views, but that doesn't mean I'm a good person. Liberals
make that mistakes sometimes. I have a more conservative friend,
and you know he has views that really he's one
of those guys, and we all know those guys who's
like you see this article, a trans woman played volleyball,
made a little girl.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
And I can't stay on that ship.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Because the kind of guys that complain about trans women
playing women's sports are same kind of guys that whole
guys like me in high school. You run like a girl,
you throw like a girl. And now they're mad because
some of us followed through. But I will say in
his defense, he is a wonderful human being, better than
I could ever imagine being. I'll tell you a story
(26:58):
once me and my conservative friend walking on the street
in New York City. In front of us was walking
a woman in very high heels. As far as I
could tell, she was trans. Now, at some point, this
woman she tripped on her right heel. She fell into
the street right as a bus was approaching, and my
conservative friend ran into the street, scooped her up just
(27:18):
in the nick of time, helped her on her feet,
send her about her way, And then he turned to
me and was like, that's why men shouldn't wear heels.
It was a lot of things, and I want to
be clear, I didn't a city.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Thing to do.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
But if I'd been alone, I would have been like.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Oh no, she's dead. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I enjoyed that because look, yeah the comedian would have,
you know, gendered her how she wanted to you know,
the trans person wanted to be gendered. The conservative friend
took action and saved the person.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So I think that is symbolic. There is a sort
of a material physical support for you that in these
friendships conservatives will give and they'll stick around and they'll
be more forgiving. And by the way, this is not
just me making stuff up. Like every polling, every survey
shows that Democrats are more will democrats and liberals and
(28:14):
are willing to break friendships over politics, and that they
have fewer of those friendships to begin with. And I
do think it's just a totally different approach to other humans,
where you're just taking this one thing and making it everything,
and I don't think it makes for happy people or
happy relationships.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I'm going to wrap this up with how's Matt still
going to be friends with him?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I know after this piece? If think he wrote two pieces,
he wrote one for the Free Press. Also, I mean
this is beat now, yeah, this is I'm going to
wrap it up with David Lit's last paragraph where he
wants to let the Libs know, don't worry.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
I still hate a lot of them. I just don't
brother in law.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Of course, he.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Writes, there are, of course, some people so committed to
odiousness that it defines them.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
If Stephen Miller wants a surf lesson, I'll decline. But
are most people like that? In an age when banishment backfires?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Keeping the door open to Kely friendship isn't the betrayal
of principle, it's an.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Affirmation of them.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Dude, you would also find common ground with Stephen Miller.
I know, I know how crazy that sounds, but it's true.
Stephen Miller is a human who has also human interests,
and he may also like surfing, and you may also
be able to connect with him over at.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Amazing Amazing Stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Well, thanks for joining us on Normally. Normally airs Tuesdays
and Thursdays, and you can subscribe anywhere.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
You get your podcast.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally
Oh my guys, we are mad. Normally your show with
normal what she takes for when the news gets weird.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I am Mary Tatham him and I'm Carol Markowitz. We
are going to get into the news getting weird. We
put this topic off, and I want people to understand
we did not discuss Epstein because we're on the Epstein
list and we can we you know, want to hide
our involvement or any of the conspiracy theories around it.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
We have not discussed Epstein because.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
The news changes very quickly, and even as we are
going to record right now for tomorrow's release, Donald Trump
just five minutes ago posted something on truth that we're
going to get into also.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
And you know, it's not that easy.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
To talk about a topic that is rapidly changing when
you record a show when we're not live, even when
you are alive, because so much changes so quickly. So
we wanted to wait on Epstein, and we feel like
we can wait no more.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, here we go, let's do it. Here are my
basic thoughts on Telestine from the beginning is that at
the very least this was investigated from the beginning incompetently
and probably corruptly, because there were so many important people involved,
(01:21):
he got a sweetheart deal and his first charges yep,
and throughout the thing stinks to high heaven.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I don't know what the truth is, but I know
that it is bad. And we know there are all
these very real victims, many many of which signed NDA's
and we may never know anything about, many of which
don't want anything known about them, and they are in
the files. Such that the files are makes it hard
to release some of that without major reactions, which then
(01:52):
lends itself to various other theories. I don't think it's
wrong to think something's afoot. I just don't know what
the thing is other than I think this was slow
rolled or incompetent from the beginning, and I think that
Trump administration, and by the way, that was both sides,
with the slow rolling and the incompetency, I think the
Trump administration stepped in it by promising people things that
(02:14):
they couldn't give, right.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Yeah, that's basically where I am. Look.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Our second topic of the day today, which we'll get into,
will be Trump's Scotis wins. And I just want to
say I've had a up and down relationship with the president.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
You know, one side of relationship.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
He doesn't.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
You know, he's not having any relationship with me.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
But you know, my feelings and thoughts on him have
been up and down depending on things that he does
and says, not you know, not out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
But I am like peak Trump love right now.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
I think that he is crushing it. I think that
since they I ran attack, maybe even before that, all
of his moves have been in my mind Stella, the
scotuswinds are incredible.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I think he really is on a high.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
I've been joking that maybe it's time for me to
get a mega hat like we are in a place
Donald Trump and I having said all that, I blame
him for this. I don't blame PAMBONDI, I don't blame
Cash Ptel or Dan Bungino.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
This buck stops with Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And now when I would say blame, I don't think
he's covering up his own involvement at all.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
I've never bought that theory.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I can give you guys a slight piece of insidery information.
A friend of a friend, somebody I really trust, worked
on the obscene investigation hates Donald Trump says he has
nothing to do with it. I mean, like says he
literally has nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Well, so, yeah, this is part of the danger of
all of this information is that he had connections to
many very famous and powerful people, many of which were
normal or innocent or transactional in normal ways that did
not touch the illegal activity. And so you can't just
assume everyone involved was doing this kind of thing. I
also think if this information had existed in any form
(03:54):
or any hint at it, the Biden administration would have
leaked this information.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Somebody who thinks the Biden administration sat on Donald Trump
being involved with Jeffrey Epstein is fooling themselves.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Also the side note to this is I think that
money lets people kind of disregard asking additional questions. You know,
when somebody has a private plane, I think that makes
people be like, oh, well, he's a legitimate person and
he made all his money, and I can go on
his plane.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And so a lot of people were on his plane
a lot.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
I know some seedless celebrities that were on his plane
who are not I would just say, not involved in
any way, and nobody has ever mentioned them.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
But you would also bolster that part of it if
you ever watch any of these Netflix like scam artist documentaries.
All of them charter planes and pretend that they have
private planes, because that's the signal that you are of,
you know, like the okay person to associate with. Right.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I hope that I raise my kids to be like,
I don't care if you have a private plane, Like
I'm not going somewhere with someone I don't know. On
a side side note, conservative influencer Lauren Southern yesterday published
a whole thing about how she was sexually assaulted allegedly
by Andrew Tate. And one of the things is like, well,
(05:10):
he had so much money and he was able to
like call me a car, and I went to these
fancy restaurants and I was very poor and blah blah blah.
And she blames herself, which she shouldn't. But that's what happens,
is that people get taken in by wealth or the
illusion of wealth, and kids don't do this. It doesn't
matter how rich someone is, like verify, you know, verify
(05:31):
who they are. You know, really don't trust everyone just
because they have money.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yeah, So I think to your point about them about
Trump bringing this on himself, you know, there were a
lot of there were promises made, and then people within
the administration were explicit about those promises, like I got
the list on my desk. I don't actually think there's
a list, because generally people don't write down explicitly all
the illegal things that they are doing in a list form,
except for the Ivy League with hiring, which I always
(05:56):
admit that they did it by race, but that's another
issue for another day. Yeah, I don't know if there's
an explicit list. I do know there's more information, right.
I think the easy, clean answer for the Trump administration
was Ghislaine Maxwell has this case in appeals. We can't
do anything until that is resulved. Maxwell was Epstein's right
(06:17):
hand woman who did a lot of the cultivating of
these relationships with these underaged women. That's a lot of
the work of getting people matched up or whatever, discussing
things they were into. She did a lot of that work,
and a lot of people rightly say, why is this
woman convicted and we see no other people who actually
did you know, we're the other side of this transaction
(06:39):
getting punished, And I think that's a fair critique. I
think the administration should have just said until this appeals
case is done, we can't do anything else.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
That's what they should have said.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
We're going to read something from Sonny, right. We mentioned
that account recently on here. But Sonny points out that
the brief of the United States Government before the Supreme
Court of the United States, submitted and signed by Trump's
Solicitor General d John Sower from quote from about nineteen
ninety four to two thousand and four petitioner, and this
is talking about Maxwell coordinated, facilitated, and contributed to the
(07:10):
multi millionaire financers Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse of numerous young
women and underage girls. Petitioner and Epstein paid victims large
amount of cash to provide Epstein with sexualized massages. So, yes,
were there other people involved. I'm sure that there were,
But she's actually convicted of getting girls for herself and
(07:32):
for Epstein. Look, I you know, another quote from Sonny
from the brief is moreover and in order to maintain
and increase his supply of victims, Maxwell and Epstein also
paid certain victims to recruit additional girls.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
To be similarly abused by Epstein.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
In this way, Maxwell and Epstein created a network of
underage victims.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
For Epstein's to sexually exploit.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Sonny points out the conviction and sentencing was not at
all based upon notions that she was trafficking them for a.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
List of clients, and that saying.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
That does not mean that we don't think there were
additional people involved. It just means this is what the
Cord case was, and I'm sure there were more people involved.
We know there are more people involved. You know, victims
who have spoken out said that there were more people involved.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
That does not mean that that's what they convicted her.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
On or that they could possibly can convict because they
don't have the evidence. I would say, I think this
is a real there is a real rift of sorts here.
I think the people who care most about it are
content creators and influencers and commentators. Yeah, that doesn't mean
it doesn't matter to the base. There are there are
there's a portion of the portion that cares about Epstein
(08:40):
that really believes this is the decoder ring to all
elite corruption, right, And I think I think there's like
there might be a kernel of truth there about how
people are protected and how these systems work. But I
think assuming it's the decoder ring to all this thing,
that you're going to break wide open is a mistake,
but that being said, Trump prefers to it as the Epstein.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
Hosts olks, it's big yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That is going to be an interesting take. I think
this tests how much the portion of the portion of
the base that listens to Donald Trump will buy from him. Right,
if they care about this issue. In the past, they
would have said, well, this guy's in on it too.
Here we have it. The deep state won't let us
know the real truth, right, or the influencers and such
(09:23):
might find out that indeed, Maga is what Trump says,
and Maga takes Trump's word for it that they're being
sort of swindled by the left, which is very happy
to make this rift the number one story in the nation.
So we shall see.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I think that Donald Trump and his bass have a
real trust between them, for better or for worse, because
I don't think trusting politicians is the best idea, but
he really does have their sincere trust. So it will
be interesting to see what happens when he calls the
Jeffrey and Epstein hoax.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
A scam, their new scam, and he.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Says, my past supporters have bought into this bullshit hook line,
and Sinker is going to expose a rift. And there's
this additional element where all of the influencers who despise
Israel have decided that this is a Masad plot that
would entail our intelligence services not acting on that Massad plot.
(10:20):
And we're going to need any evidence whatsoever other than
some guy said, which is literally what this evidence is
based on right now, to say that this was an
international plot in any way, or an intelligence plot in anyway,
because the next step, if the people aren't blaming Massad,
they are blaming our own intelligence agencies are saying that
he was a CIA agent. I'm going to need to
(10:42):
see some evidence before you say things like that.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
And so also back to the issue of trust. I
trust Dan Bengino.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I know him personally, think that he talked about this
issue for years. He wanted to uncover this. He wanted
to get into the FBI and uncover this. Nobody wanted
to uncover it. More so, when he said like two
months ago that Jeffrey Epstein actually did kill himself, I
believe him. That does not mean that nobody helped, That
does not mean that he didn't pay the guards to
(11:10):
look the other way. I allegedly I'm alleging this. That
does not mean there was no involvement by anybody else
in his suicide. But the medical examiner found that it
was a suicide. And Dan Bengino says so, and I
believe him.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, I mean the truth is the truth could be
that this is the story and this is what the
government could prove, and that he did kill himself, and
that could just be the truth. Right now, that doesn't
settle anything for anyone, I think, no matter how much
information you give them. And this goes to another trust problem,
which is a bigger one than the Trump and his base,
(11:44):
which actually does have a fairly decent trust relationship. It's
the just institutional distrust. Oh yeah, And I was on
Special Report talking about this issue with Guy Benson, who said,
you know, I'm not usually in the market for a
ton of conspiracy theories, but this one has stunk from
day one. And I said, and not only that, I've
been tricked before by assuming that the rational, simple explanation
(12:09):
would be the right thing as opposed to what Russia
Gate actually was, as opposed to COVID disinformation. Yeah, right,
And so I understand people's confusion and anger about it.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, they were lied to. They don't trust anymore, and
I get it. And so that's why Donald Trump, I think,
is saying, yes, you don't trust anymore, but you trust me.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
And I'm telling you this is not a thing.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Whether or not people will accept that is you know,
it really is the tell here.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
It's the question of is this were maga splits?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And there are influencers who are going to kind of
do well, raking in the cash from the people who
turn on Trump, and they build the audience off of that.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
There's so much of that.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Also.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
I wanted to mention there was a story on Monday
that Donald Trump was personally calling influencers to say layoff
Pam Bondi. This is from CNN and it's a little
bit of long quote, but I'm going to read it privately.
Trump has also doubled down on his support for Bondi.
The president called some of the Attorney general's most vocal
critics over the weekend in effort to stem the bleeding
over the Epstein files. Three sources familiar with the matter
(13:13):
told CNN. Trump's calls included one with the conservative activist
Charlie Kirk on Saturday to express his support for Bondi.
The call came as prominent MAGA supporters reportedly criticized the
attorney general at Kirk's Turning Point USA Student Action sum
at a Florida event aimed at mobilizing young conservatives. Members
of the president's inner circle have also reached out to
some of Bondi's critics to essentially ask them to ramp
(13:35):
it down, noting that Trump at this moment was not
getting rid of his attorney general source his caution that
while Trump was currently still supporting Bondi, things could always change.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
To be clear, no one has.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Called us, so we could say whatever we want. But
I don't think it's fair to lay this on Pambondy.
And again, in the world of teams, I'm kind of
team Dan Bongino here, But I don't think this is
Pam Bondi. I think this comes from Donald Trump. So
if you're mad at Pam Bondy, you're actually mad at
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Yeah, I think. Look, And then then the question is also,
even if people are mad about it, are they happier
about other things that are happening in the administration? Right
this is maybe not their top priority. What is the
tradical salience of this issue, and that's one of the
things where people who have disagreed with him about other
things like support for Israel, like whatever sort of deal
we're making on Ukrainian arms, that kind of thing. Are
(14:27):
they mad about that? Yes, And that therefore the good
parts of Trump for them are not overriding this, whereas
for other people, the good parts of Trump will easily
override it and they'll move right. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I mean Tucker Carlson made a comment at that TPUSA,
you know combab that he said, basically, who cares about
boys playing in girls sports? Like that's just an appetizer
and I want the main dish. I'm sorry to me,
that is a main dish to me, that is one
of the main dishes.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Why I'm buying a Maga hat.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Also, Tucker Carlson, famous culture warrior, is disappointed that we're
winning a culture war in the state in the battleground
for which right now is the state in which he lives,
right where they took a female representative and took her
right to vote on vote and her right to speak
on the House right away from her an elected representative.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
But who cares because she spoke.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Out on this issue that he formerly very much cared about. Yeah,
now it's just nothing, It's just small potatoes.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
And I think you're right that it is these other issues.
I think at Tucker has majorly turned on Israel and
this it disappoints him that Donald Trump hasn't, and that
he's a big Israel supporter. I'm sure there are Ukraine
issues involved there as well, but Trump is crushing it,
absolutely crushing it. And anybody who is on the right
who says otherwise has ulterior motives or ulterior kind of
(15:50):
priorities more than anything else.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, And that's Trump's argument explicitly in his truth post
where he says like, I'm killing it and you guys
are all talking about this others, right. Yeah. I do
think him calling it a hoax is going to be
an interesting test of where people land. And I would
just say for the future on these big issues, be
careful what you make hay out of before you're elected, yep,
and then how you handle said promises after you're elected,
(16:15):
particularly in something that gets this much social media heat.
When you're back on normally, we will talk a little
bit about a lot of those successes.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
We are back on normally, and we are going to
talk Trump wins, because they've been numerous and really far reaching.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Let's just talk about the last month in Scotis.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Victories in June.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
At the end of June, he won on immigration resumed
deportations to third third party countries. Another one in June
birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions case, Court ruled sixty three
that lower courts cannot issue nationwide injunctions, significantly empowering Trump's
executive authority. At July eighth, the mass federal worker layoffs,
(17:02):
the Supreme Court lifted a nationwide injunction blocking Trump's February
executive order permitting large scale terminations across federal agencies, including
state and veteran affairs, without needing congressional approval. Just yesterday,
as we're recording this Education Department downsizing, Scotis lifted a
lower court block enabling the Trump administration to lay off
(17:23):
nearly fourteen hundred staff at the Department of Education. These
are massive, massive victories, and I get why Trump is
a little annoyed that his incredible success is being overshadowed
by Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Well, and then he's also got this the big beautiful
bill through before July force, which I did not predict.
It is a massive victory. To have extended the tax rates,
which we're going to expire at the end of the year,
is the thing that he wanted. Now it comes with
a lot of other stuff that I'm not a huge
fan of, but the part where he got the tax
rates extend, yeah, six months before the actual deadline. Huge.
(18:04):
It's been a long time since I've seen that in government. Yeah,
and now he has, yes, indeed, the power, the boss
has the power to restructure his own agencies and fire
employees that work within them. Down breaking. I can't believe
we have to go to Supreme Court for this, but
this is what you know, law fair, this is.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Where we got to.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, but it's good news that you know. You can
indeed restructure the Department of Education. You can, indeed, let
go a small percentage of the giant number of bureaucrats
we work within it, not working on students educations at all.
By the way, that's not what they do, that's not
their job. So these are really big deals.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah, and let's not forget yesterday, just yesterday, since cast
the tie breaking vote to move forward a nine point
four billion dollar Recisions package, which would defund PBS and NPR,
among many many other Dolge priorities.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Three Republicans voted against it, which made no sense to me.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Hey, and that is huge, that's huge. Elon Musk, come back.
They're doing what you asked for.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Can I note? Also, and this is a bit of
a one eighty for me, who was I was very
concerned about Trump's NATO rhetoric back in the day, right
two fifteen sixteen, He's saying I don't know about Article five,
I don't know about defending all these people, because he
is more of a strained restrainer foreign policy guy. And
it made me nervous. Yeah, and then in two this week,
(19:27):
the Secretary General of NATO is in town, Mark Ruta, who,
by the way, kind of a looker, really tall, drink
of water. That guy. He ran into him as special
report this week, so I think I ran into no, no, no,
So he was in town. They do the Oval Office presentation,
and he has I just went back in time and
read some of the coverage from twenty eighteen when Trump
(19:48):
was first engaging with NATO, and it's all so hysterical
about what's going to happen. To NATO and how he's
going to weaken NATO and how he's going to ruin
this huge alliance. Right that asking these countries to pledge
two percent is unthinkable was the word used, right, And
Europe's gonna hate us, Okay. At the time, five of
(20:09):
the countries in NATO were contributing two percent of their
GDP to defense. Not only have they hit the two
percent mark in the world since Donald Trump started suggesting this,
but now all but one have pledged to get to
five percent.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
So it didn't destroy our relationship with them, No, And.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Actually I would argue it's quite clear that NATO is
stronger now with all of the nations contributing more than
it would have been had it stayed as it was
in twenty eighteen. And like, that is a turnaround that
he will not get enough credit for. But it's pretty amazing.
And Secretary General Mark Rute is smart enough to say
(20:47):
he helped us make this happen. Russia helped too by
being a giant a whole, all right, but he helped us
make this happen. And it's good for alliances, it's good
for the Western world, and that is a pretty impressive turnaround.
Since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Did you envision on normally that we would be like,
oh my god, Donald Trump's doing all this amazing stuff,
and conservatives, other conservatives like his MAGA people are not
giving him any credit for it, Like I didn't see
this coming.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
He just people ignore these giant things. Yeah, and I'm like,
do y'all remember the first term? Do you remember?
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah? Donald Trump absolutely crushing it. We love to see it.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Let's take a short break and we'll come back and
tell you how not to destroy your relationship with your
family over politics. You're right back on normally. Welcome back
on normally. We here at normally do not think that
politics should destroy family relationships. It's kind of an easy call. However,
(21:51):
for some reason, people don't make the same one as us.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Why is that, Mary Catherine?
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Yeah, well, they're writing about it in the New York Times,
which is to us. There's an hotbed this week that
it explicates some of this. It is entitled is it
Time to Stop Snubbing your right wing family? Written maybe
by David Litt, who is an author and was a
speech writer for Obama. And let's just lay out the
(22:17):
characters in this hotbed. One is David Litt, who hasn't
he This is how he describes himself. I was one
of President Obama's speech writers and had an Ivy League degree.
This is Matt Kapler, his brother in law, who he
met in twenty twelve. He was a huge Joe Rogan
fan and went on to get his electricians license. Okay,
(22:38):
all right, so this is his brother in Law's his
wife's little brother. Yeah. Around the pandemic, he just decides
this guy wasn't willing to get vaccinated, and I therefore
am not going to hang out with him anymore. I'm
not going to talk to him. I'm not even going
to be polite to him. And this is what he admits.
My frostiness wasn't personal, it was strategic. Being unfriendly to
(22:59):
people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right
thing to do. How else could we motivate them to
mend their ways. Even cites historical examples of shunning from
society and puts himself weirdly on the side of the
anti hester Prenne society in the scarlet letter. He's like,
the whole point of hester Pren's scarlet letter was to
show she had violated norms. Is that what we're doing now.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Right, right, I kind of saw her as the hero
of that story.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
I think he missed the point in literature class. This
guy's a jerk, and he's writing about it in the
New York Times.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, it really is something that people like him think
that they're the good guy. He talks about how as
it was on the rare and always outdoor occasions. Of course,
always outdoor because the dirty, dirty relative wasn't vaccinated.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I mean, I'm ad living that.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
And when we saw each other, I spoke in disapproving snippets.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Work's been good. I would never talk to that person again.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
I know, I know this is, you know, a segment
about be good to your family, even among politics.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
But I'm not going to be good to people who
are a holes to me.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
And that's really on the you know, on his brother
in law, Matt, still accepting him, still going surfing with him,
still finding a way to be okay with him, find
that Matt is the person I'd want to be friends
with in the story and not oh death, David.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Matt the surfer sounds like a lovely person, right, And
also fixing my electricity is a more useful skill than
writing a New York Times up ed and I say
that as somebody who writes out that the thing is
and this is what Litt believes. He has taken this
man's political actions and actions outside of the family and
(24:38):
turned them into well, he's being a jerk to me, right,
And this is how he expresses it. He doesn't apply
it like he's This is not a personal interaction they're
having again, he's only seeing him outside. And by the way,
the vastly didn't protect you from getting it or passing
it anyway. I'm not sure if David knows that now.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
I don't know. Has it been in the New York
Times yet?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Who knows? But don't use this kind of stuff to
justify your bad behavior and then congratulate yourself still for
being the good guy. By the way, he comes to
this great conclusion, which is the one that we always
teach a little late to the party. Here he says
they become surf buddies because honestly, he's selfish and he
needs somebody to surf with, and Matt's the only person
(25:20):
he knows that he can surf with. And he says
that they look they made connections over things other than politics.
So weird. And then he adds this, and I just
want to say, Matt is a very good person. He
says it helped that in the ocean are places in
the pecking order reversed. Matt's a very good surfer. One
might call him an elite and I am not. According
(25:42):
to surfing's unwritten rules. He had the right to look
down on me, but he never did. His generosity of
spirit in the water made me rethink my own behavior
on land. Matt, you're a really good dude.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Is Matt looking to be set up? Do we have
some friends for Matt?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Right?
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Do we know if he's single? We don't. Let's play.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
I have a little comedian clip from gian Marco Sesi
talking about how he's a progressive but he finds his
conservative friend to be a really good person.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Let's roll that I have progressive.
Speaker 4 (26:13):
Views, but that doesn't mean I'm a good person. Liberals
make that mistakes sometimes. I have a more conservative friend,
and you know he has views that really he's one
of those guys, and we all know those guys who's
like you see this article, a trans woman played volleyball,
made a little girl.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
And I can't stay on that ship.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Because the kind of guys that complain about trans women
playing women's sports are same kind of guys that whole
guys like me in high school. You run like a girl,
you throw like a girl. And now they're mad because
some of us followed through. But I will say in
his defense, he is a wonderful human being, better than
I could ever imagine being. I'll tell you a story
(26:58):
once me and my conservative friend walking on the street
in New York City. In front of us was walking
a woman in very high heels. As far as I
could tell, she was trans. Now, at some point, this
woman she tripped on her right heel. She fell into
the street right as a bus was approaching, and my
conservative friend ran into the street, scooped her up just
(27:18):
in the nick of time, helped her on her feet,
send her about her way, And then he turned to
me and was like, that's why men shouldn't wear heels.
It was a lot of things, and I want to
be clear, I didn't a city.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Thing to do.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
But if I'd been alone, I would have been like.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Oh no, she's dead. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
I enjoyed that because look, yeah the comedian would have,
you know, gendered her how she wanted to you know,
the trans person wanted to be gendered. The conservative friend
took action and saved the person.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
So I think that is symbolic. There is a sort
of a material physical support for you that in these
friendships conservatives will give and they'll stick around and they'll
be more forgiving. And by the way, this is not
just me making stuff up. Like every polling, every survey
shows that Democrats are more will democrats and liberals and
(28:14):
are willing to break friendships over politics, and that they
have fewer of those friendships to begin with. And I
do think it's just a totally different approach to other humans,
where you're just taking this one thing and making it everything,
and I don't think it makes for happy people or
happy relationships.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
I'm going to wrap this up with how's Matt still
going to be friends with him?
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I know after this piece? If think he wrote two pieces,
he wrote one for the Free Press. Also, I mean
this is beat now, yeah, this is I'm going to
wrap it up with David Lit's last paragraph where he
wants to let the Libs know, don't worry.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
I still hate a lot of them. I just don't
brother in law.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Of course, he.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Writes, there are, of course, some people so committed to
odiousness that it defines them.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
If Stephen Miller wants a surf lesson, I'll decline. But
are most people like that? In an age when banishment backfires?
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Keeping the door open to Kely friendship isn't the betrayal
of principle, it's an.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Affirmation of them.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Dude, you would also find common ground with Stephen Miller.
I know, I know how crazy that sounds, but it's true.
Stephen Miller is a human who has also human interests,
and he may also like surfing, and you may also
be able to connect with him over at.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Amazing Amazing Stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Well, thanks for joining us on Normally. Normally airs Tuesdays
and Thursdays, and you can subscribe anywhere.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
You get your podcast.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
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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