October 16, 2025 • 25 mins
Mary Katharine Ham and Karol Markowicz unpack the latest in political and cultural shifts — from the questionable antics of young Republicans in group chats to the double standards that define political accountability today. They examine former President Obama’s dwindling relevance in modern politics, the emergence of new conservative voices, and what the decline in non-binary identification among youth reveals about changing social dynamics. Normally is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Tuesday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Yeah, guys, we I'm back on normally.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The sure with normal one it takes fore the news.
It's weird. I'm Mary Catherine Ham and I'm Carol Markowitz.
It is very hard, Mary Catherine to get back into
regular news. All I want to do is like watch
hostage videos and read stories and hear about families being reunited.
But like the you know, the world moves on and
(00:30):
that's a good thing, but I'm sort of unprepared for it.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, I'm the same way.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
It's so rare that you get a just unvarnished good
story like twenty live hostages coming home. And we've you
and I have been through the Bengaian Airport. We've seen
those posters on the sides of the moving side way there.
We've seen people tear down posters all over the US,
and it is gratifying to see people.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
By the way.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
A programming note, if you want to listen to me
on the column with Matt Welch and Camille and Michael
one hand, you could do so, and we talk about
this as well, so you.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Can get more of that. Excellent.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, I love those guys. All right, let's get into it,
young Republicans. What are you people doing on a giant
group text saying dumb shit?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I mean, so this is, as I said, this is
an example of how you edge lord yourself into disgrace,
which is this thing where you know, we've left the
time of the PC woke flag throwing, right, which is
in many cases good for discourse because you're not afraid
to say some things right, and then you go to
a point where the pendulum swings where you're just trying
(01:44):
to shock people as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Right. And I didn't think that everything was the same.
I mean, people say things on private group chats that
they might not say publicly. I actually don't think that
you should. I think that you should be who you
are on group chats who you are in the real
world as well. But there is this story. It's in Politico.
It's about young Republicans in various places saying terrible things
(02:10):
on a group chat. Now, you know, I have to
say that my first instinct I read the story before
it became like a story story, and I felt it
was a little bit ridiculous because in the piece, of course,
who do they blame this rhetoric on? They say, the
private rhetoric isn't happening in a vacuum. It comes amid
(02:31):
a widespread coarsening of the broader political discourse, and as
incendiary and racially offensive tropes from the right become increasingly
common in public debate. Last month, Trump posted an AI
generated video that showed House Minority Leader what Kim Jeffreys
in a sombrero besides Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose
fabricated remarks were about trading free healthcare for immigrant votes,
(02:54):
a false. Long running GOP trope, the sombrero meme has
been widely used to mock Democrats as the government and
shut down. Where's on?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, there's a.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Direct line from the sombrero AI picture to saying Hitler
is good and using the N word like spare me.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
So this is the double standard, right is that is
that when these private chats, which by the way, are
by adults. I don't want to minimize it by saying
they're kit, they're young Republicans, but they're adults.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Sure from young Republicans can be as old as like
thirty nine, I believe, yes.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yes, And also I should note importantly that the young
Republicans National immediately condemns this in a statement and asked
everyone to resign from any position they held in their
local or state chapters. So that is good because imposing
that consequence will deter such behavior in the future. But
the double standard is this applies to all Republicans, and
(03:50):
every Republican lawmaker will be asked about it, of course,
versus by the way, these guys aren't running for office.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yep, there's nobody's really versus.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Like I agree, they should not be in leadership positions.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
We should not ratherdom have those versus the Democrat ag
nominee in Virginia. By the way, this story is designed
to counter the damage caused by that story, however.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And this is a distinction worth making.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
He's running for office right currently, and almost everyone I
think everyone in the Democratic Party has declined to ask
for him.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
To step aside, so I think they've I think this.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Story actually doesn't reflect well because it is it is
revealing the double standard where Republicans walked away from these
guys and they haven't walked away from him.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Absolutely. But you know what they're going to say is
well jd Vance, He tweeted, this is far worse than
anything said in a college group chat referring to the
Jay Jones tweets and the guy who said it could
become the Age of Virginia. I refuse to join the
pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence. I
understand this response. This is not my response. I am
disgusted by those texts, and I think people should be
(05:02):
held accountable. When people were celebrating Charlie Kirk's death, I
thought to myself, I don't want this person to be
my dentist or don't be teacher, right. I feel the
same way about the people on these texts, and I
don't care that we're not supposed to criticize our own side.
I've said again and again that Republicans conservatives do criticize
(05:23):
their own side all the time, and this is just
more evidence of that, where we do say I don't
stand with these people, and I think that's not a
bad thing. I think I get JD's impulse to say
I'm not throwing these people under the bus. You guys
can't throw j Jones under the bus. And he's right,
but that's not my impulse.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I have to Yeah, the argument from him is we
don't just take unilateral ls while they take no l's
over this guy exactly, how much of an.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
L is it? Like?
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Are these people valuable?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Are they people who can entice new people into the party?
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Right? If you are engaged in a.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Private chat that is nonetheless full of a lot of
people who you might, by the way, have bitter political
rivalries and jockeying for political power positions in the future,
and you're doing this, you have shown yourself to have
a certain amount of bad judgment that will not allow
you to rise and shouldn't allow you to rise. Right, So,
I think I understand where people come from when they
(06:27):
say that, because.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I mean, honestly, they're right. They're not gonna jettison J. Jones.
They're going to tweet through it, They're going to campaign
through it.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
And the people who don't disavowed J. Jones will then
tell you, and who, by the way, did zero stories
on the Israel Palestine deal accomplished by President Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Will then tell you, this is the most important.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Story in the world for like four days, and we
don't believe you. Yeah yeah, So, by the way, I
should note in the Virginia ag race that Jason Miaris,
who is the Republican running against j Jones has put
out a pretty clever ad that basically says, like she says,
you can make your own choice, maybe you should make
your own choice.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Right, So, because she said.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
In the debate, like everyone else Lamberger, excuse me, Abigails Spamberger,
the Democrat running for governor, in not disavowing j Jones
basically said well, everyone's running there and own individual race.
So he turned that into an ad and said it's
an individual race, take a look at me. So I
think that was pretty clever of him, and they're likely
(07:34):
people in Virginia who would undervote or switch sides for that.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, I am just I don't know. I find that
this it's both sides of this right where I don't
like at all any of this commentary is being tied
to the right, and I just refuse to participate, you know,
or believe any of that. But also this idea that
(07:58):
this is my side and I need to quiet just
is appalling to me. And why it's so bad the
Spamburger won't denounce him. The whole your side thing it
shouldn't apply to I want children to die. And you
know what the Young Republicans said in their chats is
nowhere near that, if you want to be real about it.
(08:20):
And I still don't think that I need more people.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Nowhere near legally actionable threats, which is actually what Jones
got very close to. Yeah, this was this was excuse
my language, ship posting gas chamber stuff, stuff about African Americans, watermelons,
like just disgusting, designed to discussed people, right, and yeah,
(08:46):
like I don't.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Think you're bringing a bunch of people into this party
like that.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, Bonchi read spend political capital on you. Oh yes, exactly,
so Bonchie read state I'd account I like very much.
On X said Groyper, Losers are not my side. If
I want to call them losers, I'll call them losers
and it will not cost us a single election. But
I'm also not going to waste time on total nobodies
who have been forced to resign and who will never
(09:11):
be heard from again. That's where I am on this
same Yeah, you pointed out that the Young Republicans issued
a comment and they said, we are appalled by the
vile and inexcusable language revealed in the political Art article
published today. Behavior is disgraceful. Onbecoming stands in direct opposition
to the movement. All involved must resign immediately. I mean,
(09:32):
what more could they say.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Over to you, Virginia Democrats, National Democrats. It will be
interesting to see how many Republicans in the halls of
Congress are asked about this versus Democrats being asked about
j Jones, right, even though he's running for office.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You know, as we're going to air, there's a story
in Pirate Wires which I haven't read yet, but there's
a long tweet about it. Heather Cox Richardson is apparently
this big leftist boys, they.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Point out, is the biggest substack that exists.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Right, more subscribers than Jimmy Kimmel has. And they say
every night she tells her two point seven million followers
that America is sliding into authoritarianism, Trump is a dictator whatever.
But they also say when it was revealed that Charlie
Kirk's assassin was not the right wing extremist she claimed
he was, she never corrected the record. When Biden's debate
performance was so bad the New York Times called for
(10:23):
him to drop out, Richardson claimed he thoroughly proved his confidence.
When an assassin murdered Minnesota lawmakers. It was horrific. But
when Luigi Mangioni assassinated United Healthcare CEO, it was a
moral protest. And so spare me the handwringing and the
pearl clutching, because this is the most famous substack of
(10:45):
all time.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
So their disinformation is good, Carol, Right, I know that's
the difference.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
All right.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
We will be back on normally in a moment with
some stories about Obama. How's he doing these days?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Poorly?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
He's doing poorly. All right.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
We are back on normally with a little bit about
Barack Obama and the new Barack Obama, who is mom
Donnie in New York running for the mayor's slot. But first,
the original Barack Obama, who appeared on Mark Maren's podcast
this week. Maren is drawing to a close his fifteen
year run of podcasting. He is a comedian but also
(11:25):
a political commentator, and.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
It was a really big deal.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
I remember when Obama appeared on his podcast in twenty
fifteen ish, because that was like the.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
New Frontiers, new things.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
So he's capping it off as well, and he had
some thoughts about what has come to pass since he
left office.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Here's let's listen to.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
A little bit. I mean, what was unusual for me
was obviously a lot of what I represented. Yeah, a
lot of what Michelle and I had tried to project
the values are thinking about America. My successor seemed to
(12:10):
represent the opposite, right not seemed didn't. And so I
think there is a lot of anger, a lot of sadness,
some fear among a big chunk of the country.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
He seems frustrated, Carol.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, he doesn't like that anybody else got to be
president after him.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I am sort of amazed by how little people listen
to him now, and I think that's of his own doing.
He made himself irrelevant. I think he did a lot
of damage while he was president and since he's been president,
which I want to I want to congratulate myself on
this one. I said while he was running for president
and while he was president. This man wants to be
(12:54):
an ex president. He wants to he wants to live well,
he wants to give spe he wants to be congratulated for,
like I don't know, observing elections in other countries and
lecturing the United States of America and hang out in
Marsa's vineyard. That's what he wants to do, he's going
to be great at it, and that part he has embraced.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, And I mean, I guess he has some behind
the scenes roles at the you know, in the Democratic Party,
but he has been so largely irrelevant and I can't,
you know, when we look back at his presidency, other
than Obamacare, which is largely a disaster, what are his accomplishments?
And you know, people at the time even said, oh,
(13:37):
but he's such a good speaker. He's such a good orator.
And I'm always like, named something he said, Name something
he said other than if you like your doctor, you
can keep your doctor, which turned out to be a lie.
So I'm thoroughly unimpressed with this guy. I nowhere near
as impressed as he is with himself. And it's just
(13:57):
funny because what did he think was going to happen?
And after he left the presidency, what did he think
the next Republican was going to do? He led in
such a way that was so abrasive to the opposite
side from him when he said all I need is
a phone and a pen. What did he think everybody
was going to do after him? Right?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I think he fools himself into thinking it wasn't divisive,
Like I think he's still the illusion that he was
a uniting force while he was, like, you know, calling
out the Supreme Court justices sitting in front of him
at a State of the Union address, while he was
calling out Republican congressional leaders whose votes he needed on
(14:39):
various things while they're sitting on stage with him.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
He wasn't unifying.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
And I don't think beyond giving speeches, he really was
understood what the job was.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
And as a result, the.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Thing that he passed, Obamacare was not executed. Well, it
doesn't live up to its promises. You can still do
polling where people are like, oh, I guess that free
thing you gave us is fine, but if you start
like picking in the details, people are like, now, this
didn't give me what I wanted. He I feel like
he makes himself irrelevant. Every statement is like what world
(15:17):
are you living in? And this felt very much like
are you're living in twenty fifteen? This is just a
replay of twenty fifteen and you're trying to grock what
happened and how you possibly could be losing this race
or Hillary losing this race.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
But you know, right, yeah, same thing speaking of irrelevant.
The Joe Biden people have been working over time to
say that it was actually Joe Biden's peace deal that
the Trump administration enacted in the Middle East, but Joe
Biden like totally just didn't want to do it. That's
really what happened here. He was doing other things and
(15:52):
you know, his peace deal. It was just it was
really it was Trump's fault. It was Trumpett Yahoo's fault
that it got together.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
No, no right that you know.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
This guy Keith Edwards. I don't know who this is,
but apparently a lot of people do because they were like,
why are you giving this person attention? And I said, oh,
I don't know who this is, but he tweeted he
had a very big sweet Joe Biden had a peace
deal in place, but then net Nyaho and Trump met
in mar A Lago. I decided that keeping the war
going would benefit them both. Ten months later, this signing
the exact deal Biden brokeer. I was on with your bestie,
(16:26):
Guy Benton yesterday, and we talked about how some of
the things that have happened since Joe Biden was president, like,
for example, the Twelve Day War with Iran and the
tech inside cutter and things like that actually led to
the peace deal, and Joe Biden would have never been
able to get that done. You know, tell this to
(16:49):
enorm me in your life and they're going to respond
as the normies in my life did with Joe Biden
was a potato. He could have never done this.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yes, yeah, it's just obviously incorrect. I would also add
this important detail and pardon me on pronunciation. But Laha Harkov,
who is a journalist in Israel, she puts the order
of operations into perspective, which is the Biden deal for
Israel to fully withdraw was for Israel to fully withdraw
from Gaza and only then for all of the hospitals
(17:19):
to be released. Hamas rejected it. Israel is still deployed
in most of Gaza, she notes, and we have all
the living hostages at home.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
That is a better, huge difference.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
That is not the same deal. That is a deal
that Israel goes.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Why would we do that, right, because there isn't a
guarantee and it goes really badly.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And by the way, you.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Get all of those horrific, tortuous ceremonies of handing over
because the Red Cross ain't gonna do nothing to stop them.
By the way, can we just once again say the
Red Cross is trash for the way it acted the
entire time, unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
More pointless than Europe and that's really saying something.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Okay, one more thing in this section, I want to
add the new Obama's rise. So this is u Zoron Mumdani,
who's running for mayor in New York. He is a
head by double digits over Andrew Como. A lot of
that has to do with the fact that Democrats just
couldn't muster anyone better than Andrew. I would have been
an Adams Gallay choice.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So fast. Yeah, but me, you and like eight percent
of New Yorkers.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I know, I know. So that's happening.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
And the New York Times did a sixteen page profile
on him, and I read, I want to say, like
ninety percent of it. I have a few more paragraphs
to go. But there is not one dang interesting revealing,
like negative moment in this from the perspective of the writer, Like, right,
(18:44):
you do a sixteen page profile on someone you didn't
find anything you might want to just like criticize a
tiny bit that's that's a problem there, Obama ask yes,
And the question that keeps coming to me as I'm
reading through the profile is like, yes, so he has
all these ideas, but he doesn't know how.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
To execute them, is what you're saying?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Any of them?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Any of them and a lot of them defy economics.
So you're going to end up on the other side
of this, which the Democratic Socialists of America who endorsed
him have already pointed out where they're like, oh, what
if he wins and then he tries to enact these
things and a he doesn't have the power to or
be he can't, and then we have to pay the price, right,
And it's yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Maybe think about it an issue? Yeah, it gonna be
an issue. The guy with a smile doesn't always get
it done.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, And I you know, look, I the other concern
is when he inevitably can't get any of his policy's
done or they're a total failure. If he ends up
opening one, you know, grocery store run by the government
and it is the failure it's been in other places,
what does he fill kind of the gap with? And
I think when he is running for UNRA over the weekend,
(19:54):
I think a lot of Jews should think about the
fact that it will be you know, maybe riling up
people against Jews, and that's a very common strategy through
history among failed politicians, which he inevitably will be.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I would say that there's one sentence in this that
is accidentally revealing that suggests that in which he the
writer contends that this is the one issue he will
not compromise on, and it is Israel Palestine, even though
like he's running an affordability campaign, but this is the
one issue where he can't even say, yeah, globalize, the
(20:31):
entifata is bad.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
People shouldn't say that, right.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yep, He's going to lean right into it, and there's
a reason for that. So we'll be right back with
more on normally and is the transcantagion finally breaking among kids?
We'll see be right back. We are back on normally
where a few days ago, a researcher posted a graph
(20:56):
that seemed very promising. Eric Kaufman is a professor of politics,
and he looked at some studies out of andover Brown
and from the fire Org. Part of it is that
there's a collapse in people who say they are non binary,
and that's great, because non binary is not a thing,
(21:19):
and the fact that it's spiked so high in twenty
twenty three, it's about fifty percent down from that the
peak numbers. That's fantastic. Of course, the fact that anybody
still thinks that they're neither gender is ridiculous, but we'll
take it for now.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, no, it's it seems like a small victory at least.
And my thought would be that this suggests that the
pipeline to trans identity is closing. Yeah, that the social
contagion and those early stages where people are using this
as sort of like a like an intersectional politics pass.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Oh, I'm just like a suburban white girl, but I'm
non binary. That is losing its cachet as it should,
and that fewer people in the future will be drawn
into actual bad, bad situations.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I mean, look, it's the easiest one, right If I
always say, if I were a teenager right now and
I had the kind of power that comes with declaring
yourself non binary and making up your pronouns every day
and having every adult in your life follow it, I
would one hundred percent be into it. So the easiest one,
the one that you don't have to do anything is
falling off, and that's great. He also says that non
(22:39):
conforming sexual identity, queer questioning, et cetera. Is also in
sharp decline. Gay and lesbian are stable, while heterosexual has
rebounded by around ten points since twenty twenty three. Yeah,
it's the vibe shift, you know. But I when recording
this as I'm writing the piece, so I think I
have a piece, and then you're a post today on
(23:00):
this how I don't actually think that the trans contagion
is over, and I think we should be really careful
about taking these stats to mean that. Part of what
Eric says is he thinks that trans people would be
more likely to say that they're non binary, and therefore
(23:20):
the non binary numbers is declining means that trans is declining.
I don't think so. I don't think so. I think
when you're in the trans contagion, non binary means something
very very specific to you, and you are absolutely not that,
and your identity is so fixed in those words that
I don't think a trans person would pick non binary.
(23:40):
And that's what my column today and then New York
Post will end up arguing.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, I think we should be wary about any of
this stuff sort of falling off the cliff. I do
think there's a vibe shift shift that you want to
be careful about the data. And there's certainly people who
are still very invested and now in creating more kids
who can go into this pipeline. And I just the
(24:05):
damage that has been done thus far is just shocking.
And you know, I know when we were kids, the
social contagion of the day. Neither of them good were cutting,
an anorexia, and I would take those over this one.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
This one is, Yeah, this one seems a lot more permanent.
Those were both terrible, obviously, but they were seemed more
temporary than getting drugs and changing your well.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
And importantly, the most important thing about them is how
we responded to them. Yeah they're bad, to them as
if they were good and enlightened and a choice. We
responded to them like, girl, you got to get yourself
some therapy.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, when you went to the therapist, it wasn't like, oh,
this is good and I'm going to affirm this.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I think that that's a big part of all of this,
that the affirming is what's driving this.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Really.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
If you go to a therapist and you say I'm
mixed up and I'm going used it. I think I'm
the opposite gender, and your therapist says, no, that's good,
you are that opposite gender. It leads you down a
path that is hard to get off well.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
And we've talked about this before, and it concerns me
for lots of kids. Is that this kind of affirmation
and the need to get it out of some of
these professional circles.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It speaks to the need to get it out of
these professional circles.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Is if your kids do need some kind of therapy,
you cannot be assured that that person isn't going to
decide that your kid's issue is that they're actually in
the wrong body. I would just like my kid to
be able to talk about normal stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
That'd be great.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Absolutely well. Thank you for joining us on Normally. Normally
airs Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you could subscribe anywhere you
get your podcasts. Get in touch with us at normally
theepod at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening, and when
things get weird at normally
Yeah, guys, we I'm back on normally.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
The sure with normal one it takes fore the news.
It's weird. I'm Mary Catherine Ham and I'm Carol Markowitz.
It is very hard, Mary Catherine to get back into
regular news. All I want to do is like watch
hostage videos and read stories and hear about families being reunited.
But like the you know, the world moves on and
(00:30):
that's a good thing, but I'm sort of unprepared for it.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, I'm the same way.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
It's so rare that you get a just unvarnished good
story like twenty live hostages coming home. And we've you
and I have been through the Bengaian Airport. We've seen
those posters on the sides of the moving side way there.
We've seen people tear down posters all over the US,
and it is gratifying to see people.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
By the way.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
A programming note, if you want to listen to me
on the column with Matt Welch and Camille and Michael
one hand, you could do so, and we talk about
this as well, so you.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Can get more of that. Excellent.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, I love those guys. All right, let's get into it,
young Republicans. What are you people doing on a giant
group text saying dumb shit?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I mean, so this is, as I said, this is
an example of how you edge lord yourself into disgrace,
which is this thing where you know, we've left the
time of the PC woke flag throwing, right, which is
in many cases good for discourse because you're not afraid
to say some things right, and then you go to
a point where the pendulum swings where you're just trying
(01:44):
to shock people as much as possible.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Right. And I didn't think that everything was the same.
I mean, people say things on private group chats that
they might not say publicly. I actually don't think that
you should. I think that you should be who you
are on group chats who you are in the real
world as well. But there is this story. It's in Politico.
It's about young Republicans in various places saying terrible things
(02:10):
on a group chat. Now, you know, I have to
say that my first instinct I read the story before
it became like a story story, and I felt it
was a little bit ridiculous because in the piece, of course,
who do they blame this rhetoric on? They say, the
private rhetoric isn't happening in a vacuum. It comes amid
(02:31):
a widespread coarsening of the broader political discourse, and as
incendiary and racially offensive tropes from the right become increasingly
common in public debate. Last month, Trump posted an AI
generated video that showed House Minority Leader what Kim Jeffreys
in a sombrero besides Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose
fabricated remarks were about trading free healthcare for immigrant votes,
(02:54):
a false. Long running GOP trope, the sombrero meme has
been widely used to mock Democrats as the government and
shut down. Where's on?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, there's a.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Direct line from the sombrero AI picture to saying Hitler
is good and using the N word like spare me.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
So this is the double standard, right is that is
that when these private chats, which by the way, are
by adults. I don't want to minimize it by saying
they're kit, they're young Republicans, but they're adults.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Sure from young Republicans can be as old as like
thirty nine, I believe, yes.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yes, And also I should note importantly that the young
Republicans National immediately condemns this in a statement and asked
everyone to resign from any position they held in their
local or state chapters. So that is good because imposing
that consequence will deter such behavior in the future. But
the double standard is this applies to all Republicans, and
(03:50):
every Republican lawmaker will be asked about it, of course,
versus by the way, these guys aren't running for office.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yep, there's nobody's really versus.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Like I agree, they should not be in leadership positions.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
We should not ratherdom have those versus the Democrat ag
nominee in Virginia. By the way, this story is designed
to counter the damage caused by that story, however.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And this is a distinction worth making.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
He's running for office right currently, and almost everyone I
think everyone in the Democratic Party has declined to ask
for him.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
To step aside, so I think they've I think this.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Story actually doesn't reflect well because it is it is
revealing the double standard where Republicans walked away from these
guys and they haven't walked away from him.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Absolutely. But you know what they're going to say is
well jd Vance, He tweeted, this is far worse than
anything said in a college group chat referring to the
Jay Jones tweets and the guy who said it could
become the Age of Virginia. I refuse to join the
pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence. I
understand this response. This is not my response. I am
disgusted by those texts, and I think people should be
(05:02):
held accountable. When people were celebrating Charlie Kirk's death, I
thought to myself, I don't want this person to be
my dentist or don't be teacher, right. I feel the
same way about the people on these texts, and I
don't care that we're not supposed to criticize our own side.
I've said again and again that Republicans conservatives do criticize
(05:23):
their own side all the time, and this is just
more evidence of that, where we do say I don't
stand with these people, and I think that's not a
bad thing. I think I get JD's impulse to say
I'm not throwing these people under the bus. You guys
can't throw j Jones under the bus. And he's right,
but that's not my impulse.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I have to Yeah, the argument from him is we
don't just take unilateral ls while they take no l's
over this guy exactly, how much of an.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
L is it? Like?
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Are these people valuable?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Are they people who can entice new people into the party?
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Right? If you are engaged in a.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Private chat that is nonetheless full of a lot of
people who you might, by the way, have bitter political
rivalries and jockeying for political power positions in the future,
and you're doing this, you have shown yourself to have
a certain amount of bad judgment that will not allow
you to rise and shouldn't allow you to rise. Right, So,
I think I understand where people come from when they
(06:27):
say that, because.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I mean, honestly, they're right. They're not gonna jettison J. Jones.
They're going to tweet through it, They're going to campaign
through it.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
And the people who don't disavowed J. Jones will then
tell you, and who, by the way, did zero stories
on the Israel Palestine deal accomplished by President Trump.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Will then tell you, this is the most important.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Story in the world for like four days, and we
don't believe you. Yeah yeah, So, by the way, I
should note in the Virginia ag race that Jason Miaris,
who is the Republican running against j Jones has put
out a pretty clever ad that basically says, like she says,
you can make your own choice, maybe you should make
your own choice.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Right, So, because she said.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
In the debate, like everyone else Lamberger, excuse me, Abigails Spamberger,
the Democrat running for governor, in not disavowing j Jones
basically said well, everyone's running there and own individual race.
So he turned that into an ad and said it's
an individual race, take a look at me. So I
think that was pretty clever of him, and they're likely
(07:34):
people in Virginia who would undervote or switch sides for that.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, I am just I don't know. I find that
this it's both sides of this right where I don't
like at all any of this commentary is being tied
to the right, and I just refuse to participate, you know,
or believe any of that. But also this idea that
(07:58):
this is my side and I need to quiet just
is appalling to me. And why it's so bad the
Spamburger won't denounce him. The whole your side thing it
shouldn't apply to I want children to die. And you
know what the Young Republicans said in their chats is
nowhere near that, if you want to be real about it.
(08:20):
And I still don't think that I need more people.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Nowhere near legally actionable threats, which is actually what Jones
got very close to. Yeah, this was this was excuse
my language, ship posting gas chamber stuff, stuff about African Americans, watermelons,
like just disgusting, designed to discussed people, right, and yeah,
(08:46):
like I don't.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Think you're bringing a bunch of people into this party
like that.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, Bonchi read spend political capital on you. Oh yes, exactly,
so Bonchie read state I'd account I like very much.
On X said Groyper, Losers are not my side. If
I want to call them losers, I'll call them losers
and it will not cost us a single election. But
I'm also not going to waste time on total nobodies
who have been forced to resign and who will never
(09:11):
be heard from again. That's where I am on this
same Yeah, you pointed out that the Young Republicans issued
a comment and they said, we are appalled by the
vile and inexcusable language revealed in the political Art article
published today. Behavior is disgraceful. Onbecoming stands in direct opposition
to the movement. All involved must resign immediately. I mean,
(09:32):
what more could they say.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Over to you, Virginia Democrats, National Democrats. It will be
interesting to see how many Republicans in the halls of
Congress are asked about this versus Democrats being asked about
j Jones, right, even though he's running for office.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
You know, as we're going to air, there's a story
in Pirate Wires which I haven't read yet, but there's
a long tweet about it. Heather Cox Richardson is apparently
this big leftist boys, they.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Point out, is the biggest substack that exists.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Right, more subscribers than Jimmy Kimmel has. And they say
every night she tells her two point seven million followers
that America is sliding into authoritarianism, Trump is a dictator whatever.
But they also say when it was revealed that Charlie
Kirk's assassin was not the right wing extremist she claimed
he was, she never corrected the record. When Biden's debate
performance was so bad the New York Times called for
(10:23):
him to drop out, Richardson claimed he thoroughly proved his confidence.
When an assassin murdered Minnesota lawmakers. It was horrific. But
when Luigi Mangioni assassinated United Healthcare CEO, it was a
moral protest. And so spare me the handwringing and the
pearl clutching, because this is the most famous substack of
(10:45):
all time.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
So their disinformation is good, Carol, Right, I know that's
the difference.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
All right.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
We will be back on normally in a moment with
some stories about Obama. How's he doing these days?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Poorly?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
He's doing poorly. All right.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
We are back on normally with a little bit about
Barack Obama and the new Barack Obama, who is mom
Donnie in New York running for the mayor's slot. But first,
the original Barack Obama, who appeared on Mark Maren's podcast
this week. Maren is drawing to a close his fifteen
year run of podcasting. He is a comedian but also
(11:25):
a political commentator, and.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
It was a really big deal.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
I remember when Obama appeared on his podcast in twenty
fifteen ish, because that was like the.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
New Frontiers, new things.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
So he's capping it off as well, and he had
some thoughts about what has come to pass since he
left office.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Here's let's listen to.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
A little bit. I mean, what was unusual for me
was obviously a lot of what I represented. Yeah, a
lot of what Michelle and I had tried to project
the values are thinking about America. My successor seemed to
(12:10):
represent the opposite, right not seemed didn't. And so I
think there is a lot of anger, a lot of sadness,
some fear among a big chunk of the country.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
He seems frustrated, Carol.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Yeah, he doesn't like that anybody else got to be
president after him.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
I am sort of amazed by how little people listen
to him now, and I think that's of his own doing.
He made himself irrelevant. I think he did a lot
of damage while he was president and since he's been president,
which I want to I want to congratulate myself on
this one. I said while he was running for president
and while he was president. This man wants to be
(12:54):
an ex president. He wants to he wants to live well,
he wants to give spe he wants to be congratulated for,
like I don't know, observing elections in other countries and
lecturing the United States of America and hang out in
Marsa's vineyard. That's what he wants to do, he's going
to be great at it, and that part he has embraced.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, And I mean, I guess he has some behind
the scenes roles at the you know, in the Democratic Party,
but he has been so largely irrelevant and I can't,
you know, when we look back at his presidency, other
than Obamacare, which is largely a disaster, what are his accomplishments?
And you know, people at the time even said, oh,
(13:37):
but he's such a good speaker. He's such a good orator.
And I'm always like, named something he said, Name something
he said other than if you like your doctor, you
can keep your doctor, which turned out to be a lie.
So I'm thoroughly unimpressed with this guy. I nowhere near
as impressed as he is with himself. And it's just
(13:57):
funny because what did he think was going to happen?
And after he left the presidency, what did he think
the next Republican was going to do? He led in
such a way that was so abrasive to the opposite
side from him when he said all I need is
a phone and a pen. What did he think everybody
was going to do after him? Right?
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I think he fools himself into thinking it wasn't divisive,
Like I think he's still the illusion that he was
a uniting force while he was, like, you know, calling
out the Supreme Court justices sitting in front of him
at a State of the Union address, while he was
calling out Republican congressional leaders whose votes he needed on
(14:39):
various things while they're sitting on stage with him.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
He wasn't unifying.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
And I don't think beyond giving speeches, he really was
understood what the job was.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
And as a result, the.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Thing that he passed, Obamacare was not executed. Well, it
doesn't live up to its promises. You can still do
polling where people are like, oh, I guess that free
thing you gave us is fine, but if you start
like picking in the details, people are like, now, this
didn't give me what I wanted. He I feel like
he makes himself irrelevant. Every statement is like what world
(15:17):
are you living in? And this felt very much like
are you're living in twenty fifteen? This is just a
replay of twenty fifteen and you're trying to grock what
happened and how you possibly could be losing this race
or Hillary losing this race.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
But you know, right, yeah, same thing speaking of irrelevant.
The Joe Biden people have been working over time to
say that it was actually Joe Biden's peace deal that
the Trump administration enacted in the Middle East, but Joe
Biden like totally just didn't want to do it. That's
really what happened here. He was doing other things and
(15:52):
you know, his peace deal. It was just it was
really it was Trump's fault. It was Trumpett Yahoo's fault
that it got together.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
No, no right that you know.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
This guy Keith Edwards. I don't know who this is,
but apparently a lot of people do because they were like,
why are you giving this person attention? And I said, oh,
I don't know who this is, but he tweeted he
had a very big sweet Joe Biden had a peace
deal in place, but then net Nyaho and Trump met
in mar A Lago. I decided that keeping the war
going would benefit them both. Ten months later, this signing
the exact deal Biden brokeer. I was on with your bestie,
(16:26):
Guy Benton yesterday, and we talked about how some of
the things that have happened since Joe Biden was president, like,
for example, the Twelve Day War with Iran and the
tech inside cutter and things like that actually led to
the peace deal, and Joe Biden would have never been
able to get that done. You know, tell this to
(16:49):
enorm me in your life and they're going to respond
as the normies in my life did with Joe Biden
was a potato. He could have never done this.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yes, yeah, it's just obviously incorrect. I would also add
this important detail and pardon me on pronunciation. But Laha Harkov,
who is a journalist in Israel, she puts the order
of operations into perspective, which is the Biden deal for
Israel to fully withdraw was for Israel to fully withdraw
from Gaza and only then for all of the hospitals
(17:19):
to be released. Hamas rejected it. Israel is still deployed
in most of Gaza, she notes, and we have all
the living hostages at home.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
That is a better, huge difference.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
That is not the same deal. That is a deal
that Israel goes.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Why would we do that, right, because there isn't a
guarantee and it goes really badly.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And by the way, you.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Get all of those horrific, tortuous ceremonies of handing over
because the Red Cross ain't gonna do nothing to stop them.
By the way, can we just once again say the
Red Cross is trash for the way it acted the
entire time, unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
More pointless than Europe and that's really saying something.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Okay, one more thing in this section, I want to
add the new Obama's rise. So this is u Zoron Mumdani,
who's running for mayor in New York. He is a
head by double digits over Andrew Como. A lot of
that has to do with the fact that Democrats just
couldn't muster anyone better than Andrew. I would have been
an Adams Gallay choice.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So fast. Yeah, but me, you and like eight percent
of New Yorkers.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I know, I know. So that's happening.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
And the New York Times did a sixteen page profile
on him, and I read, I want to say, like
ninety percent of it. I have a few more paragraphs
to go. But there is not one dang interesting revealing,
like negative moment in this from the perspective of the writer, Like, right,
(18:44):
you do a sixteen page profile on someone you didn't
find anything you might want to just like criticize a
tiny bit that's that's a problem there, Obama ask yes,
And the question that keeps coming to me as I'm
reading through the profile is like, yes, so he has
all these ideas, but he doesn't know how.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
To execute them, is what you're saying?
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Any of them?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Any of them and a lot of them defy economics.
So you're going to end up on the other side
of this, which the Democratic Socialists of America who endorsed
him have already pointed out where they're like, oh, what
if he wins and then he tries to enact these
things and a he doesn't have the power to or
be he can't, and then we have to pay the price, right,
And it's yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Maybe think about it an issue? Yeah, it gonna be
an issue. The guy with a smile doesn't always get
it done.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, And I you know, look, I the other concern
is when he inevitably can't get any of his policy's
done or they're a total failure. If he ends up
opening one, you know, grocery store run by the government
and it is the failure it's been in other places,
what does he fill kind of the gap with? And
I think when he is running for UNRA over the weekend,
(19:54):
I think a lot of Jews should think about the
fact that it will be you know, maybe riling up
people against Jews, and that's a very common strategy through
history among failed politicians, which he inevitably will be.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
I would say that there's one sentence in this that
is accidentally revealing that suggests that in which he the
writer contends that this is the one issue he will
not compromise on, and it is Israel Palestine, even though
like he's running an affordability campaign, but this is the
one issue where he can't even say, yeah, globalize, the
(20:31):
entifata is bad.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
People shouldn't say that, right.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yep, He's going to lean right into it, and there's
a reason for that. So we'll be right back with
more on normally and is the transcantagion finally breaking among kids?
We'll see be right back. We are back on normally
where a few days ago, a researcher posted a graph
(20:56):
that seemed very promising. Eric Kaufman is a professor of politics,
and he looked at some studies out of andover Brown
and from the fire Org. Part of it is that
there's a collapse in people who say they are non binary,
and that's great, because non binary is not a thing,
(21:19):
and the fact that it's spiked so high in twenty
twenty three, it's about fifty percent down from that the
peak numbers. That's fantastic. Of course, the fact that anybody
still thinks that they're neither gender is ridiculous, but we'll
take it for now.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Yeah, no, it's it seems like a small victory at least.
And my thought would be that this suggests that the
pipeline to trans identity is closing. Yeah, that the social
contagion and those early stages where people are using this
as sort of like a like an intersectional politics pass.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Oh, I'm just like a suburban white girl, but I'm
non binary. That is losing its cachet as it should,
and that fewer people in the future will be drawn
into actual bad, bad situations.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I mean, look, it's the easiest one, right If I
always say, if I were a teenager right now and
I had the kind of power that comes with declaring
yourself non binary and making up your pronouns every day
and having every adult in your life follow it, I
would one hundred percent be into it. So the easiest one,
the one that you don't have to do anything is
falling off, and that's great. He also says that non
(22:39):
conforming sexual identity, queer questioning, et cetera. Is also in
sharp decline. Gay and lesbian are stable, while heterosexual has
rebounded by around ten points since twenty twenty three. Yeah,
it's the vibe shift, you know. But I when recording
this as I'm writing the piece, so I think I
have a piece, and then you're a post today on
(23:00):
this how I don't actually think that the trans contagion
is over, and I think we should be really careful
about taking these stats to mean that. Part of what
Eric says is he thinks that trans people would be
more likely to say that they're non binary, and therefore
(23:20):
the non binary numbers is declining means that trans is declining.
I don't think so. I don't think so. I think
when you're in the trans contagion, non binary means something
very very specific to you, and you are absolutely not that,
and your identity is so fixed in those words that
I don't think a trans person would pick non binary.
(23:40):
And that's what my column today and then New York
Post will end up arguing.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, I think we should be wary about any of
this stuff sort of falling off the cliff. I do
think there's a vibe shift shift that you want to
be careful about the data. And there's certainly people who
are still very invested and now in creating more kids
who can go into this pipeline. And I just the
(24:05):
damage that has been done thus far is just shocking.
And you know, I know when we were kids, the
social contagion of the day. Neither of them good were cutting,
an anorexia, and I would take those over this one.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
This one is, Yeah, this one seems a lot more permanent.
Those were both terrible, obviously, but they were seemed more
temporary than getting drugs and changing your well.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
And importantly, the most important thing about them is how
we responded to them. Yeah they're bad, to them as
if they were good and enlightened and a choice. We
responded to them like, girl, you got to get yourself
some therapy.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, when you went to the therapist, it wasn't like, oh,
this is good and I'm going to affirm this.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I think that that's a big part of all of this,
that the affirming is what's driving this.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Really.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
If you go to a therapist and you say I'm
mixed up and I'm going used it. I think I'm
the opposite gender, and your therapist says, no, that's good,
you are that opposite gender. It leads you down a
path that is hard to get off well.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
And we've talked about this before, and it concerns me
for lots of kids. Is that this kind of affirmation
and the need to get it out of some of
these professional circles.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It speaks to the need to get it out of
these professional circles.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Is if your kids do need some kind of therapy,
you cannot be assured that that person isn't going to
decide that your kid's issue is that they're actually in
the wrong body. I would just like my kid to
be able to talk about normal stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
That'd be great.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Absolutely well. Thank you for joining us on Normally. Normally
airs Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you could subscribe anywhere you
get your podcasts. Get in touch with us at normally
theepod at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening, and when
things get weird at normally
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