Latest / Normally / Normally Podcast: Teaching Teens, Tariffs, and Tesla Tantrums

Transcript

Normally Podcast: Teaching Teens, Tariffs, and Tesla Tantrums · Normally

0:03
Speaker 1: I normally the show with normalis takes, but when the
0:07
Speaker 1: news gets weird, I am Americas.
0:09
Speaker 2: Am, and I'm Carol Marco, I'm Mary Catherine.
0:12
Speaker 1: How's it going. It's going all right. We're still working
0:15
Speaker 1: on potty training. But I saw that you had like
0:17
Speaker 1: a rite of passage in your home.
0:18
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I have my very first child who is driving,
0:23
Speaker 2: who terrifying. Also, it turns out I'm not a great
0:29
Speaker 2: driving teacher. I was just like, all right, let's go
0:32
Speaker 2: start driving, and she couldn't do that. So I handed
0:37
Speaker 2: it over to my husband, who was like, what you
0:39
Speaker 2: have to do is show her how to do it.
0:42
Speaker 1: So it's a hard thing to teach. We are doing
0:45
Speaker 1: it redneck style, where our kids started on little dirt
0:49
Speaker 1: dirt bikes and little little power wheels, and so they
0:52
Speaker 1: learned kind of the basics of how these things go,
0:55
Speaker 1: and we keep stepping them up in size.
0:57
Speaker 2: Right, Well, we meant to do it starting the Floridian
1:00
Speaker 2: Way on a golf cart, but smart we didn't actually
1:03
Speaker 2: pull the trigger on getting a golf cart yet. So
1:06
Speaker 2: here we are. But yeah, fifteen years old, they get
1:08
Speaker 2: their learners permit in Florida. It's younger than we did
1:12
Speaker 2: it in New York and it's it's great. I mean,
1:15
Speaker 2: it's great that she wants to do it, because there's
1:17
Speaker 2: so many kids this age now who put it off indefinitely.
1:21
Speaker 2: I don't know. I couldn't wait to drive when I
1:23
Speaker 2: was a teenager.
1:24
Speaker 1: I know, I love it that she's going out there
1:26
Speaker 1: and she's very much like that. I was required to
1:29
Speaker 1: learn stick, so like there was an even thoughts are
1:32
Speaker 1: in our family. So man, I remember sitting on a
1:36
Speaker 1: hill for the first time driving stick and just wondering
1:39
Speaker 1: if I'm going to slide back into the bumper behind me. Oh,
1:41
Speaker 1: it's a good time, yeap.
1:42
Speaker 2: That was my husband. My husband in Italy when we
1:45
Speaker 2: were dating, learned. I mean he said he knew how
1:47
Speaker 2: to drive stick and that's why we rented a car
1:49
Speaker 2: with stick shift. He learned how to drive in the
1:52
Speaker 2: parking garage of the airport in Rome. And let me
1:55
Speaker 2: tell you, the Italians did not enjoy that.
1:57
Speaker 1: No. I bet I drove a sixty eight Volkswagen Bug.
2:01
Speaker 1: So once you start with that level of cantankerous, yeah, manual,
2:06
Speaker 1: you could do any transmission. You can really do anything.
2:08
Speaker 2: It really does. The origin story here makes a lot
2:11
Speaker 2: of sense.
2:12
Speaker 1: That's alrighty, shall we get to the news.
2:16
Speaker 2: Let's do it. So, you know, we haven't really talked
2:20
Speaker 2: about the economy on here, and we really specifically haven't
2:23
Speaker 2: talked talked about tariffs. And part of why we haven't
2:26
Speaker 2: discussed the tariffs is that things remain very in flux.
2:30
Speaker 2: And the first time that you and I were like,
2:33
Speaker 2: let's talk tariffs today, we actually decided to wait and
2:35
Speaker 2: see what happened, and then the next day the tariffs
2:38
Speaker 2: with Canada and Mexico were postponed. So every time we
2:41
Speaker 2: kind of think like, Okay, should we do tariffs today,
2:44
Speaker 2: we end up not doing it because things are changing
2:47
Speaker 2: all the time. And in the financial world they call
2:49
Speaker 2: this kind of thing uncertainty, and they don't like it.
2:53
Speaker 1: They don't the market says no, thank you, yes to that, thanks,
2:57
Speaker 1: but no thanks on the uncertainty. Yes, I do think
3:01
Speaker 1: we're getting to a point where Trump could be in
3:04
Speaker 1: some real danger of just burning through political capital because
3:09
Speaker 1: he has a lot, he has a lot of leeway
3:11
Speaker 1: here inherited a soft economy at best from Biden. Like
3:16
Speaker 1: people were not feeling good, right, I think, unleashing energy
3:20
Speaker 1: and working on some deregulation can have tremendous effects, it'll
3:25
Speaker 1: take a little while. But the tariff's pitch is trickier
3:29
Speaker 1: because he says this is short term gain or short
3:31
Speaker 1: term pain for long term gain. Right, voters don't like
3:34
Speaker 1: short term pain.
3:36
Speaker 2: No, they don't, they don't. But you know, you bring
3:39
Speaker 2: up a good point, which is Trump has only been
3:41
Speaker 2: president for two months, so you can blame him for
3:44
Speaker 2: like the stock market dipping because investors are concerned about tariffs.
3:49
Speaker 2: But you can't like lay the price of eggs at
3:51
Speaker 2: his feet quite yet. You know, although Barack Obama basically
3:54
Speaker 2: blamed George W. Bush for like eight years of economy,
3:58
Speaker 2: he kept saying, this is the economy I inherit, or like, dude,
4:01
Speaker 2: you've been president for six years at this point, so
4:04
Speaker 2: you know, maybe Trump can do similar, although I you know,
4:07
Speaker 2: from what I've seen, he hasn't necessarily done similar. He
4:10
Speaker 2: hasn't said, well, this is you know, what I inherited.
4:14
Speaker 2: But he had an interview with Maria or Taroma, her
4:19
Speaker 2: name is always a toughie for me, and she asked
4:23
Speaker 2: him do you expect a recession? And he said it's possible.
4:27
Speaker 2: That kind of thing is unheard of. By the way,
4:28
Speaker 2: you never hear a politician bluntly say something like that.
4:32
Speaker 2: But that's the long term, you know, gain for the
4:35
Speaker 2: short term pain that you're talking about here. And you're right.
4:39
Speaker 2: I don't know that Americans are going to be okay
4:42
Speaker 2: with this. I don't think that they're going to say, oh,
4:44
Speaker 2: well things are more expensive, or I got laid off
4:46
Speaker 2: or any of that. But it's good for the country
4:48
Speaker 2: long term. That's It's a tough, tough little nut to
4:53
Speaker 2: crack there.
4:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very big ask. I think. Also, Canada
4:57
Speaker 1: kind of came to play. I don't know. I didn't expect.
5:00
Speaker 1: I didn't expect the Ontario premiere to go quite so hard.
5:03
Speaker 1: He was like, he was like, okay, so we give
5:06
Speaker 1: you electricity in New York, Michigan, and Minnesota, I believe
5:10
Speaker 1: are the three states. So we're just like going to
5:13
Speaker 1: slap twenty five percent on that, which will cost consumers
5:16
Speaker 1: potentially one hundred dollars a month on their power bill.
5:20
Speaker 1: And I guarantee you people will notice that. Now. He
5:23
Speaker 1: backed off of that as soon as Trump had some
5:26
Speaker 1: engagement with him, right, But there is cost to the
5:29
Speaker 1: uncertainty itself. Right, So if you're going to have the
5:32
Speaker 1: fight again, I think a medium tolerant of tariffs as
5:36
Speaker 1: a negotiating tactic if it's quick and efficient. But this
5:42
Speaker 1: exchange is looking rockier for people, so I think it
5:45
Speaker 1: does have potential to harm his political prospects.
5:49
Speaker 2: Earlier today, AP reported that Canada will announce more than
5:53
Speaker 2: twenty billion in retaliatory tariffs in response to Trump's metal tariffs.
5:58
Speaker 2: So yeah, Canada is I mean leaning into their nationalism
6:04
Speaker 2: and saying we don't like this, we don't like you,
6:07
Speaker 2: We've never liked you, haha, And they're really fighting back.
6:12
Speaker 1: But you know, he gets leeway, and.
6:15
Speaker 2: He gets leeway from me. I was on your bestie
6:18
Speaker 2: Guy Benson's radio show yesterday and I said, you know,
6:21
Speaker 2: I've had this long road with Trump. I know you've
6:23
Speaker 2: had sort of a similar one where I was adamantly
6:28
Speaker 2: against tariffs in his first term, but I saw that
6:31
Speaker 2: he used it as a pressure tactic and not necessarily
6:35
Speaker 2: as an economic one. So I am giving him the
6:37
Speaker 2: benefit of the doubt. And I'm very much in weight
6:39
Speaker 2: and see mode, not making any strong judgments yet. But again,
6:46
Speaker 2: if Americans do end up feeling it in the next
6:49
Speaker 2: few months. I don't think that's saying, oh, but we're
6:52
Speaker 2: bringing back all these businesses to America. Just wait, twenty
6:54
Speaker 2: years is going to work?
6:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that horizon is long. Even though there are
6:59
Speaker 1: some shifts you know, that will that will happen quickly,
7:02
Speaker 1: they are not like big change the economy shifts, all right,
7:06
Speaker 1: you know. But to your point, Carol, how, I cannot
7:09
Speaker 1: count the times that Trump's political calculations have been wildly
7:15
Speaker 1: different and better than mine. Right, Okay, I'm in the
7:19
Speaker 1: same place. Yes, so I'm there. We are open to that.
7:22
Speaker 1: But I think on the politics of the economy, it's
7:27
Speaker 1: very risky ground, and it's very risky ground to be
7:30
Speaker 1: fighting based on being I think mostly just annoyed with
7:34
Speaker 1: Justin Trudeau by the way, you're putting wind beneath his
7:37
Speaker 1: wings with the let's not so yeah, I think he
7:41
Speaker 1: stands to do himself some damage. Although you had a
7:43
Speaker 1: good an interesting data point on cost of living.
7:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's roll that clip from CNN.
7:49
Speaker 3: Finally we have some good news on the economy and
7:51
Speaker 3: really the number one issue for many Americans the cost
7:53
Speaker 3: of living. So we just learned that consumer prices in
7:56
Speaker 3: February increase by two point eight percent year, zero point
8:00
Speaker 3: two percent month of a month.
8:02
Speaker 4: Both of these figures were a step.
8:04
Speaker 3: In the right direction, and both were better than expected.
8:08
Speaker 3: So this is definitely very encouraging to see because it's
8:12
Speaker 3: going to, I think, relieve some fears.
8:15
Speaker 4: That inflation was perhaps reaccelerating, because this actually breaks a
8:19
Speaker 4: streak of four straight months where I think you could
8:22
Speaker 4: see it on the chart all the way to the
8:23
Speaker 4: right where the inflation rate was going in the wrong direction.
8:26
Speaker 3: Right, it was going higher and higher. Finally we're seeing
8:29
Speaker 3: it dip.
8:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.
8:30
Speaker 2: So the Trump Rapid Response team shared that on x
8:33
Speaker 2: Obviously they are proud that CNN is saying it, which
8:37
Speaker 2: is unusual for CNN. Cost of living obviously going down
8:42
Speaker 2: is going to be a data point, they stress. They
8:45
Speaker 2: also had Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon was on again
8:50
Speaker 2: Mornings of Maria kind of being more optimistic on what's
8:54
Speaker 2: going on in the economy and with the Trump administration.
8:57
Speaker 2: He said that the business community quote understands Trump's intentions
9:01
Speaker 2: with tariffs.
9:02
Speaker 1: Well, and that's one of the things I think. Josh
9:04
Speaker 1: Holmes said, I was on Special Report last night and
9:06
Speaker 1: he said, the man is engaged in negotiation. The man
9:09
Speaker 1: is always engaged in negotiation. Many many business leaders understand this,
9:17
Speaker 1: but like I always go to go back to there
9:20
Speaker 1: is a cost from uncertainty because businesses want to plan
9:24
Speaker 1: and they want to know what is in front of them. Also,
9:26
Speaker 1: I don't like the part of tariffs where it's like
9:28
Speaker 1: it becomes political gamesmanship and very swampy to be like,
9:32
Speaker 1: but I need an exception to the tariff, and this
9:35
Speaker 1: is how I'm going to get it right. I don't
9:37
Speaker 1: like that at all.
9:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's going to have to be everybody or nobody.
9:42
Speaker 2: I think the exceptions are the swampiest part of DC
9:47
Speaker 2: and we can't allow that to go on.
9:49
Speaker 1: That's that part worries me. Yeah, alrighty up. Next, we
9:54
Speaker 1: have mostly peaceful protests, mostly.
9:57
Speaker 2: Peaceful, just some vandalism, some Tesla set up on fire,
10:01
Speaker 2: will be right back on. Normally, these protests are going
10:07
Speaker 2: on around the country. A really really sad one happened
10:10
Speaker 2: in South Florida. I saw video of it the other day.
10:13
Speaker 2: They manage like twelve people at the Tesla plant in
10:15
Speaker 2: Delray Beach. It's really I think unsettling because look, I
10:21
Speaker 2: get that these people are really mad at Elon Musk.
10:24
Speaker 2: But Elon Musk only owns only has twelve point eight
10:27
Speaker 2: percent of Tesla equity, so they're really just harming people
10:31
Speaker 2: who have nothing to do with anything. And it's interesting,
10:35
Speaker 2: of course the additional angle that Tesla is an electric car.
10:39
Speaker 2: The people posing Elon are largely on the left. They
10:42
Speaker 2: should be loving their electric car in California. You know,
10:45
Speaker 2: I saw a bumper sticker that said something like I
10:48
Speaker 2: bought this before Elon went crazy on a Tesla, which
10:52
Speaker 2: is like, okay, like, I don't even do we know
10:55
Speaker 2: what the other car manufacturers, top equity owner now leaves.
11:01
Speaker 2: We don't right, for better or worse, Elon is out there,
11:06
Speaker 2: and uh I you know, I find it difficult to
11:10
Speaker 2: wrap my mind around that people are blaming him for
11:13
Speaker 2: this because it's it's clearly unbalanced people who are causing
11:19
Speaker 2: vandalism and oh yeah, you know, doing really crazy stuff.
11:23
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm obviously not a fan, but I also
11:28
Speaker 2: think that the people doing it should be harshly punished.
11:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, remind me of the good guys, the
11:32
Speaker 1: ones burning the electric cars. So the guy who made
11:36
Speaker 1: the electric cars. Yeah, that's the thing that's astounding to me,
11:39
Speaker 1: I've always found Tesla's to be interesting, in the company
11:42
Speaker 1: to be interesting. The only problem I had with it
11:45
Speaker 1: was any government subsidies it got because I'm boringly consistent
11:50
Speaker 1: that way.
11:50
Speaker 2: Yes, Dary, but he did.
11:53
Speaker 1: The thing where he made electric car cars high performing
11:57
Speaker 1: and cool. I have he he did the thing you
12:00
Speaker 1: guys wanted. Lefties and now eco warriors are like, let's
12:04
Speaker 1: set fire to a whole lot of Tesla's. And they've
12:08
Speaker 1: done this, by the way, in several places. There's headlines
12:11
Speaker 1: from Seattle, I think in California. This is this is
12:18
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that if it was the left
12:21
Speaker 1: throwing molotov cocktails at a North Charleston Tesla charging station, right,
12:27
Speaker 1: if it wasn't the left and it was the right
12:29
Speaker 1: doing this because they didn't like whoever owned a company,
12:32
Speaker 1: you'd get a lot more national coverage of this horrific
12:36
Speaker 1: threat to democracy. But political violence on the left is
12:40
Speaker 1: not treated the same in the media. And Frank Luigi
12:44
Speaker 1: Mangioni sets such a low low in the in hell
12:48
Speaker 1: bar that now the lefties are like, I mean, we
12:50
Speaker 1: didn't murder.
12:51
Speaker 2: Him, right, we could do whatever we want. It's just property.
12:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, scary prospect, but that is what they think. They
12:59
Speaker 1: think the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare was
13:01
Speaker 1: sort of kind of like a deserved unacceptable maybe even
13:07
Speaker 1: laudatory and uh and now they're like, well, we've really
13:09
Speaker 1: done you guys a favor by stepping it down and
13:11
Speaker 1: just burning a few cyber trucks, right.
13:14
Speaker 2: Uh. You know, I think that if the right were
13:17
Speaker 2: to respond even similarly, we'd see, you know, mass unrest.
13:22
Speaker 2: Let's just say it wouldn't it wouldn't go quite so swimmingly.
13:26
Speaker 3: So.
13:27
Speaker 2: But Donald Trump had a tesla at the White House
13:30
Speaker 2: and he said, oh, everything's computer. And let me tell you,
13:38
Speaker 2: everything is computer.
13:40
Speaker 1: Everything's computer. There was a guy who tweeted, I'll leave
13:46
Speaker 1: the cursords out of it because that was my Linton sacrifice.
13:50
Speaker 1: But he says this guy. Yeah, I hate this man.
13:55
Speaker 1: I hate how funny he is. Yes, I hate how
13:58
Speaker 1: he puts things in my lexicon and without my consent,
14:01
Speaker 1: like everything's electric, everything's computer. Things beautiful.
14:07
Speaker 2: Because it really fits. Again, I have a tesla. I
14:10
Speaker 2: love my tesla. I love the self drive more than anything.
14:15
Speaker 2: Even though I still, you know, I still hold on
14:16
Speaker 2: and I still watch the road. I know people I
14:19
Speaker 2: won't name any names who completely, you know, let the
14:23
Speaker 2: tesla take over. I'm not quite there yet, but it's
14:26
Speaker 2: the future. Everything's computer and it's amazing. I really do
14:31
Speaker 2: love it.
14:31
Speaker 1: The first time I ever wrote in a tesla, by
14:33
Speaker 1: the way, was with Vincent Gallo in La.
14:36
Speaker 2: You know, I love him. He was like an early
14:40
Speaker 2: early crush for me. And then I found out he
14:43
Speaker 2: was conservative much later and I was like, wow, I
14:46
Speaker 2: really know how to pick him.
14:47
Speaker 1: We did one of those secret conservative meetups in La
14:50
Speaker 1: and I wrote in a tesla in the early early days,
14:53
Speaker 1: before anybody had one in it it was everything was computer.
14:56
Speaker 2: Then I'm gonna have to look up what Vincent gallows
14:59
Speaker 2: up to. Haven't heard from him in a while. Please
15:01
Speaker 2: don't let him be a Nazi, like just you know,
15:03
Speaker 2: it's one of those.
15:04
Speaker 1: Like Google carefully. Yeah, I don't know.
15:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, I deserve whatever I get here. We're going to
15:11
Speaker 2: take a short break and come right back with normally.
15:17
Speaker 2: It is five years since the COVID lockdowns began. We
15:22
Speaker 2: are around the five year mark, and it is something
15:26
Speaker 2: I'm still mad about. Bro and I know that we
15:29
Speaker 2: talk about it on the show a lot, probably more
15:31
Speaker 2: than other shows do because we are still mad and
15:35
Speaker 2: just you know the importance of looking back right now.
15:38
Speaker 2: I think so many times we hear about new viruses
15:41
Speaker 2: or new things coming up, and you're like, but now
15:43
Speaker 2: I know what to do. Now, I won't believe anything
15:45
Speaker 2: you people are saying. It's a dangerous place to be.
15:49
Speaker 2: I don't trust our health officials at all. I'm glad
15:52
Speaker 2: that Jaboticharia is at NIH. That makes it far more
15:56
Speaker 2: trustworthy for me.
15:57
Speaker 1: It is a nice bow on the five years. It is.
16:00
Speaker 2: It absolutely is. He was, of course, somebody who opposed
16:03
Speaker 2: the lockdowns and did it at tremendous personal costs. He
16:08
Speaker 2: was really shunned by his peers. He was treated like
16:12
Speaker 2: a lunatic, when of course he was right about all of.
16:16
Speaker 1: It, labeled a fringe epidemiologists who works at Stanford, like
16:20
Speaker 1: all the fringe epidemiologists.
16:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you and I listen, you and
16:25
Speaker 2: I were right about quite a lot. Also. I do
16:27
Speaker 2: like to pat us on the back because a lot
16:30
Speaker 2: of things that people say, oh, how could we have known,
16:32
Speaker 2: or we didn't know, we like to say, oh, we knew,
16:35
Speaker 2: we knew, we knew the whole time. We knew that
16:37
Speaker 2: this was going to be bad for kids. We had
16:39
Speaker 2: no illusions that taking away school from only public school
16:44
Speaker 2: kids was was going to be a problem for the
16:47
Speaker 2: poorest kids in the country. And that's exactly where we
16:49
Speaker 2: are now.
16:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was obviously the things that people say, we
16:53
Speaker 1: didn't know. And that's the line that my counterpart used
16:57
Speaker 1: on me on on Fox News Sunday. It's like, oh,
17:01
Speaker 1: people just learned as they went. It's like, okay, but
17:03
Speaker 1: at the beginning, we knew outside safer than inside, old
17:08
Speaker 1: in more danger than young. Those were just facts known
17:13
Speaker 1: from the beginning that should have protected both school children
17:17
Speaker 1: being shut out of school and old people being thrown
17:19
Speaker 1: into nursing homes and hospitals together with in New York.
17:25
Speaker 1: So those two things, or like you know, opening parks outside.
17:30
Speaker 1: I remember I went out to Colorado early in the pandemic,
17:34
Speaker 1: I confess, and I went to Colorado and we couldn't
17:37
Speaker 1: go up the Manitou Incline, which is a famous hike,
17:41
Speaker 1: because it was closed and they would they said they
17:44
Speaker 1: would find you thousands of dollars if you attempted to
17:48
Speaker 1: walk up an outdoor staircase in the Colorado Mountains.
17:52
Speaker 2: Yep, it made no sense, and we knew it even
17:55
Speaker 2: at the time. It's also hard to go back. And
17:58
Speaker 2: I think that that's a lesson that I hope people
18:00
Speaker 2: learn going forward, is that once you do stupid things,
18:04
Speaker 2: it gets very, very hard to stop doing them. For example,
18:08
Speaker 2: New York keeps setting records for children not going to school.
18:12
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty five, they continue to have absences at
18:15
Speaker 2: astronomical numbers because when parents were told the school was
18:19
Speaker 2: not that important, it penetrated. People believe them, and now
18:23
Speaker 2: kids go to school kind of whenever they feel like it.
18:26
Speaker 2: Another thing, Liz Wolf, who writes for Reasons She's Fantastic,
18:31
Speaker 2: keeps pointing out that they keep closing down playgrounds now.
18:35
Speaker 2: In my childhood in Brooklyn, playgrounds were open in you know,
18:39
Speaker 2: six feet of snow. It didn't matter. Everything was open
18:42
Speaker 2: all the time. Now it's like, ooh, the weather's a
18:45
Speaker 2: little iffy, you're going to close the playground just in case.
18:48
Speaker 2: And she basically, you know, climbs over the fence with
18:51
Speaker 2: her with her son and they play on the toy
18:53
Speaker 2: you know, on all the structures. So it gets harder
18:57
Speaker 2: to stop doing dumb things once you start doing them.
19:00
Speaker 2: Always best to not do them in the first place.
19:01
Speaker 1: Well, and I think humans are not particularly great at
19:05
Speaker 1: rational risk analysis to begin with. And then what we
19:09
Speaker 1: did during the pandemic is that we demonized rational risk analysis.
19:15
Speaker 1: And that's why Jay Boditaria got in trouble. That's why
19:18
Speaker 1: people like you and I were shamed, because we were like, well,
19:22
Speaker 1: we are healthy and in an age range that this
19:25
Speaker 1: is not likely to hurt us a bunch. Our children
19:28
Speaker 1: are even less susceptible to being hurt badly, and we
19:31
Speaker 1: are therefore going to try to live life the best
19:34
Speaker 1: we can. I think it's important to say that I'm
19:38
Speaker 1: proud that we made those decisions. I am glad that
19:42
Speaker 1: I didn't put my kids through what a lot of
19:45
Speaker 1: kids went through when they ended up with parents who
19:48
Speaker 1: were not standing in the breach for them, who were
19:52
Speaker 1: using them as a shield instead of being a shield
19:54
Speaker 1: for them. Like some of the behavior of parents was
19:58
Speaker 1: absolutely outrageous, putting their kids in tiny kids in guest
20:03
Speaker 1: rooms and basements and feeding them under a crack in
20:05
Speaker 1: the door when they had COVID.
20:06
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just I'll just say, when my kids
20:09
Speaker 2: had COVID, they were all over me they were like
20:12
Speaker 2: on top of me, and I never got it. I
20:15
Speaker 2: never got COVID.
20:16
Speaker 1: That's the other you know, amazing. Yeah. So when the
20:20
Speaker 1: first time I ever got COVID, which was of course
20:22
Speaker 1: like a year and a half, two years in even
20:24
Speaker 1: though I had been gallivanting, I had it with a
20:29
Speaker 1: several month old baby. And like, you know, this is
20:33
Speaker 1: the problem with coverage of the pandemic as well, is
20:35
Speaker 1: that at the time, I knew if I wrote in
20:38
Speaker 1: a motive piece about how devastating it was to be
20:42
Speaker 1: to put my newborn in a bathroom by herself.
20:46
Speaker 2: You'd be in the New York Times because I had to.
20:48
Speaker 1: Protect her from COVID. I would have gotten a New
20:52
Speaker 1: York Times calum. Yeah, but if I write a piece
20:54
Speaker 1: that's like, yeah, I just like breastfed the baby and
20:58
Speaker 1: assumed everything would be fine, and then everything, it's fine,
21:00
Speaker 1: that's fine, they're not bed it's not allowed. Yeah, but
21:04
Speaker 1: I think we needed much more of the chill version
21:07
Speaker 1: we did of that in the news.
21:09
Speaker 2: I kept waiting to get COVID so that I could
21:11
Speaker 2: write the tweet that I had planned. You know a
21:13
Speaker 2: lot of people had the I did everything right, but look,
21:16
Speaker 2: I got COVID, and I wanted to be like, I
21:18
Speaker 2: did everything wrong and look I got COVID. But yeah,
21:22
Speaker 2: it never happened.
21:24
Speaker 1: You know.
21:25
Speaker 2: I'll just credit my strong Russian blood for that, I guess.
21:28
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also think I can't remember the date, but
21:31
Speaker 1: it was maybe early twenty twenty one. I think it
21:35
Speaker 1: was past the vaccines and past like when we were
21:39
Speaker 1: already an omicron era, when things were clearly less dangerous,
21:43
Speaker 1: and you and I did a clubhouse with some other folks.
21:47
Speaker 1: Liz Wolf might actually have been there, Nancy Rommelman for sure. Yeah,
21:51
Speaker 1: where we said y'all gotta get out, like everybody's got
21:56
Speaker 1: it now, to declare that you're done being in your house,
22:00
Speaker 1: that you're reclaiming your old life. And I remember at
22:03
Speaker 1: the time some people in the clubhouse, which was just
22:06
Speaker 1: an audio only sort of like X spaces is now
22:11
Speaker 1: some people being skeptical, like, why are y'all even talking
22:14
Speaker 1: about this, because obviously people will reclaim their lives. But
22:18
Speaker 1: as you say, once you've broken the habit of living life,
22:22
Speaker 1: it becomes harder to go out and live life. And
22:25
Speaker 1: a lot of people have stayed stuck, way more stuck
22:28
Speaker 1: than they should have for sure.
22:30
Speaker 2: The flip side of that is that when we moved
22:32
Speaker 2: to Florida in January of twenty twenty two, and that was,
22:35
Speaker 2: you know, we had already done like five months in
22:37
Speaker 2: Florida in twenty twenty one, and we went back to
22:40
Speaker 2: New York trying to figure things out and realize we
22:42
Speaker 2: can't stay there and made the permanent move. When we
22:44
Speaker 2: moved down here, even I met like even liberals down here,
22:48
Speaker 2: they'd be like, oh, what made you leave New York?
22:51
Speaker 2: And I'd be like, oh, the COVID insanity And they'd
22:52
Speaker 2: be like, what are you talking about? And I was like, well,
22:54
Speaker 2: our kids are still masking there, and they're like what
22:57
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two And they had no idea, Like
23:00
Speaker 2: there was no way for them to really understand what
23:02
Speaker 2: was going on. I was like, kind, only am my
23:04
Speaker 2: kids masking in January twenty two when we moved down here.
23:07
Speaker 2: They were eating lunch outside on the ground in the
23:11
Speaker 2: cold in New York, pulling their mask down between bites.
23:15
Speaker 2: And my middle son, who is argumentative and loves to debate,
23:19
Speaker 2: was constantly getting into these fights with staff and other students.
23:23
Speaker 2: Other students was like, actually a big one. They'd be like,
23:25
Speaker 2: you know, pull up your mask, pull up your mask,
23:27
Speaker 2: and he'd be like, it doesn't work anyway. And it
23:30
Speaker 2: was just but at the same time, old people like
23:34
Speaker 2: you know, you say, old people, young people. It was
23:36
Speaker 2: a major difference in COVID, you know, poor outcomes. Old
23:40
Speaker 2: people in New York were dining inside at restaurants full on,
23:44
Speaker 2: masks off, and everything was fine. It just none of
23:47
Speaker 2: it made any sense. And that is what I had
23:50
Speaker 2: to get my kids away from. I kept thinking that
23:54
Speaker 2: I can't have them living in this crazy place doing
23:57
Speaker 2: these crazy things that we all know in Jack and
24:00
Speaker 2: you were of twenty twenty two don't work.
24:03
Speaker 1: We were also in a crazy place because we're in
24:04
Speaker 1: northern Virginia. But we had a sort of a crew
24:09
Speaker 1: of people who were doctors, nurses, law enforcement, or military
24:13
Speaker 1: and they just had to work. We all they were
24:17
Speaker 1: all working, and so all of our houses were to
24:21
Speaker 1: some extent exposed, and.
24:22
Speaker 2: We were all dirty.
24:23
Speaker 1: Pretty as were dirty. We were all pretty comfortable with
24:25
Speaker 1: the idea that we were exposed and that that was
24:28
Speaker 1: just how life worked. And so we would hang out
24:31
Speaker 1: together and you know, be icky together.
24:34
Speaker 2: Right right where people like looking at us like you guys,
24:38
Speaker 2: are you know you're just too loose, noting around too much?
24:42
Speaker 1: It was wild. At one point in twenty twenty, I
24:45
Speaker 1: offered to have kids at my home who had essential
24:49
Speaker 1: worker parents who couldn't have child care for them. And
24:53
Speaker 1: I was like, look, we're not a pod like we're exposed,
24:56
Speaker 1: but if you have kids that you need care for,
24:58
Speaker 1: please don't shame me. But I'm offering my home as
25:01
Speaker 1: a place that they could do zoom class I can supervise.
25:06
Speaker 1: Just putting that Facebook post up was so scary because
25:10
Speaker 1: I knew someone was going to jump in the worse
25:12
Speaker 1: and say, how dare you do this to your neighborhood.
25:15
Speaker 1: You're going to kill somebody's grandma. By the way, our
25:18
Speaker 1: grandparents and our family were like, oh, we will be
25:22
Speaker 1: seeing the children.
25:24
Speaker 2: My mom like three weeks in. It was like, this
25:27
Speaker 2: is the longest six months of my life.
25:30
Speaker 3: We did.
25:30
Speaker 2: I think we waited like a moteless away anymore, you know.
25:33
Speaker 1: I think we made it. We waited like a month
25:34
Speaker 1: and a half. And then I was like, maybe we
25:35
Speaker 1: should do outdoors because I was more worried about them. Sure, yes,
25:39
Speaker 1: and the grandparent parents and our family luckily all quite healthy.
25:42
Speaker 1: We're like, nah, I'm just gonna hang out because we're family,
25:47
Speaker 1: and we did it and everybody was fine, right, but
25:49
Speaker 1: you know, I just to wrap this up.
25:52
Speaker 2: It's five years. We obviously are over a lot of it,
25:55
Speaker 2: not over some other stuff, but we did have a
25:59
Speaker 2: lot of negativity thrown at us, and we were right.
26:04
Speaker 2: You know, I got threats. I'm sure you did.
26:06
Speaker 4: Two.
26:08
Speaker 2: In November of twenty twenty, I wrote spend Thanksgiving with
26:12
Speaker 2: your family, and that got me an avalanche of abuse
26:17
Speaker 2: on the internets. Yes, of course, all the people who
26:20
Speaker 2: told us not to spend Thanksgiving with our families, like
26:22
Speaker 2: my then governor now possible New York City mayor candidate
26:27
Speaker 2: Andrew Pomo. He was planning to spend it with his family.
26:31
Speaker 2: So while we were supposed to not see our families
26:34
Speaker 2: on Thanksgiving, the people in charge were totally doing whatever
26:37
Speaker 2: they wanted.
26:38
Speaker 1: Doctor Burks did the same thing, Yeah, Gavin Newsome.
26:41
Speaker 2: I mean, they all just did whatever they wanted, and
26:45
Speaker 2: we took a lot of abuse for it, and I
26:48
Speaker 2: definitely feel like we came out stronger on the other side.
26:50
Speaker 2: But I'm not quite forgiven that yet, not that anybody's
26:53
Speaker 2: asked for that. Forgiveness.
26:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that's not top of their minds. Well,
26:57
Speaker 1: there is one sort of consequence that is rearing its
27:00
Speaker 1: head this week, which we will close out with. Just
27:02
Speaker 1: for the stats for you guys, half of the Department
27:05
Speaker 1: of Education, Federal Department of Education is now laid off.
27:09
Speaker 1: They were told to leave by six pm from their
27:13
Speaker 1: headquarters yesterday in Washington, although I hope they sent that
27:17
Speaker 1: email out before too, because ain't nobody was at the
27:20
Speaker 1: Department of Education at six pm. You got to catch them, Merlin. Yeah,
27:25
Speaker 1: thirteen hundred people laid off. There will be rending of garments,
27:29
Speaker 1: there will be screaming from Randy Winegarden. These people didn't
27:34
Speaker 1: care about disruptions in education, not at all. They only
27:38
Speaker 1: care about a disruption in the racket of the pass
27:42
Speaker 1: through of bureaucratic funds that go straight to their pockets
27:47
Speaker 1: and not largely to education. So when people complain about this,
27:52
Speaker 1: I will be checking to see if they complained about
27:54
Speaker 1: the eighteen months that every child in every public school
27:57
Speaker 1: in every major metro area was out of school. Yeah,
28:01
Speaker 1: because this is the consequence of losing public trust and
28:05
Speaker 1: not doing your job.
28:07
Speaker 2: That's right. This is the fo to the fa yep,
28:11
Speaker 2: I didn't give up cursing for lent. I could have
28:13
Speaker 2: just said it, but I'm with you in solidarity.
28:16
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's very good.
28:17
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on normally. Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays,
28:20
Speaker 2: and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. Drop
28:24
Speaker 2: us an email at Normallythepod at gmail dot com. Thanks
28:27
Speaker 2: for listening, and when things get weird, act normally