Latest / Normally / Normally Podcast: Biden's Latest Health News - Who Knew? Who Lied?

Transcript

Normally Podcast: Biden's Latest Health News - Who Knew? Who Lied? · Normally

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: He yea on a normal In the show with normal,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: she takes for when the news gets weird.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: I am Mary Katherine here, and I'm Carol Markowitz. What
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: a weekend, Mary.
• 0:12
  Speaker 3: Catherine can't stop?
• 0:15
  Speaker 4: Won't stop, guy, I won't it just stop? Though on
• 0:19
  Speaker 4: a weekend, it would be nice if it stopped.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: The big story this weekend is Joe Biden's health. And
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: we went into the weekend having the conversation about how
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: his mental health was doing in the time of his presidency,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: how with it he was, and that sort of thing.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: And we came out of the weekend finding out that
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: he has fairly advanced prostate cancer. This is awful, obviously,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I echo Tim Carney who tweeted former President Biden.
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: Deserves our prayers. He does not deserve the benefit of
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: the doubt. Yeah, that's where I am.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: That's a very good way of putting it, because I
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: truly wish the president a full recovery. Prostate cancer is
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: a thing that is quite common in older men. It's
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: something most people have an experience with through a relative
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: or a dad or whoever. If it's caught early, it
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: is extremely treatable. This one has metastasized to his bones,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: so it is obviously more dangerous. It's in a later stage,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: and I hope that his treatment such that it is,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: is not painful and that he can get to the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: other side of this. And also, just as I would
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: always say about John Fetterman, Yeah, the fact that his
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: health event is regrettable and sad does not preclude us
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: from criticizing a public figure when they deserve to be
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: criticized period.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm not going to lay off on him.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think there's more reason now to question
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: what exactly his family and the people suing him and
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: his staff told us during his presidency, and how many
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: lies there really were.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: That's absolutely right, And a twenty twenty two clip of
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: him has gone viral again where he says this.
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: Let's roll the clip of Joe Biden.
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: I just lived up the road. I just an apartment
• 2:17
  Speaker 5: complex when we moved to Delaware, and because it was
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: a four lane highway that was accessible, my mother drove
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: us and rather than us be able to walk and
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: guess what the first frost you knew what was happening.
• 2:33
  Speaker 5: It had to put on your windshield wipers to get
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: literally the oil slick off the window. That's why I
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: had so damn any other people I grew up had cancer.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: At the time, the White House said that was a
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: flub and he didn't actually have cancer. But now, of
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: course the thinking is they knew all along, and they
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: didn't tell the American people.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Well, and if you have any experience with a relative
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: or friend who has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, again,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: you know that it can be caught with merely blood screening,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: not necessarily prostate exams. You would imagine that a man
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: who has been president and indeed a public figure and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: public official for low these many years, would have been
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: regularly screened for this, that's right, which leads you to think,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: how long did they know about this diagnosis before it
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: became metastatic. Now I was listening to Cole and This
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Sapphire this morning on Fox, and she's like, look, there's
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: an outside possibility that they had stopped screening him, because
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: later on in life sometimes we stopped screening for lower
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: level cancers. There's a chance that it metastasized very quickly,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: that it went from zero to sixty very quickly after
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: he left the presidency. But she also noted in twenty
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: twenty one he was being screened for these things. So
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the chances that he wasn't being screened during his presidency
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: pretty low. And again, these people have lied to us
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: so many times about his health.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: I will not believe it unless I get no.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I need his PSA numbers for every year that he's
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: been in public office.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: That's what I do.
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Nichole's being very charitable about it. There's obviously a lot
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: of discussion about when they knew. On MSNBC this morning,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: doctor Zeke Emanuel said.
• 4:20
  Speaker 6: This, You're a noncologist, obviously incredibly respected. You believe that
• 4:30
  Speaker 6: it is likely, just for those just tuning in, you
• 4:34
  Speaker 6: believe it is likely, if this prostate cancer has spread
• 4:38
  Speaker 6: to the bone, that he could have had it for
• 4:42
  Speaker 6: up to a decade. But certainly it's likely. Would it
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: be fair to say it's likely to have had this
• 4:49
  Speaker 6: for at least several years?
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Oh more than several years.
• 4:55
  Speaker 7: You don't get prostitions.
• 4:59
  Speaker 6: I just want to stop you. So this is this
• 5:01
  Speaker 6: is not speculation. If you have prostate cancer that has
• 5:05
  Speaker 6: spread to the bone, then he's most certainly you were saying,
• 5:10
  Speaker 6: had it when he was president of the United States.
• 5:13
  Speaker 7: Oh yeah, he did not develop it in the last
• 5:16
  Speaker 7: one hundred two hundred days. He had it while he
• 5:19
  Speaker 7: was president.
• 5:20
  Speaker 6: He probably had it at the start of his presidency in.
• 5:24
  Speaker 7: Twenty twenty one.
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: Yes, that I don't think there's any disagreement about that.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: Oh I want to know.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: I want to know why MSNBC is running such irresponsible
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: conspiracy theories on its network.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, this is not Newsmax, it's
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: not o an, it's MSNBC saying this. It's MSNBC bringing
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: on a guest to say that we were likely lied
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: to about the president's health and we know that this
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: went on. You know, one of my Twitter followers, Jarvis Best, tweeted,
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: if you don't want people to be conspiracy theorists, stop
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: engaging in massive conspiracies.
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: I don't know what the f to tell you.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: And well, and and here this really bothers me because
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: what this is and again we have both said we
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: hope he experiences a full recovery. I think it is
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: highly likely that they knew about this during his presidency,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and even before it. It is vanishingly unlikely that that's
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: not the case, in which case they lied about it.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: And what they're doing now is they are taking a
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: more sympathetic and smaller lie and announcing it to save
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: them from the unsympathetic, gigantic lie that they have perpetrated
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: and gotten caught in. Now, is this uncharitable of me?
• 6:48
  Speaker 6: No?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: For this reason, because Biden's mo O for decades has
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: been to point to his significant and real personal tragedies.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: The loss of his white daughter, the recovery times of
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: his little boys and how he raised them on his
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: own for a while, the loss of his son Bo.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: All of these things he uses regularly during his political
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: career to get him out of hot water. Yeah, as
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: soon as he mentions Bo, you're not allowed to ask
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: him about Afghanistan anymore. That's the pattern it has been
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: for years. I hate that he does this. He uses
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: your compassion against you and says, you're not allowed to
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: talk about my political failings anymore. But we are allowed
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: to talk about this, And in fact, I think it
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: makes it worse.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: And I think we've gotten to a place where people
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: are just not having it. David Axelrod actually said out
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: loud conversations about Biden's mental acuity should be more muted
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: and set aside for now, as he's struggling through this,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: like you're not supposed.
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: To say it out loud.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: You're supposed to kind of, you know, nudge the public
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: in that direction. But they've gotten so desperate because people
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: are being so kind of blatant about their opinions on this,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: which I love that they are saying, please stop talking
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: about this.
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: It's really not nice of you.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what they want.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: They want you to default to being nice to protect
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: this entire cabal from their own giant scandal.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: And I will not.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: I will so will not. Yes.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: So is the timing a giant coincidence? Is what people
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: are wondering. And you know, our old friend Brian Stelter,
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: he had this to say.
• 8:30
  Speaker 8: I'm seeing some prostate cancer survivors, people who have lived
• 8:34
  Speaker 8: with this disease, who have been through this, expressing support
• 8:37
  Speaker 8: both condolences but also support and cheering Biden on as
• 8:41
  Speaker 8: he faces this. The timing, Jessica is just extraordinary. We
• 8:45
  Speaker 8: know from the statement from his personal spokesman that Biden
• 8:48
  Speaker 8: learned the diagnosis on Friday. Well, what was the biggest
• 8:51
  Speaker 8: Biden's story on Friday? It was the release of those
• 8:54
  Speaker 8: audio excerpts from his conversations with Robert Herr back in
• 8:58
  Speaker 8: twenty twenty three. This was the audio that Axios obtained
• 9:01
  Speaker 8: almost certainly from the Trump administration, showing memory lapses. And
• 9:06
  Speaker 8: you heard a lot of people on Friday talking about
• 9:08
  Speaker 8: that audio being hard to hear, even excruciating to hear
• 9:11
  Speaker 8: Biden showing his age on those audio tapes that had
• 9:13
  Speaker 8: never been heard by the public until now. So on
• 9:15
  Speaker 8: the day that story was breaking, Biden was facing this
• 9:19
  Speaker 8: personal news, at least that's according to this statement from
• 9:22
  Speaker 8: his personal spokesman. So you have that as one element
• 9:24
  Speaker 8: of the timing here, and then you have, as you
• 9:27
  Speaker 8: and Paul just acknowledged, this book coming out one of
• 9:30
  Speaker 8: the biggest political books in several years. Take out our
• 9:33
  Speaker 8: colleague Jake Taper for a second. This book, no matter who,
• 9:37
  Speaker 8: no matter where it was coming from, was going to
• 9:38
  Speaker 8: be a very big, blockbuster book. And it just so
• 9:41
  Speaker 8: happens two of the best reporters in Washington, Jake Tapper
• 9:43
  Speaker 8: and now Thompson, are the authors of it. It's already
• 9:46
  Speaker 8: a best seller based on a number of pre orders.
• 9:49
  Speaker 8: And so this book comes out in two days, but
• 9:50
  Speaker 8: some of the excerpts have already come out, and it's
• 9:53
  Speaker 8: reignited this debate in Washington and beyond within the Democratic
• 9:56
  Speaker 8: Party about Biden, about whether he should have run for
• 9:59
  Speaker 8: reelection at all. So it seems to me, Jessica, this
• 10:02
  Speaker 8: debate doesn't end at all, but it is briefly put
• 10:05
  Speaker 8: on pause as there's one of today's news.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Extraordinary timing, Mary Catherine, extraordinary.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: You're telling me the Robert Hurr tapes that we were
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: all told would reveal that he was just smart as
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: a whip all the way through, because Robert Hurr was
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: actually just smearing him for me, of the present Democrats
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: back then, the day those are finally released and we
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: all hear that the right wing conspiracy conspiracy theorists were
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: again just correct, that's the day we get this other
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: news that is fascinating.
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: For extraordinary timing.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's like, do you think we believe you,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Brian Stelter, Do you think we think that you believe
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: the White House that this is extraordinary timing? I mean,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: the former White House, come on, now, come on.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: It is amazing to me that they almost they almost
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: flaunted as as it's a feature not a bug, that
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: that if they're covering a democratic presidency, they are the
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: most credulous people on the planet. Right, you're a reporter, dude,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: You're not supposed to be the most credulous person on
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the planet. You're supposed to be like, h, these are
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: people with access to power and motives that I should consider,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: and they just.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Out of their brains. They just.
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: The spokesperson said. So how could I possible challenge that?
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: The spokesperson said.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: And surely we have no other evidence that these people
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: have lied about his health in the past. I mean,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: it is actually and this is the problem I think
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: for Biden and for the press that has covered him credulously,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: is that a lot of sort of rational people are
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: just looking at this, even left leaning people. I think
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: that the armies of doctors speaking out on x that
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: are like, ah, that doesn't make me sense that this
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: would have just appeared. I think that's very interesting that
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: they're all being pretty vocal about that. But people are
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: just finally saying this is one of the biggest it's
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's the biggest presidential scandal of my lifetime
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: for sure, And people who are not right leaning people
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: are noticing that, and I think they just made it worse.
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: In another era.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: I think you and I would be saying different things.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: I think that so much trust has been broken over
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: the last five years that I think that we know
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: we can't believe any of this. And I think again,
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: in a different time, you know, twenty five years ago,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: when you and I were starting out in this game,
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: I think we would have been more trusting. But we've
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: seen some things and we know that.
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: We can't be anymore.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Our friend Buck Sexton posts the people who now admit
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: they hid Biden's dementia for four years with Soviet level
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: of ruthlessness, are about to be outraged at anyone who
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: suggests Biden's inner circle may have also hid his cancer diagnosis.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't run the same play again, guys.
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: You only get to do that once.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: We just saw this.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: It's also just it's so disgusting what they did to
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: the American people, what they did to Democratic voters. They moved,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: They did all of this to subvert their own voters,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: took the possibility of a primary away from them. And
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: now there wasn't some great hue and cry, except from
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Dean Phillips, but some people certainly probably would have liked
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: a choice had they been presented with one.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: And yet They're just like, nah, opt.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Out when they knew this was the situation, right, and
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: they knew, by the way, how much do they hate
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Kamala that they were like, well, he does have dementia
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: and cancer, but we cannot hand the reins to her,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: like we.
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: Absolutely did so. And the joke is, of course that
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: they weren't entirely wrong.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: She was terrible and they knew that she would be,
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: so that like they accepted that reality, but they were
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: like going to wing it with viben.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this is my greatest of all time analogy.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: This is just the worst of all time debate, and
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: we'll be having it forever more because Biden and Kamala
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: are so uniquely bad. Yeah, that it's hard to ever
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: come to a conclusion about it. But I think I
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: think perhaps two times in a row, Obama and Biden
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: himself both picked vps that they did not want to
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: hand off the presidency too, but then ended up being
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: forced to do so. I don't think Trump made that mistaken.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: He didn't for whatever policy differences I have with strety Vance,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: he would be a person who's ready to do that, right.
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. I don't don't think anybody would deny that. I
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: don't think.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: You know, they could have personal disagreements at the end
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: of the next four years, and who knows what's going
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: to happen.
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: I mean, Donald Trump, I like to.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Say, I quote my husband, Are you trying to get
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: into the mind of Donald Trump? You know you really
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: don't know where he's going to go, but you can
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: see him obviously feeling.
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: Like this is my successor.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: It astoundingly gets worse. Yeah, that's what I think.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Like, just when you think they've hit the level that
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: they can hit.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: Nope, right, nope, They're like, let us show you a
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: new bottom.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: And my favorite part about it, as always is the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: self congratulatory, like moral grandstanding of all of it. Is like, oh, well,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: we're still the better people. Obviously we had to do
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: this extraordinarily dishonest thing and perpetrate a constitutional crisis.
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: Here for years and years.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: But because because Trump is like extraordinarily bad, you get it, right,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: you get.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: It Hitler right, So.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, trash.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Anyway, We're going to take a short break and come
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: right back with normally Republicans are obviously taking this crazy.
• 15:59
  Speaker 9: Moment to be really good, right, I mean, what else
• 16:06
  Speaker 9: would they be doing right now except pushing through policies
• 16:10
  Speaker 9: that conservatives have wanted for decades.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: Right, Well, there's a big bill.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: I'm told it's beautiful, big beautiful bill.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: And look, this is also ties into your observation about
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: like trying to get into Trump's head. The House and
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Senate Republicans both which must be exactly unified in this
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: reconciliation bill because that's the only way you can pass it,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and it is the number one priority of the Trump administration.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: They have to understand what he wants. Getting in his head.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: Is very hard, So the one big beautiful bill.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: So they're having to keep the GOP caucus united completely
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: to do this. Uh, he's over here saying, like, maybe
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: raise taxes on the highest earners the Republican parties like
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: this is the last thing we need right now, dude.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: The only thing we agree on is that we don't
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: us taxes.
• 17:00
  Speaker 6: On any day.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: And the results of the break big beautiful bill, as.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Is almost always the case when the people come together
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: to hash this stuff out, has a bunch of giveaways
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and a bunch of loopholes and a bunch of nonsense
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and brings up the baseline of spending of our American
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: bureaucratic Leviathan, despite all of the messaging to the contrary
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: from the Trump administration.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I have.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: A very low expectations bar for things like these, and
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: it still is managing to take me off.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: I think it's so bad that I don't think a
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: lot of Americans realize how bad it is.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: I have to say, I don't follow.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: I feel like the spending parts as closely as I should.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I have in the last few years gotten better at it,
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: but it's complicated. There's so many different avenues to it,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: and so I get that the average American doesn't understand
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: what's happening. I think David Friedberg, he was on the
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: All In podcast, and he did a really good job
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: of explaining why this spending bill is so bad. On
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: his Twitter, he calls it fiscal emergency O clock in America,
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: and we're going to play just a few minutes of
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: this All In clip. I think it just explains succinctly
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: what the problem is.
• 18:24
  Speaker 7: You should feel shame that your elected officials are proposing
• 18:28
  Speaker 7: that this is the bill that gets past that we
• 18:31
  Speaker 7: vaporize this much money, that we put ourselves this much
• 18:33
  Speaker 7: further in debt that we do not treat the situation
• 18:37
  Speaker 7: as the fiscal emergency that it is. The bill ultimately
• 18:42
  Speaker 7: yields no real change in the annual deficit. The annual
• 18:46
  Speaker 7: deficit could climb to two zero point five trillion dollars
• 18:50
  Speaker 7: being added to the federal debt load every single year
• 18:54
  Speaker 7: going forward. In fact, if you look at the Treasury yields,
• 18:57
  Speaker 7: the thirty year is now kissing five percent. So the
• 19:01
  Speaker 7: United States has called thirty seven trillion dollars of debt
• 19:06
  Speaker 7: at five percent. We're paying close to two trillion dollars
• 19:09
  Speaker 7: a year just in interest on our debt. As this
• 19:14
  Speaker 7: debt gets refinanced, the interest rates are going up because
• 19:16
  Speaker 7: the probability that the US will default on its debt payments,
• 19:20
  Speaker 7: which is what you're buying when you buy US treasuries.
• 19:23
  Speaker 7: You're getting the US government to pay you some number
• 19:26
  Speaker 7: of dollars with interest over time, and the market is
• 19:29
  Speaker 7: now demanding that that interest rate be as high as
• 19:31
  Speaker 7: five percent. Because of this fiscal situation that the United
• 19:34
  Speaker 7: States finds itself in, we are now burning an additional
• 19:37
  Speaker 7: two point five trillion dollars a year adding to our
• 19:40
  Speaker 7: debt load. We are in a fiscal crisis, and we're
• 19:43
  Speaker 7: not willing to admit it. And I've said this from
• 19:44
  Speaker 7: day one that DOGE can only do so much, and
• 19:48
  Speaker 7: clearly that's the case where they're now talking about sub
• 19:50
  Speaker 7: three hundred billion dollars a year in potential annual savings
• 19:53
  Speaker 7: from DOGE action. At the end of the day, Congress
• 19:55
  Speaker 7: needs to take action, and this bill from Congress doesn't
• 19:58
  Speaker 7: take much action. I will tell you that if you
• 20:01
  Speaker 7: look across the board, all of these programs are still
• 20:04
  Speaker 7: being proposed to be run at a cost that is
• 20:06
  Speaker 7: well in excess of their pre COVID levels. And so
• 20:09
  Speaker 7: I would set two guiding principles if I was to
• 20:12
  Speaker 7: be the benevolent dictator of the United States of America.
• 20:15
  Speaker 7: My guiding principal Number one would be that any program
• 20:18
  Speaker 7: that we intend to continue to persist have its budget
• 20:22
  Speaker 7: level cut to pre COVID to twenty nineteen levels. Second
• 20:25
  Speaker 7: would be and if we did that, by the way,
• 20:26
  Speaker 7: we would be in a much better fiscal situation. The
• 20:28
  Speaker 7: second would be that we add no new programs in
• 20:30
  Speaker 7: the moment. There's a whole bunch of you thrown into
• 20:32
  Speaker 7: the spill. As well as increasing the cost and a
• 20:35
  Speaker 7: few cuts here and there. I'll just highlight a couple
• 20:37
  Speaker 7: that I think are worth noting. You know, there's a
• 20:39
  Speaker 7: cut in the SNAP program, which is the Supplemental Nutrition
• 20:42
  Speaker 7: and Assistance program that's food stamps, And I talked about
• 20:45
  Speaker 7: this with Brooke Rowlins in the interview I did a
• 20:46
  Speaker 7: few weeks ago. You can watch it on YouTube, and
• 20:48
  Speaker 7: we talked a little bit about how this SNAP program
• 20:51
  Speaker 7: has absolutely exploded in size from sixty billion a year
• 20:56
  Speaker 7: in twenty nineteen to one hundred and twenty billion a
• 20:58
  Speaker 7: year today. So in this budget proposal, they're actually cutting
• 21:02
  Speaker 7: it back by about thirty billion, so to ninety billion,
• 21:06
  Speaker 7: So it's still fifty percent higher than it was pre COVID.
• 21:10
  Speaker 7: And there's a lot of kind of stories we could
• 21:12
  Speaker 7: go through on what happened during COVID that caused this
• 21:14
  Speaker 7: thing to blow up the way it did. But political
• 21:17
  Speaker 7: wrangling pulled money out of the government into people's pockets,
• 21:21
  Speaker 7: and that is persisting today. I'm a big believer in
• 21:25
  Speaker 7: cutting taxes. Obviously, I'm probably more libertarian than anyone else
• 21:29
  Speaker 7: on the show or that we've ever had on the show.
• 21:31
  Speaker 7: But at the end of the day, you can't just say, hey,
• 21:33
  Speaker 7: let's cut taxes and spend more than we're making. It
• 21:36
  Speaker 7: doesn't make sense.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: I have very low expectations for these things. The problem
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: to me again, and I understand, they have to keep
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: everybody together. So they got to buy everybody off with
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: their little benefits, and they got to make sure that
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Trump also has his many random tax decisions he's made
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: in speeches represented in this bill. So you've got to
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: have no tax on tips, you've got to have no
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: tax on overtime. Any idea he had on the camp paintrail,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: you got to put it in there.
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: Now.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: I understand how that works from a political point of view,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: but when you start trying to do the math, you
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: end up with some bad math and some bad unintended
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: consequences in all likelihood, because we're going to incentivize certain
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: kinds of work over others.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: It's going to be weird.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: But the priority from the beginning should have been extend
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the twenty seventeen package, period, extend the two thousand and
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: seventy package. If you do not do that, all the
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: people who got a tax cut at that time, which
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: was the majority of Americans, will see their tax.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: Liability go up. Period. That's what we're trying to.
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: Escape, right, and if that's.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Not number one, and you're having a bunch of infighting
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: about these little side issues, and you're fixing the side
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: issues by racking up more spending in other areas, in
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: particular the salt cap discussion, which, let me just say,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: this is a thing where people in blue states with
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: really high property taxes get to deduct their state and
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: local taxes salt from their federal liabilities bunkers.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Even when I lived in New York, I oppose this.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: It's crazy because what it does is it subsidizes those
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: local and state politicians who give you those whopping taxes
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: because you can deduct it elsewhere, and then they don't
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: pay the price for having raised those taxes on you. Ever,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: So there's conservatives who believe in not subsidizing this kind
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: of behavior are like, hey, there needs to be a
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: cap on this deduction, and they're negotiating what that cap
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: should be. Understandably, New York Republicans are like, you can't
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: make this cap too low because my people are the
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: people who benefit from this. And I'm like, we're just
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: the whole part. The whole pitch about systemic change and
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: how we're going to fix a bunch of things, and
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: we have all this opportunity to do so. So look,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't expect them to actually do it, but good lord, right.
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: This is going in reverse.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I look other things, like you mentioned unintended consequences, things
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: like no taxing tips. Like in theory that sounds good.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: In practice, that's going to lead to all kinds of
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: I would say, not corruption, but in the vein of
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: corruption is there's so many, so much opportunity for people
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: to pretend that money that they're making is tips, And
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: I just think we're heading in such a bad direction.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I would love and Trump talked about this also on
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: the trail, so I don't see why this can't be
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: one of the plans. But I would love a simplified system,
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: a system with a flat tax, a system that is
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: fairer to people and just to everyone really, because if
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: you're paying a flat tax, you're paying a portion of
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: your income and everybody pays, you know, the same portion.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: It's just crazy that we have Republican Congress and it's
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: somehow going to end up just as bad as it
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: would with a democratic one.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: With maybe a rise in marginal rates for high earners
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: like it's wild complexity in the sort, so we're doing here.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Complexity in the system is a subsidy for those who
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: can afford really good accountants, That's what it is. And
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the people who get the people who worry about salt caps,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the people who know what assault cap is. Those people
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: are not like working class people. Okay, those are the
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: people they're worried about. Those are the people they're they're serving.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: If we had something simpler, you wouldn't have people having
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: to go to the mats for excusing New York property
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: tax rates, which is what we're doing.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: I just think we're we're in deep trouble. If the
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: twenty seventeen package doesn't get extended, it's probably going to
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: have to be extended as part of this ugly big bill,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: and you're going to get a bunch of ugly stuff
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: Will be right back on normally.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: All right, let's leave the listeners with something a little lighter.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: We have a lot of post weekend complaints, A woman
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: writes into The New York Times. Yes, they provide a
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: lot of our content here on normally, she writes, I've
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: always loved my husband, but now that we are older
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: and in our sixties, I definitely hate him less. Maybe
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't have waited, had to wait thirty three years,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: a third of a century to hate my husband less.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: But time has been good to him. And she goes
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: on to say that basically he has more time now.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: He's making dinner and making her Martinez when she got home,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: and he's just looking better and all of this, and
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: she's enjoying this happy, creative time in his life. But
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: the thing is, he seemed pretty good the whole way through,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: And as I'm reading this piece, I'm waiting to see
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: how he was like just you know, absent and not
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: helpful to her. But she tells stories where he absolutely
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: was a very involved at I mean, like some of
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: the things that she criticizes him for. Bruce was also
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: very adept at coming home from work after the kids
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: had already been tucked into their bunk beds, lights out
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: and all that, and rousing them so that he could
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: read books to them.
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: I get it.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I understand rousing kids. There's like it's something that you
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: just don't do. But to read books to them that's
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: quite nice. I feel like I feel like maybe that's
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: something that should be applauded.
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: It's not like he roused them to watch the next.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Game to.
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: Him.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: To my husband, No, he roused them to read to them.
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: I like it.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, So I get where she's coming from with
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: some of this, because I'm I do not doubt her
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: that she was probably carrying a lot of the load
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: when it came to the home and home management and
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: kids in the prime of those hard years. He's out
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: as a magazine editor and writer. She says, doing a
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: lot of events. You know, I get it, networking, it
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: probably looks like a lot more fun than what you're
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: doing at home. She has the more flexible schedule, and
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: so she's picking up a lot of that work, right,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: I get that, But like, some of this is just
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: like the way the cookie crumbles everyone. You can't magically
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: live in Manhattan as two writers and not have someone
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: maybe shouldering a little bit more of the kid's stuff
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: while they're more flexible, while this guy goes out and
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: has a more traditional nine to five. Like, if you
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: want something different, you might have to move to a suburb, right,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: you might make some cuts in other areas. And some
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: of this, too, just feels like Season of life stuff,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: where like, of course you both feel better now you
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: have fewer stresses, there's less of a grind every day.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: And I would suggest that maybe the fact that she's
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: written this piece as her way of communicating this and
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: had him edit it for her is maybe.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Sort of a.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Diagnosis of what was going on in the thick of
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: things as well, because she says, there's one paragraph, I
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't a stay at home mother, but I dropped off
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: and picked up my kids from school every day, organized
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: their activities, took them to the doctor, bought their clothes,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: kept them fed, homework, bathbad, the whole schmeer. When I
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: showed my husband this essay, he wrote in the margins,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: you weren't totally on your own. I dropped off one
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: or other of the kids every day, and at least,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: in my memory, got them breakfast every morning.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: The former note is sort of true. The latter is
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: a complete fantasy. Okay.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: If the former note is true and he was dropping
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: off one or other kid every day, that's a pretty
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: substantial thing to leave out.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: And also, like, why are we doing it this way?
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: Why are we slagging our husband for things that happened
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: twenty five years ago?
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: In writing, I feel like he's being pretty nice to like,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: very calmly comment in the margins.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: He's letting her have her moment.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: I just don't ever see the reverse of this where
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: her husband's like, I like my wife so much better
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: than I've ever liked her before, because now that the
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: kids are out of the house, she gets she goes
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: to the gym, so she looks better, and she cooks
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: for me and she makes me martini's, and I'm so
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: much happier. You know now that now that she's relaxed
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: a little bit with her career or whatever, we would
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: kill this guy. He would be just slaughtered on the internet.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: And yet this is in the New York Times, like look,
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: how look how nice this husband became.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I just a lot of a lot of this.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: This type of commentary is a little bit like she
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: wants to have it all, but there's not going to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: be a trade off and having it all, even for
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: a season of life. She didn't want there to be
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: a trade off for having at all. And the truth is,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: I think as you and I embrace, is like, you're
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: not going to have it all.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: There are gonna have it all.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: There are going to be trade offs, particularly when you're
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: in the thick of raising children and some more of
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: it might fall to you and some more of it.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Might fall to your husband. Whatever it is. Like, I
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: don't want no dead beats in here, but like.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: There are gonna be situations where you're doing more of
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the child rearing because you're more flexible, because that's your thing, right, Yeah,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: and want to well yeah, I also enjoy doing it.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so but if you want it all, you kind
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: of have to accept that some of that's gonna happen.
• 31:28
  Speaker 4: That's absolutely right, including.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: The Manhattan place you live in. You know, it's like, yes,
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: you made the choices these.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: She even acknowledges like, I know, our life sounds quite rarefied,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: and I'm like it.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: Indeed does a little bit, lady, little bit.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Two writers living in Manhattan, Like, how can we possibly
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: make it work?
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: She says his industry collapsed at one point, so that's
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: why that's why they could do that anymore.
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it was, he was.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: This was the heyday of magazine and that was a
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: cool life and it existed.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah it's gone, guys, it's gone. Well, thanks for joining
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: us on normally normally airs Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and you
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: can subscribe.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: Anywhere you get your podcasts.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail dot com.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally