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Five day program at prolonlife.com iheart that's prolonlife.com iheart hey guys, we are back on normally the show as normal it takes for when the news Weird. I am Mary Kathryn.
Guest Speaker
And I'm Carol Markowitz. What a weekend. Mary Katherine.
Mary Katherine Ham
Can't stop. Won't stop, guys.
Guest Speaker
Why won't it just stop though?
Mary Katherine Ham
Because never on a weekend.
Guest Speaker
It would be nice if it stopped. The big story this weekend is Joe Biden's health. And we went into the weekend having the conversation about how his mental health was doing in the time of his presidency, how with it he was and that sort of thing. And we came out of the weekend finding out that he has fairly advanced. Sorry, prostate cancer.
Mary Katherine Ham
Metastatic prostate cancer.
Guest Speaker
Yes. Okay, let me say that again. He has fairly advanced prostate cancer. This is awful. Obviously I echo Tim Carney who tweeted former President Biden deserves our prayers. He does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, that's where I am.
Mary Katherine Ham
That's a very good way of putting it because I truly wish the President a full recovery. Absolutely. Prostate cancer is a thing that is quite common in older men. It's something most people have an experience with through a relative or a dad or whoever. If it's caught early, it is extremely treatable. This one has metastasized to his bones, so it is obviously more dangerous. It's in a later stage. And I hope that his treatment such that it is is not painful and that he can get to the other side of this. And also, just as I would always say about John Fetterman.
Guest Speaker
Yeah.
Mary Katherine Ham
The fact that his health event is regrettable and sad does not preclude us from criticizing a public figure when they deserve to be criticized, period. I'm sorry, I'm not going to lay off on him. In fact, I think there's more reason now to question what exactly his family and the people surrounding him and his staff told us during his presidency and how many lies there really were.
Guest Speaker
That's absolutely right. And a 2022 clip of him has gone viral again where he says this. Let's roll the clip of Joe Biden.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel
I just lived up the road an apartment complex when we moved to Delaware. And because it was a four lane highway that was accessible, my mother drove us. And rather than us be able to walk and guess what? The first frost you knew what was happening, you had to put on your windshield wipers to get literally the oil slick off the window. That's why I and so damn many other people I grew up have cancer.
Guest Speaker
At the time the White House said that was a flub and he didn't actually have cancer. But now of course the thinking is they knew all along and they didn't tell the American people.
Mary Katherine Ham
Well, and if you have any experience with a relative or friend who has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, again, you know that it can be caught with merely blood screening, not necessarily prostate exams. You would imagine that a man who has been president and indeed a public figure and public official for lo these many years would have been regularly screened for this.
Guest Speaker
That's right.
Mary Katherine Ham
Which leads you to think, how long did they know about this diagnosis before it became metastatic? Now, I was listening to Nicole Sapphire this morning on Fox, and she's like, look, there's an outside possibility that they had stopped screening him because later on in life, sometimes we stop screening for lower level cancers. There's a chance that it metastasized very quickly, that it went from 0 to 60 very quickly after he left the presidency. But she also noted in 2021, he was being screened for these things. So the chances that he wasn't being screened during his presidency, pretty low. And. And again, these people have lied to us so many times about his health. I will not believe it unless I get. I need his PSA numbers for every year that he's been in public office. That's what I need.
Guest Speaker
That's right. Nicole is being very charitable about it. There's obviously a lot of discussion about when they knew. On MSNBC this morning, Dr. Zeke Emanuel said this.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel
You're an oncologist, obviously incredibly respected. You believe that it is likely. I just, for those just tuning in, you believe it is likely if this prostate cancer has spread to the bone, that he could have had it for up to a decade, but certainly is likely. Would it be fair to say it's likely to have had this for at least several years?
Guest Speaker
Oh, more than several years.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel
You don't get prostate cancer. Again, I just, I just want to stop you. So this is. This is not speculation. If you have prostate cancer that is spread to the bone, then he most certainly, you are saying, had it when he was President of the United States.
Guest Speaker
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel
He did not develop it in the.
Guest Speaker
Last 100, 200 days.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel
He had it while he was president. He probably had it at the start of his presidency in 2021. Yes.
Guest Speaker
I don't think there's any disagreement about that.
Mary Katherine Ham
Oh, I want to know. I want to know why MSNBC is running such irresponsible conspiracy theories on its network.
Guest Speaker
I was going to say this is not Newsmax. It's not oan. It's MSNBC saying this. It's MSNBC bringing on a guest to say that we were likely lied to about the president's health. And we know that this went on. One of my Twitter followers, Jarvis Best, tweeted, if you don't want people to be conspiracy theorists, stop engaging in massive conspiracies. I don't know what the f to tell you. That's it.
Mary Katherine Ham
And this really bothers me because what this is. And again, we have both said we hope he experiences a full recovery. I think it is highly likely that they knew about this during his presidency and even before is vanishingly unlikely that that's not the case, in which case they lied about it. And what they're doing now is they are taking a more sympathetic and smaller lie and announcing it to save them from the unsympathetic gigantic lie that they have perpetrated and gotten caught in. Now, is this uncharitable of me? No. For this reason, because Biden's M.O. for decades has been to point to his significant and real personal tragedies. The loss of his wife and daughter, the recovery times of his little boys and how he raised them on his own for a while, the loss of his son Beau, all of these things he uses regularly during his political career to get him out of hot water.
Guest Speaker
Yeah.
Mary Katherine Ham
As soon as he mentions Beau, you're not allowed to ask him about Afghanistan anymore. That's the pattern. It has been for years. I hate that he does this. He uses your compassion against you and says, you're not allowed to talk about my political failings anymore. But we are allowed to talk about this. And in fact, I think it makes it worse.
Guest Speaker
And I think we've gotten to a place where people are just not having it. David Axelrod actually said out loud, conversations about Biden's men mental acuity should be more muted and set aside for now as he's struggling through this. Like, you're not supposed to say it out loud. You're supposed to kind of, you know, nudge the public in that direction. But they've gotten so desperate because people are being so kind of blatant about their opinions on this, which I love that they are saying, please stop talking about this. It's really not nice of you.
Mary Katherine Ham
Yeah, that's what they want. They want you to default to being nice to protect this entire cabal from their own giant scandal. And I will not.
Guest Speaker
I will not. I also will not. Yes. So is it. Is the timing a giant coincidence? Is what people are wondering. And you know, our old friend Brian Stelter, he had this to say.
Brian Stelter
I'm seeing some prostate cancer survivors, people who have lived with this disease, who have been through this, expressing support, both condolences, but also support and cheering Biden on as he faces this. The timing, Jessica, is just extraordinary. We know from the statement from his personal spokesman that Biden learned of the diagnosis on Friday. Well, what was the biggest Biden story on Friday? It was the release of those audio excerpts from his conversations with Robert herr back in 2023. This was the audio that Axios obtained, almost certainly from the Trump administration showing memory lapses. And you heard a lot of people on Friday talking about that audio being hard to hear, even excruciating to hear Biden showing his age on those audio tapes that had never been heard by the public until now. So on the day that story was breaking, Biden was facing this, this personal news, at least that's according to the statement from his personal spokesman. So you have that as one element of the timing here. And then you have, as you and Paul just acknowledged this book coming out, one of the biggest political books in several years. Take out our colleague Jake Tapper for a second. This book, no matter who, no matter where it was coming from, was going to be a very big blockbuster book. And it just so happens two of the best reporters in Washington, Jake Tapper and Alice Thompson, are the authors of it. It's already a bestseller based on the number of pre orders. And so this book comes out in two days. But some of the excerpts have already come out and it's reignited this debate in Washington and beyond within the Democratic Party about Biden, about whether he should have run for reelection at all. So it seems to me, Jessica, this debate doesn't end at all, but it is briefly put on pause as a result of today's news.
Guest Speaker
Extraordinary timing, Mary Katherine. Extraordinary.
Mary Katherine Ham
You're telling me the Robert her tapes that we were all told would reveal that he was just smart as a whip all the way through because Robert her was actually just smearing him for political reasons of the press and Democrats back then, the day those are finally released and we all hear that the right wing conspiracy, conspiracy theorists were again, just correct. That's the day we get this other news that is fascinating, Brian.
Guest Speaker
Extraordinary timing. I mean, it's like. Do you think we believe you, Brian Selter? Do you think we think that you believe the White House, that this is extraordinary timing? I mean, former White House. Come on now. Come on now.
Mary Katherine Ham
It is amazing to me that they almost, they almost flaunt it as a. Yeah, as a, it's a Feature, not a bug. That if they're covering a democratic presidency, they are the most credulous people on the planet.
Guest Speaker
Right?
Mary Katherine Ham
You're a reporter, dude, you're not supposed to be the most credulous person on the planet. You're supposed to be like, these are people with access to power and motives that I should consider. And they just, out of their brains, they just.
Guest Speaker
Yeah, the spokesperson said so how could I possibly challenge that? The spokesperson said, and surely we have.
Mary Katherine Ham
No other evidence that these people have lied about his health in the past. I mean it is actually, and this is the problem I think for Biden and for the press that has covered him credulously is that a lot of sort of rational people are just looking at this. Even left leaning people. I think that the, the armies of doctors speaking out on X that are like, that doesn't make any sense that this would have just appeared. I think that's very interesting that they're all being pretty vocal about that. But people are just finally saying this is one of the biggest, it's, I think it's the biggest presidential scandal of my lifetime for sure. And people who are not right leaning people are noticing that and I think they just made it worse.
Guest Speaker
In another era, I think you and I would be saying different things. I think that so much trust has been broken over the last five years that I think that we know we can't believe any of this. And I think again, in a different time, you know, 25 years ago, when you and I were starting out in this game, I think we would have been more trusting. But we've seen some things and we know that we can't be anymore. Our friend Buck Sexton posts the people who now admit they hid Biden's dementia for four years with Soviet level ruthlessness are about to be outraged at anyone who suggests Biden's inner circle may have also hid his cancer diagnosis.
Mary Katherine Ham
Yeah, you can't run the same play again, guys.
Guest Speaker
You only get to do that once.
Mary Katherine Ham
We just saw this. It's also just, it's so disgusting what they did to the American people, what they did to Democratic voters. They did all of this to subvert their own voters. Took the possibility of a primary away from them.
Guest Speaker
That's right.
Mary Katherine Ham
And now there wasn't some great hue and cry. Except from Dean Phillips. But some people certainly probably would have liked a choice had they been presented with one. And yet they're just like, nah, opt out. When they knew this was the situation.
Guest Speaker
Right.
Mary Katherine Ham
And they knew, by the way, how much do they hate Kamala, that they were like, well, he does have dementia and cancer, but we cannot hand the reins to her. Like, we absolutely cannot.
Guest Speaker
And the joke is, of course, that they weren't entirely wrong. She was terrible and they knew that she would be so that, like, they accepted that reality, but they were, like, going to wing it with Biden.
Mary Katherine Ham
Yeah. I mean, this is my greatest of all time analogy. This is just the worst of all time debate. And we'll be having it forevermore because Biden and Kamala are so uniquely bad that it's hard to ever come to a conclusion about it. But I think perhaps two times in a row, Obama and Biden himself both picked VPs that they did not want to hand off the presidency too, but then ended up being forced to do so. I don't think Trump made that mistake.
Guest Speaker
No, he didn't.
Mary Katherine Ham
For whatever policy differences I have with Katie Vance, he would be a person who's ready to do that, right?
Guest Speaker
Absolutely. I don't think anybody would deny that. I don't think, you know, they could have personal disagreements at the end of the next four years and who knows what's going to happen? I mean, Donald Trump, I like, I like to say, I quote my husband. Are you trying to get into the mind of Donald Trump but you don't. You really don't know where he's going to go?
Mary Katherine Ham
No, never.
Guest Speaker
But you could see him obviously feeling like, this is my successor.
Mary Katherine Ham
Yeah. Oh, I just, I. It astoundingly gets worse. Yeah, that's what I think. Like, just when you think they've hit the level that they can hit. Nope.
Guest Speaker
Right?
Mary Katherine Ham
Nope.
Guest Speaker
They're like, let us show you a new bottom.
Mary Katherine Ham
And my favorite part about it, as always, is the self congratulatory, like moral grandstanding of all of it is like, oh, well, we're still the better people. Obviously we had to do this extraordinarily dishonest thing and perpetrate a constitutional crisis.
Guest Speaker
And hide it from all years and years.
Mary Katherine Ham
But because. Because Trump is like, extraordinarily bad. You get it, right?
Guest Speaker
Yeah.
Mary Katherine Ham
You get it.
Guest Speaker
Hitler. Right? So.
Mary Katherine Ham
Nope.
Guest Speaker
Yeah.
Mary Katherine Ham
Trash.
Guest Speaker
Anyway, we're going to take a short break and come right back with. Normally.
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Guest Speaker
Republicans are obviously taking this crazy moment to be really good conservatives, right? I mean, what else would they be doing right now except pushing through policies that conservatives have wanted for decades, right?
Mary Katherine Ham
Well, there's a big bill. I'm told it's beautiful.
Guest Speaker
Big, beautiful bill.
Mary Katherine Ham
And look, this is also ties into your observation about trying to get into Trump's head, the House and Senate Republicans both, which must be exactly unified in this reconciliation bill, because that's the only way you can pass it. And it is the number one priority of the Trump administration. They have to understand what he wants. Getting in his head is very hard. He's one big, beautiful bill. So they're having to keep the GOP caucus united completely, completely to do this. He's over here saying, like, maybe raise taxes on the highest earners. The Republican Party's like, this is the last thing we need right now, dude. The only thing we agree on is that we don't raise taxes on anyone. And the results of the big, beautiful bill, as is almost always the case when the people come together to hash this stuff out, has a bunch of giveaways and a bunch of loopholes and a bunch of nonsense and brings up the baseline of spending of our American bureaucratic leviathan, despite all of the messaging to the contrary from the Trump administration.
Guest Speaker
Yeah.
Mary Katherine Ham
And I have a very low expectations bar for things like these. And it still is managing to tick me off.
Guest Speaker
I think it's so bad that I don't, I don't think a lot of Americans realize how bad it is. I have to say I don't follow. I feel like the spending parts as closely as I should, I have in the last few years gotten better at it. But it's complicated. There's so many different avenues to it. And so I get that the average American doesn't understand what's happening. I think David Friedberg, he was on the all in podcast and he did a really good job of explaining why this spending bill is so bad. On his Twitter, he calls it fiscal emergency o' clock in America. And we're going to play just a few minutes of this all in clip. I think it just explains succinctly what.
Carol Markowitz
The problem is you should feel shame that your elected officials are proposing that this is the bill that gets passed, that we vaporize this much money, that we put ourselves this much further in debt, that we do not treat the situation as the fiscal emergency that it is. The bill ultimately yields no real change in the annual deficit. The annual deficit could climb to $2.5 trillion being added to the federal debt load every single year going forward. In fact, if you look at the treasury yields, the 30 year is now kissing 5%. So the United States has called $37 trillion of debt at 5%. We're paying close to $2 trillion a year just in interest on our debt. As this debt gets refinanced, the interest rates are going up because the probability that the US will default on its debt payments, which is what you're buying when you buy U.S. treasuries. You're getting the U.S. government to pay you some number of dollars with interest over time. And the market is now demanding that that interest rate be as high as 5%. Because of this fiscal situation that the United States finds itself in, we are now burning an additional $2.5 trillion a year adding to our debt load. We are in a fiscal crisis and we're not willing to admit it. And I've said this from day one, that DOGE can only do so much. And clearly that's the case where they're now talking about sub $300 billion a year in potential annual savings from DOGE Action. At the end of the day, Congress needs to take action. And this bill from Congress doesn't take much action. I will tell you that if you look across the board, all of these programs are still being proposed to be run at a cost that is well in excess of their pre Covid levels. And so I would set two guiding principles. If I was to be the benevolent dictator of the United States of America. My guiding principle number one would be that any program that we intend to continue to persist have its budget level cut to Pre Covid to 2019 levels. Second would be. And if we did that, by the way, we would be in a much better fiscal situation. The second would be that we add no new programs in the moment. There's a whole bunch of new thrown into this pill as well as increasing the cost and a few cuts here and there. I'll just highlight a couple that I think are worth noting. You know, there's a cut in the SNAP program, which is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. That's food stamps. And I talked about this with Brooke Rollins in the interview I did a few weeks ago, you can watch it on YouTube. And we talked a little bit about how this Snap program has absolutely exploded in size from 60 billion a year in 2019 to 120 billion a year today. So in this budget proposal, they're actually cutting it back by about 30 billion, so to 90 billion. So it's still 50% higher than it was pre Covid. And there's a lot of kind of stories we could go through on what happened during COVID that caused this thing to blow up the way it did. But political wrangling pulled money out of the government into people's pockets, and that is persisting today. I'm a big believer in cutting taxes. Obviously, I'm probably more libertarian than anyone else on the show or that we've ever had on this show. But at the end of the day, you can't just say, hey, let's cut taxes and spend more than we're making. It doesn't make sense.
Mary Katherine Ham
I have very low expectations for these things. The problem to me, again, and I understand they have to keep everybody together, so they got to buy everybody off with their little benefits, and they got to make sure that Trump also has his many random tax decisions he's made in speeches represented in this bill. So you got to have no tax on tips, you got to have no tax on overtime. Any idea he had on the campaign trail, you got to put it in there. Now, I understand how that works from a political point of view, but when you start trying to do the math, you end up with some bad math and some bad unintended consequences in all likelihood, because we're going to incentivize certain kinds of work over others. And it's going to get weird. But the priority from the beginning should have been extend the 2017 package. Period. Extend the 2017 package. If you do not do that, all the people who got a tax cut at that time, which was the majority of Americans, we'll see their tax liability go up, period. That's what we're trying to escape.
Guest Speaker
Right, Right.
Mary Katherine Ham
And if that's not number one, and you're having a bunch of infighting about these little side issues, and you're fixing the side issues by racking up more spending in other areas. In particular, the SALT cap discussion, which, let me just say this is a thing where people in blue states with really high property taxes get to deduct their state and local taxes S A L T from their federal liabilities.
Guest Speaker
It's bonkers. Even when I lived in New York, I opposed this.
Mary Katherine Ham
It's crazy, because what it does is it subsidizes those local and state politicians who give you those whopping taxes because you can deduct it elsewhere, and then they don't pay the price for having raised those taxes on you ever. So there's conservatives who believe in not subsidizing this kind of behavior are like, hey, there needs to be a cap on this deduction and they're negotiating what that cap should be. Understandably, New York Republicans are like, you can't make this cap too low because my people are the people who benefit from this. And I'm like, we're just the whole part, the whole pitch about systemic change and how we're going to fix a bunch of things. And when you have all this opportunity to do so, look, I didn't expect them to actually do it, but good Lord, right?
Guest Speaker
This is going in reverse. And look, other things like you mentioned, unintended consequences, things like no taxing tips. Like, in theory, that sounds good. In practice, that's going to lead to all kinds of, I would say not corruption, but in the vein of corruption, there's so many, so much opportunity for people to pretend that money that they're making is tips. And I just think we're heading in such a bad direction. I would love. And Trump talked about this also on the trail, so I don't see why this can't be one of the plans. But I would love a simplified system with a flat tax, a system that is fairer to people and just to everyone, really. Because if you're paying a flat tax, you're paying a portion of your income and everybody pays, you know, the same portion. It's just crazy that we have a Republican Congress and it's somehow going to end up just as bad as it would with a Democratic one, with maybe.
Mary Katherine Ham
A rise in marginal rates for high earners. Like, it's wild. Complexity in the.
Guest Speaker
What are we doing here?
Mary Katherine Ham
Complexity in the system is a subsidy for those who can afford really good accountants. That's what it is. And the people who get, the people who worry about salt caps, the people who know what a salt cap is, those people are not like working class people, okay? Those are the people they're worried about. Those are the people they're serving. If we had something simpler, you wouldn't have people having to go to the mats for excusing New York property tax rates, which is what we're doing. I don't know. I just think we're in deep trouble if the 2017 package doesn't get extended. It's probably going to have to be extended as part of this ugly big bill and you're gonna get a bunch of ugly stuff with it.
Guest Speaker
We'll be right back on normally.
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Guest Speaker
All right, let's leave the the listeners with something a little lighter. We had a lot of, a lot of post weekend complaints. A woman writes into the New York Times. Yes, they provide a lot of our content here on Normally she writes, I've always loved my husband, but now that we are older and in our 60s, I, I definitely hate him less. Maybe I shouldn't have waited. Had to wait 33 years, a third of a century to hate my husband less. But time has been good to him. And she goes on to say that basically he has more time now. He's making dinner and making her martinis when she got home, and he's just looking better and all of this, and she's enjoying this happy, creative time in his life. But the thing is, he seemed pretty good the whole way through. And as I'm reading this piece, I'm waiting to see how he was, like, just, you know, absent and not helpful to her. But she tells stories where he absolutely was a very involved dad. I mean, like, some of the things that she criticizes him for. Bruce was also very adept at coming home from work after the kids had already been tucked into their bunk beds, lights out and all that, and rousing them so that he could read books to them. I get it. I understand rousing kids. There's like, it's something that you just don't do. But to read books to them, that's quite nice. I feel like. Feel like maybe that's something that should be applauded. It's not like he roused them to watch the Knicks game. Ahem.
Mary Katherine Ham
To.
Guest Speaker
Him. To my husband. No, he roused them to read to them. I like it.
Mary Katherine Ham
Yeah. Okay. So I, I get where she's coming from with some of this, because I'm sure I. I do not doubt her that she was probably carrying a lot of the load when it came to the home and home management and kids in the. In the prime of those hard years. He's out as a magazine editor and writer, she says, doing a lot of events. You know, I. I get it. Networking, it probably looks like a lot more fun than what you're doing at home. She has the more flexible schedule, and so she's picking up a lot of that work. Right, I get that. But, like, some of this is just like the way the cookie crumbles, everyone. Like, you can't magically live in Manhattan as two writers and not have someone maybe shouldering a little bit more of the kids stuff while they're more flexible, while this guy goes out and has a more traditional nine to five. Like, if you want something different, you might have to move to a suburb.
Guest Speaker
Right.
Mary Katherine Ham
Smaller city, make some cuts in other areas. And some of this too, just feels like season of life stuff, where, like, of course you both feel better now, you have fewer stresses, there's less of a grind every day. Um, and I would suggest that maybe the fact that she's written this piece as her way of communicating this and had him edit it for her is maybe sort of a diagnosis of what was going on in the thick of things as well, because she says there's one paragraph, I wasn't a stay at home mother, but I dropped off and picked up my kids from school every day, organized their activities, took them to the doctor, bought their clothes, kept them fed, homework, bath, bed, the whole schmear. When I showed my husband this essay, he wrote in the margins, you weren't totally on your own. I dropped off one or other of the kids every day, and at least in my memory, got them breakfast every morning. The former note is sort of true. The latter is a complete fantasy. Okay, if the former note is true and he was dropping off one or other kid every day, that's a pretty substantial thing to leave out, right? And also, like, why are we. Why are we doing it this way? Why are we slagging our husband for things that happened 25 years ago in writing? I feel like he's being pretty nice to, like, very calmly comment in the margins.
Guest Speaker
He's letting her have his. Her moment. I just don't ever see the reverse of this where a husband's like, I like my wife so much better than I've ever liked her before. Because now that the kids are out of the house. She goes to the gym so she looks better and she cooks for me and she makes me martinis and I'm so much happier, you know, now that she's relaxed a little bit with her career or whatever. We would kill this guy. He would be just slaughtered on the Internet. And yet this is in the New York Times, like, look how nice this husband became.
Mary Katherine Ham
Yeah, I just. A lot of this type of commentary is a little bit like, she wants to have it all, but there's not gonna be a trade off in having it all. Even for a season of life. She didn't want there to be a trade off for having it all. And the truth is, I think as you and I embrace is like, you're not going to have it all there. There are going to be trade offs, particularly when you're in the thick of raising children. And some more of it might fall to you and some more of it might fall to your husband, whatever it is. Like, I don't want no deadbeats in here, but like, sure, there are going to be situations where you're doing more of the child rearing because you're more flexible or because that's your thing. Right?
Guest Speaker
Yep. And like, want to. If.
Mary Katherine Ham
Well, yeah, I also enjoy doing.
Guest Speaker
Yeah.
Mary Katherine Ham
So. But if you want it all, you kind of have to accept that some of that's going to happen.
Guest Speaker
That's absolutely right.
Mary Katherine Ham
Including the Manhattan place you live in. You know, it's like you made the choices.
Guest Speaker
These are the choices.
Mary Katherine Ham
She even acknowledges, like, I know our life sounds quite rarefied and I'm like, it indeed does.
Guest Speaker
A little bit, lady. Little bit.
Mary Katherine Ham
Two writers living in Manhattan, like, ugh, how can we possibly make it work?
Guest Speaker
She says his industry collapsed at one point. So that's why.
Mary Katherine Ham
That's why they got a better way.
Guest Speaker
That's why nobody could do that anymore.
Mary Katherine Ham
Yeah, no. This was the heyday of magazines and that was a cool life when it existed.
Guest Speaker
Yeah. It's gone, guys. It's gone. Well, thanks for joining us on Normally. Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays and you can subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. Get in touch with us@ normallythepodmail.com thanks for listening. And when things get weird, act normally.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel
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Mary Katherine Ham
And feels like, yay. Okay, we could be here all day.
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Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Episode: Normally Podcast: Biden's Latest Health News - Who Knew? Who Lied?
Release Date: May 20, 2025
Host/Authors: Mary Katherine Ham and Carol Markowitz
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts
In this episode of "The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show," hosts Mary Katherine Ham and Carol Markowitz delve into the recent and startling health news concerning President Joe Biden. The discussion centers around Biden's diagnosis of advanced metastatic prostate cancer, scrutinizing the timing, transparency, and implications of this revelation.
The episode opens with the hosts addressing the shocking news that President Biden has been diagnosed with "fairly advanced metastatic prostate cancer."
Mary Katherine Ham elaborates on the severity of prostate cancer and expresses hope for Biden's recovery while questioning the timeline and transparency surrounding his diagnosis.
The hosts explore how the news of Biden's diagnosis intersects with previous statements and media coverage, including viral clips and statements from healthcare professionals.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist, is cited discussing the likelihood that Biden had been battling cancer for years, potentially during his presidency.
Mary Katherine Ham criticizes MSNBC for disseminating what she perceives as irresponsible conspiracy theories regarding Biden's health.
The conversation shifts to the broader implications of the diagnosis, including trust in the administration and potential misconduct in withholding health information.
The hosts discuss historical patterns of Biden leveraging personal tragedies to deflect political criticism, suggesting a continuity in behavior.
There is a critical examination of media strategies and the potential manipulation of public perception regarding Biden's health issues.
Mary Katherine Ham emphasizes the erosion of trust between the public and their leaders, highlighting how this scandal could represent one of the biggest presidential controversies.
The hosts briefly touch upon other political dynamics, including the ongoing debate within the Democratic Party about Biden's capabilities and the potential influence on future elections.
Towards the end of the episode, the hosts shift gears to discuss a lighter topic involving a New York Times article about a woman's evolving feelings towards her husband as they age. This segment provides a contrast to the intense political discussion, showcasing the hosts' ability to balance serious topics with more personal and relatable stories.
The episode concludes with the hosts reiterating the gravity of Biden's health issues and their implications for his presidency and political legacy. They underscore the need for transparency and accountability from those in power, emphasizing that personal tragedies should not shield public figures from scrutiny.
Carol Markowitz (03:03): "The big story this weekend is Joe Biden's health... he has fairly advanced metastatic prostate cancer."
Mary Katherine Ham (07:02): "I need his PSA numbers for every year that he's been in public office."
Mary Katherine Ham (10:29): "They want you to default to being nice to protect this entire cabal from their own giant scandal."
Carol Markowitz (15:09): "In another era, I think you and I would be saying different things..."
Biden's Diagnosis: President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with advanced metastatic prostate cancer, raising questions about the timing and transparency of the announcement.
Media Scrutiny: The hosts critique media outlets like MSNBC for what they perceive as irresponsible reporting and conspiracy theories surrounding the president's health.
Political Implications: The diagnosis is viewed as potentially one of the most significant presidential scandals, with discussions on trust erosion and the administration's possible deceit.
Historical Patterns: Biden's long-standing strategy of highlighting personal tragedies to deflect political criticism is examined and critiqued.
Public Trust: The episode underscores a deepening mistrust between the public and political figures, emphasizing the need for honesty and accountability.
Balanced Content: The podcast balances intense political discourse with lighter, personal anecdotes, showcasing the hosts' diverse range of topics.
This comprehensive summary encapsulates the critical discussions and insights presented in the episode, providing listeners and non-listeners alike with a clear understanding of the major themes and viewpoints shared by Mary Katherine Ham and Carol Markowitz.