Normally Podcast: NYC Bomb Plot, Media Spin, Trump’s Iran Strategy & Political Hypocrisy

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode Title: Normally Podcast: NYC Bomb Plot, Media Spin, Trump’s Iran Strategy & Political Hypocrisy
Date: March 10, 2026
Hosts: Mary Katharine Ham & Carol Markowitz
Network: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Mary Katharine Ham and Carol Markowitz dissect the most pressing news stories of the week with their characteristic mix of humor, skepticism, and pointed critique. The main themes span recent political violence in NYC and responses to it, media bias in covering such events, the discussion of Trump’s handling of Iran, political hypocrisy among leaders, and the politicization of public life—particularly at high-profile funerals.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bomb Plot in New York City & Media Coverage

[03:20–14:19]

• Incident Summary:
  Two individuals, Amir Bilat and Ibrahim Kayoumi, threw improvised explosive devices near Gracie Mansion, NYC. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch confirmed the devices were not hoaxes but genuine explosives capable of causing serious harm.

• Media Response & Spin:
  The hosts highlight that several news outlets, including NYT and NBC, framed the story as an Islamophobia or anti-Muslim protest rather than focusing on the perpetrators themselves. This framing, they argue, manipulates public perception and overlooks the reality that the attackers were not targets of anti-Muslim bias but radicalized American Muslims.

  • Notable Quote:
    “The New York Times went with the headline, ‘smoking jars of metal and fuses thrown at protest near mayor’s house’ ... Now, there was an anti-Islam rally going on, but that's not who was involved in the bombing at all.”
    — Carol Markowitz [05:10]

  • Host Critique:
    Ham and Markowitz are critical of both the Mayor, Zoran Mamdani, and various progressive activists for downplaying or misrepresenting the violence and its source.

  • Political Violence Coverage:
    Discussion extends to how leftist or Islamist violence is downplayed or reframed by media, distorting the reality of political violence in America and fueling both public mistrust and conspiracism.

    • Quote:
      “The press erases leftist violence and ignores it, or they alchemize it into something else. Islamist violence is something they don’t want to talk about.”
      — Mary Katharine Ham [09:46]

  • Commentary on Radicalization:
    Hosts note the perpetrators' privileged backgrounds in Bucks County, PA, pushing back on narratives of marginalization or societal failure.

  • Media Trust & Conspiracies:
    The tone is lamenting but biting; they blame persistent media distortion for fueling extreme skepticism and conspiracy theories across the political spectrum.

    • Quote:
      “People feel like they've been lied to for so long that anything goes and anybody can be believed.”
      — Carol Markowitz [08:47]

  • Notable Moment:
    Outrage at a leftist protester joking about nearly being bombed (“I cannot stress this enough ... we just stood there laughing ... Meanwhile, the incel femoids ran away, having been totally gesture mogged. Their cortisol levels have yet to recover.” [07:06]). The hosts sharply criticize this nonchalant reaction:

    • “You almost died in a bombing attack ... You are the lamest person alive and you almost died.”
      — Mary Katharine Ham & Carol Markowitz [13:20]

2. Trump, Iran, and the Value of Strategic Ambiguity

[18:34–23:12]

• Trump’s Iran Policy & Communication Style:
  The hosts discuss the lack of a formal Trump address regarding Iran, but point out that Trump (and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth) are purposefully ambiguous about military options.

  • Hegseth on leaving "all options on the table" and keeping adversaries guessing.
  • Quote:
    “You don't tell the enemy. You don't tell the press. You don't tell anybody what, what your limits would be on an operation. We’re willing to go as far as we need to...”
    — Pete Hegseth (clip) [20:04]

• Host Analysis:
  Ham and Markowitz support the idea that refusing to disclose tactics can help deter adversaries and is a sensible strategic approach, even if it frustrates media.

  • “Let us not assume that not ruling out means a willingness to do.”
    — Mary Katharine Ham [21:15]

• Ukraine’s Support:
  Brief mention made of Ukrainian involvement in countering Iranian drone technology, creating unusual global alliances.

3. War Powers and Political Hypocrisy

[23:12–28:43]

• Congress' Role and Presidential Authority:
  The hosts introduce a Bill Maher segment where Adam Schiff is confronted about Democratic inconsistency regarding war powers: Democratic outrage at Trump using broad interpretations of executive power, contrasted with silence during Obama airstrikes.

  • Bill Maher's gotcha:
    Maher reads a statement about executive power—Schiff decries it as vague, but Maher reveals it's from the Obama administration on Libya [23:44-24:31].

  • Host Analysis:
    Discussion on how politicians frequently shift their standards based on which party holds power and how the media often fails to challenge them.

  • Quotes:
    “He got him good. He really did ... He only cares because it's Trump ... They haven't been [serious] in so, so long.”
    — Carol Markowitz [24:58, 27:07]

    “The person who used to do this to politicians was Tim Russert ... now it’s an HBO political show host [Bill Maher].”
    — Mary Katharine Ham [25:51]

• Consequences of Hypocrisy:
  Examples given where viewers lose trust in politicians like Adam Schiff due to persistent unsubstantiated claims (e.g., repeated promises of “Russiagate” evidence).

4. Funeral Politics: Jesse Jackson’s Service as a Political Rally

[31:55–36:45]

• Jesse Jackson’s Funeral:
  The discussion covers how Jackson’s funeral was transformed by political figures—Obama, Biden, and Kamala Harris—into a platform for their own agendas, often overshadowing the person being honored.

  • Jesse Jackson Jr. publicly criticized this politicalization, stating:
    • “Three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson ... the demands of our message ... demanded a consistent prophetic voice that at no point in time ever sold us out as a people. Our message has already been delivered today.”
      — Jesse Jackson Jr. [33:15]

• Host Response:
  The hosts voice frustration with a recurring pattern of using funerals for political grandstanding and note the imbalance in media critique of such situations depending on the politics of those involved.

  • Quotes:
    “I don't understand how other funerals have gotten turned into such political rallies. And I find it disturbing, especially when the politicians largely don't know the person that has died.”
    — Carol Markowitz [34:46]

    “And that's really the standard. And that shouldn't be the standard when you're honoring someone who has passed away.”
    — Mary Katharine Ham [35:08]

  • Bravery of Jesse Jackson Jr.:
    Carol Markowitz calls his comments “actually quite brave” because he subtly rebukes the political establishment (especially Obama) within the Democratic Party. [36:07]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Media Bias and Political Violence:
  “The proper response to his speech is speech, not an IED and attempting to kill people.”
  — Mary Katharine Ham [07:50]

• On Covering Obama vs. Trump on War Powers:
  “He got him good. … He only cares because it's Trump. … They haven’t [serious coverage] been in so, so long.”
  — Carol Markowitz [24:58, 27:07]

• On Politicized Funerals:
  “You have this stuff that's very, very blatant and it's like, yeah, but this is for good. This is for good, right? … And that's really the standard. And that shouldn't be the standard when you're honoring someone who has passed away.”
  — Mary Katharine Ham [35:08]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• NYC Bomb Plot & Media Spin: 03:20–14:19
• Trump’s Iran Strategy & Media Expectations: 18:34–23:12
• Congress, War Powers, and Political Hypocrisy: 23:12–28:43
• Jesse Jackson’s Funeral & Politicization of Mourning: 31:55–36:45

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Conclusion

This episode of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show (Normally) delivers sharp, unsparing critique of media bias and political double standards. The hosts examine how narratives are shaped and often distorted in high-profile news—urging greater skepticism and drawing attention to the consequences for national trust. They balance humor with seriousness, especially when challenging the wisdom and motivations of political and media elites across the spectrum. If you want frank takes on the week's most controversial headlines, this episode is a representative entry point.

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Transcript

[Mary Katharine Ham]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

Hey guys. We are back on normally. So normal it takes for when news gets weird. I am Mary Kathryn Kim.

[Carol Markowitz]

And I'm Carol Markowitz. How was your weekend, Mary Kathryn?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

It was pretty good. I flew back and forth from Michigan so, so I could see the little kids and make sure that I do daylight saving time with two toddlers. You'd hate to leave just your husband there for.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, you wanted the experience. Of course.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I actually Woke up at 7 and was like, look at these angel children. Sleeping till seven before I realized, yeah,

[Carol Markowitz]

this is the good one. This is the springing forward is the one that everybody likes and the falling backward is the disaster one. At least I think that's the way it goes.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I feel like I'm basically neutral. They didn't torture me too much. We're fine.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

How are you doing? Not bad.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. Once they hit a certain age, it's their problem whether they can sleep or not sleep. And that's where we are now. Yeah. Youngest is 10. That's if he gets to bed. That's up to him.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I've handed that off to you children. Yes.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yes. All right. What is going on in the world? You know, it's funny, you and I were discussing whether Iran should be our first topic or not. Obviously Iran is the major topic, but we're going to leave that for the second segment because in New York City, Amir Bilat and Ibrahim Kayoumi have been arrested for throwing bomb like devices. Jessica Tisch, who is the NYPD commissioner, says that it was not a hoax device or a smoke bomb. These were improvised explosive devices that could have caused serious injury or death. Now you heard the names.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Thank you to Commissioner Tisch for being sort of pretty clear eyed about this.

[Carol Markowitz]

I mean, New Yorkers should, if she goes anywhere, like it's a real problem for New York. New Yorkers should hang on to her as best as possible. But what's been going on in New York is that these Attacks. These bombs were thrown near Gracie Mansion, where Mayor Mamdani lives. And so the news is pretending that this is about Islamophobia. The New York Times went with the headline, smoking jars of metal and fuses thrown at protest near mayor's house. NBC New York had multiple arrests made after suspicious devices found outside Gracie Mansion, home of Mayor Zoran Mamdani during anti Islam rally and counter protest. Now, there was an anti Islam rally going on, but that's not who was involved in the bombing at all. In fact, the hills were the targets of that bombing.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, and Zoran Mamdani's statement further confuses by saying, yesterday, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism. Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city's values and the unity that defines who we are. We followed. What followed was even more disturbing. Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are. I want to thank the brave men and women of the New York PD who acted quickly to keep New Yorkers safe. Our officers ran toward danger without hesitation, demonstrating once again the courage and dedication it takes to protect the city every single day. My administration is closely monitoring the situation, and I remain in contact with our police commissioner. I think you could monitor it a little bit closer. I think you could monitor it close enough to find out who was throwing the bombs. It's like the geese meme. Who threw the bombs? Zoran Mamdani.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's. It's actually amazing. So the terrorist jumped over a leftist with a megaphone who was saying, basically, everybody's welcome in New York and everything's fine. And, you know, these protests, protesters are the bad people here. And to show you how unwell leftism has become, the protester who, again, the terrorists, like, leapt on top of him to throw the bomb. He tweets. I cannot stress this enough. It was right near our feet and it did not look real. We just stood there laughing. Meanwhile, the incel femoids ran away, having been totally gesture mogged. Their cortisol levels have yet to recover. Like, dude, you almost died in a bombing attack.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

It's so embarrassing.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, you're not brave. You're so stupid.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, and Mamdani's statement illustrates what too many leftists and liberals and academics believe, which is that the speech of Jake Lang is the most dangerous thing happening at that event. And I'm sorry, Like, it's not his speech, even when reprehensible is not an ied. And the proper response to his speech is speech, not an ied and attempting to kill people. By the way, these two young men radicalized in the United States come from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where they live in a very, very nice house. Bucks county is a lovely place. This is not a. These guys did not have hardships. We did not torture them. This, this society has been quite good to them. And they decided to travel to New York City to do this, to perpetrate violence on their fellow citizens.

[Carol Markowitz]

And apparently they made pro ISIS comments and held up the one finger as they were. Perp walked. And that one finger is apparently an ISIS sign. I have to say also the way that this is being covered, I know that we're kind of laughing about it and we're saying, look how ridiculous the New York Times and NBC and Mirza and Mamdani all pretending that it's like an attack on Islamists and not from Islamists. But the thing is that a lot of the conspiracy theories that we see permeating on the right and on the left stems from this kind of stuff. People feel like they've been lied to for so long that anything goes and anybody can be believed. I think that when you have the New York Times blatantly lying to people over and over and over again, the Candace Owens of the world, the Tucker Carlson's of the world, realize they could just say whatever they want to, they could just say what they hope could be true, just like the New York Times does, and get a pass. And that's actually what's happening.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, and what the press does is that they specifically, on the issue of political violence, which the numbers, the polling shows that liberals, particularly liberal women, support the idea of political violence in much larger numbers than conservatives do. These are just real things. And what the press does is that they erase leftist violence and ignore it, or they alchemize it into something else. Islamist violence is something they don't want to talk about. So they're like, let's just pretend that it's something else. And that gives a really incomplete picture. Sure, it's easy to think that the right is uniquely politically violent if you alchemize every other kind of violence into right wing violence like that. That does distort the numbers quite a bit. And I saw it in real time at CNN when I worked there when the baseball shooting happened, which is explicitly political violence by a Bernie Bro who camped out in my neighborhood for a month to stalk these people and then asked Ron DeSantis, then a congressman, before he went to shoot everybody. Are those Republicans? I just want to make sure when that happened, within 24 hours, I was talking about how Trump's rhetoric might have been the real culprit here on cnn. That's what I was being asked.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, that's what they do. They turn it into something that does not exist. And Americans kind of either know they're being lied to or they don't. And either way, it's not a good situation with what ends up happening in our country.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I mean, this wouldn't. This coverage is just such dishonest trash bs.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. It's terrible, unacceptable. And there's, you know, no. No way we can really complain about it. We, you know, we've been pointing out media b bias for our whole, entire careers, and we've been showing the lies that they tell and all the. I mean, during COVID you and I had a lot of time to point out lies and more lies that the media was feeding the population. And then when we look around and like, wow, people just don't trust anything, anything that anybody says that this is where it comes from.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

This is where it comes from. And it. It does not. Does not make things better if you don't behave yourselves better.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

New York Times. And they, they don't think it's a problem. That's. That's the issue. It's not a. It's not an honest mistake that they're going to correct.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right, Right. So my old city councilman, Brad Lander, who is the absolute worst. And you know, I always make the comment like, as you can see, New York's declined by how far Brad Lander is allowed to rise. He's actually primary another leftist Democrat for Congress because that guy's not leftist enough. Okay. He tweeted, happy to know that our mayor and first lady are safe, but horrified that there's such a disturbing threat of viol their residents. Vile displays of Islamophobia will never be tolerated in our city. I mean, Brad Lander marched with the Women's March when it was clear that they were anti Semites. Like when a lot of leftists and liberals left the Women's March because they were like, okay, these, these women are complete Jew haters. Brad Lander, who's Jewish, was like, it's fine. I'll just march with them anyway. And as of this recording, he has not corrected the Islamophobia nonsense on his Twitter. So we'll see.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah, it was designed to be misinformation and just unfortunately we don't have a reliable narrator and you have to do a lot of work to figure out what is real and what is not. Absolutely. So in this case, the New York Times was doing hard work to turn you in the wrong direction.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. And again, the guy who almost got killed by a bomb and thinks it's funny and it's funny that people were scared of a bomb. Like, this is the best example of Gad Said's suicidal empathy. It's like I am so open minded that I don't even care if I get killed with this bomb as long as I'm not seen as racist, as long as I'm fighting racism. Like you are the lamest person alive and you almost died.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. Another, by the way, should flag the rhetorical use of something like this by some on the more isolationist. Right, who will say, aha, look, we have created this by our actions in the Middle East. This is a retaliation and therefore, well, I would say we've come a long way from we don't negotiate with terrorists, so we don't dictate our policy in those ways. Please make arguments against the policy, but this kind of violent attack will not be an acceptable argument against policy.

[Carol Markowitz]

The thing is that these are American boys. Like yes, there are Muslim American boys, but are we really saying that Muslims can never become fully American? That they can never adapt to being fully American? They always have their eye on the Middle East. I mean, that's the accusation that's like made against Jews, that they care too much about Israel. I just think it's nonsense. I think you can be America first no matter what religion you are. And we can't be giving a pass to Muslims who are upset about events happening in other countries while they live their cushy lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. All right, we're going to take a short break and come back to the real issue, Iran.

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[Carol Markowitz]

we are back on normally where President Trump has still not given a nationwide address, which I know you want him to do. Mary Katherine, he has been answering a lot of media questions. Basically, any media member that calls him up and asks him questions is getting some sort of answer from him. But Pete Hegseth did take 260 minutes over the weekend and he had some really good clips. I really, I'm becoming a Pete Hegseth super fan. I don't know what to tell you. I really am enjoying him as our, you know, I can't, I can't say defense secretary anymore. Chief, no, War secretary. It's just, it's a mouthful. But fine, fine. For my Pete Hegseth super fandom, I'll do that. We have a clip of him on 60 Minutes basically saying what we say all the time. Trump leaves all options on the table, always.

[Interviewer]

Is it possible to achieve the objectives President Trump has set before you? If we don't locate and obtain and extract the highly enriched uranium, there's a

[Pete Hegseth]

lot of different ways we can get after that. They've used a conventional umbrella of missiles that was growing every single day their production capacity to try to cover over their nuclear blackmail ambitions. As far as how you get at that nuclear option, we'll make sure that their nuclear ambitions are never achieved.

[Interviewer]

Will we take it out ourselves?

[Pete Hegseth]

I would never tell you or anybody else what our options are. See, that's another thing people keep asking. Very fair question. People ask boots on the ground. No boots on the ground. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. Go in. Go in. President Trump knows. I know. You don't tell the enemy. You don't tell the press. You don't tell anybody what, what your limits would be on an operation. We're willing to go as far as we need to in order to be successful.

[Interviewer]

Do we have any overt or covert forces inside Iran? Now,

[Pete Hegseth]

I wouldn't tell you that if we did.

[Interviewer]

Only reason I ask is earlier this week you said no. Is that still the answer?

[Pete Hegseth]

Yeah, that's still the answer. But we reserve the right. We would be completely unwise if we did not reserve the right to take any particular option, whether it included boots on the ground or no boots on the ground.

[Carol Markowitz]

I feel like that was a correction because of Trump. He's like, do not tell them anything. Do not say, we do not have covert forces in Iran. We do not give any information out. And look, whatever else you think of Trump, the fact that he leaves every option on the table makes certain regimes afraid. And that's a good thing. No.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And also, I do feel like this is a media literacy thing that perhaps people who cover the president should have noticed by Matt now, which is that every time you ask him, it does not matter how outlandish. Right, right. You ask him, are we going to transport the elephants that were retired from the Ringling Brothers? Could be circus, maybe Iran to do our bidding in this ground war. He would be like, could be right. I'm not gonna take it off the table. Like, it's just. It doesn't indicate his willingness. Now, you can be frustrated with that because you want more straightforward information. Fine. But let us. Let us not assume that not ruling out means a willingness to do.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's exactly right. And I think that Pete Hexth has become the spokesperson for that message of, we will do whatever we need to do to achieve our objectives. And we won't be telling the media about it. They won't be telling Democrats in Congress about it. So, you know, I like it. I'm in.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. Well, like, again, I think you can have concerns about, you know, how seriously are we taking next steps here? What does that look like? What can this transition to? All of that's fair game. But, like, I do feel like that the part where you're just, why isn't the President briefing us regularly on actual tactics? Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

Well, I think is, we know why.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. Oh, I would also add that I think it's an interesting twist of global relations that the Ukrainians are now like, hey, we have technology to help with these Iranian. The Iranian technology, the drone technology that we've been fighting against. Because obviously the Iranians support Russia, and that's part of the access of our enemies. And so now they are able to say, we can help you guys defend against these for less money. Which is a nice little coming together.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, yeah. It's. A lot of things are changing, and, yeah, I'm optimistic. I don't know. I. Look, I get the argument that nobody asks Congress anymore about going to war. I do. I. You know, I would have in the last 20 years have enjoyed Congress playing some role in making those decisions. But that's not what we have and that's not what we've had for a while. We have this great clip. Adam Schiff was on the Bill Maher show and Bill Maher did this to him. Let's roll that.

[Interviewer]

This statement from the administration. The president had the constitutional authority to direct the use of military force because he could reasonably determine that such use of force was in the national interest. That's too vague for you. Totally vague.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Okay.

[Interviewer]

Because that's from Obama about Libya. Well, Obama made the argument initially that he could go into Syria without an authorization. I and many others pushed back on that argument. Ultimately he did not go forward with going after Assad, even though Assad was gassing his own people because he thought he might lose the vote in Congress. But I respect the fact that that that was important to him and the fact that he did not have the support of Congress meant that we weren't going to go forward. We are unquestionably at war.

[Carol Markowitz]

Now.

[Interviewer]

The founders made an extraordinary decision at the time which was not to give that power to the president but to give it to the Congress because they worried, I think, as Hamilton said, that a president would grow too fond of making war after Venezuela, after the earlier Iran conflict, after bombing Nigeria and Iraq and Syria. He's grown too fond of this. And Congress, Don, as you're saying, needs to step up.

[Carol Markowitz]

He got him good. He really did. Because, you know, he didn't care when Obama was pushing war in different places. He only cares because it's Trump. And that's the other thing with taking this to Congress. It's like they're just gonna go on party lines with the exception of like Rand Paul. And it's basically pointless. But I understand the urge. I wish we could get back to a balance of powers the way it was supposed to be. Not holding my breath for any of that.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, and by the way, Mar's good at this. He's good at finding where people's partisanship and tribalism takes them into hypocrisy and airing it on this show. He's done it in the past when it comes to. It was a couple of race related quotes that he read and implied that they were Republicans.

[Carol Markowitz]

So good.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And then caught a bunch of people by saying those were actually Michelle Obama saying those things. So he's, he's good at highlighting this stuff. I think it's useful to highlight. We have a problem in coverage of Trump, which is that everybody in the press is always willing to say this is unprecedented and it's actually quite precedented. Whatever. The thing is, in this case in Libya, I believe there were months of bombings. And you're right, Schiff didn't care. Schiff's media training is good enough that he just switches to another conflict entirely right here and breezes right by the actual question. Yeah. But I think it's telling about this era that the person who used to do this to politicians was Tim Russer, the head of. Or the host of a Sunday show, Meet the Press, and he was sort of famous for bringing up old tape and saying, okay, well, what do you have to say to this now? It's an HBO political show host.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

The Sunday show hosts sort of take a pass on this kind of thing most of the time.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And appreciate him for doing it. And I don't mind when our side gets caught either, like, highlighting these.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And. And yeah, he. He had shift dead to rights there.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, look, that's a really good point. The Sunday shows used to be a serious discussion, and they haven't been in so, so long. And what we talk about on the show a lot is that Democrat privilege. The reason that Schiff was surprised by that and the reason that he didn't expect it, even though, again, he did cover great, was because he never gets asked difficult questions. He never has to. Gets challenged. He doesn't go on programs or that might be the case. It's just. Just he gets to say whatever he wants, however he wants to. And, you know, I. I think that there's some level of damage that happens. I met somebody recently who said that they really flipped politically when they kept. Adam Schiff kept saying, he's gonna have the. The goods on Russiagate.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

He's Russia.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. He's gonna have the smoking gun, like, any minute. And he was like. And he never had it. And that made him, like, rethink everything. So, you know, even. Even if you're watching friendly media, you might catch on to the fact that Adam Schiff doesn't have it. Yeah, well.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And Schiff was a double betrayal because it wasn't just, I have the. I have a smoking gun, I swear, wink, wink. He was, by doing so, misusing his own clearances. Because what he was saying is, I've seen what's behind closed doors, and I am assuring you because of my clearance, you can't know about it, but I know what's there. And it was just a lie. It was just a lie. And to the extent that there was anything there. It was created by Democratic allies and paid for. So you know these people are full of it.

[Carol Markowitz]

All right, we'll take a short break and come right back to maybe Democrats being sick of everything being politicized. We'll see. Be right back.

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

All right guys. Well Jesse Jackson passed away and his funeral was held on I believe Friday. His homegoing services and despite I think some please that it not become a political rally, it most certainly did in the hands of very prominent people who spoke, including former President Obama, former President Biden, I believe Kamala Harris also spoke and I think Clinton was there as well. And a lot of their comments ended up being not about Jesse Jackson, but about the only person any of them

[Carol Markowitz]

think about lives free in their head.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah, and you know I have my own thoughts on this. This of course has had There's a history of funerals being turned into political moments and not going so great. Particularly the Paul Wellstone funeral is the most famous instance of this and it really created a backlash against Democrats. I'm not sure that this one will because Democrats are used to everything being so politicalized. Yeah, but there was some backlash from a very important person in this process and that is Jesse Jackson Jr. The son of Jesse Jackson who had this to say about that service and how it went down.

[Jesse Jackson Jr.]

I listened for several hours of three United States presidents who do not know Jesse Jackson. He maintained a tense relationship with the political order. Not because the presidents were white or black, but the demands of our message, the demands of speaking for the least of these those who were disinherited, the damned, the dispossessed, the disrespected, demanded not Democratic or Republican solutions, but demanded a consistent prophetic voice that at no point in time ever sold us out as a people. And it speaks volumes about who the Reverend Jesse Jackson was. Our message has already been delivered today. I can see it all over my mother's face. Rise Jessie, rise. Give Jonathan Jackson another great round of applause for delivering our family message to the world.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Good for him.

[Carol Markowitz]

I don't understand how Other funerals have gotten turned into such political rallies. And I find it disturbing, especially when the politicians largely don't know the person that has died. It's so obvious and it's so calculated that I get why he'd be upset. And I would be, too.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. Because the focus should be on the person. And I get it. Whenever it's a political person, you're going to have a bunch of political figures there who have issues, who have problems avoiding the temptation of making everything political. And some of that is within bounds. I just think, of course, the standard is completely differently applied during Charlie Kirk's memorial service, which I thought did a really nice job, did have political figures, but really kept it focused on his faith, his mission, and him, as opposed to, like, overwhelmingly doing modern political rhetorical jaunts. It was nonetheless criticized for that. And then you have this stuff that's very, very blatant, and it's like, yeah, but this is for good. This is for good, right? Yeah, the Charlie Kirk stuff, that's for icky stuff, but this is for good stuff. And that's really the standard. And that shouldn't be the standard when you're honoring someone who has passed away.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. It's actually very reminiscent of our first topic and the way that the media massages the news to make the left look better than they are and, you know, frequently does the exact opposite to the right. And we're supposed to just take it. Good for Jesse Jackson Jr. For saying something about it. It's actually quite brave because if the family does have any political ambitions, it is still Obama running the show over there and taking kind of that direct and saying that Jesse Jackson had problems with the political establishment. That could only mean Obama. Who else on that squad is the political establishment at this point? It was braver than it seemed.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

All right, well, thank you so much for listening to 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.

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