Normally Podcast: Socialism in NYC, California Fires, and Newsom’s Political Playbook

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode: "Normally Podcast: Socialism in NYC, California Fires, and Newsom’s Political Playbook"

Date: January 8, 2026

Hosts: Mary Kathryn Hanley & Carol Markowitz

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Overview

In this episode, Mary Kathryn Hanley and Carol Markowitz discuss three major topics: the rise of socialism in New York City politics, the aftermath of devastating California wildfires and Governor Gavin Newsom’s handling of the crisis, and media narratives around supposed "rifts" in the Republican party. With candid conversation, a mix of personal anecdotes and policy critique, the hosts explore how ideology shapes governance—and how media spins both crisis and recovery.

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1. Socialism (and Property Rights) in NYC

[02:23–11:41]

Key Points:

• Zoran Mamdani's Election:
  • Zoran Mamdani, running openly as a democratic socialist, has become the mayor of NYC.
  • The hosts emphasize that Mamdani was transparent about his beliefs during his campaign.
  • "He ran on being this guy. So I don't know why anybody's surprised by any of it." (Carol Markowitz, 03:22)
• Controversial Appointment & Property Debate:
  • Sia Weaver, an appointee to head the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, had old tweets resurface advocating for property confiscation and challenging the very concept of private property.
  • [Clip plays]: "For centuries we've really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good...transitioning to treating it as a collective good." (Sia Weaver, ~04:00)
• Rent Control Backlash:
  • The conversation shifts to rent control's unintended consequences:
    • Citing an example where maintenance issues plagued a rent-controlled building, Hanley and Markowitz point out that artificially low rents make upkeep unfeasible.
    • "They can only charge $965 in New York City... The people who own the building have trouble maintaining it. It is an untenable, unworkable business plan caused by the state." (Mary Kathryn Hanley, 06:04)
  • The city opposes bankruptcy proceedings for landlords under financial strain, instead suggesting non-profits take over such properties—an approach the hosts call "radical."
• Personal Perspective on Communal Housing:
  • Markowitz, who emigrated from the Soviet Union, vividly describes the downsides of state collectivism:
    • "I'm from the Soviet Union. Communal housing was totally a thing. ... It broke up families." (Carol Markowitz, 07:13)

Memorable Moment:

• Hanley parodies Sia Weaver’s tone:
  • "Just like, hey, we just need to rethink this. Like, she's the HR person for all of our property. You're not the HR person for my property." (Mary Kathryn Hanley, 05:59)

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2. California Wildfires & Newsom’s Political Playbook

[14:53–25:28]

Key Points:

• Grim Fire Anniversary, Slow Recovery:
  • Marking the anniversary of the Palisades fire, the hosts tally the damage (12 deaths, 16,000 structures burned) and call out the abysmal pace of reconstruction:
    • Only 2,500 permits issued for rebuilding, none completed; in Malibu, only 22 permits in a year.
    • "That is after California Governor Newsom...said, we're going to cut all the red tape. Everything's going to go smoothly. That has not happened." (Mary Kathryn Hanley, 16:03)
• Governor Newsom’s PR Maneuvers:
  • Hanley and Markowitz criticize Newsom for using the disaster as a springboard for his presidential ambitions, referencing favorable media coverage:
    • "It's commemorating a grand failure in his own state...And he's like, you know what? This makes me the front runner. And the Atlantic is like, yes, it does." (Mary Kathryn Hanley, 16:38)
• Competence vs. Incompetence Narrative:
  • Newsom touts "the fastest debris removal in American history" [Audio Clip: Newsom, 18:52–20:11]; the hosts retort that it was federal, not state, action and contrast California’s foot-dragging with, e.g., Florida rebuilding a hurricane-damaged bridge in 15 days.
  • Internal investigations into the Fire Department’s performance were edited to gloss over errors and avoid accountability.
    • Quote: "A deleted passage in the report said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment... all looking to cover their asses." (Mary Kathryn Hanley, 21:31)
• Media Spin and Blame:
  • Noting a pattern where Democratic leaders reframe failures as strengths, Hanley reads from an Atlantic profile portraying Newsom as a fighter amidst disaster, sarcastically remarking:
    • "He's a fighter, Carol." (Mary Kathryn Hanley, 24:51)
• French Laundry & COVID-era Hypocrisy:
  • They revisit past scandals—"French laundry guy"—contrasting Newsom dining at an exclusive restaurant while public schools/private gatherings were forbidden.
    • "If we can't beat Gavin Newsom on that issue alone, I don't know what to tell anybody." (Carol Markowitz, 25:19)

Notable Quotes:

• "When you're a Democrat, they let you do it." (Carol Markowitz, 24:16)
• "You gotta beat him. That's it. I mean, he's very beatable. So let's do it." (Carol Markowitz, 25:50)

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3. GOP "Rifts" and the MAGA Base

[28:36–34:59]

Key Points:

• Hyping Republican Division, Debunked by Data:
  • The hosts mock recurring media narratives of deep Republican splits, particularly over military interventions:
    • "There is no rift in the Republican Party...Donald Trump has had an iron grip, an iron grip on that Republican base." (Harry Enten, quoted by hosts, 29:21)
  • Polls show overwhelming GOP approval (over 80%) for recent Venezuela strike and continued support for Trump.
    • "85% is one point higher than 84%." (Harry Enten, 30:48)
• Competence Appreciated, Not Ideological Purity:
  • Both hosts note that despite online bickering or dissent (e.g., from Thomas Massie or J.D. Vance), actual Republican voters support strong, competent action even if they have reservations about interventionism.
    • "I think people underestimate a bit how much Americans appreciate seeing competence and power in action." (Mary Kathryn Hanley, 31:02)
    • "Nothing succeeds like success." (Carol Markowitz, 31:11)
• Education on Socialism & Moral Clarity:
  • The pair see value in former victims of socialism educating Americans about the realities it imposes, citing social media efforts to dispel utopian myths.
• Vice President’s Foreign Policy:
  • Lightly poking the ambiguity of Vance’s positions (should he be Trump’s VP), Markowitz jokes:
    • "If he has a different foreign policy than Donald Trump, I'd love to hear about it from him." (Carol Markowitz, 33:29)

Closing Note:

• "International law...is not actually a law. Like, let's just be real here." (Carol Markowitz, 34:56)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• NYC Socialism & Property: 02:23–11:41
• California Fires & Newsom: 14:53–25:28
• GOP Rifts and Media Spin: 28:36–34:59

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Memorable Quotes

• "You're not the HR person for my property. And in order to get my property, you're going to have to take it from me. And that is stealing."
  — Mary Kathryn Hanley (05:59)
• "This is who New York elected. And I feel really bad for almost half of New Yorkers who tried really hard...But this is where his election was going to go."
  — Carol Markowitz (04:33)
• "If we can't beat Gavin Newsom on that issue alone, I don't know what to tell anybody."
  — Carol Markowitz (25:19)
• "Nothing succeeds like success."
  — Carol Markowitz (31:11)
• "International law will let Maduro just sit there and torture everyone for decades. But if you do something about it, that's when international law has a problem."
  — Mary Kathryn Hanley (34:46)

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Tone and Style

The conversation is brisk and irreverent, blending policy critique with wit and personal insight. The hosts use real-world examples and media soundbites to expose what they see as ideological excess, government mismanagement, and media bias—always with a sharp, sometimes sarcastic humor.

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Transcript

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[Carol Markowitz]

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[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Hey guys, we are back on. Normally the show is normal as it takes for when the news it's weird.

[Carol Markowitz]

I am Mary Kathryn Hanley and I'm Carol Markowitz. How are you Mary Kathryn how is the first week of the new year treating you?

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

We're hanging in there man. I think everybody is just trying not to catch whatever their kids had. And I think I may have fallen victim today. So we shall see.

[Carol Markowitz]

Which version do they have the cough or the no voice or mostly cough.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

But you can hear this voice is a little Kathleen Turner. Y. Yeah. It could take a turn in the near future.

[Carol Markowitz]

Some of my kids are really enjoying that. I mean, I have a little bit of the voice thing, but yeah, my. My middle son is just like, I lost my voice. It's like extra.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

I love it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Well, other things that have happened in the first week of the new year that we didn't get to last episode, but Zoran Mamdani became mayor of my old city and he is turns out, a communist.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Yeah, the. The democratic socialists. Just socialist pretty much, it turns out. Yeah. Yeah, we had suspected.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. I, you know, I. I have to say to give credit to Mamdani and, you know, that's going to be a rare thing for me to do. He ran on being this guy. So I don't know why anybody's surprised by any of it. The first thing that people are surprised by is that a Zoran Mamdani appointee, Sia Weaver, she was tapped to lead his mayor's office to protect tenants, had some old tweets resurfaced where she's calling basically for property confiscation. And she's saying that people need to rethink the whole idea of private property. Let's roll that clip. I think the reality is, is that.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

For centuries we've really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good.

[Announcer]

And we are going to transitioning to.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Treating it as a collective good and.

[Carol Markowitz]

Towards a model of shared equity will.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that families, especially.

[Announcer]

White families, but some POC families who.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Are homeowners as well, are going to.

[Announcer]

Have a different relationship to property than.

[Carol Markowitz]

The one that we currently have different relationship to property. But to be real, is this surprising? Did Zoran Mamdani not run as the kind of guy who would nominate people like this? I think he was very honest about who he is. He kept stressing that he is a democratic socialist. He specifically breaks with members of his party because they're not socialists enough. This is who New York elected. And I feel really bad for almost half of New Yorkers who tried really hard. And I have a lot of family, I have a lot of friends, and I root for them and I root for the city. But this is where his election was going to go. And I am not at all surprised. Like, not even a little surprised. I'm Actually surprised that she's kind of walking it back and saying she doesn't believe that kind of stuff anymore. Or those are old tweets and you have to give some grace. And she was crying when confronted by it. That's surprising to me. That's the only part that I find surprising in any of this.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Yeah. Also, don't be a baby and cry about this. These are your own words. You said them in public. They are directly related to the job you will be doing in one of the most important cities in the world. Yeah. So you have to answer questions about those things. I find her rhetoric, which I don't think is just rhetoric. I think she genuinely believes this and has the power to do it. I find it sad for New York and I find it pretty scary, even with the uptalk that she uses.

[Carol Markowitz]

Uptalk.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

So it's so sinister the way she delivers it. Just like, hey, we just need to rethink this. Like, she's the HR person for all of our property. You're not the HR person for my property. And in order to get my property, you're going to have to take it from me. And that is stealing. And that is what she wants the state to do. And that's kind of what the state has already been involved in with a lot of these rent control schemes, because what they do is they say, oh, yeah, you like that building. And this is what Mandani started his first day of his mayoralty with. He went to visit a. An apartment building that he claimed was plagued by bad landlords. Well, it turns out that apartment building with all of its maintenance issues is a rent controlled apartment building. They can only charge $965 in New York City, in New York City to live in this apartment. And therefore the people who own the building have trouble maintaining it. And also owning the building, like it is a. It is an untenable, unworkable business plan caused by the state.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Then the state shows up.

[Carol Markowitz]

You did this.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Look at these floors. We have to take your apartment building from you. I mean, it is radical, radical stuff.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's crazy. Look, I'm from the Soviet Union. Communal housing was totally a thing. I've heard all about it. How multiple families would share one kitchen, all live in one bedroom. I mean, it does not go well. No one has ever looked at communal housing in the Soviet Union and be like, this is what we should have more of. I mean, it broke up families. I mean, think about when, like in laws come to visit and families can't take it. This is like strangers are living in your second bedroom. It really.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

It's a.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's a scary situation that they're trying all these terrible ideas anew.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Well, an interesting wrinkle. Did you see this court case that the Mamdani administration brought immediately?

[Carol Markowitz]

No, I missed it.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

So they filed. They filed about rent control in a dispute with a property owner. The Mamdani administration opposes the bankruptcy proceedings of a landlord on the grounds that his or her rent controlled apartments do not produce enough income to operate the building. So they don't want him to be able to sell or restructure after the rent control regulations they've imposed have made it an unprofitable business. And then they say we'll just take it and give it to an ngo. But they actually admitted this in court, which a bunch of court watchers are like. That could spell real trouble. So I guess we could cross our fingers for an. A hubristic socialist who takes a bunch of socialist policies to court and then maybe they get kicked up to, I don't know, a pretty conservative Supreme Court.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. Or even like a normal liberal. Right.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Like heck no. Right.

[Carol Markowitz]

You're hoping for a non communist, which I understand is sometimes too much to hope for.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Yeah. It's just. It's wild to put that in writing. That yes, the government caused this problem and yes, that is the reason that the government opposes the rightful owner of this property selling or restructuring. Why don't you give to us? It should probably be for us.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right? I'm sure you'll do the way.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Turn something into nothing.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, very quickly too. So, Zor mom. Danny, I have good news actually. Mary Catherine. We're getting free World cup tickets. I mean, you know, because why not everybody deserves World cup tickets. I know my husband thinks he does.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

There are no scarcity issues and everything will just fall from the heavens.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's amazing.

[Advertiser]

Let's roll that clip we are seeing. You know, I had a New Yorker the other day come up to me and ask me if there was any way I could help him get World cup tickets. Because he was saying that the cost that he saw for a game was $600. Right. This is increasingly out of reach. We have made what used to be a working class game into a luxury experience. And there are too many. For whom? It doesn't matter where the World cup is being played in the world. They know where they're going to watch it. It's tv. And we want to ensure that there are more experiences available to each and every New Yorker.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, well, I'm going to be watching it on tv. Because yeah, tickets are expensive. That's how it works. When there's only X amount of tickets and people want them, they get expensive.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Also, you know where a bunch of people can watch games on tv, which is by the way a modern miracle that you can watch all sports engagements on your pretty awesome tv. Pretty great. A great place you can do that is in capitalist countries versus socialist countries where they have far fewer goods and TVs for people on which to watch things or electricity in some places.

[Carol Markowitz]

Our friend Adele Scalia tweeted, I'm genuinely concerned at this point that he doesn't know how anything works in the real world. And the There was a note attached to his video about this. Apart from the fact that the mayor has no influence over FIFA pricing policy, the there are also no games in New York City. The closest games are in New Jersey. Not sure he'll be able to affect that, but he really does have the vibe of like the guy who wanted to be student body president and put a Coke fountain in the cafeteria. Like he thinks that he could do this kind of stuff. Like who are you? Why would you believe that you could change any of this? It just. It's bananas.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Here's an idea. He could buy personally with all of his wealth and his mom's wealth a bunch of World cup tickets and then give them to people.

[Carol Markowitz]

Give them to for free. Buy them at market and hand them out. Right. My beloved Scotland is in the World cup this time around. They haven't been in for many, many years. So my Scottish friends are excited about this. I'd go to a Scotland game. Why not?

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Yeah, sure. Yeah, if they're giving them out for free. Courtesy of mum Danny.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, we'll be right back with more on normally and that other socialist paradise, California. Be right back.

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[Carol Markowitz]

Breaking news everybody.

[Announcer]

Not everything is terrible. I repeat, not everything is terrible.

[Carol Markowitz]

The Ripple effect with Jenna Kim Jones.

[Announcer]

Is proof that the Internet it hasn't ruined humanity entirely. Let me start by saying it's a.

[Carol Markowitz]

Great day to be a gray shirt team Rubicon.

[Announcer]

You know, it truly is a team. Those folks, myself included, all had one desire, which is helping folks in disaster.

[Advertiser]

Trying to be a little bit of.

[Announcer]

Hope in a really, really bad situation. It's like magic, you guys.

[Carol Markowitz]

So put down your doom scroller and.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Pick up your faith in humanity and.

[Carol Markowitz]

Join me, Jenna, for the ripple effect.

[Announcer]

It's a reminder that you can start a ripple that changes everything. You really can.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

We give just that nugget of hope helping other people. For some of our gray shirts, it's during a time when they need help and by helping others, it helps them.

[Carol Markowitz]

Listen to the ripple effect with Jenna.

[Announcer]

Kim Jones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

All righty. Well, it is January in sunny California and it is the marking of a sad anniversary. The anniversary of the Palisades fire and other southern California fires. 12 people in the Palisades lost their lives in that fire. And some 16,000 structures were burned just in that area. There were other places as well. There are a couple commemorations going on there, the White Glove flag presentation and remembrance ceremony, and this one, the they Let Us Burn rally headlined by Palisades fire victim Heidi Montag, whose husband Spencer, has been really involved in getting to the bottom of what happened with the LA Fire Department and the city governance and state governance and why things did not get done better than they did as it stands right now. So 16k structures burned in that area. There are about 2,500 permits that have been issued for things that could be rebuilt. Zero have been completed. Some 500 are in the process of building. And that is after California Governor Newsom, Governor Gavin Newsom, and Karen Bass, the mayor of la, said, we're going to cut all the red tape. Everything's going to go smoothly. That has not happened in Malibu. There have been 22 permits given. 22.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's crazy.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

In a year for these beachfront properties that many people anticipated, the environmentalists and the state and local government are going to say, you can't rebuild there. Which I think is probably what we're slow walking into at this point. And here's my favorite part of this anniversary, is that Newsom is unabashedly using it as a press tour for his future presidential run.

[Announcer]

Yeah.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

So it's commemorating a grand failure in his own state, where 12 people died and all these things burned and nothing has been rebuilt. And he's like, you know what? This makes me the front runner. And the Atlantic is like, yes, it does.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

You run this big glossy piece on him called the Front Runner, and it says, california, Gavin Newsom would rather be wrong than weak. Well, I'll grant that he's often, often wrong. So that's where we are in California today.

[Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

He's like, tweeted that they've had the fastest debris removal in modern U.S. history. And our friend read Redsd retweeted that and said Florida rebuilt a bridge destroyed by a hurricane in 15 days.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

And, yeah, so congratulations on that debris removal. It's really crazy that he's going to be the front runner. This is. This is where we're heading.

[Advertiser]

Right.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's like him or AOC really depends which lane of crazy the Democrats want to take us into. But his incompetence. And we talked about competence in the last episode of this show because it's so rare to see competence now that this incompetence of his is being portrayed as competence. It's it's crazy. It's like he did a terrible job. Watch him win the election on this.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Well, and Democrats have a pattern of this because they know they can get away with it in the media. So he comes out and says, like, oh, anniversary of the fires. A giant failure on my watch. Let me do a press tour. And the press is like, sure, you should blame everything on Trump. And he goes ahead and does that. I noticed that the Baltimore, or, excuse me, the Maryland governor Wes Moore, who's the up and coming fresh face for Democrats. He also cited in his convention speech a big failure on his watch, which was the destruction of that giant bridge that got hit by the giant cargo ship and destroyed and had not been rebuilt at all by the time he's giving this speech. He's like, anyway, bad things happened. I am great. Think that's, I don't think that's the connection a lot of voters make, nor should they. Let's hear a little bit from Newsom on his press tour about who's really the problem here.

[Advertiser]

Where are we at in the recovery effort?

[Gavin Newsom]

We've made tremendous progress. The fastest debris removal in American history, at least modern American history, in six months, working with the Army Corps of Engineers, working with fema. They did an exceptional job. And I will say this, to be fair, Donald Trump did not get in the way of that. But that process began under President Biden, who was president at the time. We established the contracts, we established the major disaster declaration. I can't even conceive, had this happened under the Trump administration, we would still be debating which one of his contractors he would send out to do the debris removal, which one was connected to the larger construct of the administration. So we were able to move forward very effectively in those first six months. We put out a detailed plan, a master plan for removal, a vision for the future of the region. We did that at the six month mark. And we continue to wait for a simple response, just the dignity of a response from Donald Trump himself to a request for federal disaster aid that we made in February of last year. It's almost been an entire year. That request is currently 33.9 billion. We continue to visit with leaders of both parties, Capitol Hill, that are consistently supportive, but they're simply waiting for that request to come from the president.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

You're waiting.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. My favorite part of that look, you know, we all use filler words, but when he corrected himself from American history, the fastest debris, you know, cleanup in American history, and then he went to modern American history because he can't speak for ancient American history. Who knows what happened back then with the debris removal.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Well, first of all, it was federal assets doing the debris removal that he's bragging about. And he at the time was saying, like, I appreciate all of this happening. He just, he changes based on his audience, he changes based on the day of the week. It doesn't matter. But I do want to point out that the LA Fire Department did its own internal investigation of what happened here. And the LA Times reported, hats off to them, they dug on this and found that there were like seven different versions of it, one ready way earlier. And they kept going in and changing it because the powers that be do not want anyone to be held responsible for this. They want Newsom out there pointing fingers and saying, the Fed somehow failed you when that is not the case. And I just want to point out a couple things that did get left out of that report. A deleted passage in the report said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment. The day of the fire, a section on failures was renamed Primary Challenges. And an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched. It goes on and on. The. The COVID was required to be more positive than showing a fire because they're all looking to cover their asses.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

And it costs people's lives, it costs people's property. There's a whole section that they didn't deal with. The fact that There was a January 1st fire that they believe was reignited to start the January 7th fire. That was the very disastrous one. And a bunch of firefighter whistleblowers were like, actually, we didn't want to leave that fire because it seemed like it might reignite.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

And lo and behold, that's what happened. But no one's actually dealing with this.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

And they're, they're letting Mr. I'm waiting for Trump go out there and say that that's the problem. By the way, the fire Aid concert that raised $100 million, many, many millions of that just went to local NGOs doing lefty stuff that has nothing to do with fire recovery. So it's all around just a beautiful story.

[Carol Markowitz]

As we've learned in the Last year, leftist NGOs make the world go around. Really, the whole, they're the only game in town if you want to be profiting from disaster.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

But like, to me, it's just, it is upside down world to have someone out there, like running around the country going, let me lead. And this is his data point.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, yeah, let me lead. I can't do it on a small scale, but I assure you, I'll succeed on a large scale.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

I'll be great at it at the, at the, at the National. No problem.

[Carol Markowitz]

You know, I was also thinking, in our last episode, we talked about San Francisco, and the San Francisco mayor basically said, you know, a lot of people let San Francisco down and it got really bad because they weren't enforcing their laws. I mean, Gavin Newsom is one of the people he's talking about. He's talking about the Gavin mayor. Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco. And the way that he did not enforce any crime laws over there and let things get into a bad spiral again. If this is the guy and Republicans can't take him down. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, we deserve what we get if we can't beat Gavin Newsom.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Well, and another perfect example of how he's all about talking and not about actually achieving anything is one year ago, he released. He put out a tweet saying, I've issued an executive order to get rid of all the red tape. And today he basically reissued the same tweet. So the first executive order didn't work, as you can see by the number of houses rebuilt. The second executive order, I'm sure will do the trick and is not just issued to tell everybody he's doing something while nothing actually happens.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's our Gavin.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

He's something else, man. And they're going to let him do it.

[Carol Markowitz]

They're going to let him do it. Yeah. When you're a Democrat, they let you do it.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Can I read you actually, real quick the first paragraph of this Atlantic piece so you can get a feeling for the tone, please?

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Gavin Newsom has a 30 page file of reasons the Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election bounding across his Sacramento office. He starts listing them. Incumbency, inflation, interest rates, Israel. And that's just the letter I. Yes. Two woke. He adds, Yes, 107 days, referring to the short campaign after Joe Biden's forced withdrawal. But the California governor distills his party's problem down to one word, weak. You see, he's a fighter. He's a fighter, Carol.

[Carol Markowitz]

I see. I see that he's a fighter. He really knows how to send the tweets. The tweets are. The tweets are on fire, fighting.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

But the man himself, not so much. Not so much.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

So unimpressive to me. Yeah, you got that hair, though. The hair's off. Putting to me.

[Carol Markowitz]

My God. Yes, the hair is so off putting. But you know, I do not miss an opportunity when we're talking about Gavin Newsom to throw in an I'm still mad bro that he was governor of California. His kids went back to school because they went to private school and the public schools stayed closed. And if we can't beat Gavin Newsom on that issue alone, I don't know what to tell anybody.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

He's also French laundry guy.

[Carol Markowitz]

Like French laundry guy went to the.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Nicest restaurant arguably in the country.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, in the country.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

While the rest of us could not go through a dang chick fil a drive through.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right while we were eating at inside outside restaurants and parking lots.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Amazing stuff, that guy. Woo. You're right. You gotta go beat him.

[Carol Markowitz]

You gotta beat him. That's it. I mean, he's very beatable. So let's do it. We'll be right back with one more segment of Normalely. Stay with us.

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[Carol Markowitz]

Breaking news, everybody.

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Not everything is terrible. I repeat, not everything is terrible.

[Carol Markowitz]

The ripple effect with Jenna Kim Jones.

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Is proof that the Internet, it hasn't ruined humanity entirely. Let me start by saying it's a.

[Carol Markowitz]

Great day to be a gray shirt team Rubicon.

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You know, it truly is a team. Those folks, myself included, all had one desire, which is helping folks in disaster.

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Trying to be a little bit of.

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Hope in a really, really bad situation.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's like magic, you guys. So put down your doom scroller and.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Pick up your faith in humanity and.

[Carol Markowitz]

Join me, Jenna, for the ripple effect.

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It's a reminder that you can start a ripple that changes everything. You really can.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

We give just that nugget of hope helping other people for some of our gray shirts, it's during a time when they need help and by helping others, it helps them.

[Carol Markowitz]

Listen to the Ripple Effect with Jenna.

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Kim Jones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

All right, we are back on normally with a repeating recurring theme in national media coverage, which is Republican rifts. There are always maga rifts. We are always having fights. And while there are disagreements, it turns out that the, the polling, Carol, doesn't exactly stand up to the narrative. We're not rifting.

[Carol Markowitz]

We're not rifting. I thought there were rifts on the Twitters. There's a lot of rifts. And it turns out that the Republican Party in general has no idea what's going on on X and does not care.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

That is an important lesson for everyone all the time.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. So let's roll the clip. Harry Anton at CNN talking about that rift.

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Let me be very clear. There is no rift in the Republican Party. Yes, there are. Some folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie are quite skeptical of this. They are very much in the minority. What are we talking about here? Well, why don't we just talk the GOP on the US military ouster Maduro Ipsos, 65% support, 6% opposed. How about the Washington Post poll? 74% support, just 10% opposed. If you look among 2024 Trump supporters, we're talking about 80% support. The vast, vast majority of Republicans are with Donald Trump on this issue. Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene are very much in the minority. Very few Republicans are with him. You say they're with him on this issue. Do you even need those words, this issue? No, I don't need this issue. Because the bottom line is this. Donald Trump has had an iron grip, an iron grip on that Republican base for a long period of time. And it is the same iron grip that he had six months ago. I know every so often people are trying to say, oh, I spot these, these little riffs in the Republican, oh, oh, you know, they're finally starting to break. They're starting to break from downtown. It ain't happening. At least when it comes to the approval rating. Look at this. 84% six months ago, 85% now, you don't have to be a mathematical genius to know 85% and 84% are basically the same number. In fact, 85% is one point higher than 84.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Yeah. I think he also showed some polling the other day that showed overall like a 16 point increase in support for the Venezuela strike after it happened versus like right after people had found out about it.

[Carol Markowitz]

Me. It, me.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Well, yeah. And so I think, as we noted on the show, I think people underestimate a bit how much Americans appreciate seeing competence and power in action.

[Carol Markowitz]

Nothing exceeds like success.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

And if it doesn't drag them into something that they're more worried about, then, yes, that will, that will be important. But particularly among Republicans who are pretty comfortable with that. And I think that is also a lesson for those in the party, such as Amassie. A little bit of Vance, who is more skittish about intervention than Trump is.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

That often the voting public does not have as many of the same concerns as they do.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. And look, you know, they polled Democrats and independents and one third of Democrats supported the strike and 65% of independents supported the strike. This was popular. Like I said, nothing succeeds like success. And I admit that I don't know that I would have been for the strike before it happened, but I certainly was for it after. It was a wild success. And that's where most Americans will end up.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Well, and people could shift as we move through this and we see what happens. It is unpredictable. However, let me say this, and this goes back to our first topic as well. One thing I like about this news cycle is that there is some real clarity from a lot of people who really understand what socialism and communism look like all over social media saying, you do not understand. Here's what actually happens. There was a great free press bit where Daniel DiMartino, who's a Manhattan Institute fellow, went out or scholar, went out and about telling New Yorkers who had voted for Mamdani, okay, well, this is what actually happens. And they all were like, huh, Right. Really? And I think that that education part and the part where people are unafraid to make these points on social media right now and they are doing it with absolute moral authority. That is a good moment.

[Carol Markowitz]

Really goes a long way. Yeah. So look, I, you know, is. Could MAGA split? I don't know if you know, that's. That's definitely possible. Could the Republican Party split frequently. Does not. You know, Republicans love the infighting, but the idea that there is a foreign policy split even. You know, we mentioned Vance. Vance never says anything publicly that no. Would lead us to believe that he opposes Trump's actions. We're just kind of left to, like, read his eyebrows sometimes.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Like, which I am an expert in. Same.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, look, I'm a poker player. Like, I get what we're supposed to think about Vance. It just, you know, and I've mentioned this on my ex before. Like, if he has a different foreign policy than Donald Trump, I'd love to hear about it from him. I would. I. I don't think we should be guessing what the vice President believes, but a lot of people think that they know, and a lot of people think that it is in opposition to the President. In which case I ask, does the president know that his vice president doesn't support his actions? You know, I'd love to know all about that publicly.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

He definitely seems to be in line when called upon.

[Carol Markowitz]

Exactly.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

So, you know, whether he will lead a more isolationist wing of the party going into the next presidential election. I just don't think that is a successful endeavor. Look, these numbers paint a picture of who the Republican Party are, what they support, and I don't think it's that, you know, heart clutching, my gosh, like, we should never use our military might.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Yeah. It's not. It's not constant deference to international law as the lefties would like us to indulge. No, thanks.

[Carol Markowitz]

International law. Yeah, they could take their international law.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

International law will let Maduro just sit there and torture everyone for decades. But if you do something about it, that's when international law has a problem, Right?

[Carol Markowitz]

A law that can never be enforced. Like, international law is not actually a law. Like, let's just be real here. So. 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.

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[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

Gentlemen, I propose a toast to our good friend Dave. You inspired this epic guys weekend. I'm sorry you're missing it. Everyone knows that when you fly you need to bring a reason ID or a passport.

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Everyone but Dave.

[Mary Kathryn Hanley]

So here's the finally figuring out how to get on an airplane. Dave, we'll see you tomorrow. And I'm glad you could rebook your flight.

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