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A
This is an iHeart podcast. Hey, guys. We are back on normally, the show with normalish takes for when the news gets weird. I am Mary Kathryn Hume.
B
And I'm Carol Markowitz. How was your weekend, Mary Katherine?
A
It was good. I did a quick up and back to New York City, and I saw two matches at the US Open, which I love before. Wonderful. Tennis is awesome.
B
Yeah. I'm not a huge tennis person, but I feel like I have to follow it a little bit living in South Florida, because everyone here is, like, full on obsessed with it. I don't know if you saw a claim. Buck had this whole thing back and forth that. That Buck could hit the tennis ball. I think 100 miles per hour. 100 miles per hour. He came close, though, like, on his initial thing, and he's like, I feel like if I got trained for this, I could totally do it. I rooted for him.
A
I believe that he could train up to it because he got pretty close.
B
He did. Yeah.
A
The serves I was seeing yesterday were like 114 miles an hour.
B
Wow.
A
Tennis is something that I feel like I should take up and take into my old age. I'm going to work on that. I'll give you a.
B
You know, there's also pickleball.
A
I know pickleball is very, very popular.
B
Very.
A
It's almost triggering my oppositional defiance disorder, and I don't want to be into it.
B
Interesting. I don't know if you know, but the pickleball and the tennis communities, like, they fight to the death, like they hate each other. And even though there's some crossover.
A
But they like it's court space.
B
Exactly.
A
Perhaps I should do both and mediate this conflict. Earn trust in both communities.
B
Right. Or neither. But.
A
Yeah, I'll keep you posted.
B
All right, let us know. So, as we are recording this, President Trump is expected to sign an executive order ending cashless bail by threatening to revoke federal funding for jurisdictions across the country that have this cashless bail. It's interesting because I've seen a few different liberals on X commenting things like, shouldn't conservatives not want the federal government used in this way? Well, yeah, but that's a battle you waged. And I lost. Congratulations.
A
Yeah, yeah, it really. There is this thing where they demand, like, that conservatives just unilaterally disarm after they have escalated 400 times. And sometimes I do argue against it. Sometimes I say, that's not the right thing to do. We don't wanna ratchet this up, but it's really hard for them to make that argument.
B
Exactly. Trump is flexing the power that you wanted presidents to have. You won. Look at you go.
A
Yeah. Well, the other thing specifically about Trump that cracks me up in people's response to him is that the same people now who cry fascism at anything at the drop of a hat, wanted him to be a fascist in 2020, much harder than he was willing to be.
B
Right.
A
And they're just like, lock us down, put us in our homes forever. Yeah.
B
Donald Trump, you're the worst with the virus, you know, with the vaccine, from far away, like, yeah. Just anything. Yeah.
A
Just be as heavy handed as possible. And in this case, like, sometimes I disagree with him, but at least he's heavy handed in the attempt to target people who are breaking laws, victims of crime.
B
Right. Yeah.
A
People are making life worse for others, protecting citizens against violent crime. Because in the cashless bail situation, people get out of jail very quickly, they reoffend very quickly because there's the message that they're not gonna pay a price for this.
B
Yeah. And I can't take Democrats serious with this outrage thing. Andrew Wilcow posted a picture from New York from the subway station in New York City where there are National Guards troops in the subway stations because Governor Kathy Hochul called them up because they were having such problems with crime. Nobody's saying, oh, she's a fascist, or this is the second coming of Hitler. They're just saying, like, oh, she's trying to fight crime. That's a good thing. Because that's a thing, right?
A
No, of course it's a good. If you're a Democrat. Right. J.B. pritzker had a piece, I believe, this weekend in the New York Times that said, you know, Trump's crackdown on crime will just create more crime. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, look, I am willing to listen to the argument that there are very serious trade offs for having a heavy law enforcement or military presence in your town for an extended period of time. Noted civil libertarian. Understand you can't make the argument that it will make crime worse in the week that it made zero murders in.
B
The Washington, D.C. yeah, like that's.
A
I think zero murders is good.
B
Yeah. I feel like we need to find somebody who doesn't think zero murders is good and ask them why they think that. But Democrats just refuse to answer that. And they just keep screaming fascist at us. And so the thing with this cashless bail is, and you know, we've talked about this a lot on the show, but I used to be a outspoken proponent of that. Bail was too high you'd read stories and somebody would be arrested for shoplifting and the bail would be $20,000. And true story. And I would say 20,000 could be 20 million for certain for somebody in the state. It's crazy. It should line up with whether there are flight risk. So Democrats took this sane opinion of let's reduce bail and said, how about no bail? And. And then nobody came back. Fewer people started coming back to their court dates. Crime went up because the people would reoffend as soon as they exited the jail. And it didn't work. It didn't work. And Democrats now need to face it that they went too far with an idea that someone like me would have agreed with. Now, I can't agree with anything that you guys say.
A
This is what they always do because they've lost me to some extent on criminal justice reform because I was very. I am very much and I think still in the. In the group of people that's in the Van Jones Trump alliance of the First Steps act or something. Right. That does give nonviolent offenders a way to come back that pardons more nonviolent offenders, that kind of thing, just so that you don't have people who are in this grinder for their entire lives because they did one nonviolent thing. I think that's good.
B
Right.
A
But they go so far and then they demonize law enforcement, all law enforcement, and they say they should defund all of law enforcement.
B
Right.
A
And then you watch 2020 summer and you go, no, I'm not. I will not be standing with you guys on this issue because you can't keep it together.
B
Exactly. There's so much of that and they step all over their own cause. I mean, the thing is that the left controls the Democrats. They are just afraid of their left. They feel like they have to cater to them and you have to keep ratcheting up the rhetoric and the policies to go with it. Which is why you have. When the defund police thing started and all these Democrats were like, we don't really mean defund police. And all of their leftist activists would post, no, we literally mean defund the police. So that's where we are.
A
We have more on this actually, when we come back because there's an group of sane Democrats who have a group of words that they would not like Democrats to say. And it aligns with this idea. So we'll have more on that when we come back on normally.
B
All right.
A
We are back on normally with a semi regular segment, which is what the heck is going on With Democrats. And as I alluded to, there's. There's some signs of. Of life with the sane people that I'm going to get to first, and then we can get to the insane people. Third way, which is sort of a centristy moderate Democrat group often demonized by the left. In the Democratic Party, there's a memo circulating with blacklisted words that Democrat candidates should not use. Do you want to hear them?
B
Let's hear them.
A
Here are the terms. Privilege, violence, as in environmental violence. Dialoguing, Triggering, Dialoguing, Othering, Microaggression, holding space. That's a. That's a. That's a good one.
B
Yeah.
A
Body shaming. Subverting norms. Systems of oppression. Cultural appropriation. Overton window. Existential threat to climate, Democracy, Economy. Radical transparency. Stakeholders unhoused. Food insecurity. Housing insecurity.
B
Yeah.
A
Person who immigrated. Birthing person. Cisgender, Dead. Naming, heteronormation. It goes on and on and on. I actually don't know what they're going to say now.
B
Can you tell me? Yeah, I posted that on X. I said, but this is literally their whole vocabulary. I literally don't know what else they can say. This list is amazing because every one of those phrases is vaguely embarrassing. And I understand why Democrats are newly embarrassed by this, but you've been talking like this for a really long time. And I don't know, heteronormative is actually a great one to talk about because I remember and this is going back. I don't even. This is early 2000s, mid 2000s, where Jada Pinkett Smith gave a speech on a college campus. And this is like what I call my first moment of realizing something was shifting. And she gave a speech and she talked about people getting married and having kids and that kind of thing. And her speech was criticized for being heteronormative the first time I ever heard that term. And this is a long time ago. This is, you know, decades ago now. And so to work these words out of their vocabulary now is going to be tough.
A
Yeah, it is really tough. And there is this idea, there's a bit of pushback on this from pundits of the left who say. Or representatives of the left who say, well, now you're just playing this game where anyone who's coded left, an elected Democrat or someone campaigning as a Democrat has to answer for these weird words that they don't really use. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Yeah, you guys have been using these words, right? On the rest of us to impose Whatever insanity you want for many, many years. This is not only an activist problem. You are led around by your activists. And every party has some of that to some extent. But wow, to pretend that this is like a new standard that you're placing on Democratic candidates. That's coming from nowhere. No, no, no, no. As someone pointed out, the first page of the Democratic Party platform at the DNC was a land acknowledgement. The one page one. These are your people.
B
That's just the case. And you know, I hear all the time that when you go to on college tours, they all start with land acknowledgements. And I. It's like this is who you're listening to. Like doofy 18 year olds who came up with stuff like this and now it's part of your party, you know, party platform, party ideas. And you know, I would just say one of the phrases not on the list, but I always like to throw back at them. Sit in your discomfort with this, with these phrases.
A
Do the work.
B
Yeah, do the work. Right. I'm not gonn not going to explain things to you.
A
Good luck to them. I do think this is. Yeah, it's going to be tricky because they have learned this goes back to the problem of like they need their own Joe Rogan. Again, Joe Rogan is a liberal, but they think they need their own Joe Rogan. The thing they're missing is freedom to speak. They don't feel that. They feel that they must use these words because they will be absolutely crucified for not using them. And so to get away from them feels like the opposite of being a good Democrat. But they have to get on the other side of this vibe shift or they are in trouble.
B
Yeah. What's going on in Virginia? Tell us about this.
A
Oh, something, something good, Carol. This one's crazy. Actually, I checked this like four times to make sure it wasn't photoshopped or something. Indeed it was not. So the Arlington Public Schools had a school board meeting. Arlington Public Schools, along with several other Northern Virginia school districts have had all sorts of scandals in the past several months. The one in Arlington in particular is that the gender bathroom policies allowed a 50 something child sex offender to go into a women's facility in a local high school and expose himself. Is that bad to minors?
B
Yeah.
A
And so a bunch of parents are like, hey, what are you doing about this?
B
Right.
A
The local reporter who must be commended for staying on these stories is like, hey, what are you guys gonna do about this? And the Arlington Public Schools are basically like, nothing. We think our policy's Good. And it's on the opposite side of Trump. So we're fine.
B
Must be good. Yeah, yeah.
A
So there's a gathering at the school board meeting, and Winsome Sears, who is the Republican running for governor here, current lieutenant governor. Current lieutenant governor, shows up to speak at this meeting because Abigail Spanberger, the allegedly normie Democrat running for governor, can't muster any statements on any of the great giant controversies happening in Northern Virginia schools, especially on these gender policies, because she would have to get on the right side of the left, and that will make her not appealing to many in Virginia. So when some Sears shows up to speak at this meeting, she is notably an African American. She would be the first female black governor of the state of Virginia. She's a Marine. She's an immigrant. She has a great life story. She's speaking inside, outside a gathering of, as is often the case, boomer libs in Arlington, very, very affluent.
B
You see them everywhere.
A
You see them everywhere. And one of them is carrying a sign that says this. Hey, Winsome, if trans can't share your bathroom, then blacks can't share my water fountain.
B
She really thought that was a win when she came up with that sign. She was like, I got her.
A
I. I was joking. Like, can you imagine the husband and the family or friends who were like, girl, I can't leave with that. And then they just got steamrolled by her.
B
I say what I want. Yeah, exactly.
A
And there's a guy, Ben Tribbett, who's a trustworthy, smart Democrat who works specifically in Virginia politics, knows a lot about their activist base. He pegged that she was from this door knocking activist, far left group. And he said, look, wake up to the Karen problem that we do have. There's a lot of people smart. Who have gone around the bend. And he's like, the problem isn't necessarily that there was one person who used this sign. The problem is that no one in that group of Democrats could say, no, you can't do this.
B
This does not speak for us. Right. That's crazy. Meanwhile, Mark Brocklowski, vice chair of the Virginia Democrats, he thinks the sign might be the fault of the black lady, obviously.
A
Oh, the lady embracing Jim Crow in public who is white.
B
No, not her. It's not her fault.
A
No, it's not her fault.
B
He posted. What happened in Arlington wasn't just about a meeting. It was about the climate. Winsome Sears is creating one where contempt is currency and neighbors are turning against each other. How dare she? With her.
A
That's amazing.
B
Contempt is currency and Neighbors turning against each other, telling herself not to use the. The white people found.
A
Yeah. She did show up, you know, with her skin in Arlington. Right. One would think that that would go okay, but no, she disagrees with them. And what happens is if you are a minority or a woman or an LGBTQ person who disagrees with the left on any given issue, you are subject to basically just whatever they want to say to you.
B
Yeah.
A
And this one was woo. And I wonder, look, this is a race that is going to be a bit of an uphill battle for Winsome Sears and Spanberger. By not saying anything about these issues. She did denounce the sign. That's the one thing she's been specific about. She did come out and denounce the sign. She's still silent on all these other controversies. And she is giving Winsome Sears the exact same dynamic that made Youngkin governor in this series.
B
Love it. Yeah.
A
She is handing it right to. As are the public schools, which can't get sane.
B
Yeah. I mean, I hope that the voters do the right thing here and realize how bad of a governor she would be. But yeah, I like her giving that preview and kind of ducking all these issues that are important to parents. Meanwhile, in my home of hometown of New York City, Zoran Mamdani was like, at a street fair and somebody asked him if he wanted to bench press and he said yes. Now, let me tell you, if I were running for mayor and I was at a street fair and somebody asked me if I wanted to bench press, I would know that I don't know how to bench press.
A
Yeah.
B
How come he didn't know that? Like, what is it that happened here? He attempted to bench press and it failed completely. The guy holding the bench press had to kind of pull it up for him. What went wrong?
A
Pretty confused by this because there's not much on the bar.
B
So in like, like, he's clearly wasn't there for this. Like, it was just, you know, he wanted to seem spontaneous and cool and that did not work out.
A
Yeah. I think this is just straight up hubris.
B
Yeah.
A
I think he, he, he's very. He's quite capable as a campaigner. He clearly has charisma. He might think he can just do anything.
B
Yeah.
A
And he gets on this bench at like, whatever this Men's Day was. It was some sort of male focused celebration.
B
Is that even allowed? I didn't realize that was permitted.
A
Apparently.
B
Yeah.
A
His form is bad.
B
Poor. Yeah.
A
His spotter has to do most of the work for him. There's not much on the bar. For the uninitiated. The bar is £45. It looks like there's a total of a little over 100. Like 130, 135 on this, on him, total. That's not a lot for a 30 something man. And he struggles with it. And I just think if you're running for something, if you're a public figure, you gotta know beyond a shadow of a doubt what you're capable of before you put yourself in that position. Also in this case, there's a standing narrative that men of the Democratic party are effete, are liberal, are weak, do things like lift weights. So if that's the narrative, you do everything you can not to play into it. And he did the exact opposite.
B
Yeah, it was kind of embarrassing to watch, but I think you're.
A
It got a lot of attention too. I was like, Axios wrote it up.
B
They were like, yeah, I think hubris is the correct really thing there. As famous New Yorker Biggie Smalls said, never get high on your own supply. And I think that's exactly what Zoran Mamdani has done here.
A
Yeah. Like it's. And here's the thing about both the racist sign in Arlington or this event. The truth is that campaigns change in these weird symbolic moments. That doesn't mean that either one of these Democrats isn't going to win. Right. They can still win.
B
Yeah.
A
These are moments that stick in people's minds.
B
Right.
A
They go, oh wait, I thought that guy was like a dude's dude. I thought he was somebody we could mix it up with. He doesn't seem like that now. By the way, he was called Mom. Scrawny.
B
Uh huh.
A
That's a good name.
B
Yeah.
A
By Eric, who to his credit, put up a lot of weight or put up the same amount of weight plenty of times with no. With no help. Someone also noted, and I want to be bipartisan and fair, that Jamal Bowman, that's his name, right? The guy who was primaried out.
B
Yeah.
A
That he can bench 405. So I just want to point it out there. I want to be fair.
B
Good for him.
A
Good for him. Who is he now? He's not a congressman. That's why he got immediately stronger after he was not a Democratic congressman anymore.
B
Yeah.
A
Anyway, that's what I heard.
B
I could see that, you know, like the Democrats being like, hey, we have somebody who knows how to bench press.
A
Yeah. I don't think he's not in office right now, but we gotta go transfer. No, it doesn't but yeah, I think it's. I don't want to be unfair to people who, you know, not everybody benches, not everybody lifts. No. But know your limits before you put yourself in that position.
B
Absolutely. We'll be right back with stories you may have missed from this wild weekend. Welcome back on normally. And I have to start this one off because I think that this is just sort of interesting to me that this did not hit at all. Andrew Kaczynski, he posts under K file. He's a CNN senior politics reporter. He's known for digging up stories like really like people forgot or didn't know. And he posted over the weekend that Jelaine Maxwell was an honored guest at a prestigious Clinton event in 2013, years after abuse allegations against her were publicly known. Information we reviewed showed her on a list recommended for free access by either Bill or Hillary Clinton, per a source familiar. The weird thing about this is it did not resonate at all. He got 416 retweets on that and I just feel like that's nothing. Obviously the left doesn't want to highlight this because they're trying to tie Epstein to Donald Trump. But a lot of the Epstein obsessed people on the right didn't talk about this at all either. Now that might be because Donald Trump said, we're not talking about this anymore. Or my own personal conspiracy theory, because we're in a world of conspiracy theories with this Jeffrey Epstein thing altogether, is that a lot of the people that incessantly talk about Epstein on the right are just trying to hurt Trump with it also. So, yeah, take that with a grain of salt, but that's my take.
A
Well, and there's a third take which is that in any contest between Trump's base and Trump, when they disagree, Trump wins. Trump is going to win.
B
Yep.
A
You can take it to the bank like that. That is the lesson that everyone must learn. And like, sometimes I'm not going to like it and sometimes I am going to like it, but he's going to be the victor when it comes to a break between him and his base.
B
Yeah. Another story from this weekend that I felt was a little undercovered. Summer box office for Hollywood won't reach 4 billion, which is what they thought it would. It hit about 3.5, which is higher than I would expect, honestly, because I think all of these films are terrible and I, I just, I never go to the movies. I. Nothing looks even remotely good to me. But some of the things that they talked about being highly grossing are Lilo and Stitch, Jurassic World. Rebirth, how to Train youn Dragon, Another one. Superman Again. Again. These are all remakes or familiar things. Nothing new. I don't know. I. Do you watch movies?
A
I sort of. I do not go to the movie theater often. I would like to see Naked Gun, which is another remake, but I have heard good things about it. And I would like to see Naked Gun in the theater because it's good to support comedies in the theater because I want them to make more comedies. And I've heard it's quite good. But it's always like best laid plans, you know, like me getting out to a movie theater is not easy.
B
Right, right.
A
And here's the thing. My husband used to talk about this all during the pandemic. Once you have broken people's habits, the chances that they will revive them the same way that they had them low. So with eating it.
B
Yeah.
A
With going to church. Another bad one that went by the wayside during the pandemic. Going to theaters. The idea of taking our full family to a theater is expensive, tough. It could be fun, but it also could be a total dud, depending on what the movie does.
B
Right.
A
And so when I'm presented with the choice of theater versus my home. Yeah.
B
Easy call.
A
And I am very often, because they just allow me to stream it at home. I'm going to stick around the house.
B
Right. I can't even now that you mention it, and my kids are older, 15, 12 and 9. I don't think we've been to a movie, the Five of Us. I mean, definitely not since the pandemic.
A
So pre2020 is who they need to be reaching. And my family is who they need to be reaching. And by the way, they haven't figured out how to advertise to me. Instagram ads can be served to me for any other thing. Do I hear about children's movies? No, never.
B
I didn't even know Lilo and Stitch came out.
A
Neither did I. So I don't know how the big studios are missing how to advertise to people like me, but they should work on that.
B
Speaking of things that we haven't recovered from, you know, from the pandemic, the New York Times, as we're going to. As we're airing this, just published something that they're worried that all the people that left blue states now means the Democrats will have a harder time winning. And the next census, the Democrats are going to suffer some losses. Yeah. I don't feel bad for you at all.
A
No, this is. I remember I used to get very Frustrated because there wasn't an immediate political backlash for COVID policies. And I was like, are people just gonna memory hole this? Are they not gonna be mad about it? And there was a little in Virginia where Youngkin was elected. And then I think a larger backlash came in 2024. And it came in people willing to vote for Trump and moving away from the Democratic Party for all of the insanity that they had served up from 2020 to 2024. And this is like the real deal. This one is you drove a bunch of people out of your states with these horrible, dare I say, sometimes fascist and authoritarian policies. Yes, they left, they ain't coming back. And in many places like Florida, Georgia, they end up being converted to centrist or right leaning people who keep those states red. And then those red states get more Electoral College votes and more representation in Congress.
B
Or they just drove out the people who were voting Republican but still represented numbers for your Electoral College vote. They didn't consider that. You know, I, both Andrew Cuomo and Kathy Hochul made comments like, if you don't like it, move to Florida. And then a bunch of us did. And now they may lose electoral votes because of that. Like, you know, you're bad.
A
Meanwhile, by the way, I just want to note this because I forgot to note it in the first segment or in our second segment, but Mamdani is suggesting getting rid of misdemeanor charges entirely. So get ready, I guess, for another flood of folks to Florida, because I feel like this isn't going to go well in the city.
B
It's pretty bad. One of the things that the New York Times found in this thing, Nick Khorasaniti, who posted this, he does politics voting democracy reporter for the New York Times, he said that if a Democratic in 2032, a Democratic presidential candidate who wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada still loses the presidency. I mean, whoopsie, really, you know, maybe you should have thought of this as I can let you know from my new home of Florida.
A
Yeah, I mean, this is the blue wall gone, right? The blue wall has been weakened because Trump was able to make inroads places that other Republicans were not. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. And this is the, you know, just that on steroids, because he did it through hard work and through appealing to these folks. And then the Democrats helped him by sending a bunch of folks to the south to otherwise red states. And the past of the presidency is going to get much, much harder for Democrats in the future. And that's what a lot of this redistricting screaming is about.
B
Right?
A
It is. It is the death throes of people who are looking down the barrel at a 2030 census that's going to be very bad for them.
B
If only someone would have said something during the pandemic that all these things we're doing are going to have repercussions. Mary Catherine why didn't anybody tell them?
A
I know. If only.
B
I know. If only we had spoken up. Well, thank you for joining us on Normally. Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays and you can subscribe anywhere where you get your podcasts. Get in touch with us at normallythepod at gmail com. Thanks for listening. And when things get weird, act normally.
A
This is an I Heart podcast.
Episode Date: August 26, 2025
Hosts: Mary Katharine Ham & Carol Markowitz
Network: iHeartPodcasts
In this episode of "Normally", hosts Mary Katharine Ham and Carol Markowitz guide listeners through a lively, incisive, and often humorous exploration of current politics and culture. They analyze Donald Trump’s expected executive order on cashless bail, critique Democratic messaging and policies, highlight an ongoing shift within the Democratic Party regarding progressive language, and discuss controversies in education and pop culture—culminating with Hollywood's box office slump.
a. Epstein & Politicians
b. Hollywood’s Box Office Decline
c. Pandemic Migration & Political Repercussions
The episode blends sharp political analysis, contrarian takes, and personal anecdotes with playful banter. The hosts offer both direct critique and wry observations, skewering Democratic inconsistencies while sharing stories from their own lives and communities. The atmosphere is irreverent but anchored in current events, with a mix of humor and seriousness.
This episode captures a moment of political turning points: Trump’s law-and-order flex, Democrats’ struggles with their activist wing and language, cultural moments that shape campaigns, and the long-tail impact of pandemic-era policies. All delivered with the hosts’ signature mix of candor, wit, and cultural awareness.
(Summary omits ads, intros, outros, and non-content sections.)