← Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels
Iran Is Out of Control - Victor Davis Hanson
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
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Jillian Michaels
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Victor Davis Hanson
I'm very well. I'm doing very well, doing my best. I had a little misadventure, but things happen. I'm getting better.
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Jillian Michaels
I cannot tell you how much that thrills me to hear, first of all, because we need you now more than ever. And I'll be honest, I was hopeful going into this situation with Iran. I had thought maybe it would be quick. I had hoped that the Iranian people would be able to rise up against the irgc. And now given the state of the state, I'm feeling a bit foolish and a bit hopeless about all of this. So I thought maybe we could start, given everything that's going on with the fact that there's now a bipartisan war powers resolution passed by the House, what does this mean for Trump right now as he's attempting to negotiate this?
- [04:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I don't think it means a lot because really, you could argue that the 38 days of bombing are over with. And so the new then he had almost 50 days of negotiations. I think that was too long. But that's a hiatus. And now I think he's going to say, I'm starting if I have to, I'm starting over. And then I think he would direct everybody's attention to Bill Clinton, who bombed for 72 days straight in Serbia, or Barack Obama, who bombed for seven months straight in Libya and neither one requested nor was granted the War Powers Act. So I don't think that's the problem. And I think we have to be very careful not to take counsel of our fears because this is the first real major Middle east war where we don't have any troops on the ground. So we have no embedded reporters, we have no news. We have no idea the status of the Iranian economy. We have no idea what the people are thinking, but. And they want to shield us from that, which suggests that they suffered a lot of damage in that 38 days. So the options are ours right now. And there are two we can. If he wants to, I think he wants to negotiate a deal with them. It would be better than the Obama deal because he would not allow enrichment. And unlike Obama, who signed the deal and then they enriched, you know, they kept enriching just at a slower pace. He's already demonstrated to them he has no problem taking them out. So he did it once in June of last year. He did it 38 days. He's going to have a carrier group there. If people come back to him and say they're cheating, then he doesn't have to wage a war. He just has to hit them for three or four days, whack a mole as long as he needs to with, you know, mental, and never let them rearm their air defenses. Or he can do the long view and that would be my preference. He can say to them, we've done this for 50 days and I'm tired of it. So here's what I want. I don't want any more subsidies to Hezbollah, Hamas or the Houthis. I don't want your missile arsenal. You'll have to tell us and surrender. I don't want any nuclear enriched uranium in your possession. I also want the strait of Hormuz open. And I'm going to give you about a week. And then if they don't want to do it, then he and the Israelis can unleash a devastating war. And unlike the last time, they have a lot more targets. I think we forget sometimes, with all the hatred of Trump, that this was a very limited engagement. If you look at what Obama did, he hit the ports, he hit the dock works, he hit the media complex in Libya. And he had no idea who was who. And it was a complete mess. That was Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton and Samantha Powers who dreamed that up. He bombed them the last day he was in office. And in the case of Serbia, Milosevic didn't move. It was much longer than this bombing until Bill Clinton said, we're going to bomb all do use targets. And he bombed every bridge on the Danube cut off Belgrade. They still didn't move. And then he hit all of the electrical plants almost every day. They did not have power. And that was with a population that was very supportive of Milosevic. As to your other point, I don't think you should be disappointed. About the Iranian people. When the Berlin Wall fell, that was the disgrace and the end really of the Soviet Union imposition on Eastern Europe. But there wasn't a spontaneous uprising. In most of those Warsaw Pact, it took two, three, four months. In the case of the Soviet Union, it took two years. That regime now has lost a half a trillion dollars over 50 years of nuclear, industrial and military investment. And they're broke and they're losing about $400 million in output. They're sneaking some stuff in through the Caspian Sea and by rail to China. But, and they've lost all of their overseas. Their, their accounts are frozen. As long as he keeps that up until they meet the concessions, it's going to be very hard for that regime either to rearm, but especially to tell the Iranian people who are waiting in gas lines, we know about three or four miles long in some cases and there's a shortage of food, to tell them, well, you know what? When we get free of sanctions, we're going to start giving $50 billion a year to the Houthis, the Hamas people, and the Hezbollah and not to you. And then we're going to rebuild all of our military stuff, but not for you. And that's where the tension will start. Because once we're away and they can't blame the bogeyman, America, and we let them stew in their own Jews, I think that's what the administration will do. They're going to have to make some tough choices how they're going to spend limited funds and if they start rearming, it's going to be at the expense of the people. And so I'm not, I'm not. I was surprised that Condoleezza Rice yesterday, our director at Hoover, wrote a very positive. And she's been a very, you know, fair minded, but a critic of the Trump administration. So it wasn't like a MAGA person writing. And she said, we've done more damage to that regime than anybody has in 50 years. We have the ability to do it any day we want, and all we have to do is remain confident. The only thing that's different about this incursion is I have never seen opposition like this. There wasn't this opposition to Clinton. There wasn't this opposition to Obama. There wasn't this opposition to the first Gulf War. There was something about Trump and coupled with the midterm elections that have really, I, I didn't think I'd see people on the left and some on the right who are actively hoping that we're going to lose to teach us a lesson or something and we're not going to lose.
- [11:10]
Jillian Michaels
Yes.
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Victor Davis Hanson
So I, I'm not, I'm not as pessimistic. And the reason that, no, there was a reason why seven prior presidents never went into Iran because it had this terrible reputation. 93 million people, the biggest country in the Middle East. It bragged that it was a suicidal nation, that Israel was a one bomb state. It wanted to reclaim the Shia mantle of Islamic supremacy. It wanted to make a, an axis from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to Gaza to Yemen. And everybody said these people are crazy. They're a big thing. They were willing to fight Saddam for eight years, just leave them alone. And that was our presidents. I mean they killed probably not just 500 as reported, but more accurately 1500Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq through shaped charges. They blew up our barracks and embassy in Beirut, they blew up two African embassies. They were behind assassination plans. They wanted to kill Trump. They tried to kill the Saudi ambassador. So they're very bad people. And everybody let that go. And they got, and Obama really, if you think about it and you look at the conditions and the protocols of that Iran deal and what he said about it and if he was very transparent, he wouldn't have had to airlift $400 million on a pallets by night, he would have done it during the day. So I'm not as pessimistic. So the future I think will be that he will, he's negotiating with him. I don't believe anything they say. So at some point he's going to have to use force, in my view, but maybe not. And he's going to see what they're going to do and they're going to, and they're in bad shape and they, they're very desperate for a deal because their economy is imploding. He still has, today is June 4th. We've got exactly five months for the midterm and I don't remember anything in the news, to tell you the truth. In January of this year, five months ago, I can't remember anything. So if he can get a deal and, or he has to force a deal in a week or two of bombing, I think he's got plenty of time. There's 200 tankers out sitting in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Gulf and they've got a million to 2 million barrels each. That's about five days supply of the world's oil. And that's gonna, and that's gonna have to be going, that'll go on the Market. Right away, Russia's sneaking in another 300,000 barrels. Venezuela's up to 300,000 barrels. We've gone up about 500,000. So there's going to be plenty of oil. It's just psychological now that they don't know what's happening. A lot of people are speculating, but I think there's a very good chance that he can resolve it in two or three weeks. I wish we hadn't spent 50 days of negotiation, though, that we had given them a deadline, say two weeks after the bombing started.
- [14:10]
Jillian Michaels
I want to play devil's advocate, because anytime I try to defend this, and I say, like, we've only lost 14 people, which is terrible, but the regime has killed hundreds of Americans over the last 47 years. There's no boots on the ground. They had enriched uranium. I go through all of this, and then this is what I get back. Are you kidding me? This is a disaster. And he's shown Iran how much power they have, and now they know that they can close the street at any time and cripple the global economy. And now they're gonna do the. They can't. But aren't they, though? So, okay, they can. I see. Now they're gonna act.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, they're doing it because they decided not. They're doing it because Trump wants to negotiate with him, and he doesn't want to kill them or destroy them because he thinks there's going to be a popular uprising. But we have the power tomorrow to bomb the entire corridor opposite the the Strait and eliminate what Mosquito Navy, they have. We have the ability to take out all the dockworks, everything on Carg island without even hitting the fuel. And they may have 500 to 800 missiles or something like that. We can find them. It might be rough for a day or two, but we can destroy their ability to do anything in the Gulf. But that is a kinetic action, and he doesn't want to do that right now, but we have the power to do that. And you talk to people in the military and they say they've got such great satellite reconnaissance. They know exactly what has been taken out and where the Iranians are all scrambling to rebuild and where their intelligence said there's stuff to do. And they're. And they're going to do it if they have to go back in. And the Israelis are begging to get back in so we can do that. When people say that, it's only because, you know what would happen if Iran let in embedded reporters, say CNN and ms, they would go in there and they would walk around Tehran and they would see destroyed compounds of all the military targets and they would say, this is really horrible what we did. We have been absolutely devastating. These people are in line. They don't have any gas, they don't have any food. Why did we do this? And now they're saying we didn't do anything to them. They're strong, they won, but they don't have any credibility. They have the ability to frighten people and to create this sense that we haven't done anything. But you can't negotiate with Iran unless you are willing to do damage to them. When they break rules and obligations and they lie and no president's been ever able to do that. They lied to Jimmy Carter about the hostages every single day. Even Reagan when the Iran blew up our embassy and they blew up 242 Marines, he didn't do anything to Iran. He said he was going to take the USS New Jersey and bomb the Beka Valley where Hezbollah was. But Hezbollah was ordered to do that by Iran. And George W. Bush, they went to him again and again and they said, they're supplying all of the sons of Saddam and ISIS and all the resistance, Al Qaeda, can't you bomb or. And he said, I'm not going to get, I'm not going to get involved with Iran. I can assure you that. The same thing with Biden. The Iranian surrogates hit over 200 of our installations during Biden and we didn't do anything to it. We didn't do much to the Houthis that were on their orders to hit shipping. So this was the first president said, I don't really care what you say about Rand, I'm going to do something. And it's very important though, at this critical juncture that he not engage in another 30 or 40 days of off and on negotiations because he has the credibility, our credibility with China, with Russia, that tenuous situation in Venezuela with what the Cubans do, it can go either way. If he gives him a deadline and, and then he hits them very, very hard, he still has time for, to recover and get gas before, before the midterm. But, and that will make things much easier. But if he keeps negotiating and they keep bragging they survived and they're winning and the opposition keeps growing and we talk, talk, talk, we're going to have a lot of emboldened enemies that say, wow, we were really scared and we thought, you know, no one would ever take on Iran. But they just kind of quit and let Iran do what they want. So it's, this is a very critical time.
- [18:54]
Jillian Michaels
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, that's an untenable. That's untenable.
- [20:46]
Jillian Michaels
Sorry, go ahead.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. So I don't think we're going to accept that. I think what's happened is while we were negotiating, Hezbollah regrouped and they started using more sophisticated weapons, especially drones that did not rely on Internet connections or satellite. They had actual fiber cables, kind of a retro. And they have been killing or wounding two or three Israelis, as you know, every day. And the way to stop that. And they have moved because of the sanitary corridor Israel's made. They have moved a lot of their drones and weaponry, as they always do, into Shia neighborhoods in Beirut. And Netanyahu wants to hit those, which would be very logical to do. And then Iran says to Trump, because they have no cards to play. But Hezbollah, and Hezbollah is very weak right now. Israel could destroy them if we let them do it, at least for a generation. But Trump thinks that he doesn't want to get back into a kinetic war with Iran. So Iran says this is part of the deal. And Trump says, no, it isn't. And then he says to Bibi, well, we're going to silence Hezbollah, but you can't hit any party in Beirut because it's going to play bad in the news. And Bibi says, how am I, how am I going to stop these people then? And, oh, I'll stop them. And he won't be able to stop them, I don't think, because that's about the only card that Iran has to play, because the Hamas is basically finished. And the Houthis have been told by the Israelis and Americans, if you start firing on ships, we're going to take out your whole grid, all of your infrastructure, and you're going to be back in the medieval age. So they've been very quiet. They send a missile every once in a while, but it's Hezbollah that Iran is clinging to. And I really do think that he should let the Israelis take care of him. And I don't know if he will or not, but he's under. I think we also have to see he's in a 360 degree centrifugal opposition. So he's got the left. And it's not just the left, it's the loony left who is actually rooting for Iran and fall. And then he's got maybe 30 or 40 representatives and 10 or 12 Republican senators that are in purple districts or they're in red districts that may. And they're going to him every day and say, if you don't get the price of gas down, I'm going to lose. If I lose, you're going to be impeached in the House. And then he's got the media, of course, then he's got the Europeans who are delighted about all this because they wanted to see Trump taken down. And they, they could be helping. They could have come to us instead of just talking about it and said, lead us into the Persian Gulf and we will patrol it. But they haven't done that. In fact, they've opposed everything about it. But all of that being said, if you take a deep breath and look at the geostrategic map, everything is much better than it was a year ago. China is in a big mess. It has to import 11 million barrels of oil a day. And it's lost its cheap, underhanded way of buying sanctioned oil from Venezuela. It's having a great difficulty of getting it from Iran. And it's desperate because it's going to have to. And the price is very high. And that's hurting them financially. And the tariffs have hurt them and they've been humiliated. They gave Iran the most, they said they were the most sophisticated air defenses in the world. And the Israelis took them out in about 48 hours and they tried to rebuild them and they have done nothing. They shot down maybe one plane. And so all of their weaponry has been shown to be less than, less than mediocre. Russia, which we were very worried about, everybody thought we'd be in a deadly Ukraine is winning that war and I don't think they'll be able to take back all the territory. But Russia's lost probably a million people. It's in dire straits right now. The Europeans think that they're coming out very good, but they're going to be very surprised. The Spanish, the French, the Italians, the British, all they had to do is say, okay, Americans, you've helped us with the Falklands, you helped us with Milosevic, you join the coalition of the willing against Libya, you help us in Chad, the French. So we're going to help you with all the bases, but we're going to keep quiet about it because we have a lot of Muslim voters and da, da, da. But they couldn't even do that. They had to mouth off and performance art and grandstand. And they're going to get really surprised because I think this administration has already told them that you don't understand. We are giving you reconnaissance. And for all the criticism of Zelensky, this administration has given more latitude to the Ukrainians than Biden did. He Trump said, if you want to hit targets deep into Russia, go ahead. Biden wouldn't let him do that. And he Obama wouldn't send them offensive weapons. Biden put a hold on him as soon as Trump came in the first term, in the second, no holds, give him any offensive weapons. He, he complained about it, he bitched about it, but it's what he has done. And he told them not to buy Nord Stream oil. He got out of a missile deal, he killed the Wagner group. He's done a lot to hurt Putin and that gets lost. So geostrategically our main enemies are weakened and the Europeans have shown to be absolutely dependent. When one missile went toward Akrotiri and Cyprus, Britain announced it was going to send a ship, HMS Dragon on Friday it was supposed to leave. They said we can't leave because it's union hours over the weekend and we can't get it serviced. It took them 21 days for one ship. They have 45 Admirals and they don't have 45 capital ships anymore in the Royal Navy, Israel has more fighter aircraft, about 320, than the fighter aircraft of Britain, Germany and France combined. So does the uae. So they have been shown to be really weak and they can't do anything and they're kind of just gnashing their teeth. They want to be a big critic of Trump but they're afraid he won't help them in NATO. And so they're just loud and impotent. And so you look at the Middle east itself, most of the missiles that are being knocked down in UAE and places are by us and the Israelis. I never thought I would live to see this strident Gulf Council of six rich Arab countries asking the Israelis for expertise. And now we hear that they have more planes than the Israelis. They have about 600. All of those six nations together, sophisticated aircraft. Some of them are being flown by I think foreign pilots, ours and European, maybe retired pilots. But I never thought they had been flying missions into Iran to attack a fellow Muslim country, often in conjunction with the Israelis and us. That's just incredible to think that the Gulf states, for all the anti Semitic, all the Jew hatred, all the hatred of Israel, has come to the conclusion that a fellow Muslim country across the Gulf is an existential enemy. And for all of its hatred of Israel, it knows Israel is never going to attack them and they would see it more as an ally than an enemy. That's quite new. So the world is in flux right now and it can go very well in our direction if we just don't. We're not captives of our fears. And we continue to tell the Iranians we're willing to negotiate. We've done it for 50 days, but you've run out of time and we're sorry. But if you provoke us and you do not give us these, meet our demands, you're not going to have a modern country. And I want to warn you what we're going to do to you. And I think a lot of the world would like us to see it see us do that too. The Europeans, reporters and people off the record would like us to finish the job and so would the Arab world. So I don't think Iran, nobody is rallying to the Iranians flag except the American left. I can't think of anybody who's allied to him if you can.
- [29:40]
Jillian Michaels
That is, no, that is absolutely mind boggling. By the way, Anna Kasparian recently said she wished that Iran had nuclear weapons. And then Megyn Kelly just went on Sean Ryan. Yes. And said, Anna Kasparian is absolutely brilliant. And I was like, all right, I'm on Mars, I must have landed on Mars because this is just nonsensical to me. I wanna circle back to the Gulf countries for just a moment.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yes.
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Jillian Michaels
Okay. Why is Iran striking Kuwait? Is that to send a message like, hey, you cooperate with the United States and we're going after you. But then does that not do exactly what you just said and get the Gulf states to eventually take a fully unified position with the US And Israel? It seems counterintuitive.
- [30:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
They are, you got to remember how they look at the world. They want Iran, the regime in Iran destroyed. They have been begging the United States to destroy it, but they didn't want to participate in it because they have, they have Shia populations in their kingdoms and they also, it doesn't channel well in the Arab world that you're fighting with Israelis to destroy. So they wanted us to do it. And they probably, we will find out later. But some of them probably flew, as I said, missions against them. But when the negotiations started, they went to our people and said, you let, you've got, you have a wounded bear and you're going to go home and leave him and he's going to come out of the cave right next to us. So you either got to finish the job or we're going to start, you know, triangulating. And that's where we are now. So they secretly want us to either finish the job or allow them stealthily to calm down Iran. So what are they afraid of? They've got vast water distillation plants, they've got oil refineries, they've got vulnerable and they believe that Iran out of their six or seven thousand long range missiles has 500 to 600 left and drones and they feel has happened at Kuwait with the airport, that despite all the Israeli and American defenses, it's very hard to stop every single missile and they don't want to be, you know, hit. And that's Iran's only car. They have two cards left. Notice they're not really attacking the Israelis because that's not going to do them as much. Israel has nothing to do with the goal, the goal, the Strait of Hormuz or anything. And they know if they start hitting Israel, Israel's is going to reply to them. And the, and the UAE and the Saudis will probably not reply to them even though they have more aircraft now. They have, As I said, 600 combat aircraft and Iran has none. And they have no air defenses. But they're not the type of people that want to sustain a war against, I guess, Iran. And so that's their only car. Iran has two cards left. It's, we're going to harass ships in the strait and we have secret caches of missiles everywhere. You won't be able to get everyone. And they're all going to go at the oil producing nation. And our, you know, our stance is, okay, well then let's not. We have stuff too. You're going to go broke every day and in a month or two you would be completely broke and we can destroy you. And that's where we are now. And Trump feels that the longer he talks, the worse off Iran is and is far worse off than we are. That's why he keeps saying he doesn't care about the midterms, he doesn't care about the gas. But he does care and I think he has the ability to accelerate the process. He doesn't have to go into a full stage war. He just said, oh, you hit Kuwait. Then I took out the, a couple of main bridges in your house. Oh, you, you hit the uae. Oh, I decided to take out all the dock works at car guy. We can go on like this forever if you want to do this. That's what he can tell them. And I think they will, they will stop. And if they don't, he can do it for a week or two and still have time to settle the markets.
- [33:59]
Jillian Michaels
He doesn't need to put boots on the ground to finish that.
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Victor Davis Hanson
I don't think so. I don't, I don't think he does. I think he can, I think he can leave the oil stored for the, if the people ever take over. And he can make Carg island, where 90% inoperable by making it impossible to load oil off to a ship. If we have a piece and say a year from now, that would take him two or three years. He can do that without boots on the ground. I think wherever the enrichment is, they feel that it's in Pike Mountain or areas they can bomb it with. They can keep bombing as they did in June last year. They can do that three or four more times if they have to. And I think that's something that we don't have a good record of having. We have a good record with reconnaissance and things like that, killing bin Laden, but going on the ground into the Middle east is something that pushes Trump. You know, not that it's a forever or endless war, but it pushes him into the territory where the base will go ballistic. They're all. Some of them are like Megan and Tucker, but that's kind of a red line, I think you don't want to put troops. We fight very well with firepower and Western technology and air and sea power, and we fight very well in the first Gulf War with the conventional land forces, and we fight very well in counterinsurgency. But it's costly, so we don't want our soldiers going door to door in a version of Fallujah or, or Helmand province. And we'll take a lot of casualties, and we can avoid that. I think, especially if the population. I think the administration really does believe that once the whole thing is done, there's going to be a lot of economic damage and the regime is going, as I said, going to want to invest what scarce resources they have to rearm or they're going to lose credibility and the people are going to get even poorer and poor and there's going to be a lot of turmoil, a lot of turmoil. And we don't know. Part of the problem is, as everybody says, we don't know who. I think we're watching a. We're either watching a genuine split in the civilian elected leadership, elected in quotes, and the Revolutionary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the military, or they're playing bad cop, good cop. You know, the elected people say, well, let's negotiate. Oh, I didn't know that. Why did they hit. I told them not to hit Kuwait or something like that, but whatever it is, we can't worry about. You can't negotiate and have them hit something every other day. It's going to ruin the credibility of the United States. So I think that's. I think we're in a position where we can resolve it in a week or two of heavy kinetic action. If they don't want to seriously negotiate, and I don't think they do.
- [37:01]
Jillian Michaels
What do civilian casualties in Iran look like if we engage in that? And do you think that's the reason that we haven't yet? Because people just can't tolerate the idea of that?
- [37:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I don't think they even know, because we have no idea. People have said there's been a thousand or two thousand civilians, but we don't know to what degree. The Iranians are counting bureaucrats that work in the war Ministry or for the as civilians, but there would be casualties. And we don't know whether the. The civilians have. Would consider that a way to rally for the mother Iran or they would get. We have no idea. But there's a way to do it to hurt the regime without a lot of casualties. You can, I mean they, they put human shields on the bridges, but you can't put human shields on there every single hour. So we could hit bridges, we could hit power plants, we could do a lot of things. But the reason we haven't is unlike Serbia where the population was on the side of the Milosevic and unlike Libya where we had no idea who was who. Obama did not hit the. He hit a lot of civilian targets, but he didn't hit the power plants very much, if at all. But we can do that because it would hurt the regime. But the reason again why we don't is we feel that we'd like to decapitate a regime because the people are on our side, the majority of them. But that's. And that wasn't really true. They hated Saddam, but I think they hated us as much as they did Saddam. They hated the Taliban, but they didn't like us either. And Libya, we didn't know who. What we were doing. Milosevic, the people hated us and they liked Milosev. Here I think the people want to become western and they don't like the regime. So I think they don't. They don't want to spoil that by, you know, killing civilians. It's a very complicated matter, but it would be very much more complicated if we put ground troops in there. And it'll be politically untenable for him domestically if he does that.
- [39:17]
Jillian Michaels
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- [40:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
The only worry we have about oil is we're the largest producer of oil and natural gas in the history of civilization. We're producing more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia. More oil and gas in Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. The problem, the only problem we have is you talk to people, they keep saying every time we use the word peak oil, some fracker finds a new way to get more efficient in a new field. But at some point we are producing almost 14 million barrels. I think we're close to 14 million barrels a day. And if you do the math, at a hundred dollars a barrel, I mean, we're making a fortune on this. And I think if, to answer your question, if, if they either concede to the demands and we have to, you know, once in a while knock their heads in with an airstrike or they don't negotiate and he makes it impossible for them to make war against anybody. And say in two weeks he said, I've done enough with these people. I'm going to punish them, I'm going to take away their ability to make war and bombs them for two weeks and then goes home. Whatever he does, but he resolves it. There's going to be a lot of favorable things for the United States and a lot of favorable things. Most of these countries, whether the Saudis or the UAE are finding ways to expand their pipeline delivery systems outside the gall of the Persian Gulf or into the Red Sea or by rail. It's going to be a less important place. And the Chinese or the Arabs world is not happy with the Chinese. For them arming Iran. They're not happy with the Russians who have been arming Iran. Russia's lost Syria, he's lost Iran, it's lost Venezuela, as I said. And the Chinese, their him is their western hemisphere gambit. They got kicked out of Venezuela and they basically are leaving or they're not going to be very prominent in Panama. So all this was completely a Reversal of what we saw the prior four years. Nobody talks about that. But Biden basically allowed a Chinese company to run the entry and exit of Panama and put such pressure on Panama that they were violating our treaty and even suggesting that our ship should wait. And they were calling the shots. Trump stopped all that. He stopped the Venezuela import of, you know, three or four hundred thousand, most of them criminals, into the United States. He stopped drugs coming here. He stopped their disruption and efforts to overthrow less, you know, I mean, conservative governments in Latin America. He's done a lot, and I don't think we can get accurate information from the left. Are the new. I don't know what you call them. Maybe you have a better word for them, the apostate. Right. Or. Yeah, I don't know what. I don't understand that. I know all those people pretty well. And I was very surprised and saddened because I didn't understand the theory of, you know, Candace is a different story. Or Fuentes. But Tucker and Steve Bannon and Megan and all that group, they, they, they agree with 85% of it. If you ask them, do you want the border closed? Yes. Would you ask them, are you suspicious of biological males and women? Yes. Would you. Are you happy that we're trying to, you know, lower the crime rate in Washington and we've deterred it and it's the lowest crime rate, really, in 40 years. And. Yes. Are you happy that we are deregulating. We had a tax cut. Yes. I can't find any major point of difference other than now. They're very critical of Trump's uncouth ways, but that hasn't changed in nine years. But now they're, they're remarking on it, except this one issue, and that is, I guess, Israel and the Iran war. And I don't understand that at all. Because if you look at people who have harmed the interests of the United states the last 50 years, and who was responsible for 911 and Fort Hood and San Bernardino and the Boston Marathon. I could go on. It's not Israel and who. I had an interchange with Piers Morgan. I asked him when he and his other ally on the. His show said that Israel was not a consensual society, it wasn't a democracy, and they were. This man was speaking from the uae, and I said, if you really believe that, I'll have a wager for you. Go into Israel and say that you want to put a Christian on your podcast and then say you don't like the Netanyahu government and you'll probably be okay, do the same thing and put a Muslim on who said, I don't like Islam anymore, I'm converting to Christianity. And by the way, the royal family, whether the Kuwaiti, the Saudi or the, I don't like the, and I want to overthrow the government or something and you'll be in jail for the rest of your life if you survive. And then peers interjected and said, well, I broadcast all over the Middle East. I'm treated very well. I said, you're treated very well because you're a celebrity and you mouth what they want to hear. But why don't you put on Muslim apostates that want to convert or fierce critics of the royal family in which country you're broadcasting. And I don't think you'll be invited back, if you even survive. So I don't understand that. Seems very logical to say that. And yet they keep saying these things. And I, I don't understand it other than just to finish. I, I think a lot of what's going on is there's been a rapid change in demographics in the United States. The Jewish community is, is secularized, it's integrated. There's a lot fewer observant Jews or even people who identify with Israel. Used to be 6 million. I would imagine there's only 2 or 3 million observant Jews who really feel strongly about Israel or even non observant that feel strong about Israel. There's about 5 million Muslims who are in enclaves in Michigan and New Jersey and elsewhere, and they feel very strongly about Gaza. Israel is no longer a small power that has been attacked by everybody. It's the technological economic powerhouse of the Middle east with its scanty 11 million people. And if it fights a war, it's going to win a war. So they feel it's an overdog. And I think a lot of people on the right also feel that they wanted to come in out of the cold, so to speak. They, when you support Trump or you support Israel, you get so much criticism that they find crevices or apertures where they can go in and then be championed by the left. It's amazing when, you know, Tucker says he wants Graham Platner, he wants to interview him. Or if you look at some of the guests that go on, they're, they're, they're, they're, they have a lot of left wing guests, they bring in Fuentes and stuff. And I suppose the left likes that. And so, you know, then they can be kind of statesmanlike. I have friends on the right, I have friends on the left. But it's very bizarre that you would refute everything that you tried to advocate that other people agree with, agree with you, and then you would reject all of that over one issue. The only other thing I can think of which I think is also a factor, and maybe you would agree with me or not. Trump is a sort of president that can be beguiling. So it seems if you're a podcaster or opinion maker or columnist or pundit, it's very important if you favor Trump, not to be too intimate with him by that, but I mean, don't hang out at Mar a Lago, don't get on Air Force One, don't call him all the time. If he wants to call you, fine. But that sense of intimacy can lead to division, visions of grandeur that you're, that you can influence Trump. Nobody can influence Trump. So when all this started, it leaked out that Tucker visited Trump and Megan told him talk to him, and they were very upset that Trump didn't listen to them. But what were they thinking? I mean, he's called me a few times, but never in my right mind would I ever call him and tell him, don't do this or do this. And I think he expects that. He calls people for advice or to chat. But you don't call him is what I'm trying to say. And you don't try to tell everybody you know him and you don't get on Air Force One and you don't magnify your sense of importance with him. And then when that, that illusion is shattered, you get very hurt. He betrayed me. I was on Air Force One. And so part of it is, I think people tried to be too intimate and tried to suggest a level of influence that was impossible to achieve. They didn't have it. Nobody has it.
- [50:34]
Jillian Michaels
That's very interesting. I, I see your perspective, to be dead honest with you. I think huge checks have been written. That's what I think. I think for a 180 of this nature so quickly in so many different areas, I think huge, gigantic checks have been written. And that's what I think.
- [51:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think there's evidence that Erdogan in particular that Turkish foundations in front have for years channeled money from the Gulf into influence influencers. And I, I, and you know, $50 billion has gone from the Gulf the last 40 years into middle east programs. So I know that is very influential. When I was a graduate student, the Middle east departments were. One guy was an expert in Israel, one guy was an expert In Arab. That was it. No endowed chairs. It wasn't 15 professors. All that weren't really professors. They were all pro Palestinian activists. And that's what it is. And that. And it's in the general education curriculum. So that the money from the Gulf has had enormous influence. Immigration has had enormous influence. And the idea that Israel is very powerful and very successful. Anybody who goes to Israel and will say, walks the streets of Haifa, then flies back to San Francisco would be amazed that that city grew out of nothing. It was. It was a provincial city for hundreds of years. But, I mean, it's safe, it's clean, it works, it's beautiful. And so it's a very confident, ascendant country. And that bothers a lot of people in the United States. They magnify the influence of Israel. Oh, look at Israel now. They're. It's a country of 11 million people. It's trying to survive, you know, every single day. Ralph and Johnny, reportedly, I think it was an accurate report, said that Israel was a one bomb state. And he went on and said it was kind of good. Israel had half the Jews in the world in one place because they were easy to liquidate. So, oh, my goodness. Yeah, I don't. I'm very confident that if Trump's got very. He's a very bright guy. He's got bright people around him. And I think he will become exasperated.
- [53:03]
Jillian Michaels
Don't worry.
- [53:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
You'll either cut a deal.
- [53:05]
Jillian Michaels
Be patient, as you're saying, okay? Because.
- [53:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Be patient. Up to a point, though. You have a good point. You have to be patient. But you've been patient, and I've been patient for 50 days. And now the time is a constraint. And I think they would tell us, you don't have information. This regime is about ready to fall. And I would say, I thought. I've been hearing that. But this regime is a lot more elastic because they can live on almost nothing. So why don't you just give them a deadline and tell them what you want and when they don't do it, make it impossible for them to make war for the next 10 years or eight years, and then hope that we don't have another Obama administration in power that, you know, sends them money at night or sanction relief, keep the sanctions on them. That'll be costly, too.
- [54:03]
Jillian Michaels
I cannot thank you enough for your time. You've helped me a ton because it got to a point where I literally could not make heads or tails of the situation.
- [54:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's hard to.
- [54:13]
Jillian Michaels
It's hard. It is. Especially when you know, like, I was just talking to Bhatia Angar Sargon, and she's like, I have to admit I'm wrong. It's the right thing to do. And I thought, are we sure it's only been like 100 days? It's been. Am I losing my mind? It's 14 service people. There's no boots on the ground. They do have enriched uranium enough for 11 bombs. It's not like Iraq, where there aren't weapons of mass destruction. They are the number one funders of terror proxies around the world. Like, am I nuts? But when you know, someone like Bhati, who I, I hold in high regard, says that to me, I'm like, all right, I'm losing it. I'm losing my mind. I must be totally wrong.
- [54:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, that, that, that all what you said is absolutely accurate. I, I go back not because she's the director of where I work, but because I've known her a long time, Condoleezza Rice, and she has, if you go back to her op eds, she has not been a big supporter of Donald Trump. She's been a critic, and yet she's very empirical. So today she wrote yesterday, it's there today, a very detailed analysis. Some of it was a little critical, along the lines that we talked to, that if you don't give them away, don't give away the story to them in negotiations and you might have to bomb them. But it was an analysis of how much better things are for us vis a vis Iran and for the world vis a vis in Iran after what we did Visa, before what we did in a cost of benefit analysis. And that's coming from someone who has no nothing to gain from the Trump administration. I mean, she doesn't call up Donald Trump and say, put my friend on this board or that, you know what I mean? She's cordial, but she has been. She's a mainstream kind of Romney Republican. And she's. But she's intellectually honest and she wrote a very great article and that took a lot of courage because she works at Stanford university, which is 99%, as you know, left wing and even the Hoover Institution has a lot of critics of Trump and she's a director of it. So I would say that a minority of our fellows would agree with her. But so that, so I. And everything argument is sort of what we've been talking about. And there's a lot of people like her that are looking at it empirically, not for, I mean, the never Trumpers and the New Apostate right. And all of the left, the anti Semitic left, the pro Islamic left, the Democratic Party, they all have these access to grind. But they didn't say anything about Obama when he bombed for seven months. He killed a lot of civilians too. I was in Libya and I had a ruptured appendix and almost died in 2006. And a very heroic Egyptian doctor came out in his pajamas. He'd never taken a ruptured appendix out. He said, you're going to die in about six hours. You've had this. And I'll operate at this clinic, a Red Crescent clinic. And he did. And that clinic was blown up during the bombing. And he was blown. I never heard from him after the bombing, so I assume he was killed. So that was a misadventure because there was no agenda other than the so called Arab Spring. They didn't know what they were doing. They bombed, they destroyed the country. And it was Barack Obama or the 500 assassination Predator assassinations we took out. They weren't nice people, but they were U.S. citizens, three of them. He killed three citizens. Then he joked about at the White House correspondence dinner, he said, if you want to date my daughter, be careful. It's called Predator. And you know, all of the. You got to. I think we have to realize that the media, the academic world, the corporate world, Hollywood, the entertainment world, they have so ginned up in this echo chamber that everything Trump does is terrible that they make it impossible for a lot of people who don't agree with him to look at it empirically because they don't want to be attacked. Attacked. I had a friend that said to me, you know, why do you write this stuff? One of my friends that, where I work, why do you write this stuff when you don't have to do it? And then they just attack you? And then you write a book about history that has nothing to do with it. And some guy calls up a journal or a podcast so he can attack you about your book and say it's lousy, even though he's never read it. It has nothing to do with what you're writing. But he hates you because you said something nice about Trump. And that's a powerful deterrent to a lot of people. And they, they kind of get tired of it after a while, I guess, and they want to make peace with the Trump hating right and left.
- [59:10]
Jillian Michaels
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- [60:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
But if you look at it empirically, they're relentless. Yeah, they are relentless.
- [60:25]
Jillian Michaels
They call you neocon, bloodthirsty, genocidal Zionist. I recently had this conversation where I'm like, I'm reserving judgment on the situation. I'm undecided. Yet it remains to be seen, will there be a deal? What will the deal consist of? And it's like, oh, you're a neocon. Like I knew, gone. I'm a classic liberal. What are you talking about? You wanted Iraq. I'm like, I'm not even old enough to have wanted Iraq, actually. It's just unhinged, boss. And it does.
- [61:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
I can't tell you how many people. I live on a farm and I in a very small town and I anybody that I knew was Jewish until I went to UC Santa Cruz, kind of a wild campus in 1971. And I have people who write me, well, you and you Jews and your Jewish friends, you know, or why don't you just come out and tell you. And I'm thinking Hanson, S O N Scandinavian name or whatever. But you know what I mean, they all have to find some motive to explain why. It's just obvious. I mean, John Fetterman, of all people, he can see it. Israel is the only democratic, consensual society, like all societies, that makes mistakes. But it's Self corrective, it's self critical. It has a multi party system. It has a judiciary, executive, legislative branch. It guarantees rights. 2 million Arabs live there. They have mosque everywhere. The correspondent antithesis. Anywhere in the Middle East. If you were 2 million Christians in Saudi, you would be in a camp if you tried to open a church. So they all know that. But I think a lot of it is envy too. They look at Israel and it's so successful and so powerful and a lot of it, ancient anti Semitism is based also on a lot of envy. The bad kind of ending, not the envy of emulation. You know, if it's somebody you know who's, you know, like Elon Musk, who's a brilliant guy and they see all these one you say, I like to be like Elon Musk, he's doing so well. But it was a Jewish guy. It says, how do you get that? Who does he know? What's the, what's the deal? What's under the table? So that's part of it, a lot of it, the anti Semitism. And that's kind of scary because historically once it starts, it's kind of like a virus, you know, it infects a lot of people and they feel that it's a code, it's, it's a way to be accepted. And, and that's what's scary right now. If you're on campus, I don't know how many parents I've talked to that are not sending their kids that got into Harvard or Yale or Princeton or Stanford and they're sending them to Texas A and M or places in the South. Isn't that a commentary where the Ku Klux Klan was that now the south would be considered more. Yes, that's a commentary on the bankruptcy of the coastal elite in New England and Northern California where you would utter send your child to the ancient. The old south, the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. Because that region has evolved more tolerantly and progressively than the left, which is now kind of flipped. And it's more like the anti Semitic clan than the south is.
- [63:53]
Jillian Michaels
Yes. And fascistic. If you don't agree with them, if you don't see it the way they see it, if you're not as far left as they are, there's an eventual purge.
- [64:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's just like everybody says, occupied land. Occupied land, Israel. They never mentioned Turkey has been occupying Northern Cyprus since 1973. They don't mention that Kazakhstan has ethnically cleansed 150,000 Armenians almost the same day as October 7th they never mention any of the other stuff. They just. They just focus on Israel. And that's a sign of a. Of a anti Semite is that there's all these things going on in the world, but it's only 12 million people that are the cause of this. And that's the tip off.
- [64:39]
Jillian Michaels
And it's so funny you say that. I've picked up on that. And when there are legitimate criticisms of Netanyahu and Israel with regard to how they may have oppressed Palestinians or killed a huge amount of innocent civilians, I'm like, I can hear all of this, but why are you not applying those exact same criticisms to Hamas or Iran? What about the Uyghur community being slaughtered by the Chinese government? Or how about what's going on in South Sudan? Oh, look at Israel blew the ceasefire, attacking Hezbollah. I'm like, but, you know, Hezbollah started it, right? And they're actively killing civilians. Where's your outreach there?
- [65:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
How about our two biggest, most renowned leftist immigrants who hate Israel? They're anti Semitic as well. Mandami, he came from using his own vocabulary, you could say. Mr. Mandami and his family were settler colonials. They went into Uganda, a 99% Black Country. And the Indian community was a settler colonial community. It owns 65% of the wealth. And he's always talking about going into wider neighborhoods for justice. And then he comes over here and his parents are very wealthy. He was very wealthy. But somebody who was a Ugandan said, well, you people came in and you took over my country. And you weren't born here, you're not black. And Ilyan Omar's family was very well connected with Saeed Barry. He was the genocidal dictator of Somali who is responsible for liquidating over 200,000 people. That broke away. And we don't. We never really were told how many of the people who came in the 80s and early 90s into Minnesota were Saeed Barry, bureaucrats and apparatchik. But I think you can make the argument the vast majority were. So we never tell Ian Omar, what did your dad do as a colonel in the army of Said Barry, who waged a genocidal operation? And who are all these people who came here as refugees when Said Barry was kicked out? And they were afraid that the people that they had slaughtered would have, you know, retribution upon them. Are you people dictatorial? Are you genocidal? Nobody ever says that. And so.
- [67:10]
Jillian Michaels
No.
- [67:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
And she.
- [67:11]
Jillian Michaels
They claimed he was a teacher. Her father.
- [67:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
- [67:14]
Jillian Michaels
No, no, he wasn't actually a teacher.
- [67:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, he wasn't actually teacher or if he was a teacher temporarily. He was teaching people things that say he very wanted to be taught. But so it's always, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of like a philosophy or it's an ideology that we're encountering right now, the hatred of Israel, hatred of Jews. And it's not empirically based, but it's kind of a club that you get resonates. And I, I knew people like, I didn't know them, but I, I met Candace and people I could see why she would go that way or in Fuentes is unhinged. But I didn't think that Tucker and Megan would go that way. I didn't.
- [68:08]
Jillian Michaels
I'm heartbroken.
- [68:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
I was on, I was on it. Yeah. I was on a show for about six. Yeah. But anyway, maybe they'll find their way back.
- [68:16]
Jillian Michaels
Nope. No shot.
- [68:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's it.
- [68:19]
Jillian Michaels
There's no shot. No, no, I know, but this is why, this is why voices like yours are so, so precious. And we've lost Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager has been seriously injured and Jordan Peterson has had debilitating health issues. And I'm like, oh, my God, we need these people. We need these voices. And this is why you're such a treasure. I am so grateful to you for all you do for giving me this time. Where can people find you? Which book would you recommend out of all the brilliant ones you have? Tell us everything.
- [68:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
I can be found@VictorHansen.com and I have a book called Counter Revolution, the Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and his MAGA Movement. And it charts from the day January 6th and how low he was and how everybody wrote him off and what all the things that happened and how he had this miraculous comeback. And it goes all the way up into. It's going to come out September 8th. So I have an endnote updating the Iran war, but I think people like it. It's kind of a, it's not a rah rah book about Trump. It just, it is the most amazing comeback. If you think about. I had forgotten what people were saying about him after January 6th, but after I went through there, I could not believe it.
- [69:44]
Jillian Michaels
They tried to kill the guy four times. They debanked him. They've cut him off of the social media platforms. I mean, I look at that and think, I couldn't survive.
- [69:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
I couldn't. They raided his house, they impeached him twice. They tried him as a private citizen. 5 Civil and criminal suits. Yeah, I just, it was just amazing to go through all the stuff they said. Ron DeSantis was ahead of him in the polls by 30 points in February March of 2, 2021. So it's really, it's it he's kind of. He was indestructible. I, I would not been able to handle that physically or psychologically, but he did. Anyway, it's been nice talking to you.
- [70:34]
Jillian Michaels
Thank you so much boss. I appreciate you. I'm putting my pre order on the book and I'll be listening to you every day like I always do.
- [70:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
- [70:43]
Jillian Michaels
Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the podcast, please like comment, subscribe and share. And make sure to let me know what guests you want to see on in the future. I'm Miranda Devine. Pod Force One is the podcast where I interview the most powerful people in Washington. This week we are with President Donald Trump. You won't want to miss this conversation that gets behind the headlines. Search Podforce One on Apple Podcasts or YouTube and please like and subscribe so you don't miss an episod.