← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
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- [00:02]
Sammy Wink
Hello, and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. This is our weekend episode in which Victor does something a little bit different in the middle segment. And we're looking historically at important moments in U.S. and world history in the 20th century and today. Victor will be looking at 1943 in World War II. So we'll learn a little bit more about after that year in which the tide turned to the Allies in 1942, how the war progressed after that, that before that, we'll look at a few news stories. So stay with us. And we'll be right back from these messages. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Don't want to forget Hillsdale.
- [00:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
And wait, wait, don't forget Heritage. Oh, we're here at Heritage today and they've offered generously their studios. I'm giving a lecture today on the history of borders and, and they're also the sponsors of our Daily Signal every morning.
- [01:17]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, our five. Victor's five minutes.
- [01:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
We owe a lot of gratitude to Rob Louie, who thought up the idea of me doing five minutes every day.
- [01:25]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. So that's been really nice.
- [01:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's nice to be here.
- [01:28]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, it is. All right, Victor, so I wanted to start with the first topic today. The Government accountability is issuing 39 inquiries. And the accusation behind that is they're trying to slow up Trump in his actions. The Government Accountability Office is an arm of the legislature, so they control it, but they're saying that the Senate doesn't have the right to stop them from issuing these inquiries. What I wanted to add that to is the courts trying to stop Trump, this Government Accountability Office. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that.
- [02:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
You got to put the whole thing in. Donald Trump is not doing what Reagan did. He's not doing what George H.W. bush did. He's not doing what George W. Bush, and he's not doing what John McCain or Bob Dole or Mitt Romney would have done. In other words, they were treating the symptoms of the project, the progressive project, and he feels that's insufficient. He's a counter revolutionary. So in the Trump world, he is saying, why was the border not just close the border? Why was the border open? He's saying, not just clamp down on crime, but why do these D.A. s let people out? He's saying, why did they do Afghanistan the way they did? Why were there two theater wars and he comes up with an exegesis. And the exegesis is that there is a nexus of people on the left that do not have public support for their initiatives. So all of those initiatives I mentioned and we saw that in the 2024 election, this common term on the right, an 8020 issue was 70 30. That's to indicate that the public is behind the Trump initiatives. Okay. So he is saying they can thwart it. And how do they thwart it? They use the institutions. They use, as you say, the Government Accountability Office. We could use that as the administrative state. People within the. In the first term when it was people like Alexander Vindman and the National Security Council or it was so called Anonymous. Right. Or it was Kevin Kleinsmith, the lawyer for the FBI who forged a document. These are. Or it's Anthony Fauci who was a partisan. These are Lois Lerner during the Obama. So those people are left wing and the unionized employees below them are left wing and they try to stop someone. So Donald Trump is looking at them and how does he trying to address that? He's cutting, cutting, cutting and they are angry about it. And then there's the circuit and the district judges, 700 district judges, maybe cherry pick 400 of them and maybe a couple hundred circuit judges. That's the court of appeals, maybe 150 of them. And so he is going to have to start appointing judges and they will. But he has got people in the Congress trying to say that a district judge should not have jurisdiction over the entire. There's bills in the legislature, the Senate and the House. So he's trying to address that. He looks at the media and he says, what am I going to do with the media? Let's get rid of npr, the subsidies or pbs. Look at the universities. That's where they train these people and they break the law all the time. They're not transparent as they're supposed to be about gifts from gutter or communist China. They don't report that to the Department of Education as they should. Stanford got fine four years ago. They're gouging the federal government on grants 50, 60% instead of the fit. So he's going to go down to 15. They are. They are not apolitical. So we'll have to look at taxing the end the endowment income. They don't follow the 2022 Supreme Court rulings on race. They still hire, promote, retain and admit people by race. So we're going to go look at their federal funding. So in that whole process, those people know they're targeted as rebel. They are the revolutionaries. And he says the counter revolutionaries are going to put you back to your constitutional place. And it's a knockout drag out fight.
- [05:47]
Sammy Wink
It sure is.
- [05:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
And he's the first Republican. Reagan tried to do it with the Cold War. He said no more Kissinger detente. And it's very simple. We win, they lose. And then he tried to slash taxes, you know, and supply side economic, but no one's looked at fundamentally A to Z. And this is kind of like the Reformation. Counter Reformation, you know what I mean? It's, it's going to be brutal.
- [06:13]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And I'm sure that they see themselves, if they could articulate it this way, as the counter revolution. The Democrats do.
- [06:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, they think that they're revolutionaries. They believe that they have a mission to get into government and pursue an agenda. And it's, it's, it manifests itself in various ways. But the way to, to epitomize it are synchronized, sum it up is they believe in a mandated quality of result as government people. And so they feel that people that have too much money or power or corporations or white Christian males or cisgender, whatever term they use, they, they use mechanisms to lower level the playing field. They would say, yeah, and not for themselves. They're the apparatus of the old Soviet Union that have Dhakas on the Black Sea. But for the people, that's their agenda. And he's trying to do other things as well. He's going over their heads and he's saying to the left, I'm going to appeal to the working classes on the basis of class solidarity. No tips. I'm going to back unions if I have to. In some cases I'm going to give no cutting of Social Security. So he's really taken the Hispanic vote and the black male vote and combined it with a white working class. And out of that he gets a 51%.
- [07:42]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [07:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
And that's what also they're angry about. The elite, the black elite, the Hispanic elite have the same relationship to the working classes of those constituencies as the white working class does to Stanford professors or you know, NPR professors. They're out of touch. And he's trying to take away that group. So that's another element of why these people are going after him in every possible way.
- [08:08]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [08:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
They get up in the morning at the Government Accounting Office and say how can I stop this person? And they go to bed thinking I didn't do enough. Yeah, that's how they think.
- [08:18]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, I was looking at some of the Discussion of original sin, that Tapper book and Thompson and the. They were saying that one of their big arguments for these staffers, that they covered up Joe Biden's inabilities, and they did it because they said Donald Trump was an existential threat. We can see that. I guess we've got to remember that.
- [08:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
Signature mindset of the left. It always starts with my. My ends are so much more noble.
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Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [08:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
Because I'm not for greed, I'm not for inequality, I'm for mandated equality. And therefore, because I'm for that, any means necessary are justified by those noble ends. And that's what the Soviet Union was about. That's what socialism's about. That's the whole story. Once you set yourself up as a heaven on earth person or a God on earth, you can do anything and justify it.
- [09:19]
Sammy Wink
Yes.
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Victor Davis Hanson
That's the history of the left. That's what they always do. That's why they're so insidious or so hard to defeat, because they have a much better ad than the right does. The right says, we're for individual liberty and freedom, and if people do better than others economically, we have incentives, religious incentives, the church, we have community, we have family, incentives to be philanthropic voluntarily. But the left says, no, no, people are great, people are greedy, and therefore the state has to intervene and force that. And because. And that's a more attractive opiate, really.
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Sammy Wink
Yeah.
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Victor Davis Hanson
For many people.
- [10:04]
Sammy Wink
Well, especially if they think the state's going to be giving them money and things, which I think a lot of the Democratic voters see it that way. The last thing, the second. Not last thing, the second thing I would like to talk about, about the Democratic narrative is they're using this Ukraine war now ironically. And I have. I wonder what you have to say about that. It's because Putin has, of course, challenged Trump. I think just even today he's said Trump is unhinged himself. And they're saying that the. The Ukrainian war, Donna. Is showing the weakness of the United States because Donald Trump is failing at resolving this conflict. And I was wondering, was there a conflict?
- [10:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
Donald Trump says ad nauseam, it was 2017-2021, and he never left his borders. He went on, when George W. Bush was weakened by The Iraq War, 2008, he invaded Georgia. Nosatia. When Obama had the hot mic conversation in Seoul in 2012, in March, and he said to Medved, tell Vladimir that if this is my last election, if he'll give me space, I'm quoting him verbatim, I will be flexible on missile defense. And you know what nobody realizes they both kept their bargain. He counseled Polish and Czech missile defense, which would have been handy right now given Iran threat. And Putin let him was he behaved until Obama was re elected. And in early 2014, he said, you know, the deal's up and I'm going in. And Obama did not do anything. And then Biden came in. First thing he did is he canceled, put on hold javelins and other offensive weapons. And he said to tell Vladimir if he's going to conduct cyber warfare against the United States, please, please don't attack non profits hospitals and stuff. And then they ask him, what would you do if he says, it depends on if it was a minor invasion or not. That was Biden. And then of course, Afghanistan. The debacle empowered. So Trump's attitude is, I didn't do any of this. They did. Now, I came in and he said two things. One was accurate, I think I mentioned that the other day. And one was inaccurate. He said I could stop it on the first day. He couldn't, nobody could. But he said it wouldn't have happened if I was present. He's correct on that. So what's happened now is the left thinks, well, it's been 120 days, he didn't stop the war. And he thought he was going to pressure Zelensky first. And then because he had been more understanding of other issues that may have aggrieved Vladimir Putin, such as NATO, that people in the past had promised indirectly or sometimes overtly, that Ukraine would be a member of NATO, even though they had pledged to Putin, they wouldn't. They were trying to find, they were accusing Trump of trying to find reasons why he could deal with Putin. All of that is out the window now because Putin, Trump is starting to see, has an imaginary line. And that line says to the east, I may be assassinated or dethroned because it's not enough for the military, industrial, oligarchic rulers of Russia to the west, it is. And I've got to explain why I launched a preemptive war that did not take Kiev. I told them we were going to take Kiev and then we would have had the whole country. That failed. We had a puppet government that failed. And now we had to start from scratch from the Donbass in Crimea. And I'm telling these people, I got Crimea. It's a part of Russia forever now. And that wasn't true before it was disputed. And the same thing with the Donbass. I got a pledge. They're not going to be in NATO. And these people are saying, and you killed a million Russians or wounded them. That wasn't enough, Vladimir, you've got to take half of Ukraine or something. So that's the dilemma that he's in. So now he's finally mobilizing, like the Soviet Union, 1944, and that economy is now a war economy, and Trump knows that. So now, the irony of all this is there's only one solution to stop him short of something stupid, and that would be Americans involved. There should be no Americans involved on the ground there. And we're violating already the rules of a cold war, which said, as I said last time, you can't use a proxy to attack the homeland of your superpower nuclear rival. And that's what we're doing. It's a little bit tricky because he invaded and started it. But nevertheless, what Trump is now doing is he said, I didn't start the war. And nobody had given a fair hearing of Putin. I did. And he is now the aggressor. And you can't reason with him. So there's no, well, you should have been nicer with the left. There was no plan. It was just on to Moscow. Whatever it takes is what Putin said. And then people would say, but, but you violate. They lied to Putin. They said that it wouldn't be in. There was all these little questions that people on the paleo rights said, that's all over with now. So Trump has kind of cleared the air. Putin won't deal with it. Zelensky will. He doesn't like Zelensky because Zelensky is always whining and nagging, and you'd give me this, give me that, give me, give me, give me. But he knows now that the war wouldn't have started if Putin hadn't invaded. So then what's the next step? There's only one next step short of war, and that's a secondary boycott on all the oil that Russia sells. Putin knows that. And Donald Trump doesn't want to do that because central to his trade controversies and all of his economic program is cheap energy. And you take off 10 to 12 million barrels of exported oil off the market, and you're going to have a price shock, and it's going to hurt a lot of economies. And that means India, China, the Middle east will not be able to buy. And even Europe, Europe talks a great game, but they're still buying, I think, a quarter of all the natural gas from Russia, liquefied natural gas. So that's. That's where we are Now, Yeah, yeah. And the left can't say anything because all they said that he was a Putin's puppet. He would never do this. And now he's doing. He's considering something much more serious than anybody in the Biden administration or the Obama administration or the George W. Bush ever conceived. When they got all those people together and they said, what do we do to get him back? That came up. And people said we could have a. Oh, no, no. Secondary boycott. That would ruin the oil market. We would get this. We would get India angry at us. We'd get our ally. So it was a taboo subject. And now the left is going to be in a very difficult position because they're saying that he was Putin's puppet. And suddenly he comes through with initiative that's much more radical than theirs. Radical in the sense of anti Putin.
- [17:24]
Sammy Wink
Yes.
- [17:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
So we'll see if the mere threat of it, which Trump holds. That's why he says these crazy things. Crazy like a fox. I think Putin's gone crazy. I think. Notice he didn't say Putin is a killer like Biden. Putin is evil. He didn't do any of that. But he says he's crazy. And crazy means. I'm so mystified. He was so rational before. Now he's temporarily crazy, but he's not a killer. That's how he does the art of the deal.
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Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [17:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
It always gives somebody. He puts them in a room and shuts all the doors and he opens a window you can climb out if you want. Or when you're Biden and you just say, as long as it takes. He's a murderer. He's a killer. He did that with Saudi Arabia. They, you know, they killed Khashoggi. We're not going to have anything to do with him. Then he got on all fours and crawled back before the midterms and begged them to pump oil.
- [18:18]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, he sure did. I would like to take a moment, Victor, for our sponsor, Native Path. Native Path is packed with only type 1 and 3 collagen fibers, the ones your body needs most for healthy joints, skin, bones, hair, nails and gut. Plus, it's third party tested for purity with no fillers, no additives and no artificial junk. Two scoops a day of native path delivers 18 grams of protein. Mix it into coffee, tea or any drink. It's completely flavorless and easy to use. Right now, get a special bundle deal at a fraction of the retail price, plus free shipping available@getnativepath.com Victor with over 4 million jars sold thousands of 5 star reviews and a 365 day money back guarantee. This is your moment to take control of aging be before symptoms get worse. Go to nativepath.com Victor now supplies are limited and demand is surging. So, Victor, I wanted to look at. There was a graduation speech given by Scott Paley. And in it he basically reiterated the Democratic talking points that the government now is a danger to your free speech, your rights, etc. And it seemed a terribly political speech to give at a graduation ceremony. I felt sorry for the students there.
- [19:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
I've given four or five. I just gave one at Hillsdale. And I talked about some of the political issues, but not as it involves Hillsdale. I said specifically, it is not the mission of Hillsdale to be a political actor. What I did say is in this tumultuous times, people are going to be looking for traditionalist leaders. And Hillsdale's offer, you have to be very careful because even in. So, you know, if you go to a left wing and they're all left wing except for a few of them, there are people in the audience that didn't come to hear you harangue them. Ken Burns did that at Stanford not long ago, and that's a liberal institution. And he just basically said, anybody who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 to the people, it's a terrible thing to do.
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Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [20:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
So he had no common sense. And then you, you get to the next level of criticism. Scott Pelley is talking from 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes did an interview with Kamala Harris and they edited it to make her word salad sound semi coherent. And they did not tell the people that they would never, if they, they would never do that for Donald Trump. So he's at an Orwellian institution going way back to 2004 when the head of 60 Minutes, their iconic Dan Rather, got in front of the American people and said, this is a memo that we have verified that shows that George Bush was given preferential treatment. And it took the blogosphere about a nanosecond to show that that was typed on a Microsoft Word program that didn't exist at the time. And then when he was trapped, he, it may be fake, but it's accurate. And so that's a discredited form. 60 Minutes. The next thing is when somebody says something like that, rather than just say it, you should be empirical. So my question to him is, let's look at the branches of government. Let's start with the judiciary. Is Donald Trump using the judiciary to investigate the Biden? He may, but is he appointing a Special counsel to say, you know, Joe Biden, this was never really adjudicated. Robert Herr found him culpable, but he said that he was not mentally coherent enough to convince a jury. But that was an independent decision. I want to go back and revisit that and say that the data that he accumulated as a prosecutor was sufficient as an investigator. But a different AG might make a difference. So we're going to investigate Joe Biden. He could do that. Did he do it? No. Did he have a local or state? Is there a right wing Fannie Willis out there? Is there a right wing Letitia James? Is there a right wing Alvin Bragg? No. Nobody is trying to Hunter. All of them. Hunter was given a federal pardon like Fauci and Adam. That's not a state pardon. And they could go. That's one reason the state and the local governments were so prosecutors were active, they were immune. If anybody pardoned Trump, if they thought that they would still be going and Trump would pardon himself. And that's why they use the local governments. Okay, is there a state where they're in this election? Did the Trump campaign or will the Trump campaign in the midterm say, you know what, it looks like AOC is going to be the nominee against JD Vance or Marco Ruby just to take some names. We got to get all the red states to get her off the ballot. Let's go get her off. That's what they did.
- [23:45]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [23:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
Did. Did the Republican Party in the last 13 years basically deny the people a chance to nominate their president? No. Not since 2012. Have they had an open convention. 2020, they cleared the field. Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders had won, respectively, the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire. And Joe Biden got Jim Claiborne to speed up the date of South Carolina. And then they, they got all of them out. Suddenly, within 30 days, Elizabeth Warren came, got out, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Spartacus, all of them got out. And then they coordinated him. They knew he was mentally incoherent and they used him as a waxen effigy to use these handlers, as Jake Tapper is now telling. And then we go to the next four year cycle. Did they nominate Joe Biden? Yes. He won 14 million votes in the primary, so he was the nominee. And then they did something that nobody's ever done in the history of modern politics. They egged Donald Trump on by having a debate challenge before either candidate had been nominated. That was a stress test that was designed to get. Get rid of him and deny the voice of 14 million people. And it worked. He was completely non compos mentez. They said, you're out. Blank, blank. The 14 million primary voters. And then everybody said, we're going to have a primary. Joe Manchin says, I might run. Right. And everybody said they were going to. No, no, no, no, no. Then they took 24 hours and they appointed her. And by the way, she was appointed on the basis of her gender and race, according to Joe Biden, when he pre announced the. That he had limited the field so they really had not nominated anybody by a fair vote of the people since Barack Obama's second term. Did Donald Trump do that? No, he ran there. You know what I mean? He ran all the way. So when you look for barometers of how he's weaponized the government, it's hard to see that he is doing. He's weaponizing it. We'll see. We'll see if the IRS starts to just audit people like Lois Lerner did. We'll see if Cash Patel emulates James Comey or Andrew. Maybe Cash Patel will wear a wire and he'll get Pam Bondi and they'll try to go in and tape some Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer, Yeah. Say he's incompetent or something. Or maybe a FBI lawyer will forge a document like Kevin Kleinsmith to get a FISA warrant. Or, you know, maybe the FBI director in the next election will suddenly unload a bombshell. Or maybe he will have a private conversation with somebody and then leak it to the New York Times. So I'm just looking for evidence that they have weaponized the government in the fashion that Biden did. And by the way, Obama did in 2016 with the deal. Did they give a sweetheart deal to one of the Trump kids who's like they did Hunter Biden before a judge intervened. I have some legitimate. It's not me. I don't matter. But people have legitimate worries that some people around Trump are doing too much business. And the. Is it going to be overt, like Hunter's paintings, where you're selling this junk stuff to donors? I hope not. So I don't see yet anything that he's done that is comparable to what the left does. Yeah, because the left always projects whatever they do they accuse other people of doing. And so when he, when, when they talk like this, there's no. There's no evidence at all.
- [27:59]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. All right, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break, and we'll come back and talk a little bit about 1943 and I confess that in World War II, 1943 we don't on a. Because I have taught generally World War II and we don't usually talk a whole lot about 1943. So I'm excited to hear about that. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson show. You can find Victor at his website the Blade of Perseus. It is found@the URL victoria victorhansen.com and come join us there. You can sign up to be a subscriber for 6:50amonth or $65 a year. And with that you get two articles a week plus a Friday video that we do for our ultra subscribers. So please come join us there. So Victor, 1943. I'm excited to hear about how the war progresses for the Allies.
- [29:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, we said at the end of 1942 you could make the argument that in the fall the Axis reached the high point. They had a Nazi flag in the Caucasus. They were 40 miles from the Russian oil fields. Rommel was 90 miles into Egypt and he was on his way to the Suez Canal in Alexandria. And the Japanese had not been defeated until Midway. Really. So that was a. There was a turning point in late 42 with the invasion of North. But 43, I think you can make the argument after February or March of 43 the axis could not win. But that was when they had the Casablanca conference and they announced without Stalin that they were going to seek unconditional surrender. So that meant they didn't have to defeat as they had done in World War I. They had to destroy because they were not going to surrender. And that meant that they had to have a different type of military that they started the war with. So once we went to war, these brilliant architects and industrial. Henry Kaiser, Henry Ford, William Knudsen, the war production they started to take over the economy. And we had all of these brilliant engineers at Lockheed and Boeing and they were and shipyards. So they all during late 41 they actually started a little bit before the war with the Carl Vinson Naval Acts. But what was happening aware to the axis there were 26 huge Essex carriers, best carriers. They will come in in 43 and they are going to produce 50,000 Sherman tanks. And the uploaded Sherman tank. For all the criticism of it in terms of durability, reliability, it's a wonderful tank and it's made. They are now going into Iran and they started going through Archangel and they are supplying the Soviet Union with 25% of their military and it's not just their military needs. They have sent Harry Hopkins over there and they said, what do you need? What do you do? Well, and they said, we make big things, guns and artillery and tanks, better than anybody. But we don't do radios, we don't have rubber ponchos, we don't have C rations. We have no aviation. We don't have. And we've supplied everything they didn't need along with the British. And then they said to the British, you're right, we don't know what we're doing by mid-1943, as far as bombing, we've got to do some things. We've got to go if we're going to go at daylight. It was round the clock. We're not going to be so precise. We're going to drop bombs in the general area and we're going to start. They started to experiment the end of the year with drop tanks on for fighter escorts. And then in the Pacific and in the European theater, there was a whole new generation of airplanes. So the dominance of the 0, the 109, and what that was going to end. The Supermarine Spitfire, the latest model, was better than the Falk Wolf 190. The P51 was on the drawing boards. It would come into mass use in early 44. It was better than the Falk Wolf. The P47 was as good or better. And then in the Pacific, the Hellcat and the Course, and then they had the Iowa class Bat. All this is starting to come. So how does that manifest itself after we invaded North Africa in May? The entire Africa Corps will surrender. Squeeze between Montgomery and Patton. That's a quarter of a million people. That follows the February collapse of two army groups at Stalingrad. 250,000 after Stalingrad, the Germans cannot win. They have a huge battle, the biggest tank battle in history at Kursk. It's basically Stalin tanks and T34s against the new Panther and Tigers. And it's a horrific battle about the Germans. They know the Germans are coming. They want to cut a salient. And after Kursk, you could argue that it's a tactical German, but the losses are so horrific, they will never have the wherewithal to take any more land. They go into Kharkov for a while and they come back. So the front, By July of 1943 in Russia, it's going to go back to Germany? Yes, back to Germany. They're going to do hedgehogs. They're brilliant. They are going to kill six Russians for every German and lose. So that is something that's happened in 43. The Americans, after getting this big surrender in North Africa, have now invaded in July, Sicily. And then right after that they've gone into the lower boot of Italy and they think it's going to be the soft belt underbelly. But two things have happened that will stop that. Number one, the most brilliant commander in the American Army, George Patton, who is unpopular but an authentic military genius, and George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower know that he has slapped two soldiers. One had malaria, one what we would call post traumatic stress syndrome. No one would believe you would take your most effective commander, but that's what they did. So when they go into Italy, you have a functionary Mark Clark and John Lucas, and whether it's Anzio or any of the landings, that is going to be a bloodbath. And no one has ever really taken Italy from the south. You've got to go up two sides of the appennaise mountains, you know, Hannibal, Napoleon, they all come from the north and it's going to be a disaster. And this military genius is going to put on ice for one year with no role in planning D day. So it's the turning point in the sense that the Mediterranean now to recap, is all in ally's hand. They're never going to take Malta, North Africa, the whole when that war started, the only country that was in the Allies hands was Egypt. And now the entire like frogs around a pond, the entire Mediterranean is in allied hands. Italy has quit the war in 43, Mussolini's in a puppet state up north that Hitler has saved. The Italians are now infiltrating American lines and helping Americans and British or they're neutral while they're fighting Germans. And in the Pacific the Japanese takes us. This is after the battle of Midway, this is now the tensions turn to Guadalcanal and it is a horrific battle. But by October, the Americans, in five critical sea battles on the island have defeated the Japanese and they've stopped any notion that Australia will be cut off or the Japanese will have New Guinea. And then as the year ends, they've got this brilliant strategy with Nimitz with the navy and the Marines and MacArthur with the army, mostly army. And he gets them to use the fleet in a primary. And his idea under Operation Cartwheel is to go around New guinea and go into the Philippines and Nimitz idea is to go straight an island hop, skip over Rabaul, take Tarawa, skip, forget about Taiwan and then take the Marianas and then Iwo Jima and skip. So you can bomb Tokyo and they, they're going to start that in 44. But the point I'm making is they now have a strategy, they have better weapons and they found the right people. They found that Admiral Spruance, the victor of Midway, was a great commander. They know that Nimitz has proved himself. They know that Bull Halsey is erratic, kind of crazy, but he's a great guy when you need him. They've looked at the system in Europe for the coming D day. Eisenhower is sober and judicious. Montgomery is sort of a competent yes man. But they have brilliant people like Patton who will come back online in a year and he has some of the best corps commanders. They all come out of the Army War College. They're brilliant. You've got some people coming out that are absolute military genius. Curtis LeMay is now revamping some of the B17 with Jimmy Doolittle. Jimmy Doolittle's got this idea about fighters, a new strategy, escorting Doolittle in LeMay. And then LeMay are going to revamp the B17. They're going to take horrific casualties in 1943. They're going to lose 15% at places like Schweinfurt, the ball bearing factory or trying at Plutoisi, trying to bomb the Romania. It doesn't work. But they're going to learn from the 40,000 dead Americans that you can still bomb Europe effectively if you're flying from Britain across the Channel over friendly France occupied France where there's not German airfields. Number one two if you have fighter escort with a P47 but especially the new P51 that has a Merlin engine in it and you have a guy like Jimmy Doolittle who says you don't have to stick next to the plane, give a 19 year old a P51 and tell them just you're free to go escort the bombers, then find where these Germans take off and just hang out at their. And when they take off, shoot them down and when they come back, shoot them down. But shoot as many fighters down. And don't just think you have to hover around the bomber. It's a brilliant strategy. It works. And then you've got LeMay who will go over in 44 and revamp the B29. So it's the pivotal year when war production, new weapons, new strategy and like every war, it's sort of like 1864 when finally the war is turned over to Ulysses S. Grant, General Sherman and General Thomas and they finally get great commander geniuses and then they crush the south. And now they've got the right team. And the economy is just, the American economy is just about ready to surpass all of the British Empire, the Russian economy, the German economy, what's left of the Italian command and the Japanese combined. So they can't win the war after February, March 1943. It's just a question of how many Americans are going to have to die and how many British are going to have to die and how many Russians are going to have to die to go in and physically kill Hitler and Tojo.
- [40:54]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. So I have a couple of questions. First is the short one. You said Kurz was the most devastating war or it took a lot of battle, it took a lot of lives. So what is approximately how many lives are we talking about for a really bad battle in World War II?
- [41:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's about over a half a million casualties. Dead, wounded, and over both sides or each, each side. Russians, it's hard to know, but probably 500,000 when you say a battle. This went on for weeks and probably a half a million to 600,000 and then somewhere over 2,000 tanks. And Van Manstein, anytime there's a bulge in a line, everybody wants to cut the bulge off at its base. And the problem with Kursk is they had this. The Russians had overextended themselves and the Germans had been so successful in 1941 in cutting those blisters out that the Russians knew it. So what they did was they dug tank ditches, they had anti tank obstacles, they mined everything. They put a rail line right up to Kursk and they started sending in thousands of T34 tanks. So they were, they knew exactly what the Germans were going to do. And finally Hitler himself, who was reckless, tried to tell Manstein, I don't know if this is smart or not. And Manstein said, we can still win. But they, they lost the cream of the German armor corps and then they lost their best soldiers at Kursk and their best equipment. And from that on they're. Except for Kharkov, they went and tried, they took it and then they lost it. Then they took it again, then they had to give it up. But from now on, from middle to late 1943, it's going to be a continual retreat. And when the D day starts in June of next year, it's going to be Operation Bagration. It's going to be accelerated.
- [43:05]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And the second question I have, because we don't hear a lot about Mussolini, we all know he's dethroned more or less In 1943, however, you said that he's a puppet state and I understand that the Germans have two lines of, of soldiers that the Allies have to get through. First off, is that true? And then just a prayer, I guess. A preview. How long does it take them to defeat Northern Italy?
- [43:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
They never do.
- [43:34]
Sammy Wink
They know. Oh, they never get.
- [43:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, they never get to Austria. They never do. There's the Gothic line of Germans. Yes, they have actually three or four of them. And because Italy is long and narrow and it's mountainous and the British are on one side, the Americans on the other, they make these successive lines, Siegfried line, Gothic line, and it's designed to go. And the Americans think they can go behind them with amphibious. So when they do do that successfully at Anzio, and the Germans are pretty canny here is on the right side, they evacuate Rome and make it an open city. Right. This is in 1944. And then there's a choice and they think they've landed here and we're kind of behind our lines. Any good commander, a Patton or a German commander would forget about the decoy of Rome, but just go north and then trap the German army where it can't get out. And they said, no, we'll make it an open city. And Mark Clark will be such an egomaniac that he'll want to take Rome and parade through. And that's exactly what happened. So then they did that and then they had to go and, you know, Monte Cassino they had to destroy. So they were just head to head. And what saved them was they had by July, we'll talk about 1944, they had 100% air supremacy, not superiority supremacy. So they were bombing, bombing, bombing. But the idea originally was they were going to invade Sicily in July and then in August, September, they were going to land and they did. And then they were going to. In Churchill's mind, he was terrified of D Day and they had been given a date and he said, you know what? I remember the psalm. I remember Verdun. I know what it's like fighting the German army in France. I can remember what happened at Dunkirk. I just don't want to do this. But we'll go into the soft underbelly and we'll go through Italy and we'll just go zoom. And there'll be two things about it. We don't have to hit the German army head on and we'll get Italy out of the war quickly and they'll join us or be neutral. But more importantly, when the war ends, we're going to Be behind Germany and Austria to the east and we can stop the Soviet from the Soviet machine from occupying Germany and Europe. He was already thinking like that. And the problem he didn't understand was.
- [46:16]
Sammy Wink
Stalin was also thinking like that. Right.
- [46:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
He didn't understand that for that to happen he needed a different type of command. He had a good British commander, Alexander. But they were taking troops away to plan already for D Day. And that hurt Italy. And then they also decided, I don't think it was worth Operation Torch. They invaded southern France, Anvil they called it later. And that took soldiers away from Italy. And then they had, the idea was that if you had air force bases with long range B24s, you could bomb Eastern Europe. And they did from Italy. So there were, there were reasons that they either didn't capture the moment or they used it for purposes other than what was intended. But it was a disaster. I don't think, I think anybody looked at the amount of Americans and British were killed in Italy and what they achieved. I mean, later people said, Mark Clark said, well, we kept the German army from massing on the beaches of Normandy. I don't think that's quite right.
- [47:27]
Sammy Wink
Didn't they have the tehran Conference in 1943? And isn't it there that Churchill and FDR agreed with Stalin that they would not invade through the Balkans? Exactly what you described. Churchill was thinking.
- [47:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, Churchill, Churchill hadn't been at Casa Blanco. I mean, Stalin hadn't. So now. And he was yelling and screaming. And the reason that they were able to deal with him so long, Stallon was right that they didn't. People like George Marshall wanted to invade France in 1942. That was the American doctrine from the war colleges. Find the enemy and go to him. And the British, who had been fighting World War I, who lost a million dead, said, no, no, no, no, you can't fight the German army, they're too good. You have to, you know, finesse them, go around them or something. But really what Churchill was saying is we've got Stalin and he is as bad as Hitler. He's on our side now, but he probably won't be. And more importantly, when Stalin pressed them and said, what you're doing is you are using air power and you were fighting the Japanese, the Americans, and you are not dealing with the German army at its center. You were dealing in North Africa, Sicily, Italy. But you won't go on the beaches of France and go to Berlin because to do so you will come up against a million, 2 million of the best soldiers in the world. But we're doing that. And you know we're doing that. And you are delaying this so we get killed and weaken the German army. True, but then Churchill and others said to Stalin, well, yeah, but we didn't cut the. We didn't start the war. The war would have never started if you had not concluded the Molotov ribbentrop Prak of 1939. August 23rd, you invaded Poland. You were on Hitler's side. You were a Nazi supporter, an active one, so don't give us any lectures. You were on their side, and the only reason that you're on our side is he attacked you. So there was a big disagreement. In the end, 20 million Russians would be killed and they would kill three out of four German soldiers. And we got out of the war with 450,000 dead, Britain with 420,000 compared to 20 million. So they did a great job and they did a great service, but there was never. The British were the ones that did not want to go into France. They just had bad nightmares of 1914 and the German army. And they tried to tell the Americans. You've never really. You came in late in 1917. You don't know what they're like. We've been fighting them since 1939. Americans are kind of like, cocky. You know, we have B17s, we have B24s, we have Sherman Tangs. We'll just.
- [50:32]
Sammy Wink
We like Americans.
- [50:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, you know, the funny thing is they landed in June and in May, they're in Germany, you know, so 10 months later. And what the Americans said was, well, yeah, Russia started from Moscow in December 1941, and they didn't get to where we are until four years. So whatever you say about us, the distance from Moscow to eastern Germany is about where Normandy is to center of Germany. So we did the same distance in nine months. And so that controversy continued.
- [51:08]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, last question. I hope it's a quick one. The British had a radar system at the Battle of Britain in 1940, which was very effective in warning the British Air Force that the Germans were coming in. Did the Germans have any radar along their north. The Atlantic Wall that they had? Because they had that covered. So they had radar. They could.
- [51:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, they were almost as sophisticated as the British, and they were very sophisticated with radar and with anti sonar. Their submarines had finally developed some means to block sonar technologically. Why they lost the war was not technology. You can argue the atomic bomb. Yes, but it was production. They had a fundamental misunderstanding of war material. They were highly. And over Engineered. And what I mean by that was when they made a tank, they said what matters is the size of the gun and the thickness of the armor. And the Americans who had to take those things all the way over the coast said no, no, no, it's how long will it run without maintenance, how many miles to get to the gallon, how easy is it to fix, and how many can you make? So in 1944, if you were in a Sherman tank and you ran up against a Panther or a Tiger or you were done for, you were done for. But three out of every five Americans survived a direct hit because they had a little. They made a hatch at the bottom, they could get out. And they weren't not Ronson lighters like everybody said. But the point is that they almost never met a. They only made 1600, 1600 tigers. And most of them were on the Eastern front. And they didn't make over 6,000 or 7,000 Panthers, but they made 80, 90,000 Cromwells, Churchill tanks and Shermans. So basically in Europe it was American Shermans and British tanks attacking infantry. And when they saw a regular Panther, they were pretty smart. So they had taken a 17 pounder, which is a high powered 76 millimeter gun, and they put it on a Sherman. And it's ridiculous. It was like this big long thing and they called it a Firefly. And when they got in trouble, you'd hate to be in the thing because when you shot it, it would shutter the whole porturret. So these medium sized tanks, when they saw a Tiger and they would blow them up. Fireflies were great. And you know, that's what Germany never cooperated with Japan or Italy. We cooperated with the British and the Russians all the time.
- [54:10]
Sammy Wink
But the ingenuity of Ger engineering gave them some pretty good radar on the Atlantic water.
- [54:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
Good radar. They were ahead of us in radar, they were ahead of us in missiles, V2 missiles, they were ahead of us in cruise missiles. With the V1 they had better. We caught up. But the 88 millimeter was the best gun in the world. Most accurate. They had. We caught up to them with a proximity fuse and other stuff. You could argue they were the first. Had Hitler allowed the 262 jet Mr. Schmidt, they could have had, Mr. Schmidt fighters swarming us as early as July 1944. But he wanted to make a bomber and he delayed. He didn't understand it. And if you look at the actual German soldier, their helmets protected more than 30%. Fewer wounds to the head. They're kind of like a Modern American helmet, their hand grenade, those potato smashers with a handle, they were more effective than ours. They made. Their personal machine guns were better. They. They had a. The 42. I mean, my gosh, they could fire 1200 rounds a minute.
- [55:31]
Sammy Wink
But did they have an atomic program like they did heavy water?
- [55:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
They would have gotten it. They were farther along.
- [55:37]
Sammy Wink
They were.
- [55:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
First we thought that we're never. They were just doing heavy water, but they were pretty far along. In three or four more years, they would have done okay, almost everything. Their problem was quantity, quantity, quantity. And it had. So when they made a tank engine, the clearance between the cylinder and the piston cylinder and the piston was very tight. So you got more power and compression, but it was easier to.
- [56:08]
Sammy Wink
It got hot, get a little sand in there, be in trouble.
- [56:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
And Americans were much. In Russian stuff was much easier to maintain, much more practical. But they just didn't Rommel have trouble.
- [56:24]
Sammy Wink
With his tanks in the.
- [56:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
He didn't have very many.
- [56:28]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Africa.
- [56:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
But basically, when you get back to it, Hitler was worth probably 100American divisions because he did so. He said he didn't have enough troops in 41, when the Italians started to collapse in 40 to save them. So he sent Rommel with two divisions, 25,000 people, and he said, don't screw it up. We're going to invade the Soviet Union in May or June, and I can't afford it.
- [56:58]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [56:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
But later, when it was already lost, he sent a quarter of a million people over there. So what I'm saying is, if he had just delayed going into Russia one year and he would still have Russia as a partner and given Rommel 10 divisions, Rommel would have easily overrun the British at El Aman. He would have been in Alexandria, he would have taken Cairo, he would have cut off the Suez Canal, and he would have been in the oil fields of the Middle east, and that would have been terrible. But he shorted Rommel and then he went into Russia with stupid.
- [57:37]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, I just thought about this. Right now, do the Germans. They don't have a nuclear program today, do they? I know the French, of course, do.
- [57:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
But they have a nuclear program like the Japanese don't have a nuclear program. And what that means is they've had nuclear plants and they have nuclear physicists and they have enough plutonium in storage that if they wanted to make bomb, I think South Korea could make 100 right now. Japan could only make three or 400. And they would work. And the Germans could do it, too. But part of the understood protocol at Potsdam was remember what the NATO motto was when they formed NATO in 53? It was Germany down, Russia out, America in. So how did you keep Germany down? You divided it and they thought they were going to reunite it. But they did reunite the British, American and French sectors, West Germany and then Russia wouldn't do it. But that weakened Germany. The other protocol that was never explicit but it was understood is they would not have nuclear weapon, but France and Britain would, the winners. And people have always wondered about that. And that is what would happen if that protocol was stopped and Japan and Germany on our side now got nuclear weapon and would they have a different attitude? And you can see that Germany has been very anti American, especially toward Trump and people. They're much more likely to think Japan would be valuable with nuclear weapons that check China than Germany. But that was part that came out of World War II.
- [59:20]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and since we're speaking about nuclear weapons, we'll talk a little bit about North Korea and then we'll go on to Melanie Trump. Has this taken the, the veil off of whether Barron was applied to Harvard or not? So we'll get, we'll get to that after these messages. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. You can find Victor on X. His handle is at VD Hansen and on Facebook, Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. You can also find him on, on YouTube for these videos and on Rumble and also Spotify. So join him in any of all of those places if those are your social media outlets. So, Victor, the North Koreans apparently just came out this morning that they had, they have enough nuclear material or nuclear fuel to have 90,000 nuclear weapons. Not 90,000, sorry, 90 nuclear weapons. Not 90,000.
- [60:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
They'd like 90,000.
- [60:37]
Sammy Wink
They would, they would be using them, unfortunately. But yeah. So that's the new news this morning.
- [60:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think we're, we've got to be very careful because South Korea is on the verge of going nuclear. And that may be good or not. I gave a lecture once, I think I mentioned this, and a South Korean military official showed up at it because I'd written about this, an article, and he said, I want you to tell me how many nuclear weapons are devoted to the defense of South Korea. This was after North Korea went nuclear. And I was just curious. So I wanted to play left wing naive guy. And I said, well, it doesn't really matter because once you start a nuclear war, and he says it does matter, you have 6,500 nuclear weapons how much is protecting Canada? And I said, oh, 50. How much protects the American homeland? I said, oh, I don't know, a couple thousand. How much protects Japan? And I said, I don't know, 150. How much protects all of NATO? I said, a couple of thousand. He said, where are the nuclear weapons? And it was all in response to Barack Obama had had announced that he wanted to build down to 1500 nuclear weapons total. And everybody on the left said this is good because 10 nuclear weapons will wipe out the world. And this guy had come over and said, you wrote something about this. Tell me if you get down to 1500, there's nothing left for us to protect us. We want to know how many nuclear weapons are pledged in an all out war to protect us. So you can tell the Chinese and the North Koreans if you touch South Korea, we will nuke you and they won't believe you unless you can say you got about 100 of them to wipe out all. And I thought it was ridiculous at the time, Orwellian. But looking back, what I'm getting at is we have to be very, very careful at this point with Australia, with the Philippines, with Taiwan, with Japan and South Korea to assure them of the old we pledge San Francisco's safety or LA's safety or Portland to your survival in a new. Because if you don't, they all have the ability very quickly and they have plutonium that they stock up to be nuclear for their own. Anytime they would sense the United States is not shielding them, that would make them independent nuclear powers. And actually Don Rumsfeld was rumored to have said in 2006 when North Korea, remember Bush administrators, it started under Clinton and then under Bush they were trying to negotiate it and then North Korea let off a bomb and Rumsfeld, I think it was 2005 before he left, he went over there and supposedly said to them, to the Chinese as well, we had a deal that each one of our clients, so you had a client and you let him go north and we have a client and we're going to let them go nuclear. And our client is better than your client because his will work and yours won't. And I, I don't know if that restrained them for a while. Then Trump was confronted with the same thing they always inherited from a Democratic administration that lets them do it. And then Trump, basically, when Kim Jong Un was threatening Portland and Seattle, you know, I have new missiles that can reach them. He said, I have a bigger, but I have a button too, and my button is bigger than Yours. Everybody made fun of him, said he was a sable rattling juvenile. And then all of a sudden we didn't hear anything about Kim Jong Un and China said, what are you doing? Shut the blank up and controlled it. And then when, of course, when Biden came in, he started up again and started shooting missiles everywhere.
- [64:34]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Ones that came right back down, though, as far as I can remember.
- [64:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's a larger question with Trump because there are fissures in the MAGA movement. The MAGA movement moment, the JD Vance Tucker wing is we just keep out of things. We're Fortress America and we don't do optional stuff. You saw that. Yeah, Daily that the signal chat secret thing between Hegseth about whether to hit the Houthis or not. That was leaked. It was that. And then you have not Neo. Nobody wants nation building, but you have the Jacksonian. No better friend, no worse enemy. Don't tread on me. And their idea is that, yeah, maga's right and we're maga, but every time you have to knock some heads around. So Trump destroyed the Wagner group in Syria. They got rid of Baghdadi, they got rid of Soleimani, but without getting in a war. So we're going to go hit the Houthis and that's their attitude and that's friction right now we're talking about. So. So MAGA is saying, what do we care if Iran goes nuclear? We can nuke at any time. And Jacksonian says it's our pleasure that it's not and we will get rid of them because they're going to eventually do it against our allies or us. So that's a big fissure that's never really been resolved.
- [65:58]
Sammy Wink
Yes.
- [65:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
Trump himself is not an isolationist.
- [66:01]
Sammy Wink
Could I ask you though, which one do you think is worse? Because we seem focused on Iran and stopping the Iranians. But isn't the nuclear threat from North Korea equal or is one more.
- [66:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
North Korea is a puppet of China. There is no master of Iran. So that's number one. And although there is an existential enemy in South Korea, they know that if they attack South Korea, North Korea, they'll have another Korean War. Iran's existential. The purpose of their nuclear is Israel. Now they're afraid of the Israel. Israel's probably got 250 nuclear weapons, but if they attack Israel, we'll probably come in. So.
- [66:59]
Sammy Wink
Excuse me, we have come in because we've helped defend.
- [67:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, we may or may not come in. I say we will be more, more likely to come in to defend South Korea than We would Israel. So my point is that there is no check on Iran like there is. You can go tell China if you don't control them, we're going to have big problems with you at trade or whatever.
- [67:21]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [67:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
China is building three nuclear weapons a month, 40 a year and they think they're going to have a thousand nuclear weapons by 30, 20, 30. And Trump has already announced that we're going to start revamping our nuclear stockpile.
- [67:43]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [67:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
And some of these new defense contractors like Anduril and those people, if you look at some of the weapon systems are talking about, they're pretty scary. They're almost unstoppable and they're gonna and we're changing under. It's long overdue. We're going from big blockbuster platforms, you know, 14 billion dollar huge carriers or 175 million dollar F22s or big, big bombs to, you know, a million little drones that are controlled by a fighter aircraft, have an arsenal of a million of them. Or if China wants to come across, we could flood the sea with, with six or seven thousand small little submarine drone. And that's what we're trying to catch up. We don't have that capability now but we will if we listen to people.
- [68:40]
Sammy Wink
Like, you know, if we're smart.
- [68:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
- [68:43]
Sammy Wink
Okay. So Victor, let me welcome back Vibrance. Vibrance is one of my favorite products that we spot. That sponsor is us here at the Victor Davis Hansen show and I have found the secret to all in one serum and it's Vibrance Super C Serum. The ingredients in this one bottle can replace your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams and dark spot reducers. Made in the USA with the highest quality ingredients including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, vitamin B5 and vitamin E. Super C serum delivers noticeable results results simplify your skincare routine, get a healthier complexion and minimize wrinkles and age spots with Vibrance. And if you don't find it better than your current skin care routine, you'll get a full refund. Go to vibrance.com victor to save up to 37% off and free shipping. That's Vibrance V I B R I A n c e vibrance.com Victor and we thank Vibrance for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show and to all of our listeners, I enjoy Vibrance and am sold on their products. I highly recommend it. So Victor, Melanie Melania, sorry has told the world because Trump's getting a lot of criticism from his policies on Harvard that, in fact, Barron did not apply to Harvard. And I was wondering your thoughts either on that or in your.
- [70:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't understand that, because that's not a debatable point. Harvard has records. He either didn't or didn't. He either did or didn't. So Harvard is in this existential fight with Trump and its defenders. Float this story out. Why didn't Harvard just either produce the goods and show the application because they have a record of it or not? And they kept quiet like, well, we'll just see where it goes. And then she said, absolutely not, unless he applied and didn't tell her. Or maybe there's an argument with these multiple applications where you just apply. You know, you just apply the form and then you. You check all the. Is that an application? I don't know, but it doesn't seem like he did in the traditional sense. And then Harvard is. It's a very sticky point because Trump is starting to see a little bit of defection on the right. Because. Right. Intellectual. I mean, everybody goes to Harvard and places like Harvard. So they look at this and they say, okay, they're anti Semitic. Yeah. So, you know, Claudine Gay is not going to do anything of that type of stuff. So that you got a reason maybe to say, clean up your act or you're not going to get. And we understand that they're avoiding the 2022 court ruling on affirmative action. Di. And so get them on that. And then they're not reporting income from China and get them on that. And they're not protecting First Amendment rights. Get them on that. But then the Trump administration, you know, says, and they're also teaching this and this and this. And then these intellectuals on the right wrote four of my colleagues at the Hoover Institution, and their argument is, you got to draw the line. Now you're telling an institution what they can do and cannot do, and that's against the First Amendment. So this is a tricky question, because I think the Trump general counsel will come back to them and say, no, we're not telling them what they can or cannot teach. We are telling them, just like usaid, that, that we have a choice to fund private institutions and we don't have to fund any of them, and we don't have to give any reason. We can just say, you know what? We don't like the Harvard Crimson colors. Sorry. We like Stanford's red better. So we're going to give stuff. But it's a tricky. So you're starting to see defections among the right intellectual community. And they are saying that they agree with Jason Riley today in the Wall Street Journal said, I agree with you on the anti Semitism and this and this and this. But now you're too intrusive and you're going to hurt with the student visas and all this. And you know, the Trump people will say, so we're, we don't have people that can get into Harvard here and we have to import people from China and India, is that what you're saying? And from the Middle east. We're that impoverished in people maybe, and, and 30% of the research anyway is DEI. So it's a, it's a hard question, but I haven't seen the left has all these arguments, but they're going to have to make an argument that the federal government is obligated to give money to private institutions. And if it doesn't, it has to explain why. And we don't give federal money to a lot of them like Hillsdale, that doesn't want it. But there's also other ones that are just, they're not Harvard. So why does Harvard or Stanford or Princeton or Yale, what makes them as private institutions have a claim on federal funds? And that's what the Trump administration is saying. And they are saying they would say to these scholars who are constitutional experts, you're right, we're intruding on what we don't like about them. And your problem is you're agreeing with us, when you agree with us that you don't like it. You don't like anti Semitism, fine. You don't like the idea that they're sidestepping the Supreme Courtroom, fine. You don't like the idea that, that they're still using racially segregated dorms, fine. But now you're saying you don't like the idea that they're teaching communism or di. Or hate America. Well, we do. We disagree with you. So tell us why we have to fund it. Yeah, just tell us why. Because that's our job. Where is it in the Constitution that says we have to give money?
- [75:19]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, exactly.
- [75:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
Why can't we just say, like, I think it was Judge Jackson earlier, as I mentioned on immigration in a ruling of the 40s, they said, if you don't want to let somebody in, don't let them in. You don't have to write a PhD thesis and explain why, if you don't want to give Harvard some money, just say, you know what, it's anti American. Well, they're saying, how dare you do this, there is a split, a class split here among the right. So people with advanced degrees who come from these institutions or work at them look at it one way. And people where I live that are blue collar look at it another way. And somebody get angry for me saying that and say, well, First Amendment transcends class. No, that's a little bit different. They say, well, why doesn't the federal government give money to Reedley College? It teaches people how to weld. It teaches people how to be electricians. It does. And my father ran a vocational training center at a community college. He didn't get federal. There were. If there was federal funds that was small. Yeah, he applied. But why don't they fund all that stuff and give it more?
- [76:30]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [76:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I don't know. I mean, are you telling me they have a 53 billion dollar endowment and they don't have enough money to fund cancer research or scientific research? I think they do. I think all they have to do is fire all their DEI people and cancel all their DEI grants, because 30% of them, you look at what they're doing at Stanford, 30% of them are grants like this. They go to the National Institutes of Health, and instead of saying, we have a new molecule that will stop a glioblastoma in your brain, they say, we want to study how there's systematic racism that has denied access to the COVID booster in this community. That's not going to do anything to cure anybody from COVID But that will get more that will probably be put before the other one. He'll get privilege or primacy over it. So Trump is just saying, I'm taking a shotgun and blasting, and you can put barriers up where the pellets land. It's up to you. So if you put a big shield over your science and your engineering ground, then my pellets will just take out the dei and that should be fine. But what you want to do is you want to take up the shield and let me blast everything. And then you're saying, oh, you're cutting cancer. Well, it's you who are cutting cancer. I don't know how this is resolved. It'll probably end up in the Supreme Court.
- [78:05]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, I have a feeling.
- [78:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
Same with the students kicking out the student visas. It's funny because when he says, no student visas, and they said this is cruel and everything. Have you noticed that the last three or four weeks, I noticed at Stanford that everything's really quiet. You don't see any. Hamas is great. And foreign students are very well behaved. I'm so lucky to be here. It's nice to be in the United States rather than I hate this place and it's a racist sex, you know, that kind of stuff. So it has an effect.
- [78:40]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, for our last topic, we could talk about the French president's wife shoving him in the face or we might even talk about Secret Service in a brawl outside of Obama's residence at 2:30 in the morning. But I thought more important was Musk's criticism of the big beautiful bill as.
- [78:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
To, I don't know why Macron's wife just saw the hand come out and slap him, but he is, what, 20 years younger or something.
- [79:06]
Sammy Wink
She pushed him.
- [79:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
Pushed him. Yeah.
- [79:08]
Sammy Wink
Horrible.
- [79:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, he, he's French and he's male. Yeah, so. And he's 20 years younger than his wife.
- [79:16]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [79:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
So there's a subtext there. That's all I'll say. And she probably waited until the cameras could see it.
- [79:23]
Sammy Wink
You think so? Yes. I don't know.
- [79:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
And then Secret Service, I think one of them was saying, you better get the supervisor over here before I. Who ass. And when you collate that with. During the Obama administration there were Secret Services that were visiting prostitutes that were drinking, that were partying. They have a dismal record of protecting Trump from two something's wrong. I don't know was the DIA non merocrotic hiring or whether they're in the past partisans were. It was kind of a weaponized bureau, but something. That's why Trump tried to get his own people in there. And I think it'll happen, but it's not, it doesn't give me confidence that Donald Trump is protected, safe. Yeah, doesn't at all. And Musk, well, Musk's point was that he's working and taking all this flak and he's only up to 200 billion. And Trump's Congress, the big beautiful bill, it's like, well, all these wealthy people in California that they pay $100,000, $200,000 in California income tax now they're going to be able to write up to 40 or 30, they're going to get 20 or $30,000 handout. And that makes me think I got to go fire another person. And then they're going to say you're just firing this person so that they, these wealthy fat cats in New York, even though they're liberal, are going to get money. And then we ran on trade deficit, budget deficit, national debt, but $2.1 trillion budget deficit. And you look at this, there's some tax cuts and all this, it's not going to stop. It's not going to be tangible before the midterms where you say we came in and we cut. And I think his argument is, if I'm going to take all the flack about cutting, I need an argument to show. So, you know, his SpaceX blew up and he hasn't been putting his eye on the ball. I'm not saying he's responsible for that, but he has devoted a lot of his energies. This is a guy who used to sleep on the shop floor to cut. So what he's saying to Trump in the Republican Congress is, I have really. I was a good liberal in Stan, everybody loved me. And then I became a conservative because I thought conservative principles, among them physical sobriety, were more important. So I joined and I took a lot of. I got all these guys to leave their great jobs and I've got 200 billion. I'll get up maybe to 400 billion. But what good does it do when you give these tax cuts that are not productive tax cuts, even the tax cut on tips? I don't know if it's. I don't know if that's going to be the same thing as accelerated depreciation on business. But what he's saying is the deficit's going to grow. This year under Trump, it could be 3 trillion. And then he's saying, even if you're right, for this whole thing to work, you're going to have to grow the economy from a projected 2.3 to 3 or 3.4, because you're already at 6% of GDP as deficit. And you said you were only going to be at three. So Kevin Hasford, who's a really. I like him, he works at where I do, he's arguing these tax cuts and these incentives and this foreign investment are going to grow the economy at 3, even 4. And if that happens, you're not going to get $5 trillion of federal Lebanon. You might get 6 or 7. And so you could. You wouldn't have a huge. And Musk. All Musk is saying is, I don't know if that's true or not. All I know is I'm the most hated man in America for trying to get these cuts. I fight for every dollar. And then your Congress just spins it like crazy. And I think it might be a parachute for him to get out and get back to Tesla without damaging his. He's got to be careful what he says. So he basically can't criticize Trump. He's got to criticize the Congress because he wants to be on good terms with Trump, but he knows that he's sacrificing his companies by lack of attention and public anger at him. So it's a good issue because it's principled to get, get to back off.
- [84:13]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And criticize the bill.
- [84:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
- [84:16]
Sammy Wink
Well, thank you, Victor, for this thank you show today. Thanks to our audience for joining us.
- [84:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
And thanks to the Heritage.
- [84:24]
Sammy Wink
Thanks to the Heritage for hosting us, too. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen. And we're signing off.
- [84:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everyone, for listening and watching.