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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hansen
Did you know that American homeowners nationwide have over $32 trillion in equity? And cyber criminals are targeting it with a growing scam the FBI calls house stealing. House alarms, doorbell cameras and deadbolts won't work against these thieves because they're not after your stuff. They're after your equity. If your title isn't being monitored, scammers can transfer the title of your home into their name using a one page document they file at the county, then take out loans against it or even sell it behind your back. The scariest part? You won't find out until collection or even foreclosure notices start arriving in your mailbox. But by then the damage has been done and you're left with a financial and legal nightmare. The best way to protect your equity is with triple lock protection from our friends at home title lock. Triple lock protection is 24. Seven monitoring alerts of any changes and God forbid if the worst happens, restoration services at no out of pocket cost to you. So when was the last time you checked on your title? If you're like me, the answer is never. And that's exactly what scammers are counting on. But you can check on your home's title today and make sure you're not already a victim. You can get a free title history report and 30 day free trial of triple lock protection today by going to hometitlelock.com and using the promo code Victor or click on the link in the description that's home title lock.com promo code Victor home title lock.com hello and welcome.
- [01:42]
Sammy Wink
To the Victor Davis Hansen Show. This is the Saturday edition where we do something cultural in the middle segment but we'll look at news in our first and our third segment. We've got lots on the agenda to continue with some of the news from the week. Drones over the over military bases believed to be Russian. And we will look at Gavin Newsom is going to leave Elon Musk out of his EV rebate program. So stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [02:17]
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- [03:15]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor's the Martin and Nealy 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. You can find him at his website, victorhanson.com and it's called the Blade of Perseus. Come join us there. We've got lots of good material on it that is free that comes from his American greatness, writing and other things that are published elsewhere and our podcasts as well. But you can also purchase a subscription for for $5 a month or $50 a year and you can get the VDH Ultra articles. So come join us. So, Victor, we saw this week that some drones were over US Military bases and they are telling us that it might be the Russians. But I was wondering your idea and also Israel as well. Let's just dispense with both of these very important stories.
- [04:14]
Victor Davis Hansen
Well, this came up when we had the Chinese balloon and there were reports unconfirmed that some of the the Chinese said that they were not transmitting secrets. I shouldn't say secrets, but I mean photographic evidence of our military installations. But there were people who said that that didn't mean that you couldn't transmit information like on the Internet from people on the ground. And maybe people on the ground were in contact with it. And that might be the same thing with drones. I don't understand. If it's a foreign entity like Russia, people have pointed their fingers to Russia. Yeah, it's got to be people. What I'm saying, with all of this open borders in Europe, the United States, there's so many people here and there's so many people from foreign countries that I think the same thing. There were people that were communicating perhaps with a Chinese balloon that were here. And I think there's people in England. It's not. And then there's the other thing. We had four saboteurs in World War II. The submarine took four Nazi agents. I think there were five of them and some of them were German Americans that had gone back and got trapped during the war. But they landed, I think it was on the New Jersey shore. People will correct me because I'm doing this by memory. And they were tried for espionage and they shot them. And Churchill shot. I mean, they shot a lot of Albor German spies in World War II. Nobody fears that anymore. So if you're somebody and you want to take a drone and fly it over and they catch you, big deal. There's no consequences to it. There's no consequences to anything anymore. And that's why, you know, Andrew McCabe was on television. I was watching him and he was saying, well, you know, these people try to shoot trauma. They go after everybody. It's no big. They do that because there's no consequences. Should be a felony to threaten somebody's life because there's an epidemic right now. They threatened Lee Zeldin, they threatened JD Vance, they threatened Pete Hegseth, they're threatening these appointments. They've threatened Tom Holman. And they should go. This defunct, inert FBI should stop spying on parents at school board meetings or anti abortion and actually go, because that's a federal offense to threaten a federal official. And they should do that. We need to restore, is what I'm saying, deterrent. So nobody in their right mind would ever send a drone over a US base because that would be synonymous with 10 or 20 years in prison.
- [06:51]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Since you brought up Tom Holman, that was going to be a later subject. But what I noticed this week, because he's getting a lot of press for his support of the Trump agenda and his willingness to support it. And I noticed this week he said that he's more than willing to put the dimmer Denver mayor in jail for trying to conceal illegal aliens from him because that is a felony. And so maybe he's one man that is going to be willing to do some of this stuff.
- [07:24]
Victor Davis Hansen
All these people just talk so grandly. We're going to stop this. I mean, what are they worried about? An epidemic of lawfulness? Is that what they say? Oh, it's going to be. I think Rich Lowry wrote something about that. That's what they're mad about. All of a sudden, the law will start to have currency again. So this Denver person, can this Mike Johnson can posture virtue signal performance art? I'm willing to go to jail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But your spiritual forefathers are confederates in the 19th century that said the same thing. Just like you. They were confederates that defied the federal government because they thought their morality was superior. In your case, you do not ever talk about all of these wonderful people who have been murdered, all these poor kids that mistakenly take this drug and get killed by fentanyl, all the people on the border patrol that are in danger, you don't care about them. All you want to do is from your enclave. Virtue signal. This is a losing issue for the Democrats. It's one of the issues Trump won. Not the only one, but probably the major one. And it's not like the issue in 2016. And why isn't it? This entire illegal immigration issue has metamorphosized one. We never saw numbers like this. 10, 12,000 people a day, never 12 million people, illegal entries in the last three and a half to four years. The sheer magnitude has shocked everybody in 2016. Nobody connected as they do now. 80 to 100,000American deaths with fentanyl or sex trafficking. With that open border. There's another thing people are not talking about. Traditionally the Hispanic community, and that's a vague word for mostly Mexican American communities, were staunch open borders. That's why they one of the reasons they voted for Democrats. That's not true anymore. And it's not true for two reasons. One, only about half of these illegals are coming from Mexico. They're coming from Guatemala, but they're coming from Kenya, they're coming from Africa, they're coming from Sudan, China. They're all over the world. And the Hispanic community at best has no ethnic affinity with these people. And more importantly, they feel that they're hurting their communities by impacting their schools, by spiking the crime rate. So it's a whole new dynamic. And you know, one of the most iconic moments of this entire discussion was when Ron DeSantis, who didn't get enough credit and Abbott, the governor of Texas, hand in glove, started to bus people. And when that bus arrived in Martha's Vineyard and those shocked left wing liberals, their faces and that they were like deer in the headlights. And they decided for 72 hours they were going to tell the world that they were so ecumenical. So one and they brought those little boxes, remember their little visitor center. And then they said, now that is quite enough buses. Where are you we so long. We wouldn't want to be, you know, wouldn't want to be you. And they left and everybody said, well, that is what it's all about. About. It's about a bicoastal, mostly white elite on the coast who are very left wing and their political activist partners and the media who with a lot of Latino elites think that this is cute and you can change the demography and you can flip Arizona and Texas and Georgia like you did California, Nevada, New Mexico, and they're completely insulated from the consequences of their own ideology. Their kids don't take Fentanyl. Their communities where they live, Martha's Vineyard, they're not overrun. If they really wanted to put their money where their mouth was, the Obamas would have stopped right then and said, I've got 20, 15, 20 acres here. I got a big expensive lawn, bring those tents. I want all of those illegals to stay on my yard. I've got 2,000 gallons of propane for heater and I've got seven or eight bathrooms. We can turn over a whole wing of the Obama state and if that's too much, send them to Chicago. I got my Obama mansion or my colorama Washington mansion or Stanford University. Could have said, well, you don't have to do that, Barack. We have about, I don't know, room for 10,000 people in the summer of our dorms and we've got a med center and a law center. Just send them. But they don't do that. And everybody saw that, that it was so hypocritical to virtue signal that you were so empathetic and you were not a xenophobe and you were not a racist like all of these stupid MAGA people were. And then they thought they were going to run on that Trump is a dictator, he's a racist. And all of a sudden the Hispanic community said, nope, I don't want somebody from China, I don't want somebody from Africa. I don't want people anymore from Mexico to come in here with no English facilities, no skills, and they're going to swarm my social service network. I can't go to the doctor, I can't go see a lawyer. They have legal, they have everything. And so then the working classes said all they're here is going to undercut us as far as wages go. And then the people in the inner city, African Americans said, these gangs, man, they go after us. It was just different from 2016. And these stupid people on the left didn't see that. And they think now they're going to replay 2016. They are so stupid, they're going to go out and oppose this. And if you look at 75% are in favor of deportations. That is a lose, lose. I hope they do it because it's such an elite issue. And people are going to say these people are so hypocritical. They always virtue signal, but it never happens to them. It never involves them and that's why they do it. And I think they put their head on the noose. They're suicidal on this issue.
- [13:45]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, they sure are. VICTOR I'd like to take a moment for our sponsor, OpenPhone. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system. They'll help you separate your personal life from your growing business. For just $15 a month, the cost of a few coffees, you could complete complete transparency and visibility into everything happening with your business phone number. OpenPhone works through an app on your phone or computer and integrates with HubSpot and hundreds of other systems. It's affordable and easy to use. Right now, OpenPhone is offering 20% off of your first six months when you go to openphone.comVictor that's O P E N P H O N E dot comVictor for 20% off six months. Openphone.comVictor and if you have existing phone numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. And thanks to OpenPhone for sponsoring this episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor, I noticed that your governor, Gavin Newsom is excluding not my governor, but he's yours. Excluding Elon Musk from his proposed program for rebates on ev. And so I would like you to account for what he said.
- [15:19]
Victor Davis Hansen
Well, he says he's not a socialist, but he said if Donald Trump cuts the EV subsidy, then we're going to pick it up. I think it's $7,500. But, but, but just the only person that actually makes EVs in California still is Elon Musk. But we're going to single him out because he has too much. He sells half of all EV EVs. So we're going to single him out because he's too successful. So he, you have to pay the full price for a Tesla, but if you can get a what?
- [15:53]
Sammy Wink
Volt?
- [15:54]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, well, they don't even make those, do they? Did they stop making them Kia or something? We will a foreign car. So we'll give you a for a Toyota or a Honda, we will give you an EV rebate over an American made California car. And it's only out of spite and anger that Elon 201516 when he was very skeptical of Trump, they loved him and he was a big leftist, they thought and he was wonderful. And now they're trying to use the powers of government to destroy his company. And because that's what they want to do, they want to give a $7,500 price edge against all of his models. And it's Only out of spite. They don't know what they're dealing with. Donald Trump will find a way. He will make a federal mandate or make it up somehow. And he's not going to allow that to happen, believe me.
- [16:46]
Sammy Wink
No.
- [16:47]
Victor Davis Hansen
And this is a governor, remember, who's going to raise the gasoline tax up to about 62 cents. It's the highest in the country right now. And you know, we have fourth largest reserves of oil and gas of the 50 states and we're not utilizing. Our production is going down every month under him. Everything about him is a failure. He has the unmitest touch. Everything Newsom touches turns to dross. The budget is in deficit. The streets are filthy, the infrastructure is archaic. The homeless thing is just out of control. One out of every three people on welfare in this state, 21% of the people live below the poverty line. The schools are rated like at the last in the bottom five. They used to be in the top ten. I think a lot of truckers magazines rate the 99 per miles driven. The most dangerous, lethal freeway. It's not a freeway in every place in the United States. He's been a complete failure. And he just doubles down on this failure. He's not going to be. He's not going to be president. No, he's not going to do it.
- [18:01]
Sammy Wink
It would be a terrible thing if he were elected president.
- [18:04]
Victor Davis Hansen
Was he going to run off? Hello, I'm Gavin Newsom and I'm going to do for the United States what I did for California. The California model is our future. Oh, yeah.
- [18:16]
Sammy Wink
He'll try to contrive it so that all the problems he created, any solutions to his own problems, are going to be what he's going to say, I did this.
- [18:26]
Victor Davis Hansen
He's a child of privilege and he's spoiled. He's a product of the political nexus of the Pelosi family and the Jerry and Brown Jr. And senior and the Getty oil money in the Bay Area with proper obsequiousness to the Silicon Valley. $9 trillion market capitalization. That's who created him. He's never done anything on his own. He's always been handed an appointment and he usually screws.
- [18:54]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and you are going to talk to us today about US Bombing campaigns in the Pacific. Stay with us. And we'll be back.
- [19:05]
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- [20:05]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen show. You can find Victor at his AT X and his handle is Dhanson and you can find him on Facebook at Hansen's Morning Cup. So come join him there if those are your venues for getting your information. Well Victor, I'm interested in these bombing campaigns. I just have one question. How long did or when did the B52 bomber come in? Was that a post World War II? It was the B29 and then the B52. Did I have that?
- [20:39]
Victor Davis Hansen
No, no, no, no, no, no no. Hey audience, we're ad libbing this so you have to excuse Sammy.
- [20:45]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, Sammy. She's got the B17, 29 and 52 and she doesn't know.
- [20:50]
Victor Davis Hansen
Let's just go for a quick primer.
- [20:52]
Sammy Wink
Okay?
- [20:52]
Victor Davis Hansen
In the 1930s there was a contract put out for a all metal, all weather four engine bomber. No other country could build it. Japan never built a four engine bomber. Germany had a four engine Condor reconnaiss. They never could build it. Only two countries could. Russia couldn't and that was Britain who built one of the best four engine bombers at the end of the war. The Lancaster and the United States. But think about it. They created a B17 Flying Fortress and it flew in 1936 and seven and it had the so called Norden bomb sight. It had all of these double 50 calibers and it was a very rugged plane. But it had a range of about 1,000 miles, maybe 800 depending on the bomb load. So when they looked at World War II they kept B17ABC and it was that and the B24 which had a longer range, a greater capacity but was much more vulnerable, harder to fly. Those were the workhorses but as early as 1939 and 40, the Boeing aircraft carrier on the initiative from HAP Arnold said, you know what? What if we lost Europe and we couldn't put B17s in France to hit Germany? Or what if we fought the Japanese? We couldn't reach them from Pearl Harbor. It's 3,000 miles away. What we need is an improved version of a B17, but completely revolutionary. They can fly 16 to 1700 miles one way and back. And that was just, how are you going to do that? And then you should read the specifications. I did a lot of research for the second World wars on this. They wanted a plane that could fly 400 miles an hour, which was ridiculous, carry up to 20,000 pounds of bombs, fly at 31,000ft and go 16 to 1700 miles in one direction and get back. Now they got the specs on the direction check, the speed. They could go almost 360 miles an hour, but with a load that cruise speed was about 240. And they could carry finally 20,000 pounds if they didn't go up to 31,000. So they started this project. And it was. The problem with it was once they announced Boeing was going to make a next generation bomber, the biggest plane that was ever, biggest warplane that was ever built, 100ft, wingspan, 26ft from the bottom to the top of the plane. Everybody got in on it. So all their subcontractors kept saying, well, then let's make a computerized gun system so that one central fire control and the bubble on top can take over the guns. And when he sees a plane, he can direct all of the turrets to turn to concentrate their fire, even though he's not in charge of any one of them. Then someone said, well, let's make a pressure. If you're going to go that far, people shouldn't have that mask on. We'll have oxygen. They said, well, we have an open bomb bay. Let's make a tube. So they made a tube inside the plane that was pressurized so that there was some comfort and on and on and on. And so by the time they actually got the plane, it was so loaded and so sophisticated, it had 25,000 separate parts. The project was twice as expensive as the Manhattan atomic bomb project.
- [24:32]
Sammy Wink
Wow. That's right.
- [24:32]
Victor Davis Hansen
And then in 1942, they had this Allison Cyclone engine that was way ahead of its time. It had 18 cylinders per engine, 2,000 horsepower. You could put four of them get 8,000 horsepower. The problem was they heated up, they were air cooled, they leaked, and the first two planes, the experimental models, blew up. They had horrific accidents. And so by 1942, 43, they were seeing they were not going to get this plane in time for the European theater. They told the Germans they were, hey, you guys, we got this huge super plane coming. And there were some people, this was kind of informal that thought, you know, at some point we're going to get an atomic bomb, because there was a simultaneous Manhattan. And this was the only plane that could carry it had to be modified for it. So they finally came online, and the only places they had that were within 1600 miles of Japan by late 1919, 44 were India and China. But they couldn't supply. They had to fly in the gas, the bombs, in the case of India, over the Himalayas. And then they had to fly up at 30,000. So they discovered that when you load that plane up with 8 or 9, just not £20,000, 8, 9 or 10, and you go high, high, high, high. You burn the engines up. And then when you get up to 31,000ft, you try to bomb, you can't see anything. And the Norden bomb site improved version was not that accurate. So they were going to Japan with 50, 60, 70 planes and the first missions from India and China. And they were an abject failure.
- [26:17]
Sammy Wink
This is with the B29.
- [26:19]
Victor Davis Hansen
B29. So then General Hansel was removed and they had the reason that they took. We talked last time about the great Marianas turkey shoot, the battle of Philippine Sea that was to take the Mariana Islands, Guam, tinyen Saipan, because that was the closest large island they could develop that would reach Tokyo 1600 miles. And they built these fields before the battle was even over. They needed almost 8,000ft for the Runway. So they took off. And General Hansel was a great guy. He was traditional. We can go so high, the Japanese fighters can't even get up that high and perform. And when they do, they can't really attack us because we've got 11 men when 10 mounted machine guns and they're synchronized so we're invulnerable. That was the idea. And they dropped high explosive and they were three, four miles off the target. And they were starting to get a high loss rate because of mechanical. It was so. So it was just like nobody knew how to fix it. I mean, they had a whole crew of mechanics. Every 25 hours they had to swap the engines out. Think of that, 25 hours. Think of buying a car, you know what I mean? And six long trips and you're bam. You got to Put the engine in. So then finally they got a guy that was probably the most controversial American general in history, Curtis LeMay. And he was from Ohio. He had gone a few units short of graduation at Ohio State. And he was a George Patton. He was a fighter, but he was an authentic military genius. And he himself, as a colonel, had flown 25 missions on a B17. And he created the Stack squadrons, where he figured out mathematically if the B17s flew in a pyramidal fashion, then all of their guns would be able to be enhancing each other. So they put him in charge and they told him, you've got to make this program work because it's two and a half billion dollars now, and it will be the biggest fiasco in American history. And too many people are dying and they're dying from mechanical problems. And he tried to do what his prior, his predecessor had done. He says, it doesn't work. It does not work because the plane will not go up to 30,000ft. And it's too far and it takes too much fuel. And you get over the target, you're there for four or five minutes. And they have flak guns that you go down to 28,000, they're fine. It does not work. And then they said, well, what are we going to do? He said, I have an idea. We're going to go in low, four or five thousand, like a dive bomber, and we're going to increase the speed to 300 miles an hour. We're going to get rid of most of the guns, and we're going to put napalm in the dupont's new product. And we're not going to worry about the Norden bomb site. And we don't worry that the jet stream comes and pushes you at 3 or these B29s. When they were getting over Japan, they were going 400 miles an hour, and they couldn't really see the sight. And he said, every good thing will happen. They will go at 400 miles an hour with a tailwind. If you're dropping napalm, you do not have to hit the target. You just get in the general area. Because the Japanese are dispersing all their factories into individual homes. Propellers in this neighborhood, wheels in that neighborhood. We'll drop leaflets and let them tell them we're coming. And then the fire and the wind will do their work. And we will come in so low, their flak guns won't even be able to adjust to the lower. And everybody said, are you crazy? You're going to take the most sophisticated bomber in history that's designed to be invulnerable. And you're going to put it right down low so everybody can blow it up. They will blow every single B29 up that comes in at 6 or 7,000. He said, no, they won't. They're going to come at night, they're going to come quick, and they're going to get out. And that's exactly what happened. So on March 9th and 10th of 1945 was the greatest loss of life in a single day in the history of military conflict. Somewhere over 150,000 civilian military personnel. And then Namay went crazy. He burned out the industrial centers of 11 of the major Japanese cities. The only reason he paused was he ran out of napalm for a while. They literally the ship and see when the Marianas, they could bring them in with tankers and cargo ships and they would go right into the docks at Tinyon, Saipan and Ga, and they literally loaded up the napalm right off the ships. And then he did something that was even he didn't get a lot of credit for. He started using them with time released mines. So they would drop mines in the harbors that would last for 30 days, 60 days. And they shut down all Japanese shipping and he won the war. And then these same people, they, five years later, they went into Korea and they did the same thing to North Korea. The only problem was by then they had the MiG, the Russian MiG, 15, and they shot down about 40 of them. Every time you shot him down, there was 11 killed. And I think I said that to that story. My father joined the Marines with his first cousin that they had adopted his mother. He was orphaned and the two big Swedes went and one of them hit an officer. And they said the officer started the fight. They didn't care. They said, you pick which one's going to take the fall. So my father did. Victor stayed in the 6th Marine Division, got killed at Okinawa. But William, my father, they said, we're going to fix you. That's what my father told me. So they said, they pointed the finger and said, we're going to fix you. You're going to go to Nebraska and these things. You're going to be in an experimental plane. And they blow up. Mr. Hanson, think about it. So he went there and he had two crash landing and he survived. And then they put him in Tinian and he had 16 planes in his squadron, I think four of them survived, and eight replacement crews. And he survived all of them, 40 missions. He was on the March 9 and he was the central fire control gunner right on the bubble where the Japanese planes would try to hit that gunner and knock out all of the fire control. I asked him how did you survive? He said I don't know. I've always been pretty lucky. It reminded me of that line in the Forgiven by Clint Eastwood when they said my God, you killed five people in the saloon. William Money is the character he's playing. And I don't know, I've always been pretty good at killing. I don't think my dad felt really bad later because he could smell. I mean he said that they could actually smell human flesh. It was horrific. He had a lot of problems the rest of his life about it but somehow he came through. Crash landing at Iwo, emergency landing at Iwo. They almost fell off Tinyon. He shot down three. I had the certificates. He shot down three Japanese fighters. So it was successful. That's what really prevented. Everybody said the atomic bombs precluded the invasion of Japan. I think it's a little bit more intricate about it was Curtis LeMay. They had destroyed 80% of the industrial production of Japan. They had mined all the harbors and they were. And LeMay had kind of a grotesque agenda because they had taken Okinawa, what was declared secure in the middle of June 1945. And he thought that he could put another 2,500 B29s for a grand total of 5,000. Instead of going three or four times a week at 3,200 miles he was going to go once or twice a day 350 miles from Okinawa to Tokyo and back. And then he said why not bring over some B17s? And the British said well we got some Lancasters. They're all sitting idle. Germany surrendered in May 9. So that the idea was they were going to have 10,000 four engine bombers only 350 miles and they would have destroyed Japan. And it was just the dramatic effect of the atomic bombs that made them surrender. But they would have done. They would have had the same effect but with a lot larger loss of life if they continued the incendiary campaign from over.
- [34:47]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, sure. Didn't they destroy or kill over 100,000 in two nights?
- [34:55]
Victor Davis Hansen
March 9th and 10th the Japanese claimed 200,000. I think the bombing survey after the war said 130. And I think now scholars suggest maybe somewhere between 100 and 50,000. It was much. I think Dresden was 45,000, Hamburg was 35 or 40. It was much worse than Dresden or Hamburg. And LeMay said I dropped leaflets. I told everybody to flee. But where were they going to flee? It was cold, it was March, April. He said if we had lost the war, they would have tried me as a criminal. He was the one that was the model for Dr. Strange, General Turgenson, remember?
- [35:38]
Sammy Wink
Yes.
- [35:39]
Victor Davis Hansen
When he says, when they ask, well, what will happen with the nuclear weapons? I mean, even if we get through, won't some of theirs get through? And he said, I'm not, I'm not claiming we're not going to muss up our hair a little bit, but that was kind of unfair, the cigar and all that. And that was a brilliant movie, but it gave an unfair portrayal of Curtis LeMay.
- [36:02]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, let's take a break and then come back and talk a little bit more about the news, Kamala's campaign and post campaign activity. Stay with us and we'll be back.
- [36:16]
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- [36:56]
Victor Davis Hansen
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- [37:03]
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- [37:07]
Victor Davis Hansen
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- [37:24]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back. This is the Victor Davis Hansen show. We're glad all of you are here here. So, Victor, the Kamala campaign and campaign advisor David Fluff have recently admitted that they never let out that their internal polls never showed Kamala ahead. And so that's the news.
- [37:48]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, I really resented that because as the news agencies have pointed out, as I remember, he was telling everybody, remember the campaign of joy and the boom and the relief that Biden was gone, this brilliant coup that Nancy Pelosi and the Obamas pulled off. And then they said she was soaring. We know now that she was never ahead and we know that when he said our eternals, our internals, internal polls confirmed that when they were interviewing, he knew he was lying. He just said he was lying. He just said that our polls were at odds. We never were ahead. And so she gave that little, what he would call a post mortem kind of confession, 30 second speech. I've never seen anything like it. She did this video. She came back from Hawaii. She looked disheveled. She didn't have their makeup the same way or her hair, and she looked like she was groggy. And then she just kept. You don't ever let them take away your power. What are you talking about? They voted. They had the power. They took away your power. You're out of a job. What do you, what don't you get about that? The people spoke. They have the power. You're out of a job. Whereas Donald Trump said, get out of here, you're fired. So I didn't understand it. It was pathetic.
- [39:07]
Sammy Wink
She said she was proud of the race she ran as well.
- [39:11]
Victor Davis Hansen
I don't think so, because there's a storm. All of these big fat cat Democrats are saying, my gosh, we gave a billion and a half. They just. They couldn't walk across the street without renting a jet. They paid Al Sharpton and msnbc. Now, Megyn Kelly's so wonderful. She said she's really going after that, that al Sharpton got 500,000 for his crooked association, whatever it is, I don't want to disparage it, but it's a joke. And he didn't apprise his employers when he did this interview with her. Kamala, don't you think that the opposition to you is because you're black and a woman and there's racism? Yes. And what was he going to say when she was handing him under the table $500,000? It was so unethical. And she gets a pass. He gets a pass. The whole crooked. They had a guy on there, he was on the news and he just said, if she can't run a campaign, she can't run a country again. As I said, it's the worst campaign since Judge George McGovern with one big asterisk. George McGovern was a heroic bomber pilot and a sincere person. She's not.
- [40:24]
Sammy Wink
Well, what gets me is that she thinks she's going to run for governor, California. And nobody was going to give her money. Would you give her. I wouldn't give her money. Well, of course we wouldn't anymore.
- [40:34]
Victor Davis Hansen
If you wanted to give her money, you'd say, okay, Camilla, I'm giving you money and I'm gonna. I know. You're gonna give Oprah another monacino wing on her mansion or you want to give Beyonce and JC a couple more Mercedes. That's what you're doing. You're just turning it over to all those entertainers and celebrities that will do phony interviews with her and she's hand in glove with it. I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, well, I won't even go there, but it was so mis. I don't believe that you can go through a billion and a half dollars in 100 days. Do the math. The packs and the direct money that she has. It's just, you know, you're talking. It's not a million a day. It's a day. It's 10 million a day. You see what I'm saying?
- [41:24]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [41:25]
Victor Davis Hansen
And it's just impossible to even fathom. And Donald Trump, he was so, you know, I know that's an over use similar. I did a tweet today about it, but he's kind of beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. He's a road runner. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And she's Wile E. Coyote. She just sits there. And then finally, if you remember those Roadrunner cartoons, Wile E. Coyote kind of puts his hand on his coyote jaw and he's like, this is amazing. He kind of has an admiration for Roadrunner. And they take up every diabolical thing to destroy Roadrunner. Remember they saw off trees that he's sitting on and they put bombs on. It's just like the taking him off the ballot, the law for the impeachment. And it didn't work. It all failed. In fact, it made him stronger. There's a really weird sense in the country right now that it's a good time to be alive. I was thinking that the other day yesterday. It's really exciting. It really is. It's not like 2016 or 2020. He's got a determined group of people that really think, I don't know if they can do it because they're up. All the odds are against them. The media, the big money, the administrative state. But they.
- [42:44]
Sammy Wink
All the court cases, they're going to.
- [42:46]
Victor Davis Hansen
All the court cases, the liberal justices, Biden, you know, I have two minds. They want to put her in there for the last. I said that a bunch of times. I got a lot of kind of nasty email. Victor, are you Indulging in conspiracy theories. Because I said that twice. I think they want to say that she was the first woman president. She's an incumbent when she runs again for a while. And they're going to. As much as they leak that Joe Biden was fit as a fiddle and strong as a horse, they're going to leak that he's come completely demented. And when he was. You saw that speech he gave two nights ago that was spoken in some language other than English. It wasn't Spanish. It wasn't French. It was. I couldn't understand a word what he said. It was like this. And he was like, you know, okay, what did you say? And everybody looked around like he didn't say a word. And then he walked off into the Amazon jungle. It was weird because they cut the. The feed, so he never saw him come back out. So the comedians kept thinking he's still. He's like that old Kingston Trio song. Remember that? You don't. You're too young. The Kingston Trio, mta. Mta. He's never been. It was a joke about the subway in Boston and he's never been seen again. He goes in there and he can't get out. He's in the jungle right now because we never saw him come out. But maybe they're going to try to put her in for the last 30 days. But that even I'm not sure that he's going to physically or mentally be able to do it. The only thing I can think of is he's going to have one day photo ops in his basement. He is not able. When you see him, it's just sad. And to think what the Democrats did. They pulled this charade on us. They put this. This challenged, cognitively challenged person from day one just so the Obamas and the hard left could use him as a cheap veneer and convince everybody he was old. Joe Biden from Scranton. He wouldn't open the border and he wouldn't, you know, work with Soros attorneys. He wouldn't commit law. He did. He was just one of the darkest moments in American political history. He really is.
- [45:03]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. It makes you wonder why they didn't put Kamala in earlier. Because it seems to me that they should have just pulled, you know, threatened him with the 25th amendment, got him out.
- [45:14]
Victor Davis Hansen
Well, they tried. No, no, no, no, no. They tried. In late 2023, people went to Joe and asked him not to run again. The Obamas. It was Jill Biden. The media said, Jill. Dr. Jill.
- [45:28]
Sammy Wink
Oh, really?
- [45:29]
Victor Davis Hansen
And Hunter, who said no. No, he's going to run. But if they had have had him not run, they would have had an open primary or they had one last chance. And that is when they got rid of them. They had a brief that was that pathetic. Joe Manchin really thought he might run, you know, as a centrist candidate. He said, I might run, you know, but it was all fixed. There was no open convention, but they had a chance to get somebody. But then when you look at it, there was a poll yesterday that polled people right now, who would you vote for after the election? And she lost, I think, by four points in the poll. And then. But then this is interesting. They asked other. Amy Kobachar, Josh Shapiro, Gavin. Every one of them polled less than she did.
- [46:18]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, I was going to say the bench is. No, she's a good bench.
- [46:23]
Victor Davis Hansen
Nobody would have beat Don. Nobody would have been beaten. Donald Trump. That was sad for Nikki Haley. I kind of winced when she wouldn't give up in those last weeks of her campaign. I like her, but I was very critical in print once, because her narrative, her theme was, he can't win. He cannot win. And I'm thinking, yes, he can. All they have to do is keep trying to destroy him, and all he has to do is resist. He's getting millions of dollars of free media. He's a political genius. He's going to these areas of New York with these hearings were held where there's poor people. He's with the people and he's got the mugshot, and he's the person of the people. He's completely turned politics upside down. Gosh, I keep going back to that image of him going in Madison Square Garden after the election with Dana White and Joe Rogan and RFK and Mike Johnson. It was like a menagerie. You know what I mean? It was like, anybody can participate. This is not Mark Mitt Romney's party. This is not George Will's party. This is not John McCain. It's just anybody who's sick of what they're doing to the country. You name your issue, we're here for you. And it's kind of exuberance that's happened after. He's polling like 55% of people.
- [47:49]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [47:50]
Victor Davis Hansen
And people are. After all the negative publicity, I'm kind of worried he's soaring so high that you can't maintain that. But now they're. And I wrote an ultra piece on the website about the strategy behind Matt Gaetz. And I floated this. Not that I. And we mentioned it with Jack, but I'm not convinced that he did that. Three dimensional chess. That Matt came to him and said, I'm going to have a terrible ethics thing. I might be kicked out. Censored. Can you appoint me? I won't get confirmed. I'll go up. I'll cause a firestorm. They won't look at Pete, they won't look at rfk, they won't look at Tulsi. I'll bring all the fire on me. I'll never get out of the committee. I'll either have to resign or the committee will refuse you. You won't embarrass any of the Republicans to have to be on record voting for me, Please. And maybe he did.
- [48:42]
Sammy Wink
Maybe that's what happened. Because it sure looked like he quit. Right. Immediately.
- [48:46]
Victor Davis Hansen
And what happened? The people in the House are happy. There's going to be a good conservative that's going to be elected in his steed in that seat. Very quickly with Ron DeSantis. And all we heard about was Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt. And now people are saying, okay, you guys, you got your scalp, but we're not going to let you sobs do this again and again. So we're drawing the line with Pete.
- [49:08]
Sammy Wink
Pete. They're going after him.
- [49:11]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, they are.
- [49:12]
Sammy Wink
So that'll be interesting.
- [49:13]
Victor Davis Hansen
There's another article today in American Greatness written about Pete Hegseth and the accusations. And it goes through the whole case, just makes the same point. One of the strange things about it was, and I don't want to be too graphic to our audience, especially because I've been remonstrated before by being too graphic.
- [49:33]
Sammy Wink
Justly so.
- [49:34]
Victor Davis Hansen
What?
- [49:35]
Sammy Wink
Justly so?
- [49:37]
Victor Davis Hansen
But in the testimonial that she gave the investigators of the Monterey Sexual Unit of the police, she says that after the assault with Pete in which there was no prophylactic used, she says then she didn't report it the next day, the next day, the next day, not until four days. And that came that she must report it because she had sexual intercourse with her husband. But she had a condom with her husband.
- [50:07]
Sammy Wink
So what does that mean?
- [50:10]
Victor Davis Hansen
I don't know. Does it? And that fact shocked her into then going two days later, I think six days in total, to say that she was sexually assaulted to go have a raped kid. Think about this. After you've had sex with somebody else, then you're going to say that the person prior to that sex act, you're going to be tech that you were assaulted and raped. Is that why she had it? Everything about that story was completely incoherent. That's not going to hurt him. The only thing that's going to hurt him is if they can find out, you know, something more. They've tried. They've said he's been married three times. You and I talked about that. Matthew Ridgeway was etc. This sex thing's not going anywhere where no more than Tara Reid. And Tara Reid had a lot more credibility than this Jane Doe. I don't even think the fact that he hasn't led a corporation. He hasn't been a CEO, he hasn't been a general. Given what we know what CEOs do as cabinet officials. We just have Rex Tillerson and we know what four star generals do. We have General Kelly. And so those aren't recommendations as far as requisites.
- [51:28]
Sammy Wink
Yes.
- [51:29]
Victor Davis Hansen
What's the his war on warriors is what getting what what they're doing now. He wrote four bestselling books and there and one was on classical education, one was on the left Di and they're going through all that thousand pages. You know, he's probably got 400,000 words, 500,000 and they're looking to see exactly what he wrote and said and that's what they're doing. They're bringing that up because he said women wouldn't perform well in combat. Well, I've heard generals give lectures for the last 20 years and say that before DEI came in.
- [52:00]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor. And so speaking of cases, the last thing I wanted to talk to you about was we know these things and we've been talking about these things about the January 6th investigation. But now they've finally come out with the formal admission that Trump did offered National Guards in anticipation of a protest on January 6 and he was turned down and that Officer Byrd had prior disciplinary and training issues that included a 33 day suspension for a lost weapon. And finally these reports have come out and I think what I'm worried about is this seems to be what the government does in general but the left did is to allow a whole bunch of time in between and then all of a sudden, wow. And then it's no news. But they're. They've been lying. They've been lying.
- [53:01]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, they've been lying. And one of the it's kind of the FAUCI at large or FAUCI on steroid syndrome. Fauci, remember we talked about was so secretive and so careful to have redacted not turn over his internal communications right after the discovery of COVID in China and its lethality and its trajectory to hear then he was trying to remember. There was this exchange where they said, well, do you think the lab had anything to do with it? And echo. And that was damning. He tried to suppress it. That explained his whole career. What explained the hatred of Donald Trump and all the lawfare this year? It wasn't just they always hated him. They hated him in 2016, the collusion, the laptop disinformation. In 2020, it was. They were thinking, my God, we tried to destroy him. And if he comes in in 2024, and look what we did with the archives. And we kind of rearranged them and took pictures and we let Biden off for a greater offense. And he's going to look at Nathan Wade. And that November date was at the White House. And then the same day Coangelo resigned, and the same day they picked Jack Smith. They're going to subpoena, they have all the internal communications, and then they're going to go take another look at January 6th, and they're going to bring in maybe Matthew Rosenberg and say, what did you mean when you said there were all these, these FBI undercover agents? And they're going to look at all the destroyed evidence of the January 6th committee? They're going, it's not going to be pretty. It's going to give you a little different view of January 6th. It was not an insurrection. It was a buffoonish demonstration that got out of hand. But you don't try to overthrow the government when not one person is armed inside the Capitol. And then I think they're going to look at the other thing that's really strange. Donald Trump has got. I don't know what about. He's got a Nostradamus streak about him. He can predict things. But if he hadn't got in with the Kraken and all of the Dominion computers, there was something always weird about that election, 2020, and it was all a result of this massive deliberate transfer. So 30% absentee ballots goes to 70%. And then the rejection rate is a magnitude less. 10 times fewer ballots are rejected, even though you have double the mail in, plus. Double plus. And when you look at it, you know, I know that the vote in the last three weeks is creeping up, of course, for Kamala Harris. I think he's down now to 49 or something from 50.8. But they still, they were talking about the four. There's still 4 million ballots that you cannot explain. Only one time in American history has an election had fewer votes total cast than the election four years ago. I think that was 2012. And that was because of the ennui or the weariness of the second term of Obama that had Hopi Changi had worn off. And Romney wasn't necessarily a magnetic candidate. But this time was the second time and it was of much greater magnitude. So what I'm getting at is something about 2016 to 2020. There was an enormous leap, which it should be, but it fell off in 2000. Everybody wanted to vote. This was a much more exciting. But it fell off by 4 million votes total cast. Where did they go? I mean, Donald Trump got almost exactly the same amount of votes that he did four years ago in which he lost by three or four points, and now he wins by two points, percentage points. So people are trying to explain that. And I think that once they go have power, subpoena power, they're going to bring in everybody and try to look at that. The left keeps saying, he's going to go after us. It's going to be the end of the world. And that is 100% projection. Again, it's their thinking, if I had done that to Trump and I was Trump now, and he thought like I do, and I had the power, I would go after people like me for what I did, and therefore he must be going after me. But no, I don't think he is.
- [57:36]
Sammy Wink
No, I don't think he will either. It will be weird. I don't know. Do you think they really will investigate the 2020 for votes that were being cast that were illegal?
- [57:49]
Victor Davis Hansen
The first thing he's going to do is he's going to pardon all the people who did not commit an act of violence against a police officer, and he's going to let them out and pardon them. They're still. Some of them are in solitary. Some of them hadn't even gone to trial. And that's juxtaposed with 14,000 people arrested in 2020. And they let them. All these were for arson, assault. It was horrific. And the people will be with him on that, too. I think he'll probably pardon Hunter.
- [58:22]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [58:23]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah.
- [58:24]
Sammy Wink
I wouldn't be surprised if. If Trump did that. But last thing, because I asked you at the beginning of the show, but we didn't get a chance to answer it, and that is Israel. It seems that Israel has hit a Hezbollah armory or some sort a missile.
- [58:40]
Victor Davis Hansen
Factory where they actually assembled parts shipped in from Iran. And nobody thought they'd ever find it. They knew it existed, but they found it and they used a bunker, but they blew it up. They have almost emasculated Hezbollah. And the big story there is that there's a lot of accounts coming out from the Middle east that are pretty amazing that people in Lebanese newspapers are openly writing op ed writers, letters to the editor, their disgust with Hezbollah. They've done $20 billion of damage to Beirut's infrastructure, highways, bridges, electrical cables, power, sewer, all of that to get those grandees in Hezbollah, when they killed them in those, when they took out those apartment buildings. And the people in Lebanon are blaming Hezbollah because they're sick of them hijacking their own country. And they said, you did this. And the Shia Hezbollah supporting is not a majority of the population. So Hezbollah thought they would get empathy. And they said, you started this war, you had to get 150,000 rockets missiles from Iran and then you just had to keep shooting them into Israel. And then you just had to join Hamas. And then you just had to plan that you were going to do a bigger murder raid than they did. They had a plan golden area. And you did that. And you knew that we were going to be the ones that were responsible for you and they were going to go after us. And I think it's been, the world is changing. That's what's so frightening. I mean, it's frightening and it's exciting that if we had this conversation with a foreign diplomat from Europe or an expert on the Middle east in the State Department, we started to talk to them a year ago, they would have said, well, you don't understand, Mr. Hanson. Hezbollah is the most successful, lethal, dangerous terrorist organization in the whole Middle East. Look at them. They have 100,000 crack troops. They have 150,000 rockets. Nasrallah is an evil genius. You can't mess with those people. And Iran, it may have the bomb now, who knows? And they're unpredictable. And Hamas, well, you know, you don't want to go into Gaza. And Lebanon is the graveyard of the idf. We've known that from history. And then you what if you said, yeah, and they're crazy and Hamas will try to do something stupid. And when they do, they're going to level Gaza because Hamas is going to hide under the hospital, schools and mosque. And then when they do that, they're going to go take out all of the hierarchy, maybe 4,000. They're going to blow them up with pagers, they're going to blow them up with walkie talkies. They're going to target Nasrallah, they're going to target his successor, they're going to target the successor to Nasrallah. They're going to target the successor to the successor to Nasrallah. And then you know what, if Iran does anything, they're going to take out its whole air defenses. So how do you like that? And they said, well, that's why you're in Selma, California, you ignoramus. That can't happen. You know what I mean? And that's what did happen. And so we're living in a period where there's no limitations on the horizons of things. You can think, you can say anything, anything's going to happen. And it's kind of a scary, but it's also exciting time. And I think there's a very good chance that Donald Trump being unpredictable has frightened Putin in the past, but also he hates people who lecture him who are weak. And Donald Trump, he feels is unpredictable and strong. And I think he's going to cut a deal with Trump and it's going to stop the bloodletting. And when the left and the neocon right start to say he sold Zelensky out, I think the Ukrainian people, which According to polls, 55% of them want a settlement, they're going to say, thank you, Mr. Trump, because if we were at the battle of Stalingrad, we've had a million and a half casualties on both sides and they were going to go to the last, they were going to fight to the last Ukrainian. Thank you. We'll see. But I think it's very possible he can solve that quagmire.
- [62:55]
Sammy Wink
I think so, too. Well, Victor, a comment from a reader on your VDH ultra controversial cabinet and agency picks. Elizabeth Herring writes his speaking of Pete Hagseth. I think his War on Warriors is an excellent book that reflects my feelings as well. I'm an enthusiastic supporter of this nomination. Quote, Advice and Consent is a farce for Democrats, never Trumpers and Pearl clutching Republicans. It has morphed into obstruction and decent a political tactic having nothing to do with the original purpose. Trump won with mandates on several key issues, the very ones these controversial picks were chosen to resolve. And Bob Meyer says I could not agree more. So, Elizabeth, thank you, Elizabeth Herring and Bob Meyer for comments on the VDH ultra material. And thanks to our listeners who come all the time and the new ones. Please continue with us. Jack Fowler and Victor talk on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then Victor and I have a show on Friday and Saturday. And you're welcome to all of them.
- [64:14]
Victor Davis Hansen
We're speaking tonight on the eve of Thanksgiving.
- [64:18]
Sammy Wink
Oh, we are. That's right.
- [64:18]
Victor Davis Hansen
And I buried Sporty yesterday. He was 11 years old. He had stomach cancer and he. We didn't want to put him down. We let him, with painkillers, stay out here, but I had to dig kind of sore. I dug four feet. I buried them in the orchard. I don't know how many are out there now. In the last 50 years, probably 30 of them. And I always try to go down four feet, put ammonia or bleach or something to stop. If I don't, the coyotes go in and dig them up.
- [64:47]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [64:48]
Victor Davis Hansen
I didn't know that until I was 27 and did it the first time. I won't go into it, but I saw a coyote with a body part of my dog, and I went. And I could not believe he dug two feet, three feet down.
- [64:59]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [65:00]
Victor Davis Hansen
But anyway, it was bad yesterday. I felt bad for the.
- [65:03]
Sammy Wink
It was raining.
- [65:04]
Victor Davis Hansen
It was out in the. I was out in the middle of a mud and rainstorm, but got Sporty, got him buried.
- [65:11]
Sammy Wink
Sporty was a good dog, I imagine.
- [65:14]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yes. He had very loyal, very large teeth. He had the Queensland crazy gene. And that means now that Lucky's dead and body's dead, Sporty's dead, and Gracie's getting close to the end. I think she's 13 with arthritis. And we just have maniac brainless Spike left.
- [65:39]
Sammy Wink
Oh, poor little brainless Spike.
- [65:40]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, Spike. And he's getting up there. He's gaining weight. He's lost his killer instinct.
- [65:45]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [65:46]
Victor Davis Hansen
And what I did was, instead of investing other dogs, I'm 71. You can't really go anywhere when you have five dogs. So I've been putting up cameras, and I kind of read a manual how to do it. So I think I've got 11 cameras all over the farm and the grounds. And, I mean, you can see every inch. So if I was ever, I could call somebody, I could go. But right now we have all these dogs that no one ever wants to come in because the dogs are formidable, but their ranks are thinning.
- [66:23]
Sammy Wink
Yes.
- [66:24]
Victor Davis Hansen
And anyway, that was Thanksgiving. The other thing I was thinking just before we end is, you know, everybody says you should think about what you're grateful for. I've been really grateful for having really close friends. And I was thinking that the other day, my closest friend in academia was Bruce Thornton. We went 35 years together, Cal State and Hoover. I'm very close friends with Peter Robinson at Hoover. He's a wonderful person. Scott Atlas is a wonderful person. And I had a farmer, Chuck Garagas, who was one of my best friends. He's not well right now. And you know what Also, it's very important you want to try to. There was two of my best friends, and I'm not hearing, I mean, kind of estranged. One was Lawrence Woodlock. I mentioned him. He's a brilliant lawyer. He was probably the most brilliant student of Greek that I ever met. And he was a Green Beret and he had been wounded in Vietnam. Very heroic guy. And he was very conservative. And I was kind of apolitical and I became more political and he became, I think, more liberal. But I don't know what happened. He didn't answer some of my. I'd like to meet him again, talk to him. Because we were for 10 years best friends. The other one was John Heath. He was the co author of who Killed Homer? That book was very funny. When that humor did not come from me, I didn't have that talent. I, you know, I was kind of dour about classics is going to die. But he was so funny. And there's a, there's a spirit of joy in that book that's kind of irreverent. And he did that. And he was a marvelous prose writer and funny. He was the only person I ever met that could go in a class, three or 400 people, and just captivate them the first time I met him. This is funny. I think I'll end with this. I was taking this very serious graduate seminar in the Olympic Tetrad, you know, the Nemean Games, the Isthmian Games, the Pythian Games at Delphi and the Olympiad. And you each had to give a talk. And so. But the teacher was kind of boring and kind of sanctimonious. And I was kind of. There was Larry there, I just mentioned, and myself, and John. And John was supposed to give a report. So he put sheep in just like he had slides of all of the sanctuaries. But he would put a slide in with a sheep there in a pasture and say, oh my God, how did that get in? And she said, what is that doing there? Well, I guess it was in the background, I don't know. And he would go and say, now this is the Tholos at Delphi and this is the treasury of the Athenians. And we get to Isthmus. This is the Temple of Posei. What? There's a sheep in there. There's another slide.
- [69:24]
Sammy Wink
It's following us.
- [69:25]
Victor Davis Hansen
He just kept doing it, doing it and doing it. And I was just laughing. And everybody, they thought it was so bizarre. They thought it was crazy. But he was doing this to make fun and make it lively. And she got so angry. And that's the first time I really met him. I said, I've got to be a friend of this guy. He's a first year graduate student. I was two years ahead of him. And then we started having baseball. And he was probably the best natural athlete I've ever seen that didn't get serious and pretty semi pro. We would play and I was a pretty good hitter. And Lawrence was this guy I just mentioned was big and strong, but John was like 6:1, but gangly. And you would go out, you know, 300ft and he would hit it over your head every time. He was just a natural athlete. He had a great sense of humor. I miss him. I've tried to reach out to him. But, you know, Something happened after 2016. The Trump factor. I was kind of overt that I thought that he would win in 2015. I wrote and I had a lot of people who lost confidence in my friendship.
- [70:29]
Sammy Wink
Oh, I see. Yes. Can I be a nice way of putting it? They just lost confidence?
- [70:36]
Victor Davis Hansen
No, I would say I would hear things. Victor's flipped out. He's crazy family members. He's nuts. He's for Trump. He's a black sheep. He ruined his career. He shouldn't. I heard that from. I don't know if I heard from those two, but I never heard really from him. And when you get older, you should really work on friendships. You just can't let them be passive. You have to. They're active. So the people. I'm very friendly. I mentioned Carol Harris, who passed away. She called me every week to discuss politics and who she could help from the wonderful Harris Corporation. I really enjoyed talking to her. And Devin Nunes is another person. I try to. And Max Nakias, I try to work on that because they're such wonderful people. And you can't just be. As you're going down the home stretch. You can't let things just go on autopilot. So I'm going to reach out to both Larry and John. I hope they'll reply.
- [71:31]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, they will. Well, Victor, thank you very much. And thanks to our audience here.
- [71:36]
Victor Davis Hansen
Thanks, everybody, for listening.
- [71:37]
Sammy Wink
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off.