← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
Shopify helps you sell at every stage of your business.
- [00:03]
Jack
Like that.
- [00:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Let's put it online and see what happens. Stage and the site is live. That reopened a store and need a fast checkout. Stage thanks. You're all set. That count it up and ship it around the globe. Stage this one's going to Thailand and that Wait, did we just hit a million orders? Stage Whatever your Stage Businesses that grow grow with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 a month trial@shopify.com Listen.
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Jack
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. This is our Friday news roundup and there is lots of news this week. Trump has been making news every week, all the time, anytime. As everybody knows, he did have a cabinet meeting. But we do want to look at Zoran Mandami first and then also the storm in Texas that took more than 100 lives. So stay with us and we'll be right back after these messages.
- [01:02]
Richard Karn
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Jack
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 Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhanson.com Please come join us there. The name of the website is the Blade of Perseus and it does have all of Victor's works there. It is his official website and there are links to his books as well. So please come join us. So Victor, I know that there's been a lot of news out on Zoran Mandami. The things I picked up on this week that I thought were new was that he visited a mosque after the aymen in the mosque said that Israel should be annihilated. And then he has also threatened that he would arrest Netanyahu if Netanyahu came to New York City.
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Victor Davis Hanson
The thing to keep in mind about him is he is a leftist communist, and I use that term very carefully because he did say in Marxist terminology that he wants to seize the means of production. I don't know what that means. Tesla dealerships, Trump towers. So that's not hyperbole. But the problem with him is he is a child of privilege, as we pointed out before when he said he wanted to go out after richer, whiter neighborhoods. He's also not that bright. He's glib, but not that bright. Because everybody knows when you look at statistical analyses of per family capita income Indian Americans, that is him, the Mamdanis are the richest of all. But now that he's in the spotlight, everything he's posted. So he talked about an ISIS member who was unfairly treated by the United States. He said he apparently filled out applications where he said he was African American. He was trying to game the system just because he's an Indian American who happened to be born in Uganda. He thought that would work. It didn't work. He didn't have great SAT scores. We're told he was a genius. In addition to that. He didn't make it. But he trafficked in a video making fun of Hanukkah. He had all of these Indian actors And they were. It was like a minstrel show. Can you imag. If anybody did that about Ramadan, he would be outraged. And now we learn that he also trafficked in photos where people were flipping the bird at the Columbus statue. So if you think about it, in the last two weeks he has managed to offend three ethnic groups that are prominent in New York. Blacks by trying to piggyback onto affirmative action when he wasn't qualified. Jews by making fun of their most solemn religion, this festivity. And Italian Americans make about 8 to 10% by basically saying f Columbus. And he's not done yet because he has a whole record and he supported people who were anti American terrorists. So the question again is Curtis Silwa and washed up Cuomo, are they going to stay in the race and divide the conservative vote? If you look at the primary totals of Cuomo, Soa and Eric Adams, there's enough to beat him by 10 points. I don't like Eric Adams. I think he was a racist. He said when he was a policeman that he's only he could go after the crackers. He was hard left. And then when he found out his city was being bankrupt by the Biden immigration policies and the transference of illegal immigration people to New York, then he flipped. And when he flipped against the left, then suddenly they brought out of the wilderness indictments. Probably was culpable of getting Turkish government money. But it wouldn't have ever happened had he not crossed them. But he's the only chance that they have to stop this Marxist. A lot of you on the conservative side, you feel like this is good because they get what they deserve if they want to. It's only going to discredit the Democratic label. That's partly true. But New York is an iconic city and it's an all American city. And you don't want it going down the tubes from this faker. So we'll see what happens. But each day we learn more about Mr. Mamdani and it's not good. He's one of these people like Barack Obama. His father got everything from the government. He came over here and he was a leftist from Kenya. And the same thing with Obama, you know, apology tour, all that. And then we get Kamala Harris. Her father came from Jamaica. He was a Marxist professor, got everything, affirmative action. Then Kamala is leftist and very critical. And then we have the not only need to get into the Ilhan Omar family, all the scholarships and special deference that she got. And I could expand that list. But what you're Seeing with mom Dahme is a pattern where people from, let's be candid, third world hell holes, they want to get out. And the US government in its DEI or its magnanimity offers them ways out. They come over here, they enjoy all of the benefits of being a non white minority in America, whether it's a Jamaican economics professor, Mr. Harris, or whether it is Mamdomi's parents filmmaker and his, his father is a left wing Middle east studies professor at Columbia or Obama's father from Africa. And then their children, the second generation tend to be very critical and hard left of America. But America is the antithesis of where they came from. So you would think that they would appreciate. Oh my gosh, I got, I got special preference. I didn't even grow up in America, my kids and they don't.
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Jack
And, and it's very sad people about.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Human nature that so many people look at magnet magnanimity as weakness to be exploited and not to be respected and returned in kind.
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Jack
Yeah, that would take a little bit too much elevated thought, Victor, for those people that you just mentioned. So let's move on to the big tragedy this week. The storm in Texas that flooded the Guadalupe river. More than 100 people died. The river rose 26ft in three quarters of an hour in the dead of night. And so a lot of kids in a camp lost their lives and other people as well. And I was wondering your thoughts on the news on this real tragedy here.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Well, there's the truth.
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Jack
Yeah.
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Victor Davis Hanson
And then there's the media constructs, not just, I could say the left wing or Democrat. It's not, it's the media too. So the truth is that the National Weather Service and NOAA gave alerts 24, 36 hours. If you look at their maps and you read their alerts, flash flood warning, dangerous conditions. I don't know why people who had these camps on the river did not evacuate. Evacuate because I think they thought that when they had flash floods in the past, the river went up 10 or 12ft, nobody had ever seen this in a hundred years. And when you see those time elapsed photographs where you see a bridge that's several, I mean way, way above the river and then within four or five hours there's water coming over it. And so there was no if you weren't going to evacuate then you weren't going to save a lot of people. And I think people just thought, you know, I'm here out in central California, we get NOAA alerts all the time about spring storms, lightning, Dangerous, they'll say, possible tornado conditions. It's very rare here. So they don't, they don't take it seriously. But that's the reality. If it was preventable, it was only the people who run the camps might have taken more seriously the clear weather alerts. But for the left, it was a Rahm Emanuel never let a great crisis go to waste. So immediately they jumped in and they had three themes on social media. One theme was, you deny global warming. This is what you get. You Texans. Well, that's kind of weird because Texas has one of the largest solar and wind grids in the country and they've really paid for it. And Austin's probably one of the most liberal cities in the United States. But the point I'm making is there's no evidence that this was global warming. It was. If you look at 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, you had an incident in 1987, but nothing like this. So it's a once in a century phenomena. And that happens. The second thing the left did immediately was this was Nemesis. You got what you deserve. You're cutting everything. And we're kind of happy this happened. I'm not exaggerating. You had a pediatrician that went on social media and said basically, they get what they deserve. The third one was because a lot of these people were very conservative that were killed tragically and they were Christian. You knew that somebody in the left had to do. They have two cards. They play the global warming card and the race card. So we had this minor appointed Democrat, say Philip Perkins, excuse me, in Texas. And she gets on there and says, basically, that's good. You never let blacks go to your camps. And you were segregated. That was demonstrably untrue. And you kind of got died. And you want us to feel sorry for you white people. And we don't. So this is important because it's a reflection where the Democratic Party and the left are going, because you have to superimpose what we just saw and what I just said onto a series of events. So you had the Obrego Garcia romantic treatment of this spousal abuse thug, gang member, trafficker, and the attempts to redefined him as a victim. Then you had these constant attacks on ice. And just this last 10 days, there were two violent attacks. One would be assassin, had armor and he was in his car and they stopped him. Then we had 10, 10 Antifa like would be assassins that shot one of the officers in the neck. And what's interesting about them is they had their pictures, they fit the Perfect profile of white, kind of antifa, extremist spoiled brats. They were all in black, they had arms. They were communicating with radio to coordinate this and they had body armor. And if you want to. This happened when I was in high school and in college with the Weathermen and the Cymbelines. Liber if you want to stop it, then you have to do what Voltaire said. Every once in a while the British hang a admiral to encourage the others. And I don't mean they're going to be hanged, but what I do think is they should charge all of them with conspiracy to commit murder, even the people who were not actually shooting. And then the next question is, who is funding these people? Where do they get the money to buy expensive arms, AR15s body armor, who coordinates them? Where do they train? And if you could, if you take middle class, upper middle class kids and we had this with the Cymberlese Liberation army and you put them in jail, that kind of stops it because then, because these kids, for all their revolutionary talk, they are part of the establishment and they're the kids that grew up and their mom said you've got to go to Stanford, you've got to go to Harvard. And so that, that's another. Then you had the mainstream Democrats feeding this seditious. That's a word the Democrats use, but it's more apt to themselves. You had hikem Jeffrey posing with a bat. Hike. You're opposing the big beautiful bill and you spoke eight hours. But why would you take a symbol of violence like you're going to club these people? And this happened at the same time that members of your Democratic Congressional Caucus met with town hall people and grassroots and we don't know if it's true or not because it was off the record. Anonymous but your own Democratic people said these people are kind of crazy. They're asking us to be shot and take a bullet. We don't know if that's true or not because the Democratic Party is very, I mean it's not like Jasmine Crockett and AOC are moderates, but they're trying to claim now, well, we're only like this because we have this lunatic hardcore base. So what is just to finish, what sums all this up? The obvious exegesis is they have no power. We had a district judge and we have been told for the first five months that Donald Trump has executive orders and that's why district judges are going after them, to stop them. But if there was congressionally approved legislation, constitutionally correct, then they couldn't do anything. Well, we had the big beautiful bill pass and what had happened, the Planned Parenthood people went to a Obama appointed DEI judge and tried to get an injunction to stop it. Well, this is a Congress. This isn't an executive order. So it shows you that these people are renegades. And there's people talking about impeaching that judge for trying. I mean, that's unheard of that you go in there and you wait to a congressionally approved major bill and then you immediately, you nullify it nationwide when you have this limited jurisdiction right after the Supreme Court has said you can't do that. And then so they don't have power, they don't have the House, they don't have Senate, they don't have the White House. But there's another thing that's going on that's showing how crazy they are. Well, actually two. One is Donald Trump had, I think acknowledged by many people the best 20 days of any president in modern history. So he did that incursion, 25 minute incursion to Iran. He neutered the Iranian nuclear facilities. There was no wider war. Now he's negotiating. He's not pro Putin, he's hard on Putin. He's trying to leverage Putin by arming, giving arms to the Ukrainians against the wishes of his base. He's looking at Gaza and there's about 500 to 700,000 Gazans who want to follow a group of sheikhs and cut a deal and make their own enclave independent in Gaza, analogous to something and the west bank. What we see of the 2 million Arabs who are living inside Israel. So he's doing that. He passed the big beautiful budget bill. The economic news came out unexpected. Tariff, high income, good job growth, unexpected. We have to use the word unexpectedly because the media always says this isn't true. Wall street hit record highs, was not supposed to happen. Inflation low. And in addition to all of that, basically zero illegal entries. Nobody would have believed that, that he could go from 10 to 12,000 a day to none, maybe 50. And they're not making it through. And this is coupled with something we also don't talk about. When we came in, we were told by our military grandees, oh, we're short 45,000 troops. It's not those commercials with pregnant flight suits. It's not the trans commercials. It's not the DEI hiring. It's not Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin talking about white rage, white privilege, none of that. It's because suddenly people got fat, suddenly they got tattoos, suddenly they went into Gang members. Suddenly there's very low unemployment. So we just can't compete with the ones we get. We can't. No, no, no. As soon as Donald Trump came in, they canceled all of those politically correct things. They started renaming ships to people who really served the military and were heroic, not Harvey Milk. I won't get into that. And they started to appeal to that. They basically said to the white working class, rural class, and Mexican and black were world class. But mostly the people who were responsible are the, the targeted demographic that the Biden administration went out after when they said they were going to investigate them. The multi generational combat people, the people that die at double their numbers in the demographic and they want to go and count. They said, you're not culpable, you're not a racist, and you're going to be judged on your expertise and military efficacy, not your gender, your sex, your sexual orientation, your race. And lo and behold, it's just like illegal immigration. We need comprehensive immigration. No, you need a new president. Well, we can't recruit people. We just have to get used to the new Democrat. No, no, no. You need a new military leadership. And so you put all that together. I could go on. And that is driving the left crazy that he is very, very successful. Finally out of breath. He's not doing what he did the first term. He, he addressed symptoms. He said, we're going to try to build a wall because of illegal immigration. This time we're going to try to find a university that doesn't disclose, like Stanford Chinese. This time they got in the wilderness years between 2021 and 2025. Trump and his advisors sat down and they said, why are these people so crazy? What caused the transgender nuttiness? Why did we. We've got to address the symptoms. Not the. Excuse me, not the symptoms, the causes of the symptoms. It's the universities. They are training an elite and they're getting away with murder. They're not honoring the Bill of Rights. They're not honoring First Amendment rights, free speech. They are violating the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on racial prejudice and bias. They are gouging us on grants. They're charging 55% overhead, on and on. They're having all of these foreign students from illiberal regimes are not even giving back. Let's hold them to account. Let's look at the foundations. Let's look at endowment income at the universities, and that is. And, and let's look at PBS and npr, these megaphones that are propagandistic. And then if we have illegal immigration. Let's just not build a wall. Let's just look at Mexico. Let's just look at Mexico and say, Ms. Sheinbaum, do you want to have 63 billion in remittances or you want me to tax it? Do you want $171 billion in surplus or do you want to go have me tariff you? Do you want to have the cartels killing us and getting 20 billion or you want me to declare them a terrorist organization and anybody that has anything to do with them in the banking system? And so he's looking at the causes and that is terrified the left because that's how they hold power. Not through popular acclaim but because of the they control the media and education and foundations, Wall street, etc.
- [22:45]
Jack
Yes. And Donald Trump is doing it all with his velvet glove as as has become his way. And I admire it. So let's welcome back a sponsor of this show, Open Phone. If you're running a business and you know that you miss a call, you're leaving money on the table. When every customer conversation matters, you need a phone system that keeps up and helps you stay connected 24 7. That's why you need Open Phone. Open Phone is the number one business phone system that streamlines the scales your cus and scales your customer communication. It works through an app on your phone or computer. So no more carrying two phones or using a landline. With OpenPhone your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts like a shared inbox. That way any team mate can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. Plus say goodbye to voicemail. Their AI agent can be set up in a minute to handle calls after hours, answer questions and capture leads so you never need to miss a customer. So whether you're a one person operation drowning in calls and texts or have a large team that needs better collaboration tools, Openphone is a no brainer. See why over 60,000 businesses trust Openphone. Openphone is offering my listeners 20% off your first six months@openphone.com Victor that's o p e n p h o n e dot com Victor and if you have existing numbers with another service, Open Phone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone, no missed calls, no missed customers. And thank you Open Phone for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. So Victor, the the one last thing I wanted to just note about all of this democratic warring with ICE is they always fill us with the rhetoric of Hitler and tyranny and they're really, the ones that look like the brown shirts of the Nazi party when these things are taking place, that they have their antifa and the Nazis had the brown shirt. So they are the real.
- [25:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
They have two problems. And number one is when you ask people, do you support illegal immigration, it polls no. And would you support no deportation? Even with the legacy media propaganda, they do support it. That's number one. Number two, they have a problem with the law. They're basically telling Americans that it is moral to break the law and let in 12 million people, but it is amoral to enforce the law and tell the people who came in illegally to go back and try it again. If they would self deport, if they don't want to select, if they want to continue to reside illegally, they're not going to get a second chance and they will be deported. So they understand that reality, but they also know that, as I said earlier, they don't have any institutional power. And Donald Trump is addressing why they had any influence at all. They have no political power. And now he's addressing their institutional power. And they are paranoid. And so one of the things they're doing is they're trying to concoct an idea that we're going to Forget about the 100,000 criminals he's already deported and the drastic drop in crime that ensued. We're just going to fabricate an idea that ICE is going after young children that were here illegally. But the problem they have is they can't tell you, well, what do you do about somebody who came in illegally and defiantly broke the law, cut in ahead of people who were here waiting to come in here legally, and they're now residing illegally, often with fraudulent id. They're breaking the law. So either believe in the law or you don't. Well, they don't believe in the law. So their idea of the law is whatever is convenient to us at any given moment. So if it's to wage lawfare about against Donald Trump, that's lawful. If it's to raid Mar A Lago, that's lawful. If it's to say that Donald Trump took classified documents and we're going to go into Malenia's underwear drawer. But you don't do that to Joe Biden's house. You don't raid his house. So it's asymmetrical. They don't believe in the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They believe in critical legal, critical race theory, that the law is a malleable construct, that it's against the Law to steal sneakers only because white, Christian, heterosexual, wealthy white people don't do it. So then they make laws to hurt poor people, so poor people then can redefine those laws and just, Just do it. And then a critical legal, critical race theory prosecutor should understand that he should let them go. And that's called distribution and equity. That's what they believe in. And they do it, of course, from their enclaves. They believe in the law when it comes to illegal aliens swarming into Martha's Vineyard. Or they believe in the law when Brad Pitt or somebody's house like that is broken into and they. Malibu or the most tony areas of Beverly Hill. You mentioned Karen Bass. So she went and confronted ICE and said, get out of here. Karen, two things. You are utterly disgraced. You were in Uganda and you let your city burn. You were on a junket. You had no business going over there at the height of fire season. Your administration, in cahoots with Gavin Newsom, did not allow people to clean the hillsides. You allowed the fodder. You appointed a crazy water and power person who let drain or let stay empty a critical reservoir. You appointed a DEI fire chief that was more interested in people's appearance, sex or race than she was making sure the hydrants were there for her fire crews. Your deputy, your deputy mayor is now in jail because he phoned in a bomb threat in an anti semitic fashion. That's your record. It's a mess. So you know that. So what are you doing now? You think if I confront ICE and tell them to get out of my city, the 1 million undocumented or illegal aliens in my city will be happy and I'll be popular? No, it's not going to work. It's too late for you. You're a seditionist. And that's very funny. You and others gave us lectures about January 6th. This is true sedition, when this is George Wallace par excellence. You're going as a state's writer right up to a federal official and you're saying that you have no jurisdiction in my city? Karen, you should read the Constitution. He does have jurisdiction in your city because the laws, federal laws, trump state laws. George Wallace cannot tell black people to keep out of the University of Alabama just because it's the Alabama National Guard. JFK nationalized it. Abraham Lincoln went to war because Confederate governors, mayors were claiming that post offices, armories, federal bases belong to the jurisdiction of the state or the city. And the federal government said, that's insurrection. That's what you're doing. That's what she's doing. And it's not going to work. It's all a ruse because she and Newsom cannot govern can California. They can't. It's a mess. And so they think they're going to gin up all this hate of ice. She's going to there's going to be, I hate to say this, but there are going to be ICE people killed unless people speak out and start to tell Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass and others that we hold you directly responsible for your rhetoric. And we and we're not going to allow people to shoot at an ICE patrol person or enforcement. If they try to do it, we're going to file felony conspiracy to commit murder charges and they're going to be in jail if we can convict them for 50 or 60 years. And we don't really care if they live in the suburbs or their parents or professionals, that we're going to make an example out of them to save lives. And I think that's what's going to happen.
- [31:21]
Jack
Well, I hope so. Victor, let's go to a break and then come back and talk a little bit about Trump and his Cabinet meeting. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. You can find Victor on X. His handle is D. Hansen, and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. So please come join us there if those are your choice. Social media well, Trump had a meeting, a Cabinet meeting. And in fact, he went over a lot of the the victories of his administration that you have just recounted for us. But there was one other thing that he said in it that that surprised his defense minister or sorry, Secretary of Defense Pete Hagseth, and that was that the Ukraine needs defensive weapons and Donald Trump's willing to give them to them. I was wondering your thoughts on that.
- [32:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
I wrote an article in the New Criterion about six months ago at the beginning of the Trump and I said, these are MAGA agonistes. These are contradictions. These are problems within the MAGA movement. One of the points I made is in terms of foreign policy, MAGA is Jacksonian. No better friend, no worse enemy. Don't tread on me. And from time to time, to maintain deterrence, you're going to have to use force, kill Baghdadi, kill Soleimani, get rid of the Wagner group attack on an insulation Americans in Syria deal with the Houthis. But the MAGA people say no, that's we don't even have our border is wide open and you're spending too much money Overseas, the defense budget's too big. Why don't we spend and be Fortress America? Well, an Iranian missile will soon be able to hit Fortress America. So what happened was Donald Trump came in with a MAGA movement, and he said, I'm kind of tired of Ukraine. Zelensky is a fraud. I. The Democrats pressured Israel. They said, no collateral damage. Got to have a coalition, coalition government. You got to get a ceasefire. They suspended weapons deliveries. And they said to Ukraine, you can suspend habeas corpus, you can suspend political parties, you can spend elections. No ceasefire. Don't have a ceasefire win. Don't be proportionate like Netanyahu. We want you to be disproportionate. And I guess they hated Putin or they thought he was more existential threat than they did the people on October 7th. So Trump came in with that anger at that, and he had the MAGA base. But the problem was when he yelled at Zelensky, he. There is an existential truth. The immediate causation of the war was Vladimir Putin, for the third time in four presidents, who's left his borders. He went into Osatia under Bush. He went under Honor Obama, Donbass and Crimea. He tried to take Kiev under Biden. And Trump said, well, he didn't try to do it on me because he knew what I would do. Yes, that's true, but you didn't inherit a quiet Putin. You had inherited a country with no deterrence left. So you had to restore deterrence. And by pressuring Zelenskyy to make peace, you forgot for a second that it was. That it was Putin. Maybe he had reason. The MAGA people said, well, we promised that we wouldn't extend NATO to the Russian border. Or, you know, we did all. It doesn't matter. For the. The immediate proximate cause was he crossed the border again, tried to take Kiev. Okay, so Trump is learning now as he talks to Putin. Basically, he said, vladimir, stop it, stop it, stop it. We'll get. We'll. We'll have a thing. We won't put them in NATO. And we promise that we'll make an economic corridor between you and Ukraine. You can. Everybody can profit with rare earth mining and everything. And you can probably. We'll give you the Donbass in Crimea that you stole in 2014. We'll. What do you want? And Putin said, basically, I want it all, because you don't understand, Mr. Trump. I'm riding a tiger. And when you're a dictator, you can't get off the tiger. You got to keep riding Him. And I got to explain to the Russian people, I killed a million and a half or wounded a million and a half Russians for What? To go 30 miles more than I already had? That's not enough for me. If I have peace right now, all the Russian bloggers and all these people are going to start attacking. They're going to get rid of me. So I'm not going to do it. So then Trump went to his advisors and said, oh, we've got to violate a MAGA canon again right after the Iranian war, that we have to do something that we didn't want to do. We have to side with Zelensky for a while and give him arms, because if we don't give him arms, we have no leverage against Putin because Putin is counting on me not to give them arms and to yell at Zelensky again in the Oval Office, so I don't have any credibility. So to get credibility, I've got to threaten Putin by giving arms to Ukraine. That's where we are are. It's a lose, lose situation. It's in. It's not Trump's war. He didn't. He inherited it from a weak, demented president. And he's going to have to create a credible deterrence with Ukraine and I think he's going to try to give them Patriot missiles. But he's got a good point. We're so depleted because we have not re armed ourselves and we had to give a lot to Israel and our means of production is sluggish of Patriot missile production.
- [37:05]
Jack
So I don't anticipate that he will be. Trump will be very successful with his peace efforts in the Ukraine and Russia, while he will be successful in the Middle east and his work with the state.
- [37:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
There's only one way to stop Putin, and that is to triangulate. And that's what Henry Kissinger did in the, in the Cold War when Russia was threatening to gain military superiority under Nixon, he said to Nixon, go to China and then split the two apart and make, make a cardinal rule. Russia is no friendlier to, to China than it is to us. China is no friendlier to Russia than it is to us. There's a lot of disputed territory in Russia that has been annexed over the years from China. Russia has 144 million people in a much bigger territory than China. China's got 1.4 billion, 10 times more. And yes, it's got less territory and it has claims on some of them. So when you talk to Xi, you're trying to divorce him from Putin. You tell Putin, xi's got designs on your territory and he's got a bigger army than you and you're tied down. You should be friendly with us and make a deal with us because whatever you say about the United States, we don't want your territory. We're not interested in trying to hurt you. And then he should tell Qi, you know, be careful. But Putin's tied down. He has no means to. And we don't support your idea of aggression against Russia, but we understand it. And then we tell Putin, you better be careful about China. And that's why what Kissinger did, it was kind of double D, lean triangulate. But the point was he nullified the Russian overwhelming threat in the Cold War that way.
- [38:57]
Jack
Well, Victor, let's welcome back another sponsor of our show, Free Prints. I would like to take a moment for Free Prints. I know you've got a gazillion photos sitting on your phone right now. Don't leave them there. Get them printed for free, free and delivered straight to your door with Free Prints. With more than 1 million 5 star reviews, free Prints is the world's favorite way to get premium quality photo prints. No subscriptions, no commitments, just a thousand free prints a year. Go to freeprints.com or download the Freeprints app directly from Google Play or the App Store. I think they mean the Apple App Store store. So thank you, Free Prints, for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson show and I hope everybody takes advantage of your service. So, Victor, it seemed like there was one more thing on that Trump meeting. Oh, no, not one more thing on the meeting, but one. Netanyahu. The second thing that Trump did this week was to meet with Netanyahu and they seem to be good, good friends. I think everybody and myself as well are very happy about the relationship between Israel and the United States right now. And that that meeting seemed to exude that. But he also said that he has nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Netanyahu did.
- [40:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
That was a payback because Trump supported him, never cut off his supplies, gave him the, I think, I don't know if he gave him the green light during the actual negotiations, but that's what the Iranian president, when he had that interview with Tucker, I saw part of it. It was, it was something else. I mean, that guy just acted as if he was. I don't know why anybody doesn't like Iran. We love the United. We've never done it. We haven't ever committed one act of terrorism. Again. I thought, you know, how about the Marine barracks How about the Iraq war? How about killing, trying to kill diplomats in Washington? How about blowing up the embassy? Those were all your surrogates that did that. But anyway, it was the idea that Trump was allowing Netanyahu to do what he had to do. And then he helped out in the 11th hour to get rid of the nuclear facility when I wasn't sure the Israelis had the wherewithal to do it. And then Trump also attacked the left in Israel and said, why are you trying to destroy Netanyahu through these bogus. I've gone through this myself. Law fir. Stop. And then Netanyahu appreciated that and said, we should nominate you for the. But the problem is, do you really think the left, left, left, left wing Norwegians would ever listen to the head of Israel if he's nominated something, they would say, that person's never going to get it. We live in a very sick world, an upside down Alice through the Looking Glass world where Barack Obama does nothing and he gets a Nobel Prize. And Donald Trump, whether it's the Abraham's Accord or trying to stop the Iranian war after the end of the nuclear threat, or the Pakistan, India or the Rwanda war or Ukraine, he's trying to create peace. And he'll never get the Nobel Prize. The more that he creates peace, the more they hate him. And again, it's that tragic hero. The more Shane comes down out of the mountains and he starts to give deterrence to the sod busters, and the more he kills the three people, the cattle barons. He has to say to Joey, tell your mother there's no more guns in the valley. I'm gone. Or that one guy during that dance scene in Shane, I mentioned that with Jack the other day. I don't know how, you know, Wilson and I felt like getting out of my chair and slapping the TV screen. You idiot. He's saving all you people that can't save yourself. And you're criticizing the methodology only because says you're safe now because he's here.
- [42:59]
Jack
And isn't it strange that they give a Nobel Prize to somebody for not doing anything? American President Obama for not doing anything. As though the Europeans are saying, if you Americans would just stay out of everything, it would be better. But we all know it wouldn't be better.
- [43:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
No. You know what's going on right now in European capitals. They're all saying, oh my God, crazy Donald Trump, he eliminated, at least for five to 10 years, the threat of ballistic nuclear tip missiles. And the Iranians would always gang up on us and bully us and not listening because we're unarmed. And we were always kind of hoping the United States would help us. And they never. Obama and Biden, everybody was too scared to do it. And this guy comes in that we despise and he, in one shot puts him back 10 years and then he makes us go up to 5% and he's going to rearm the United States and we're better. But we can't say that because we're supposed to hate him. He's orange, he's got comb over hair, he's got a queen's accent, he's crude, he's bombastic, he's right wing. Gosh, what are we going to do? That's their attitude. That's moral cowardice at all. I really like the NATO head. He didn't care. He was a former, I think, what, 14 years. He was the head of state at. Of the Netherlands. Was it Netherlands? I think so. And he basically said they had a New York left wing journalist that interviewed him and said, are you kind of embarrassed that you called him daddy and all that? You're obsequious. He said, no, we're in better shape than we ever been. We're going to be rearmed. NATO's going to be. We have strike plans. The moment Putin goes into Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania corridor, they would pay a terrible price. Then the reporter, she said something like, well, you don't think Trump would come to you. We've already discussed it. Yes, he is. And we're going to have the wherewithal and between Trump and us, and we could swat, you know, very confident. I couldn't believe it. So what they're saying, I mean, how low do you get when the American journalists want to attack their own country and their own president? Because the Europeans are starting to respect the idea that at last the United States is rearming and forcing them to rearm against their will, which they knew they had to do. And yet it's like that news conference you mentioned about the. It's not a news conference. The televised cabinet meeting. And they asked a question about Epstein.
- [45:28]
Jack
Yes. And Donald Trump just tore the reporter apart as that's an inappropriate question when there's so much more going on and so much tragedy in Texas.
- [45:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
I was watching that. I think that's the six cabinets. There's once a month. Biden in four years only had nine, so he's going to pass him in September. But there's a famous. He wasn't a very good writer, but there was a classical Greek writer of the Roman period. Athenaeus and he had something called the dipno sophistica, and it was called table talk, Witticisms around the table. And he just recorded what everybody said. And it was. If you read it, it's fascinating, you know, how many varieties of figs are there? Or why do Romans have togas? Or what? You know, they just talk about. And when you listen to that Cabinet meeting, each Cabinet member kind of praises Trump. But Trump goes, how about energy? And then all of a sudden he goes, it's just horrible. Wind and solar and you can't recycle and they're toxic. And then somebody else comes out with a whole different topic, and it's just a potpourri. And it confuses the media because they're like, wow, Biden never even had this. And we've never had a televised let it all hang out kind of. We feel like we're being used because it's scripted, but it's crazy. It's spontaneous. Trump can say anything to anybody, anytime, anywhere, and there's no blinders, there's no filters, and we're right in the middle of it. Then you have some, for the first time, you have conservative journalists, and they kind of have a T ball attitude. Hey, President Trump, what are you going to do about this? They put a ball up there so Trump can whack it. And then you look at the faces of the Democratic or left wing journalist. What? You're not supposed to be a journalist. You're conservative. You know, the British played that famous song when they lost at Yorktown. The world upside down. That's what happened. The world is upside down. It's a battle of Yorktown.
- [47:29]
Jack
Trump seems to have done it in a very good way for most of us voters. So I'm not complaining about the upside down world of the left.
- [47:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
And just think if he's right about the tariffs. That was another news this week that all of the experts who said that tariffs were going to spike inflation, according to Jerome Powell, apparently the Japanese and the Germans and the Chinese and the Indonesians and the Vietnamese and the Canadians and the all of them were making a lot of money. And they all want to be in the largest consumer market in the world. And if you just say to them, so we know what you're doing and you're making a big profit, so we're going to take 10, 15, 20% of it. And they go, we're not going to do that. And then you say, okay, don't do it. But then Scott Bessant, who's really a Good guy. He calls him up and says, hey, remember now, when you have a big surplus, you're vulnerable. And when we have nothing left to lose because we have a deficit, so just if you don't want it, play with us. Bye. Would want to be you. See you. So the point I'm making is that now they're all saying, well, Trump got revenue with these 10, 15, 20% tariffs and the prices didn't go up. Well, yeah, because they were making a huge price margin profit. So they got together and said, which is more important? Making 5 to 10% on our sales to the United States instead of making 20% or not having sales at all in the United States. And they chose to have a reduced margin and pay the tariff, etc. And then Chairman Powell, the head of the Fed, keeps talking about tariffs are going to raise inflation. He keeps doing it and doing it and doing it. So Donald Trump said he's too late. Powell, Jerome Powell, everybody said Trump is picking on him. He was picking on him. He didn't fire him, which would have been kind of untoward. He's going to, I think he, he has to step down and march. But basically, if you think of all the economic indicators and you compare his lowering of interest rates under Joe Biden, you get the impression that we're paying $3 billion a day in interest. And all Donald Trump is saying, if you were to lower it by a third, we would save $1 billion. That's third of a trillion dollars in my budget. And that would really help us to balance the books. Why don't you do that? Because all the economic indicators and you get the impression Powell is thinking, yeah, but you've made fun of me and I'm a left wing person. I may be a rhino Republican, but I don't like you. And I'm going to have all this highfalutin language and economic jargon and I'm going to keep the interest high. And you're going to hate that. And I'm going to enjoy the fact you hate me and hate that because I got another nine months here. I'm going to torment you. And he's really tormenting millions of Americans that want to buy a house or a car with paying artificially high interest rates.
- [50:38]
Jack
And you are not going to catch Jerome Powell making Donald Trump's administration a success.
- [50:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's one of the downsides of Trump screaming and yelling at people. There's a lot of good side because the chaos disrupts and gives avenues of new, new change. But a lot of people nurse their wounds and they get so angry that they become self destructive and nihilistic like Powell. He's not going to go down as a great fed. 20 years from now when somebody writes the periodic book of the Federal Reserve, they're going to look at this period and they're going to say this guy did not lower interest rates when every economic indicator shows the economy was robust and there was no danger of inflation.
- [51:25]
Jack
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take our last break and then come back and talk a little bit about the word that's been floating around D.C. recently. And stay with us to find out. And we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson show. Victor's podcasts are now on video on YouTube, Rumble and Spotify. So join us on any of those platforms if that's where you get your video content. So, Victor, the word floating around D.C. has been amnesty that Donald Trump is planning on some sort of amnesty for the workers of agriculture, hospitality, etc. And I think he's a little bit opposed to that right now. But they seem to, there's a lot of pressure on him to, to give amnesty to, to those people who have been here for some time and have been working and participating in the economy. I think that's the key.
- [52:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
Amnesty is a weird word. It's a Greek word. In Greek, you put an alpha, we call it alpha privative and it cancels out whatever the, the root is. The root comes from the Greek verb memo, to memory, to memory, to remember, pneuma. Anything you see with mn is usually something to do with memory. So amnesty. But you just don't, you just forget it. Yeah, I forget what happened. So the problem is that I don't want to give amnesty. But he's not talking about citizenship. He's talking about allowing people under certain conditions to apply for a green card. The key is the certain conditions and the numbers. Those are the two things that will rile everybody. Everybody's got to remember that the 12 million who came under Biden was in addition not to three or four or five like the left told us, but 20 million illegal aliens. There are about 30 to 35 million illegal aliens and they make up part of 55 million who were not born in the United states. The other 20 million apparently are either citizens now or Green Corps shareholder. So what are we talking about? We're talking about people in key industries that he that Trump has been told by agribusiness that you can't find Americans who do the work. And that's not Just driving a tractor or picking blueberries. It's also meat packing, it's also making beds, it's also cooking, etc. Okay, so how is he going to square that circle of telling his MAGA supporters that he's giving amnesty? Well, he's going to have to be very, very careful. If he's going to do this, he's going to have to say the following. Of the 35 million, I'm only talking about 4 or 5 million people that can get a green card that are not going to be subject to deportation. And who are those? They have to have been here four or five years. They have to be crime free, no DUIs even. They have to be off public assistance. They have to be gainfully, as I said, employed and they have to pay a fine and then they get a green card and then they can do what they want, they can reapply every year for it, or they can try to go to the citizenship route. Under the 1986 Simpson Mazzoli act, only a third chose to get citizenship. I think I said in the dying citizens that citizenship and residency are almost the same now. But my point is, out of the 35 million illegals, I don't think you'd have more than 4 or 5 million. And I'm always surprised when I go into my local town and I meet somebody that I thought I knew or I was acquainted with or comes up to talk to me. And they are on the following. They're working, they speak perfect English, they're very conservative and they've been here a long time and they're illegal. I'm serious. I've met a lot of people like that and they made a bad mistake and they're perpetuating that mistake. And if they had an avenue to get a green card, I think it would be worth it because it's not going to be a lot of people. But it would. There's another thing why it would be valuable. It would really make the left look stupid because they're saying they want to deport everybody. But they. If you said to the left, well, if you're a good US Resident and you don't commit crimes, you don't take money from the government. When you're able bodied and you're working and you're willing to pay a fine, then you have an avenue to a legal green card. So in other words, you're demanding that you not deport all the other people who don't qualify. You mean you're on the side of people who are able Bodied and not working on the side of people with criminal records on the side that people don't want to pay a fine. On the sides of people who just crossed the border. Is that what you're doing? So that's what I think his team is doing. But the MAGA base will say, no, no green cards. It's not amnesty. That's the wrong word. It's the chance to get a green card if you fulfill certain conditions.
- [56:46]
Jack
And speaking of immigration, if we could turn to a little bit lighter subject, and that is movies. There is a new Superman movie out, apparently, and the director has claimed his movie has a political message about immigration because Superman was an illegal immigrant. Apparently.
- [57:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
So what's the actor's name? Glenn. Is that his last name? Can't remember. But he.
- [57:12]
Jack
Scott Glenn.
- [57:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
Or not Scott Glenn, it's another guy, young guy. But he's saying that Superman was an alien. I guess he's saying he was an interplanetary illegal alien because he came here without getting a passport or asking permission to come from Krypton. Right. So there's two things I can't figure out. This, because we know from the Snow White debacle and every other Disney movie. Take one example. Anytime you have the lead actors show who they really are. And they're all the same, that they hate the United States and they hate Trump even more than they hate the United States. And this would be ridiculous because Superman stands for truth, justice and the American way. I remember I used to watch George Reeves. I'd come home from Selma, Eric White school. My twin brother and I would get off the bus before we did our farm chores with my grandparents. We ran in at 4 o' clock to see Superman and George Reeves would stand there. He killed himself later the after, and there was wind blowing and his cape would blow and it was really good. But the point is they're taking an all American traditional hero and they're making the actor attack America or at least attack the current administration. So you think now what's going on? And it has to be one of two things. They lost control of their merchandise and it's going to be a big dud. Because who wants to go see an anti American Superman? Just it's like Snow White, a PC Snow White. So that thing was a dud. And they know that. So they lost control of the narrative. Or they knew from the very beginning, given the people that were working, it wasn't somebody in the front office let their ideology once again freelance. And then the guys in the back room with the green shades and do all the numbers. They said, what the. Who are these people? They're going to bankrupt us. They always go PC and it destroys us. So what do we do? Well, at this point we can't do much but maybe we can get the left wing crowd to go to a movie. So tell those guys since they're left wing anyway and the rights onto it and middle America doesn't like it and we're going to lose money. Just tell them that now they're for Illegal Alien and maybe we'll get a bunch of antifa people and suburban Karens to come out. That's really pathetic. But it doesn't make sense otherwise. We want the hysteria we're getting, getting free publicity. Keep mouthing off. You hate American Superman. It's like Captain America. Any as a general rule, and maybe I can call it Victor's rule, any movie that is a superhero movie and any movie that the lead character is supposed to represent the American way or have the name America in him or Captain America super, he's going to be left wing and the director or producers are going to try to insert into the movie subtle repartee, lines, dialogue that he's anti American because you have to look at the people, the people who live down there in Los Angeles and write the scripts. It's like Google. There's an article recently when you search all these Google we've talked about all the opposite comes up. You know, I mentioned insurrection riot 2020 and January 6th came up. I had to have a surgical procedure follow up this week. So I was in Menlo park where it was. I had to go to a doctor and I sat in a cafe and watched people walk by and I was walking around from one doctor's office to the other and I looked at those people and I said these are the people who write the Google algorithms. And they are, they're all spaghetti arms, they're pink haired, they're young people and they're all left wing. And that's who runs America's Google searches and Yahoo searches. And it's the same thing with screenwriter. They're completely disconnected from the body politics.
- [61:21]
Jack
And it's no wonder that Google runs the way it does or movies are put out as they are. So. So last topic for the week for our news roundup is that Gavin Newsom has backed down from placing caps on oil corporation profits. And I was wondering if you had, you know what I'm wondering? Is this a political move I'm trying to get elected president or is this him coming to terms with the reality that fossil fuels are an important source of energy for his state.
- [61:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
He went along with the legislature the last six years. Remember, as I said earlier, no one person is more responsible for California's decline than Gavin Newsom. Because maybe Jerry Brown, who was mayor of Oakland and had been governor and was governor twice and mayor of Oakland. But Gavin Newsom was eight years a city council person, eight years a lieutenant governor, eight years a mayor, and he will be eight years a governor. So he'll have 32 years in the Bay Area, where his Bay Area, not LA is now with Silicon Valley money and left wing. That's what runs California. So he's more responsible. And he has been overseeing all the regulations that we're going to get rid of refineries. And he bullied them and bullied them and bullied them. You got to have the California Air Resources Board does this and you have to have this blend and you have to do that. And finally they said, you know what, we're going to go somewhere else. You keep importing oil from the Saudis and you complete. You're going to have to, you know, import gas from Nevada or, I don't know, Arizona, go ahead. And Texas, I don't know. But we're not going to do it anymore. And that whole Richmond corridor for Northern California, they're going to leave. And gas will go up to about $8 a gallon. And all the left wing millionaires along the coastal corridor will be happy. But he's going to panic because they're going to look at that when he wants to run for president and his Democratic primary rivals will bring it up. What's the price of Cal? That's what Ron DeSantis did when he beat him in that debate. What's the price of gas? How many people have left? California vs. Florida? What's your tax rate vs. Here's how many people you have and here's your budget and here's how many people we have in our budget. And he's done all of that. And so remember that line in Animal House where. What was that guy's name? I know, everybody knows Dean Wormhole or what? Worm. Wormer. Yeah. He says to the fat Dean Wormer going through life, fat, lazy and uglier. Is that what he says? Fat, ugly and lazy is nowhere to go through Life. Life. I feel like somebody should say being incoherent, incompetent and I don't know what else. Corrupt is no way to go through being a governor, Gavin, because everything you've done from high speed rail to the tax rate at 13.3 to gasoline tax that you're now increasing, it's going to be. It is the highest in the nation to 40 cents a kilowatt to Stonehenge, high speed rail to. I was drove. We drove home today from Menlo park on the 152 from Gilroy to Casa de Fruta. Hasn't changed in 60 years. 70 years. I remember going three or four years old. Four years old. And that's your legacy. And the LA Fire, the Aspen fire, the paradise fire, all of that. You took paradise and you made it into purgatory. That's what you did. And then you every once in a while went to Napa wine tasting while people were trying to get a permit in la and you went to the French Laundry while you shut down everybody else. And you can't help but you're living in a $9 million house. Your wife has government contracts. You were a Nepo baby that got everything from the Getty family. And. And now you're kind of a character. He does that little neck thing. What is that? He goes back and forth with his neck. It doesn't work anymore, Gavin. The hair slicker and the vet, all that doesn't work. Every once in a while you put on your Abercrombie and fish work clothes and you go out by that nightmare train yard by the port of la, remember, where they loot everything. And then you. He takes. Picks up his little gloves or he goes to the Paradise Fire and he digs a little ash and puts it in a bucket or something. It doesn't work anymore. He's just a total failure. You destroyed a whole. You destroyed the most successful, most beautiful state in the world. And the reason, the only reason it's even viable is because people, unlike you, Pat Brown, who was a Democrat, but he was a good governor, Ronald Reagan, George Dick Mason, Pete Wilson, they built the state. And you're living on their work and you're trying to destroy it. But they were so, I don't know, so industrious and so imaginative that it's very hard to destroy in just your 32 years as a public official to destroy it. But you're managing. He's got a little bit more to go. What will come up next?
- [66:49]
Jack
Such a sad tale you weave, Victor, about that pathetic young man. Tales of heroes on this, on this podcast. And I guess Donald Trump right now is our tale of a hero. So, Victor, we're at the end of our show and I have some comments from Listeners of you and Jack on your latest podcast, that would be the Tuesday podcast on July 8th. And Lisa Ortiz 4364 says thank you, you both, VDH, praise God. You seem to be on a positive recovery. Thank you, Jack. I enjoy your input during the podcast. We all don't like the same tea and that's okay. Don't change. So like the same, you're here for tea meaning Jack said that he has detractors and I think she's saying she really likes what he does and so don't worry about.
- [67:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
Post op the other day it was kind of medieval where they went in and took a camera. It was kind of. I've never seen anything like it. You're watching it, they give you a local anesthetic and then I've had an infection from the opera. And they go in and they have one little thing, it shoots water. One little thing sucks it out. One little thing takes a picture and it feels like you have a caterpillar under your eye and a caterpillar crawling around above your wisdom teeth. Teeth. But the doctor is very good and there was a lot more extensive cutting than he had anticipated when he got in there and a lot of it had some problems. So I hope that now I'm back on the road to recovery.
- [68:28]
Jack
Yes. So some tales from Victor's precious about Victor's precious bodily fluid. Yeah, not so Precious.
- [68:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
Operation number 10. I don't want to do a level and believe me.
- [68:39]
Jack
Yeah. Another one is Boo Boo lion lbs. So pounds. Boo lion pounds. Hey, Jack, in a future podcast, can you finish the story of going to for a drink on 35th and 3rd?
- [68:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I bet he can.
- [68:55]
Jack
I bet he can. And CS or sorry. C.SELLEY5658 and this was a longer one where he was saying he really likes your guys's podcast. But I like this part of it. He said, I'm a self taught. I'm a self taught kid. I saved up to buy Oxford history books in my late 20s and I'm in my late 20s now, only to be forced to temporarily fail my high school history exams in my socialist country. As I quoted Victor Davis Hansen as one of my sources. Got the. Got a true PhD eventually and planning to teach on a temporary visa. I adore America. I adore order. I've never known it and will leave when my gift of teaching expires.
- [69:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you for that. Yes, I had a person write me about eight years ago, a scholar. I won't mention his name or affiliation, but he said, you know, what's happening to you, Victoria? He was kind of friendly and he said when you wrote a book like the other Greeks that has, I think I had like 5,000 citations. And in the on the bottom of the page, footnotes at the back, it was kind of crazy. And the references and a lot of them were very obscure and some of them, you know, from untranslated scholia from manuscripts. But anyway, he said, people use your citations and your research, but then they don't want to be associated with you given your trump fides. So they put a footnote and they'll say they'll use in the body of the text, they'll use an argument that you did, and they don't want to be called plagiarists. So they'll footnote it and they'll say, see Victor Hansen? And then they'll have a comma who otherwise is completely wrong on the whole or who otherwise is not. And they always do that. They take your research and your ideas and then they footnote it. But when you look at the footnote, after they acknowledge they took it from you, they trash you as an idiot.
- [71:08]
Jack
Or public enemy, as only academics can do. And this last one is from Socratic Sandpiper. I'm sympathetic to Elon Musk. Elon, I like this Socratic Sandpiper because I kind of sympathized with your sympathy here. I'm sympathetic to Elon's disappointment and anger. He tried to move mountains in the administration and then Trump turned around and pushed through the big beautiful bill, which adds to the debt in significant ways. Instead of starting a new party, Elon should take interviews and explain his position. And that's a very rational I think.
- [71:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm on record that the richest man in the world and the most powerful should let bygones be bygones. And one of the things that Elon is a Renaissance genius, but he when he says something at X our Starlink, our SpaceX, our Tesla, that's gospel. I want you to get a better booster. I want you to expand Starlink into Africa. They do it, I want you doge to cut no, you can't do that in government. And that's Trump's position, is this we'll see who's right. He's saying to Elon, you didn't get your trillion dollars. You got maybe 200 billion. But I'm going to you're not giving me credit because I got 10 trillion in foreign investment coming in and I'm going to lower the interest rate one way or the other and save a billion dollars a day. I'm going to get tariff revenue. I'm going to start selling citizenship to rich foreigners. I'm going to do everything in the. I'm going to have the tax that's going to stimulate gdp. So before you say that, I blew up the. Let me wait until next March and we'll see. And the only problem with that is that supply side does work, but only if you have fiscal restraint. Reagan really grew. The economy grew by 7% in 1984. But the problem was he couldn't stop the spending, so he, he had big deficits.
- [73:18]
Jack
Yeah. Yes. And, you know, I, I was thinking, just anecdotally, I, as I drive the 99, since I commute sometimes, I can really see a difference in the industrial area because you end up on the 99, right, in a very industrial area of Fresno. And it really is changing. I can see business, businesses starting to pick up and abandoned.
- [73:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
I drive through some very impoverished towns between Central California and where I work, on the coast, near the coast. And on the west side, I'm starting to see little towns where the old abandoned factories packing out. You can start to see trucking companies come back, food companies come back. And then I start to see the quality of some of the farming. It's the, the places look better. So I think there. I don't know if it's psychological or it's foreign investment. I don't know what it is and.
- [74:17]
Jack
But it's looking good. Donald Trump. That's all we have to say.
- [74:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
I just saw a statistic today. 2 million more Americans are working and 1 million less foreign nationals are working. That's something that. Cannot believe that.
- [74:31]
Jack
All right, well, thank you everyone for joining us us for the Victor Davis Hansen Show. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen and we're signing off.
- [74:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everyone.