← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [01:20]
Jack
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. This is our Friday news roundup and we've got lots of news from the week. So we'll be starting with the Canadian elections just took place on Monday. And also some more on the Trump polls. I know that Victor and Jack have been talking Trump polls on Trump because we're all got him right at the edge at 50, about 50%, sometimes under, sometimes over. And so we're going to talk a little bit of clarity on that. So stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [01:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [04:55]
Jack
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Please come join him at his website victorhanson.com I'd love to have you there. It has all sorts of stuff for those who are not subscribers. But subscribers also have the Ultra material which is two articles a week and a video by Victor on the some current event. So we do that on Fridays usually. So come join us at the website again it's 6:50amonth or $65 a year if you like Victor's work So, Victor, we had first the Canadian elections, so I wanted to just give you a chance to reflect on those first, and then we'll go to the polls.
- [05:50]
Unnamed Speaker
There's a lot of complexities to that, Mr. Puliav. I've been corrected so many times. So he lost. He not only lost his party. The Conservative not only lost the election, he lost the seat. So he will not be in the Canadian Parliament. And the traditional exegesis is that Donald Trump so offended the Canadians by suggesting that Trudeau was ripping us off for 60 to $100 billion a year and that they might as well become a 51st state, since they're not spending enough to defend themselves in the real world and they rely on us for trade surpluses and defense. And that offended Canadian nationality. So it put Pouliev in a terrible position because he either had to say that Donald Trump was a fellow Conservative and he supported him, and if he did that, then he was anti Canadian, or he had to oppose Donald Trump. And if he opposed Donald Trump, he was doing exactly what Carney did. So there was no distinction. So he struggled with making that distinction. He had a huge lead. The fallout is, though, I don't see that they have a lot of cards to play because they're doubling down on Trudeauism. If you look at the Wall Street Journal pointed out, I think today in an editorial, had some problems with it, I think. But nevertheless, they pointed out during the Trudeau years, their total GDP over all those years grew at about one quarter of the United States. So that statism and huge. And they're going to huge bureaucracy, deficits, state health care, all of that. When you add in open borders, which they're to welcome you, they're in bad shape. And if people, everybody says, well, the Canadians hate us now. Well, we're having record immigration from Canada, thousands. And they're not just anybody. They're the most gifted, educated and skilled people are leaving. It's a big drain because the system doesn't work. So that was what was tragic about it, that they had a candidate that knew that, and he was similar in attitude. I think Trump's idea was, Canada's got so many existential differences with us, it'll be hard for me to work with a person who's Canadian, whom I like and agrees with me because I want to disagree with them. And he's. Carney's an easy target. I don't approve of that, but I think that was a logic. The other irony is this is really ironic. So everybody knows this, and I Think all of our listeners are bewildered by it. The subtext, or maybe even the dominant theme of the whole election was Canadian. Oh, Canada. Canadian nationalism. Right. We're not going to bend the knee before America. So who do they get? A native Canadian? Well, they're both native Canadians. But Mr. Carney, I think as I'm speaking, he's trying to backpedal and renounce. He is a citizen of Ireland, he's a citizen of Great Britain, and he's a citizen of Canada, where he was born. He was the head of the bank of Canada, but he was also the first foreigner to be the head of the bank of England. He resided in England for a long, long time. He is a globalist. He was a Goldman Sachs executive. He was on a UN directorship of climate change. He spent. What I'm saying is he's a citizen of nowhere and everywhere. He has no sense of identity. He just came back to Canada not too long ago and he's still a citizen of three different countries. And he is supposed to be the iconic nationalist and die hard Canadian True Blood. And it doesn't. Mr. Poulet had far better Canadian credentials. And that's kind of an irony, you know. But the other final thing is this trade war that's heating up and all of that we talk about, as I said, 70 nations. We're just talking about, I don't know, five to seven. We don't need 70 nations. And Canada is one of them. What do I mean by that is if you add up the $300 billion communist Chinese trade surplus, the 230 EU, the 200, maybe it's too little higher. Maybe 220 from the ASEAN nations. That's Vietnam, you know, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore. And then you add up in addition to that. So you have the EU, the ACN. Then you add up Canada, 170, I mean, excuse me, 63 billion in goods, and Mexico, 171. And then you just have two or three others, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan, and that gets you about 150. That's it. So all we have to do is get those nations. That's why Trump is so exasperated. The Wall Street Journal said this is very dangerous because with our Canada, because we depend on them for so much. I don't think that's true. You know what they mentioned? Fertilizer, timber, car parts and oil. Well, California's got, I think, the fourth largest forestry and we're not even using it. We've driven out all but two timber we can. If you told the Timber industry, We're not importing Canadian logs. Can you supply us? They would be so happy. They would go crazy doing it. If you told the nitrogen industry, you Americans know how to make nitrogen fertilizer? Yes, we do. We invented it almost along with the Swedes and the. So they could do that very easily. If you say, do you Americans know how to produce cars down there in Tennessee? Can you build a car? Yes, we can. Can you pump another? But we're going to be short 4 million barrels a day. Can you get some more oil? Maybe open anmore again, more offshore? Yes, we can. So that's what's tragic. I like Canadians, but this idea that the Wall Street Journal, that we're going to get in a trade war, then everything's going to be terrible. We can't find these. Trump was right about that. He said in a crude fashion, but when he said, they don't have anything that we can't do. And so I wish they knew that. And all they had to do was get a little thicker skin and say, trump is a wheeler dealer, art of the deal, and go to Trump and say the following. We will spend 2%. Carney said, yes, we'll make our deal, we'll spend 2%, but it's going to take until 2030. And I'm thinking, you promised in 2014. So you broke your promise for. You've already broke your promise for 11 years and now you're saying, give us five more years. And he was pursuing climate change and then it's going to cost $41 billion. So you say, well, it's going to cost 41 billion. Just cut your deficit down, maybe we'll give you a break, but why do you have to do this? And so I don't know. I got reprimanded in email by a number of people and they said, victor, Victor, Victor, you're not an economist. I heard that so much. You know, I went, I did some debates late, I gave a talk and people talked on the ancient world. And I grimaced because I spent my whole Life, I wrote 15 books on it. You know, I think I could say that I read Latin in Greek almost as well as English, not Greek. I'm not Latin, but Greek. But my point is this. I'm not trying to brag, but when I hear people weigh in on the ancient world, I don't say, just a minute, you're not a classicist. I want them to weigh in. It gives interest to the ancient world. But my point is that all these people said you were at Fault because you were talking about trade deficits and it says in goods. Yes. And you go to any online table from any economic data organization or institution, it says trade deficit and it doesn't say trade deficit in goods and not services. And the other thing is they're a little bit different. Just because the trade deficit in services enriches one part of the economy in a way that's not quite true of a trade deficit, surplus or deficit. It doesn't affect it in the same way as goods. If you tell the average worker, would you rather have a surplus in financial services or would you rather have it in assembly line products? I think you know what the answer is and so stay in your lane. I don't. I'm not going to stay in my lane.
- [14:52]
Jack
I like that, Victor.
- [14:53]
Unnamed Speaker
Rebel against people, get in my lane all the time. I never say a word. I have colleagues, I have friends that weigh in on the ancient world and I just, as I said, I grimace. They're so crazy. One of my close friends said that we're in the end of this is like the end of the Roman Republic, that Octavian is Augustus is trump. And I thought, wait, wait, wait, wait.
- [15:18]
Jack
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
- [15:19]
Unnamed Speaker
The Roman Republic was starting to fall apart a hundred years almost earlier under Marius and Sulla. It started to fall apart because unlike us, they had imperial possessions all over the European and Asian sub and North African subcontinent. And these provinces were the source of massive amounts of slaves but also great wealth and territorial governors found themselves with more money and more people and greater army recruitment and they marched on Rome because to be, you know, that was the whole story of Crassus and that was the story of Caesar and that was the story later of Antony and it was the story of Pompey. They all had made their fortunes in names outside of Rome in military campaigns going back to Sulla and Marius. And when you bring in battle hardened veterans with a lot of money from the provinces and the Senate says Cicero and Cato say no, no, no, put those away. They don't. It's just Augustus was the tail end. He was a reification of something that had been going on for years. So Victor spoke.
- [16:33]
Jack
So Victor spoke. Victor, I'd like to welcome a sponsor back to our show Vibrance. I used it for the first time when my skin was a little sun stressed. I wouldn't say it was burnt or anything but it had been out in the sun and boy did that super C serum feel great under my moisturizer. So I highly recommend this, this brand It's Vibrance and I found the secret all in one serum and it's Vibrant Super C Serum. The ingredients in this bottle can replace your your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams and even dark spot reducers. Made in the usa with the highest quality ingredients including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, vitamin B5 and vitamin E, Super C Serum delivers noticeable results, simplify your skin care routine, get a healthier complexion and minimize wrinkles and age spots with Vibrance. And if you don't find it better than your current skincare routine, you'll get a full refund. Go to vibrance.com victor to save up to 37 off and free shipping. That's Vibrance. V I B R I A N C E vibrance.com Victor so Victor, let's turn then to the polls and the the Real Clear Politics had an article by Kudlow. I forget Kudlow's first name. The Fox News guy, Larry Kudlow.
- [18:06]
Unnamed Speaker
I like Larry Kudlow. Show a lot and he's very, I.
- [18:10]
Jack
Like him, especially since Greg Gutfield makes so much fun of him. He makes him more endearable.
- [18:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Why is it, are they good friends?
- [18:17]
Jack
I guess. Yeah.
- [18:19]
Unnamed Speaker
Understood that. Yeah. You know, he had a slight heart attack on the first administration, but he's, I like the word he uses all the time, King dollar. Let's get back to king dollar.
- [18:32]
Jack
Well, what I liked about his word in this article was he called, he kept saying phony polls. And he did look at some polls by abc, Washington Post and ipso, and he said that their polled group of people was only 30%, 37% Republican voters. So it was low on that side. But there were two other things in the polls broadly. So if you would like to address seven. Oh, okay.
- [18:58]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, I mean, the Washington Post wasn't too bad. It was off, I don't know, three or four points. But what they basically did was they wanted to show that Trump's hundred days are creating a massive backlash. And so what they did was they looked at the 2024 results in which Trump won by a million and a half and one and a half points roughly. And rather than poll people who turned out to vote and give a little edge slightly in some, but largely in others, polled people more that voted for Harris. What did you expect? And then they polled people that didn't even show up to vote. And of course there's an argument, but most traditional exegesis said that people who don't show up for go. That's what the left says, that they're mostly to the left side of the ledger. And then so he did quote Mark Penn. Mark Penn's a Democratic pollster, conservative Democratic pollster. And he has Trump dead even. The other thing is there's two things what I think that are saving Trump and one is what is the alternative? Is the alternative open borders and 12 more illegal aliens? Is it more Obrego Garcias? Is it a Democratic Party that is reduced to potty smutty mouth videos? Is it ad Hitler, Ad Hitlerium reducto, ad Hitlerium argumentation? Oh, he's a fascist. I don't like to mention he's a Nazi allegory, that kind of stuff. And the F word, the shi word, you know, we try not to use that on this podcast. I think it's very important. Another op ed. It's a good one. I think Matthew Hennessy wrote it today. Everybody has to. We're getting a greater crudity in the culture. And so you don't want to use that pornographic or type of speech, similes, metaphors if you can help it. And that's what the Democrats think. There's going to appeal to people or they have the phony filibusters or the kickback videos or they're almost threatening violence. Did you see Governor Pritzer in Illinois?
- [21:08]
Jack
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.
- [21:10]
Unnamed Speaker
He said that he doesn't really believe in disruption and we had a judge try to civil disobedience. We'll get to that about David.
- [21:20]
Jack
But Pritzker then started saying this was about defending against tyrants and traitors. And he did call for we're going to get out there there and disrupt things.
- [21:31]
Unnamed Speaker
With all due respect, I'm not fat shaming him. But when he calls for near violence and disruption, I don't think I can see him on the street battling successfully against anybody. He's worth about $4 billion that he inherited and he thinks he's a man of the people. And he spent, I think he was one of the, I don't know, six or seven largest Democratic donors. When they talk about oligarchs, they being Sanders and aoc. And when you start to look at what the Soros people gave and Michael Bloomberg gave and Pritzer gave and Reed Hastings and Reid Hoffman, the money was overwhelmingly left wing, overwhelming. And for this idea that oligarchs, they've always been in the pocket of oligarchs, that's what's so strange about it. And this call for near violence and take Elon out. It's just, that's the alternative. And then if you look at you say, well Victor, that was just their mechanics, that's their methodology, that's their theatrics. Look at the issues. Okay, do you want another Afghanistan pullout? Do you want the why are the Houthis suddenly not attacking Red Shipping? Why do we have all 500,000 criminals? You want to go back to that again? Get Biden, say, you know, I want to retake on that. I'm aoc, I'm going to run, I'm going to get a million criminals, let's get 20 million illegal aid. Is that the idea? Let's shut down not just ANWR and new leases, let's shut down all of them. So there is no alternative. And the success or failure of the first hundred days of the Trump counter revolution will basically hinge on the status of the economy right before the midterms about 16 or 17 months from now. And if it doesn't, it's not in recession. He's going to do pretty well and he might even retain the house. I think he will. But it's very important to be on the. I don't know how to say this without sounding like Dudley Do Right. Remember that cartoon?
- [23:32]
Jack
Yes.
- [23:35]
Unnamed Speaker
Who is the most self righteous person in Markham politics today? Pete Buttigieg.
- [23:39]
Jack
Al Gore always takes the cake on.
- [23:42]
Unnamed Speaker
That Al Gore, he said, you know, it's not my tendency to compare people Hitler, but I'm going to do it. And I'm saying, you pathological liar. You called George Bush the head of a bunch of digital brown shirts. You know, you called Bush Nazi, Nazi, Nazi. But anyway, I don't want to be too sanctimonious, but as long as there's a moral ledger and Trump is on the right side of the moral ledger, he will be fine. So is it moral or amoral to have a sovereign sovereign border? Is it moral or amoral to have legal only immigration? Is it moral or amoral to enforce the law equitably among everybody and not twist it and wage lawfare? Is it moral or amoral to have a deterrent foreign policy to protect the interests of American allies and ourselves? In other words, you don't want two theater wars on your watch like the Middle east and Ukraine. Is it moral or amoral to look at the world's trading system and say can't we just have a little parody? Can't we have a little reciprocity? We're not stupid. You people think that the United States either is naive and thinks that trade deficits don't matter or they're good. Well, maybe some people do that, but most Americans don't. We just want to be treated the way you are. So on all these questions in the universities, if the universities are taking an aggregate 60 billion from the likes of China the last 30 years and Qatar and they're illiberal and they're partnering with their illiberal institutions abroad, which they are, and they're hiding it. If they're trying to go around the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action and still use race based segregation and preferences and graduations, dorms, hiring, admissions, retention, chain of. Yes. Are they using the student loan 1.7 guaranteed trillion dollars of student portfolios to raise the cost of tuition, room and board higher than the rate of annual inflation? Yes. Yes they are. Or do they enforce the. Do they provide guests, lecturers and students the protections under the First Amendment? No, they don't. Do they apply the law equitably? So if a white male is accused of hate speech or sexual harassment, is he getting the same due process as somebody that goes into Columbia and trashes a whole building and violence? No. No he's not. So my point is that as long as he's on that fight, he's on the right side. The only thing that he's got to be careful. I keep beating this dead horse. Tariffs. The American people have weighed in. They want them reciprocal. They would like no tariffs because they think we can compete. Fine. But if you're going to have terrorists for their tit, we want a tat and we want our surplus to go down from 1.2 trillion to a mere billions. Okay, but they do not believe, they don't think we should tariff Israel or Australia or the UK that are running deficits with us. They don't want a 15% tariff on everybody just to raise money. We only raise somewhere between 75 and 180 billion per year out of $5.5 trillion in revenue. And Trump says that, and I understand what he's saying, but he wants to lessen the burden on income taxpayers. But right now 40% of the American people don't pay any income tax whatsoever. Most of them get a credit. So it's not. If he wants to, he doesn't want to. I mean people in the party, the MAGA movement, want to put taxes on millionaires million dollar income. But my point is this. As long as he stays there and say reciprocity, symmetry, fairness, let's reduce it all and all just treat each Other the same. But if he thinks, ah, I'm going to keep, I'm going to tariff all these countries and I'm going to get, I don't know, he said a trillion dollars, 2 trillion over the decade. If you do the math, we're still only getting 100 to 200 billion. That's still not enough when you have a 5. The data doesn't support it. But the moral argument is not there to tariff everybody to get a bunch of money. It'll come off to the American people like we're gouging and we're trying to profit out of trade. We all profit, but we do it equitably and symmetrically. And we will lose the moral high ground if we tear off countries in a way that they do to us. We don't want to go down to their level. We only reply to their level and say we don't like what we're doing, but we have to do it because you don't play by the rules. But if we don't play by the rule or we're trying to gouge people, it's not going to work. I wish he would just, he doesn't have to say we're not going to get any revenue. He just, just tone it down. Just say, you know, there'll be some revenue, but we're not going to depend on it.
- [28:51]
Jack
Well, since you mentioned that they. I think that your point is that they can create the image that Trump is trying to gouge if he puts out the rhetoric that way. And to go back to our polls that the Fox News poll showed that 92%, not poll, sorry, but 92% poll of the news about Trump.
- [29:16]
Unnamed Speaker
That was network news.
- [29:17]
Jack
And I want to get one of the poll statistics in here, too. 72%, according to Rasmutin of Americans, think that they're in a fascist dictatorship. Oh, sorry. Of Democrats think they're in a fascist dictatorship. So my point there is that the media is still at the same game and Trump risks them winning with these negative issues.
- [29:46]
Unnamed Speaker
What I'm trying to. I think what you're saying and what I would like to say is that given all the negative media and given the history of presidential polling in the 2016, 2020 and 2024. Footnote, four days before the 2024 election, the NPR poll had Harris winning by four points right before the, the day before. Excuse me, not four days, the day before, by four points. And she lost by a point and a half. So they were five and a half points off. I don't even want to get into the Des Moines registered fiasco. But my point is that these polls are not reliable. The Republican conservative polls have Trump either equal or down two or three, not eight and nine. But what they do is they try to get some outrageous poll by asking known non Trump voters in the majority and then they think that when you aggregate all the polls it'll bring the whole average down one or two points. And it does. And yet so I don't think the polls are an accurate assessment. And then the media is completely negative. And it's not just the, it's not just the network news. I read the Wall Street Journal, I read a lot of the National Review. It's coming from the right as well. And they can't say a good thing anything. They'll say well the border was closed but. Or deportations were necessary but. Or he's spending, he's increasing the defense budget is where we need. But they're cutting. But it's always they can't just give an open handed and that's because they have a personal dislike of Donald Trump and they don't understand him. They still don't understand him. I'm not defending everything he does but when he says they rip us off, the countries are ripoff artists or it's fantastic, we're going to get billions and beautiful tariffs, you know what I mean? They can't handle that. It's not sober and judicious. But what is sober and judicious? Is it lying about for four years about Joe Biden's mental dementia? Is it trying to put a waxen effigy up as president and then manipulate him like the Obama crowd did? So I don't know. I don't quite. I have a lot of friends in these types of conservative media but I think they would like to see him fail and discredit the MAGA movement and then return the party Back to the McCain Romney Bush wing. I like George W. Bush. I'm not attacking him. And I think the subtext is well, we're going to play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules and lose nobly and we do not want to win ugly. We tried that with Lee atwater and George H.W. bush Bush and it worked. But we had to pay penance by losing to Clinton in 1992. That's their attitude. No more Willie Horton ads, no more Boston harbor ads, no more Dukakis tank ads. Those were too mean.
- [32:59]
Jack
Yeah. Well, we're going to go to a break but since we're there, I have reader I mean people who have been watching our podcasts on YouTube and since Victor already went there, I have other ones for the end of the show. But this one was From Vivian Watt Rosen 8378 and she said about that issue, I don't see the Republicans losing anytime soon. Their sweeping changes cover the whole of America. The Democrats can only win by cheating and lying. The public are more aware of that than ever. The Republicans will be in for at least 30. Thank you Vivian. I liked your opinion on that.
- [33:42]
Unnamed Speaker
That's like that scene in what movie was it when the recruit is slapped by the sergeant. Thanks Sarge. I needed that. Thank you for the slap of reminder. Yes, I don't know why anybody would vote for a party that is so foul mouthed and so duplicitous and gave us everything from collusion to laptop disinformation to Axios ping to the COVID virus was birthed by a pangolin and a bat to one vaccination good. Two better. Seven boosters gives you complete protection from being infectious or infectious. All that stuff. No, I don't think so.
- [34:27]
Jack
Yeah, I hope Vivian is right and I agree with her on everything.
- [34:33]
Unnamed Speaker
The Wyman, Homie, don't do that. That was a great show.
- [34:38]
Jack
All right, Victor, let's go to a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit. I have one more. Oh no. Then we'll come back and talk about Bill Belichick.
- [34:52]
Unnamed Speaker
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- [36:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [37:39]
Jack
E.
- [37:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [38:01]
Jack
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is on X. His handle is Ed Hanson and he's on Facebook at Hanson's morning Cup. And we've got lots of new viewers. We have 90, 99,000 followers on YouTube.
- [38:20]
Unnamed Speaker
So you can come follow us there. Pod viewership by about four fold.
- [38:24]
Jack
Yeah, it's been crazy.
- [38:25]
Unnamed Speaker
Nice and very crazy. And my email shows it. As I said, I'm kind of remorseful because I can't reply to anybody like I used to. Well, too many.
- [38:36]
Jack
Well, Victor and Bill Belichick who had, who has six Super Bowls winning under.
- [38:43]
Unnamed Speaker
His seven or eight as part of the coaching staff. He recently, I think he's been in the most super bowl appearances too. He was the most successful modern football coach. Might not have been the best, but he was the most successful.
- [39:00]
Jack
And now he has a new girlfriend and they were interviewing him. Jordan. Jordan. Jordan Hudson. Hudson, yes. And Bill was in an interview with CBS Morning Sunday Morning and he was asked how they met and he didn't want, he didn't want to answer it, but she didn't want him to answer it either. And so there's been a lot of news on that. The poor Guy is, she's 25, 24 and he is phenomenon.
- [39:30]
Unnamed Speaker
But it's got so many ramifications when we males turn 60 and if I'm not in that category, but I've watched these males who become, they're celebrities or they have money or they have influence and maybe they're divorced or single by then. And then a young attractive woman and the age difference is usually 20, 30. How many years is this?
- [39:55]
Jack
Some 40 years. Just short of 40 years.
- [39:57]
Unnamed Speaker
40 years. And then a younger woman. Some of them really like the people and they want to help them in their health crises. But many of them, many of them then absorb their whole person's life and they control. Like that interview where she was telling Sunday morning interviewer, don't do this and we're not going to talk about what is she doing? I think she used to run a sex toy shop and she has these weird pictures where she's dressed up as a mermaid and he's a fisherman that caught her and they've done all these little Internet stunts. But you want to tell him, I mean I've had people I know really well in their 70s and 80s. I had one of the most wonderful fathers in the world. I think I was blessed. But when my mother died far too early, he never really as solas he would go down to a local restaurant by himself and there would be a bar. And one time the bartender called me, who was a family friend and said, victor, can you come down here? There's some younger woman talking to your father. And he's had a few. He wasn't at all intoxicated. So I, I drove down there about midnight. I said, hey dad, what's going on? And he was about 73 and she was about 25 and she was sitting there, I'm just talking to this young woman. And then she got up, I said, could I talk to my dad? I said, why do you think she's talking to him? Because she wants my little pathetic pension and she wants my pathetic condo and she wants to our little money losing ranch. She wants that because she's talked all about, I'm not dumb, Victor, what do you think I'm doing here? I'm just trying to calm down. And he was really good about it, but he understood that and he looked a lot better than I did at 71. So my point Is that happens to. I don't know what it is about the male ego. The older you get. If for some reason youthful attractive women would show an interest in you, you don't think it is because you might have money or, you know, it was a quid pro quo good deal. Or a young woman thinks I can just. I can just sidestep the whole. Marry somebody roughly within my generation, work together, buy a house, get in debt, all that I can just. I've got everything. And then it usually ends ugly because then the family thinks that they're trying to appropriate. It's not a good look. It's not good.
- [42:31]
Jack
Do you remember Casey Kasem? But he was married to the second wife for a long time, but she still tried to steal them from his children. And when he died, they. Or when he was getting close to death, he. She hit him up in Washington state and then they had to send out investigators.
- [42:54]
Unnamed Speaker
I can't see what the name of that show was. It was the kind.
- [42:58]
Jack
The top 40 something or the top hundred hits, I can't remember. But he had it from 1989 to 1999. They still play his show on like Sundays on some of the.
- [43:13]
Unnamed Speaker
But I can't remember the, the attitude of his, you know, his family. That's what I was looking at.
- [43:20]
Jack
Oh, with the. The courts ruled in their favor. That's what I found interesting that when they. They ruled that they had visiting rights with their father when he was in the hospital and they had another rule that was in favor of his children. And that was a very strange case nonetheless.
- [43:41]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, I was just looking. He was that American band, all that kind of, you know who else that happened to. I was thinking of the X1, the great pilot Chuck Yeager. He had kind of a. Found he was in great shape and his wife died. He was very close. He'd been married to her. And then his family kind of had the foundation and he married a much younger woman and that turned really ugly. It really did. So.
- [44:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
It happens.
- [44:09]
Unnamed Speaker
I don't. I mean, hey you guys out there, I'm 71. If you're 71 and somebody 30 years old wants to talk to you and go out on a date, it's for reasons other than the way we look or talk.
- [44:29]
Jack
There you go.
- [44:30]
Unnamed Speaker
Although there are cases where I know people I met a lot of the donor class where I work, where I've met, you know, 30 year differences and they're very happy. But I have a good friend at probably 30 years and they're happy. They've had kids and everything, so I don't want to prejudge it. Some people out there are listening, but in this case, it's kind of manipulative.
- [44:54]
Jack
Yeah, it sure seems like it after that interview.
- [44:56]
Unnamed Speaker
So it wasn't Chuck Yeagers as well.
- [45:01]
Jack
Well, let's turn then, make a big turn to international things going on. And recently in Spain and southern France and Portugal, they had the massive. Recently, this Monday, they had a massive power outage that shut down transportation and communication. And I was wondering your thoughts on the Spain outreach.
- [45:25]
Unnamed Speaker
They had just boasted, given on their sunny days of spring that they had reached an iconic moment where they had 97% of all their power was wind and solar. That day. That day. But what they didn't tell you was, how about that night? So the problem with wind and solar is it was always designed as an auxiliary source because it cannot store power, it cannot surge the grid. It's not always. It's kind of like a pressure tank on your pump. You always need that pressure there. But it would be as if you're going to use your hose in your yard while the windmill is pumping. You know, we used to have a windmill here. My grandparents would tell me that when the people took too many showers and they had a big tank on the waterhouse and it wasn't windy, there was no water. And so when there's no sun or there's not sufficient sun or wind, then there's no backup. So it's fine if you have nuclear, gas powered natural gas or oil or coal. And they don't. They only have like 11 or 15% of 11 of 1, 3 of other, 4 of another. So it shuts down. The other thing is that I get terrified of the EU paradigm because to me it's odalous, Huxley's Brave New World or it's Orwellian dystopian and it's all heaven on Earth thinking. And if they had, look what they did to Germany. They destroyed their power grid, they destroyed their electricity, they destroyed their competitiveness, they destroyed their borders. Remember Merkel? Every time they said, we've got all this crime coming in from Middle east countries and we. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. What was what? That was just a nonsensical nihilist answer. But when you looked at this shutdown in Portugal and Spain, I don't think they were going to get out of it unless they imported nuclear power from France. And they did. And then France had a touch of it as well. But the point is, look at their paradigm that they were all their electric trains stopped, their high speed rail because they had no power and all the people and their beautiful echologically sound. What the left wants to do here, high rises, they couldn't get the elevators stopped and a lot of the electric buses stopped. And so my point is that everybody ridicules the American dispersal program. It's not efficient, it's too much of a carbon. But, but the idea of a ranch home where you have at least one or two cars that are gas powered with different sources, and especially out here in the country where you can, you know, if the grid goes down, you have ways of, you know, you have firewood for heat or you can always, you know, I have a hand pump. I don't know if it's, you know, on a well, an old well, it's probably dry by now. Never know, every spring it kind of fills up a little bit. But my point I'm making is you want your citizenry to be autonomous and self reliant and you don't want them to be bees in a honey hive. And then somebody can destroy the source of fuel and they're all gone and they're all dependent. And it also creates a psychological idea of dependency. Every time I go to New York, I think to myself, where does all the food come today? Where does all the water come? Where's all the power come? Where's all the sewage go? You know what I mean? Where does the gasoline come? Because you feel so vulnerable that you're dependent on thousands of people that have to do a perfect job. But it's much better to have a large portion of the citizenry at least able to cope self reliant. And it makes a different type of citizen profile. That was what the founders thought. That was why they were agrarian, because they thought it was the one type of occupation that was noble, because it produced food. But more importantly, it had so many skill sets that would allow the citizen to be independent. He had to know how to heat himself, he made his own clothes, he ate his own food. And you couldn't really intimidate him or scare him by cutting off a service or something. That was the whole idea. In Greece they had a word for it, autarkeia, means self sufficiency. And it's used often in association with autonomia. That means political independence because you're economically self sufficient.
- [50:11]
Jack
Didn't they have to reboot the Spanish electrical system with the French nuclear electricity? That's.
- [50:21]
Unnamed Speaker
I think they had to help it give a little start. They had all the things they thought were not so important. I think they have 11% of their power is nuclear or I think they had to take the nuclear plants offline because they didn't have power. They were worried about the cooling and stuff because if they turned them on, the power would go right into the grid and they would be endlessly lost. Grids are like plumbing systems, you know, they have to have pressure and surge, I think they call it. So if you don't have the surge, and that requires an ability of more than 100%, you have to 120, 130. Because if you start having outages, you surge in to keep that grid voltage at a workable level. But when you're relying on just these two backup sources, that's what they are, solar and wind, and they collapse. Then how do you get the stuff in there to reboot it? Because it's just going to go filter. All that's like your artery and vein system. If you lose all this blood, you just can't put a pint in and think you're going to wake up. It goes all through your body. You've got to maintain, get the blood pressure up to, I don't know, 60 over 40 or something to get it into the brain to start reboot again. And that's what this was. They had no brain because there was no way to get that surge up to a sufficient level to start the system to reboot. And they knew it. They knew it. They had been told that again and again and again again. I think everybody realizes that is one of the greatest dangers to modern society is what I would call the commissariat. And that is an ideological belief system that defies reality and rationalism and is imposed on people for supposedly superior moral reasons. And my gosh, it's dangerous. We saw that in Soviet Russia where military decisions in 1941 in the Red army were based on ideological purity and not strategy and tactics. And the same thing is true with dei. That's the scariest thing about dei, that you're using criteria that are not merit based in some cases. And you, you don't know what you're going to get except. And the other thing about it is it creates. It's an evangelical commissariat, an ideological purity. When they're imposed, they're kind of evangelical. I don't mean that in a religious sense, I mean it in the Greek sense. That's the word for trying to sway or to announce or to pronounce a belief system, any belief system. It can be Secular in the ancient world. But anyway, my point is that when you have those belief systems, then the people are not accountable because they think that if I'm pure on ideology, if I'm pure on di, if I'm in the office working pool and I've missed my deadlines, but I'm on the right side of the di, I'll get a pass. And it creates in the person themselves that are a beneficiary of di, a less urgent appeal, a less urgent catalyst, a left urgent desire to compete with people meritocratically because you always fall back and see, you don't like me because you're racist, you don't like me because you're sexist, you're homophobic and otherwise, when you don't have that, you just go out and compete.
- [53:45]
Jack
Yeah, maybe, I don't know for sure. But that helicopter that ran.
- [53:50]
Unnamed Speaker
Yes, we know for sure. Yeah, it's inexplicable that they told her to make a turn away from the running one way corridor. She didn't do it. And then they had repeatedly told her to alter her altitude. That was in the radio transmitter and she didn't do it. And either she froze and she panicked or she felt that maybe in her training she hadn't had enough hours. I don't know, I'm just speculating. But it could also be, as you suggest, that she was used to maybe men telling me what to do and I don't have to do it. You know what I mean? There was other elements in that calculation calculus where there shouldn't be. And that's what people are really after. Pete Hecseth but that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to say that when you hit the battlefield, you don't want any other considerations, that the person next to you is there for a particular reason and that is excellence. And in certain aspects, maybe not pilotry, we don't know. Or if you were an artillery person behind the lines and you had that calibrate mathematically the best target, women can do that perfectly. But when you're carrying a person that weighs 180 pounds, or you have to fight a jihadist hand to hand, you would want a male person in most cases. And then of course, you ever see that movie with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Adams rib. And she wants, she's the feminist lawyer to show that he's wrong. She gets this huge woman weightlifter and then a puny little guy and she lifts, you know, he lifts him, but there's exceptions, but on the norm, you don't want to change standards for ideological commissariat reasons.
- [55:39]
Jack
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about the Ukraine and the Houthi. Stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [55:51]
Unnamed Speaker
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- [57:05]
Jack
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen show. You can join Victor for these podcasts on YouTube, YouTube and watch them on video and on Rumble. So please come join us there. So Victor, I was just looking for an update. It seems like on the Ukrainian negotiations that Russia is making intimate supposed to be starting a ceasefire today for three days. Of course we would like that longer. And Putin has said he would like to negotiate directly with Zelensky. And so I was wondering your thoughts.
- [57:39]
Unnamed Speaker
On Zelensky would have to have a pretty big bodyguard or to get a plutonium pellet in his cab or something. Or he might he'd have to do it on a ground floor because he might fall out of the window. But Trump understands that he came across whether he as harder on Zelensky because of that shouting match. Putin then took advantage of that and so now he's rebooting, recalibrating. He's truth socialing or he's texting or posting that. I think I've been had by Vladimir. He's maybe he's playing me and Therefore, I might have to do. And this is something that Biden would never consider a secondary boycott because that would bankrupt Russia in its second. And they're nuclear power. If you told India or China, you're not going to have US$1 in trade, we're not going to buy one thing. If you continue to buy Russian oil, we have to say it to our own allies, unfortunately, the Europeans, because they're sneaky and they're illegally buying third party supplied natural gas. But that is something that has had an effect and I think that's kind of behind the ceasefire. He's just probing. Putin is like a little. I shouldn't say that. He's like some kind of bobcat or mountain lion. He just paws around and sees who, how much blood he draws. And then when he sees something, he goes at it. So he's just probing.
- [59:14]
Jack
He's looking for a weakness.
- [59:15]
Unnamed Speaker
He's looking for a weak spot. And if he doesn't find one, and public opinion, such as it is in an autocratic society, it is there. And they've got bloggers and everything, he's got a problem. And that thing is when the music ends and he gets a piece, he's got to go back and tell 145 million Russians that he probably got killed or maimed or wounded or lost a hundred, I mean, 1 million Russians. And he's going to have to say for what? And he, he's going to say, well, I had to do it to stop Ukraine from being in NATO. Okay? I had to do it so we could finally get formal legal title to what I stole in 2014. Donbass in Crimea. I had to do it because we made a little progress. That's still a hard sell for a million people. And so that's what he's looking for. There's something he can grab onto and sell to his own people or. And so I think they're going to get a piece. But it's so mind boggling that the right, the anti Trump right or the never Trumper right and the left are so critical. And then you want to say to them, well, wait a minute, we followed you for three years. What was your policy? It was the nihilistic whatever it takes. Asked Biden, how long are you going to keep doing this? Whatever it takes, as long as it takes. That's all he said. And you'd ask anybody in that administration, what is the. I asked some very. We had a military history conference that I hosted at my institution and I asked people two years ago, what do you think about the spring offensive? And so many people said this was in the glory euphoria days of stopping the armed assault on Kyiv. Really formidable thinkers, really did believe that if you had this stupid little, I mean, stupid huge Russian, it was one of the stupidest things you've ever seen militarily. They put all of these armored vehicles on that thin road to Kiev, and then it was open. It was kind of like the Market Garden arnheim Campaign of September 1944, where that elevated road was bridge after bridge. All they had to do was stay in the woods and pick them off and just knock out one. And then. And they did. And everybody said, well, see what they did. Now they can do that on the front. So the spring, the following spring offensive, that was the stupidest thing in the world. And it was advised by a lot of American analysts and military people. The idea that you were going to give a country that had been depleted by 12 million refugees had left, and you were going to tell them, you've got about 28 million people and we're going to give you armor and you're going to attack the state country of 144 million people. That's 30 times your size. That's insane. All they had to do is hunker down and use their drones and pick off the Russians when they attacked. And so. But that was the strategy, such as it was. And all it was was Stalingrad 2.0 or Verdun or Somme. And they did. It was just all that wastage for nothing.
- [62:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
All those lives gone.
- [62:29]
Unnamed Speaker
All those lives. And nobody in the left or nobody in the libertarian or anti Trump right said, well, I don't like Trump, but he's the first person that talks about it in human terms. He is. He says, he tweets things like, why did you hit that rocket and kill those people? This is just an utter waste of manpower. This is an utter waste of human life. I never heard Biden say that once, did you? This Ukraine war. I never heard people on the left say it. I would walk around the Stanford neighborhood and I saw that their George Floyd. You know, this House supports George. It had been first year those little things were gone. It was their Ukrainian flags. But I never heard any of them when I was walking by, say hello to them. They'd say, oh, my gosh, this is a horrific cauldron of human wastage and death. So Trump is talking about that. It affects him. And you know what would happen if he got a deal? That would be the most spectacular diplomatic move in the last half century. Far more impressive than Henry Kissinger's 1973 Peace 74 Peace Accord with the Vietnamese, which was broken and ended up in the trash heap. He got a Nobel Prize for that. Far more impressive than the Obama Nobel Prize.
- [63:49]
Jack
Victor Trump is not going to get a Nobel Prize, no matter what.
- [63:55]
Unnamed Speaker
He could be walk on water, and he's not going to get it. He's not going to get it at all. John Kerry wanted it. Remember, he thought he'd be sold out to the Russians on the Arab Spring and brought in the Russians. He was going to get. Or then he thought he was going to get one on the Iran deal. Remember he kept Logan acting around in Paris, where he would meet secretly when he was out of power in Trump's first term and meet with the Iranians and basically tell them, hey, just hold out against him, don't give him any wins because we both don't like him. And when I come back in, we come back in, we'll cut a deal with you. That was the kind of.
- [64:29]
Jack
The message, that's terrible message.
- [64:33]
Unnamed Speaker
That's what Jimmy Raskin said. He just said the other day, the representative, he just said, I wanted to tell all, you don't make a deal with Trump because when we come back, we're going to punish you.
- [64:46]
Jack
Wow. Iran under. Now that Trump is in, Iran is really struggling, I think, and it's got a threat, not just from the Israelis or us or anybody outside, but its internal population. I think that's right.
- [65:00]
Unnamed Speaker
We have no cards left. It was kind of like Potemkin village. Not that the Potemkin village was always a Potemkin village, but I mean, metaphorically, they were just this. All they had was this rhetoric about death to America, and they seemed crazy. And then they would have videos of the Hezbollah six footers and the camouflage and the Hamas people saying death. And then the Israeli IDF destroyed Hamas and the American and the Israeli militaries have pretty much destroyed the Houthis. I mean, we spent a billion dollars now, but we, we have taken out their command and control. Iran is broke. It can't supply them. They don't have ports. We're taking out their air depositories where they flew in by air and put the missiles there. So Hezbollah's gone, Hamas is gone. Maybe Hezbollah is dormant and the Houthis are getting neutered and there is no more Assad. So Syria was a big depot. It's gone. And then Iran has had its air defenses shredded not too long ago by Israel. But more importantly, it's shown to the world they were. Even if they weren't shredded, they were no good. And so here you have the United States is now going back to maximum pressure, and it's embargoing all of its oil, and it's putting secondary boycotts on our ally so they can't buy it. And we're in the Straits of Hormu and they're not doing anything. I. I thought they would get their little motorboats out. Remember, under Biden, we'd have a big carrier or frigate, and they'd get their little motorboats and cut in front of it, and then Biden would go, oh, my gosh, this will not stand. And they just let them do whatever they wanted, and they don't do that now. So the point is, what is Trump's plan? And his plan is, I think it is we're going to give them one last chance to negotiate. They have power disruptions. They have no electricity grid that works. They've got 30% of the population are minorities that are rescued. The people want chains. They got the Internet. They see things. And as I said, all the terrorist tentacles are gone. It's just the ugly head of the octopus. And he's giving them, I think, about three or four months. And you know what they're doing? They are rushing to enrich from, I don't know, 65 to 90% to get 10 or 12 bombs as quick as they can. And they're lying. And Trump, he surely knows that. But I think there's some question whether his sense that I solved the problem diplomatically outweighs his realism, because they lie. I mean, the theocracy is incapable of telling the truth. So I think what the strategy is, is to give them three or four more months and ratchet up the pressure and have them come to us and say, okay, I'm not going to support all these terrorist groups and I will open everything up and just restore the oil and everything. And that's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. So in three or four months, one of two things are going to happen. They're going to tell the Israelis, what do you need to get rid of your existential enemy? You need intelligence. You need a particular type of bomb, maybe even a particular type of American plane you want to rent, and we could train them to carry such a device. I don't know. Or we're going to do it, and everybody, whoever does it, the world's going to go crazy and say, this is horrific. And the world then is going to Take a big pause and say, ah, thank you. The Europeans will say, we would never do. This is imperial. This is cowboyism. Okay? We just said that because we're so. We're no longer in range of a potential missile. And then the Arab world goes, this is attacking a fellow Muslim country. Thank you. The Persian Shia are neutered. They're not going to hit Riyadh or they're not going to hit Dubai. So everybody will be happy. And the Chinese will say, how dare you do that? We might go into Taiwan, but actually we didn't like them either. And the Russians are going to say, I got enough problems with nuclear India and nuclear North Korea and nuclear Pakistan. I didn't need a nuclear Iran near my borders, you know.
- [69:19]
Jack
Well, Victor, I have one more topic here today, and then we'll finish up on Saturday, as we always do. But David Brooks was on PBS talking. I know, I'm sorry, but I know you and Jack talked about Justice Dugan and how she skirted a criminal out her back door to help him escape. Ice, I believe that was.
- [69:41]
Unnamed Speaker
He was a criminal. He beat up three people.
- [69:44]
Jack
Well, he praised her as he called her a hero, despite, and he didn't say it this way. This is my paraphrase. Despite the criminality that she was supporting.
- [69:57]
Unnamed Speaker
Sometimes civil disobedience is necessary in a judge. It's not in a judge, David, If a judge disagrees with a particular law and they say they're not going to show up for the courtroom, then they do a disservice to the country. As in the three victims that were sitting in her room who came there for justice because he admitted that he beat the crap out of three people. I think one of them was a woman. And so when she walked out of that courtroom or tried to, didn't show up, she escorted him out to defy a federal officer. That was not civil disobedience. That was a criminal act. And judges do not commit crime. If judges commit crime publicly, then they have no moral fides, no moral authority. And when you said, I don't really know the details. If you don't know the details, then be quiet. If you really think that she didn't try to obstruct and help the defendant, then don't say anything. But where is your moral compass when you are siding with a, a felon assailant who's here illegally and has been deported in the past and broke the law to come back and a judge tries to facilitate that criminality against her own federal government? It's you know what I mean?
- [71:24]
Jack
To the chagrin of the three victims that were sitting there.
- [71:27]
Unnamed Speaker
I know that I didn't discuss the law much with my mother. It was a superior court judge, Pauline Davis Hanson, and an appellate court judge. But I, I had talked to her a lot, especially when I was a graduate student. And every once in a while when they drove up to, she was on the Stanford Law Board of Overseers and she stopped by my apartment and I talked to her and she'd show me, she didn't tell me the case. She just would show me what she was working on. And it was something like this. I don't agree. She said, I think that this person is guilty, but it's so flagrant what the superior court judge did to this guilty person that I'm going to have to overrule him. Or she would say, I think this is, this person was deprived of, you know, that this person was guilty and was a very. And this person, person let him off because they didn't follow the rules particularly. And there was an appeal, especially in civil cases. But the point is that a good judge then follows the law, whatever their particular. I don't remember my mother ever saying, well, I disagree with this and I'm just going to not show up and I'm going to defy the law. If she did that, she would be fired. And I hope they fire this judge or they hold her. I mean, I hope they prosecute her for this, this. Because if you don't. And David Brooks was almost acting as if she's going to set an example of moral courage. No, she will be. She will set an example, David, but it's going to be a deterrence. So they're going to go after her and prosecute her to the fullest letter of the law. Because if they don't, all these lawyers and judges and the whole legal system will think they can rise up and defy the federal gut enforcement of an existing law. It's really revolutionary. This is from somebody who wrote, you know, has a contempt for little people too. There was a class element. He sided with an elite judge and a boutique left wing cause about don't deport criminals. But he didn't give a blank blank about the victims in that court that were beaten up by this thug. Just as these people don't care about Obuego Garcia trafficking or being in a gang or beating up his spouse, they always, they don't. That's for them all collateral damage. And I've met and know him a little bit once in A while. I've met him or seen him and talked to him. But this is a person who said that he looked at Barack Obama's crease and his patch leg and he said, I saw it and it was perfectly done. And then I knew he would be a good president.
- [74:22]
Jack
You mean David Brooks is the guy who said that?
- [74:25]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, it was even more egregious, I think, in some ways of Chris Matthews Freudian thing that said, when I hear Obama speak, I get a tingle up my leg. Remember that? There was something about that in that Brooks comment that just encapsulated the snobbish elite view of the world, that just because somebody has a type of pants that elites wear and he knows they have a crease done just right, that that has anything to do with him being a serious or good president. It doesn't. It has nothing. Nothing. Unless you think maybe you think that Donald Trump. I've looked at Donald Trump's clothes. They're immaculate. They're perfectly creased. David, does that mean he's your idea of a good president? Is that why? So the whole thing was ridiculous. And the idea that he goes on PBS and he's the conservative voice with that very radical K bar, they should just that it's another. I don't think he understands that. He's an. Another little tessera in the mosaic that says we don't need to fund this. Why would we pay somebody like that to opine silly things like that to a public station? You can go on the Internet and you get 500 Newstead channels. Right. This isn't 1990, 1970, when there was only ABC, CBS and NBC and you're out in the sticks of Fresno county and you like to have pbs. No, no, no, no. We don't need this anymore.
- [75:52]
Jack
And you could just go on to YouTube and read comments on Victor Davis Hansen's side. Yeah, well, I'm serious. Commenters are often much smarter than these, these commentary, these pundits on television.
- [76:07]
Unnamed Speaker
But.
- [76:08]
Jack
So here we have some comments to finish up the show with. One's for me, Sammy, it says, and this was a good comment because last Saturday we did a show with the beginning of World War II and Sammy said the Japanese invaded Pearl harbor. And I did. And that was a misstatement. So here is the comment from Pins Wordman. Sammy, Japan didn't invade Pearl Harbor. It's an important distinction. They attacked Pearl harbor is what the distinction is. Hold on a second. It's an important distinction in light of the Japanese strategy. It also must be pointed out in case any of the three most recent generations are listening and are hearing these facts for the first time in 17 years of education. So I apologize.
- [77:00]
Unnamed Speaker
I knew what you meant.
- [77:01]
Jack
Yeah, I know. So I get out of it by saying Victor knew what I meant. Nah, it's a good thing.
- [77:09]
Unnamed Speaker
That they invaded the airspace over Pearl Harbor. Yeah. I can't say you invaded the sea space because they were about 175 miles off the. But you meant that they invaded the airspace, which they did.
- [77:25]
Jack
All right.
- [77:25]
Unnamed Speaker
They did a little bit more than invade the airspace.
- [77:27]
Jack
Yeah. Another comment from our YouTube watchers was this is kind of a comment on World War II and the French. And I don't. I was wondering your thoughts on what this. What 65 GTO trips has to say. And that's the name of the person. The French didn't understand how to utilize their early World War II tanks, which were as good or better than the German Panzer. And you made that point.
- [77:57]
Unnamed Speaker
So Sharpie tank was 75 millimeter gun. It was bigger than anything in the German arsenal.
- [78:03]
Jack
Yeah. So this is what he says. He says they used them piecemeal for infantry support and not a strike force number one. And then he says that that alone, coupled with the Allies failure of imagination and thinking it would be be another static trench war vis a vis the Maginot Line, that they would get caught in a trench war when the German generals just did an end around through the Ardennes forest. So a failure of imagination in addition. Victor.
- [78:36]
Unnamed Speaker
Yes. But the French knew that when they were building the Maginot Line. Right. And they got to the Belgian border where the Ardennes was, they knew that they should continue the Maginot Line through the Ardennes in Belgium. But the Belgians told them that if you do that, then we're on the wrong side and we'll become neutrals because we'll have to. And the French then tried to encourage them to rearm. They only had about 20 divisions. They didn't want to fight, so they stopped. And then people said warfare has transmogrified into a war of tanks and armor and the Ardennes. When you go to the Ardennes, it doesn't. I mean, everybody, it's not the Rocky Mountains, it's the foothill and it's passable. That was another part. But the big problem with the Char B tank is, as the writer astutely points out, they didn't use them in mass. And people like Guadarian and J.C. fuller had been writing about that and Liddell Hart, how you should use Tanks in the, in between the wars. But the most important thing is it's the same thing through the fighter force of the French Air Force. If you look at some of their airplanes, they were better than the BF109. They were better, but they didn't have the backup crews, they didn't have the maintenance, they didn't have the urgency. So when you look at sorties of Germans that were flying from ad hoc grass runways on the forward lines, they were flying five and six missions a day, seven missions, and the French were flying two. And the same thing about when the Germans, they had very few Mark 3s with a 50 millimeter gun, but the Mark 2 was bad and the Mark I was worthless. But when they came through, they had much more organized fuel tankers with them. They had people that were mechanics and the French were not. Their logistical support was just laughable because they were, as he points out, they were a static army and a static air force and a static everything. That was one of the great tragedy because if you look at the French Navy, the Jean Bart, the battleships and especially the destroyers, they were the best destroyers in the world. French craftsmanship. They had the biggest Mediterranean fleet. They had some of the best tanks, they had some of the best planes. They had a lot of veteran people in the officer corps that were veterans of Verdun 19, 20 years earlier. And it just, they didn't get back to Mark Bloch's famous Strange Defeat tragic book about why they lost. And then he was executed just days before he would have been released. He was a great medieval historian, but that's a weird essay. Why Strange Defeat? Why did they just collapse? And he comes to the conclusion they lost it in the 1920s when they went socialist and pacifist and utopian.
- [81:50]
Jack
All right, Victor, thank you. And thanks to 65 GTO trips for that comment on the last Saturday's edition. We'll be coming back with Saturday Edition this weekend. Victor's going to be looking at the first year of the war, 1939 of the World War II. So listen to our Saturday edition for that. And thanks for joining us on this Friday News Roundup. Thank you, Victor.
- [82:19]
Unnamed Speaker
Thank you for listening and viewing and thank you for all the nostrums you've given me about sinus infection. And I'm trying every one of them and I'm making progress after two months.
- [82:30]
Jack
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hanson and we're signing off.
- [82:37]
Unnamed Speaker
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