← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
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- [00:00]
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Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. This is our Saturday edition where we look at something a little bit different. In the middle segment this week, Victor's going to be talking about the building of the Panama Canal in the early 20th century, so we'll take a moment for that. In the middle segment, we have lots of news and I know that we're going to return to the Ukraine because as is true with the Trump administration, lots and lots of news is coming out and since we last talked, there has been lots of changes on the Ukraine scene. So we'll start with that. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Bombas makes the most comfortable socks, underwear and T shirts.
- [02:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
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Sammy Wink
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Victor Davis Hanson
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- [02:35]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marshabusky Distinguished Fellow in history at Hillsdale College. You can join him at his website, victorhanson.com and it is called the Blade of Perseus. Come join us. We've got lots of changes going on at the website, so you might notice things a little bit different. But we are putting a video on each Friday of Victor 4 Ultra subscribers in particular. So come subscribe to Ultra and at 6:50amonth or $65 a year. So, Victor, we've got a lot going on in the Ukraine. And since we last talked, what's come out about the Ukraine is that the united Russia's rhetoric is starting to be that they are winning and they're going to be victors in this or Putin will be victors. And this is just prior to having talks in Saudi Arabia. Trump as well as putting pressure on Zelensky, particularly about having elections. So he looks like a democratic ruler. And Zelensky apparently is not going to show up for the talks in Saudi Arabia. I don't know whether he's been banned from them or not. I saw a story that said he was banned, but he said he wasn't going to go anyways. And I was wondering your thoughts on these recent developments.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Well, that's a lot. I'm here again in Palm beach on the road. That's why we have we're not in our little Selma Farm studio, which I miss. But I hope this will work. We want to be timely and not miss a production. Look, everybody is upset. Let's just start about what the the brewha is about. Donald Trump said two things that got everybody upset. He said that Zelensky started the war a and that he was a dictator. Let's start with be first. A dictator would be classified as someone who is not legitimately elected or did cancel further audits on him by election. So Zelensky canceled a schedule election. Zelensky outlawed most opposition papers. He, he outlawed most opposition parties and he suspended much of habeas corpus. What do I mean by habeas corpus? It's you may have the body. It's a Latin term to mean that a person cannot be arbitrarily arrested without being formally charged under a body of law. And he is taking people right off the street and kind of impressing them into the army. He's going after dissidents, etc. So he's very sensitive, as is the American and European left. Because one of the arguments that you have to accept to supply Ukraine to the hell is it is a beleaguered democracy and it's attacked by an autocracy. If you blend that, then you lose the marginal moral superiority of Ukraine. And that's what he's worried about. And he, I'm not sure he's an absolute dictator, but there are, it's true, there is truth to what Trump said. Trump is also trying to suggest that he started the war. That is ridiculous. On the front of it because we all know in December, February 24th. Excuse me, on February 24th, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine for a third time. After 20 2014, he went into the Donbass in Crimea. In 2000, he went in. Excuse me, he went into the Crimea once, then he went into the Donbass. And then in 2022, he tried to attack Kiev and the borderlands. Why would Donald Trump say that Zelensky invaded first? Do you have any ideas, Sammy? I do.
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Sammy Wink
No, you got me there. Everybody knows that Russia invaded it. So I.
- [06:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
Let's just go through the alternatives. Okay. Number one, he is trash talking art of the deal trolling Zelensky, for example, does anybody listening believe that Trump was going to invade Panama or absorb buy Greenland or absorb Canada and make it the 51st state? No. Those ridiculous statements jump started a discussion, a negotiation. And what was the result of that negotiation? Denmark is now arming to the teeth and has sent a billion dollars in aid to Greenland. Does anybody believe it wouldn't have done that if Trump. It would have done that if Trump had kept silent. And does anybody believe that's a bad thing? Two, Panama got out of a horrific deal with China that was trying to encroach and basically break the spirit of our agreements with Panama, not to have a foreign power, in this case an enemy of the United States have a prominent role in operating the canal. Okay. Does anybody believe that Panama would have got out of that. No. Without Trump's art of the deal rhetoric. Does anybody believe that's a bad thing they got out of it? No. Donald Trump said he wanted Canada to be the 51st state. Does anybody believe that that's going to happen? No. Does anybody believe that Trudeau would have put a billion dollars and thousands of officers on the northern border to stop drug importation and illegal had Trump not that said that? No. So what he is saying is I'm going to say all kinds of crazy things. Dictator you invaded and that's going to affect you and it's going to remind you something. And here's what he's trying to remind him, Mr. Zelinsky, this is not 2022 when you were a world rock star, comedian and A T shirt that captivated the world because in a heroic defense of Kiev, you obliterated a Kiev. Russian. Russian attack on Kiev. Everybody saw it. They were just hysterically happy. You were touring the world. You were the rock star. But, Mr. Zelensky, that wasn't the end of the war. History shows us that Russia does not fight well at the beginning of wars, especially if it's way away from its borders, like in Afghanistan or Russia Japanese War of 1904, 1905, or. Or invading way distant Poland in 1919, 21. However, if it's fighting right next to its borders or inside mother Russia, ask Charles XII or Napoleon or Hitler what happens. They all think they're going to win, and then they're ground down. And so your country, Mr. Zelinsky, has only 30 million at most of its 40 million population. They've left. The Europeans talk a great game, but they will not give you the wherewithal. They won't even arm, according. There's still nine of them of the 32 nations that didn't meet their 2%, 2% requirements. They want us to arm you and be the primary supplier and protect them at the same time while they trash us and ignore, and we're supposed to ignore our border, our domestic needs to defend your border and Europe's borders. And yet all you do is trash us. You've been trashing me. That's what he's trying to convey. So he's also saying another thing. Well, maybe you didn't start the war this time, but in March, you went and negotiated with the Russians under the Turkish auspices, and there was rumors that you were offered a negotiation. I know your people didn't want to negotiate. You thought you were going to win the war, but you could have negotiated a better deal when Russia was not doing well than you will now when Russia is doing very well. So you miss the boat. That's another thing. He's telling. He's telling him a third thing. Mr. Zelensky, I am of the school, whether you like it or not, and whether the left in America likes it or not, that in 2014, Mr. Yanukovych was a pro Russian elected government. Yes, he was unpopular. Yes, he was shady, but they all are shady. And he was elected. And the Obama State Department and people like John McCain, Victoria Newton, they all pressured the Ukrainians to reassert themselves against this Russian influence. And he was skeptical. The president who was elected of Ukraine drifting into the EU orbit and the NATO orbit. Why? Because he was afraid that Russia, who he had kindly Feelings for would invade and say, we're not going to let you capture the breadbasket of the old Soviet Union and turn it into an eu, NATO country right on our border when we have millions of Russian minorities. And they ignored that. And so they. Then what happened? They had a coup, a revolution, insurrection, Left, got all kinds of words for that. And they put in Mr. Poroshenko, a pro Western person, and then later Zelensky. But they did remove an elected government. That was a provocation. That's what he's talking about. And so these are the reasons that he, he thinks that he can trash talk art of the deal, troll about who invaded first and who didn't. And he's trying to make it ambiguous. And Trump is very angry, Sammy. He's very angry. He's got reason to be. Think about it. Russia invaded under George Bush in 2008 in South Asia, in Georgia, because Bush was weak because of Iran and Afghanistan. He invaded in 2014 under Obama. He invaded in 2020. He did not invade under Trump. Trump told the world that. So Trump down is on record that Russia invaded in 2022. He's not denying it. He just said, well, maybe you invaded or started it, but he knows it because he brags that he didn't invade under his regime, but he invaded on all three, three out of the last four presidents. So Trump is saying, look, he didn't invade. This wasn't my problem. I inherited it. He and I inherited it. Because you, Biden, like you, Obama, like you, Bush, appease, appeased, appease Russia. I didn't appease him. You were the ones that thought up Russian reset. You were the ones that went to South Korea and had the hot mic. Tell Vladimir that if you give me space in my last election, I'll be flexible on missile defense. Okay, so Putin delayed invading. So you got elected Obama and you got rid of missile defense. That would have been very critical right now. So Trump is saying, wait a minute, world, I'm going to shock you. I sold offensive weapons to Ukraine. Obama didn't. And Biden was not going to until the invasion. I told the Germans not to approve Nordstrom2 not to go through with it. I was prescient. They made fun of me when I did that. I bullied NATO into rear me, not Biden, not Obama, not Bush. I was the one that got out of an asymmetrical missile deal with Russia, not Biden, not Obama. I was the one that killed the Wagner group. You talk about me being Russian asset or puppet. I killed over 300 Russians in Syria that attacked our forces. I was the one that killed Baghdadi. I was the one that killed Soleimani. I was the one that bombed the crap out of isis. I did that. So I was tough on Iran and I was really tough on Russia. I flooded the world with cheap oil and almost bankrupt. And what did I get for that? I got, oh, he's a Russian puppet. He's an asset of Russia. The people who were assets and said, I looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and I saw kindred soul or something got invaded in Georgia. The people who pushed the red reset button in G got invaded. And the people like Biden who refused to sell offensive weapons or said, well, I will react to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, depending on whether it's a major one or not. And who said, vladimir, Barack Obama said to you about the cyber attacks, cut it out, Vladimir. And I say to you, keep hospitals off your attack list. And then I also said the first week in my strong support of Ukraine, Hey, Mr. Zelinsky, you want a helicopter right out of there? So all of that is driving Trump crazy. And now he's the one that has to settle a war that the other ones caused. And. And when he was tougher on Russia, and they're talking about him as lax on Russia, so he's got to get a deal. And he knows that he's boxed in. If he keeps giving aid, then he's viol. Then the war is just going to go on unless he gives a. If he increases the aid, then the MAGA base says, wait a minute, you said we weren't going to get involved in optional wars. If he cuts off the aid, it'll be absorbed like Afghanistan and he will be blamed for it. So he's angry that they don't give any. So the only way he thinks he can get out of it is to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. But he doesn't have much to work with. And that's what he's telling Zelensky. You're not winning the war, you're losing the war and you're being ground down. And now you want me to keep, what, feeding this losing cause. And so he's very angry and he's trying to tell Putin, look, we're not going to ask for the Donbass back. We're not going to ask for the Crimea back. Obama didn't ask for it back. Biden didn't ask for it back. I didn't during my first term. So go tell the Russians that you institutionalize that theft and whether we like what John Bolton says or anybody else. It's not going to be a NATO. Ukraine, it's not going to be a NATO. You, Europe doesn't want it NATO. If you talk to them privately, they don't want to have to fight a Russian nuclear power over the Donbass or something. We don't want it in NATO. Russia doesn't want it in NATO. I don't even think Ukraine wants it in NATO. So why lie and say we have a card to play called NATO? Because Putin's looking right at us across the poker table and says, bluffing, bluffing. You don't even believe it. So what he's saying to Putin is, get out. Get back to where you were on February 23rd of 2022. We won't put them in NATO. We will get, we'll lift the sanctions. You can tell everybody you stop getting them in NATO. You got. But let's just stop it. And I don't know if that's going to be enough. I think that Putin's going to say, well, I'm a little bit further west than I was on February 23rd. So if we make a DMZ, it's going to be here and not back there. And we're going to try to tell them, no, you got to get back there. And while Ukraine is not in NATO, it's armed better than any other NATO power, Mr. Putin. In fact, if you look at the 32 nations, the one country you would not want to fight is Ukraine. It's got a bigger army, a more veteran army and better weaponry than Germany or France or anybody. So there's where we are.
- [18:55]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, I would. Oh, go ahead.
- [18:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, well, we had a.
- [18:58]
Sammy Wink
There was a.
- [18:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, yes, you can ask a question and then we should go on as you answer. If I answer the question, I was asked to write or comment just today while I'm on the road by the Free Press about an exchange between JD Vance and We'll get to that Neil Ferguson over this issue.
- [19:17]
Sammy Wink
But first, let's welcome back one of our sponsors, Factor Factor has chef made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes. So you can feel right and feel great no matter what your life throws at you. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active, busy lifestyle. Eat smart with Factor. Get started@factormeals.com FactorPodcast and use Code Factor Podcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's Code FactorPodcast@FactOrMeals.com FactorPodcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. And I have had those absolutely delicious meals from Factor and I highly recommend them. And they're keto smart and also calorie smart. So join Factor and the Victor Davis Hansen podcast who they are sponsoring. So, Victor, my question is this, since I get a question here, all of this is coming at the same time as Russia. Russia's rhetoric is ramping up about them winning. Isn't that making it a little bit difficult for Trump to get a peace settlement? I mean, if I were Trump, I'd feel like telling Putin, shut your mouth for a second and let's see if we can get it done with the Ukraine.
- [20:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
Trump's problem is that every time he tries to show reasonableness, and I mean, how does reasonableness define. Biden appeased Putin and he called him a killer. Obama appeased him and called him names. The Obama strategy was to go over there, appease him, do reset and when he didn't want to do reset and become an EU like Western democracy, then try to overthrow his government by talking to dissidents and stuff, just like they do with Netanyahu, just like they did in Ukraine. We have, we have a bad problem. As we saw from usa, there's a streak of cultural imperialism on the left that we're going to put these wonderful lgbtq, green energy woke dei, big government, left wing utopian values on Ukraine, on Russia, on, on everybody. And it doesn't. We even tried to make Greece accept, as I said, you know, Greek Mary, I mean, gay marriage. So the problem is anytime he tries to seem reasonable to Putin, Putin thinks, ah, he can't keep giving aid, he can't stop aid and he can't continue as he is. So I'm in the driver's seat because you look at the battlefield, I have worn out the Ukrainians. So in traditional classical strategy, Trump would then tell the Ukrainians, here's some hypersonic missiles, here's some drones, hit some really important targets. You like that, Vladimir? Because we can keep doing that. But he doesn't want to do that because he doesn't want to start all the killing over again. So he's trying to find ways to convince. And there are different ways he can do it. He can say you're going broke, you say you're not, but you are. But you know what, if you stop this war, we're going to leave all the sanctions. We might even invest in Russia. And you think China's your partner. Any country that is underpopulated with rich, huge territories that's near China. And I can give you two good examples, Vladimir. Your country and Australia, they are very vulnerable because China thinks they can bully them and take stuff from them. And he's going to do the same. They're going to do the same thing to you. And so there's a natural alliance, Vladimir, if you wake up and it is Europe, Ukraine, the United States and you in a very tense Ribbentrop Molotov non aggression pack. I don't want to use that horrible German name, but that's what we're talking about, a non aggression pact aimed at China. So that's what. So that's what they're trying to do in this whole mess. And the. And, and, you know, see. So just to sum up, Trump is mad because he just said he's a dictator, he started the war. And they all went nuts and say, he's selling out, he's a traitor. And this brought in a big Twitter war. So my colleague, whom I admire and I like dearly, Neil Ferguson, wrote on a tweet, this is not what George H.W. bush did when confronted with Saddam Hussein in 1990. He said, this will not stand. Okay? And I cannot believe that conservatives would see another Republican president appeasing Putin and calling him siding with Russia. That drew a furious response from another person that I know less well, I've met and highly Admire and like J.D. vance. And he said that this was. This was the currency of globalism and moralistic.
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Sammy Wink
Moralistic garbage.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. And he said it was an inap. Let's just start, because I think everybody can be enlightened by this argument.
- [24:48]
Sammy Wink
Wait, one more thing. He said it was historical illiteracy, too.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, well, let's get to that. First. I tend. Neil's a great historian, but I'm not sure he should have used the George H.W. bush. You know why? It wasn't quite this will not stand. First of all, in her memoirs, as I recall, Margaret Thatcher said, don't go wobbly. Then she repeated that in Aspen. You remember when she met Trump, she met Bush face to face. George, this is no time to go wobbly. And that was in response to Bush saying, oh, my, I don't know. I don't know. Am I ahead of public opinion? So it wasn't, this will not stand ever. He had doubts. Number two. Neil, come on, you know that better than I do. That being at the start of a conflict in the Middle east, which was basically a proxy war between Kuwait, which was our friend and the former Soviet puppet, Saddam Hussein, who really was a paper tiger. We had seen what he did when he went into Iran. He had been fighting for 10 years and never got more than 100. He was losing that war. So when you say that shall not stand, it was pretty easy to do that because we could obliterate Iraq. But this is different. Trump was not there at the start of this war. He inherited it. He's in medias rebus. And it's not a war between a paper tiger, Saddam Hussein and a defeated. First of all, Ukraine is not Kuwait, it's a huge power. And Saddam Hussein, it's not Russia, it's a nuclear power. It's got seven. It might have 500 more nukes than we do, maybe 7,000. So you're asking Trump to jump into a war that he did not inherit, with a vast nuclear power, with a dispute over a former Soviet republic that has been going on and has probably killed already or wounded or missing or captured, a million and a half casualties. And you're saying that that's the same thing. When George Bush said this will not stand, that was pretty easy to say that, given our military and all. So it's not. He was right. There is an apt historical model. I wish Neil had mentioned it and maybe he will. And it is the 1939 Winter War. Let me remind everybody, Joseph Stalin wanted key portions of Finland. He had just signed a non aggression pact with Germany. He had seen Germany swallow up Poland. He saw the United States was not going to get in the war. It was isolationist. He knew that France and Britain were soon to be targeted by Germany and they might fall and he could get away with anything as Germany's partner. So he told Mr. Mannerheim, a brilliant, ferociously brave, we want to take 10% of fall and if you give it to us, maybe we can live with you. And Mannerham thought about it just like the Ukrainians did, and he said no. And the Ukrainian government said the. The Finnish government. And they fought. So for November and December and January, in February, they fought incredibly fiercely. They killed, wounded or captured 400,000 Russians, this little Finnish army of a Nation of what, 3 million people? And then guess what? Just like I said about the Russian army on its borders, it steamrolls people. And so Joseph Stalin said, hey, I don't have any war going on. Get everybody over there and get them these new tanks and artillery and rockets and let's just crush this upstart. And so they started to do that in late February and they would have annihilated the Finns. And so finally the Finns said to Russia and Stalin, I tell you what, that 10% or 9%. And Stalin said, well, I want a little more now. Okay, but take it. Take our borderland, but we're going to fight you if you. We're going to be autonomous. And Stalin said, you know, you guys fought pretty well. I stole what I want. And you. And what happened. So for the next 85 years, despite World War II, when they were on the German side, Van Finland had a reputation of being fierce from that war, and they deterred the Russians. The Russians never wanted to go in there again. And they had been expelled from the UN, the League of nations, excuse me, in 1939 for invading. And Mannerheim was the version then of Zelensky, only he was a real hero. He was much greater man than Zelensky was. And so that is a model. I think that Neil and Vance could. Could agree on that. Ukraine did what Finland did. It fought magnificently, and it's going to have to give up some territorial concessions, but it can deter Russia because of the huge damage. It's killed more Russians than Finland did. Okay, the other thing then Vance went down and said, Neil, there's five things that you're forgetting. Number one, Europe won't arm. It's basically unarmed because it wants to attend to its domestic social equity green project. And it wants us ultimately to defend them, whether defined by the greater portion of NATO contributions or our nuclear shield that has protected them since World War II. And you know what? We can't afford it. Look at you. You ask us to defend your borders in Europe and you ask us to defend Ukrainian. Who's defending our southern border and our northern border. So we're going to attend to that. And we got China over there. We've got allies that, you know, no offense, Europe, no offense, but if you look at what Australia is doing, what Japan is doing, what South Korea is doing, what Taiwan is doing, they are rearming and they're real allies and they are going to help us deter China. Why don't you do like they are and they don't just tell the United States, you do this and you do this and you do this, they actually arm, are rearmy. That's another point he made. And then another point he said, this isn't in our interest. We do not want China to be on the same team as Russia. And we don't want to exhaust all of our artillery shells and our javelin stocks and give it all over here while you guys sit there and give all these big promises and don't come through. So it's not on our interest. It's not on our interest to see all these people killed. It's not in your interest, it's not in Russia's interest, it's not in Ukraine. Why don't we talk about humanitarianism for a while? You're utopian. Nobody in Europe or in the United States left ever says, God, this is a horrible Maine. Killed, ruined lives for nothing. And so he made a whole five point point to Neil. Neil replied again today. I haven't really read it. But the main thing is, Selena, Zito made a good point when she said you have to take Trump figuratively, but not literally. You know what I mean? He, he says things that are intended to win a argument or to get a better deal for his country, but if you look at them as gospel, then you're going to go crazy. And that's how he operates, whether you like it or not. And, you know, he. When I wrote the Trump book, I read, I don't know, four of the Art of Deal books. It's always going to a room. Bluster, say crazy things on get your opponent unstable, demand a 90% advantage. You're going to work out, let it, and then bicker back and forth. And when you get to the magical number you wanted, 53%, then you say, oh, my gosh, you've taken me. And then you walk out and Everybody goes, hey, Mr. Trump, on that building deal or that high rise, you just obliterate. And then you say, oh, no, I didn't. I was just worn out by that brilliant negotiator. I got taken. Now, maybe to your kids, you go, ha, ha, ha, I got what I wanted. But you don't cut. You don't make fun of your opponent because you might have to deal with, deal with him in the future. That's how he's doing this with Putin and Canada and Greenland.
- [33:50]
Sammy Wink
And I guess that's what my question is, is Putin's making it very hard to make it make. Allow Trump to make Zelensky feel like he's won when his rhetoric is, oh, China is just taking everything in these Saudi Arabian talks. They're winning the war. So he's just making it difficult for Trump. And so I'm curious how it will all come out in the end. And I'm sure you want to y.
- [34:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, there is a fine line. It's a tightrope. He's walking. He's trying to tell Zielinski you know what you're doing? You put on that stupid little green T shirt and then you tour the world and everybody thinks you're this utopian. And then you start making demands. But I know you. And you're losing. And your European friends that you love are not there for you. And the me that you hate have to be the only one there. So you better straighten up. And don't tell me that you're an equal with us because you could draw us into a nuclear war with Russia. That's what you could do, whether you like it or not, whether it's your fault or not. And then he's saying something else. This is very important. Everybody, here it goes. Sammy, he's saying this. I have a long history with Ukraine. In 2016, when I was running for president, your ambassador wrote an op ed saying that I was to be defeated. That is extraordinary. That Ukraine interfered in our elections. Second, Hillary Clinton created a dossier with allegations. Go some people in Ukraine giving information along with the Russians to lie about me and destroy me in that election and then take away 20 months of my term under the Mueller investigations. If that wasn't enough, after I fought you all and was exonerated, Mr. Alexander Vindman, who bragged that he was offered the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense job two or three times, cooked up an impeachment against me. And he violated classified rules and disclosed a private talk he listened into with Mr. Zelinsky. And Mr. Zelinsky probably had something to do with this. And then got Eric Salamella, who never heard the talk. And the three of them went and lied about it, but met with Adam Shift. And they cooked up this impeachment that further destroyed my first term. And it was all over my warning to Zelensky. Given the corruption under your nose of Joe Biden and his family and his son and your burisma, I don't know if I should delay congressionally approved aid. And he did okay it. And it was offensive aid in a way that Obama's and Biden was not. And there was a third thing he's thinking, take a deep breath. In September of 2024, Biden is off the ticket. But everybody is worried that the joy campaign of Kamala Harris is not working very well. It's sputtering. So people think, how are we going to win Pennsylvania? It looks like that Elon Musk and all these people, Charlie Kirk, they've registered all these Republicans. I know what we can do. Let's go get Zelensky and make him come over here. And we'll show that we are for Ukraine and Trump's not. And so they call up Zelensky and say, hey, we got a C17. We're going to fly you over to Pennsylvania, right in the heat of the election, the swing state that's going to determine who's going to win. If you get Harris, you get all the aid, but if you don't get Harris, you get evil Trump. And Zelensky said, okay, fly me over there. And then they said, well, we got to land you at an iconic Scranton because that's where old Joe Biden came from. And we'll get Josh Shapiro to meet you, we'll get all the Democratic team and we'll escort you with a Secret service, like you're a head of state, you are. And we're going to take you to a munitions factory making ammunition for Ukraine and you're going to see all these blue collar voters and you're going to wink and nod and say it's because of your government under Joe Biden, that is Harris, that you have a job and you're sending shells for me. But, but subtext, subtext. If you were to vote for. He didn't say this, but here's what he was saying and he had other surrogates say it. If you vote for Trump, they'll probably shut this down and you'll be out of a job. That was complete intellectual interference. So don't give me anybody that. Zelensky is not interfering in US elections, and they have been for a long time. And Trump knows that he's no friend of Putin. Because I can tell you that if you go after the Wagner group and kill him and you raise sanctions and you flood the world with oil and you try to stop the Nordstrom's pipeline and you arm Putin doesn't like that. But this has caused a lot of problems. And now Trump has let me think. He's got Neil Ferguson, he's got my entire Hoover Institution angry at him. He's got Mark Levin, whom I really like and respect angry at him. He's got Tom Cotton, whom I really like and respect, and he's got some of the Democratic people in the Congress and he's got all the left going crazy. Now, if this is like Denmark and Panama and Canada, maybe some good will come out of it, that Zelinsky will be shocked. And he went like this to him. And Zelensky goes, oh, my God, he's right. I am losing the war and he's the only guy that can save me. And I'm telling him what to do and where I'm going to be after I've tried my best to make sure he wasn't president. What the hell am I doing? Excuse me, the language. And so that's what he's trying to do. Now, what's going to happen? There's one key arbitration point. The whole thing is going to hinge on one thing. We are going to tell them no NATO for Ukraine. We're going to tell them no Crimea for Ukraine, no Donbass for Ukraine. Lots of money and arms for Ukraine. And for you, Putin, you get to have Crimea that you didn't institutionalize in the past. You get to have Donbass. You get to have no NATO for Ukraine. You get all the sanctions lifted. You can come into a detente with Europe and the United States. You can sell gas and get rich again to Germany if you want. But Ukraine is going to have a dmz. It's going to be armed. And here's the point that they're going to fight over, but you have to crawl back 60, 70 miles, some places 30, 40 miles back to where you were in February 23rd. We cannot reward that invasion. And I don't know how they're going to split the difference. Maybe they're going to say he's got to have to go a quarterback or a halfback, but that's what everything will hinge on. And Vladimir Putin knows he can talk really big, that he's winning the war, but he, he knows if the war goes on another year, there's going to be somebody going to try to remove him because the Russians are in deep trouble. I mean, I'm not saying like the left is. They're broke and they can't make it. They, they're selling oil like crazy and all that. But when you have to bring in North Koreans and you have to, you know, do what Ukraine is doing, walk, go down the street and pick people off the street and get empty your prisons and then find old T34, World War II tanks and parks and get them out. Come on.
- [42:02]
Sammy Wink
And you killed off the head of your own Wagner group. That's a problem. All right, Victor, let's go for a break and then we'll come back after these ads to talk about the Panama Canal and the early 20th century building of it. Stay with us and we'll be back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So the Panama Canal is recently much ballyhooed and built by the United States. And so I'm anxious to hear about that. Monumental. You know, I was thinking last week we didn't say one thing about that Russo Russo Japanese War and that it was one of the main events that led to the Russian Revolution as well. And we forgot to mention that. So I want to be sure, like why are we talking about it? It did do that.
- [42:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
So anyway, what people got really it did. And it did two things. I'm glad you mentioned that. When they heard that they had lost the Pacific fleet and the Baltic Fleet and they had been beaten by, in racist terms, so called inferior Asians, the people went crazy. And I mean especially the aristocratic landowning class. That was the support for Nicholas. The same thing happened though in Japan. When the government came back and said we negotiated a peace treaty. They said what? We never lost a war. We should have got the Sakhlan Islands at least we should have got all this stuff from Russia. We have a border. We could have taken in Manchuria and stuff. And Korea. And you gave it away after we blew their entire fleet out of the water. This is insane. So they both had revolutions after that and unfortunately the militarists got the upper hand. Panama. I mentioned it in the Art of the Deal. The idea with Panama was that in the age of clipper ships and hybrid steams, it had taken an extra two or three months to go around Cape Horn. If you look at the map, there's that. You got to go all the way around South America to the Cape. Then you, you've got to go in that Straits of Magellan or somewhere through there and then you've got that bulge as you come back up. Even in the age of 30, 35 knot ships, it takes about eight or nine days. And it's bad weather and it's risky. You go through. There's two or three places that people had looked at. Nicaragua had a place, a narrow strait that had a lake in it. There's parts of Mexico that might, I think Mexico is even now dreaming of putting a high speed rail across their narrowest border with Guatemala so that you could have cargo ships just slide the cargo off to another cargo ship. But the, the best one was Panama. So the guy, Mr. Lesseps, who had created the, the Suez Canal successfully when nobody said he did it, and he did it without any locks and it was about 100 miles long, they drafted him. He made a big corporation in Europe, mostly in France. And in 1880 he started in Panama to build it pretty much where the canal is. And they discovered two things very quickly. They were not financed by a government and they didn't have a capital, and the whole thing collapsed. Number two, they didn't understand what caused malaria and yellow fever, mosquitoes. So they lost about 40,000 workers in this fetid area, especially when you're taking out dirt and it's raining every day and you have these stagnant pools everywhere. They didn't understand that. And number three, there was no way in the world, given the uneven elevations between the Caribbean and the Atlantic, that you could just go like that. It would have to be something like the ridiculous Corinth Canal. You know, you see in Greece how deep it is. It's carved way, way down there, and it's very narrow because they can't. They didn't want to have locks between the Gulf of Corinth and the Aegean. But the result is that ships, you know, they're level when they go. When they go through, and they. And there's slight rises in elevation, but they had to cut so deeply that the sides fall off and everything. So the United States then decided that they wanted to cut these months in the early stage of steam and sale. So they went to Colombia. There was no Panama. And they say, we'd like to deal with you. And Colombia said, no, no. And then we. You know how we are. Teddy Roosevelt got gunboats and said, look, we're going to stage a revolution. And we said, it's unfair that the Panamanian people should have national aspirations. And so we said, rebel. They rebelled. Then we sent the Marines in and they said, no, Colombia. They're free now. And we gave some money for Columbia to pay them off. We usually do that. You know, in those days, we get. We didn't just take it. We. We paid him a nominal sum, not nominal, several million dollars. And then we started, and luckily we had some. Mr. Finley, I think his name was a Cuban American, and Walter Reed, the heroic Walter Reed. And they went down and they said to the engineers, and we had some brilliant engineers, you've got to get rid of all the mosquitoes. And they said, this is crazy. And they did all these experiments and they proved that it was mosquito borne. And so they drained all of the water. They used toxic chemicals and sprayed all the stagnant. They issued mosquito nets. They built new housing off the ground so water wouldn't seep in. They put screens on all the windows. They had inspectors and trucks with spray, and they sprayed everybody and they told everybody to wear repellent. And the result was that in 10 years, from 1904 to the completion of the canal, they went from the French losing 40,000 people to. They only lost about 5. Mostly, I think Trump was incorrect to say we lost thousands. They were mostly foreign workers from the Caribbean. And then the second another thing they did that was really important, they looked at the French equipment, they bought it and they said it's junk. So they went to US factories and said we want special trucks, heavy duty rail tracks and steam shovels. And they built these on spec, huge machines and transported them down there. They bucked up the railroad so they could get rid of the thing. And in 10 years they built the canal. It's about 52 miles long. They created an artificial lake, Galgoon I think its name is. And they have locks at the entrance and the Atlantic and the Pacific. And they created this canal zone and they had autonomy there according to the treaty. Everything was hunky Dory for 40 years. It worked perfectly. Panama was a backward country that was getting rich. And then the post colonial period happened in 1956, remember the Israelis, the French and British air landed a troops and tried to take back the Suez Canal because crazy Abdel Nasser had nationalized it and not paid the British for it. And the canal interest, the private interest. And they were afraid that he was going to cut off all access. He's threatened he would to for Israel so that Israel could not have any trade going out of the Mediterranean into the Indian Ocean. And they were afraid all oil imports from the Middle East. And so they invaded and then they would have taken it back. And then Dwight Eisenhower of all people turned on the British and he said, no, you're not going to do it. We'll get out of NATO, we have to. And he stopped it and it collapsed. And there was a big worldwide jubilation that you could stand up to the old European imperialist. And so at that point Panama came to us in 56 and said, look, your president stopped a indigenous, I guess Egyptians are indigenous, a European effort to take back an indigenously appropriated canal on their territory. So if you're not going to be a hypocrite, you were on the right side of history there. On the right side you should concede and give us this. And we said, I said, I'm not going to do that. You know, we had to fix a lock. So the U.S. missouri, we had it in World War II that every battleship could make it through. The Missouri went through with like 2 inches on either side. So we said no, no, no. And there was all this upheaval, there was rioting and that. I grew up in the 60s and early 70s, where all you saw was Panamanians rioting in the Canal Zone. And they call them. I don't know what they call them, zonies. They were all these. It wasn't just American zone, it was hyper Americanism. Fast food, beautiful lawns, indigenous health lifestyles that were just so in contrast with the mess of a Third world country. So then Jimmy Carter came in and said, this is intolerable. So 1978, 9. He had a treaty. You can read it today. It's very, very long. And it gave autonomy after 20 years. 1999. And then we would train them, we would prep them. They would get to have these beautiful buildings, the Canal Zone. They would enlarge one of the locks so that large container ships could come through. And they did. However, there were provisions in there that the United States could intervene if a foreign power sought to disrupt the special relationship between Panama and the United States. And if, in military terms, we did not have primary access to it, and if Panama were starting to give favoritism for particular countries. Okay, Donald Trump comes in and says, you guys signed a thing with China in 2016. I'm looking at the five foreign interests and, oh, I see that. The two ones that. The only two that really count, the container ship ports. Wow. One is at the Caribbean entrance and one is at the Atlantic Ocean. And they're both from a phony Chinese communist front, Hong Kong company. And you think we're going to sit there, why? China now builds a bridge, is going to modernize it, and it's full of spies. And you guys have Chinese signs all over Panama City. You know exactly what you're doing. This is an enemy of the United States and they would not tolerate us doing that. And so he said, we're going to take it back under the treaty. It was absurd that nobody wants to go down there and die in Panama. But it's also absurd that China would be de facto running that. Then they had all of these Americans that are on the canal board for Panama and saying things like, trump is crazy. It was. It runs wonderfully. The Chinese have done so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Trump was ultimately right about that. And to get them out of that treaty was smart. And I don't know if he needed to say all the things he did, but without saying all the things he did, I'm not sure they would even listen to him. And so that was the history of the canal, and it ended up like Canada and Greenland did.
- [54:11]
Sammy Wink
Did that have a detrimental effect on South America broadly, since all those Ships were no, no longer going down and.
- [54:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
Hitting those not South America. It had, it had a detrimental effect on three countries, Argentina and Chile, down at the Tierra del Fuego, both of them, remember, have that border right at the tip of the Cape Horn. That got them very, that was very lucrative because when ships all along the coast of South America, they would come in for water and fuel, but when they got down there, it was, it was the, the weather was so terrible that often they would have to stay there for weeks at a time or days at a time. And they had hotels and industry to house hundreds of ships. Second, when they made the turn, the Falkland Islands, everybody said, why does the British. Well, the British were there with facilities, coal and other things that they could help ships in need as they turn the corner. So the Falklands suffered and Argentina and Chile suffered. And the one, the people who were kind of against it was the Vanderbilt consortium that had made a railroad through for the Gold rush. And right after the Gold rush, I should say, and that was very lucrative, that you could take a train from Atlantic to Pacific and there would be ships waiting for you. They took that railroad and beefed it up. Part of the canal says the United States will not negotiate with Nicaragua or Colombia or Mexico to make another canal. There's people who said that the spot in Nicaragua or even Colombia might, even though it's longer, it might be better because there's a way to do it without locks, you know, make a big. But I don't think anybody's ever going to do it. And part of the problem is that the United States, although, you know, there's about, I don't know, 2,000 or 3,000 ships a day that go through there, or maybe more if you do the math. Maybe it's, it might even be up to over 10,000 of them a day. It's just packed and 75% of them are American directed ships, either American owned or going to an American port. But the military got around it when they started making super carriers that wouldn't fit. You know, they, they basically have an Atlantic, and they did that in World War II. Atlantic and Pacific Fleet and North Fork and San Diego and then Pearl harbor, that they're separate and they don't have to go back and forth as much. But a lot of US ships in World War II, and I think to a certain extent today are designed to be narrow enough to go through.
- [57:12]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, you would think they would make that a priority. Well, Victor, let's go ahead then and take a break and come back and talk a little bit about Kash Patel's confirmation and then maybe a little on Hagseth and the military. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. You can find Victor on his social media. He is at VD Hansen and on Facebook he is at Hanson's Morning Cup. So come join him there. We're also on YouTube and on rumble and Spotify now, so you can find Victor on all of those for a video version of his podcasts. So come join us. Well, good news. Kash Patel was confirmed. But what a struggle and what so much rhetoric against Cash. I thought he was an excellent choice given his background. But what are your any thoughts on this good news?
- [58:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
I knew it was going to be tough. I knew that Susan Murkowski, Murkowski and Susan Collins would vote against him and that made it close 5149. That was it. Was it.
- [58:30]
Sammy Wink
Mitch McConnell voted for him. So that was good.
- [58:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
That was Mitch McConnell voted for him. And I think Mitch McConnell did not want to go out. He's not going to run for reelection. He did. I know that everybody dislikes him. He's the most unpopular politician of either party and polls. But there was a once a great moment where he was able to engineer in a way that was not just punitive. He got Merrick Garland not confirmed because it was the Biden rule. He brilliantly said Joe Biden is a blowhard. And he said in a lame duck administration they cannot just pick a a nominee when the opposite party has control of the Senate. Joe Biden had said that and they had stopped the Brit that and so he turned it around and said you're not going to appoint Merrick Garden. They stopped that. Can you imagine if that guy had been on the Supreme Court given what he did as DOJ attorney general. So that was really good what he did. And so I don't think he wanted to go out being hated. So he didn't. He turned around and he didn't require J.D. vance to come back and break the vote. And he also knew it wouldn't make any difference anyway. He would only get more abuse. He's not up for reelection. Collins and Murkowski, she believes that under that weird ranked voting system that she can always finesse a victory in Alaska with a minority support of voters. And Collins, I don't know if she wants to run again. They all want to run again. But she thinks she can't win in purple Maine by being too conservative. But he's confirmed and People were. The argument against him was that the people that needed to be fired had been fired before he got there. So his fingerprints weren't on the firing. That might be true or not, but they needed to be fired. He's going to go.
- [60:24]
Sammy Wink
Suggested that he was behind it. Nonetheless, the Democrats were saying that.
- [60:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, well, the Democrats are angry because they implemented a de. Why the rank and fire. FBI agents are wonderful agents. They're professional. They understood that their eighth floor in Washington with the likes of Robert Mueller, followed by James Comey, Followed by Andrew McCabe, followed by Christopher Wray, were politicized. And not politicized in the sense of just being aware of politics, but left wing orientated and had. All of them were revolving. I mean, Andrew McCabe's wife was a beneficiary. She ran for office in Virginia. She was a beneficiary of Clinton money PACs. Comey had come out of Lockheed as general counsel. I mean, they were all knee deep in the corporate political world and cash. He has some corporate things, but he's not anywhere near where they are. And more importantly, he knows that you don't raid the home of an ex president to go in and take 13,000, 14,000 documents because you say there's lots, a trove of classified. And then you find 102, which is.007 of all the things they carted away. Then you don't take the documents and spew them all over the floor, like, this is how Trump actually did it. And then you don't come armed with props. They all came armed with like little files that said secret on it. Then they took the files that were classified, the 102, they threw them on the floor. Then they pulled out of their briefcases secret and put them on each one. So we saw that as a stage photo op. And then they went through Malenia's underwear. They just, they didn't need to do that. And he had been negotiating with them a long time. And why. I know that people that I respect, like Mike Pompeo at one point, and I think it might have cost him a position. And the Trump administration said, although he condemned the raid, he also said, well, Trump didn't comply. Well, they all have arguments about presidential papers. Joe Biden took more papers for a longer period of time and less secure places and more of them, and was considered a feeble old man and should not be prosecuted. So come on. But Trump was worried that some of these papers were evidence of what they had done to him. Classified. And he did not want them to go to the archives because given what he'd seen with the deep state, he thought that they might disappear and I guess he could have made copies, etc, but there were, there were paranoias on his part what might happen and he had surrendered most of them without any raid. And so the people who did that, the people who were informants at the January 6, when Christopher Wray stonewalled that there were people, the people, remember McCabe and Lisa Page and Peter Strosik had had this thing, don't worry, Andrew will take care of him. And making sure that Trump doesn't win. That wasn't just three people. That was the prevailing view of the FBI in 2016. Comey coming in on those Obama last Obama sessions where he was saying, you know, we're. We've got an informant. Christopher Steele. Da, da, da. And remember the Chris they, they paid Christopher Steele. There were people. James Baker, who was the chief counsel of the FBI, he rotated into the old Twitter where his salary magically ballooned to $7 billion. Why he got FBI agents to work with Twitter to censor the news of the authentic laptop. FBI may have been involved with the CIA, with Mike Morale, CIA interim director who cooked up with Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of state to be soon they cooked up the 51 intelligence authorities. What we forget about that. When they said that this was Russian information, Russian project, they lied that it wasn't authentic. Wink, nod has all the hallmarks. I could say something like if I have a kidney stone, I could say I have all the hallmarks of having a kidney stone, but I didn't say I had one. And that's what they were doing. And then on top of that, the FBI had the laptop in their possession for more than a year. They'd done every forensic study on it. They knew it was legitimate. They talked with the CIA. So the CIA had called them up, no doubt, and said, hey, we're going to lie about that laptop. And somebody in the FBI said, well, if you lie about it, we're not going to have to. We can't release the truth that it is authentic. And all those porno pictures and Mr. Big Guy and 10% and all that incriminating stuff, it happened so it was corrupt. I could go on. They remember that was a retrieval service for the Biden family. Oh, Ashley Biden got lost. Her diary where she said she took showers with her dad too long. Uh oh, James O'Keefe wanted to buy it or was told he could buy it. Let's go get him in his underwear at 2 in the morning and humiliate him. Oh, the teachers unions don't like parents talking about gay LGBTQ stuff in their libraries. Let's go monitor them at school board meetings. So they shut the F up. That's what they were thinking.
- [65:59]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And they were very corrupt. And so, yeah, they've been fired. They went in and fired. Hacked out all these guys before Patil got in. But do you. There were things that Cash said in his. The hearings that are. I was wondering about. For example, he said that he didn't think it was necessary for FBI agents to get warrants to do wiretaps. That was the thing that I thought was the most. What I thought was, whoa, that sounds pretty crazy to me, but I don't know, maybe it isn't.
- [66:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
And then I think that's. There are cases in which that is true. And. But part of the FISA courts is a way. And the FISA court system now is totally disreputable after what we saw, that with Kevin Kleinsmith forging documents and Homie lying, that they didn't use the Steele dossier, which they did, to get a warrant on Carter Page and Papadopoulos, that they're gonna. He. He's gonna go out. He's gonna go after culpable people. He has to. But the key. The key point will be what he'll face is are you going to set a precedent that you're going to examine the political leanings or beliefs of FBI agents? And the answer has to be no. But are you going to set a precedent that if you are an FBA I agent and you break FBI rules for political purposes, you're going to be fired? And I. Only way I can enforce that is to fire the people who did do that unequivocally. And that's what the difference is. And I think he will fire more people. He said. Also, he said he was going to move the headquarters of the FBI out of Washington. I wish he would do that. That would help.
- [67:56]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, let's go ahead and then turn to Pete Higseth. He has. He's in the news as well. And some good changes in the military. And one of which, the big thing this week is that he's going to require, I think he said, 8% cuts of the military budget, and he's going to expect his departments to do it each year, cut a little bit back from what they're spending. And I'm glad that we have at least one agency. I wish they'd do that across the board. Bored.
- [68:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
But they're going to do a lot. But you got to remember, I mean that's 60 billion plus in the 880 billion dollar budget. So you know a lot of North Virginia, Northern Virginia people who are going to have to sell their home and move out and get a job in the private sector. But what, what would be those projects? He was going to get rid of the green energy division that says you have to use biofuels at 28 bucks a gallon or something for naval ships. He's going to get out of the DI people. He's going to get out of the abortion stuff. He's going to get all of those social issues. He's going to get out of. He's going to get rid of. I don't. He's got a good argument. If you look at the number of generals and you look at the ratio of generals per enlisted men and the size of the force, we are not in a wartime situation. You can make an argument that historically we're over represented by very expensive four star generals, three star generals. So that's going to be a big change. There's going to be other changes that are going to be more controversial. He's really, I think they're going to say that if you're going want to be a. He's going to reestablish the idea that if you are a officer who retires and you want to take the civilian task like Austin and Mattis did, you're going to have, there's not going to be a waiver. The Congress, they're going to try to stop that. I think you can't go right back in as a civilian even though you're on a military retirement. I think he's also, from what I've understood, he's reminding everybody if you're going to be Mark Milley, Mark Milley was pardoned by the way, so he's free. But if you're going to be Mark Milley and call up freelancers and the chairman of Joint Chiefs, you have no chain of commandment responsibilities or requirements. You can't do that. You're an advisory. You cannot disrupt the chain of command. If you do that, it's treasonous, it really is. To tell everybody, talk to me when I get an order or you get an order from Trump, talk to me first and I can countermand it. And then I think if you're a retired officer you cannot, you can't have a military where retired officers of the four star with enormous prestige, much of it earned, nevertheless call him Mussolini Or Hitler, like, or a liar or should be removed sooner than later. Auschwitz, all that stuff. And I could name the names ad infinitum. There's 10 of them, 12 of them. You can't have colonels writing op eds saying that Trump should be escorted out of the office. You can't do that. You can't have Pentagon lawyers. I mean, it's a free country. But we had Rosa Brooks saying that, you know, we move in by the 25th amendment. 11 days into office in 2017. Well, we got to get rid of them. 25th amendment, too long. Impeachment, too long. Military coup. Oh, I can imagine that. I can go for that. So that that whole atmosphere has got to change. It's not good. It's not conducive.
- [71:27]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, we're getting close to the end, but I thought that this weekend a very important thing to mention about the war in Hamas and the hostage exchange, and that is that they had a hostage exchange of the Bebus family. The two babies were killed and also the mother. And Hamas has returned, supposedly returned them. The babies, of course, have been returned, but they found that the body of the mother was not actually the mother. And so Mrs. Beavis did not make it home in this hostage exchange. And it shows you a lot about Hamas and the sort of disrespect that they have I both for the process and for humanity. It's just terrible.
- [72:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, even I guess their medievalism, even I shouldn't say medieval, that's unfair. I'm a big fan of medieval Europe. So it's a slur on medievalism. I don't mean that their barbarity even shock when you have to shock. If you're a radical Muslim and you shocked the Grand Mufti and the United nations both, then you must have done something beyond the pale, because they tolerate anything. And they got all of these terrorists out. And by they never told anybody that this family was dead. So they didn't know anything about them. They knew the whole time they were dead. And so they were trading bodies for live terrorists, number one. And then they showed no respect for the deceased. They put the coffins on display and they had a Hamas rally with these cowardly men who have been hiding in tunnels under civilian protection, under civilians getting shelled in hospitals and mosques where they sneak around tunnels. Then as soon as the Israelis back out, they get back out and they're camouflaged, but they wear masks and they're big tough guys boasting about dead babies. And then they've obviously done something why would they not have the body? I don't know what they did to her, but they may have tortured her or worse and they did not want to release that body. So then they thought they could fake the Israelis. They really think the Israelis think like they do. Do they think the Israelis have a level of technology that they do. And what they're doing is they are destroying the left wing's argument that they are a persecuted romantic people and that Hamas hijacked the, the people of Gaza. And what they're showing when you see these crowds of the Gaza people cheering it on and happy and you see how they facilitated this when they took the prisoners on October 7, they're acting the same way. And apparently this group of prisoners was not taken by Hamas. They were captured by freelancing civilians that tagged along to rape, kill, murder and steal. Put it all together. And it's a, it really reflects terribly on the whole Gaza project. And I think people, what they're going to do is at some point the Israelis intelligence is going to look at all the hostages that are back into in custody, all the hostages that are theoretically missing, dead or alive, call in all of their Gaza informants, all of the people who are sitting in jail, many of them who are informants, and come to a consensus just how many prisoners are still alive versus how many of those people are still have to be released. And I would not want to be a Hamas leader. Anybody who is in the Hamas leadership right now, and it can be identified as a dead man walking, because as soon as these hostages are released or and that's why they're releasing dead people, they want to prolong and prolong and prolong it. But at some point the Israelis are going to say enough is enough. We might even have to lose hostages. But every single person on that stage, they're going to find out who they were and they're going to kill them. They really are. They've done it already with the apparat of Hezbollah and Hamas. And that's why you don't hear who the new Hamas leaders are. But they'll find out who they are. And all they're doing is giving ammunition for public opinion is now going way in Israel's direction and why we allow. I hope Donald Trump has a travel ban. I, I know a lot of you are going to say that's unfair, but when I see the people of Gaza cheering this on and I see all the hatred of the United States in that area of the world and I see people in Detroit cheering on Hamas and Hezbollah flags. And I see that on campus as part of this restoration, this Thermidor reaction to Robespierre ism and the Jacobins, we really do need to say, you know what? We take you literally. You do not like us. And you should stay in places that you love and not come over to places you hate. So you're not going to come to the United States under any circumstances. And if you're here on a student visa or a green card and you break our laws, you're going to go home. And I think that would make a big difference. And then we should get back to assimilation, integration. Once we close these borders and you have a static population, and once you change the idea that you're not going to indoctrinate children in tribalism and how awful this country is, you can unleash popular culture, as crude as it is, and the government, civic and the school, civic education. And if you're not pouring in a million illegals a year or two, you can finally get back to a multiracial but single culture America. But not when you have open borders and you let in 2 million people and you indoctrinate them, that they have grievances the moment they set foot into the United States by reason of their DEI status.
- [77:51]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, I know that you're on a really hard end here, so I'd like to thank you and our audience.
- [77:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
Were you going to ask about Representative Crockett?
- [78:00]
Sammy Wink
I thought, well, yeah, I was, but we were really late. But if you would like to answer. She had a crazy interview on the View where she was making accusations that Trump will take money from people. You know, especially the old planes will continue to fall from the sky. And Sleepy Joe would have been a better person to have in the position than Donald Trump. And I was wondering Crockett's machinations, what you thought?
- [78:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, she's very intelligent because she looks at the squad type crazies of the black community or the DI community. And she says, Maxine Waters over the hill. She's like 86. And Representative Bowman, who did the. He's gone. And the guy who said that Guam was going to flip over, too many people stood on the wrong side of the island. Representative what's his name? He's gone. So they don't really have a powerful, hard left, inflammatory voice, but they do with me. And I'm going to say stuff. But what she doesn't understand, I think, is when you see 26% of the black males voting for Trump, the Hispanic vote almost evenly divided, Native Americans, maybe 45% for Trump. Asians maybe 40%. Jews maybe 40% more than any other Republican. First guy to win 20% of the popular vote since George H. George W. Bush in 2004. What am I getting at? People are sick of that tribalism. So when she stands up and I went and looked at some of her speeches in Congress that are on YouTube, she always. She's kind of like Whoopi Goldberg she raped. She puts everything in racial. And she always says kind of the same thing as a proud black woman. You ain't going to talk to me that way. She and Marjorie Taylor Greene and all that. But what I'm getting at is at this point in our history, we're sick of that. We know where it goes. The DEI woke tribalism and self identification of your superficial appearance. It goes nowhere. It gets people very angry. And I think we're coming to the point now when 30% of the population are DEI or minority. So they claim we don't even talk about intermarriage, that the country won't work with people like hers for a beach. So she's going to get increasingly tagged for what she is. She's really a racist. A racist is a person who believes that people who look like herself oneself are morally superior, genetically superior than other people based on their superficial appearance. So anytime she says as a black woman, I think she's going to get a lot of criticism. And I think she's going to get a criticism from the black community. I think they're getting sick of it as well. They see where it leads. It leads to a Chicago or a Baltimore or a Los Angeles. Karen. I just say that because Karen Bass tried that when she came back. She said, I was appointed to go to Ghana as a black woman. And this is. And then she had all of her surrogates. This is racism. And now she's reduced to blaming the gay fire chief because the gay fire chief didn't tell her, don't go to Ghana. It's Santa Ana winds and everything's dry. Nobody told me everybody's sick of that. Don't use race. And I think Crockett is ten years behind the. The times.
- [81:35]
Sammy Wink
Just everybody's not as smart as you think she is.
- [81:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
No. And she starts yelling and screaming. I know the average Hispanic or black male or just tunes her out. I know very liberal people. I won't mention their names or listening. Very liberal. But when they hear that stuff as a proud black woman, you know, I'm a black woman. I'm a black woman. They're just saying, I don't want to hear it anymore. It goes nowhere. It just leads to animosity. And, and as the white population and minority term shrinks, their obvious questioning is, and it's already started, is if do you believe in proportional representation or do you not? If it has to be mandated, then look at the post office or the NBA or the NFL. They're merocratic, supposedly, but they're over represented by African Americans. But why go into the English department, say there has to be this many African Americans when you don't do it in the much more prestigious and lucrative NFL? When you say only merit count. So it's. So there's such a disability now that people are sick of it. And you can see that with really important African American figures like Mr. The Quarterback Hertz. He said, I didn't want to get into that because he knows that merocratically he's superb. He doesn't have to get into that. Everybody's sick of it. So I imagine that her, she's going to be a voice because there's no other voices that age and she's going to double down. But she should go look at Whoopi Goldberg and all of those. A lot of them are DI voices. And Harris Faulkner, almost by herself is getting a greater audience than they are. And they're on a major network with all those resources and that's free to watch. You cannot watch Fox. You got to pay to watch Harris Faulkner. And she's got a bigger audience. Why? Because she's a sophisticated, brilliant black woman, beautiful black, sophisticated woman that can on her own merits repartee with anybody out argue. And she never mentions the fact she happens to be incidentally black. And those people are mediocrities and they have to do it all the time. And most people then would rather, I'm a viewer. I would rather pay $40 a month than watch Harris Faulkner and brilliant commentary. Oh, yeah. Oh, I didn't realize she's black. Or I got to be told every day by Whoopi Goldberg that about the Holocaust, revisionism and black this and black that and then hear nain silly things. And I have. And even though it's free, I'd rather pay for something else. So Crockett is a. An anchor in ism, an ossification, a calcification.
- [84:30]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, well, let's go ahead and end the show and thank our audience and thank you once again for the wisdom today. It was quite a discussion, especially of the Ukraine, and I really thank you for that. And the Panama Canal, too.
- [84:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I hope I give a great. I shouldn't say great. I never give great talks. I hope I give a good talk. And I have to prepare now.
- [84:55]
Sammy Wink
Okay. Okay, we'll let you go. Thank you very much. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hanson and we are signing off.
- [85:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you everybody for listening. Much appreciated.
- [85:06]
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