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- [00:00]
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- [01:16]
Jack Fowler
Hello ladies. Hello gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I'm Jack Fowler, the man lucky enough to be the host. But you were here. They'll listen to and get wisdom from an analysis from Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Bestselling author, classicist military historian, farmer Victor's everything right, Victor? Am I correct on that? Oh, great American also yeah means yes.
- [01:54]
Victor Davis Hansen
I didn't say duh.
- [01:55]
Jack Fowler
I said ah, I know doctor or a patient. Hey, we are recording on Saturday 16th November. This particular episode will be out on Tuesday the 19th. Tons of stuff to get Victor's wisdom on. Many of that will be the Trump appointments to various cabinet positions and leadership positions. But I think first there's an A topic we have put off for the last couple of episodes talking about and that has to do with North Korean troops involved in the Ukraine war. So we'll get Victor's take on that and then we'll move on to some of these other more domestic and political topics. And we'll do all that when we come back from these very important messages.
- [02:50]
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- [03:57]
Jack Fowler
We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. By the way, Victor's got a website, the blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the web address. Towards the end of this podcast, I'll tell you why you should be subscribing Victor For a few weeks now, North Korean troops have been fighting alongside the Russians in the war against Ukraine. I'm no military expert expert, nor not even someone that can speak English clearly. I've read a thing or two here or there. One guy is talking about how this is North Korea sticking it to China. Someone else is saying how this is China using North Korea in a way to control Russia. I just think it's bad news regardless. What do you what's your take on it and you know who's pulling the strings here, if anyone?
- [04:53]
Victor Davis Hansen
Well, I mean, it reflects a lot of things. As I understand it, they're going to be going into occupied Russia. So maybe the 500 square miles or so that Ukraine took, remember a few months ago with almost no opposition because the Russians were mounting themselves in an offensive inside Ukraine. So Ukraine thought, well, we'll mount one inside Russia. I never understood that, though. It was sort of what the German army did in 1942. They tried to go on the offensive in 43 at Kursk. But even earlier after Stalingrad, they had some success, but they didn't have enough, enough manpower and they were losing the manpower war every month, as is Ukraine. And yet you don't if you're going to go on an offensive, you would think that they would have timed it to go into the rear of the Russians, cut their supply lines and then maybe envelop them. But they didn't. It was very distant from the heavy point of action of the Ukrainians. So I imagine what they're doing is they're going to send the North Koreans. I don't know if they're going to send them in Ukraine, that might be, they might have for the Russians a little strategic worries that if they have a. It's not a civil war, but they are fighting to get fighting with Russian speakers in that area along the border, Ukrainians. And you bring in foreign troops and invade that, I don't think that would be a good morale thing. The other thing is they're kind of mercenaries, aren't they? They're obviously getting the government who's short foreign exchange has been sanctioned by the US it's either payment for Russian missiles or Russian defense systems that Russia's been sending them. They don't have any foreign exchange currency or they're getting cash. But you get the impression that this 10,000, I mean some of the reports are saying they could get what, 10 or 15,000amonth, that they're willing to put in 50, 60,000 of them. And we don't know how they're going to fight. They're probably much more orderly. They look better than the Russian troops. But if you were North Korean, if you think about it, and you were sick of North Korea and you were put in a distant theater and you were fighting a western Ukraine country and that they had what propaganda that said, hey, all you have to do is give up and you will be given freedom and sanctuary in Europe or the United States or something. That might be a successful way to undermine them. Who knows. But I imagine they'll fight pretty well. They remind me of the Cubans. Remember that in the 70s when the, when there were all these. Yeah. Angola, all these anti colonial wars against the Portuguese, especially the Cubans, they had a shock force of about 40 or 50,000 and they sent them everywhere. They were, you know, they were everywhere. And you know, the United States tribe was very worried about that for a while. They were sort of like the French Foreign Legion for a while I suppose that maybe the North Koreans will show up in the Middle east or wherever and the dictatorship is fighting a westernized country.
- [08:12]
Jack Fowler
But Victor, the. The amount of casualties that the Russians are taking. Yeah, I, I'm reading a Newsweek article that just one day alone there were, it says there were 1,770 Russian soldiers had been killed or injured. Well, I think that's over two days. But in the month of October, 40,000 casualties. I mean many of them are dead.
- [08:42]
Victor Davis Hansen
It's just this I read, you know, I think we talk. I don't know if we talked about it. I've been reading from some of these military blogs. 1.5, 1.6 million combined Russian and Ukrainian dead, wounded and missing. Yeah, I mean, it's greater. That's a greater figure than Verdun, our first psalm. And nobody's really talking. I, you know, I did a. It was supposed to be 40 minutes, but we ended up talking an hour and 20 minutes. Yesterday, I did it with a European news show on Ukraine. And I, I really was empath. The guy with that was in interviewing me was pro Ukrainian. He's from Georgia, so he has experience, obviously, with Putin's invasions and aggressions. But their basic argument made perfect strategic sense. But I was trying to tell him that it's not about strategy alone. His argument was, well, if you want to stop Putin, you have to arm us. And you're arming us, as everybody knows, enough with the $200 billion not to lose, but not to win. If you would arm us to win, you would deal Putin a blow. And then you say to him, if we armed you to win, which you could do in theory, although I doubt it, because they have four times the manpower, 30 times the territory, and 10 times the GDP, then you would. Might. You would provoke a nuclear standoff, maybe because you would be violating the rules of proxy wars, as we understood them with the Soviet Union, that you don't use a third party in Vietnam or Korea or wherever to attack the homeland. And when you tried to do that, as Nikita Khrushchev did in 1962, and use Cuba as a proxy power to attack the homeland with missiles, we almost went to. I guess we did go to DEFCON 2, almost 1. So my point is, I was trying to tell him that what is strategically sensible is not politically feasible. And then he said, well, what. Trump comes in. He's. I. I really liked him. He was trying to go through. We were. He was trying to game me on all the different scenarios.
- [10:56]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [10:57]
Victor Davis Hansen
Well, if you. I said, we need to stop the killing. And I gave the old boilerplate that everybody's heard, they get to have the Donbass they stole in 2014, they get to have the Crimea they stole. Neither Trump nor Obama earlier or Biden Afterwards, prior to February 24th of 2022, ever wanted to get those back by force. Okay. And then we don't put them in NATO. And then we tell them that in exchange for that, Putin tells the Russians, oh, I stopped them from being in NATO for the rest of our lives forever. Crimea and Donbas will be Russian. Okay. And then he has to go back to February 22nd. Then he said, well, why? What happened next year and the year after? I said, well, you would integrate Maybe you can integrate it with the eu. You can negotiate a DMZ like in North Korea. Then you get armed to the teeth. And he said, well, what if that's not enough? I said, you're not. We're not an ally of yours. You're right next to Europe.
- [11:59]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [11:59]
Victor Davis Hansen
Well, why not in NATO? Because NATO is only as strong as its weakest league. Do you really, really, really believe that people in Spain are having cappuccino in Florence or on the river, the river Rhone, or maybe on a bank in Amsterdam or Rotterdam are going to go fight for you and Ukraine because you're attacked and they're going to. You're going to invoke Article 5. If you were in NATO right now, do you think Americans would be flying over there to fight Russians for you? And so I said, that's not going to happen. And then he said, well, if you pull out, it'll be worse than Afghanistan, and that'll be a blot on Trump. Yes, it will, but Trump is a businessman, so I don't think he's going to just give the country over to Putin. And I said, basically, he's going to try to negotiate from position of strength and along the lines everybody knows, as they just outlined. Yeah, and if you don't, I mean, if you don't like it, and I didn't mean that as a personal affront to him, because I liked him a lot, then maybe the Europeans that have, roughly, the EU and its associated members have about the same GDP and population as we do. Why don't they have a Marshall Plan and, you know, rebuild the country and give them billions of dollars and, I don't know, buy natural gas from us and do all this stuff. But they're not doing that.
- [13:29]
Jack Fowler
They're an economic basket case, collective.
- [13:33]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, they're not doing that because they're socialists. And they'll never be able to have that type of dynamic economy when everybody feels that, you know, you're gonna. You're gonna work four hours a day or you're waiting, waiting for your. For your uncle's government job to open up in the Census Bureau so you can inherit it.
- [13:50]
Jack Fowler
50 weeks of vacation.
- [13:52]
Victor Davis Hansen
Exactly. It's never gonna happen. And then the same thing with Ukraine. And I said, look at Israel. And we compared them. I said, we give Israel about 4 or 5 billion bucks. And what do we get for that? We get the destruction of Hamas, we get the destruction of Hezbollah, the people who killed our Marines and have tortured CIA people. And we've got Iran in the. In the most neutered condition since 1980. And we haven't had one American involved in the war. And it's a lot cheaper than the 200 billion you're giving you. And so if you would, so he's, and I was not trying to be provocative. I just said if you guys would win, then we'll help winners. But you can't win because you're outnumbered and to, and you've lost 12 million people have left your country. So you're only about 28 million people. And I know you've done enormous damage to Putin, but he's going to grind you down. And so if you had negotiated a year ago when everybody was talking about Russian morale, proxy or whatever his name was, the coup and all that, then he would have negotiated. But he thinks he's in the driver's seat now. So it's going to be very hard for Trump, for all his rhetoric, to cut a deal. Trump's going to have to do something either help them more to get let get less out. I mean, get us less committed by committing short term, more. But the idea that we're going to surge weaponry as we surge troop and Iraq, I don't think permanently. It's not going to happen politically. He didn't run on that. Trump did not run on. I'm going to do the Biden massive aid so they don't lose, but not enough so they can win. And everybody criticized Biden and I did, too. But giving enough aid for them to win. You don't defeat a nuclear neighbor in today's world. It's a dictatorship unless you have overwhelming superiority. You can do it with Iran because they're not quite nuclear. But he's not going to just say, I'm defeated and you killed a million Russians and everything. And I'm defeated and humiliated and I had to withdraw in shame and I gave up the Donbass and the Crimea that had been Russian for decades, in the case of Crimea centuries. And okay, I'm done. It's not going to happen. I wish it would, but it's not. But anyway, we had a good conversation about that, but it's, it's really depressing. It just, I, I, then, then there's a left wing attitude. It's like, how dare you say you're not going to let them have, have Hypersonic missiles and 50 F16. You're, this is Russian collusion all over again. You know what I mean? It's just, I think I told you I was riding my bike maybe a year and a Half ago. And I go through the Stanford faculty, I say ghetto, but it's, you know, a little tract house is three or four million bucks. And they had these signs out all during 2000, 2020. You know, this house doesn't stand racism or racism has no place here. You know those. George Floyd. And then they had the pride for homophibia. They had those. And then there was one, you know, and then they had Ukraine for about a month. They had little Ukrainian kind of flag signs. And so in their mind, Ukraine became. Oh, Russian collusion didn't work. Laptop disinformation. But the damn Russies are still there. Now they are Putin and they're MAGA people. And that's what they thought. They just transferred this domestic hatred of Trump onto anybody who questioned their strategy in Ukraine.
- [17:47]
Jack Fowler
That Russian smear card they think is applicable to any situation. Tulsi Gabbard.
- [17:55]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, they're already doing that. They're already doing that. They're calling her a Russian stooge, just like Clapper called Trump. I think I wrote an article about that. Trump kills more people than the Russians than during the entire Cold war. I think 250 Wagner Group. He gets out of the Russian asymmetrical. That they don't like missile deal. He ups the sanctions, he swamps them with cheap oil in the world market. He sells Obama embargoed offensive weapons to Ukraine. And then they say he's a Russian puppet.
- [18:36]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [18:37]
Victor Davis Hansen
And then Hillary does the reset and gives him everything he wants. And all of a sudden she's tough on Russia. Made no sense.
- [18:47]
Jack Fowler
One last thing here, Victor. Back on Ukraine and by any standard. But who does, who, What European country does the American left hate? And that's Hungary.
- [18:58]
Victor Davis Hansen
But by any standard, everybody hates Hungary and what, what? And Hungary says what? Five years ago, when Germany, Merkel was saying yes, we can, or what was the. In the German motto? I think it translated to we can do this. We can do this. We can let in a million radical Muslims from the most impoverished area in the world. At the same time, we're destroying our economy by shutting down coal and nuclear energy and having wind and solar in a cold, cloudy country. We can do this and still support, you know, export Mercedes and BMW and Audis to all over the world for a competitive product. No, you can't. You can't. And anybody goes to Berlin sees that the people who are Muslims, whether they're Kurds or Turks or wherever they're in, they're just in a separate apartheid existence, Right? Well, they do not like Germans and Germans don't like them and so they can't do it. And it was a disaster. And who was the one that warned them? Viktor Orban. That was my point. He said this is not going to happen in Hungary. And now everybody says, you know what we're going to do? Exactly what Hungary's doing.
- [20:11]
Jack Fowler
And so it's a great country. I mean, Budapest is like, wow, what a, what a terrific, terrific place.
- [20:18]
Victor Davis Hansen
You know, that's another thing. In the last 10 years I've had the pleasure of going to Prague or Budapest and no offense, Western Europe, but those cities seem to me that they're functional in a way that parts of German cities and French cities and special Brussels. Brussels are not as far as the immigration and cleanliness, etc. Etc, etc.
- [20:47]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. So where would you feel safe walking down the street at 2 in the morning In Budapest or in Stockholm? Right. I don't know. Hey Victor, we have lots of American political analysis to get from you on Donald Trump's various nominations. So let's do that when we come back from these important messages.
- [21:16]
Victor Davis Hansen
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Victor Davis Hansen
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Jack Fowler
Home Internet plus while supplies last.
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Victor Davis Hansen
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- [21:47]
Victor Davis Hansen
My dad works in B2B marketing.
- [21:49]
Jack Fowler
He came by my school for career.
- [21:51]
Victor Davis Hansen
Day and said he was a big roas man.
- [21:53]
Jack Fowler
Then he told everyone how much he.
- [21:55]
Victor Davis Hansen
Loved calculating his return on ad spend.
- [21:58]
Jack Fowler
My friends still laugh at me to this day.
- [22:01]
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- [22:21]
Jack Fowler
We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show. I'd like to remind you dear listeners of Victor's website. You go there blade of Perseus victorhansen.com you can do a Million things there Free. You can read Victor's articles from American Greatness. He writes every week, Big essay, his syndicated column. You're new to this podcast. Well, you can go back. The archives are there. Go back and listen. Links to Victor's other appearances, other podcasts and videos. But you're going to see these little articles with Ultra on them, and you're not going to be able to read them unless you subscribe. They're terrific articles. Victor writes two or three a week. They're all done, always done.
- [23:07]
Victor Davis Hansen
Except haven't missed one yet. Since we started. I do. Three a week.
- [23:10]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [23:11]
Victor Davis Hansen
2500 words. I haven't missed one yet. I, I, well, I owe that to the readers that pay their monthly fees. Yeah, we're gonna, I'm doing, I'm gonna do a series on the appointments, pros and cons of all the PR appointments.
- [23:25]
Jack Fowler
Well, we're gonna get into that in a, in a second. You just mentioned that, you know, the subscription is five bucks a month, discounted $50 for the full year. The Blade of Perseus. So, Victor, let's save the most controversial one for the end because it may require the most time, but there were a few that you, I know you want to talk about. Elise Stefanik for the UN and not uncontroversial. Bobby Kennedy for hhs and of course, Matt Goetz for Department of justice, the Attorney General. Let's start off with Stefanik. Your thoughts about that appointment or not Appointment, that nomination.
- [24:10]
Victor Davis Hansen
Well, that, that appointment was predicated on two things. Two or three things. One of them was the disaster of Ambassador Greenfield. Is that her name? Greenfield? I think it is the current Biden ambassador. There, there is a I as when this is aired, there's going to be another UN resolution. Remember the one that when Obama left office, there was a UN resolution saying essentially that any land that Israel was on after the Green Line was established at the end of the 47, 48 war, was illegally occupied. Forget about they had been attacked. Attacked, attacked from the Golan Heights or from Jerusalem, East Jerusalem. But nevertheless, Obama voted for that. And then this new one, if you look at it, it's got all sorts of provisions in it. And you get the impression that I don't think these are revocable, not that we ever abide by them, but the Europeans are really against us on this one. Coming up, condemning Israel about the settlements and the jurisdiction of the international criminal, all these issues. And Bievsky, I think she runs something, is it called UN Watch? She has.
- [25:35]
Jack Fowler
Ann is one of. Yeah, she's an expert on the UN.
- [25:38]
Victor Davis Hansen
And she's the expert and she has one on she has an article on fox.com today and I think Representative Stefanik should talk to her because but anyway, she is picked there to I think, based on the performance she that brilliant inquisitor role that she played with those three, especially Claudine Gay, but the MIT Pennsylvania president and Harvard president, when he she showed them to be either indifferent to anti Semitism or antisemitic or just incompetent and destroyed them. And she's been a very strong advocate to, I don't want to say man up, woman up, person up and stop the antisemitism on campus. She's very pro Israel. She's probably going to be the most pro Israeli UN Ambassador since John Bolton, or probably more so than John Bolton. I think she's very good. I don't know whether her seat, you know New York better than I do, but people tell me that there's a good chance they can keep her seat. The problem with all these appointments are losing congressional seats.
- [26:50]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [26:51]
Victor Davis Hansen
And they, they assure us that, you know, in Waltz's Florida district that they can make them up with Republicans, but they're going to be short for a while anyway. She's going to be a good pick and it's going to bring in a lot of new issues that we haven't heard for four years. You remember under Trump with hw, we got out of a WHO and we were thinking about cutting the UN And I think there's going to be a lot of that type of talk. Not just the UN is crazy and we're going to vote against these nutty people. But do we really want to give them, is it 20 billion a year total for all the programs? Something like, I don't know what it is. Something like that. Do we really want to keep doing that? Do we really want to keep hosting these people in New York? Does anybody know a war they stopped? Does anybody know that UN peacekeepers, I mean, they're on the Lebanese border and they're sanctuary cities basically, or sanctuary zones for Hezbollah. And we had people in their aid workers participating October 7th we had united nations relief workers that were participating in the murder, rape, killing. What do we want with these creepy people? And why do, why do we, why do we do this idea that we're going to be liberal internationalists by putting all of these illiberal regimes on the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba. So I think it's going to be an excellent appointment and she's going to ask all these questions. But the question is the main question I think a lot of people have, is there support, public support to go beyond the gadfly role of what we've seen in the past with Nikki Haley and John Bolton. But I would say that Nikki Haley didn't really replace the Obama people. They were working for her. It wasn't like she came in and made a clean sweep and brought in MAGA people. She really didn't. She was good, but she, I think Stefanik will fire all the people there that were Biden and Obama people and get a whole new group of people.
- [29:11]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [29:12]
Victor Davis Hansen
And I think Marco Rubio in the State Department will support her. And then the question will be well, do you really want to keep participating year after year in this charade? And I don't know what you do, but I would cut, cut, cut. If you're going to cut waste here at home, I would cut that budget by half. And then really suggest to them maybe you just maybe all of you illiberal people who come over here and bring the Iranians over here and blast every year. Yeah, racist, homophobic. We're going to put your, you're going to put your soldiers subject to the Union International Criminal Court. And after what we saw in George Floyd, the Human Rights Commission is going to come in and look for systemic racism on the invitation of Secretary Blink. I don't think anybody's wants to do that anymore.
- [30:01]
Jack Fowler
Even America's own national security having this dump in New York and what it, what it allows into our country and then some of these nasty ass nations and they have these consulates that are filled with spies under using un you know, alleged employment.
- [30:23]
Victor Davis Hansen
It's not as bad though Jack, because in the Giuliani Bloomberg Renaissance years every, we were all mad that these people are coming, coming from these hell holes and then squandering their corrupt government budget in New York, living it up at five star hotels, going on New York media. But now, you know what I mean, New York's not such a good place. So they're, they're leaving Nairobi or something and coming over to something like it. So I, it's kind of, I don't think they see new being in New York as such a great thing anymore. But nevertheless, I don't know what it, it helps the New York economy but I think they should really put it in Caracas or Havana or I don't know, maybe Kabul or something else. Put it where the problem is. Problem is not us. And I wouldn't don't put it in Europe. Europe we've had. Anybody looks what's going on with the EU and Strasbourg or Brussels, know that it's just hopeless. I would maybe Mexico City, I don't know. Or Lima, Peru. That would be good. And they'd get there. All these liberal people would get to come over and say, I feel finally I don't have to be with those racist, sexist, homophobic capitalist running dog imperialist any more. I get to be where I have solidarity and group faith and reinforcement of my ideological equity beliefs. And I'm here in the third world where I love it.
- [32:08]
Jack Fowler
Well, let's go to the middle of the nation. Victor. I didn't mention Doug Burgum, but he is one of the of President Elect Trump's nominees for Secretary of Interior. He's North Dakota governor. You have some positive thoughts about him.
- [32:27]
Victor Davis Hansen
I've always liked, I think everybody likes him. He had a software company, I think he sold it to Microsoft for what, 5 or 600 million, maybe more. He's self made and I mean he's, he's pro energy. He's, I thought in the debates he conducted himself well, you know, I think he always wanted a, either energy secretary or interior secretary was very measured in his criticism of his rival Trump for the few weeks he was on the, in the primary. So yeah, I think, I think he's a good, he's a good pick. He'll get confirmed, you know. You know, he'll get confirmed automatically.
- [33:08]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, I would think so. He, as, I think, you know, as probably most of our listeners know, the Department of Interior, Overseas Indian Affairs.
- [33:15]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yes.
- [33:16]
Jack Fowler
And I saw, I read the other day, if someone tell me, I know.
- [33:20]
Victor Davis Hansen
What you're going to say. We haven't talked about that, this, but I know what you're going to say.
- [33:23]
Jack Fowler
Well then go ahead.
- [33:24]
Victor Davis Hansen
You're Jack, Jack is going to tell everybody and correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't talked, we haven't talked about this. But you're going to say that for all the Native American activism and all the left wing pandering that Native American peoples voted 65% for Trump.
- [33:44]
Jack Fowler
Correct.
- [33:45]
Victor Davis Hansen
Is that what you're going to say?
- [33:46]
Jack Fowler
That was what I was going to say.
- [33:48]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yes, absolutely. And why would they do that? And because according to Obama, they're suffering from false consciousness and according to Marx people, the opiate of the Maxes, they're just eating pizza and watching TV all day and they're imbued with Fox propaganda and they need people to fly out from Martha's Vineyard and tell them what is really in their interest before he flies back. That's what they think. But no, they're. You know, they're on wherever they are, on whichever particular tribal set aside. They think, you know what? My wolf is leaping, leaking. I've got to go get some shingles. Oh, my God. The shingles are four times what they were. Well, maybe Biden didn't mean that. Oh, gasoline's a dollar higher. Well, maybe we'll have some ribs and bar. Oh, my God, it's double. And maybe they're worried about that. And then they turn on the television and Kamala here, I love Biden makes. It's working. It's so good. And they're sick of it. And then they think, well, surely somebody in Washington is worried about us. And they think, you know what? What's your pronouns? What are your pronouns? You aoc. She took her pronouns down. But yeah, yeah. So that's what the Democratic Party is just a bunch of very wealthy people. And the minority people, Native American, Asian, black, they have about the same relationship with the masses of their particular constituencies as the Stanford professor or the Harvard administrator have with you or me, Jack.
- [35:26]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [35:27]
Victor Davis Hansen
Or artists.
- [35:28]
Jack Fowler
They were, at least in South Dakota. I forget.
- [35:31]
Victor Davis Hansen
I forget.
- [35:32]
Jack Fowler
Did Thune lose an election once running against Tom Daschle? I remember the. The Indian vote was very suspect and very much a tool of the Democrats.
- [35:44]
Victor Davis Hansen
Oh, it always was. Yeah, it always. That's what's really strange about what we're watching. I think everybody should take a deep breath. I'm doing it right now. This is the greatest cultural, political, social revolution of my lifetime, because there was nothing like it in the 60s. What we are watching is the slow disintegration of identity politics, racial tribalism, Democratic demagoguery. And it's insidious, and they can't stop it. The more that they double down after this election and the more. The more that Scarborough or the View or Nancy Pelosi starts to lecture people or you see it everywhere on YouTube. All of these teacher meetings were. Did you see that in California where that Mexican American teacher, he went out and he started lecturing people in his. In his class. You people want to be white. You don't know who's. What's good for you. You voted for all these Trump people, and it's because you. And then the school board meeting where they just. People came and just blasted him. We're sick of you. We don't need to be told what you do. We're intelligent People don't mock us. But they can't get. They're so used to mocking people and talking down to people and they don't understand that the, They've lost the people. They have. They have msnbc, they have the corporate boardroom, they have the Tides foundation, they have the Soros foundation, they have the owner of the NBA. But they do not have the people and the people are sick of them and they don't understand what's going on. You're having a major realignment. And the irony about all this is it's Donald Trump lit the fuse. And you know, I was thinking the other day, they could, if Jack, we, we ever talked about how many people tried to destroy him and he ruined their careers or he destroyed their brand. It's just incredible. I mean, look at the Cheneys. The Cheneys were, whether you agree with them or not, you could argue that in conservatives they were the gold standard. Gold standard. Don't you think?
- [38:03]
Jack Fowler
Oh, my gosh, Lynn, she was, she was very good.
- [38:07]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, she was a great, she was great at the nea. She was a National Endowment for Humanities. My gosh. And Dick Cheney, that's the secretary.
- [38:18]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:20]
Victor Davis Hansen
And then there was Liz. And Liz was third highest in the House. Safe seat in Wyoming. All the people in Wyoming. I mean, she was rock solid. They're gone. Done. Done. They. He broke them. He broke them. And then you think of, well, I, I like George W. Bush, but he broke the Bushes. He broke the brand. He did. And, and maybe it's not fair. There were second generation, third generation Bushes that were trying to be MAGA and conservative and, you know, make the necessary. He broke them. He destroyed the Weekly Standard. It doesn't exist. That was a marquee voice of foreign policy among neoconservatism, but also mainstream Republican. I think he broke John. Don't you think he broke John Bolton? Yes. Yeah. I think at one time you would read reports of John Bolton's political action committee with 6, 7, 8 million.
- [39:21]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [39:22]
Victor Davis Hansen
In one year. And I think it's like down to 30,000 or something. He broke him. He broke. When, When Donald Trump ran. You could say that George Will, whom I served on a board with, I liked him. He was very erudite, famous probably. I think it would be no disservice to others to say that George will, circa Jack 2014, was the premier conservative pundit in the United States other than Victor Davis Hansen. No, I, no, I had no, I never approximated his reach. He was, he lorded over. Well, Sunday, a Fox Shows he had a. Must have had three or four hundred subscribers to his Washington Postcard.
- [40:10]
Jack Fowler
With all I'll do reference to Rush Limbaugh, I think, you know.
- [40:14]
Victor Davis Hansen
Oh, no, no, I'm not talking about populist. I'm talking about establishment.
- [40:19]
Jack Fowler
Right, okay. Yeah, I would say that.
- [40:21]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, he was.
- [40:22]
Jack Fowler
We got to get George Will to come speak.
- [40:23]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yes, exactly. Along with Charles Kruthheimer. But Kuttheimer was smarter, wilier, or more astute, whichever term you want to use. He didn't ever come out and say Trump was beyond the pale. He said that he was interesting. There were problems with his candidacy, but he represented something that had not been addressed in the Republican Party. Yeah, Charles was a very brilliant guy. I used to talk to him sometime.
- [40:52]
Jack Fowler
A nice man, awfully nice.
- [40:54]
Victor Davis Hansen
He had a wonderful wife. Very humble, very nice. He. He was very courageous. I, I liked him a lot. But George Will, I mean, now he's, He's. He, it's just, he, he just got, he got obsess.
- [41:11]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, the obsession. And I don't bandy, you know, derangement. I don't want to say he's deranged, but he, he reviewed Al Felsenburg's biography of Bill Buckley, and he was very close to Bill. And George Will worked at National Review, but he used it, the Review, to attack, of all people, Whitaker Chambers, because Whitaker Chambers, he thought was the kind of two generations ago a source for the Trump.
- [41:44]
Victor Davis Hansen
I don't get it.
- [41:45]
Jack Fowler
But the hatred was like.
- [41:47]
Victor Davis Hansen
He broke him. And the same thing, Jack, I have to be very careful now.
- [41:52]
Jack Fowler
Be.
- [41:53]
Victor Davis Hansen
Please don't make me. I'm tiptoeing. And he broke our former employer's National Review. He did. And all of that array in 2014 or 13 when they had that issue, the never Trump issue, that was supposed to be the sentencing and the execution of the Trump candidacy. And they doubled down. Our former colleague and of esteemed friend David French would write column after column after column, along with Kevin Williamson and the others, that he is shortly done politically Trump, and he will be done, and thy will be done. And it never happened. And they got obsessed. And then we could go over to some, he broke the whole conservative punditry. He broke the people in the Republican. Remember, there was a time when the stalwarts were considered the sober and judicious Republicans in the senate were John McCain, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker. Remember those people? These were the people who reached out over the aisle and helped get the Iran deal. Maybe not John McCain, but the other two. And John McCain heroically came in and stopped Obamacare and he, he just broke them all.
- [43:16]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Victor, can I add something here, interestingly about National Review? I went back to the first issue I'm trying to write a piece for somebody on like, what would, what would Bill Buckley, if Bill Buckley was alive today, what would he have to say about all of this? I just think is a worthwhile exercise. And looking at the first issue and the mag, what we, you know, stand a thwart history yelling stop. It's not like sit on the sidelines, you know, equipping or, or tweeting or.
- [43:48]
Victor Davis Hansen
The first was the first 2000 in the Cambridge phone book.
- [43:52]
Jack Fowler
Well, that was. His bill was very much a populist in that regard. Yeah. I'd rather be judged by the, you know, government, by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directly than by the faculty of Harvard. But my point here is that the topics, the issues that NR at the first issue, 1955 laid out is like, this is why we have come to be. This is the issues we fight for are still very current and they're all stuff that Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Donald Trump is totally in line with. So like this, except for, except for free markets. You know, there's obviously some, some change there. But, you know, generally Donald Trump is a strong conservative and many, I don't know, that's what keepers of conservatism hate.
- [44:44]
Victor Davis Hansen
Him, hate him for that. You know, that's, that's what everybody listening. Not everybody, but because we have loyal followers that on the left. I know that because I get stuff from them and they're very astute people, some of them. But I think the majority, it's safe to say, are center right.
- [45:03]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [45:03]
Victor Davis Hansen
And what they are astounded because I hear from you and I talk to you in public when I see you. They're astounded by this. They understood that Donald Trump could be crude. His tweets were inconsiderate. They didn't always approve of, you know, if you're going to make fun of Kamala Harris, they don't like saying she has a low iq. But whatever that is, they understood that a, the establishment kind of asked for it and they needed somebody without any political baggage of the past, no political loyalties, who was going to be their ballistic missile to hit the target. The target being the administrative blob.
- [45:48]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [45:48]
Victor Davis Hansen
And that he did that and tried to break through. And my point is they were wise enough that if they voted against him in the primary, they understood when they passions cool, they Went down the conservative checklist and they said tax reduction, Check. Border security, Check. Reasonable reservations about abortion, Check. Foreign policy, deterrence, Check. Strong defense, Check. Tough criminal policing, law enforcement, Check. Very good. On energy production, America first energy, Check. Skepticism and rejection of this radical transgender agenda. Check. And so what did they. And then they said, what do I disagree with the MAGA people? Or at that time it was Trump. There was no maga. He was Trump. Well, tariffs. But Reagan had tariffs and Bush had tariffs. So my objection to Trump is his sloppiness and language when he says he's going to put tariffs everywhere. He didn't last time. He had selective reciprocal tariffs. Check, check. That's what they did. That's what Reagan did. That's what Bush did. And then they think, well, what else did he do? Appointments, judges. Oh, he had. He appointed Harriet Myers. No, he didn't. He didn't.
- [47:21]
Jack Fowler
David Souter. No.
- [47:22]
Victor Davis Hansen
David Suter. No, he didn't. So the.
- [47:27]
Jack Fowler
And even John, you go back to Reagan.
- [47:29]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah.
- [47:30]
Jack Fowler
Not a disaster.
- [47:31]
Victor Davis Hansen
He was Justice Roberts. No. So there it was 90%. And some of you are going to say, well, it was 90%. What was so different? Why did he. Because it was his a. He kept his promises and he took on the left and he made conservative appointments as well. And yes, he didn't. He was tricked and hoodwinked by a lot of people in that four year period that were not loyal and tried to subvert him that he had appointment. But the point was he never gave any grounds for anybody to reject their entire lifelong holistic conservative mental landscape and belief. And they did. Bill Kristol did. David Frum did. Charles Sykes did. George Will. Now, I don't know if George Will completely did, but a lot of them did. He went, he made them go crazy and they read and they basically told all their readers, hey, Max. Booty. Hey, you guys. Everything I believed in and I told you to believe in and I hammered you to believe in. Don't believe that now because I hate that guy so much that I've rejected everything and now I'm 2.0. And. And you should still be persuaded. Jennifer Rubin, she was hired by the. I remember she was in Commentary. I think John Po. Horiz made her. And I remember talking. I won't mention the people at Commentary and they said, you got to meet Jen Rubin. She is brilliant. And I remember saying, well, I read something I was on. I was not impressed. I was underwhelmed. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. She is the, the new conservative. She is our Conservative.
- [49:16]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [49:18]
Victor Davis Hansen
And so my point is that he broke all those people and he was, you know, who really saw that at the beginning and he's very underappreciated. I know everybody said he can't be underappreciated. He was the most popular conservative was Rush Limbo.
- [49:31]
Jack Fowler
I was going to say El Rushboard man.
- [49:33]
Victor Davis Hansen
He was a crew supporter and he had, he, he voiced his reservations on Trump not because he was bothered by Trump's attack on the establishment, but he felt that Trump had been a Democrat, that Trump was soft on abortion. All those were legitimate. Rush wasn't right. Rush saw exactly what Trump meant and the people who were supporting Trump, you know who else did I talk to him very early. He had initial. Dennis Prager did too.
- [50:03]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [50:04]
Victor Davis Hansen
And you know who else did I before he was pardoned? Conrad Black and Bill, Bill Bennett did too. He, they did.
- [50:13]
Jack Fowler
They did.
- [50:14]
Victor Davis Hansen
Oh yeah, they did. Very early.
- [50:17]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [50:17]
Victor Davis Hansen
There were a lot of people who you would not ever suspect that, gosh, I love Conrad.
- [50:23]
Jack Fowler
He's such a father writer, what a great guy.
- [50:27]
Victor Davis Hansen
He's got a, he's got a beautiful vocabulary and method, oral and written expression. Yeah, I've, you know, he's, I blurbed his history of the world and it's very, well, it's, it's 19th century esque. It's, it's a very, it's a wonderful achievement. But I anyway, getting back to that, this is a revolutionary time where we're living. All of a sudden we can say things, we can say, you know what, I don't want my, that representative, he didn't want his daughters in with competing against biological males. Yeah. How do you do that? Rep. We're going to get no, I don't care. Go ahead. I don't care. And the same thing with the Disney woman who's doing the Snow White. What was her, she's the actress. She started lecturing everybody. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it. Disney has $800 million invested in the production of my movie and you might what Bud Light me. Right. And so all these people, and even the View now is in terror, you know, that they're going to have to bring, you know, Barbara Walters was weird, but when she founded that she had people with different viewpoints and it was, it was just kamikaze during the George Floyd mania. That's going to be looked at that period From May of 2020 to 2024 election as a period like the Great Terror.
- [51:50]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [51:51]
Victor Davis Hansen
It's going to be a period that's known as complete insanity.
- [51:56]
Jack Fowler
Can I, can I just inject. Comparing, Comparing what? Some of the things you said earlier was Drew Bledsoe. Remember Drew?
- [52:04]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yes, I do. He was that quarterback that some days he was be the best in the world and some days not so much.
- [52:11]
Jack Fowler
Right. But he was critical of the tax on the cops and then he folded so immediately and so grovelingly to me, that was like, that was the Mount Rushmore of embarrassing things that happen in America. But you're right, Victor, that's not happening anymore. What he should have said at the time was up. I can't curse in here. Anyway, hopefully the days of Bledsoe groveling are hopefully over.
- [52:42]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, absolutely. This is a liberating time to be alive. It really is. And I didn't think, I'm 71. I never thought, thought that you could go around the Al Sharptons and the Barack Obamas and all of these race hustlers and grifters and just make the argument that we all have this common humanity and we all have more in common than not. And our race, our zip code, all of that is incidental to whom we are. And then one thing else Trump did is underappreciated. He brought people in. I know that a lot of them were crazy, but he didn't care what letters you, he didn't care if you had a PhD, an MD, a JD. I know that our credential system has benefits, but it was way overdone. Fauci, MD, chairman of the national he.
- [53:41]
Jack Fowler
Was a I am science.
- [53:43]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, I am the science. And that. And then he didn't care about the prior titles. So you can see that. And, and this will lead us to our next discussion, the revolution and what these appointments represent.
- [53:58]
Jack Fowler
Well, let's get to them right after these final important messages.
- [54:08]
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- [55:47]
Jack Fowler
We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Hey, Victor, before those, those, those really controversial appointments that I want to hear and I know our listeners want to hear about, about breaking things and I know you're talking about Trump breaking conservatives. He has almost broken. I think the Obamas, they do indeed need to be totally broken. There's a great piece in Tablet magazine. It's a weekly Jewish publication. I write about it a lot. I refer to it in that civil Thoughts and Obama as unique in history for hanging around Washington other than Woodrow Wilson who couldn't leave because he was, you know, stroke ridden. But Obama, this would have been what, the fourth. If Kamala Harris had one, it would have been the fourth Obama turn effect. It was essentially, but he, he needs to be totally crushed.
- [56:46]
Victor Davis Hansen
Somehow or other we were, we had talked about that, that this was, that Joe Biden was a puppet and it was Michelle and Barack and the people around them. And I thought they would be more subtle about that. But the moment he faltered and they were able to get him off, they just came out and just admitted it. I mean, they just took over. They put their people in charge of the Harris campaign. They dumped Biden in a very cruel way. And then they were very clever and very, very careful about how they handled that. They gave mixed messages. They kind of told one person, we want an open convention. The other is that Carmela should be. They didn't know who was going to win for 72 hours is what I'm getting on getting, they were trying and trying. I think their heart said they wanted a black woman that they thought they could control in the same fashion they control a demented white male like Biden. But they weren't sure about that.
- [57:44]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [57:45]
Victor Davis Hansen
So they were going to have an open convention. And then when that was squashed and she beat that, she cut them off at the pass. Then they came in full hearted for her. And then they thought, wow, you know, and so they were, Michelle, you know she was lecture. Finally, I think she told America, Remember when I shut up and I became I had the garden and I talked about how I liked everybody and I wrote my memoirs about truth and beauty and mushy, mushy, mush and you all like me again. And I talked about women and everything and I'm on your side. Well, that wasn't me. I was never raised the bar on me. And every time I try to make something, they raise the bar. Or I've never been proud of my country before or this is a damn right mean country. That's who I am. And if you forgot it, I'm going to come out and we and lecture everybody that you're racist, hateful dictator, you don't know your. And then Barack, remember, oh, I've been playing golf. You know, I just think I'm going to go play some golf. That was the 2016. He finally woke up and he thought, you know what? People don't like me.
- [59:02]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [59:02]
Victor Davis Hansen
Because I lecture people. I lost my party. 1400 seats state, local and national during my tenure. I didn't care about them because it was me I was worried about. But, you know, I lectured them that Trayvon was a child I never had. He looked just like me. And I told that policeman in Cambridge that it was that police were basically racist. And oh, I had my little moments. But I knew that people did not like Hillary and I knew they didn't like Trump. And I checked out my last year and I let them fight each other. And then I waved to the crowd my Bermuda shorts on the golf every day. And I let John Brennan and James Clapper and James Comey go to work on the Russian collusion which I fed to destroy Trump in the background. And I like that. And now you all like me. And now you got to see me again. I popped up again and now you hate my guts because I am an sob. So I lectured a bunch of very sincere African American people that were very troubled when they attached themselves to the Harris campaign. And I thought that they were undereducated, they didn't have my sophistication, they had never read Marx. And so I had to school them. I had to tell them they're suffering from false consciousness, they are innately, you know, sexist, and maybe they're even self loathing racist because they did not appreciate the beauty, the intelligence, the dynamism of Kamala Harris and the great record she was supporting. And that's what he did. And everybody said, you know what? You reminded why I never liked you. And I'm sick of you. And then they. The more he went around the country and then he kept saying he thought, you know what going to do? I'm going to go to my Hopi and Changy and I'll just. We got to go and hope and change and we're going to do all this. And everybody said, yeah, I remember that. Ancient history. I never liked it when I heard it the first time. I just voted for you because you were the first black guy. I don't like you. I don't like what you're doing. I don't like you stirring up people. Bye. Go away.
- [61:16]
Jack Fowler
Go back to one of your mansions.
- [61:17]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, we don't care if you go to Chicago or Colorama Mansion or Martha's vineyard with your 2000 gallon propane tank and global warming is going to raise the ocean and lap over to your 40 acre estate or your what you build a home, a multimillion dollar home on the beach of Hawaii when you told us we couldn't drive because global warming was going to wash over all our coastlines. Go back there. We're done with you. We're done. All right, so that's.
- [61:47]
Jack Fowler
Oh my gosh, she's. He's the gift that keeps giving us this podcast. Hey, Victor, we've got to get three significant takes from you right now. So I think let's start off with your thoughts about the response reactions to the nomination of Pete Hegseth, who I just want to say I love Pete. He's a friend. I think he's a super guy. And he is. And anyone thinks, oh, he's just Fox and Friends and interviewing people in diners is. He is really. He is quite intellectual. I've been with him. Very steeped in Burke and the roots of conservatism. Just a great guy. Anyway, I liked him.
- [62:29]
Victor Davis Hansen
He came to Selma, California. He came out here to my farm and spent the day with me. Yeah. And he came out in a T shirt as I remember. And he pulled on his dress shirt and tie. We were filming a Fox Nation that he was directing on. Remember that? Classical education.
- [62:49]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [62:50]
Victor Davis Hansen
And I was kind of a talking head in a few seconds. But anyway, I spent a long time with him. I noticed when he pulled his shirt off to get his dress shirt on, he had his Inka Dinka do. Yeah, yeah. His. I don't. What would we call it? It's the Crusader cross. Right? It's.
- [63:08]
Jack Fowler
Yes.
- [63:09]
Victor Davis Hansen
And it's. It was kind of a. And that's what people was claimed. It's not A white supremacist, if anything. It's a Catholic monarchist, Jack, that you'll like. Like.
- [63:19]
Jack Fowler
Well, Pete's not Catholic, but.
- [63:21]
Victor Davis Hansen
No, but I mean, it was. It was not. It was, and then. Right. Didn't he have Deus Walt? That's a famous. That was an early patristic. The God wishes. And that was part of the crusader motto, as I remember. But anyway, the point is, one way to look at Pete Hexitz is this. I'm Senator Hansen, okay? Just imagine me and he's sitting across the aisle right now. Now, Mr. Hesep, were you involved? Did you plan, did you condone, did you ignore that catastrophic worst humiliation in history at Cabal? No, I wasn't there. Okay, next question. Did you revolve from your perch in the Pentagon and go work for Raytheon? And now when you get done with your job, will you go back to Raytheon? No, I've never worked for a defense contractor. General Dynamics, Lockheed, Northrop. No, no. You mean you never work for it. Well, what the hell's wrong with you? Everybody does. No, I don't. Okay, next question. And you got rich on Wall Street? No, I left Wall Street. Well, where did you go? Oh, I went for a combat duty in Iraq. So you didn't want to go to Afghanistan? No, I went to Afghanistan too. I went to Guantanamo. You did. Okay. Well, did you. If you get defense person, you're going to get a private jet and fly to your home? No, I. I'm not going to do that. Well, Leon Panetta did. Well, I'm not going to do that. Okay. Are you going to design? Were you in. Were you. Did you write in support of designing pregnant flight suits for women pilot? No. How about. What do you think about, you know, starting a. A study you've heard, or just your distinguished predecessors and they've all said that the Pentagon was suffering from systemic racism, white privilege, white rage and white supremacy. And they have a two year study. What do you think of it? I don't think it exists. So you don't want to insult the people that diet twice their numbers in the demographic in Iraq and. No. So that's what it's going to go like. That's what it should go like. In other words. What I'm trying to say, Jack, is that these people have destroyed all standards for performance at dod and now they're going to tell somebody who has an Ivy League, which they value an Ivy League, Princeton and Harvard degree and could have had a very lucrative career on Wall street. And volunteered to go into combat hell, into combat theaters. They're going to tell him that he is not qualified based on the standards of qualification set by the last five or six Defense Secretaries. I guess that's what we're going to witness. And so remember, everybody, there is a theme, as we talked about with Sammy, to all of these appointments. They have something in common. I tweeted about it last night, Jack, the person there is on a revenge ride. Tulsi Gabbard was put on a terrorist watch list. She's going to be Director of National Intelligence and have a lot of say who goes on that. Robert Kennedy was considered a complete nut by hhs. He may be. We'll see how long he lasts if he's confirmed. But he's going to be running HHF if he's confirmed. You could argue, you could argue that. You could make the argument. I'm not going to get. We're going to save a Matt Getz. But the DOJ did go after him. If he were to be confirmed, he's going to. Whether it's good or bad, they are putting people in here who have legitimate grievances about the agents, agencies they're going to run, and they have been targets of those agencies. The second thing to remember is we're not drawing people that have been in these positions the last 20 years. So they don't have a lot of Alphabet titles, JD or PhD after their name. They don't have assistant. I was the Assistant Secretary to that person and I was the Associate Director of that. No, they don't. And they're not coming from, you know. Well, I was in the Biden administration and then I came out of the Obama administration or the Bush, and I went over to Georgetown University and taught. Then I was at American. No, they don't. They're not.
- [68:12]
Jack Fowler
And then I signed a 51 or I signed 100 letter, 100 name against.
- [68:17]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, and they're not from Wall Street. I, I went there. They didn't. They're not coming back and forth from Silicon Valley and finding not revolutionaries. They're not. They say, well, they're gonna destroy. No, they're just trying to say, what was the mission statement of the Pentagon originally? What was it supposed to do? What was the CIA supposed to do? What was the FBI supposed to do? What was HHS supposed to do? What was CDC supposed to do? What were all these EPA supposed to do and what are they doing now? And they are acting in a fashion that the original creators never imagined. The Pentagon today bears no resemblance to what George Marshall and those people thought it would be like. And the same thing with the epa. And so these people are not radicals, they're just traditionalists. And they're saying, we're going to either disband this division or this, this, this cabinet because it's so far gone, or we're going to try to restore it to its original purpose. That's very important.
- [69:26]
Jack Fowler
Again, if I may, but Bill Buckley, 1955. Stand athwart history, yell stop. It has to stop. It can't be accompanied and say stand athwart history and accommodate. And these, these are the stoppers.
- [69:40]
Victor Davis Hansen
And that's what I meant, you know, Elon Musk. They have gone. The government, whether state of California or the federal, has gone out to destroy that guy. When they try to get X, they try to get him. They try to get him on his space, they try to get him on Tesla. And you know, he's now going to be. Have a large hand in talking about what these people do. He, they are the. He was policed and now he's the police. And that is what is so frightening.
- [70:08]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Yeah. Well, what about Matt Getz? You want to say, okay, we'll finish.
- [70:14]
Victor Davis Hansen
Go ahead. About time to finish, and we'll finish on Matt Getz. So the traditional view, everyone. And I'm not going to get partisan. I'm just going to say, if you're a. Well, forget about the left. I don't care what they think. But if you're a MAGA supporter, then you say, yes, Victor, I just heard what you said, and Matt Gaetz was the subject of a lot of DOJ stuff to destroy him, and they dropped the case. Now he's going to be back in the doj. Who knows better than hound of the DOJ than an object. Then the other people say, well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We have to be effective here. Matt Gaetz is not a prosecutor. This is the top prosecutor prosecutorial job in the country. He's never been a federal prosecutor. He's never really been a lawyer to any great degree. He's. His family was in politics. He went right into politics. And I don't think that he has the temperament to represent and protect the MAGA view of what needs to be done in the doj. He doesn't have the skills or the experience or the age. So those are the two views. I'm not going to adjudicate them, but this is what I think is going to happen, and I don't know if it's deliberate. Jack. Or it's inadvertent. Matt Gates resigned his House seat. Matt Gaetz was the architect of the dethronement of Kevin McCarthy. You hear what Kevin McCarthy said?
- [71:57]
Jack Fowler
No, I can't imagine.
- [71:59]
Victor Davis Hansen
Oh, they asked him, they said, what do you think about the Gates? He started laughing. He's very close to Trump. He started laughing. He said he'll never be confirmed. It's a joke and he must know something. I don't know if he'll get out of the. So I think there were people in the Republican Party, I'm not supporting it or I'm not opposing. I'm just trying to analyze it. I think there were people in the Republican Party that knew that he had ingratiated himself to Trump and he had Trump's ears and they thought that they could persuade him to be appointed under certain conditions. So he resigns from the House. And they say, see, Matt, you got rid of the ethics investigation. They were going after you. But everybody sighs Relief Johnson and everybody says, you know what, we only had it. We're only by the time these appointments are over where they're only going to have seven or eight seats and we won't, we don't want somebody that's going to fire up Bo Burt and Mary.
- [73:06]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [73:07]
Victor Davis Hansen
Marjorie Taylor Greene and the mega bakes. So he's gone now. Check. And then he's going to go in and they going to go to the committee and he is going to embarrass the Republican senators because they're going to have to defend him and these people are going to hammer him. They're going to ask him under oath, how many federal, how many cases have you ever tried as a prosecutor? How many cases have you done as a defense person? What do you think about this particular case? What do you, can you name two prior.
- [73:40]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [73:41]
Victor Davis Hansen
You know, attorney generals that you think were good or bad, that kind of stuff.
- [73:45]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [73:46]
Victor Davis Hansen
And they're going to try and that may be true, that they're not going to approve him and there's going to be senators and they're going to even Ted Cruz when they ask him, he was non committal. Yeah, this is kind of a good. Yeah. So they're going to these guys and say, now listen, you guys on the Judiciary Committee, do not put us in a position where we're going to have to vote against Trump. So you kill this, strangle this appointment in the committee, we'll see. And that's going to be very tough because how you don't want to, you know, you don't want to vote along with Schumer or somebody.
- [74:26]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [74:26]
Victor Davis Hansen
So, so anyway, they're, they're going to do this and then Trump is going to say, look, you guys, I, he's going to call in all the MAGA people and said, I got you the ultra, ultra MAGA appointment for the most important job in the country. I tried my best and it didn't work. It was beyond mine. I couldn't control the center just like I couldn't get Scott appointed, appoint appointed majority leader. They have a mind of their own and I accept that. So I did my best to get Matt elevated and he got stopped. Then he's going to go tell the Senate in general. Now listen everybody, you got out of your system, you vetted, you destroyed my ultima and I am really angry at you. But do not, I warn you, do not do that with Tulsi Gabber. Our rfk, our Pete Hexa. Yeah, I think, I think he was a sacrificial lamb. I really do.
- [75:24]
Jack Fowler
Could be. I am still scratching my head about it. And we were long ago, Victor, when we were talking about.
- [75:34]
Victor Davis Hansen
Don't remind me, Jack. I got so many angry emails from some people, my friends and people, you dear listeners that I so love, you wrote me and said, victor, you should be be drawn and quartered. No, Victor, I think you should be guillotined. No, Victor, you should be burned alive. No, Victor, you should be thrown on an island, eaten by cannibals.
- [75:55]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, I just don't get. And all I do want to get the adoration of.
- [76:00]
Victor Davis Hansen
All I said was at that time that I had known Kevin McCarthy. I understood that he was not Albert Einstein. I understood that he was not ultra mag or even mega maybe. But I did think he, first of all, I was prejudiced because I like him. And second, he was a very effective advocate for California agriculture and not just agribusiness, just everybody needing water. And he fought like hell, excuse me heck, for that. And I could, I didn't think that. And then the second thing was he had only a seven or eight seat majority in the House. He couldn't be, he had to compromise here and there. He had no power. He needed about 15 seats. And so right when they had Kevin had made them take back the house in 2022, he went around the country, he raised the money, he picked the candidates that were going to win and he was trying to stop the madness of Biden and then to throw him out and have this internal revolution. So that was why I just criticized Gets for a Minute. And the next thing I knew, my email and my website was overwhelmed with. You are a traitor. Go, get away.
- [77:17]
Jack Fowler
Bad, Victor, bad. Well, I'm sure we'll have more to talk about these nominations and the nominations.
- [77:24]
Victor Davis Hansen
So I was careful right now. I did not say that he would do, I don't know what kind of job he would do.
- [77:31]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, I'll be the villain. If someone has to be the villain here, Victor, I'm very happy to be because frankly, I see him in a way of a little bit like Biden. I see. I, I think there's a, a difference between a disruptor and a, and an agent of, of chaos and Biden. Look at Afghanistan. This is chaos.
- [77:50]
Victor Davis Hansen
I, yeah, you're absolutely, I, I, I'll come out and say my view is to get the conservative, the most conservative message possible.
- [78:00]
Jack Fowler
Right.
- [78:01]
Victor Davis Hansen
And not through just, you know, orthodox compromising. Don't compromise until you can't get anything. But there was a point when I thought if they stuck together and even with their seven seat advantage, they could stop stuff and then to have blood on the floor and fight back and forth and have all those votes and humiliate the guy who kind of got them the majority and then put Trump in a bad position where he had to favor his ideological kindred spirit, Gates versus the practical kindred spirit that was trying to, and Kevin had come out for Trump. And I, I just didn't see the purpose of it. That's all I said. And I think now that Trump is going to expend a lot of capital. But I do believe that there were people around Trump. I'm not saying Trump engineered it. I'm thinking people who convinced Gates to take it so that he would get out of the ethics problems if it was a problem. But their alterior mode was getting him out of the House so he won't cause another insurrection with a small margin.
- [79:13]
Jack Fowler
Plausible, by the way, he stepped down from his current term. But he was reelected, right?
- [79:19]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yes, he was.
- [79:20]
Jack Fowler
He could be sworn in again on January 3rd.
- [79:24]
Victor Davis Hansen
That's what I was wondering about. And then Ari could run again on the special election. Right. I quit. I'm going to run to replace myself. So, and then I thought, you know, as I said, there will be people in the Senate who will try to kill it in the committee so they don't put the senators on the spot. And then people around Trump. I'm not saying Trump did it. I don't know. I think he genuinely supported Gates and he sees him as a necessary disruptor, but then they went and told Trump this is something that they vetted about and you vented. I should say not vetted. They vented. They got their outrage and you tell them now you, you picked off one of my men and that's it. We draw the line with the other appointments and we'll see.
- [80:11]
Jack Fowler
Well, we've come to the just about the finish line. A couple of things business, Victor. First, I just repeat that you have the website blade of Perseus victorhanson.com you mentioned that you wrote a piece on X yesterday. And if you're on X used to be Twitter. Victor's handle there is D. Hansen. As for me, Jack Fowler, I write Civil Thoughts every week. Free weekly email newsletter for the center for Civil society. Go to civilthoughts.com Sign up 14 recommended readings of great articles I've come across the previous week. That's what you're going to get in Civil Thoughts. And thanks for those of you who do get it. And I get a lot of nice notes from you. I have to man up here when we're talking before about you talk about National Reviews, the never Trump issue actually was the against Trump issue and the publisher, National Review.
- [81:09]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yes.
- [81:10]
Jack Fowler
A guy named Jack Fowler. And I was very much supportive of it. And, and many of the initial things.
- [81:16]
Victor Davis Hansen
No, I didn't say about Trump and your in defense of you.
- [81:21]
Jack Fowler
Well, I was going to defend myself, but go ahead.
- [81:23]
Victor Davis Hansen
But correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't Tom Soul a contributor?
- [81:28]
Jack Fowler
Michael. Tom Sol was. Michael Casey was and so was other.
- [81:32]
Victor Davis Hansen
People who and I, I read Tom Soul's thing. It was pretty logical. And so was Larry Arms, right? Wasn't he a contributor? Was he a contributor?
- [81:41]
Jack Fowler
I don't know if Larry was on that. I don't think so.
- [81:44]
Victor Davis Hansen
He's a very, he's a very sober wise guy. And so my point was at that point it wasn't so much they were against Trump. They were, they had, had felt that they wanted a more established critic, conservative critic, and that most of them had defined that as Ted Cruz.
- [82:03]
Jack Fowler
Ted Cruz, correct. Yeah.
- [82:04]
Victor Davis Hansen
And that's what they were trying to say.
- [82:06]
Jack Fowler
I eventually in that election cycle, I've been a Trump donor, the last voter. But I was struck as election day approached in 2016 from it was actually folks from the right attacking Trump voters. And I, I was aghast at that. I'm One of the 2,000 names, you know, in the Boston telephone directory type I, I was kind of shocked by the, by the vitriol to run of the mill conservatives that really bothered me.
- [82:38]
Victor Davis Hansen
I had initial suspicions of them, but my support, I have to confess, was initially generated by the negative things people said about him. And in other words, I looked at all these people I was skeptical about, but in the conservative movement, and I said, the fact they all uniformly hate this person is a recommendation that you should look very carefully because this guy's doing something right. Yeah, that's how I came.
- [83:05]
Jack Fowler
Well, he's the enemy of my enemy. And he's. Yeah, he's my friend, at the very least, you know.
- [83:11]
Victor Davis Hansen
Yeah, he was. And I like the idea that he was appealing to the working class. And the weird thing was just to finish, and I'll shut up, is people. He. The unexpected happened in 2015 and 16 to me. I would go in to the hardware store, local hardware store, I'd go to a part store, I'd go to Home Depot or something, and I would see somebody who was a traditional Democratic, mostly Mexican American, and they would come up to me and say they were voting Trump. And then I would see people that I thought were logical, people that I'd known for years, both at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford University, who were conservative. And when I would talk to them, they were foaming at the mouth at the very thought of Trump. And I said to myself, why is this person, who is a working class, who has no advantages and no hope for upward mobility given the system that's against him, why is he for Trump and sees a chance, and why is this person has had every opportunity and is doing so well, giving me all these arguments against Trump, and they're all based on style and the other person's arguments are based on substance.
- [84:35]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [84:35]
Victor Davis Hansen
And I said, I'm done.
- [84:38]
Jack Fowler
Style and class. Yeah. No question.
- [84:40]
Victor Davis Hansen
Victor.
- [84:41]
Jack Fowler
Hey, one last thing before we close. We folks leave comments on Apple and on Victor's website, and folks on Apple rate the show zero to five stars. We thank those who take the time to do that. And Victor's rating is of many thousands of folks who've done so, 4.9 plus. And we read the comments that some people leave. But today I'm going to read a comment that someone left on a recent podcast. Very powerful most recent podcast you did, or maybe it was two ago with the great Sammy Wink. And you talked about very, very powerfully about your daughter. And here's what Mary Hupp writes. This is on from the Blade of Perseus. Professor Hanson, I'm so sorry for the loss of your daughter. What a heartbreaking tragedy. Thank you for sharing the story. The insensitivity of the person who called to buy back the bench is astounding. I'm sorry for that as well. Thank you so much for your podcasts and interviews. I've learned so much from you. I love to hear you speak. And I think, Mary, that last sentence there, as people do. Oh my gosh, Victor, I can't tell you how many people I come across the last week or two. They just love to hear you. Victor, you've been terrific. Thanks Mary, for your comment. Thanks everyone who's listened and we will be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye Bye.
- [86:14]
Victor Davis Hansen
Thanks again everybody for listening.