Harris Exit and Campaign Blame Game

Summary

Summary of "Harris Exit and Campaign Blame Game" – The Victor Davis Hanson Show
Release Date: November 8, 2024

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Harris Exit and Campaign Blame Game," The Victor Davis Hanson Show delves deep into the aftermath of the recent election, dissecting the performance and strategies of Kamala Harris's campaign, the unexpected triumph of Donald Trump, and the broader implications for American politics. Hosts Victor Davis Hanson and Sammy Wink engage in a candid discussion, enriched with critical analysis and pointed commentary, aimed at understanding the shifting political landscape.

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Election Results and Concession Speech

The episode opens with Hanson addressing listeners' concerns about time management and self-improvement, briefly promoting Hillsdale College's free online courses. However, the core discussion swiftly moves to the election results, focusing on Kamala Harris's concession.

Sammy Wink critiques Harris’s concession speech:

"She didn't concede when it was clear she lost on campaign night and then she was 20, 30 minutes late to her own later concession speech. It wasn't really a concession speech. It was kind of fight, fight, fight and we're going to do this and we're going to do this and then we're going to do this."
[05:16]

Wink emphasizes the perception that Harris's concession lacked sincerity and failed to acknowledge the electoral defeat straightforwardly.

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Performance and Competency of Kamala Harris

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Harris's competence as a candidate and her future prospects post-election.

Sammy Wink boldly states:

"She's not a very good lawyer. She flunked the bar the first time she took it. She was a, she only was attorney general."
[06:23]

He further argues that Harris lacks the necessary skills for roles beyond her current political standing, comparing her potential career trajectory unfavorably to that of Michael Dukakis.

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Voting Demographics and Electoral Shifts

The hosts analyze the voting patterns that led to Trump's victory, highlighting significant shifts in key demographics.

Sammy Wink highlights the breakdown:

"He got about 18% of the black vote. He got about 28% of black males. He split the Latino vote. He whittled down the Jewish vote to almost getting, I think, 40% of it, 45% of it."
[11:01]

He underscores how Trump's outreach to previously non-traditional voter blocs contributed to his unexpected success, signaling a repudiation of the established Democratic base.

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Media Critique and Portrayal of the Election

A critical examination of media bias and narrative shaping features prominently in the conversation.

Sammy Wink criticizes MSNBC's coverage:

"I watched MSNBC, they kept saying, women, women. Here's the women vote. It's breaking for her. And I thought, you're lying to people. It's breaking for her. But it's not nearly breaking enough to make up for the fact that white women, white women, 51% for Trump."
[19:08]

He accuses the media of downplaying Trump's support among white women while overstating Harris's appeal to women voters, suggesting a deliberate misrepresentation of the electoral dynamics.

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Political Strategy and Future Implications

The discussion transitions to the strategic maneuvers within the Republican Party and projections for future political developments.

Sammy Wink offers insights into Senate races:

"They were so organized. They didn't keep. I mean, Hillary was caught. She was campaigning, you know, in places like Arizona on why she was losing the blue wall. First of all, Trump did better as far as the margin in almost all the states that he won."
[09:55]

They discuss the effective campaign strategies that enabled Republicans to secure a stronger Senate majority, contrasting it with past electoral performances.

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Criticism of Democratic Policies and Institutional Suggestions

Hanson and Wink delve into critiques of Democratic policies and propose significant changes to governmental institutions.

Victor Davis Hanson suggests:

"I would get rid of one or two cabinets and outsource. I wouldn't try to lay a bunch of people off. It would be politically disastrous. I'd just say, you know what, if you're in the Department of Education, we're going to try to hire you in another thing."
[55:43]

He advocates for decentralizing power by relocating agencies like the FBI and CIA away from Washington D.C., arguing it would reduce political manipulation and overreach.

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Endorsements and Influence of Public Figures

The influence of public endorsements on election outcomes is scrutinized, with a focus on endorsements of Trump versus Harris.

Sammy Wink remarks on endorsements:

"You could make the argument that he [Trump] was surrounded by, he deliberately wanted to be Kellyanne Conway. She gets on tv, she talks a mile a minute. She's very capable and all of them were capable, but especially the women."
[43:12]

They discuss how strategic endorsements and the media presence of Trump's team members contributed to his campaign's success, contrasting it with the less effective endorsements supporting Harris.

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Listener Feedback and Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with reader feedback highlighting the need for continued effort despite the election results.

Listener Peter comments:

"Victor, thank you for your insight as they hope your insights as they help explain the election. Also thank you for your diligent reporting. All this time, winning a few people per hundred still makes the election very close. And because of this, we as a country have much work to be done."
[76:55]

Hanson and Wink express appreciation for the engagement and underscore the ongoing work required to address the nation's challenges moving forward.

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Conclusion

"Harris Exit and Campaign Blame Game" offers a critical examination of Kamala Harris's campaign shortcomings, Trump's strategic electoral successes, and the media's role in shaping public perception. Through incisive analysis and unfiltered commentary, the hosts provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the election's outcome and its implications for the future of American politics.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Sammy Wink [05:16]: "She didn't concede when it was clear she lost on campaign night and then she was 20, 30 minutes late to her own later concession speech."

• Sammy Wink [06:23]: "She's not a very good lawyer. She flunked the bar the first time she took it."

• Sammy Wink [11:01]: "He got about 18% of the black vote. He got about 28% of black males. He split the Latino vote."

• Sammy Wink [19:08]: "I watched MSNBC, they kept saying, women, women. Here's the women vote. It's breaking for her. And I thought, you're lying to people."

• Victor Davis Hanson [55:43]: "I would get rid of one or two cabinets and outsource. I wouldn't try to lay a bunch of people off."

• Sammy Wink [43:12]: "You could make the argument that he [Trump] was surrounded by, he deliberately wanted to be Kellyanne Conway."

• Listener Peter [76:55]: "All this time, winning a few people per hundred still makes the election very close. And because of this, we as a country have much work to be done."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the critical discussions from the episode, providing key insights and notable quotes for listeners seeking to understand the complex dynamics of the recent election and its broader implications.

Transcript

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Time is our most precious commodity and we've heard from so many listeners who have asked for advice about how they can spend it wisely to improve themselves and the people around them. That's why we're so excited that Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses in the most important and enduring subjects. You can learn about the works of C.S. lewis, the stories in the Book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church with Hillsdale College's online courses all available for free. That's right, for free. We recommend you sign up for Athens and Sparta. In this course you'll hear from Victor Davis Hansen and Paul A. Rey, distinguished professors of history, as they discuss the history, culture and government of each city, the ill fated Peloponnesian War and its consequences, and examine what is necessary in order for a democracy to flourish and endure, how best to form free and self governing citizens, and how to resist tyranny from without and from within. Start your free course Athens and Sparta today. Go right now to Hillsdale Edu VDH to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's hillsdale edu/vdh to register hillsdale edu.

[Sammy Wink]

Vdh hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. This is the Post Biden Harris administration and Donald Trump's New age that we've joined you in. So we're happy to be here and I hope you guys are all happy out there and had good celebrations on Tuesday night. But we'll be back to talk a little bit about this Post Harris Biden World in just a few minutes. Stay with us and we'll be back.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Kamala Harris]

For.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

15% off your purchase.

[Sammy Wink]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is the Martin and Nealy Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marshapusky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhanson.com and the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. So please come join us there. Lots of good information on the website. Well, Victor, we have a Trump victory declared and conceded to and Harris gave a, as usual, a most interesting concession speech looking for a claiming she's giving a peaceful transfer of power, as one of our recent comedians has said, to the to Hitler and the Nazi regime, apparently. Or maybe that was just campaign rhetoric. Anyway, your thoughts on her campaign speaking?

[Kamala Harris]

Well, she didn't concede when it was clear she lost on campaign night and then she was 20, 30 minutes late to her own later concession speech. It wasn't really a concession speech. It was kind of fight, fight, fight and we're going to do this and we're going to do this and then we're going to do this. And you get the impression that the remember La Resistance that Hillary announced he was joining, which culminated in everything from Mueller to anonymous, et cetera, that tried to destroy the Trump administration. Expect that. Everybody just expect it. They're not going to give in. They're going to try to do all sorts of things. But it begs the question, what does she do now? I mean, think about it. If you were a Speaker's Bureau, would you hire her to get, you know, you think, oh, I've got the National Abortion alliance, let's have her as a key speaker. And what would she do? We're unburdened by the passage of time again. And I'm a middle class. She can't speak and talk about stars.

[Sammy Wink]

Like she did in her.

[Kamala Harris]

Yeah, she can't speak. And would you, if you were a big, I don't know, white shoe law firm, would you hire her as a head. No, she's not a very good lawyer. She flunked the bar the first time she took it. She was a, she only was attorney general. Just, she just barely squeaked by questionable mail in ballots. If you were the, you know, usually Google or Apple steps up and they hire flunkies coming out of the Clinton or Obama or Biden. But would you want her? What would she do?

[Sammy Wink]

No.

[Kamala Harris]

So I don't know what she's going to do. It's the same thing with Liz Cheney. What's Liz Cheney going to go? A professor of what At University of Virginia and where she basically lived. What are these people going to do? I was listening to a bulwark where they were. These people were more out of touch than the left was. Well, they are the left, but they were saying this is fascism and this is this and this. And they had no self recognition that just a few hours before they were telling everybody that Donald Trump was going to be, you know, lose, slaughtered. They had no idea that that whole election was a referendum on themselves, that people were tired of the Washington, New York corridor of elites talking down to people. That's what it was. And I don't know what any of these people are going to do, but she's not going to have a glorious second political career. She's not going to be in a shadow government. She's not going to do anything. She's going to go back to where she was. She was a mediocre senator. I shouldn't say that. She's not going back to the Senate. She's going to have the same career as Michael Dukakis, a person who was an inept politician, but who was a nice person and had a lot more character than she does. And that's what she'll do. I Don't know. Would you hire her as a law professor?

[Sammy Wink]

No, but I would hire her as a third grade teacher or something to that.

[Kamala Harris]

Maybe she should be.

[Sammy Wink]

She had the habit of.

[Kamala Harris]

Maybe she should do that.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So perhaps there's something out there for people like her to do.

[Kamala Harris]

Just so you're clear, you're not making fun of third grade teachers are very important people. No, but she, I don't think she could do it.

[Sammy Wink]

You don't think she could?

[Kamala Harris]

No. I know third grade teachers. They're very hardworking people.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Kamala Harris]

The reason, one of the reasons of many that she lost, they gave her a campaign thick binders with 20 fonts on them and the print saying if they. These are what they're going to ask you if you're a change candidate, why weren't you making changes as vice president and why don't you do. Now, here is what you must say. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Question 2. They're going to ask you why you're for fracking or why you're not for reparations or why you're not for confiscating guns as you used to be. Here's what you say. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Here's the other one. They're going to ask you why did you tell us that Joe Biden was fit as a fiddle, strong as a horse, bold, when you then all of a sudden participate in a coup, saying he was demented. So why did you do that? Why did you mislead? Here's what you say, A, B, C, D. And she couldn't do that.

[Sammy Wink]

No, not at all. So to my next question then, was this a landslide and was it better, a better landslide or a worse landslide than Hillary's loss?

[Kamala Harris]

It was better because it was better because they were organized. They didn't kept. I mean, Hillary was caught. She was campaigning, you know, in places like Arizona on why she was losing the blue wall. First of all, Trump did better as far as the margin in almost all the states that he won. He made inroads in places like New Jersey and Minnesota and Virginia. He had coattails. He almost won six or seven seats. He may win McCormick seat, he may win Brown's in Nevada if he does with Marino in the West Virginia seat. And sheehy, he's got five seats, he's up to 55. But he, I was hoping that he would win Mike Rogers and Carrie Lake. He might. Carrie Lake, I doubt it. But that would have been 57. That was amazing. And people who said that they Wanted to distance themselves from Trump, like Larry Hogan. Not that he would have won anyway, but that didn't work well, did it?

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Kamala Harris]

So it was a much more impressive victory. He got about 18% of the black vote. He got about 28% of black males. He split the Latino vote. He whittled down the Jewish vote to almost getting, I think, 40% of it, 45% of it.

[Sammy Wink]

The Hispanic vote, too.

[Kamala Harris]

Yeah, that Latino, Hispanic, whatever term we use, he won Dade county in Florida. So it was a repudiation. That's what makes them so angry. That's why you had people like Joe Scarborough and Al Sharpton saying that, what, the black men, Latino men, were sexist. And then they were racist, too, that Latinos didn't like blacks because they didn't vote for Kamala Harris because she was black. And it's. You know, these people are crazy. In 2008, Barack Obama got more white voters than did John Kerry. And think about that. That was 26 years ago. Excuse me, 16 years ago. Okay, 16 years ago, we have a black candidate who gets more white voters than an earlier white candidate. And they're still on that topic. They can't explain that she was a mediocre candidate, that she was a radical whose positions and issues were not only way out of touch, but the people had seen them for three and a half years under Joe Biden. And just to make a little excursus, any time a party goes off the rails and does not reflect the middle class they pay for, and it takes generations or years to get that brand back. So George McGovern destroyed the Democratic Party party in 72. He was wiped out. Then you had Nixon dash Ford for eight years. But then Watergate came along, and they said, just forget a minute that the left is really radical. And they put in Jimmy Carter, and that just confirmed what the Democrats were. And then they said, you know what? You guys don't represent the middle class. Reagan came in and George H.W. for 12 years. And then you know what they. What George H.W. bush was talking about privatizing Social Security. He was talking about more capital gains tax. Maybe they were good ideas, but they sure didn't appeal to the middle classes, did they? And they brought in Bill Clinton. What? I just want. I feel your pain. And we're going to get 100,000 police officers. And I want my. I want all our students to wear school uniforms. We got to stop that inner city violence. We're going to have night baseball, night basketball. Remember? Else what he said, he said to Sister Soulja, I don't like what you're saying. You're a racist. You're making fun of white people. And all of a sudden, Al Gore was not the Al Gore that we know, the nutty one. This was the supposed conservative one that had run for president to the right of even Bill Clinton. And guess what? They ushered in eight years. They won the popular vote in 2000 against George W. Bush, and they would have won in 2004 had they nominated somebody other than an aristocratic, hard left John Kerry. The only reason they won with Barack Obama were two reasons. He did not tell them what he was going to do. And he was the first black articulant. As Harry Reid said, da, da, da, da. I don't mean he was the first articulant black. There was a lot of articulate black people that ran for president, like Shirley Shizun, for example. But people wanted to feel good about themselves, and he moved the party. And then Trump came along and he said, you know what? These people don't believe in the middle class anymore. And he would have won. And, you know, everybody says, well, what happened then, Victor? Why didn't he win in 2020? He didn't win because of COVID and the lockdown and the radical change from 30% mail in to 70% in many states. But then there was the correction, because Joe Biden came back and he said, I am more radical than Barack Obama. I'm not the politician he was, and I'm an old, white, demented president. And then he let Obama run vicariously with his administration, and they were very hard left. So they're all arguing, hey, should we have taken him out? George Clooney, I know he said that Biden was Abraham Lincoln. He was so courageous. He was like Washington in his farewell address. He stepped down. Can you imagine how selfless? Then they went from, we lost. He stepped down too late because he was greedy and selfish. Whatever. It wasn't anything about that. It was the issues. It was the agenda. Opening the border. Nobody had ever seen that before. 12,000, 12 million illegal aliens, the moonscapes of our big cities, homelessness, rising crime, the humiliation in Afghanistan, and the abortion obsessions, you know, not that it was for abortion. It was like glorifying abortion and all the way to the moment of birth. And then there was the transsexual and the transgender and the trans. Whatever you want to call it, this obsession. And it was so out in the New Green Deal. And everybody said, you know what? These people are nuts. And don't we're going to go back to the MAGA middle class. So it's always that way in American politics.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. I would like to take a moment for our sponsor, Hillsdale College. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses in the most important and enduring subjects. You can learn about the works of C.S. lewis, the stories in the book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or history of the ancient Christian church with Hillsdale's college's online courses all available for free. That's right. For free. Go right now to Hillsdale Edu VDH to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale Edu VDH to register. Hillsdale Edu VDH to register. And we would like to thank Hillsdale for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor, there's been a lot of disgruntled people, and many of them are deciding, or so they say, to leave. And British celebs going back to Britain and American celebs who say they're going to leave the United States, like Cher and Whoopi and Amy Schumer and all of this hysteria. What are.

[Kamala Harris]

What are your thoughts on, I mean, promises. Promises, right?

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, exactly.

[Kamala Harris]

Do they really think we're going to be impoverished by the absence of Amy Schumer or Whoopi Goldberg? Who cares? One good thing about this election is it completely demolished the idea that if you have a lot of money, you can win. She outspent him by a billion dollars. Her packs and her own. You know what I mean?

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Kamala Harris]

And what did it do? All they did was get a bunch of mediocre ad people who ran stupid white dude ads when you only have seven swing states. That's what we're talking about. What good does it do you if your opponent spends a billion and you spend 2 billion? How can seven states absorb that? You know what I'm saying?

[Sammy Wink]

Yes.

[Kamala Harris]

So people get turned off if they turn on the television in Pennsylvania or Michigan and it's 20 commercials every single day. And Harris happens to have 14 and Trump has. It doesn't work. And another thing we've learned is that the media, the completely disgraced. I might have a confession to make to everybody. I feel a little guilty about. I had some old friends over. My wife and I did on election night. Known them for 20, 30 years. We all get together. They're our Fresno friends. And after about an hour, we turned to msnbc.

[Sammy Wink]

We all did.

[Kamala Harris]

And it was quite something.

[Sammy Wink]

Was more Entertainment.

[Kamala Harris]

As soon as they turned to. There were two things. It was kind of like I was on Jesse Waters and we were talking about Cooper Ross and the five stages of death. The first was anger. And Rachel Maddow was. It was like a cuckoo clock. Russian collusion. Well, we've never dressed the Russians. The Russians did it. And then it got angry at, of course, Biden. And then it got angry at black men. And then it got mad at Latinos. And I thought, if you keep this up, you'll shut the border. My God. It's like the left has looked at Mexican Americans now and feels they're Cubans or Hungarians. You know, get them out of here. They're too right wing. And then it was kind of, I think, denial. Well, they had a guy on there. There's a pathway now. You can get this Philadelphia votes coming in. If you get Pennsylvania, you can do this. And that's the. I'm thinking, are you insane? Have you seen these margins? Have you seen these exit polls? They just told you the Amys are voting for Trump. They told you that. African Americans and Latinos and autoworkers. Are you nuts? Well, you know, there's. People have a really marked little pathway. And I figured it all out. And then, you know, Joy Reed's nodding her head yes. And then it was kind of bargaining, like, maybe I won't have cancer if I pray five times. I'm not making fun of religion, but it was kind of this bargain with this cancer sentence. Yeah, that's what it was. I'm not making fun of cancer. Someone's lost everybody in my family to cancer. But what I'm trying to say is after the bargaining, you know, if. Then it was, you know what I noticed? Resignation. Oh, well, I guess we lost. But there was some good. You know, we lost, but there was this congressional district in California that we won. And then finally it was acceptance. We've lost. And it was just incredible that they didn't see this coming. They did not see it coming. Anybody had to be blind. You know, I wrote on the altar the day of the election. Calm down. The Iowa thing, this Iowa crazy poll that he was going to lose. Trump was going to lose by three. It's just complete garbage. And all of this about her momentum and Donald Trump wants to assassinate Liz Cheney and he wants to get the fake news shot. All that stuff, it was all disguising the fact that their internal poles had told them, you are losing too many women for the gender gap. The gender gap. Trump can't. He turns off Women. He wants to protect them. Ha, ha, ha. No. Women were down to about 8 points. Meanwhile, men were up to like 13, 14, 15, even though 52% of the electorate. And I watched MSNBC, they kept saying, women, women. Here's the women vote. It's breaking for her. And I thought, you're lying to people. It's breaking for her. But it's not nearly breaking enough to make up for the fact that white women, white women, 51% for Trump. Why? Because they won't want to pay. They're human. They don't like to pay high prices for groceries. They don't want to walk into downtown Los Angeles on their way to work and get assaulted. They don't want to step over excrement in San Francisco. They don't want to be carjacked. They don't want to pay $6 a gallon. I was in Palo Alto, it was 5.72 for gas. So they don't want that. And they were just in complete denial. And so when I wrote this on election Day, I said, don't believe this. Look at inroads with Hispanics, with blacks in Pennsylvania. They're getting the Amish, the auto workers in Michigan. People are sick of these people. And then the day before, on Monday, before the election, I said, this election is between people who lecture and people who get lectured. And they have. You can see that in a variety of ways. They have this whole rich vocabulary of disparagement. It goes back 16 years to Obama in 2008. You know, clingers, deplorables, Hillary, irredeemables. We forget that Biden contributed the most to that. Called them garbage, semi fascist, ultra maga chumps, dregs. Even John McCain threw his little sobriquets in. Remember hobbits, crazies. Trump's bringing all the crazies out. And so you don't do that, and then to show you don't do that, you bring out the Obamas. I don't know what, again, I don't know what mansion they jetted out from, but they're talking down to people. And then they were all saying, you're sexist, you black African American men. I'm thinking, no, they're not sexist. They have to pay bills, unlike you. They don't have a 2,000 gallon propane tank at Martha's Vineyard that you do. What, you got $100 million for doing nothing for Netflix. Oh, you're a consultant on content. No, I mean, they're out working and they're out working like everybody else. And they have more in common. The men that he was talking down to, they have more in common with a white truck driver or a Mexican American plumber if they were working class than they do with him. Just like I have more common with an African American electrician or a Mexican American plumber out here on this farm than I do with people on the Stanford campus. And they don't get that. And so they talked down. And I was, so when that election came around, you know, I was at Hoover, there was a few of us that just quietly said Trump was going to win, but it got so oppressive there. I just, I think I got up at 4:30 in the morning on election.

[Sammy Wink]

Day to get out.

[Kamala Harris]

I'm thinking, wow, I got cataracts in glaucoma. I shouldn't be driving on this two lane road on 152 from Gilroy to Pacheco with 20,000 cars coming right at you with glares. And I thought it's worth it. I gotta get out of here as quickly as possible and back home to sanity. And by the way, Fresno county, everybody listened very carefully. It went for Trump.

[Sammy Wink]

Congratulations, Victor. Maybe you had some sway in that.

[Kamala Harris]

I doubt it.

[Sammy Wink]

But let's take a second to take a break and come back and talk a little bit more about this. Stay with us and we'll be back.

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[Sammy Wink]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So Victor, while you were talking, I was thinking there is, there was one Democrat or at Least left wing person who thinks like you. And that was Bernie Sanders. He came out to criticize him for abandoning the working class. And I don't know how.

[Kamala Harris]

Wait, wait, wait. His idea of the middle class is something like the Soviet Union, 1925. You know that I'm for the middle class. We take all, we line up all the aristocrats and shoot them and then steal their money and then give it to everybody and we divide the spoils out and we all get poor. So there's no one poorer than anybody else. We're all poor except the nomenclature. Like Bernie Sanders and his wife who own three homes. No, I'm not like him. But he did see something, that they were an aristocratic, arrogant party.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. There's also the, in the Daily Mail, I have to say where I got this from, that not only were the British celebs leaving, but the reason they were leaving, they said, we can't take anymore. All the gun violence. And things are all effed up here. I'm like, well, I wonder who did that? You know, maybe Trump will be a new age for you. You know, go away.

[Kamala Harris]

But guns, people, how many times they have to hear people, people, people shoot people. Do we want to sell an 8 year old an AR115? No. But when you look at the number of deaths in the United States, it is overwhelmingly over 90% are handguns and about 75% of those are illegally possessed. So what they do is this typical thing. If you cannot address the felony, you obsess over the misdemeanor that you can. So they can, they don't not. They have no idea what to do on Saturday night in Chicago to go in to young African American men that are shooting and killing each other and saying, we're going to take these illegally possessed handguns or we're going to frisk you. Stop and frisk or we're going to jail. They don't know what to do and they don't know about education. So their idea is they get some guy with buffalo horns and camouflage in the rural Michigan and they say, we're going to take your AR15 away and we'll solve it. Or she said, we want to ban semiautomatic. She doesn't even know what a semiautomatic weapon is. But we're going to ban these weapons. And somebody said, would that mean confiscation? Yeah, yeah, you know, buy back. And how would you enforce it? Well, we're going to their homes. But is that going to stop where people are being shot?

[Sammy Wink]

No, no, not at all. I would like to take a moment for our sponsor, Field of Greens Green. Field of Greens is an organic, superfood fruit and vegetable drink unlike any other. It's serious nutrition. Listen to this. Field of Greens was approved for a university study that doctors believe may lower your body's biological age. That generally means better health. Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was selected by a doctor to support vital body functions like heart, liver, kidneys, metabolism and immune system. Only Field of Greens is backed by the Better Health Promise. At your next physical or checkup, your doctor will notice your improved health or your money back. Join me in better health with 15% off and free shipping. Visit fieldofgreens.com and use promo code Victor. That's promo code V I C T o [e-mail] that is fieldofgreens.com and we would like to thank Field of Greens for their continuing sponsorship of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So I wanted to talk a little bit about. Who do you think is more happy about Kamala's. Yes. Kamala's loss? Hillary or Joe Biden or somebody else?

[Kamala Harris]

Okay, that's a good question. Let's go through the list of suspects. Who is the happiest about her loss? Well, the happiest is Jill Biden. Jill. Dr. Jill, because remember, Camilla called her husband a racist in the 2019 debate. So she's delighted. She never liked Kamala and she's very happy. Joe Biden is tickled to death because he didn't want to select her. He had to make a devil's bargain with Representative Claiborne of South Carolina when he had lost Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. And he was going nowhere but into a rest home. And then he went to Clyburn and said, if you can bring out the African American vote in South Carolina exclusively for me, the backroom lobby, the big silicon donors think that I'm old Joe from Scranton and I am a possible moderate. And then we'll get rid of these nuts. We'll get rid of Nutty Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Crazy Bernie, get them all off the stage. I will be the nominee, and I promise to select a black woman. And exactly. That's what happened after George Floyd. Then he looked around and said, stacey Abrams is crazy. She's nuts. Where are the black women? And they said, it's Camilla Harris. And Dr. Jill said, she called you a racist, but he was forced into that. So he was angry about appointing her. But of course, what I'm getting at in this ponderous Wendy. Fashion is they removed him from the ticket and she was part of that. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Obama. The Obamas, of course, after they removed her, claimed that they didn't want her, they wanted a more palatable replacement. Somebody like Gavin or Mark Kelly or somebody they thought they could manipulate even more. So but basically they removed Joe. And now we learn Joe's just sitting there. He's. They didn't even have him on the campaign. Yeah, where was he? Where? When he said garbage. He was like a little kid in the White House. Did you see? I mean, I do about two zoom interviews a day and I'm out here in this annex on my farm. I have three books piled up under my laptop. And then when I do zoom, the people say, victor, I can see the bathroom door. Could you please turn it? Victor, on the right side there's a television. But I try to get it level. But did you see when he was talking? It was like a kid, like it.

[Sammy Wink]

Was on his lap. He was talking.

[Kamala Harris]

Why didn't he have all these aides were out with her? And then they could. Didn't anybody say, you don't want to. He was talking to the Hispanic group. Didn't they say, don't call these people garbage? So he was just neglected. They didn't even want him. He didn't even go to Scranton. That's how he got elected. He was old Joel from Scranton. They didn't even want him in Scranton. And then when he left, it was just nauseous. George Clooney got with that op ed and was bragging how, I'm George Clooney and I'm the most carers male actor in America today. I snapped my fingers and I removed the President of the United States. No, you're an idiot. You're an idiot because you didn't just remove a demented, unqualified disaster, you brought one worse. At least with Joe Biden, you could plead natural dementia that explained his cognitive dis with her. You had to say it was innate to her. That's who she is. She's not suffering from some malady. It's just a life of lazy intellectual. I can't even say intellectual. A lazy person who never studied, who never tried to improve her knowledge or data, anything. All she did was bat her eyes and cackle. And that worked as long as she was in her 20s and 30s and 40s. And then she was appointed things because of her gender and her race. And then she yelled racism. So that's who George Clooney Got in. And so Joe Biden is saying, you know what? I could have done better because I did better in 2016 and almost every county in the United States than she did. Now, he's not saying that was me four years prior to my full fledged dementia when I was only 70% diminuted. But nevertheless, he is delighted. Who else is? Gavin Newsom is so happy. He was thinking, man, I had the Bay Area wrapped up. The Gettys adopted me almost. I had all the Bay Area old money, and then I ingratiated myself to all the new trillionaires from Silicon Valley. And I was mayor of San Francisco. I was lieutenant governor. I'm governor. I'm kind of good looking, I'm flashy, I'm oily, I'm swarming. Every time there's something in the news, I get on my Abercrombie and Fish little vest. I go down and pick up trash. Or when there's a forest fire, I get my rake and rake some stuff. And during the COVID thing, when I sneak out to French Laundry, I kind of keep. Once in a while I get caught. But the point I'm making is, what was he going to do if she got elected? He's thinking, I had to deal with this ignoramus. I had to deal with her when she was Willie Brown's girlfriend. She was nothing. She was city and county attorney and I was somebody. And I had to listen to her. She was going to be President of the United States. Did anybody hear what I said at the convention? I said, we don't want to have a open convention. That's what they made me say. Remember that? Yeah, he was. He was saying, I'm. I'm better than this. So he is delighted. Yeah, he is delighted. And then we get to the person who is most happy about her losing.

[Sammy Wink]

Oh, who's that?

[Kamala Harris]

Kamala Harris.

[Sammy Wink]

Oh, no.

[Kamala Harris]

Yes, she is. She's thinking.

[Sammy Wink]

I thought you were gonna say Willie Brown. Sorry, I'm getting to him.

[Kamala Harris]

Well, I'm getting to him. I shouldn't say. Let me just stop there for a second. Willie Brown, he's thinking, you know What? I was 60 something. I was 40 years older than her. She was a hot young woman. And I moved out. I was married. I didn't get divorced, but she was my consort and we had a wild time. And I introduced her to politics, but she had no skills. She knew nothing. I tried to teach her about politics. She couldn't teach her. So I put her on a board and gave her 100,000 plus salary. And then I put her on another board. She didn't learn anything. Well, then we got all of our San Francisco money and then Jerry Brown and everybody. What are we going to do with her? She's black and she's a woman. She's my girlfriend and I want her to run for, you know, city attorney, county of San Francisco, prosecutor. And then it was attorney general. And he thinks, you know what? She dumped me. She dumped me. Now I'm 70 and she dumped me because she doesn't need me anymore. And he started writing everybody saying, victor, you're just out of it today. No, I'm not. She was writing, he was writing op eds. Remember that when she was running for president. And if anybody goes back and read them very carefully in the San Francisco. They were double edged. They were things like, I'm so happy that my, that I mentored a dynamic Kamala Harris that over the years has evolved, evolved, that kind of stuff. And so he's very happy and she's very happy. She was not comfortable. She didn't. She was basically saying, do I have to do this for four years? Do I have to give an interview where they're going to ask me all these questions I don't know how to answer? Do I have to when I want to go buy Doritos for a photo op? Do I have to stage it and I want to talk about the space program? Do I have to get children actors again? Do when I want to go to somebody's house? Did you see that last one where she had to film how she knocked on the door to go in? Do I have to always say that I grew up from a middle class family. I'm tired of it. I'm not suited for this. I like the power, I like the money I'll get afterwards. But thinking about it, I'd just rather go back in LA and live in a nice big wealthy home and hang out with celebrities. And I don't think anybody's going to hire me, but there's always Google or Apple that can give me a functionary position for 3 or 4 million a year, at least for a while before I become full Mike Dukakis. Right?

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Kamala Harris]

Maybe she can go to university. Stanford. Stanford would be perfect for professor of Africana Studies at Stanford.

[Sammy Wink]

Politics takes too much study and preparation for somebody like Kamala and she doesn't. But we need somebody if it's going to be female, it's got to be somebody like Margaret Thatcher. I mean, Margaret Thatcher could take on anything.

[Kamala Harris]

We just don't have Any lot of people like that. But unfortunately for the left, they're all on the conservative side.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Kamala Harris]

And that's what they don't. I mean that's what was so funny when that nut Mark Cuban said that Trump only likes passive or mediocre women. And you, I mean Susan, Susie Wiles is running his campaign. Did you notice? It's the most disciplined, effective campaign they've ever had.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Kamala Harris]

Because of her.

[Sammy Wink]

Laura Trump is Laura Trump.

[Kamala Harris]

My God, she took on the impossible. How do you beat these people when they've mastered 70% not voting on election day. Fast forward she takes over and suddenly you learn that the Republicans due to a lot of other people that she helped, but they were doing helping her and they get 600,000 more registration in Pennsylvania alone. And then on election day in many states they had more early and mayo balloting than the Democrats did. But it was a different type. They did surveys and they found out the low propensity voter and those are the people they had time to work on to get that ballot in. And once they knew that those ballots were in then they could rest easy because the high propensity voter would come out on election day.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Kamala Harris]

And it was really brilliant. And, and you know she did that.

[Sammy Wink]

And I think Carrie Lake too is a very impressive.

[Kamala Harris]

See if she doesn't look like she's going to win but she's, she's a defiant person. Yeah, you can't, you can't get to her at all.

[Sammy Wink]

She's, she's well studied.

[Kamala Harris]

But you look at all those women in the Senate, you, Marsha Blackburn, we had her on here, they're tough as nails. They don't back down to anybody. And so I don't know what he meant by that because they were all very successful women.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, there's a lot of them.

[Kamala Harris]

That's why he won in the case of white women, he won because of that. Women saw that not only did he have an agenda that helped them but that he was open to hiring them. He would. If Kristi Noem hadn't had the dog problem, she would have been a contender for Vice president. He was talking about that.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. And some of his press secretaries. Right. Like Kayleigh McEnany and his current ones, they're all really bright young women.

[Kamala Harris]

I mean they don't like Fox. But if you, if you compare Laura Ingraham to the people on the View, Laura Ingram could go on the View and single handedly out debate all of them at once. Kind of like did you see Ben Shapiro do that? Yeah, he sat down there and he said, what was it, an hour or so? He took on 20 of them and they just came up for two minutes and then he just said, time's out. Next time's out. I mean, it was like he was in a carnival shooting little cute little targets. It was just, that's the way Laura would do with those people. And so Trump, you could make the argument that he was surrounded by, he deliberately wanted to be Kellyanne Conway. She gets on tv, she talks a mile a minute. She's very capable and all of them were capable, but especially the women. And I don't know, given the left projects, when Mark Cuban said that, you think, well, he's probably talking about his own values and himself because they always do that. Whatever they are insecure about or committing, they fob off on as a psychological projective mechanism.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. Victor, let's take our last break and then come back and talk a little bit about the government generally, how the changes in the Senate and in the House. Stay with us and we'll be back.

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[Kamala Harris]

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[Sammy Wink]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen show. And as I said at the beginning of the show, you can reach Victor at his website, victorhanson.com it's called the Blade of Perseus. Please come join us for $5 a month or $50 a year and you get access to the VDH Ultra material and some of that is available. A lot of it is available every week and great articles from on everything from military affairs to the current state of politics and diplomacy. So please think about it and come join [e-mail] Victor so I wanted to look at how the government broadly is panning out. Are we having a complete transformation of the Congress itself as well as a new presidency and especially the campaigns of Mike Rogers and Sam Brown. I know you mentioned them, but I was wondering your ideas on them further.

[Kamala Harris]

I really like Sam Brown. He came to Central California and I was at an event that he was at. I had a long talk with him. I had met, I think Mike Rogers there at the Capitol Club once in a luncheon. I really was impressed with him. He was very knowledgeable about intelligence matters. I thought that that's hard to do is to defeat. In those swing states it's very hard to defeat an incumbent multi term Democratic senator because they have such an organization and money. And he almost did. He was creeping up as the vote. He just ran out of votes. But I think another three or four days and he would have won. McCormick is excellent. He's in some ways the most impressive of all of them. And he's neck and neck now with Casey and he may win. And then you had Sam Brown and Jackie Rosen. They ran a really dirty campaign against him, said he was a tool of the rich. That was another projectionist argument that she used. And that was just basically a vote among wealthy people in Las Vegas versus the culinary workers and the unions that usually align themselves with the wealthy people. But the middle classes and half of the culinary union people voted Republican. So he had a. Unlike the Harry Reid machine, unlike the days of the Harry Reid machine where he had absolute control of the unions and he was as corrupt as they came. He had a good chance. He still has a good chance. Tim Shi was an ideal candidate. They tried everything against him. And Tester basically he said to the Montana people, you know, let's face it, we're a conservative state. We're getting a lot of Californians that move in here, but not all of them or elitist. Most of them want to get out of California and they're ideologically akin and we've got a left wing guy and he gets this flat top and he brags about being a farmer. But you look at his voting record when he goes to Washington, it's 99% Democratic. He does not represent us not on energy, not on crime, not on the economy, not on foreign policy, not. Not on the border. And it just for 100 days every four years. He's good old Tester from Billings, you know what I mean, that kind of stuff. And that they were tired of that so they got rid of him. He was kind of like Frank Church in Idaho when I was growing up.

[Sammy Wink]

Didn't Sheehy win by double digits?

[Kamala Harris]

I don't know if he quite did. He was supposed to. Again, these polls were so dishonest. They kept showing all these people. McCormick down by three, Sam Brown bind by six. Ted Cruz only has a two point lead. Sheehy's advantage has gone down by five. They were so if anything comes out of this, it's a rejection of these corrupt pollsters and media. My God, they were just lying to the American people. But they're going to have a really good Senate. And as I remarked to Jack, it's going to be a different Senate from 2017 when Trump came in with the House and Senate because he's not going to be dealing with Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, John McCain, people who fundamentally did not like him. And so he did not really have a Senate strong majority. He does now. He will have a stronger majority with 53 or 54 senators and with 60 because he would have five or six rhinos. There's not going to be a lot of Susan Collins, trust me. So he's in a very good position. And all these people were, you know, Mitch McConnell was kind of vindictive. He didn't give money to certain candidates he thought were maga. But there were people that he did help. And this was the finest group of Senate candidates they've ever put out there. They were very good in selecting candidates. Tim Sheehy, Sam Brown, Bernie Moreno, McCormick. They were all excellent. And they may get half of them elected. We still have two that are out. And you know what's funny though? For four years we've heard that the Democrats wanted to make fundamental changes, remember that structural change. And they were talking about four things they had to do to save democracy. You remember what they were, Sammy? Let's see if they want to do them. Number one, I'm going to quote Kamala. I think we're going to, we're just going to have to get rid of the Senate filibuster to get the new Green deal. We have to get rid of it. Okay, Kamala. Let's get rid of it. In January, they're going to have 55 Republican senators and it's not Democratic to stop that majority view with a Democratic filibuster. And you know what they're going to do if you even suggest it. And I wouldn't suggest it because I think it's a valuable tool to slow down enthusiasm that can be sometimes misdirected. They're going to be just like Barack Obama. He said it was a racist. It was a racist Jim Crow holdover. And then he went out when he was in the minority and he did what? He tried to filibuster Alito that nomination. So that's what they are. They don't believe anything, everybody. It's just about power. So that was the first thing they said we had to do to save the Republic. Get rid of the filibuster. They're welcome to do it now. January, they have a minority and they can tell the majority, please, please, please get rid of the filibuster. Shut us up. We can't stop you. We don't have a majority. That's undemocratic if we try. Number two, they were 61 votes short on the National Voters Compact. That was an effort to go around the Constitution and not use the amendment process to destroy the Electoral College. If we didn't have Electoral College, we would have just looked at one little thing on our screen, the popular vote, and everybody would have been in Illinois, Texas, Florida, New York and California, and we wouldn't even care about these states. And if you wanted to rig an election, you could rig very quickly a whole national election. But you disperse the power and counting to 50 states and you get a much more representative view of Americans as states. So my point is, I know, I read the National Voter Popular Voter Compact. It says the as soon as you get 270, we all agree that we will no longer reflect our state's tallies. Well, why wait if you think it's such a good idea? California do not reflect the California victory of Kamala Harris. Donald Trump won the popular vote. Give your electors in December to Trump. Same with Illinois, same with New York. This is what you wanted. You don't believe in the Electoral College, why wait until you get 270? Put principles first. You can show that you do not believe in the Electoral College. And the national vote should elect a president, not the California vote.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Kamala Harris]

So do it. Number three, they said they wanted to pack the court. They talked about it all the time. They said we have to get 15 justices, we have to have term limits. Well, come January, why doesn't Chuck Schumer get up and says the court is fossilized, we need, oh, I don't know, six more justices. President Trump, you want to appoint six justices and we better have ethics and all this other stuff. So let's reform the court. They're not going to do that.

[Sammy Wink]

No.

[Kamala Harris]

You think they want a 15, a 12 to 3 court, 12 conservative justice to three. They're not going to do it. And finally they said we need more states in the union. We're going to bring in Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. No, what's this? Wait a minute. Maybe we should just bring in your two states that you wanted. But I suggest that we have two states that are just not compatible with each other, within each other, and that's Washington and Oregon. You go to Spokane, Washington, it's a different world than Seattle. Once you get out of the rainbelt, mountainous areas in the high plains of Washington, or once you get out of coastal Oregon, why don't we have a western and eastern Oregon, western and eastern Washington, or for that matter, why don't we have a northern California, north, let's say of Napa Valley, and give them two senators and we could get six senators. Now they may all be conservative, but they don't seem to matter about partisanship. So my point is that none of these things should ever be taken seriously. The left says they're only predicated on the aggregation of power at the expense of their opponents. No, we shouldn't do any of that. We shouldn't tamper with a court, we shouldn't tamper with a filibuster, we shouldn't tamper with a 50 state union. But that's what they wanted to do. And that brings up an age old question among the right. Do you just play by the Marcus of Queensberry rules and by your sterling moral superior, say, I'm not going, not in my name, I'm not going to do what they do. And then you shame them and they'll quit. Or you'll say, you know what, I don't want to do this, but I have to do what you would do if you were in this situation. So we'll get rid of the filibuster and see how you like it. I don't know. But I wouldn't tamper with those institutions. I think I would tamper with administrative, non constitutional or non traditional issues that haven't been here for 180 years. Had a nine person court since 1869. Filibuster from the 1820s, 30s. I would move the FBI office out, first thing, just move it to the center of the country. I would get rid of one or two cabinets and outsource. I wouldn't try to lay a bunch of people off. It would be politically disastrous. I'd just say, you know what, if you're in the Department of Education, we're going to try to hire you in another thing. And then we're going to. But eliminate those positions so when people retire, they're not replaced. And I would move, I think I would move the CIA out. That is a very scary organization. I would get the doj, I get it out of Washington, maybe put it in New York. I don't know where to put it. Put it in Miami or somewhere. But when you put the DOJ and the CIA and the FBI next to the White House, you've got just unlimited power to destroy people's lives. Whether that's going through Melania's underwear drawer from a SWAT raid, are trying to tip off CNN as you raid Roger Stone's home or you go arrest anti abortion protesters or you sick the FBI on school board members in nearby Virginia or you got that text communication from Lisa Page and Peter Stroke about the smelly people. They're just, it's too much, it's too much of a temptation. And when you look at, there's a pattern. We had Robert Mueller, who testified under oath, he did not know what the Steele dossier was and he did not know what Fusion gps, the two primary catalyst of his own investigation. So he was lying. And then we had James Comey say, I don't remember. Mr. Comey, would you please tell me when you hired the Christopher Steele, a foreign national. I don't remember. Did we. Mr. Comey, would you please tell me that. Did you have a conversation with Donald Trump and you told him unequivocally that he was not an object of a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe? I don't remember 245 times Andrew McCabe, you know, I wasn't those people who disliked Bill Barr intensely. I think he said things. He got kind of full of himself at the end, but I think he did a good job. But one thing I really disagreed with him when Andrew McCabe, either three or I think it was four times, admittedly lied to federal investigators about leaking and he was the interim director of the FBI. You just can't have that happening. You could not have an FBI director lying to federal investigators. Not when you went out and destroyed the career of Michael Flynn? No, he should have been completely indicted. And if a jury found him convicted and sentenced. And then we get to Christopher Wray. When Christopher Wray basically didn't want to tell us why the FBI was working with social media to suppress news of the laptop, he didn't really want to tell us the laptop was in FBI possessions, and they knew it was authentic, and yet they've not only sat on that story in the 2020 election, but they tried to suppress it with corrupt social media. He should have been fired immediately. So if you have four directors like that, that's a pattern. And maybe you can just get somebody who's a police chief or somebody outside the hierarchy of the FBI, an outsider, and stick them in the middle of the country and say, work on the cartels, work on drugs, work on gang members, but do not ever, ever get into politics or start using your power to investigate people on the prompt of a political party. And I think that's one of the things that Trump would be famous for if he did that.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. You know, since you're talking about it, there are people who have come. Steve Bannon, and I'm trying. There was somebody else, but they said now that Trump is all through with campaigning, he can do what he's. And they suggested he's been wanting to do, which is to implement Project 2025, even though the Trump campaign has denied that during the campaign. I find that I don't like that because Steve Bannon is making it look like Trump is a liar. And it bothers me. I was wondering, well, there were people.

[Kamala Harris]

Who knew of Project 2025, but if you had said about what was the thing that they thought was valuable in that 920. I looked at that. You know what was valuable? They said that your problem in 2016, when you and 2020 were your appointments, you appointed people like the woman on the View, Aliyah Griffith or whatever her name is. You appointed Omarosa, you appointed Scaramucci, you appointed Anonymous, you appointed Kelly, you appointed Mattis. All of these people, I'm not trying to denigrate them. I'm just saying that they did not believe in your agenda, and in some cases, they thwarted your agenda without your knowledge. So this time, we're going to do what the left does, what Barack Obama does. I'm speaking as somebody who was summarily fired from a nonpartisan presidential appointment on the American Battlefield Monument Commission. You know what? So that said, here are 20,000 people that we have vetted, and who are they? I looked at the list. You know what they were an assemblyman loses election and he's a MAGA person and he has expertise in natural catastrophes. Let's put him in fema, you know what I'm saying? That kind of stuff. And they had it all vetted. So when he hit the ground doesn't mean they were going to accept everyone. And then you looked at it and it was pretty much lower taxes. There were controversial things in it. You know what they were what, about 5%? And they were things like, we're not going to allow people to prescribe over a zoom call, very powerful anti abortion pills. So you go out and say, you know, I'm 16 years old and I'm pregnant. Could I have an abortion pill? And the person's not able to check their heartbeat or look at, you know what I'm saying, or give them a pelvic examination to see if there's a problem with the pregnant, anything. And they didn't, they didn't package it. Right. So then all of a sudden it was against, they were against birth control pill. So it was the social issues. They didn't want to have trans stuff in them, you know, the government paying for it. So it was about 5%. And Trump was advised early on get away from that. And he did. Will they use some of their suggestions on appointments? I think they will. I think that's what Bannon's talking about.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, that's hope.

[Kamala Harris]

They really demonized Kevin Phillips, the head of the Heritage Foundation. You know, I gave a talk in April. He's not what they say he is. He's a very unapologetic, effective conservative. And I think they dismissed the person who wrote that 2020 because of these social issues, that they went too far. They weren't politically palatable. But the gist of it was meat and potatoes conservatives. And it was valuable to try to address the fact that Trump made appointments of people who misled him and said they were conservative. There should have been. There were people around Pence and in the White House that should have never been there. And you could see that after, after the January 6, they all turned straight evidence. A lot of them did.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. Some of our political pundits have 2020 hindsight and have said that they saw Trump winning the whole time. People like James Carville and Karl Rove.

[Kamala Harris]

And I was wondering, James Carville, I heard him say the day or the day before of election, I think he's going to win. She's going to win about 278 votes. That's what she's going to do, she's going to win. That's a done deal. And then after there's six mistakes that they made. Well, I don't think they. You think they made them, Mr. Carville, after the election was over, then they made mistakes. Or did you when you told the American people? And what would he say? Well, that was politics, you fool. What was I supposed to say? Of course, I was supposed to lie to get momentum. Well, we don't like to be lied. We don't like to hear that Iowa is going to be won by Harris by three points when it's lost by 10. And so. Yeah. And Karl Wolff, I'm a person who supports the Trump agenda, and I know that he's to many people the prince of darkness, but I like him because I think he's very talented. But I think when he wrote a Wall Street Journal article today, I think you're saying he did have a qualifier. He said a lot of conservatives were fooled, myself included. But basically he wrote column after column after column saying that Donald Trump could not win. His criticism of Trump was. He wasn't disciplined and he didn't have people like Karl Rove that were controlling narratives. Which. People like Karl Rove who were political operatives, that's their job. But Trump doesn't believe in that. But what he failed to see was that the more Trump was uncontrolled, there was the downside. Now, he could say things like Tucker Carlson, so you're Donald Trump and here's Tucker. I'll give you what I'm talking about. So if you have a Karl Wove or an experienced professional handler, Tucker calls up and says, I want to interview no holds barred, Donald Trump right before the election. Here's what the political operative does. Says, no, no, no, no. Tucker's in a lot of mini controversies. He was in a Putin suit, supermarket in Russia, bragging on Russian supermarkets. He had that unhinged Darrell Cooper on his show. And the guy is an anti Semite. Yes. So you don't put him on. And you could say anything, but you gotta be quiet when you're ahead. Remember, remember, that's what Thomas Dewey did against Truman. They said don't do any interviews. That's what Kamala did. She was ahead. That's what they do. And then there's Trump. They don't appreciate. Trump's attitude is, well, wait a minute. This guy has been for me a long time. He speaks what he says. But I'm a grown man. I build things. I can do anything. Yeah, I might, you know, I might Say something stupid. But my brand is anytime, anywhere, anything to anyone. That's who I am. And if I say something, I'll address it. So he goes on there and he says, tucker does not like the Cheneys. And he said something. He says, what about this crazy? I don't know. I'm quoting him very loosely. Liz Cheney. And that set him off. Trump. And he said, she's a warmonger. And then he said kind of is.

[Sammy Wink]

At least a war hawk.

[Kamala Harris]

Yes. I don't think she's a warmonger. She's an interventionist. But anyway, he basically said that he would like to see her. And here's the key word. Take a rifle. If you want to kill somebody, you don't say, arm yourself, take a rifle and go over there and fight and see how it feels to have people point guns at your head. Right. This is a person who had just survived two failed assassination attempts. So the handler would say, why did you say that? And then he kept talking about it, and people said, trump tells it like it is. I've talked to so many people in my hometown here that you would never think would vote for Trump. And I say, why are we going to vote for him? Because he doesn't. He's not as scared. He tells everybody what they think, and they're so desperate for any shred of authenticity. Same thing about the garbage thing. A handler would have said, well, you know, he said, we've got to do this. And Trump just said, no, I'll get in a garbage truck. No handler would have thought of that. You know what I mean? Nobody would have done that. Or McDonald's. They said when he said, she's lying about McDonald's, she never worked. They never found the McDonald's. A handler would have said, okay, now be careful, Mr. Trump, because we don't have documentation. When you go out there and say that she never worked at McDonald, it could be a trap. They might have the actual pay deduction. So if you say that, then they're going to come out and trap you. And Trump would say, I don't care if they haven't said it now, she's faking. So I'm going to go myself to McDonald's and put on an apron and show that I've worked more than she had. Nobody would have ever thought of that but Trump. So I think Karl Rove was basically saying that in this article that I was wrong about this guy. He's sui generis. He's like a cat that you throw down on the ground and he lands on his feet and it's embedded into who he is, that he's whatever he loses by crudity or offhand meanness, he makes up an authenticity and being genuine. But for the MAGA crowd, Karl Rove is a prince of darkness. But I tell you something, there was a time when the left did to Karl Rove, but they do renounce Trump. Does anybody remember 2004, when George W. Bush was dead in the water? He had no chance of reelection and we would have had Obama, Biden much earlier if they had won the 2004, that the Iraq war was in a mess and I mean, he was unpopular and Karl Wolf went in there and whether it was. I really don't know who the swift voters are, but they seem to have an argument. You know what I mean? It was like everything. And he got done. He did the impossible. He got George W. Bush elected. He only didn't get 51%. He got 50.4, I think. But that was a miraculous ability. And then he wrote a book on McKinley and I read it. It's a very good book. He said that he wanted to have a McKinley Republican era. And I don't think he understood that to beat the left again and again and have 20 years of Republican governance, you've got to get to the middle class. You have to get to the middle class. And the problem with the Republican brand was it was very easily caricatured as aristocratic. That's what killed Romney when he went into that convention. Remember, Jimmy Carter's grandson was there. Well, I just don't think we can ever win 47% of the population because they're all on government help. There's some guy, you know, who has driven a tractor for 40 years, he's never taken a dime, he made minimum wage, and he's sitting in the one one bedroom apartment in Modesto and he's getting $700 a month from Social Security. Right. And you're saying he's part of the 47, that you want to privatize that. What the hell's wrong with you? So they had that insensitivity. And it's like, you know, when George H.W. bush, when he was in the 1980 primary against Reagan, he said he won New Hampshire against Reagan. Remember, he said we got the big movie, we got the big mo for momentum. Reagan was just different, man. He was just. Reagan was. He came from the middle class and he had middle class taste. Gosh, I went up to the Reagan ranch once, and when I was in college, everybody Said, well, there's all these oil men and they've gotten together very illegally and they want to help Reagan, who had no money. So Salvatore and all these, the kitchen cabinet, they went up and bought 650 acres and they built this mansion for him. It's like Hearst Castle. And I said, okay. So I went up there and visited it and I could not believe it. There's like a, there was a queen bed and it had a little extension, like bench because he couldn't afford a big bed and his feet were on it. And I thought, where's the William Randolph Hearst closet? There's like a wire on the side of the road. And then there's this little trashy house. And I thought, wow, I can see Romex on the wall. It's illegal. And then I thought there's all this kind of like a pond and trails. And I remember in college they said, you know, Reagan's just a fake. He just, he doesn't know how to use the steel. And I go and look at these films, you know, they have there, and he's like an hour chainsawing. And my grandfather taught me how to, you know, saddle a horse. He's much better than I was. And he was authentic and he was very comfortable there. And Nancy hated going up there. But he was a middle class guy. And he doesn't mean. It doesn't really have a lot of things to do with money. It really doesn't. Trump is a billionaire and Trump was born into riches and privilege. But there's something about him that I don't know what it is. He looks at his buildings and said, you know what, somebody poured the cement here, somebody put the glass in here, somebody put the insulation in. These guys did a great job. He really likes the middle class.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes, he sure does. Well, Victor, we're at the end of the show and I'd like to read a comment from the website. I think what I like about this comment is that it's forward looking. He says Peter is the name and he says, victor, thank you for your insight as they hope your insights as they help explain the election. Also thank you for your diligent reporting. All this time, winning a few people per hundred still makes the election very close. And because of this, we as a country have much work to be done. People need good information, which is hard to come by because of our education system and media. The next two to four years will hopefully be a productive time for our country. It should prove to be somewhat of a reprieve from the insanity of our culture and government. And I liked that comment because it was, we won the election, but we've got a lot to do.

[Kamala Harris]

We do. And I'm very thankful that I grew up in this farm, even though it's in vastly reduced size, because. Because any value that I've had is not from me. It's from this farm in this area that I live in. If I had moved to Palo Alto and I had. Not that I'm making fun of my colleagues, because there's some wonderful colleagues I have, but I would have lost what I grew up with. And to be here every day and have to do physical work and be with people who do, you get appreciation for them. You really do. And there's something, you know what Jefferson said about a farm. He said, it's a place where people can hide failure. You know what I mean? And every time that I thought something had happened bad to me, I could always be here. And I was all, you know what I mean? There were the trees and everything that insulates you. And I knew that once when I first started writing columns, a very powerful person wrote me and said, I like these columns and I have a product and I would like to give you a little gift. You know what I mean? And there was just something about farming. Everything you thought, why do I. That's wrong. You can't ever take a gift if you're an opinion writer. But the reason I didn't do it is because I had a garden, you know, for food, and I didn't need a nice car, and I had this wonderful old house, and it was like an insulation from the world at large. And it was. I know that when I started doing Fox and people suggested a Fox contract, but I thought, wow, why would I want to take money to talk to people about the conservative cause? And I just have this barn. If they'll just put a little place, they don't have to go anywhere. And I thought that was my magnanimous at Fox. I didn't want any money, but I also didn't want to ever suggest you're not free to do what you want. And there's something about farming that keeps you attached to the ground and nature and people that are. You just have to. If you're farming, you cannot farm and not have confidence in the middle class. Because people who farm, my God, they're the most toughest people in the world. They're the most. They have the most challenges. And when you see them every day, you. You get a respect for the type of people they are. And the people who help them farm, you know, the farm worker, everybody. And then you don't need the modern world. You don't need to take money for things. And if you don't take. That's the biggest thing I learned in life. When somebody offers you something, don't do it. If somebody says, we'd like you, you know, at least when we have our advertising, we're honest that we're doing an ad. But when somebody. When you're offering an opinion and people trust you as a reader, you should not take money. I don't think. And I tried never to do that. And you'd be surprised about the opportunities you get to take money, to say things that might be insincere, but not that you should have a moral character that ipso facto would refuse that. But when you're on a farm and you're away from people. I was in the food market the other day, and this fellow that I went to high school with, I won't mention his name. He's Mexican Americans. He said, victor, I haven't seen you. What the hell you been doing? I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, I saw you about five years ago in Selma. You just hold up. Where do you. You don't do anything. And do you retire? How old are. Because he's my age. He was in high school. He said, I quit at 65. You must have been just. I don't know. You're just on your farm. You're never. Nobody, ever. We never see you in Selma. What happened to you? I said, oh, I have a little job on the coast, and I do a couple of other things. Oh, that's good. You got to keep busy. See you. You know what I mean? It's good to hear that.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, of course.

[Kamala Harris]

And it keeps you grounded. And when you're in an academic world, there's nothing real about it. I mean, teaching is real and helping people, but the rest of it is. My God, I just. Ugh. And it's really important to be judged. That's the problem with politics. And Harris didn't realize you have to be judged every single day on what you do. You write 10 books. Your 11th book does not depend on the quality of your ninth or eighth book. It has to be good in itself. If you're going to speak on television or to an audience, they don't care that you had a great appearance or didn't 10 appearances ago. It depends on what you're doing right now. So you have to. You can't ever Relax. You have to be committed to excellence the whole time. And that was a problem with Harris. You got the impression that she never had to do that. She never had to debate anybody. She never had a reporter who didn't say she was brilliant. Bret Baer was, I thought, very, what, Nice, modern, sober, judicious. And they thought that she was. They thought that she was a victim, that he was mean to her. He wasn't. But she had never had that right. That's One reason why J.D. vance is so confident. It wasn't just that he went to Yale Law School and he was an entrepreneur and he met some brilliant people. The fact was he grew up in Appalachia. Man, he knows what it's like. You have to be at the top of your game to survive. You don't get any rest, you don't get any passes, you don't get anything. And when you can't do the. And that's what was so weird about Joe Biden. We kept being told he was old Joe Biden from 30 years ago. No, he wasn't. He was cognitively unable to fill the job of presidency. That was a problem of Kamala Harris. She had been promoted on her looks, on her race, on her gender, on who she knew and who were, you know, daughter of two PhDs. And then she hit a wall and that was she had to perform and she couldn't do it. And all the resumes and all the help and all the literati, glitterati, whatever you call them, could not help her. And the people saw who she was and it didn't do any good. I was a US Senator or I live in. I know these movie stars. Movie stars are counterproductive. If you want an endorsement, you want A, get an endorsement from A, somebody who is very influential and has followers and B, would not endorse you automatically. It would be difficult for that person. RFK had followers and the idea that he would endorse Donald Trump, that would mean to RFK that every single Kennedy member of his extended family would despise him for life. Tulsi Gabbard was originally a liberal Democratic congresswoman and she had a following of an anti war following. And for her to introduce Donald Trump at a rally or to endorse him, that was a death knell. But she had some influence and that meant something. Joe Rogan has 70 million people that download him eventually. And he had not endorsed Donald Trump because he knew that he, he had some of the audience that didn't like him. And he probably didn't like him. But when he endorsed Donald Trump the day of the election, that helped a little bit. And a tight legs. George Clooney has nobody that follows him. Maybe Cardi B does, I don't know. But they were going to enter. All they were doing is endorsing Kamala. For the people who were endorsing Kamala, if there was any value, it was like, well, I'm going to vote for, I didn't do my mail in balloting. I'm driving to work. Do I really want to go by the polls on the way home? Because I'm going to vote for her anyway and she's going to win. Oh, my God. George Clooney on board. I will make sure to go. I don't think it even works that way. So with Trump though, what the endorsements from rfk who was on the left and Tulsi, that was center left, and Joe Rogan who was very popular, what they were basically saying was this. Joe Rogan was saying, if you're kind of a young man who doesn't like the drift of the country and you're tired of all the PC woke, all that crap, go ahead and vote for Trump. There's nothing wrong with it. And what RFK was saying, you know what, you may not like Trump, but some of you people were suspicious of the value of the quarantine or this or that. It's okay to vote for Trump and that made a difference. But not, not Julie Roberts or Barbra Streisand. How many times has Cher told us that she's going to leave the country? She never does. You know what I would do? I don't know how much you think a business class ticket is to London now? 5,000 bucks.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. Getting close.

[Kamala Harris]

I would pay for it if she'll leave. If she would go to London and promise to stay there for five years, I will pay for it. I will. $5,000. I can come up with it. But she has to stay there and not bug us anymore.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, Victor, this is the end of the show and I would like to invite everybody to come to the weekend show where we'll be talking about the cases against Trump and the future of those California politics and Elon Musk and our World War II and the two year campaign, Air campaign against Germany.

[Kamala Harris]

Oh, you know what I wanted to say before we leave?

[Sammy Wink]

Oh, okay. What?

[Kamala Harris]

I wanted to mention this wonderful couple, Michael and Adrian Wiener, who sent us this. It's not an advertisement. Elevate water. You drink it.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes.

[Kamala Harris]

Love it on the show. We have it right in the refrigerator. We're drinking it. I'm drinking it all morning. And you know what I want to ask just very quickly, if you're in California and you drive down I5, you probably see the Harris Ranch restaurant. Oh, yes, and it serves the fourth most numerous meals per day. It's a steakhouse, and it comes from Harris Beef. My point is, I've known that Harris family grew up here and they have one of the most beautiful ranches in the world along the Kings river, as well as out by Kalinga. But they're a major agricultural family. John and Carol Harris. And when you enter in the rough and tumble business of westside farming in California, these are the large acreages, you know what I mean? It is. There's books written about it. It's kind of like the out west cattle barons, you know what I mean? You've got to be tough because you can make a lot of money. If almonds are $4 a pound, you can make 50 million a year. If almonds are $1.53, you can lose 70 million a year. But the Harris family was kind of always different. It had this name, John Harris, as being very, very honest. And I say that from the truck drivers. I talked to other farmers who did business with him. He was tough, but he was very honest. And his wife, Carol Harris, was kind of. She helped decorate that hotel. She was a philanthropist. She gave money to hundreds of causes. And I've known her for 25 years. And she would call me periodically and say, victor, I'm mentioning this campaign. She would say, I want to help somebody. Who is Tim Sheehy. I've been reading so much about him. How much can I give him? What do you think? Or she said, Dave McCormick, he sounds like a wonderful person. But my point is she read every single day. And she felt the traditional is conservative, very religious too. And so once a week we would talk about religion, the hereafter, not about business, not about her corporate, nothing like that. But how could she help people on the traditional side? And she did. Well, she passed away three weeks ago. Yeah, I feel really terrible about it because a lot of people didn't understand what a nice person because she was wealthy and she entertained and. And to some people they call that a socialite. But she grew up in Tranquility, which was kind of a middle class. And her father was a farmer. Her husband met her husband John in high school. She was a wonderful person. And I think in California she helped so many candidates. And she gave to 30, 40, 50 candidates. And she just kept doing it. And this is what I'm getting at her. Her big dream was she was ill. And she'd say at the end of the conversations each week, I think Trump's going to win. I think these people are going to win. I think she is going to win. I really do. James in Michigan, I love that guy. I think he's going to win. As Congress, she knew every little minutiae. And the irony was she was calling me up for advice about which candidate she could. She knew more than I did. And it's really tragedy, I think, that she didn't live to see what would happen. And I sat with her on the 2016. I'll never forget it. She was suffering from some health issues. She was about 73 or 4. Then she died at 81. And it looked like Trump was going to lose. And it was tight. And she fell asleep right during the Blue Wall crumbling. And it was pretty loud. And she woke up and she said, oh, my gosh, I guess he lost. We said, no, Carol, he just won. Oh, my God, he won. He won, he won. I cannot believe it. And it was like she was giddy. It was really something to see, and a lot of people felt the same way. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that it hasn't been wonderful, widely reported, but she was a wonderful philanthropist and she helped hundreds of people. And she wasn't a right wing fanatic at all. She was a traditionalist that wanted people to appreciate the traditionalist conservative cause, and she was willing to put her money where their mouth was. And she did.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, she was very sweet. I had interacted with her a few times in my life. She was always very sweet, too.

[Kamala Harris]

She was very talented, too. If you go to the Harris ranch, you see a lot of the things that she implemented there, and she was scrupulously honest. You know, that's really important that she and her husband. John Harris is a very honest person. Really is. He's very successful, but he was very honest as well.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. Well, thank you, Victor, and thanks to our audience for listening to us. We love you.

[Kamala Harris]

Thanks, everybody.

[Sammy Wink]

This is Victor Davis Hansen and Sammy Wink, and we're signing off.