Historic Transparency, Theater, and Success

Summary

The Victor Davis Hanson Show
Episode: Historic Transparency, Theater, and Success
Release Date: February 11, 2025

Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler

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1. Trump's Diplomatic Victory Over China and Panama Canal

Timestamp: [07:43]

Victor Davis Hanson opens the discussion by highlighting former President Donald Trump's recent diplomatic success with Panama, effectively countering China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Hanson attributes much of this achievement to Senator Marco Rubio's adept diplomacy. Rubio’s proficiency in Spanish and his ability to connect culturally with Panamanians played a pivotal role.

"Trump knows he might lose power. And these people are crazy," says Hanson, emphasizing Trump's strategic use of executive orders to push through his agenda swiftly ([07:43]).

Trump leveraged a "good cop, bad cop" approach, with Rubio acting as the conciliatory figure, urging Panama to adhere to the Panama Canal Treaty. This strategy ensured that Panama remained aligned with U.S. interests, particularly in maintaining U.S. military precedence in canal operations without allowing Chinese influence.

2. Media Bias and Trump's Relationship with the Press

Timestamp: [13:47]

Hanson critiques the Wall Street Journal and mainstream media's consistent negative portrayal of Trump. He discusses instances where media figures, such as Jennifer Griffin from Fox News, have engaged in biased reporting, undermining Trump's actions and policies.

"Donald Trump does not do what the Wall Street Journal op-eds tell him to do," Hanson asserts, highlighting Trump's disregard for traditional media narratives in favor of grassroots communication ([16:15]).

Hanson argues that Trump prioritizes direct engagement with the public and influential figures like Joe Rogan and Sean Hannity over established media outlets, which often remain critical regardless of Trump's successes.

3. Trump's Use of Executive Orders Compared to Past Presidents

Timestamp: [19:45]

The conversation shifts to Trump's unprecedented reliance on executive orders compared to previous administrations. Hanson notes that while presidents like FDR and Truman issued numerous executive orders during pivotal times, Trump's usage aligns more with his limited tenure and the volatile political climate.

"Trump knows he might lose power," Hanson explains, emphasizing that Trump's aggressive approach is a calculated response to potential political setbacks ([19:45]).

Trump's executive actions aim to swiftly implement policies without the delays of congressional approval, allowing him to make significant changes despite a potentially short remaining time in office.

4. Domestic Challenges: Department of Education Standoff and Declining Test Scores

Timestamp: [35:48]

Hanson and Fowler delve into the recent confrontation at the Department of Education, where Maxine Waters and over 70 congressmen demanded the Education Secretary to "show their ID" to a security guard. Hanson interprets this event as a manifestation of deep-seated frustrations within the Democratic Party regarding Trump's policies.

Additionally, Hanson addresses the alarming decline in national test scores, with the U.S. ranking last among 40 industrial nations despite substantial educational spending. He attributes this to the politicization and weakening of educational standards.

"We're doing everything wrong," asserts Hanson, criticizing the current educational system's focus on political agendas over academic excellence ([35:48]).

5. Corruption in Federal Departments: USAID, Medicare, and Medicaid

Timestamp: [29:04]

Hanson discusses the corruption within federal departments, particularly USAID under Samantha Power. He accuses USAID of misusing funds to promote LGBTQ agendas and anti-American media, diverting resources to NGOs that benefit through exploitation and lack of accountability.

Regarding Medicare and Medicaid, Hanson warns of rampant fraud and inefficiency that could equate to the economic output of a European nation, stressing the need for stringent oversight and reform.

"We have to make sure you get your Social Security check," Hanson emphasizes, advocating for protection against systemic corruption ([29:04]).

6. Elon Musk and Tech Moguls' Shift Against Media Suppression

Timestamp: [56:33]

The hosts explore the evolving relationship between tech moguls like Elon Musk and traditional media platforms. Hanson notes that while Musk initially faced media suppression, he has become a focal point in deflecting negative press away from Trump.

Musk's role as an advisor to Trump is highlighted, where he exerts influence over policy areas such as AI, cybersecurity, and cryptocurrency. Hanson criticizes the Stanford Internet Observatory for its role in taking down Parler, arguing it represents federal overreach and suppression of free speech.

"Elon Musk is an advisor. He gives you a list of cuts," Hanson states, underscoring Musk's behind-the-scenes impact on policy and media dynamics ([56:15]).

7. Transgender Athletes in Sports: Fairness and Biological Realities

Timestamp: [80:23]

Hanson addresses the contentious issue of transgender athletes in competitive sports, asserting that biological differences provide inherent advantages that cannot be negated through hormone therapy or surgery. He cites examples where transgender female athletes have outperformed their cisgender counterparts, arguing that such policies undermine fair competition.

"There is no case of a biological woman taking hormones, having radical surgery and then outcompeting males," Hanson firmly states, challenging the legitimacy of current transgender athlete policies ([80:23]).

8. Audience Engagement and Personal Reflections

Timestamp: [93:52]

The show concludes with personal anecdotes and listener comments. Hanson shares his experiences with prestigious institutions like Hillsdale College and Pepperdine, advocating for classical education and highlighting the excellence of these institutions.

A poignant moment arises when a listener's tribute to Matthew Cooper, a fan who passed away, underscores the personal connections and community within the show's audience.

"Each moment was important," Hanson reflects, emphasizing the intrinsic value of individual lives beyond their academic or professional achievements ([95:15]).

9. Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

Timestamp: [96:58]

Hanson wraps up by addressing the enduring impact of historical military innovations, referencing his own scholarly work on the Hoplite spear's butt spike. He underscores the importance of recognizing and valuing each academic contribution within the broader scope of history.

"Each moment was important," Hanson reiterates, concluding with a reminder of the significance of individual and collective moments in shaping history ([96:58]).

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Key Takeaways

• Trump's Diplomatic Strategies: Effective use of executive orders and strategic alliances (e.g., Marco Rubio) can yield significant foreign policy victories.

• Media Skepticism: Traditional media outlets often maintain a critical stance toward Trump, prompting him to engage more directly with grassroots platforms.

• Educational Decline: There's a pressing need to reform the educational system to prioritize academic standards over political agendas to improve national test scores.

• Federal Corruption Concerns: Agencies like USAID require oversight to prevent misuse of funds and ensure alignment with national interests.

• Tech Moguls' Influence: Figures like Elon Musk play a crucial role in shaping policy and media narratives, often countering mainstream media suppression.

• Fairness in Sports: Biological differences present challenges in integrating transgender athletes into competitive sports without compromising fairness.

• Community and Personal Impact: The show's community values personal stories and reflections, highlighting the importance of individual contributions to broader societal narratives.

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Notable Quotes

• [07:43] "Trump knows he might lose power. And these people are crazy."

• [16:15] "Donald Trump does not do what the Wall Street Journal op-eds tell him to do."

• [19:45] "Trump knows he might lose power."

• [35:48] "We're doing everything wrong."

• [29:04] "We have to make sure you get your Social Security check."

• [56:15] "Elon Musk is an advisor. He gives you a list of cuts."

• [80:23] "There is no case of a biological woman taking hormones, having radical surgery and then outcompeting males."

• [95:15] "Each moment was important."

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Note: This summary excludes all advertisement segments and focuses solely on the substantive discussions between Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler.

Transcript

[Jack Fowler]

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[Victor Davis Hanson]

I am still smiling.

[Jack Fowler]

It's the star and namesake of this show, which is a podcast on just the news and now video on Rumble. So you're getting it one way or the other. If you're on Rumble, you'll see a great looking new Victor.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That doesn't sound very good. You're getting it one way or the other. That's right.

[Jack Fowler]

It's like caster. This is your medicine.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You're going to take it whether you.

[Jack Fowler]

Like it or not. Yes, I think everybody likes this medicine, Victor. We are recording on February 8th and this is a Saturday where I am. We're about to get 10 inches of snow, which is not like the I think. Didn't you get 10ft of snow yourself last year, Victor?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

No, we don't get any snow. We get rain and rain and for some it's the weirdest year in the world. If you go up to 7,000ft in the central Sierra, there's no snow. It's falling high up, but I've never seen anything like it. Very wet down here, but it's warm, warm rain or it's bypassing the central Sierra. So we're in a drought up there.

[Jack Fowler]

No reservoirs to get them either. Well, we're going to talk today about plenty of topics. Donald Trump's I think resounding diplomatic. That's diplomatic. It's foreign policy victory over at Red China. In Panama we have this as we're recording today. Yesterday the 7th of February, there was this nutty standoff outside the Department of Education and there are some test scores from the National Report card that came out last week. We should talk about LA fires, tariffs, so much more and we'll do all that when we come back from these important messages. New Year Fresh Start Optimize your nutrition this year with Factor. Factor has chef made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes so you can fuel right and feel great no matter what life throws at you. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active, busy lifestyle. Hey lose up to eight pounds in eight weeks with Factor Keto Meals Based on a randomized controlled clinical trial with Factor Keto. Results will vary depending on diet and exercise. With 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week, it's easy to pick meals tailored to your goals. Choose from preferences like Calorie Smart or Protein plus or Keto Factor can help you feel your best all day long with wholesome smoothies, breakfast grab and go snacks and more add ons. Reach your goals this year with ingredients you can trust and convenience that can't be beat. Eat smart with Factor get [e-mail] Victor 50 off and use the code Victor 50 off Victor 50 off to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's that's code Victor 50 [e-mail] Victor50 off to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box if you've.

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[Jack Fowler]

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I forgot to mention, Victor is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marshcibosky Distinguished Fellowship in History at Hillsdale College. And he has a website, the blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. More on that later. Victor, I know you've talked. We talked a little bit. You've talked with Sammy about Donald Trump's actions related to Colombia, Venezuela, Denmark, Greenland, et cetera, and Panama. But this, but this is a real blow that the Panamanians have. The government has conceded to Trump's demands and a big blow to Red China and its program for belt and trade. You want to talk about that, please?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, I do. I think a lot of it's due to Marco Rubio. I mean, he went down there and he charmed the Panamanians. He speaks his native language. And I read an account where they were amused by his Cuban accent in Spanish. But the head of state is conservative. They use the US Dollar. So after Trump did all this, he was the bad cop and they sent the good cop. But the good cop, as bad cop, good cop routine goes, doesn't contradict the bad cop. The good cop always says, look, want to help you, but this guy, he's not going to bend. So let's. Let's find out what's best for you. And that's what he did. So he said we can resolve all this very simply. Just go back to the spirit and the law of the Panama Canal Treaty. And you know what it is? I don't have to tell you. You don't bring in our most dangerous rival and plant China at the exit in the entry, and then deny US preference. So we have 700 or 600 ships over there, and a US warship's got to wait in line. So we want all the US Warships to come through with privilege, as was agreed upon. But we're going to add something. We don't want you to charge them any money, and we do not want you to go through with this remodeling, rebooting of the Panama Canal under Chinese auspices. So cancel the belt and road and renew your close relationship with us and we'll be fine. And that's what they did. And it brings up the larger issue that these aren't really tariffs. Tariffs are to protect an anemic domestic industry against unfair foreign competition. They can do that. But every one of them has worked. And apparently, based on his first term, these countries don't feel that they have to call his bluff, because they really haven't yet, because they saw what happened in the first administration. So Mr. Trudeau whined, and he went into his little cave and licked his wounds and said, oh, this is so unfair. Then he authorized a billion dollars of border security, and he said he would address in bilateral talks this huge $50 billion trade deficit. Then Sheinbaum, in her machismaway, had to show everybody that she didn't bow to the Yankee dictator and all that crap. And then she quietly said, okay, I'll put 10,000 of our troops on the border like we did last time. You go ahead and build the wall. We won't call it racist. You can start bilateral talks to reduce the $170 billion deficit which we have achieved, not because we're more productive than you are, but we're assembling foreign supply parts. Chinese. And we're building cars, computers, cell phone, everything here to get around your tariffs against China. And we know what we're doing, but we're going to try to reduce that. We're going to try to let you close the border so fentanyl cannot come so easily. We have to. If you don't tax the remittances. Please, please don't tax remittances. That's our $63 billion golden calf that we worship. We will close the border. And then he went to the EU and he said, you have a 500 billion, and you know what you're doing. You're a mercantile organization. You act like you're liberal, but you're screwing us over. And I want you to reduce the tariffs on cars. I don't know if they're going to buy them or not. Every European I talk to says, when I ask them about this, always says they love American trucks, but they're too big and they. They take too much gas, and they wouldn't buy them anyway if they were the same price. I don't know if that's true, but he's working on them. Japan just announced. Japan's looking at this and said, oh, my God, Toyotas and Hondas. And we wouldn't let American cars in. And even if we did, we have a cultural disdain, or I shouldn't say disdain. We have a cultural chauvinism for Our own products, but so we better. So the Prime Minister's promised to spend $1 trillion buying US fuel and products, ag products, etc. And to invest in the United States, maybe with Nippon's steel investing with US Steel. So that is going on. He's already had people promising another 500 billion investment and it's all working. And what I'm getting at, Jack, is nobody's talking about it on the left, so they're swarming, as you pointed out, the doors of the Department of Education, while Trump is spending 20 hours a day trying to help the United States redress all of these lapses that have been going on for years. And we've been a big fat target and we've been ripped off. And he's right about that. And now he's making enormous progress in just two and a half weeks. You think people in the Wall Street Journal would be happy, but when I look at the reporting of the Wall Street Journal, almost every article is negative. Almost every one. They said the terrorists wouldn't. This was dangerous. They were horrible. And then they just go silent when they're proven wrong. And they've got a lot of left wing Molly Ball, who wrote that Triumphalist, chauvinistic. Oh, we really screwed them over in the 2020 election. The tech barons and everybody got together with the Chamber of Commerce and the unions and we modulated the street protests. We got all this billions of dollars. We censored the news. Ha ha. She's now a Wall Street Journal hack. And I was listening to Jennifer Griffin. She's the Pentagon, you know, reporter for Fox.

[Jack Fowler]

She got into it with Pete Hecht.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, she said that Pete was painting his house. Well, what she didn't tell you is that Pete Hexseth doesn't have any. I mean, he makes a good salary, but Lloyd Austin lives in a $7 million mansion. And where did he get that kind of money as a four star general? He got that kind of money for working for Raytheon. And believe me, he'll go right back after he leaves and he's left and make more money for either Raytheon or something like it. In the meanwhile, the official residence of the Department of Justice was decaying and the money was already allotted in prior administration. So it's sort of like the jobs report. Everybody said, oh my God, there's only 145,000 jobs. Trump blew it. He was in office 17 days. And then they point out that that job report ended for the period January 12, eight days before Trump entered office. But what's interesting is Pete Hecseth called out Jennifer Griffith. He said, the Democratic media and you and they're synonymous. And so she was. I don't know what she's trying to do, but there's a lot of. I think that's why Rupert Murdoch was in the White House, because I think Trump has said publicly that the Wall Street Journal, some people at Fox News and even the New York Post editorial board, they're anti Trump. I don't know if they're anti Trump, but they've been very crit. Well, man.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, I know in the New York Post, which I get daily, and I think it's a terrific paper. They have been critical of some of his nominees. Particular, very aggressive, very aggressive against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And with the Journal, you know, you're right about the reporting side, but also the editorial side, which we've discussed before. We have friends there, Bill McGurn's, who's a columnist, one of my dearest friends. And there are other people not as well known who I'm friendly with. So what? But I think the general aura is, well, we are the people who dictate the policy that is to be followed. And many Bibles or semi Bibles on the right have been disregarded. And that's. Those are wounds that need to be licked. Ego wounds. I think so.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, I mean, I'm at the Hoover Institution. I would say that we have de facto, with the exception of Kevin Hassert, who's probably one of the chief economic advisors for Trump.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

We have zero influence. And I would say Donald Trump does not do what the Wall Street Journal op ed tells him to do. So he has a different sort of influence. It's much more grassroots. And he listens to people. He listens to probably Joe Rogan or Charlie Kirk or Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity a lot more than he does these official organs of news dissemination, Wall Street Journal and others that are on the conservative side. Although he might listen to our former employer, Jack National Review.

[Jack Fowler]

Okay, well, he might. You never know.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It's still very critical. I looked at the other day, it's still very critical of Trump. Rich Lowry's been very fair, I think. Yeah, yeah, he's come around. He's been very empirical. He's fair.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. A great piece on the envy and attacks on Musk today, Victor. I have a point about that with Buckley and Trump. But before we do that, I just want to pause to tell our listeners about a critical intelligence brief briefing by our friends at American Alternative Assets. They've just released it. As someone who studies threats to our homeland security, what I've read in Homeland 2025 confirms many of my own concerns. And they've gathered analysis from former CIA officers about what's really happening within our borders. But more importantly, they explain how to protect your family's financial security. Central banks are already taking action. Shouldn't you know why American Alternative Assets is offering our listeners this vital briefing? Plus up to $10,000 in free silver and a secure American made safe. These are patriots we trust to help protect American families. Call get your pens out, folks. Paper, paper, pen. Call 1-888-615-8047 or visit victorlovesgold.com call 1-888-615-80 47. Again, 1-888-615- 8047 and tell them Victor, who loves gold, sent you. Victorlovesgold.com we thank the good people from American Alternative Assets for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Hey, Victor, about two months ago, I wrote a little piece for Real Clear Politics on what would Buckley say about Donald Trump? But National Review, famously its first issue, Bill Buckley wrote standing athwart history, yelling stop. And the tone and tenor was very aggressive. And then the practice of conservatism over the years was very, I don't know, business schooly. But Donald Trump's activism is shocking. It's, it's deep, it's broad, it's aggressive, it's, it's cool. It's made Eeyore happy. I'm, I'm really. And that, I think, is part of the problem, is that professional conservatism is, has not trained its activism muscles. Anyway.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, as I said, we were talking about this on Megyn Kelly's show, and I said if it had been any other Republican of the last generation, a Bob dole, a John McCain, a Mitt Romney, and they were in this position and they wanted to make change. They would have selected a lot of committees for pros and cons. They would have had a special advisory they would have brought in, and they would have never been done. Never, never, never. And Donald Trump, there's about three things going on, why he's so successful. Number one is it's Donald Trump. He knows he only has four years. He knows what happened last time. He knows that if they lose the House, he'll never get any legislation through. He knows that. So he's got to move quickly, mostly with executive orders. But I looked at the executive orders the other day, Jackson, and if you look at the period from George H.W. bush four years, then Bill Clinton, then George W. For eight, and then eight with Obama, then four for Trump, then four. They're almost indistinguishable. There's a little bit more with Clinton than Obama and then if you calibrate by day for Trump, maybe a little bit more than Biden. But they're pretty much in a continuum and they're in a descent. The big executive order period in American history was FDR and Harry Truman and to a lesser extent Dwight Eisenhower. I mean, they went from 300, 200 to 1,900 and even Ike had about 450. So the use of the executive order has declined radically. So my point is that he knows he might lose power. And these people are crazy, as you saw in the House with that demonstration at the Department of Education. So he's got to push it through. Number two, Joe Biden gave him a lot of precedence. So, for example, they want to sue that he's canceling out a usaid. And they know that was created by an executive order by JFK so it can be eliminated. They also know they're being disingenuous that the actual minority of that budget is really going to be rebranded under Marco Rubio, State Department. He's ahead of it now. And what was the criticism of USAID was three things. Number one, it had a socially imperialistic agenda of LGBTQ so called queer homosexual advocacies. And far from what Samantha Power said the other day, oh, the Chinese are very happy that we're not aiding. No, they're very worried because we were turning off people throughout. We were giving, we're still giving money to the Taliban, but we were, you know, Syria with Sesame street and the Middle east, we were going in traditional Islamic societies and forcing down the pride agenda down their throats. And that hurt us. And China was happy about that. Now they're angry that we stopped that. The second thing they were doing, they were fused with the media. AP Roy Eight percent of the budget of BBC, one of the most anti American megaphones there is. $8 million for Politico. I could not believe that. And Politico was always interviewing Samantha Power. It was just so insidious. So they were fused with the media. $250 million to promote foreign anti American media. And so that was the second thing they were doing. The third thing they were doing is to the degree they did provide some relief overseas, they were doing it through NGOs. And a lot of these NGOs were staffed by former USAID workers who went out in retirement or understood the system and then built their own companies and took a huge cut. Kind of like the universities that take 15% of all NIH grants, which Jay Bachari is going to eliminate. And that will cause a big howl. And so what I'm getting at is Donald Trump knows that these things are corrupt. He knows he doesn't have a lot of time. He knows he has to use executive orders, and he knows that he's going to press ahead because every objection is absurd. They said, well, he is not spending congressionally approved money for usaid. Well, all he has to say is, I put it in the State Department. Now it's in the State Department budget. I transferred. But if you're talking about illegally compounding approved money, you didn't say a thing about Joe Biden. We approved the wall. Congress approved the wall. He stopped it. And they said, that's against the Constitution. You have to spend money that Congress approved. He said, well, we have to have an EPA statement. And that took four years. And then remembers he went over to Ukraine and that famous thing that he related at a session of the Council on Foreign Relations when he was grandstand, he said, well, what did you think about Ukraine? He said, well, you know, I went over there and I think there was a crooked prosecutor. So I said, you ain't. You. You ain't getting the billion dollars. And then he said, son of a bit. B. They got what I wanted and I released. Well, Joe, that's what they impeached Donald Trump for, for not spending money immediately that had been improved. You did the same thing. So Trump comes along and he says, sue me, and then see what the courts say after Biden has impounded money, both as vice president and as president. And then finally, they got Elon Musk all wrong. The other day, they tried to embarrass Trump during the Japanese prime minister visit. They said, did you see Time magazine? Did you see that? What? They said, did you see Time magazine's cover? Mr. Trump, Elon Musk was sitting in the Oval Office in your desk. Now, Trump had kind of a soft spot for Time because they made him man of the Year. But he said, time, I didn't know it was still in existence. It went out of business. But what I'm getting at here is Elon Musk is sort of like a fly trap. And Trump has hung him up in that Oval Office. And all of these insects from the media, they're now obsessed with Elon Musk. They're jealous of him. They Hate him. And they're all swarming and getting stuck on him. And here's Donald Trump now. And no one's talking about Donald Trump as evil. It's all Elon Musk. And so Trump then naturally says, Elon's doing a great job. I'm not going to make fun of him. He's going to be. And yeah, and they say, well, he talked to the press. And he goes, yeah, he's great at it, he loves it. But what he's really doing is deflecting a lot of negative press at Trump in which he seems to enjoy baiting them anyway.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, I don't know that. Does anyone really care what the press has to say anymore? Like we come through a fever on that. Also having fainting couches, pearl clutching stays a room.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I saw that with that Afghan reporter was going back and ask him an embarrassing question and he said, I love your accent. You're so, you have a beautiful voice that I don't understand one thing you said. God bless you and move on.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, it's kind of, kind of.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I looked at her face. It's like I have never had a president talk to me like that. And then we found out almost the same day we're still giving money to the Taliban under usaid. It's going to be very hard for them to support this as long as they can get the narrative out how crooked and corrupt it is. And they have to do two things with usaid. They got to get the narrative out that it's corrupt the vast majority and that the small areas where they're really going in need. It's better and more efficient for the State Department under Rubio to do it. They already exempted Egypt, for example. And the other thing is going to be funny when they get into Medicare and Medicaid because you can see what they're going to do. They're going to scream and yell and yet everybody knows there's all these scams. We had one with Somalia, you remember, about COVID money and Medicaid money and Medi Cal and Medicare. And as long as they talk about the corruption takes away money from the system and it hurts seniors and the disabled. So we are here to make sure you get your Social Security check. And he's already said he's not going to tax Social Security. I don't know whether there'll be an income limit on that or not. But that's going to be tricky. But there is a lot that's if you want to get waste and fraud, that's where you have to go.

[Jack Fowler]

I think some of this corruption just with aid, never mind what we're going to find out with Medicaid and Medicare will be equivalent to the economy of a recognizable European nation. Staggering.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Hey, Victor, we have. The funny thing about it, just before you go is the person who really, I keep getting back to Bill Clinton. I mean, Bill Clinton had that agency for government efficiency and he tried to impound funds and he did all of.

[Jack Fowler]

This, cut the federal workforce by 12%. That's what he wanted to do.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, he did and he did. And he balanced. He got higher taxes and Ginrich got him to cut, but he cut himself. So a lot of the stuff that they're angry about, Bill Clinton set the example.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, you know, we mentioned the show outside of DOE and I think would be good to talk about that a little more. And more importantly, the horrific test scores that came out, I think about 10 days ago, the national report card and I threw. I didn't bring this up ahead of time. Victor, I don't know if you spoke with Sammy about the TNC's committee meeting and the lunacy that went on there.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, we did.

[Jack Fowler]

You did. Okay, well, we'll talk about, we'll talk about Maxine Waters trying to get in the DOE and more when we come back from these important messages. Let me pause to tell you about a critical intelligence briefing our friends at American Alternative Assets have just released. As someone who studies threats to our homeland security, what I've read in Homeland 2025 confirms many of my own concerns. They've gathered analysis from former CIA officers about what's really happening within our borders. But more importantly, they explain how to protect your family's financial security. Central banks are already taking action. Shouldn't you know why? American Alternative Assets is offering our listeners this vital briefing plus up to $10,000 in free silver and a secure American made safe. These are patriots we trust to help protect American families. Call 1-888-615-8047 or visit victorlovesgold.com call 1-888-615-80 47. Again, call 1-888-615- 8047 and tell them Victor sent you.

[Sammy Wink]

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[Jack Fowler]

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show recording on Saturday, February 8th. This particular particular episode will be up on Tuesday, February 11th. Victor's website the Blade of Perseus. The address is victorhanson.com it costs you $6.50 a month to subscribe or if you take the full year, discount it to $65. Why would you do that? Because you get Victors twice a week a article written exclusively for the Blade of Perseus plus an exclusive video analysis of a certain topic. And then there are archives of these podcasts, links to everything Victor nearly everything Victor writes, American greatness, weekly essays, indicated column links to his books. If you're a fan of Victor's writing and you're not a subscriber, you need to fix that. So the Blade of Perseus victoria hansen.com Victor Three things intersect here. The tests, the test scores from the national report card. It's just, well, I don't know that anyone's shocked anymore, but the might have thought, well, we got through the bad news about COVID and we will make up for that. There's no makeup. The the standards for the fourth grade testing and the eighth grade test and the Proficiency in math and English continue to decline. Donald Trump called that out the other day. So we have that as a backdrop. And you may want to talk about that. And then also again, this one dude with the glasses over his head holding off, I think it was 70 congressmen led by Maximum Funny Thing Victor Maxine Waters demanding of this guy, show me your id. Show me your id.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Can you imagine he did the first time he did.

[Jack Fowler]

But can you imagine if someone said that, an election worker asking some voter to show the id.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You know, Maxine, if she had been white, if she had been white and he had been black, if a white congressman had done that, a white male congressman to a black security guard, they would have officially censored him in the Congress for that. Because not only did they berate him and they kept trying to physically intimidate him, getting in his face. They said that he had reminded he was standing in the door of the school like George Wallace, you know what I mean, that he was a racist. And that was just. I don't know what's happened to the Black Caucus or the black leadership on the left, but they, I think part of their anger is that 26% of black males voted for Trump. And so that their argument that Trump is a racist and he's horrible and he's this and that, they're really telling one quarter of all black men, you're a racist, you voted for a racist. That's not a sustainable argument. So they're very frustrated about that. There's a subtext, too. So Trump said when they threatened, when he's threatened to, I think he will try to eliminate most of the Department of Education. And people said, you know, this is terrible. And he said, well, of the top 40 industrial nations, essentially 40, we're number 40 in actual test scores or performance. And we're number one or two in the amount of money we spend per pupil. A lot of that is for two or three reasons. One is the teachers union, and that has people forget the subtext of this teacher's union. Teachers union is a place because of the dumbing down of standards as an undergraduate and the politicalization of the schools of education. This is a place where left wing mediocrities go to because they feel they can make social change and they don't have to meet any standards. And the alternatives that would keep them honest are threefold. Number one, you could turn it over to the states and believe me, a guy like Ron DeSantis, that would be over. He would have all sorts of programs that would compete with the public schools and keep them honest. And charter schools, parochial schools, private schools do, but they're always after them. The second thing is, if you got rid of the schools of education, most states, without federal pressure, would allow you to have a master's degree for one year, and that would substitute for a teaching credential. So you would just bypass the school of education. And some of the states have already talked about in terms of higher education, that they would have an exit score conditional on the bachelor's degree. So you have to have an SAT to get in, maybe you have to have an SAT to get out. My suspicion of looking at undergraduate education for 50 years is half the students would score worse on the SAT after four years because they've taken these horrible courses and they've forgotten what they learned in high school, if anything. But his main point was, we're doing everything wrong. We're going on the back end. So we have affirmative action, we have dei, and we're lowering standards at the top. But going back to people like Tom Sowell, they said it would never work. They warned us 30 years, 40, 50 years ago, you have to start the kindergarten level and you have to compete with the public schools. You got to go into the inner city. And we're trying to do that. And say to black parents, here is a parochial school, here is a charter school, here is a public school, and here is a private school academy, and you can choose anything you want and you get a voucher. And the unions try to stop that because they know there's no accountability. And teachers, if they were a public school teacher and they lost enrollment and they went to go work for a Catholic school or a private school or an academy or a public charge school, they wouldn't be hired, they wouldn't want them. And so it's a jobs program for mediocrities. And it's got the wrong emphasis. And Donald Trump is basically saying, how could you do any worse? Turn it over to the states. And then you would have competition between each state. Nevada would say, well, California may be bigger, but we're number five in test scores among the 50 states. Haha. And you would have that competition. And of course, California has been doubling down. Now they, Gavin Newsom ran to the White House, kissed Donald Trump's ring, please give us billions of dollars of aid for Los Angeles, flew back home, and then immediately joined the we're going to have a special Sue Trump fund.

[Jack Fowler]

Speaking of the fires, Victor, it just, it was announced earlier, I think today, maybe late yesterday. Steve Soboroff who is a former police commissioner in Los Angeles, and he's very tied in with Mayor Communist Mayor Karen Bass, and he's getting paid $500,000 for three months of work to be the recovery czar. I feel after Donald Trump's appearance out there, I thought was a galvanizing moment. It was. The leadership of the area has not been galvanized. No surprise.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They have to do what they did after the Loma Linda earthquake. They started giving incentives. So where that big overpass collapse on 5 as you come into Los Angeles, they gave them, the contractors, day by day incentives. If you get done by day 30 with this part, day 40. So all they, if Soboroff really wanted to rebuild Los Angeles quickly, he would say to the excavators and the refuse haulers here, here's the first 30 days. If you get all the lots clean within 60 days, then for each day you, you know, it should take 70 days. You get a 5 million dollar bonus each day you beat it and then look over. So they're not cheating and that would do it. But there's a lot of suspicion that when they talk about they want to do it the right way, rebuild it, they're talking about more high density housing and bus lines, bike lanes, high speed rail links. And if they get into that, they'll never rebuild it. As I said before, when I go to Pepperdine once in a while I drive through there and I It was one of the most beautiful places in the world. Those single family ranch style and older homes. It was kind of California classic 1920s stucco, white stucco, big homes with red tile roofs, beautifully cypress trees, palm trees, landscape. They were just stunning. And to not rebuild that would be a tragedy. It was really beautiful. And so they're going to have to really. Trump's going to have to condition. I don't know if Rick Grenell's going to do it, but if he does it, he's a pretty tough guy. I think he will have incentives on time and the nature of rebuilding. And they can do it very quickly if they have all the, if they would. Just one of the things that make it very quickly, we've run out. I think it's 30 timber companies in California. We only have three timber mills left and yet we have the fourth largest timber resource in the United States. I think Georgia has the hardwoods, deciduous mostly, not all, it has pines. But California, Oregon, Montana, Washington, if you would just. Oregon is sort of lax compared to California, but not as lax as Montana and Wyoming. But if you would Allow these states to reopen. We wouldn't even need to import. Trump was right about that timber. They're going to need a lot of building materials for Los Angeles and we need to really go full bore in allowing us to produce them. Plywood shingles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, I recommend to our listeners to check out this guy Soboroff. It seems like he's, he is plugged in with the wrong people. But before we talk about anything else, Victor, I want to just take a moment for our sponsor, Lean. The science behind Lean is impressive. It's studied natural ingredients target weight loss in three powerful ways. Lean helps maintain healthy blood sugar. It helps control appetite and cravings. And it helps burn fat by converting fat into energy. Listen, if you're tired of losing weight and gaining it back, if you want to lose meaningful weight at a healthy pace, Lean was created for you. Breaking free of your yo yo diet pattern is a main reason doctors created Lean Leans a supplement, not an injection. And you don't need a prescription. We can get you started with 20% off when you enter the code Victor20. That's [e-mail] that's code Victor20akelean.com and we thank the good people of Lean for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor, again, I'm throwing you a curveball. I didn't mention this ahead of time and I'm curious. I did not get to listen to you in the great Sammy Wink talk, but did you mention at all Biden's Trump denying Biden security clearance?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

We did a little bit, but that was based on three things as I think. Number one is we have that great clip where I don't know if she was CNN or NBC said, are you going to accord Donald Trump a security clearance? And Biden, who had just been elected, was puffed up and he was trying to do the Biden tough guy. He goes like this. He always paused or said, are you going to ask, are you going to allow Donald Trump, you look like this. No, he's not dependable. He's too erratic. And so Donald Trump comes in and says, well, you know, Robert Hur said that he was an older man with a poor memory. And we remember that what Speaker Johnson said in the last weeks of the Biden administration, he went in there to say, why are you canceling liquid natural gas export facility projects for Europe since you're a big pro European? And he said, I'm not. And he said, you signed the executive order. No, he didn't. And he didn't, apparently. I mean, his hand did. Right. He's back to John Galt in that Star Trek episode where he's sort of like this and a guy behind him takes his arm and do that. So that's very ironic because they're criticizing Elon Musk for de facto exercising executive authority that he didn't get and know that Hunter and Dr. Jill were doing it. Nobody elected them and they were running the country. Elon Musk doesn't do anything. Not one recommendation can he cut.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It can only come from Donald Trump. So Elon Musk is an advisor. He goes in with Doge and he looks at all of these things and he makes a list up and then he presents it to Donald Trump. Trump. And Donald Trump says, no, I'm not going to. I can't cut Egyptian aid, or no, I can't cut Christian advisory money. That's what he does. And so you can criticize Donald Trump, but he's an advisor. He gives you a list of cuts. And to do that, he has to have access to the budgets. And they're trying to hide the budgets, as we know, from the Pentagon, which flunked an audit. And Pete Hexseth has already addressed that. So. And the other thing he said about Joe Biden was that, number one, he did it to Trump. So it's all's fair, love and war. He gets what comes around, goes around. Payback is a bitch, so to speak, as they use that term, excuse my language.

[Jack Fowler]

You're forgiven.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes. And then in addition to that, he can use the special prosecutor who exempted Biden and tried to help Biden by not indicting him for disclosing classified information and taking away files to his ghostwriter. Remember, that ghostwriter destroyed the material under subpoena in the Hillary Clinton fashion. But so that was the second thing he did. And then the third is. The third is by not allowing Joe Biden. He's now saying, we're going to stop all of this special treatment. We're not going to give 51 intelligence authorities. We're not going to get John Brennan, John Clinton. We're not going to get ex CIA, we're not even going to get ex presidents, because a lot of these people use this information for nefarious purposes. And he knows that if Joe Biden gets national security information, someone will get it from him and get on ABC and say, Donald Trump is risking nuclear war with Iran. Because my sources. Because my sources, Jack, tell me so if I'm a Washington hack like John Brennan or James Clapper or Leon Panetta. And we've seen it so often, and Joe Biden will do the same thing. He did it. And they get on television, they get these $300,000 contracts, and they look in the camera and say, well, what do you think about Donald Trump's maximum pressure campaign against. Is there any worry that we'll only radicalize Tehran? Well, my sources and I have sources, my sources have informed me that Donald Trump is walking a tightrope. There's a lot of internal dissension within the CIA. Believe me, the State Department is an open revolt. And I've talked to my sources, tell me that the European heads of state, which I'm in contact with, they're shocked. That's what they do. And so he just says, no, I'm not going to do that anymore. Homie, don't play that game. As they used to say in Living Color, that was a great show. Remember that? Homie, don't play that game. No, he just says that I'm not going to play that game anymore. You can say what you want, but I've got four years and I'm not going to be, I don't have Robert. There's not going to be an Andrew Weissman. There's going to be no Robert Mueller. There's going to be no Letita James, there's going to be no Jack Smith. There's going to be no get me off the ballot. That's all over with, that's done with, and I'm moving as fast as I can. The left likes to say it's like the hundred days of Napoleon. It is, in a way that, you know, he came in and tried to really change the Bourbon dynasty, the Restoration. But he's not a dictator. You got to remember that. And the reason that these guys have no power and they have none is not because of Donald Trump. It's because they lost it and they lost it. Not because of Kamala Harris was a black woman, not because even that she was mediocre. I know that you mentioned the Democratic hierarchy in that convention and they polled them. I think Jonathan Capehart said, how many of you, it was like saying, how many of you would like an ice cream sundae right now? How many of you kind of sort of think it was racism and misogyny? And they all said, he said, oh, you passed the test. And I'm thinking, yeah, and Joe Biden is black and he's a woman. And that's, that's why he was eight points behind when he Pulled out. If you really believe if Joe Biden had run, he would have defeated Donald Trump. And when he lost, would you say it was because he was a white male? No. And so.

[Jack Fowler]

That was really that event. Victor is more than a doubling down of the chaos and problems this party has.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

When they got that guy David Hogg on there and he started screaming and yelling and about. He was young. He's a young idiot. And then they had the woman, they had the former retiring guy from the dnc and he was trying to struggle with the non binary this, the transgender this, the black this. And then they had that woman from the Southern accent come in and kind of read him the riot act that. You don't really know the codes of woke. Here's the WOKE bible. Let me read it to you. And the whole thing was anti Democratic. It was a mess. And it was a force multiplier of the nominations were. Remember Senator Hirono? Women must be believed. Remember her? That woman? She was yelling and screaming and Elizabeth Warren did the. Elizabeth Warren. I'm completely insane. Look, when I remember Elizabeth Warren, I remember two things. One was Pocahontas. And after she got her DNA back and said she was.001%, she said, See, I am Native American. And then when she said she never used it, like in 1 nanosecond, the Internet lit up with a Harvard little catalog with a picture. First Native American professor. And then the other one was she had that aborted race for presidency in the Democratic primary of 2020. And she cut a commercial where she opens up the refrigerator and she takes a beer, very slow, she goes. And she. Oh, my good beer. Tasty. First time in her life she's tasted it. So they had that crazy woman and then they had that crazy Sheldon Whitehouse and that Tim Kane that looked like he was. He put his hand in an electrical socket. You know what I mean? His hair was out and he looked. And of course, his son had been arrested in 2017 for trying to let off an explosion. Explosive or something like that, and a riot. So it was just a menagerie of crazy people. Then you had that DNC and then you had the Department of Education where this poor guy was like stoic. He became an Internet. I didn't realize that. I went on the Internet this morning. He's a hero now. Did you know that there's every type of. He's famous because these people insulted him and he just said, no.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, I want your id.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I gave you your id. Are you going to let me in? No, he Just stood there and they were thinking, can we hit him? Can we do this? Can we embarrass him and claim he's George Wallace? Can we do anything? He just stayed there. And all of everybody, you know, I did about four interviews yesterday and almost every host brought this topic up and they all said the same thing. If he had been black. And that type of vitriol came from a white male. And so they've completely lost their mind. So the confirmation hearings, the DNC conference, these demonstrations, and then this, I don't know what it is, this hatred of Elon Musk, this social media hatred of him. He went from the beloved Elon that figured out you could have an EV and drive 320 miles to Satan or Lucifer. And all because he was an apostate.

[Jack Fowler]

You know, Victor, they're all about theater and it's bad theater.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Whereas.

[Jack Fowler]

And Trump, it's not like Trump isn't about theater, but his theater is like, I'm gonna do McDonald's, I'm gonna go in a garbage truck. And it's consequential and funny. There's his.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And when he attacks people, he does it. He does it. Matter of fact. So they say something about, did you see Maxine Waters? What she did? He said, well, these people don't like America. Come on. That's it. It's not. And that's funny because they say they have lost it. They have no power, they have nothing. They committed political suicide. They do not have the White House. They do not have the House of Representatives. They do not have the Senate. They do not have the Supreme Court. They cannot block a presidential appointment. They don't have the votes. They cannot subpoena anybody. They can't override any veto. They can't do anything. Anything. At least until they see if they can get the House back. And by everybody should be very aware that this next House race will be the most expensive, bitter, nasty fight in our lifetime. Because if they get the House back, they will impeach him. They really will. And for all you Republicans in the House, that when Joe Biden was obviously non composition and everybody said you should just impeach him, and you said, well, he'll be acquitted. In the Senate, we don't have the vote. Exactly. You impeach Mayorkas and that was good. He'll be known as a person who was impeached, but you didn't do it with Joe Biden. And they're not going to show any laxity. And if you say in two years, if they win the House in two years. And you say, well, we didn't impeach Joe Biden. They would say, yeah, because you're an idiot and you're weak. And I hate to say that because if you read the Federalist Papers, they were very, very worried about a president losing the House in his first term and have a political hit job done against him by impeachment. And that's why they required 2/3 vote in the Senate for a conviction. But they wanted impeachment to be very rare.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, the Democrats impeach citizen Trump.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

So there's no question they tried citizen Trump.

[Jack Fowler]

Tried him, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They impeached him. And then right after he left office, they put him up for trial. And I got to admire the Republicans. They stood fast. And then it was, I can remember those weird days in January. That was a weirdest time of my life. All of a sudden Nancy Pelosi was saying that Trump people killed five officers. There was an armed insurrection. There was no arms found in the Capitol. There was no officers killed. There was a mysterious Capitol officer who for his life shot and accidentally killed Ashley Babbitt. We can't tell you who he was because the MAGA people would lynch him or something. And then. And we were told that Parlier was this subversive social platform that we needed the good citizens of Google and Amazon and Facebook to destroy. It was weird, weird, weird, weird.

[Jack Fowler]

My mic went off there. Lucky for our listeners. You mentioned Parler. I think when we come back from some messages, Victor, we should talk a little about Parler and Stanford University. You saw that back to aid funding. Stanford and one of its projects was.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Another the Stanford Internet Observatory. I'm very familiar. We had the director of IT come to Hoover. And I said at the time to a number of high ranking Hoover officials, this person is not for free speech and open inquiry. He's after punishing people for, quote, misinformation and disinformation, which translates into I don't like their politics. But got to remember, in those dark days of January of 22, we also had George Soros enlist some Hoover people to try to sponsor something together with us. So that was an insane period. And thank God it's over and that would not happen again. But we had the Stanford Internet Observatory people all around us.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, we'll get into that maybe a little more. And then you mentioned the hand holding Joe Biden's hand to sign things. And according to one report in PJ Media, that hand was that of Hunter Biden. We'll get to those Final matters.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Wait a minute. You can't have a shaky hand guiding a shaky hand.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, maybe he.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Which is worse, being suffering from Alzheimer's or lifelong cocaine addiction?

[Jack Fowler]

Well, maybe that was the day Hunter left his cocaine in the wardrobe closet. That still hasn't been figured out who did it. But we'll get to these when we come back. Victor, from these final important messages before we continue, I want to tell you about a great American company I trust, American Alternative Assets. Like many of you, they understand what's really happening to our nation's financial strength. And they're helping patriotic Americans like you protect their retirement savings. As someone who studied America's history for decades, I'm concerned about what I'm seeing. For the first time ever, our great nation is spending more on interest payments than on our military. That's why we've asked our friends at American Alternative Assets to share their wealth protection guide. The guide explains why smart Americans are moving their retirement savings to precious metals IRAs. These are true patriots who understand American values. Right now, they're offering our listeners up to $10,000 in free silver plus a free American made safe. They'll show you how generations of Americans have protected their wealth during uncertain times. Call 1-888-615-8047 or visit victorlovesgold.com call 1-888-615-80 47. Again, call 1-888-615- 8047 and tell them Victor sent you. We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show, recording on February 8th, and this episode will be up on Tuesday the 11th. I did, I did promise. By the way, somebody, I have to say this is. No, there's no criticism, Victor.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And I've got a lot of criticism lately. You know what, Just to interrupt you on my website, I was kind of making a thing like this and someone whose name shall not be mentioned. I had a scene like that and it was frozen, right? And that was in my Friday ultra. And I've got all these emails that. Victor, were you saluting? Are you Elon? I said, no, I was going like this. And it was more Tim Walter move than. So I get a lot of criticism. I got a lot, a lot of criticism.

[Jack Fowler]

Okay, well, this is the folks at Thomas Aquinas College. Love you. And so one of the guys, I said, could you, could you ask Victor? Because, you know, you talk sometimes the three colleges, Pepperdine, Hillsdale, and you've said St. Thomas Aquinas, and it's Thomas Aquinas. And the reason it's important is that There is a St. Thomas Aquinas College. So I went on the website.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I didn't know that. I'm glad you corrected me.

[Jack Fowler]

It's upstate New York. It is so woke. And it's.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

There's no connection, is there?

[Jack Fowler]

No, no, no, they're not. But it's amazing how. And this is not a Catholic podcast, so we're not going to down this rabbit hole. But there are authentic schools. Authentic about classical.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I want to apologize because that was a slur. I didn't mean to say it. Thomas Aquinas. I went down there for two days with our mutual friend who's on the board and I came away just blown away. I mean, everything about it. The faculty was wonderful. The students were right out of. I don't know where they. They were one's nicer than the next.

[Jack Fowler]

Everyone you meet there, like they're just.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They all. I looked at this beautifully landscaped campus and there was this kid walking by, he had dirty Levi's on and he was working on his knees, you know, And I said, what are you doing? He said, we do our own landscaping. We're assigned an area of the college and there's almost a competition to make. And it's in a very beautiful valley, you know, out of the San Fernando Valley. It's.

[Jack Fowler]

That's how they keep their costs down. They're very. There are a couple of colleges that are really into that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I have a 15 year old daughter who's going to be 15 year old granddaughter.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And she's Catholic and I'm trying to get her to apply to three colleges.

[Jack Fowler]

Three total. Okay, yes, go ahead.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Three total. Not Stanford, right. Pepperdine, Hillsdale and Thomas Aquinas.

[Jack Fowler]

All right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think she wants to stay next to her family at UC Davis and I don't want that to happen. They live near the Auburn foothills in Placer county now. So I'm really going to pressure her if she's listening to her. Her name is Maeve. She's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet and she's very bright. She's just a perfect person. And I'd like her to go to Hillsdale or Thomas Aquinas or Pepperdine. I'm really going to try to. And she has straight A averages in junior high. Her credentials won't be a problem, but.

[Jack Fowler]

All right, Grandpa. Everybody needs a grandpa like Victor.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I will work overtime to pay for it. I'll do anything to pay for it. But I do not want. I say that not as an imperious Intrusive grandfather, because I don't see her a lot because I live 220 miles away. But I do it as someone who has been in academia for 50 years, and I've seen so many kids go into academia and four year, five or six years later come out not the same. I'm not sure that it's a healthy experience, but I've seen St. Thomas. I've seen Thomas Aquinas named after St. Thomas Aquinas. And I am so impressed by the students and the faculty and the curriculum and the beautiful place it's at. It's only 200 miles from my home. And if she were to go there, I would go there and see her all. And Pepperdine has got a wonderful new president, President Nash, and it's got a wonderful school of public policy. You and I know Pete Peterson. Wonderful guy, terrific. And then we go to Hillsdale. I have so many friends at Hillsdale. Wonderful president Larry Arne, Mark Kalkoff, Tom Khan. It's got some of the best people in the world there. Wilford Maclay, all these great people. And.

[Jack Fowler]

He is a happy warrior. I love that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Who's that?

[Jack Fowler]

Bill McClay. He's just.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah. Yes. William Maclay. I should. Wilfrid. I'm sorry. Yeah. And the Land of Hope is the best. I mean, it's just. I'm on the Encounter. I'm on the Bradley board of directors, but I'm assigned to be the overseer of Encounter Books. Is. We give it quite a large amount of money, and I work with the editor, Roger Kimball, So I look at the sales figures. It's just taking off.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And now they've got a new series on world history that's coming out in August. It'll be really wonderful. And I'll talk about that later. I'm gonna have Roger Kimball come on and talk about it in one of our podcasts. But Bill McClay is just Bradley Prize winner, author of Land of Hope, wonderful teacher, happy warrior. His son is a happy warrior. Who's a classicist. There. A professor.

[Jack Fowler]

Is he the Victor Hansen Professor? Does he bear that?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I don't want to embarrass him by that. I'm very conscious that what Jack's referring to is a donor whose name I won't mention because I don't want to have him bother or anything, but he gave a sizable sum in economics and classics endowed professorship, if he could use the name of, in this case, Walter Williams and myself for the classics. But it's kind of hard. Walter Williams, unfortunately, has passed away. But when you name a professorship after a living person, then the living person's behavior is scrutinized and it can be an object of advantage or disadvantage to the recipient. In the case of Tom Sowell, who was the. He was the Milton Friedman. He is the Milton Friedman. It was a big plus because Milton got better with age. Every year he was even more sharp and witty and everything.

[Jack Fowler]

I love that guy. He came on a few of our cruises.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I know he did.

[Jack Fowler]

And Rose, his wife. Lovely lady.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I was so sure. Yeah, I debated him in a restaurant. I think I told you in San Francisco. A nice donor put us up there and we kind of had an in house debate. It was very good. He's very polite and everything.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, sweet man. Not sweet, Victor are the people at the aforementioned Stanford Internet Observatory. Very quickly, the Gateway pundit put out a piece that said that Stanford Internet Observatory, a group that received funding from the National Science foundation, which is in partnership and receives funds from usaid. So what? A network published a report on how they took down Parler. This is really a nasty ass, excuse my French.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I was very upset about that because I'll be frank and I want to be very careful because I don't want to say something that's untoward to anybody. But one of the two people who were running that spoke on campus and I was outraged by what they said. I didn't know quite what they did by taking down, now that I've read these accounts post facto. But the majority owner of Parlier, Rebecca Mercer, was one of the most generous contributors to the Hoover Foundation. She has her own the Mercer family, I should say, Robert Mercer Foundation. And they've been so generous to support the Hoover Institution and other places like it. And yet we had this Stanford Internet Observatory person come in and really say things that I didn't think were true. And even if they were true in the sense that it was a conservative effort to balance, I mean it was that. But what they said was not true. But the point is everybody has a right to create a company without having him try to go destroy it with federal funds. So he was federally funded. And that's another thing we didn't really mention about the USAID under Samantha Power. She's being so disingenuous. She's on all the left wing talk shows. Oh, this is so sad. All these people are going to die. So there's not going to be this and that. And the Chinese are so happy. I know that. And foreign leaders are calling up and says the United States is going to lose its reputation of being magnetic. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Chinese, as we said, are saying, oh, my God, they're going to get their brains again. There's not going to be a gender studies program at Kabul anymore. You're not going to have a gay drag show or trans. Oh, my God, this is terrible. They were really killing themselves now. They're not. Or things like that. And one of the things that that money came from was government money to fund an effort to destroy Parlier, as you said. And they did. They absolutely did. They made it any. There was a rush to go join it and it crashed their site. And the next thing they knew, they kicked Donald Trump off social media, as you remember, Twitter and Facebook and he went to Parlier and then you could not get an app to get on it. They just Google. Was it Amazon? Is it Amazon, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter or. No, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

The Apple Store would not. They would not carry the Apple App.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Store and Facebook, Facebook and Amazon. And you couldn't get on it. And so it died. And their attitude was, sue us, we have billions of dollars at our behalf. You're just a single wealthy person, but you don't have our resources.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, that's what I must say. Still both of anything that's happened recently, and I'm glad everything's happening is happening because see some of these tech bros who were suppressors of free speech to be in the front row now, it's.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Very funny because what is Bill Ackman, Mark Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk have in common besides that they were left wing and they were anti Trump and now they're not. And one of it is, as I said earlier, they don't really mind giving their money about redistribution. But what they really. On the back end, but on the front end, that interview with our former colleague at National, Ross Douthat. Is that his name? Douthat. How do you pronounce Ross's last name?

[Jack Fowler]

Ross Douthit.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Douthit, yes. So Douthit had an interview in which Andreessen said, I woke up one morning, I went in and I discovered, and I talked to my CEO, that these people want to destroy us. We hire these people, they come in, they think we're capitalists, evildoers, and they want to destroy us. And then I met with the Biden administration and I understood that they were going to control the whole AI industry and they were going to pick winners and losers, and that was going to be based basically on ideology. And I got out. And so they got out because they saw the other side of the Biden administration that they were censorious. They were going to rig the system and they were going to reward their friends and punish their enemies. They got out of the left because they saw that people within their own companies that were coming out of Harvard, Yale, Stanford were all being indoctrinated to hate the very systems in which they were being paid and undermining themselves. And they hated the. I'll be frank, in the case of Ben Horowitz or Mark Zuckerberg or Ackman, many of them were Jewish Americans. And they looked exactly what the Democratic Party was doing. They looked at Claudine Gay's testimonies, they looked at what was going on at Columbia University, they looked at what was going on at Stanford University, and they looked at the anemic, pathetic response of the college president. And they saw the Biden administration was either doing nothing or de facto encourage it. And they said, these people are anti Israeli, anti Semites, and I'm not going to subsidize them anymore. So that was a perfect storm. I don't know how long they're going to be. David Sacks was another really good guy. He's a really smart guy. Trump, it wasn't their money that was important, although it was important in the case of Musk. He kind of balanced the billion and a half dollar advantage that Kamala Harris had, but it was their expertise. So you've got all these people who are really smart and they're going to be advising Trump on policy, from AI to biotech to lasers to cyber currency, cryptocurrency, cyber security, everything. It's good. But the Stanford Internet Observatory went out of business. And we should have seen the parade of propaganda, how wonderful it was. And the name was so clever. And they were going to be the observatory, like the Lick Observatory. They were going to have their big telescope and they were going to scan the entire social media day by day. And then they were going to say, uh, oh, laptop. New York Post says laptop is authentic. We know it's Russian disinformation. Suppress, suppress, suppress, suppress, disinformation, Disinformation. Joe Biden subtext. Joe Biden needs to be defended in the next debate by saying 51 authorities say that it's Russian disinformation. So that's what they did. They did other things too, with their spin offs about, you can't use the word patriot American. All that stuff came out of that movement.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

But as I said, I just, I've been there a lot lately at Stanford, almost every day. And I come home on weekends because I've been on some hiring committees and it's a very different place. You walk across, the campus is quiet, there's no Hamas tents, there's no chalk written on the side. As I said in another podcasts, there's nobody defacing property. There's a new president, very different president. And even as I said to Sammy, the Stanford Daily Jack reads like the high school newspaper. What's your favorite food? What's the new iPhone that all Stanford students are using? What's the latest shoe footwear, that kind of stuff. Not like, you know, fascist Donald Trump, Judge Duncan given good riddance ridden out of Stanford. None of that. It's because of two things. The alumni said, I'm not going to pay for this anymore. And they stopped giving at least 10 or 20% and they lost a lot of income. And number two, and far more importantly, to quote Julius Caesar, act one, scene two, when Crassus and Brutus are angry that nobody knows their name, our name is just as good as Caesar's. Why don't people know it? And they say he doth strove like a colossus and we as mere mortals peep around between his legs.

[Jack Fowler]

Sounds kind of familiar.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, that's what it is. They're scared to death that Donald Trump is going to tax endowments, put strings on government aid, that they have to follow the bill of rights, etc. Due process, freedom of speech.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Title nine, thankfully.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Title nine, yeah. California is not. We're not following it, Jack. 70% of people nationwide. No, excuse me, 79, 80% want biological males in there. And as I said, the biggest thing about that, just to finish, I was on a broadcast and there was a guy on there that they ran a clip and he said there was no evidence that any person who was trans had an innate advantage over the other people. And he was a male, I think, that had transitioned. And of course there is no case. And this proves the opposite of what he's trying to prove. There is no case of a biological woman taking hormones, having radical surgery and then out competing males. It doesn't happen. You can have all the women's soccer players, they had a big. I think the women's soccer team lost to a high school team not too long ago.

[Jack Fowler]

Boys team.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, boys team. You can't do it. And so when you talk about transgendered athletes abusing the system, it is only one Type. It is biological males transitioning into female sports where their muscular skeletal size and muscular strength, their DNA, in other words, gives them enormous advantages. And it proves the point that they're not the same as biological women. Just as the fact that transgendered men never win a major sports event because they have different DNA that is female.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And that's what everybody's been saying. They're all. They all lie about it.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Reminds me, there's this terribly terrible, funny movie, in its way, called the Ringer, and it was about some. One of those guys from that Jackass show was performed in the Special Olympics. And, you know, it's. It's. There is a. There's. What is it about Leah Thomas and others that makes them want to do that? It's either misogyny or it's this.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I don't know. I just saw that picture of that famous iconic picture of Riley Gaines here, second place, and she's there, and Riley Gaines is like this. And he's like a pyramid with huge shoulders and no rear end.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And he's like 2ft taller with a big male muscularity. And we're supposed to believe that this was a fair competition. And of course it wasn't.

[Jack Fowler]

That he believes it's a fair competition is the pathetic thing about it all.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah. And then you have Megan Rapinoe mouthing off during this whole cycle, and you think, well, you're at the end of your career. If you were 20 and you were trying to become, as Megyn Kelly made that point the other day, if you're trying to become a multimillionaire and you're competing against biological males in soccer, you would have never made it. And so you're just, after your career is over, your performance art, virtue signaling, supporting this nonsense. JK Rowlings was really good. She had a really good commentary about it. Martina Naviterola. Both those people are anti Trump, and they still really praise Trump for doing that. He ended it. I mean, that's it. The funny thing is, Jack, When I was 9 years old, 10 years old, 11, there was something called the US Russian track and Field Games. Remember that? Yeah. And they often held them at least one or two years at Stanford University in the old stadium. And my mom was a graduate and et cetera. So we went up there to see it, and my dad and all the people, we were there, and they had some. Do you remember these two women? They were called the Press sisters. Tamara Press, and I think her name was Olga. I haven't researched this, so bear with Me, everybody, It's by memory 60 years ago. But I was a little 10 year old and I said, and she was right before us with a hammer throw and my dad. And everybody goes, she's a man, she's a man. Everybody was going, boo. And it was against. And then an usher came and my mother said, bill, Bill, Bill, this is against the spirit of please don't boo. And he says, she's a man. She is a man. And then my mother said, actually they did some saliva test and I don't think her sister will be well, the point was they were men and the Soviets were cheating on the system for shot put, javelin and ball and hammer, hammer throw. And everybody knew it and it was unfair and they were giving some kind of test and they finally eliminated them. But we went from there to what we are now.

[Jack Fowler]

I think it used to be about like the East German women swimmers that you would see at the urinal.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

All right, anyway, Victor, anyway, just because.

[Jack Fowler]

It'S cold outside doesn't mean you need to stop grilling. Not if you have the right grill. And that would be a Solaire infrared grill. Solaire Infrared grills heat up in just three minutes, perform equally well in the cold of winter, which we're in right now, as in the heat of summer, and grill food much faster. The Solaire Infrared grills heat your food directly, not the air around the food like conventional grills do. The intense heat also results in the juiciest food you'll ever taste from any kind of grill gas, charcoal or otherwise. To get the great taste. It's all the heat in solaire infrared from besthotgrill.com it gets hotter than anything you've ever experienced during the season. Try the Solaire Infrared grill now. Use the demo program. Don't be left out in the cold. Learn more about the USA made Solaire infrared [e-mail] that's besthotgrill.com and we thank the good people at Solaire for once again sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor, we're going to take this. Excuse me. Into the around the home stretch and over the finish line with Hunter Biden. So here's a piece from PJ Media. According to Lynn D. Lee. And that's the the Chinese American woman who, who was a big fundraiser for the Democratic Party. So everyone knew she's seen.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I really like what she's saying that she's now threatening. I think she threatened the two left wing senators from Georgia that she said she helped elect with massive fundraising and that if they vote against the right, you know, the, the immigrate, new immigration, protect. Yeah, if they vote against that, she's going to make sure they're defeated.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, let us pray.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

She was another tech baron that we didn't mention.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, is that where her Doe came from?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, I don't mean tech baron. I mean she came out of that malou Silicon Valley.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, she's got a book out. And let me just say this from PJ Media. The headline is now we know who was running the country for Joe Biden. Lee alleges the following Biden's disastrous debate drubbing Hunter. Hunter essentially took over White House operations. Speaking with podcaster Sean Ryan, she painted a picture of dysfunction at the highest level of government. Quote, after the CNN debate, Hunter basically commandeered the White House. He sat in on all of the White House top level meetings. We have a former cocaine addict sitting in on the most sensitive meetings of the most consequential and most important important government in world history. Does that sit right with you? Ryan's immediate reaction?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

No.

[Jack Fowler]

Reflect on what many surely are thinking without security clearance. Mind you, Lee added that's yeah, not.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Without security and as they say, facing felony charges. The left always talks about felony charges. Well, he was facing felony charges and I don't know whose cocaine, but they found a bag of cocaine, you remember in the Secret Service has never released the information about what they found out as far as DNA or anything on the bag. But that's another thing. The left doesn't, just doesn't want to talk about that. They keep talking about Elon Musk not having statutory authority and he's got a lot more authority than Hunter Biden's ever had or Dr. Jill. And the only thing I'll just finish today's broadcast with something. I don't know the answer. Joe Biden is deteriorating now even more so. He's completely humiliated. James Carville almost every day in his weird Broad podcast says things like just go away. It's your fault. Everybody is. Even Nancy Pelosi said the other day that she wasn't sure that Joe Biden would have won anyway. You know what I mean? She said that he may or may not have helped, but the point I'm making is there is no support for him anymore. So why would the Hollywood people give him this money and hire him and their talent agents as they do with Obama. It's left wing, so they always Clinton, let me get your image you'll endorse. What product could he endorse? That would persuade anybody to buy it. What's there is it kind of like affirmative action? They think, well, we gave all this money to Clinton, Michelle and Barack, so we can't really. So we'll just give him 10 or 20 million bucks so he won't start grifting again. Is that what it is? I don't know. But what does he bring to the table if you want endorsements, negative endorsements.

[Jack Fowler]

I have a jello.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I just depends. I think he's going to do something like this. He's going to get on said, I really want you to buy Trump watches and Trump shoes and he's going to be a negative endorser so that whatever product hires him, he will give an endorsement for their rival.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And that will help those sales. Maybe Miller will say he's the new Bud Beer spoke Bud Light spoke one Dylan Mulvaney.

[Jack Fowler]

And he can appear on an. We're at the end. I have two comments I want to read. You know, we read wherever comments are about this podcast Apple Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus. Actually, someone called contacted me the other day and said, you know, you never comment about the refer to the comments we leave on Audible. So I did not know there were such things. So I went on Audible, which you can listen and some people do listen to this show on and I'm going to read one and then I have another one I want to read. It's. It's titled Victor should be required listening. So glad I followed Victor from Fox News to Spotify to his website, the Blade of Perseus. His wisdom and wit are endless. It's like becoming a student of modern history with a sprinkling of classic and military expertise mixed in. His podcast is my favorite four hours of the week and could only be better if it were seven days a week. Thanks, Victor. I think you need to see a shrink on that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Thanks.

[Jack Fowler]

Thanks, vdh. Sammy and Jack, you're quite a team. And that's from Peggy on Audible. So we thank you, Peggy, for.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That was nice, Peggy. And I really appreciate it. If you want to know my military history importance, I wrote a seminal article that changed the whole notion of classical military history. And it was on the butt spike. I'm serious. It was on the Hoplite spear, the butt spike. And I tried to show that the butt spike that everybody had thought was to protect it from rotting, you know, the back end, that the rear end had a point on it.

[Jack Fowler]

Right, Right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I tried to go. I went through vase painting and showed that the Butt spike was used when the spear broke in two, you could flip it over for an auxiliary second chance. And that sometimes when you were marching over the defeated enemy that was on the ground, you took this square butt spike and you rammed it through the armor of the person on the ground that couldn't get up. And that's why when you see armor in museums, every once in a while you see a square hole. That was a seminal contribution, Jack.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, I.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Listen, I'm not making fun of academics either because a lot of these things are very important, so I'm not making fun of myself. But I spent a good month on the butt spike.

[Jack Fowler]

When you first came to National Review long ago, and this is 20 plus years ago, and my brother who still works there said, that's Victor Davis because he followed you and the hoplite and all. Weren't you a consultant on the 300?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I was. In fact, if you go to the little book about the making of the 300, then you'll see that I wrote it. And if you go to one of the long versions, I'll have a little commentary on the. In those days, the disc. Yeah. See the cd I used to. I do still do some of that stuff, but not as much.

[Jack Fowler]

I didn't know about the butt spike. Now we're going to end with this.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I referred to the butt spike.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, this is a little sad way to end. And this is from Apple. It's titled Fan and this I think is very touching. Matthew Cooper, one of your many fans, passed away on Monday, January 27, 2025. He was 32 years old. Matthew graduated from Stanford 2015, spent more than a decade as an electrical engineer for Apple. Matthew was totally blind and accomplished many things during his short lifetime. Matthew recently began a podcast, the Defending Vision podcast and a website, defending vision.com. if you have any time, you could honor him by looking and listening to him in his own words. Thank you. A proud father missing a wonderful.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I will do that, everybody. I will listen to Matthew Cooper's podcast on Vision. That's terrible. I lost a 26 year old daughter to leukemia and it's the worst thing in the world. It never goes away. You think of it every minute. And I have only empathy for Mr. Cooper.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, I did check out this website and I'll say lots of pictures of Matthew, I think with this family and sister and he just seemed every picture beaming. And so.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You have to. When you get in that situation, you think of all the education and hard work they do. They go to undergraduate, they go to graduate school. They're at the prime of their life. But you can't look at it that way. You just have to look at it that for each moment they were alive was important and they were not judged at where we're going to or all the education. And then you can't look at it that way or you go nuts. You just have to look at what they did in this particular life. And I know we're all going from the Alpha to the Omega. But it's not that college is just a prerequisite to job as a prerequisite. Then you get this big moment. No, no. Each moment was important. Go back and look at when they're in college or and that is important in itself is what I'm trying to say.

[Jack Fowler]

Right. Right. Well, Victor, thanks for that. Thanks for all the wisdom you shared today. I want to thank people who write to me and say I love Civil Thoughts. And if you are just if you're a new listener to this podcast, I write a free weekly email newsletter, Civil Thoughts. I do that for the center for Civil Society where we are trying to strengthen civil society. It comes out every Friday and it has 14 recommended readings. Not charging anything will not take selling your name. It's non transactional. I think you'll enjoy it. So go to civil thoughts.com and sign up. Easy peasy. Thanks for that. Thanks Victor. You've been.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Thank you everybody.

[Jack Fowler]

We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Bye Bye.

[Sammy Wink]

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