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Victor Davis Hanson
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Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Thank you for joining us for this Friday news roundup and we've got lots of news this week. Of course, Hunter is leading us back down a rabbit hole. So we'll start with him and then we also have Russiagate and so new information out from Tulsi Gabbard's investigation that has a lot of information about the Obama administration. So stay with us for those things and we'll be right back after these mess. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow in military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhanson.com and come join us there for $6.50 a month or $65 a year. And you will receive two articles a week from and a Friday video for our Ultra subscribers. So we would love to have everybody and please join us there. So Victor, Hunter Biden just gave an interview with Andrew Callahan who is a Gen Z influencer, I guess and he seemed to say that crack cocaine or coke, yeah, crack cocaine was pure and better. I don't know, he didn't quite say. Yeah, it wasn't as bad as wine. And he was very unhappy with his dad's one time friends turned critic once they decided to oust Joe Biden. I was wondering your thoughts on this.
Victor Davis Hanson
He didn't say a lot of things. He didn't say that he was a tax cheat and had got caught and then had to get bailed out by his father who pardoned him. One of the few pardons that didn't use an auto pin. He didn't say that he seduced his brother's widow, got her hooked on drugs. He didn't admit that he lied on a federal affidavit about a gun, said he was not a drug addict and that gun ended up near a school in a dumpster. So he didn't do a lot of things when he got to the laptop. It was. I think what he was trying to say is that everybody has laptops. You open up a laptop, you see all kinds of weird stuff. So no, Hunter, your stuff was a little weirder. You were stark, buck naked, if I could use that term, crude though it is. You were engaged in sexual intercourse, you were engaged in drug use, you were engaged in prostitution, soliciting prostitutes in the laptop. You were, in addition to that, referencing your father as the big guy and 10% and complaining to your sister or cousin that you were the proverbial bagman that didn't get adequate recognition for the money you helped shake down that was diverted to the older Biden siblings. You had some racist thing there. You're talking about Asian people as if they're taboo as sex partners. I thought, well, that was pretty gross. And then the weirdest thing was he didn't acknowledge it as his own. He never has. He's never said it was. He's never said it wasn't. Oh, the laptop floated into this crazy repairman. No, you were the crazy person. You signed off at it. He tried to contact you two or three times and said, Mr. Biden, I have your laptop. I have fixed it, come and get it. You were so addled that you couldn't even do that. Then he went after the Democratic Party, David Axelrod. He said, just a one time flash in the pan consultant. Maybe that's true with Barack Obama. He said James Carville hadn't won an election or 40 years. He went after David Floof and all of the Podcasters of America, pod of America, all that Obama group, said they were young rookies. He said that Anita Dunn, remember her, she was the one in the Obama administration, said she admired Mao Zedong, the greatest mass murderer in history. But anyway, he said that Anita Dunne and others like her were, were grifters. They had cashed in. And then he attacked George Clooney, the actor who apparently was a force to get Biden out and Harris in. And at times he said Biden didn't know who he was. He was so confused. He explained all that away. And then he went on to this take that was very embarrassing because he defended the use of crack coat as if it was a health drug almost. And the obvious subtext was that Hunter somebody found cocaine in some type of backpack slot or mail slot in the West Wing. Cocaine. And that news, and the news of that investigation was suppressed, if there even was a. So here you are when you were going into the White House every day and you're defending cocaine and they found cocaine, which is a felony, inside the White House. And you're just sort of laughing it off. So the whole picture was very disturbing because when you juxtapose it with his adult father by age and dementia and his. He's still addled. He's still. The funny thing about it is the more he said that cocaine had less deleterious effects on alcohol, the more you could see that it did do something to him, that he has got cognitive problems and he has no blinders, no filters. So the idea that he was close to the president and making decisions along with Jill Biden is frightening. This is worse than. I think the whole Biden dementia and what they tried to do to Donald Trump in association with that is worse than Iran Contra. It's worse than the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It's worse than Watergate.
Sammy Wink
And just so our audience knows, and we don't forget that he did say that the laptop and all the information about the Ukraine, Russia and China bore no resemblance to reality. And so that was his take on it.
Victor Davis Hanson
Hunter never said this. They bore no resemblance to reality because I never said that My father was Mr. 10%. I never said anything. I never. Those were not me in the pictures. Those pictures of my genitalia, that was not me. The picture of me snorting cocaine in a bathtub, that was not me. The pictures with call girls, foreign call girl, that was not me. The reference to paying the utilities of his father, that was not me. That's all he had to do. He couldn't deny anything. I think he was addled when he gave the interview because he. What was the purpose of it? All it proved is that good riddance to all the Bidens. We were all sick of Jill Biden. We were sick of Joe Biden. We were sick of Hunter. He just confirmed that. See, I wouldn't want to be you. Get out of here. And yet he's very lucky that he got a pardon or he would have been a convicted felon that had a. That forged or improperly lied under oath on a federal document about gun registration. He was a federal tax cheat that he lied about. He had evidence that he could have been prosecuted, he could have been prosecuted for drug use. And he probably had amounts that were over the amounts that have lesser sentences for personal use. So he's never had to face any consequences.
Sammy Wink
Nope, that's for sure. All right, Victor, then let's turn to the Obama administration and Tulsi Gabbard's recent revelations that Russia Gate, as if we can call it that now I think we can, that they manufactured that whole thing and went through and remanufactured it. And the evidence coming out from the Tulsi Gabbards, what is she? Defense National Intelligence, Department of National Intelligence?
Victor Davis Hanson
She's the Director of National Intelligence, kind of an empty tower title. It's supposed to coordinate, quote, 17 intelligence agencies. But she released this on Sunday, last Saturday night. And what was new about it was it zeroes in on a December 9, 2017 meeting in the Oval Office with James Clapper. The same bunch, the well known cabal of Clapper, John Brennan, James Comey, Susan Rice, I guess there was Loretta lynch there and John Kerry. And the timing is very interesting because Obama is an outgoing president and we know from the last six months to nine months of his presidency, he checked out. He just came to the impression, I do not want to go out. As a president who lost 1,400 state and local and federal government, Democratic offices, senators, state legislatures, he did more damage to the Democratic Party than anybody. He set the tone for what we see now. And he did not want to go out with 40% unpopularity, which he was looking at at the beginning of his last year. So what he did was brilliant. He played golf, he picked the final four, he did photo ops. And then he just turned over the national media landscape to Hillary and to Donald Trump. And then he kind of needled Hillary a little bit and he went after Donald Trump and that's, that's all that he did. So it's kind of interesting, on December 9, he calls in these people I just mentioned and he says, I need my intelligence assessment. And they said, you know, we looked at these 17 intelligence agencies that we coordinate and there's nothing, there's no actionable, there's no real Trump Putin collusion. That doesn't mean that the Russians didn't tap into Hillary's email. They do that all the time. They go into everything. But there was no direct contact between Trump and Putin to overthrow a credible election and warp it and be a beneficiary. In fact, there was evidence from Dutch intelligence that had tapped into Russian intelligence that they were very curious. Wow, Americans are as bad as we are. They're making up lies about us, what we do, and wow, they think that we help Trump. We have no preference for Trump. He's just as bad as Hillary. She's just trying to cover up the fact that we tapped her emails because she was so lax and used a personal server and Podesta used the password. So we got in there and just caused what we always do, trouble. But what is this weird stuff about Putin, Trump? And I mean, this was not external communications, it was internal, that the Dutch intelligence people who were investigating Russia for interfering in their institutions, they found, and they had found it for years. And so this is all coming out at this meeting. Obama basically says to Clapper and Brennan and Comey, what do you got? And they said, we don't have what you want. He didn't collude with Putin, he got elected fair and square. There might have been Russian interference in the laptop, I mean, in the emails with Hillary. But on the other hand, she was culpable. She had thousands of emails that were on a private server. She destroyed subpoena evidence. So let's not go there. That was the subtext. So then Obama said, basically, I have the criminal, but I don't have the crime. So I got Trump that I can't stand. So you go back and you revise the intelligence estimate. This was on the transition, not just during the election. So they went back and the rest is history. Michael Flynn will be removed. Trump will be inaugurated. There'll be huge riots in Washington on Inauguration Day. The Pentagon, Obama era lawyer Rosa Brooks will write a controversial article that Donald Trump should be removed because of Russian collusion, either by the 25th amendment, impeachment, RR military coup, Mark Milley style. I guess so anyway, Obama then. This is really funny. Well, why did you. He was asked, first of all, he was asked briefly and he said, well, you know, really, you know, controversial stuff going on that. And then he went, came out when Trump, Trump weighed in, not just Tulsi Culvert. So this is treasonous. He should be prosecuted for treason. If you think about it, trying to destroy a political campaign, trying to erode a transition and trying to undermine a presidency is pretty revolutionary. But Obama then said, this is beneath the presidency. Presidents don't talk like that. I'm not going to read. No reply. That's so crazy. But, but, but what? Barack, all you had to say was the following. I, Barack Obama, yes, I did meet on December 9th during my transition in one of my final meetings with my intelligence officials. And they gave me an opinion that I just thought was flawed. So I just said, go back and look at the 17 intelligence officials reports. Go back and then think about it and then maybe we can find out whether he actually colluded. But I just don't accept you. He couldn't even say that because he knows that he really said, listen, I don't care what you say. This guy is going to have to be destroyed because he's a danger. So let's get on the same team and get some dirt on him. And there's apparently noted, you know, John Britton took notes. And now this week as we talk, there's rumors that other whistleblowers, if you were One of the 17 intelligence authorities who had said during 2016, 17, yes, they did hack Hillary's emails and she was vulnerable, but they didn't collude. And then you were told that you were quoted by Hillary and Obama to the opposite effect, that you had concluded that there was Russian collusion. You might be angry about that. I'd be curious to know how many of the 17 intelligence authorities were later turned up as One of the 51 intelligence Intelligence authorities that further lied and said that the laptop was Russian information operation.
Sammy Wink
Well, it just is shocking how terribly willing they were to destroy democracy.
Victor Davis Hanson
I think with everything, Victor, democracy dies in darkness.
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
Remember that.
Sammy Wink
Yeah, sure.
Victor Davis Hanson
They project. They're the ultimate projectiveness. If they think we want to destroy democracy to get rid of Donald Trump, then we'll say he's destroying democracy. That's what they always do. And I don't think, unfortunately, I don't think any of them are ever going to be indicted. There's just. And if they were, they'd all be up in a Washington courtroom with a Washington judge and a Washington jury and Washington lawyers, and they get off. So I think a lot of people think, I'm just so sick of this. Just let them go. Let them go. Gnash their teeth in the darkness. But Obama, it's really going to hurt his legacy that he did this. Especially when you see those clips when he's at the White House Correspondent's Dinner attacking Trump because of the Trump effort to prove that he was not born in the United States. And he says, well, you know, Donald Trump says he's got one thing they didn't have in common with him. I'm president, and he'll never be president. That was very funny. No, Barack, he will run for president three times and be elected twice with larger vote margins than you have.
Sammy Wink
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Victor Davis Hanson
Well, we talked about with Jack, I just think, I think the suicide there is missing video and the people who were tasked with monitoring him were lax or absent. But it's just as explicable that he looked at his age, he was in his late 50s, early 60s. And he said, I'm a convicted pedophile and I'm in prison and I'm going to go to a high security prison and I can't use my influence anymore to get out of it like I did the first time. And I know what prisoners do to men that are pedophiles. They sexually abuse them and they kill them sometimes. So it's logical that when he, he had no life left because of the revelations of what he'd done and he was probably going to be killed in prison or endangered. So the idea that he committed suicide and used his money or leverage to pay off people, not to monitor him while he prepared his suicide noose and hung himself. Otherwise they would have stopped it. So that might be a conspiracy. But I don't think he was taken out. The other thing is very quickly when people say that Donald Trump was not, what's the word, not transparent, that he promised this explosive release of documents. Pam Bondi did, Kash Patel did. I think everybody knows what happened, that the names that came up and there were 170 names that crossed paths with him, they were all of various categories. And they called Donald Trump and his people and said, you know what, I was his advisor. I shook him down for some money for my foundation. He had an office At Harvard. I flew on his plane because I was his attorney. I met him in a celebrity. I'm Robert. You know, Leonard. Leonard. Leonard. Leonardo. Oh, my gosh. Leo DiCaprio. Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm Kevin Spacey. I'm Bruce Willis. I'm Alan Dershowitz. I'm George Mitchell. I'm all these people, and I didn't do anything wrong. And then people say to yourself, well, how many people have you met? You had no idea. I mean, I go to the airport and there's people all the time that come up. Not all the time, but want a selfie? I have no idea who. They're criminals or what if one of them is a pedophile and that shows up. You remember when Jimmy Carter was president, that guy Gacy, he was a clown that mass murdered boys. He had pictures with Rosalyn and I think and Jimmy Carter at some event that surfaced. That always happens. So the other argument is that Donald Trump wrote him a birthday card. But it's very suspicious, even though the Wall Street Journal printed it, because it's a typewritten interrogatory. You know, Jeffrey, Donald Trump, and anybody could have typed that. But more importantly, he wrote a little illustration, and it was kind of obscene. But even if it were true, and I'm not sure it is, it's all baked in. Donald Trump, it's Stormy Daniels, it's Eugene Carroll. It's. Everybody knew that about him, that he. It's the Access Hollywood P U S S Y tape. It's. They know that that's not. They're not interested in that anymore. And so I don't know why the Wall Street Journal made such a big deal out of it, because I don't think he. I mean, it's, it's released. I don't think he was trying to hide that, that birthday thing. Because you think somebody in Ohio who's now working in a steel factory says, I can't vote for Donald Trump. He took a Sharpie and he said Jeffrey, and then he signed his name right where the groin area is. And it looked too just. It looked just too obscene. I'm not going to vote for him. I don't think that happens at all.
Sammy Wink
No, probably not at all. Or else nobody would be voting for anybody in this world. So. All right, Victor, so let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk a little bit about a House Judiciary Committee memo, which is very interesting. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. So Victor, the House Judiciary Committee put out a memo about Biden Harris administration of government funds and funding both terrorist organizations in Israel and anti Netanyahu organizations. But reading that memo, the interesting thing was not just that the State Department and USAID was funding these groups under Biden, but that there were other groups. And the big one that came out was the Rockefeller Brother foundation and the Rockefeller philanthropist advisors were helping to fund these groups as well.
Victor Davis Hanson
We know that the Democratic Party, the new Democratic Party hates Israel because of its new demographics, Middle east people, young people, college people, radical. But the effort to interfere in Israeli politics goes way back. Clinton sent some of his own campaign team in the 90s to stop Netanyahu. So it's very ironic that the Democratic Party was always lectures in election interference, Russian collusion. Foreign people have no place in our, that they're doing the same thing that American. The American left sends campaign operatives into Israel to campaign against Netanyahu and they fund organizations that do that. It's not, this isn't, you know, the ugly American. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to intervene, especially the left will tell you that. But the left is the one that wants to intervene so that its supposed moral ends justify any means necessary to achieve them. And we've known that about them. But again, it doesn't have any legs, that story, because people will just say that's what Democrats do. And is it against the law to interfere in a foreign country? And maybe against Israel's law? But we expect that from them. It's like Comey and Clapper and Brennan. They're never going to see the inside of a courtroom. Just not going to happen. I'm not that I am cynical, but it's not just that I'm cynical. It's just that when you look at John Durham and you look at that compendium that he found of all that stuff, and yet he couldn't get one conviction, really. You know, he got, there was Kevin Kleinsmith and then Jones, Brodzberg or whatever his name is, he let him out. So with nothing. So all of that Russian collusion, we have Kevin Kleinsmith, the only person that ever paid a real price for it for forging a FISA document, which would be a major felony. So I just don't think that any of this is going to go anywhere.
Sammy Wink
All right. And I wanted to just talk a little bit about, because the New York Times is always publishing misinformation, if I can put it use their word about Israel. And they always get death Statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry, which obviously is run by Hamas or Hamas sympathizers. And they had an interesting thing on Powerline today where they were talking about the misinformation of the New York Times and that everybody's used to it now, so we don't really pay pay much attention to it. But they said the observation was this, that if the Israelis were really trying to commit genocide and were doing anything even remotely close to what the New York Times says, the count of deaths would be a lot higher because we've seen all of the capability Israel is capable of.
Victor Davis Hanson
It's 2 million plus people in Gaza and I think 50, if you look at the accurate figures, 50,000 have died. That's a tragedy. But many of them were collateral damage. But the word comes from Latin genus, a tribe or people. And quito, to kill or to slay. So they didn't slay an entire people. And the problem, Victor, why is the death count so high? Because on October 7th, they butchered 1200 innocent, mostly civilians. They took 240 captives. They raped, tortured, desecrated people. They beheaded them. They did the most atrocious medieval things imaginable. And Israel replied, and guess what? The perpetrators went down like moles into the ground and hid themselves under hospitals, schools and mosque. So you either had two choices. You're either going to have to forget getting them or you're going to have to find out how to separate them among the civilian shields. And they did their best, but people get killed. So the question now is, what do you do with Gaza? And the answer is you're not going to be able politically to move everybody out and start over as Trump and others have suggested. But you can't. On the other hand, you can't let Hamas, their killers and hostage takers and terror, you can't let them be the government. So nobody has come up with a solution. How you disengage Hamas from the people because they threaten the people. And how do you give them a breathing space free of Hamas so they don't embezzle the money as they always do, hijack UN food supply convoys and just rebuild Gaza with Middle east money and then keep Hamas out. That requires a degree of force that's not compatible with ideas of non interference.
Sammy Wink
All right, so we also had on the similar topic, I guess, Mahmoud Khalid, who has been released from his arrest. CNN was interviewing him and they asked him if he would condemn combatants hiding behind civilians. Oh, sorry. If he would condemn Hamas. And he said this is disingenuous and absurd. To ask such a question. So I was wondering if you had any commentary on this crazy guy.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, I support Hamas, and no, I won't disassociate myself. That's what he was anyway. He was a spokesman for the Columbia Divest group. That was just a euphemism for radical, pro Hamas activist. And he was here originally on a student visa and then a green card. Never said that we let him in so he could be a protester that tried to disrupt the Columbia campus. But why did he want to come here? He hates the United States. He loves Hamas. Hamas is back there. They need his help. Just go back and help them. I don't understand all these people that come over here, and then they get here and they start attacking the United States and making fun of the people, and they think they're so sophisticated. Just leave. If you don't like it, that's another question. But if you look at the 300,000 students, 70% of them are either from China or illiberal regimes. There's probably more than that that are not counted. And why we bring people from the west bank or places like Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Yemen, any of those places here, Iran, I don't understand it at all. We have no. We should just say to these countries, I tell you what, just as we have reciprocal terrorists, we're going to have reciprocal population. For each one of you people who want to go to the United States, one of us has to go to your country. And how many Americans would love to live in sunny Gaza or beautiful Houthi? Yemen are the wonderful attractions of Tehran, and maybe there's 20. So 20 of you get to come here and see what happens.
Sammy Wink
Yeah, that would just definitely be a better situation. All right, let's turn to other people who are not happy with the United States, and that would be the Democrats. Elisa Slotkin, who is a current recent representative, said that the Democrats lack alpha energy and fear their unhinged base. So she came out and said that.
Victor Davis Hanson
Because energy alpha, we use that term in association with the American male. I guess what they're saying is we want to disassociate ourselves from Rah Rah Trump supporters like we see at those rallies. But that has the energy and the success rate that we don't. We prefer our males or people to be NPR type of people, that we are very sophisticated, nuanced about all these questions, and we consider those people to be, hey, Trump. Yeah. And they don't like that. But then they're ambiguous because they feel that people react to Forceful alpha type people. And they're not alpha type people. Pete Buttigieg, for one example. It was disclosed this week that.
Sammy Wink
He.
Victor Davis Hanson
Just used most of the money, not on any new highway projects or infrastructure, but mostly on dei. And he didn't do anything about the air traffic controller mess or the pilot mess or the airline mess. He just went around on his little bike, got out of his limo, got on his bike, rode, took a photo op and said that Trump was a racist and cloverleafs were racist and overpasses were racist and aqueducts were racist. I don't. Everything was racist. That was all he did. He wasn't an alpha male. And you got all these other people that are, that are successful. The Democrats problem right now is we're on a cusp and it could go either way. But, but there was reports today, as I'm speaking on this Wednesday, that there had been massive power outages in Iran, fuel shortages, etc. And they think it's internal sabotage. And they're so extensive that the Iranian theocracies had declared holidays because they have no power for electricity and they have no fuel to drive. What I'm getting at is if Donald Trump during his tenure with a maximum pressure renewal campaign and the bombing was able to get rid of that horrific regime and you could solve the Gaza thing. There is no Hezbollah active right now for a while. It's a whole new. We've never seen a presidency like that. You know, it's been so successful in foreign policy. And then when you add on what I call the known unknowns, massive foreign investment. We had a Japanese trade deal, it was just announced yesterday, over $500 billion, a reciprocal 15% trade tariff. They've been tariffing us for that rate for a long time. And we just said we're going to do the same. So when you look at $15 trillion in aggregate coming into this country, my gosh. And you look at deregulation and tax incentives, incentives and robotics, AI there's just so many things that point toward an expansionary economy, really expansionary, that I don't know what's going to happen. If that were to happen, what would the Wall Street Journal say? What would the New York Times say? Guru Donald Trump for two months in succession has more revenues than debits. You know, in May, there was more federal money going in than out. They say, well, this is a special case. It was a special case, but it had not happened for eight years. So we'll see what happens. But we're in very uncertain times. Everything could break one way or the other. That's why it's very, very important for Donald Trump and his team to explain the deportations and to explain exactly what we're going to do with energy and everything. So he doesn't just get caricature. Caricatured, caricatured, caricatured. Oh, you're Ice Nazis. Oh, yeah, this. I know they're going to do it anyway. But he needs to outsmart these people and you know, don't, don't get in the Epstein stuff. It's just that was a lose, lose situation. He should have just said, we looked at and thought there was a master list we were categorizing as a master list of clients, people who were on a list that had come in contact with him. And that list was compiled by prosecutors who had access to his private communications, text, email, snail mail, photographs, videos. But they're not all guilty. If he could just say that. And that's why we decided to pivot. We didn't know really the extent of people who were innocent collateral damage and would be hurt by these disclosures. But we're going to make them now anyway. We have to. We're sorry, but we have to. And he'd solve the problem tomorrow and then we could start looking at the economy and foreign relations. He's done a great job.
Sammy Wink
And just to answer Elissa Slotkin, I don't think their woke ideology of victimhood is very consistent, consistent with alpha energy at all. So I don't think she's going to get anywhere. But I also had a question on their current, you know, face of the Democratic Party, which seems to be Jasmine Crockett, AOC Mamdani. And I was thinking, wouldn't it be good for conservative media to just bring them out and put them on as much as they possibly can so they can keep that face of the Democratic.
Victor Davis Hanson
Party out there on Fox News. She's always on there. She's really. Her problem is that she's an unabashed Joy Reid racist. She hates people who don't look like herself and she's insecure. AOC has a way of talking that suggests she has 50 more IQ points than she has. And Rashida Tlaib, the rest of them, Presley, they're a really, I mean, Ilhan Omar, they're all, they're just not capable of running a party. They're so off putting. So all we're doing is the Democratic strategy right now. We have no power, we have no Congress, Supreme Court, White House. We have no popular side of the issues, we're just going to say fascist, Fascist, Fascism. Fascists Monday. Nazi, Nazi, Nazi. Totalitarian. Totalitarian dictator, Dictator, Thug, thug. And that's what we're gonna do with Trump. And if we do it long enough, we'll drive down his ratings. That's what they think has already happened.
Sammy Wink
All right, let's then turn to Rand Paul, who wants to test the legality of the auto pin by bringing charges against Anthony Fauci. And I thought, yeah, that's a good idea. We can see how long that auto pin stands up on that and at least get the information out there. But I was wondering your thoughts on.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, there's two questions. One is, is Anthony Fauci guilty of anything? We know he's guilty of machinations, all sorts of weird conspiracies. Wear one mask. No wear two masks. No wear no mask. Hwo is we got to stay in it? No, we're going to have to get out of it. Oh, a pangolin or a bat caused Covid. Oh, maybe not. Oh, maybe this. So he's all over the map. But the question is, did he divert money from the United States to fund gain of function research, which was outlawed in the United States? You could not spend money in the United States for it and try to circumvent the law and help the Chinese Liberation army run that lab? And if he did, why did he do it? And why did he try to cover up his tracks the first week Covid arrived here? And those emails with Francis Collins and others. Well, be careful what they're going to try to say, that we're responsible for it. Yeah, we are trying to say that because you were. And so that's his exposure. And Rand Paul wants. The other question is, how do you prove that Joe Biden didn't tell people to use the auto pin? So I know you can say this is the auto pin and this is Joe's eroding signature, and you can tell the authenticity of it from the auto pin. So I can say they can get all these executive orders and look how many have auto pin and then ask themselves, are there communications from Joe Biden to allow that to happen? And I don't think there are. And I just think people just got into the mood. Well, Joe's asleep. It's 10:30. This guy want big donor wants to get a pardon for this guy. Go do it. And that's what happened.
Sammy Wink
But, well, if these auto pin signatures.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, well, I mean, he's going to. Ron Paul's going to call Fauci up and Fauci says I'm immune and he's going to say, no, you're not because you were signed by an aide or something. But what I'm getting at is all presidents use the auto pin, but not nearly as much as Biden's people did. And all presidents direct somebody if they can't be in the town that day in Washington to go do pardon this person. One, two, three. But nobody's ever seen these masses pardons with auto pins. So you know that other people are doing it especially there's some textual evidence that people were communicating the donor class and politicians with Trump staffers about who gets pardoned. And the staffers at not necessarily a high level were making that decision.
Sammy Wink
Seems like you might have a timestamp on that auto pin and you could find out if Joe Biden was sleeping at the time of the timestamp.
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, it wouldn't matter though. I mean, because he would still say I was up most of the night like now and I'm sleepy. Right. But I can delegate people to do stuff for me, can I?
Sammy Wink
True enough, yes. All right, Victor, so let's go ahead and take a break and come back and talk a little bit about the US District Court and Elena Haba. And then also the Uyghurs and the Tibetan representatives were here talking to our Congress this week. So stay with us and we'll come back with those stories. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen. So you can find Victor on X and his handle is Edhansen and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. And there's also a Facebook group that is unaffiliated with us. But they do a lot of good work of finding old things that Victor interviews and or talks that were given long ago. So it's good to go to Victor Davis Hanson fan club. So, Victor, I wanted to talk first about the Uyghurs and the Tibetans. It seems to me this is something that speaking of democrats, they should be able to get along because they are here trying to convince the Congress that it should support them as independent nations and it should recognize them as independent nations and that their opposition to China should not just be opposing human rights violations. So I was wondering it's not going.
Victor Davis Hanson
To happen that we're not going to advocate a successionist movement in China no matter how poorly treated the Uyghurs are. And they're not going to get any support from the Democrats. Democrats only interest in China is that they do not want a trade settlement with us because they want to embarrass Trump. Any good that could come of it that would help Trump would be taboo for the Democrats. It's very funny. We're talking. You just mentioned Gaza, Gaza, Gaza. Genocide, genocide. And there's a million Uyghurs in labor camp. No one talks about what, 45 years? 40, 25. Yeah. Gosh, I didn't realize I was that old. But basically, no one talks about a half century of illegal occupation of Cyprus. No one talks about Rwanda and the Congo. No one talks about any of this stuff. They just talk about Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, but they don't talk about the Uyghurs at all. And it's very strange. The only explanation is that Israelis are Jewish. And we're starting to see this overt, unapologetic antisemitism that focuses on what Israel does, but not what communist China does, not what the Congo, Rwanda do, not what Turkey does to what 180,000 ethnically cleansed Armenians out of a Turkish speaking former province of the Soviet Union. How about what the Turks have done to the Kurds? Nada. It's the Jews. Jews, Jews, Jews, Israelis, Israelis, Israelis.
Sammy Wink
It might be because the state of Israel is so strong and obviously so part of it.
Victor Davis Hanson
They hate the west in general, anybody who's Western and they are Western, and then they hate the overdog. And they always empathize with the underdog without ever asking themselves, why are they an underdog?
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, there's the U.S. district Court has in New Jersey or the U.S. district Court. I'm not sure if it's bigger than New Jersey, but they've decided to remove Alina Habaugh, who was one of Trump Trump's lawyers for a while, from her federal position as a judge in New Jersey. And Bondi has removed the replacement because it's a federal position. So interesting thing where a district court is trying to take her out.
Victor Davis Hanson
The only when I said that Democrats had no power, they only have one power. Of the 750 to 800 lower court federal district judges, about 60% are left wing and they're activists. So they're using these people to exercise power that wasn't given to them by the people. And I say, well, they said, victor, but they're judges. Yes, but they're not. They're going well beyond their purview of deciding individual cases. They're trying to look for cases as levers for national fame to sidetrack or cancel or postpone a Trump initiative. That's what they're doing. And they're very powerful at it. By the time that one of these guys issues a ruling to John Roberts, agrees to take it up with the Supreme Court can be over a year or two.
Sammy Wink
We've seen lots of changes in Europe recently. And one of the things that I thought was interesting in the the UK is slowly things are changing. They have launched their first sanctions against groups that are facilitating illegal immigration. So they are starting to follow Trump's example, I think.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, that's important because they have to make their. And they won't do it. The 5% promise to invest GDP, 5% of their GDP for defense. But Britain, but Italy, but Germany, but France, but Netherlands. They all have three problems. One, they have no borders. They've let in 15% of their population are anti Western Muslims that have not shown so far a propensity to intermarry, integrate, assimilate into the body politic. Number two, they have these crazy energy, subsidize wind and solar. So they just keep spending trillions of dollars on these programs that don't give them affordable, reliable energy. So they can't compete with the Chinese or the Japanese or South Koreans or US because their electricity costs are double what others pay. And then they have that fertility problem. It's 1.4, 1.545. So they're breeding them, they're not breeding themselves, what's the word? They're breeding themselves out of existence. And it's a western pathology. It's happened everywhere in the west except Israel. It's the only country that has 3.0 fertility rate. And it has, well, it used to have secure borders until October 7th. And it's not, it's not naive about where its power comes from.
Sammy Wink
Did you hear that Candace Owen is being sued by the President of France for claiming that his wife was one time called Jean Michel Trogneau, a male who went through transition when he was in his 30s and that he, he, after transitioning to a woman, he groomed Macron himself. She's been sued by Macron.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, there's all these rumors on the right, mostly on the right, that Macron is sort of a hyper Trudeau type effeminate person that had homosexual tendencies. And it kind of dovetailed with the Obama rumors that Michelle is a trans person, remember all that crazy stuff. So they believe that she's not a woman. But it's, they all go up, the rumors all go to a certain point and they stop. And the stop is they either are or they're not. So she's either a woman or she can be easily identified as A man. And by her, you know, I've seen her in dresses and things that suggest that she has a figure like a woman. And it's. It's kind of ridiculous. But I don't know why Candace Owens does those things. What is it to get clicks on the Internet or Darryl or why would Tucker, whom I like, but why would he put Daryl Cooper, this anti semitic amateur historian that gets everything wrong, all the details. What's the purpose of it? Is it to get. So why would you say that when you don't have evidence? If Candice Owens said, well, here it is, I have a picture of her in a string bikini when she was 17 years old and look at her muscular skeletal body type. And that is not male. Or here are the records of a. Not female. I should say say. And here are the records of her trans surgeries. There's also. Why don't just produce the data and let people make their own, you know.
Sammy Wink
As well they should. So the, the last thing on our agenda before we close out the show is that. And I'm not sure I was ever a big fan, but he was a icon in the rock world. And Ozzy Osbourne died at the age of 76. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that.
Victor Davis Hanson
He had Parkinson's disease. He actually gave a concert right before he died in a wheelchair. I wasn't a big. I never. I had weird eclectic music tastes, but they didn't extend to hard. You know what I mean, hard metal. So I never really listened to. If you asked me to name one Black Sabbath so song I could not. If you asked me to name one Kiss song I could not. If you asked me Metallica, I could not. I'm kind of like Enigata. I remember that. Which I thought was kind of hard metal. That's about as far as I remember. But apparently he grew up in Manchester, so he was known as being very affable and kind to people and he never forgot that he had a Manchester or accent, that he was a product of the lower middle class in England and that after he's. I can't find anybody that would say anything negative about him. Although he admitted himself that he was a chronic at one point in his life philanderer and that his wife, Sharon Osborne, who became a reality TV superstar, I suppose and everybody was scared of. Because she was so protective of him and she'd seen scream and yell at people, which probably was good, but they all liked him and he had a long life. He, what, 75 years old with Parkinson's There are videos online where he says he took massive amounts of marijuana, cocaine and harder drugs. And he was in rehab. What I don't understand about all of this is maybe it's because I have this mastocytosis immune. But if I were to snort, I've never snorted cocaine, but if I were to snort, I think cocaine, I would be out of it for you know what I mean? Or if I went into a bar and ordered six gin and tonics, I would be dysfunctional and I would assume that people who smoke two or three packs of cigarettes would be too. But then I have people in my immediate family and friends that have smoked their whole life or have used drugs or. Not necessarily my family, but friends, but my family. I have siblings that are smokers. I just don't know how they can all the. I guess I'm getting back to Hunter Biden. He had one point, and that is how is he even alive, given all the crack cocaine he used to. How is Willie Nelson Alive at 94, all that marijuana he used? When you hear every day how dangerous it is. And I don't know whether some of these drugs are palliatives for people who are highly stressed or they have, I don't know, obsessive compulsive personalities and they serve the same function as antidepressants or antianxiety drugs. But sometimes it's very strange to see people who have used drugs their entire life and they outlive people who never drank, never smoked, never use drug.
Sammy Wink
Well, on that, do you. I've often wondered if Parkinson's is because you see these singers that have done so many drugs and stuff, if it may be a cause of Parkinson's or help that disease a little bit.
Victor Davis Hanson
People have suggested that they've seen, suggested excessive alcohol. But Parkinson's is on the upswing. And partly people are living longer and it's inevitable that people get it. Partly people say it's artificial substances, you know, plastics, benzene, all of these things in the environment. But again, given what we know about the toxicity of these drugs and given we know about the amounts that people take, when you look at all of these rock stars, you would think they look at Neil Young, he was a heroin addict. He's got to be in his mid-80s or early 80s, and he's still there. I don't understand that.
Sammy Wink
Yeah, it is strange. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and look at some comments. This time I went to YouTube and I looked down yours in Jack's recent podcast and here are Some comments from. The first one is from Putz in Round. Putz n round, I think is what they're trying to say. Victor's unmatched skill in distilling the giant amounts of info we all are bombarded with these days into digestible portions. He then serves us these morsels and helps us with the logical conclusions to be drawn therefrom. Thank you. Thank you for your work.
Victor Davis Hanson
That's a good point. When I was six years old, my job, when I got home from school, my parents were at work, so they let us off in front of our little 800 square foot farmhouse on the other corner of this farm. And my job was to make sure I saw the Fresno Bee. It had a rubber band about it and it wasn't during the rain, all wet or somebody didn't steal it. It was 10 cents. And then I brought it in and I started reading it when I was like 8. But then my parents would come home and get very angry because they didn't fold it back the way it was. But my point is there was always like three or four stories. That was it. The news stories. There was not all this stuff that you see, gosh, I wake up at 4:30 or 5 in the morning and I look at my little phone and there's all these notices from X, all these servers that you inadvertently get subscribed to and it's just dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. All this chaos. And you don't. You have to distinguish what's important, what's. I mean, do I really care what the Kardashians are doing today? I don't, I don't care that Jennifer Lopez is doing obscene pornographic shows. It has no interest of me. I'm glad that really astute people I admire, like Megyn Kelly or dealing with, with it, because I'm unqualified to deal with it. But there's so many of these crazy stories that are of no value. We should be talking about the debt, inflation, status of the military, foreign policy, the universities. These are all legitimate issues.
Sammy Wink
In fact, for our Saturday show, I'm hoping to go over or have a retrospective on the last six months of Trump's successes.
Victor Davis Hanson
So I just did that. I did that sort of with you. You it Yesterday we went through what he called the 10 most fundamental achievements of his first six months. And there's a lot. That's why I wish that he just get over the Epstein thing and just say, you know what, I don't know what the status of all these people's names are, but I got people calling me and saying, president Trump. You know, if you release names of people who came in contact with him, I'm ruined. And just say, you know what? I don't know what your status is. I imagine it ranges from the majority that just raised money with him for him, about him. Saw him at Harvard, did a photo op, thought he was kind of a weirdo they invited to a party to the other extreme, where they were pedophile. So just let the names be released and let the public make the necessary determination of their status to the degree they're interested.
Sammy Wink
Yeah, good idea. All right. And this one is from Debbie Peterson, 2003. Victor, sweetheart, I feel your pain.
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm in pain right now. Must have telepathy. Telepathy.
Sammy Wink
Well, you're gonna get angry. Find yourself in better circumstances than Deb is. I feel your pain. A year ago, I had a. I had brain surgery and access was through my nose. It was described to me by a specialist. They removed all the 2x4s in the house in order to access the brain. Now they want to open the hood and replace the 2x4s in the house. The specialist states, it will take another year for my nose to settle into a recovered state. Boy, am I ever anxious to be done. Hang in there, Victor. I get you.
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm here because I got this sinus infection on March. I got the flu and I got the sinus infection maybe March 15th. And I was operated on June 11th. And as I'm speaking right now, I have severe pain in my left sinus, which was my good sinus sinus that didn't have the bone. And I was with some people the last week, and some people come up and said, you know, they'll say, you better be careful. Maybe it was an amoeba in the neti pop that's eating your brain out. Have you thought about that? Or fungus? Fungus. It can just creep through and they have to cut out. And you don't want to think of that. You just think, you know what? I just have an immune problem. I can't. I have to. It's taking longer than I thought. Surgeon did a good job. We'll see. What the pain. Why I have pain after six weeks. Today is six weeks to the date that I was operated on.
Sammy Wink
All right. And Larry Brier, 4066. Is the federal government the employer of last resort? If so, does that mean jobs in the federal government are created out of nothing? Is it possible the federal bureaucracy is full of people whose jobs were invented as patronage in the purest sense. Yes, Larry, take it from me, that's so true.
Victor Davis Hanson
That's what's scary when they. When everybody talks about the Doge as ending 200,000 jobs in the government. And then what do people do? Because some of those jobs, I don't know. I mean, does a person lose their federal job? And all of a sudden somebody says, I've got a fabricator job at $40 an hour at a steel plant. I'm not sure that's true. Anytime I've had to call the IRS and be put on hold, the person's been incompetent. And anytime I've had to deal with Social Security on wrong benefits or so, you know, Medicare, the person's incompetent. I don't want to make that in a blanket statement, but I don't have a lot of confidence in the federal workforce or the state workforce.
Sammy Wink
Yeah, and not just incompetent, but surly.
Victor Davis Hanson
And surely like going to Arrogant a few years ago, going to the Readley. Oh, I shouldn't say that, really. California DMV and waiting, waiting in line and seeing everybody there with a purple T shirt on that said SEIU Service Employees Union. And so what am I? And I said to them, do you really? I said, I've been waiting for about an hour and I had an appointment and all I wanted to do was just correct an improper registration name that you put David for Davis. And I had been pulled over and a cop said, victor Davis. It was in a license or something. And I said. And they said. And I said, do you think that's right to wear union? You know, advocacies at a public place? And she said, how. How eager are you to be served?
Sammy Wink
At least she was honest.
Victor Davis Hanson
She was honest.
Sammy Wink
All right. Thank you, Victor, for all the wisdom today and all the great ideas.
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everybody for listening and viewing. See you next time.
Sammy Wink
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off.
The Victor Davis Hanson Show: Episode Summary
Episode Title: Hunter, Barry, Ozzy, & Candace
Release Date: July 25, 2025
Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler
Co-host: Sammy Wink
Timestamp: [00:31] – [08:23]
Victor Davis Hanson delves into Hunter Biden’s recent interview with Gen Z influencer Andrew Callahan. Hunter’s remarks suggested that crack cocaine was "pure and better" than other substances, which Hanson criticizes heavily.
Notable Quotes:
Hanson outlines various allegations from Hunter’s laptop, including drug use, sexual misconduct, and questionable financial dealings, portraying Hunter as "addled" and a potential liability to the Biden administration.
Timestamp: [08:31] – [16:55]
The discussion shifts to Tulsi Gabbard’s recent claims that Russiagate was a manufactured scandal orchestrated by the Obama administration. Hanson critiques Obama’s handling of intelligence assessments during his transition period.
Notable Quotes:
Hanson argues that Obama manipulated intelligence to delegitimize Trump, comparing the situation to past scandals like Iran Contra and Watergate, and expressing skepticism about the possibility of indictments for those involved.
Timestamp: [18:30] – [30:51]
Hanson addresses the theories surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s death, questioning whether it was a suicide or a conspiracy. He speculates on Epstein’s motives and the plausibility of foul play within the prison system.
Notable Quotes:
Hanson suggests that Epstein’s death was likely a suicide given his circumstances and the risks he faced in prison, while addressing parallels with other high-profile individuals who have overcome substance abuse.
Timestamp: [23:36] – [28:30]
The hosts discuss a memo from the House Judiciary Committee alleging that the Biden-Harris administration, along with the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, funded both pro- and anti-Netanyahu organizations in Israel.
Notable Quotes:
Hanson criticizes the Democratic Party’s historical and ongoing interference in Israeli politics, drawing comparisons to past actions by Clinton and labeling current efforts as hypocritical.
Timestamp: [42:56] – [48:28]
Hanson contrasts the intense focus on Israel with the disregard for other global human rights crises, such as the plight of the Uyghurs and domestically ignored issues like illegal occupations and genocides.
Notable Quotes:
He attributes this selective attention to antisemitism and the political strength of pro-Israel sentiments within the Democratic Party, arguing that other significant human rights issues are systematically ignored.
Timestamp: [30:51] – [38:24]
The conversation shifts to the Democratic Party’s struggle with its public image, highlighting statements from representatives like Elisa Slotkin about lacking “alpha energy” and fear of an “unhinged base.”
Notable Quotes:
Hanson critiques Democratic leaders for disassociating from more forceful, charismatic figures, leading to a perception of weakness and ineffectiveness. He discusses the party’s reliance on labels like “fascist” to undermine opponents, suggesting a strategy aimed at diminishing figures like Donald Trump.
Timestamp: [38:24] – [41:31]
Hanson evaluates Rand Paul’s initiative to challenge the legality of Joe Biden’s use of the auto pin for executive actions and the potential prosecution of Anthony Fauci for alleged misconduct.
Notable Quotes:
He discusses the complexities of proving such allegations, emphasizing the unusual frequency of auto pin usage under Biden and the potential for uncovering improper influence if investigations proceed.
Timestamp: [48:28] – [50:45]
Candace Owens is reportedly sued by French President Emmanuel Macron for defamatory claims about Macron’s personal life and gender identity. Hanson criticizes Owens for spreading unfounded rumors without evidence.
Notable Quotes:
Hanson dismisses the allegations against Macron as baseless and highlights the problematic nature of spreading such rumors without substantive proof, questioning Owens’ motives for seeking internet attention.
Timestamp: [50:45] – [54:22]
The host reflects on the passing of rock icon Ozzy Osbourne, discussing his legacy, personal struggles with substance abuse, and resilience despite his challenges.
Notable Quotes:
Hanson admires Ozzy’s affable nature and enduring legacy in rock music, while pondering the paradox of substance abuse and longevity, referencing other artists like Willie Nelson and Neil Young.
Timestamp: [55:00] – [62:58]
The show features audience comments praising Victor’s ability to distill complex information into understandable segments. Victor shares a personal story about growing up with limited news exposure, contrasting it with today’s information overload.
Notable Quotes:
Hanson emphasizes the importance of focusing on significant issues like the economy, military, and foreign policy, rather than sensationalist stories about celebrities. He also shares his own health struggles, highlighting resilience and personal challenges.
Timestamp: [62:58] – [63:01]
The episode concludes with gratitude towards listeners and a preview of upcoming topics, including Trump’s successes and further discussions on judicial matters and international relations.
Critique of Hunter Biden: Hanson presents a highly critical view of Hunter Biden’s personal and professional conduct, emphasizing the potential threats his actions pose to the Biden administration.
Skepticism of Russiagate: The hosts express strong skepticism towards the Russiagate narrative, suggesting it was a politically motivated effort to undermine Donald Trump.
Selective Foreign Policy Focus: There is a clear criticism of the U.S. focus on Israel at the expense of other significant human rights issues globally.
Democratic Party Weaknesses: The Democratic Party is portrayed as struggling with its public image, lacking assertive leadership, and relying on negative labeling of opponents.
Legal and Ethical Concerns: Discussions around the use of auto pins and potential legal actions against figures like Anthony Fauci highlight ongoing political and ethical debates.
Cultural Commentary: Reflections on public figures like Candace Owens and Ozzy Osbourne offer insights into cultural and societal impacts of their actions and legacies.
This episode provides a comprehensive critique of current political dynamics, emphasizing concerns about integrity, governance, and media influence, while offering personal reflections and engaging with audience feedback.