← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
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- [00:00]
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- [01:34]
Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. This is our weekend episode where we do something a little bit different in the middle segment and Victor's looking at 1945, World War II, the end of World War II today, so exciting moment for our historical study and we'll do more news first. And of course the Iran Israeli war is at top of the agenda. We got lots more questions. I know we treated it on Friday, but we're gonna do it again in just a few minutes after this message.
- [02:09]
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- [03:14]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. So Victor, there's lots, there's so many things to ask you about, but maybe I'll start with the media coverage of the war in the war on Iran by Israel and that is that the Wall Street Journal has reported by three anonymous sources that Donald Trump has approved and a plan to attack Iran. And Donald Trump replied with the Wall Street Journal doesn't know anything that he's talking about.
- [03:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, there's two things. Carolyn Levette said that he was going to make a decision in the next two weeks. Well, he's, what I think they're saying is he's already decided on a plan. Doesn't mean he's adopted the plan yet. He's ready to go and he's moving assets in the region, tankers, fighters, bombers, carrier task forces. So we'll just see in the next two weeks. And what is he waiting for? Well, what he's waiting for is the maximum amount of damage that the Israelis can do, both to ensure the air defenses of Iran are non existent and they have gone from air superiority to air supremacy. There are some rumors out that the Israelis themselves, under pressure from Trump, are in talks with General Kurilla about mechanisms that they could take out some of the more difficult nuclear facilities that are under 100 yards of solid rock. And what do I mean by that? Either drop commandos in, I think that would, they would not have much chance of surprise. It's a Texas sized country with over 90 million people or they have. In Afghanistan, the United States dropped a mother of all bombs. It wasn't a bunker buster, but it was very heavy. From a C130 they can carry £40,000. So maybe the Israelis are thinking if we have air supremacy, a slow moving 250 mile an hour, 130 flying at 30,000ft at night or something might make it through. And they could drop one. Maybe they could, they could at least drop one and have two or three of them in succession. So they're thinking of ways to handle the possibility that the United States will not intervene in the next two weeks. I don't think anybody knows what we're going to do Donald Trump is trying to deal with the apostates and his administration. The Wall Street Journal, of all the organs of news on the center right, they have the least insight into the Trump administration because they have been so negative. I mean, every single initiative, trade tariffs, oh, recession, recession, recession, unemployment, unemployment, unemployment, inflation, inflation, inflation. DONALD Trump this. And they've been wrong on every single one. But we saw the May statistics. There has been a monthly rate of inflation that dropped to the lowest in four years. There's been an increase in personal income, personal savings. There's been good GDP growth. There's been everything that you would want, and yet you never see that in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. So I think when Donald Trump said they don't know what they're talking about, that reflected a larger disdain for them. And when you look at, as I've said on these videos, when you look at the bylines of the reporters and you click them on and you want to see where they came from, where they gravitated, you can see a shift in the Wall Street Journal. I don't know which of the Murdoch sians is running it, but someone has moved it to the left because they are drawing reporters and their news divisions from Politico, Washington Post, New York Times, Atlantic. And it's noticeable. So they're not going to have any influence. They're not going to be a receptacle of leaks. The only other thing, very quickly is it is a mistake to think that someone in the administration, in the media or in the MAGA movement is so close to Donald Trump, is so protected that they can publicly either leak or attack him. I like Tulsi Gabbard. I've met her, I've been on a venue with her. I think she's great. But when she gave that assessment that Iran was not immediately going to make a bomb, that was belied by a lot of other intelligence networks in Europe, in Israel and our own. But more importantly, when someone leaked that she might resign, might resign if he does use force, I don't know if that's true or not, but that was a leak. And more importantly, when she gave that report, I'm glad that it's independent, it's not weaponized, but that's not Donald Trump said he just ignored her and she's on the outs. And I like, as I said, I've got a lot of criticism from people on the right. I like, I mean, on the, I guess you'd call it the center, right? I like Tucker Carlson. I was on his show mostly Monday nights right after prime time on the A block. But when he says that Donald Trump is going to lose his administration by belying MAGA and you factor in the fact that they leaked those dominion lawsuit comments he made that he couldn't stand Donald Trump, I think that was. He said that two days before January 6 and then he had to say in this debate with Ted Cruz, it was a fascinating debate. They both went at it that he loves Donald Trump but when that leak gets to Donald Trump, that's why Donald Trump used the word kooky. He's a kooky. Donald Trump is absolutely transactional. He does not care what you think your relationship is with him. If you leak and if you attack him publicly, whether I don't know justifiably or not, he's going to reply and he's going to remember it. And so that's he said in the comment, I've never been more popular with a MAGA base. I looked at most of the polls. He's right. The MAGA base is the MAGA people who identify @maga overwhelmingly 60 whether which poll you read? It depends. 60 to 70% support United States help to Israel and the United States possible one or two time strike on them.
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Sammy Wink
So what you just said reminded me of interview that I saw and I'm sorry, I can't remember the guy who was talking but he said that they were asking him about the current events in Iran and he said that the Iranians didn't read the Art of the Deal. Donald Trump offers his best deal the first time and after that they're not going to get as good of a deal. And that was a really.
- [10:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
When I wrote the case for Trump, I think I read the Art of the Deal, the Art of the Comeback. I think there were nine books in that series and it's just sort of a textbook about what he does. Notice that he hasn't really trashed the Iranians as they deserve. He said, well I want to negotiate. They should have took the deal. I said 60 days and they didn't do it. But you read the Art of the Deal. It's very interesting. He says that you go in and you just demand the world but you have a pre determined level of advantage, let's say 55% in your interest but you want 90 and you scream and you yell and you threaten and you get maybe 54% and then you cut the deal and then you lament that you were taken. But you never ever attack your former adversary. You praise him. That's what he does with Putin. Everybody said he's a Putin puppet because he. No, no, no, no, no. He's trying to be transactional with Putin and the same thing with the Iranians. He could have said all sorts of things about him. He said, I want him to negotiate, we can negotiate. It's not as crazy as you think because there are a lot of scenarios for the end game of this war. The only end game that will be acceptable to Israel is or a, there can be no nuclear infrastructure remaining. Doesn't mean they can't in a future time rebuild it. But for these foreseeable five to 10 years, there will be no ability to make a bomb. Number two, there will be no fissionable material, enriched uranium or plutonium derivatives that can make a bomb anywhere. And the present government not only will not be there, but a replacement like it will not be there. Now, Israel can't determine that because that has to come from the Iranian people. But those are its three war aims, our war aims. As I understand the Trump administration, strategically we're parallel to them. We want an end to all of the nuclear material and all of the nuclear facilities, but we don't want to ourselves, if we can help it, go in and take them out. So we want a mechanism of the Israelis to come up with their usual brilliance and figure it out how to do it. There was a column today by Michael Oren. He was the ambassador from Israel. He was a brilliant author of Six Days of War about the Six Day War. He had the same literary agent as I did and he said, looking for Obama or anybody, I mean, just give us, can we lease, can we buy an old B52? And that got people really enraged. Why would we give you a strategic bomber? But one thing I don't understand about the Israelis and they spend, I don't know what they are, 60 to 70 million dollars for F35 and maybe, I don't know, for a souped up F16 or F15, 30, 40 million. Can't they get some type of either a C130 or C17, some type of civilian plane like an old 747 and refit it as a bomber because they need one or two of them because this is going to come up again and if they had that, they would be successful.
- [13:54]
Sammy Wink
Well, I was looking today at the Times of Israel, which is not necessarily a right wing paper, but they were talking about Mossad. I don't know if you saw the article, but just how the recent leader of Mossad, David Barnea, has really transformed it and they were. They didn't quite say this, but it led to this conclusion that he made this whole attack possible. All the work that Mossad did.
- [14:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think. Because the difference is that under his direction, he assumes there's going to be a war. Now, they missed October 7th, but he assumes there's going to be a war. Then the next question he asks himself is, what can intelligence authorities do to aid the war effort? I don't mean by gathering intelligence, I mean actual detriment to the enemy. And so then he places operatives years ahead, years ahead, inside Iran, dissidents and pays them. I don't know how they do it. I don't know how they got the drones in. They say they put them in crates, they put them in trucks. They land them. Do they go out to the desert? Do they go through a neighboring country? Do they work with dissidents? I don't know how they do it. But on the first day of the war, those drones took out a lot of Iranian defense capability. And more importantly, they have wiped out 20 of the top military leaders. They had to know where they were. They had to know where they sleep. They know exactly where the physicists were. They took out probably 15 of them, and they know where Khamenei is. And now that he attacked a hospital, I'm sure they're going to take him out. I don't think people would be necessarily in Iran upset about it, but I do think if we do intervene, it will try. Tom Cotton in 2024 had a very mercurial, irate exchange with Lloyd Austin. And he said to him at one time, how many times has Iran attacked us in Jordan, Syria and Iraq, our installations? 70, maybe? I think actually the number is 200. And he said, how many times have we responded? Well, you know, we responded different. How many times? Five. And so what he was getting at is that Iran, through its surrogates, has an ability to attack. Not, I think they killed three Americans and they injured some, but they have an ability to attack these people. And I just like to editorialize for our audience here for a second. I don't want to go back and blame prior administrations, but if you look at the root of this entire fiasco of 47 years, six years of this evil regime, it was Jimmy Carter. He was President of the United States when we had an ally. Yes, he was autocratic. Yes, he was right wing. Yes, there was savak. But compared to the alternative in the region, he was modern. He was pro Western. He helped us with the Straits of Hormuz he guaranteed oil for us, he was a solid ally. Jimmy Carter fell for that European. Michel Foucault Francisco. French fascination with Khomeni. And the French flew Khomeni in there with his cassettes. And when they took those hostages and they attacked or that was an act of war. And he had the ability to really hurt that regime. He could have bombed their oil. He could have bombed their military bases and given them a lesson. It's a very dangerous. I also have some criticism of Ronald Reagan when they blew up the Marine barracks in Lebanon and the US Embassy and we just lobbed some military. I think the New Jersey or the Iowa shelled the Becca Valley. That was not enough. And they were mirrored. And then when you have Joe Biden, who took the terrorist designation away from the new Houthis, first thing he did, oh, they're not terrorists. Then they started up again, and then we had these attacks on our installations. He didn't reply to them. And then he begged and begged. Please, please, can we get back in the Iran deal? Oh, you need some money. Here's $100 billion for your future of oil revenue sales to China. Oh, Hezbollah. Well, we'll negotiate with him. Maybe we'll take Hezbollah's side on who really owns offshore gas with the Israelis in their fight. Oh, Turkey objects to the pipeline, the med pipeline. Oh, we'll go against our own allies, Israel and Cyprus, and side with Turkey and cancel it. But we'll say it's cl. It was just systematic, repetitive cereal. All they did was make as much daylight between themselves and Israel and pander and appease Iran and its tentacles. And this is what we got. And sometimes I get irritated. When I don't get irritated, I get amused. When Carolyn, I like her so much. She's so self assured, she's so beautiful. She's so poised. And I look at the faces of the left wing people like, why isn't she uglier? Why isn't she older? Why doesn't she make mistakes? Why is she so confident? Why does she praise Donald Trump? But when I see all of those, you know, the Trump reinforcement, that everything. And I think they've got a real. I don't. I kind of get angry. I'm trying to stumble a minute. My first impulse is just get over Joe Biden. Because Carol, it's like a little speck. She starts to speak and she says, and Donald Trump. And this was because of the derelict Biden administration. Then Trump goes, he starts talking about the Houthis and he said, well, we've had we cut a deal with them. And I'm not going to talk the Red Sea, but it was the awful Biden. You know, he was the worst president. Biden did that to Trump, only he did it with the FBI. And then Trump said, there's something that was really funny the other day. They asked him about his attitude about his enemies, more or less. And he said I was the hunted and now I'm the hunter that sent everybody crazy because he's been hunted. He still is being hunted by the media.
- [20:20]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, he sure is. Well, Victor, let's take a moment for a message and then we'll get back to to the Iran war. I would like to take a moment for Vibrance. I found the secret to all in one serum and it's Vibrance Super C serum, which in fact I do use and love. The ingredients in this one bottle can replace your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams and dark spot reducers. Made in the usa with the highest quality ingredients, including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, acid, vitamin B5 and vitamin E, Super C serum delivers noticeable results. Simplify your skin care routine, get a healthier complexion and minimize wrinkles and age spots with Vibrance. And if you don't find it better than your current skincare routine, you'll get a full refund. Go to vibrance.com victor to save up to 37% off and free shipping. That's Vibrance V I B R I A n c e vibrance.com Victor and we're happy they returned as a sponsor to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor, I just want to ask you about China and Europe before we go on to World War II. China. Apparently there was a transport plane that was lost from radar right around the Iranian region. So we're not sure if China is trying to stealthily.
- [21:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
It was supposed to be going to Luxembourg.
- [21:53]
Sammy Wink
Yes.
- [21:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I guess a Chinese part owner was a Chinese firm or consortium and it disappeared. So we can imagine what that was. They were either sending, I don't think they were sending fissionable material, but who knows? They were probably sending more drones or missile guidance systems, something. I mean, they buy, As I said, 50% of the middle east oil. Before Trump came in under Biden, they were buying 90% of Iranian oil and they were part of the Russian, Iranian, North Korean axis. The problem with it is three of them are nuclear and Iran may or may not be. So that is something we have to watch when we have Nuclear Russia, nuclear China, and then crazy nuclear North Korea and crazy almost nuclear are around. Their basic attitude is we think you're stupid. This is their view of the United States. We think you're stupid. We think you're decadent. We think you don't earn your riches and you shouldn't be any competitor of ours. We're smarter than you are, we're better than you are. We're more numerous than you are. We're going to destroy you someday, but for some weird reason, you have more power than we do, and that's not fair. So we're going to do everything we can to hurt you. We're going to send people in with fungus to destroy your crops. We're going to send people to Reedley, California, who will have all sorts of weird strains of viva and bacteria. We're going to send drones, probably off the coast to test your defense. We're going to send a balloon. We don't think you're going to do anything. We're going to send 300,000 students and 290,000 of them are going to appropriate your technology. They're not going to be spies, but they're going to come back and help us. 10% are 10,000 more than that. Well, you know, maybe 30,000. I don't know. 10,000, 20,000 are going to be actively engaged with intelligence for China, and that's their attitude. And if you. Then when you bite back, you're a racist yellow peril of the 19th century. Oh, no, no, no, no. We helped you in World War II and then you turned on us and got a communist government and killed a lot of us in Korea and created this North Korean monstrosity. They're capable of anything. Anything. And I won't even get into the lab. Origins of Wuhan. Best case scenario, that the Chinese People Liberation army, who controlled the lab, gave a contract to a civilian pro, you know, affiliated group to make a virus and a vaccination experiment and gain and function and get all the information you could after stupid idiotic naives like Peter Dasick at Echo Health and Fauci and Michael Cole. And the worst, it was a bioweapon and they didn't. Maybe. And the worst, worst, it got out because of lax security. And the worst, worst, worst, worst, conspiratorial perhaps, is they let it out. Or if they didn't let it out, as soon as it was out, they let it spread and shut down all flights from Wuhan domestically and let people from Wuhan go all over Europe and the United States for two weeks.
- [25:23]
Sammy Wink
And now they think we're still stupid because they've had students bring in a fungus that could cause blight in our staple crops. They are buying land near our.
- [25:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
I shouldn't say they do. That's what they did under Biden.
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Sammy Wink
Yes.
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Victor Davis Hanson
That balloon should have been blown up the first moment it got into Alaskan airspace. And we didn't do anything. Just as a point of honor, you know.
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Sammy Wink
So let me go to the last thing here or the second thing. The Europeans, apparently France, has intimated that they want to have the European powers resolve this Israel, Iran war. And Macron is leading that, number one. And then we've had in Britain a bunch of actors and people in the entertainment community that are trying to pressure their Prime Minister Starmer to start stop selling arms to Israel. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts on European responses.
- [26:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, the French kicked out the Israeli arms merchants at their international arms show. I think the Israelis, when they left, they left a little sign, if you're interested, look at what we're doing against Iran, or turn on the TV and see our weapons. Something to that effect. They go way back with Iran. I mean, they. They're neo imperialists. They always were. They divided up Sykes, Picot, they divided up, you know, they got Lebanon, they got Syria, the British got Iraq and Egypt, Jordan. And they feel they have a special historical tie to the Middle East. And they think that they're sort of Greek philosophers and were Roman legionnaires. So we are the muscle, but we're stupid and they're smart, but they're too moral to have armies and militaries. So in their way of thinking, Macron is. Well, I shall come to you, Donald, and I will give you a plan that our beautiful intellectuals have thought up. And you and your. I don't know what you call them, the B1, the B2. I don't know what they are, but you just go do it according to our direction. That's how they think. And they're nuts. They have no power. Their economies are ossified and fossilized. Only thing I'm curious of, in the G7, the Italian Prime Minister was rolling her eyes to Macron. And I think. We think it's because he said something stupid. I think it was because Donald Trump was leaving and she thought that was psychodrama or something. Oh, wow, here's Trump again. She should not do that.
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Sammy Wink
Should not do that.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Italy is not necessarily critical to the economic or military health of the United States, as beautiful as it is. And how much. We all love Italy. Nevertheless, if that's true.
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Sammy Wink
Yes. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back for 1945 in World War II. And we'll probably come back to a few of these things in our third segment. But stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [28:33]
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Victor Davis Hanson
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- [30:07]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I forgot at the beginning to tell everybody, especially new people, who Victor is. He is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institute and the Wayne and Marshavosky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. He has a website where you can find all his works. So he writes articles and books and does podcasts. So you can find him in all sorts of formats at his website, which is victorhanson.com and the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. Please come join us there.
- [30:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. Today is seven days ago to this very hour I had my operation.
- [30:48]
Sammy Wink
And you look great. To tell you the truth, you know.
- [30:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
It'S kind of gross. I had to have some diseased bone taken out. So it was a little bit more complicated and longer. But I'm a little bit fatigued and debilitated. But the doctor was very good. You know, they encourage nasal washes. So I keep doing it. You have to be careful not to do it too much blow, but you get drainage. But apparently I had four months of. What's the word for impolite conversation. Precious bodily fluids, Elmer paste that was glued in there, that could not get out. And I had no opening whatsoever. So antibiotics, nothing would work. But now that he drilled these holes and he cut out this bone, it's starting to drill. But what's coming out is all of a sudden I sneezed and it looked like black cherry jello. I mean, it was just gross. It was so massive. And I thought, wow, I wonder if I should call him then. I remember the last time I had an operation, he had told me that if the color is black, it's dead, you know, dry. It's there. So what I'm getting at is that I think when you do steam and eddy wash and all that stuff, the opening now he had to open it again. It had a scab on my five day follow up. But I'm thinking it's starting to come out, whatever it is, and if it comes out, I'll get my energy back.
- [32:16]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. So for all of those who are oogie about precious bodily fluids like I am, I apologize for Victor's description of things. But we'll get to World War II now. So Victor, the end of the war. So happy that.
- [32:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, it had been decided in the winter of 45, the Yalta agreement, that a couple of things were decided that are quite controversial because Alger Hirs's people were there that Germany would be divided. And we argued for French zone. So the French, British and Americans would form independent zones. Of course, they would absorb each other and become West Germany. But Russia would get the eastern part. But more importantly, Russia would get Berlin and Ike. And everybody said that was a good idea that Roosevelt had done. Roosevelt would die in April. So he was so sick. But I think if we had gone in with the third army from the Czechoslovakia, then they wouldn't have resisted us and we wouldn't have had the problem with the Berlin airlift. So my point is there were decisions made at Potsdam that reflected the realities on the ground, and I mean at Yalta. And the reality of the ground was that we had about 120 divisions. We, the British, Canadians, the Americans, and they had about 400. We were supplying 25% of their logistical capability that to Russia. So what happened in 1945? There was one last gas. In December, Everybody remember the German army went into complete radio silence. And they decided, General Halder and Keitel, mostly Halder and von Rundstedt, etc. They said the Allies are moving at a more rapid pace to get into Germany than even the Russians are. And they are a more existential threat. They're into Belgium, they're in the Ardennes, and they're coming into Germany and they will come right through the Rhine. We have to stop them. So there was this idea that if they waited till snow and they could go complete radio silence, the ally air superiority would not be a factor. And in snowy conditions, they could surprise two green divisions and head all the way to Antwerp and cut the British off from the Americans and destroy the logistical capability and then super peace. It's a crazy idea, but for the first week in the Battle of Bulge, it worked. And they really. It was our worst experience in Europe. The sad thing about it was the third army was heading toward. In September, it was heading toward the Rhine. It would have been there. And we diverted in late 44 for the market Garden catastrophe of Montgomery. The idea you were going to take leapfrog with 101st, the 82nd and the 1st British Parachute Division, leapfrog over the tributaries of the Rhine into the Ruhr. It was a crazy idea. Anybody looks at that road will see it was impossible. But they diverted all this equipment and wherewithal from the third and first Armies so they couldn't reach the Rhine. But here's my point. As this bulge developed, Patton then was ordered to cut it off, get to Bastogne. But the idea was he was going to go in the middle of the Bulge, and then the American reinforcements would take the tip of the Bulge and push it back. He wanted to go all the way at the base, cut it off at the base. And they said, well, you can't do that because he had said the same thing at the Falaise Gap, cut it off at the base and then trap the whole quarter million people. And they wouldn't let him do that. It would have been risky because the balloon could have broken. But the point is that when you look at Bastogne and the casualties before Bastogne, Christmas Day of 1944, and the casualties after, till they got back all the ground, they lost more people from Christmas to January 25th than they did at the beginning of the German campaign. Once that was exhausted, they really had no fresh troops. So then in March, they went over the Rhine, they had the Remagen Bridge. Patton bridged it. Montgomery had some kind of crazy, you know, ceremonial. He had artillery strikes, bombing parachutes. And Patton kind of called up Bradley. I sneaked across last night. And then they just were unleashed. And they had fought and General Model had held them back, and the Battle of Bulge had held them. And then they just went wild in March and April, and they got into the Elbe river in March and that was it. At that point they had about five to 10, more like 10,000 bombers, Lancasters, which had a huge payload, £15,000. They had B17s, they had B24s, they had B26s and B25 medium bombs. What do you do with all of them? So there was this idea that you could transfer this over to the Pacific. And the British fleet was now freed up. And there were this, you know, a million and a half men in Europe, battle trained veterans. And many of them were going to be designated to invade Japan. So Operation Coronet and Intrepid said that in late November 1945, we were going to invade Honshu. And then we were going to go and march into the main island. And so lame why this was happening. We invaded on April Fool's Day of Okinawa. And we thought after Iwo Jima and Taro, we had it down. Everything went great in the Pacific. 6 Marine Division. It was a special division of people that had college degrees. Some of the old breed from the 1st Division were training them. Crack Division. They had their 1st Marine Division, probably the most formidable group of people ever fought for America, who had fought so gallantly at Guadalcanal and elsewhere. And they landed in Okinawa. They mopped it up, and then they didn't realize what was going on. The Japanese were born burrowed in coral, reinforced, and they wanted them to come in. And then the fleet came in and they unleashed 7,000, 7,000 kamikazes and they sunk 17 ships. They killed 5,000 sailors, and they killed about 8,000 Marines and Army, 12,000. Total casualties were probably 40 to 50,000 wounded, missing. And that thing went on all the way to July. Officially it was declared secure, I think in mid June, but there was still action. And then the highest ranking officer in the Pacific, Simon Bolivar Bunker Buckler, excuse me, he got killed. He was watching it, the mop up. It was almost the battle was over. People were criticizing him. They said, why didn't you let the Marines have amphibious landings to get around the Shuri line? And why did you send the Marines head on against, against the Japanese? They were dug in and he was a good guy. And anyway, a isolated remnant vestigial, I think it was a mortar or an artillery round hit some coral and that sliver went right through a group of people around, I don't mean through their bodies, but right, the only possible trajectory. And they hit him and killed him. And my grandfather, who was very much, you could tell he was Swedish, had a very thick. He and his father, his father and mother had come over. I think he was born as soon as they got in the United States, she was pregnant. And you know, I would, when I was talking about Victor Hanson I was named after, he'd always say, ah, he's a Marine, he was a Marine. And they just go head on. Why do they go head on? They go head on, they kick, get them kill. He did. He was very bitter his whole life, very proud, but very bitter. And then after you take Okinawa, you see everything changed. The British were responsible for reclaiming Burma and they were going to. Then we have two, we have landed in the Philippines. That was a horrific battle at Manila. And then you have a problem and that is how do you end the war in the Pacific with Japan? Japan had about 6 million soldiers and civilian National Guards people. They had 8 to 9,000 planes and most of them were kamikaze. They were much more effective than a cruise missile with a 500 pound bomb. And the range is doubled because you don't have to go back and you've got all these ships sitting around and then you look at where you're going to have to stage off. Okinawa. And Okinawa cost 50,000 casualties and this was nothing compared to invading. So everybody was thinking, how are we going to solve this problem? We're going to lose a million at least. And I think they would have. So then we did a dumb thing at Yalta, excuse me, at Potsdam in July, we looked at this and we let the Soviets. We thought that since the Soviet army was idle, we thought, well maybe you can help us so we don't have to invade Japan maybe. And all they Said was, yeah, we'll take Korea, North Korea, we'll take Manchuria, we'll take some Sakhlan Islands. That was a really dumb thing to do because we could have handled it. And there were two poles of thought. There was the Manhattan Project. The billion dollar wasn't the most important expensive, but it was connected. The B29 was two and a half billion in $1945. So we had the plane that could carry 20,000 pounds. And so this project is working at tinian, where the 509th was based. It was working parallel to Curtis LeMay. Curtis LeMay said we don't need. He didn't know what it was, but he was very angry afterwards because he looked at the map where Okinawa was and he had about 22, 2300 B29s on the Marianas, Tinian, Saipan and Guam. But they had to fly 1600 miles one way and then go back and they only had fuel for about 20 minutes over to. And they were mining harbors, they were bombing secondary targets. But he had an April, he thought, within a month. And the Seabees were building runways before Okinawa was declared secure. So by July he had these huge runways under construction. And his eyes got big. He thought, we have another 2000 B29s on order from the United States. But more importantly, the British wanted in. They've got land, that was a wonderful plane. And then we've got the B17s and B24s. He goes through talking about 5, 6, 8, 10,000 bombers and not going three or four times a week, but going twice a day at only 360. So in his view he could have. And when he was envisioning this, he had been bombing since March 11th. So by the end of the European war in May 12th, he had all of April for 60 days they had burned Japan with napalm. And by mid summer you could argue that 65% of the industrial capacity of Japan was over with and the major cities, with the exception of Kyoto, was in ruins. And yet he said afterwards, we did not have to invade, not because of the atomic bomb, but because my bomber force. B29s, new bid. Mariana, B29s, new B29s, 17s, 24s, Lancaster, everything. I could have just saturated the skies. A final thing is really important. In 1945, when we achieved air supremacy in Europe, all those Americans and British, probably 80,000 had died from 39 all the way, in the case of the British, to 43, 44 and ours 42, 43, 44. They finally mastered strategic bombing. And they did it by, in the case of the Americans, by not being committed or wedded to precision Norden site bombing, but following the British area bombing and having fighter escort. And then brilliant Jimmy Doodle in charge of fighter escort, letting the fighters detach and go after Germans. But what I'll just finish with. We always think that the Americans won the war with quantity and not quality. And the Germans were technicians and they over engineered and the Russians just wanted mass. So their T34s or their tank destroyer, they were massive Katush, that's all true. But when you actually look at what the Americans did, they were very technologically superior. The Essex carrier was the most deadly ship in the world. And we had about 25 of them, 28,000 ton carriers, wonderful carriers. We had the P47 workhorse Thunderbolt. It had a supercharger, it was indestructible. And then we had the P51, we put a Rolls Royce liquid cooled engine into it. And the P51 Mustang was as good or better than the Focke Wulf 190. And they were even shooting down misherschmitt jets for a while. And then in the Pacific we came out with a Corsair and the British loved it, they used it on their carriers. And we had the Hellcat, this big huge fighter that was better than anything the Japanese had in quantity. And when you look at the Iowa class battleships, it was the best battleship in the world. North Carolina had been good. You look at destroyers, cruisers, submarines, our submarines were better than the U boats. But weirdest of all was Liberty ships which were hastily put together. They could build them in a week. We built over 3,000 cargo ships. We finally came up with these Victory ships, sophisticated big cargo ships. And we were building them every two weeks. They were brilliant. And that's not even talking about discoveries like the atomic bomb and sophisticated American radar. We adapted from the British and improved. And proximity shells on artillery. We invented that. The idea that if you're in a foxhole in the old days, the shell had the shrapnel would hit and would go along the surface so you were safe. But the idea that you could put a kind of a barometer type device and calibrate when it would explode, so you were exploding 10, 20, 50, 100ft to above and it would kill everybody. Horrific weapon. So all those things came out of American engineering and we made the best at the end of the war, I think you could say in quantity we had the best plane. I mean the jets were a German invention and rocketry. But if you look at the most lethal, most of the best, and you look at everything, even the Sherman tank has been unfairly derided. It was not a main battle tank. You had to ship it overseas. It couldn't be 40, 50 tons like a Tiger II or something, but it was durable, it was reliable, it could be up gunned, it could be adapted for anything. And we made almost 45,000 I think of them. And then the final thing is that that was the, as I said earlier, the worst part of the war. So so many families got people, they thought the war was over or going to be over very quickly after we crossed the Rhine and they had no idea. February was Iwo Jima, but April was Okinawa. That was the worst battle of the entire Pacific War for us. And then it was too bad that all these people got killed. And then we brought the Russians in. And then as soon as we brought the Russians in, within a year after the war, we realized that we went into over freedom in Eastern Europe. That's what caused the war with the invasion of Poland. And we ended up guaranteeing they didn't have any. And I don't know what the solution was. One final thing. Churchill was the one who started the idea that you talk to the Russians and you use them. See, we weren't in the war when Russia invaded on June 22 of 1940. But he said I would enlist Satan himself if he would help me kill Germans. So he was very real politic. He hated Stalin, he hated communism, but he was a visionary and he understood that if the Red army could be armed and be an ally, a lot of people said, just back off. Germany's not in the west anymore. They're fighting only in the east. They have one front. Just let them go and these two horrific regimes will just kill each other. But he understood that Germany was an existential threat closer to Britain. And it was even more evil given the death camps. And he had. So anyway, that strategy that I'm making, that I'm critiquing of welcoming the Soviets given the Cold War, there was a logic to it. Of the 5 million people in the German army, 75% were killed on the Russian front. And that cost them 27 million people. And that's why World War I, all of the Americans and all the British killed in World War II were less than the British lost alone in World War I. And we lost, you know, we were in a horrific war for four years and we lost 117,000 in World War I. But I think we only lost in combat about 420,000. So that was an amazing achievement given that the people we had to defeat and make unconditionally surrender. When Trump said the only thing he's going to ask the Iranians is unconditional surrender, I thought is a US Grant, what were your terms? Unconditional surrender? Fort Donelson and Fort Henry. And then. So I think he's. Trump always references two generals as his heroes. One, I think, quite justifiably Patton. But he likes MacArthur, too. MacArthur is a much more problematic general than Patton. I'm not talking about personality or hysterics, but just his record compared to Patton.
- [51:55]
Sammy Wink
So I have a question then. Given the war we're in currently, it seems that when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, the Emperor didn't respond quickly or for whatever reason and accept that these Western powers had something much more powerful than his whole country could resist.
- [52:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
He did it pretty quickly. I mean, it was sixth and ninth.
- [52:19]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [52:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
I mean, they were pretty much within a week or two, they were in negotiations to quit. He had almost a coup by the military that wanted to hijack kidnap him. But I know the Official date was September 2nd, but if you look at what they were actually doing, they were pretty much resigned to it. And later afterwards, by the way, they didn't say that the atomic bomb is what forced them. They said that they weren't not able to fight much longer because of the firebombing.
- [52:53]
Sammy Wink
Well, that may well be true, but then they waited a second atomic bomb was dropped on them, and then they said, okay, let's surrender. Is there any comparison to the Ayatollah Khomeini?
- [53:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, they're both fanatics, aren't they?
- [53:07]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And you would think he has seen what Israel can do. He better start looking at the negotiating table.
- [53:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, the difference is that Japan was a country of about 65 or 70 million people, and we were a country of 140 million. And the Soviet Union was 240 million, and Britain was 70, 60 million. So when Japan looked around and looked at all, there was no more Germany or Italy. There was overwhelming odds everywhere. But what the Iranians are looking at, we got 90 plus million people. We're the size of Texas. Look at this little Israel. 10 million people, and there's 500 million Muslims surrounding it. So at some point, Hezbollah will arise from the ashes, the Houthis will, Hamas will come back, the Palestinian Authority, Syria will. They have all these dreams that they have, all of the advantages of demography and area resources. And wealth. And they just can't believe that these brilliant Israelis are beating them because they're, I mean, you think about it, they've only got, it's kind of like Colorado fighting, you know, Iran. They don't have that much resources and yet, I mean, just think of the wear and tear they have about 400 F16s, F35s. Just think of the wear of tear, of flying. It's like flying from San Francisco, I don't know, all the way to the eastern Texas border every night. I mean, the wear and tear on the engines and all, they're really going. And I don't know how they have any replacements for those. They've had 500 projectiles sent at them. And think of all the anti aircraft munitions they've had, rockets they've had to put up. I don't know how many they have. I hope we're. One thing I am optimistic about is that our CENTCOM commander, Eric Kurilla, he was, as I mentioned once, he was a very heroic person as a colonel in the Iraq war, combat veteran. And there was a lot of things written by correspondence about him. And he is, I think, the most capable of all American generals. And I just say that because there was a couple of news stories today that Trump is talking directly to him and to the chairman that he appointed and the Joint Chiefs. Everybody should realize that had Trump not done what he did when he came in and cleaned house, we would be getting. John Bolton liked leaks, Jim Mattis liked leaks. I'm not saying, I'm not disparaging their character. Leaks the wrong word. But there would be reports that they were dissatisfied or Bill Barr or his legal team were always leaking. Ty Cobb didn't like Trump. And you know, Anonymous, there's none of that. So he's got people that he can get on the phone and call and they are on the same page. And that's a big difference.
- [56:14]
Sammy Wink
It's amazing and it's great for us because you want an administration that has that kind of solidarity.
- [56:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, it just means that they're loyal to him and they're not going to try to weasel around and call the New York Times or be like Scaramucci and call up and say, oh, he's kind of an idiot, or Bannon did that too. Bannon made fun of the Mercer family. I mean, Robert Mercer, there's no better person. I've met him, he's a wonderful person. But they were making fun of him and they were leaking. So I don't, you know, I don't they don't have those. The inner circle, the cabinet, the advisors are wedded to the same agenda and they like Trump and they don't. And they know that if they were to do what the first bunch did, they would be in trouble.
- [57:03]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about. You were mentioning something about things that are sane and insane. And Guy Benson says that this particular show is the Daily National Insane Asylum. And we'll talk about some things coming from that. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. You can find Victor on YouTube and on Rumble. These podcasts are there. And we also are on Spotify. The Victor Davis Hanson podcast for Spotify is the name of it. So Victor, the Guy Benson's Daily National Insane Asylum is the View. And they were having a little argument over where it would be better to live. And a young girl, Alyssa, I don't know her last name, was saying that nobody would want to go live in Iran if they they could live in America with somebody. Elissa Griffith.
- [58:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Griffith, is that her name? Maybe she worked for Trump.
- [58:08]
Sammy Wink
Oh, did she?
- [58:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
Then she was an apostate.
- [58:10]
Sammy Wink
And Whoopi Goldberg fired back with not if you're black. And so I was wondering your thoughts on that.
- [58:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean, here you have a multimillionaire actress who was given all sorts of roles. She adopted a name so she can say all she wants about white people, but she adopted a Jewish name as a pseudonym. And she's been very blessed. And we are in now to 60 years of racial preferences and affirmative action. Since 65, Civil Rights Act, Great Society, we probably spent 30 trillion on Great Society. Redistribution, anti part poverty, pro racial preferences, all that. So with all of that and you look at the income of say, black women, I think the income of the per capita income of black women is almost what it is of white males without college education. Or maybe it's higher. So I don't quite if you look at certain demographics, life expectancy, the people who have the greatest plunge in life expectancy are white males. If you look at the suicide rate, it's much it's about double what the black rate is and the black Hispanic, if you look at the actual number of people below the poverty line in terms of actual numbers rather than percentages, it's the white population. So what she says sitting there on television, and she's an ignorant Rayman, she knows no history, every time she mentions something about The Holocaust. She gets the dates wrong, she gets the information wrong. And they're almost illiterate, all of them. And so they have this little form, their audience is shrinking, and they just say things that if it was reversed, Mutatis mutandis. If it was somebody else talking in such blatant racial terms, they would have been off the air a long time ago. I think it's kind of sad because Barbara. What's her name? Who?
- [60:17]
Sammy Wink
Barbara. Oh, my gosh. We both forgot the most important female anchor, Barbara Walters.
- [60:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. She had a dream of a bunch of liberal professional women with two genuine conservatives or something and having a polite debate on culture or fashion. And what they got are four or five raving lunatics that are hard left and they don't know anything. I mean, there are people on the left that are educated and they don't know anything. When I look at them and I listen to. Is that Mark Ruffio? He said something the other day. When I look at all these Hollywood celebrities, they're all multimillionaires and they're all privileged. They all live in places like Malibu, Brentwood, you know, Palos Verdes Estates, Beverly Hills, and they're all privileged. It reminds me it's like the vestigial elite among the ruins. Then I look at la and specifically LA and then California in general, and they don't even know how irrelevant. When I see Beyonce or I see, you know, Jay Z or Brad Pitt, and they mouth off or they say something. I thought you can't even go to your little Sunset Boulevard restaurants anymore. They've been shut down. You can't even feel, say, they killed somebody in Beverly Hills. It's just so starting the logical ramifications of your ideology that you pushed on it, let in all the illegal aliens. Do not defund the police. Go Palestine. Globalize. The. It's finally coming home to you. Even your wealth can't protect you. Pacific Palisades was destroyed because of Di. When you have a mayor who goes to Ghana, or you have a deputy mayor who phones in a bomb threat, or you have the head of Water and Power who's incompetent, or you have a fire chief more interested in how your sex or race, that's what you get. And so when you look at California and what Gavin, you know, Gavin Newsom, and you see what they did, all these people thought, well, I live on the coast, or I'm a Silicon Valley titan. I have so much money. I have. And then you hear what they're talking about. Illegal immigration it's the weirdest thing in the world. It's who's going to pick our crops? Who's going to. One woman who represented said, who's going to wipe our rectums. She said that it was the most racist thing you can imagine. And you get an insight into these wealthy. It's not just wealthy white people, wealthy minority white people, all of these wealthy elites, they look at illegal immigration as you're all going to come in here and serve me and do all this stuff and all the social problems from it. No audits, no background checks, leaving the scene of the accident, all of that. The racist will deal with hoi polloi, will deal with the stupid Neanderthal white working class whose wages go down. We don't care about the collateral damage, but we want our fruit, we want our Whole Foods strawberries. They have such a weird. They don't even understand that we're in the biggest agricultural revolution. I was walking out in the almond orchard today and I just looked at it and I thought, it's one guy. One guy goes up and down on a four wheeler and he checks to see if the coyotes have cut the. There's no. When I was a kid, you had to go out there and get on that tractor and make furrows and then you had to have a concrete pipeline with a twister. I did that from my whole youth. And then I had to come in and dis the furrows down and then spring tooth it. And then I got a mallet and hit almonds and I had canvas and I had to dump it. And it's all machine. It's like some brain says hydrometers say the ground is dry, send a signal to the pump, turns it on. The pump says, oh, nitrogen needs, starts pumping nitrogen into the water. They can pick 50 acres of almonds in two days with three people. So they don't understand that we're in a revolution. And the more that you raise wages, the more that you raise wages for American citizens, the better off they are. But that also is a greater incentive to mechanize. And the more you let in cheap labor and then the more social problems you have, the more disparities in income, the more anger, envy you develop. The more social programs you have to, you know, health, education, housing, food to make up for a standard of living. And the more a farmer says, well, if I can hire somebody for seven or eight bucks until recently, then why go invest in a machine? But it's agriculture and all of these things, maybe not restaurant shed or Hospitality. But we're getting to the point that they're pretty much mechanized. And with AI we're going to have a lot of jobs. I was reading the other day that AI is going to put out a lot of financial people and a lot of intellectuals, media writers. I have a suggestion. One of the most innovative companies I've ever seen in my life is called Fowler Packing. It was created by four brothers from Armenia and their kids and grandkids run it. And it is the world's greatest producer of a type of cuties, tangerines, mandarin oranges. But they also have table grapes. And every once in a while I go over there, they have a beautiful cafeteria, they have dental, they have a doctor on call. It's very humane and it's spotless. And their workers are not considered farm laborers. They pick grapes and they're considered specialists. And they're paid by the rate. And I think they're so good at what they do, their hourly compensation based on piecework is well above 30 bucks an hour. And they're very skilled. But I suggest, and it's a very noble thing to do, I suggest that all these unemployed white collar workers, whether sociology or their business administration, whatever degree they have, they should start doing this. They should say, you know what? We need food, we need plumbers, we need electricians. I'm going, AI put me out of business. I'm going to be a skilled technician. And when I hear the people on the View say, wow, who's going to pick your food? They think they're back in 1970 with Cesar Chavez. And by the way, Cesar Chavez went down to the border, was kind of like Eisenhower's Operation Wetback. They use physical force to club people coming across because they didn't want illegal aliens undercutting UFW wages. But when I hear all these elite wealthy women, oh, who's going to clean my rear end? Oh, who's going to cook my food? Who's going to do this? Well, why don't you do it? Or why doesn't somebody who's unemployed do it?
- [67:32]
Sammy Wink
Yes, exactly.
- [67:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
Why do we need, you know what the labor participation rate is right now of able bodied people who are working? 62%. So we've got 38% are not working. And we need to get them in the workforce. And there's nothing more noble than farm work, especially in the age of mechanized aided farm work.
- [67:55]
Sammy Wink
Well, since we're speaking of the elite, Obama has come out of his hole once again to give a lecture.
- [68:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
You mean his mansion?
- [68:04]
Sammy Wink
Out of his hole that led to his mansion to give advice to those elite that followed him and the progressive elite. And he says, well, with me you could have a social conscience and there would be no price that you had to pay for it. But now under Donald Trump, your social conscience will have to pay a price. And it may mean, you know, his price. His example of his price was you may not be able to remodel your.
- [68:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
Hampton kitchen or go to Milan. I think he said, yeah, I don't know. I don't think Milan's a big tourist trap. I thought he had mentioned Venice or Florence. You know, he always projects. He was some of the people who cooked up the idea in February, March, April of 2020 that Spartacus, Buttigieg, Warren Sanders were losers and that they were going to get this waxen effigy called Joe Biden and rebrand him as good old Joe. Remember he said when Joe ran and, and was thinking of running, he said, joe, you don't have to do this. Meaning he knew he was senile, but they cooked up the idea to use him as a waxen effigy. But he always gives what he's going to what he really thinks by projecting. Earlier in his last year of presidency, they asked him if he'd ever thought of a third term. He said, well, you know, I could just sit down in the weight room in his gym and call in and don't have to wear that top and just kind of be the secret brain behind. And that's what exactly he was thinking about. And he did. And now when he says all you wealthy liberals need to get out on the street and fight and don't think your money, what he's basically saying is my money and my house, my million multi million dollar Chicago home and my 9 million dollar Calaroma home. And he got it for 14, but it was probably worth 30 million in Martha's Vineyard and my multi, multi million dollar Hawaii, four homes. And he's thinking, I've just been hanging around with Hollywood elites and I call them up and they write me a check for 5 or 6 million. I said, I have an idea for a TV show. It'll be about community organizing, black and white, interracial. Oh, that's brilliant, Barack. How much do you need? 10 million. That's what he's been doing and he hasn't done anything. So now he looks guilty. So given how he thinks and projects all my guilt, all my secret desire, I gotta go trash people who do what I do. And so, you know, that's what he Did. And he's still hurting because, you know what? He just. He kind of flew in from one of his mansions during the campaign and thought, well, you know, Barack Obama's here and I'm here. And, you know, you know, he did the same thing when he's talking about wealthy liberals with black males. He went up to them, you know, just because you're, you know, some of you are black male, I hear, you know, you like a strong leader and you like Donald Trump, and don't do it. Don't do it. Don't be fooled. Let me tell you what's good for you. I know. I know what's in your real interest. They just basically said, okay, go back in your jet and go back in your Gulf Stream and get back here. I don't want to listen to you anymore. Everybody's sick of him. Everybody is sick of him. And every time Michelle opens her mouth, all you have to do is say, what is the grievance meter? 1 to 10. Oh, you don't know how much I had to pay. We had to pay for our own food at the White House. They raised the bar on us. Oh, you had to get clothes. Oh, people look at me and they all say, what's she wearing today? Oh, I'm such a victim. That's how she does.
- [72:05]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, she throws the grievance meter way off.
- [72:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
She's a cry bully, too. She's passive aggressive. She's always bullying somebody, and so is he. Why don't they just go away? He had his eight years. He wrecked the country. That was the idea. We're only five days away from fundamentally transforming. You did. You did it. You gave us Obamacare. You gave us. Destroyed our foreign policy. You let Putin into Ukraine. You did everything you wanted to do. And you got into your Trayvon Martin thing. You got in your beer summit thing. You got in all of that.
- [72:41]
Sammy Wink
Gave a lot of power to Iran things. Yeah.
- [72:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
Valerie Jarrett. And you, you got your Iranian thing. Why don't you just go back and crawl back where? You go back to Hawaii and sit there and go on your yachts with your Hollywood celebrities. We're sick of you.
- [72:56]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, go. What is that? Just go. Go away.
- [73:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, that was that famous line by.
- [73:05]
Sammy Wink
One of those British PMs or something.
- [73:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I'm trying to remember his name. He was funny. He quoted Cromwell.
- [73:12]
Sammy Wink
It wasn't Halifax.
- [73:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, it was a. No, no, no, no, no. It was a. It wasn't. What's his name? I'll remember it in a second.
- [73:20]
Sammy Wink
So let me read a Few.
- [73:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
But anyway, he said it was from Cromwell. We've had enough of you. Let us be done with you. Just go.
- [73:27]
Sammy Wink
Just go. All right.
- [73:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
It was Oliver Cromwell. It was quoted about Chamberlain and the Conservative Tory appeasers.
- [73:40]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, So we're at the end of our show, and I would be remiss, actually, since we just did World War II for five weeks. Not saying that people should go out. If you haven't read Victor's book, the Second World wars, it's probably, in my estimation, one of the best books he's ever written, because he does deal with about seven different opinions or theories on different things in World War II in a way that they haven't been dealt with before. So it definitely has a lot of new material and perspective in it. That's called the Second World. Sorry, the Second World wars with an S. And again, that's Victor's fairly recent. 2017, 18, something like that.
- [74:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it is. You know, it had a Chinese version that sold well, but as I said earlier, the Chinese. The Chinese wrote me through my agent and said, I think the End of everything's got about 15 or 20 foreign published translations, but they wanted to translate it. They looked at the Second World wars and saw that Japan comes off pretty bad, and therefore they thought, this will be good for us. But they wanted me to take out one line in the End of Everything. And it was. I had quoted that they had made a video about nuking Japan, and they said, if you take that out, we will have big sales in China. You can't do that.
- [75:09]
Sammy Wink
No, can't do that.
- [75:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
My agent, Glenn Hartley and Lynn Chu are wonderful people. They wrote me and said, you've got to make a decision, but we know what you're going to do because that's what we would do. So they were all 30 years with them.
- [75:25]
Sammy Wink
All right.
- [75:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, excuse me. 40 years, I think.
- [75:28]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, so let's go ahead and look. I went to your website this time and a couple of the articles and looked at comments on them, and this one's off of can the Left Ever Stop the Craziness? And this was by Strategic Viewpoint. And he says Trump is a centrists. He's not even far right or radical. He's not particularly effective as potus. But then it can be argued that no president can be. Since their powers are limited to commander in chief, foreign policy, veto over legislation and executive order affecting the government bureaucracy. Trump Derangement Syndrome must be regarded as mass hysteria or mass psychosis, similar to the increase inquisition witch Trials or millennialism. This is distinct from the riots and anarchy, which is clearly staged and funded by domestic foreign powers.
- [76:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. I think what he's saying is if you look what Trump has actually done and you look at what the left has said they always were for, I mean, if you ask yourself who hates Trump more, unions or Wall Street? It's Wall Street. Wall street, yes, absolutely. And if you ask yourself who hates Trump more, the people who make over $500,000 or the people make under 50. His constituency is working class, lower middle class. And now we know it's the majority black males. I mean, I thought it was 26% in the election, but the latest Rasmussen poll had 53% of All Blacks and Hispanics. So what I'm getting, and you ask yourself who had been for tariffs and what they called free, not, not free, but fair trade. It was the left. So he's done a lot. Who would. If you said a president's going to demand there's no tax on tips, you think George H.W. bush would have done that? No, he was for capital gains cuts nonstop. It was Trump. So the writer has a point. He's not a leftist. He's transactional.
- [77:51]
Sammy Wink
And so, so, and then just one more, and this one was on the article on that was called what was Iran Thinking? Or not. You had a lot of comments on this one. And this is by Ron Nixon. He said, I think all of you are going to feel this way. So this is what Ron Nixon says, thank you, PM Netanyahu and President Trump for finally destroying the Iranian nuclear threat. The free world is breathing a massive sigh of relief. For years we were told that we dare not attack Iran for fear of retaliation, so we might as well accept that they'll have the bomb. We were even told by a worthless Barack Obama that we could reason with Iran. Quote, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fists, they will extend the hand. They will extend the hand from us, unquote. And I think he was quoting Barack Obama.
- [78:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think a lot of it, I think a lot of people don't realize because I looked at CNN the other day and msnbc, and they really want to gin up the story that magazine revolt. And when you actually look at the polls, they're not. And neither are Republicans in general. And you know what? And even the American people, by a slight margin, about 54%, want Trump to hit them. I'm not going to weigh in on that particular issue, other than to say I don't think that the media understands the deep Anger and hatred that the Americans have for that government. And by that I mean for 50 years almost, you turned on your Death to America. Death to America. Death to America. Death to America. Death to America. Oh, Hezbollah. And then they showed those pictures of Hezbollah. And then the news said to an embassy blown up in Beirut. Embassy, Marine barracks killed. Jews in Argentina butchered. And then death to Israel. We heard all of this and then we were told again and again by our media and by Obama, everybody. Did anybody see those pictures of Hezbollah? They're goose stepping. They're like the SS Wafanessa. That's what the image we were supposed to believe. And then Hamas, they're not like the Palestinian Authority, they're just formidable. They're puritanical killers. And then the Houthis, they're crazy. You can't deal with them. And Uranus so far away. They're just out of range for Israel. They'd have to go over. They just can't do it. It would just crush Israel. They've got so many missiles. They could. And one day they could destroy Tel Aviv. And then they. That's what we were told. I grew up, you know, I was in college during the Iranian hostage. And Every single day 44 there was this picture of this pathetic Cyrus Vance and pathetic Jimmy Carter. And then they would juxtapose it with all these students. These were not even the Khomanius, these were students and they were screaming death to America. And so there's no goodwill there. There is no goodwill. And you know, when I meet Iranians, say this very controversial. I see a lot of Iranians when I go to Los Angeles, I was in the university system. There's a lot. There are two types of Iranian expatriates. Two. There is what I call the first wave. And these were the people in 78, 79 and 80 knew what was coming. And a lot of them were Jewish and they got out, most of them got out with some property and they were for the Shah and they were unabashedly pro American. And now they're mostly in business and they're very successful and they're hyper patriotic American. But then there's a second wave. And these were the goat's body, but Bonnie Sadhar, European socialist, communist. And they were in the university, they were in media and they had this mistake and they would quote us chapter and verse about Mosaddegh. And he was this wonderful Lincoln character. And then British Petroleum and American CIA got rid of him and it's your fault. And they really did Believe that, that they were the brains behind the revolution and Khomeini was just a vessel. He was just an idiotic, middle evil, middle aged relic and they were going to take it over and then just dispense with him. They didn't realize the Shah had to pay him off. And the Shah should have never cut back on the bribery to the mullahs because that's how he kept them in check. But anyway, they thought, you know, the Shah was so crass, he was so right wing and he was so pro Israel, pro American. And now we were the brilliant intellectuals and then they got what they wanted, they got the Shah and they stayed about a year and then Khomeini started rounding them up, killing them, hanging them, saying they were godless infidel, and they started flooding Europe, the United States. So when you meet today an Iranian, I'm stereotyping, but it's based on empirical, my empirical experience. When you meet somebody that is in business in their 70s, late 60s, 70s, 80s, they are the most pro American, they are the most eager to see these. But then when you meet people in their 50s, 60s, a little bit younger, and they are reporters, they work for the government, they're in the media, they are in the universities, they are the ones that we always read about that are pro Iranian or they're mixed. Their idea is it was the United States that created Khomeini because you supported the Shah and that made this crazy right wing theocratic. And if you hadn't supported the Shah, then we would have taken over and had our brilliant European socialism and we wouldn't have had to deal with Khomeini. But he was a reaction to you, not us. No, no, no, no, he hated you. You are godless, secular and his way of thinking. And you got what you wanted. You took a morally ambiguous government that had some good and some bad and you got rid of it in your puritanical zeal and you got something that was pure evil, that you thought you could ride the back of the tiger and the tiger turned his head and devoured you. And then you fled. Where? Where? To the evil west in general and the evil America in particular. And you got a job where? In our media, in our universities and our government and our bureaucracy. And you're doing very well. But they're the ones that are always blaming us. This is the Valerie Jarrett wing of the pro Iranian. And I have no patience with them. I've had so many conversations and debates with them in my life.
- [85:03]
Sammy Wink
And you would think that given what's going on right now that whether it's Iran and such, Iranians or China, they would look at the picture seriously and go, the strong power is the. The power that is free, open.
- [85:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
And Pavlovi, the son of the Shah is on. He should say. I mean, he's saying rise up. But the problem with rising up in all of these types of revolution, I saw it in Greece, I lived under the dictatorship 73 and 74 in Greece, Papadopoulos and Ioannidis. The problem is somebody has to get killed. And nobody wants to be the first one to get killed. But he is giving communiques as Shah's son. And what he should say is, I will be a caretaker. I'll be like Juan Carlos when you got rid of Franco. I will come in for a year and I will stabilize things and I will draft a constitution and then we will have elections. And he might resonate. The other thing is that we have to be very careful. The United States and Israel. If we say we include Israel, and I think Israel's been pretty good. You always have to damn the theocracy, but not necessarily the Iranians. That's a lot of people say, well, you're sick of. You just said, Victor, you're sick of. I'm sick of the radical people. But if you want the Iranians on your side, the more they've had to put up with. They're like when I was a teenager, whatever my parents were for, for about a year in my life was against. Well, they see that Khomeini ism and they're against it. But they have to have something positive. So you have to appeal to them that these, I think there. The Israelis have been very brilliant in their targeting because they look around and they don't see hospitals going up. They don't see schools. They see. Well, wasn't that where I was tortured? Bam. Wasn't there where that crazy lunatic woman used to lecture me about Khomania? Bam. Wasn't that rumor where the nuclear program was? Bam. Isn't that where the Revolutionary National Guard barracks is? Bam. As long as you keep doing that, you'll win them over.
- [87:12]
Sammy Wink
Well, let's hope. And I know we'll be talking more about that and you'll be talking with Jack for next week. So thank you, Victor Davis Hansen, and thank you to our audience.
- [87:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everybody. I made it after my operation, seven.
- [87:24]
Sammy Wink
Days, and we're all happy. And I'm. We've got lots of wishes on the.
- [87:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
I didn't sneeze and give birth to some creature alien.
- [87:35]
Sammy Wink
All right, this is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off.
- [87:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everybody.