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Victor Davis Hansen
Time is our most precious commodity and we've heard from so many listeners who have asked for advice about how they can spend it wisely to improve themselves and the people around them. That's why we're so excited that Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses in the most important and enduring subjects. You can learn about the works of C.S. lewis, the stories in the Book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church with Hillsdale College's online courses all available for free. That's right, for free. We recommend you sign up for Athens and Sparta. In this course you'll hear from Victor Davis Hansen and Paul A. Rey, distinguished professors of history, as they discuss the history, culture and government of each city, the ill fated Peloponnesian War and its consequences, and examine what is necessary in order for a democracy to flourish and endure, how best to form free and self governing citizens, and how to resist tyranny from without and from within. Start your free course, Athens and Sparta Today. Go right now to Hillsdale. Edu VDH to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale. Edu vdhtoregister hillsdale. Edu sl VDH.
Jack Fowler
Hello ladies. Hello gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I am Jack Fowler, the host. You are here to listen to and get wisdom from Victor Davis Hansen, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Victor is the author of many bestselling books. He is a historian, a classicist, a syndicated columnist. You'll find his writings and links to books and links to these podcasts, the archives at his official website, which is the Blade of Perseus. I'll tell you more about it later in this podcast and why you should be subscribing. This is being recorded, Victor, on Sunday, November 3, and this particular episode will be up on election day, November 5, although by that time, even by right now, Victor, I thought I saw some report that's implied over 40% of voters had already cast votes for the presidential elections. But even the polls are still open, I guess as people are listening to this as it first comes out and polls, the last batch of polls publicized about the election are worth your discussion and getting your wisdom on and about. So let's begin the show with that and then we'll get into Chuck Schumer, who's a think it's technical term and some of the last, oh, I don't know, never Trump anecdotes of the of the election, which involved Liz Cheney and allegations that Donald Trump wanted to put her before a firing squad. We'll get to all that and more when we come back from these important messages.
Victor Davis Hansen
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Jack Fowler
We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, you want to talk about polls and there are Some important ones that have come out the final release polls that have had some credibility. Not all polls have credibility but you want to talk about a few that do indeed and reflect on what they're saying now and relative to what they also said in 2020. How about my friend well you know.
Unnamed Speaker
The old Nate Silver site 538 rates polls predicated on their performance in 2020 when Trump was on the ballot and then 2022 during the midterms. And it turns out, you know that all the ones that people are quoting Susan Marist Quinn, New York Times, Washington Post well, all of those they don't have the the top three out of five are Atlas Intelligence is number one both and I was looking how their methodology they pole Jack anywhere depending on the particular state 1 to 5% more women and they try to reflect the likely and they do likely voters and the other of these five top ones past record is Trafalgar. It only was off within the margin of error. Everybody kind of criticized it because it had Trump close. But if you go back and look at 2020, it was some of these polls were 7 and 8 points off. If you remember 17 points off that Trump was going to lose Wisconsin in one poll. But the point is if you look at just forget the other polls and look at the Atlas Intelligence intel and the Trafalgar and Rasmussen, the old Rasmussen because I think Scott Rasmussen sold it then for example today or the latest one Yesterday, Nevada Harris 46, Trump 52 okay if you look and then of course the New York Times has Trump behind by three. If you go and look at something like North Carolina Atlas intel again, the one with the best record in the last two elections, both Presidential and midterm Trump 51Harris 47 if you look at Pennsylvania Atlas intel and I could and the same pattern holds up with Trout Falgard to a lesser extent and not quite as wide. But unrest month TRUMP 50 to 48 Pennsylvania. Yes. And if you look at Wisconsin, TRUMP 5049 and 4948 depending on one they did it over two polls on November 1st and November 2nd. If you look at Michigan, TRUMP 50 HARRIS 48 TRUMP 49 HARRIS 48. If you go to Georgia, Georgia 5048 and the poll before was 4947 TRUMP if you go to Arizona, TRUMP 52 I don't understand this. HARRIS 46 that's a six point lead.
Jack Fowler
TRUMP's Trump is ahead in all of these.
Unnamed Speaker
Every single yeah. My point is this. I could go on and on but when you See a poll that has Trump down 10 points in Iowa. I think that was the Des Moines history. That's not accurate. And all we can do is we can't trust polls because they all have different agendas. And the agendas are manifested in the manner in which they poll. They have about 50 or 60 different decisions to make. Should they have registered voters? Should they ask the registered voter if they are going to vote? Unlikely voters, should they just ask everybody? The idea that people don't tell the truth about whether they're registered or likely to vote. If women participate more than men, should you do you know that's true. State by state, do you have more women than men? Do you reflect the party registration and ask more Democrats and Republicans? So all of those decisions have to be made. And also it's very expensive. The more people you poll, the greater you get. But all of those factors in consideration, two or three polls, as I said, Trin and Atlas intel in the last two, the presidential is the one we look at more than the midterm because Trump was on the ballot. I just don't think that the left gets. There's just not a hatred among the left. And a lot of the left are pollsters. So I think the other thing is, and I'm speaking again on Sunday, and you and I talked about that, but when you look at these polls by these same reputable pollsters, gosh, Jack, they're within the margin of error in Virginia. They're close in New Hampshire, they're close in New Mexico, a little bit off in Minnesota.
Jack Fowler
I think Trump is in Virginia today.
Unnamed Speaker
Yes, he is. And when you look at that surge over the last six weeks, it's about three or four points. And we talked about that. But the other polls, they do, they pick up a surge. And because if you look at where they polled, and I spent about a couple hours looking at where they pulled three, four, six weeks, the surge that these more reputable polls illustrate is across the country, especially in states that are near each other. So Virginia, I know Virginia is more liberal than North Carolina, but not that much, given the triangle research triangle and all that in North Carolina. But Arizona, New Mexico, I understand Taos and Santa Fe is not. They don't have anything quite like that. And in Arizona, and I understand my ancestors in Minnesota are more numerous and therefore more leftist than Wisconsin. But these polls do show that Trump is ahead in the seven swing states, and they show not quite the same, but they show the same momentum in these other blue states where Trump is closing the gap I don't think he will win all four of them. I don't even know if he'll win one of them. But I think he will come close. And that should have been reflected on these other polls in these swing states, and they won't reflect it. So I don't know what they're trying to do. But after spending 50 years, 50 years in academia and 50 years dealing with the media, I can tell you that almost a day doesn't go past when I have to encounter some ideologue on the left and they feel any mechanism that they can use for a higher moral plane is legitimized. And I think most of the polls feel out.
Jack Fowler
So this, you mentioned Iowa, and there's a woman in Selzer who is reportedly, you know, a good pollster, and she's the one. Victor, this news came out yesterday that implied Harris has a chance of winning Iowa. And it's put a lot, it's given a lot of consternation to people. And I think it's affected these betting odds, which are, as we go into the, you know, two days out, Trump is about 53, 47. So that, that has narrowed. But Iowa, if you look at 2020, the voter registration, it was Republicans had an advantage of 1%. And then in the ensuing four years, now the advantage is 10% over Democrat registration. So you're right. You know, ideology has marched through all of our institutions. Why shouldn't it march through the institution of poll taking?
Unnamed Speaker
Well, if you look at the swing states today, on the Real Clear Politics average, you know, yeah, Trump is ahead in five of seven. And the weird thing is that Real Clear Politics has, like Sherrod Brown only up by one. And they average polls, even weighted. Those bias polls I even seen. And the, the Atlas intel has Carrie Lake really closing the gap. I could not believe that that's accurate. And so my point is that I think, I think there's a lot of pest. I'm getting a lot of emails from people that are pessimistic and they're saying, Victor Trump is crested the poll. And I think that's the intended, I think a lot of these people, not all, but some of these polls, they do one of two things I think Nate Silver talked about. They show Trump more. They, they have him two or three points ahead. So then they what I think Nate Silver called hurting, they don't want to be an outlier, but they want to help her. So they just put it around half a point either way. And I, I think it's much Closer. It's much more clearly Trump in the swing states. And as you know, today in he, she's in only up 0.3 in Wisconsin and she's, you know, only up 0.6 in Michigan. He's up 0.3 in Pennsylvania. But even the real clear Paul happens. I'm almost three in Arizona, over one in one and a half in North Carol, one in Nevada, 2.3 in Georgia. So there is, there is this, I think everybody gets depressed because I get these one poll comes out and I don't, I think they should go back and look at the polls in 2020 and 2016 when he was on the ballot there was a little edge in the polls. They over polled the Democrats a little bit, but they were really accurate in the 2022 midterms. That caught people by surprise according to the left's logic as we learned our lesson in 2016. In 2020. So we did it in 2022. No, you quite, you didn't, you were off on 2016 and you didn't learn your lesson. You were way off on 2022. And a skeptic would say, okay, you tried to skewer the polls for Hillary in 2016, you got utterly humiliated. Your reputations was near nothing. And then you went back and doubled that in 2020 to help Joe Biden. So self satisfied because that was an effective tactic that you were going to do it again. But in 2022, Trump wasn't on the ballot and so you more or less were kind of accurate because the poll really showed that the red wave was not as strong as it was it could have been because as we've talked about the leaked abortion memo, etc, etc, Roe vs Wade and that student loan giveaway right before draining, getting the price of gas down right before by draining the reserve, stuff like that. OK, so now we're in 2024 and I don't think they've learned anything because Trump is on the ballot. So that's my point. And we'll see, we'll, we'll see what happens.
Jack Fowler
Everything's anecdotal right until the votes are counted.
Unnamed Speaker
So you know, when we talk, we'll talk about these things, I don't know what we call them. They're not October surprises, they're 11th hour November surprises. Yeah. And we can talk about all of them and whether they're going to, there's four or five of them.
Jack Fowler
Yeah, well let's, let's get to one of them here in a minute. But first, Victor, I just want to let Our listeners know if you're looking for a great place for online news, great place online, excuse me, for news, discussion, and entertainment, then please check out Truth Social, Donald Trump's social media website. You'll get breaking news stories, commentary from top media figures, and, of course, Victor's own Truth Social account. If you want to see Trump's legendary Truth Social posts, then get on Truth Social today. Join a growing community of patriots on a free speech platform designed to avoid censorship and cancellation by Big Tech. Make your voice heard. Join the movement. Join Truth Social. And we thank Truth Social for sponsoring this episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Yeah, Victor, one of those surprises of just kind of absurdity is Donald Trump's commentary about Liz Cheney where she. He was essentially calling her a chicken hawk. And it was turned quickly into, Donald Trump wants Liz Cheney killed, executed by a firing squad. And this was a mantra to go into the weekend and show the violence and the violent rhetoric and the violent thoughts to Donald Trump. And of course, this plays in line with everything else. All these other BS lines, oh, he wants to put us in jail, he's going to come after us, et cetera, et cetera. Victor, we have two things to talk about with Liz Cheney, but this is just what you were referring to. October, November, surprise.
Unnamed Speaker
Well, yeah. Well, I mean, the problem with what Liz Cheney said was that he had an important qualifier. If she had a gun. If she had a gun. And they, in other words, if she was an armed soldier and they, she had to go there. And that was the whole point. If you read the whole paragraph. If she had a gun and she was assaulted and she went over there and everybody was pointing guns at her face then, and her life was on the line, then she would be a little bit more circumspect about wanting to intervene all over the world because she was very critical about, as Trump said, when he wanted to lessen our profile in Afghanistan or Iraq or Afghan whatever. But the point is that just imagine this, it's 2012, Trump's not a candidate, but he mouthed off all the time, and everybody paid court to him. Remember 2008, McCain went up to his towers. 2012, he went up to this tower for the endorsements. He went to Hillary, invited him to Chelsea's wedding. Everybody wanted to listen to him as Mr. New York businessman. But so let's. And he was very critical. He was very popular among the left. Remember, he said that George W. Bush should be impeached for the Iraq fiasco. And so let's just say it's 2012. And Donald Trump says, he just says Liz Cheney, because he's again, I'm setting the scene right, that he was against. Well, he first was for taking Saddam out. Then he switched and said we should not be there. He switched pretty early. So then he says Liz Cheney is a war hawk. The Cheney's, if she'd have a different attitude, if she took a gun over there and then they pointed guns back at her, what would the left have said? They would have loved Donald Trump. They would have said, yes, you're right, Trump. Can you believe Donald Trump finally gets it that she's a chicken hawk? Wouldn't.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
And so I was really surprised that I, that he was so candid. You know, Joey Jones, the Fox commentator who was an Afghan veteran, lost his legs. Did you see what he said about it? He just said, he really went, he said this your Halliburton this and you're Halliburton that and your Halliburton that and your Halliburton that and I have your Halliburton legs. Basically, he said. And he was, and he was really, it was really tough. But if, what I'm getting at is that if Donald Trump was not running for president this year and he had said that and Lyn Cheney was the Lyn Cheney of her entire life saved the last year, they would have been delighted with that quote, they would have loved it. Donald Trump says of a 78 year old businessman, he really put Lynn Cheney down. Let's say, if I don't know, Desantis or Jeb Bush or somebody like that, that Cheney would have probably, you know, been on the team and she would have been, you know, talking about this and Trump might have been an outsider and said, you know what, you wouldn't have that active. So it was all stage. And even people like Bill Maher, right, saw that out. I don't know if Jake Capper did, but some of them like that did. Mark Halburn, everybody understood that you don't, you're not threatening to kill somebody. You don't want somebody to go be shot and then tell them to go to a war zone with a rifle as if they're a soldier. And the neck. The other thing that was weird about, usually Republicans and people on the right don't adopt the chicken hawk argument. That's a left wing trope. So that was very odd for the left to be very angry when someone was adopting their own ideological rhetoric. That was another thing. So I don't think it, I don't think that worked very well, the other ones, remember the garbage one had, it had two results. One, it stopped that unfortunate comic who said that Puerto Rico was garbage. And the problem with that was he was a third party. It was unwise. Anytime you have a trash comedian, the next generation, two generations beyond Don Rickles, you're going to be in trouble if you're in a. Nobody should ever put a trash talking comedian. Some of them are funny and the guy can be funny, but you don't put him in a national stage at the last days of the race. So that was a strategic error. But he's the third party and Trump didn't even know him. But of course they connected him. So when Joe Biden said that about garbage, it did two things. First, it made him, it made the left look really bad because it was consistent with clingers, with deplorables, with irredeemables, with chumps, with dregs, with semifascists, with ultimate, all of that, with Peter Strokes, oh, they smell in Walmart, all of that stuff. And more importantly, it stopped the whole hysterical machine of the left to gin up the comedians remarks about Puerto Rico. And then we had Joe Biden yesterday, right? Tough guy and Mr. He always does that. He tries to act. He's so insecure. Yeah, if you think I'm exaggerating, I'm just doing this on the top of my head. But you remember he said the following. He said, I'd like to take Trump behind the gym and beat him up. And then about a year later he said, you know, when I was in high school, we used to take guys like Trump behind the J, said it twice and beat him up. Then he said, you know, part of his. And when he was doing the corn pop saga, I just went down that basement and had that guy cut me, what was it, six feet of chain. And I said I'm gonna go take on corn pop. And then it was slammed the guy, remember the guy made. I was. Went to the local diner where I grew up and the guy made fun of my, my sister and I went over there and I took his head and I slammed it on the bar. It's so tiring to see this.
Jack Fowler
Gonna jam, jam my rosary beads down your throat.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, from.
Jack Fowler
That's from the 90s.
Unnamed Speaker
Yes. Such a little wimp he is. He's so insecure and he's so off the scale. So for you have the. All these people talk about why I can't vote for Trump because there's no decorum. He's not sober and judicious he's not in the, he's not in the tradition of McCain and Romney. It's not in my name. And then you think, well, you're voting for this ticket where the president and you voted for Biden and the president of the United States yesterday just said, you know, ah, these guys, you know, I just want to, what do you say? Kick their ass. Or he said, smash something or house. And his, his face was contorted. It looked terrible. So you have the president basically saying, I like to, you know, beat up a guy who just is, has escaped two assassination attempts and whom he has called, you know, we have to put a bullet, a bullseye on Donald Trump. Bullseye and Donald Trump. And he's called him, he and his supporters garbage. So it, that hurt a little. That hurt. And I don't know if it's going to have ripples just three days before the election, but it confirmed that this, this crazy narrative that they had with these October, October surprises. The other October surprise was Mark Kubin, and he was on the View. He's kind of flipped out. He used to be kind of not apolitical but kind of entertainingly obnoxiously. But now he's just, his eyes get beady. He gets serious. And you know, when he says there's not one smart woman. The thing about that is that Trump was known in New York for promoting women at an earlier time when other people didn't do it to run his companies. And when you look at Kellyanne Conway or.
Jack Fowler
What'S Sanders.
Unnamed Speaker
Sanders, Susan Wilds that runs his campaign. She's the head of the campaign.
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
Unnamed Speaker
Kaylee McAheny is her press secretary. So he's been, he's promoted all sorts of women and he talks to women all the time. And so that I, that was a, another mistake. If Trump doesn't reply. So it's now Sunday. He should not get. He, these people are melting down in their hysterias. He just should not get into any more psychodramas.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
And he said that about Lynn Cheney because Tucker was asking him. And Tucker's kind of made fun of her. And then he kind of trumped Tucker's question with his answer. And there wasn't really a. He could have just said, you know what? I'm so tired of her. If his point was that she was a warmonger, all he had to say is, I'm, I'm so tired of that line of thinking of which she represents and the old, the old Republican Party that we always have to go over there. We always have to intervene. And we never can achieve anything other than stalemate or humiliation. Let's just not do it. It's not isolationist. It's just we're going to pick and choose in a Jacksonian fashion when we use force. No better friend, no worse enemy. And he didn't do that. He got into back and forth. And that's what they do is they dissect. They use a magnifying glass at every single word.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
And it's just the opposite of what the media does to Joe Biden. Joe Biden can say garbage. And the actual presidential text that they release will be at odds with the national archive. And they, and they'll. They don't care.
Jack Fowler
Apostrophe Police commission.
Unnamed Speaker
Yes. It's like, it's like Orwellian. We're going to change history by altering an archive that's, that's released from our.
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
Unnamed Speaker
From our White House official records. It doesn't, it's, I think they're just, you know, they're getting JLo and who's running this campaign? It's LeBron and JLo. And almost immediately, the counter people to Trump start flashing pictures of Diddy with his arm around JLo and Diddy and Levon partying it up. I mean, all these, these people are not the type of people that are going to make people in Pennsylvania vote for Trump. Right. I vote against Trump. They're not.
Jack Fowler
Well, that's, I think the politics of endorsement is a strange thing. And maybe we should, maybe we should come back to that. Victor, get your thoughts. Keep on, Liz Cheney, and we'll do that when we come back from these important messages.
Unnamed Speaker
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Jack Fowler
We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. We are recording on Sunday, November 3rd. This particular episode will be up on election day, November 5th. Victor, about endorsements back Liz Cheney and I think she even dragged her dad into this, urging George W. Bush to endorse Kamala Harris. Bush, the former president has last time round and this time has sat out the endorsement game even though his wife has not, I believe. I think she endorsed Kamala Harris and I know one of the daughters has.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, that's not. I don't think that's going to work because they did not leave unnecessarily. Good terms because George, if you remember about the Valerie Plum episode or imbroglio Scooter Libby and I'll be very fair to Dick Chain. Scooter Libby did nothing wrong. We know that because Colin Powell's personal a lieutenant colonel, you'll remember his name. He was the one was an Armitage. Richard Armitage had mentioned to people that Valley Plum was a CIA agent. And it was very disputable whether she was actually undercover, dash covert or not, but she claimed she was and then Judith Miller and that whole thing. But no one ever proved that Scooter Libby, because he didn't, was the first person to expose Valley Plan for political purposes. It was common knowledge all over Washington. I was at the Naval Academy and I was on a Fox News at about that time and Joe Wilson was in the studio and he was bragging about his blonde wife and worked for the CIA. He did. I don't know if that was after this whole thing, but everybody knew she worked for the CIA. I don't know if they thought she was covert or not. But the point was they ruined school. Robert Fitzgerald, the special Patrick Fitzgerald classmate in high school.
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
Unnamed Speaker
You know, I, no offense, Jack, but we're starting. We're starting to see a profile here.
Jack Fowler
That's right.
Unnamed Speaker
Of these overzealous Catholic city. Catholic New York City.
Jack Fowler
Anthony Fauci.
Unnamed Speaker
Anthony Fauci and Robert Mueller fit that or not.
Jack Fowler
We'll leave him out of it.
Unnamed Speaker
Patrick Fitzgerald went out, went after Conrad Black. He did in a just a fanatically unfair way. And my point is that Bush wouldn't. When they went after him and they convicted him, he lost his law law license. He was pilloried in the press. What it was really about was that he was a very effective Chief of staff for Dick Cheney. In this sense, if you wrote a negative story about Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby would get on the phone and he'd try to give Dick Cheney's point of view. And he was kind of like J.D. vance. He was that effective and they wanted to take him out and they did. And then when it was all over and there was no political price to play pay, George Bush was, he would not, he wouldn't pardon him, he, he wouldn't commute, he commuted. I think that he didn't have to go to prison, but he didn't pardon him.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
And Dick Cheney and Bush, this is my windy explanation, got in a big argument. Remember we don't leave our dad on the battlefield.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
So the idea that Liz Cheney might solicit her father to ask George Bush and they haven't been in communication, what would Bush have to gain? What would he have to gain? I mean, think about it. What right does he really think that that's. If Jeb ever wanted to run again, that's going to help Jeb Bush. Michael Bloomberg came out today and said he was for Harris. I was looking at all the things he said. They were just in lunatic why he was going to vote for Harris. One of them was Donald Trump was going to deport millions of people. And we, we need these people as workers. I'm thinking 12 million came in illegally. There's over 300,000 violent felons and you don't want to deport any of them. What is wrong with you? You're back to drop a seed in the ground and any idiot can farm is that destroyed your billion dollar campaign. So my point is when all of this Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, Lynn Cheney, get the Bushes. And then our former colleague at National Review. We don't want to be ad hominem, but Jonah Goldberg admittedly screwed up as soon as it was kind of like a juicy Smollett rush to judgment. He heard the arg, the, the alleged thing that Donald Trump did and about the firing squad. Yeah. And then he went in, he used the emphatics unequivocally or clearly this was a threat to her life and this is why is he doing it. And then he got bombarded on social media, nuked. And then he kind of apologized because he looked and saw that left wing people were embarrassed. And then he more or less said I apologize with a footnote. That's what Donald Trump does to people like me. You know what I mean? Blaming Donald Trump for the original rather.
Jack Fowler
Than the who is it Flip Wilson, remember, the devil made me do it.
Unnamed Speaker
The Devil made me do it. Donald Trump, Lucifer's henchman, made me do it. And that's why he did it. So that do it. All of these endorsements are not going to make any, any difference. And this poses a question that we, we haven't really talked about. Jack is win or lose, Donald Trump will either be gone as a political person in November or he will be gone in January of 2029.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
What do these people think is going to happen to them? And they all talk about the Republican Party. What are they going to do? What are they going to do? The next generation of the Bushes are going to come in. I mean, they're, they're coming of age. Michael Bloomberg, he's going to be too old probably. But what do all these people think they're going to do?
Jack Fowler
That's the key question. It is about them. That's what they're thinking.
Unnamed Speaker
That's. So what is, what is somebody like Jonah Goldberg or Bill Kristol or David Frum or you name them, Liz Cheney, do, do they go completely left wing because they're working for institutions, outfits that have some large funding from people on the left, or do they have this idea, well, the MAGA people are over and Trump lost two out of three elections and we're going to go back and reclaim the Republican Party and let's just dismantle all the things that Trump did. And what would that be? Reciprocal tariffs against China, deregulation, tax cut, energy promotion, tough on crime, what. You know what I mean? And then they would, then they would get a Romney like character, Nikki Haley, maybe, huh? And Nikki Haley, then there's a big fight in Republican Party and Nikki Haley goes to Pennsylvania, she goes to Ohio, goes to Iowa, she goes to Indiana, she goes to Wisconsin, says, you know what, I'm for the working person. And she comes to, you know, Arizona, New Mexico, and I'm for all the laza, Mexican, Hispanic, Latino, I am going to win. You think she's going to win that type of vote from working class whites, working class Latinos, working class blacks? She's going to go into the inner city, she's going to go to McDonald's, she's going to drive a garbage truck and all these MAGA people, which have now been redefined as a multiracial middle class coalition? I just don't think it's going to happen. I don't. I think the Republican Party thinks they can re, they can revert back and they can just talk about capital Gains, privatizing Social Security, capital gains cuts, laissez faire. I have no open borders. You know, I don't agree with, I don't disagree with all of them, but they're, it's just not going to work. You're not going to get, you're not going to get those people back. Yeah.
Jack Fowler
I mean, the social fabric of America is being torn, but ripped, shredded by leftism.
Unnamed Speaker
They don't care. They do not care about women's sports and the transgender movement. They do not care about abortion on demand in the ninth month because that's what the, they don't care about mandatory confiscation of guns, which Kamala Harris said that she's, she even said she'd inspect people's homes to get rid of AR15. They don't care about that. Those were lifelong pillars, we were told, of the Republican Party. And that's just so, it's incoherent. And by the way, we'll see what happens in a few nights, but I have a feeling Donald Trump will win.
Jack Fowler
Yeah. On a practical level, excuse me, with the please, George W. Endorse, but I don't see what it would matter. I, I really, I'm at a loss to understand the value of endorsements that, that they really matter. I, I could, I could see Robert F. Kennedy's endorsement here, but you mean.
Unnamed Speaker
You'Re not affected by Tom, Tom Hanks and George Clooney?
Jack Fowler
Believe it or not.
Unnamed Speaker
I thought, I thought, I thought I was going to vote for Trump. And then JLo said, she, I can't. Oh, my God. And then LeBron, you know, I thought, wow, yeah, LeBron. I can't vote for Trump because LeBron said so. And, and he took a knee and wouldn't salute the flag of the United States before. That's why he's my man. And I'm voting Harris.
Jack Fowler
Thank God. I waited to listen for that. By the way, this is not doing endorsements. Did you see Tim Walls calling Elon Musk gay?
Unnamed Speaker
That's what you get to, that's what you're left talking about.
Jack Fowler
Projection, ugly mackerel.
Unnamed Speaker
You know, it's, it's so funny. You get, you get here, you get the end of all things. That's a line kind of right out of Tolkien's at the very end when they throw the ring, a golem ring. And here we are at the end of all things. Well, here we are at the end of all things in this economy, and we're told that Donald Trump is crude, profane, reckless, and Here, what do we have at the end of all the end that she's going to talk about the issues. And we hear that the various people. Tim Waltz now is calling a man that has how many children? 11 or 12?
Jack Fowler
11.
Unnamed Speaker
11 children. Various liaisons, all female marriages has been pilloried in attack for being. What would be the word, Randy with women. And now he's gay. This comes from a person who maybe unfairly, I think unfairly, but people have implied that he was gay.
Jack Fowler
He is definitely fae.
Unnamed Speaker
Yes, they've said that. And then we get the President of the United States in the space of five days, finishes the campaign, good old Joe Biden. We're going to bring decency and moderation and unite the country. That's what we were told. We had to vote for him in 2020. And he says that the Trump supporters are garbage and he'd like to kick, smash, smash or spank or smash the ass of Donald Trump. And then we have Camilla Harris. Do you think she. Yes, she's a FASC fascist. And then all these sober and judicious and humanitarian liberals are, at the end of the day, I hate that expression. But the end of the campaign, all they're left with is just personal slurs and smears. And it's just so typical out of.
Jack Fowler
The playbook of unity, I think.
Unnamed Speaker
Yes, it's. And it, it hurts. I mean, irredeemables and deplorables. They really did hurt Hillary Clinton. And when they released those text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Stroke and you had that exchange about the smelly people call capitalized smell S M E L L Y in Walmart. Then we had that CNN guy, Caputo, or I think his name was, he said, I'm at a Trump rally and I've got more teeth than everybody put together. And that stuff, people don't forgive them for that. And even John McCain lost completely. He lost the middle class money. People got very angry at him at the end when he started talking about the crazies and the hobbits, that yeah, crazy birds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you just, it's just a rule of cardinal rule of politics. You do not insult the voters. You really don't. Well, you know, Obama could stop. He did it again with his false consciousness Marxist narrative to young black men who look at their facial expressions, they're like, what the hell he's telling me. I don't know what's in my interest. This guy who lives in Martha's Vineyard in Hawaii, when gas is $4 a gallon and I can't afford anything. And he tells me that I'm sexist because I don't want to vote for the co owner of this disastrous economic record.
Jack Fowler
I have to think also, you know, the black guys who are black, black in a barbershop are thinking this guy is, this guy's half white. Telling me, you know, I, I know that kind of dynamic comes into play. Why he thinks doing that would have, would have motivated as opposed to boomeranging is beyond me. Lots of things are beyond me, Victor. But anyway, I want to take a moment to welcome back our sponsor, Wired to Fish Coffee. Founded by a Christian couple, they're anglers that are crazy about the love of Jesus for his people. Wired to Fish Coffee cares about clean water, healthy fish and healthy grounded people. Giving back 25% of their net profits to faith based programs and clean water initiatives. Wire to Fish Coffee is committed to making a better quality of life for the earth and its people. Not only that, the coffee is delicious. Sourced in Guatemala and Mexico, known for some of the finest coffee beans in the world, Wired to Fish Coffees rich arabica blend has already been loved by thousands who comment on its smooth finish and amazing taste. Give Wire to Fish Coffee a try today and join a community of people that are making a positive impact. I mean everyone drinks coffee. So drink coffee for something that you're passionate about. Head over to Wired and then the number two wired to fish coffee.com today and make a difference. And we thank the very good people at Wired to Fish Coffee for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, a couple of other topics on our agenda today. Let's, let's talk about, I want to talk about Chuck Schumer. We'll wait, wait on that. Boy, the one of your favorite, the Hansonian solution to America's problems. One of the planks in that platform is bust up Washington, get some of the bureaucrats, move. If you said specifically like move the FBI to Oklahoma. So Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, he announced the other day that he wants to deport bureaucrats from Washington. He had an interview with John Solomon of Just the News. By the way, Just the News is the mothership of this podcast, the Victor Davis Hansen Show. House Speaker Mike Johnson says Republicans have an ambitious plan to reshape and shrink federal government if they win the election. That vision includes a plan to deport tens of thousands of federal bureaucrats from Washington and relocate them to middle America. Sorry about that, Middle America. But anyway. Victor, your thoughts?
Unnamed Speaker
Well, I mean the problem is we're talking About a culture. A culture where Ben Rhodes, the assistant national security advisor for Barack Obama, will give him a lecture about how these people know nothing. And I created an echo chamber, haha. To get the rant, remember that? And then his brother will be president in this. Of cbs. And they're in the same Washington nexus. If you start looking at people on Republican and Democratic side, you start looking at the people who work for NBC, CBS, you know, Andrew McCabe is investigating people and his wife is right next there in the Virginia corridor running for Congress. It's media, it's politics. It's the permanent administrative state. They're all connected and they're all within these radiuses of each other. And there's so many conflict of interest and there's so much distraction. They all want to get on tv, they all want hype. It's just, there's all these predatory lawyers. It's just a bad scene. So why not take bureaus? Not because you want to be punitive, although that would be a side benefit. And break up the administrative state. That wouldn't be the only rational. That wouldn't be the prime rationale. But the prime rationale. Why wouldn't you put people in bureaucracies that better fit the new demography of the United States? This is not 1787. So why wouldn't you say, take the FBI and put it in Kansas City? It's a law and order place. There was no big media centers there. FBI agents, spouses, their husbands wouldn't be reporters working for national news. Their wives wouldn't be working for npr. They wouldn't have conflicts of interest, they wouldn't have contact with all these revolving door, you know, go. You go from the Pentagon, you go right into Northrop or Lockheed or all of these places there. You would do that. So put, put. But. And you would be centrally located. So when j. When James Comey got on his private FBI jet and he wanted to go look at somewhere, he could just zoom, zoom left, right, east, west, north, south, right in the center of the country, visit all the district FBI, not have to go all the way to one side of the country or another. And then why don't have people who are actually farming where the Department of Agriculture is? Why not put it in Texas? Why not put it in Rapid City? Why not put it in Fresno, California, richest agricultural county in the United States? And you would have farmers there that people could have on hands, expertise. We're in the age of zoom now, Jack. So if you say, well, Victor, there's, there's A Nexus. We'll just get on your zoom screen. You get a 58 inch zoom screen in your office and from time to time you'll go zoom into a White House Cabinet meeting or maybe the secretary can fly back there rather than flying all over the country, on the other side of the country. But again, it will break up these marriages, these liaisons, these siblings, all of this incestuous culture. And if you don't, you think that's too radical, then just take the FBI and outsource it. It's counterfeit. I don't know if it's anti terrorism here, investigating overseas problems there, gang task forces there. Just outsource them to DOJ or Homeland Security or Treasury. And I think it would be very salutary. It really would. It'd also be much safer because a lot of these people wouldn't have to live in Washington D.C. that has one of the highest crime rates in the United States. It really would. And it would change that. It would be good for Washington to just loosen it up a little bit. And it would, it would disperse federal dollars. So the rest of the country got some patronage with good paying jobs. And you can think of all this Department of Energy, why not put in Houston, you know what I mean? Or somewhere like if you're going to. I would get rid of it, I would get rid of education too. But if you're. And maybe they will, but you've got to break it up. And I think the Trump administration is starting to see that last time was very last. Their first term was very redolent of Ronald Reagan. He was going to come in and change, shrink government and do all that. He did a good job in many areas. But basically when George H.W. bush took over, it was. And even in the last term, Iran Contra, the swamp absorbed everything because he didn't make fundamental changes that will outlast particular appointments. If Trump comes in and gets a lot of die hard MAGA people and they're really good and there's no anonymous and there's no, you know, people in the DOJ trying to destroy him, or there's no people at Defense that won't follow his directives, whatever, it's still only going to be four years. But you make fundamental change. I'm not talking about constitutional changes, which I don't agree with. I'm talking about bureaucratic changes and geography. And I think that would be the greatest remedy or anecdote to the mess we have today was done a little.
Jack Fowler
Too close to home. But Robert Byrd, who was the Senator from West Virginia and the majority leader. He did move a number of agencies to West Virginia. But, but you know, so what?
Unnamed Speaker
I once drove, I drove through, I rented a car and drove through West Virginia and I didn't see anything that didn't have his name on it. Victor before grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Jack Fowler
He was.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, at one time one of the grand wizards or one of the. I don't know if he was the grand Wizard.
Jack Fowler
He wasn't the. But he was a wizard or Kleagle or whatever.
Unnamed Speaker
The Cleon Cleveland, I think is something grand. Cleveland.
Jack Fowler
Maybe it's a woman's exercise.
Unnamed Speaker
That's a good Greek word. You know, Ku Klux. It means circle. Oh, the circle clan.
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Well, hey, Victor, before we roast another Democrat majority leader, I just want to put it a good word for our friends atbesthotgrill.com Football is back. So is tailgating. And whether it's Friday night lights Saturday, college or pro Sunday, Solaire Tailgate infrared grill set up fast. Heat up quickly. Only three minutes to searing hot temperatures. Just like the big backyard Solaires, which Victor owns. One of a Solaire grill will make you the master of the tail gator with the juiciest, most flavorful food in the parking lot. And the fast grilling times leave you more time to enjoy the pre game festivities. They also cool down fast so you won't miss a minute of the game. The USA made Solaire anywhere, everywhere and all about Infrared grills are portable and perfect for any grilling on the go. From picnics to camping RVs to boating, but especially tailgating. Amaze your tailgating friends with the great food you grill with your Solair infrared grill. Learn more about these fantastic grills and Solaire's try before you buy demo rental program at best hot grill.com that's best hot grill.com best hot grill.com and we thank the good people at Best Hot Grill for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor Every time I read that, it reminded me of like the one tailgate I ever went to was at Yale, which is nearby where I live. And Yale was playing Columbia. And our old friend, my old Dick Morris was a Columbia grad and his family, it was lovely family. They come, they used to come on national review cruises and we just had just the most wonderful time. I like. That's fun.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, I did. I do too. It's funny you said that. I spoke 20 years ago or somewhere. I was in Miami and he was the top bill and I was the second bill.
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
Unnamed Speaker
And you know, it was one of those venues where what. It's not quite advertised, what you have to do, you know, that's add on, add on, add on, add on. It's. So we were there and we were gonna have dinner and we were asked just to give. He was going to give a big speech and I was going to give a shorter speech. Right. And then people said, would you guys speak earlier or something? And he just kind of. And it was on this big boat in the harbor. And he said, you know, I'm going up on the private deck that you can't get anybody can't get up, and if you don't go up there, you're going to get round. So I went up there and then he sat down and explained the entire way that he wrote books.
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
Unnamed Speaker
And he had a, he signed them and he had special order. And he was very helpful.
Victor Davis Hansen
Helpful.
Unnamed Speaker
He said, you know what, in this business, the traditional way of relying on, you know, you write a book and you go on a network news, you don't. You can bypass. That was very prescient. You know, and he was trying to say that it was kind of pre. Podcast, pre self published on am, kind of that stuff.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
And he was, he was actually very helpful and I. Very entrepreneurial too.
Jack Fowler
Oh, I was going to say that. Yeah, he, Dick was definitely, definitely a great marketer.
Unnamed Speaker
Do you remember he wrote that book and I don't know when it was 2007 or 8 called Hillary vs. Condi, where that was his idea of what the next race should be. Well, and it was kind of like Condi was going to be beat Hillary, I think. Yeah, but I mean, the point was that he, he got disillusioned after they destroyed him, that the Democrats, the left wing destroyed him.
Jack Fowler
Yeah, well, he's a complex, complex man. But I've spent a lot of enjoyable time with him and his wife's family. Hey, let's talk about another. Well, he's a New York. Dick was a New York Democrat, and so was Chuck Schumer. And the news came out last week about Schumer. Here's a headline. Best strategy is to keep heads down. Schumer advised Columbia's leaders to ignore antisemitism backlash, saying their problems are really only among Republicans. So here's Chuck Schumer. You know, he's Jewish, majority leader, tremendous power in New York State, of course, never mind the country. Great defender of Israel and the most egregious anti Semitic. Well, I don't think they were the most egregious. They were, let's say Harvard and Columbia sort of were running neck and neck for whose students were doing most outlandish things at the time after October 7th. But you would have thought that Chuck Schumer would be out there giving the leadership of Colombia a kick in the shins and other places. Manu Shafik, the then president. But he was counseling him off the record to keep your head down. By the way, this is all just about a bunch of Republicans upset. Are you surprised by this?
Unnamed Speaker
No, I'm not. I mean, this is a man who's a lawyer and he got out in front of the Supreme Court in 2020 and he said, gor Kavanaugh, you sowed the whirlwind. You're going to reap the wind. Pause. You are not going to know what's going to hit you. That's a direct threat by name to the Supreme Court justice. By that time he was Senate Minority leader, a legal mind, supposedly. He was ahead of a throng of anti abortion protesters and he was screaming at the doors of the Supreme Court. And you could argue that that precedent made it much easier for what followed in the next two years where you had people showing up at the justice's house illegally trying to yell and scream and threaten them to affect their decisions with Merrick Garland didn't do a thing. And more importantly, we had an assassin show up, as you remember.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
And if he hadn't called his sister, he probably would have tried to shoot Kavanaugh. And he took no, I mean they forced apology out of him. The Republicans condemned him such. But yeah, I believe it. I don't think he's just an operational senator. Whatever he thinks is in the interest of his political career, he'll say, but you know, one thing we haven't talked about when you look at these campuses, everybody had predicted that when these students came back to school, they were going to erupt. There's been some demonstrations, but where I work, there is no Hamas tent city there, Jack. And they haven't rushed the new president's office like they did the prior one. And they haven't spray paint, spray painted the colonnade. And guess what? The 13 people who trashed and vandalized the president's office, the prior president, are still being investigated and indicted by the Santa Clara da. And they were suspended. Some of them didn't graduate. And I think there's not been one tent that violated university policy. You could not camp out 24 hours in a public square. And I think the message went out to everybody that if you engage in violence and you violate university policy, two things are going to happen. If you're a student and you're found to violate, you're going to be suspended pending and hearing. And if you're here on a student visa, you're going to be suspended. And that means by law that they have to report to the Homeland Security that your student visa has expired and therefore you'll get your wish to go back to the utopia of Gaza or Jordan or Egypt. And that's, that's a powerful deterrent that really is.
Jack Fowler
Well, some places the nastiness remains percolating and I want to recommend to our listeners to check out the Commentary magazine. The new issue has a piece by a woman, Irina Velitskaya, who's a student at Berkeley. And if you're there, the anti. Semitism there is still very palpable. Well, it's there.
Unnamed Speaker
That's two. No, no, I don't mean there isn't. There's two different questions. One is violent manifestations of it.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
To insidious antisemitism.
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
Unnamed Speaker
We just had a 900 page report compiled by faculties. Some people at the Hoover Institution, I think one or two participated and they found overwhelming incidents. And these were people of the left, almost institutionalized antisemitism in the sense of asymmetrical, asymmetrical treatment of people who say things especially. And I think one of the reasons that you haven't seen as much antisemitism on campus is under the new repertory admissions, when you go like Stanford and you let in 9% of your student body are white males or 20, 21% white in general or Yale or Harvard or Princeton or Cornell. Then you have a lot less Jewish students. And it's gone from anywhere from 20 to 30% in the 1970s down to 9 and 10% Jewish students. And then at the same time you've got a quarter million students coming from the Middle east, foreign students. And the other thing is, after what happened the last year, when people chase Jewish students into the library or the MIT president said basically, I can't protect you and so be careful where you walk. Or we saw the Harvard Review guy attack a Jewish student.
Jack Fowler
Oh my gosh.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he came from Stanford. A lot of Jewish students are just not, they're not identifying as, as Jewish.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
And they are quiet and they're circumspect. And that's what, that's tragic because the university didn't intervene to protect them. And one of the reasons there is less violence is that there's fewer Jews on campus and they don't visibly identify as Jews and they're not in places where they might be attacked as Jews. Right.
Jack Fowler
So, so deeply discouraging.
Unnamed Speaker
Well, I can tell you that I live in a town that is 95% Mexican American and people, you know, undocumented, so to speak, immigrants. And I don't care what the official statistics are. It's pretty well known. That's a pretty accurate 90 to 95%. I can guarantee you if you were Jewish and you had a Star of David around your neck and you walked into the local circum supermarket, no one would attack you, no one would come up and insult you, no one would try to harass you. If you did the same at liberal, enlightened Stanford University where I work, Right. That would be very questionable.
Jack Fowler
Provocative act.
Unnamed Speaker
You walked across the Stanford campus and you had a Star of David visibly from your neck. Somebody would say something or somebody would do that. And yet right where I live, no one would say anything. And you should think about that because that really brings in this enlightenment question. What is the liberal enlightened intellectual utopian landscape creating but medievalism and hatred? And what are people who don't have access to higher education? They're innately not anti Semitic. And so it really is. I think the last two or three years have really made people question the Enlightenment. I really do. I've devoted my entire life to the Enlightenment. But the Enlightenment has become Orwellian. It really has.
Jack Fowler
Well, the absurdity of the elites Victor is on display in many ways. And maybe we'll talk about that as we've come into the home stretch of this episode of the Victor Davis Hansen show. Let's, let's talk about California housing. I'm glad you mentioned Hoover. And we'll get to all that.
Unnamed Speaker
Not, not housing. I just got my property tax yesterday.
Jack Fowler
Oh, well, you. I'm only going to talk about tiny houses. We'll get to that right after these final important messages.
Unnamed Speaker
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Jack Fowler
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Unnamed Speaker
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Jack Fowler
We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show again. This show is up on election day but it's being recorded on Sunday. The third Victor has a website, the Blade of Perseus. The web address is victorhanson.com you should go there early and often like they used to vote in Chicago. And you'll find links to Victor's various articles and essays, syndicated columns, weekly pieces for American greatness, the archives of these podcasts, links to Victor's other appearances, links to Victor's books, links to the Ultra articles which he writes exclusively for the Blade of Perseus. To read them, you should subscribe. In fact, you have to subscribe in order to five bucks a month, $50 discounted for the full year and you can sign up also for the newsletter that comes out every week. So that's VictorHanson.com the Blade of Perseus. I just need to make one note. Victor, by the way, a good friend, John from Milford, where I live, wanted to let me know that something I said when we talked last episode about Penny, who was, you know, the Marine. He could not because this is a state court. He if he's, if he is convicted, the president cannot pardon if it was a federal case and who knows, you know, with if the people of New York do not convict him and there's a Democrat administration, administration. I'm sure they're not going to let that go and they'll find some federal reason to prosecute. But anyway, all that said, thanks John for the correction. Victor, I'm glad you mentioned Hoover before and Hoover as on the website as you have Strategica. There are a couple of major efforts that Hoover promotes. One is again Euro Strategica. Another is called California on your mind and that's overseen by, is it Bill Whalen and Leo Haney.
Unnamed Speaker
Those are two of our best fellows. They really are. They're very good.
Jack Fowler
So Lee. Yeah, they write terrific stuff. So Lee has a piece on sheltering California's homeless is insanely expensive. And let me just bear with me here quickly. There's been, of course, the state legislature has passed some law on housing and this has to do with tiny homes. It's not just the delay that is the problem with the tiny homes plan, it's also the cost. San Jose, one of the four locations chosen for this project. This has to do with reducing homelessness. We'll be spending $30 million for tiny homes that will add 144 beds to an existing tiny home site in the city consisting of 72 single occupancy units which do not have plumbing and 36 double occupancy units which have a bathroom but no kitchen. The standard sizes of these units are about 70 square and 120 square feet respectively. This works out to about $208,000 per bed and about $278 per unit. And he goes on to, I mean, at some of the per per foot cost, they are, this is the equivalent to, to the most expensive mansions you could find in America.
Unnamed Speaker
I know that it's, I mean, we go from one extreme to the other. So we say here's all these people that are injecting, fornicating, urinating, defecating on the street. And it's sort of like, I don't know, London in 1840. And that's the nicest place in the world at that time. And so we're going to clean it up. So we're going to make little modules that are going to have every little thing that costs 200,000 rather than, why don't, what would be better than being out in the cold? Why not just have tents and every fifth tent, have a public restroom with stalls and maybe a group kitchen and maybe use a big parking lot, anything to give them warmth, protection from the elements, clean showers and toilet facilities and then control the influence inflow of drugs. Why do you always have to go from the worst to the most expensive remedy? And I think the answer is that you've got government and you've got people who know how government works and they have relationships with people in private enterprise. And somebody says I can do that. And then there's no transparency and we do something stupid like we're going to solve a person laying on the cement this winter with urine, pools of urine and feces around him and his head next to a bunch of needles. And the solution for that is to build a 210,070 foot cubicle rather than. We can do better. We can, we can't be perfect, but we can give him a tent and maybe a space heater and a group shower where he and five tents can share. We'll have stalls, etc, maybe we can even have a nurse practitioner on, on this. We could do that, but we just don't, can't we? We never do that because of the regulation. Somebody said, well you'll be sued. The tent has. It only reduces the temperature by 20 degrees, something like that, you know. And that's what's wrong with the whole country. We have to be perfect, which we can't be. So we never are, we never even try rather than good or better than the alternative. And yeah, that's a weird mindset. I always found creation paralysis.
Jack Fowler
This is this projection of this tiny house thing. And if there are listeners who live in a tiny house house, God bless, you know. But you know, you see some of them with like we got a kid, a big dog and this is. There's something culturally, I don't know, it's cool to be doing this. It's kind of a middle finger to the McMansions which I don't know that our society needed McMansions built through the, you know, the 90s. But it's weird to take this cool thing. I don't consider it cool, but that's the solution to this problem where there are, as you just mentioned, so many more reasonable ways to.
Unnamed Speaker
It gets the back to that what I've called. When you can't address the felony, you charge them with a misdemeanor. So when there are existential problems. We've talked about the Michael Bloomberg factor. When you can't get the snow off the street. I've got a column about that. When you can't get any snow off in a huge turn, then you talk about super sized drinks.
Jack Fowler
Right.
Unnamed Speaker
To be relevant. And that's what this is, that's the problem.
Jack Fowler
The Big Gulp is the problem. Not that, not the mountain of snow.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, anytime. It's true. And I see that where I live all the time. There's, you know, is that I had an inspector come out and he started to lecture me about the panel and the solar panels and where were there. Where this. They have to have a label here. And I just said you can I just say it? That's one thing we're talking about writing labels on A circuit breaker that is in code. It's new and the panels are new. And the company that installed them did it according code, but we didn't write which particular circuit. And you're here. If you turn around and walk, I don't know, a third of a mile down that street, you will see about 50 people living in one house and its yard. There will be about four Winnebagos, three lean twos that you can see Romex, that's not professionally wired, going out of the circuit breaker to each home. Home you will see porta potties, I guess, with a hole, whether. Because nobody's going to service them. And then you will see every type of animal known to existence. It looks like Noah's Ark. You will see ducks, you will see chickens, you will see dogs, you will see horses, you will see cows, you will see pigs, you will see sheep, you will see goats all running around amok. And you will probably have 5,000 violations.
Jack Fowler
Right?
Unnamed Speaker
And he said, well, what do you. What do you mean? I said, why don't you go over there and try to deal with the felony? Why, I can't do that. I don't want to go over there. They wouldn't want me to go over there. I say, exactly, I need an arm. You don't have a clue to deal with the problems of that. So to make yourself useful and important, you will come over here and I will nod, yes, yes, yes. No, no, I do not want to find. Tell me exactly what you. What you want me to do. Yes, I will go get a felt pen right now and, well, I'll go get some tape. Will the tape be regulation? Tape is a felt pen or I need blue ink or black ink. And that's what my conversation was like right over there. That place is just a moonscape and no one would even get near it because what would you do when you went over there? You'd say, this is a violation. This person is illegal. Here's drugs, here's this, here's that. And that would be the first 10 seconds. And then somebody would call up and say, I'm from the poverty rights legal. How did you know? How dare you do this? And so they know all that. And so we're into a paralysis.
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
Unnamed Speaker
And that's. That's what the elections. And just to rant one second longer, that's partly what this election is about. This election on Tuesday is about a particular mindset that lectures people and says, you can't do this, you can't do that. You're not doing this. You're not. And then that lines that mindset says, and we're going to keep doing this to you. And the people who, it's the people who lecture versus the people being lectured to. And the people that lecture says, don't. I don't want to hear your gospel anymore. I'm sick of it. You have all sorts of problems. You go into inner cities, see people are shooting themselves, they're killing them themselves. There's. You can't even walk in San Francisco. Go deal with that first before you tell me that I said an incorrect pronoun. Right, but you go after a pronoun while your whole society is turning into Afghanistan or something. And that's because you can't deal with it because you're scared. But you're only, you're a bully. You're a bully. And that's, that's what's so weird about. And Joe Biden. I'm going to take Trump behind. I'm going to spank. Well, if you really want to go after someone who says terrible things and is disrupting, why don't you just go after Louis Farrakhan? Just say, you know what, you're an anti Semite racist. Or go after somebody in your own party, Al Sharpton, and just say, I'm going to go. There's a nice. Michael Paak did a wonderful documentary about ground knights. I just saw it. And I'm not going to have Al Sharpton in my White House. Why don't you just do that before you start getting on your pulpit?
Jack Fowler
Yeah. By the way, you mentioned all this talk of drugs and other things spring this on you. But I did, I did see Steve Bannon. He got out of jail and he talked about, he was talking about Biden and not in a malicious way. I thought he said there's so much drugs in the, in the federal jail and he was in what used to be called club, the lowest level.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
Jack Fowler
And he, he did not think Hunter Biden would be able to survive that.
Unnamed Speaker
I, I saw that quote. Did he mean that Hunter would not be able to survive because a, there would be too many drugs that would tempt him or. Yeah, I think the inmates would be violent.
Jack Fowler
No, I got the impression it was the near occasion of sin, of the drugs and that. And that his father should pardon him for that.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
Jack Fowler
I mean, it wasn't political. It wasn't malicious.
Unnamed Speaker
You know, that's so funny. Why doesn't Lynn Cheney. Because she's always saying that democracy will be destroyed by Trump. Why doesn't she just ask herself one question? Why did you put two high ranking at one time Trump officials, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, into jail, prison. I don't mean her personally, but why did the system do that which you didn't object to, to put them in for the crime of not complying with a congressional subpoena when, when Merrick Garland and Eric Holder themselves didn't on much more fundamental questions, why didn't you and why did you, when you ran that committee, why didn't, why don't we have all the records? Why weren't, why did some disappear and why the ones that are very critical, why don't you have all of them released? Why didn't they do that? And why did you deny members of your own party who were nominated by your speaker that they could not participate? And why were there only two Republicans?
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
Unnamed Speaker
And the only two things that you had in common, you two Republicans, were two things. A, a, you would not be running for office and B, you voted to impeach Donald Trump. And that those were the only two people that I guess they could find. I guess the Democrats said, Pelosi said, I want to run a rigged investigation on January 6, but I'm going to be the first time in the congressional history we're going to refuse the nomination of the opposition party, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy's nominations. But you know what, we got to be careful because we only want Republicans. Can you find any Republicans that both voted to impeach Trump and then they have no political future. They're either not running or they have no chance to winning because if you can, we can get some bodies. And that's what they did.
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
Unnamed Speaker
And we're supposed to think that she was representative of her party or the country or anything. It's joke.
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, that will have to be the final word of wisdom here. I want to thank our listeners who come to Civil Thoughts and sign up. You go to civilthoughts.com and you will get every Friday the free email that I write. It's weekly since it's every Friday. 14 recommended readings of great articles. I've come across the previous week that not so much on politics, but more about cultural and spiritual matters. Folks seem to like it. So not selling names. There's nothing transactional about it. Sybilthoughts.com thanks to those of you who write me and say nice things about it. Lots of people say nice things about Victor. On Apple, itunes and Victor's website, people leave comments. And on Apple you can Rate the show zero to five stars. And again, I've said this before, a million times. Practically everyone is giving Victor five stars. One who did that sick tale. Porsche Pausanias signed off a comment. Also attended the rating with a comment and it's titled Best Podcast. Hey Victor, longtime listener from Canada. I listen to every episode. Why don't you ever give Sparta. We should bring this up as a topic for another podcast. Why don't you ever give Sparta the proper credit it deserves for winning two wars against Athens and leading the Greek world? If Athens is so great, is not Sparta the greater? For beating her twice and setting the governmental example of republicanism and constitution.
Unnamed Speaker
Wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm being accused of being a spartophile. I mean a Sparta missile.
Jack Fowler
Ms. Spartanophile.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, I have been very critical. I will redirect our dear reader to this issue of the New Criterion. Yes, and it's called American Athenian Democracy and it is a very critical look at trends in America to emulate what the manner in which Athenian democracy 51% mobocracy or what the Greeks called the aklos the mob oclocracy. And if he read the other Greeks, that is a 250,000 word defense of what we would call the middle Constitution or the con what the Greeks called polita eia at the end and best exemplified by Thebes, in which you had a upper chamber, a lower chamber, legislative. You had outside judicial watch, whether it's the ephors or Spartans or the Creta at Thebes. And then you had an elected executive officer. In fact, this is ironic. I just came yesterday from a mountain retreat held by the Intercollegiate Students Institute. It's institute, isn't it?
Jack Fowler
Intercollegiate Studies institute.
Unnamed Speaker
Yes, intercollegiate isi.org Guy and John Bera was very cordial, very professionally run. And what were the topics? The topics were Cicero's De Officius on duty, Xenophon, Cyropadia, Washington's Farewell address. And I in the course of the question answer, I made it very clear that our model in the west of a tripartite judicial, legislative and executive checks and balances can be traced from the American Constitution back to Monsieur and the Enlightened, back to the Roman Republic, and ultimately back not to Athenian democracy, but to the Spartan and Cretan constitutions in which there was two kings, executives, the Affirmate, a judicial overseer and the Gerousia, the Senate and the Ecclesia or the homoioi, all the citizens in a mass assembly and one was checking the other and that was the most stable form of government. Not in my view, but in the view of people like Aristotle. Look at this fourth book of the politics. I have been a big critic of mass mob rule in Athens. I mean. Oh, another thing I could suggest. I'm sounding kind of pompous. I have to be careful.
Jack Fowler
No, no, wait, wait, wait, wait. I do. I just read the new Criterion essay, so I want to make that emphatic.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
Jack Fowler
To all listeners.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
Jack Fowler
The New Criterion. It's Victor's one of four parts series there on. But Victor kicks Athens in the. Wherever Joe Biden says.
Unnamed Speaker
And I think you could also go on the Hillsdale website and Paul Ray and I have an online course on the Peloponnesian War. And I think, in addition, if you were to read my book on the Peloponnesian War, I'm very critical of Athens. And why would I be that? For exactly what I said. There were no constitutional guardrails on the expression of the ecclesiastical. So if they want to go to, I don't know, Sicily on one day and things go bad, then they want to recall Alcibiades for convincing them to do what they wanted to do. And then Nikia says, well, it's kind of a bad idea, and I'll try to give. I'll be so outrageous in my demands that even these stupid people wouldn't go for it. And the more outrageous as he is, we need this and this and this and this. I. E. It'll bankrupt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or I talk in that book about going into the island of Milos and murdering all the males over the age of 16. Or we can go to the third book, going into Midi, the capital of Lesbos. And this is typical Athenian. Let's go kill all the males over 16. Okay. Oh, I went home and talked to my family. That's kind of a bad idea. Let's go back and vote not to kill all of the millet males of six. Well, what do we do? The trireme only left 180 miles of lesbos. Well, let's give them free food and water and make them eat so they don't take any breaks and they can catch the first trireme. Thucydides dryly says, and so when they had everybody lined up to have their throat cut, the second one says, no, no, just the bad guys. Not. Not the innocent. Or how about executing all the generals after the great battle of Argonai, that tremendous, stupendous, incredible victory over the Spartan fleet. And the winners were the admirals who crafted that Brilliant comeback. Well, let's execute them all because they didn't pick up every survivor in the water. Or how about Socrates, 70 years old. Let's have an Athenian popular court, and let's just say he introduced new gods and he corrupted the youth. So let's vote to execute him. But then he'll propose the sentence and maybe he'll propose, you know, like five days exile or something. That'll be fine. We'll let him do that. Oh, he proposed that we feed him free. That's an insult. Let's execute him. And that's what Athenian democracy did. Well, and so I've been a big critic.
Jack Fowler
Chicago. Chicago sounds better.
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, it had a lot of good. I'm not suggesting that democracy per se is bad. It's not. It just has to. No checks of balance function within a constitutional system. And the Greeks knew that and they called it politea. So.
Jack Fowler
All right. Well, you've been terrific today, Victor, with all the wisdom you shared. We thank you for that. Thank folks, for listening again. This is election day. If you haven't voted yet, go vote.
Unnamed Speaker
Go vote. Go vote.
Jack Fowler
We will. We will be back soon with the post election edition of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye. Bye.
F
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Podcast Summary: "Last Thoughts on Election Day" – The Victor Davis Hanson Show
Podcast Information:
The episode begins with Jack Fowler introducing the show, highlighting Victor Davis Hanson's credentials and the purpose of the podcast. Recorded on Sunday, November 3, the episode was scheduled for release on Election Day, November 5, 2024.
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A significant portion of the discussion centers on the reliability of recent polls concerning the presidential election. The hosts critique various polling organizations, emphasizing that many polls have historically underestimated Trump's support.
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The discussion shifts to Donald Trump's comments about Liz Cheney, where Trump referred to her as a "chicken hawk." The hosts explore the misinterpretation and exaggeration of Trump's statements by the media, which portrayed Trump as endorsing violent rhetoric against Cheney.
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Jack Fowler and Victor Hanson critique President Joe Biden’s language and behavior, particularly focusing on inflammatory remarks aimed at Trump supporters and aggressive rhetoric that breaks from traditional presidential decorum.
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The hosts discuss Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's proposed plan to relocate federal bureaucrats from Washington to middle America. This strategy is portrayed as an attempt to decentralize federal power and reduce the influence of Washington-centric administration.
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The conversation touches upon rising antisemitism on university campuses, despite a decrease in visible Jewish populations due to changing admissions policies.
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A critical analysis of California’s expensive tiny home initiatives aimed at reducing homelessness is discussed. The hosts argue that the high per-unit costs are inefficient and suggest more practical, cost-effective solutions.
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Victor Hanson and Jack Fowler delve into the philosophical underpinnings of American democracy, contrasting the rigid constitutional checks of the U.S. system with the more volatile Athenian democracy.
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As Election Day approaches, the hosts urge listeners to vote and engage with the political process. They also promote Victor Davis Hanson’s website, The Blade of Perseus, and encourage subscriptions for more in-depth analyses and content.
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In "Last Thoughts on Election Day," The Victor Davis Hanson Show offers a comprehensive analysis of the current political landscape, emphasizing skepticism towards polling accuracy, critiques of both major political figures, and discussions on broader societal issues such as antisemitism and housing crises. The hosts advocate for informed voting and engagement with historical principles to navigate present challenges.
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Note: This summary excludes advertisements and non-content sections to focus on the core discussions and insights presented in the podcast.