Negotiations, Military Success, and the Overweening, Underwhelming Left

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Victor Davis Hanson Show Episode: Negotiations, Military Success, and the Overweening, Underwhelming Left
Release Date: May 9, 2025

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1. US-Canada Negotiations and Trump's Tactics

Timestamp: 01:34 - 13:42

Victor Davis Hanson delves into the recent negotiations between US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Trump attempted to pressure Canada by claiming, “we subsidize Canada a lot in various things, and we also provide military protection” (04:10). Hanson critiques Trump's approach, highlighting that Carney effectively countered Trump's taunts by emphasizing Canada’s sovereignty. He explains that Trump's strategy of insinuating Canada could become a "51st state" is both impossible and politically untenable, citing the constitutional requirements and the likely bipartisan opposition it would face (06:25).

Hanson further analyzes Trump's leverage regarding defense spending. He points out that while NATO countries pledged to spend 2% of their GDP on defense, Canada remains the sole outlier at 1.37% (09:15). Trump’s criticism of Canada for its defense spending is seen as demagoguery, aiming to position Trump as a defender of American interests against foreign free-riding (11:40). Hanson argues that Carney’s administration now faces the challenge of addressing Trump’s allegations without jeopardizing Canada’s economic and military stability (13:10).

Notable Quote:

"Canada is such a great place and we love Canadians and we are looking just for negotiations." — Donald Trump (paraphrased) (04:00)

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2. House Investigation of the FBI and the Congressional Baseball Shooter

Timestamp: 14:00 - 21:03

Sammy Wink introduces the discussion on the House investigation into the FBI's handling of the congressional baseball game shooting, where Steve Scalise was wounded. Hanson criticizes the FBI’s partisan shift, tracing issues back to figures like James Comey and Andrew McCabe, who allegedly warped the agency's neutrality (16:24). He asserts that the FBI under the Biden administration has transformed into a partisan body, citing the suppression of information related to the Hunter Biden laptop and biased investigations into political figures (19:50).

Hanson warns of forthcoming disclosures from Cash Patel's files, predicting they will further embarrass the FBI and expose its deep-seated partisanship (20:20). He laments the erosion of the FBI's integrity, contrasting it with its former reputation as a respected and impartial institution (21:00).

Notable Quote:

"The FBI was not the FBI that we used to watch on TV with Ephraim Zimbalitz Jr. It was a partisan extension of the Biden administration." — Victor Davis Hanson (20:30)

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3. Decline of the Democratic Party: A Postmortem

Timestamp: 21:50 - 36:47

In his article "From One Fake Left Wing Hysteria to the Next," Hanson examines the weakening influence of the Democratic Party. He identifies three main factors contributing to their decline:

1. Lack of Institutional Power: The Democrats hold no majority in the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court, limiting their ability to effect significant change (22:15).

2. Absence of a Clear Agenda: Without a solid alternative to Trump's policies, the party lacks direction. Hanson criticizes Democratic leaders for not presenting viable solutions to issues like the trade deficit and federal budget (28:00).

3. Reliance on Demagoguery: Faced with these limitations, Democrats resort to street theater and inflammatory rhetoric, such as targeting corporations like Tesla and using profane language against political opponents (33:00).

Hanson argues that the Democratic Party's failure to articulate a compelling and actionable platform leaves them without the necessary support to regain power. He also touches on the party’s mishandling of immigration policies and its disastrous impact on American communities (34:50).

Notable Quote:

"They have no plan because there is no alternative to really what Donald Trump is doing." — Victor Davis Hanson (28:26)

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4. Israel's Military Strikes on Sanaa and Regional Implications

Timestamp: 41:12 - 48:30

Hanson discusses Israel's recent military action against Sanaa, Yemen, targeting the airport to disrupt Houthi supply lines from Iran. He compares the Houthis to historical terrorist groups, emphasizing their reliance on Iranian support and their ineffectiveness without it (41:24). Hanson praises Israel’s decisive response, suggesting that such actions cripple the Houthis' operational capabilities (43:15).

He expresses skepticism about Iran's willingness to adhere to any agreements, asserting that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is purely for leveraging power against Israel and Europe. Hanson underscores the futility of negotiating with Iran, labeling it an illiberal and aggressive regime (46:06).

Notable Quote:

"Iran has zero intention, zero of ever abiding by anything. They want a nuclear weapon." — Victor Davis Hanson (46:06)

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5. The United Kingdom's Updated War Plans Against Russia

Timestamp: 48:59 - 52:19

Hanson addresses the UK's initiative to update its war plans amidst fears of a potential Russian nuclear threat. He criticizes Western nations for neglecting their nuclear deterrents, arguing that maintaining and modernizing these arsenals is crucial for credible deterrence (49:30). Hanson contends that Britain’s updates are a response to Russian provocations and praises the necessity of strong nuclear capabilities to prevent Russian aggression (52:00).

He underscores the importance of alliances, particularly NATO, in reinforcing deterrence and supporting Ukraine, while cautioning Europe against boasting about independent military capabilities without backing from the United States (51:50).

Notable Quote:

"Europe should wise up and stop talking about 50,000 people going alone without the United States." — Victor Davis Hanson (52:10)

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6. Court Rulings Favoring Trump’s Policies on Transgender Military Service

Timestamp: 60:44 - 67:59

Hanson highlights a significant Supreme Court decision that allowed Trump’s executive order banning transgender individuals from military service to remain in effect. He criticizes the judiciary for its partisan bias, suggesting that the current courts are extensions of the Biden administration's agenda (61:47).

Hanson further denounces the erosion of the judicial system's integrity, pointing out that both conservative and liberal judges are compromising to serve political ends. He laments the transformation of the FBI and the courts into tools for partisan warfare, undermining their foundational principles of impartiality and justice (67:30).

Notable Quote:

"They have a terrible reputation. I said, my mother was a state appeals court judge. She would have been horrified to watch this." — Victor Davis Hanson (61:49)

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7. The Decline of Major Pharmacy Chains Amid Economic Downturns and Increased Theft

Timestamp: 67:59 - 71:14

Hanson discusses the recent bankruptcy filing of Rite Aid, attributing it to mismanagement rather than external economic factors like tariffs and supply costs. He contrasts this with other pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS, which remain operational and well-stocked (68:55).

He attributes Rite Aid’s struggles to inadequate security measures, leading to increased theft and looting. Hanson criticizes the left for decriminalizing theft and failing to support businesses in maintaining security, resulting in depleted shelves and compromised operations (71:00).

Notable Quote:

"The CEO didn't mention the increased costs that were incurred by theft and by having to police their own stores." — Victor Davis Hanson (71:14)

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8. Audience Interaction and Final Thoughts

Timestamp: 73:09 - End

Listener feedback is addressed, with comments appreciating the show's insightful analysis despite occasional delays in news coverage. Hanson emphasizes his preference for thoughtful digestion of news over real-time reactions, contrasting his approach with more immediate, often superficial news formats (73:30).

He concludes by defending his perspectives on various topics, including World War II military strategies and criticizing academic institutions for perceived biases and inefficiencies. Hanson encourages listeners to explore his works, such as his book on World War II, to gain deeper insights into historical military developments (84:20).

Notable Quote:

"We're not going to listen to you. You lied too many times. We know what you're going to do." — Victor Davis Hanson (73:30)

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Conclusion

In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson provides a critical examination of contemporary political dynamics, military strategies, and institutional biases. He challenges the efficacy of current Democratic strategies, underscores the importance of strong defense alliances, and criticizes the judiciary and academic institutions for perceived partisan tendencies. Hanson consistently advocates for pragmatic and historical-informed approaches to policy and governance, offering listeners a perspective grounded in military history and conservative principles.

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For further insights and detailed discussions, listeners are encouraged to visit Victor Davis Hanson’s website victorhanson.com and explore his extensive body of work.

Transcript

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[Sammy Wink]

Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. This is our Friday News roundup and we've got lots of news for the week. Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, the new one or President is always Prime Minister. Prime Minister, has come to the White House to talk with Trump. We have also a House investigation of the FBI and the shooter of the Congressional baseball game and Steve Scalise was wounded. We have new information on that investigation and then we'll talk a little bit about the Democratic Party and its rhetoric against Trump. So stay with us and we'll be right back with those stories. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor is the Martin and Nealy Anderson Sr. Fellow Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Please come join him at his website. It is victorhanson.com the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus and we welcome one and all to come. There's lots of VDH material. In fact it's all VDH material just about and you can find information on his books, you can read his latest articles and you can join Ultra to subscribe and get two articles a week plus a video at the end of the week. So we have special for our Ultra subscribers. So Victor, we had just this week, we're, we're recording on Tuesday and Trump is currently having a discussion with The Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who is here to talk about. Part of it is tariffs. But I thought there was one interesting thing before you go ahead, and that was that Trump made a statement on his tweet that there was one simple truth, and that is that we subsidize Canada a lot in various things, and we also provide military protection, which was kind of taunting. And then he came into the negotiations, negotiation and the press conference saying Canada is such a great place and we love Canadians and we are looking just for negotiations. So I thought that was an interesting Trump move, but go ahead.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, Prime Minister Carney was elected and he overcame a 20 point deficit from the Conservative Pouliev, and he did so by hammering the Trump troll. Trump said to Trudeau, whom he despised and vice versa, that Trump Canada, since we provide all of its security and its economy, is joined at the hip. It might as well be a 51 first state. And he kept trying to troll them. If they were adults, Carney would have said this to the Canadian electorate under the provisions of the United States Constitution. Trump knows we know, the Congress knows. The American people know. That's impossible because you have to get, as I understand it, as I remember, I'm doing it by memory, 2/3 vote of the Congress, and you have to have three quarters of the states to bring in a new state. More importantly, the left would never do it because they would feel that would be imperialistic and the right would never do it because they would not want another California. So there was zero chance. And he knew that. But he wanted to keep going and saying Trump wants to do this because he. And it worked. So now he ran on Trump as an existential enemy that wants to incorporate us rather than if he had been a statesman, he could have just said, I like the United States. Donald Trump knows what he's doing. He's trolling. And he will say he's not, but don't take him seriously. But he didn't want to do that. Okay, so he did that. And now what do you do now, now that you've trashed Trump? Trashed Trump. Trashed Trump. You go to Washington. He requested the meeting. Okay, so there's two issues. Trump said defense, because that's the strongest issue, and that's why he mentioned it first. In 2014, the 32 NATO nations. Excuse me, 2014, the NATO nations promised the following. That they would spend 2% of their GDP on DEF. The Obama administration quickly discovered in its last two years that only four or five of them did it. People, Greece and Poland, you know, and they wouldn't do it. And he called them in a New York Times interview, free Riders. And he was right. So Trump came in and he got angry and he said everything, you know, we might not even have to. And he did the art of the deal trolling and he got six to eight more do it. Then over the campaign and over the seasons from 2021, when Trump left office, these European nations hadn't done anything. Then two things happened. One, the Ukraine war and it terrified them. And two, Donald Trump was resurrecting during the, in his wilderness years. They thought, you know what, this guy is like Dracula. We can't, we can't keep a state. He's going to come back. So they started to make the 2%. That was the point. Now there's only six nations that do it. You know who's in the last one to do it? The worst, Canada. It spends 1.37% of its GP on defense. Now why does it do that? If it was in Europe next to the Ukraine border, would it do that? No. If it was next to France or Germany and it was had a history of World War II, would it do that? No, it does it for one reason, because it's right next to the United States and it knows that Mexico is the only belligerent of the three that might even pose a threat to it. And we're in between them. And if they're worried about Chinese and Russian entrance into the Arctic Circle, there's Alaska with all of these. We have a ballistic missile system in Alaska, an anti ballistic missile that protects Canada. So what Trump is saying, pay the 2%. Why don't they want to do it? Because it would cost about $40 billion and they don't want to do it. So then they said, well, we'll wait till five more years. So you guys all pay 2%, but we're just going to free ride on you. That was number one. The number two was they keep saying, well, we ran up $63 billion because we give you free, we give you oil at a discount. And, and that's why we have tariffs on our poultry and our cheese, on our milk. And you know, it has to get up to a certain level and then we'll stop, stop. Canada, you produce heavy sulfur oil right next to the United States in the center of your country. We buy 95% of the oil you produce. It's a long way to Vancouver, it's a long way to the East Coast. That would be very expensive for you to transmit. That to and then find buyers for it. We have refineries right across the border that can refine your heavy crude. So it's very cheap for you to go right across the border. No shipping overseas, nothing that right in the interior of your country, to the interior of our country. And we guarantee we buy almost all you have. So why would you then put any tariffs since you're making a fortune on any of our goods? And why would you do that if you're relying on the United States? Why would you run up a $63 billion surplus? Why wouldn't you just negotiate and say, look, we're remiss, we haven't spent very much on defense. We're saving $40 billion a year and you're making up the difference with your military shield. So what we're going to do is we're going to try to cut that deficit by 30 billion. And that means we're going to buy more of your cheese, more of your Wisconsin, Michigan dairy products to make up for the fact that you're buying enormous amounts of our oil. They won't do that. They will not do that. And so he demagogued this issue. And then the other thing is, he knows darn well that Trump was not going to invade Panama, that that was art of the deal to get the Chinese out of the canal. And it worked. Rubio went down there as a masterful diplomat, fixed things, and it looks like there's a 50, 50 chance that Blackrock will take over the entry and exits of the Panna Co op. Everybody knew he was not going to invade Greenland. He said what was the point he wanted, he wanted Denmark to put a billion dollars in there. And they did. And he wanted more autonomy for Greenland. Maybe they would like to vote their interests, which we support them. And then he was trying to remind the world of two things. China and Russia go right through the Arctic Circle and there's a lot of rich natural resources there. And Greenland is utterly defenseless. And when they get in a jam, they're going to call us, so why don't we just admit it? And that worked. Greenland's on the national coat of arms of the royal family of Denmark suddenly. So that worked. And then we get to the art of the deal with Canada and that hasn't worked because Canada has not agreed in a year or two to make their 2% investment. And they just feel they have a God given right because they say we sell oil to you at a discount. No, you couldn't sell to anybody else at that price. And so he demagogued that issue and he got what he wanted. He got what he wanted. He got elected on nationalism. These awful Yankees to the south, they're going to invade us. They're going to make us our 50. Yeah, that worked, Mr. Carney. But you're an international globalist. You are a citizen, I think, unless you've changed your citizenship of Ireland, Great Britain and Canada, you were ahead of the bank of England as well as the bank of Canada. So you're a globalist, but you got what you wanted. And now you've got a problem. You've got to go over to Donald Trump and you've got to say, these tariffs will kill us. But you've killed Donald Trump as an image in Canada. I mean, he helped himself, obviously, but you so demonized him and you so fabricated the idea that you might be invaded and be a 51st state when you knew that was not true and you knew you were running a deficit and you knew about your defense. What did he not do in that campaign? He didn't say this. Fellow Canadians, to defend ourselves from rhetorical attacks from the President, we must be strong. We must next year spend $40 billion more in defense and partner with the United States and meet our NATO requirements. And because we've got a good customer that buys our heavy, sulfurous crude, interior oil, we're going to try to find things that we can import from the United States to get that surplus not down to zero. But he didn't do that. And now he's got to do it. And he's going to go and mouth off like he did before he left, and then he's going to go in. And I think. I think Trump is going to say, I'm not interested. And it's too bad, because everybody likes Canada. They don't like us as much as we like them, probably. But they demagogued the issue in a way that they could have handled it. And we knew what Trump was trying to do. He was trying to do a Panama Agreement, get some traction and rectify a situation that should have been rectified 20 years ago.

[Sammy Wink]

Trump sounded like he would be all in for negotiations. So he was read Art of the.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Deal, Art of the Combat, and Art of the Deal, too. I read them all.

[Sammy Wink]

But you did help me understand why the Prime Minister kept saying we're an independent nation and kept making references to that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I thought you're not an. They're not an independent nation. If you defined an independent nation as a sovereign nation that is autonomous and can defend itself. You are a sovereign political nation. But you, your economy depends on the United States of America and your defense depends on the United States of America. If the United States tomorrow said you don't like us, we don't like you. You're not part of the nuclear shield, we're not going to defend you. That would be a terrible thing to do. I'm not advocating it. China would be there in two seconds to make inroads.

[Sammy Wink]

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[Victor Davis Hanson]

He was a Bernie Sanders staffer.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes. And the f. So this is what the investigation found out, that the FBI knew not only that he was targeting Republicans, but that he had a list of Republicans. They had it from his pocket that he had targeted and obviously luckily not any of the other ones had been hurt. But they kept that under wraps all the way through 2021 and actually longer until now. But in 2021 they really didn't want it to get out that there were ter it's terrorist act. So they didn't want it to get out into the public when they were investigating January 6th and right wing.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It's interesting when you say they because the FBI director doesn't sneeze unless he calls his boss who was the Attorney general who doesn't sneeze unless he calls the White House, even though they say there's firewall between them. At least Eric Holder said there wasn't. He was Obama's wingman. But my point is this is under Robert Mueller, who did the special investigation, but under James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Christopher Wray, there was a steady pattern of warping the FBI and making it a partisan body. What do I mean? That James Comey interfered in the 2016 election. He did not ever bring. He said that Hillary Clinton was legally culpable of a felony, but he said no one would ever prosecute it. He let her off even when she destroyed subpoenaed material and devices. And then he told the President of the United States that he was not under investigation when he had already known that Operation Crossfire. He said he didn't really know about Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele was a paid informant of the FBI. And when Trump fired him, we got Andrew McCabe. He then appeared in the Lisa Page Peter Strzok text correspondence when it said, don't worry, andy, da, da, da will take care of it. Andy McCabe was the one supposedly, he said she. He said, he said, he said Rod Rosenstein was going to wear a wire. Rod was. And they were going to entrap Donald Trump to show that he was non compos mentis. This is. The FBI didn't say a word about Biden when he was non composable. And then he was fired. And then we got Christopher Wray. And Christopher Wray was the one under whose direction that FBI agents partnered with whom they partnered with social media, the old Twitter and Facebook. And why? To suppress knowledge of the Hunter Biden laptop because they did not want that authenticity to be revealed to the electorate. And by the way, when the 51 intelligence authorities said that the Hunter Biden laptop was authentic when they knew it wasn't. And why did they knew it wasn't? Because it was in the possession of Christopher Wray's FBI and they had already authenticated it and they didn't tell anybody. So they have a long pattern. And now Cash Patel has got. He's got these files and it's putrid and toxic. So just get ready, everybody, because he's going to start releasing stuff like this and it's going to be really embarrassing to the FBI. And because the FBI was not the FBI that we used to watch on TV with Ephraim Zimbalitz Jr. It was a partisan extension of the Biden administration. If you lost a Biden family diary, the FBI would Go shake down Operation Veritas. If you lost Hunter's gun, they would go find it for, you know, it would be in a bin. They would help find that. If you had a laptop that Hunter lost, they would go get it and put it. They were a personal retrieval service for the wayward Biden family. And it's really sad to say that about the FBI because but they're like the universities. If they were smart, they would just shut up. And all the people who were responsible, I think they're firing and then the rest of the people who are keeping mum but are probably left of center in the Washington office, they would be very smart just to say that was an aberration and we're now going to be apolitical. It's going to be hard to do for them.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, it sure is. Well, let's turn to another topic then. You have an article that this week in American Greatness, but you can find it at his website, victorhanson.com and it's titled From One Fake Left Wing Hysteria to the Next. And you show, I would call it a postmortem on the Democratic Party which seems like it's dead if it's not quite dead. But you show that all their fear mongering, antisemitism, Trump hating, swearing that all of that's doing nothing to, to draw followers in and that in addition it seems they have no agenda. And you ask a question in there, why would anybody believe them? And I thought that that was interesting.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I was just looking at the hundred day polls. Yeah, I think I mentioned that before. All of them except for insider advantage, Trafalgar and Rasmussen, that had the best record in the 2024 election, they all said that Donald Trump was anywhere from 42 to 45% unfavorable rating. Yeah. And when asked do you approve of the hundred days? I think they said 42. So it just anybody who read any of those polls. And so I just picked the first one. I only picked the NPR PBS Marist poll because they had been defunded lately and they were really outraged. So I just said okay, I know those people. I remember them in the 2024. I wrote about them because the night before the election, NPR, pbs, their poll came out and said that Kamala Harris would win the election beyond the margin of error, four point lead. She lost by one and a half. They were 5.5 points off. And then when you looked at the poll and you compared it with the Washington Post, the New York Times, a lot of people that were Conservative pollsters or just observations said 51%, 50% of the voters were Trump voters. That's what happened. They voted for Donald Trump. These polls have them about 35%. These are rigged. The question I was asking is there were three themes. Number one, they have no power. Power is described by institutional power. They don't have the White House. They have no executive orders. They, they do not have the House. They can't impeach Trump and they can't do any, they can't introduce any legislation. They don't have the Senate. They cannot disqualify a nominee or not confirm a judge or oppose. They don't have any. Okay. They don't have the Supreme Court. Ultimately, these lower court, if Justice Roberts wants to, he can get a 5 to 4 majority. 6, 3, but I more like 5, 4. So they have no institutional power. So then they are left with one. The second thing is they're left with an alternative. They could be a shadow government. They could start Andy Bashar, the Kentucky governor, Josh Shapiro, the. I don't even want to have an adjective for Gavin Newsom. But they could get the young governors or some senators, not talking about the deranged AOC or the half educated Jasmine Crockett or the octogenarian Bernie Sanders. They could get the new people of the party and they could say, we have a Contract with America. There's five great issues. Here's the border. We don't believe in what Donald Trump is doing. Here's our plan. We don't believe that the deficits are a problem. We have 2 trillion dollar deficits that he inherited, budget deficit. Here's our plan, either to increase it or lower it. And then we have a 1.2 trillion dollar trade deficit. Here's our plan. Here's our plan for 37. They have no plan. And the reason they have no plan is there is no alternative to really what Donald Trump is doing. You've got to cut the federal budget and you've got to at the same time prime the economy with deregulation, energy development, tax to get more revenue and expand it. And that's what he's doing. You have to address the trade deficit. You can say they don't matter, but they do matter. You can't just keep giving all of these trillions of dollars to China when they're building 100 naval craft for every one we make. So they don't have any alternative because there isn't any. They can modify what he's doing. They can say, well, we wouldn't build the wall in canyons near the Gulf. But they don't have it. So then the third theme was if they don't have institutional power and they don't have an alternative, what do they do? They do what they're doing. They turn to street theater. They trash Teslas. They go on their street rank and file soldiers to go out and destroy chargers, Tesla dealerships. They try to think they're going to be hip and cool by using the F word, the sh word. They call. They called Elon Musk. And I say they, I'm talking about people like the former vice presidential candidate Tim Waltz or senators. They call them a dip S H I t. They call them an A s S H O L E. And then they do their little kickback videos. Then they get, they see how many senators can say S H I t. You got Spartacus over there. I'm of 25 hours, I haven't urinated. You know, what was the point? And then getting the steps and I don't know what they. Hakeem, Jeffrey's a joke. I can't believe that. George Will, I think he did and correct me if I'm wrong, listeners, he wrote a column about the up and coming brilliant Hakeem Jeffries. That guy is the most. He's a gift to the Republican. He just has this little script that he reads and he has no impromptu ad hoc ability to speak or to think. It's the same stuff. They're cutting Social Security, they're cutting Medicare, Donald Trump. So compared to Nancy Pelosi, she was Count Dracula. She was clever. Right? She was formidable. He's not. So they don't have, they just do street theater and scream and yell and Jasmine, we're going to take Elon down, they threaten Pitzer, we're going to disrupt the Republican Schumer, we're going to go into their town. Okay, okay, can I, that's it.

[Sammy Wink]

Can I say something here? And not in their defense, but maybe where they're coming from is their opinion is or assessment is, is that the popular vote, the popular appeal that they can have because they're going to say, well, that most voters or a lot of voters have absolutely no idea about the issues and that they can be attracted by streets theater. And so they're, they're bargaining on that. That portion of the voting population is large enough to get them following. That's my guess.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It's not large enough. You can say they're going to cut Social Security, they're going to destroy Medicare, but you can't get 51%.

[Sammy Wink]

I hope not.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

No, you can't. They didn't do it in the election. And I say that they didn't do it in the election because they would have lost big time. If Donald Trump had an extra billion dollars, they outspent him by a billion dollars. If the media had been 50, 50 rather than 95%. They had every advantage. They had the media, they had the money, they had the bureaucracy, they had the universities, they had the foundations, they had everything. And they demagogued every issue. They had warped debates, they fact checked Trump, they fact checked Vance. It was. And they still couldn't win. They still couldn't win. And they say, well, she was a bad candidate. Who else? They put in Biden because there was nobody else. They had Spartacus, they had Elizabeth Warren, they thought they were going to get slaughtered and they would have in 2020, so that's why he was there. And then they say, well, she was a weak candidate. Who were you going to put in there? There was nobody else and she was weak, but she was weak. But they were even weaker. The alternatives, they all say, well, Josh, he wouldn't have won it either. He wouldn't have won. So the point I'm trying to make is in this article, they just have these hysterics. Hysterics, hysterics. One thing they won't do, and this is kind of a weird thing to say, but they don't tell us what was the reasoning behind the inexplicable. So they let in 12 million people illegally. And now we find every day there's a murderer, a rapist, a pedophile. There's thousands of them. I went to a medical institution today for a procedure, diagnostic. It was packed. Half the people could not speak English. So my point is, Americans said they brought in 12 San Francisco's of the poorest people. No background check, no Covid vaccination. In 2021, they treated the illegal aliens much better than they do. Americans, if you want to get on a plane and you don't have your license or id, you won't fly. They did if you were in the military and you wouldn't get the Pfizer or Moderna, you're done injection. They didn't need it. So why did they do that? Why would they try to? Is it because they hated half the country and they wanted to destroy it? Was it because they wanted to get welfare constituents and grow government and higher taxes, more entitlements? Was it they thought these are future constituents that we don't have anybody that we can persuade. We don't have 51%. So we'll bring in voters. Or was it, hey, early voting, mail in voting. That's a new. We can get them voting immediately. There was some reason, but they never told us was that they hate borders because they're globalists. Oh, that's anachronistic. And that's what I was trying. They don't ever tell you what, what was the whole purpose of the Joe Biden thing? Why don't they just say all these people say in the media, they write these books. Well, there was a big cover up and I apologize. I kind of known it, but I didn't really. Okay, well then tell us the next thing. Why. Tell us why. Why don't you write the following? They knew that there was no viable candidate, so they forced them out of the primaries on March and March, February, March and April. Shoo. Elizabeth Warren was gone like that. Shoo, Buttigieg, shoo Bernie. And Joe Biden was coronated by the inside donor, inside political class. And his idea was, you're a waxen effigy. You're going to sit there on the COVID lockdown in your basement. We're going to raise tons of money to hate Trump money and we're going to change the voting laws. And then you're going to go in there and we're going to control you. You and Jill get all the fame, but the Obamas and the left wing of the party and the squad and the DI people, we're going to set the most radical agenda. And you're going to mouth it, Joe, to the extent that you can just come in three days a week, four hours a day, you mouth this and it's old Joe Biden. Remember the script? It's old Joe Biden from Scranton, the moderate guy who was from, as you said, the slave state. Remember that? That's what. Why don't they just tell us they did that? But they don't even tell us that. They never say on the polls. You'd say to the pollsters, you rigged the polls in 2016. Even when you said that Biden was going to win in 2020, you had no idea that Trump got so many votes. You rigged that too. You rigged it in 2000. Why do you do that? Is it to gin up momentum? Is it to help the Democrats raise money? It's going to make people get depressed and not want to go out to vote. And that is more important to you than your reputation because you always think, well, we're still here. We did it in 2016, we cheated in 2020. Is that what. Well, just tell us then. They just need to tell us. That's all I was trying to say.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, well, I still love the question you ask in that article. Who would believe them? And then I thought, who would follow them on top of it, this must be the end of the Democratic party.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Of the country, 30% and that's that. Just as a footnote, I want to, I don't want to keep ratting, but just as a footnote, if you were a very smart person, and I think people around Trump are very smart, J.D. vance, Steve Miller, people, Susan Wilde, and you analyze just what I said, you would say to yourself, where does this idea come from? And where do these people get this idea they can do this? And you would trace it back and you would find it in the university training a whole new generation. And then you would say, we've got to stop this because they are institutionalized racist, they're violating the law, they're institutionalized anti Semitic people. They're getting money from China and Mideast illiberal governments and they're not reporting it. They don't follow the First, Fourth or Fifth or Sixth Amendment. And they're gouging us, the government at 40 to 60% of grant and this is outrageous. So we're going to go after them and that's what they're doing. And that's where it all starts. You deal with the universities and make them be honest and disinterested and this whole problem will vanish. But the schools of journalism, the schools of education, the law school, that's where all these judges went to these law schools at these elite universities, all of these media grandees went to these Columbia, all these journalism schools, all these crazy people in K through 12 went to these schools of education and they were doing things that were unlawful, illegal and unethical. I can tell you, I've been in academia for 50 years and I've watched it for 50 years and they thought they were God, had a God given right to do whatever they pleased and the government owed them because they were brilliant and more moral than the average Joe. We'll see now because this is just the beginning. Congress hasn't weighed in yet. All Congress has to do is say that was really good what you did with executive orders, the cut, but you were taking money that you gave them away. We're going to take money that is theirs, not government money. We're going to tax their endowments and we're going to do about 10 or 15% tax because they're not nonprofits and they're not philanthropic people. And that will really, when you combine that with going down to 15% surcharge on government grants, if they get them back and you tax endowments, they're not going to have one penny for a DEI problem. They're not going to have any of that money. There's not going to be any centers for race, gender and di at these universities. And they don't get it. This Harvard president, they just keep. We're gonna. You can't cure cancer. You can't cure cancer. They're gonna cut it. No, no, no, no. You've got so much money that you're wasting to try to make social change as you see it. And I think they're gonna really lose, lose, lose.

[Sammy Wink]

On that topic, Harvard, the Department of Education, I believe, man, is it Department of Education. She told Harvard that they should just not apply for any grants because they're not going to get any of them. I thought that was great. That was just this week, just to.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Our audience, Columbia is laying off hundreds of people because they were worried about their grant. And Columbia has already apprised students from the Middle east that if they go in after they've been warned and protest and get violent and break university rules, they're not going to be allowed to go to class or to graduate or so they, they're terrified because they know what they're doing. That's the. Everybody I think understands that when there's a culpable party and they know what they've been doing and they know that it's unethical, unlawful and illegal, and they get found out, it's obvious they have no leg to stand on. That's why they're compromising. Not because they're nice people or they're lawful people or they're ethical people, it's because they're trying to cut a deal with Donald Trump. They're trying to say, okay, you ask us for 10 reforms, we'll give you eight. And then you give us 80% of the federal money. How's that? And you have to watch them because they don't tell the truth. So they'll go right back and do it again. And what is. Stanford didn't sign the letter. My institution, they didn't sign the letter of solidarity. And I think that might be because on their website, until a year ago, they were bragging that they only let in 9 to 10% white males who make up 35% of the population. And now they're not bragging about it. Or Harvard was bragging about their Middle east program. They just fired one of their board of overseers. Of that. They were bragging of their partnership on the West Bank. Don't protest at Harvard. We have a sister university. Wink nod. With real terrorists at it at berserk. Oh, they just disconnected their association with it. I wonder why they did that. They had a sudden idea. Let's be ethical and moral. I doubt it.

[Sammy Wink]

Let's stop our anti Semitism for a few years.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You know that Harvard Law little throng that was protesting and they have a video of a Jewish student walking across campus. That former. I remember him from Stanford. He was an undergraduate. Stanford went to Harvard Law School. He went out of his way to push and hit that guy. Well, he's on the Harvard Law School. He was until recently. On their website is. They honored him with a $65,000 prize.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes. Gift. Yes.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Does anybody listening think they would have given this rascal $65,000 if he hadn't become infamous and in their way, famous for pushing a Jewish kid and assaulting him? They've. The DA should have. They suspended the charges of assault. They let him get off by community service. But the point was they knew he was guilty and he knew he was guilty. If he was innocent, then he wouldn't have accepted the deal. And yet Harvard honored him. Yes. You're going to say, well, that was Harvard law student. No, it was Harvard. It's Harvard's name. They did it. And the president didn't say, we send that award. And now he's writing as if he's Socrates or Jesus, you know, to Trump. Despicable.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, Victor, let's go to a break and then come back and talk a little bit about Israel. Speaking of the Middle east, stay with us and we'll be right back. You can catch Victor on his X account. His handle is D. Hansen. And on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. So please come join us there. If those are your social media outlets. He also has an account on Truth Social, so you can catch him there for all you truth social media people. Well, Victor, Israel did a massive hit just last night, I guess, of the Yemen capital city, Sanaa. I'm not sure how to say that, but Sanaa. And it took out their airport so that the Houthis have no ability to get supplies from Iran.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Just 48 hours ago, they were bragging that they made a big crater at Ben Gurion Airport and they said that they were going to shut down the airport. And Israel was terrified. And they had a hypersonic missile that nobody could stop.

[Sammy Wink]

You want me to say Israel's awesome?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I wonder what made them change their mind. That Israel took off the gloves and said, if you want to try to destroy our airport, you will not be able to destroy it, but we surely and certainly will destroy your airport. And you will not be given any air landing for your missile shipments from Iran. You know what they remind me of? There are a bunch of terrorists that took over half the country, and then they got billions of dollars of Iranian oil money and they bought this huge arsenal, right? And they got Iranian technicians who were trained by North Koreans and Chinese, and then they started shooting missiles. Anything that moved in the Red Sea and they shut down the Red Sea, which Europe, that's central. It goes right in from Asia and the Middle east right into the Mediterranean and Europe. And the Europeans didn't do anything, basically. I mean, the Britons did. Brits did a little bit, but there was no big NATO force out there. It was. The United States did it. And we. And under Biden, his attitude was tit for tat, tit for tat, tit for tat. They sent some drones. We'll send a missile. And under Trump is for every drone you send, we're going to smash you 10 times greater. And it didn't take long. And they remind me of somebody. I don't know if our listeners have ever. I always talk about cowboy movies, but there was a movie in the early 80s, the Shootist, I think it was Ron Howard directed it and it was John Wayne was Dying. Remember Lorne Bacall? They had. They had a great cast of Western actors as the heavies. The guy that played Wireder and then they had Richard Boone. I think he's one of my favorite actors. He was one of the best.

[Sammy Wink]

Between him and Frederick March, I couldn't tell you which one was better.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, you got a lot of thick bark on you. Remember that? And how's hell going to look to you? And that was in Hombre. But anyway, he was a Stanford student. I think he got kicked out. Correct me people, that as I remember, they asked him about it and he said, I didn't graduate because there was a motorcade with the president of the administration. He threw a dummy out with ketchup on it and made it look like they ran over somebody. He was. Was a stunster. When I grew up on. I grew up watching Paladin Half Gun with Paladin. Paladin, where Will you roam. It was a great movie. He was a great actor. He had that wonderful accent, kind of a Burl Ives accent, that gravel. I don't know if he came from Illinois, but a lot of people from Southern Illinois have beautiful. There was a local congressman here in California when I was a kid, Gus Garrigus, and he had the most beautiful accent. And it's the same thing as Richard Boone's and Burl Ives. It's not quite a Southern accent, but it's close. But any case, in that scene in the Shootist, I don't know if you remember, there's a final shootout. So John Wayne's got terminal cancer and he wants to clear the ledgers and help the town out by killing these three creepy people that have kind of become fixtures. So he goes into the saloon, he kills Hugh o' Brien, was the actor, and then he kills another bad guy, and the last one is Richard Boone. And he's behind a table and he picks the table up and he runs at John Wayne, and John Wayne calmly blows him to pieces. And he goes, take that, take that. You think you want to stop and say, you're being shot full of holes, you're not winning, but he makes it, yeah, I gotta take that. These are like the Houthis, they're being shot full of holes. And it's like, take that. You don't have an airport. It's this crazy braggad show when you're being obliterated, you know, it's so funny. And that's what they're doing. They are the most boastful, arrogant, braggadocious terrorist I've ever seen and yet have the least clout to jump back it up. So finally, everybody just say, well, you know, they're like a mosquito and they bite you and it hurts and you slap them. But now when Trump came in, he said, no, they're not like a mosquito. They're like a mosquito that has malaria because they can lead to stuff. So we're not going to allow it. So then I think they probably just said, what do you need? Netanyahu in Israel? And here's what we're going to do. You're going to do. Let's just trade days. You do it on Monday, we'll do it on Tuesday. And they're going to. If the Houthis were smart, they would stop because they're going to lose their power generation. They've already lost their port. And when they take out the airfield and the airport, they're not going to be able to get Resupplied with terrorist weaponry.

[Sammy Wink]

Trump claimed. They capitulated this morning, I believe. I don't know if they have.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

There's no such thing in the Middle east among terrorists, that capitulation, what they say is just a lie. It's capitulation for a day or two. The only thing they understand. I hate to say it, because I hope the Iran deal works and I hope Donald Trump can get a deal and we don't have to use violence. But Iran has zero intention, zero of ever abiding by anything. And they want a nuclear weapon. They may have one already, and they have no intention of giving up. They don't need nuclear power. They have more oil than they could ever use in a century. But they want that to threaten Israel and threaten Europe and threaten Western interests. That's just the way it is. And we could tell Iran tomorrow, do not give any more missiles to the Houthis. And they would say, yes, let's not do it. They just threaten us. They just. They ask an Iranian official, why are you negotiating with Donald Trump? Why? People are out on the street organized by you to say, death to America and death to Israel. He said, that's a good strategy. We just. That's what we're going to do. Going to do. And so they have no. I guess what I'm saying is when Israel took out all of their air defenses, can you remember one nation that said, we deplore that? I can't think of one. So what? They don't even. They're like Richard Boone, too. They don't understand that the Iranian government is the most despised government in the world. If you gave China and Russia any little incentive to sell them out, they would take it. If you just said, you know what? We're going to take out all their stuff and you can go get an oil concession. Just steal their oil, do whatever you want. They have no affinity. Nobody likes that government. They've killed over a thousand people, executed a thousand people. They hate women, they hate homicide. They're the most illiberal, awful regime. I don't even know a leftist that likes them. And they have zero credibility in the world stage. If tomorrow Israel or the United States took out their entire nuclear. You would get like 24 hours of the global left saying, oh, this is colonialism, imperialism. And then they'd say, oh, my gosh, thank you. Thank you. I like trauma.

[Sammy Wink]

All right, Victor. So as kind of an ancillary to the war going on in Ukraine and Russians aggression this week, I read that The British, after 20 years are updating their war plans and their military because they fear a. That if Russia did decide to fight against them, they could be taken out by Russia's nuclear weapons. So they are currently updating their war plans with that in mind.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, they've let their nuclear deterrent, like all Western countries, stagnate. They have, I think, somewhere around 200 to 300 nuclear weapons. And that was always. In all the arms talks of the Cold War. Russia always tried to include their arsenal, and the French arsenal was about the same size and then added on to the United States. So they would tell the United States, we in Russia, Soviet Union should have 7,000 nukes, and you should have 6,500, because you've got 500 or so with your allies. And we would always say, de Gaulle got out of NATO. We don't know what they're going to do. They're independent, sovereign nations. That's like us making you count China, you know what I mean? Or India, who was closer to the Soviet Union than we were in the Cold War. So. But the point was, they always were telling Russia that you may have 5,000, but you cannot stop us if you want to destroy us. We have enough nuclear weapons to take out all of your. All of your major cities. So I think that's what they're. And that's deterrence, if you think it's a credible threat. So they want to update their nuclear force and reiterate what they would do if they were. And that is in response to a lot of Russian generals, media people, crazy Russian blogger. They all have been picking on Britain because Britain has been very muscular about helping Ukraine. When that blow up with Zelensky, Sturmer said, we're going to send 40,000. The British are going to lead the way. And then his military said, it can't be over four or five thousand people. We just don't have them. And so Russia knows that. So they like to pick on France and Britain because they think they're going to drive a wedge with us. And they're not under our nuclear shield. They are under NATO's protocols. But it's just a wise thing to be quiet and carry a club and not to be loud and carry a stick. So Europe should wise up and stop talking about 50,000 people going alone without the United States. We don't need a backup. All that bragging is a sign of insecurity and inferiority. They need the United States. They need to work with us if they want to defend Ukraine. Ukraine's got a great army now, if they want to defend, they can supply it to. They have 500 million people in Europe and they have a combined GDP in the EU that's about, I don't know, 70% of ours. It's pretty big. They can do what they want. They have the wherewithal to protect them and we can back them up. We can say we'll use our C17s and C5s and transport all you want. And if you guys get overrun, we'll have a last readout with our air power. We will not go into Russia, but we will make sure Russias don't go across here. And they'll say, well, why would you do that? Well, we killed the Wagner group, didn't we? Those were Russians. They attacked us. And we told Putin they're going to be obliterated. And we did. So we have credibility if we want.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, Victor, before we go to break, I just have one small question. It's kind of from a week ago. I think Trump endorsed. Well, I guess it's an endorsement. He said Vance and Rubio will be good candidates for the 2028 election. 20 others did he say? And 20 others. Anyway, he did mention them. And I was wondering, do you have any predictions on the election of 2028 or any ideas right now not to hold you to them?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

There has been a meme theme among the left and it goes like this. There is no MAGA without Trump. Ha ha ha. Finally. He's gone. He's gone, he's gone, he's gone. He's a lame duck. There cannot be a MAGA movement. Look at the Tea Party. It had no leader and the Tea Party was the forerunner of MAGA along with and Ron Paul never. He was a forerunner and so was Pat Buchanan. But they're. Their movements failed because they were not a showman. Celebrity apprentice Trump. And now he's gone. So in response to that, Trump gave an interview in March with NBC and they asked him, there's all this talk about a third term and you know that's illegal. And he trolled them. He said our lawyers are working on it and there's a lot of workarounds. Well, the 22nd Amendment says you cannot be elected more than twice. It doesn't say you can't hold office more than twice. So the work around. And by the way, they did it with Reagan. They did it with. There were left wing zealots who said Obama, remember Obama? Would you like a third term? Only if I could phone it in from my basement and didn't have to wear a tie. Remember that? And then Bill Clinton. I don't know if I kind of. That'd be kind of an interesting concept. Reagan, you know, I'm kind of old, but they've all. Ulysses S. Grant talked about it. But the point I'm making is he was trolling them and then they took it really serious and they started saying he was a dictator. I mean, think about what you'd have to do. You'd have to go to J.D. vance or Marco Rubio or DeSantis and say, I'm going to be your running mate and you're going to run for president and as soon as you get elected, you're going to resign and play a big trick on the American people. That's not going to happen. So anyway, he had another interview with NBC and they thought they'd do it again. And he was basically saying, the troll is over. It's used its effect. So you don't think I'm a lame duck? No, I have no intention of being a third term president. And then they said, well, can MAGA continue without you? And he said, yes. And they said, how would that be possible? How could it? Well, J.D. is a great guy. He's doing a great job and I don't want to endorse anybody, but Marco's fantastic and there's 20 other people. So he was. That's what he was trying to say. And I don't know if it's right or not. I mean, I'm writing this book on Trump and I'm at the epilogue. MAGA without Trump, yes or no? Sunlight without the sun. It's, it's an interesting question because you look at some polls and the MAGA agenda out polls Trump and then everybody says you don't need Trump. But then we look at the DeSantis candidate. He was MAGA to the core and he couldn't win.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Part of that was the lawfare that gave empathy to Trump. So you can look at different ways. I have a feeling that it's so institutionalized MAGA now and it's been so successful. The latest Rasmussen poll on the first hundred days, did you see that? 62% of Hispanics, that was higher by about 15 points than whites, 39% blacks. He has succeeded even after the election in creating a nationalist workers populist party. And they're worried about price of gas, they're worried about jobs, they're worried about crime, they're worried about illegal immigration. They meaning white, black and brown. And they don't like the I guess they don't like Jasmine Crockett. They don't like Gavin Newsom. They don't like Representative Garcia. They don't like any of those people. They're bi coastal elites that don't appeal to the bread and butter. They don't care about the stock market. You know what I mean, Joe, Billy Bob Smith, the elite make fun of on a forklift in Dayton. He doesn't care about. I mean, he might have a 401k, but he's one of the 50% of Americans that have 1% of the market capitalization of the stock market. Wall Street Journal always says, well, there's 70% of the people now are stockholders. Yeah, that doesn't mean anything. It's the market capitalization. The value, 93% of the value is in 10%. That's the neurotic, narcissistic, paranoid class that almost put us in a recession going crazy in March. Right? We've lost 10, $200 billion because we have a God given right that whenever the market got at a high point at 44,000 right after Trump was inaugurated, that is our benchmark and we deserve every penny. We don't want to lose one penny. Good luck with that.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, Victor, let's go ahead and go to a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about Corsica court cases that are going Trump's way. Stay with us and we'll be right back.

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[Sammy Wink]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Don't forget to try to catch Victor Victor at on video at his YouTube channel. And he is also on Rumble and Spotify. And on Spotify. We called it the Victor Davis Hansen podcast on Spotify so we could distinguish it from other things that had Victor's name on it. So just so everybody knows, that's where you're going to find the video podcast. Victor Trump has had court cases this week that he has one the Supreme Court of the United States has put a stay on a lower courts trying to stop Trump from banning transgendered people in the military. Which means that Trump can continue with his executive order. And just before you say anything, the District D.C. district Court of Appeals has circuit court has ruled to stay lower courts who have tried to interrupt Trump's.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That was in Washington. It was pretty liberal too.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. And so the courts have gone a lot his way, which I'm really happy with.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I don't think these there's 750 or so district, the lowest level of federal courts. None of this is in the Constitution, by the way, just says there should be a Supreme Court. And there's about 400 left wingers from Biden and Clinton and Obama and they're a cherry pick to stop Trump. There's been more lawsuits in the first hundred days and four years of Biden. But the problem that the left doesn't see is that if you're a district court of any, excuse me, if you're a circuit court, that's the mid level appeal of any persuasion. You're letting these subordinates of yours just take over and run the country and you are being nullified, you are being embarrassed unless you want to get in and reverse a pro Trump decision. So that's one thing to think of, that the circuit courts are thinking that these people are all publicity hounds, performance aren't grift and that this can't go on. And then the Supreme Court in a few decisions has told the circuit courts, if this goes on, we don't have a country because this is just insane. And there was a president, I think his name was Barack Obama, says, I have a phone and pen and if the Congress didn't want to do what I want to do, I'm just going to do executive orders. That's what I'm going to do. And remember that he bragged about it and he issued a lot of them. Not as much as Bill Clinton. But the point I'm making is that this was started long before Trump executive orders. And this is not a way to run a country, to weaponize the judicial system after it's got its reputation destroyed by justices like Judge Merchand, Justice Engoron and all of those partisans in the Fanny Willis, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith fiascos. They have a terrible reputation. I said, my mother was a state appeals court judge. She would have been horrified to watch this. The judges used to be highly respected and disinterested. I remember I was at a reception once with my mother and somebody came up, a very liberal person. My mother was a Democrat and said, you did not hear this appeal. It was kind of like a child molester. And he was on appeal, he wanted out. And my mom, she said, I don't discuss, she said, I don't discuss court. This isn't proper for me at a reception to come up. But then she also said, I look at the evidence, I look at the photographs, I look at the testimonies and I rule accordingly. If you don't like it. That's your prerogative. But don't try to intimidate me. But her point was that that's what justices are supposed to do if they're liberal. Sometimes they have to be as conservative as other justices if the evidence warrants it. Same thing with conservative judges. But not now. Not now. There's a whole. The other thing is I'm not going to mention names. I know both of them. I like both of them. But there's a lot of high level Republican jurist attorneys, very powerful, very well known both in the media and then top law firms that are joining the left and attacking Trump. And it's a very effective strategy because you have conservative lawyers at the ground level and then you have conservative legal pundits at the intellectual or, I don't know, media level. And my only question to them is getting back to a reductionist argument as I understand what they're doing. I don't remember them writing either, writing about how horrible it was that Joe Biden destroyed immigration law, destroyed the border, destroyed the concept of a border patrol, all illegal. And I don't remember them enlisting their efforts to go to conservative law firms and try to file suits to stop this illegality. Because we get back to this I don't know what we call it axiom that I mentioned before. Apparently all of these people that are suing or supporting them in the media or rounding up lawyers to stop deportations, etcetera, they're, their theory is it was lawful. I don't mean their theory. De facto. The rationale of what they're doing is it was lawful for Joe Biden to destroy the law and act illegally and bring in 12 million illegal aliens because I didn't say a word. But it is unlawful for Donald Trump to try to rectify that by enforcing the law. And I just don't get it. I just do not get it. Every single day there's some despicable criminal who rapes or assaults or kills or tortures somebody. And there's 500,000 people estimated with criminal records. And we're going to have to have a deportation hearing and an appeal for every one of them, even the ones that have already been adjudicated. They've had due process, they've served their deportation orders. And that's not counting the other 11 and a half million who got little apps that says, okay, your hearing is this date 80, 90% didn't show up. They're subject to instant deportation. But that's the idea of the left and the people who Enable the left. Everybody gets a trial. When they break, everybody gets a hearing. When they're in, they're subject to deportation. Nobody gets a hearing or an audit. When you break the law and come in, that's it.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, Victor, let's look lastly at the Rite Aid. One of the bigger pharmacy chains is filing bankruptcy. And the CEO said that it was because there was a dramatic downturn in the economy. And he blamed tariffs and supply costs and landlords and said nothing about the.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes. Oh, right. A. That's why Walgreens is shutting down. That's why Walmart's pharmacy is shutting down. That's why CBC is shut. They're all shutting down, just like. No, they're not. It was a mismanaged company. I say that as a person. Right now, as I speak, my pharmacy in my local town is Rite Aid. And I can tell you that I can go to five different pharmacies. I can go to the Walmart pharmacy. I can go to the Walgreen Pharmacy. I can go to a different town. Cvc. Is that cbc? Yeah, I can go to that.

[Sammy Wink]

Cvs.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Cvs, yes. And I can tell you their shelves are full. I can go to the Rite Aid. And for the last two years, they're sparse. I can tell you that I've went to all the other stores and I've never seen a security guard. And I can tell you if I go in there at night, I've seen security guards at Rite Aid and I've asked why are there security guards? And they said they've had nocturnal thefts. People come in. So whatever the. What he says is that that particular brand was not able to ensure the safety to the same degree that its competitors were of shoppers. And it either did not have a successful strategy against this epidemic of looting and shoplifting, or it didn't have the capital to replace it. Because when I go in there and I've gone to two or three Rite Aids, the shelves are empty. And they've been that way for over a year. I shouldn't say empty. They're just whole areas that are empty. But, you know, in the year 2022, 23, we. I guess it was after George Floyd, too, and the COVID pandemic, we just de facto all George Soros. While everybody was working and tending to their lives, he just secretly went to every left wing nobody who never would have been elected and gave him millions of dollars and got all of these creepy DA's in all the big cities. And what they did was they just decriminalized theft. And you could just walk in and steal stuff. And if anybody tackled you or enforced good thing in my local food market. I saw that. I think I said that in the last podcast. I saw a guy come in and they shook him down and he had all this stuff in his trench coat. And then the guy just took him out and grabbed him by the neck and threw him out. And then he kicked him once and he said something in Spanish to get the blank out. And I asked him, why not call the police? And basically his answer was, they don't do anything. I'd rather just put the fear of God into him because he keeps doing it.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, we don't need him anymore.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I guess he knows how not to steal $950. But that's been repealed.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, he doesn't. That's the surprising thing. The CEO didn't mention the increased costs that were incurred by theft and by having to police their own stores.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's a tenet of the left that they never care about. The majority of people who suffer, they always, from a safe distance, empathize with the victimizer. They always say, oh, he shouldn't put him in jail. Oh, he didn't really mean to steal. They never say, oh, that person can't afford toothpaste now. He can't find his allergy medicine because it's locked up. Or he can't. He's just scared to walk into the store because these people, nobody ever cares about that. Or he's got a sidestep. Excrement or needles. We can't just put this guy in a. We can't just take, you know, 500 acres and make clean tents and little buildings and have it police and have health care and make a little mini homeless city because they should have freedom of choice to inject and defecate and urinate and fornicate. That's what they do.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, I know. The way you put it makes it very clear, Victor. So let's go ahead to comments from this time. I went to Rumble and I looked at some of the shows that you and Jack did, and I have one. We often get to our audience. We. We often get. And I'm sympathetic with people who say, well, the news that you guys talked about was a. Was two or three days old or, you know, things have occurred since the recording. And that's kind of true, but this was a person that was helping us out here with, you know, maybe that's not so important. So they said Elmwood America is the name on it. Thank you vdh. I always appreciate listening to your sage take on what's going on in America and the world. Some humor as well. I see folks complaining that you are late on the news by a day or two.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I like to digest the news. I just don't want to just do ad hoc. You know what I mean?

[Sammy Wink]

Yes. Well, geez, maybe these folks should just get the news firsthand by being right there when the news occurs. Silly. Don't be an information slave to those who aren't happy about anything. I appreciate your take. May the good Lord bless you and keep.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

In three hours I have to do the A block on Fox and we're going to talk about temp. I do it three times a week. Hannity, Jesse and and I comment on the late breaking news and I do, I probably do, I don't know, two interviews a day Newsmax or podcast about late breaking. But I like to just take at least 24 hours and try to think about history and culture and how you can explain it. I can't. I'm, you know, I'm not. There are other podcasts that talk, you know, in real time about this is late breaking. I could, we could, I guess we could put those little chevron's at the bottom. Is that the word for it? Little late breaking news. We can have a victor, not a.

[Sammy Wink]

Fox News bullet or something did it.

[Sponsor Announcer]

All right.

[Sammy Wink]

And then this one I just, our, our readers are very smart and they knew all about David Hogg who is one of the vice chairs of the Dean and he said, just for your information, David Hogg was not a survivor of a school shooting. He was at home and heard about it and then rode his bicycle to the area where the media was and was interviewed by a reporter. That was it. He wasn't even at the school when the shooting occurred. And that was patriotism dawning.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I was being too generous when I said he was a member of the school. That was being the shooting. That's a very good comment. And that he, he got on Fox and everything and in a nanosecond connected the shooting with gun control and then he became a hero of the left. He went, they let him in at Harvard for that. Speaking of Harvard, as we did earlier and so if he had bicycled to school and he'd said this could be prevented if we had seven teachers with guns that knew how to use them, you think Harvard would let him in? No, he could have had a perfect SAT and an AP 4.7 and they wouldn't let him in. That's Why I just laugh at all these academics when they give these sober and judicial. This is a very grave concern and it questions the very vitality of the higher education system and the ability of our educational campuses and resources to produce first rate quality research and science and physics so essential to the economy and the future of the. Nah, we're not going to listen to you. You lied to it too many times. We know what you're going to do. You're going to say, yes, we're going to ban masks because that disguises and gives anonymity to criminals. And they're going to go back to the faculty and Senate and say I didn't mean it. That's basically what the interim Con Lima president, Columbia president said.

[Sammy Wink]

Like I, I like that David Hogg, in a sense that he wants to, he at least he puts a lot of energy into things and he does have this idea he's going to unseat the old guard of the Democratic Party by running younger Democrats against them.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, but I saw that with a Tea Party. They said that they were going to go on seat and they did. And then the candidates, you know, take Susan Collins, right? She's the senator from Maine. She's an institution. She's not a reliable vote on confirmation. I'd say she's 75% conservative. But why would you want to primary her and say she's not a conservative? Because that's as conservative as you can get in Maine and she's beloved in Maine and she will deliver 75% conservative votes. And if you want 25% purity, you're going to get nobody, is my point. I don't know if that's true of somebody I'm not particularly fond of, Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska senator, but she probably votes 70%, 60% conservative. So if you want, I mean, there's a reason why these old institutionalized people that David Hogg doesn't like keep getting elected because they're in purple states and they deliver the bacon to special interest groups and they're probably 70%, 80% assured Democratic vote. But if he wants to go get another Jasmine Crockett and try to run Jasmine Crockett like people in, I don't know, swing state in Utah or Tennessee, good luck. That's what basically Carville's telling him. They call him a little twerp.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, Carville in some big massive argument with another pod with Bill O'Reilly.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's Bill O'Reilly, shut him up. He's not used to being have people yell like he Does. Yeah. He was talking about cutting Medicaid, Medicare. And Bill O'Reilly said that was a lie. Bill was right. Absolutely right. I'm glad he did it. I had one instant. James Carville. I met him on a cruise. I really liked his wife. She was a Bush conservative. And he came up to me because I was giving a talk on World War II and he wanted to give me. I think I mentioned that. He wanted to give me the argument why the T34 was such a superior tank. I think it was because it was Russian made. And I very politely tried to say that the suspension system was from a veteran named. Was an American system. But when you looked at the totality of the T34, the steel was substandard. The casting was substandard. It had a diesel aluminum engine, which was good. It had white tracks. It had a very powerful 76 millimeter. The first models did. It was better than the German Mark 3. It caused the Germans to make the Mark 4, which was not as good, but the Panther was. But it was not very dependable. My point is this. And I tried to be very. Because he was saying Americans got that Sherman tank, they couldn't stand anything. The Soviets in World War II. Well. And I said, well, Sherman had a trap door. So remember that Marie Fury where the guy. And out of all Sherman tanks that were destroyed, three and a half on average of the five man crew survived. That was not true of T34. There were more T34s destroyed. And when you look at reliability and ease of changing transmissions and engines, that was the most reliable tank in the war. It was the most easy to service. And the later models either had a 17 pound Firefly big gun that could blow up a Tiger one out of every four. But more importantly, as I tried to say to him, he forgot this. It was on a. Who was sponsoring that cruise? It wasn't Hillsdale. Must have been national. Maybe. Anyway, I just politely said so the Russians and the Germans had to take their tanks and they had to go to a port and they had to get a crane and lift them up or drive them up on a ramp and then ship them 3,000ft. Do you think that had anything to do with keeping the Shermans to a manageable weight? So it couldn't be a Tiger or a K model big Russian tank, but nobody ever thinks of that. We had to take them all the way over there.

[Sammy Wink]

Wasn't it. Wasn't it the first to have slanted armor that was much better at bouncing rounds off of it? German no the T34, I thought that it slanted armor.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Slanted armor better than the Tiger did. Panther was. If you look at all of the specifications, as far as the powerful power of the gun and the durability of the accuracy of the gun, the power of the gun and the durability of the armor, probably the German Panther was the best in that category. But if you look at the totality of actual people having to be in a tank in comfort and having the tank go through mud or go across a bridge, the Panther was. It was like the Tiger. For every hour of maintenance, you only got about two hours of running ability. It was like ten to one with a Sherman. So there was all these other. And Sherman was the most comfortable. I've been in a Sherman tank. I was in a T72 tank in Iraq. Iraqi. I went to an arms depot and he just said, go get it and drive it. So I drove a T72 tank. It had little. I remember when I was a little kid, my grandfather had a D2 or World War II war surplus caterpillar. Before they had hydraulics. It had cables, but it had those little levers to drive to steer it. So I knew how to do it a little bit. And it had a huge. God, I think it had a 120 millimeter gun. But it was the most uncomfortable place. There was an Iraqi with me in it. But people got to remember that about munitions and war. It's not just. You can't just look at a piece of paper. And if you look at the P51 Mustang versus the P47 Thunderbolt, the P51 had about a 40 mile an hour range on it and it had a bubble canopy, so it was better visibility, was better adapted to drop tanks and had longer range. So it was considered the best fighter of the war. The P51 had the Merlin engine in it, so it gave 40, but it went about 440 miles. And the Thunderbolt went about 400, but had an Allison engine. But my point is, when you look at the totality of had a big Allison engine that was air cooled, so if you shot it a bunch of times, it didn't heat up like lose its water radiator, like a liquid cooled P51. And then more importantly, it was really heavy and durable. And it was. The pilot didn't get tired because it was easy to fly and had all this. But nobody. You don't talk about that. People just look at the specs and they say, oh, faster, bigger gun. But it doesn't matter. It's the ease of use and the durability and the ability to repair and maintain something. It's kind of we used to have a Alice Chalmers. It was a beautiful tractor. But my gosh, it was hard to my beloved Oliver tractor was the same way. But I had a little three engine Ford 4000. Man, that thing was just went forever and putt, putt, putt. And the generator would now they just take it out and put the new brushes in. It was easy. That makes a big difference.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, Victor, thank you. And for anybody who's curious about what Victor was just talking about, tanks in World War II, you can always buy his book, the Second World Wars. And he's got lots of new ideas about things that really transformed World War II in it. So tanks and tank information are one of those things. So so by Victor's Second World War is And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Friday News Roundup. And thank you, Victor, for Thank you, everybody.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And thank you for listening and viewing. And we'll see you next time with another installment on World War II.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Yes.

[Sammy Wink]

And that will be our Saturday episode. So please join us on Saturday as well. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off.