Jack Fowler (4:04)

Wow, it sounds like you'd be St. Stephen with all these pokings at you. Pin pricks.

Victor Davis Hanson (4:09)

I know. Every time. I used to love bees. I thought, poor bees go out and work. In fact, when it was a shady day and they weren't pollinating the plums, I would throw rocks at the hive. I'd say, get out there and work, Lazy. I see them. I said, get back in there. Don't attack me. There's a theory. A guy told me in the E.R. i don't think that bees are attracted to people who have a discernible allergy. As if you give off a scent or something. I think that's an old wives tale. Anyway, go ahead.

Jack Fowler (4:45)

Wow, that is big time old wives tale. All right, Victor, what are we going to talk about today?

Victor Davis Hanson (4:52)

We're going to talk about Joy Reid. Yeah, Joy Reid lost her premier extravaganza hit show.

Jack Fowler (5:00)

We can all tell that Victor is in mourning, and we'll get his tears when we come back after these important messages.

Victor Davis Hanson (5:12)

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Jack Fowler (8:19)

We are back with the Victor Davis Hanson show again recording on Sunday the 23rd. This episode up on Tuesday the 25th. Who knows what might happen between these two days? The Pope may may pass away. He's in critical condition. But we'll we'll deal with that if and when it happens. Yeah. So Victor, about Joy Reid, her. It was announced today her show has been canceled. And a side note, I think this is will be a new must watch show for Victor. His headline is Failed squad Reps Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman launched new show on failed MSNBC Hosts made Hasan's new media platform.

Victor Davis Hanson (9:01)

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Jamal Bowman, the fire alarm guy?

Jack Fowler (9:06)

The fire alarm guy?

Victor Davis Hanson (9:07)

The guy that was basically claiming that the Jewish community defeated him?

Jack Fowler (9:12)

He was basically, yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (9:14)

Well, I don't understand the logic of that. You're going to go from the frying pan into the fire. It doesn't make any sense. Joy Reid was very strange. I wrote a column about her once because she went on there with cornrows once and she said I'm going to be path, essentially not quoting her verbatim but eventually she said this, that I'm going to be a path breaking Africana Americana and I'm going to wear my indigenous. And I don't like basically blonde haired women. Culturally appropriate, sort of like, you know, movie stars that have cornrows. And I thought okay, that's illegitimate. And the next thing I know I turned. I know. And I was channel surfing. She's got blonde hair, she's dyed her hair. But I thought, I thought you don't believe in cultural appropriation. So white people cannot wear black hairstyles, but you can dye your hair like you're some Viking, be symmetrical. Because she was. And then I realized that every once, about once in a month I would just wanted to see what the left was saying. And I felt really bad. Her parents were immigrants, they were upper middle class. She was given every type of fairness and if not advantages. And then all she did for six or seven years was she could not, she couldn't finish a show without saying white, white people, white people, white people, white people. And I thought, why are you doing. I think she's married to somebody who's white, isn't she? I think she is. I can't believe that she would. She was so and so I thought of myself, Joy, stop it. Even your left wing bi coastal elite who are white are not going to want to hear that white people are the alpha and the omega of all mortal sins in the United States. And when you say that you come off from a position of perceived self doubt or inferiority complex or something. Just talk about issues without being upset. She couldn't talk about anything but race is what I'm saying. And to put Bowman on There who, you know, he committed a felony and then he lied about it. And then he was anti Israeli, anti Semitic, so the Jewish community helped defeat him. And then he got mad and screamed. That was the rally. Remember when AOC did her rain dance? She got up on the thing and she started leaping around.

Jack Fowler (11:43)

You know, I think that rally jumping.

Victor Davis Hanson (11:45)

Jack flash or something.

Jack Fowler (11:46)

Yeah, I don't think that was even in his district. It was in the Bronx. So he could play a tough guy, South Bronx foul mouth thing, but was.

Victor Davis Hanson (11:54)

Not even in his.

Victor Davis Hanson (11:55)

Yeah, he kept using all these bad words and yeah, yeah, he's gone. And then Cori Bush is. She's just as bad. I think she. Wasn't she the one that had the. Her husband was doing the security detail or something. She got in trouble. It doesn't matter what race you are. It doesn't matter what tribe you say you belong to. Once you are perceived to have exempt, exemption or advantage, whether it's dei, affirmative action or asymmetrical application of the laws, then that's not good. And we know that from Jim Crow in the south that poor white people or any white person who was charged with something and received either a lighter sentence or was exonerated and a black man was not treated the same. It wasn't good for white people either because they got a sense of entitlement. And then to take that asymmetrical, wrong, amoral system and flip it back and I'm just basically quoting chapter and verse of the life work of Tom Sowell that wealthy white people flip this system over and put it on black people. And it wasn't going to be good because it didn't hold everybody accountable. She was never accountable to the ratings game. And she had a brief moment for about a year after George Floyd where she capitalized on that. And if she had been a disinterested person, she could have offered analysis and opinion. But she just got obsessed with race, race, race, race. By the way, ratings were below 500,000. I think they were down, getting down. She lost half her audience at least after the election.

Jack Fowler (13:38)

Very few Americans eyeballs on that on that network. Victor, her husband, by the way, I was checking that out. He's a black man.

Victor Davis Hanson (13:48)

So he is. I'm sorry about that. I thought he was. I'm thinking of somebody else that was very.

Jack Fowler (13:53)

Yeah, I'm just sorry. He's her husband. Hey, let's stick with somebody else who talks about race, race, race, and that's Stacey Abrams.

Victor Davis Hanson (14:03)

There's another prominent African American, I think Ellie Mistel. You know, the guy that's got the wacky hair, he's a Harvard Law graduate and he's always talking about white people. I think his wife may be white. I don't know.

Jack Fowler (14:19)

It could be. Yeah, could be.

Victor Davis Hanson (14:23)

I just want to take a moment.

Jack Fowler (14:24)

For our sponsor, Quince.

Victor Davis Hanson (14:26)

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Jack Fowler (14:28)

Mongolian cashmere crewneck sweaters from $50, iconic 100% leather jackets, versatile flowknit activewear. And the best part, dear listeners, all Quince Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly, directly, directly also with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices along with premium fabrics and finishes. I love that. You'll love that indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quince.comVictor for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Quince Q U I N C E dot com Victor to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comVictor and we thank the good people of Quince for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. And also I did not mention at the beginning of the show, Victor's wife website, the blade of Perseus. Victorhansen.com I'll talk about that as we head to the home stretch today. Victor Stacey Abrams, I guess while we're talking about people that have made a living on Karaching about race and a living on race, she has doge issues with she's a woman that was underwater economically, financially, personally, I think in 2018. And all of a sudden, a few years later, she's sitting on top of $2 billion of cash courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency, which just seems to be a slush fund for any left wing group. Has nothing to do with picking up litter, right. Or keeping rivers clean or clean smokestacks. It's a slush fund for the left. So anyway, she has been outed. And do you have any thoughts on that, my friend?

Victor Davis Hanson (16:27)

Well, you know, I never understood her popularity because in 2000, I think it was 2018, I'm doing this from memory, but she ran for governor. She lost by 50,000 votes. Immediately she became an election denialist. She toured the country for a year raising a lot of money for herself. I think she had a, she didn't declare bankruptcy, but she had all this credit card debt and financial problems. And then she wrote these pathetic risque novels about sex and stuff that didn't go very well. But she became a hero of the left. And it was so incongruous because they were the year, two years before and during that time they were calling that Trump was illegitimately elected in 2016, Russian collusion. And here they had a person who then after 2020 it became even worse because then they were saying Trump won't, won't accept the election. But she had never accepted the election. And then when Joe Biden ridiculously pre announced in panic over the George Floyd riots that he was going to pick essentially a black woman, he surveyed the landscape and wow, there were people said it's either going to be Kamala Harris or Stacey Abrams, somebody like Susan Rice. And she really helped Kamala Harris because Kamala Harris compared to Stacey Abrams was mainstream. So what they did was, and I remember that Kamala Harris, she went to Georgia and she said, we're doing something new. We're going to take this billions of dollars out of that 20 billion dollar slush fund. I think it was 2 billion and we're going to give it directly to these groups. But what she didn't tell us was two things, that Stacey Abrams would be the clearinghouse. And as Lee Zeldin said, that she had never had more than $100 in this defunct pack or whatever it was, and it increased by 20 million times to 2 billion. So you were letting sort of an arsonist dispute disperse fire prevention money. That's basically what it was. Somebody who was completely irresponsible with her own finances, would not accept elections, played the race card ad infinitum and then you're turning over 2 billion. And the second thing they did is they didn't trust that everybody could waste that money quickly because they did it as they were going out the door. So they put it in a Citibank account, in other words, as if it was already spent. So they took it out of the EPA because they didn't want it to sit there and then to have to disperse it because they thought they couldn't blow through 2 billion in time before Trump came in. So then they just took it all out and put it in a city. And that's what Lee Zeldin is doing now. He's suing to get that money back if there is any left. So you know, when they all talk about Elon, why don't they just say stuff like that? Why don't we just, why doesn't the left just say, look at this wonderful program. We've got this sober and judicious Stacey Abrams known for her physical sobriety. And she is overseeing $2 billion. And, you know, the average person pays $20,000 in income tax. So she's representing the investment into the government each year of thousands of households and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. So why doesn't she just say, I'm very proud of what we're doing. Don't cut it. She's a wonderful steward of your money. But do that. They just scream and yell constitutional crisis. And they never actually address the cut. You know, because of this podcast, I get emails now, maybe three a day, and they're from people like the following. I am a Forest Service lifetime ranger and my. I clean the trails and police, and I'm going to lose my job or I have been a soil chemist for epa. Victor, you need to point out that, that this is. We're all losing our job. And I have no way to adjudicate that right where the program. But the other thing, very quickly, Jack, is. And I'm not criticizing Elon, whom I praised to the skies, but they need to get a better narrative in the sense that it's tragic. In other words, you don't want to act like you're getting scalps. You got to say something along the following. We didn't create the problem. You people, you were the revolutionaries. You hired all these people. You were the one that spent $7 trillion. You were the one that opened the border. You were the one that let in 12 million people. You were the one that canceled keystone and put 650,000 acres off. You were the cancer. And it was not sustainable with 37 trillion. So then we came in and we are the ones. It's very easy to hire people and get patronage. It's very hard to say there's no money and have to lay them off. We don't like doing that. It's very easy to let in 12 million people and say, ha, ha, ha. It's very hard to find them and tell them, you have to go home. You entered under illegal auspices. Very easy to destroy the border. Very hard to build a wall and reconstruct it. Very easy with it. Just say, oh, we're not going to have Anwar. We're not going to have Keystones. Very hard to get those projects resurrected. So my point is, we are the counter revolutionaries, and we've had the most radical revolution in our history. And it's not easy to undo what Joe Biden did and earlier Obama. And we're not bragging about putting people out of work. We feel bad, but it was. We feel Worse for the taxpayers who are strapped and have to give money to an irresponsible federal government. And they have to have. The more they're starting to do that. They had a wonderful press conference. I looked at it on YouTube, Jack, with Caroline Levitt got. She brought out Kevin Hassert, who's wonderful. And then they had Steve Miller, who's got a photographic memory. And then they had Waltz national security. And each one explained what they had done in one month. Waltz went over the foreign policy, which I hope we'll talk about in a second about Ukraine. And then Miller went over the whole idea of the constitutionality of what they're doing and illegal immigration. And Kevin was really good on. Just hold on, everybody. We're going to deal with inflation. We didn't cause it. We've only been in 30 days. But when we address this massive overspending and when we get. We're not trying to put tariffs on anybody. We're just saying, you have a tariff, we will have a tariff. You have no tariff, we will have no tariff. And it was very good. I think they need to do that almost every two weeks. Bring in Kristi Noem. It's your turn, Kristi. Tell us what's going on in Homeland Security. Your turn, Pam Bondi. And showcase them. It would be wonderful.

Jack Fowler (23:51)

It was a very powerful video. Kelly Loeffler, I'm not sure how she pronounced her name. At the SBA headquarters where they were, nobody was there. The emptiness kind of shocking, and we know that. But to actually see on a workday when we're all working, you could go through the office without a single soul.

Victor Davis Hanson (24:10)

I don't understand how the argument the Democrats, it's almost like they're saying a federal employee is not subject to any of the conditions, risks, any of the real world that all of you are out there. What are they going to tell some farmer who's out there farming wheat or corn? He has no idea or she has no idea what. They're going to have any money at the end of the year, period. And they are living on borrowed money from the bank on their crop loan. And every day they go out, they don't know if they made money that day or if they paid somebody for the pleasure of being an attractor all day. And they won't know until that crop is harvested. If there's not a rain, there's not a frost, something. And if they actually get the crop, then they don't the price. They're at the mercy of the brokerage people. And the world market. And they're going to tell those people, oh, it's so bad that we have to go into work with a steady guaranteed income. I don't think that's going to be persuasive for a truck. How about a truck driver? You know, he's driving down there 17, 18 hours every couple of days. He looks at what's the price of fuel in Indiana? Oh, God, I got to go to California. What's the price of diesel there? Oh, my car, my truck insurance went, oh, my. And you're trying to tell him that somebody with a guaranteed job you're supposed to feel sorry for. I don't think they're going to be sympathetic. Same thing. Like a guy on a forklift in Modesto and you say to him, how long you been on that forklift at 15 bucks an hour? I've been out here since I was 18. Do you want to pay your taxes to forgive 1.7 trillion in student loans? No. He's half the country. And that's why the Democrats don't quite get it. You know, I know that the polls, as they did with Reagan. Reagan didn't. Reagan had terrible polls. And as you remember, Jack, in 82, he got hit in the midterms and in 83. And then all of a sudden, the Reagan revolution kicked in with tax cuts, deregulation, and the economy grew almost 7%. In 84, he wiped out Mondale. But. But it's going to be rough to administer chemo to this patient. It really is. That's us, the patient.

Jack Fowler (26:27)

We're going to talk a little more specifically about, excuse me, about Democrats and their polling free fall. And we're going to talk about what else, Victor? The cruelty in Gaza. Zelensky now offering to resign. If that will help. A broker broker deals. Kash Patel's first action. So we've got plenty more to get your views on. And we'll get to that when we come back from these important messages.

Victor Davis Hanson (27:00)

Before we continue, I want to tell you about what's really happening to your money. What economists politely call inflation, but what we've come to understand as government approved counterfeiting. Like many of you who've studied history, I've watched the pattern repeat throughout civilizations. The steady erosion of purchasing power as governments print money instead of making hard choices. Folks, I'm deeply concerned. For the first time ever, our nation is spending more on interest payments than on our military. That's why we've asked our friends at American Alternative Assets to share their wealth protection guide. The guide explains how this hidden tax transfers wealth from savers to asset owners and why smart Americans are moving their retirement savings to precious metals IRAs before inflation steals more of their future. These are true patriots who understand the mechanics of currency devaluation. Right now, they're offering our listeners up to $10,000 in free silver plus a free American Made Safe. They'll show you how generations of Americans have protected their purchasing power during times of monetary uncertainty. Call 1-800-861-8047 or visit victorlovesgold.com call 1-800-861/8047. Again, call 1-800-861, 8047 and tell them Victor sent you Ready to optimize your nutrition this year, Factor has chef made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. They're dietitian approved and ready to heat and eat in two minutes so you can fuel right and feel great no matter what life throws at you. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active, busy lifestyle. Lose up to eight pounds in eight weeks with Factor Keto Meals based on a randomized controlled clinical trial with Factor Keto. Results will vary depending on diet and exercise. With 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week, it's easy to pick meals tailored to your goals. Choose from preferences like Calorie Smart, Protein plus or Keto. Factor can help you feel your best all day long with wholesome smoothies, breakfast Grab and go snacks and more add ons. Reach your goals this year with ingredients you can trust and convenience that can't be beat. Eat smart with Factor get started@factormeals.com Factor podcast and use the code Factor podcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's Factor podcast at Factor meals.com Factor podcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.

Victor Davis Hanson (29:50)

Foreign.

Jack Fowler (29:55)

The Victor Davis Hansen show recording on Sunday, 23rd February. This episode is up on the 25th. Victor is back in the saddle in California. He was down in Florida for a few days. How did everything go there? Victor? Quickly. You didn't have any airline issues, no dogs sitting next to you on the plane, licking you or anything like that?

Victor Davis Hanson (30:17)

No. People were very friendly. I flew in, it was a kind of a storm and the pilot was wonderful. He went right through the storm. We landed and then a dense fog ensued in Dallas and we took right off. I arrived right on time. I had a connection and then it was kind of cloudy and cold in Naples and I had to go to a Bradley foundation meeting for two days and then took a car and went to Palm Beach. It was very cold and windy, got a little warmer. And then I went to Scott Atlas Liberty Institute. It's a new institute that Scott has founded, mostly geared toward young people, young professionals, to see if they can create each year advocates for free speech and free expression all across business, healthcare, everything. So I gave that speech, had a nice. I sat at the table with the first lady of Florida who was just very.

Victor Davis Hanson (31:18)

Yeah.

Jack Fowler (31:18)

What do you think of her?

Victor Davis Hanson (31:19)

She gave a talk right before mine. She's brilliant. She's a. She's a very effective speaker. She's beautiful, she's competent, She's. Gosh, that's a scary pair, the two of them. Ron DeSantis and his wife could survive cancer also. Yes, she survived cancer. And, and then Laura was there, Laura Ingram. And I talked to Laura and I owe a great debt to Laura because I had been informally, to tell you the truth, exiled from my rare occasions appearances on Fox. And then Laura Ingram brought me back in 2017, I think. So I owe her a debt of gratitude. And we talked, I had a little conversation. We were both a little worried. I don't know if she's going to bring it up Monday, but that there can't be a triumphalist message that we're, aha, we're doing all this. It's like you people put us in this position. So there's going to be some rough medicine that's being administered. We don't like to do it, but you made us do it because this was not sustainable, especially on the economy. We didn't create the hyperinflation you did. We didn't create these huge deficits in the same degree that you did. And so I think we were kind of on the same page on that.

Jack Fowler (32:45)

Okay, well, let's get into some foreign matters. Let's start off with Gaza. Victor. And it's just absolute depravity, these twisted celebrations of the murdered babies and their moms. A little clip here from the Daily Mail. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed revenge on Hamas after it was discovered that the body in a coffin bearing Shiri Bibas name and photo was an unidentified woman, not the kidnapped mother of the two. On Thursday, Hamas was supposed to deliver the bodies of Shiri Ariel and Kfir Bibas and Oded Lifshitz. However, during the identification process, Israel discovered that the body inside Shiri's coffin was not hers. These Hamas monsters also cynically refused to bring back the boy's mother, Shiri, and sent the body of a Gazan woman instead in brazen violation of the agreement. Netanyahu said in a statement on Friday. Victor, that weirdo. Sick, twisted gameplay. Plus the celebrations in the streets of your average Gazan citizen.

Victor Davis Hanson (33:57)

What was interesting about this is the left wants to create this narrative that there was this small clique of Hamas radicals that, yes, they did get elected, but they canceled all the elections and they're not representative of the Palestinians of Gaza. And when you gave them evidence that on October 7, when it was announced, these hostages, Jack, were not taken by Hamas terrorists, they were taken by civilians and sold. I mean, there was a bounty on Israelis. You saw the picture when the bulldozer knocked down the fence. It was a free for all once the word got out. You can rape, you can kill, you can torture, you can steal. Right across there, you know, look at that beautiful kibbutz. All these affluent Israelis. Just go to it. They had all. They had hundreds of people who swarmed. And when you saw the bodies that they came back with or the people they were torturing, it was the Gazans. And then when they started releasing the first prisoners, they had Hamas people protecting the prisoners from the civilians. They wanted to kill them. So. And this whole idea that we didn't, oh, I have a. I'm in a mosque, I'm in a hospital, I'm in a school. I didn't know there was a Hamas headquarters beneath me. Of course they knew. They were part of the thing. So my point is, when you. And then they did the autopsies on the two young children who came back battered, and it was very clear to them, very. I mean, you can't fool an Israeli pathologist and coroner. And what they found was that the children had been strangled to death and then their bodies had been beaten up to make it look as if they were hit by falling concrete or something. So they killed little children. And as I said, even the Grand Mufti, that's pretty hard for him to get shocked by anybody. And the UN criticized it. But here's the point. Their whole currency that protects them is the international left. And so all they had to do was take off their mask, wear business suits, and conduct themselves like other people who claim that they are nations. And they couldn't do that. So they, as they are cowards, they put on their whole camouflage uniforms, their scarves, headbands, the whole Hamas get up. They were anonymous. You couldn't identify them. And then they started triumphantly bragging and boasting over coffins, Coffins. So they were trading corpses and they didn't tell anybody they were dead. That came very late. It suggests to me there's a lot of people we think that are alive or dead. And here's the final point. There's a thin thread that protects them from annihilation. Just a thin thread. And that is everybody in Israel wants to get rid of Hamas for what they've done and what they are doing. But the United States uniparty diplomatic corps says you can't do that. We're not going to give you bombs. We're not going to do this. And that's not there anymore. It's Donald Trump. Donald Trump said yesterday they asked him what Israel should do. He said, I trust them to do what they want. Whatever they want to do, go do it. And all of those people on the stage that were triumphantly boasting about the coffins, I have a feeling they're all dead men right now. They're all going to be. They're all dead. They don't know they're dead, but they're dead because there's going to be informants and there's going to be people who know it and they're going to boast to people and they're going to have some sophisticated technology that can identify foreheads and they're going to identify them. And you haven't heard anybody said, I'm the proud leader of Hamas. You hear names but not self identification. Because to say that you are a leader of Hamas is a death sentence. And everybody laughed at Donald Trump when he said, you know what, we have to rebuild that rubble. But you can't do it when people are supporting Hamas. So we suggest they temporarily go somewhere. The criticism of them in the Arab world wasn't, well, we don't. That's a little extreme. It's like it was twofold. That came from an American with Israel support. Therefore, since we're illegitimate rulers everywhere, we've never won an election, we're afraid of the people and they won't like that. And number two, we don't want these people. We do not want them in Egypt, we do not want them in Jordan. We do not. Kuwait must be saying, we had these people once and when Saddam invaded Kuwait, they sided with Saddam. We don't want. And remember the Kuwaitis, once we gave them their country back, what was the first thing they did ethnically cleanse a third of a million Palestinians just said, get out. And so that's the only hang up. And I think there's going to be a lot of support for rebuilding Gaza, but having passport control about who gets to come in and make it a real nation and try to make it, you know, a situation where you don't let terrorists in. And that's going to be my only reservation. I don't think the United States should spend any money on it, period. Not one dime. And number two, I don't think that we should allow anybody from that enclave to come into the United States. Not one.

Jack Fowler (39:39)

If there's Arab money to build a Dubai, there's money to invest.

Victor Davis Hanson (39:44)

There's plenty of Arab money to do that, and we have plenty. We have 12 million illegal immigrants. We have students rioting and chasing Jews on our campuses, defacing monuments and graves. We don't need any more students from the Middle east, countries that support terrorism. And I hope Donald Trump reinstitutes his ban. Not aimed at Arabs or Muslims, just countries that Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Iran, probably. Yeah.

Jack Fowler (40:19)

Did you see this? You know, Irish ministers typically come to America on St. Patrick's Day. I think St. Patrick's Day is a bigger deal here than it is in Ireland.

Victor Davis Hanson (40:28)

Yeah.

Jack Fowler (40:29)

And they're not coming this year because of. Because of support for Hamas. Gaza.

Victor Davis Hanson (40:36)

My grandmother was Irish, so I have no. I have no ethnic.

Jack Fowler (40:41)

No, but stay there.

Victor Davis Hanson (40:46)

Stay there. This whole thing with Europe, we'll get into it about Ukraine, but they're running almost a $230 million surplus. And Germany alone is 60 or 70. I should say billion. Excuse me, 20 or $30 billion surplus. Germany alone is 70 or 80 billion. When you start looking in depth at the asymmetrical tariffs, depending on the particular commodity, electronics, pharmaceuticals, cars, food, it's about double ours. In other words, they charge us 5%. We charge them either 0 to 2%, and then we're defending them. And by the way, everybody. Don't tell me that. We all will. Victor. We only pay 16% of 17, maybe a 20% of NATO budget. We don't pay half. That's not quite true. They're all under our nuclear shield, number one. Number two, they wouldn't be able to import oil, believe me, from the Middle East. They would not be able to ship stuff to China. If the US Navy did not patrol, they wouldn't even get through the Red Sea. If it wasn't for the US Navy, they couldn't even go through the Suez Canal. So we underwrite all of that, and then they don't even follow the Western tradition of free expression, and they hate us. We'll get into Donald Trump in a minute, but I don't think they know what they kind of remind me of the Democratic Party right now. They think they're doing something that everybody, when they get Jasmine Crockett on TV and she starts screaming and yelling and racially epithets and horrible stuff and they think, or you get Schumer out there and he does that or that shrill Elizabeth Warren or that Jamie Raskin, they think that's going to generate, you know, popular support. Well, the same thing about the Europeans when they start attacking Trump, the United States and this. And then you say, fine, just don't.

Jack Fowler (42:52)

Did you see the lead, the woman who's the leader of the ADF in Germany, whose name I don't know. I apologize. She's adopting a very, I'm going to follow Trump's template if elected, etc.

Victor Davis Hanson (43:04)

There's an election coming up. We'll see. Yeah, there's, I think the Christian Democrats and the socialists in Germany are doing all they can to get elected the AfD, because almost every day there is an illegal alien who goes and runs over someone or knife someone or kills someone. And this was yet this was the Angela Merkel, yes, we can do this program. Remember that? Yes, we can do it. Yeah, you did it. All right, Angela. She was the worst chancellor in the history of Germany, except for Hitler. She really was. She destroyed that country. Schroeder was bad, but not as bad as she was. She hated, she didn't like any conservative. She was an East German brought up under communism. And that country is in bad, bad shape. And we'll see. And then when this Ukraine, we'll talk about the Ukrainian settlement. But when Europe says, when Donald Trump says, this is a problem on your border, it's been going on for three years, you have no solutions. There is no Ukraine now. It's lost a quarter of its population. It's been destroyed. And you want to just fuel it just enough so you can kill about 100,000 people a year. But you don't have any positive strategic goals because you don't want to win and you don't want to lose. You just want to keep it going. And you bragged and bragged after Linsky was the rock star of 2022 with his T shirt ex comedian that we're going to send over all and you didn't send over all that stuff and now you know you're free. If we had a problem with Mexico or Canada, I don't think the Europeans would butt in and say, we're going to help you with that border with Mexico and those cartels you can't handle it, America. No, no, no, no. It's right in your backyard. And we have tried to help for three years and we're nowhere. And there has to be some kind of solution. We can talk about that.

Jack Fowler (45:11)

Yeah, let's, we'll, yeah. Because Zelensky said something important today. But before we get there, Victor, before we continue, I just want to tell our listeners about what's really happening with their money. What economists politely call inflation, what what we've all come to understand as government approved counterfeiting. Like many of you who've studied history, I've watched this pattern repeat throughout civilizations. I'm sure Victor has also the steady erosion of purchasing power as governments print money instead of making hard choices. Folks were deeply concerned because for the first time ever, our nation is spending more on interest payments than on our military. That's why we've asked our friends at American Alternative Assets to share their wealth protection guide. The guide explains how this hidden tax transfers wealth from savers to asset owners and why smart Americans are moving their retirement savings to precious metals IRAs before inflation steals more of their future. These are true patriots who understand the mechanics of currency devaluation. And right now they're offering our listeners up to $10,000 in free silver plus a free American made safe. They'll show you how generations of Americans have protected their purchasing powers during times of monetary uncertainty. What to do? Call 1-800-861-8047 or visit victorlovesgold.com call you do, Victor, I know you do. Call 1-800-861, 8047. Again, 1-800-861- 8047 and tell them, Victor, victorlovesgold.com sent you. And we thank the good people for. Oh, go ahead.

Victor Davis Hanson (46:54)

When I was a little boy, my grandmother, who grew up in New Mexico, very poor with a ranching family and her father had spent his whole life looking for the Adams Diggings. They made a movie about it, McKenna's Gold. You remember that?

Jack Fowler (47:09)

Oh, really?

Victor Davis Hanson (47:09)

The mystical. It's supposed to be on the Rocket Range somewhere. But anyway, her brother was shot in a saloon and murdered and her father sold what little cattle they had and went out to look for the desperado. And then he went out in the frontier mountains. They caught the guy and brought him back. And then he looked for this mystical treasure. But every once in a while, one of her brothers or somebody would send back a little bit of gold dust in the mail. So my grandmother, when I was a little boy in this house, I'M sitting and would say, look at this, it's worth $32 an ounce. Can you believe that, Victor? And there was like an eighth of an ounce. And remember, my point is, before Nixon got us off the gold standard, the price of gold was set by the government and the currency. In theory, I think they stopped that in the 30s. And I know a lot of comments are going to correct me, but there was a time in America that anybody could take their dollars in to a bank and get gold in return at a silver certificates.

Jack Fowler (48:16)

Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (48:17)

Yes, you could do that. It was a redeemable printed money was not currency. It was a certificate for redemption. It was just a way of not having to carry gold around. And there's a lot of people I've talked to a lot of people, not nuts at all, who want to bring back the gold standard.

Jack Fowler (48:35)

I was just watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre the other night. The goal, of course, you know the goal.

Victor Davis Hanson (48:41)

Badges. We don't need those stinking badges.

Jack Fowler (48:43)

Yeah. How did grandma meet Grandpa and get herself from down New Mexico up to. Up to.

Victor Davis Hanson (48:50)

They lost everything. They lost everything because they had gone to find the murderer. Their maiden name was Johnston. They were a distant, distant, distant relative of the Confederate general Joe Johnston. And that was kind of a sticking point because my grandfather was a Welshman maternal from Missouri, and his grandmother, Lucy Anna Davis, they came from Missouri because they were northerners and he fought on the northern side, but they lived in the southern part of Missouri. So after the war was over, there was a family saga that he was in a fight with someone and he fled. They decided that southern Missouri was not safe for Yankees, so they fled to California. In 1870 they came out on the railroad and then they looked around here and they found an artesian pond and you could buy land within, I think it was 2 miles of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which we're still 2 miles from for $4. The government gave it to the railroad, you know, for development and I had the certificate. They bought it for $4 an acre and they were given 20 years to improve it. And then the railroad would come back and examine. That was what caused the great riots about eight miles from me. The massacre that was written about in the Octopus.

Jack Fowler (50:25)

When did that happen?

Victor Davis Hanson (50:26)

That happened. The Muscle Slough tragedy, it's called. That happened in the early. I think it was either 1888 or 89. And it's about 6, 8 to miles there's a monument. And the railroad came in and basically told people who had bought land that they didn't improve it. And they said we did improve it and they did. But we couldn't improve it as much as you would like because you kept raising railroad cargo fees because it was a monopoly and there was no way to get their grain or fruit. And so the railroad tried to take it and they had a shootout and they became folk heroes. It was in that period, that 18 earlier, that we were, I think, one of the first families here. And they bought the land. And then she had three sons, my great grandpa, my great uncles, Oren Schuyler and Cyrus, what names he was named after. Cyrus McCormick and the inventor of the threshing machine. And anyway, he stayed here and then he had his father. His son was my grandfather who was born here in 1890, Rees Davis. They were all Welsh and he had a little. They were very poor. They dried apricots. And this family had moved in from New Mexico in about 1955 or 1906. My grandfather was about 15 or 16 and he met this young girl who had a family of 11 children. They were dirt poor and they waited till they were 21 and they got married. And then the next thing he knew, he told me his mother died of breast cancer and his father kind of went crazy when that happened. So at 21 they had no money and he had a brother and a sister. Anyway, he bought 120 acres. He had a mortgage his entire life. And then he married my grandmother and their whole family moved in with him.

Jack Fowler (52:33)

He had to take care of the clan.

Victor Davis Hanson (52:35)

Yeah, they had a barn here, it's made out of eucalyptus poles. So they had all. Well, anyway, then my grandmother was very different. Her family had come from the south, they lived in New Mexico, but they were from Alabama. And my grandfather was a very strong and union person. And anyway, my grandmother had kind of still, when I knew her, a slight southern accent. And there was always a little tension there. And all my parents of course were very strong Democrat, but they were very strong unionists. And my grandmother wasn't, you know, she didn't refight the Civil War, but her family were cowboys. And her brother, when they moved here, he was 12 years old. And what little cattle and horseshe was 12 or maybe he was 13. He drove them from New Mexico, Magdalena, New Mexico, all the way over here himself. Can you imagine that?

Jack Fowler (53:33)

13 over a thousand a parent would get arrested if their 12 year old was out walking on a sidewalk nowadays.

Victor Davis Hanson (53:40)

I knew him very well. He was born in 1900, he came much later. He was selling off their bankrupt little cattle ranch and he Came and they didn't have money to put use the. She came on the train and then they went broke. When they got here, they bought a house. They all went broke. The weird thing about it is that family was all very successful. The guy that I told you who moved here became very, very successful. He was deaf too. And he figured out the most brilliant for a person who was completely broke. He got a concession from the local sewer plant that put gray water, not sewage, onto alfalfa. He rented the alfalfa from a person. She said, it's not level. It won't irrigate. What do I do? And he said she had 400 acres. He said, if you level the 400, you can have 200. So he did it himself. And then he got the gray water. He said, I will charge you a nominal fee to put the gray water on my 200 level acres and I'll grow alfalfa. In those days, you could do that. The alfalfa grew very quickly. And then he went every few months to Montana, and we had this big cattle truck. And he brought the cattle back, put them there, and he deliberately picked that place because it was two miles from the feedlot. So he would get a cattle drive for two miles. So he explained it when he was about. He died at 98. He explained it to me that he. There was no way to lose money. People were paying him to fertilize his own alfalfa. And then he got cheap cattle and he fattened them up very quickly. And then he didn't have any transport costs. And he was very right wing, Very right wing. And he Wore. He was 5, 4, and he wore cowboy boots. And then he introduced me to my great uncle.

Jack Fowler (55:39)

Is he the guy you brought booze to on Christmas?

Victor Davis Hanson (55:43)

Yeah. Well, he came. He came with his. I'll stop now. With his brother, who was Uncle Bill. And he came from Magdalena, New Mexico. And he literally came. He was 5,556-big-cowboy boots and a hat. And he had a Smith Wesson on his holster with a little sheriff store. When I knew him and he was visiting, he was in his 60s or 70s. And he said, well, you know, I like your dad. When he married my niece, you know what your dad told me? He got out of that darn B29. He came home, he said, you're the littlest man with the biggest gun I've ever met. So he wore a gun everywhere. So anyway, that was a pioneer family.

Jack Fowler (56:36)

Yeah. Imagine a man leveling 200 acres. That's just.

Victor Davis Hanson (56:41)

Well, they didn't and you know, he did it with a. He didn't do it with a D9 or a Massey. He did it with a 9 in tractor or he had somebody do it. I don't know if he did it himself, but they had, you know, the 9N didn't even have overhead valves. I had a 9N. It's just the jubilee tractor was a beautiful invention. When I was a little kid, I used to disc with it.

Jack Fowler (57:11)

Now Lamborghini makes tractors. So they do. That was at Clarkson's farm. He was driving.

Victor Davis Hanson (57:17)

No, I know they do.

Jack Fowler (57:18)

I've seen Lambertini like, wow, air conditioning.

Victor Davis Hanson (57:20)

Italy makes beautiful farm equipment.

Jack Fowler (57:23)

Well, let's talk about Ukraine, Victor, as we're getting into foreign policy matters now headlined today, President Volodymyr Zelensky says he would step down if it would guarantee peace in Ukraine. This from the Daily Mail. Very quickly said on Sunday he was willing to step down and amend peace for Ukraine, quipping that he could exchange his departure for Ukraine's entry into NATO.

Victor Davis Hanson (57:48)

Nice jokes.

Jack Fowler (57:49)

Zelenskyy also said he wanted to see US President Donald Trump as a partner to Ukraine and more than simply a mediator between Kiev and Moscow. I really want it to be more than just mediation. That's not enough, he told a press conference in Kiev. So this is news coming out today. Victor, your thoughts about this or anything else related to.

Victor Davis Hanson (58:08)

Yeah, well, everybody we've known, you're all hearing about this huge controversy. And it started when Trump sent General Kellogg over his special Ukrainian envoy, Marco Rubio waltz, his national security. And he said some things and basically, Trump, I want to be very careful and characterize it. He looked at this and he said, this thing has been going on. It'll be on the 22nd. And we're speaking today on the 23rd. Excuse me. Tomorrow is the third anniversary on the 24th. And he said, he keeps saying millions and millions, but it's probably the aggregate Russian and Ukrainian dead, wounded, missing, captured, probably a million and a half. This is the worst disaster since Stalingrad 1/4, more than 1412 million people have left Ukraine and there's no end in sight. So he looks at this and he says Trump is saying, well, when this whole thing started and it didn't start on my watch, the Europeans said they were going to pour all this stuff in and they didn't do what they said they did. The United States under Biden gave enough money to save Ukraine, but not to win. And it's just a death thing. So I'm going to stop it And Zelensky then said he wanted to be in on talks. And everybody said, you can't talk to Putin. And basically, J.D. vance, and I'm paraphrasing, and Trump said, we talked to Stalin, we talked to Mao, we talked to everybody. How do you stop a war unless you talk to even if it is a monster? So then Zelensky said, I want to be on this and you're going to sell me out. And basically they said, listen, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You don't tell us what you're going to do. I know this is your country, but your country wouldn't exist if you count on your beloved European friends. They talk a great game, but they do not give you enough. It came from us. And then Trump said some things. He said, by the way, he's a dictator and he started it. Well, that got everybody upset because he didn't start the war. And I say that with all deference to Donald Trump, because Donald Trump knows he didn't, because Donald Trump campaigned correctly by saying the following, that war would have never started if I were president because Putin did not invade on my watch. He invaded in 2008 when he went into Osatia and Georgia. On George W. Bush's watch, he went into Crimea and Donbass. On Barack Obama's watch, he tried to take Kiev and more borderlands on Biden, but not mine. So what did he mean by that? Well, I think what he meant was that there were periods that this thing could have been prevented and Ukraine acted in a way that might have precipitated. I don't know if I agree with that or not, but here's what he was trying to say. Very quickly, in 2005, there had been an elected pro Russian, pro Russian Yanukovych, and he was overthrown, he was unpopular, he was corrupt, but they all are. And then a pro ueu, pro NATO, pro European, pro American person. And the controversy lies with what did John McCain do when he flew over there? What did Victoria Nuland, what are the Obama. Did they encourage this couple? Because he abdicated. And at that point, you had a government in Ukraine that was pro West. And Vladimir Putin warned that we're not, we lost the Eastern Europe, but we're not going to put a former Soviet republic as a NATO, EU power right on our frontier. And they didn't believe him. And then he looked at the Obama administration and he said, wow, they are appeasing, appeasing, appeasing me this. Oh, we want reset, reset, reset. Hillary reset, reset. And then the Hot mic. Tell Vladimir, Mr. Medved, tell Vladimir that if you'll just give me some space, that is don't invade until I get reelected in 2012. I'll be flexible on missile, that is, I will destroy missile defense and disband it. And they both kept their bargain. And then he invaded after Obama was elected, and Obama did nothing. Okay, Trump is angry about that. So then after they invaded on the 24th, and Trump, by the way, had said, you know what I meant. I didn't mean that. I know that Russia invaded. He said that yesterday. But why did he call him a dictator? Well, everybody said, well, he hasn't held elections. But Churchill didn't forget a decade from 1935-45. And that's very disingenuous. 1945, they had an election after the European theater was over, but while the Japanese theater. And Churchill lost that election. But more importantly, in May, when he became prime minister of Britain, he brought in people he did not like.

Victor Davis Hanson (63:28)

National government.

Victor Davis Hanson (63:29)

Yes. And he brought people in that he did like and he liked people that he brought. People like Halifax, who was all over the place politically. And he brought loyalists like Anthony Eden in. He bought Bevan in. He bought all sorts of people. And the point I'm making is he had a wartime Israeli type coalition government and he did not. He censored the news that he thought was pro German, but he did not hound his political opponents. Like, Zelensky has suspended a lot of habeas corpus, he's suspended opposition parties, he suspended opposition media, he has canceled elections. And I don't think he's a dictator like Putin, but he is a soft dictator, okay? So that's got everybody angry. And then the left said that Donald Trump is pro Russian because he lied and said that Russia didn't invade. Well, the other thing that he was very angry about is in March, just so get this time three years ago, Zelenskyy's a hero. Because after 10 days or 12 days, that column we watched every day was blown apart and Kiev was saved. And he had a little T shirt on. He was an excommedian. He was going all over the world. He was a rock star. And they said, the war is over. They lost this man. And it wasn't over. And then things started to happen. He kept making demands on the United States, and we thought Europe was going to shoulder it. Europe was not meeting their 2%. Even though they'd been hectare, there were still nine or 10 countries in NATO that would not invest 2% of their GDP. And then things started to get very weird. The Ukrainian ambassador in 2016 had written an op ed during the election attacking Trump candidate Trump. We all remember Alexander Vindman, the US dual citizen. He was US and Ukrainian citizen that was offered the Ministry of Defense. He engineered. He broke the rules and disclosed a classified private call between Zelensky and Trump. Magnified it got Mr. Serramella, the person who never heard the call, cooked it up with Adam Schiff and impeached Trump. If that wasn't enough, in September, right at the height of the campaign, Pennsylvania is a swing state. Joe Biden, who is now abdicated for Kamala Harris, tries to get her elected by flying in on a C17 flatter Florida. Mr. Voldemort Zelensky. And where does he go? He goes to old Joe Biden's hangout in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And where does he go? He goes to a munitions plant. And who with whom is he? With Josh Shapiro and the Democratic cadre. And what does he say? That these jobs are essential, that is be making shells. And the subtext is if you vote for Trump, he'll cut off a and you'll be out of a job. He was interfering in US elections, so he had no goodwill from Trump. Take a pause. And then we had a recent controversy. I'll be very quick. And I was. I was in a car and the editors at Free Press asked me to comment on it. So I wrote the. I stayed up till 12:30 that night and wrote the first draft.

Jack Fowler (66:55)

But this was this past week.

Victor Davis Hanson (66:58)

J.D. vance. And so Neil Ferguson, my colleague, a good friend, a wonderful historian at the Hoover, he tweeted when Donald Trump said that Zelensky was a dictator and then wrongly said that he didn't say invade. He said that Zelensky started the war. And I explained why he said that I would go back just for a second. In March, two months after the salvation, the saving of Kiev, there was a peace agreement, peace negotiation, and word leaked out that the Russians might have been willing to cut a deal on circumstances that today look pretty good. But at the time, Zelenskyy thought he was going to be in NATO and they were going to get him out of Crimea and the Donbass, in which they had been there for at that time, about eight years. And so Trump's view as well, you started it because you could have ended it with a negotiation. I don't know if that's true or not, but my point is this is. Then Neil Ferguson wrote how dare Trump. Basically, he said the following. We used to have an American President George H.W. bush, who, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he said, this shall not stand. What will the Republicans say about a president that doesn't follow that example? I'm paraphrasing. And that got a furious response from J.D. vance, and he's called him globalist and basically a bankrupt moralist. It's a very tough response. But he outlined five things that Trump and the administration wanted. We do not want the United States in this mess. Number two, we have given them more money than Europeans. Number three, they don't have any plan how to stop this war. Number four, the real enemy is China. Number five, we are draining our critical stocks of shells and weaponry to subsidize this, and we do have a say. So then Donald Trump came back and said, after everybody was angry at him, he said, I want to get paid back for all this stuff. And you have rare minerals that are critical, lithium and other things. And we want a concession. And, oh, my God, he's an imperialist. But everybody should remember what Trump was trying to do. He's trying to say, you're never going. We know what Trump's position is and what J.D. vance's is, and that's what we all talked about. They are not going to be in NATO, but it wouldn't even matter if they were in NATO, because NATO would never come to their rescue. And if they did want to come to their rescue, look at them. How many people does Britain have that are battle Ready? Jack? 18,000, I think. 18,000 troops. That.

Jack Fowler (69:54)

Is that it really? Oh, my gosh.

Victor Davis Hanson (69:57)

Well, I mean, they have about 180,000.

Jack Fowler (69:59)

I know, but battle ready? Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (70:00)

I mean, you can. You can get like that. And how many tanks are. There's fewer than 50 that are running in Germany, and I think Germany has about 10F35. So even if they wanted to, they wouldn't. They couldn't, and they don't want to. So what's holding Vladimir Putin from absorbing all of Ukraine are the heroism of the soldiers in the field that are Ukrainian, and the average age is getting up close to 30, and they're worn out. And US munitions and intelligence and economic aid. I think we pay for the entire salaries of the Ukrainian administration. Okay, so then Donald Trump is saying, we want this concessions to be paid back. And they said, how dare you do that? They don't understand Trump. They don't understand any of this. This is all art of the deal trolling. And what he's basically saying is, Mr. Zelensky, you are not master of your own fate. Don't tell me what you are going to do and what you're not going. It's your country. I'm not saying I'm going to get into your business. I'm just saying if you want me to get into your business, and apparently you do, then I'm going to have the say. If you don't want me to get in your business, fine. You go deal with the Germans and the Poles and the British and they're going to protect you. But don't play this game where you come and fly during an election year to an ammunitions plant and start lobbying against me and then tell me that you're disinterested. I'm not going to believe that. So if you want United States aid, you from now on are going to pay for it and we'll have a concession. But the real subtext was Zelensky thought about, ah, this is horrible. And then he thought about it and obviously some people, he said, Mr. People came to him and they must have said, hey, Zelensky, you understand what he's really saying? He's not going to send US Troops over there. And if the British sent troops and the French, that wouldn't be any good. Any. But he's going to put a lot of American businesses and investment there. And so if Putin were to try to break whatever negotiation we have and try to overrun, he's going to be dealing with American investment money, corporations, employees, infrastructure. And that will bring the United States into conflict with Putin. In other words, we're trying to sort of kind of have an investment in Ukraine to get back the money, but also to tell Putin, this is a nation that's going to open up investment to Western concerns, so don't go in again. So then in this rigmarole, Neill said that it was like the Gulf War. J.D. correctly, I think, and this is no criticism of Neil, that that was not a historical, good, historical account. I pointed out that this is exactly like in my response to both of them, exactly like the 1939 Winter War, November. Hitler had made a deal with the Soviet Union. The United States was isolationist. France and Britain were terrified over the loss of Poland. They knew they were going to be invaded soon, and they were invaded. And Stalin said, you know what? Germany's on our side. There's no other opposition. We're going to go take what we want from Finland, our neighbor. So they went to General Mannerheim and said, we want 10% just like Putin. Oh, no, no, you can't. Okay, we're going to invade and they invaded, and that was the worst. Like Putin they had at Kiev, they had no idea about the mettle of the Finns. They're some of the bravest, most courageous people in the world. And all of November, December, January, February, they killed, wounded or captured 400,000 soldiers. The Finns were on skis, they had sharpshooters, they were dressed in white during the snow. They understood the terrain, the weather, and the Russians were just bled white. And then finally Stalin said, grind them down. They poured in artillery, they poured in tanks, they poured in another million people. And all of a sudden, this poor little country of two and a half million was overrun. So then what did they do? They were in the same position as Mannerheim, went to Stalin and said, look, we'll give you the 10%, but if you try to take the whole country, we'll fight to the death. And Stalin said, well, that's what I. I only wanted to steal 10%. And what happened after that? Mannerheim was very careful. In World War II, he helped the Germans, but he never invaded the Soviet Union. He promised he would never join Germany. And even though the Germans begged him at the siege of Leningrad, please, you got a half a million of the best fighters in the world. You could break the siege of Leningrad if you just set foot on Soviet territory and stop the supply. And Mannerhum said, nope, I will help you any way I can, but I'm not going to invade the Soviet Union. And when they lost, Stalin went over to Finland and said, I'm going to let you go. You're not going to join the West. You're going to be, like, off. No west, no Soviet. And it kept their freedom for 85 years. So that's a good model for Ukraine. They're not going to get the Crimea back and they are not going to get the Donbass. And that has not been the policy of Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump, or Mr. Biden to get it back. Militarily, nobody believes they can. They're not going to, Joe. And another argument that Neil Ferguson made was, we're giving back. You're playing poker and you're giving away all of your leverage. You say you're not going to get back Donbass and you're not going to get Crimea, and you're not going to put. Well, don't tell Putin that, because now you're giving away the negotiation. No, no, no, no. If you're playing poker and you're bluffing and you're going like this, well, I've got a really good hand. They know you're bluffing. They know that Europe doesn't want them in NATO because they don't want to go have to rescue them. By statute, we don't want them in NATO. Russia doesn't want them in NATO. And I don't think Ukraine wants them in NATO deep down inside. And more importantly, nobody believes they have the military ability to take back Crimea and take back Donbas. And nobody wants to give them that, you know, a half, I don't know how many billions it would be a half a trillion dollars in equipment to try and another 300,000 dead to try to take those things. But, and here's what I think JD Vance and Neil Ferguson and Donald Trump would all agree on. They can cut a deal. They can go to Putin and say, okay, you get to go tell the Russians that you institutionalize the occupation, the theft of Crimea and Donbass. You can tell them that you caused dissension in NATO and you stopped Ukraine from being in NATO. And that was worth. It's a disaster for Russia. And then you got the sanctions lifted and Russia now is going to be part of the G7. It's going to go back to the normal. And then Ukraine can say, we saved our country and we pushed them back to where they were on February 24th. And that would mean that Putin would have to withdraw 30 or 40 miles. They would make a South North Korea type DMZ, and that's the negotiation. And I think that Trump can, if he pulled that off and to pull that off, he's saying some crazy things, but like everything he says, whether it's Gaza or Panama. You know, I had a talk with some people this weekend and somebody came up to me and said, I won't mention the person, but not a friend. And a couple people wrote me really nasty things. Oh, you're a Trump sellout or you're an appeaser. Shame on you. You've ruined your reputation for suggesting there should be a negotiation. We need to give. We need to give him a lot more. We can give him a trillion to all this crap. We should have American troops and all this stuff. Stupid thing. We should put him on the nuclear. No, no, no. But the fact is there can be a negotiated settlement that will stop the killing. And Ukraine will have its country. It can get its refugees back. You'll get Western investment. And it's the best armed country in NATO right now other than us. And it's got the most experienced fighters, and Putin knows that. So all we have to do is have a dmz US Western investment in Ukraine, get back its population, rebuild the country and keep that army at the same size it is now and beef up NATO and Putin will not go in again. And so that's what we're talking about. Donald Trump. Just one last thing, Jack, is that they don't understand what he says. I don't know what the word is, trolling. But. But he wasn't going to invade Panama. But he did stop that awful agreement in which China was going to have a concession and has a lot of extra legal influence on our Panama Canal that we gave and we had a treaty that no foreign power should usurp. Our premise vis a vis the Panamanians. Their foreign nation's closest relationship has to be us and they got out of that deal. He's not going to make Canada a 51st state. What he's angry about is they had an open border and all of a sudden Trudeau was spending a billion dollars and putting thousands of people to patrol the border. And more important, he's looking now like, oh, they caught me with that $50 billion surplus and this asymmetrical. He wasn't going to attack Greenland or force Denmark, but he did want a concession that China and Russia are extracting key concessions in the Arctic Circle. Greenland is a North American territory. We've had a long history with it in World War II. It's a vital piece of real estate. The Danish have agreed now to give a billion dollars in development for Greenland as colonial powers. And more importantly, the Danes now says they're going to arm up to 3 or 4% of GDP. And that's what he. That's all he wanted. That's all he wanted. So Panama, Canada, Ukraine, there's a pattern there. He tries to confuse, rattle, cause controversy, get people thinking. Same thing with the Gaza thing. And then once it all settles down, things happen and I think there's a 50, 50 chance you'll get negotiated settlement.

Jack Fowler (81:04)

Well, let me, Victor, tell people again that you wrote about this JD Vance, Neil Ferguson piece for the Free Press. You can check that out. And it's available, not behind a paywall. The title of the piece is can Trump Troll his way to a peace deal in Ukraine? So that's one thing. We're coming to home stretch here because we have another topic too to talk about. Second order business, I think, is just an obvious comment. None of this would have happened had Biden calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan happened.

Victor Davis Hanson (81:37)

He destroyed deterrence. So how did Biden everybody, when Donald Trump said that they had not invaded on his watch. He said that many times. He reportedly told Dong Vladimir Putin, the following will happen if you invade Ukraine. And Putin reportedly said, you wouldn't really do that. And he said, yes, I would. But the point is, how did Biden Destroy Deterrence number one? As Jack just pointed out, in August of 2021, he just skedaddled from Afghanistan. He left 13 Marines to die. He left contractors there. He left a billion dollar brand new Embassy, a $300 million retrofitted Bagram Air Base, and I don't know how many. The military said, oh, it wasn't 50 billion. It was just 7 or 8 or 10 billion in equipment. But a military. But if you look at all the equipment, the vehicles, it was built much more than that. And then when they kept trying to use cyber warfare against our institutions, remember Obama had said, cut it out, Vladimir. That was really effective, wasn't it? And then Biden said, if you're going to do this, Vladimir, don't hit our hospitals or schools. Take them off your target list. And then right before the invasion, Jack, remember, they asked Biden, what will you do? Because after Afghanistan, Putin is massing on the border of Belarus and Ukraine. And he said, it depends on whether it's a major invasion or not. That's what he said. And then the first week, when the caravan of troops, that long column of Russian armor was trying to take Kiev, what did Biden do? He called up Zelensky and says, you want to ride out, I can evacuate you. Otherwise, just give up your country. So he appeased Putin. And Donald Trump has a right to be angry because not only did Ukraine, I won't even get into Mr. Vindman and the impeachment, and I mentioned the op ed, but, but they created a narrative that Biden was tough on Putin, Obama was tough. Both of them appeased Putin and Biden. We just explained that hot mic with Obama. The reset. Donald Trump killed 2 to 300 of the Wagner group. That's tricky to do. Russia and Syria, he really did. He destroyed isis, he killed Soleimani, he killed Baghdadi, he almost bankrupt Iran. He got us out of a missile deal with Russia. He sold offensive weapons to Ukraine. Not, not Obama, not Biden. Initially, Biden put a hold on them. He sent them javelins, artillery, everything, and they didn't. And so in his way of thinking is, I was the one that was tough on Putin. You guys appeased him. And yet your left wing press makes me into a puppet and an asset of Putin. And yet everything he threw at me was a lie. Russian collusion was a lie. Russian disinformation, laptop was a lie. And the worst thing you can do with an enemy like Putin is to a be weak and appease him and then smear him and say that he did all these things that he didn't do and then call him a killer. He is a killer. But if you insult him like Biden did and call him all these names and you're weak, that's much better. To praise him and then get tough with him. And that's what Trump does, just like he did with Kim Jong Un. Doesn't mean he likes him. It doesn't mean he really praises him. He just says, you know what? I'm going to let you back in the G12 and you'll try to get back your country and be a normal country again. And then privately he says, do not blank blank with us.

Jack Fowler (85:24)

Yeah, as opposed. And means it. As opposed to Biden saying he means it.

Victor Davis Hanson (85:28)

Yeah, he's tossed. He talks softly and he carries a big stick. And Biden is a loud blowhard with a twig. That's the difference.

Jack Fowler (85:37)

Well, Victor, we've gone long, but. I know.

Victor Davis Hanson (85:40)

Too long.

Jack Fowler (85:40)

No, but that's a look. People want to hear you. While you were talking, I was checking to see any news on the Pope, but news came out about the German elections, so we can maybe talk about that and it's a big day for conservatives in Germany. Or we can talk about Kash Patel. We'll get to this when we come back from these final important messages.

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Jack Fowler (86:36)

We are back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Quick reminder or. Well, to old listeners, or loyal listeners, I should say. And news to new listeners. Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus, is located on the world wide web@victorhanson.com Please go there, check it out. You'll find links to everything Victor writes. You will find the archives of these podcasts, links to Victor's other appearances, and the things Victor does exclusively for the blade of Perseus. Two articles a week and a roughly 10 minute video every Friday. That's again just for subscribers. $65 a year. That's discounted from 6:50amonth or if you're a fan of VDH, you should be on the blade of Perseus. Victor, springing this on you. But yeah, here's the headline. Olaf Schultz however he says his name concedes defeat as Germany's conservative party storms countries election with far right AFD coming in close second. The exit polls and this is again we're recording on Sunday the 23rd. The elections results are just coming in. Exit poll suggests the Conservative CDU has topped today's ballot securing 28.5% of the vote while the AfD has taken 20% which is the strongest showing for a quote unquote far right party in Germany's post war effort. The governing center left SPD has slumped to third place in what looks set to be a disastrous result for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party and the party already describing the results as a historic defeat. Victor, there's that and thoughts on Kash Patel. We can maybe put one off if you want, but any quick thoughts on these German election results?

Victor Davis Hanson (88:30)

I know I'm springing up very quickly. Everybody knew this was going to happen because the center left has ruined Germany. And by that I mean in every aspect. They dismantled their nuclear and coal plants. They pay four times more for electricity than we do. They suppressed free speech. 60 Minutes was trying to praise what they're doing, but they raid people's homes. If you object to the orthodoxy in Germany. They let in, 16% of the German population is foreign born. They let in over a million illegal aliens from the Middle East. They get almost a terrorist incident. I shouldn't say incident. Assault, killing, rape, daily rape, assault and then killings, often mass killings. So they don't. And that's driving people crazy. They've de industrialized so their car companies because of EV mandates coupled with the price of electricity, coupled with the United States is getting very angry at their asymmetrical tariffs. They haven't had no GDP growth to speak of for two years. This used to be the engine of Europe. So people are much poorer. They can't afford to keep warm. Winter are cool, in summer, they can't afford the price of gas. They're scared of immigrants that prey on them and they're not allowed to object. And JD Vance comes over there and says you've got a big problem for those reasons. But more importantly, you want us to be your partner and to subsidize your defense and to subsidize your economy by letting you have these asymmetrical tariffs and run up 80, 90 some years, 70, 80, 90 billion. We're not going to do it anymore because you're not a free western country. And they went nuts. And he was speaking, as I said at the time, Jack, he was not speaking to MAGA as they accused him of. He was not speaking to that audience. He was speaking to the silent majority of Germany. And almost half of them, I guess supposedly voted for one of two conservative parties. They say far right, far right, far right. I know that every party has extremists, there's probably some neo Nazi, but that, that alternative for Germany is run by a lesbian woman who has a non German born girlfriend, wife or whatever. She doesn't fit the portrait of a far right. What they call far right is closed borders. You have to come legally. We're going to frack and we're going to, you know, we're going to develop our own natural resources and we're going to have nuclear power, etc. And we're going to have free speech. That's far right in Germany.

Jack Fowler (91:17)

Well, this, we'll get more details on the election results as the week spills out. And then, you know, Victor and the great Sammy Wink may be talking about it when they record their two podcasts later this week. So Victor, let's cross the finish line today with your thoughts on Kash Patel. I know you talked a little about that. He was confirmed by the Senate and surprisingly Mitch McConnell cast a vote for him. But on his first day as head of the FBI, he ordered 1500 FBI agents and staff out of the building. Sending, I'm looking here from red State. Some 1,000 agents and staff will be reassigned to cities the Trump administration has designated higher crime locations where they can fight crime rather than engage in political shenanigans. Another 500 staff will be reassigned to Huntsville, Alabama, which is the DC equivalent of exile to Siberia. That's what this article says. And the other thing about Kash Patel, we get your thoughts on Victor is he did respond to Elon Musk's Doge's order or I guess they're suggestions because if they're ordered, they have to be followed. But no, the employees of the FBI do not have to offer a once a week memo on here are five things, bullet point of here, five things I've done. He said to pay no attention, that I'm the boss here.

Victor Davis Hanson (92:49)

So anyway, Kash Patel, who has been.

Jack Fowler (92:51)

A guest on this podcast, your thoughts on his initial actions as well.

Victor Davis Hanson (92:56)

What he's doing is very smart. What he's basically doing to the rank and file. He's saying you don't have to do anything but what I tell you and I'm going to protect your back so you don't have to. Whether it's smarter or not doesn't matter. I think the Elon Musk and Donald Trump will allow him to tell the employees, you don't have to say what you're doing because he wants to create a positive climate. And that's very hard to do when you've had a politicized FBI that puts informants on January 6th or goes after parents at school boards or goes after anti abortion people or takes a laptop and hides it for a year while its intelligence brotherhood lies to the country. I could go on. Is behind Russian collusion or pays Christopher Steele money to interfere with an election. Well, that's what they were doing. James Comey, Andrew. And then you know what Cash is saying is we're not going to have a guy like Robert Mueller around anymore who says he doesn't know what the Steele dossier is under oath. We're not going to have a guy like Comey who feigns amnesia 245 times under oath. We're not going to have a guy like Andrew McCabe who lies under oath four times to federal exec. We're not going to have a guy like Christopher Wray that just won't answer a question. And so that's going to be good. But to do that he has to get rid of dispersed people and he's going through the ranks and he's trying to find out who gave the order to go after parents at school board. Who were the people who carried out the Mar A Lago raid and dreamed that way up, by the way. There were 14,000 documents taken from Mar Lago. We were told by the FBI they were classified. 102 were 007. And they brought props in to put around top secret, secret to place next to these documents. It was all scripted and choreographed. So he's trying to. Yes, he's trying to get rid of the people who have destroyed the reputation. You look at polls that barely less than half the people have confidence in it and make it a professional group. And if you're an FBI person and you join the agency to fight crime, then it wouldn't be. It shouldn't be considered Siberia to go to Huntsville or go to Victoria.

Jack Fowler (95:21)

Yeah, Oakland is waiting for you.

Victor Davis Hanson (95:23)

Yeah, yeah. That's what you're there for. And that's what he's trying to say. We are not there to go to Washington and have your wife work for a Democratic operative or run for office or to be a lobbyist or to hang out at cocktail parties in Georgetown with Comey and Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. And just get back to that famous iconic quote when Peter Struck says to Lisa Page, don't worry, Andrew says that Andy says that Trump will not be elected, or that Peter Struck says, I went to a Walmart and I could smell them when I got there.

Jack Fowler (96:00)

Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (96:01)

So that's the kind of people there are when you have a subpoena for FBI listening devices, excuse me, communications. And all of a sudden, I don't know where they are, they disappeared. Or when Kevin Kleinsmith gets a document and he has to forge it and an FBI lawyer commits a felony and then he gets a little slap on the wrist by his friends in the doj. That's what he's talking about.

Jack Fowler (96:28)

Well, as you've pointed out, Victor, this is restoration. It's not retribution.

Victor Davis Hanson (96:34)

No, it's a counter revolution. It's not a revolution. It's trying to bring things back to normality and common sense where they were 10 or 15 years ago. That's all they're trying to do. And the left is screaming because they know what they've done and they're afraid of being exposed.

Jack Fowler (96:52)

Well, Victor, you've been terrific today, as ever. I want to thank our listeners for listening and our sponsors. And we know that many, many of our listeners on various platforms take the means, time and effort to rate the show. You can do that on Apple. 0 to 5 stars. Practically everyone gives Victor 5 stars, 4.9 plus rating. I know on Audible. You can leave comments on Victor's website, comments on his articles and on these podcasts. I also get some emails, Victor, I want to share one because as I mentioned on every show I write, Civil Thoughts, which is a free weekly email newsletter, comes out every Friday with 14 recommended readings of interesting articles, important articles I've come across the previous week. And if you want to get it, go to civilthoughts.com sign up. And I got an email from Michael McMahon who did that. He just wrote me, said, jack, I want to thank you for Civil Thoughts. Great reads. Of course, I started with Civil Thoughts through your co hosting of the Victor Davis Hanson show. The dialogue between you and Victor reminds me of the conversations my father, who was an English teacher, would have with the small minority fellow conservative teachers. Those were filled with so many teachable moments for me growing up in the 1970s, those conversations shaped my conservative mindset. That continues today wish you and BDH good health and happiness. Nice letter. Thank you, Mike. And thanks everyone else again who takes the time to write comments. We read them, even the ones that say Fowler, shut up.

Victor Davis Hanson (98:24)

Lot I got a lot about. I got a lot about Donald Trump saying that Ukraine started the war, but I don't think he meant that. And he's corrected that.

Jack Fowler (98:35)

Well, again, you've been terrific, Victor. We'll be back soon, ladies and gentlemen, with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye. Bye.

Victor Davis Hanson (98:47)

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