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Jack
Before we dive into today's topics, there's a development that ties directly into the themes we cover on this program. Right now, 134 countries representing 98% of global GDP are rolling out programmable digital currencies aimed at ending financial privacy. This isn't just about tech. It's about control. It's the most serious threat to personal liberty since the rise of the surveillance state in China. 260 million people are already using a digital yuan that comes with government imposed expiration dates. And the IMF has admitted these currencies can be programmed to control what kind of things people can own. Our friends at American Alternative Assets have created a vital new guide, the Digital Dollar Trap. How CBDCs threaten your financial freedom. It outlines seven alarming ways digital currencies threaten your freedom and how precious metals maybe the only way out. Call 833-2-USA-GOLD or visit victorlovesgold.com to get your free copy. That's 833-287-2465 or victorlovesgold.com now let's get into the show.
Victor Davis Hanson
Foreign.
Jack
Ladies and hello gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. We are recording on Sunday, August 17th. Victor is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in history at Hillsdale College, the possessor of an important website, the blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. You should go there early and often, like they vote in Chicago and you should even subscribe. And later in today's episode I will tell you why I believe you should subscribe. Victor, we're in two strange places. One is literal strange places. You are strange. As a new to our, our viewers and listeners. You are elsewhere in California.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I'm 7,200ft up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I can't believe that the Internet is working. So far it is.
Jack
But that's what we're doing this on. Zoom, zoom.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. Right.
Jack
And I'm trying to re. Re rearrange my. I created an office at my house so background's a little different from how we normally do, but so what. Anyway, we're glad that you're available here. And so we've got some important things to talk about today. One is where today's episode as we record again it's Sunday, going to get Victor's take on what happened with Putin and Trump in Alaska on Friday. We do this knowing that the day after we talk Monday, which is the day before this episode is up on the air which is Tuesday Premier or president. What that. What a strong man. I guess we should call him. Zelensky from Ukraine will be meeting with Donald Trump. So that'll put a different dynamic, obviously on the peace talks, on the ceasefire talks, on the Ukraine Russian war. But we're going to get Victor's take at least on what he thought happened in Alaska when we come back from these important messages. If you're running a business, you know that every time you miss a call, you're leaving money on the table. When every customer conversation matters, you need a phone system that keeps up and helps you stay connected 24 7. And that's why you need Open Phone. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or computer. So no more carrying two phones or using a landline. With OpenPhone, your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts like a shared inbox. That way any teammate can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. Plus say goodbye to voicemail. Their AI agent can be set up in minutes to handle calls after hours, answer questions and capture leads. So you never miss a customer. So whether you're a one person operation drowning in calls and texts or having a large team that needs better collaboration tools, Openphone is a no brainer. See why over 60,000 businesses trust Openphone. Openphone is offering our listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com Victor that's O P E N P H O- N E openphone.com Victor and if you have existing numbers with another service, Openphone will port them over at no extra charge. Openphone no missed calls, no missed customers. Shopify helps you sell at every stage of your business.
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Jack
Let's put it online and see what happens.
Victor Davis Hanson
Stage and the site is live.
Jack
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Jack
We'Re back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show. So Victor explaining the worst, how we're straddling time and space continuums here for your, for your wisdom. But let's, let's get your take on Sunday the 17th. What happened on Friday the 15th?
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, Trump didn't get his ceasefire. They did Have a long three hour talk. They were supposed to have a Q and A with media. They did not. Each gave a statement. Putin's was three or four times as long as Trump's. And he went first. And I would characterize it, he gave a long litany of Russia, America, cooperation from World War II, 19th century stuff, all irrelevant. And then he mentioned that he didn't want any last minute shenanigans on his willingness to discuss a peace. It's pretty clear he does not want a ceasefire. He wants a comprehensive settlement. And Donald Trump then said most of the sticking points were resolved, but two or three major ones were not. He said nice things about Putin. Putin said that he wouldn't have invaded if Trump had not been president. I don't know whether that meant he would have been. He was admitting that he was afraid of Donald Trump's mercurial response, or he felt that the Russian collusion hoax promulgated by Obama and by Biden had precipitated his invasion. And being that Trump was the victim, not the creator, of those anti Russian hoaxes, maybe he meant that. I don't know. Here's the parameters. I think we all know what they are. Ukraine will not be in NATO. Ukraine will have to have some wherewithal in addition to its present munitions and force to deter Putin. The sticking points are over the institutionalizing of the Donbass acquisition in 2014 and the progress westward that Putin has made versus the Crimea, which is a dead letter. It will be given to Putin formally. I don't think Ukraine will say it's yours. They'll just say it's not going to be negotiated or a matter of the use of arms. He gets that little prize. He gets a prize that says, I kept them out of NATO. Big deal. They were never going to go into NATO. And now the big issue left, Jack, is if you stop them fighting. Now, he has most of the Donetsk and Donbass, but he doesn't have all of it. He's 50 to 100 miles westward of where he started, but he's. His exterior lines are expanding. Ukraine's interior lines are contracting. Ukraine is pretty stubborn and everybody knows that both sides are exhausted. There's been a million and a half dead, wounded, missing, captive. Ukraine has less ability to withstand those losses than Russia. But Russia has taken a worldwide hit to its economy and Putin is obviously scared of the current sanctions and the possibility of a secondary boycott. So where are we? They're going to meet in three to four weeks. And in the meantime, both sides will try to gain advantage or leverage on the battlefield. Unfortunately, more people will d and then we will decide where they are in situ, and then we'll have some kind of peace where they withdraw to a prearranged border, and then Ukraine will do its best to make a Maginot line. You know, that's an unfortunate reference. Imagino lying defensive earthworks to keep them out. And then the Europeans will beat their chest and say, we're going to guarantee their security. And they'll be loud. And then privately, they'll call up Trump and said, look, come on, man, you gotta. You've gotta back us up. You've gotta secure us. You gotta give us troops you got. And the MAGA base will not tolerate that. Will probably give them more aid, maybe logistical support, air support, I don't know. But the left went bananas. I was watching Nicole Wallace. She was using profanity on the air. Jack about Trump had said nice things about Putin. And then my colleague, ambassador, former Ambassador McFaul, railed about praising Putin. I would just like to remind everybody that when FDR decided to send Lyn lease along with Churchill in June of late June of 1941, immediately following the Nazi betrayal of the Molotov ribbon pact and invasion of the Soviet Union, at that point, at that point, Stalin had killed 20 million of his own people in the great famine, the show trials, the roundups, and he had invaded free Poland and stolen half of it with Hitler in 1939. And he had attacked an independent Finland and grabbed 10% of it. And he had given him the fuel and the food to bomb and burn London. That's what Stalin had done. And yet FDR went over there at Yalta in 44 and praised him, called him Uncle Joe, laughed with him. We supplied 30%. Trump is not giving any money or aid to the Russians. We provide 30%, along with the British, of Stalin's ability to fight the Germans. And we did it. We do it again. It was real politik. If that's not enough for the critics, I would remind everybody, in 1972, Richard Nixon went to China to triangulate China against Russia, vice versa. And he met and was very cordial and spoke highly of the greatest mass murder of the 20th century, Mao Zedong with the blood of 70 million people on his hands. So the idea that Donald Trump doesn't say as Joe Biden did, he's a murderous thug, he's a criminal, he's a dictator. So I guess he was supposed to say, well, thank you, Vladimir. You're a murderous dictator and a thug. You understand that? And then that would make Nicole Wallace and MSNBC and Biden and McFaul and everybody happy, I guess. But he didn't do that. He did what Nixon and FDR did. And he spoke highly of a person with blood on his hands for the greater good of stopping the bloodletting. And that's what he did. And he may or may not be successful. You can't trust Putin. But Putin has take, has suffered a defeat and he wants to at least tell the oligarchs and the military people who could put him out of business back in Moscow that he has a large section of 20% of Ukraine, maybe that he didn't have it all before and that's what he's going to use to justify a million dead, wounded Russians.
Jack
Well, Victor, I have a question to bounce off you related to fdr. But first, sticking with the Friday in Alaska, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, I think it was he, him who wore this CCC P shirt. And this is one of the, you know, the issues gives I think, some ammunition to, to the left and even many on, on the right who, who still think of Russia in 2025 as if it was the Soviet Union in 1972. And it's not, it's not a great country, but it's, it's not the land of, of Stalin. But him Lavrov doing that I, I think was a, a terrible thing. And maybe it's, maybe he's a wise Heine. I won't say the other word, but any thoughts on, on.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I mean, it was pathetic. I guess they served chicken Kiev to the reporters too, to remind them that they almost took Kiev. They kind of got out done. When they flew Trump flew over the B2, the B2 bombers right over Putin's head that had just bombed Iran. Iran. And then he had the F22s and the F35s parked all around the tarmac. So nobody's saying that these people are not killers and thugs. They're like. But they're not on the same league as Mao and Stalin that we cuddled up to for the interest of the United States. And that's what Trump is trying to do. He's trying to stop this war and eventually turn Russia against China. And rather than have them unite against the United States and that how do you do that? Well, you don't go and call somebody what he is a murderous thug, which everybody wanted him to do. So he didn't get you. I guess they wanted him to do what Jake Sullivan and Blinken did in angry. Just sit there like this. I'm so sorry, Vladimir. Oh, please hit me again. Oh, I'm ashamed. That kind of stuff. I would like to remind her. Yeah.
Jack
With the Chinese.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, yeah. She his foreign minister. Right. But I would like to remind everybody when Trump said this was not his doing, everybody thought, well, why is he saying. Well, he's saying that because he wants to remind everybody that Putin took, went into Georgia and took Osatia under George W. Bush in 2008. He took the Crimea and the Donbass in 2014 under Obama. He did it under Bush because Bush was bogged down in Iraq. He did it under Obama because Obama two years earlier, a year and a half earlier in South Korea and Seoul had said, tell Vladimir to Medev. He had said, tell Vladimir if he's flexible, I'll be flexible on missile defense if he gives me space for my last election. Meaning, hey, Vladimir, if you're going to invade Ukraine, don't do it while I'm up for election and I'll cancel that missile defense. It's so important to Eastern Europe. And they both kept their bargain. And then he invaded under Joe Biden and tried to take Kiev. So he didn't. Under Donald Trump. It wasn't Donald Trump who pushed the Jacuzzi button in 2009 in Geneva. That was Hillary Clinton who said, russian reset. Bush has been too mean to the Russians. We're going to have a reset. Wasn't. It wasn't Trump who invited Russia back into the Middle east after 35 years hiatus. That was John Kerry, remember him? Oh, we're going to have the Russians help us get rid of WMD from Syria. Remember that, everybody? That was. It wasn't Donald Trump who went over to Ukraine, got his, got in the middle of it and said, I want this, this attorney general fired or I'm going to use foreign aid as if it's my own personal purse because you're looking at my. So that was the subtext. Wasn't Donald Trump who said, no offensive weapons for Zelensky, none for Ukraine. That was Obama and Biden, not Trump. And so if you look at this whole sordid history of the triangle, United States, Russia, Ukraine. It was not Trump's fingerprints on any of the things that caused this war. He was not Victoria Nuland trying or the Clinton and Bush administrations that were finagling around to get Ukraine a change of government and to get them into NATO. He didn't do any of that. That was kind of a Provocation. He. I don't know. You could say that he was not the one who let Vladimir Putin continue with an asymmetrical missile deal. He wasn't. He didn't tell the Germans, go ahead and Nordstream, Nordstrom, too, go ahead and buy stuff from Putin. He said, don't do it. So I don't get why the criticism. Because he didn't insult Putin. He has no record of appeasing Putin. That was all Obama and Biden and the people under them. Yeah, they did the worst of both things. They tried to appease Putin under reset and flatter him. And then when he saw that magnanimity as weakness to be exploited, then they started lecturing him on democracy. You better help these dissidents. You better listen to Gary Kasparov. You better do this. He's not going to do any of that. He's a thug. And so they didn't have the force to back up. So the worst thing you can do is speak shrilly and loudly with a twig. And that's what they did. And it didn't work. And under their regimes, he invaded and took what he has now, and they're never going to get it back. And they can talk all they want about on msnbc. And Clapper, oh, he's a Russian puppet, he's an asset. But none of them have the intelligence or the guts to tell the truth that they're not going to get back the Crimea, they're not going to get back the Donbass, and they're not going to get him out of Ukraine. They're just not going to do it. I wish they could do it, but they can't. Europe can't do it. Europe can talk all they want about, oh, you know, we don't need the United States. They insulted Zelensky. We're going to do that. They're not going to do anything. Nothing. And they're not going to get the Ukrainians to get an expeditionary army and attack the Russians and their home ground to get them out of Crimea. They're not going to do that. So just be. Just be honest. The other thing is, very quickly, I'm very critical of Putin. I wish he had not have gone in there. It was a criminal act. I wish he would get out of Ukraine. I would like Ukraine to get as much territory as it possibly can back. But the borders of Ukraine are not set in stone. And this is an old. It's like the Balkans. It really is. In 1939, if we said the word Ukraine, it would not Be where it is now, about a third to a half of it was Polish. And Stalin invaded. He invaded then Roman Catholic, Polish speaking what is now western Ukraine. And he stole it along with Hitler. And after the war, when Hitler was defeated, they said to Stalin and get out and give us back Roman speaking. And he said there is no more Roman speaking, Roman Catholic, Polish speaking Poland. It doesn't exist. It's now Soviet Ukraine. If you want land for your new Poland, steal it from the Germans. So take the defeated Nazi territories of Pomerania and Prussia and give it to Poland. And that's exactly what they did. As far as the eastern boundaries, it was Nikita Khrushchev who said these are the boundaries of Ukraine and Ukraine is now an autonomous Soviet Republic. He did that for, I don't know, in the 50s. He never thought the Soviet Union was going to fall apart as far as the Crimea. It declared its independence right after the Cold War, independent from Russia and from Ukraine. And the question was who was going to grab it first. And the Ukrainians grabbed it first and it gave up its three year autonomy and joined Ukraine. And then the other part of is, I have no idea what the demography is now, but before the war there was a sizable number of Russians in Crimea and in Russian speakers in the Donbass. So it's, it would be, I mean it's not the same, but it's kind of like Castro in 1962 and then Nikita Khrushchev sending the missile components to use a proxy to hurt us. And we didn't want anything to do with it. I'm not saying it's the same, but when you have a superpower rivalry and you have a proxy on the doorstep of Russia, you got to be very careful about it. And we had a proxy on our doorstep that the Russians were using to hurt us. If, you know, Chi right now decides he's going to go visit Canada and play up Canada's Carney's statement the other day that he's going to recognize Palestinians. He thinks that he has to go it alone. He doesn't consider the United States a strategic partner. That's basically what he said. And she, she came into Toronto and put his arm around. We wouldn't like that. Right.
Jack
Well, Victor, I have a question for you about Zielinski before we head into our break. But first I want to tell our listeners that total control over their, over their money, it is closer and than you think. Right now, 134 countries representing 98% of the world's economy are building Central bank digital currencies. These systems are designed to make every transaction visible, trackable and controllable by government authorities. It's a level of financial oversight that mirrors the tactics used by authoritarian regimes throughout history. Look at China. 260 million citizens are already using a digital wanna yuan. I'll never get that right. That can expire if not spent by government deadlines. And it's not just theory. The IMF admits these currencies can be programmed to decide what people are allowed to own. Once cash disappears, so does the last real protection individuals have had against financial control for thousands of years. And that's why our friends at American Alternative Assets put together a must read guidelines. The digital dollar trap How CBDCs threaten your financial freedom. This free report explains how digital currencies represent one of the greatest threats to personal liberty and why physical gold and physical silver maybe the last line of Defense. Call 8332 USA Gold or visit Victor lovesgold.com to claim your copy. Now that's 833-287-2465 or Victor loves gold.com History has shown us what happens when governments gain control. Don't let it happen again. And we thank our very good friends at American Alternative Assets for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor, quick thing on Zelensky who has been president. What happened to the last presidential elections? Elections in Ukraine and as you mentioned before, Franklin Roosevelt.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, don't go there.
Jack
What if Franklin Roosevelt.
Victor Davis Hanson
No, what if.
Jack
What if there was no election in 1944? The excuse being, well, we're in the midst of a war. What if Abraham Lincoln said in 1864 no elections, we're in the midst of this.
Victor Davis Hanson
Winston Churchill not only had an election, why the Japanese theater was still raging but he lost it. And the man who saved Europe from the Nazis was deposed after they he defeated the Nazis. And Clement Attlee who was kind of an incompetent was then in charge of the British war effort in World War II against the Japanese. Wasn't even fair. Attlee was the one who was in charge at Potsdam, not Churchill who saved Britain. So yeah, I mean we don't ask those questions. We're not supposed to ask those questions. We don't mention Ukrainian corruption. We don't mention the fact that he banned opposition parties. We don't mention the fact he suspended elections. We do not mention the fact he's banned most media that not government controlled or government favorably inclined to government. So we don't ask any of those things.
Jack
Orthodox church too has been banned yeah, yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
And we don't do what we did to Israel. We don't say, get a ceasefire right now. We don't say to him, no collateral damage. No collateral damage. We don't say to him, be proportionate, no disproportionality. Don't do that. We don't do, we don't do any of that. Why aren't you texting Russians in apartment buildings when you hit Crimea? We don't do any of that. And, you know, it's kind of strange how the left and everybody in Europe especially, they attack Israel. They're declaring that they're going to recognize a Hamas controlled Palestinian state in Gaza and they, they're really tough on Israel, but they say they're really pro Ukrainian and tough on Russia, but they don't, they don't have the same type of rhetoric toward Russia because they can't do anything about Russia because Russia is a thuggish, murderous, tough state. And Netanyahu is a liberal, democratic Western nation. And they know that it's consensual and has a free press and it listens to them. And so they bully Israel and it's only 11 million people. And so they're, they're cowards and they're bullies. They pick on this little Western country that is liberal, and then they don't dare say anything about Putin. They say it in, you know, in the abstract, but they don't. You know, I don't see anybody in Europe saying, well, this week we're going to make two big, important statements. One, we're recogniz a complete autonomous Palestinian state. Take that, Netanyahu. And now we in demand and we are recognizing a full Ukraine, an independent, autonomous Ukraine with the borders prior to 2014. Take that, Putin. They're not saying that, are they? No, no. They don't want to tell Russia what to do because they're scared stiff of Russia because they know that Russia would say to them, okay, how many divisions you have? Stalin asked that of the Pope once when he lectured Russia. You know, how many divisions do you guys have? And we know that in the case of Netanyahu, he sends a minister over there and says, you know, what are you, what are you guys picking on us for? So it's a different situation. And the Pope, you know, when they kind of kick Zielinski out of the White House with Van, that big, explosive meeting, I did a daily, I guess it was Daily Telegraph interview, and, and I did a Piers Morgan interview. But anyway, I watched earlier interviews as I was waiting in the virtual green room. And I, I watched all these British intellectuals just giddy saying, the Americans have blown out there. They've shown their real Russian colors are out of it. Now it's time for us to stand up and, you know, Britain's got to start deploying peacekeepers along with our French allies and German. I'm thinking all eight run operable German tanks, what, 50 aircraft that are operable. Go ahead and do it and see what Putin says. So the only time, I mean, when they want American natural gas or liquefied natural gas, so they want guarantee security guarantees and they're nice, but usually the western Europeans at least are. They talk a great game, but they're remember the no fly zones? They were all going, this was the big thing that after Saddam violated the Schwarzkopf agreements and he started flying killing Kurds and he was flying. So then George H.W. bush said, we're gonna get our allies, we're gonna have no fly zones. The French and the British are gonna help. How did that work out? They kind of peeled off and said, you know, Victor, you can do it. We're not going to do it. So anyway, well, we are our allies. We love them.
Jack
Hey, Victor, we're going to get your take on.
Victor Davis Hanson
Wow.
Jack
Two things. Doreen St. Felix or Feliz, I'm not sure how she says her name. And then the return of subway sandwiches in national stories. And we're going to get to those two issues when we come back from these important messages. This is unconstitutional. Have you heard some biased journalists, maybe on a podcast or a YouTube show say this? Probably. Do you just take their word for it? Which begs another question. Have you ever taken the time to read and understand for yourself the meaning of, of the United States Constitution? Most haven't. That's why I'm excited that Hillsdale College is offering a brand new free online course called the Federalist. This terrific course explains how the United States Constitution established a government strong enough to secure the rights of citizens and safe enough to wield that power. And today, it's our responsibility to pay attention, to be vigilant, as our founders might say, in order to preserve and protect Republican self government. Hillsdale's online course, the Federalist, includes 10 lectures each about 30 minutes long. You can take the course at your own pace. There's no cost to sign up. They're remarkably well produced and engaging and a must for anyone like me who's never really delved into the Federalist papers. Enroll here at no cost. Go right now to Hillsdale Eduardo VDH to enroll again. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale Edu VDH to enroll for free Hillsdale Edu vdh.
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Jack
We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show recording on Sunday, August 17th. This particular episode is up on August 19th. Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus. It commands your subscription. Why? Because every week, in addition to all the tremendous amount of free material you will find there, links to Victor's writings, to these podcasts, the archives of them, Victor's other appearances, his books, et cetera. Victor writes two exclusive pieces for the Blade of Perseus and one exclusive video. And to read them to see it, you need to subscribe. It's $65 a year. That's discounted from the monthly charge of 650. Go to VictorHansen.com and sign up and you will be glad you did and you will be sad you had not done so already. Now by the way, Victor, before we get to Doreen St. Felix. Felix. Felix the Catch it's interesting. You talked about the British journalists, the BBC journalists, gleeful. And I couldn't unlock it yesterday because I don't have a subscription to the Daily Mail. But there was a headline about Boris Johnson attacking Trump and saying he was like Trump's stand or his actions in Alaska were vomit inducing and what, what is it about these guys that just take.
Victor Davis Hanson
I mean, I don't mind if they do it. I don't mind if they do it. So they're basically saying here and in Europe, you've got to be tough with Putin, you've got to insult them. You got to get angry. Okay, fine, then what? Then he storms out. And you're going to do what exactly? I can tell you what you're going to do. You're going to get your eight Leopard tanks and your Belgian two fighter planes and you're going to get everybody to drop their cappuccino cups in Florence and, you know, fly over there. And then you're going to do what exactly? You're going to force Putin to get out of Ukraine? I don't think so. The only person that can force him to do anything is the United States. And the only thing that we can do short of force is something that Biden didn't even dare, nor Obama think of. And that's a secondary boycott. And that is a tough measure. If you say to the Indians and the Chinese, which are basically, if you think about it, 45% of the population of the world, and you say to them, we're not going to buy one thing from you and your not buying one thing from us because you buy Russian oil, that is going to really hurt the world economy and us and maybe it's necessary. But that is the only person that can do that is Donald Trump. And he said he would do it. And that's tougher than anything that anybody had envisioned, including the Europeans. So Boris Johnson can say all he wants, but if I were Boris Johnson, I would be worried about the British government locking up people for saying things like illegal immigration is a cancer on our society or having Pakistani rape gangs molest girls with virtual impunity because they're supposedly a politically correct group. Or I would ask them exactly how you're going to defend yourself if you alienate the United States. That's all I would say.
Jack
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
And I'm going to some small questions, you know. Yeah. I mean, they don't understand the American mindset. You know, they really don't. I would just think it in my own family. My grandfather was 27 years old. He was on a little 40 acre, and they said, you know what? The French and the Germans, the French and the British have lost over 2 million casualties. They can't keep the Germans. Hey, Mr. Hansen, you're going to go all the way up to Washington and train and then we're going to put you on a ship and you're going to go over there and you're going to fight to save the French and the British, okay? And then you're going to come back two and a half years later with half your lungs and be disabled the rest of your life. And then your son, 23 years later, is going to drop his studies and he's going to go over with your other grandson, with your nephew, and they're going to go over there and one of them is going to die on Okinawa to stop the Japanese, and the other one is going to fly 40 mission. And these are all these wars that we're in America going to get involved in. And then we're going to send another generation during the Cold War in places like Korea and Vietnam to stop the Soviets from what, overrunning Europe, essentially. And then we're going to hear that we are appeasing them. I think everybody's tired of that. And I'm not saying I'm an isolationist. I'm just saying that the only way to get Putin to stop the killing is for Donald Trump to pressure him. And he would like to turn China against him and him against China, and he would like to threaten him with a secondary boycott. And he would like, first of all, to give him one last chance to have a DMZ ceasefire leading to a peace. And to get that, you do what FDR did, you don't ruin the Stalin relationship when you're in the middle of a war or you do, you know, basically what Richard Nixon did, he flew to China. Mao did not fly to the United States, he flew to China. And he tried to persuade him maliciously and compliment him. And he was he and Stalin made Putin look like an amateur. As far as the body count, absolutely.
Jack
Well, Victor, we have a story about race and journalism, and I just want to put a little background. We remember that the great outrage and the controversy, the uproar when the New York Times wanted to publish and did publish, and if I put wanted in quotes, Tom Cotton's op ed a few years ago, how berserk the media went. Now, few years later, here's the headline, New Yorkers Doreen St. Felix deletes X account after racist tweets resurfaced. Doreen St. Felix, a staff writer at the far left New Yorker, deleted her ex account this week after a countless number of racist tweets were uncovered. I'm reading a piece from Breitbart here. St. Felix, who has been with the New Yorker since 2017, has not commented on her objectively racist views, views that not only denigrate an entire race of people based on their skin color, only on their skin color, but put forth an equally grotesque opinion of her own ethnicity, awards her and those who look like her a racial supremacy. What's most revealing this time about the state of our wretched legacy media is that just a year or so after St. Felix openly expressed these racist and supremacist views, she was hired by the New Yorker and even earned a place on Forbes 30 under 30 list. And here's just one tweet that she put. And this was in April of 2015. TBH. To be honest, whiteness fills me with a lot of hate. Can't really be a prude about it anymore. I'm often angry and hateful about it. And Victor, I think that was one of the nicer tweets that this.
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, that was one of the nicer ones. She says something like, she didn't ever want to have a baby that was half white.
Jack
Right?
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. I don't know. We talked earlier, and I had done a Daily Signal video about President Wood at Sacramento State University who said he got very angry. We mentioned on this broadcast as well that he admitted he said, quote, I want to eliminate whiteness. He said, well, I said it in 2017 when I was a professor, not a president. We never said you said it as president. We said, US President have said that. Eliminate whiteness. And then he tried to get it. Get out of it to save his job, which I don't think was ever in danger. And then, of course, we had Ellie Mistel, that talking head legal expert, who said right after. I think it was right after Covid, that when he came back out of the quarantine, he just didn't want to see white people anymore. He was tired of them. We had the. Was it the. The Texas official, Jack, that when the poor girl, small children died in the Texas flood, she sort of said, well, these were all white enclaves anyway along the river, Right. And then we had the city councilwoman in Cincinnati that said that the white people that were on the ground and being kicked to death almost deserved the beat down. She said that. And then we had Al Sharpton weighing in, as he always does, on the federalization of the Washington police force. This is the architect of the Tijuana Brawley race hoax. He was the one that told when. After a Jewish person was killed, get on your yarmocks and come over here if you want to fight. So it's an old idea, but what's Weird about it today is in a period where if you look at per capita income of black women, for example, in the workforce, it's almost comparable to white women or white male. I think it's the same as white males. If you look at ethnic groups by per capita income, I think so called whites are eighth or ninth, well behind Indians, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, et cetera, Arab Americans. And so to see in this post dei, post affirmative action world, not just racial slurs, but just pure expression of racial hatred coming from people who are all privileged. How much more privileged can you be to be a writer at the New Yorker? Or how much more privileged can you be to be the president of Sacramento State? And yet, you know, or a professor at UC San Diego in his earlier incarnation. So it's almost as if, you know, we had that ta Nehisi Coates, you know, and all you have to be racist to be anti racist. And he was the one that talked about the talk he gave. It's weird that we crew, we created through these set aside programs this whole professional class of elites and everybody thought they were going to emulate Martin Luther King and his movement at a time when they were very oppressed, economically, racially, socially, culturally, legally. And yet when those oppressions had ended, you would think the beneficiaries of the civil rights movement would be, I don't know, they would be magnanimous, they would be friendly, they would think that race is incidental. No, they not only showcase their race, but they did it in a way that was hateful and racist against so called white people. They do it because, you know, right after George Floyd, remember the dinners where white women would pay black women to host them at dinner and then they would sit around the table, why they were called all these names and then they would kind of shake. It was almost like Orwell's 1992 minutes of screaming or torture. It's a symptom that the black left wing elite thinks that the so called white population is all like the msnbc, Rachel Maddow or the women on the View elites and they're not. So the people in East Palestine, Ohio or Bakersfield, California are not guilty of anything. And they don't feel they're guilty of anything. They just want to live and let live. And they probably have a lot more non white friends than the people in the white elite that love to be attacked and humiliated or don't complain or object when they are attacked or humiliated. And so it's going to continue until somebody holds these people accountable. If that Woman was fired. But don't hold your breath. Remember George Reed who spouts that anti white racism and hatred and it was exposed to her from her that her website. Her website or social media account. Remember she went after the Florida governor, Charlie Crist said he was gay and that was creepy and all this homophobic. And yet what did the establishment do when she said a flat out lie? Somebody hacked my social media. And then there was no, there was an investigation that proved false. Did they say that you just compounded your racism with a flat out lie? They no more did that than they did it to Juicy Smollett. The moment they hear about Juicy Smollett, Kamala Harris said this is horrible. It's a modern lynching. This is. And then you know, Nancy Pelosi then when you had the evidence of the attackers, quote unquote of Juicy Smolt buying the bleach, the hats, everything on tape and you had the canceled checks that he paid them to do it and then the story was impossible unless you believe he violated the laws of chemistry and the bleach wouldn't freeze in sub arctic temperatures. They still didn't apologize. He still didn't apologize and nobody held him to account. And the only reason he was even given a slight slap on the wrist is that somebody intervened from the state and appointed a real prosecutor rather than the joke prosecutor and racist prosecutor in Cook County. So it's. I just don't think it's sustainable. I really don't in a multiracial society. We talked about that with the SAC State president. You can't just say these things again and again and again at a time when anybody else who said them would be career finished, you'd be all done with. And you know, I, I remember Victor.
Jack
Watching the flick in the channels and the Baltimore riots were happening because that, that guy died in the back of.
Victor Davis Hanson
The van or whatever. Yeah, I remember that.
Jack
And somehow or other this was my fault and was your fault and was the fault of a truck driver from Arkansas, etc, because of who we are and not to we'll create a prototype. I work hard, go to work every day. I'm active in my community. I'm charitable. And I come home and I turn on the TV and the media is saying I'm a racist and I'm to blame for this event here. I'm to blame for Michael Brown, you.
Victor Davis Hanson
Know Michael Brown, remember the CNN host walked out, hands up, don't shoot. That was a complete lie. Even the everybody said it was a complete lie. There was no evidence, even the eyewitnesses said that he didn't say that. So they just gave that just like.
Jack
Yeah, it just gets to a point where enough, enough of this.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, everybody's sick of the Duke lacrosse. They're sick of the Covington kids, They're sick of George Zimmerman. And he was the white Hispanic. A new category the New York Times. So it would not be brown on black violence. It had to be white violence. They were sick of. Remember Henry Louis Gates and his little shackles because he locked himself out of his house and somebody didn't know who he was. And all of a sudden that was a civil rights that led to the beer summit. All of this stuff. And it's all promulgated on the idea that a generation six, five gener. I mean we. This is 1964. 65 Civil Rights Act. So you're talking about 60 years. So three generations beyond that, a young kid who's 18 until the Supreme Court ruling is enforced, I'm not sure it's enforced. Will not get into university because of his skin. And then we had as a collary story, Jack Pete Buttigieg. Sean Duffy pointed out that when he inherited the Department of Transportation, he found that what but a jig had lowered the standards for air traffic controllers. So from, you know, what was considered, well qualified or qualified, it went down by five or six points or 10 points on the test. So basically he was saying to reduce the number of merocratic white male air traffic controllers, I'm going to take a gamble and risk everybody's collective safety by allowing people who are not as qualified as exemplified by a test, an empirical test. We're not going to go by the test results. We're going to go by the color of this person's skin. And you know what the problem the likelihood is you guys in that plane will never know who's in the control tower and you probably won't get a crash because there's computer guided avionics. So it's no big thing. But I'm going to take. You're a lab rat. I'm going to experiment on you. Not me. I fly private. As a Department of Transportation official, that was basically his attitude.
Jack
Yeah, Victor, can I add to that that there was an exponential effect of that. After all that lowering the test, then those who passed the test, there was a much higher washout rate of 30%. So that means the lack of air traffic controllers, it's not that they're lower quality, they're just not there because these who got in on the buttigieg rule never made the cut at the end of the day. So we're all at risk.
Victor Davis Hanson
It reminds me in 2019, right before the COVID lockdown and in the last year before they abolished the SAT or the last year and a half before they abolish it, Stanford University had a press release. It was picked up by the San Jose Mercury that they were bragging that 60 to 70% of those rare students who achieved a perfect SAT scores were rejected by Stanford and that was released by the university to show that they were not going to be bound by silly standards of merit on disinterested test that was supposed to show that they were fully committed to diversity, equity, inclusion. All it did was just give the ammunition to the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that they were racist and they were using race to not merit to admit people. And they finally got down I think until the new president to 9% of their entering Klaus were white males. That was what they wanted.
Jack
Well Victor, you mentioned Juicy. I love how you say his name. Juicy Smollett reminds us of Subway. No Juicy. The juicy part. And I want to bring up a story. But first I want to let our friends, many new viewers and listeners to the Victor Davis Hansen show about our friends@besthotgrill.com and if you're tired of replacing your grill every couple of years, you'll want to check out the Hot Fast Solaire Infrared Grill From Best Hot Grill.com Solaire makes these amazing American grills that heat up to 1000 degrees in just three minutes. Solaire infrared grills eliminate flare ups and consistently make juicy flavorful food. The Solaire Infrared Grills heat your food directly, not the air around the food like conventional grills do. Solaire has been making infrared grills for 20 years and has really dialed in the design experience. The Solaire Infrared Grill firsthand with the Solaire Demo Rental program. You can try Solaire before you buy with the foods your family enjoys without a salesman breathing down your neck and see why Solaire is the last grill you will ever buy. Learn more@besthotgrill.com that's Best Hot Grill. Best try before you buy with the Solaire Demo rental program@besthoughtgrill.com and we thank the good people from Solaire for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor to torture those who listen even more the sound of my voice. I want to read this quickly. Headline Dramatic video shows Feds rearresting Subway Sandwich slinger after he pelted Officer with hero in D.C. the Justice Department worker accused of throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal agent was rearrested by an armed team of at least a half dozen U.S. marshals in a dramatic Wednesday night raid. New video show Sean Charles Dunn, 37, was cuffed a second time inside his apartment about a mile northwest of the White House after being slapped with a felony assault charges charge. Footage of the raid was posted by the White House on X Thursday evening with the caption quote, nighttime routine operation Make DC Safe Again edition. Well, Victor, I just love the fact that the Subway sandwich, which was a tool of a weapon in the Juicy Smollett alleged abduction beatdown, was here used in a federal crime. Anyway, he's a DOJ worker and what do you think, Victor? He gets what's coming to him?
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, he did. I think any of us who were pulled over by an officer, especially a federal officer, if we touched him, that's an assault on him. We'd never do that. But what they're trying to do is restore deterrence because as you know, with the ice, federal officers, congresswomen and men go up and push them, they spit at them. People get away with everything. They throw stuff at them and nothing happens to them. And then people get hurt and some of them have been attacked and shot. So what they're trying to say is if you're a, you, you know, if you're especially an upper middle class person and you think that because of your status you're going to be able to just, just throw a sandwich in somebody's face and hit them with it, you're not going to be able to get, get away with it. I will say that I was surprised in the Juicy Smollett because he said that he went out for a Subway sandwich break at 1 or 2 in the morning. He got his sandwich and then he definitely held it with one hand. Why he had his cell phone apparently in the other or maybe in his pocket. But then he said he whopped their rear ends. Given his, I guess his martial arts expertise and the fact that these two guys were what, six, three? Solid muscle and juicy is not known as a physical specimen, but given his deft martial arts skills, he knocked them away and he dodged the frozen. Oh no, it didn't freeze because the laws of chemistry didn't apply at 20 below zero when he threw the bleach on them because they were trying to bleach him and make him white, these African. And they were from Africa, these Africans that he had hired to assault him and turn him white. But they did somehow. Why he was fighting them and still had the sandwich in his hand and his cell phone, which he would not turn over to the police, they put a noose around his neck and I don't know how they did that. And then when they were shown in a hardware store buying rope and bleach and red caps to besmirch MAGA people and they had a canceled check from Juicy and they testified that he had scouted out the scene and, and went through the theatrics of what would happen. No one was anybody who believed the truth was considered a racist. So I don't think, you know, I'm getting pessimistic about all of this stuff, right? And human nature being what it is, it's the only thing that makes people lawful or act apparently civically and civically as a citizen is the threat of punishment. And we don't do it anymore, especially in the big cities. And you know, it's just funny because just today and yesterday I heard that two people I knew really well and they've been lived their whole lives in where I live, they're leaving California. And I saw Gavin Newsom the other day and he was doing his little shtick about threatening Trump and he's going to call a quarter million dollar, quarter billion dollar election if the people, and he thinks the people, 2/3 of them, will vote to disband the nonpartisan but actually left wing part commission that regulates or adjudicates the size of congressional districts in their shape. Not the size, but the shape. It's just the whole state is in free for all. And all of these blue states are in free for all. It's something we don't really talk about, Jack, but 13 or 14 million people have left California in the last 12 or 13 years. And these, we know who they are because we have their tax records and they're the upper professional classes and businesses. Over 300 major corporations have left and at this time, and the population really hasn't changed, hasn't grown, but we are importing a lot of very poor people who are dependent on federal and state largesse. As I said, 40% of the state is on Medi Cal and 50% of all births are on Medi Cal. But to pay for all that, you need upper middle class taxpayers and they don't want to stay here apparently anymore. And Gavin Newsom is not talking about any of this. Instead he does his head jiggle and his arm jiggle and the F word and the S word and it's Victor.
Jack
I saw some poll that 61% of Californians support the Independent commission.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, they do, they do. And Arnold's out there against it, against decommissioning the commission he helped create, which was hijacked. The funny thing is, As I said, 40% of votes in most elections go Republican or for the Republican candidate. And we only have 17% representation Republican and the 52 member congressional caucus. And he wants to, I guess he thinks 17% is too much and he wants to get rid of five seats that is, is play two Republicans off against each other to get rid of them, to get down to five seats. And he thinks that's going to win over California, that idea. And then of course, you know, you can argue that Texas did something extraordinary because they were underrepresented as Republicans. But unlike California, they had the population and they were a majority Republican state and they wanted that majority to be reflective of the actual percentage of voters that vote Republican. And they can get away with it because they have a, as I said, a majority. But Republicans can't get away with it here. There's no way that they can increase their congressional representation to represent their actual numbers. But instead Gavin Newsom wants to destroy a Democratic backed commission so that they go from 17% of their actual strength congressionally down to I guess 8, 8%. I don't think that's going to work. If he loses that and he's the governor of a major state, the biggest state, and he's running for president and he comes up with this crackpot idea and he can't convince his own left wing constituency that voted 60% for Kamala Harris, then I think he's all through as a candidate. Yeah.
Jack
What is the leftist way? I mean there's no deviation allowed in college. You can't have one. One Victor Davis Hanson would not be permitted today in many a college campus. You could not have one Victor Davis Hansen, columnist at many a newspaper, cannot tolerate any deviation from the left. So he is a textbook leftist.
Victor Davis Hanson
Like I said, I would go to the Stanford studio and they have two studios to do occasional Fox role when the Hoover studio was closed because it closes at 5 Pacific. And I would listen to my Stanford faculty colleagues rant and rail about all of these hoaxes, the disinformation laptop. And I would just shudder and think, how can this person go on CNN or MSNBC and claim that Donald Trump is a Russian asset? There's no evidence and they were fine. And then I was told that I could not go on it unless I wrote out in advance what I was going to say. And then when they wanted to censor me along with Scott Atlas and Neil Ferguson, I had to sit down and look at all the transcripts of things I'd said on Tucker Carlson show to see if I'd ever once said I doubt the, the, I doubt the 2020 vote tally, which I never said. And I just think of all how they, how these people who are so sophisticated, they have all these degrees, all these letters after their names, all these titles, they're so liberal minded, but they're not. And they're very dangerous people sometimes when they get into a pack as well. Trump learned he did compliment afterwards. Remember when I guess it was Brett Burry said, what do you think when Hillary Clinton said that you might win the he she would urge you to win the Nobel Prize if you pull it off. But she had conditions. You can't get, you know, if he doesn't give any territory to Putin, well, our Lord and savior could not do that. I'm not, you know what I mean? Nobody could do that. And yet. And then Donald Trump. That's very nice of. And they said, well, how can you be so. Sean said, how can you be so magnanimous to somebody that tried to do so wrong? He goes, yeah, she really tried to destroy me. And then he quoted Frederick Nietzsche, basically, he said that whatever she did made me stronger. I have a chapter in this book I just finished on the Trump return called Nietzsche and Trump and Boy, it was a learning experience for me to go through every single lawfare, every single aspect of the raid, everything. They went to destroy him. It's just incredible that he's still here.
Jack
Well, he said proof of the broader theme, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I think that's one explanation for it. Hey, Victor, we're rounding the turn here into the home stretch. We're going to take a break and when we come back, we'll get your thoughts, your reflections on talking about books on the dying citizen, which you started to write or were in the midst of writing about five years ago. So I'm interested in your thoughts on that book as it might stand today. So we'll do that when we come back from these final important messages. We'll return to the conversation in a moment. But there's something unfolding that directly connects to everything we've been talking about. While we've been examining the reach of government power, 134 countries are actively launching digital currencies that will make every transaction traceable by the authorities. It's no longer theory, it's happening right now, when governments can create and control the flow of money, freedom disappears. People stop being citizens and start being subjects. China has already taken this step. 260 million people are using a digital yuan that expires on government command. And the IMF has admitted these currencies can limit what kind of things people can own. Thankfully, our friends at American Alternative Assets have created a critical guide, The Digital Dollar How CBDCs Threaten your Financial Freedom. It details the seven ways digital currencies threaten your liberty and why precious metals may be your last financial safeguard. Call 8332-USA-YOLD or visit victorlovesgold.com to get your free guide. That's 833-287-2465. Now back to the analyses.
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Jack
We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So Victor, I'm not. I didn't imply. I don't mean to imply. The dying Citizen is not as it is written and and you added to it too. You had a second you revised it edition are not still terrific books. I just wondered if how you assess the dying Citizen. That's the title you used when you were you started writing this. Is this citizen still dying? Is he in better shape, worse shape still in the icu. If we can use these analogies, what's your take on that?
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, most of the initiatives of the new administration is To, I think, save citizenship. But in that book, I said there were six areas that were killing citizenship. Three were pre modern, three were postmodern. So one of them was we conflated residency with citizenship, I. E. When you have an open. But gosh, I was writing that in 2000, what, 19 or 20.
Jack
19. 20.
Victor Davis Hanson
20. Yeah. And I had no idea that Joe Biden would let in 10,000 people a day. Yeah, 12 million would come in and are still here for the most part, maybe 10 million plus 20 million others. And I would come home from Israel last year and see a person taken into a room who didn't have his passport when I had seen on the news that day 10,000 people crossing the border without a passport. So I think that that was prescient. And then I also said that we were becoming peasants. The middle class was losing their earning power, and it sure did under Joe Biden, with a 30% inflation of staple goods over four years and the inability to buy houses and high interest. I also said third, that not only were citizens becoming peasants and had very little differences than residents, but when you looked at what a citizen could do and what a resident can do, there was almost no difference. The only thing I said in the book was that a resident couldn't run for office and hold office, and a citizen could. Otherwise, they could go back across the border, they could serve in the military, they can get welfare. They can serve in a category campaign which is against the law, but which Christopher Steele obviously had influence. But I see now that there's people who want to run for office and they're considering it in liberal enclaves that are not U.S. citizens. They're here either as green card holders or illegal aliens. And I think they can run for office in some school board elections as well as vote. So, you know, and then I said there were postmodern challenges that the evolutionaries wanted to pack the court. There's. That came up again during Biden. They wanted to get rid of the filibuster. That came up again. They wanted to get rid of the Electoral College. Somebody just yesterday said that on the Democratic side again. And then they wanted to bring in two states, Puerto Rico, and change the Washington D.C. that just came in. Didn't James Carville say that just the other day? So they want to change the system. And then I also said that they were the unelected, were dangerous. That was the administrative state. And I think we got a good glimpse of that when we exposed what USAID had been doing or what James Comey and James Clapper and John Brennan or Mark Milley or Anthony Fauci, these were all people that they weren't as active or. We didn't know exactly what they were doing when I wrote the book, but I knew enough about them. I was very worried. But the idea that we have the unelected exercise more power than elected officials, that was one of the themes. And I had a cosmopolitan. The last chapter said that we are surrendering our sovereignty as citizens to the International Criminal Court, the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Paris Climate accords, things like NAFTA. Yeah, Davos, etc. And that, I think, only got worse. And Trump has reversed some of this. But it's only, you know, we'll see. It's only eight months. And so. So I think a lot of it was a worry that things are getting worse, but I had no idea that as I was writing it, Biden would within a year be president and as a waxen effigy, be controlled by these hard leftists that would try to diminish citizenship. And then I didn't realize they would be open about it. They don't believe in citizenship. They really do believe illegal aliens should be exactly the same as citizen. There's no doubt about it.
Jack
I thought democracy died in darkness, not in plain sight.
Victor Davis Hanson
But democracy, democracy dies in darkness. The left keeps talking about redistricting congressional districts to reflect the actual proportion of political sympathies in the state is killing democracy. And these are the people who raided Mar Lago. They tried to get him off the ballot in 25 states. They indicted him for 93 counts, all of them bogus, coordinated by the White House. They impeached him twice. They tried to try him as a private citizen, which we'd never have done before. They sure gave Trump a lot of precedence. You know what I mean? If he wants to conduct a Wyatt Earp revenge tour, all he can say is, well, I think I'm going to call in. Let me see, it's November 8th, 18th. Let's get, let's get Pam Bondi to get her third highest ranking person and send him in to, I don't know, Utah, Wyoming or Montana to indict Gavin Newsom, likely candidate, or go after the Biden family or. Well, you know what? I don't think that Biden really turned back all of his files. Let's rate his home with a SWAT team or let's make sure that, I don't know, Josh Shapiro is not going to be on the ballot in 25 states. Or maybe, maybe one of The Bidens took a loan out and he didn't give the accurate assessment of his collateral, even though the bank had no problems when he paid it back. Let's go after him, you know, let's go after everybody in the United States. After they lost a close election called the elect. Election officials said, come on, man, I know there's votes out there. You didn't count. Let's indict them for that out.
Jack
Yeah. Maybe we should put together a conservative celebrity video. Victor, on pressing the left. Hey, you. You've. We're.
Victor Davis Hanson
We are.
Jack
We are crossing the finish line here. So there, there are other topics we could have gotten to, but we will get to when we record again. I, I appreciate, Victor, all the wisdom you. You shared. I want to thank folks who take the time.
Victor Davis Hanson
7,200Ft. Our little signal went out over the Sierra Nevada mountain. Yeah.
Jack
So it's a, it's amazing the, the technology. I'm still a pencil and eraser guy, but we have so many new viewers through YouTube Rumble and listeners to the podcast. And thanks all. Many people now, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds a week are leaving comments and the great Sammy Wink and I try to go through them. I want to read two. One is from Robert Gundla, 4341, who writes. So thankful for the dedication of Victor. One of very few people who expand my knowledge almost every time I listen to him. Used to pick up produce all over the Central Valley in my truck driver days. So I have an idealized vision of him out there on farm contrasted with Stanford. Talk about contrast.
Victor Davis Hanson
That's a big contrast. I confess to that contrast. Yeah.
Jack
And then another one from when we talked last time and I mentioned a movie you were talking about when you were in high school and running some student elections there. And it reminded me of this great movie, Napoleon Dynamite and Summer Lake. Photog8239 wrote. Great show. Vote for Pedro. VDH should watch Napoleon Dynamite.
Victor Davis Hanson
I need to do a segment on it.
Jack
Oh. Oh, yeah. Southern Idaho is like the Central valley in the 70s. It's a great movie. It's a, it's a silly movie, but, you know, just really genuinely funny. And I want to thank people who write to me. Email me at Regarding Civil Thoughts. That's the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Civil Society, where we are trying to strengthen civil society. It comes out every Friday. Go to civil thoughts.com sign up and when. What you'll get is my 14 recommended readings of great articles. I've come across the previous week and I think you'll enjoy it. It's free. We're not selling your name. And give it a. Give it a shot again. Victor's website is the blade of Perseus. Victorhansen.com if you're on Facebook, the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club is a great group of friends. So check that out. Victor's got his own page on Facebook, VDH's Morning Cup. And if you're on X, his handle is at VD Hansen. Vic, you've been terrific. Thank you very much for everything, all the wisdom you shared. Thanks folks for watching and listening. We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye bye.
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you everybody for hearing us and viewing us and we'll get back very shortly to you all. Thanks again.
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Episode: Putin, Trump, and the High-Stakes Game of Diplomacy
Date: August 19, 2025
Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson & Jack Fowler
This episode centers on the aftermath and significance of the recent three-hour meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska, with a view toward ongoing ceasefire talks in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Hosts Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler interpret international reactions, historical parallels, and the broader implications for U.S. and global diplomacy. They also discuss current U.S. domestic social and political trends, including race and academia, and reflect on Hanson's book The Dying Citizen.
Summary of the Meeting (05:52)
Major Negotiation Sticking Points
Notable Quotes
Historical Parallels: Dealing with Dictators
Media and Political Reaction
Victor’s Analysis on Criticism of Trump
Changing Boundaries and Ethnic Realities (16:59)
Assessment of Western & European Response
Ukrainian Governance (25:29)
Western Hypocrisy (26:40)
Case Study: Doreen St. Felix’s Racist Tweets (41:38)
Pattern of Double Standards
California’s Ongoing Woes (56:34)
Political Manipulation: Gerrymandering and Representation Gaps
Victor’s commentary is incisive, historical, and often acerbically critical of perceived hypocrisy among political, media, and academic elites. Jack provides context, questions, and the populist/ground-level perspective. The tone is analytical and deeply skeptical of the mainstream left, especially on matters of policy consistency, civil liberties, and meritocratic standards.
Use this summary to understand the episode’s rich analysis of current geopolitics, domestic social strife, and the state of U.S. citizenship in 2025.