Republican Loyalists, Democrat Spendthrifts

Summary

The Victor Davis Hanson Show

Episode: Republican Loyalists, Democrat Spendthrifts
Release Date: November 14, 2024
Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson & Jack Fowler

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1. Introduction and Episode Overview

The episode kicks off with co-host Jack Fowler expressing enthusiasm about discussing the aftermath of recent elections, particularly focusing on the dynamics within the Republican and Democratic parties.

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2. Trump's Removal of Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo

Early in the discussion, Jack Fowler brings up Donald Trump's decision to part ways with Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo.

• Jack Fowler [04:36]: "Victor, Donald Trump said, hey Nikki, Hey Mike. It was great working with you before, but not going to be working with you this time round. What do you think about that?"

• Victor Davis Hanson [04:57]: "I had a little conflicted about that... Mike Pompeo was very loyal to Donald Trump while he was Secretary of State and he helped restore deterrence... Nikki Haley was very good as UN Ambassador..."

Victor acknowledges Pompeo's contributions but criticizes Haley's decision to challenge Trump, suggesting it was a strategic misstep that didn't yield the desired support against Trump within the Republican base.

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3. Analysis of Nikki Haley's Campaign and Republican Dynamics

The conversation delves deeper into Haley's campaign strategies and the broader Republican landscape.

• Victor Davis Hanson [08:45]: "She was smart. She wrote, as you know, those Wall Street Journal op-eds... But she, she couched them in that something to the effect the more. Although I've been critical of Donald Trump, he's much preferable to Camila Harris and I endorse."

He critiques Haley's approach, arguing that her attempts to distance herself from Trump were ineffective and possibly counterproductive, failing to resonate with the Republican majority who remained loyal to Trump.

• Jack Fowler [08:51]: "Also, there was a sense of the Nikki Haley Republican was a pro. Kamala Harris."

Hanson further contends that Haley's alignment with certain Democratic figures diluted her Republican credentials, weakening her campaign.

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4. Examination of Democratic Deficiencies and Mitch McConnell's Role

The hosts shift focus to the Democratic Party's internal challenges and Mitch McConnell's influence.

• Jack Fowler [23:17]: "Mitch McConnell and his GOP sidekicks own the Democrats."

• Victor Davis Hanson [24:04]: "McConnell saw his job as to master the intricacies of Senate rules... But what he lacked was empathy for the working-class people and why they were not fully Republican anymore."

Hanson criticizes McConnell for focusing on traditional Republican agendas without addressing the evolving needs of the working class, leading to a disconnect that contributed to Democratic successes in states like Arizona and Nevada.

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5. Media Meltdowns and Public Figures' Performances

A significant portion of the episode addresses recent media incidents involving Democratic figures and the left's handling of dissent.

• Jack Fowler [70:56]: Discusses an incident on CNN where Jay Michelson criticized a Republican strategist's stance on transgender athletes.

• Victor Davis Hanson [71:15]: "When you lose your temper, you lose your argument. He [Michelson] showed who he really is, an arrogant, half-educated, entitled person."

Hanson and Fowler critique the left's approach to moderating discussions, arguing that figures like Michelson display arrogance and dismissiveness, undermining their own positions and alienating potential supporters.

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6. Class, Race, and Privilege in Modern Politics

The discussion broadens to explore the intersection of class and race, emphasizing how identity politics has fragmented political support.

• Victor Davis Hanson [85:13]: "It is about self-interest. If you're middle class of any color, you want to be able to have a middle class... If you're an elite then it's all about prestige and musical chairs with titles and compensation above 200,000."

Hanson argues that political divisions are increasingly influenced by class and economic concerns rather than purely racial or cultural identities, suggesting that the Democratic Party's focus on identity politics has alienated the broader middle class.

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7. Concluding Remarks and Listener Feedback

In the closing segments, the hosts acknowledge listener support and share positive feedback.

• Listener Comment Read by Jack Fowler [93:42]: "Excellent show... His comparisons of current events with those of recent to ancient history are always pertinent and fascinating... Extremely entertaining."

Victor humorously responds to feedback, highlighting the show's impact and connection with its audience.

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Notable Quotes

• Jack Fowler [04:36]: "Did they deserve that? I mean nobody deserves a role in the administration."

• Victor Davis Hanson [08:45]: "She needs some money... she went on a lot of corporate boards."

• Victor Davis Hanson [12:17]: "I don't think that they have. They're impotent. They're irrelevant."

• Jack Fowler [23:17]: "Mitch McConnell and his GOP sidekicks own the Democrats."

• Victor Davis Hanson [85:13]: "It is about self-interest. If you're middle class of any color, you want to be able to have a middle class..."

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Conclusion

In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler provide a critical analysis of the current political landscape, focusing on Republican loyalty to Trump, the Democratic Party's internal struggles, and the impact of identity politics on election outcomes. Through incisive commentary and notable insights, the hosts elucidate the shifting dynamics that shape contemporary American politics.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the substantive discussions of the episode.

Transcript

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

Hello ladies. Hello gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I'm Jack Fowler, the host. You are here to get wisdom from Victor Davis Hansen, the namesake. He is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. And he is the possessor of a website, the blade of Perseus. Victorhanson.com is the address. Later on I'll tell you why you should be checking that out regularly and even subscribing. We are recording on Sunday 10th November. I am still pumped, happy, joyful about what happened earlier this week. This particular episode of the Victor Davis Hansen show will be out on Thursday the 14th. We're going to talk about any number of political things today related to the aftermath of the elections. And maybe we should start off by getting Victor's thoughts on Donald Trump's pronunciamento. I don't think it was a dig, it wasn't mean. But hey, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo. There is no room in this second Trump administration for you and we'll get to that, plus plenty of other topics when we come back from these important messages.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So Victor, Donald Trump said, hey Nikki, Hey Mike. It was great working with you before, but not going to be working with you this time round. What do you think about that? Did they deserve that? I mean nobody deserves a role in the administration. But what your thoughts?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I had a little conflicted about that because I had known Mike Pompeo a little bit. He asked me to speak on World War II to the CIA, the whole everybody at Langley, which I did. And then he hired a number of people of my, a lot of my colleagues from Hoover. And although he wasn't entirely maga, he was very loyal to Donald Trump while he was Secretary of State and he helped restore deterrence. And so a lot of the success that we had, whether it was deterring Kim Jong Un or Putin from going into Ukraine and the Chinese didn't try stuff like the balloon antic that they did with Biden or serially threatening Taiwan, was due to his manifestations of the Trump Jacksonian policies. I think what happened though is that people like, you know, Tucker, whom I like a lot and admire, I think a lot of them felt that he was part of. There was, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, he was very critical of Julian Assange, you know, and the leaking. And I think a lot of people on the mega Right saw some of those people as free spirits that had a right, that were trying to expose government wrongdoing. I don't know what it was, but they were a little different. I think in the case of Nikki Haley, she was very good as UN Ambassador, but when she. Let me just stop for a second. There was one other matter. There was a period, as you remember, Jack, somewhere in 2000. Oh, it was in 2022, when there were rumors that Mike Pompeo might want to run. And people had said he had lost a lot of weight.

[Jack Fowler]

He was, he, he did throw his hat in the ring for a little bit there.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He did. Well, I don't know if he did officially, but it was generally known that he, he hit the, the lecture circuits and he, he had position papers and, you know, and in the Trump mind, it would be. Well, you know, he was a member of the House of Representatives, and I made him CIA Director then I made him. So that would be considered taboo. And then with the same thing with Nikki Haley. She, she'd had a very good career as UN Ambassador, and then she was. She needed some money. She resigned. She went on a lot of corporate boards. But then, no, I think what I'm trying to get at is I think that he has much more cordial relations with Ron DeSantis than he does with Nikki Haley. Given that both were the two finalists, it came in, respectively, third and second to Donald Trump, because DeSantis got out when there was no pathway. When he got out, Nikki Haley saw that there. Maybe she could pick up his support and then run against Trump to the bitter end with two. With two narratives. One, he can't win. He can't win. There's no way he's going to win. You're going to have him lose again. He'll lose two elections. And then that's the second message after January 6th. He's too unstable. He's too vindictive. He's too. And she just kept hammering that. Yeah, I think I said, I wrote a column saying, I think it's time for you if you want to preserve your status within the Republican Party. If. Either way, if Trump loses, he will not be a figure, but if he wins, he'll only be there four years, but you're going to be around a lot. So why are you pushing this all the way to the bitter End.

[Jack Fowler]

Also, there was a sense of the Nikki Haley Republican was a pro. Kamala Harris.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes. And then she, she was smart. She wrote, as you know, those Wall Street Journal op eds.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

But she, she couched them in that something to the effect the more. Although I've been critical Donald Trump, he's much preferable his message to Camilla Harris and I endorse. But it was almost like pulling teeth.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So, you know, but everybody has made these, these adjustments. Do you see Peggy Noonan's column in the Wall Street Journal?

[Jack Fowler]

I don't. What did she, what did her.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

She basically said, well, she called him just like she did in 2017. She just took that column in 2000. The poor vulnerable people, the people without a voice. The people, the deplorables, they have a voice and we've, we've all ignored them. And this is kind of the same thing. And these Trump people were trying to tell the establishment, I. E. And then, and then of course, Peggy has to have the caveat. Of course Donald Trump quote is an sob Right. An SOB But I, I don't think they'd understand something if I could just say something about Trump. Trump exaggerates. He doesn't tell pernicious lie. I mean he gets into self in trouble, you know, when he gets into the birther stuff and all that. But he exaggerates. He's a showman. Yes. He can be cruel to people. Yes. But he doesn' like weaponize the FBI, weaponize the doj, weaponize the CIA to go after and destroy people's lives the way they did. He didn't organize lawfare. He didn't even go after Hillary. Remember, I think he said something to the effect she suffered enough.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

This is when she was telling people to join the resistance and he was an illegitimate president and she was a.

[Jack Fowler]

She did commit crimes.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

She did. She did. She destroyed a subpoenaed devices and James Comey said she broke the law. But no prosecutor would, you know, indict a major political candidate. So anyway, I, I think Haley went way overboard.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

There was a way to bow out gracefully. And the other thing is, I think people, when you looked at the final polls of Haley and Desantis, not the polls against Trump, but the polls against Biden, it was, yeah, it was kind of shocking. They either pulled the same against Biden or not quite as well as Trump. And my point, for a while, Desantis pulled much better with the fumes of January 6th. But as that campaign primary came campaign heated up, it was very hard to make the argument if you vote for me, you have a much better chance of beating Biden. That was the narrative. But when you looked at the polls, that wasn't borne out.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And that was what was shocking, even at the last moments, when Haley, that was her signature campaign talking point against Donald Trump. But when you look at the polls, it wasn't there. So what I'm getting at is, yes, they might have got more Never Trumpers. I'm talking about Haley in particular.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

But two things there. They might have got more never traumas. But does anybody believe that Haley could have either gone to Madison Square Garden or Oklahoma City, the reddest of the red or the bluest of the blue, and turn out 20,000 people in an indoor auditorium? I don't, no, I don't think she could do it. And, and so that was one thing that she just wasn't going to be able to do. And the other thing was that, and I think Jen Psaki of all people said that we've been talking about it, the people, when we get on the Never Trumpers, but for all the publicity and the left wing money that amplifies their voices.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

There are not that many Never Trumpers anymore and they have zero constituency. This election had about 95% Republicans and those Republicans stayed loyal to Donald Trump. So they were hearing from Bill Kristol, from the Bulwark, from the Dispatch, from Jonah Goldberg, from all these terrible things about Trump, but they had George Will, nothing. And in comparison, the renegade Democrats or the independents were far more likely to jump ship from the left and join Trump. And therefore you can make the ancillary argument that RFK or Joe Rogan or Tulsi Gabbard with just a single endorsement had done more for Donald Trump in a month or two than the Never Trumpers had done to damage him in 10 years.

[Jack Fowler]

Right, right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So I don't think that they have. They're impotent. They're irrelevant. And so Haley would, if Haley could get a Liz Cheney, nobody cared. It would be like, no, what a flop.

[Jack Fowler]

What a complete and utter flop.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. If what I said was true. I think it is true. Why would you drag somebody along who was so embarrassed with that scowl on her face, she was going to bring no one from the Republican side over to Harris because there was no one who wanted to go over there. And if they did, her endorsement would be counterproductive. If you had a Never Trumper who was a Republican, let's say he was a CEO and he, you know, he and his wife were appalled by the tweets and Donald Trump saying that, you know, low iq Camellia. And they said we just can't vote for. Let's turn on the TV and they see Liz Cheney about talking about Trump destroying democracy and shrill and all. I don't think that was. That would not swing them over. I don't know why Harris, that if you think about it in every aspect, the way they use the money, the type of commercials that they led, the venues that they visited, the interviews that she gave, that was the worst candidate and the worst run campaign.

[Jack Fowler]

What it was a fl. I read it was a flawless campaign.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

No, the only one that was worse was the 1972 George.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, my government abortion, acid amnesty. Yeah. Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It was a train wreck.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. You know, I'm glad you mentioned the word caveat and I want to, I want to bring that up more. But first I just want to take a moment for our sponsor, OpenPhone. OpenPhone is the number one business phone system. They'll help you separate your personal life from your growing business. For just $15 a month, the cost of a few coffees, I think in New York it might be the cost of one coffee. You get complete transparency and visibility into everything happening with your business phone number. OpenPhone works through an app on your phone or computer and integrates with HubSpot and hundreds of other systems. It's affordable, it's easy to use. Right now, OpenPhone is offering 20% off your first six months when you go to openphone.com Victor that's O P E N e H o n e openphone.com Victor for 20% off six months. Openphone.com Victor and if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. And we thank the good people from OpenPhone for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor this is probably not a good on the fly attempt to do something but caveat Republicans I think have many of my former colleagues still friends, but that have to, every time they write, every time they talk, have to add the Trump caveat. As you know, he's a, it only diminishes. And there are people who might be receptive to the point they have to make, but just after the endless amount of times they do that, say, you know, I'm sick of listening to you and you, you're pissing on him. Excuse my French. You don't add caveats every time you talk about Obama.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

That's a very good point. Why don't they say a Biden, you know what you just have to. Trump is so crude. You have to, you have to vote for Biden. Now. I'm not going to mention that he sexually assaulted likely Tara Reid or that he blows on women's hair or he invades their space or he called Charlamagne the God you ain't black or Barack Obama, that he was the first articulant black, clean, clean black presidential candidate or the corn pop stuff or he was good friends with Segret Southern segregationists. I'm not going to mention that, but I have to. Do they do that? No, they don't have any of that. They always say Donald Trump, although Donald Trump is awful. They never say any of the other people. They don't say, well, you know, I'm, I, there are some good things about Gavin Newsom, but the fact that he had sexual intercourse with his best friend's wife. I'm not, you know, they don't, they don't ever do that. They just do it with Donald Trump that he, he's a liar, that he's sex deviate, he's a rapist. And they never do it with all the other people whose sins are commiserate.

[Jack Fowler]

The sheer repetition of that undermines their, it does standing as like they're, they have something wise that they're wise. If you're so wise, why do you keep saying it over and over?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Oh, that's why. Donald Trump is bulletproof. Yeah, that's not a good metaphor after the two ss. But my point is that they can't. They thought that they don't understand. It's even weirder than that. When they go after him and call him a fascist and a dictator and they melt down. It's not that that has no influence upon him that makes Donald Trump more sympathetic and people like to hear that about him that he gets such a rush out of these awful people that helps him. And by the by, the antithesis is true too. I didn't think it was, but I'm beginning to think it is that when Donald Trump says things that you're not supposed to say, you know, like right. Kamala Harris was a low knowledge voter. No. Low IQ or something. Or dumb. Dumb as opposed. I wouldn't say that. But the more. But I was on Megan Kelly show when I said I don't think she's dumb. Megan said she was dumb. We were arguing about manifestations of inability and I just said she's got a cunning to get where she is. Unlimited ability. She does. But the point I'm making is that when Trump gets out of hand. People are so angry at the establishment. If they hear Trump say something out there and they think that's going to make the establishment angry, then they, that's fine with them. Yeah, no matter. Yes, it is. They, I don't think the left have any idea, this new left, how despised they are by the majority of people. They don't understand. The more they talk about the Republican Party has been hijacked the pardon. 94% of the Republican Party are happy where it is now. It's the party that's changed the Democratic Party. It's the one that's hemorrhaging because it doesn't even look like anything close to the old Democratic Party. It's a full blown neo socialist anarchist party. It really is.

[Jack Fowler]

And a week after the election, Victor, their theologians, they still don't get it. We're going to talk about that a little later. Some of the meltdowns I do have. I didn't talk to you about this ahead of time, but I'd like to get your thoughts on Mitch McConnell. I think you might have thoughts on him. And how about we'll get to him and we'll get to some of the continuing crazy leftists in the Democratic Party right when we come back. Right when we come back. If I can speak English correctly from these important messages.

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[Jack Fowler]

Ladies and gentlemen, we are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show. Again. We're recording on Sunday 10th November and this particular episode is up on Thursday the 14th. So Victor Mitch McConnell. I wrote a note here. Mitch McConnell and his GOP sidekicks own the Democr. Do they own. I think they do the Democrat Senate victories in Arizona and Nevada where not a dime was spent.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I never understood that. I never understood millions were spent for.

[Jack Fowler]

Larry Hogan in Maryland. But yeah, Brown lost by ra are thin margin.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

What 3,000. He was behind by 3,000 votes.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. And Terry Lake is still things up in the air, but, you know, not a penny. Not a penny.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I never understood that because Sam Brown was, you know, disfigured in service of his country and he's a wonderful guy and he had almost no resources and by sheer grit and, and determination to win that seat and to help the Republicans and by association, Mitch McConnell himself, he wouldn't give that guy as that he needed about $5 million. He would have won.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And I don't. And Carrie Lake, I know she turned people the wrong way that were rhinos. But if you didn't want to give to her and you say, well, she's just polarizing, okay, maybe I can see your logic. But the last month she was incrementally gaining, gaining, gaining. And, and that Gallegos guy with all these tawdry revelations were coming out about him. He was a hemorrhaging candidate and if they had put money in there, they would have picked up both seats.

[Jack Fowler]

And that's how much spite is a. Is an ingredient in politics and spite is malpractice here.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I think, I don't think McConnell, he saw his job as to master the intricacies of Senate rules and protocols and leadership, to outfox his Democratic counterpart and most recently Schumer and use the rules and regulations to further the traditional Republican cause. And in terms of judicial appointments and getting people approved and using the Senate not to bring up, you know, a chance for Merrick Garland, which in the sense that they, they started it and they said, you know, we're not going to b the Biden rule. So he was good at all that. But what he lacked was he didn't really have empathy for the working class people and why they were not fully Republican anymore. And he represented that established very wealthy echelon that did not have. Either he didn't have it or he had lost the empathy for the middle class that was, that was increasingly electing them. And when you do that, it's not Good. And he was very insensitive to criticism. You couldn't criticize him. He'd get very angry. And.

[Jack Fowler]

There was no, he had a lot to be critical. I was Peter Schweitzer going after him in his books about his wife's dealings with China. And amongst other things.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He had that public spout with Trump.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And on, you know, on January 6th, all he had to do was say, look, I don't approve of any violence or any, anybody going into the Capitol, but Joe Biden got 81 million votes. We've never had 81 million votes. We will never have 81 million votes again. And by the way, Donald Trump lost was 74. He won this time was 74. And Haley, I don't think a black woman with tons of money is going to what, get 65 versus 81. So all he had to say was this was the first election in American history where many states switch from 30% male in balling to only 30% on election day. And in that influx, there was a radical drop off in the typical rejection of inauthentic ballots from 0.4% 5% to 0.3. And so when you have this enormous number, 81 million, and by the way, no one got will ever get close for that in our lifetime. Population is not that growing that much. And. Right. And you have that large number and you have 70% of them not voting on it. There were reasons to be incredulous. He could have said that he didn't have to get in the voting machines or theft. He could just express that skepticism and he couldn't even do that.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, I'm going to hold off a little on the, on the meltdowns because there's a lot, a lot there. And I want to get your thoughts on what seems to be the correct story of how things played out. And Mark Halperin, who has been really risen in journalism esteem over the last few months, remember he was, he was me too, out of job at abc, I think, and he was on Morning Joe all the time. But he is kind of resurrecting himself with some sterling daily throughout the day analyses of the elections and reporting. Well, he had reported back in whenever it was July that Biden was actually going to not run. But there, the implication was there was then going to be an open process. So Biden, of course, as we know, immediately endorsed, well, Harris and to the consternation of, I guess, Nancy Pelosi, etc. But Victor, this seemed like Joe Biden, the big F you, the chaos creator. Which he. Look at Afghanistan. Wait, wait, wait.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Are you suggesting that Joe Biden knew he was cognitively impaired? Didn't really care whether that perception was shared by the public, didn't really care whether that had led to him supposedly losing what, 400 electoral college votes and was still going to persist. And then he was taken off the ticket in a veritable coup and some of the coosters thought that they were going to have an open convention, but he rushed in to annoy Kamala Harris because. And now I'm kind of extrapolating a little bit. He knew that she was in app because he picked her because she was inept, because she was his Spiro Agnew insurance about getting removed. And he knew that she would be an utter disaster and pay those people back. And therefore he could say I was unfairly ripped off my ticket. I was perfectly fine. I had a little dip in the polls. She's an in app. She's not going to say this. He's thinking, you pick this in app in a very non democratic way. You cancel 14 million of my voters and gave it what I had won. You gave to someone who never even won, much less even entered a primary. And guess what? She lost. I carried every county that she lost. I won the popular vote. I won the electoral college. She won neither. And you know what? Good old Joe Biden from Scranton will be the only person in history that ever beat Donald Trump.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Hillary. Remember the year of the woman and Camilla, the year of the woman. They didn't. They didn't.

[Jack Fowler]

I can see him smiling.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes. In the support.

[Jack Fowler]

An ice cream cone and being on a beach. Happy already.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Did you saw him put the mega hat on?

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Put the Magill wore the red dress.

[Jack Fowler]

When she went to vote. Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes, he had the mega hat on. And then she got in a spat, tried to demagogue the hurricane damage and Ron DeSantis and she went back and forth. He went right into that, inserted himself. Ron DeSantis is doing a wonderful job. We have a close relationship. And then that just cut the legs from, from, from under her. And then she's out there with a rally and just as the same time in the rally is going, he's got this amateur little laptop with nobody even supervising him. Looked like a 12 year old. The angle of his head saying that half of it. It's like me, you know, getting on the zoom and some guy calls me and says, you had a zoom today? Oh my God, I don't have time. I just flip over. I whipped up And I looked like I'm in Mars or at some weird security camera angle. And that's what he was. And he calls half the country garbage. And all of a sudden in a nanosecond, Biden slurs, half of the country is garbage.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

When she's doing her big rally. I mean. Yeah. And now you know what else I was thinking? I watched him today. He gave a little. There was a clip today of his post election commentary. And I couldn't believe it. He was robust.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He was happy. He had a little color in his face. He didn't slur. And I'm not looked at the comments because it was on YouTube. They were all conspiratorial. This was all. He went into limp deer mode. He was in, he was a possum. He deliberately got, he didn't want to be present anymore. He was tired. So he deliberately had a bad debate and slurred his words. So they kick him off, put. And then he could get back at him and put Camilla in there and then revert to being robust for the last 90 days of his term to make him even look worse. I don't believe that. But it's kind of strange that he's so happy now.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. And Nancy, Nancy has been payback to her, has been serious and she's in fights now with all.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

She's in fights at all. And everybody should remember that before Joe Biden came on reemerge that people were saying that she had. She is 84. She's got cognitive problems and she says a lot of crazy things and she's been saying crazy. She's been fighting with Biden, she's been fighting with Harris. She's been fighting with everybody now Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

She doesn't look very well. She's, she's won't let go. I mean, she's still running for Congress.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And yeah, I don't know. Biden is, is very happy now. And he can say to everybody that if you'd only let me have a chance, if you'd only let me have a chance, I would have done for you in 2024 what I did in 2020. I would have stopped the evil Donald Trump. But you had to go DEI in 2016with Hillary and he went in again with Kamala. That's why I had to endorse her because you treated me so badly and humiliated me. I was gonna, you know, champion her and put a. Yeah, what'd you expect? Yeah, what'd you expect? No. No open convention for you. No Josh Shapiro Gavin. No. Mark Kelly moderates. No, no, no, no, no. If you want to get rid of me, you go full comel and see how it feels. And that's, that's where he is now.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Well, it's parties. Drive. Driven that car over the cliff. Now, Victor, first before we talk about, I think we should talk about sodomy air. But before that, I'd like to put in a good word for our friends atbesthotgrill.com Football is back. So is tailgating. Or whether it's Friday night lights Saturday, college or pro Sundays. Solair tailgate infrared grills set up fast, heat up quickly, only three minutes to searing hot temperatures. Just like the big backyard Solaires of which Victor owns one A Solaire grill will make you the master of the tailgater with the juiciest, most flavorful food in the parking lot. And the fast grilling times leave you more time to enjoy the pre game festivities. They also cool down fast so you won't miss a minute of the game. The USA made Solaire anywhere, everywhere and all about infrared grills are portable and perfect for any grilling on the go. From picnics to camping RVs to boating, but especially for tailgating. Amaze your tailgating friends with the great food you grill with your Solaire infrared grill. Learn more about these fantastic grills and Solaire's try before you buy demo rental program at best hot grill.com that's best hot grill.com best hot grill.com and we thank the good people at Solaire for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. So Victor, the clock's ticking. Biden will still be president July, June. Excuse me, January 19th. The Senate though they, I think it's January 3rd, there'll be a whole new Senate. So he's got what, six weeks and what do people want him to do in those six weeks? Well, what they want sort of my heir to do, step down as supreme court justice so Biden can appoint somebody new. So they can instead of having some 70 year old whose big sin health wise if she has diabetes, let's get someone who's 40 years old and a real, real radical who will be there for, you know, 34.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Everybody should remember that going back to the Soviet Union, the left is ruthless. When they get a party line and they get a narrative and you it's ruthless. It's always for the perceived interest of the majority and therefore is unquestionable. And they took Ruth Bader Ginsburg and they deified her they made movies about her when she was in her 80s and cancer stricken. And it looked like, you know, that Hillary was going to be the next president. And they said that she was lifting weights, remember that she was giving videos of working out. And then the unthinkable happened. Donald Trump won. She passed away. And on a dime they turned and said she was selfish. She lost them a seat. She was horrible. Same thing with Joe Biden. They were saying that he was exactly like George Washington in 1796. I'm quoting literally, he wrote his famous version of George Washington's farewell address. Remember I stepped down. I still I owe it to it but I'm in retirement. Washington did not run for a third term. So they had an open election in 1796 and that was wonderful. And that's what Joe Biden had done when no didn't matter that Nancy and Schumer and Hikam Jeffries to corner them along with the Clooney Hollywood people and the big money bags and said listen Usob, you're going to lose us 400 electrical boats. You get off this ticket now, right now. And if you don't going to do it, we're going to get a cabinet to vote and get you out of here in the 25th Amendment. Our way or the highway. What is it? And so he got off and they said he was wonderful. Remember that? Selfless. And then all of a sudden Kamala Harris came in. She had her honeymoon, her bump so good that Joe did this. And then all the proverbial all hit the fan. She started to stumbling. There was grumbling, but they thought well, she's still going to win the momentum. I read these dishonest polls. I KN York Times would not lie to me. Sienna wouldn't lie to me. Washington Post wouldn't lie to me. Des Moines Register wouldn't lie to me. And then she lost. And all of a sudden it's Joe's fault. He's not George Washington anymore. He's Dick Nixon who wouldn't leave on right when he was under pressure. He's selfish and sob Jo stupid Biden, his wife doctor that's how they add. So the same thing now was so to my ear. I remember when they nominate her and she said as a Latina, I wrote a column and said she I think she quoted I'm a Latina 32 times in a speech to Berkeley. Latina? Yeah, wise Latina. And she also said that if it's a question of a wise Latina and a white male, the white male will always come to the worst judicial decision because he doesn't have the empathy and the expectation, the experience of the wise Latina. So they was. She was the Obama canonized everybody. Did she have a distinguished record as a lower class judge? No, no, no, no, no, no. She was going to be the first Latina and she was. So they canonized her. And then they thought, you know what, Don? And we never thought he was going to win. And she'll. That SOB will do a Ruth Bader Ginsburg or a Joe Biden on us. So let's take that narrative and flip it. She's no longer the voice of the oppressed. She's no longer a person of color. She's no longer the senior member of the noble opposition that's stopping the fascist six justice republic. She is selfish. Selfish.

[Jack Fowler]

And she wants her deathbed also.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes, yes. She's sick. We hear rumors she has diabetes. She's sick. She's got to get out now. That's how they are. They don't believe me. There's people that are politicals in every party, but I don't think that people on the right would kick out Clarence Thomas.

[Jack Fowler]

No, this is, you know, Orwell did this in 1984. Right. Oceania. We're the allies today with Eurasia and on a dime. They're the enemy. Right. You know, so this is, this is.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

How, this is how they do, man. They're just all utility. Utility. Nothing is sincere. And there's no. It's all conditional on whether you were useful or not.

[Jack Fowler]

You know, she married, first of all, my. She went to high school in the Bronx. She's from the Bronx, sort of my air. And my sister was. My brother in law was in her class in high school. But she married a guy from my neighborhood, a guy named Noonan who believed is a kind of a white Irish guy. So I don't. I think she's had some experience with. With white men. Anyway, Victor, what else we've got before the meltdowns? Yeah. One thing I'd like to just throw up there for you is really interesting kind of shocking interviews that this Lindy Lee is giving.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, I watched a couple of them.

[Jack Fowler]

And she was with Will Kane. I love Will. Will. Such a great guy. And she's like, what the hell? We raised a billion dollars, we're 20 million short. And I think we should get your thoughts on Donald Trump saying maybe I'll cover the. COVID the Democrat debt and just carpet bombing people within the dnc. And wait a minute. I owe the truth to these donors I'm raising money for the. This like the internals are close. Yes. On election day. She's going to win. Oh yeah, she's going to win. So she just took no enemies immediately. Your thoughts?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, she was on every. She's making a little career now of the insider and her narrative is that we in all consciousness, all good consciousness conscious said to our donors, if you give money, we're ahead and we have momentum and we need money. So they just poured a billion dollars and I was part of that. And now I realize that we had internal poles and we had such problems that. And we were spending the money so unwisely and extravagantly and wastefully that I feel that I was complicit and a fraud. And I feel bad for the people who gave us money under circumstances of which had they known the truth, they wouldn't have given. And she's very popular now. She's. But you know, I'm pretty cynical. I wish she had said that. I don't know.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

September 1st and, but now I have.

[Jack Fowler]

To admit I'm Trump donor. Have been the last three cycles and not. I'm not a big donor, but I am. Put your money where your mouth is. And I this news. That's cool. Donald Trump says, you know, we maybe we should cover the 18 to 20 million dollar debt. Which I think there may be some kind of legal issues. They're not in the, not in the.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I don't think that was serious.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, if, listen, some people who are serious, unless they're being tongue in cheek are saying isn't this. Wow, this is, is, this is really. I don't want my.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. I think it's my donations. I think, I think it's basically the subtext is you had a billion dollars more than I did, but you're wasteful crazy liberals that just waste money. And I beat you with a billion dollars less. And I not only beat you with a billion dollars less, I have a surplus and you owe 20 million. If you want to come to me and I can give you some money. Yeah. And I then that's not going to happen.

[Jack Fowler]

You may have discussed this with Sammy, but I, I didn't know this until recently. Maybe I'm just an idiot. No maybe about it. But that the Harris campaign, they paid Oprah. They were paying.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes. One million.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Like what this is.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

That brings up so many questions. Here's a person who's worth $3 billion.

Yeah.

$3 billion. And she's probably in this stock market getting, I don't know 8 to 10. 10%, right.

[Jack Fowler]

She made pretty out pretty well the day after Election Day, right?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

So it was up 3%.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So she's probably getting 300 million bucks in interest or investments a year. And do the math how much she's making a day and the idea that she would charge and then that. That's one bizarre, bizarre element, but the other is the journalistic integrity. She did a town hall interview with her. It was staged as if it was like a journalistic rather than a promotional event.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And so she was getting paid as. I mean, it wasn't like she was getting paid to be a moderator between two people. She was getting paid with a. By the person she was interviewing. That would be as if, you know, Donald Trump called me up and said, victor, I would like to be on your podcast, and I know you get paid with your ads and everything, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll slip you a million bucks and maybe that'll get me a little better questions or maybe, you know, there's something wrong with that. And, and if there's not something wrong, if Donald Trump said to me, okay, Victor, I'm going to give you a million dollars to interview me, but don't tell anybody. If it's nothing wrong, just tell everybody. She had. They didn't find out till that post facto when it was on some obscure ledger of expenses. And, yeah, it was. They paid for everything. They paid for actors. I think they paid for Beyonce.

[Jack Fowler]

They did.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

They paid for all the actors. They didn't want to do it. Nobody wanted to do it. You know, I don't, I don't think that they paid Joe Rogan anything. I can't do. No, I, I don't think they. They did. They paid anybody to endorse him. And it's. It just. There's something there about Camilla Harris that nobody wanted to give money to. Nobody wanted to get involved with her. She, in private, she was said to be Isocrates, the great rhetorician and philosopher, said the worst thing about the Persians, they're haughty to their inferiors and they're obsequious to their superiors. I think Churchill said something about, the Germans are always either at your throat or at your feet. And that's the way you get the impression that Harris is publicly, to people in authority, very obsequious and compliant. And to her aides. I think she fired 95% of all of her vice presidential aides. And just there's something about her as a candidate, whether her Mediocrity or her personality nobody wanted to work for. Nobody wanted to come out and get enthused about her.

[Jack Fowler]

You know, Victor, one of the things you do for your website, the Blade of Perseus, is you write these ultra articles and one of the series you've begun and we're talking on Sunday the 10th and this podcast is up on the 14th, so there may be other installments, but the first installment you're writing about like who's happy, who on the left is happy that Kamala lost. And we don't give away the article or the series again, it's one of the ultra articles that subscribers read. But you do have in there that Willie Brown Brown is happy about. Would be.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, that wasn't a matter. None of them are just Victor thinks this. It was based on empirical data. He wrote a series of op EDS in the San Francisco Chronicle. I urge people to go back and read them because he somehow managed in these encomia that were designed to praise her and to gin up support as her former paramore. He was in his 60s and she was in her late 20s and they had this relationship where she ended up on, you know, I don't know whether it's the state health board or real estate board, but they paid very well and she ended up on a couple of them. And then he got her elected the city, county attorneys and then he just was her svengali. And the idea was that this young woman was having carnal relations with this older man who was married. His wife would say every once in a while, weigh in with kind of snark about, you know, you're not going to be up there in the podium when Willie's sworn in, you know, that of mayor, that kind of stuff.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

But anyway, you got the impression that he felt as he got older and she got more powerful due to him that there was a little bitterness. So probably when he was 17, you know, what 30 year, 33 year old woman wants to go with a 70 year old after you milked him for all of his knowledge and contacts and influence.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So he, when he wrote that, he said something like and she has a lot of experience, she was on a lot of boards. Did I tell you that? I had her appointed? And then he would say things like she's tough, she's not, she's tough on law and order. She even went after me haha about I wouldn't cross and stuff like that. He just kept dropping personal anecdotes, but the point of them was to reinforce the narrative that they were having this sexual relationship. He was the brains, and in turn, for sexual gratification, he was training and grooming this young woman. And now she. He really didn't hear from her anymore, and she was his. And he was kind of a little bittersweet about it. So to be. To be charitable.

[Jack Fowler]

To be. Okay.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. And so it was. It didn't help her, is what I'm saying. When you read these op eds, they were designed to show you why you should vote for her and why she's a good vice president and will be a good pre. This was. They started appearing, Jack, in 2019 during the primary. And when you read them, you thought, oh, my God, she must have been around 28, and she was living with Willie Brown when he was married and he was the speaker of the assembly. And may.

[Jack Fowler]

I don't remember any reporters asking her about that on the campaign trail. Well, they got so few opportunities.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

They were just. No, it was just relegated to backroom jokes. Like when, you know, her husband says one thing about Camilla, when she puts her head down, she goes to work. You know, that kind of stuff. Yes. Or Joe Biden said the other day, she's got a bone like a ramrod. You know, people say, you know, she never has a sore back during sex. Is that what you're saying? I know. I know it. I mean, everybody. It wasn't her enemies that were saying this audience, it was their friends. Right. And no one liked her. No one liked her. She was. You know what her worst moment was? When she started bullying Kavanaugh. That was horrible. She just demagogued the Kavanaugh hearings, and she had no knowledge, and she was just reprehensible. The whole. The whole me too thing, I thought, you know what? You made your career by attaching yourself in a sexual context to an older man who you knew was probably not as interested in you in a symmetrical romantic relationship. And then you're. You're lecturing this person as if he sexually harassed people. And you're the expert on that. And you. You know, it was just. I don't know, the whole thing was really bad. And I. There was all these rumors that of the two centers, Dianne Feinstein had looked at this complaint and had surmised that Susan Blossie Ford was either crazy or without knowledge to lodge a believable complaint and was going to pass on it. And then Camella smelled it and thought she could ride this metoo horse all the way to prominence, and she did.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, we should talk about blassie Ford someday at length. But right now, Victor, we're going to follow up on something you mentioned at our previous podcast. The Democratic Party is in danger of of going over the cliff or imploding with their inability and on some level to accept what happened the other day or why it happened. And we've got some epic meltdown incidents to get your views on and maybe the mental health of the nation even if we have time. And we'll get to all of that when we come back from these final important messages.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Jack Fowler]

Then he told everyone how much he.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day.

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[Jack Fowler]

We'Re back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. The aforementioned Victor website. The blade of Perseus victorhanson.com check it out if you want to read these kind of ultra articles. You need to subscribe. It's five bucks a month, $50 discounted for the full year. There's plenty of other things to do. See Find on Victor's website while I'm mentioning things Victor things Dhanson. That's Victor's handle on X. And there's a wonderful unaffiliate, well, unofficial Victor Davis Hansen fan club. You can find that if you're on Facebook. Go check it out and join. So Victor two two two incidents. Here's what happened this week. One is on cnn. There's an epic to million meltdown by this Jay Michelson who's a lefty, Rolling Stone columnist, author and a rabbi. So there's a black Republican strategist on this panel. I know this seemed like six or so people. Shermichael Singleton. And he dared to say this about I don't believe boys should play girls sports. And talking about how this kind of, this was a reason, one of the reasons that voters elected Donald Trump. And Michelson immediately jumped on him. I have to believe many of our listeners have seen this. And he started talking about transphobia. I'm not going to accept this. And then the host of the, of this panel kind of talked down on, on a Singleton so that you cannot still after what happened on election day. And on top of that, Victor, all the kind of scientific news that we're getting about just how evil this slicing and dicing young boys and girls are is, is proving that the theologians like J. Michelson of the left left on cable still are holding to these insane non normal views. I think if, if they remain the voice of the Democrat Party, that's what it comes off as. This is just further disaster. And we have one other episode to talk about.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So yeah, I, I heard that clip and you know, he, he screamed something to the effect, you know, they're not boys. Right. I'm not going to listen to transphobia. And he said he called a trans girl a boy. So he's saying they're a third sex because he didn't say they're girls. He said they're trans girls. So what is the difference then in his mind? Because I thought that if you really, that they are now completely girls and therefore permissible. But if he says they're trans girls, that means they're not. Not. I guess he means that they're biological males. So he's not apparently objecting that. Sure. Michael didn't say, well, they're biological males rather than just boys. But what the point was is that these trans girls have male genitalia and they have a male muscular skeletal system. So when they play contact sports and some of these sports like you know, lacrosse or soccer or basketball even, and especially volleyball or wrestling or boxing, as we've seen on the national international scene, they have enormous advantages. So they're not girls. Not unless you think that girls play, that boys can play girls sports and not people with a muscular skeletal frame that is male don't have advantages. And, and why, why would Jay, why would you think that we don't have a huge rush of boys who trans gender into women. We have boys who transgender into women. Why do you think that they excel in female sports? But we have all who are transitioning into male. So why, why isn't it a topic right now? Why don't we say this isn't fair. We have all these transgendered males that were biological females and they bring in increased what to the football or basketball or baseball or boxing or volleyball. Why is it just one, one direction? In other words, male to female, but not female to male? Is it because that females have reached the age of puberty and have. Or genetically they have a smaller frame, a. A less sophisticated or large muscular skeletal frame and therefore in. On general, in general, I'm not talking about everybody, but in general they have less bodily strength than males and therefore they don't perform well in male sports. Maybe, Maybe. So there is something different, isn't there? So what's the. What, what is the felony that. That the target of his attack, he said boys in girls locker rooms. And he was supposed to say what, transgendered girls or just girls? And if he just says girls, I don't think that would have been sufficient. If he said transgendered girls, then it's just a linguistic problem because they still have male genitalia, male shoulders, male thigh muscles, male everything thing. And that, that's the point. The point is that if they compete in female sports, they bring innate advantages that other girls don't have. And if they compete in male sports, then they're accorded as girls, then they're accorded certain facility rights and one of them will be going in and showering, etc. Etc. With, with male genitalia. And you know what's so funny about this? It's not funny, it's kind of disturbing is that this takes place at just the period that we have redefined sexuality, where it's in a way that it's. You know, we were saying that when I was growing. Let me be very careful. When I was growing up and I was in high school, there was a person in our high school who had a liaison. He was 16 and he had a liaison with our English teacher. And there was another case. I won't get into the other case.

[Jack Fowler]

Excuse me, Was this a woman and a boy?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes, yes. But there was a man too, and a younger girl. But in those days that wasn't considered sexual predation. Right? It was. I'll be frank. On the case of the boy, it was kind of like, wow, he got an experienced, good looking teacher, you know, and then they married and then they kind of hushed it up and they. She left and they married. Okay. And there was no. That was the end of it.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And the same thing with the other situation. They just said, you know, and I don't agree with that, but my Point is that has changed now where we became hypersensitive to anybody under the age of sexuality, in other words pre adult teenagers or even preteens, we said that they have to be sheltered from all sorts of sexual contact and sexual experience and sex, sexual shocks. And that's fine. But there is nothing more shocking for a young 9 year old or 10 year old or 12 year old or 13 year old who has never seen a male genitalia and never had seen testicles in a phallus to all of a sudden see that right, right there naked. And I don't think. And yet in this particular case we just wave it, we just say you know what, that's fine. In fact if you object and you think that young girls can't handle it, then you're. You're a transphobe. And so the whole, the whole, the whole situation is contradictory. And all he was saying was he didn't say he approved of it. He didn't say he disapproved of it. All he said was it might explain one. And he didn't say it was a chief one. He said there were a lot of reasons that the Democrats did not have a winning message. And among them was this idea that. That biological. He didn't said. He said boys because he was referring to their biological. And they are boys biologically by their shoulders and their muscles and their genitalia. Unless they. They are boys. Whether you want to say so or not. Maybe they're trapped. They're boys trapped. They're women trapped in a boy's body.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

But are.

[Jack Fowler]

But you know, similarly Seth Molten, I think his name, the maybe you saw this story. Massachusetts congressman said something along the same lines and was immediately vilified within his party.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And I think that to be very cynical you can see the Republicans are delighted. They just want this to continue and to continue and continue because they're basically saying, you know, until the Democrats tried to get a vestigial civil rights issue among the population, those who suffered from ancient and well chronicled gender dysphoria were about.0001% of the population. And that's their constituency. And they're willing to offend in a most fundamental way. 99% of the population in theory. And it's not a civil rights issue. It's an issue about young people who are not. Either they're not experienced with nudity or sexuality and they're putting in situations that are not comfortable or two, they're who have spent their entire lives excelling in sports and training and sacrificing either to get college scholarships in one day or to be a professional athlete. And their hopes and dreams are destroyed by these mediocre men that transition mediocre male athletes that transition into female sports and voila, they're all of a sudden winners. Yeah, and that's something very unfair. That's all he was trying to say. The fact that you had this kind of elite, snarky professor, Ivy League type guy talking to an African American guy as if he was nobody and trying to argue from authority. And they always do that. Who cares? Know what the American Medical association has said lately? We've all these people who have been on record about the quarantines and the origins of COVID and the vaccinations. Oh, these are the same people that said, if you get two of the moderna vaccinations, we can tell you one thing, you are not infectious and you will not be infected. And there are no side effects, even though it is an experimental genetic engineering technique. That's who told us that.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, but he sort of. He sort of. He Michaelson, the lefty here. And this CNN 5, 6 people. And you know, the tenor of it was that what's his name. Sure, Michael had singleton. Had to. Had to back back down.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Had to shut up. I'm talking. Who are you? It was all, I mean, if I'm not, anybody knows that I'm not. Not play ever playing the race car. And I don't like dei, but the way that he talked, as if he was the imperious expert and how dare you. I am the sophisticated academic, author, rabbi, superior intellectual superior. And so all he had to do was just say, excuse me, when we talk about this very controversial issue, can we kind of be very careful about the terms? You said boys. I think what you meant was transgendered women that are biologically in some aspects still boys. And then left it there. Just a point of interest. But he couldn't do that. He was like almost the stereotype. If you were an African American who didn't know anything and you were looking at this, you would say, here's some arrogant white guy who interrupts and won't let this African American guy even finish, treats him like an idiot. And then when he very politely tries to continue, he interrupts him again. And then the liberal host has to intervene and kind of work out of the corner of our eye, thinks, wow, I don't want this crazy nut to scream at me. So then she chastises him. And it was just. And this is on A liberal cnn. And it was just a bad show. It really was.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, volume, table pounding, et cetera, matter. By the way, Victor, I know many people love you because you speak calmly, clearly there's no thumping of the table, et cetera. And that, you know, that carries, that persuades people.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

When you lose your temper, you lose your argument. He lost his temper, but it was not that he lost his temper. He showed who he really is, a arrogant, half educated, entitled person. And it also showed you a glimpse into the dark side of the left. He's a very hard leftist. And we have talked throughout this show that a lot of leftists boilerplate rhetoric disguises their arrogance and that arrogance entitles that they think that other minorities that they help. And we've seen this hundreds of times since the election in the first 10 days. How dare you black men dare vote when you don't know what's in your interest. Even the, the idea that black women were being alienated from black men was only accentuated after the election because they were parroting the narrative of wealthy white people. And it was almost as like, like the wealthy white people on the left were saying to the black woman, you hey you guys, you better than anybody can go talk down to the Black men because 25 maybe percent of them didn't know what was good for them. They're either sexist or they're stupid or they're uneducated. And by the way, you guys are educated because we know that black women with bachelor's degrees pretty much agreed with us and we know that black men without college degrees didn't. So you, we task you to go talk to them him. And that's what the black woman at CNN did who was the, the moderator.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He really. And all he was doing was trying to be just normal, normal, normal. That guy, that Jay Michaelson just came off as a complete buffoon.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah but he's, but, but you know that that may still be the as I said before theologian. He may be one of the, you know, holders of the sacred documents there.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Everybody should know. I think everybody that was election was this election was about people like him. We can't make an argument on common sense and personal experience and empathy for people's plight. And he doesn't have any empathy for transgendered or any are much less the people who dress young girls who are dressing with biological males. He has no empathy for them. So what he does is he always appeals to like minded authority American miracles. So the American Psychiatric Association Just like 51 intelligence authorities have assured us that this laptop was a product of Russian disinformation. How dare you question that. It was people like James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence. It was John Brennan, CIA Director. It was Neil. John Panetta, not only CIA, but also he was the Secretary of Defense. And it was Mike Morrell. He was the interim head of the CIA. And then we have 16 Nobel laureates that said that the Inflation Reduction acts will not be rec. Actionary. And now they say we got 15. And now they say Donald Trump's ideas will be inflationary. That's how they think.

[Jack Fowler]

It's.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

You know, if you go. Anybody spends time in academia, it's always the, the, the appeal to authority. Well, you know, I don't know how many conversations I've had the last 20 years, and it goes something like this. Well, we're considering candidates and I'm a little bothered. I, I don't know how to say this, but I noticed that his B. Was that his BA was at Oklahoma State. And how did he ever get to Princeton for his PhD work? Now, I know that, that we don't really undergraduate degrees, but I'm really troubled about the Oklahoma State degree. I just don't think that it's what we want and I don't know how we did. And then another thing, I looked at his file and Professor Smith, who was on the Nobel Nominating Committee for Literature, has said if you look very carefully at the letter, he says that there might be little traces of that Oklahoma background intruding into his scholarship and demeanor. I'm not saying that I agree with that, but, you know, when you have these people with Professor Smith, who is basically known as the world's expert on the early plays of Aristophanes, I can't. You know, that's how they deal with it.

[Jack Fowler]

It's like the names were changed to protect the innocent here. I think this is probably a real case study.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, I've had, I've had about five recent doses of it.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And, and I, it just repugnant. Why can't you just juge a man or a woman on how go read if they're, if you're an academic, read their book. Don't say that. He wrote a lot of books.

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

10 bad books are a lot worse than one good book. Or. I know some of the most brilliant students I ever had went to Cal State, Fresno. Really, I'm serious. And some of the stupidest people I have ever made in my life were gradu with students in PhD program at Stanford. They couldn't read Greek if you put a gun to their head. And they were Greek students. So you don't judge people by their cattle brand. And, and, or don't appeal when you're losing an argument. Don't appeal to some group of like minded frauds like 51 intelligence authorities or the American Medical Association. We went through that with Anthony Fauci and the, the Wuhan lab. That couldn't be from the Luhans on Wuhan lab because experts under Peter Dasic's direction at Lancet did an independent investigation and there were some of the greatest luminaries in the field of immunology. And then you know, okay, I'm dumb, you guys are smart, I didn't know. And then like a year later Lancet withdraws the argument because they were all frauds.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, let's wrap this up. We got a few minutes left here. Victor and repeal to you mentioned Princeton. We've talked about academia and I mentioned before a meltdown and here's the second meltdown. Anyone who's taken the time to flip around the channels and landed on MSNBC may have seen Princeton professor Eddie Gl, I think he says his name Glo.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, I've seen him before.

[Jack Fowler]

He was, he's always on and he's always, you know, very sanctimonious and he, he, he's, he's also a black man. So we were talking about before about, you know, and it plays into this. He was on the nightcap with Stephanie Rule and he attacked her. Now she ain't no conservative for saying, she said that voters started to say voters were furious over inflation and the cost of things. And he countered, he immediately got head shaking. No and inter interrupted said that implied that this was all about racism, that whiteness, whiteness is under threat. Then he said something about these voters sitting home and racially watching racially ambiguous children on Cheerios commercials and they knew that they were voting for a convicted felon. So it, it had to be not a convicted felon.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Convicted felon. That was all that word right there was half of the reason why Alvin Bragg and Latita James and Eugene Carroll and Jack Smith bought all these suits just so they could say convicted felons so idiots like him could mouth and parrot that.

[Jack Fowler]

And then I'll just wrap this up by saying obviously they wouldn't, they, that's they wouldn't vote for a convicted felon unless they were really voting against a black woman. People want to believe what the country actually is because if they believe it, they're Going to have to confront what's in them themselves.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Have you ever noticed this?

[Jack Fowler]

That when was just like he's one of the kings of msnbc.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I know it, I know it. And you look at, you look at people who interview. Have you ever noticed there's a, a divide they, when you have these interviews of whether it's formal by legacy media or whether it's some guy for CNN or Fox trying to, to get, you know, controversial statements on the street. When they interview African American and there's some person who's working, a working class person or they may not seem so soph or they're just, and they're very, very open and they'll say something and let's say they're going to vote for Donald Trump. But the point is whether they're voting for Donald Trump or not, they give you the rational right answer. I can't afford to fill up gas, I can't afford to eat meat. My insurance statement came and I'm dropping comprehensive coverage on my car. I can't afford to pay my property tax anymore. I can't aff the deductible. This they give you practical and then they, if they interview someone on the left, it's always somebody who's a lawyer or a Ph.D. or Ivy League and they, they because of their privilege, their money, their title, the type of work, they never say that. They never can ask can understand why anybody would make those considerations because it doesn't affect them. They're exactly the same as Stephanie Rul and all the other. There's no what I'm trying to get as we're talking about class now, not race. Some of the most racist, entitled, snobbish people I've met have been black academics and black lawyers and some of the, the best common sense working class, well rounded have been black middle class people. And the same is true of whites and Latinos, Hispanics, whatever term. What I'm getting at is these people that are interviewing don't understand that we're in the midst of a radical transformation in this country. We, we are finally actually getting over race. When you look at this election and you see 25% of black males or 50, 50 Latinos in some states, even Asians are starting to vote in a way that does not reflect what the left tells them to do. It shows you that class and practical, practical issues are more important than this boutique identity politics, DEI self interested stuff pushed down everybody's throat by the beneficiaries of it.

[Jack Fowler]

Financially beneficiary.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, it's basically an argument of people on the Titanic panic in academia and media. Black, white, brown and they're all arguing with each other about who gets to be the network anchor, who gets to be hired as the chairman, who gets to be, you know, the top dog in the round table in the corporate boardroom and the, the white, black, Latino stuff, it's all among them. And then they project that, that enhanced argument by saying that these people are racist. These white middle class people are. If you're white you say these white middle class people are, are joy re they're racist. Or if you're black you'll say well those lower class people are. They suffer from a Marxist false consciousness. What's the matter with Kansas? They don't have my intelligence to see what's really in my interest. Well they're right about, not about the intelligence but they're right that they're making their own decisions on their interests since they don't care about the price of food or they don't care about their jobs because they have tenure. And so for there the point is this election was about furthering and perpetuating racial polarization and privilege so that they could play, you know, perpetual victims and get promotions and get an edge over their like minded white or Hispanic or whatever counterpart. They were right about that. It is about self interest. If you're middle class of any color, you want to be able to have a middle class a buy a home, two cars, affordable food, clothing, fuel and not be broke at the end of the month. If you're an elite then it's all about prestige and musical chairs with titles and compensation above 200,000 or something whether you're black or white. So that is the divide. That, that a guy like Ellie Maal or this Michelson guy who, whatever, it doesn't matter. They're all the same. They all, they all come from the same milu and they're attacking people that are all the same. Now they're middle class and they're all supposedly stupid because they don't vote. We haven't really seen this. It was always directed at the white middle class and lower. That's who the deplorables, the irredeemables, the chumps, the clinger and the chumps and the dregs were. And now guess what? You can have black irredeemables, you can have black chumps, you can have black dregs and we. That's what they're calling black people.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And they're calling Latino people that so welcome this is great. We have an ecumenical clinger and irredeemable class now. I'm glad that we're all together.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Well this is, we've come a long way from white Hispanic, you know, so this is.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And now we all know who's calling us those names.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It is Barack Obama, a black man. It is Hillary Clinton, a white woman. It is people of the same class. So when Michelle jets out and I don't know which one they came out, maybe you want to bet? Was it from Kalorama or was it from Martha's Vineyard or was it from the new Hawaii beach house or was it the. I don't think it was the six room mansion, six bedroom mansion in Chicago, but whatever mansion. The Obama's private jetted into the campaign and told black men that they were sexist and racist and did not know what was good for them. They were no different than white people talking the same way. They're the same as white wealthy people. They're indistinguishable. Obama has a lot more in common, a lot more in common with the white techie executive that's worth a billion dollars. And he does those African American men he was saying were stupid to vote for Trump.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. I imagine if he walked into the barbershop that Trump went into, the reaction would have been noticeably different.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

It hasn't, it hasn't fully developed. It's just starting. It's going to accelerate because people, once a black male starts to question this, he's, you're trying to, anybody would try to explore this. And once a white elite starts to look at this or a black elite starts to see this and it starts to be true, then it becomes more true. And then you go back in your own experience, said yeah, now I can see what I was experiencing. And our problem is not, it's not going to be race. It's going to be a bicoastal, out of touch, arrogant, overly empowered elite who does not deserve the deference that they exercise wise. They're not that talented.

[Jack Fowler]

Some level. They know it's common. Victor. And that's why the state, yeah, we have screening is the be up.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

We have created a rig system where if you go to a particular school, you have particular titles, Alphabet letters after your name, you have a particular resume, you're married to a particular person, you come out of a particular zip code. Do you therefore think that you, you lawfully, fairly, judiciously have earned the right to exercise power and to ridicule people and to talk down and to rig the system in your favor. And before that was always called white privilege. And now we're saying it's not white privilege, it's black privilege, it's Latino privilege, it's white privilege. And you know what? There is racial segmentation on that elite because the white people thought they're talking about the deplorable white guys from east Palestine. But now I see that my Latino and black brothers to get my anchor job or get my chairman of the department, they're after me and vice versa, I'm after them. And so it's starting to really create shared interest. And the Democrats were the party of the middle class. Not only didn't see this, they didn't want to see it. And they have seated the entire upper middle and lower middle classes over to the Republicans of all different races. And if Republicans are smart and they will say to Bill Crystal, I was.

[Jack Fowler]

Gonna say go ahead.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, they will say to Bill Crystal and George Will and David from you know what, we like you guys, we do not want to refight this, but there's no need for you to be Republican. This is a party that your whole life we had it wrong. We thought that you really believed in free markets, deregulation, no DEI Jacksonian, no better friend, no worse enemy defense. But you didn't. You were a Republican because you were an elitist and you thought that you were entitled. And now this party, that hasn't changed that much. When you look at a rally, they're still yelling for your positions, closed borders, your old positions, right to have a gun, skepticism about a ninth month abortion, trust the people with lower taxes and less deregulate. But you don't like that because you don't like them because they don't look like you, they don't talk like you, they don't sound like you. So now you've gone over to the place where you belong and where you always belong was a cultural niche. Because you're basically a snob and you're basically judgmental and you're basically mediocre. So you went over to the left because they are the party of the wealthy, entitled, with all the prestige, they control all the institutions. And for you it wasn't a big problem to switch your supposed convictions. You just flipped them over to. Because what was more important was the culture. So you're back with the wealthy bicoastally and you're happier now because they will review your books and New York review books. You can be go to Georgetown, you can be asked to be on Meet the Press, all of that stuff. And that's what was important to you. And you just. You just change the. You know, is this a. Oh, what do I have to do? Okay. I'm for open borders. Oh. I'm for woman rights to choose abortion. You know, N. I don't care. Oh, confiscate gun. That's just nothing. I'm with the right people. I do not want to be with these orange McDonald's type crazy.

[Jack Fowler]

I don't think this is correct Latin, Victor, but snobbio ergo sum. I think that's probably.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. And that applies to minorities too. See, that's what that is. So interesting. Yeah, I want to be with the Obamas or Kamala, but I don't want to be with some black guy with an accent. Southern accent. That is a taxi driver in downtown Chicago. Chicago, right. I don't really want to hang out with that guy. Same thing with Hispanics. I went to Stanford University and I did this and that. And I don't not want to hang out with great pickers from Mendota, but maybe white people do of that class. That's what's so weird about it. And somebody's going to see this truth and going to be a fabulously successful politician and party. I'm just waiting for a Mexican American woofer or a Mexican American contractor who talks about his white and black colleagues and the middle class without distinguishing people, privileging them or demonize them on the basis of race. But how they can't make it and run against a very, very elite Polish Gavin Newsome or Camila Hare or somebody like that. They would win, man. They would win.

[Jack Fowler]

I think we should try to locate. All right, we've come to the end here. Actually a little over. But we have to thank our listeners, especially those including those, I should say, who rate the show on Apple. Zero to five stars. And practically everyone gives Victor five stars. Some people leave comments. Comments. I'm going to read one. It's titled Excellent show. I was so happy to discover VDH's podcast as whenever I read the opinion page in epic times, those written by VDH have been my absolute favorites. I never miss a podcast. I even go back and listen to the older podcast when I finish the latest. His comparisons of current events with those of recent to ancient history are always pertinent and fascinating. Listening to him share his thoughts on what is behind the actions and words of political figures of today is so eye openening and extremely entertaining. And what a great sense of humor. Three exclamation points.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I'm no longer Eeyore. I've been liberated. I went on to a podcast and everybody's told me what happened to you, Victor, your audience has cured you. You're no longer the E or dower I Somebody wrote me a note. Somebody wrote me a note that you smiled on Jesse Waters.

[Jack Fowler]

That was me.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. Well, I had other ones, too. Oh, yeah, my podcast audio, that was.

[Jack Fowler]

From Sandy the Cook. We thank Sandy for that. If everyone else has taken the time to rate the show and leave comments. So we read them all. And I want to thank the folks who sign up for Civil Thoughts, which is the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Society. I I give you 14 recommended readings of really good articles I've come across the previous week. How do you get it? Go to civil thoughts.com sign up. Very simple and not selling your name. Every Friday, the new new edition will come in your inbox. So thanks for those who do that, Victor. You've been terrific as ever. Thanks folks for listening. And we will be. Oh, I wanted to just say I want to compliment you, Victor, you and Sammy, your discussion of the Allied air horses in action in the most recent podcast you did with her, it was just absolutely terrific.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

So, yeah, we're going to talk about the campaigns that we don't talk about. We're in 43, 44 of the war. So we're going to talk about the Guadalcanal we did a little bit, but we're going to talk about the Tarawa, the disaster, and then also North Africa, Sicily and Italy.

[Jack Fowler]

They're just really eye opening and informative. So anyway, thanks everybody. We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye bye.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Thank you everybody for listening.