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Victor Davis Hanson
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Sammy Wink
Customers hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhanson.com the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus and we'd love everybody to come join us there. There's lots of free stuff and you can join the ultra subscribers at 650amonth or $65 a year. So please come join us there. This is our Friday news roundup and we've got lots of news on the agenda. The Ukraine and Israel first, so stay with us and we'll be right back after these important messages. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So Victor, we are at Heritage Show.
Victor Davis Hanson
Heritage foundation and they've been very, very nice to allow the use of this beautiful studio. And I've always been a big fan of Heritage. Everybody is, but they're doing a great job and we're. I'm in Washington for a week with the Bradley foundation and some other stuff and I'll be giving a lecture tomorrow at Heritage.
Sammy Wink
Yeah. All right. So good to be in Washington D.C. with you. The first topic of the day is just the. For this week, the continued bombing of the Ukraine. In spite of Trump's efforts to get a ceasefire in the Ukraine war, Putin seems to be amping up his military efforts. And I was wondering your thoughts on that.
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, Trump's getting very frustrated because he, you know, he campaigned and said the. He said two things, one accurate, maybe, one not accurate. He said that the war would have never started on his watch. It wouldn't have, because we know that from 2017-21, it didn't. And it had started in three of the last four. That was George W. Bush, the Osatia Georgia, then Donbass, Crimea under Obama, and then the takeover, attempted and failed takeover of Kiev. But he did say he was going to stop it on day one, but he felt that at that time that Putin was more reasonable than he is. As I said last time, Putin's going to try to push his borders as far east as he can and get as many concessions, because right now it's the justification of a million dead Russians and wounded. I don't think he has enough territory to explain that gambit to his apparat. It's very similar to the 1939 Winter War. And to remind everybody, Nazi Germany had made a pact on August 23, 1943, 1929, with Joseph Stalin. The Molotov Ribbentrop hat. Each took advantage of that. They both carved up Poland. And as part of that deal, Stalin was going to take the Baltic stakes. But he started with finland. So on November 30, 1939, he gave an ultimatum, kind of like Putin, and he said, I want 10% of Finland. And Mannerheim, the Baron Mannerheim, General, he was the most distinguished Finn. He actually had served in the Russian Army. He said, no. And everybody thought it's hopeless because it was kind of like the China, Russia axis. Fennon was aligned. I mean, all by itself, Russia was aligned with Nazi Germany. Hitler was supposedly angry about it because he favored Finland, but he helped, according to the pact, Stalin, they kicked Russia out of the League of Nations, but it was exact. Nobody sent anything. Britain was going to send, France was going to send, we were going to send, but it was kind of like Ukraine. So we invaded. And it was just like the Kiev takeover. It was a mistake. The Finns were in winter, on rough terrain with skis, with white camouflage. They inflicted 500,000 Russian casualties. Not quite like Ukraine, but that's taken them three years. A million casualties. And they fought all of December, all of January, January or February. And then finally they were exhausted, kind of like Ukraine. Then Mannerheim went to Stalin and said, you can have the 10 or 11% now. They lost a little bit more, but we will fight you to the death if you try to take over the whole country. So they settled. Everybody talks about the Winter War as a model for Ukraine. They can fight. But the actual story is that he cut a deal and he suffered territorial concessions, but he survived. He, Mannerheim, and Finland survived World War II. They made a deal with Stalin, and they said, if there is ever an invasion of your country by any other country, any other nation, we won't join it. But they're all talking about Germany. So when Germany invaded Russia, Army Group north surrounded Leningrad, St. Petersburg. And they said to Mannerheim, you can really help us. You've got 700,000 troops if you come in from the north. And, no, I made a deal. I'm not going to do it. And they said, well, we're going to win the war. He said, maybe, maybe not. Well, when they lost the war, Stalin then everybody thought was going to take Finland. And all Stalin said was, I'll keep my word, but you're not going to be in NATO. Austria's not going to be in NATO. And that was the deal. Or the Warsaw Pact.
Sammy Wink
Well, Putin seems like he's not going to give in. And every time something's given, he wants more. And so Trump seems very.
Victor Davis Hanson
He's got to show that he can't be pushed. He wants another month to kill more Ukrainians and show the Russian military and governing apparatchiks. He wants to show them that he didn't cave to Trump because Trump's been bragging and says, I'm going to cut a deal with Putin. But he wants to hold out longer, and he's not getting traction on the ground, so he's trying to kill more civilians. So how will it end? It'll only end in about a month or two when he can say to the military, I fought as hard as I could. And Trump has to put. He's going to put a secondary boycott, and that'll be hard to enforce. He's going to have to tell Germany who's buying natural gas, by the way, and India and China, we're not going to buy any of your products if you buy Russian oil. And it will drive the price of oil up on the world market. That's why he's been hesitant to do it. And we'll see what happens. But it's never happened in a superpower we're doing stuff that, by the way, we've never done in the Cold War. We had a rule in the Cold War. You did not use a proxy and arm it directly to attack the motherland of your superpower rival. And when Russia did that with Cuba and armed it with nuclear tipped missiles, we said you broke the rule. That's not possible. You take it out. Yeah, we got to be very careful what we're doing.
Sammy Wink
Well, speaking of ceasefire, another ceasefire in a completely different situation is in Gaza, and apparently there's been a ceasefire offer. Gaza says it was 70 days ceasefire and five live hostages given. The United States says it was 45 to 60 days ceasefire and 10 hostages and 19 dead hostages returned. Netanyahu isn't buying anything that Hamas says from Gaza, and he says they reject it. So again, here we see a stasis.
Victor Davis Hanson
On whether we have no idea whether they're alive. When they say hostages, they could be talking about corpses. Everything they say is a lie. They're like the Iranians. Nothing they say is true. So when you negotiate with Hamas, it has to be entirely on your self interest, not reaching a settlement, because they will not honor a settlement. And if they reach a settlement, even if it's in their interest, they won't follow it. That's just who they are. And we should remember that all these young students, these rich kids at Columbia and every place, they're really demonstrating on behalf of a terrorist organization that took over Gaza through one election. As Bernard Lewis said, one election, one time in 2006. And then all of the Jews that were settling in Gaza left. They left their infrastructure. American Jews had paid for some of it, turned it over to the Gaza. They destroyed it all. They had their free elections, League of Nations. What did they do? They eliminated the opposition. They killed the Palestinian Authority candidates in many cases. They got election, one election, one time. And then they created a police fascist state. And they could have been like the Palestinian Authority. They could have off and on fought, or they could have been like the 2 million Arabs that are living as citizens in Israel. They could have had some kind of deal with the Israelis. The Israelis very naively were allowing 20,000 of them to come in to work on the kibbutzes. They thought this was a way of acculturating them and keeping paying them two or three times higher than the gate. And you can't deal with them. So think about what the kids at Columbia are dealing with. They're demonstrating on behalf of a fascist organization that butchered 1200 people at time of peace, does not allow habeas corpus, does not allow free elections, does not allow free media, and has their own autonomous territory. When they say free Palestine, Free Palestine from what? It was free. It could do whatever they wanted, but it chose to go slaughter a bunch of men, women and children that were civilian. So I never understood that. I would walk across the Stanford campus and somebody would come up to me. Free Palestine. I said, why isn't it free? Well, the Israelis, I said, they're not in there. This is before the invasion. That was right after October 7th. I said, why don't you just make a democracy and have some votes? Why don't you get a bunch of Gulf state money and build something like Dubai? They could do whatever they want, but they won't. They're a terrorist organization and they would rather be poor and destroy Israel than be prosperous and free and allow Israel to be the same. It's a nihilist cult. It's a death cult.
Sammy Wink
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Victor Davis Hanson
Nobody even cares about American music or I didn't even know what it was. You say, ama, I don't know. American Medical Association. I have no idea what it is. And every for a Hollywood person or an entertainer like Bruce Springsteen or any of these people, it's sort of like being in the Soviet Union around 1980. You have to get a card that says you're a member of the party. And then you say, on May Day, you stand at the dice, kind of like Brezhnev people, and you say, I believe in the Communist Manifesto and I believe in the socialist agenda. Why everybody? And then you just kind of look at your watch and say, I gotta go home. Yeah, and where's my dhaka? On the Black Sea, and I need two telephones. And that's how cynical it was. Well, that's what Hollywood is. So Bruce Springsteen, if you sat Bruce Springsteen or the AMA and you said, would you please explain the 1947 settlement or what Transjordan is, or the million Jews that were ethnically cleansed in three wars since the foundation of Israel, or why you're worried about a settlement and refugees in 1947, but you're not worried about 13 million Germans that were ethnically cleansed from Prussia or 40s, 80,000 Greeks that were ethnically cleansed from Cyprus, or 500,000 Volga Germans that were ethnically cleansed by Stalin after the war can go on. What would they say? I don't know. I'm just a member of the party, and that's what they told me to do. So the Democratic Party, you know, when they issue talking points to these mindless anchors, you know, Mueller say Mueller, investigations say Trump any day bombshelled. Or with Walsall coming in and use the word all star. So you say. Every night they said the same thing. Mueller's All Star lawyer team released a bombshell. And it looks like the walls are closing in on Trump. And then when Ramposa came, remember him from South Africa? The little DNC directions say, use the word ambush. Ambush. He was ambushed. Ambushed means, as I said, you're attacked unexpectedly from a secret location. He asked for the meeting because he knew what he was doing and he wanted to defend himself, and he was indefensible. Ye, but no, that was the talking line. Every single radio, tv, pod. On the ambush, Trump ambushed him. It's dangerous to be ambushed, and it's the same thing with Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. And that'll get you a next role in a movie or that will give you. I was watching a clip from 60 Minutes and we had the brilliant CEO Parker from Anduril and they asked him when he sold his $2 billion company to Facebook why they got rid of him. He was a genius. He is a genius. And he said it was because it leaked out that he had given money to Trump. So I mean, all he had to do was just mouth the I hate Trump or you know, Trump's a threat to democracy. Our democracy will die in darkness. It's all they do. They don't think. And so all these entertainers stand up and, and say this stuff. Mouth stuff. Yeah, just like an apparatus, Russian apparatchuk in 1980, dying Soviet Union. So they, they're in a dying entertainment industry and they're, you know, it's just nobody wants to say anything about it. But when you look at Kanye west or Diddy and the people around them and the people Jeffrey Epstein was hanging around with, JLo, all of them, I mean, they're just, yeah, they're not interested in art or performance or acting.
Sammy Wink
I think it's not just a dying industry, but a dying party because they're all on the dnc. And recently we've had a Senator Michael Bennett come out and say that the party is, I use the word dying, so. But a dying party. This is what he said. I think they're sick of a Democratic Party who hasn't been able to show how we're going to address an economy where the middle class continues to shrink and where over the last 20 years we have actually lost ground in terms of achievement of our kids in school. We need to address those things. So I think it's very important for us to stand up against the insanity that Trump represents and the chaos that he represents and show that there's something better. And I don't think, I think so.
Victor Davis Hanson
He's going to show the people who voted for Trump how insane they were for voting for Trump. Still got that same talk down attitude. They're mad because of two developments. The first development was they were always the party of Hubert Humphrey, Bill Clinton, middle class, lunch bucket, blue collar workers. But they took issues, radical abortion to the partial birth abortion, trans men, biological men competing in women's sport, open border, you name it. And they turned off the white working class, anti religion, anti tradition. But they always said demography is destiny. That was their words. They accused Tucker Carlson of the great replacement Theory, but they were using the same terms before he even mentioned them. And it was demography is destiny. And the news Democratic majority, and that was open the border and bring in immigrants. We have a record right now, 55 million people in the United States that were not born here. It's the highest percentage ever. 16%, just about. And California, where I live, what, 27% of the population was not born in the United States. So that was their whole project, destroy the immigration, because you'll bring in people who they felt were mostly non white, non rich, poor, without skills, without English. It was just the opposite of the old meritocracy. And it was going to be largely illegal. I think we have 20 to 25 of those 55 million people who were not born here illegally. And then what happened? They turned out to be no different than the working class. They said, you know what? I didn't come to the United States to see a bunch of biological men, you know, slamming women in basketball. I didn't come to the United States to see a bunch of socialism. I didn't come to the United States to see crime everywhere and they don't do anything to the criminal. I didn't come to the United States just to see abortion on demand. And the ninth. So they're losing that. 50% of Hispanics, they've lost 62% of Hispanics said they approved of Trump's first hundred days. So they've lost that group. And they think they can get it back because they still have the inner city and the hardcore, what I would call a subsidized class, people that are on government support and Medicaid, medical, all that. And then they have the very wealthy, the money. So when Kamala Harris is nominated, they can get her a billion dollars in 30 days. They can out Biden. Harris outraised Trump by $2 billion. So they have all that money and they think that. And they have control of all the institutions, but that allows them, they think, to be on the wrong side of 70, 30 on the border, 7030 on crime, 7030 on transgenderism, 7030 on foreign policy, 60, 40 on Hamas, Israel. So they're wrong on all the main issues. And yet they think that by changing the demography and appealing to the victimized class and their Marxist binary, they're going to win. But the problem is their victimized class doesn't feel victimized. They're here to make it. They want cheap gas, they want cheap electricity, they want jobs, they want foreign investment. They like the Trump agenda. So they're trying to Use the institutions to destroy Trump law firm. We saw just every day they say they're going to impeach him now, all that, they're going to do all that because they don't have issues that 51% of the people support. So they use the institutions, media, universities, schools, foundations will get an alternate message. And what is the message? Trump is a monster. He's a fascist. He's Hitler, he's Mussolini. It's not, here's the open border and here's why it's so good. Here's why we want gas at $8 a gallon. We can convince you of it. This is, we have a million abortions a year. We'd like a million and a half that. They don't say that because they know it won't appeal to anybody.
Sammy Wink
No, but I think that they feel that, that those things, like keeping fossil fuels at a minimum, are things that are going to change the world for the better so they don't have to be honest. Right.
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, they think they're morally superior so that their means are justified by their exalted ends. They always believe that. But.
Sammy Wink
So you can lie if you.
Victor Davis Hanson
They can, but according to them, you got to remember, they say, well, Trump only won by one and a half percent. No, that's not the way to look at it. Trump won the House, the Senate, the White House. He has control, more or less of the Supreme Court. He won the popular. Well, he won the Electoral College Dash Despite 93 indictments by Bragg, by Fannie Willis, Letitia James, by Jack Smith. That by after they raided his home to get 102 files out of 13,000 that were actually classified. That's after they tried to take him off the ballot in 25 states. And that's why he did not have the media. He did not have the foundations. He did not have the universities. He didn't have the popular culture. He didn't have the administrative state. I don't know how he won, but he did. And he won because, actually I do. He was on the right side of a series of issues and people were sick of all this stuff. And they said to themselves, we have no border. He borrowed $7 trillion. Biden did. It was a hoax. He was just an empty waxen effigy they used to put through this agenda. And they didn't want a McCain or Romney saying, well, let's not be hasty. This is a judicious, complex matter. We have to be sober in our criticism. They like somebody that said, this guy's our scum. They're going to destroy the country up to a point. I don't know where that point is reached, but you might want to tone it down. But they like the idea that he didn't give up.
Sammy Wink
All right. And Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and come back and talk a little bit about Trump himself and some of the things that he's faced in his administration. Stay with us. And we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. You can find Victor on X. His handle is at BD Hansen and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. So if those are your social media outlets, please join him there. So, Victor, Trump has had a conflict with a new tech magnate, Apple. And Tim Cook, who is the CEO of Apple, has been pretty tight with Trump. But now he's building huge facilities inside of China to build a lot of Apple products in China. And Trump is threatening to put tariffs on those things, which I cheer on. But I was wondering your thoughts. Well.
Victor Davis Hanson
He'S a little different than Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg because his market capitalization of $2 trillion is almost 50 or 60% attributable to his China division. He's got a deal with China that they allow him to supply unlimited amounts of his products in China. At least they do until they have completely absorbed his company. You know, they're kind of like the Blob. So he's over there making trillions of dollars or hundreds of billions, and he's partnering with the Chinese and they get his technology, but they let him make, make some phones. But when they find out they don't need him anymore, that's a hard question for them because they don't know to what degree they have the talent yet to be creative and have the next generation rather than just steal it. But he has a basically, his attitude about Apple is of all the tech companies I'm going to partner with the Chinese communist government, they're going to give me enormous concessions. And they have a market of 1.4 billion people. And I'm going to have that market. In exchange for that, I'm going to give them access to technology that they otherwise wouldn't have had. That's why they want it. And Trump is saying to him, and Trump's trying to get along with him. He's saying to him, how much more would a phone cost if you just assemble it here? A hundred dollars. And he's saying, why are you empowering the China? Nobody's done more to empower China than he has Apple. And I don't think that's something that he wants to get into because I'll give you the example. Until Harvard locked horns with Donald Trump, Harvard was this and Harvard was that. But as I said before, Harvard is like a rock on a hill. And when you turn it over, there's worms, there's slugs, it's ugly. And when Trump got in with Harvard, I know he was a little excessive, but when he turned over that rock, oh, my gosh, Millions of dollars from gutter. Billions of dollars from gutter and communist China funding your program. Oh, my gosh, you're charging the federal government 50, 55% charges on federal grants. Oh, my gosh, you ignored the supreme court ruling of 2022. You're still using racial prejudice and bias not to let white males or Asians into your university. Oh, my gosh, you're still rewarding people who beat up Jews. You haven't addressed anti Semitism. Well, the same thing will be like with Apple. If he wants to get in a big fight with Trump, they're going to say, wow, you paid this much to the Chinese government. Wow. Chinese tech went up this much. Wow. This percent of Chinese communications technology depended on you because it's not indefensible what he's doing in terms of America.
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
So if you like during the Cold War, you remember Occidental Petroleum sold had partnered with communist Russia and they gave them the pencil monopoly to make all the pencils and arm and hammer was that. And everybody criticized him, you know, for his Soviet. But he was the only one really who did that. Well, pencils aren't telephones. What I'm getting at is that it's not a good thing to be responsible for fueling the economy and the applicable military technology of someone that wants to destroy the United States. And if he wants to get in a fight with Trump, that will come out and people will not want. I may not. I have never bought a computer except an Apple Computer Mac. I've never bought a phone except a Mac. I have a Mac watch on. If it gets ended, I would just give it all up and go non Apple because I'm tired of what he's doing. He's not Steve Jobs. They had a plant in the United States that was making stuff and they were making a lot of money. They just weren't multi trillion dollar global company. And they sold all. Sold it all.
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, to continue on things Trump, let's turn to the court system because as all our audience probably knows the courts are trying to block Trump's work. And so we have a new thing in Maryland where there's a standing order to automatically block the deportation of an illegal alien whenever their lawyer files a petition before a judge even reviews it. And that's just an example of the district courts trying to hamper the executive branches power and Adrian Vermeilu.
Victor Davis Hanson
Vermeil.
Sammy Wink
Vermeil.
Victor Davis Hanson
He's the daughter. He's the son of the great archaeologist Emily Vermeil.
Sammy Wink
Oh, wow.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. She wrote Greece in the Bronze Age.
Sammy Wink
Oh, that's.
Victor Davis Hanson
And I think his. His sister is a law. Law professor at Stanford.
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
And his mother was a broadcaster and classicist and archaeologist at Harvard. But she also broadcasted once in a while, the Boston Red Sox game. And her husband was a famous classicist as well. I had dinner once with her daughter. But Adrian Vermeule, unlike his sister and parents, is. What's the word for. It's not quite right wing. It's libertarian or paleo. I can't quite get it. But he's a very brilliant legal scholar, but he's not liberal and he gets a lot of criticism.
Sammy Wink
Well, his son is. It's his son, right? Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
Son of Emily Vermeule. Yeah.
Sammy Wink
And his thing was, or what he said was that they are basically an automatic judicial veto on all new policy by Trump.
Victor Davis Hanson
So, yeah, what he's saying is that of the three courts, Supreme Circuit and District, that these lowly 700 judges, probably 400 of them, are liberal. Four hundred judges are now the executive branch of the United States. In other words, Trump can't make one initiative that governs either the interior or exterior relations of the United States without them staying it even before the case comes up. Just as a matter of principle.
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
So that's unsustainable. And at some point, John Roberts and the conservative majority, and I mean the conservative majority, it's going to have to include Comey Barrett, and it's going to have to include Kavanaugh and Gorsuch. All of them are going to have to come in at 6, 3. Otherwise you won't have a country. They filed more lawsuits in the first hundred days than any other. Any other presidents. They've filed more than even the Trump people did against Biden and even more than against Obama. So they're trying to hijack the executive branch. And the American people are baffled by this because they let in illegally 10 to 12 million people. And the court. There were a lot of lawsuits about this. Make majorcas. They impeached him make him follow the law. It is illegal to enter the United States without permission. It is illegal to reside in the United States without permission. It is illegal to get identification. That is false to justify that. And nobody did anything. The courts didn't do anything. So now the court is saying, here's the court's message to the American voters. It was legal, in our view, that all 12 million of you who broke the law came in. That was, that was legal to break the law. But it is illegal now to follow the law and make you comply with the law and go back home and try it again. Legally, that's illegal. But when you broke the law and you came in here and you stayed illegally, as far as we were concerned, that was legal. I think Justice Jackson in the 1940s, and he was one of the famous justices at the Nuremberg trials, had ruled that in matters of immigration, it was like a guest host relationship. The United States did not have to explain to any guest, legal or otherwise, why they should go home. They can just say, we don't want you to have a visa. You have to have a visa. It can be a work visa, it can be a student visa, it can be a travel visa. They don't even have a visa. But Jackson's ruling was all you have to do is say, we feel that you represent a threat to the United States and it's not a First Amendment issue. It's just like somebody comes in your home for dinner. You have 12 people. That's not like that because those are invited guests. It's like you're eating dinner with your family and somebody knocks on the door. No, it's not like that. Somebody just breaks in, sits down at your table and starts lecturing you and you say, you know what, I don't like you. Get out. And they're saying, you can't do that. So we're going to have, what, 12 million lawsuits for people who broke the law, but zero lawsuits for the American people who want them to follow the law.
Sammy Wink
It's crazy. Well, Victor, let me welcome back another sponsor of our show. In today's fast moving world, your team needs to stay connected to your customers. Without missed messages, communication silos, or slow phone systems. A flexible and efficient business phone system isn't just nice to have, it's essential to succeed. Entertainment OpenPhone. 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, with AI powered call transcripts, scripts and summaries, you'll be able to automate follow ups, ensuring you'll never miss a customer interaction again. So whether you're a one person operation drowning in calls and texts, or have a large team that needs better collaboration tools, Openphone is a no brainer. See why over 50,000 businesses trust Openphone to manage their business calls and texts. Openphone is offering my listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com Victor that's O P E N P-H-O-N-E.com Victor and if you have existing numbers with another service, Open Phone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone, no missed calls, no missed customers. And we'd like to thank Open Phone for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson show. So, Victor, we have lots of things going on at Columbia and Harvard with our protesters who were arrested. And I know you wanted to talk a little bit about their portfolios of their lives, their careers, their backgrounds. And then also at Harvard, apparently they are awarding at their graduation ceremony another anti Semitic.
Victor Davis Hanson
So, yeah, well, here's the situation. You have the presentation of Harvard Professor Garber and he is telling the Trump administration and his donors and the media that this is all cooked up, that there are some problems, but they are dealing with it, that they have a special report on anti Semitism. Take one example. And while he's saying they're dealing with it, two of the many Harvard students that harassed and pushed and were cited and given community service because they were basically convicted of that. In other words, there was no doubt they were on tape attacking a Jewish student. One was a former Stanford student and he is on the Harvard Review. So I want to ask President Garber, so you expelled him for doing that because the police sentenced him to that. No. You know what you did, you being Harvard, and I think you can spear. If you want to speak for Harvard, then you're responsible for Harvard. Your law school gave him a $65,000 honorarium, so he was rewarded for that. So Professor Garber, if he hadn't have assaulted that student, he wouldn't have gotten $65,000. So you're going to say, wow, that was just. Things happen. I got a big university. No, your divinity school. There was another student who was salted. He's going to be the marshal that is honored the person who is kind of the grand marshal of the divinity graduation. So he's going to be honored. So basically at Harvard, President Garver, if you're walking around and you see a Jewish student and you push him around or you call him names or you assault him, your two most prestigious schools, your law school and your divinity school, you got a good chance. You have a much better chance of getting money or honor or from them. And you're going to go tell the Trump administration that they've cooked all this up in their head. No. And you know why it's happening? It's happening because you brought in thousands of students from the Middle east because they pay 110% and they're all on wealthy golf money. And you understood that your DEI community has a long history of antisemitism. The day after October 7, the BLM chapter in Chicago glorified the hang gliders that were butchering Jews of that poster. And before blm, we had Al Sharpton tell them Jews to come over here getting their yaw marks on Freddie Fenders, Freddie's Market, or gutter religion from what's his name? The horrible preacher.
Sammy Wink
Oh, Obama's horrible preacher.
Victor Davis Hanson
No, Jeremiah Wright. He was the one who said dim Jews have a special weapon that can smell out Arabs. No, he was. Oh, and he also. Jeremiah Wright said that dim Jews won't let me talk to Obama. And then we had Jesse Jackson who said, hi, me tower. And so Farrakhan, Louis Farrakhan was the one who said it was a gutter religion. So they have a long history in the DEI community, and they feel they're empowered by the Middle east students. So then they're Marxist, binary. 70% of the country are white interlopers, settlers, and that includes Jews, and 30% are noble victims. So the Jews have now transmogrified into white oppressors. And that allows somebody in the DEI community, which has been expanded from blacks in the affirmative action paradigm to anybody who claims they're not white as part of that protected, then they have exemption. They're philosophically, psychologically impossible for them to be racist or anti Semitic. And when you have that message imbued through thousands of students, then you get people who not only assault Jews, but they are rewarded by other students for doing so. And then you get a president who somebody comes to him and says, you know, we got so many students from the Middle east and they're so popular and they have so many Kendrick spirits, and we've let this anti Semitism go on for so long that if you crack down on it, we're going to have riots. So it's better just to say there is no place for anti Semitism. This is not who we are at Harvard. Just say that and then don't do anything. And it would have worked, but they got a crazy Trump in the White House. So he says things that they just can't comprehend. So when they're arguing with him, he said, today they're arguing with him. You don't have any First Amendment rights. Come on, you know that. You shout down speakers, person's accused of sexual harassment, they don't give him any rights. Confront his accuser. Come on. You know you have separate graduations, themes segregated by race. Come on. You know you let in people on the basis you hire, promote, retain people on the basis of race. Come on, we know that you gouge us and you charge us 50% on federal grants on your surcharges. So they have no, nothing. They have all of that. And so when he's saying, let's be sober and judicious, Mr. Trump, and Trump said, nah, I just thought about it. I'm taking the 3 trillion, I'm going to give it to trade school guys that weld, guys that build, guys that do stuff, not you. How does he deal with that? Nobody's ever imagined and probably is on the phone right now saying, he's probably telling his assistants, give me every federal judge that's a Harvard graduate, law graduate, every district judge, now, we gotta file suit now. Give me the names of all the big law firms, all the Harvard. I shouldn't say, give me. He knows who they are, all the Harvard graduates. Who's our biggest donors, who the. And he's calling, he thinks he's going to take on Harvard. And it's hard to do that. But Trump just.
Sammy Wink
Yeah, well, he has every right, or at least everything going for him in that because they're breaking all the laws that we find so valuable.
Victor Davis Hanson
Our first, they don't have any currency with the Americans, American people.
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
You ask the average American person, would you rather give $3 billion to Harvard that has a capital fund or endowment of $52 billion, or would you like to help trade schools and community colleges? Yeah, no brainer.
Sammy Wink
No brainer. Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
And this is from the Harvard who's supposedly the custodian of the left and worries about the little guy.
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, I know that at Columbia they've got some of the profiles of those that have been destroying property and threatening people, as said protesters, peaceful protesters. And I was wondering, your Thoughts on that?
Victor Davis Hanson
Those were the women, the women that were on the barricade. There wasn't one that went to a public school. Every single one of them went to a private school. And I looked at them. The cheapest tuition, I think, was 75, but most of them were 85,000 a year, or 90. So basically their parents are, you know, they're. They're paying 350,000 for high school and then probably 400,000 for undergraduate. And then we're supposed to believe that these people are revolutionaries and that they feel for the oppressed. If they really feel for the oppressed, they should just tell all of those students from the Middle east. You know what they also gave? I think it was the Washington Free Beacon, where they lived and how big their homes were. So why don't they just say, we have seven bedrooms and you're an oppressed person. Just come home and live with us and bring your friends over from the Middle east from time to time so they can teach us. They wouldn't do that.
Sammy Wink
No, not at all.
Victor Davis Hanson
I've been to Gaza and I've been to the Gaza fence, and I've been all over the west bank. And I can tell you that when you step from one across Gaza into Israel, it is a different situation. When you go into the west bank, and I'm not talking about Israeli oppression. No, no, it's very different.
Sammy Wink
It's a modern state with modern legal codes that protect the rights of individuals.
Victor Davis Hanson
In Israel, it protects the rights of women. It has an independent court system, a weird court system, but it's independent. It has regularly held elections. It has a free press. It has an independent, as I said, judiciary. It has protections of freedom of speech. There's nothing like that in Gaza or the West Bank.
Sammy Wink
No.
Victor Davis Hanson
And there's no idea of a free market economy. It's all tribalism and client and concierge economies.
Sammy Wink
I've been reading lately these newspaper writers that have been lamenting that if the Gazans had been smarter, they could have had what Dubai has or built a modern state. And I was thinking while they say that, no, because you really have to have a whole value system. And they clearly do not have the value system to foster a capitalist class.
Victor Davis Hanson
You know, Tijuana could. Why isn't Tijuana San Diego? Why is it sewage floating into San Diego? And the answer is not racial. It's not. Because we know when Mexican American people come here, they do well once they're acculturated. And the answer is that Mexico does not have an Independent judiciary. It does not have a bill of rights. It does not have property rights as we do. It does not have, it doesn't have patents and copyrights like we do. It doesn't have protections for a free economy. It doesn't have any of that.
Sammy Wink
It's not law abiding. It has gangs that control a lot of it.
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I live in central California where we've had 10 million illegal alien. So when you have thousands of people who come across the border without acculturation, integration, assimilation. And the first message they get when they come across the borders, we don't care about our country, come in. Second one, they say, stay here, we don't care. Third one, oh, you need public assistance. Then they get one, two, three strikes. They have contempt and that contempt is expressed. So all of a sudden, during the Biden years, people in my little community drive out and they think, you know what? This country let me in. They didn't care. They have no honor. They let me do whatever I want. I've got all this public assistance. I'm not going to pay $60 or $80 or $100 a month for garbage service. I'm just going to take it all in and drive out at 2 in the morning to the nearest little orchard and throw it in there. And that's what they do. And somebody's going to say, victor, that's racist. No, it's not. I look at all the stuff that they throw in, all the literature, all the receipts are all in Spanish except accept the address.
Sammy Wink
Yes.
Victor Davis Hanson
They weed out any notion that where you could find them. I know, I wait through it, I wait through it. And then the same thing with animal. Oh, I have a dog. I think I'll just throw it out the window. And so it ends up at my house. Yeah, I don't think. I think I counted once. Since the last 40 years, I've had about 25 dogs thrown out the window.
Sammy Wink
Yeah, at least.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, at least. They come in starving, they have no shots, they have no license, they have nothing. And then you spay them, you spend three or four hundred dollars, put a collar on them.
Sammy Wink
Yes. And they seem clever enough to take their address off of all of their garbage.
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm talking about illegal alien.
Sammy Wink
I know, exactly.
Victor Davis Hanson
Because when I walk on my property and I turn the corner and somebody's got an AR15 and he doesn't speak English and you ask him why he's here and he doesn't answer, he just kind of gives you the hundred yard stare. You ask why, how did he get here?
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
Or if you go a quarter mile down the road and it's 110 degrees and you see two horses out in the middle of pasture roasting almost right. You think who would treat a horse that way? And you think it's not my business. Or a building inspector comes and you followed every code and you're putting in solar panels and he says you're 6 inches off on the edge of the roof, please tell the contractor. Or you put a heavy duty conduit casing. You didn't really have to do that. I won't. And then you say to them go down a quarter mile and there are 45 people living in Winnebago's with Lomex with nothing. And he says to you, I'm not stupid. So what's happening in these states with illegal immigration is the law is not applied equally. We're going to go after the law abiding citizen because they will pay the fine and they will justify our position and we'll feel good. So if I'm driving down the road and I see a guy and he's going 70 miles in a 50 mile zone, I'll pull him over. If he's a US citizen and he speaks English, I'm going to cite him and that makes me feel like I'm enforcing the law. But if I'm a Tennessee patrolman and I pull a guy over and he's got eight people in there and he looks kind of scary like Albergo Garcia and I find out that he has no license and he's speeding and none of the people in his vehicle have licenses and the car is registered to a trafficker. I can think of 25. I'm just leave, go. I don't want to be in trouble. I'll be in trouble for two reasons. There's a lot of stuff I'll have to do, paperwork. He'll be in the system and then somebody will say I'm a racist or xenophobe or NATO. So I'm not going to do it it and so everybody knows that. So there's two sets of laws.
Sammy Wink
Well Victor, let's go ahead and take our last break and then come back and talk a little bit about Caitlin Clark in the Women's Basketball association and non resident Californians or former Californians. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson show. You can find Victor on YouTube and on Rumble and on Spotify. So join us there if that's your avenue of social Media. So Victor, Caitlin Clark, who is. And this is not important to us, but it's important to her other players. She's white. And we've got a lot of anger at her by black players who are calling her Brittney Griner just recently, white girl. And so I was wondering if she.
Victor Davis Hanson
Said a.
Sammy Wink
I'm gonna be generous.
Victor Davis Hanson
No, I want to be literal, but I won't use it because we have. We don't use that type of language. But she said she looked that trash, effing, effing white girl. And then Angela Reese, Angel Reese, excuse me, said, look at the white girl. Leave the fade. You know, she left the tumult. White girl. If anybody had reversed the roles, there'd be a problem. And then she gets roughed up all the time, and she's injured now, which may or may not be part of that. But here's the dichotomy or the paradox. It's kind of an Orwellian situation. So here you have the NBA, the wba, women's basketball, and it's been around for years, and it's never really made any money. And it's probably 80% black. So then there was this basketball star, happens to be white. And she was a spectacular star, more than any other star in her generation. So she comes in and she's. Almost immediately people think, well, on the one hand, because she is. It would be as if you had a Kamal White WBA in 1950, and you brought a black player in who was better than anybody. You would probably get a lot of people at that period that would be mean, like Jackie Robinson. When he brought Jackie Robinson, he was fantastic athlete, but there were people who tried to rough him up. Well, that's what they're doing to Caitlin Clark. But the difference is, when that happened, there were a lot of people who objected to what Jackie Robinson had to go through. Branch Rickey was the owner, and he made sure that any white player that treated him that way was off his team. 60 years of moral improvement and progress. We don't have that. We have a mostly black group that has people that are systematically, in a racist fashion, expressing racist contempt, that are trying to injure her. But we don't have anybody in the Women's Basketball association that will stand up and say there is a systematic racist attack on her, as we did with Jackie Robinson. So the question is, why? And that is tricky, because on the one hand, you can look at the gross revenues of the women's basketball, and they're going like this because she's a phenomenon. So then you would say, well, why wouldn't you want to protect the person who's bringing you all that money? And the other consideration by the management is, but all of the black players are angry that we brought this person in, not all of them. So they're going like this, but they have to be very careful. She played every game without an injury. But you look at these tapes, they are hitting her hard. She went up for a layup and was pushed. Now she's injured a ligament, I think it is, and she's not ready to play. And if they don't do anything, they're going to injure her and knock her out. And that's going to be the end of the wba because two things will happen. Caitlin Clark that everybody tunes in to watch will be gone. And two people will not forget why she's gone. They remember why she was gone because the WA condoned that by not doing anything and it's going to. That'll be the end of it. And they don't understand that. And the other thing is, Angel Reese is not this good a player as Caitlin Clark, but she has taken upon herself to be the representation of blackness in the wa. And no one's ever really called her out. She confronts her all the time. But Brittney Griner is a little bit more disturbing here. She went to the Soviet Union. She admittedly brought drugs in. I don't know whether they were gummies or something. They were no big thing. But Putin wanted somebody, and he's a clever, devious sob so he knew a black person would be divisive in the United States. So basically we were told that she will die in a prison very quickly, the way the Russians treat her. So the Biden administration saw an opportunity. Well, Trump gets people out, but we'll get a black person out. And there were other people in Russia. There was a. A U.S. military personnel that was there, and they didn't bring him out. He'd been there longer. So they wanted to prove to everybody their DEI fides and credentials. They were going to bring her up. So they gave in exchange, one of the most notorious deadly merchants of arms, Russian arms dealer, killer. We gave that back to get her back. There was nothing in her career that was especially impressive as far as her value, I think, compared to a US Military. But we brought her back and she was contrite for a while. But you would think that given what her country did for her, we could just ask her for one thing. Don't on national TV say Out loud, F white girl. It's all we ask. You don't be a racist. And she couldn't do that. So I think that whole WBA is in a mess. It's imploding. And when you have, there is no such thing as a rainbow coalition anymore, when you have 62% of Hispanics expressing confidence in the first hundred days of Donald Trump and you have 39% according to the same Rasmussen poll of African Americans, there is no intersectionality. There's people who are worried about class, middle class, and that trumps their worries about race. And that means they get sick and tired of the Brittney Griners and the Angel Reeses. They don't want to hear it anymore. And yet that's all we hear in the media. So I think that it's a losing deal.
Sammy Wink
Opposition. Yeah, absolutely.
Victor Davis Hanson
I would never watch a WBA game. No, because I, I wouldn't want to see all the racial tension and I don't want to hear the commentators say this or that. It's just a mess, you know.
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, speaking of people who are can't take it anymore, pods, the moving company, you know those big boxes you can put yourself. And it's PODS has data on people moving from places. And here are the big cities that they're moving from. Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco are among the top 20 areas. And so people are moving out of California.
Victor Davis Hanson
And I was wondering, that's interesting because I wrote a column about, I don't know, six years ago and some bureaucrat in Sacramento wrote me a letter, don't lie. But basically what they do, they count illegal aliens coming into California. We've had 11 million of them as population residents. And they'll say, well, look at the residents. It's the state is actually not losing population. Or they'll say that the minority communities that came across the border are still having two or three children and the ossified white aging group, you know, whatever. But the fact is California US Citizens are leaving. So anyway, this guy wrote me from Sacramento and there was on somewhere near Bullard and Blackstone in Fresno. So I drove in, I said, hello, I want to rent a trailer and I want to go to Texas. And they said, we don't have any. I said, you don't have a trailer in Fresno to Texas? And they said, no. And I said, well, how would I get one? And they said, if you have a relative, you can drive to Texas and you can get the trailer and you can bring your stuff back on the trailer for free. And then you can go back again and we'll give you a discount. And I said, well, what is the usual charge from Texas to California? And they said, well, if it's not free, it's 200 bucks. And I said, what is it to Texas? He goes between 15 and 2500.
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
So I trust that a lot more than a bureaucrat in Sacramento.
Sammy Wink
Yes.
Victor Davis Hanson
But I. It's kind of a phenomenon in the Central Valley when you walk around and you just say, what happened to that person? I haven't seen them lately. Oh, they moved to Boise. What happened to that person? Oh, they're in Stateline Nevada. What happened to that person? Oh, they went to Nashville. Oh, what happened to that person there in Houston? It's just. It's a reverse Oklahoma migration of the 1930s, and they're being driven out because it's all about cost of benefit. They pay the highest income taxes, the highest gas taxes, the fifth highest sales taxes. And for that they get schools that are rated in the bottom 10. For that, they get the highest property per capita crime rate of the United States and San Francisco. For that, they get one third of the welfare recipients. For that, they get 21% of the population under the poverty level. For that, they get 50% of all people on Medi Cal. For that, 40% and 50% of all births on Medi Cal. And they're rated unusual by highways, about 49th in the country for safety of miles driven in some of their highways.
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson
So they're paying a lot of money and they're getting little in return. And they're creating this one party bureaucratic democratic state. And its sole purpose is to create a huge DEI population that's angry and subsidize it and claim that it's always a victim of racism. And what they've done is they created a Frankensteinian monster that now has turned on its creators. So all the Silicon Valley people, Ben Horowitz, Mark Andreessen, David Sachs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, some of the Google will think, wow, we hire these people and they hate our guts. Marco Andreessen said that.
Sammy Wink
He said it.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, they hate our guts. And now they're going to tax us. We give $9 trillion in global capital to this place. We run the whole state and they hate us. Yeah, they hate you. And well, maybe we're going to move out or maybe we're going to, you know, support Trump. Or then the people in Pacific Cabal says, well, they burned. They wouldn't let us clean the slopes because they Said this milk vetch was a protected species. So the Santa Ana winds came in, it was dry, there was all this fodder for winds. And our mayor went to Ghana and the vice mayor was supposed to take over, but he's under house arrest for phoning in bomb threats because he wanted to hurt Israel. Bomb threats? Well, we had the water and power director. We paid her 700,000, but, oh, she's the one that let the lake go dry and didn't fix it. The reservoir on top of Pacific Palisade. Well, then we had the fire chief. Yeah, but she was more interested in gay issues and was bragging that she had more DI hires than anybody. And she didn't correct the fact there were hundreds of hydrants that didn't work. Well, how about the assistant fire people? Well, she was the one who cut the commercial DI hire who said that if she couldn't carry out a man because she was a woman, the man was in the wrong place during a fire. And that was the group. And then the Pacific Palisades people said, I can't get a permit to rebuild my house. And you want to say to them, you voted for all this? Don't you realize you inherited a third of an acre? Beautiful home home, but it had toxic materials in it. You didn't use green substances in it. And you know what? Why should you have one third of an acre when there's homeless people in Venice? So it would be much fairer if we rezone all the Pacific Palisades with multiple family residences and maybe no garages. Kind of a central plaza where you take the bus in. And that's what you guys want. Not. Well, they're not quite there, but that's what's holding up the. They want to restrict the size of homes, etc. Etc. And it's not going to ever be the same.
Sammy Wink
Apparently the press is trolling Violet Affleck, who is screaming, doing her best. Greta Van Sestern or not Van Cistern, sorry, the. The screamer in the Netherlands, Greta Thunberg. And she is saying that the fires were due to climate change and wealthy people not.
Victor Davis Hanson
She's wealthy.
Sammy Wink
I know, exactly.
Victor Davis Hanson
And she flies across the country in a carbon spewing jet. But it wasn't because of climate change. I teach at Pepperdine and I can tell you that in the late fall and early winter, in a semi dry winter year, you get near the Malibu hills and all of a sudden around six o' clock at night, that wind comes up. It's 40 or 50 miles an hour. And if you. Those grasses are really. Pepperdine campus was protected because they had a fire and it burned off everything. They didn't cause it at all. They tried to stop it. They saved the campus. But one of the ironies was when this bigger fire came, it was protected because it had had a fire protection plan by accident that saved the campus in a way. But they wouldn't let them. They wouldn't let them clean the hillsides. It's like all the fires. They don't let people come in and tend the forest because they believe that's unnatural or they don't want people in the mountains. They feel that that should be a reserve and Sierra Club people and Save the Earth people should be the custodians and they should be able to drive up and have a great unspoiled weekend inspecting the wilderness, Yosemite places. But you don't want hoi polloi in there. They're just too trashy. They might bring their jet skis or Winnebagos. They're loud, they're uncouth, they don't have the proper sensitivity.
Sammy Wink
It seems strange though we've seen. Because I've lived in California all my life and it seems like we've seen these fires in the LA area many, many times. But they've always been able to pretty much prevent them from getting into the cities like they did this time around. Which seems strange.
Victor Davis Hanson
That was the generation that built the California Aqueduct in five years. Five years, yeah. Not 15 years. $30 billion for high speed rail from Bakersfield to Merced without one foot of track laid yet. That was a generation that built the California Water plan, Central Valley plan, California Water project, huge reservoirs. They did it in about 30 years. That was the one that created nine UC campuses and 23 CSU campuses. I think it was 80 community colleges pretty much like that. That was the one that at one time people came to California to see what a cloverleaf was on a freeway. And believe it or not, SFO was the model airport in the 50s. That's what California. And who did all that? All the people they hate now. All the people they hate. Let's change the name of this person and that person and that person. They built la. They built something. It was the nicest place in the world and they destroyed it.
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, last thing. Charles Rangel died at 94 this weekend. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Charles Rangel himself.
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, he was an early civil rights figure. He was very odd. He was quite heavy. He lived to be 94. He had some good attributes. He was funny. He wasn't a malicious left winger. He was a Korean War vet. He was very heroic in the war. I think he'd even been wounded. But as he got older, he went into this third generation of the Woke DEI movement. So the first was the pioneer civil rights wanting equal of opportunity. And the second generation was, we want a modicum of affirmative action and help the great society stuff, which was pernicious. The third generation is we believe in mandate of result. So if we're not equal in at the back end and every aspect of our lives, kind of like what Aristotle said about democracy in Athens, the thing about democracy you have to watch out, is once a man feels he's equal politically, then he feels he should be equal in every other aspect of his life, and it's the government's responsibility to do so. And that's where we are now. And he bought into that. So he became kind of unhinged at the end. Yeah, he was kind of funny because he would always talk about white privilege and privilege. And then he just parked his car, I think, for like, in a capital parking spot and just forgot about it. I mean, didn't pay anything. And they kept saying that car and they were afraid to tow it and everything. He was very powerful in the house. He was. He had kind of a gravelly voice. He was a very funny guy, but. But, you know, he was. He was a typical Democrat of the age.
Sammy Wink
Well, that's the end of our show. We'd like to thank our audience for joining us and thank you, Victor, for very much.
Victor Davis Hanson
I had jet lag. I didn't sleep, so I'm droopy.
Sammy Wink
No, you're not.
Victor Davis Hanson
But we're here in Washington. Very excited.
Sammy Wink
Yeah, we are. And Washington. You know what? One observation before we leave that I been walking, you know, getting exercise this morning and walking in the streets. It seems like there's not as many homeless in the streets as I was expecting, given what we see on the news. I have to. There was a lot, but there was less than I was expecting.
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, compared to California.
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Yeah. Because you see whole cities of.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, California is where half of all the homeless. Nearly half of all the homeless. California. And Gavin spent billions of dollars, and now he's blaming Trump for it and says, I would have solved the homeless, but Trump's economy.
Sammy Wink
Well, we're happy to be in D.C. and thanks to our audience.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
Sammy Wink
And thank you to Heritage as well.
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everybody, for listening and watching.
Sammy Wink
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hanson, and we're signing off.
Podcast Summary: The Victor Davis Hanson Show
Episode: Swimming Upstream: War, Trump Tried, and California Exodus
Release Date: May 30, 2025
In the episode titled "Swimming Upstream: War, Trump Tried, and California Exodus," hosts Victor Davis Hanson and co-host Sammy Wink delve into a myriad of pressing political and social issues. From international conflicts and domestic policies to cultural tensions and demographic shifts, the discussion offers a critical analysis of contemporary events shaping the United States and the world.
Sammy Wink opens the discussion by addressing the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, highlighting President Trump's attempts to broker a ceasefire amidst escalating Russian aggression led by Vladimir Putin.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"Trump has to show that he can't be pushed. He wants another month to kill more Ukrainians and show the Russian military and governing apparatchiks."
— Victor Davis Hanson [07:25]
The conversation shifts to the complex dynamics of ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"When you negotiate with Hamas, it has to be entirely on your self interest, not reaching a settlement, because they will not honor a settlement."
— Victor Davis Hanson [09:31]
Sammy Wink brings up recent controversies surrounding the American Music Awards, particularly focusing on political statements made by performers.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"Bruce Springsteen, if you sat Bruce Springsteen or the AMA and you said, would you please explain the 1947 settlement... What would they say? I don't know. I'm just a member of the party."
— Victor Davis Hanson [14:29]
The hosts examine the friction between Apple CEO Tim Cook and President Trump, particularly concerning Apple's manufacturing operations in China.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"Nobody's done more to empower China than he has Apple. And I don't think that's something that he wants to get into because he'll just reveal how dependent they are on him."
— Victor Davis Hanson [27:04]
A critical discussion on the judiciary's role in obstructing President Trump's policies, focusing on immigration laws and deportations.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"It's illegal to enter the United States without permission, but when you broke the law and you came in here and you stayed illegally, as far as we were concerned, that was legal."
— Victor Davis Hanson [32:05]
The episode delves into Harvard University's struggles with anti-Semitism and campus activism, critiquing the institution's response and broader cultural implications.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"They brought in thousands of students from the Middle East... they understand that your DEI community has a long history of anti-Semitism."
— Victor Davis Hanson [39:16]
A discussion on racial dynamics within the Women's Basketball Association (WBA), focusing on conflicts involving star players and organizational responses.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"When that happened, there were a lot of people who objected to what Jackie Robinson had to go through. ... that's what they're doing to Caitlin Clark."
— Victor Davis Hanson [54:49]
The hosts analyze the trend of residents moving out of California, attributing it to high taxes, crime rates, and economic mismanagement.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"California is where half of all the homeless. Nearly half of all the homeless. California. And Gavin spent billions of dollars, and now he's blaming Trump for it and says, I would have solved the homeless, but Trump's economy."
— Victor Davis Hanson [64:00]
A critique of environmental policies and their impact on wildfire management in California.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"They don't let people come in and tend the forest because they believe that's unnatural or they don't want people in the mountains."
— Victor Davis Hanson [68:54]
In tributes to the late Congressman Charles Rangel, the hosts reflect on his contributions and shortcomings.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"He was a typical Democrat of the age. He was very powerful in the house. He had kind of a gravelly voice. He was a very funny guy."
— Victor Davis Hanson [72:03]
Concluding remarks touch upon the visibility of homelessness in different states, contrasting California with Washington D.C.
Key Points:
Notable Quote:
"California is where half of all the homeless. Nearly half of all the homeless."
— Victor Davis Hanson [74:29]
The episode navigates through a spectrum of contentious issues, offering a perspective that intertwines historical context with current events. Victor Davis Hanson and Sammy Wink present a critical stance on political leadership, institutional policies, and societal trends, urging listeners to reconsider prevailing narratives and assess the underlying factors influencing these multifaceted topics.
Notable Quotes Compilation:
"Trump has to show that he can't be pushed. He wants another month to kill more Ukrainians and show the Russian military and governing apparatchiks."
— Victor Davis Hanson [07:25]
"When you negotiate with Hamas, it has to be entirely on your self interest, not reaching a settlement, because they will not honor a settlement."
— Victor Davis Hanson [09:31]
"Bruce Springsteen, if you sat Bruce Springsteen or the AMA and you said, would you please explain the 1947 settlement... What would they say? I don't know. I'm just a member of the party."
— Victor Davis Hanson [14:29]
"Nobody's done more to empower China than he has Apple. And I don't think that's something that he wants to get into because he'll just reveal how dependent they are on him."
— Victor Davis Hanson [27:04]
"It's illegal to enter the United States without permission, but when you broke the law and you came in here and you stayed illegally, as far as we were concerned, that was legal."
— Victor Davis Hanson [32:05]
"They brought in thousands of students from the Middle East... they understand that your DEI community has a long history of anti-Semitism."
— Victor Davis Hanson [39:16]
"When that happened, there were a lot of people who objected to what Jackie Robinson had to go through. ... that's what they're doing to Caitlin Clark."
— Victor Davis Hanson [54:49]
"California is where half of all the homeless. Nearly half of all the homeless."
— Victor Davis Hanson [64:00]
"They don't let people come in and tend the forest because they believe that's unnatural or they don't want people in the mountains."
— Victor Davis Hanson [68:54]
"He was a typical Democrat of the age. He was very powerful in the house. He had kind of a gravelly voice. He was a very funny guy."
— Victor Davis Hanson [72:03]
This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key discussions and viewpoints expressed in the episode, providing listeners with an insightful overview of the diverse topics covered by Victor Davis Hanson and Sammy Wink.