Victor Davis Hanson (2:57)

I think they warned me that the doxacillin turns your teeth brown. So if you see my teeth looking brown during the episode, it's not anything untoward.

Jack Fowler (3:09)

Okay, I have another Brown comment I want to make, but I won't. Victor Davis Hansen is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marshawsky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. And he's the owner possessor of a website, the Blade of Perseus. Its address is victorhansen.com and I'll tell you towards the end of this episode why you should be subscribing. We are recording on Sunday, April 6, after a momentous week in America and around the world, this particular episode will be up on Tuesday, April 8. Between that will come a Monday. And that Monday may have epic financial consequences for America. We don't know. But I'm just letting you know that because when we come back from these important messages, the great Victor Davis Hanson is going to give a few more thoughts on tariffs, which he has discussed at some length with the great Sammy Wink in some prior episodes. But you'll hear that when we come back from these important messages.

OpenPhone Advertiser (4:19)

We'll be back to our show in just a moment. But first, an important message for anyone concerned about their financial future. Have you seen the headlines? The Department of Government Efficiency has uncovered a staggering $115 billion in government fraud. With investigators suggesting this is just the tip of the iceberg, financial analysts are now confirming what many suspected. The previous administration's economic success was largely artificial, propped up by funneling trillions through NGOs and creating an economic mirage. As this corruption is exposed, experts predict we're heading toward a short but deep recession when this false economic support evaporates. What does this mean for your retirement savings? Throughout our history, when governments manipulate economies and currencies collapse, physical gold has been mankind's most reliable store of value. Shouldn't you consider protecting part of your retirement with an asset that governments can't create with keystrokes or devalue through corruption? American Alternative Assets is offering a free wealth protection guide to help safeguard your financial future from the coming economic correction. Call 833-2-USAGOLD or visit victorlovesgold.com today for your free guide and learn why now may be the perfect time to add precious metals to your portfolio. That's 833-287-2465 or victorlovesgold.com protect what you've earned before the fraud economy collapses completely. Listen, Americans are fed up with Big Pharma controlling health care, raising prices, restricting access, and making it harder to get the medications they need. That's why more people are turning to all family pharmacy. You've probably heard of them. They're a family owned pharmacy in Florida that does things differently. They put you first, giving you the freedom to order what you need when you need it. So you're never without essential medications from ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to antibiotics, daily maintenance meds and emergency kits. They make sure you have access to the treatments you need without restrictions. They know how important it is to stay prepared, which is why they make it easy to stock up and order treatments in bulk. It's simple. Just order online and they ship your meds to your door. You don't even need your doctor involved. They work directly with licensed doctors. To get you the prescriptions you need. Visit their website today and get 10% off your order. Go to allfamilypharmacy.com Victor and use the code Victor10 again, that's all family pharmacy.com Victor and use the code VICTOR10VICTOR10 to get 10% off your order. Today.

Jack Fowler (7:24)

We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor's alive and he's two arms tied behind his back or half his brain tied behind his back. He can beat up anyone when it comes to scholarly thoughts. Victor, you have some thoughts you want to share in addition to what you've already discussed with Sammy? What are they?

Victor Davis Hanson (7:45)

I was curious because everybody says this is the end of Trump and everything, so I looked at the Harvard Harris poll. I'm speaking on a Sunday, and he's gone 1% approval to 49, 46. He's still approval and he's been subject to things that make, you know, it's kind of like the sensationalism of Russian collusion or a laptop disinformation or lawfare or. It's been incredible, the psychodramas. So I was trying to think why is he doing? And then I started looking at some data. Jack over When Trump came in in 2017, the stock market was about 19,000. Even after this precipitous. Is it 10% down from the first of the year? I think it is. The total losses or is it 13%? Anyway, the point I'm making is that they went up 65% under Trump, even with COVID 55% under Biden. And even with their sudden losses, they're right now on 38, 37,000. They're double what they had just nine years ago. Double second data point. Wages had gone way up for the first time in 12 years under Trump. They just skyrocketed $10,000. The average wage index rose under Trump's four years. And because of the inflation, nothing that Biden did, but the general inflation of wages to catch up with prices under Biden, they went up another 6,000. So they went up about 30% from 50,000 to 61. Okay. Or something not that quite high, 25%. But here's my point. Wall street is going crazy and angry about the tariffs that are designed to help workers. Whether they will or not, I don't want to get into. But they in this have doubled, they have 100% gain and the workers have only had about a quarter of that or a third of that. And they're not saying, well, wait a minute, they got all this money and I want to double my wages. They didn't. So the other thing about it is, why does Trump'swhy didn't his popularity collapse? Powerline had a good footnote today, Jack, and it quoted Business Insider of last year. And they pointed out maybe one of the reasons 10% of the American population own 93% of the stocks. So what we're watching is the media, legal, political, academic, investor, trader, corporate, class paranoid because their 100% profit, their 100% profit is now 90% profit. In other words, the stock market is where it was on January 1, two years ago, 2023. So all the money we got, I mean, even with inflation, we haven't really lost purchasing power to that degree. And then the other thing is, if the 1% own 93% of the stocks, the 50%, Jack, they own 1%, 1%. So they're not upset. They know that the stock market is very critical to their well being, whether they're participating or not, because it's a barometer of American and their pensions, some of them, pensions. But I'm talking about everything. Most people don't have a 401k or maybe 70, 60%, but 50% only what I'm getting is they only own 1% of the stocks in the whole market, 50% of American. So their pensions are pretty paltry. And so this is a class thing. And what is Trump trying to do? He's trying to appeal to a particular class that was told by Joe Biden, you've got to go. If you can go down in that mine and you can program or here we, you know, whether you like it or not, we're going to put you in the coal business, out of business, or Peter Strzok, I went to Walmart and I smell these guys are the dregs, garbage, you know, irredeemable. That whole vocabulary, that whole people, they're not. They're the ones that elected Trump. And pretty much Trump is at 50%. I don't believe some of the crazy polls. And this is after the worst press a president can get, which begs the question, why is he doing this? Why is he taking this risk? Bush didn't. Bush had tariffs. Reagan had tariffs, Biden had tariffs. Clinton had big tariffs. Nobody got angry. You know, I went back and look at some quotes, Jack. Nancy Pelosi said this free trade with China is a job loser. You know what Paul Krugman said about protection tariffs? There's a lot to be said for Merc wisdom. And you know what Warren Buffett wrote in 2003, it's about time we stop this huge trade deficit because they're buying land and everything, investments. So it's mostly because Trump's fingerprints are on the tariffs that people are upset. Why did he do it? He wants to get in Trump's mind, Jack. If a country runs up a big deficit and what he calls is disrespected or ripped off, then they have no respect and people will. It can't deter people. They have no influence. If they're tough and they demand equity from their friends and neutrals, then people respect them abroad. Then. Second, if he can cut 500 billion out of Doge this year, can't do a trillion like they say, but if he did 500 trillion, if he can deregulate and tax cut taxes and grow the economy, if he can get $4 trillion and maybe 20 million jobs out of that foreign investment, if he can get 500 billion out of revenues, he thinks he can get close to balancing the budget in a year or two and that will calm the bond markets, etc. Then the second thing is he's willing to negotiate. And it's like musical chairs. If you don't want to negotiate and everybody else is, the only way he'll lose is they all get together. Japan goes to China and says, we represent the Asian community, Mr. Chi, and can we stand solid together? That's not going to happen. It's more like every man for himself. If you're the last guy when the music stops, you have no chair because everybody's cut a deal and you demand high tariffs and you're not going to be competitive. And he knows that. So it's working its way out. The other thing is he's equating it with military, too, in his view. All the countries that don't make the NATO countries, there's still eight of them, you know, and Spain, for example, one point.

Jack Fowler (15:03)

I mean, they'll make the 2%.

Victor Davis Hanson (15:05)

Yeah. Canada 1.37. So in his view, they're the ones running surpluses with us. They're running surpluses because they don't spend anything. And so he's also looking at dollars going out of the United States. And he looks at Mexico, he sees 63 billion in remittances. He says cartel going out, 20 billion. He says he sees 171 billion dollar outflow. It's a quarter of a trillion dollars going into the Mexican economy from us. And you got a lot of people right in the town that I'm living that are. Because I see them at the store, they pay with EBT cards and then they pull out all this cash to buy non EBT covered foods. And I think those are the people who are sending the remittances to Mexico or Central America. And Trump is saying we're sending too much money out of the country. And it's not just the investment that I'm after for assembly and manufacturing, it's what they're doing. The Chinese are buying strategic land near military bases. The Middle east are buying professorships and curricula in our elite universities. They're inflating the price of homes in Los Angeles and everything with these third and fourth home. It's not always good for us. Don't monitor that type of foreign investment. So he has a lot of reasons that he's doing this. And finally, I have to be very careful. My Wall street friends, whom I dearly love, but they should. I would ask Wall street this, Jack, have any big recession or depression? I can name the two biggest ones that I call the 1929 Great Depression that lasted a decade and the 2008 meltdown, as I recall, they were not due to tariffs. They were due to what greedy Wall street speculators who were buying on the margin during 19, all during the 20s, oblivious to how Germany was inflating its currency, how oblivious to how we were loaning money to Germany so that Germany could pay France and Britain so France and Britain could pay their loans back. It was a crazy cycle. And that speculation blew up. And how did the 2008. Was it all those terrible. No, it was not. It was subprime mortgage securitization that the Wall street people loved. And they were trading all of these speculative huge mortgages that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had stupidly, on their prompt, allowed to happen. So I can't think of one recession or depression that was caused by excessive tariffs. And so I just Wish Wall street would stop quoting. Every time I pick up the Wall Street Journal, there's, there's a Smoot Hawley Act. Smoot Hawley Act. Smoot Hawley Act. Smoot Hawley Act Smooth. Hawley caused the. It did not cause the depression. It came after the stock market. It was punitive. It was preemptive. It came at a time of a huge, huge surplus in trade. There was no need for. It has nothing to do with these tariffs. If you want to talk about tariffs, talk about the Biden and Obama tariffs. They were similar. Okay. That's what I wanted to say.

Jack Fowler (18:29)

Well, that was quite the mouthful and an appropriate lead in for this note here. We're going to get back to your thoughts in a second. But first, here's an important message for anyone concerned about their financial future. And I think that might be anyone in America today. Have you seen the headlines? These are all headlines. The Department of Government Efficiency has uncovered a staggering $115 billion in government fraud. With investigators suggesting that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Financial analysts are now confirming what many have suspected. The previous administration's economic success was largely artificial, propped up by funneling trillions through NGOs and creating an economic mirage. As this corruption is exposed, experts predict we're heading toward a short but deep recession when this false economic support evaporates. What does this mean, ladies and gentlemen, for your retirement savings? Throughout history, when governments manipulate economies and currencies collapse, physical gold has been mankind's most reliable store value. Shouldn't you consider protecting part of your retirement with an asset that governments can't create with keystrokes or devaluing through corruption? American Alternative Assets is offering a free wealth protection guide to help safeguard your financial future from the coming economic correction. Call 8332- USA-GOLD or visit victorlovesgold.com Call today for your free guide and learn why now may be the perfect time to add precious metals to your portfolios. That's 833-287-2465 or victorlovesgold.com and he sure does protect.

Victor Davis Hanson (20:17)

I want to buy it as soon as I can afford it, but right now it's all in here.

Jack Fowler (20:21)

Well, call the number I just gave you. It's called 8332- USA-Gold.

Victor Davis Hanson (20:26)

I do have one of my crowns. It's gold. It's in a little plastic bag. I think it's worth $75. The person wrote on it.

Jack Fowler (20:33)

I just have one last thing to read. Protect what you've earned before the fraud economy collapses completely and we thank the good people from American Alternative Assets for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson show. Victor, I just want to pick up a point you made on the societal, cultural, class oriented aspect of this. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant was on. I saw a clip of him from the last day or two and it was interesting. He wasn't hanging tariffs on this but he said, you know, last year was record travel of Americans to Europe. And at the same time though, there are people with full time jobs who are now increasingly having to rely on local food pantries for basic foodstuffs. So there's a disparity here. I don't think he's begrudging Americans who take vacations to Europe. I did last year with my wife. But there is this need to address the lower 50%, lower economically as you brought out before. Yeah, people, they don't have stock so maybe they're also not worried so much about as I am what's happened in my 401k. So anyway, that was a point that he made.

Victor Davis Hanson (21:59)

That's a very good point and I see it all around me. And you know another thing that people haven't related to that Jack, if you stop 10,000 people of the poorest people in the world coming in every day and that's at the rate they came in at 12 or 13 million over the Biden, forget about finding them all. Just stopping it will mean less money going out from the federal, local and state governments and our health care. When I had this flu and sinus infection, I called up a local group and they said I really had fever and everything. And they come in Thursday, five days from now. I said okay. And then I called my GP and I got an appointment for a checkup, you know when it is in July. And I went to my urologist and they said, sorry, your appointment's the wrong day and you can come two months. Even though I showed up the day they sent me. And what was the common denominator? There was thousands of people in central California who are here illegally and they have no healthcare. And the state has $8 billion shortfall in Medicare, Medi Cal and 40% of the state is on it. And you have to take them because they need help and they have swamped all of these services. So if you stop that influx, you're going to make, you're going to save a lot of money and it's going to help Americans because Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden do not have to wait in the waiting room with 40 people who just arrived here from Venezuela or Colombia or Mexico.

Jack Fowler (23:39)

Oh, they don't even have to wait for haircuts. So if you're Nancy Pelosi, just do whatever the hell you want.

Victor Davis Hanson (23:44)

Hey Victor, Nancy Pelosi's lecture, I saw again and again and again where she gives that big. She looked pretty good. She was about 55 and she was screaming about the George W. Bush outreach to China and that she was a working class protectress and we have to have tariffs. It was pretty good. So was Bernie's. He wants tariffs. Then so did Warren Buffett. He wanted tariffs. So did Paul Krugman, as I said.

Jack Fowler (24:09)

Yeah, well, on that note, by the way, Victor, you're mentioning of Medicare, Medicaid fraud or abuse is a perfect jumping off point for the next topic we should get your take on and that has to do with doge investigation of Social Security and not only how it affects illegal use of our medical system, but also our election integrity. And we'll get your thoughts on that. And I don't know, fencing and 5% defense expenditures that Marco Rubio is talking about. Maybe another topic or two when we come back from these important messages.

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Jack Fowler (27:43)

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Joe recording on Sunday, April 6th, and this episode is up on Tuesday, April 8th. And we are blessed because Victor is alive and he is not delirious. So thank you for all those things. Good God in heaven. Victor, the dots connect here on the Doge investigation. I'm sure you saw, and I believe any number of our listeners or viewers have seen Elon Musk and one of his minions. I forget the guy's name, but they did. They were on a stage, they said, look at the amount of people that the border illegals who are now in the Social Security system. And then how many of them are on immediate on taking advantage of our healthcare system. And then out of curiosity, they compared some of these illegal citizens, illegal citizens, I'm sorry, non citizens, illegals, with the voting rolls in several states and of course found them any number of people registered and that they had voted.

Victor Davis Hanson (28:57)

The whole point, though, wasn't it? We all knew that. We all knew that they did two things, they being the left, they took Soros, Zuckerberg, all of those Pacific foundation money in 2020 and then they said, oh, we're going to lose. Covid. Covid. Covid. Covid. Covid. We have to change the voting laws in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina. And they did. And they said, you know, we're only going to have 30% of the electorate showing up where they'll have to show it an id, but the other people early and mail in voting. And then if you look at the actual numbers, it's about 60% were Democrats, 65%. So 70% of the electorate voted for the first time not at the polling station. And of that 70% over 60% were Democrats. And that was initiated because we have about 30 million illegal aliens here then. And a lot of them felt, well, I can tell you that our DMV in California just announced nonchalantly a few years ago, we mailed out 100,000 motor voter registration forms to non citizens. So everybody knows they're voting. That was the whole point of the open border. To bring in 12 million people who needed radical social attention. Cultural subsidies, economic housing, food, health. And then a larger government. And then higher tax taxes, more federal employees to address that. More claims of. Look at the poverty rate. We've imported 12 million people. They don't have Teslas. This is unfair. And then they're going to vote. Everybody knew that. And the left always has these little preemptive tropes they use. Have you ever mentioned that? That they would vote? That's racist. You're part of the great replacement theory, Nut. And then they would write books like Demography is Destiny and the New Democratic Majority.

Jack Fowler (30:59)

You know, remember when they cared about election integrity with Dinesh D'Souza because he made an excessive payment to a New York State Senate candidate and he actually was convicted. And the torment he was put under, well, we all know it's not.

Victor Davis Hanson (31:17)

I remember when they felt also to your point, that if there was some violence going on in a protest and somebody was walking nearby or was accompanying them in the general vicinity, they were party to the violence on January 6th. So we locked up about 400 people that had no participation at all. But then I noticed that when you're at a university and they're breaking in and destroying things and you're right next to them screaming and yelling with an illegal mask on, you're just a bystander. You're not part. You're not responsible for the violence.

Jack Fowler (31:55)

One last Doge thing, Victor doesn't have to do with Social Security, but a random bit of corruption they found. Doge uncovers VA's agreement to pay $380,000 a month for minor website modifications.

Victor Davis Hanson (32:15)

I saw that.

Jack Fowler (32:17)

Yeah. And now this work is being executed by one internal VA software engineer who's spend less than 10 hours a week. What is that? 380amonth? This is four to five million dollars. Just like that. I think. Victor, your thoughts on this? We all remember William Proxmire and giving out the monthly award, but it was seen as a lark. And this is the way government, but I think the population has, or the majority of the population is now has embraced this.

Victor Davis Hanson (32:55)

Again, anytime Elon Musk gets those geniuses, these sober, judicious middle aged guys that are very successful and he puts them in a room and they conduct a seminar in sober and judicious terms with Rhett Baer. The result is shocking how brilliant these guys are and the fraud that they've uncovered. But anytime he gets on the stage with a chainsaw, it doesn't work. Anytime Donald Trump gets that chart and he starts saying these are what the tariffs are against us and these are our replies. And he's very instructive. It works. Anytime he tweets out that tariffs are beautiful or Europe is pathetic. True that. That is, he doesn't win as much. So a lot of it is modality and tone. And that's very, that's really important, I think, to do that.

Jack Fowler (33:50)

Right.

Victor Davis Hanson (33:51)

And I wish they can get the message out. We didn't. I keep hitting, beating that dead horse. We didn't want to do this. You guys forced us to do it. You know, Canada, I thought they were running a $60 billion. That was some of the figures. But I just looked at the reformulated. They're running 100 billion. So all these Canadian guys are angry at Trump and we hate Americans. And you think, well, you didn't even patrol your side of the border. You have $100 billion surplus with your close friend. That puts you under the nuclear shield and you spend 1.3% on defense. That's no friendship. He needs to say that. But in a polite way.

Jack Fowler (34:29)

I think all Americans love Canada and probably most Canadians love Americans. Did you see Peggy Noonan's piece in.

Victor Davis Hanson (34:38)

Yeah, I don't like them when they love us to death.

Jack Fowler (34:42)

Well, that's. Yes, I agree. But did you see Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal piece which goes, oh, our dear friends and they landed at Juneau or go. I forget which beach, Juneau or gold.

Victor Davis Hanson (34:55)

My advice, my reaction to that is.

Jack Fowler (34:59)

I hope people are watching this podcast instead of listening.

Victor Davis Hanson (35:04)

Which way is the wind blowing?

Jack Fowler (35:05)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, let's get a little cultural now, Victor, for some of your thoughts. And this has to do with fencing, which is a long time Olympic sport.

Victor Davis Hanson (35:21)

At UC Santa Cruz. They had a great fencing team. When I was a student. I tried it.

Jack Fowler (35:25)

Oh, well, I won't tell you another day. I'll tell you how the NYU fencing team ruined my wedding night in Worcester, Massachusetts. But that's another story. Another day, and it's a legitimate story. But there was a fencing tournament, I believe in Maryland. And Stephanie Turner, 31 year old woman, took a knee rather than fight the tran. I'm going to say tranny. I don't know what to say. Redmond Sullivan, who I think had been fencing as late as December as a man and now is fencing as and she was expelled from the tournament. And the USA fencing director Damian Layfeldt turns out he is a big pro transsexual competition guy. But I'm glad she did this. This is terrific.

Victor Davis Hanson (36:16)

Yeah I am too. And notice how the entire narratives are being flipped. If you also parallel that with Pete Hexess non sexist new requirements especially for special forces and combat units that everybody is required to do the same level of physicality and there is no longer any contextualization or exception for women. And the point of that is that when you're in combat nobody really cares what your gender is. They do care whether you can carry a guy off the battlefield. And so the subtext of those special Lloyd Austin exceptions for women was that women apparently in the Biden administration's view needed to have different physical requirements because they could not compete on the same level. Obviously given their muscular skeletal size is not that of men on average. And so now we're told that women have bought into that and they understand that. So they don't want to fence. They don't want to play volleyball. They don't want to with men because they will lose and get hurt. And that's very understandable. And that is also why men that are in combat might not want to rely on the average woman that won't have the same physical strength. And it's no argument women to get some 6 foot woman who works out kind of like that Adam's rib movie with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in the courtroom they bring in a big weightlifting woman to show they're equal. But my point is most women maybe if you take a weightlifting woman who's a professional weightlifter next to a spaghetti arm antifa demonstration you can make your point. But by and large men in the military are physically stronger. I'm not saying they're smarter but they're physically stronger and you have to protect everybody. But that's the argument has been one that I think most women realize now that they don't have the advantages in muscles and skeletal size and they need to have their own protected turf. I don't understand. Is it. Why is it. Why don't they have a special trans. Is it because they want to welch in and graft onto women's sports and if they had their own trans league they wouldn't censor 001% of the population. It would just be.

Jack Fowler (38:42)

If you were at a bar Victor what would the guys say? Because these Guys are a bunch of losers. They can't win as men and there's no women becoming transsexual and becoming men and competing in men's divisions and winning. I mean, this is. This is. And they're missing. These guys are misogynists too. A lot of them.

Victor Davis Hanson (39:00)

Every argument they don't. They will never answer any argument. If you say, if I'm a woman, but I really think I'm a man, but I was born with a musculoskeletal system that's female, I can just change it. And the next thing I know, if I want to, I can be a guard on the Detroit Lions. That's not going to happen.

Jack Fowler (39:19)

George Plimpton did that.

Victor Davis Hanson (39:21)

Biological woman. And that means that you're going to have a disadvantage. And that's why we don't hear one of you in male sports winning medals. Doesn't happen.

Jack Fowler (39:31)

Do you remember, though, the hostility of that. I think she was number three. She still may be in the LA fire department. The one that said, well, too bad. You know, if you're stuck in the wrong room and you're a big fat guy and that woman can't drag you down or stairs, you deserve to die.

Victor Davis Hanson (39:47)

When they fired the fire chief, I think something happened to her. Yeah. Her attitude was, if you're a white male and you don't think I can carry you out, then it's your fault you get burned up.

Wired to Fish Coffee Advertiser (40:00)

Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (40:00)

Yeah.

Jack Fowler (40:01)

Wrong place, wrong time, sucker. Too bad. Hey, Victor, let's get on one other cultural matter here. If I can only find my pa. Here we go. Today's. Well, there are more cultural matters to come. But before we go to a break, Ricky Schott has a column in today's New York Post. Again we're recording on Sunday, April 6th. It's titled Harvard University, the Ivy League Teaching Remedial Math. Here's how it begins. Harvard might be America's most elite university, but now it's offering remedial math classes. The school's math department is providing a new scale back math class for freshmen who are apparently arriving on campus lacking foundational skills. In high school math basics like geometry and algebra, it's not even trigonometry. Harvard is quick to blame these math gaps on pandemic learning losses, but in truth, administrators brought this mess on themselves by scrapping standardized testing requirements during the pandemic, all in the name of equity. Victor, you have talked about people you know in business seeing the value of the branding of these diplomas, of these institutions having real meaninglessness when it comes to employment. But that's after four years. This is even the beginning of four years. They're not seem to me to be qualified for that university, but maybe they are. You wouldn't see this in Hillsdale, by the way. Your thoughts?

Victor Davis Hanson (41:39)

Everybody knows that these universities are existing on the fumes of their past glories when they had average admittance requirements of about 770 minimum on the SAT, or straight A's from the top schools at 4.5, something like that, with advanced place courses. And then after George Floyd, they all had to run to see who was the most virtuous all the college. Oh, we're going to drop the. No, we're going to drop the act. No, we dropped it before you did. We're going to not rate High School GPAs. Well, we did that last week. That's what they were in that frenzy because they're academics and they have no sense, no independent thinking because they're insecure people. And who wouldn't be with lifetime employment in the faculty lounge? I mean, gosh, on hanging around with young people all day? So they only had three choices, as I said. They either had to inflate the grades and Yale gives 80% A's, I think Stanford's a 75, or they had to water down the courses, and that's what these are, remedial courses, or they have to introduce new ones because if they don't, given their admissions, then you're going to be called a systemic racist because it's going to show up in your grading that the people who did not come in with an SAT score are predominantly non. I mean, they're DEI people, not all, but a lot of them are. And if you give them what they deserved in class, you're going to be in big trouble. And so they just don't want to die on the altar of standards. And they're looking at a lot of stuff. Stanford was notified last week that they're going to Marco Rubio and he's been wonderful on this. He doesn't even play around with the media. He just says, I don't want to hear. It has nothing to do with the First Amendment, nothing to do with any of the amendments. It's just a simple bureaucratic. We give green cards and visas to people who say they're coming here either to work or to study. And we don't give them to engage in violent protest, we don't engage in anti Semitic overt antisemitism and we don't give visas to people who Actively and on apology, unapologetically support a terrorist designated organization like Hamas. And they do that and they've been deported and one will encourage the others. They said they're going to stop this? Well, I don't think so. I think what I've seen instead on the campus is a quietude to think about that. But all of these, it's about money. And when you see J.D. vance hitting this topic and the people in the Senate and I think they're going to get the 51% vote in the House and I think they're going to tax them anywhere from 15 to 20% on their end. They're talking about $500,000 worth of endowment for every student. Some people want a million, some people want less. But a lot of these big places are going to end up paying a couple hundred million dollars minimum a year to the government. Donald Trump really wants revenue so he can balance the budget. And that's you've said he wants. Well, he's going to tax the endowments. He's probably going to do things where they have to cover or post security for their student loan programs and get the government off of a trillion dollars in overdue loans. So I think the universities aren't going to get any support. They pull very low now and they don't get it. All they do is give speeches to each other about how humane and morally superior they are to everybody. And then they look at their product and they said, I tell you right now, if I walked across the Stanford campus, which I do when I'm up there, when I'm not fighting whatever I have, but when I'm up there and I walk across that campus, if I stopped and said to five people, can you name the president? Who? The president during the American Civil War. Can you tell me anything about what D Day is? Would you please explain to me the Pythagorean theorem? And can you tell me what the difference between an ionic column and a Doric column or what even ionic endoric means or what's the pan Partha? None of them would know it. Nope. They spent all this time in other things. I'm not talking about the smart kids too. The people that took, you know, that were competitive. And the answer to all this is we should have had a Marshall Plan to go into K12 and just say to people, we don't care about the teachers union, let them die in the vine. We're going to make a private academy and we're going to have a classical curriculum. And where that has happened, it's worked, but it's the teachers unions.

Jack Fowler (46:38)

Well, I think the greatest indicator of your future is not whether you can take a math class at Harvard, but whether you can read at third grade level.

Victor Davis Hanson (46:50)

I don't think people can anymore. The reason I quit at Cal State Fresno after 21 years, I was assigning. I used to assign. I taught a class called Introduction to Western Humanities, and it started with Homer and it went all the way to contemporary American novels. But in the first part, I would have Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, maybe Tacitus or Livy, Herodotus, Thucydides, about seven authors. And by the end of that 21 years, I had two. The Iliad and the Aeneid. And people said they couldn't read them. So what I used to do, Jack, is I would have a student who came in my office and said, I'm going to flunk your class because I can't read this thing. It doesn't make sense. So I would say to them, would you read out loud the first page? Sing God as the wrath of Achilles. Well, I don't know who Achilles is. What does wrath mean? I have no idea what wrath means. And then buckler. Well, that's a shield. Can you look it up? No, I don't ever use a dictionary. And I said, would you read it out loud? Then just read. Because you say you can't read it. Read out loud. And usually you can read about 180 words a minute. And I swear to God, it would take like 10 minutes to read a paragraph. Nobody could read anything. And so I would ask them, you know, there's 600 pages, there's 12 or 12,000 lines. At the rate you're going, this would take you three or four months. And they said exactly. They couldn't.

Jack Fowler (48:39)

And this is 20 plus years ago, right?

Victor Davis Hanson (48:42)

Yes. Yeah, yeah. They cannot read. They don't read. They don't know how to write. They don't know anything. There's a small elite, the elite that's invested in the stock market. That's pretty much the same ratio that knows how to read in America. And by age, I want to be careful. The people who are working class people are probably better educated in their 50s and 60s than today's elite at the elite campuses. They can read better. I think maybe.

Jack Fowler (49:13)

Victor. I saw an NYU professor and I forget his name. I made a note somewhere but can't find it. But he was going on about a point you've raised in the past. The colleges with the big. We were talking before about taxing the endowments or the return on the investment. Billion dollar plus endowment institutions that are small are essentially hedge funds that are running colleges and keeping their capacity small. Now there are places that like Thomas Aquinas College, our friends out there where you reach you max out with your actual capacity. But there are many places that are not they could accept an additional hundred or 200 students. They have the money there. But why aren't they spending the money on giving more people the allegedly greater education you can get at this great.

Victor Davis Hanson (50:05)

Private college, they're letting in about a million foreigners students and they don't give them any foreign aid. I mean student aid. They pay 110% in yield dollars.

Jack Fowler (50:15)

Yeah. So it's a business. I mean it is a hedge fund. All right. Well anyway my friend, we have a couple of other topics to get your take on. You aforementioned Marco Rubio has some serious thoughts about increasing defense spending amongst by our allies and maybe a proxy voting fight in Congress. And we will get your thoughts on these matters Victor when we come back from these important messages.

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Jack Fowler (54:41)

We are back with the Victor Davis Hanson show recording on Sunday, April 6th. This episode is up on Tuesday, April 8th. Victor has a website, the Blade of Perseus. Go there, type in victorhansen.com, hit the return button and you will be so happy if you have not been there yet. By the way, Victor, we have so many new followers of this podcast via YouTube and rumble rather than mere audio. And our home site, by the way, is justthenews.com that's for the audio function here. But so many people you might not know about Victor's website. When you go there, you'll find links to the articles he writes weekly for American Greatness in the syndicated column and the archives of these podcasts and and links to his books and other appearances and Ultra articles, which are twice a week Victor writes an exclusive article for the Blade of Perseus and Once a week an exclusive video. It is $65 a year to subscribe which is discounted from $6.50 a month. So that's the blade of Perseus. Victorhansen.com youm can also find Victor on X. His handle is Dhanson. VDH's Morning cup is on Facebook. As I said before YouTube, now you're doing a weekly, excuse me, a daily five days a week video for the Daily Signal. The Victor's everywhere. Everywhere. Victor. Let's see. U.S. wants NATO and Canada to spend 5% of GDP on defense. U.S. secretary of State Marco Rubio asked allied foreign ministers gathered in Brussels on Thursday last week to increase their defense spending to 5% of their GDP, a very substantial increase for most members of NATO and considerably more than even the United States spends as a percentage of gdp. We do want to leave here with an understanding that we are on a pathway, a realistic pathway to every single one of the members committing and fulfilling a promise to reach up up to 5% of spending. Rubio said from Brussels. It's tall order, Victor. As you just mentioned, a lot of these places can't even get to their 2% commitment.

Victor Davis Hanson (56:56)

But I thought this is easy because remember Stormer went over, he went back to Britain and he and Macron said, you know, basically they treated our poor little Zelensky so rude. And then they got, and as I mentioned I did a couple European podcast where they were shouting and yelling and their point was that we don't need the United States. Take your stupid badges. We don't need them. And what they were saying was we're going to have this huge European pan European force. And then to do that you need 5%. They would rather let in 16% of the population of Germany was not born in Germany and Britain's got is just on uncontrollable as is France. So in their view if it's a question of spending 2% GDP or 1% more GDP and arming ourselves and contributing to the defense of the west, they would rather let in people without background checks from the Middle East. And that's what they're doing. And then if you listen to what the propaganda is from the Middle east, it's that they're slowly outnumbering their host. They went from 6 to 7 to 8 to 10 to 15 to percent and that's the idea. So I don't think it looks good for native born Europeans. Aggregate fertility rates about 1.4 and the people coming in are about three and.

Jack Fowler (58:25)

A half and the people Coming in. They believe in something. The people who are born my paisans back in Italy. Do they believe in Western civilization anymore?

Victor Davis Hanson (58:39)

No, they believe in premises. There is one person that has something more than I do, then that was because he got it unfairly and it's the government's job to give what he doesn't need to me. And that's what their whole. That's what drives Europe. French Revolution.

Jack Fowler (59:00)

Well, Victor, we're going a little fast and a little truncated today, so we want to keep you alive. We have another topic and if we have a little time, I'm going to raise npr. But aforementioned promise to talk about proxy voting. So, Carol Swaim, who served with you on the 1776 Commission, wonderful person.

Victor Davis Hanson (59:23)

She's very bright, very well spoken. She played a critical role in the. Claudine Gay stepped down when she had a. Remember, Jack, she had a twofold argument. One of that Claudine Gay, who was lauded by all of the bicoastal elite, was really. Had plagiarized from Ms. Swain.

Jack Fowler (59:47)

That's right. From her. Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (59:49)

And then more importantly, she pointed out that at a point when she was liberal, they were lavishing on her all sorts of Ivy League laurels and offers. And then when she became conservative, she was out in the wilderness. But that Claudine Gay did not just plagiarize from her, but was an utter mediocrity. And that was what she said. It was both true.

Jack Fowler (60:14)

Yeah. By the way, that reminds me, Bill Ackman had said he was going to go through this plagiarism project. Remember that we had to look at the term papers. Well, I wonder. We should investigate the.

Victor Davis Hanson (60:25)

He tweeted something about me the other day.

Jack Fowler (60:27)

He did?

Victor Davis Hanson (60:28)

Yeah. He said that he liked what I said about tariffs, but he had one disagreement, that they were not reciprocal. And I think they are reciprocal. It's how you define reciprocity. I didn't mean to suggest that if Germany says we're going to go down to two, then we are two or three or what? But whatever country has a higher tariff of whatever size, we are going to look at them in a way to lower their tariffs. Not necessarily symmetrical. And then if people say, well, why did we level tariffs on Israel? Israel hasn't dropped their tariffs. They just said they were going to. Well, why are we doing it with Australia this flat 10%? Because they run a surplus. I don't think that's going to stand, by the way. I think that Trump will match Australia's tariffs, but they have a Little problem with beef. They ad cow from Canada, as I said 2003. And then for 16 years they banned all beef. And then they came back, I think in 2019 and said, okay, it's kind of a gimmick to keep your beef out. Australian beef is really good. When I was there, it's beautifully, it's grass fed, but it's very expensive. And they really don't want these big, husky, fat cows that are in American stockyards and force fed, you know what I mean, shipped over there at half the price. So they have to come up because they're a free trade country. They have to come up with a gimmick. And the gimmick for 16 years was, well, they might have mad cow disease. And now it is, well, okay, that was a gimmick. But we got to make sure that every cow that's dressed out was born in the United States. So you can't import cows from Mexico calves and then raise them. And that's what, that's the gimmick. And that's part of Trump's tariff policy. He's trying to tell us it's not just the tariff, but these other countries. I'll give you another example. Europe will not let chickens go in the United States, from the United States into. Because in the United States, if you buy a fresh chicken, a whole chicken and you put it on the counter, it because of the process of dressing it out and all that in the air, you can have botulism if it's not, you know, refrigerated. So they passed a law that said they all sanitize. So we kind of spray chlorine on our chickens and then you can wash it off. But that was the excuse that Europe used not to allow American chickens into Europe. And so what Trump is trying to say is there's all these gimmicks, health safety rules that they use. China does a lot of them, just to stop the tariffs. And they need to explain that and break it down so we understand what they're doing.

Jack Fowler (63:32)

Yeah, well, the regulatory state of other nations is just as much an issue as the tariff rates. Well, back on Carol Swaim Victor. She wrote an op ed in the New York Post that says, stand firm GOP proxying voting makes a mockery of Congress. And this became quite an issue last week where here's what she writes. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, has sparked a bitter public feud with some of her own party as she pushes to allow some House members to vote by proxy. It's thrust this critical question into the spotlight. Will Congress uphold its foundational role or erode it under the guise of modern convenience for new parents? Luna, a sitting member of Congress when she welcomed a child in 2023. Part partnered with Representative Brittany Peterson, who's a Democrat from Colorado, another new mother, to advocate for a rule change allowing Newhouse parents to delegate their votes to colleagues for 12 weeks postpartum. I see this is quite a slippery slope, but what do you think, Victor?

Victor Davis Hanson (64:37)

I have no problem with it. If they can find, if they, what they do is they get a, you know, a major vote and they say, I'm going to vote Republican, conservative. Is there anybody who's going to vote liberal? And then that person says yes. And if they have a. They're pregnant too, then they don't. Neither one has to show up and they can't. They've done that for years. The only problem with it for Republicans is twofold, as I see it. Number one, they have to be genuine that they oppose the Democrat. You know what I mean? If a Democrat says, well, I want no restrictions on. I'm going to vote for a bill with no restrictions whatsoever on abortion and you can vote that, you'll have to vote that way. And then they'll try to. It's very hard to get a perfect symmetry is what I'm saying. So they both don't show up. The other problem is that the trademark brand of the Trump administration is show up for work and no zoom, no three days at home, no doing the Internet in your living room in your pajamas, you got to work. That's very hard for a Republican congresswoman to say, I'm not going to show up for work. Yeah, so that's a messaging problem.

Jack Fowler (65:54)

Yeah, I think it would expand too. Well, I'm the husband of the woman my wife just had. Imagine what's his name, Duffy, who had like eight or nine kids, who's now the secretary of transportation. You know, I want my 12 weeks old, you know, gay couple, gay congressman, they adopt a kid. Well, I need my 12 weeks.

Victor Davis Hanson (66:13)

So I have a feeling this is my children. My wife was working at the post office and I was teaching four classes, five classes a semester often. And I had three kids that were at that time, I think six, eight, 10 or 10. And they were at three different schools. My wife went to work at noon and came back at midnight and I got done teaching. I would go teach a 7 o'clock in the morning class, 40 mile commute. And anyway, I would teach these classes and then I Would get in my pickup and drive like I got three tickets like a madman so I could go to each of the three schools and pick them up. And then I was exhausted. So did I make them a nice Caesar salad? No. You know what I did? They would go like this. Can we have a Happy Meal? I said, it's too expensive. Come on, we want a Happy Meal. Kfc. I said, okay. And then I would love my fries and milkshake. I haven't had fast food in 40 years. I haven't. But anyway, then I would bring them home and they would just go crazy, and I would. I had all these pennies in a jar to pay for it. So what's getting me now is that they're in their 40s, and every once in a while they'll make an offhanded remark like, I can't believe you force fed us McDonald's Big Macs. And I said, you gulped them up. You gave us a milkshake. We should have been eating avocado juice. We should have been drinking avocado juice or something. I said, are you serious? You had the time of your life.

Jack Fowler (67:53)

No favors. Go punished, Victor. So even from our. Especially from our children sometimes. Hey, last thing. Let's get you. Because I promised Mrs. Hansen wouldn't kill you today. So that's her job if she wants it. Last topic. Let's just get your take on npr. PBS funding Kathryn Maher. If that's how she pronounces it. Yeah. She testified before she. We talked about her last year. She was so obnoxious with her jack.

Victor Davis Hanson (68:30)

I don't remember. I don't recall. I have no recollection of saying that. That's what she said.

Jack Fowler (68:35)

89. Nothing. Breakdown. Democrats to Republicans among staff. Foot dragging on the. Not even more than foot dragging. Burying the Hunter Biden coverage. I mean, should the US Taxpayers be. What's the point of. I could see there's a point for Radio Free Europe, hypothetically. But I don't see the point.

Victor Davis Hanson (68:56)

He blew that all up. The writer who said that. They were lying. They were all left wing. They lie about everything. One of the things. The biggest lie is NPR says something like this. Well, this. You must remember that we only have 1 to 2% federal funds. So we are. No, you are lying. You only have 1.2percent of federal funds because all those productions that you buy, Downington Abbey, all that stuff you Give to your 400 or so Regional stations, and they pay you money for that, and then they pay you dues for that. So the mothership NPR in Washington. Yeah. You don't you get all this corporate money from, you know, the foundations, Tides foundation, all of them. That's fine, the MacArthur foundation, but you would have no NPR at all in Washington, D.C. you've got them all over. You got them in Fresno, you got them in Bakersfield. So where do they get their money to pay you the money to buy, to rent or pay or license all the stuff that you give them, the evening news, Fresno will air it. They have to pay for it. And that money means that they can claim they only have 1 or 2% federal funds. But where does the federal comes come from the Corporation of public broadcasting, the $500 million a year, half a billion dollars, it goes to the regional station for this Ponzi thing. So the federal government gives most of the money. They do have individual fundraising for all of these towns and cities to have a budget for the year. And most of their budget is besides the upkeep of the station is to buy product from npr. And then NPR can say, well, we're getting money from our stations. We're not getting money from the government, but the stations are giving money, giving money from the government to pay you in government money.

Jack Fowler (71:12)

Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (71:13)

So I think this is not 1971 or wherever it was when some of the ideas came forward for NPR. It's 2025 and you turn on Direct TV, there's 550 stations. There's, you know, the streaming. It's everywhere, thousands of stations. Some of them are cultural channels, art, cooking. Anything that NPR offers you can get on private subscriptions, streaming or DirecTV. And there's a big every type of politics you can go to pay a DirecTV and you say get anything you want. And if they're not going to provide balanced comment. I mean when David Brooks is your conservative analyst on television and it's, you know, so my point is that they should just go out in the private market and raise. They can get all those billion. Why isn't the Soros foundation give them 500 million a year and then they can do it and they can be as left wing as they want, but they represent the people's money and they're misrepresenting and her performance was a catastrophe because every time they ask her, did you believe that you still, didn't you write that you believe that white privilege is there and it makes it impossible? Did I say that? I don't recall that. And it was just again and again. Did you say this about Donald Trump? Like just she's a 1% wealthy woman representing the wealthy white bi coastal educated professional class that calls everybody a racist. She said America was fundamentally racist, I recall.

Jack Fowler (73:01)

But she's one of those types from years ago that didn't know anyone who voted for Nixon. How could Nixon have been elected president?

Victor Davis Hanson (73:11)

That was Paul and Terry.

Jack Fowler (73:13)

Yeah, it was.

Victor Davis Hanson (73:15)

Well, Victor, we've. She's never met a McGovern Nixon voter.

Jack Fowler (73:20)

We've got to let you get to taking your some more medicine. But first, before we do, we're going to end the show on a couple of things. One, I want to say thank you to folks who've written me about Civil Thoughts. And someone said please say it slower. Civil Thoughts, that's the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Thought Society. Comes out every Friday. I have 14 recommended readings. How do you get it? You go to civilthoughts, all1word.com. Sign up. Again, it's free. We're not selling your name. I know you will enjoy it. Victor Hanson's website, Victor Davis Hansen's website, the Blade of perseus. Go to VictorHansen.com do sign up there. We have so many comments on Victor now that it's this shows up on YouTube and rumble and I have two comments to read. One is, I assume this is from a conversation that you had with the great Sammy Wink. And it's from Emilian and it says my late father, World War II vet, European theater of operation, would have been absolutely delighted over this deftly presented video. I can hear him saying, now you tell him, Hanson, he can't be here now to see this. So I'm watching it and relishing every moment for him and for myself. Thank you. So that's Emily. And then, and then this is from Apple. Now people can go on Apple and rate the show zero to five stars. And practically everyone gives Victor five. If it's not a five. The excuse is usually Fowler, but let's we'll talk about that another day. This is a comment from NP Griffin and it's titled Versailles Outstanding. Full of substance, engaged and with Sammy's questions, musings, Victor shares wealth of knowledge, history, politics, life. Listening to Victor since I first listened to him making sense of politics of the 1980s on the art Bell Show. Following Victor on radio podcasts is a wonderful ride. Thank you, Victor. You are so appreciated. Victor. I never thought of you as a ride, but you know, I was looking.

Victor Davis Hanson (75:35)

For a letter I got from my angry reader on the Ultra and it said be careful. And then as you are a maggot cock, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. And he actually put his name on it with his email. I didn't list his email, but I have it on the next ultra read. I just noticed that the ones that go directly to me and not the website are getting more and more inflammatory. Yeah, well, I guess it's the time.

Jack Fowler (76:08)

I just have to tell you one anecdote. There's this great writer, Bill Kaufman, and he writes for the Spectator and all kinds of publications over the years. And he's a bit friend. And I mentioned him in Civil Thoughts a few weeks ago, something he wrote. And then he wrote me the other day. He said, jackie, I can't believe this. And he lives up in Elmira, New York, or Batavia, upstate, near Rochester. And I'm walking down the street, and there's a guy in a big bucket truck. They're cutting down a huge dead maple tree. And the guy in the top says, hey, hey, Bill, you're famous. He says, why? He says, jack Fowler mentioned you. Do you know Jack Fowler now? I know this guy in the bucket truck. I don't know him, but I know he had to have heard about. He must have signed up for Civil Thoughts. No, he's a listener to the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Victor Davis Hanson (77:04)

Yeah, we have a divorce.

Jack Fowler (77:05)

We certainly do. It's great.

Victor Davis Hanson (77:08)

I'm gonna find out if I'm going to give a Victor Hansen Ultra Award to the person that can send me an email and says, you can beat a sinus infection without taking any of these horrific antibiotics just by doing the following. Fill in the blanks.

Jack Fowler (77:22)

Ancient.

Victor Davis Hanson (77:23)

I've had about 100 of them in my life. I've been operated, as I said, three times in my sinuses. I got to find a way of not taking this crappy antibiotic.

Jack Fowler (77:33)

Well, see if the. Maybe pin cushions. What do you call that when you get stuck with pins?

Victor Davis Hanson (77:38)

I did this once. I mentioned it, and somebody sent me a National Institute of Health long, detailed blind study. You know what it said, Jack? It said for people who have had sinus infections longer than two weeks, chronic sinitis. And the worst symptom was fatigue. And that is my worst symptom. But this is what. Versus a placebo and nasal wash. So you take doxacillin or Augmentin. Terrible antibiotics. It screws your flora all up. You get tired, but you put up with it. It's going to kill it. At the end of three weeks of that. I probably have to take another three weeks to recover at the end of three weeks versus people who took the Augmentin or doxacillin, but it wasn't really. It was empty. The capsule, it had something else in it. Sugar. I don't know. Guess what? There was no difference between washing your nose out with an eddy pot once or twice a day and just filling yourself up with antibiotic.

Jack Fowler (78:40)

Oh, we know. We know the consequences of the antibiotics also. Hey, one last. Anyway, one last thing I mentioned last week. You know, my daughter was getting married and so many people wrote me some nice notes and it was very lovely. Thanks for your prayers. It was a great, great wedding. On that Victor, you need to go to bed or take some more medication. So we will be back soon. Thanks folks for listening. We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye bye.

Victor Davis Hanson (79:10)

Thank you everybody for listening and viewing.

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