← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
The Victor Davis Hanson Show
The Echoes of History: From Ancient Wonders to 20th Century Events
01:19:01
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [01:29]
Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. This is our Saturday edition where we do something a little bit different. We finished the seven great wonders of the ancient world and we're going to start on a new venture with the momentous events of the 20th century that brought historical change. So we'll be looking at that in the middle segment, but we'll do a little bit of news first and at the end, so stay with us and we'll be right back after these messages.
- [02:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [05:10]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor's the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne Marshabowsky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website and I hope everybody comes and joins us. Victorhanson.com it's called the Blade of Perseus and we have subscription fee of 650amonth or $65 a year. So we hope you come join us. We've got lots of new stuff and changes going on on the website probably for the next month or so. So come join us. Well Victor, I was just curious since we it is the weekend and people go watch sports on the weekend. I was wondering if you watched the super bowl and your impressions on the super bowl and then we'll get into an update on Hamas.
- [06:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I don't want to offend our viewers, because there's Eagles fans and. But it was the worst Super Bowl. I mean, there was no drama from the first minute. The Chiefs didn't come out to play that the Eagles had a strategy to put maximum pressure on their quarterback and that was it. They couldn't. They could. They were ossified. They'd won two prior Super Bowls. They hadn't made changes because they got complacent. The Eagles had made radical changes. So they reversed the verdict of two years earlier. They have to be very careful. The super bowl halftime show by Kendrick Lamar was utterly incoherent. By that. What do I mean by that? I don't know what that. I couldn't understand any of the first song's lyrics. They were incomprehensible. They were just mumbled. I don't think anybody understood. Everybody was right. It was like, he's the great rapper, so you don't apply any standards to evaluating his performance. He's just him. Remember, Kendrick Lamar was the one that Barack Obama invited to the White House, and he did to Pimp and Butterfly. That was his name. And in it, I wrote a column about this. He said, gotta kill Popo. He was talking about killing the police. And yet he was invited. That was when another rapper went with him and his ankle brace went off in the White House. So Obama thought he was really cool to appeal to young black men by worshiping Kendrick Lamar, even though he had advocated killing the police. So then he gave this performance and no one knew what the first song was about. The second one was, the only redeeming feature was it didn't have a lot of repetitive choruses. It was just one long narrative. And it was basically that my rival, Drake, who half America doesn't know who he is, is a pedophile. And I'm going to hint that. And the rappers, you know, they have a feud. Well, the whole world doesn't want to know about their feud. Who cares? So, yes, I'm an old white guy, and you're going to say Victor should have known that and he had no business. But the point is, I am an old white guy and I'm not supposed to judge other genres of music, but I think I could get 10 people on the planet from all over the planet. And I could have a Beatles song. I could have a Mark Laufer song. I could have Creedence Clearwater song. I could have even a Bob Dylan. And then I would play that. And they would say the latter is music. And that. So it was not a good show. And that I don't know what the, the. They, they've recovered because they were headed toward NBA type hemorrhaging. But they got rid of. Take the knee and they got rid of the end racism. And it's one of these phenomenon where I think the View women said that Donald Trump hated it because there were all black people and the, all of the chorus, you know, they tried to I think balance the fact they were not diverse. They were not diverse. There was no dei, it was all black. But they had, they wore costumes that, that emulated the flag. And then they had Samuel Jackson and I think some people call him an Uncle Tom. I thought that was cruel. But he was an Uncle Sam. That was in the View, I think or some. Maybe it was on Gutfield or something.
- [09:55]
Sammy Wink
No. Yeah, that woman on the View that was said that the, she had a whole bunch of followers on social media that apparently were very happy that it was all black. And then she said, I, she said he was like an Uncle Sam, but he was dressed up as Uncle Sam.
- [10:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. So I don't know what the reaction was, but we have this, you have to navigate this. It's so strange because African Americans are 12% of the population. And so anywhere that that demographic is not represented in CEOs or in universities, then there has to be disparate impact. That's the theory. The Supreme Court called it. So then you have to make. But there's exemptions. So 30% of the Postal Service is African American or 70% of the NBA or 68% of the NFL because they're merit based and they are, they put more emphases apparently than other groups and they excel in these. And I think that's great. But when you say that Asians put. Asians are not represented in the NFL, but they, they put their emphases say in engineering, more so than typical white kids or African Americans. And therefore we have to have quotas to keep them from being overrepresented in the, in the universities. And you could make the argument in our society that a ticket into the NFL is more lucrative and more influential for a person's life if they manage their money. For all you got to do is last from 21 to 31. There's the generous pensions, there's advertising. It's more advantageous than going to Stanford. So I don't understand this whole thing. I never have. I think we should just get rid of all of this fixations on race and just open the arena up and let people gravitate to the areas that they want to and if they're overrepresented, then if somebody's upset about it, then say, you know what, we're going to have a concerted effort. If you're an African American educator and you say there's not enough African Americans at Harvard or Yale under the new non di, then you say we're going to open in Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore academies and we're going to require Latin and calculus at an early age. We're going to have uniform, we're going to emulate what Asians do and we're going to in five year plan, we're going to be as meritocratic. This is what Tom Soul said. And if you think Asians think that they're underrepresented in the NBA, then they should have basketball camps. Same thing with whites. But we don't need to have it engineered is what I'm saying.
- [12:48]
Sammy Wink
Well, just in the interest of athletic excellence, with the super bowl, it was fun to watch. And I don't have any preference for Chiefs or Eagles either. I just like to watch academic excellence. I mean, academic athletic excellence. And boy, that Eagles quarterback just floated so many passes into his receiver's hands. That was just wonderful.
- [13:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, Jaylene Hurts. Jaylene Hurts.
- [13:20]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, he was. That was just wonderful to watch.
- [13:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
So he is a excellent athlete. He captured the imagination of everybody because he unlike many quarterbacks, he was humble. When people in the past had tried to accentuate the fact that he was an African American quarterback, he said he was a quarterback. Any people in Philadelphia are pretty tough crowd, they like him. And it's because he was magnanimous in victory. He didn't gloat, he didn't make fun of the opposition. So he was a perfect gentleman and a good citizen and he was a wonderful quarterback.
- [13:58]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, so let's turn now to the news and Hamas. So since we were talking yesterday, it appears that Hamas is trying to renege on their hostages that they will give up on the weekend. Israel is mobilizing forces. They've killed two Hamas activists or whatever in the south of Israel who were bringing in drones. So they've, they're active. And so the left is of course saying that they're being disingenuous because of these things. Rubio has said, well, it's a ceasefire. It's not a stupid ceasefire. I do like that. And Donald Trump has said, well, if they're not going to give up all the hostages, then all hell should break loose on Saturday when they're supposed to give them up.
- [14:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
So, well, it's they understood everybody understands what they're doing. They're prolonging it so they can reestablish Hamas control, not rebuild Gaza. They don't care about Gaza. All they do is steal the food and supplies that come in there. And then they say that Gazans are not getting enough calories. But to get the calories needed to survive one more day, you have to deal with Hamas. So the remnants of Hamas, most of them are dead, but they're recruiting again. And they are using these hostage exchanges as performance art occasions where they get their camouflage uniform and they get their mask on. I mean, anybody who wears a mask does it for a reason. And they're either engaging in criminal activity or they're a coward. And so they don't want anybody to know who they are because the Israelis have an ability to go get them. So then they're going to parade out these hostages and they're going to show the crowds, get them all riled up, and the crowds are going to say, these are the people who destroyed my building. And they're going to try to spit on them, go out and they're going to parade them. And then the Hamas people will protect them. And then they're going to get their choice terrorists back. And it's all performance arts, ceremony, carnival, menagerie. And the Israelis are looking at this and said, well, we had to get the hostages back, but there must be a reason why they're not doing this. They've obviously killed a lot of them or a lot of them have died. Some of the hostages said they wanted them to fake their deaths or to be, you know, say you were killed by Israeli bombs. And I think what they're doing is they're pushing, pushing, pushing, and Hezbollah is pushing. They don't understand what just happened to them. They're kind of like Democrats that don't understand the election. So they are about this far away from being unloaded upon because there's a new president and unlike Biden, he's not going to protect them. He's not going to go tell Israel. You have to be sober and judicious. You have to moderate. You can't have 2,000 pound bombs. He's going to say, you got to do what you do to. And you've got four problems. You've got Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah and Iran. Now if the Houthis want, and they're Bragadocio, they're saying we're looking at this and they want to send another missile, Israel is going to just say, you know, What? We took out your port and we're going to take out your grid. If Hezbollah wants to attack, they said we, we can do better than the exploding phones and walkie talkies. And Iran. There's reports circulating this week that Iran is targeted by, by Netanyahu. So what did Iran do after losing its air defenses and being humiliated not being able to penetrate Israel's defenses with 500 projectiles? There's. And then having Hezbollah blown up and then all of their key people killed. They're starting to smuggle weapons and cash through the Lebanese airport again. And so Trump is, he just said, Saturday at noon, all bets are off. And you know what they're going to do? They're going to kind of sort of maybe, maybe let go one or two hostages and say, see? And then they're, and then they want the Western world to go, oh, okay, we're back to the hostage release. I know they were supposed to release seven or eight, but they did give us one. And then just when the next one is, they're going to start and say, nope, you broke the deal, we'd better hold off again. It's a caricature of a Middle east business deal, and you can't abide by that. You just have to say, look, this is the deal if you don't do it. And I don't know how many Americans are still alive that are hostages. But Trump probably knows, and the only problem he's having, and you don't want to go in there to that hellhole with special forces to try to get American hostages back or to kill the Hamas people, because they're pretty much, it's a moonscape. Right? It's a Fallujah. And so I don't know what we can do. We can do a lot to the Houthis, and we can do a lot to Hezbollah, and we can do a lot to Iran with airstrikes. But I don't know about this mess.
- [19:08]
Sammy Wink
And, yeah, and there's been a lot on the, you know, on social media and in the news about the condition with which these hostages are being returned. They just look skinny and 250, as though they've been starved.
- [19:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
250 calories a day. And they had no, they had no sunlight, no vitamin D. They had no air. They were tortured. They were interrogated and beaten. It was horrible what they did to them and the world. Europeans don't care and the Middle east doesn't care. And when they came out, if they had a just, it was kind of like the game of Thrones walk. You know, they, they were being humiliated. People were going, they would have been killed. So I don't know, I don't think, I don't think the people of Gaza know what the reaction is because just during this conference in Germany about AI, another Afghan refugee ran his car in again and injured 22 Germans. Is he on the payroll of the ADF the Alternative for Deutschland? Because he's really helping them and I don't think people understand how they come across the Gaza people think that they have all the support from International Criminal Court, they have all the support from the Euro Council, they have all un, they do, the media, yes, but they don't. People in the Western public have had it with them. They've had it with a protest on campus which have disappeared. And I just don't think that a Gazan person who says he wants to study at Stanford or Caltech or Virginia is going to get a student visa. I just don't think that's going to happen. I think there's going to be a travel ban and I think Europe is going to make it very, very hard and I think you're going to see some expulsions throughout Europe. Sweden is paying people to go back, they're flying them back.
- [21:13]
Sammy Wink
And yeah, it's anybody who's civilized that sees the condition of those prisoners cannot possibly support those people.
- [21:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
They have contempt for Western society. They say Western society is self critical and it's free and it has free markets and has a higher standing of living. So we want to go there but we do not want to integrate, intermarry, assimilate. In the most part some do, but for the most part we do not want to do that. We want to form enclaves of Islamic thought and culture that's not assimilated but we want to do it under the aegis of the West. So we have the trickle down economic bounty, we have the freedom of thought, we have the legal and we appeal to the sick side of the west that hates itself and then we feed them with victim, victimology and that's how they operate. And it's all based on asymmetry. They all know that if anybody were to do what Islamic immigrants to the west or illegal aliens or whatever their statuses are, if they were to do that in Egypt or Syria or Jordan or they would be killed or I mean try going to, I don't know, Iran or try going to Saudi Arabia and setting up a Mormon church and say, you know what, there's a beautiful mosque in Dearborn, Michigan and we're going to do the same thing in downtown Istanbul or Cairo and see what happens to you. Or you know what, we make fun of Christians all the time here. And you guys have a perfect right to go make fun of the prophet, cry it, and see what happens to you so that everybody's tired of the asymmetry. Then that's what Trump is trying to do, is trying to say that we're a singular nation and we're not going to play by two sets of rules.
- [23:07]
Sammy Wink
Yes. And we've seen our trade or whether.
- [23:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
It'S trade or whether it's military or whether it's social or cultural immigration. We're just going to play by one set of rules. Whatever you do to us, we're going to do to you.
- [23:21]
Sammy Wink
We saw that this week at the AI conference that JD Vance went to and we'll talk about that after I talk a little bit about one of our newer sponsors, Native Path. Native Path Collagen is a single ingredient formula with no fillers, additives or artificial sweeteners. Plus it's third party tested for heavy metals, ensuring purity and safety. Completely flavorless Native Path collagen can be added to anything, coffee, smoothies, oatmeal, you name it. Its peptide formula makes it more bioavailable, meaning it absorbs more easily and mixes perfectly without clumping. You can get three or six packs at a fraction of the price of other brands. Visit nativepath.com victor and start your transformation today. That is G E T N A T I V E p a t h.com transformation v I c T O R and I use many of the products of Native Path and I'm very much loving the quality of Native Path products. So healthy for all the supplements that I, I get from them. So happy to have them. So Victor, As I said, J.D. vance went to Europe for his first trip and he was at an AI conference and as you said and in my notes as I wrote us, expects to be treated fairly in the future. So they're no longer going to bankroll defense or have unequal tariff policy with the Europeans.
- [25:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I wish the Wall Street Journal would listen to that because almost every day they write a op ed about the deleterious, suicidal, destructive terror policies of Donald Trump or how he's picking on countries. In other words, we have gone so far one way that the remedy is considered worse than the malady, the disease. But and you saw that the same idea in Canada where their former finance minister is now taking over for Trudeau and the Liberal Party. And she said, we're going to go full out against the United States. Were going to start tariffing all of their dairy industry in Wisconsin, meaning it's a swing state. Yeah. Okay. But you should look at the comparative size of the US economy. I think it's 12 times larger than Canada. And everything that you export to us, from oil to cars, we can assemble here. And the reason that I'm saying that is not because I love Canadians, but the problem with Canada is they operated on the same principle that Mexico did, that the United States, when they have a left wing government or even a Rhino government, feels guilty. It feels arrogant. Arrogant. We're so powerful, we're so magnanimous, we're so wonderful, that yes, you can have asymmetrical terror. Oh, you have a $50 billion. Oh, you have an open border and you're dumping illegal aliens on our north and you're dumping them on our south, and you're sending drugs from the north and you're sending drugs from the south and Mexico's got 170 billion. And that's okay because we're the USA. No, we are a nation in decline that's trying not to decline. We have 36 to 37 trillion in debt. So what Trump is saying is you can call it a tariff, but I just call it tit for tat. And then everybody said, but you're strong and wealthy. No, no, no, no. China is on the rise. Canada is taking us to the cleaners. Mexico is not only doing that, but with the remittances and the cartels, they're making a fortune. So what he's saying is go into the inner city in Chicago, walk to downtown San Francisco, go to Venice beach in Los Angeles, come out here to Southwestern. I can take you places. Lori Logan came out here from Fox Nation once and I showed her and she said she thought that the poverty was worse than Cairo and the gangs. So this is like Dickensian England about 1850, when the British Empire was all over the world, civilizing the colonies supposedly in Africa and Asia, and why the interior of London was rotting with crime stuff that we saw in, you know, David Copper Field, stuff like that, Great Expectations. And so we don't want that to happen. So that's what J.D. vance is trying to tell everybody that. And that's what Pete Hexseth is trying to tell everybody that, you know, we're going to look at our own borders and we've supplied Ukraine with, if you look at all the type of aid, it's probably $200 billion. And you know, we're not, we want to help you have peace. But it was not the policy of Barack Obama. It was not the policy of Donald Trump his first term. It was not the policy of Joe Biden to give you enough weapons so that you could stage a counteroffensive and reclaim militarily the Donbass and the Crimea, which have been lost from you for 11 years under the Obama administration. Remember that. It was the Obama administration during that hot mic scene in Seoul, South Korea, in 2012. Tell Vladimir that I'll be flexible if he gives me space. Well, he gave you, he gave you space and you were flexible and he went into Donbass. And so I guess what I'm trying to get at, so it's a whole new world now. Everything is up, up for discussion. There's no constants. There's no, there's no orthodoxy that's written in stone. Everything's up for it's because it's not working anytime. A society was preeminent and it's $37 billion in debt and it's got two theater wars and it was humiliated in Afghanistan and its education system is a joke. And you have this commissary DI system. It's not working. And so you've got to systematically go through the whole thing. And that's what we're trying to do. And people who have helped it not work are furious.
- [29:57]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back to look at one of the first great moments in 20th century history, and that's the Russo Japanese War and the changes that it brought in the United brought to the world. And then after that, when we come back for our third segment, we'll turn back to the Ukraine, since you've brought it up. So stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [30:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
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- [31:33]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So the first and earliest in 1904 and five is the fight between the Russians and the Japanese. And that had grave impact on world history. And so I'm excited.
- [31:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, we're going to look at 20 or so every three or four years throughout the 20th century, the decisions or turning points that affect us today. And we're going to talk next week. I think we'll probably talk about the Panama Canal night that was inaugurated about the same time and it's in the news. The income tax, 1913, a nice woodrow Wilson gift. So we're going to talk about that. But I want to start with the biggest shock of the century as it opened up was the February, March 1904 to late autumn 1905. It was about a year and a half war and it was a very serious war. There was about 170,000 dead and wounded and almost matched on each side. And it originated over the idea that Japan was now starting to become Europeanized, Westernized under the Meiji Restoration and revolution. It opened its gates to Western influences and it by say 1870 to 1900, it had about a quarter of million Japanese students in universities studying engineering, the mechanics, physics in Germany, France, but especially Great Britain. And that was under the radar. And then they hired consultants from France and Britain to help them design. They had been doing this during the Tokugawa shogun ship where they started to make Western sail ships. But this really took off. And so when they got by 1904, they were expansionists. They had steam powered ships and they thought that they deserved, like the Europeans who had taught them how to make sophisticated Western weapons. They wanted to emulate the Western colonial experience. So they said, well, just as Europe said Asia and Africa were not up to their technological standards or scientific excellence. So Korea is not, Manchuria is not. So we're going to do what they do. That was the logic. So they started to go into Korea and Manchuria and they immediately butted up with the czars, Alexander and later Nicholas ii. And they said, these are our domains and we have a protectorate in China. You're not going in Manchuria and you're not going in. We have a border with Korea too. Well, they don't have A they were an island, but we this is our sphere of influence. And by the way, you're Asians and we were Westerners and we were the biggest Western nation. So there was a lot of arrogance. So Japan then declared war because of these skirmishes in Korea and Manchuria. And the first thing they did, the great international port at the time, Port Arthur is named after, I think it was a British engineer who fortified it. They bottled in the Russian Pacific Fleet. They had about five battle, we called them dreadnoughts in those days and cruisers, but the whole Pacific Fleet Russia always had three fleets. The Baltic Fleet from its northern port summer ports, and then the Black Sea Fleet and then the Pacific Fleet. And they didn't really interact because Russia was so large. But the Pacific Fleet was about the size of the Japanese fleet. And it was bottled up by the Japanese who mined the harbor of Port Haro. And they tried to break out at the same time. They simultaneously attacked from all sides. And everybody thought it would be a joke that Russian artillery, Russian ships would be superior. They had had ships built by Americans, by French. And while they were as good or they were about comparable, Japan had also sent its people to copy the British Admiralty's code of conduct, protocol, strategies. Same thing with the French fleet, less so with the Germans. The two first cousins, Wilhelm and Nicholas ii, were inveterate racists. They said these are inferior in Germany was actually backing Russia. And what happened? They destroyed the most of the Pacific Fleet. Everybody was shocked. How can these Japanese people do this to a Western power? Ah, it was a fluke. They used mines, they blocked the harbor with. With a capsized ships. It was just a fluke, but we will beat them in Korea. And so they had these mass wave attacks like they did in World War II. This is the precursor. But they had superior artillery, they had machine gun. And it was like a precursor of World War I. And the Japanese began to win at great cost. Nevertheless, the Russians had never seen anybody fight like that. So then the idea was, how are we going to obtain naval superiority and blockade Japan? Because it is a sea power and if we get our fleet, we can stop them from supplying any troops to Manchuria or China because they're an island. So what fleet is there? It's the Baltic Fleet. So they announced that this huge new that was their pride and joy. It was built by the Germans and French and American expertise, the Russians. And they had eight modern battleships, this huge fleet. So they announced we're going to go defeat the Japanese. But they were way up in the Baltic. So they had to go all the way around out the Baltic down the western European coast. The smaller little torpedo ships and cruisers had just gone through the Suez Canal. But the big ships had to go all the way around the Cape of Good Hope. Meanwhile, the whole world was watching this and the whole world's attitude was well, Japan, you're going to get a come up. It's this huge western freight. And then they would stop at Madagascar and then they came in at Vladisto. But to get up back to their home port they went through the Sea of Japan and they went through at night and they had hospital ships that were lit and the Japanese fleet spotted them. And by this time the Japanese had not only besieged Port Arthur, but taken them and defeated them on a land battle. And so in early two night they finally arrived eight months later. It took them eight months and before they knew what happened, they Japanese cross the T. In other words, when a fleet is in line and you cross it like this, your ship's broadside can all go on one side and they can't use all of their because they're in a straight line. They're coming like this and you just come by like this and you blast them from both sides and they, you know, it's a one dimensional target. And in any case they blew the Russian fleet out of the water. They sank almost every, they sank half, over half the ships. They blew up all the battle these new battleships, the pride of the Tsar's fleet. And then Teddy Roosevelt wanted to get involved. He was a progressive and they thought he'd be fair to the Japanese and he negotiated a peace deal, he won that Nobel prize. So they ended in 1905. But basically Russia had no fleet except this black Seat fleet and they lost about 70,000 dead and Japan had defeated them. So under. This is a good reminder for Donald Trump who's going to play Teddy Roosevelt with Ukraine and Russia. They thought that Roosevelt would acknowledge that Japan won, but he kind of didn't. He just said no reparations and no, you can't have the Sakhalin islands that are off your coast that had been Russian. And they said, well what do we get out of it? Well, you kind of won and we'll just separate the forces and you should be happy. You blew apart the Russian, two Russian fleets and you defeated the Russians. At least you did very well on ground. Do we get all of Korea? No, you get the areas where you in control of the battlefield. They would eventually get Korea. Do you get all of Manchuria? Well, that's your business. So when they got home and they signed the deal, people started rioting the Japanese, and they had their only, really only viable democracy. But they had been indoctrinating people for 30 years about Bushido. And we're now not shoguns, we're not little warlords, we're the Japanese Yamato people. And they didn't realize they had created this fanatic youth group. And so the youth said, no, no, we won that war. You were racist and we're. And they. They had riots and they overthrew the government. And so then all of Europe went into shock. And they said, my gosh, when you look at the Japanese ships, they copied them better than the originals. And when you look out their uniforms and their discipline, they were so much more disciplined than the Russians. Their. They made improvements in optics. They had better sighting on their battleships, they had better strategies, but that's impossible because they're yellow people. And, you know, and I'm just quoting what the Kaiser and the Czar were writing to each other. So what was the importance of all this? The importance were that they were taken seriously. So when World War I came apart, came in, then there was an effort of the Allies who had trained the Japanese, they said to them, you don't like the Germans. And they were always anti Japanese, but we helped you build your fleet and would you please join the Allies? And they did. But they didn't like the Russians. But they. The Russians were knocked out in 1917. So what did the Japanese fleet? It patrolled the Mediterranean for the Allies. So when the allies won in 1918 at Versailles, they thought they were going to get a seat at the table. They thought, well, we're the biggest Asian power. We blew apart the Russians. That was over a decade ago. Our fleet now is the fourth or fifth largest. And they said, no, no, no, no, no. There's Orlando, Italy, and there's Clemenceau and there's David Lloyd George and we'll let this renegade, Woodrow Wilson come, the big four, and they're going to deal with whoever the government is in Germany. Hindenburg, good. Lutendorf were, you know, out, and Kaiser was going to Holland. So it was a provisional government and the Communists were not there. And the Communists had taken over, so there was no more tsardom. But they didn't get his seat in the table, so they were angry. So then in the 1920s, the effect of this was the Bushido militant Japanese kept saying, these Western imperialists are racist. They take colonies, they don't let us do it. They say we're cruel to Koreans. We're no more cruel to the Koreans than they are in Africa and Vietnam and everything. And we're going to have Asians for Asians. And that started the. It was the foundation for the creation of the great Japanese Pacific Fleet. They went on a crazy building program in the late 20s and 30s, and they said, we are going to have the preeminent fleet in the Pacific, and we're going to colonize it, and we're going to create a greater CO prospect East. We're going to have a greater co prosperity Asian trading block that was established in 1940. So we're going to have Manchuria, we're going to have Korea, we're going to have the Philippines eventually, and we'll get Singapore. And then that was what their plan in World War II was. It grew out of their victories in 1904 and 5 and the anger which they had that they were not accepted as a CO equal with the Allied powers both getting the spoils of War in 1905, they didn't get them. And then they were not treated as an adult power in World War I. So they didn't get any of the spoils of the Allied victory. German. They didn't get any of the old German property, the Bismarck Islands or any of that. And so they were. They said we were preeminent and it created a great variation. And they just doubled down. They said, you know, what? If we had eight battleships and the Russians had eight, we're going to have 20. If the Americans have three carriers, we're going to have eight, and we're going to. And so that's what they did. They just completely rearmed. And all through the 1930s, and people still didn't take that lesson. So when Pearl harbor happened, it was the same reaction as Port Arthur and the Battle of Tsushima. Everybody in America said, how do they do this? They're Japanese. They sank eight battleships. They have nine carriers, and we only have three in the Pacific. What's going on? The Zero is better than the Wildcat. How did this happen? Well.
- [45:33]
Sammy Wink
Well, I have a question. One's just a small thing. You said that the Japanese were patrolling the Mediterranean. Did you mean the Pacific in World War I? No, they were in the Mediterranean.
- [45:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
There was no real Pacific theater. I mean, there were some skirmishes in Africa, but they asked the Japanese to relieve them of, you know, patrolling for U boats and things like that. Italy, remember, was a Allied power in World War I, and France had a Mediterranean coast. Italy Had a Mediterranean coast. Greece was a world. Was a. On the Allied side. So the idea was that they would help bulk up so that the Germans could not make inroads into them. There wasn't much to do, but they exaggerated their contribution. But they wanted to be given deference and honor at Versailles. And they felt that they had been screwed over, if I could use that term, since 1905. And the people did. And so that everybody. When I was writing The World War II book, the Common View until about 30 years ago was that the Japanese people were innately democratic and that these warlords occasionally hijacked their government. These radical. They didn't want to settle World War II, you know, and the empty. That was not true. The militarism and the zeal to fight and go to war was from the working classes and the students. They had been indoctrinated in the school that they were a superior race. It was very similar to Nazi ideology. And they felt that they were superior to all these other Asian peoples and that the colonial model was okay for somebody, but not for them. That was very important in World War II, the lessons. Because there had been a big fight where they said, worse, they were wise enough not to attack Britain and the United States at first. They didn't do that till 1941. But when they looked at what Germany had done, they were very suspicious of Germany in World War II because they'd been against them in World War I. And they felt in 1904 and 5, Germany had helped Russia, at least in insidious ways. We know now from the correspondence of the Kaiser and the Czar that they wrote things like, nikki, these people are subhuman. And it was really racist. So the point was, when they got into 1939 and these colonial powers started to disappear, they were wiped off the map. The Netherlands was wiped off the map. France was wiped off the map as a state. And then what happened to their colonies? And some of them were the richest colonies in the world, especially Vietnam and the Mekong Delta rice belt or the Dutch East Indies. So there was a big argument. If they had just taken them, I don't think there would have been a war. They could have got everything they wanted. But they looked over at Europe and they said, ah, Germany's right outside the first subway station in Moscow on December 5th. They're going to take it any day. We're missing out. Wow. Even Italy's doing well. They're just about ready to take all of North Africa from the Vichys. They looked at all Europe and they said every single European capital is under Axis control or pro Axis neutrals, whether Sweden or Portugal. So we missed out on this. So we better go attack Pearl harbor and we'll attack Singapore, and that way we can get Singapore. And we got the Philippines. Yeah, they got there what they wanted, but they got. They ensured their defeat in doing so.
- [49:21]
Sammy Wink
Well, the other question I had was you said that Russia was a Western power, and that is up to sort of speculation, at least to some extent. They were like the Japanese in the sense that 100 years earlier, under Peter the Great, they made the decision to become like the Western powers that they knew because they wanted their military to be as well as good. And the Japanese did the same thing under the Meiji Restoration. And so it's kind of interesting, I think this is more comment than anything, that the Japanese seem to have been a lot more successful at Westernizing than the Russians were. And I was wondering your thoughts on that.
- [50:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
They were. And that became a very racist trope because the Europeans who look down on Russians felt that they could be Westernized because they were white. And that was the idea. And all of the Western capitals saw that Russia could become a very valuable partner, especially to France, to box in Germany because it was white and it would industrial. And there was a. To be fair. I mean, Russia had brilliant people, it always had. But Japan was considered inferior racially. So this. They were upstarts and they would copy American and British and French designs, nautical engineering, but they wouldn't innovate the way the Russians sometimes did. You know, In World War II, where you look at Katushka rockets or the T34 tank or some of the Yak and Mig fighters, they were wonderful. But it turned out that was wrong, that the Japanese were not just emulators. They had started to emulate Western education and they were creating scientific centers of learning and engineering that were as good, if not better than Europe. So when you look at these battleships in 1904, 1905 that they created, they were better than the Russian Westernites. And by the 1930s, if you look at the quality of American carriers versus Japanese carriers, they're about the same. And you could make the argument that Japanese destroyers or Japanese torpedoes were superior to America. So they were very brilliant people. And it wasn't after their stage of just copying, they. They became what they are today. They're very. They're very innovative and they're very creative people. And they very much resented to be looked down upon. Remember the historian Thucydides, when there's an accusation that the Athenians are, you know, they're too grasping. And Cleon says that we keep our empire and we grasp and we took it because we took it out of fear, Phobos and honor, Team A and self interest. Oh, fellows, that's kind of an iconic sense that a country doesn't just go to war to get oil or minerals or anything, but they do it because they're afraid of other countries and Japan was afraid and they do it for the honor of the Japanese people and they do it for their self interest.
- [52:56]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk a little bit more about the Ukraine. So stay with us. And we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. You can find Victor on his social media X. He is Dhanson. And on Facebook it's Hanson's Morning cup. So come join him there. So, Victor, the Ukraine, Donald Trump seems to be making a lot of inroads very quickly as is want of the rest of what he's doing. And he seems to be setting up meetings and conference for ending the war and to talk both with Putin and Zelensky about that. And another thing on this whole topic, the US has demand, well, demanded or suggested that they should have some rare earth mineral deals with the Ukraine just as compensation for their support. And also they've said, as probably most of our audience has heard, that the Ukraine will probably lose some of its territory in this deal and they will not be part of NATO in this deal.
- [54:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
I would tell everybody not to fall for the liberal left wing narrative, the stuff that's coming out and nor the neoconservative or the stuff that's coming out of the mouth of Bill Kristol or John Bolton. And that narrative goes like this. Donald Trump has a soft spot for Russia. Remember CNN or mnmc, Anderson Cooper, and therefore he's giving away all of his negotiation points. He's already ruled off the table. He and his idiots like Pete Hecseth and Rubio, they've, they've rolled out NATO membership and they, they've ruled out that Ukraine might get back the Donbass in Crimea. They just ceded them, so there's nothing left. Do you really believe that when you're dealing with a psychopath like Putin and you say to Putin, well, we're going to be really tough and here's something, we're going to put them in NATO. And Putin says you're not going to do that. He knows there's no public support if they were in NATO right now and they said we were invaded in February 24th by Vladimir Putin. So we want Article 3, everybody from NATO. Do you think some guy having cappuccino in the Netherlands is going to go get his rifle and go there? No. Do you think the United States President Biden is going to say, well, as a NATO member, you're under the NATO nuclear shield, Vladimir, if you don't get out right now, we'll nuke you? No, that was never going to happen. That was a dream of the Obama Bob Keg and his wife Victoria Newland. They all signaled them. And George H.W. bush early on had said, they're not going to be a NATO. You don't put them right at the border of Russia. It would be as if in 1962, right after the Cuban Missile crisis, the Soviet Union said, we're going to make Castro part of the Warsaw Pact, Cuba right in your area of influence. It wasn't going to work. So this next thing they're criticizing Trump is that he has hinted and hexa said, we're not going to go back to the pre2014 borders. Remember everybody, that under the Obama administration, Putin took the Donbass and Crimea and he's held them for 11 years. But here's the problem. You think when you don't admit that you're weak, you're going to go deal with Putin, said Putin, we're going to get back to Donbass and he's going to say, well, you had your big offensive in 2023. It was all over your newspapers and you went in and you lost. You didn't get them back and there is now about a million point seven dead, wounded. And we don't want it. You don't want it. But don't think threatened me with an empty threat. Was it the position of the Barack Obama administration to militarily retake the Donbass Crimea? No. Was it the position of the Donald Trump administration from 2017-21 to retake the Donbass and Crimea military? No. Was it the position of Joe Biden prior to 2022, February? No. So we don't believe you ever had the desire or will and more importantly, study the issue. The issue was that Crimea has been ours since 1787. And when we fell and we were in disarray, it declared from 1992 to 1991-93, 92 to 94, it was the independent country of Crimea. So we wanted to steal it and Ukraine wanted to steal it. And the majority were probably Russian speakers, but you stole it first. So you destroyed their autonomy and then you put it in and then don't ask. We had all these plebiscites. Sometimes they voted to go and join you. Sometimes they voted to be independent, sometimes they wanted the Federation. And in 2014 you had a coup. You being the west, you supported the removal of Yukovich. He got rid of Yukonovich, he got rid of him. And then they put in Prochenko and a pro Western government. Okay, that's great. And so Putin is looking at the breadbasket of Russia for the last 300 years and he says, oh, it's westernizing. They threw out an elected government and I know that they were behind it. They may or may not have been. So there's all this history that makes it very complex. It's very similar to the Balkans. So what does this all mean? It means that Donald Trump is going to sit down with Putin and they're going to go tell Zelensky, we're going to stop this. Because you have lost probably yourself, 700,000 dead and wounded and they've lost probably close to a million. This is worse than Stalingrad and it's a blood curdling disaster. And by the way, he is the only president who has ever talked about that. Obama and Biden never talked about the human cost. For them, it was always a strategic mechanism of using the last Ukrainian to get an edge over Russia. And so what I'm getting at is they're going to forge a deal and everybody knows what the deal is because everybody's talked about it. The deal will be this. Trump says, well, I'll let you go tell the Russian people that you screwed up. Vlad, Vladimir, you should have never gone in. That was a stupid thing to do. It was a mean thing to do, but you got to have a bone for your public. So you tell them you went to war because they were going to take back Donbass and Crimea and now they're not. You institutionalized this and you went to war so they could not join NATO and they're not going to join NATO. But here's what they want. You got to go back to where you were on February 22nd. So you give up the areas of the Donbass that you tried to add on to just go back, excuse me, February 24, 2022, get back there and we're going to arm the Ukrainians, all of Europe, we're going to arm them and we're going to help them rebuild and we're going to have a Demilitarized zone, just like Korea. And you're not going to go in there again. And that's the nucleus of a deal. And I think both sides will take it. I know that because right after the spectacular, heroic, save, saving salvation of Kyiv, remember that in February and March of the everybody was ecstatic. So asky Ukraine, they just made those Russian incompetent. That big long train of tanks, they just blew them apart. They thought the war was over. And I thought, to me, I wrote an article, I thought, no, Russia has two rules. When they go into other countries, they don't do very well. They went into Finland in the winter war of 1939, they lost 600,000. However, I said they don't do very well. I didn't say they lost the war. So then by 1940, the Finns said, we did wonderfully. We beat you. We've killed almost a million Russians dead, wounded, missing. But you're going to take, you want 10% of our country, we'll do it. And they, they surrendered, basically. And then the same thing in Poland. They went in there in 21 and 23, they were a disaster. But they regrouped and they took it in 39. Same thing with Afghanistan. They don't do well when they go into Afghanistan. However, you fight on the borders of Russia and what looks like victory never is. Napoleon goes in in 1812. He wins the first three months. And deeper you go in and the more that people get angry. He lost. Hitler goes in. He was, he claimed he was at the subway stations of Moscow. Remember the great German myth? They could see the spires of the Kremlin at sunlight glittering in the distance. That was as far as they got. And so when you fight on a Russian border like Donbas or Crimea, they will wear you down. They have 30 times the territory, four times the population, 10 times the GDP. And Ukraine had 41 million people. It was the size of California. It's only got 28 million people. They've all left. Not all, but a large part. So we all know what's going to happen. That type of settlement. I want to just finish by one thing. It's very, very important because we are rewriting history in a very false and dishonest fashion. Everybody should remember what the left is doing. In 2008, George Bush was a lame duck president. He had made a trip, catastrophic mistake by saying he had looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin and seen his soul and he was a good man. And Putin looked at that and said, Bush is bogged down in Iraq. And he's bobbed down in Afghanistan and he's a lame duck and he only has 35% approval. I'm going to go in there because he looked in my eyes and he did. And he took Osatia and he, he went into Georgia. Okay? So then everybody got angry because Bush put sanctions on him and there was a estrangement. So Obama comes in. I'm just Barack Obama. I mesmerize everybody in my charm. And I've got Hillary over there as my, my seasoned Secretary of State. We're going to go to Geneva and she's going to push a Jacuzzi button and we're going to have a, a new, I don't know what we're going to call. It's going to be Dayton. That's what it's called. We'll call it Russian Reset. Vladimir. And that's what he did. And Vladimir Putin looked at this guy and he goes, he is a total clown. He makes book Bush look like Churchill. So I can take him to the cleaners. So I'm going to go make deals with him. And they made the hot mic deal. Tell Vladimir, you know, tell my devil, tell Vladimir, give me some space and I'll give him flexibility. So then he, he got dismantled. All that effort with the Poles and the Czechs where we, Obama sold them out. And we stopped missile defense, which would come in very handy right now. And then we stopped all offensive weapons, all offensive weapons to Ukraine. Obama. It was not Trump, it was Obama. And then he repaid that magnanimity by going into Donbass and Crimea. And Obama did nothing. And then all of a sudden they had our ambassador, Mike McFaul. The whole point was that we were going to democratize Russia that Putin will be so impressed with Obama's mesmerizing presence, he'll liberalize. It'll be like the old days. And right after the fall of the bird led wall. And it's all going to be hunky dory and we're going to start lecturing Russia. Mr. Putin, I think it's time you lost the election. You should step down for free and fair elections and you have civil rights and all the great chess players of the world are on our side. It was this stupid thing and we're going to get rid of your little tin horn president. He was elected, but we'll get rid of him in Ukraine and we'll put them in NATO. And they sized those guys up and they said, no way. You're just all talk. And now we're Going to take advantage of you. And so they did. And that's when they invaded. And what happened in 2014, they went crazy. Vladimir took advantage of it. These are evil people, these are terrible people. They would say, whose fault was that? It's Donald Trump, it's 2015, it's his fault. He likes Putin, he's an oligarch. And then all of a sudden it was Russian collusion, Russian disinformation, the Axios ping, ping. And they hated Putin. And then you look at Donald Trump when he was there four years and you think, well, James Clapper, he's a Russian asset, he's a Russian poodle. I drove down the 99 and I would see a picture of Devin Nunes and it would say, Russian asset trader. They were crazy because they were so humiliated that they had trusted Putin and they were so confident in their arrogant idea of nation building that they were going to turn Ukraine into a EU member, NATO member, right on the doorstep. And then by osmosis, the liberal Ukraine, western country would make Russia flip. That was never going to happen. There was no evidence from the czars to the Soviets to the Russian Federation, there's any broad support that ever is able to be stable Democrat, democratic government. Hasn't happened. It may, I hope it does. But so far the idea that Barack Obama and his team are going to mesmerize these people was crazy. So here we that that's very important because that out of that humiliation on the left that created a hatred and they push Ukraine, pushed Ukraine, pushed Ukraine. We're going to put you in NATO, we're going to pay him back. And then collusion. He's Trump's partner and that one, you know, Mueller found no collusion. We know laptop disinformation was a fraud. Did they learn anything? No. And then we look back, final thing in this rant. So George Bush was president for eight years, Barack Obama was president for eight years and Joe Biden was president for four. 20 year period. What did Barack Obama and Bush and Biden do to stop Trump in those 20 years? Excuse me, Putin compared to Trump, nothing. He went into Georgia, he went into Osati, he went into the Donbass, he went into Crimea twice. He went into Kiev, tried to take Kiev. And what happened during that 20 year period? There was a four year addendum. So it's 24 years. When Donald Trump was president, did he go into the expand Osatia, did he invade Lithuania? No, no, no. Did he do any more invasions in Ukraine? No, no, he didn't do anything. Why? Why? Remember that conversation that Trump supposedly said to Putin, don't go in there. And he said, why? And he said, because I can hit the Kremlin. And Putin said, you don't mean that, Donald. And he said, yes, I do. And so that's the background of this whole catastrophe, that the left was going to use Ukraine and make it into this beautiful democracy, and then it'll spill over and punish Putin for not appreciating their genius. And then when you actually look at Donald Trump, who was the person who first sold them offensive weapons? Obama? No. Was it George W. Bush? No. Was it Joe Biden? He stopped it when he came in in 2020. It was Donald Trump. But you impeached him. Yes. You impeached him for doing just what Joe Biden did. He won. He. Ukraine was so corrupt. He said, before I give you the congressionally approved money, I am going to insist that you're transparent about what Burisma's doing. Impeach him. He's trying to interfere. Okay. And then Joe Biden had gone over in 2016 and said, sob you got an hour and a six hours. I'm going to go and I'm going to impound. I'm going to impound a billion dollars of aggression. And that was okay, but he should have been impeached for that if Trump was. So then what did Trump do? He killed three to 400 people in the Wagner group in Syria. That was more than the entire Cold War of 80 years. He raised the sanction, he dumped cheap oil and bankrupt the Russian oil industry. He sold Ukraine weapons. He got out of an asymmetrical deal. The Russians thought he was too tough on them. And all of a sudden, now Bolton and the whole crowd comes out of the woodwork and says he gave away negotiation points. No, he didn't. He's just saying what everybody knows. You could have stopped this war three years ago, and you'd be right where you are now.
- [70:56]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And with that, Victor, we're going to change topic, but I would like to first take a moment for our sponsor, Hillsdale College. Everybody knows that we're big supporters of Hillsdale College. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses. That's right. More than 40 free online courses. Go right now to Hillsdale Edu VDH to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy. Easy to get started. That's Hillsdale Edu VDH to enroll for free. Hillsdale Edu VDH learn about the works of C.S. lewis, the stories in the book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian Church with Hillsdale College's free online courses. Enjoy Hillsdale's course the Second World wars, taught by Victor Davis Hanson and Hillsdale's President Larry P. Arne. This free seven lecture course will help you to understand this massive and complex conflict in a new way. It will give you a clear picture of why the war was fought and how the allied powers ultimately triumphed in order to save the west from a new form of tyranny. The course is self paced so that you can start whenever and wherever. Go right now to Hillsdale Edu vdh to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started. That's Hillsdale Edu vdh to enroll for free Hillsdale Edu vdh that was a.
- [72:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm going to Hillsdale in three weeks for Mark Moyer and Jason Garrett. They have a military history program and I'm going to give a talk on World War II films. I think it's Tuesday, March 4th. And then I'm going to return. And on May 10th I was asked to give the graduation commencement address. I'm going to talk about what an exciting time it is to be a Hillsdale graduate. Can you imagine? You're going to be the tip of the spear of the counter revolution which is taking place before our very eyes. And then I go back for my regular eight day billet. So I'll be there three times in the next seven months.
- [73:24]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, so let's just turn to one more topic. Today, the epa, the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin has found this is just criminal. It feels like $20 billion of taxpayer money hidden in a financial institution. And he's hoping to they were hoping to use it in place of funds that they expected Trump would cut from far left activist groups. That's just incredible. But part of the deep state, I suppose.
- [73:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean people that are examining this huge $37 trillion debt and how we got there, one of their complaints was that usaid, epa, all of these agencies was spending not just money that was unnecessary. But Trump called it kickback. But what they were saying is that once you go into those agencies, after three or four years, you understand the mechanism from the inside, how it operates, how the usaid, how the NIH operates, how the center for Allergies and Infectious Diseases operates, how the CDC operate, all of them, how the FBI operates. And then you go out and you form a non government Organization. And you are so moral. You're here to help humanity. And you go back to that agency for the people who used to work for you. And you say, I, you go back to the epa. I know how the EPA is. I work there how you guys all used to work for me. I need 20 million bucks for my wonderful new foundation and NGO, and then I'll disperse it to all these groups. And we got to do it before Trump comes. He will be so angry because we're going to promote EVs and ban natural gas stoves and more winter. And that's what they did. It's very similar to what happens in the military when a four star general has all these subordinates in procurement and then he retires and then all of a sudden he's in a bidding war that Raytheon, Lockheed, hey, you got to work for us. And then when they work for us, he said, you got to sell this weapon system. And he might say, okay, how do I do that? Well, call up all your subordinates that used to salute you and tell them. And that's what happened. And that's what he's trying to break up, is to reduce the size of these agencies and their budgets and get rid of their incestuous relationship by these NGOs and these outside, quote unquote nonprofits that either are manned by spouses or friends of people in the agencies or by former agency officials themselves. I think they call it, didn't they call it gold bars from on the Titanic? They were throwing gold bars on the Titanic, meaning that Biden's ship was sinking, but they were throwing the gold bars out. It's, it's utterly corrupt. I don't know how anybody, I just wish the left would be honest. I wish that Mozzie Hirono or Hakeem Jeffries or Elizabeth Warren or the Squad or Maxine Waters would just say, you know what? All these programs are good. I want to give $40 million to the Wuhan Lab. They made a mistake once, but maybe when they make their next virus, it will be wonderful. I want them to say, you know what? We have a quarter billion dollars. We're paying 7% interest. That's not bad. We can borrow 250 million because they're going to train 6,000 journalists, reporters without Borders. They're going to be global internationalists and they're going to support us leftists. So that's why we're doing it. One, just be honest and say that's what you want. But instead they say, you know, everybody's going to die. This is illegal. This is a constitution. It's not. I wrote an article today about mythologies about Elon Musk and he, he's never said he had any authority to cut. He's an auditor. He goes through with his team and he finds waste, fraud and abuse. Then he turns the findings over to the cabinet heads and the heads of agencies. Then they call Donald Trump up and they say these are what Elon found. And Trump says, well do you agree? And they say yes. Well then cut it. They have statutory authority to cut, not Elon. They can accept or reject it. And he does not. He's not confirmed, he's not elected. It's like me saying, well, Jake Sullivan was running foreign policy, never was elected, he was never confirmed by the Senate. That's wrong. They just make up these things as they go. You know, this is a constitutional crisis. A judge said that the treasury can withhold all information from their own secretary. So Donald Trump is appealing that. But what happened when the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade the same way AOC said we don't have to, we should just ignore that. Or Joe Biden said about student loans, I'll get around it, just ignore it. Remember who these people are. They're Jacobins. They're not Democrats of old, they're revolutionaries. And the only in this counter revolutionary movement of maga. And Trump is scaring them because they're losing their hold on the media, on the academia and public opinion. And they can't nominate, they can't veto, they can't do anything. They don't have the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the White House and they don't have the congressional committees. So they're impotent and they're angry. And their institutions, they're turning around. They said, well call Zuckerberg up. He gave us 419 million. Now he's on the other team. Well, Bezos is the second best. He joined Elon. Well how about Andreessen and Horowitz? Well, they're gone too. Well, how about Sam Bankman? Fried? Well, he's in jail. Well how about Soros? Well, he's coming under a lot of suspicion for the stuff he's done. Well, you call up Stanford or Harvard or Yale? Well, they're facing 15% only surcharges. They're losing millions of dollars on the racket they were doing for infrastructure charges that they raked off from federal grants. So they're very angry. They've lost all their source of support.
- [80:10]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, we're at the end of the show. And I would like to read a viewer's listener or reader's comment. It's Carol Furrer and she says thank you for sharing the facts with a slice of wisdom on the side. A community that is solely absent these days from journalists. Your gift of both intellect and understanding is a joy to read. Whoever thought making, whoever would have thought that a government more efficient and effective would see so many protests? Well, maybe it's not so astonishing. Thank you for taking time to continue to write regularly. Love the hat, by the way. We watch classic movies and I told my husband, just wish men would start wearing hats again this week. Most sincerely, Carol. A fur. So thank you. Thank you.
- [81:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
Both my grandfathers wore hats. Yeah, I'm doing it because it's cold and I've lost most of my hair, so it gets even colder. And I don't treat them very well, so it'll probably wear out. But that was a very nice letter.
- [81:21]
Sammy Wink
Very nice.
- [81:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
Who would be against trying to balance the budget or stopping waste and fraud? And apparently there's a lot of federal employees. There's a lot of left wing people who count on manipulating the government.
- [81:33]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [81:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I remember five years ago, Elon, I would walk through Menlo park or powwow and Tesla was on everybody's lips. Everybody wanted a Tesla. He was their hero. So now they're saying, he's an idiot, he's cruel. And you think, okay, so why don't you call up Ukraine and say, elon, how dare you give them free Internet service. Call up North Carolina and Pacific Palisade U S O B, you're giving them free Starlink. What's wrong with you? Or call up NASA and said, you see what he did? He sent that SpaceX and he caught it with an erector set arm. That is cheating. And then called him up and said, you know what he wants to do? He wants to take your place and rescue those trapped astronauts up on that station. And now the worst thing is he took X and he allows everybody to say what they want. There's no more censorship. That's what they're saying, right?
- [82:35]
Sammy Wink
Yes, absolutely. And that and more that anybody normal just astonish who would follow that party because they've got all the wrong positions and they seem to be doubling down.
- [82:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's a gift to the Republicans. They're just. Every time I see Maxine Waters start to use the F word or foul language or she screams and yells or they had that Representative Garza, he called Obama Elon a D I c K. But on national tv. And then Anderson Cooper called the governor, Governor of New Hampshire, Sununu. He called him a D I C K on a national tv. They are losing it, man. They are losing. And then Trump is very much quieter, you know, I mean, he still tweets provocatively, but he's tired. He looks tired sometimes. He's, he's not screaming and yelling. He's just very determined, very methodical, and that's what's driving them crazy.
- [83:34]
Sammy Wink
It is. And it's making us all happy. So.
- [83:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. Where's Latita James when you need. Oh, I'm sorry. She's in trouble. She's being invested. Where's Fanny Wills? Oh, she's. She may be facing criminal penalties with Nathan Way. Well, where's Jack Smith? Oh, he folded his tent. Where's E. Jean Carroll? Well, she's under appeal. She may lose some of her settlement. Where's Alvin Bragg? He can't set foot in a federal courtroom.
- [84:02]
Sammy Wink
And some of those things Pam Bondi is doing. But we'll leave that for you and Jack to talk about Pam Bondi suing the New York governors. If I could use this.
- [84:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
I can't believe she's 59.
- [84:12]
Sammy Wink
Is that right?
- [84:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
59.
- [84:14]
Sammy Wink
So you and Jack are going to have to give a good talk about all.
- [84:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, she's something else. She's a powerhouse.
- [84:20]
Sammy Wink
So thank you, Victor, for all of the commentary today. I especially enjoyed the Russo Japanese War. That was great. And thanks to our listeners for joining us and taking some time.
- [84:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everybody. See you next time. Thanks for listening.
- [84:34]
Sammy Wink
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off.