The Lame-Duck Period: Right Revolution, Left Devolution

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Victor Davis Hanson Show Episode Title: The Lame-Duck Period: Right Revolution, Left Devolution
Release Date: December 26, 2024
Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler

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Introduction

In this episode of The Victor Davis Hanson Show, hosts Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler delve into a range of pressing political and social issues, reflecting on the current state of American politics amidst the lame-duck period. The conversation is marked by a critical examination of left-wing strategies, right-wing resilience, and the shifting dynamics within the political landscape. Key topics include the scrutiny of Elon Musk by the left, the controversy surrounding student loan forgiveness, President Joe Biden’s recent pardon moves, Anthony Fauci’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic, a terrorist attack in Germany, and San Francisco’s appointment of a "weight czar."

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Elon Musk Under Left-Wing Scrutiny

Timestamps: 04:13 - 19:16

The episode opens with a robust discussion on Elon Musk, who has become a focal point of left-wing opposition. Hanson critiques the left's inconsistent stance on wealthy individuals, highlighting the double standards applied to figures like George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg compared to Musk.

• Victor Davis Hanson (04:34): “In this age of litigation, I have to be very careful, but I think she suggested on the view that J.D. Vance and Musk had taken over and they were going to get rid of Trump.”

Hanson argues that the left's animosity toward Musk stems from his influential role and independence, particularly after his acquisition of Twitter (now rebranded as X). He underscores Musk’s contributions to technology and space exploration, portraying him as a revolutionary figure who has advanced industries significantly.

• Hanson (05:10): “He revolutionized social media in the United States. Then he took Tesla, broke into the car market at that level, and revolutionized the space industry.”

Jack Fowler adds context by mentioning Congressman Richie Torres, a Democrat from the Bronx, who criticizes both Democratic policies and figures like Governor Hochul, suggesting potential bipartisan support for reform-minded candidates like Torres.

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Student Loan Forgiveness and Educational Reform

Timestamps: 35:11 - 36:00

A significant portion of the discussion centers on President Biden’s efforts to forgive student loans, specifically highlighting the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Hanson criticizes the program, arguing that it led to inflated tuition rates and burdened students with excessive debt.

• Hanson (35:11): “The universities, once this program came in and guaranteed federal loans, if you look, you'll see a sharp increase in the rate of tuition inflation.”

He contends that the education system misleads students about the true cost and employment prospects of various majors, pushing them into debt without adequate counseling or transparency. Hanson predicts a potential rollback of such forgiveness programs, advocating for a system where educational costs are transparently presented, and the federal government ceases to subsidize student loans.

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Joe Biden’s Use of Presidential Pardons

Timestamps: 19:48 - 33:15

The hosts transition to a critique of President Joe Biden’s recent pardon actions, which they view as politically motivated and detrimental to the Democratic Party. Hanson suggests that these pardons are designed to undermine Biden’s own party by releasing individuals who can cause chaos and public distrust.

• Hanson (22:18): “The question is not whether who is president, that is Donald Trump is president, but who is making these pardons. We have no idea.”

Jack Fowler references Republican Congressman Richie Torres, praising his stance against Democratic policies and hinting that his reformative efforts might align with right-wing resistance against what they perceive as Biden's overreach.

Hanson further discusses potential pardons of prominent Democrats like Liz Cheney, suggesting that these actions will extend to other key figures within the party, exacerbating internal conflicts and weakening Democratic cohesion.

• Hanson (31:23): “He just said, I'm going to pardon people. And I have two criteria for pardon them. Whatever they can do for the Biden family or the larger friend and associate of the Biden consortium, I'll do it.”

The discussion underscores a belief that Biden’s pardons are not based on justice but rather on reinforcing political alliances and punishing opponents, thereby destabilizing the party from within.

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Anthony Fauci and the Origins of COVID-19

Timestamps: 47:11 - 55:31

A contentious segment addresses Dr. Anthony Fauci’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic. Hanson accuses Fauci of authorizing gain-of-function research that allegedly contributed to the pandemic's onset, asserting that Fauci suppressed critical evidence and mismanaged the public health response.

• Hanson (48:17): “The origins of the virus he had a hand in, at least according to the evidence. And he suppressed evidence of that.”

Hanson links Fauci to broader governmental and scientific misconduct, suggesting that Fauci’s actions were central to both the creation and mishandling of the virus outbreak. He criticizes Fauci’s shifting public health messages and the perceived cult of personality surrounding him.

• Hanson (55:31): “What I'm making is that this new Maoist type thinking, all of a sudden it turned everything up. Now the obesity is okay, you're not, you don't mention it.”

The segment reflects a deep mistrust of established scientific authorities and accuses Fauci of prioritizing his career and financial gains over public health.

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Terrorist Attack in Germany and Immigration Concerns

Timestamps: 57:06 - 83:20

Towards the end of the episode, Hanson and Fowler discuss a recent terrorist attack in Germany, analyzing its implications on immigration policies and societal tensions. The incident, involving a driver attacking Christmas market attendees, sparks a debate on the integration and oversight of immigrants, particularly those from the Middle East.

• Hanson (68:05): “If you break them, you break them. You're going to go home, you're going to be prosecuted and you're not coming back.”

Hanson emphasizes the importance of enforcing strict immigration controls and background checks to prevent such attacks, arguing that lenient policies embolden individuals with malicious intent. He criticizes European liberal immigration practices and draws parallels to Israel's stringent policies, suggesting that robust oversight is essential for national security.

• Hanson (81:59): “You're going to have to arrest them and we're going to charge them with felonies and we're going to yank their student visas if they do that.”

The conversation extends to broader societal issues, including campus safety, cultural assimilation, and the perceived failure of European nations to effectively manage immigrant populations, which Hanson believes contributes to increased terrorism and social unrest.

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San Francisco’s Appointment of a “Weight Czar”

Timestamps: 57:53 - 86:41

In a departure from the previous political topics, Hanson and Fowler address San Francisco’s controversial appointment of Virgie Tovar as the city’s “Weight Czar,” a role aimed at body positivity and fat acceptance.

• Fowler (57:53): “San Francisco Department of Health's new weight czar has gone viral for her proclamation that, quote, no one has to be healthy, end quote.”

Hanson criticizes this appointment as emblematic of a broader cultural shift towards what he describes as "Stalinist Jacobin cultural revolution stuff," arguing that policies now promote victimhood and undermine personal responsibility, particularly concerning health and obesity.

• Hanson (64:24): “It was against the law to a foreign group. You have to have a permit from the National Archaeological Service because they're trying to protect the union guides.”

He links these developments to a perceived erosion of classical liberal values, asserting that such policies discourage healthy living and personal accountability, while promoting a culture of dependency and victimization.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with reflections on the resilience of right-wing movements in the face of left-wing devolution. Hanson and Fowler express optimism about the potential for political reform and the resurgence of conservative principles amidst ongoing cultural and political battles.

• Hanson (87:57): “You know, I live overseas off and on. If you counted the cumulative months, it was close to three years. And I can tell you I was driving in Greece once and it was during the oil embargo and they had even an odd license plates…”

The hosts advocate for stricter immigration policies, educational reforms, and a rejection of what they perceive as overreaching left-wing policies. They emphasize the importance of maintaining cultural integrity, personal responsibility, and robust national security measures to navigate the lame-duck period effectively.

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Notable Quotes

• Victor Davis Hanson (04:34): “In this age of litigation, I have to be very careful, but I think she suggested on the view that J.D. Vance and Musk had taken over and they were going to get rid of Trump.”

• Victor Davis Hanson (22:18): “The question is not whether who is president, that is Donald Trump is president, but who is making these pardons. We have no idea.”

• Victor Davis Hanson (35:11): “The universities, once this program came in and guaranteed federal loans, if you look, you'll see a sharp increase in the rate of tuition inflation.”

• Victor Davis Hanson (48:17): “The origins of the virus he had a hand in, at least according to the evidence. And he suppressed evidence of that.”

• Victor Davis Hanson (81:59): “You're going to have to arrest them and we're going to charge them with felonies and we're going to yank their student visas if they do that.”

• Victor Davis Hanson (64:24): “It was against the law to a foreign group. You have to have a permit from the National Archaeological Service because they're trying to protect the union guides.”

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Conclusion

This episode of The Victor Davis Hanson Show offers a deep dive into the intersection of politics, social policies, and cultural shifts from a conservative perspective. By addressing high-profile figures like Elon Musk and Anthony Fauci, as well as discussing controversial policies on student loans and urban health initiatives, the hosts provide a critical analysis of current events aimed at highlighting perceived discrepancies and advocating for conservative reforms during the lame-duck period.

Transcript

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T o R that's getnativepath.com Victor start your transformation today. Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. I'm Jack Fowler, the host. You're here to listen to the wisdom of Victor Davis Hanson, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Victor has an official website, the Blade of Perseus. Its web address is victorhansen.com we are recording on Saturday, the 21st of December. This particular episode will be up on December 26th. I guess this is the second day of Christmas. So is it two turtle doves? Something like that? Victor and I think it's the first day of Hanukkah today. Happy Hanukkah to our friends and late Merry Christmas to those of you who we did not wish, who did not hear the previous podcast. We've got a lot to talk about today, a lot of Victor's wisdom to glean, and we're going to start off getting his thoughts on Elon Musk, who is under great attack from the left, and Victor's thoughts on that will be coming up right after these important messages.

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[Jack Fowler]

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Victor is I need an apple.

[Jack Fowler]

He's eating.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Apple.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, I love apples. I love them, Victor. Not as much as I love M&M's, but I love apples. Well, Eminem's my vitamins. So, Victor, you have some thoughts you want to share on Elon Musk, who is the bad boy now of he.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Is the bad boy and I think it was Whoopi Goldworth. In this age of litigation, I have to be very careful, but I think she suggested on the view that J.D. vance and Musk had taken over and they were going to get rid of Trump.

[Jack Fowler]

I get rid of you mean?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes. Yes. And what they're trying to do, the left, everybody knows what they're trying to do. They're attacking Elon on a variety of fronts that he's not elected. Well, he's, he's actually an appointee now of an actual federal. He's going to be a federal official along with Vic, at least on an advisory board. And they're trying to drive a wedge by leaking about him and so that Trump and he fight. Remember, in the left wing mind, as I said in the earlier broadcast, it's perfectly okay for George Soros to flood the zone with $100 million to get hard left, defund the police, destroy the jurisprudence of their city's prosecutors. It's fine for Mark Zuckerberg to get 419, but you cannot do that if you're Elon Musk and give 200, 250 million to get out the vote in Pennsylvania, for example, that's a cardinal sin. So they hate him because they feel that he had a real role and they're going after Him. And they wanted to have Trump turn away from him. And they don't quite know what to do with him because they keep. You know, as I said last time, Van Jones went on this tirade about these unelected millionaires and billionaires, but the source of their anger is that, hey, you guys, ever since Bill Clinton, the billionaire class are ours. If you go on the Fortune 400, all of the top names left wing, if you look at the size, the magnitude of these wealth, these wealthy dynasties, the Bloomberg dynasty, the Zuckerberg dynasty, the Lisa Jobs dynasty, the Google dynasty, all of them, the Amazon dynasty, they're all on our side. The Reid Hoffman, they all are on our side. But this one guy, he was on our side. Elon, we loved him. He was going to displace fossil fuels with this wonderful Tesla, Tesla, he was this good guy. And now we hate him because he crossed us and he bought Twitter. So then the question is, how do you adjudicate Elon Musk? And I think that the reason Donald Trump won, I really do, was that in this process of four years of his recovery, his comeback, he was led on. His supporters, I should say, were not censored and they had a social media platform. What do I mean by that? Facebook was hostile. Instagram was hostile. Google searches have political motivations. The order of your Google search will reflect a prior ideological agenda. So all the conservatives had there was true social. Devin Nunes was doing a wonderful job. But as far as the sheer bulk, Trump lost that 88 million followers when they kicked him off. And they kicked him off, it was almost like a trust. And it should have been subject to antitrust. It was four days after January 6th. It was Google. I mean, Facebook kicked him off, and then Facebook cooked him off for two years, as I remember, and Twitter banned him for life. But so when he bought that, everybody thought was gloating. They said, oh, what an idiot. He spent, he paid 44 billion. It was only worth 20. He's going to lose money. And they didn't understand, Elon Musk, that he's worth, what, 500 billion since he bought it, right. His wealth has doubled because of the increase in stock prices of his privately held companies. And Tesla, I think Tesla is, what, up to 420something a share. GM is 50. So it didn't bankrupt him, but more importantly, it opened the whole online social media communications. There are no FBI agents now who were working with Facebook to suppress news unfavorable to Democratic candidates. It just revolutionized everything. And you can go on to X Now and say what you want as long as it's not defamatory or obscene in a way you couldn't do before. It was all left wing and it was censored and the government was involved in it, as you know, the FBI. And it was a revolving door. They hired James Baker, FBI counsel who's making, I don't know, 200,000. Suddenly he's working for Jack Dorsey at Twitter and he's making $7 million. So he was one of the people who, as legal counsel who approved this whole idea of the FBI kind of merging with the old Twitter. So he revolutionized social media in the United States. Then he took Tesla and I was looking at, you know what the two best selling cars are in California? No, the two models of Tesla 2. Yeah, the Y model is the number one selling car in California and of all of the cars that the combined Tesla lineup is I think number four or five in the country. And that's not, that's things like Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen, Mercedes, gm, Ford, Chrysler. It broke into that. No one had ever done that before with a startup. And everybody hate everybody in the left now hates them. But I just got back from Palo Alto and Menlo Park, Jack, they've all got new Teslas, they're everywhere.

[Jack Fowler]

In fact, I wouldn't be caught dead without one.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

No, they can say they hate him, but they know that of all the electrical vehicles on the market, the Tesla is by far the best. My wife has one, it's just, I mean I don't understand that, how to drive it as well as she does, but it's flawless. And then you go into the space rocket that, The X rocket, SpaceX rocket, it's bigger than that. Remember we were told, thank God when we went to the moon that we had something that no one ever had had in history and that was that Saturn 5 huge rocket. And people announced that no one Soviets were never going to go to the moon because they didn't have the wherewithal to get the capsule up there. But this was a revolutionary breakthrough. But in terms of size, you put them side by side, that huge tall, 360ft, it was larger than the Statue of liberty. And then SpaceX is taller, it's like 30 or 40ft taller and it's got more thrust than this huge Saturn. And there's no more of those, they just disbanded them. They made the greatest rocket in history and they said we're done. I think there's only one of them left that actually works and maybe it's in a Museum, I don't know. But he did. He revolutionized the space industry and he took over from NASA and it's profitable and he revolutionized the satellite industry. He put in more satellites than all the countries in the world put together last year.

[Jack Fowler]

And the tunnel.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And then he went. Yeah, and then he went in so Tesla. Nobody could break into the car market at that level. Social media. He revolutionized. He revolutionized the space. And he's working on Neuralink. Whatever you think about him, his life has benefited millions of people. And the irony of it is he has done more to advance the alternate fuels industry than any leftist megaphone. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, any of those people that are attacking him now. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. He did it and he saved NASA from itself and he saved social media from himself. If he hadn't have opened up Twitter, the next Republican president would have gone in there and so tightly controlled that because it was working as an agency of the US government. And we know now from Mr. Andreessen's revelations on Joe Rogan that they had even scarier ideas should Harris be re elected and by the Biden continuum that they were going to control and pick and choose who got to do what with artificial intelligence based on their fealty or lack of toward the Biden administration and then the Harris administration. So I don't, I don't understand. I understand that they don't like him because he's powerful and he's an apostate, but he said the last thing. I don't know if he was trolling. You know what he said yesterday? What he said, well, I'm not just a partisan. I am going to back Democratic candidates that are sane in the primaries. So think of that. So if you're going to run and you think you're going to be outspent by Reid Hoffman and George Soros and all those people, now all of a sudden Elon says he's going to spend money to give you a shot in the Democratic primary.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, I'll throw out one candidate idea on that, but first I just want to take a moment.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Victor.

[Jack Fowler]

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[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, we all know what they're doing. Mark Zuckerberg, I think Google and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, they, they respectively buy up what, 100 startups a year, they have this huge cash so they just go out and they just buy up, buy up any competitor and they absorb them and they have market monopolies. I think 95% of the world's searches are run by Google just fine, except they're completely ideological and they interfere with free expression. As I said, anything you want to Google, just see what comes up on it and it will have a left wing tinge. And if you want to find a disinterested result, you're going to have to go five pages in before you'll find it. And the same. And so he opened that up and that is quite an achievement. And they hate him for it because they were controlling Silicon Valley and that was the next medium. And they had the old media with the Washington Post and LA Times and New York Times. They had the network, all three network channels. They had pbs and I know Fox offered a different point, but Fox on a good night had three and A half million people. If you add up all the left wing cable shows and the three networks and public TV, you get 20, 25 million people. So they have all the cards. The thing about the left, you got to remember is anytime somebody speaks up with them and claims a minority voice, I don't mean in terms of ethnicity or race, just power. If they have 3 million, 4 million, then they're all you go after them. How dare you. So you know when Van Jones went after billionaires, billionaires, when he went after Elon. Elon I think pointed out, and a lot of other people did. They counted the number of billionaires who gave to the respective candidates. It was about 88 billionaires for Harris and about 55 for Trump, a billionaire himself. So in their way of thinking, that is outrageous. How can he get 50 billionaire? They never look at themselves. And so he goes on there and tweets 10, 12 times a day and they just hate it. They hate it. They hate it. They hate it.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, I'm just a mere thousand there myself. So. Hey Victor, I know you've talked you and I a little bit and then I know you have with Sammy about these Joe Biden pardons and how schemy and disturbing they are, but you have some more thoughts to share on them and we'll get those thoughts when we come back from these important messages.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

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[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, Joe Biden said he was asked in his, one of his final interviews. It may be the final one because he has disappeared. And getting back to Van Jones accusation that unelected people are running the country, I. E. Trump and Elon Musk, I mean, he, I don't mean on, he means that they have not had, they shouldn't have formal authority, but I would remind him they don't have formal authority. All Joe Biden has to do right now, everybody is get to work at 6. George W. Bush had his suit and coat and tie and he was on the job at 6 in the morning. And all he has to do is do that and no one will say a word. He is president of the United States. He goes to Notre Dame and he can say to Donald Trump, you're not invited, whatever he wants to do, but he doesn't. He can't. And so that's in that vacuum, people are coming in. And the most logical person to come in is the elected president and his advisors, one of whom is a Renaissance man in charge of trying to save us from ourselves and spending ourselves into oblivion. And so the question is not whether who is president, that is Donald Trump is president, but who is making these pardons. We have no idea. Does anybody think that Joe Biden says to, I don't know, his chief of staff, hey, you know this guy, he's committed a bankruptcy. There's 40 people on death row right now on the federal. Federal. He has no authority over state, but he, he killed a prisoner. And I think I went through them and looked at them and most of the people there have were in robberies where they killed somebody or they executed somebody in prison. And the racial disparity there's the most on death row are white people because they represent the majority of the population. And then black people and Latino people together are more so they're overrepresented in their demographics. White people are underrepresented but in actual numbers there's more of the 40 than the other two separately but not combined. So I don't think there's a racial motive but what he's who gets to go to death row or not. But what I'm getting at is he doesn't know the individual circumstances, he doesn't know the families of the bank guards that were executed. He doesn't know the kidnapped people, how they suffered or were tortured by these people. He doesn't care. He just thinks I'm going out now and I don't believe in the death penalty. So I'll just cancel all this legal jurisprudence adjudication penalty, forget the victims families, I'm out of here. Which and then the 1500. I don't know about the judge who was taking bribes to put juveniles in this horrific private for profit prison. I don't know about the Chinese communist resident alien who was downloading porn. I don't care. That's his attitude. And then there was these stories circulating that Jill had a burn it down I guess burn it down philosophy is and think about it, payback. Yes. Nancy Pelosi and the Obamas engineered this with input from Hikem, Jeffries and Schumer. We have no loyalty to the Democratic establishment. Now Donald Trump we've detested for our entire lives. We want to hurt him, we want to hurt the Democratic establishment. They were all disloyal to Joe. So we're going to go out and we're going to make things even difficult for our own party. We're going to pardon people, we're going to lie about six times we said we wouldn't pardon Hunter, we're going to punter, we're going to pardon Hunter. And they did. And we're going to sell off that wall and we're going to try to have a little tweak in it to really get them angry. $5 a ton or pennies on the dollar. We'll just sell, sell it off. Ha ha ha. There's your wall. Remember Joe said not one foot am I going to build. So they're trying to be mean spirited at least the old guys, the Clinton administration when they left office, they stole some stuff, remember that? They lifted some furniture, china, or they took off some buttons on the computer.

[Jack Fowler]

So W's, they took the W's, they.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Took the W's off and they wrote, you know, they wrote little pop up windows that said screw you. And they opened their computers, they left little notes and books that said f you. They were just petty. These people are different. They're really trying to harm people and harm the transition. And they've got Trump fuming, which is what they want to do. But he's going to be, he is going to be known for two things. Biden. They carried off the greatest presidential deception and yes, I'll use the word cabal and conspiracy in history. They got a group of insiders to put a wall around this man. And they didn't tell us when he was in the White House, when he was not in the White House, where he was, what time he came to work, what time he went home. In fact, they didn't. It wasn't just that they didn't tell us. They lied about it. They lied about it. And the basic premise now is, well, Victor, they have 50 people talk to the Wall Street Journal. They said, and the New York Times is on. Yes. And why now? Why now? Because these reporters said we didn't say anything because they were going to deny access to us. We would have had no presidential beats if we had told the truth. So he could hurt us. Now he can't hurt us. He's not there. He has no power. He's going out. So we'll blab. We'll basically. And have you seen that guy, Chris, Eliza, what's his name in cnn they go now on, they go on like podcast and they go like this. Oh, my God. I wanted to speak. And now looking something. No, no, no, no. Mea culpa maxima. Mea culpa. No, no, no, no, no, no. You knew what you're doing and you would do it again because you wanted to have access and they told you no access if you tell the truth. And so they could hurt you and they cannot hurt you now. And they could help you. Maybe if I lie and say I just saw Joe Biden fit as a fiddle, strong as an ox, sharp as attack. Is there any more metaphors I can use that somebody hasn't used? I know what I'll do. I'll just say he's Albert Einstein. He exhausts me. Somebody said that. He exhausts me. Is it Quinn? Jean Pierre? I go in there, I'm just tired that dynamism and that power. And they wanted, you know, he could help. Well, if you lie about us, you get an exclusive interview. Yes, you will. We'll give you a tip. We'll give you a. So now, Jack, they cannot be helped by Joe Biden and they cannot be hurt by Joe Biden. So they're telling the truth. And they're telling the truth because it's going to be very clear and it can no longer be hidden that he is completely senile and he cannot function as president. And people are going to go back and say, you people lied to us and you were part of a conspiracy to injure the interests of the United States. You let this man carry the nuclear codes next to him. He was making existential decisions. Now we know why we left $50 billion of $50 billion of weapons to terrorists. Now we know why we were having daylight with Israel and we were trashing Israel. Now we know why we borrowed 7 trillion. Somebody was doing this, but this guy couldn't have been doing it. Who were these people? We want to know who made these decisions. Was it Michelle? Was it Barack? Was it the consortia of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, the squad? Who Was it Jill? Was she the con? But they're not going to tell us that. They're not going to tell us who the Edith Wilson is at this generation.

[Jack Fowler]

I have to think Jill is the greatest villain here. I mean, Joe Biden.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Excuse me, it's Dr. Jill.

[Jack Fowler]

Doctor, I forgot. You know, Victor, back on the, on the pardons, he's non compos mentis, so he's not in a position to say, oh, you know, that, that judge in Pennsylvania, Scranton, who screwed the kids over and et cetera, et cetera. Let me see his record. Or did he even know there was this. These Chinese spies, etc. How many were there? 1500 of them. So somebody's bodies, plural, are putting this smorgasbord of lowlifes in front of him and he's signing pardons for them.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, it works like this.

[Jack Fowler]

Quid pro quo here.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

No, it works like this. He just said, I'm going to pardon people. And I have two criteria for pardon them. Whatever they can do for the Biden family or the larger friend and associate of the Biden consortium, I'll do it. And whatever makes people angry, because I'm going to be a puny little Samson that's going to pull down the temple when I go out, give me as much chaos and nihilism as I can, and make it symbolic. And the more Egregious, the pardon the better. Wait till we get to the last 48 hours, Jack. I expect Ashley Biden, I expect Jim Biden. All of them get pardons. They all get pardons and they know they're going to get pardons because if they don't get pardons, when you write a check and you say loan repayment, $250,000, somebody in an honest DOJ, if the statute of limitations is not over, is going to say, wait a minute, you transferred $250,000 to your brother. Did you pay gift tax on it? Did you pay income tax on where did you get the money? Did you pay income tax? Did. Can you show me the loan document where he loaned you the 250? Did he charge interest? If he didn't charge interest, it was a gift. Did he pay gift tax on it? So they're going to ask a lot of questions. So I think they're going to give him one of these unusual, historically rare pardons that they're going to pardon all the Bidens for anything they may have done from two 2014, when he got on his plane and sold stuff to our foreign interest till the present. Anything that's uncovered. And that's his attitude.

[Jack Fowler]

It's just Liz Cheney will get a pardon from.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

She's so angry, isn't she? You want to say, Liz, calm down. Why are you so mad? Liz, I don't understand it. You, you ran Washington for, I don't know, you were, I think that thing was appointed in, was it in May? It started of 2021 and it went for over a year. And Liz, you kind of engineered that Kevin McCarthy couldn't pick people that historically has been the prerogative of the opposite party to fulfill the minority appointees. So you just said, I'm not letting any of my associates, we're not going to let anybody on here unless they're like us. They've had to vote for Trump's impeachment the second time and they have to have no political future. If you have that, you can come on the committee. And there was nobody, there were no takers and the other nominees were normal and they didn't want them. So did she suborn perjury? Did she obstruct justice? Did she witness tamper? I don't know the law. Apparently she called this Cassidy Hustenson up and said, you know, I really think you want us turn state evidence and this is what I think you should do. And her lawyer wasn't present and that was undue influence on A whip. And then the question is, do they usually prosecute that in February? I don't know. But she seems to feel that she has criminal exposure and wants a pardon and I think she'll get one. And then there's going to be another dilemma. If you were Mr. Vindman, if you are James Comey, if you're Andrew McCabe, if you're Christopher Wray, if you're Anthony Fauci, if you're Francis Collins, if you're John Brennan, if you're James Clapper, do you take these pardons or not?

[Jack Fowler]

Victor, you mentioned loan, you mentioned the Biden family loans, which is a nice little jumping off for loans. Because once the student loans, because we have yet another effort by Joe Biden or whoever is making these decisions to wipe out student loans. 54,900 student loan borrowers are getting 4.28 billion in debt wiped out this month. This has some program called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which forgives student debt for government and Nonprofit workers after 10 years of qualifying payments, blah, blah, blah. I don't know why nonprofit workers, you know, you and I are very involved in nonprofit institutions. I don't know why they should get some special.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I don't know why any of these people should. They took the loan, as Calvin Coolidge said, to the Europeans that wanted reparation relief. They rented the money, didn't they? And the point I'm making is this. The universities, once this program came in and guaranteed federal loans, if you look, you'll see a sharp increase in the rate of tuition inflation. They had a captive market. They told these young, impressionable 18 year olds just as if they were selling cars. This is the thing, this is the thing. They didn't say this to them. If you come into our university and you, it's about $60,000 a year, room, board and tuition. If we give you 240,000. These loans are not cheap. They're 6%. 6%. So you know you're going to be paying 15, $20,000 in interest alone. And these are the majors that we offer. We have 50 majors, but these, this major, this major, this major, this major has a 50% unemployment rate. This major, this major, this major as an average per capita first five year employment rate of I don't know, 6 to 55,000. So we're going to give you all the information you need. This is how much each class cost you when you come to our university and you go into debt with this federally guaranteed loan. And oh, by the way, we have a $30 billion endowment. And we are not going to give anybody any break. We're not going to guarantee your loan. We have some scholarships, but basically you're in the government. You're with the government. And so that was a situation that transpired and it was, I don't know, fraudulent loan. It was misleading. The applicant never got any counseling. And as someone who goes into the local car dealer, I usually, when I buy a car, it's usually I say to them myself, victor, it will be about five hours minimum. And then you get a stack of papers this big, you've seen it, you just sign, sign. Are you aware of the interest rate? Yes. Are you aware of how long it's going to take you? But yes. Are you aware of the monthly payment? Are you aware that we have the right to take the car back from you? Are you aware that we have a GPS device that we can contact our car? And are you aware that you do not own this car unless you pay? Yes. Are you aware that you were of cognizant mind and we are financing you and loaning you the money? Yes. All of this stuff, they don't do that with 18 year olds. Not at all. So they're subject to a lot of correction and I think they're very worried. And the universities are now scrambling like crazy to reach out to Trump. And I do, I just don't think he's going to be sympathetic. And before anybody says, well, it's because there are a bunch of yahoo, no, there are people like J.D. vance that went to Yale Law School and a lot of them are, they know the Ivy League. That's why they don't like it, because they went there and they've seen that other side of that Jack, that one eyed Jack. And so I think there's going to be a lot of reform and it could be. And we're going to get the federal government, rather than forgive loans, we'll just get out of it and we'll tell everybody, you know what, here's tables about what you will be making as a master electrician, a master drivewall, master plumber, master diesel mechanic. Here's what you will be making when you factor in your $200,000, $300,000 college education. And it's up to you now, but we're not going to subsidize it. And I think it's going to be radical. They're just going to. And I think they're going to tax endowment too. Maybe not all of it, but they're going to start to tax endowments say over five or six billion dollars because they're going to say to the universities, you're not non profit. You've got all this profit money and you're spending money and all sorts of stuff that has nothing to do with education. 94% of your faculty at Stanford University gave money to one place party. You have no free speech. You don't respect the fourth and fifth and sixth Amendment. When somebody's charged with a crime on campus. So they know that. They know that it's institutionalized anti Semitism. And so they're very scared right now and they should be. And Trump, they think Trump is a yahoo. They don't understand that Trump represents reform and a cultural revolution. And I could just give you a little tidbit. I don't have any influence of Donald Trump. None. In 2016, nobody called me and said, victor Trump got elected, could you help me get a job? No, nobody in 2020 called me. Jack, I have answered seven or eight calls a day. Hey, Victor, do you know Trump? No, I don't get involved. Victor, do you know this? Hey. And I always say this, Weren't you for Romney or weren't you in your Utah? I remember what you wrote. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was then. So my point is it's culturally acceptable now to be for Donald Trump. He has got seven or eight applicants for every single job, 25,000. He's got 100,000 people. And these people are not strong, stupid. He's drawing in the most intelligent, highly educated, yes, Ivy League trained people who want to participate in this counter revolution. And they're very skillful. And it's not going to be like the first administration. There's not going to be a New York Times op ed says Anonymous. Oh, we're staging a revolution. We're trying to contradict Donald Trump from the inside. Ha ha. There's not going to be a Rex Tillerson state. Marco Rubio is not going to say Donald Trump is stupid as Rex Tillerson did.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You're not going to see the DOD try to resist the, the executive branch. And you're not going to the White House. And you're not going to see someone as an, as John Bolton who will wink and not, oh yeah, I don't want to say anything about the impeachment. I, I got a memoir coming out in about a month. Yeah, it'll all be in there. But I don't, I don't want to go on record about what the real Donald Trump is like. It's all going to be in My book. And then the news count goes. Bolton reporting shocker book to come out. Bolton's book promises startling revelations about Donald Trump. Remember that, all that stuff. And that's not going to be here this time. It's not going to be here this time. There's not going to be a Scaramucci, there's not going to be an Omaroso, there's not going to be a Cassidy Hutchinson. He's got people who are very skilled, but they're also very loyal and they're committed to overturning this cultural revolution. And the left has no idea about that.

[Jack Fowler]

One of the claims against him, Victor, for running that why he could not be reelected from Republicans was that he could not staff an administration with.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's. That was the claim. And, and I, I think he's got just the opposite right problem. He's got everybody in the conservative movement. Did you read Brett Stevens the other day, Mayor Culpo?

[Jack Fowler]

I did not. What did he think of your.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Oh, Brett Stevens. It was a typical Never Trump. I'm sorry, I was wrong. It starts out with Donald Trump as well. He's all, you know, you list all the terrible things that you got right and then it says, but it doesn't do any good just to be blanketly rejection of us because he did some things. Yes. He left. He, he left with a 1.3, 1.2 inflation. Yes. The quad. The world was quiet. Yeah. So let's all just, can't we just get along that was that not. We don't need to be automatically hating Trump. I'm no longer a Never Trumper. That's what he said. So the Never Trump, he destroyed. Yeah, Mitt Romney. He destroyed Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney came on. They say Mitt Romney didn't it. Wasn't it true that Donald Trump's going there? What do you think about this cash, all these bits. Well, he won the election and he said he was going to bring change. And we usually accord the president his appointees and that's what he's doing. So I have no problem with it. So that was Mitt Romney. And they're all doing this now. So they all want jobs, they all want to do it and we don't know how long it's going to last because the left is just taking a pause. They're exhausted. They're saying to themselves, well, somebody tried to kill him. We call him a Nazi. We lowered the bar of assassination attempts by calling them out. We got him off the ballot almost in 16. We had these E. Jean Carroll cost him 80 million and Letitia James got him up for 370 million. And then Alvin Bragg's got a sort of Damocles over his head when he gets out of office. Oh, Jack Smith did his best. Fanny Weiss, who just got removed from the case. Poor Fannie for lying under oath, et cetera, et cetera. And poor. I like Nathan Wade, by the way. I did. I. I liked him because they asked him that question, did you take money or go? And he just looked at the what, Two minutes, thinking, what are the consequences of being A, being silent, B, lying, C, telling the truth. I've gotta pause and think about this. So anyway, all of that stuff didn't work. None of it worked. And now the left saying, and we got Joe Biden and they caught us on this lie. I am done. I can't take it anymore. They're in their fetal position for about a month or two. Donald Trump, violate the Logan Act. Violate every element of the Logan Act. Just take over. I know you're a private citizen. Just save us. We do not want to lie anymore. We tried to destroy you. You're still standing. So go to it. We'll. We'll slander and smear you and defame you in about 60 days. But we have no leaders. Everything we wanted is polling 20%, 30%. The whole thing blew up. The country's a mess. We understand that. And Joe Biden is a waxen effigy indeed.

[Jack Fowler]

Waxing. I read he is going to make one last trip. Victories going over to meet the Pope. Two more.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Listen. Stay there. They're a perfect couple.

[Jack Fowler]

Hey, listen, speaking of before of education, a headline about one of your favorite people. Give you a chance here to reflect on him. Here's the headline from the College Fix. The Great College Fix, which is created by John Miller, who's a professor at Hillsdale. Fauci holds several. Several professor titles at Georgetown, but never teaches. The article begins, Dr. Anthony Fauci is a distinguished university professor in quotes at Georgetown University, but does not appear to have taught a single course since his appointment, nor does he have any future classes scheduled. And then it also goes on to say he is a. At the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown. He is a distinguished senior scholar. The Fix went through all the course catalogs at the school. There's no evidence that Fauci has taught any classes at all.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He did. Did you see his proposed class that he was going to offer?

[Jack Fowler]

No, I did not.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, he was. It was called how to evade us. Gain of function law by rerouting 600,000 to his crony, to a crony, Peter Dasak, who will then manipulate Lancet with a phony investigation and make sure the money ends up in gain of function. Biomedical level four biology lab in Wuhan and three units with a midterm and a final and you're welcome to take it, he pulled it off again. The thing about Anthony Fauci that we all forget, if we just forget all of the acrimony, all of his career, just start from a fresh slate and say, was this virus a gain of function? Yes. Did the United States lend expertise, instrumentation and money with consultation to the Pentagon for whatever reason, good or bad? Yes. Did money circulate and was this instrumentation and knowledge and money done below the radar? Yes. Did. Was this against the law in the United States? Yes. Did Anthony Fauci authorize this? Yes. Did this manufactured virus with the help of US influence input money, did it escape from this lab? Yes. Did this virus show a genetic imprint that was be almost impossible to match in nature? Yes. Did this virus kill somewhere between 50 and 100 million people and make another 200 million very, very ill? Yes. Presto, ergo, there you are. QED quad erit demonstrandum. That was what we were trying to show. So just think of that process and when you think about it, good old Uncle Anthony is right at the very center of this virus. You take Anthony Fauci out of the equation and you could have a good debate whether this Wuhan virus would have been created. Because I don't think that the Chinese themselves had that level of expertise without Western help, and in particular American help. Somebody authorized that American help. And that help was not just Peter Dasak 600,000. It was okaying the consultation, the communication, the expertise to be transmitted to that lab from Americans. And he knew about it. And I know he knew about, because if you look at the corpus of his messages, he was very worried about that from the get go. And that I'm not. I mean, I know that he said, wear a mask, don't wear masks, wear masks, wear two masks, wear one mask. Social distancing, I don't know where it came. We just made it up six feet, all that, you know, the booster will not make you infectious and you will not be okay. Those are all errors of stupidity, incompetence, sloppiness, you name it. But the origins of the virus he had a hand in, at least according to the evidence. And he suppressed evidence of that. And when he was asked by Rand Paul, under oath, did you subsidize help foster gain of function research? He said no. And I think that's why he's going to be the number one person in line for a pardon.

[Jack Fowler]

For a pardon, yeah. You know, a few weeks ago, Victor, I was up in New Hampshire on business and I stopped to see old John Sununu. I don't mean to call him all, but he's in his mid-80s. He's a great guy. I love. I love him. Of course, he came on a few National Review cruises. That's how I got to know him. And he says, come by and we had coffee. So we're just talking about this or that. And folks should remember he was the chief of staff for George H.W. bush. And I asked him about Fauci and he said Bush wanted him to be the head of nih. He didn't like Fauci, let's put it that way. Did not like him and. But Bush had wanted this and Fauci actually turned it down. And Sununu said he's confident it was because of all the money he was already making through his job from royalties from these.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Multi, multi, multi millionaire.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, he's probably the luckiest or the most abusive. Used his job in government.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He and his wife were amongst the two highest federal employees in the country.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

As far as compensation goes. So he. And he was, you know, he. And Berks was. She was. I don't know who was, what their respective roles were. I think she was incompetent where he was malicious. But that's just my own speculation, but I do think that the evidence. We had Stephen Quay on here and he. We went. He went through chapter and verse about the genetic sequence of the virus and how hard it would be, the cleavage site, the spike for all of that he went through. And then he. The MRNA vaccination, all of that he went through. And Fauci knew that when he was promoting that, that there were real problems with the MRNA vaccine, not that. And I'm not saying that history won't show that it saved more lives than it damaged. It could very easily. And the quarantine. I think we do know the quarantines probably took more lives than would have been lost, at least if we look at the Swedish one. But that's disputed too, and controversial. But it's not controversial that he was intent on seeing gain of function virology take place. And if it could not take place in the United States, he knew that it could take place in China. And he wanted in on the results, maybe for a patriotic purpose. He was communicating with the Pentagon, supposedly. They probably wanted to see what the Chinese as if you could ever trust anybody in the Chinese Communist apparatus, which was very naive. But whatever the particular motive, good or bad, he had a role in fueling, fostering that type of research that led to Covid and he won't talk about it. No mea culpa from him. And then he got carried away with this cult of personality where finally he was reduced to coming into his office and he had on there the little Fauci bobblehead dolls, the paintings of him. Remember that? All of that cult of the personality. And he was Saint Fauci. I guess he was. It was kind of like Paradise Lost. He was the divine Fauci, I am the science and Scott Atlas was the fallen Lucifer. Going into the eighth. They really went after poor Scott and they tried to demonize him.

[Jack Fowler]

Waiting for my alma mater Holy Cross to take his name off the science building. Victor, I do have something to chew the fat over with you over. But first, first want to welcome back our friends from besthotgrill.com football's back. So is tailgating. And whether it's Friday night lights Saturday, college or pro Sundays, Solaire Tailgate Infrared Grill Set up fast and heat up quickly. Only three minutes to searing hot temperatures. Just like the big backyard Solaires. Victor owns one of those. A Solaire grill will make you the master of the tailgater with the juiciest, most flavorful food in the parking lot. And the fast grilling times leave you more time to enjoy the pre game festivities. They also cool down fast so you won't miss a minute of the game. The USA made Solaire anywhere, everywhere and all about Infrared grills are portable and perfect for any grilling on the go. From picnics to camping RVs to boating, but especially tailgating. Amaze your tailgating friends with the great food you grill with your Solaire Infrared Grill. Learn more about these fantastic grills and Solaire's try before you buy demo rental [e-mail] that's best besthotgrill.com besthotgrill.com we thank our good friends at Solaire for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor so close to you. It's San Francisco story so close to.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Me I'm speaking from Gloria Selma well.

[Jack Fowler]

It'S close to me.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I am known to go to work each week at Palo Alto.

[Jack Fowler]

Yes, I've been with you as we've stepped over human.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, I did One too many National Review retreats in San Francisco.

[Jack Fowler]

You have a right to remain fat, says San Francisco's weight czar, as her hefty pay packet is revealed. This is from the Daily Mail. San Francisco Department of Health's new weight czar has gone viral for her proclamation that, quote, no one has to be healthy, end quote. Virgie Tovar, 42, longtime activist for body positivity and fat acceptance, was hired this week as a consultant by the liberal city's health department, etc. Etc. I'm so glad they have the money to spend on this. Victor, any thoughts?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I mean, they're broke, they have a deficit, as does the state, and they find ways of wasting their money and then raising taxes, which is why tourists can't afford to stay there. It's not only not safe, but the room tax and the regulatory climate is such that it's very expensive just to eat or to go into San Francisco. There's no bang for the buck anymore. It's a beautiful city, but the injection, fornication, urination and defecation are right in your face. You know what's weird about this is this. It's the 180 degree about face from the left. It went from liberalism and naive passivity and idealism and utopianism to this hardcore Stalinist Jacobin cultural revolution stuff. And what I mean by that is in the old days, your Democrat who would rail in Congress would say, the food companies are killing us with high fructose sugar. They're putting all these fat additives in. We're not eating health. Kind of like RFK that whom they now demonize. But then all of a sudden, in the Marxist binary, they created fat people or obese people. You can't say fat. They were victims. And so you don't dare say that someone who's 5 5. Remember Oliver Anthony Richmond from Rich man from Richmond? And he said, you can't be eating something when you're five three and weigh 300 pounds. That got him in trouble. The point I'm making is that now if somebody is obese, it's not okay to say, what's your diet? What's your exercise? Do you realize that when you're carrying that type of weight, it stresses your cardiovascular system? You understand you're running a greater risk of cancer, autoimmune diseases, diabetes. And if you don't think it's important for your own health and longevity and sense of calm and helping your family, then maybe society at large, that you could help society by not being, you know, that's one thing I think about all the time at 71. Can you exercise today? Can you avoid sweets? Because the health system doesn't need Victor to go in there all the time. So my point is this new Maoist type thinking, all of a sudden it turned everything up. Now the obesity is okay, you're not, you don't mention it. It's the same thing with children. They said before, takes a village, children, you know, we have to protect the. Remember Hillary when she ran, Gotta protect the children, the children, the children, the children. All of a sudden then all of a sudden it's well, you have to protect the trans people and the graphic gay instruction books in the library. And if a young kid sees it, well, even the age of consent is now questioned. There's a whole movement that you should lower the age of consent and children need to explore sexuality and all of this stuff. And then you go into the pharmaceuticals. It was always a leftist, a big pharma. Big pharma, Big pharma. They're just pushing all these unnecessary drugs, all these very dangerous hormones. And then there's the ama, that awful American Medical Association. They're condoning if not fueling surgical procedures that are not just not necessary, but very dangerous. And they're making all this money. And then we hear that, well, if you have these drugs, they're wonderful, it's okay, they can these powerful hormones that you take at 10 or 12. And there's nothing wrong with lopping off two breasts or testicles or these life changing optional survey. And we don't really care if a person changes his mind or not. It's 16, this is important. And then you think, wow, don't you distrust big pharma? And then we get into the morning after abortion pill, whatever you want to call it. Sure, 78, 80, 90 times out of 100 it's safe. But it's a prescription drug, should be, because on certain cases that terminated feces fetus will not be fully expelled and that can cause sepsis. So you need to have a doctor make sure that the patient is in good health. And after they take the pill reports back to the physician that there's no complications from aborting. And all of a sudden they're pushing the abortion pill without prescriptions. So in this. And that's what's dangerous about DI and woke. It has this ironclad Maoist Stalinist agenda and it destroys any opposition from left or right. It's turned on classical democratic liberalism. It loves big pharma, it loves optional, dangerous surgical Procedures. It loves using dangerous drugs that are not proven. They can be used safely without prescriptions and doctors consultations. As long as it promotes this agenda. And what is the agenda? That half the United States is victimized on terms of sexual orientation, gender, race, you name it. And we are here to empower that group and that's the only thing they care about. All the other classical liberal positions have been destroyed. We talked about Gun control is another one. Gun control. You've got to ban handguns. You've got to ban them. You just can't. Or if you're not going to ban them, they have to be registered. Oh, he made his own handgun and there's no. It's not in the federal registry, so you can't trace it. And he just blew off, blew the back out of a health care. I like that guy. I'm glad he used that gun. He didn't have to register it. I don't care. It's all I care about is he shot the right guy. So much for gun control. Not one peep out of the left about this is another reason we need gun control. People who make their own guns and cannot be licensed. So that's what the Democratic Party has become.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, and we love the FBI. Victor, we've got one more.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I love the FBI. When Cash Patel. I don't. Oh my God. What is he going to find in those folders? The first one, he's going to go on his desk and he's going to see ABC and he's going to pull the one that says P. Patel and he's going to, he's going to say, oh, this is a memorandum that Cash Patel is a dangerous insurrectionist and we need to monitor his emails and phone calls even though he works for the House of Representative.

[Jack Fowler]

Victor, we've got one more thing to talk about. Not too pleasant, albeit when we come back from these messages. It's about this terrible terrorist attack in Germany. But there seems to be much more going on in that country and we'll get your thoughts on that when we return from these final important messages.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Behind the bright lights and adrenaline of pro sports is an equally exciting world.

[Jack Fowler]

Of negotiations and deal making. That's what we cover each week on our podcast, the Deal.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I'm Alex Rodriguez, former baseball player turned business executive.

[Jack Fowler]

And I'm Jason Kelly, chief correspondent for Bloomberg Originals. Over the next couple months, we'll hear from all stars like Jay Williams. I want to be an owner one day. Billie Jean King, learn the business and so many more.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Listen to the deal Wherever you get your podcast, the holidays are all about sharing with family meals, couches, stories, Grandma's secret pecan pie recipe. And now you can also share a cart. With Instacart family carts, everyone can add what they want to one group cart from wherever they are. So you don't have to go from room to room to find out who wants cranberry sauce or whether you should get mini marshmallows for the yams or collecting votes for sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then share the meals and the moments. Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes.

[Jack Fowler]

Plus enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees and terms apply. We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show, recording on the 21st of December. Now this show again. It's up on the 26th. And for all we know, much will have happened between when we're recording and when you're listening. But two days ago, Victor, as many of our listeners know, a Saudi Arabian transplant, a doctor in Germany, drove through a crowd at one of these Christmas markets, which are big deals in Germany. And there's an excellent story. I recommend folks go to the Daily Mail and check it out. From the last report, five people are dead, murdered. But there is already a great stress going on in Germany, a fearfulness about that. Some, some Muslim eruption is about to take place. There was another, another town, I think was Essen, where they have these Christmas markets. All of a sudden, boom, like for an hour, there was this parade of.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Of Muslim men shouting Allah Akbar to Christmas shoppers. Yeah, yeah, but Jack, you got to remember they were only retaliating to all those Christians that went in during Ramadan and says, said Jesus is king. Jesus is king to them.

[Jack Fowler]

I forgot about that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I forgot about it, too. I don't think it ever happened. Yeah, there's some question about what his. There's, I've read all sorts of motivations that no one knows the truth yet. People say, well, he left Saudi Arabia because he was an atheist and he was welcomed into Germany and he, he reciprocated that magnanimity with death. But did he do it because he hated all religion, because he was an atheist, or did he do it because once he got to a Christian country, he re Muslim, he re Islamicized, and he was now an Islamic zeal and more of a zealot because he had been an apostate before and he couldn't stand the social isolation that he had. So who knows and who cares? He's just a Killer. And he shouldn't, you know, he shouldn't have been let in the country. He should have, they should have audited, adjudicated, they should have monitored. But they're not going to do that. But I do object to one thing. You said, Jack, you said that he staged an attack. I didn't find that. I read Reuters, I read Associate Press, Associated Press, I read the Washington Post, New York Times. It didn't say he did it. It said a car drove into and car drives into Christmas celebrants. Yeah, car kills two people. Car wounds the car did it. Because it didn't say that he did it. It just said that a car did it. And he apparently was behind the wheel just kind of at the mercy of the car. It didn't say it was self driving. But in none of those press accounts did it say, Saudi immigrant drives car into crowd, kills maims dozens of people. It doesn't say that, it just says the car did it. So I expect the German government to, I don't know, they'll drive in the BMW and they'll drive it up on a ramp into the witness chair and they'll say, Mr. BMW car, how many cylinders do you have and why did you kill these people? And the car will say, I don't know, I can't explain it. And then they'll call the man that was driving and said, I don't know, the car just took over and forced us to go in there. I'm not kidding you, if you read those accounts, that would be what a person from outer space would conclude. It's a larger question though, I think, of reciprocity, that people in Europe now, they're starting to see certain truths very slowly, that Christians are not doing that to Muslims, that Germans are not eager to go to the Middle east and immigrate, that. And I think this would be very controversial, that it is still much better for a Muslim to live inside Israel than it would be for a Jew to live on the West Bank. And that a Arab can be inside Israel and a full citizen with a higher standard of living and more civil liberties than his counterpart in Gaza and the West Bank. And if a Jew just, you know what, I don't like Israel, I'm not a settler, I'm just going to go over and live in Jericho and be a citizen of Palestine. He would never be accepted at the same commiserate level. So there's this reciprocity. And one of the subtexts was I was watching some of the debates in the German Bund Reichstag, whatever. And Elon Musk wrote that the alternative, the AfD alternative for Deutschland, that so called right wing, they usually don't even call it right wing, they call it racist Nazi, but it is an anti immigration, it's kind of like a MAGA movement but a little bit more extreme. And I don't think maga's extreme at all. Excuse me, but the point I'm making is that they took the occasion of this tragedy to tell everybody that this group will never have power. You'll never sit here, one of the speakers, you'll never sit here in the parliament. And that's just, you know, what the public reaction is going to be as it is all over Europe. Why are they doing this? They come from the Middle east, they're poor, they have no freedoms and they come over here and then we say to them, yes, the fault, dear Caesar, is not in the stars, it's in us. It's in us. We empower people. We had an 18 year old Egyptian visitor, foreign student, on a student visa. Where? At Georgetown. And they just uncovered the fact that he was going to kill a bunch of Jews and attack the Israeli consulate. Why did they let him in? Was there any background check? And will he be deported? If he's found innocent or guilty, will he carry out a sentence? You're never going to get respect from the Middle east until you insist on a code of behavior. And when you insist on that code of behavior, you will be liked by the Middle East. If you tell a student from the Middle east you are a guest of the United States of America, you have a student visa, you are going to be adjudicated on your behavior. If you come over here from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Gaza, west bank, wherever, and you go to Georgetown, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, we expect you to follow the rules of our society and legal system. If you break them as a guest, if you break them, you break them. You're going to go home, you're going to be prosecuted and you're not coming back. And if you would do that, the message would get out and then you would not see students from the Middle east trashing the Stanford President's office, occupying the Manhattan Bridge, the Bay Bridge, shutting down traffic, defacing a federal cemetery, you wouldn't see any of that. You know, I lived overseas off and on. If you counted the cumulative months, it was close to three years. And I can tell you I was driving in Greece once and it was during the oil embargo and they had even an odd license plates, right? And you had. If you were a tourist and you rented a car, you got a piece of paper that said that your last digit on your license plate allowed you to go both even and odd. So I was driving in the Peloponnese. I was driving by myself, or. No, there was another guy with me, and I got pulled over by a Greek policeman. And it was kind of nice in Greece that they still had guys that looked like Roderick or something, only he was on a motorcycle. He had boots up to his. You know what I mean? He had that kind of YMCA look. He had the hat and the boots, and he was all dressed in black leather. And he came out. I spoke some Greek, but he spoke some English. And basically he said, you broke the law. And I said, I'm so sorry. I'm a guest in your country. But I showed him all the papers, and he got very angry, and he said in Greek, this is not fair. You're a xenos zinni. You're one of the Xini xeni. You're a foreigner, and you're getting rights that we don't have in Greece. My family can't drive today. Why do you get to. And I said, I think it's for promoting tourism. I don't know. They just said, if I rent the car, I can drive on, either eat or even in our odd days. He was very angry. And then I said, I apologize. I agree with you. I don't think it's fair. You should treat everybody. You're a citizen. And then when I said that, he got very happy, and he said, I'm sorry. I did not know that you had these papers. But you have the right attitude. You are a guest in our country and you like Greece, and you didn't want to break the law. I said, no, I didn't. And I don't think I did break the law, but I understand. And it was like. Though every month I was in Greece, or it was in other countries, I always was afraid to offend the host, you know what I mean? Every time my parents sent me a new pair of Levi's under the dictatorship, they would ring you in and they'd say, these Levi's, are you going to sell them here? And they would, you know, $10 pair of Levi's in 1973, they'd put a $10 tariff on it. I say, no, no, I'll do it. And then I would be even afraid to wear a new pair of Levi's because we were all that way. We all respected the Greek government. We did not want to break their laws. We did not want to be sent home. We did not want to offend the cultural sensibilities that they said, Victor, you're going to have an apartment from, remember this, from 1:30 to 3:00. You are not going to make a noise because it's siesta. You're not going to hang your underwear outside the window. You're not going to have your T shirts, you know, dry in the wind on a clothesline. You are not going to, on Saturday, Friday nights, make a lot of noise to disrupt your neighbors. You're not going to try to get up at 6:00 in the morning and bang your pots. Remember this? And that was the attitude. And why can't we insist on that here?

[Jack Fowler]

I don't understand, if I may, Victor, because. Because you live so much time overseas, if you had done something wrong, you would not. You would have thought it would have been natural to never be allowed back into the country.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, that's why one of the reasons I was, besides, I had respect for my host. I wanted to come back and I didn't want to have something. Even the visa that you had. I had a student visa sometimes, but a couple of times I went over and there was a 90 day, I think it was 90 days. And when you left, they would tell you, okay, you're not coming back in if you don't have a visa. And they would punish you. And I was very careful and I led a couple of tours there. If you go to a Greek archaeological site and you lecture, it's against the law to a foreign group. You have to have a permit from the National Archaeological Service because they're trying to protect the union guides. Right? You have to hire a local guide for your group. So when I took a group from Cal state, we had 30 people. I drove all the way up to this consulate in San Francisco and I filled out all these pages and pages and I got a pass with my picture on it, kind of a passport that allowed me to speak at archaeological sites for five years, I think it was. And I used that on two occasions. So every time I'd go to an archaeological site, some guide would see me and she would mostly were female, and she'd see there was no other Greek with me guide. And then she would call the police. And then the police would come and they would escort me in Olympia or Delphi down to the police station. And they knew. And as he said to me, I have to do this because the guides are very powerful. They're More powerful than the police union. So we're going to make you walk in front of them. And then we would get to the police station and I'd show him all this documentation. He'd start laughing. Great job. I'm so happy you brought your people over. It helps the tourist industry and carry that all the time. I appreciate it. You don't know how many foreign groups try to cheat and they don't have papers. So that's why the guides are angry. They have to have a living. They have families. Said, I understand entirely. And he said, if I were you, as you walk out of this site, go up to the guides and give them a little tip. So I would do that every time. But the whole point I'm making is that there's something called in Classical Ideas, it goes back to Homer and it's the xenos. The xenos. You treat guest very well and guests treat the host well. And you don't come over here and suddenly inflict, Impose your views on your host and start demanding, especially when the host has been accused, not us, but Europe, of imperialism and colonialism. And they are so sensitive about it. You don't play the cultural imperialists. And that's what these students from the Middle east are doing. And I say that with certainty because I walked across the Stanford campus for four months and I would see students from the Middle east come up to me and scream and yell, river to the sea and try to give me literature and then argue and yell. And I thought, you know what? I would always say the same thing. There's a rule at Stanford. You can't camp overnight. You are obstructing the passage of 16,000 people to the student union. They have a right to walk and be unimped. They have a right not to see people sleeping in front of them day and night. Now, you may think that's genocide. I don't care. But you're a guest here. And I would say that to people. I did it on two occasions. And they got really freaked out. Well, what are you talking about? And they got freaked out because they had no respect for their host. Because their host would probably say, is it okay if you stay four months? Do you like me? Please, please, please. And that. That's the wrong attitude.

[Jack Fowler]

New sheriff in town, Victor, by the.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Way, I hope so. Donald Trump, I wouldn't. He's a. He's not going to tolerate that. And you know what? He's not going to tolerate that because he represents the majority of American people are fed up and they don't like to apologize non stop. They have nothing to apologize for. Nothing. And you can see that with the people around him. And they're not going to be, oh, he doesn't like me. Oh, we'd have fewer student visa. They're going to tell the universities, we know what you're doing. You're bringing people over here who are not. No background checks. And you're charging them a premium, full tuition, room and board, to make money. And then you let them break the rules, not just of your campus. That's your business if you want to run a lawless campus. But you allow them to come off your campus and shut down our freeways, shut down our bridges, deface our monuments, and then you protect them. Well, we're going to arrest them and we're going to charge them with felonies and we're going to yank their student visas if they do that. And then to encourage the others, as the French say, you'll only have to do it once or twice. And the word will get, I think the word's already gotten out. Campuses are very quiet right now. They know that this Trump is coming in and they will be on a plane in two seconds if they break US Law.

[Jack Fowler]

Let us, let us pray. Hey, Victor. First of all, I got to wrap my head around the image of you doing some sort of low grade perp walk in Greece.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

The policeman, it was at Olympia the most, and Delphi, but the one in Olympia, the guy walked me in, he was very nice. And then we got into the office and he asked me if I wanted coffee. I showed him the. I bought all these papers. It was just like 20 pages with stamps on everyone. And he just said, ah, doesn't matter, I don't want to see them. Just sit down, Mr. Hansen, have us some coffee. Just. We got to wait 10 minutes. And the whole point was we got to make sure the guides think that I'm yelling, you yelling and screaming at you and you're going to be in jail. And then he said, no. Okay, 10 minutes up, we're going to walk back. So we walk back and he walks over to the guides. And I said, well, what did they say? And I said that you were severely humiliated, that you felt terrible, that you almost were jailed. So he said, on the way out, give them a tip. They're good people. They have a union, they have families to feed.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, man.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

So every time I went to the. That was the second site I stopped. I was only 29, 30. I don't know what I was first tour I ever led. And after that, every time I got to the agora, I got to Sunean. You name the site that I went to, I went right over to the archaeological warden of the site. I showed him all the paperwork, and then I went over. If I saw a foreign tour, I went over to the foreign guides. I mean, the Greek guides, and I said, I'm very sorry, but this is an American group that would not have come here. It's a university group and from Cal State, and we're not taking business away. They're not tourists, and would you like to talk to us? And sometimes they would actually come over, even, you know, and I said, you know what? I feel really bad. Maybe you want to talk to us and we'll give a tip. So they would come over and I'd tell everybody, why don't you give them $5? And then they would get ecstatic. They'd make, you know, a hundred bucks for ten minutes.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

So that's what you're supposed to do. Especially in a wonderful country like Greece, people are so friendly. They've had such a horrific history of being killed and slaughtered by the Ottomans in World War II, by the Germans, and they're still there. And you have to have some. They're kind of like the Israelis, the Kurds, the Armenians, that no matter what the world does to them, they don't. You know what I mean? They persist. And they all live in bad neighborhoods, and they're all small populations, and they're all persecuted for. They're like Israel. I just think if you're an American, whatever your politics are, you should look at Israel and you should look at the Kurds and you should look at the Greeks and the Armenians and the Cypriots and say, these are unusual people in very dangerous neighborhoods, and they have a long, illustrious history. And for the most part, they're democratic, and they're trying to be just and civil on a very difficult place where their neighbors want to destroy them. And we're going to lend them our support, and when we go visit them, we're going to make sure that they're happy with us.

[Jack Fowler]

That's always been the Lebanese into that equation.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, the Lebanese are wonderful people, and they're in a very dangerous place.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, you've been terrific. You know, you're just this anti.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Eeyore.

[Jack Fowler]

Victor is just.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I know. I'm talking. I'm going. We're going from topic to topic, and I'm. I'm upbeat. I don't know what happens. Donald Trump will Do that. I mean, I thought that just something about this past year as it closes, that the things they did to him, the things they tried to destroy him, it would have destroyed. I just always put myself, I think all of us should, in his place. I'm just thinking if I got up in the morning and they had fined me $400 million, if I was reading that I was Hitler, that people were happy. They almost killed me. If they were taking me off the ballot and I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. I don't. I couldn't take it.

[Jack Fowler]

How many days did he have to be in court?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And the. I don't know how he did it.

[Jack Fowler]

I was deposed twice. Just being deposed something is very unnerving.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I've been on. I've been a witness in two court cases, and it's not fun. And he was there the whole time. Not only was he there, he went out into a bodega document. Anyway, whatever people's politics are, you've got it. He's an indestructible force of nature.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, people as you know, leave comments about you and the show. And here's one from your. From the Blade of Perseus, Jim Ehrlich. Ehrlich writes, the genocide of the Volga Germans was done by the Communists. Communists right after the Russian Revolution. My family left Russia in 1912, and anyone who stayed died from starvation. In 1920, 21, the Communists took their seed corn and livestock and left them to die. I follow Victor, and he is one of the few people that mentioned the plight of the Volgov.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You know, it was even worse than that because there was a residual population along the Volgov. I don't know if it was 2 or 300,000. They had been there from, I don't know, post medieval times. And Stalin after the war was. They forcibly removed them and starved them to death. That was not just during the revolution in the twenties. That was after World War. At the last, during World War II, they considered anybody who spoke German or had German ancestry, and there were none. Very few of them were ever found to be pro Hitler. You know, sort of like the Japanese. That was much worse than the Japanese internment. They destroyed him, killed A Japanese internment. Nobody died. There was no killing. There was not one single Japanese American that was ever found in the United States to engage in espionage. There were in Hawaii, but not in the continental United States. And yet we put them in camps. And thanks to the McClatchy newspapers and Franklin Roosevelt, fortunately, Earl Warren and FDR.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Well, Victor, you've been terrific, and I want to thank you for sharing all the wisdom you did. I want to thank our listeners for listening. I want to thank those who write me to say, hey, Jack, I get civil thoughts. I like it. So go to civilthoughts.com that's the free weekly email newsletter I Write that has 14 recommended readings. I think you'll enjoy it, so visit Victor's website, the Blade of Purses. By the way, if you're on X D Hansen is Victor's handle. Victor, again, terrific. Thanks for everything, folks. Will be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye Bye.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Thank you everybody for listening.