The Political Blame Game and Allied WWII Air Campaign Against Germany

Summary

The Victor Davis Hanson Show: Episode Summary

Title: The Political Blame Game and Allied WWII Air Campaign Against Germany
Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler
Release Date: November 9, 2024

In this engaging episode of The Victor Davis Hanson Show, co-host Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler delve into two primary topics: the ongoing political blame game within the Democratic Party and an in-depth analysis of the Allied air campaign against Germany during World War II. The episode offers insightful discussions, historical perspectives, and critical evaluations of current political dynamics.

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1. The Political Blame Game

Overview:
The conversation begins with Hanson's critique of the Democratic Party's internal conflicts and strategic missteps. He argues that the party's shift towards fringe groups like the "squad," DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives, BLM (Black Lives Matter), and Trans movements has alienated mainstream voters. According to Hanson, this pivot has led to policies that are out of touch with the everyday concerns of Americans.

Key Points:

• Leadership and Strategy Missteps:
  Hanson criticizes Democratic leaders for not showcasing empathy towards the middle class, citing examples like Mitt Romney's failed presidential run and the ineffective campaign of Kamala Harris. He emphasizes that the party's messaging has failed to resonate with a broad electorate.

  "The Democratic Party was taken over by a fringe lunatic group of base... they had a series of policies and issues that were entirely incompatible with the American people."
  (05:32)

• Impact on Voter Demographics:
  The co-host highlights the significant loss of white women voters, noting that despite targeting this group, Democrats only secured 51% of their vote for Donald Trump. Hanson emphasizes that Trump effectively addressed concerns related to the economy, border security, and cultural issues that motivated these voters.

  "They lost white women. Can you believe it? For all the talk about the gender gap, 51% of white women voted for Donald Trump."
  (09:47)

• Media and Messaging Failures:
  Hanson discusses how the Democratic Party's reliance on blaming external factors—such as media bias and societal issues—has prevented them from addressing their own policy failures. He argues that the party's inability to take responsibility for its messaging has led to continued electoral setbacks.

  "They blame anything but their own message. They attack the messenger, but never the message."
  (13:17)

• Public Disillusionment:
  The duo touches upon the growing disillusionment among voters who no longer trust elite institutions like academia, the media, and government bureaucracies. Hanson suggests that this distrust has been exacerbated by the party's disconnect from the lived experiences of ordinary Americans.

  "They have passion, but no compassion."
  (26:42)

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2. Allied WWII Air Campaign Against Germany

Overview:
Shifting gears, Hanson provides a comprehensive analysis of the United States and Britain's strategic bombing campaign over Germany during World War II. He challenges the conventional narrative that the bombing was ineffective, presenting evidence that it played a pivotal role in disrupting German industry and hastening the end of the war.

Key Points:

• Reevaluation of Bombing Effectiveness:
  Hanson references the U.S. Bombing Survey conducted after the war, which initially concluded that bombing did not harm German industry. However, he points out that subsequent studies have overturned this view, demonstrating that the sustained bombing campaign significantly impaired Germany's industrial capacity.

  "The conventional wisdom of 50 years is now over with. It was destroyed. It was effective."
  (28:45)

• Technological and Tactical Innovations:
  The discussion highlights advancements in bomber technology, such as the B-17 "Flying Fortress" and the B-24, which, despite their vulnerabilities, were instrumental in maintaining air superiority. Hanson details how fighter escorts like the P-47 and P-51 Mustang, equipped with Rolls Royce Merlin engines, protected bombers and reduced casualty rates over time.

  "They started to have much fewer losses. And more importantly, it taught the Americans that they had good equipment. They just had the wrong ideas and the wrong tactics."
  (33:21)

• Strategic Challenges and Adaptations:
  Hanson explains the logistical and strategic obstacles faced by Allied forces, including navigating the jet stream and countering German fighter planes. He credits leaders like Jimmy Doolittle for advocating aggressive tactics that ultimately decimated the Luftwaffe.

  "They destroyed the Luftwaffe and the bombing started hurt the oil industry."
  (43:14)

• Human Cost and Psychological Impact:
  Acknowledging the immense loss of life, Hanson recounts personal anecdotes, including his father's experiences as a bomber pilot. He emphasizes the bravery and resilience of those who served, while also critiquing the moral complexities of aerial warfare.

  "Bombing was really misunderstood. It was a very savage way of fighting back against savage people."
  (45:26)

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3. Court Cases Against Donald Trump

Overview:
Towards the latter part of the episode, Hanson and Fowler shift focus to contemporary political issues, specifically the ongoing legal battles involving former President Donald Trump. Hanson critiques the actions of Special Counsel Jack Smith in indicting Trump, arguing that the prosecutions lack legitimate authority and are politically motivated.

Key Points:

• Legitimacy of Indictments:
  Hanson contends that Jack Smith overstepped legal boundaries by indicting Trump without proper legislative authority, referencing the expiration of his mandate and the inappropriate timing before elections.

  "He was not appointed by the Congress... he violated the protocol that said 90 days before an election, you do not indict people who were involved in the political process."
  (51:34)

• Parallel Investigations and Bias:
  The co-host draws parallels between the investigations of Trump and Joe Biden, suggesting a double standard in how the Justice Department handles politically affiliated figures.

  "Robert Hur... was exonerated on the excuse that Joe Biden would be too empathetic due to his dementia to be convicted."
  (55:55)

• Impact on Republican Strategies:
  Hanson discusses the existential threat these legal challenges pose to Republicans, positing that they may lead to retaliatory actions if Trump is elected. He envisions a future where Republican administrations might aggressively dismantle bureaucratic institutions.

  "He's going to take massive risks and try to make institutional change... executive orders, cutting government, relocating entire bureaus."
  (76:40)

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4. Anecdotes and Concluding Thoughts

Peanut the Squirrel Incident:
Hanson shares a concerning anecdote about a bureaucratic overreach involving the euthanization of an abandoned squirrel named Peanut. This story serves as a metaphor for misguided governmental actions that prioritize insignificant issues over pressing societal problems.

"They went in without even notice and they went in and kidnapped them. And then they liquidated them."
(66:34)

Reader's Reflection:
The episode concludes with Hanson reading a letter from a listener, Craig Jenkins, who echoes the sentiments of ongoing media bias and cultural warfare. Hanson agrees, noting the media's persistent negative portrayal of Trump and the successful counter-strategies employed by the former president through alternative media platforms.

"The Democratic media machine was relentlessly condemning Trump and still do for that matter."
(70:44)

Final Remarks:
Hanson emphasizes the resilience of Trump in the face of relentless opposition, framing him as an invincible figure shaped by continuous adversities orchestrated by the left. He anticipates fundamental changes in government administration dynamics should Trump secure the presidency again.

"Anything that didn't kill him made him stronger. They know that. Now and he's bulletproof."
(79:50)

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Conclusion:
In this thought-provoking episode, Victor Davis Hanson provides a critical lens on contemporary political strategies within the Democratic Party while offering a nuanced historical analysis of the Allied bombing campaigns in WWII. His discussions are enriched with personal anecdotes, notable quotes, and a clear articulation of his viewpoints, making the episode both informative and engaging for listeners seeking deeper insights into current and historical events.

Transcript

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

And welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. This is our weekend episode and we'll look at some of the current news and we're still on campaign news and then Victor will talk in the middle segment about his history and World War II. We're on. And the two year campaign by the United States and Britain against Germany in World War II. And so I'm very interested in that myself because it often gets left out of, you know, just common discussions of World War II. So I'm very excited to hear that. So stay with us and we'll be right back.

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhanson.com Please come join us there. It's got lots of free stuff on the website and then of course the VDH Ultra material which you must subscribe for either $5 a month or $50 a year. So come try us out. It's a great deal Victor. So we have a blame game going on among the left and I must say also a lot of crying. It's sort of like the crybaby party. But I was wondering your thoughts on that. I especially noticed that the Pennsylvania Democratic Party head was blaming the national party and I thought that was the most vicious of the blame gaming. But what are your thoughts?

I discussed this a little bit on Jesse Waters and it reminds me of that Shakespearean line, the problem is not in the stars, it's in us. You know, Caesar and what I'm trying to get at is. Yes, it would have helped if Joe Biden had not run again. Yes, it would have helped had he abdicated earlier. Yes, it would have helped if they had an open convention. Perhaps a Mark Kelly Gavin Newsom ticket would have been more effective than this buffoonish waltz and word salad Harris. But that's not the problem. The problem is that the Democratic Party was taken over by a fringe lunatic group of base, the squad, the aoc, the academics, the dei, the blm, the antifa people, the trans movement. And they had a series of policies and issues that were entirely incompatible with the American people. Now, on some rare occasions you can have a charismatic leader to thrust a policy down the throats of American people. Barack Obama did that by his novelty of being the first black president and his quote unquote charismatic delivery. But usually it doesn't work and Bill Clinton was wise enough to see that. He tried it. And then with Dick Morris, he triangulated after his setback and the first midterm. So my point is it was the policy. People do not want an open border. When I say people, I'm not talking about wealthy white people in Martha's Vineyard. They cooked it up. I'm not talking about professors in the Stanford campus, people like that cooked it up. I'm talking about the people it affected in the Rio Grande Valley, in Fresno county, in the inner city of Chicago. People don't like to watch television and see the United States military humiliated in Afghanistan and 13 brave Marines blown up. They don't like to see that with a pride flag flying from the embassy as if that was our emphasis, that we were going to be cultural imperialists and voice this postmodern culture on a pre civilized Islamic culture and then be weak about it at the same time. They don't like to pay 30 cents a kilowatt and be told it's good for them because it reduces fossil fuel. They don't like paying $30 for a tiny little steak and saying this is what this is good. You don't know what's good for you when you eat. They don't like getting their car premium insurance premium on car insurance and think, my God, this is like a regular car payment per month almost. So it was about the ramifications of their elite agenda and they don't get it. So no one I have seen has said we are out of touch. Sort of like Mitt Romney running and saying we're going to give capital gains tax. I can't capture 47% of the population because they're on the dole. He was completely out of touch and he was running against a very unpopular Barack Obama. But he managed to lose that election. And because he didn't show any empathy with the middle class, they had no agenda that people wanted. You pick the issue. The border, crime, the economy, inflation, foreign policy, energy policy, social policy. The only thing that they had was they lied about abortion and said Donald Trump wanted to take over the bodies of all the women and prohibit in abortion, even in cases of incest and rape. And they said that again and again and again. That won them a small group of people, but they want the people who they were appealing to the energize were the white single women, affluent professionals. They got them, but in the process they lost white women. Can you believe it? For all the talk about the gender gap, 51% of white women voted for Donald Trump.

I do believe that. Yes.

Yeah, I do. Because he talked about things that they were worried about. Their car payments, the price of gasoline, the food at the store, the protection. They don't want their children going to school and being told that they should consider transitioning. They do not want them to go to the library and look at some book that's graphic. And they don't like to be made fun of because they feel that way. So that was what the election was about. And they can blame game all they want and they're never going to get anywhere. And they're so full of it because you see that. I can remember in July they get this party line. You remember when Joe was forced out? So they took him 24 hours and then they came up with, he was George Washington. This is a guy who wouldn't leave for month. And they were angry and they were calling him senile and they were leaking about him, remember?

Yes.

And then he wouldn't leave. And then suddenly they got the Obamas and Hykem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and they went to him and we. And this is true, this is what was reported at least by our media. Nancy said you can do it the easy way or the hard way. The hard way is the 25th Amendment. And we have the cabinet officers and the people in Congress to get rid of you, so get out. And then all of a sudden, now the party line, he's George Washington. Wow. Have you ever heard of a president that for the good of the country and his party would retire? It was like the, I don't know, the 1796 farewell address of George Washington when he decided not to have a Third term. This was just heroic. And then everybody thought it was going to be an open convention. It wasn't. It was fixed. They picked a mediocre candidate and. And they lost. They lost. Every county in America had a lower vote for Kamala Harris than Joe Biden. And now Hillary can't say, oh, I was the only person ever to lose an election to Donald Trump. No, there's two women that lost it. And the point is, why did she lose it? Because she had a message that was awful. And Joe Biden then suddenly was declared George Washington. And now the message was so bad, lost the election. And now what are they calling him? He ruined his legacy. He was selfish. The same people who said he was George Washington and the same person that said that we're turning the page, a new chapter. She's a black, powerful, proud woman. She's young. She Rep. And now it's, oh, my God, that campaign was horrible. So they blame, blame, blame, blame, blame anything. But we have a message that nobody wants. So we're going to blame the messengers or we're going to blame the people. That's what they do. On one side of their mouth, they say, the American people. I've never. That Jonathan Capehart said, I just lost confidence in America. Oh, and Barack Obama said, oh, you people are racist. And Al Sharpton said, you're sexist. And Joe Scarborough said, Mexican people. Well, now they're attacking black men. And he attacked the people and attack the messenger, but never the message. Never the message. So, and then now we have women who young. Give me. Let me get this straight. I get this Lysistrata message today that women are going to deny sex if the men voted for Trump.

Yes. They don't want to go out with conservative men, young liberal girls.

They're telling us that women who define their own sexuality and they have a variety of sexual. Because they say that they have sex with men and now on dates and stuff, they're not married. And these are the women that we were told the single, affluent urban woman who defines her own sexuality and she's empowered and all this. And she occasionally gets pregnant and she needs to have the right for an abortion all the way up to the nine. I get that. But the narcissism is overwhelming. So I know I'm going to offend people, but I'll be heading. That's what we're here for, not to offend people, to be honest. So they're running a bunch of ads or clips, and by any classical aesthetic standard, the people who are, who are delivering this message. Maybe it's, they might have been physically attractive, but their voice and their attitude and they're very homely people. And they're saying, if some guy is Tom Brady and he voted for Trump, I'm not going to have sex with him. And I'm thinking, yeah, yeah, you're doing him a big favor. Why do this Problem with feminism is they act like every man wants to have sex with them and they're in control and no, they don't. There's a lot of women that men don't want to have sex with, especially obnoxious, just like women don't want to go out with vain, narcissistic men. Can you imagine a male who was kind of homely saying, you know what I'm going to do? I'm not going to take out women and have sex with them. And the women are saying, you promise? Well, that's what it is. You know, when you see these women that are physically unattractive with these horrible voices and their arrogance, and then they're saying, we're going to have a list of soda sex strike, and you know that's a lie. They'll go to a bar, have a drink and then hook up with somebody and then find out, well, he didn't technically tell me he voted for Trump until afterwards. It's just a joke. This whole meltdown is. It's amazing. It's all characterized by one general theme. We have an affluent, bicoastal, over educated, but very unwise and stupid ruling class in the media, in academia, in foundations, in government, in law. And it's nothing. It's not based on race. You can see a Joy Reed and you can see Whoopi Goldward. They're part of it. And they think that because they're in the media or they're professors or they have credentials or they have titles and they make a lot of money, therefore they must have been doing something superior to other people. They wouldn't be so rewarded, right? Yes, but they're like the emperor with no clothes. It just takes a person to watch the View or go in to talk to a Stanford professor and, or see somebody like Kamala Harris and say, that person's an idiot. They don't, they can't speak, they don't know anything. Why, why should I listen to them? And, you know, that's a good question. I don't know. I deal with a lot of professors.

Why do you listen to them? That's what I want to know.

I deal with a lot of Professors. And I'm not just trying to be, you know, contrarian, but when I talk to my person who is now renting my almond orchard about the almond prices and the types of cultivation he does and his irrigation strategies and the fertilization composition and types of tractors and diesel pickups and things. And then I talked to most professors that he knows so much more and he's so much more capable. So I think that was another issue of the campaign that the people were saying, we don't respect your credentialed classes. They have ruined. I'd rather trust. If I had to be on a spaceship, I'd rather trust Elon Musk than NASA. Yeah, I don't trust the FBI coming to my door because James Comey or Andrew McCabe or Christopher Rey says, you know, the FBI is professional. I don't trust the Secret Service to protect the physical safety of Donald Trump because some guy with a flat top and FBI glasses gets in the a press conference and say, this is the most important task we have. There were some. I don't believe you anymore. And I don't believe Claudine Gay. And the people like that who go, who run universities deserve our respect. As I said earlier, I can go into the local food market and talk to 50 people with a heavy Mexican American accent. And I can tell you that if a Jewish person came in, they would not be anti Semitic. I can't say that about sophisticated professors at Stanford.

No.

So this, this was a refutation of that whole class and they don't quite understand it. And you know, here's Donald Trump is Mark Cuban other example. He just likes to be around mediocre women. And he doesn't. He just promoted Susan Wild, the first female chief of staff of any president. Why didn't Obama do that? Why didn't Joe Biden do that? You know, this whole thing is so warped. You see, Joe Biden, he can't even. They don't even report on it anymore. When he hugs a woman or he Smiths their hair or he clutches them too long. If Donald Trump did that for one second, they'd go nuts. It's just accepted they had this. You know, they just, they just give us these polls that were completely wrong, except for three or four pollsters. They were not just wrong, they were intentionally wrong. They were deliberately wrong. They were used to gin up support. And that's like, well, we're really angry. We didn't think she was going to lose. Well, you didn't think she was going to lose because the people on your side were dishonest and you trust them because you're an idiot. So.

Well, now that you're talking, you brought up, you reminded me of two questions that I have. The first one is specific to New York City. So Donald Trump went and campaign to some extent in there. Do you think that that had any broad effect nationally? I know it got him a few more votes in New York, but what was the significance of that?

I'm going to Madison Square Garden.

Yeah, when he went to Madison Square.

Garden, he was trying to point. I can point out that I can go into the belly of the beast. A supposedly over the most liberal bastion in the United States, Manhattan, and I can get people who will not tell you to their face, but they're sick of the liberal progressive project. And I can get 20,000 people and sell out. And I dare Kamala Harris to go to Cody, Wyoming or I don't know, Fresno, California or somewhere and get the same amount of people. And she can't do it. And I can do it because there's a whole group of people out there that have commonalities, solidarity of middle class values and they're tired of being lectured and talked down, even in New York. And you know what? He got the highest percentage of the New York vote since George H.W. bush. He really did.

So do you think that this represents a seismic shift that will go beyond Donald Trump?

It depends. It depends on how he governs because he has started. It's like he pushed a ball up to the summit and he's almost at the summit. And if he does a little bit more in a year or two, it'll roll down the other side with an enormous. He got within five points of New Jersey. They haven't won Nevada in 20 years. Yeah, it looks like they already declared. I mean, McCormick won against an incumbent in Pennsylvania, so. And he only did that because they did things that no one ever imagined. Getting the Amish out to vote, getting 50% of the Latino vote, getting 28, 29% of the African American. That's the beginning. And you can see it here in California. Prop 36, the repeal of this insane law that you can steal $950 and not be charged with a felony. It was repealed by 70%. The Soros district Attorney of Los Angeles, he was beat 2 to 1 by a conservative London breed. Out. That lunatic mayor of Oakland, Chin Tao. Chin Tao out. And Pamela Price, the even crazier day that has turned Oakland into a combat zone. Out. So they're beginning to see the light and People, the next step is, are they going to find somebody. Republicans haven't put up a Reagan or Dick Mason or Pete Wilson. I mean, Stephen Garvey, a nice guy, but he was non. He wasn't. He was invisible. I never saw him. I never saw a commercial. I never saw him, anything about him. But if they get a young, vibrant person, they could start to win again because people don't want to pay. You know, I paid 581 for gas, 583 for gas in a very. I was stuck. I was almost out of gas. And I went to a nice place. That's what I paid. And I just got my liability insurance, I got my car insurance, I got my property taxes. And it's all predicated on, well, you must be making 10 or 12% more every year, like, because that's what we're going to charge you. We're going to charge you that little ribeye steak you used to buy that little 8 ounces or whatever it was for $14. It's $26. And we're just going to pay it, aren't you? And the people that go in there, they don't have EBT cards, all of them. And they don't want to pay it. They don't. They're sick of it. And yet the View and all these people in Martha's Vineyard and the insufferable Obamas keep telling them you're sexist. That's why you didn't vote for this wonderful agenda. You're a racist. Maxine Waters, whose husband has all sorts of insider deals with her. They're very, very wealthy. They got a beautiful home. She's been accused of a lot of unethical behavior, but she makes a ton of money via her husband. And she's on TV now lecturing that the only reason people voted against Kamala Harris was she is black and she's a female. So people don't want to hear that anymore. They want everybody held to the same standards, and they want them to promote and to worry about the middle class. When I drive every day over to, every week, I should say to Stanford, and I see this monstrous Manning Avenue solar project when we're already producing more than 100% of our daytime needs. Acres and acres, hundreds of millions of dollars, no doubt, to build. It goes on for miles. Now, I think, who is paying for this? Who is the person who's paying $0.30 a kilowatt for this? This. What happened to PG E with its nuclear plants and cheap hydroelectric plants? Why did you blow up Three dams. Why did you shut down a nuclear plant in Sacramento? Why wire? This is very expensive. We don't need any more daytime energy. We need nighttime energy, like nuclear energy or natural gas energy. But why are you doing that? You're doing this because you have a theory, an abstraction, an ideology, a creed, but it's not connected with helping the middle class. Come over here to Corcoran or Mendota or Reedley and tell Gustavo Lopez, I really worry about you. I worry that you don't have enough money for gas. I worry you can't pay your car insurance. I worry you're not getting nutritious food. I worry that you don't have opportunity to buy a home. They don't think like that. I see them, I talk to them. All they talk about is these abstractions of climate change. And. And, you know, I told you that story when I was driving to Stanford once, and there was this Mexican American guy, and he was in a landscape trailer and truck, and the truck had. It was always not tuned up, and it was just spewing smoke. Smoke and something I see all the time with poor people. And I got to my office and I talked to somebody in my office and I said it was kind of funny, I think that would drive people. And the person said that they had called, but 11 people had already called about his polluting. In other words, they were all just, you know, I can see you don't want polluting cars. Obviously, if everybody did, that would be a terrible. But they. Obviously, if you saw the guy, he was very impoverished and he probably knew that he couldn't do that all the time. And he was carrying a big load. So the point was he was probably going to get it fixed and he was stuck. And nobody thought, how. Poor guy, look at that truck. He's trying his best. He wasn't some con guy, you know, he's not somebody who passes me on. 280 at 95 miles an hour in a Tesla and cuts in front of me. But they were so angry at that, so mad. But they don't worry about the person who's in the truck is what I'm trying to say.

They have no compassion for the human.

They have passion. You remember that great line from the Professionals when Jack Palance plays the Bandito and Lee Marvin, they're going to kill him. And he said, finally, you have passion, but no compassion. They have passion, exactly, but they have no compassion.

No wonder they were all crying. It was their passion.

They were all crying. They were crying like babies.

No well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back. Talk a little bit about the air campaign in World War II for two years by Britain and America over Germany. Stay with us and we'll be back.

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor, I'm excited to hear about this because like I say, you don't hear a lot about it. And I'm really curious, especially the significance of it. What did it achieve? Anything, but go ahead.

Well, there was something called the U.S. bombing Survey after the war, John Kenneth Gilbreit with a member, and they came to the conclusion that it did not harm German industry because they looked at actual output productions and they saw that it increased until the very end of the war. So they were saying the heaviest bombing period, German industry increased, but they didn't. It wasn't a very sophisticated study. So people have gone back and they've looked at other criteria that were overlooked. And so the conventional wisdom of 50 years is now over with. It's destroyed. It was effective. The reason that output and production increase increased was Germany was on an unsustainable trajectory. They brought in slave labor. They turned everything over to Albert Speer. He cut back the standard of living that had not really been on a war footing until 1945. They cut back caloric intake. They did everything and they went on a fanatical war footing in a way they hadn't been before. And most of those increases were because they were not fully mobilized for war as some like Russia was, for example, they were still selling chocolates and silk stockings. The United States even was more mobilized in 1944 than Germany was. So the point was they put a lot more capital and input into production even though they were losing at a greater rate. And finally it fell apart in mid-1945. That was one thing to remember. Number two, the Americans went in there very idealistic and their idea was Russia has been fighting heroically for one year. We have found out that given our tanks, our lack of experience, the lack of air supremacy over the channel, the lack of naval supremacy because of U boats, it is impossible to do what we should do in. And like we did In World War I, we said we're going to go to World War I in April 1970, send the Doaboys over, we'll land in France. Well they had France, our allies did. France was there, it wasn't there. It didn't exist in 1944-43, 42. So the idea of a cross channel invasion to take the pressure off the Soviet Union and face Germany With a two front war, it was impossible. In 41, 42, 43, 40 we had to get experience in North Africa, we had to prune the Germans back in Sicily and Italy. So what are we going to do? We said to the Russians in the world, ah, for all of our inexperience in 1937, 38 we created something called the B17. It was a ahead of its time. It was a four engine bomber. Japan never built a four engine bomber. Germany never built one. Japan the only person that could do Russia never did it. It was only Britain and us. But this was the forerunner. It was a very sophisticated plane. It was very hard to shoot down. They called it a fortress. It had 1150 caliber machine gun mounted guns. It had a large crew and it went pretty fast. It was ahead of its time. And then we had something called the Norden bomb site where they navigate, took control of the plane and he could see with a telescopic scope. And we said we have the answer because we practice in peacetime and we can drop a bomb from 25,000ft into a barn. And so we went over there and we said, you know what, we're not able to have a cross channel but we're going to take the pressure with a huge bombing. We're going to bring over 6, 7, 800 bombers in the first wave. We'll get up to four. And the British had been doing this since 1939 trying to bomb Germany over occupied France. And they had Halifaxes, they had Sterlings, they had Every Manchesters. And they said, look, you can't fly over the Channel and engage in MEBF109s and now Focke Wulf 190s are coming out. You can't go over occupied France. Go all the way to Germany with 88 millimeter and bigger flak tower guns shooting at you in broad daylight, and you'll be just mauled to death. I don't care how many machine guns. I don't care if you call it a fortress. You can't do that. And we said, yes, you can. You don't know about the Norden bomb site and Ira Eaker, half Arnold to a lesser extent. And they did it and it was a bloodbath. So when we.

What do you mean by a blood bath?

A bloodbath? They were the B17s and then later the B24s, which was supposedly an improvement on the B17. It went about 25 miles faster, about 275 miles. It carried 7 to 8,000 pounds rather than 5. And they thought it would had much longer range. It could go deeper into Germany. But the problem was it came out. It was poorly designed. There was only one exit door to in the rear. They called it the flying coffin. Had thin wings. It couldn't get up to 30,000ft like the B17, above the flak. And it was easier to make. They made one an hour at World War I. But the point was they went in daylight in 42. They tried to do their best. I'm not criticizing. They were trying to tell the world the United States has a second front. It's just not on the ground. And we are, but we, we sent in that theater alone, not counting Italy, in fighter losses. The whole thing was 70,000 dead, but we lost about 25,000, 5,000 planes. So the loss rate got up to 6 and 7% in the Romanian Potosi. 15%, well, you could see 15%. Six or seven missions, you're dead. And even at five or six, you. You do up to, you know, 20 missions, 20, 30 missions, you're dead. And so the British were telling us, the only way you can do this is you got to get a heavy bomber. And they were developing something called the Lancaster. It carried a huge twice the bomb load. It was 25 miles faster. And it didn't have 10, it had only seven. And the idea was you're going to get three or four or five of them in little packs, and they're all going to come in different directions and they're going to be synchronized. So when they get right next to Hamburg or Bremen, then they meet and go in a row and bomb. And they're going to do it at night and they're not going to have any pretensions of accuracy or precision. We don't call it carpet, they call it area bombing. We're going to see the industrial center and we're not going to care. These are people who are starting of the war and we're going to burn this the. And we said, that's support. We wouldn't do that. And the British said, oh yes you will. We lost 50,000 people. So it didn't work. But what was happening, what the bombing survey missed was in that enormous sacrifice of all those poor guys that went into those, you know, those great. I don't even want to think of the poem that, you know that there's a poem about a blister gunner and they had to wash his guts out of the plexiglass. It's really a great poem. I don't want to read it. It makes me sick even thinking about it. But the point is, you should read the Fall of Fortresses. It's one of the best memoirs of World War II about what it was like to be in a B17 in 1943. So the point is, after all that death they started at Come on something and they said, if you take France, then the Germans will not have forward bases so we can fly over friendly England, friendly France, and then only into the enemy territory. And two, there's something called fighter escort. We were ahead of the British on that. We'll take the P47 and the P51. I know they don't have long range, but we'll come up with a new idea called disposable gas tanks. So you'd get a 50 or 70 gallon gas tank and you would fly over friendly territory where it was exposed and vulnerable, but nobody was there to shoot it down. And then you'd drop it, it was disposable. And then when you got over Germany, you had a full tank of your regular gas. And that gave you an hour or so to protect the bombers. And then we had a genius like Jimmy Doolittle, the hero of the raid over Tokyo, who said, these 18 year old kids, they're reckless. They're like they're on a motorcycle. Take advantage of that audacity. Don't make them stay in formation and make a little protective shield above the bomber. You'll never stop a Focke Wulf 190 coming out of the sun at 400 miles an hour in a dive. Let them go, let them go to the bases, let them go hunt things down. Just say, you know what, you're hunter killers. Go find these fighters. And then they gave them where the German bases were. And sure enough, they would come in and strafe and they would circle around and they would wait for the German planes to take off, shoot them down when they were going slow, come back again, oh, it's about been an hour. We'll go back and check how they're doing and then shoot them when they came back. And they destroyed the Luftwaffe and the bombing started hurt the oil industry. They didn't have enough gasoline. They didn't have enough hours training. They were putting fresh pilots in with no experience. It used to be three or 400 hours to be a fighter pilot. Finally the Germans were putting people kids in there with 25, 30 hours. They were shot down on their first mission. And then they got the P51 brilliant airframe. Allison engine substandard. Put in the Rolls Royce Merlin, the British engine. Get the best of both worlds. It was the best fighter. Go 400 miles an hour. And by 1945, the United States had given up this Dresden, I mean the Norden bomb site. And they were just had no pretensions, they were going to go in and carpet bomb or area bomb if they had to. They went in with complete fighter escort. The fighters just swarmed over Germans before they got near the squadron. The squadron themselves knew exactly. You don't, if you miss the target on the first run, you don't make a big wide circle and try it again to get the precise. You just drop them and get out of there. And they started to have much fewer losses. And more importantly, it taught people, it taught the Americans that they had good equipment. They just had the wrong ideas and the wrong tactics. And they learned a lot from the British. They really helped. And the British had the right idea with a Lancaster, even though it was more vulnerable than the B17. But the idea was you want to put the maximum amount of load in one plane. You don't want to expose people. You want to have the smallest crew possible. The idea, you're going to put a bunch of guys in machine guns. They're never going to be able to shoot down these planes that are coming in at 400 miles an hour. You just can't do it. And especially when they have cannon, 20 millimeter, 30 millimeter cannons and a machine gun. And then we decided that when they looked at the Pacific theater they said Japan has never been invaded. They knew that in 1942 nobody has ever invaded Japan. They're fanatic defending the home soil and there's nowhere to base. It's an island. It's kind of like Britain. So what are we going to do? To go into Tokyo and throw out that government, Destroy it. And they came up with the idea we have to bomb. And they said Okinawa is right next to Japan. It'll be just as hard to take. That'll be. And we have to island hop it. And they came on the island, they wanted to develop an experimental bomber that could fly sixteen hundred miles one way. It wouldn't have two thousand mile range, it would have three thousand miles. It wouldn't carry five or six. It would carry ten or twelve thousand pounds. It wouldn't be able to go up twenty eight thousand. It could go up thirty five thousand feet. It would fly two hundred and seventy five. So they came up with this B29. The problem was, and it would be pressurized so you wouldn't have to wear, you know, have oxygen. You'd have oxygen floating through this kind of tube in the middle. But the problem was it was experimental and no one. And you were flying from the Mariana Islands and you had only about 30 minutes at the most fuel over the target. And there was the jet stream, 400 miles and you were sending 11 men and this crew in an experimental plane and having them fly at night 1600 miles over the ocean. And you can see what happened. It was pretty bad. And then suddenly they brought in a guy with a cigar in his mouth. He had Bell park. He kind of disguised it. Curtis Lemay, uncouth. He was kind of a Trumpian figure, kind of the George Patton of the Air Force. And he said, you know what, this outfit's been getting a lot of publicity, but they haven't produced anything. You tried to do it from China, you tried to do it from India and now you're doing it and it's not working. It's not working. And this B29 project costs more than the atomic bomb. It was over a billion dollar project. And he said, we're going to do something crazy. This plane is not going to go up 30,000ft. When you burn out the engines to get up that high, it's going to go down at 4, 5, 6,000ft. It's not going in daytime, it's going to go at night. It doesn't care about the Norden bomb site. It's not going to try to be particular. The jet stream is not your enemy that blows the bombs off course, it's your friend. Because you're going to come in with the tailwind at your rear and that plane is going to go three or four hundred miles an hour. They're not going to be able to catch you. And you're going to come at night, low, where their flak guns are not adjusted, they're adjusted for high. And you're going to load up with napalm. Napalm, a new idea. And when you drop that bomb, don't worry about the wind blowing it off course. Just get it in the general direction. The wind then will feed the flames. So on March midnight of March 10th and the early morning of March 11th, they tried it. And it was the most lethal day in the history of warfare.

That's 1945.

1945, they killed somewhere between 150, 200,000 people. And Japanese thought they had kind of come on a really brilliant idea of local, decentralized, of production. So the big Mitsubishi plants or something, they didn't really follow that paradigm. They would go into a neighborhood and make an engine, a propeller, and different warehouses spread around looking like houses. So they just said, if they're going to do that, we're going to burn it all down. And then LeMay said, They'll probably try me as a war criminal if we lose it. We'll drop leaflets. They drop thousands of leaflets, please leave. We're going to burn down the following cities. And they gave the cities the names and it was psychological terror, but it worked. But the, you know, there were 3,000 people that didn't make it back. As I said in an earlier broadcast, my dad never talked about, but he had these scrapbooks and they had all the nose art, you know, Thumper, Dumbo the elephant, Pretty baby. And they had the little bomb signature for each mission painted. And they had pictures of the crew, 11 of them. And when I was a little kid, we would climb up. He didn't like to look at it. We would pull it down and we'd say, look, look, it's a cartoon. Disney. That's Dumbo. Oh, yeah. Boys, he didn't make it. He got shot down in Yokohama. Well, how about, you know, maybe Donald Duck? Did he make it? The ducks? No, they didn't make it over Cob. They got blown up. Well, how about Song of the South? Did he make it? Those guys? No, they were overloaded and they fell off the cliff at 10 and burned up. Well, how many planes in your squadron? Well, there were 16 of us and 14 didn't make it. As you got older, how did you fly over? Well, they had something called amphetamines, binnies. We took that. Well, then how did you go to sleep? Well, they had something for that, too. And, you know, it was pretty scary what they did.

Yeah.

And I don't think. In his case. Yeah, I think it affected him. I was really. I'll just finish with an anecdote. I think I said it, but the people were just astounding. And he had a pilot that was probably one of the best pilots and the entire air Wing, the 313th. His name was Allenby. And he had developed a way of revving up the RPMs and braking the plane so that when they took off fully loaded, they wouldn't. They would have enough RPMs so they would not drip. You know, they could take off over the cliff and they would zoom out. And he had an instinctual idea of how to save fuel. So they never ran out of gas. They crashed twice, I guess, in Iwo Jima. But the point was he flew the 41 missions. They did. And then the Korean War started and he went back and flew another 40 or 50. And I was thinking, and I think I said I was like 9 years old. And this guy in this big flatbed drove up one day and we were in this. We only lived in an 800 square foot farmhouse, and we didn't have nothing. And this guy was a kind of trader. He had furniture and he had a. I think he had a service day, I don't know what. He lived in Oregon, and he was making his rounds, buying stuff. And he had kind of a jumpsuit, like a war surplus green suit. But he was kind of heavy, kind of weird looking in his 40s. And we were kind of scared of him. I said, dad, there's a junk man out there. And he goes. And he goes out and talks to him, and he was smiling. And my mother came to me and she said, don't ever say that again. You go out and apologize. So I went out and I was like 6 years old, and I said, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that. He said, my dad said, this is the most brave man in the United States Army Air Force. He got all of us back. He volunteered to go to Korea. He was inspiration. And just because a man comes back from war and he doesn't look like he's successful doesn't mean he's not successful. There are certain people who are designated to make money and peace. And there are certain people you count on in war, and they're not always. It would be wonderful if they're synchronized, but they're not always synchronized. This man has abilities that the richest man in America does not have. And if you go to war with people like the Nazis, the Japanese, you need that man right there. So I know your mom said, apologize, you go apologize. I did good. When he died, his daughter wrote me one of the most moving letters. My father worshiped him and he said, that man got me home. But imagine doing that, flying 40 missions as a pilot over Japan at night. This is the second third generation Zero fighter. It was a Raiden fighter. They were some of the most sophisticated fighter planes in the world. Japan did at the end of the war. And then you know that if you bailed out, they didn't wear parachutes over Japan because you were dead, beheaded. If you, at the end of the war, if you tried to bail out and then after doing all that, go to Korea and fight against fly with the sky full of Russian MIGs. It was pretty amazing that we had people like that. So bombing was really misunderstood. It was a very savage way of fighting back against savage people. When we couldn't invade Normandy or we couldn't get to the Japanese mainland, it was one way we were telling the Soviets, we are going to take pressure, we're going to have a second front. It was completely a disaster. In 42 and 43, we learned from our mistakes, we got better equipment, we learned from the British. And by 1944 and 45, it was absolutely lethal and it destroyed the German industrial sector.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Victor. Let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk a little bit about the court cases against Donald Trump. Stay with us and we'll be back.

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor, the court cases are still moving forward? Well, some of them. Jack Smith has ended both his cases against Trump. One of them was the classified documents and the other one was on January 6th. And I was wondering what your thoughts were or if there's, you know, Jack Smith doesn't seem to have had much of a case. If he's backing off.

The whole thing was a joke because there was no special counsel, legislative authority for him to act that had expired. So he was not appointed by the Congress. He wasn't a Lawrence Walsh in the Nixon years or the Reagan years. He was not, he had no authority. He was just a minion of Merrick Garland. He violated the protocol that said 90 days before an election, you do not indict people who, who were involved in the political process. He did that by re indicting Donald Trump. He rushed, he tried to accelerate the normal schedule of indictments and court schedules to get Donald Trump in court during an election. He knew, he knew that there were improprieties on the January 6 committee. He ignored that. He knew that Joe Biden had greater exposure and that Robert Hur, his counterpart, who was investigating the supposed violation of archival laws by taking for 30 years classified documents into unsecure multiple locations and more importantly, discussing classified information with his ghostwriter who then destroyed a transcript of that evidence. And yet he was exonerated on the excuse that Joe Biden would be too empathetic due to his dementia to be convicted. And yet he went ahead with that case against Donald Trump. And so finally, Donald Trump said, you know what, if I'm elected, the first man who's going to be fired is this politico because he has no statutory authority. He works for the Department of Justice and the attorney general, and this attorney general is crooked. And then you ask, the second problem was you had Joe Biden spouting off all the time to people, when are they going to indict him? He just said two weeks ago, a week before the election, we've got to lock Donald Trump up as if he's tried and found guilty before he even goes to trial. And then you had Jack Smith. Think about the day that Jack Smith was appointed, November 23, I think, of 2022. On that same day, the Mr. Coangelo, the third ranking person, the DOJ who had worked for Letitia James, went to, resigned his prestigious position. And he waited about a week, but he resigned the same day that Jack Smith was appointed. And then he went to work for Alvin Bragg. Same day. The same day, that very day, Fannie Willis, Paramore, Nathan Wade went to the White House and met with the White House counsel. So that is no coincidence. You're Joe Biden's justice people, legal counsel. You're meeting with Fannie Willis, representative, to coordinate that indictment. You're appointing Jack Smith the same day to get another indictment, and you're sending your third ranking attorney to resign to go work for this buffoonish Alvin Bragg to coordinate this. So it all was crooked and now he doesn't exist. He resigned and he knows he did. The only thing that he's worried about is, is it retribution or is it just fairness and necessary that the next attorney general should have a special prosecutor and they should look at all, subpoena all the emails, all the correspondence and see to what degree evidence was warped and this was all coordinated with the White House and the same thing would be true of all these things. So if Jack Smith has a legacy and he wants to tell his grandchildren he was a very important prosecutor, it'll be this. He can say, I helped get Donald Trump elected because before I indicted him, Donald Trump was in the popularity polls behind Ron DeSantis. Once I indicted him, once Fannie did once Alvin did once Letitia did once E. Jean Carroll. We were able to get Donald Trump very popular.

Yeah.

And that's what his legacy was.

Yeah. What do you think about the Alvin Bragg case with its 34 counts and convict that he's been convicted. Now they're going to sentence and in a month. I understand.

I don't think that'll be. I don't think the Supreme Court will. I don't think you can have a sitting president or an elected president of the United States indicted by a local court on charges that would never have been brought in against, brought against anybody else. I just don't think they're going to do it if you did that and he didn't have a mutual. Then you can see what would happen right now. You could say, I'm the District Attorney of Fresno county and I think that Joe Biden might have done something wrong with his family or taken money and he gave a lecture here and he was going across state lines and I'm going to indict him. You have every freelance prosecutor doing. Remember what the left does. The left says, we're going to break protocol because we're morally superior. And don't you dare try what we're doing. We're going to have 600 sanctuary cities and we're going to nullify federal immigration law. You guys in Utah or Montana or rural California county. You can't do that. You can't nullify federal gun laws or federal endangered species laws. You can't do that. Only we can do it. Only we can indict a president ex president. Only we can impeach him twice. Only we can take him off the ballot. You can't. And this is an existential question for Republicans because now they're saying, oh, he's going to put us in jail. He's going to have revenge. No, you're projecting that you would do what he would. You're thinking that he will do what you would do had he. You suffered what you inflicted on him. And I don't think he's going to do it. I think he said, as I said with Hillary, she suffered enough.

Yeah.

And we'll see. He's going to meet Biden in the White House. And I think one of the questions will be, I'm not in a political position to pardon my own son. I promised the American people I would not do that out of the generosity of your heart, President Elect Trump, even though I called you a fascist and Hitler and I wanted you locked up and your supporters are garbage. Would you please pardon Hunter when you're president?

You don't think he'll pardon Hunter before he leaves office? Joe Biden?

I don't know. I don't. That'll be a stretch. He would just. If he did it, he'd have to say, I just flat out lied to you when I said I wouldn't do it.

I. I don't think he would care that he.

Well, he might. He might do it in the sense he doesn't even know what he's doing. Somebody would do it for him and say he doesn't know. Yeah, he wouldn't know.

Yeah, perhaps. Yeah. Well, last question here for this weekend. Van Jones has been criticizing Elon Musk, by a way of saying that he has too much money and he's doing. Influencing politics in that fashion. And I was wondering. The left is really angry about Elon and his pack and all the money.

Yeah, I used to be in Powell when the. Elon Musk was the heartthrob. He didn't like Donald Trump at the beginning. And everybody wanted to brag that they had a Tesla and he was a. They thought he was a wonderful man. He was the richest man in the world and he was a man of the left, they thought. And all of a sudden he got dissatisfied with the regulations and the one he had. I think he had a son or daughter that was transitioning. He felt that that was wrong and he just got fed up with the whole woke project and he became a man of the right for now. And all of a sudden Van Jones spouts off that. What did he say? He thought that people that were the richest man in the world should not be giving money to different causes. And I thought to myself, I have seen a lot of hypocrisy in my life, but Mr. Jones, I've never seen anybody like you. Because if I remember, you were the first co recipient of the Bezos Award and he gave you cash and he said, you can do whatever you want with it. He didn't give you a million dollars. He didn't give you $10 million. He didn't give you $50 million. He didn't give you 70 million. He didn't give you 90 million. Mr. Jones, he gave you $100 million. That's what you took from the second richest man in the world. And then you got on TV and you didn't really tell people that. And you spouted all of this left wing sanctimonious junk. And now you're criticizing a rich man using his money to affect what public perceptions. Why don't you do this? Why don't you say, I don't like richest men in the world giving their money to influence people. And therefore whatever I haven't spent, I'm giving it back to Mr. Bezos because I've come to Jesus moment after watching what Elon Musk does and the chances of that. You know, when I see these people, I ask myself, well, Van Jones, I mean, he makes some good points, but what has he done? He wrote one book about middle class or environmentalism, green environmentalism for the poor. It had very little influence. The only thing I can remember is Valerie Jarrett was asked about him. She said, ooh, ah, ooh ah, Van Jones. We got our eye on him and then they made him environmental. What was it? Green. Green advisor to the President. He did nothing. And then he went in and all of a sudden he's Van Jones. So all I can see that he's ever done is talk, talk, talk. And he got $100 million and now he can't even have the character enough to say, I can't criticize Elon Musk when I'm asked because I got $100 million. And no, Elon Musk didn't give anybody $100 million. He gave it to PACs and he gave it to groups, but he didn't single out one individual in the media and hand him a million, hundred million dollars.

Yeah.

Do you think that Van Jones is going to say, well, I have a news story. Why don't you comment on the Amazon factory relocation in AOC's district? Was that smart of her saying that Amazon has predatory wages? We don't want those jobs? Van, what do you think? Well, I can't comment because he gave me $100 million. Did I think he's going to say that?

No, no, not at all.

Obviously the combination of left wing politics and money is. You know, when I was a freshman at UC Santa Cruz, I played on the. They called it the Athanatoy, the Deathless. It was a classics baseball team in the softball league. We weren't very good, but I had played baseball. And there was a guy on our team who was really good. I mean, he was a faculty member. His name was William Domhoff. I really liked him. He was a man on the left, but he was, he was probably about 50 then, but he hit home runs and stuff. He was in great shape. And he wrote books called Fat Cats and Democrats. And he was way ahead of his time. And his point was that limousine liberals were very dangerous people and that very. A lot of wealth made them activists that influenced politics in the abstract. And he was a psychology professor. So he really gave us this paradigm that for psychological reasons, very, very wealthy people who do not want to interact with the people that they champion from afar. They create these causes or these charities or these campaign contributions to liberal politicians to fulfill agendas that make them feel good about themselves without actual interaction. It's sort of like the manor or the keep or the Lord. He feels that he wants to help the people outside the castle walls sweeping against them. So he goes to the church and says, how do I go to heaven? I will make a contract. You go give these people certain alms. Or some cash every month. And then you can buy things from. You can do what you keep doing. You can get on your horse and your big fields and you can fornicate and loan money and do whatever you want because you're going to go to heaven. You've signed a contract. An indulgence. And he was a really brilliant guy, even though I didn't agree with him. But what did I know? I was 18 and I remember reading his books. I was shocked that this guy on our baseball team wrote these books about the toxic nexus between great amounts of money in liberal politics.

Yeah, well, Victor, I said that was our last topic. But there's actually one small topic more and that is Peanut the squirrel.

Oh man, I had a nightmare.

Poor little guy. You had a nightmare because of poor little guy was euthanized. I felt so sorry for him.

You know what? For this condition I have a histamine they recommend. The prescription drug of choice for a mastocytosis is singular. It's a very good drug, asthma drug, but it does have a federal label that with regular use it can cause nightmares. And I've noticed that every once in a while if I watch TV late and I take the singular tablet, I do have nightmares. And I was watching that Peanut story, that poor little. And I couldn't believe it. I really couldn't believe it. This guy adopts this little abandoned squirrels that got ran over, run over his child or his little squirrelet or whatever and a raccoon as well. And he put them online. And then some bureaucrat sees this and says these are improper pets, I guess because there haven't been rabies.

They're wild.

Yeah, but I mean he was on his neck and you can, you can tell a rabid animal anytime I go out and take a walk and I see a coyote that gets too close to me. Next time I want to take a gun out or something because it's not normal and they don't have rabies. But I'm just telling you that most people can identify. But the point is they went in without even notice and they went in and kidnapped them. And then they what, liquidated them?

Didn't they send five people into.

Yeah, they sent five people in. I mean if you were in the Babylon Bee and you wanted to cook up a satire, you say five bureaucrats break into house and kidnap a squirrel, a little tiny squirrel and kill it and then kill it. And they had a little. It was just horrible. And I was dreaming that I woke up and I heard a noise. It was the dogs barking. I thought, oh, my God, there's people. Where's the squirrels? Where is he? Is he hiding? And I thought. And then I woke up, I thought, no, that was the news. The last thing you saw before you went to bed, you idiot. It was terrible. It was really bad. I think, you know what I would be. I'm kind of being facetious. But that broke right on the eve of the election. And I think for a lot of people that were maybe a few thousand that were really worried about overreach in government and Trump saying that we're going to drain the swamp. That story of bureaucrats who going into a private residence and taking a little tiny defenseless squirrel and not even negotiating, not warning them, not sending them. And then you juxtapose that with thousands of the illegal aliens and gangs in New York, and they don't ever do that. Why don't they go. If they're really worried, why don't they go into an apartment building and inspect those apartments for guns and drugs rather than pick on a squirrel?

Yeah, exactly.

And I think that there was a lot of little stories like that that I think a lot of people just said. I've had it right before the election.

Yeah.

Not just the garbage comment or the Liz Cheney psychodrama that Trump said this when he didn't. It was. There were certain little things that people said, you know, these are indicators, symptomology of a sick patient, and this patient is the whole progressive project, and I don't want you part of it.

And a bunch of useless bureaucrats who apparently have nothing else to do, even though they do really have.

I get this. I'm kind of excited because of the people that Trump has around. I know that RFK can be dangerous, probably about vaccinations, because I do believe in smallpox and measles vaccinations and all that. I'm not saying that he doesn't. I just, you know, that blanket idea. But when he said he'd have to clear out, I think he said the CDC or the fda, he said one of these big bureau would clear them out. And then when they said to Elon Musk, well, you're doing these tax cuts until they kick in with greater productivity and revenue. And you can't cut Social Security, apparently, and you can't cut the defense, well, where are you going to cut? And he said, government bureaucrats. And they thought, oh, they always say waste and fraud. He said, I'm talking $2 trillion a year. Well, if you look at $2 trillion a year that is a massive cut of whole cabinets. And then you start thinking, why not? Who's going to say no? You have the Senate in the House, maybe you should try it. And what are you going to cut all these grants for the study of the sex lives of a particular insect or something or you know, solar panel, taxi service or all this stuff. Why not cut it out? And I can remember when I was a young kid we didn't have any of this stuff. It seemed like people were more self reliant. Why not cut it out and see what happens? So I think we're starting with a clean slate. Another thing people don't realize is that Donald Trump is not just a lame duck, he's an empowered president. He doesn't have to run for reelection. The only thing he has to worry about is not losing the House because they will impeach him and even then they won't convict him. And he's already been there and done that twice. So I think he's going to take massive risk and try to make institutional change. And I don't mean anti constitutional change or trying to warp the electoral college or pack the court. I'm talking about executive orders, cutting government, relocating entire bureaus, trying to break up this toxic nexus of media, government, administrative, state, Washington, D.C. new York corridor.

Yeah. Well, Victor, to conclude this show, I wanted to read from one of your readers at the website. His name is Craig Jenkins and he is replying to your article. Harris was always doomed and he says fine article Victor, but the propaganda media machine was greatly influenced by the way people think, were relentless in condemning Trump and still do for that matter. This cultural war isn't over by any means and the Trump people know it. They're not so triumphant in victory as in 2016. The Law Fair continues with some of these bogus cases and the liberal media and Democratic party have assumed a less than quiet resistance stance in full public view. There is no concession. The culture war goes on.

No, I agree with him. But there is a difference. Today there were studies that the aggregate coverage of the cable news shows and the network and PBS and NPR, did you see it? It was 95% negative of Donald Trump. That's worth billions of dollars of free advertising for Kamala Harris. And how did he counteract that? He went on Joe Rogan, he talked to Ben Shapiro, he did all of those podcasts. He talked to local. In other words, he talked to bloggers. He had an entire alternate media and he got more. Which you think was more effective talking to Joe Rogan. Or going on the View for Kamala Harris. I mean, his audience is massively bigger. And he got endorsements for people who don't endorse. And she got endorsements that meant nothing. Oprah, who cares about Oprah? If you care about what Oprah says, you were going to vote for her. And anyway, before Opa said vote for. So what I'm saying is it's a revolutionary process. We don't know how it's going to work out. But he was. I gave you another example. We were told today that she raised in the last six weeks $1 billion and she ended up $20 million in the hole. And they were spending lavishly, hiring people like Beyonce and all these people, these entertainers and first class jet, first class tickets, travel and private jets and saturating these markets. And Donald Trump spent about 60% of what she did and beat her in every, almost every category. It's a different type of world right now. I think what I'm getting at, I'm trying to be kind of clumsy, but I'm trying to come to a conclusion that if you're listening to Donald Trump in 2017 and they say he's a Russian spy every night, you might believe it. If you're not sophisticated in 2025, if you were told that Donald Trump, as Rachel Madow did, the immediate moment she found out that he won, she mentioned Russian collusion. Does anybody believe that anymore? I don't think so. I don't think they believe anything the media says. I think in the next midterm election, if the Washington Post ABC poll or the New York Times, CNS says this is what this is a four, Nobody's going to believe them. Nobody's going to believe them at all. Everybody knows they rigged the polls. If the most prestigious pollster in Indiana, the Indian, the Zelsworth Poll, the Indiana Des Moines Register, says that Donald Trump is three down in Iowa. She's got a sterling reputation. No, she doesn't. She's just doing this in the last moment to gin up momentum. He won by 10 points. Everybody knew that. So the pollsters have been discredited, the media has been discredited. Who cares? Does anybody even know? If you ask me, we have a gun to your head, Victor. And whether we pull the trigger depends on whether you can identify the network anchors at abc, NBC and cbs. Can you do it? Could you? I can't, no. I have no idea who they are. I used to know them all. Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite. Walter Cronkite. You name it I knew Frank Reynolds. I knew them all. I don't know any of them. I haven't watched. I tried to thought when is the last time I watched network news? It's got to be 20 years ago. When's the last time I turned into PBS? I don't know, 10 years ago. I feel like I'm really informed. When's the last time I actually read online or in the New York Times? I don't read it anymore.

No, there's much better stuff.

There's so many things you can get access to. So I'm confident that they don't have the hold that they did just 10 years ago. The other thing I'm very confident about is Donald Trump said something he was widely criticized. He was asked, I think by Joe Rogan or it was another person, what mistakes did you do? And he said I brought in a lot of disloyal people that were. And he did. And I think he understood now that that was disastrous. He brought in people that any person on the left would have fired if it had been in their administration. If Barack Obama found somebody called Anonymous who announced to say a right wing outlet as they did to the New York Times, left wing, we're here to obstruct Obama. We have an underground resistance movement within the Obama administration. If he gives us an executive order, we slow walk it or countermand it if we find it too left wing, they would have fired that person in two seconds.

Yeah.

And the point I'm making is he understands that now. So I think when he comes in, there's not going to be people who say he's a senior statesman. You've got to appoint this wise man. He's bipartisan, the Leon Panetta type people, you know what I mean? I don't think they're going to go in there. They're going to say no, they say that John Bolton no, they're not going to get any of those people and they can't afford to. They're going to do what the left does and I think they're going to go into the DOJ and they're going to say something like the following. How many people did Barack Obama fire when he took over from Bush and the doj? How many people did Joe Biden fire of the Trump doj? Just give me the number and we'll average it. We'll take the Obama firings and the Obama successor Biden firings and we'll just make the media and that's how many will fire. And we don't care because the media and the fake news are biased and they're discredited and they'll get angry. But they didn't care when Biden did it. They didn't care when Obama did it.

Yeah.

And everybody who came in that we like to carry over and be bipartisan. How many people did Obama keep? How many did Biden? Oh, none. Well, they're gone. I think they're just going to act. They keep talking about revenge. I don't think he's going to do revenge. He's just going to do what Biden does and Obama did or Clinton did. That's what they're going to do. And they'll call it revenge. But it's exactly what he didn't do. He did not do that. And I cannot imagine Biden appointing cabinet officers who were deliberately and openly antithetical to him, like Rex Tillerson, our state, or Jim Mattis at defense. I'm not picking on them, but it was very clear they did not like Donald Trump. And it was very clear that they thought he was an idiot and they were not going to follow to the letter his rule. They were open about it. They were called principled. But the point is, no Democrat would have done that. No, they wouldn't have allowed to do that. And I don't think Trump is going to do that. He's going to say, you know what I think his attitude now is he's liberated. What are they going to do? Shoot me, try to kill me, shoot me in the ear, almost blow my head off, try to ambush me at my golf course, make me pay, what, $270 million for nothing? Maybe try to put me in jail by some nut called Fannie Willis, invent a crime like Alvin Bragg did, I don't know, try to take me off the ballot, impeach me twice, try me as a private citizen, swarm my house with a SWAT team and go through everything and arrange it looked like it was slightly. And take pictures and lie about me, Claim that Hunter's laptop was dreamed up by the Russians, Call me a liar, sick Christopher Steele, and say I urinated on a prostitute's bed in Moscow and tell everybody about that on the eve of the election. They can't do anything. They've done it all. I'm here. I'm still here. I'm still alive.

Are you trying to tell me that the left has made Donald Trump invincible?

They made him.

They're the architects of him.

Nietzschean figure. Anything that didn't kill him made him stronger. And they know that. Now and he's bulletproof. I don't mean that in a sick way, but his idea is, I'm 78 years old. I don't have to listen to these people anymore. They've done everything to destroy me. And I not only was not destroyed, I ran an election where they outspent me. They had all the media, they lied about me. They had crooked moderators, they had crooked fact checkers. They rigged a debate to get rid of Joe Biden before the convention even appeared. They did everything and it didn't work. And I can do whatever I want as long as I follow the law and the Constitution, I'm going to do it. And the more howling that they level at me, the happier I am. Yeah, everything is the. It's in the realm of the possible now. Not. You don't dare do that. It's a liberating. I think they're liberated and, you know, I just don't think they're going to care. And I think if, I think they're going to say, if somebody says, if somebody says, I'm anonymous and Donald Trump is a tyrant and I'm trying to block everything he says, they're going to say, find out who that guy is and fire him right now. And they will. And I don't think they did it before.

Yeah. Well, it's going to be a whole new administration which is like a machine.

Get your seatbelt and buckle in. Because I think he's going to try to make changes that are fundamental and I think the left is going to try to do everything. And I think this time he's not going to care.

Yeah.

And he's got people who know the left and feel it's a One Eyed Jack. They saw the other side. They know who they are. They know what they're going to try to do and they're ready for it. And they don't care. And they don't care.

And with that, Victor, we are at the end of the show. Thank you for all your time today and all the wonderful tales, especially and the World War II discussion. We really appreciate that. I know that your listeners do, too. I loved it.

Thank you everybody for listening. Much appreciated.

This is Victor Davis Hansen and Sammy Wink and we're signing off.