The Verdict and the Conflict

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Victor Davis Hanson Show

Episode: The Verdict and the Conflict
Release Date: December 13, 2024
Hosts: Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler
Guests: Sammy Wink

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1. Introduction

The episode begins with Victor Davis Hanson welcoming listeners to the Victor Davis Hanson Show, introducing himself and co-host Jack Fowler. The primary topics for this episode include the acquittal of Daniel Penney and recent tensions surrounding Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests.

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2. Daniel Penney’s Acquittal and BLM Protests

Key Discussion Points:

• Acquittal of Daniel Penney: Victor and Jack discuss the recent legal outcome where Daniel Penney was found not guilty. They express surprise and consider whether Penney should have been tried in the first place.

• BLM’s Reaction: Sammy Wink highlights the reaction from BLM, particularly from its New York founder, Hawk Newsome, who has called for vigilante actions from the Black community.

Notable Quotes:

• Sammy Wink [05:15]: “If the victim had been white, then Daniel Penney would have never been charged.”
• Sammy Wink [05:36]: “Being an African American woman who testified that Daniel Penny did the crowd a service... it was utterly racist.”

Insights:

• The conversation emphasizes perceived racial double standards in the justice system and BLM’s stance.
• Statistical evidence regarding interracial crimes is presented to argue against BLM's narrative.

Key Statistics Shared:

1. Racial Representation in Crimes:

   • Whites are overrepresented as assailants in interracial crimes relative to their population.
   • Jews, comprising about 3% of the population in most states, constitute about 50% of hate crime targets in New York.
   • African Americans make up 12% of the population but over 25% of assailants in interracial crimes.

2. Interracial Violent Crimes:

   • Only 8-9% of all violent assaults and murders are interracial.
   • Among these, Black individuals are six times more likely to commit violent crimes against Whites than vice versa.

3. Police Killings:

   • More Whites are killed unarmed by police compared to Blacks.
   • The importance of contextualizing police interactions with individuals, beyond mere population ratios.

Conclusions:

• The hosts argue that BLM's protests in Penney’s case are racially motivated and lack statistical backing.
• They emphasize the need for objective data when discussing racism and criminal behavior.

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3. The Shooting of Ashli Babbitt

Key Discussion Points:

• Incident Overview: Ashli Babbitt, a female veteran, was shot by Officer Byrd at the Capitol, raising questions about the use of force and racial implications.

Notable Quotes:

• Sammy Wink [06:39]: “Ashli Babbitt was 5’3, weighed about 105 pounds, and she went through a broken window unprovoked.”
• Sammy Wink [05:40]: “Officer Byrd shot her from a 90-degree angle without a warning shot.”

Insights:

• The hosts draw parallels between Babbitt’s shooting and Penney’s case to highlight perceived inconsistencies in how such incidents are treated based on race and background.
• They critique Officer Byrd’s actions and question the narrative presented by authorities.

Key Points:

• Babbitt’s lack of significant criminal history contrasted with Penney’s multiple arrests.
• The nature of Babbitt’s actions was deemed less threatening compared to Penney’s behavior.
• The discussion underscores the need for accountability in law enforcement’s use of force.

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4. Shifts in African American Political Alignment

Key Discussion Points:

• Voting Trends: A notable shift in African American voting patterns, with many moving away from the Democratic Party due to dissatisfaction with left-wing policies.

Notable Quotes:

• Sammy Wink [16:06]: “A third of African American men, close to 27-28%, shifted their votes away from Democratic candidates like Kamala Harris.”
• Sammy Wink [16:02]: “They are tired of the race baiting and are seeking new political alignments.”

Insights:

• The hosts discuss how disenchantment with the Democratic Party’s focus on racial issues and progressive policies is leading to a realignment among African American voters.
• They attribute this shift to a desire for policies that directly benefit the community rather than symbolic gestures.

Key Points:

• Factors contributing to the shift include dissatisfaction with how BLM addresses racial issues and the perception of double standards.
• Mention of historical figures and events to contextualize current political dynamics.

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5. Middle East Policy Critique

Key Discussion Points:

• Obama Administration’s Policies: The hosts critique former President Obama’s Middle East strategies, particularly the Iran deal and its aftermath.

• Impact on Current Geopolitics: Discussion on how these policies have destabilized the region, empowering various militant groups and straining relations with Israel.

Notable Quotes:

• Sammy Wink [14:43]: “Obama and Ben Rhodes cooked up the Iran deal, disbanded sanctions, and aimed to empower different factions in the Middle East.”
• Sammy Wink [25:54]: “Netanyahu was insulted by the Obama administration, leading to strained relations and instability.”

Insights:

• The hosts argue that Obama’s approach underestimated the complexities of Middle Eastern politics, leading to unintended consequences.
• They highlight the resilience and effectiveness of Israeli military responses despite previous diplomatic pressures.

Key Points:

• The breakdown of Obama’s strategy is attributed to miscalculations that empowered hostile entities.
• The current administration’s stance, particularly Trump's approach, is contrasted as more assertive and effective in dealing with Middle Eastern threats.
• Analysis of regional dynamics, including the roles of Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, and Turkey’s Erdogan.

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6. Liz Cheney and the January 6th Committee

Key Discussion Points:

• Cheney’s Conduct: Discussion on Liz Cheney’s actions within the January 6th Committee, particularly the alleged deletion of 117 subpoenaed files.

• Political Fallout: Exploration of how Cheney’s actions have led to her political downfall despite her previous alignment with Trump.

Notable Quotes:

• Sammy Wink [73:55]: “Liz Cheney was the number three ranking Republican House member who voted almost 95% with Donald Trump, yet she lost her political standing by challenging him.”
• Sammy Wink [78:40]: “She made the biggest political blunders of any major politician I’ve seen by aligning with a Never Trump left-wing effort to destroy Trump.”

Insights:

• The hosts criticize Cheney’s attempt to challenge Trump, arguing it undermined her political career.
• They suggest that her actions were more about personal gain through speaking fees and publications rather than genuine political principles.

Key Points:

• Cheney’s deletion of files is framed as part of a broader attempt to discredit Trump.
• The hosts express skepticism about the integrity of the January 6th Committee and its impartiality.
• Speculation on Cheney’s future political ambitions and potential influence despite her setbacks.

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7. Healthcare System Critique

Key Discussion Points:

• Private vs. Public Healthcare: The hosts discuss the inefficiencies within the U.S. healthcare system post-Obamacare, highlighting issues like long wait times and inadequate patient care.

• Personal Anecdotes: Sammy Wink shares personal experiences comparing healthcare services in Greece and the U.S., emphasizing the superior outcomes in the American system despite its flaws.

Notable Quotes:

• Sammy Wink [51:48]: “American medicine is still the best in the world. Breast cancer survival rates are higher in the U.S. than elsewhere.”
• Sammy Wink [52:58]: “The problem isn't private insurance, but the lack of competition and the bureaucratic mess introduced by Obamacare.”

Insights:

• The conversation underscores the systemic issues introduced by government intervention in healthcare.
• They advocate for increased competition and private sector solutions to improve healthcare quality and accessibility.

Key Points:

• Personal stories illustrate the consequences of inadequate healthcare, reinforcing the argument for systemic reform.
• Critique of pharmaceutical industry practices and the revolving door between government and private sectors.
• Emphasis on the need for policy changes to enhance healthcare efficiency and patient outcomes.

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8. Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Key Discussion Points:

• Political Realignment and Future Outlook: The hosts reflect on the broader political landscape, envisioning a shift towards more conservative and anti-left policies as a response to recent events.

• Patriotism and National Identity: Emphasis on American patriotism and resilience in the face of political turmoil and external threats.

Notable Quotes:

• Sammy Wink [89:54]: “There's no more Wizard of Oz. There's no more Wicked Witch. We're back in Kansas again.”
• Sammy Wink [88:59]: “Patriotic Americans wake up and say, what was this nightmare? What was this dream of four years?”

Insights:

• The hosts express optimism about a potential political resurgence driven by patriotic values and a rejection of left-wing policies.
• They suggest that current challenges will reinforce national unity and strategic assertiveness on the global stage.

Key Points:

• Anticipation of a political shift as a reaction to the failures of recent administrations.
• Call for accountability and a return to foundational American principles.
• Reflection on personal experiences and broader societal trends to advocate for change.

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Notable Excerpts with Timestamps

• Daniel Penney’s Acquittal:

  • [05:15] Sammy Wink: “If the victim had been white, then Daniel Penny would have never been charged.”

• Ashli Babbitt’s Shooting:

  • [06:39] Sammy Wink: “Ashli Babbitt was 5’3, weighed about 105 pounds, and she went through a broken window unprovoked.”

• African American Voting Shift:

  • [16:06] Sammy Wink: “A third of African American men, close to 27-28%, shifted their votes away from Democratic candidates like Kamala Harris.”

• Middle East Policy Critique:

  • [14:43] Sammy Wink: “Obama and Ben Rhodes cooked up the Iran deal, disbanded sanctions, and aimed to empower different factions in the Middle East.”

• Liz Cheney and January 6th Committee:

  • [73:55] Sammy Wink: “Liz Cheney was the number three ranking Republican House member who voted almost 95% with Donald Trump, yet she lost her political standing by challenging him.”

• Healthcare System Critique:

  • [51:48] Sammy Wink: “American medicine is still the best in the world. Breast cancer survival rates are higher in the U.S. than elsewhere.”

• Conclusion and Patriotism:

  • [89:54] Sammy Wink: “Patriotic Americans wake up and say, what was this nightmare? What was this dream of four years?”

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Final Remarks

Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler provide a critical analysis of recent political events, emphasizing perceived racial injustices, policy failures, and shifts in voter behavior. The episode underscores a call for accountability, systemic reform, and a return to conservative values as pathways to national improvement.

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Note: This summary excludes all advertisement segments and focuses solely on the conversation between the hosts and the guest. Notable quotes are highlighted with speaker attribution and timestamps for reference.

Transcript

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Sammy Wink]

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is the Martin and Nealy Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhansen.com and the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. And I hope that everybody comes to join us. So, Victor, we have as maybe not a surprise to most of us as it came out, as it should have with Daniel Penney, that he was not guilty. And I know we've agreed that he shouldn't even have been tried. But nonetheless, and I think what's interesting this week, besides the fact that he was not guilty, is that there were all sorts of protesters out there. The Black Lives Matter in New York's founder, Hawk Newsome has called for vigilantes from the black community. And I was wondering your thoughts on this current uproar, for lack of another word.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, I mean, there's no statistical evidence for any of their charges because their argument is that had the victim been white, then Daniel Penny would have. What? That's what I want to know. Can you answer that?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

What? He would have done something different, they think. But no, he wouldn't have. He wasn't.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He was. They would have done something different. If that person had have been white, he would never have been charged.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Oh, I see.

[Unnamed Speaker]

The only reason. And if he had been black, he would have never the assault had been black, he would have never been charged. Everybody knows that. So the BLM is protesting something that was an injustice, but it was an Injustice done to Daniel Penny? Yes, if a black ex Marine had have subdued Mr. Neely he would be considered a hero and BLM wouldn't have said a word. No, if a black ex marine had subdued a white person who was homeless and had been arrested 40 times and was threatening the safety of people the BLM person would have been braggin on him. So it was utterly racist. And then if you wanted to make that argument that Daniel Penney's race was an indicator of racism then he should bring some statistics. Can I give you some?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes.

[Unnamed Speaker]

In the FBI statistics whites are over underrepresented as assailants. They are overrepresented in interracial crimes as victims. Jews make up about 3% of the population in most states but in New York in particular, which is relevant to this, they make up about 50% of the targets of hate crimes. African Americans compose about 12% of the population. They make over 25% of the assailants. In other words, the BLM people should say if this is a height hate crime, fellow blacks are more than double more than twice as likely as their demographic to commit crimes. And so called whites and Jews in particular are far more likely to be the victims of interracial crime than their numbers otherwise should indicate. Number two, there's only about 8% 9% of all violent assaults and murders are interracial. But among that 8 or 9% and that's several thousand blacks commit violent crimes toward whites on whites six times more likely than whites commit interracial crimes against blacks. Okay, number three, after the George Floyd death killing whatever term one prefers, there was the Washington Post article or survey they looked at. Did the police kill unarmed blacks at a inordinate rate? First thing is there were more whites killed than blacks that were unarmed by police people. Number two, what is the correct basis of calculating? What is the data? Is it just anybody who's killed or is it to find a proper ratio to see whether somebody is acting in a racist fashion? And here's the correct database. All the people who were arrested by the police. If you look at the 11 million, I think it's 11 million people who were arrested that were African American and you chart how many people were killed while unarmed, then there is no, you can say of all the people who were killed unarmed there were a lot more white unarmed targets than there were black. But there might have been a higher percentage of black killed unarmed than their percentages would indicate. But not if you don't just look at the population but you look at the number of People who come in contact with the police. So what data point, what criteria is he looking at that would show there's a consistent pattern of some type of racist behavior on the part of white people who end up killing black people when the reverse is far more common? Whether we define that as hate crimes, or we define that as interracial crimes, or we define that as the police shooting unarmed suspects, whether black or white, as a percentage of those that they encounter. So there's no, there's no evidence in it at all. And could I ask him another question? What did he think Officer Byrd was doing? Where was he when Officer Byrd was doing Ashley? Ashli Babbitt was 5:3. She weighed about 105 pounds. She went through an already broken window in the Capitol. And that was culpable, that was a misdemeanor. But she didn't have a 40 arrest record. She wasn't threatening to kill people. She wasn't shouting. She wasn't leveling threats to a captive audience in a subway. She went through a window. And one of the remarkable things about that was she wasn't going toward Officer Berg. She was going toward other law enforcements that were fully armed with semiautomatic weapons. He shot at a 90 degree angle or from an angle from the side without even giving her a warning shot, and killed her. He had a record of sloppy handling and he was chastised and put on. I think he was put on notice for 30 days that he had left a loaded service weapon, handgun in a bathroom. And he had. So my point is, if the BLM wants to get mad at interracial killings of unarmed people, then why doesn't he say we've got to stop the unarmed people being killed, whether by the police or by volunteers who are trying to stop something. We just let them do what they want because that's what he didn't say a word when Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by an armed officer for doing nothing, basically. But going into a broken window, that's a misdemeanor. And so she didn't pose the level of threat that Mr. Neely did by any means. She didn't have the criminal record that Mr. Neely did. She was a loyal, patriotic veteran and she was female. And she was shot by an officer who should have known better. Daniel Penny was just a person who was on the subway and said, if I don't stop this, there's going to be somebody severely hurt. And he volunteered to stop it. And there is some question, and I think the Preponderance of evidence despite the coroner in New York was that he had either chronic health problems as a homeless person or he was under the influence of drugs that contributed to his so called suffocation. I don't think that anyone said, oh, Officer Byrd shot her, but she wouldn't have died had she a. Been. Not been on drugs. She wasn't on drugs. She wasn't any. He shot and killed her. So I think everybody, what I'm getting at is when you see the African American woman that testified at the trial that Daniel Penny had done the crowd a service because they were all in fear of their lives. And this man was a perennial chronic serial bully who loved to get up to unarmed people and get in their face and do all sorts of antics. And then he meets this ex Marine who said, you know what? I'm not going to sit here and watch you do that. Well, he made that. He had a. He's done that apparently at least 40 times earlier because he's been arrested. But his luck run out. Luck ran out and he encountered somebody that said no mosque. And I think people are sick of it. I think that the fact that African American woman and other. There weren't a lot of white people on that subway and there weren't a lot of non white people, people of color who said Daniel Penney was reckless and he shouldn't have done. There were few. And the father who came in and said that this was horrible and he lost his son, had been nowhere in his life and his mother was murdered by her boyfriend. Where was the father when that was happening? He only appeared outside the courtroom, announced that he was filing a civil suit and he was trying to grift off the death of his son, the father.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yes. So I think everybody looks at this of all different racist backgrounds and says, you know, we're done with this. We're done with the racist thing. We're not going to listen to it anymore. There is racism, but it cuts both ways. And to try to make this into a racist thing was just pathetic.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. Did you see that woman imitating Reverend Wright with saying GD America?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I didn't understand that because that destroyed Reverend Wright's. She basically said this. GD America, GD America. I'm going to emulate the famous Jeremiah Wright and I'm going to do that because when those video clips were circulated day in, day out, not God bless America, God that ruined his Persona. Is that what she thinks is what she should do? I'm going to copy his career trajectory. I'M going to say things to offend 340 million people. So it was stupid.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, sure.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And I don't know, I think everybody's just tired of this. They're just tired of the juicy smollets and all of this race baiting. And I think that was what the election was about. And I think a lot of African American people are tired of it.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I think so, too. A lot of them jumped ship and went to vote Republican.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yes. We don't know what the, the ratio of African American men was, but it was getting close to a third. And that's amazing given the propaganda of the left wing Democratic party and the fact that you had a black woman on. So maybe a third, 27%, maybe 28 of African American males said, I don't care if Kamala Harris says she's black, I'm not going to vote for her because all of the issues that she's embraced are not to my benefit.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Unnamed Speaker]

You know, I was going to say one other thing.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It was more dramatic than that. There were a lot of African Americans involved in this case. There was the victim who was African American, but there was also the DA who everybody thought Alvin Bragg, who assigned a white prosecutor who was very left. They felt that he was using race up for his upcoming election. But the mayor was also African American. And the mayor said, this is not about race. In fact, he praised Daniel Penney. There were four people in the jury who were not white. They obviously had a say in the verdict because he was acquitted. And so what I'm getting at is we're getting to a point now where the people who testified were not worried about race. They were just worried about someone was threatening their safety in an era, in a time when people are terrified to be in these cities, and someone stood up for them. And the black mayor of New York saw that, and he didn't even think of race. He just said, we want people to stand up for the unprotected. And the district attorney who was trying to demagogue who happened to be black, Alvin Bragg, filed two weeks after de facto because he saw that he might get some mileage out of it. But the people who came forward and testified, one of the most convincing was black. As I said, the jury. So what I'm getting at is that it wasn't about race because people on both sides of the issue were of different races. You had a white prosecutor, a radical prosecutor, and she was the person who really did an injustice on Bragg's directive. But you had African Americans that were testifying on behalf of Penny, and you had the mayor defending him. So I think what it shows is we're starting to move beyond race. And people, as I said, are tired of this. This demagogic Al Sharpton made an appearance. I thought, wow, this is how many years, 40 years after Crown Heights, which wasn't a. And they said, you know, race riot. The New York Times or Washington Post said the race riots, whites against blacks after Crown. No, there weren't. There were no Jews that went out in the street and tried to kill blacks. It was all Al Sharpton's gen ed up racial war against Jews. That's what the whole Crown Heights thing was about. So I think we've gone along, we've come a long way. And I think this election really got people really angry on the left because Kamala Harris really tried to fuel racial animosities by calling him a racist. The Obamas did all the time. Every time Michelle and Barack went out there, they brought up Charlotte, misquoted it, and then at the very last thing, they tried to get as much mileage out of the jokester who mentioned in a bad joke about Puerto Rico and garbage. They tried everything, and they were completely refuted. They were the big losers of this election. Everything about them failed. They came at the convention, they said, he was a dictator, he was a fascist, he was a racist. Charlottesville Da, da, da, da. And then when that didn't work and polls started to show that in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, the margins necessary for a Democratic candidate to win among the black, black voting blocs were not there, then they started lecturing people and the lecture went like this. They may not have intended it. The lecture went like, well, you know, I just came out of Colorama, my $9 million mansion, and I had to come over from Martha's Vineyard, my 40 acre play, 20 acres. And what do we pay for that, Michelle? 15 million. 15 with a fake black patois. So he has his Chicago mansion, he has his Kalorama mansion, he has his, I don't know what you call Martha's Vineyard 20 acre estate. And then he's got. That wasn't enough. He had to have a new one right on the beach in Hawaii. 10, 15, $20 million. So with all that largesse and what did he do to get it? He was just, he played the role of Barack Obama, the first black president who can find and spot and detect racism. What I'm getting at is then he comes when all of that boilerplate did not work, calling Trump racist, racist, racist, racist. And then he started to do something that really blew up in his face. He started to go to constituencies and said, you know what, this is not resonating, this is what he was thinking. Because you are ignorant and you do not know what's in your interest. And you need a mellifluous, college educated former president and multi, multi millionaire with four mansions that tell you what's in your interest. You're fooled about the inflation, you're fooled about the border. I know what's going on. Because you know what? All you have to do is get money and privilege like me and then the border doesn't matter. That was really what the message was and they rejected that.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

They did.

[Unnamed Speaker]

This was one of the biggest exposures of that fraudulent Obama mystique that you've ever. It's evaporated. And then when you look at the flip side abroad, remember what he gave us, everybody, he gave us the modern Middle east disaster. He and his assistant National Security adviser Ben Rhodes, they cooked up the Iran deal, they cooked up the 400 million in the middle of the night on pallets they sent in for hostages. They cooked up the idea of ending sanctions and punitive actions. And their whole theory was, we are going to empower a different Middle East. There's going to be the head of the octopus, Iran, there's going to be one tentacle in Hamas One tentacle in Hezbollah, one tentacle in the Houthis, and one tentacle with Bashar Assad and Syria. And we're not going to dominate. So John Kerry is going to invite in the Russians, as he did, remember, and they're going to monitor WMD and they're going to prop up this Assad, and then we're going to tell these terrible Israelis and these terrible Saudis and these Gulf corrupt monarchies and Sunni Arab overdogs, it's time that the Persians and the Shia, the underdogs and the oppressed, As a community organizer, I can see that, that you can't. And we're going to have creative tension. So the Sunnis and the Jews are not going to be the big bullies anymore. There's going to be an alternative crescent, Damascus, Tehran, Beirut, Gaza, Yemen. All of them are going to be empowered by us in a way. They are. They're going to be free from sanctions. Hey, Israel, they might kind of sort of get a nuclear bomb. Wouldn't that be terrible? Ha ha. So that's what they did. And it blew up. It completely blew up. Because they didn't count on. They hated Netanyahu, the Obama administration. They called them a sea chicken. Remember that? Sh. He's chicken.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Oh, really?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yes.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

And they made him.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, they did. And of course, Harris and Biden boycotted his congressional lecture. And never in their right mind did they think after October 7th, when you remember Anthony Blinken was calling for restraint almost immediately before Israel had even digested the slaughter, never in their right mind did they think tiny Israel would destroy Hamas, then would take on the supposedly indomitable, just terror, fearsome Hezbollah and blow it up with pagers and walkie talkies.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Walkie talkies, yes.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And then go after their supposedly 150,000 rockets. You can't do. And they did. They went after all of them and they neutralized them. They neutered them. And then they turned into a tit for tat twice with Iran. And when the tit for tat was over with, they told the world they sent 500 projectiles in here and they did nothing. We just sent about 10 bombs and missiles from our planes. And they did everything. They took out their air defenses. And now we're sitting here and where is Mr. Khomeini? And where are all the Iranians saying, death to the Jews, death to the Israels, when the great little Satan. The little Satan. And we're going to do this. We heard it all. Now it's your turn. Start it. Start the ball Rolling. You have it. There's the Israelis. Go after them. Send in another 500. But you won't do it, will you? Because you have no defenses. And you know that the moment you send a projectile into the Jewish state, they are going to take out all of your nuclear facilities, and they're going to take out all your ability for a generation to sell oil. So you can talk all you want, but there's no audience because all of your terrorist surrogates are gone. And now the latest one is Bashar Assad. He's gone. And that country's a mess. It's broken up into Christian protectorates, Kurdish protectorates, quasi ISIS rebels, Shia groups, Sunni group. It's a mess. It's like Libya. And Donald Trump said, we're not going to get anywhere near there. But my point is the whole Middle east that Obama tried to screw up, and it was stable until he started, and then every time there was a chance to restore the damage that he had inflicted, Jared Kushner and those people were doing the Abraham's Accord. They got out of that terrible empowerment of Iran with the Iran. He was weigh in. He and Ben Rhodes would weigh in. Remember, John Kerry was going over to Paris during the Trump administration for the people who always yell, logan, act, Logan, act, Logan, act. He was meeting with the foreign minister of Iran, and now it's all blown up, and Israel blew it up. And you know what the weird thing about it is? There's a chance it's going to be more stable than ever, because there is a 50, 50 chance that Syria will be off the table as an effective terrorist threat to its neighbors because of the sheer chaos that it's in. And Iran has got a rendezvous with an Israeli airstrike, and it may not know it, but it does. And now the combination of Bashar Assad saying, can I come to Russia, please? Putin says, well, you know what happened now? My planes, my ships, they got to get out of your country. I lose my. We didn't have a place. And, you know, John Kerry invited us in, so we had our base, and now you lost our base. So we'll give you something in Siberia you can say there, but we're not going to send one dead Russian because we've lost a million Russians dead, wounded and killed in Ukraine. And they said, how about, can I go to Tehran? No, no, no, no, no. You come here and they'll try to kill you, and they might hurt us. And we've been on the receiving end of Israeli effective countermeasures. We don't want you here and you owe us, I don't know, $440 billion in oil. Pay up. He says I don't have a country to pay up. And then Hezbollah, you know, and they say well where's our money? And Iran says I don't have any money. This crazy Trump is going to put an oil embargo and then well go get help from Hamas. Well there is no Hamas. Well then go to the Houthis. Israel took out their port facilities. They're scared Trump's going to bomb them. What are we going to do? This is the, what I'm getting at is this is the ultimate logic and trajectory of the Obama bankrupt angry. We're going to take the so called oppressed as a community organizer and we're going to empower the people. Think dictatorial anti American illiberal regimes and we're going to do it just to be mean and we're going to show Israel and all these other people that we're going to balance and give the oppressed. If you don't think that's accurate. As soon as he came into office people believed in Iran that hopey changey false narratives, remember?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes I do.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And they went out on the street in the green reparation for 11 days. They had a million and a million plus people and they were close to really getting some traction. And if the United States had come out and supported that and they didn't say a word because in his calculus, oh no, we don't want a bunch of neoconservative Iranian democracy people. Our whole calculus of redoing the Middle east depends on a theocratic crazy anti American regime that killed, you know, kills people and kills gay. That's what we want. We don't want to support the dissidents in the street. They've done so much damage abroad. And one of the things about the election is people looked at those people and said you are one eye Jacks and you flipped yourself over in this campaign. You were the ones, you were the ones that said you're dream Barack said is to phone in. Remember that. Would you like to run for a third term? Yeah, if I didn't have to do anything I just stay here in my basement and call in. That's what he did. So they had a facade, a veneer, a puppet Joe Biden and they knew he was non compos mentis. They knew he was demented, they knew that and they thought all he has to do is play the Star Trek Gaul roll like this just kind of stay in a chair and we will get a third Obama term. So radical because Joe is a much better facade than we were. Everybody thinks he's old Joe from Scranton, the working class Catholic union, pro union. And we're going to stick down the throat of the American people and open border and modern monetary theory. Spin, spin, spin. And we're going to get out of Afghanistan the humiliating faction. Teach us a lesson. We're going to teach ourselves a lesson. We're going to destroy deterrence. We're going to give the new Green Deal people everything they want. We're going to go into the woke DEI and we can all do it with good old Joe Biden that doesn't even know what's going on. And that was a price he had to pay so that he and Jill could get the limelight. When we got rid of Pete Buttigieg, we got rid of Bernie Sanders, we got rid of Elizabeth Warren, we got rid of Spartacus, we got rid of all of them. And we got rid of them because they couldn't get elected. They were too left wing. But he, he was a useful idiot and so he did that. The only problem they didn't count on is he couldn't quite pull it off for the fourth year. So he blew up in that debate. Then their facade vanished and then we had the puppeteers exposed to everybody. And that got them really angry. They got, they said, wait, the puppet doesn't work anymore. Let's cut the strings and get her in here. And she turned out she didn't have a natural dementia, but she had a cognitive problem. She was no more articulate than Joe was, but hers was inured. His was, I mean, problem of age, I was going to say. That's why I was stumbling. Problem of age. But I went back and looked this week at some of his early speeches. They were incoherent. They really were. The only difference is they really even meaner than his ultra maga, semi fascist Phantom of the Opera speech.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk a little bit more about Luigi Mangioni. And I wanted to ask you too about Joe Biden, who supported the Syrian, supported Assad, actually, in secrecy.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So did Pelosi. She went over there during the Bush.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Administration, the current rebels. And I was wondering the wisdom of that. But let's take a break and come back and talk about that.

[Sammy Wink]

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor has a account on X. His handle is Dhanson and he has a Facebook page, Hanson's Morning Cup. Come join him there. So Victor. Yeah, Joe Biden. I thought it was strange because I thought, wow, there's the regime and then there's these rebels. But who knows which one's worse. Who would come out and support support either one. But Joe Biden came out in support of Assad.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, it's very similar what's happened to Libya when Hillary and everybody, Samantha Power, Hillary, they all, Susan Rice convinced a reluctant Obama to bomb Gaddafi and he was in reform. His kids had. Were Westernized. They were doing things. I was there in 2007, and they were giving people cell phones. They were inviting in archaeologists. They're inviting in natural gathering gas, Italian companies. So it was in a slow meltdown. But no, no, we had to go in and do our Arab Spring thing, and we bombed. I think we killed the person who saved my life, the surgeon that was in the clinic. I was told that later that his clinic was bombed.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Wow.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He was a wonderful doctor. Egyptian. I was told by somebody who had gone back to Libya that that Red Crescent facility where I was was hit. I don't know. I haven't confirmed that. I've never heard from him since. He had written me a couple of things. And the point I'm making is that Trump saw that, and so he tweeted out, I think yesterday in capital Trump letters, Trumpian letters. We don't know who these people are. We gotta stay out. Assad was bad, but we don't know who these people are. Worse. Just keep out of it. And I don't think he means we want them to kill each other off. It's just that you don't have the wisdom after Afghanistan and Iraq that you think you do. All you smart people who are now advocating that we arm the rebels or we get on this side, there's six or seven rebel entities, and the people who are the patrons of all these are not us, their fellow NATO member Turkey, the Sunni Turkey Ottomans, and Mr. Erdogan, who's threatened to send missiles. What is Mr. Erdoganyan? He's threatened to send missiles into Gaza to kill Israelis. He's threatened to send missiles in to kill Athenians. He's threatened the Cypriots. He threatens everybody. I mean, he's a NATO ally, and we don't even trust him. And so he's behind this. He was the one that fueled it. And he wants one thing out of it, and that's to kill as many Kurds and prevent one quarter, maybe larger percentage of his country from breaking off. And they all feud. But there are Iraqi Kurds, Iranian Kurds, Turkish Kurds, Syrian Kurds. And their dream has always been to carve off something from each and make an independent Kurdistan. That's what he wants to stop. And that's why he. And he also wanted to make sure that Assad would not keep arming, for he did arm or allow sanctuary for Kurds in Syria that were attacking his neighbor, Turkey. So it's so complex and convoluted, the idea that the United States is going to go in and find some ex ISIS people and ship them over to Langley and train them. You know, it was very funny what Netanyahu said today. I don't know if people remember he's on a criminal trial, but he's kind of a Trumpian figure, too. He turned that trial like Trump did when he went out and talked to people in New York as an occasion to show everybody what he had been doing when he supposedly was drinking bribery, bourbon had been given him as bribes and cigars. He said something to the effect I was working 18 hours a day. You think I can drink when I'm doing. Think I can just smoke cigars when I'm, you know, I was in my 70s and I've got this crazy President Biden is telling me I have to do this and this and this and this and this. And at one point in this, Netanyahu excursus. He said something that was really funny but tragic. He said that Blinken and Biden and their foreign policy team said, you know, you people. And this was both. This was mostly during the Obama last year with Biden as vice president, but it continued. You people are not going to give. We're not going to give you one inch of 1967 Palestine. You're going to go back to the 67 borders. And I think Netanyahu said, well, half of Jerusalem that people live in. And he said no. And he said, and we will guarantee you because we're going to make an independent 1967 Gaza and Palestine. And I think Netanyahu said rivers to the sea. That doesn't mean that they want that. That means they want to destroy us. Oh, no, no. We are going to protect you because we're going to train the PAL. Remember that they gave them M16s and all. We're making a Palestinian internal police force to stomp out terrorism. But this is what I'm getting at laboriously. So we are offering to fly you, Mr. Netanyahu, over to Afghanistan. This was circa around 2015 or something. And we will show you the wondrous transformation of Afghans that we, American Special Forces, our experts in civil control in a war zone have done. We have trained an Afghan militia and National Defense Force. And if we can do it in Afghanistan and effectively stomp out terrorism, that is the Taliban, then you're going to have to follow that model. We will allow our experts to come over to the west bank and train you Israelis how to deal with the Palestinians with dignity, sober and judicious, and create an internal Afghan like police force. He said that the other day. That is so absurd.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

That's crazy.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I know it. And he would have got everybody killed just like everybody. I mean, there was so much death and destruction and humiliation. And from that, that was the IED that blew up the Biden administration. Before August 2021, Biden was just keeping quiet. I know people can say no. Victor Blinken and Sullivan got humiliated in Anchorage in March. Remember that? When the Chinese basically said, hey boy, you're a racist, sit down, he snapped to attention. But the point is, after that pull out, two things happened. Biden never polled above 50% again and we never had deterrence again. And Vladimir Putin was looking at that very, very closely, as were the Houthis, as were the Iranians. And most of the catalysts that destroyed the Obama vision was empowered by that humiliating destruction of deterrence on our part.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Unnamed Speaker]

Wondering your some of them that Washington Post. I guess he was a journalist or blogger. Taylor Wren she was on Piers Morgan and she said she was joyful. He really nailed her on that. But there were a lot of people who supported that and thought and they, these were people of the left, the humanist, remember the kind people that the meek shall inherit the earth. People that are stewards of our environment. They saw a man in hit style go up with a hoodie, walk up toward a man and shoot him in the back and murder him on the pretense that he was a capitalist insect preying on people. They had no evidence that United Health this man had any direct. I mean he was the CEO, but I mean would you rather not have insurance? The problem with the insurance industry is not that we have private insurance. Go look at England or Canada. And so I guess if he was in Canada and he wanted his back surgery which he said was blown, he wouldn't have been operated. He had to wait a week, three.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Months, I should say a year.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I meant an emergency situation. He would be in the hallway. The reason that we have problems is we don't have any competition. And the government came in and said we're going to have Obamacare. And I can tell you that as some person that has some health problems, especially in my 50s when I would go to a doctor pre Obamacare and I didn't have any pool, I didn't have any money, I just had a CSU health plan. You could make an appointment and you would see a doctor within 15 minutes upon arrival. And there in these specialists office there was three and four people. After Obama, forget it. After Obamacare came into wide scale practice, you would go in there and the doctors look at you and they're not, they don't get near you. They're sitting on a little stool on a computer and they were memorializing the patient before that had his three minutes and they say just a minute, just a minute. And then they finish and then they open up their laptop again for you and they say now what's going on? Just a minute. And they type and all their secretarial. And then you say something and when I go to, I won't mention the specialist but when I go to one, it's like Zombieland. There's patients that will get up and they've been waiting an hour and a half and they'll go, just open the door to the waiting rooms. You know where the doctors are. They'll come into the treatment rooms and they'll just well what's going on here? You know, there's a room, I've seen that happen so many times. And then the assistants go, no, no, no, get back out your time. And I've been here for four hours. And I drove up from the foothills and it's a mess. So if you're really upset about healthcare, then you would want competition, you would want startup companies, you would want to take a good look at the law industry, ambulance chasing, limitations on settlements, et cetera, and the pharmaceutical industries, Big pharma. In fact, in our interview today, I did one with Stephen Kwei, who's been a frequent guest on our podcast. He turned out, I mean, PhD, MD, CEO of a private pharmaceutical company that's trying to cure breast cancer, but also a recipient in the past, a faculty member, worked at Stanford. And he basically outlined what RFK wanted to do. And he was very supportive. He said there was a lot of legitimate concerns about the MRNA vaccinations, as there are in general if you don't have proper trials. He said there is a revolving door of pharmaceutical government employees that adjudicate the use of pharmaceuticals with the idea that they will make 20 times that when they retire and be rewarded and then become lobbyists. The revolving door, just like the military and defense contractors. He talked about obesity and the types of food that we allow that Europe does not. You know, the prevalence of high fructose corn syrup, everybody, that's kind of a. I hate to even mention it. Everybody's beating up on. I'm not sure that the corn syrup's any worse than the cane sugar, but the natural cane sugar is used in antithesis a lot. Yeah, by organic drinks.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But the point is that, you know, one quarter of all Californians I mentioned to them that came into the hospitals for, I think it was last year and the year before, for any reason whatsoever, on a routine blood test, was found to be pre diabetic or diabetic. So there's all these things you can do that are positive that have to be done. But it's not the insurance companies alone that's the problem. And when you look at this person's background, he went to a $40,000 a year, K through 12, prep school, he was valedictorian, then he went to University of Penn. His grandfather was a near billionaire. I mean, he was in everything, radio stations, resorts, rest homes. You want to talk about something that's controversial? It is rest homes and their government contracts and their government contracts for medical services and medic. He should look at that very carefully. And then he was anti capitalist. And I'm thinking, well, he's been floating around with all this stuff. How does he live? How did he get a 3D printer? Those are five or six. $10,000, I think.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, 10,000 easily.

[Unnamed Speaker]

How did he get that. How did he have no source of support? How do you do any of this? And so then he had back surgery and he was angry and he put, you know, I've had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 major surgeries. Have I ever said I'm really mad at Livia because I had a ruptured appendix and they gave me ether and I woke up three times on a table and they had no antibiotics and no painkillers, and then they didn't really properly sew up my muscles and I've had adhesions ever since. I can't even do a sit up because of that. I never said that. No, I said something like, you had a dull ache on your abdomen and you're an idiot to go all the way over to Libya and then ignore it for a week. What were you thinking? And you were in a third world country and somebody fought to save your life. Who was an Egyptian doctor who came in his pajamas two days after your appendix ruptured. If there's anybody to blame, it's you. Not inadequate. And it was inadequate medical care without, you know, pharmaceutical. But we were. They were being embargoed. As they reminded me, Mr. Hanson, you almost died. You almost died because your country is cruel. You. They will not let us have antibiotics. They will not have us proper pharmacy. And you were paying for Mr. George W. Bush.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

But if he was angry at his surgery, then wouldn't he go after the surgeon and not the healthcare provider?

[Unnamed Speaker]

You know, I don't know, but he was. And he put his pins up on his back.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He was an heir to a fortune. So it wasn't like he lacked the money to pay if he had to pay extra because the health care, it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Didn'T make any sense.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

None of it does.

[Unnamed Speaker]

There's only one thing that makes sense about this whole thing, that he went to private little prep schools on the East Coast. And we know what they're like. They are more woke than the Ivy League itself. And then he went straight into the Ivy League. And we know what the university. We saw what the University of Pennsylvania president said under oath when right before she was fired. She didn't, you know, Representative Stefanik just sliced her and diced her, you know, and she quit. So my point is he. He was spoon fed all of that boilerplate about terrible capitalism. Da, da, da, da, da. And he never really had to go out on his own and be a waiter or a mechanic or do anything like most Americans do. So he was a boutique radical. And then he. He threw a Little fit when they arrested him. Did you see that?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, he was jostling with the.

[Unnamed Speaker]

There was a small African American woman that was trying to subdue him. I thought, who do you think you just murdered a person?

[Victor Davis Hansen]

If she had been some gigantic person, he wouldn't have done that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He's a coward. I said, you cowardly shot somebody in the back and executed him. You executed him. Now you're shouting and you're resisting arrest. You should get down on your knees and pray forgiveness for what you've done. And this idea that you're going to become a folk hero because you're the point of the spear and resistance to the health corporations, just preposterous. It really is. And I'm not. You know, I've had my. I've had claims rejected. I really have. I've, you know, I had. When I went to Stanford, I still had my CSU plan. And I thought, wow, two plans. And what they would do is fight over who had to pay, you know, and sometimes they. Neither one would pay. Yeah, but I never said anything. I mean, okay, this is a bureaucratic mess. Try to call up, put me on hold for an hour. I understand that. And then finally, it's just quicker. I'll just pay the hundred dollars or whatever it was. 200.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I had hand surgery and they told me up front, your insurance is only going to pay. Like it was a quarter of it. And do you want to do the rest or not? And it was basically, just leave if you don't want to pay the rest. You know, what are you going to say? I don't have a thumb. Supposedly.

[Unnamed Speaker]

What he doesn't understand is he doesn't understand that he has never been in a social. I lived in Greece two years and almost three. I had a severed ureter from a kidney stone. I went to a Greek doctor, and I'm not criticizing him, but he took an X ray that. It wasn't even an X ray. It was like a 1940 X ray machine. This is 1977, 78. And he said, oh, it'll pass. And then he told me to drink olive juice and lemon juice, olive oil and lemon juice, and jump up and down when I went home and he gave me a big shot of morphine. I did. And I got an infected kidney and two days later I couldn't urinate and I had these gobs of blood and I went to the Avangal Lismos emergency room. It was like Dante's Inferno in the basement. Not the top. I wasn't ever in the top. And it was filthy. This is 78. It's not that, probably not that. It was a state run government hospital. And they just said, we'll give you some morphine and you can lay in that bed over there. And then finally I called my parents and I said, I don't have any money and I don't know. And they, they sent my older brother over and he had I think 700 bucks or 800. I went to a private clinic. I sat in a bed for six weeks getting morphine every day. And the doctor just took an X ray every, come in once a week. How are you doing? Have you. I don't think I've gone to the bathroom in two weeks. Well, you know, drink water. And then finally he came in the seventh week and he said, you've got a torn ureter. We just did a ivp. They had, you know, he had, took me to this other clinic and he said, you've got an infection, you're going to die in 36 hours. You've got to get home. So he gave me those non disposable old fashioned steel needles, a little packet of morphine six. And there happened to be a professor at American school was going home and I kind of got in the same flight with her and she watched me and I, I injected myself in the thigh. And I got home and my father being the old bomber pilot, picked me up at the airport at three in the morning or his old station wagon and made a little bed in the back and drove about 90 miles. And I met a wonderful surgeon, Jack Schiff Sr. His son is, I think a urologist. He looked at me, he said, oh my God, that thing should have been out the moment that was never going to pass. And I said, what is it? And he said, well, I'll show you a real X ray. It was called a staghorn calculus. It looked like a decapitated Texas longhorn. It had two longhorns on one side and each one was embedded in the side of the ureter.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Oh my God.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And it was just kind of like falling down, tearing like it was like a razor blade going down a tube, tearing the sides. And it was leaking. And I was in there for I don't know how long, seven hours. They came in big, big cut through my back and went through, repaired it. I was in the hospital for two.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Weeks and, and that's from socialist medicine to US medicine.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And I never, I never, I never wrote and said, this is terrible. What the Greek, you know. Yeah, I was in Sparta I. We were climbing a fence. Somebody shook the fence. I fell and got impaled on the barbed wire. It cut two tendons in my finger. I went to a clinic in Sparta and they gave me a live tetanus shot. Live. And then they forgot to tell me that you're not supposed to have protein when you get that live tetanus. And I had some eggs. On the way home, we stopped at a truck stop and I had. I mean, I just looked like I was. I looked like a red devil. I was in a red devil suit. I was just bright. But my point of all these horror stories, if you go overseas and you deal with socialism in Libya or socialism in Greek, and I've gone to a Turkish doctor, it makes America. Whatever the faults, this ignoramus does not understand. American medicine is still the best in the world. And you look at the Stephen Quay. We were talking about survival rates of all the money we spend or still the breast cancer survival rates are higher in the United States than here. I think I have five friends my age. Two have lymphoma, one has bladder cancer, one had head and neck cancer. That's a death sentence almost. And after five or six years, they're all alive and they've all survived and they have a good shot. I think they will live to a normal lifespan. They went through hell. They had radiation, some of them. Some of them had operations, chemo. But this idea that it's somehow a terrible system and you want to shoot a healthcare person because you're angry and you quote the Unabomber Manifesto and then you throw a little tantrum when you're arrested. I don't think he understands that he's going to go up on murder one. And who knows, maybe you'll have Alvin Bragg as the prosecutor.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, well, let's hope that he gets his just desserts.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I think he will get his just desserts. But every time I was. You go in a Greek hospital for six weeks and get. You know, I had to take methadone. When they came back, that's what they gave me in the hospital. Said, you've had too much morphine and Dimerol. You're going to take methadone. And not that I was addicted, but that's what they would not give you any more. They looked at this Greek chart, they translated it and said, you've had the maximum amount of morphine.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

How is that coming off of it?

[Unnamed Speaker]

It was just shivering. It was like this. It was like I was shivering the whole time.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Wow. For how many days did that Go oh.

[Unnamed Speaker]

For three months. I went into the hospital in May in Greece with the kidney stone that. And I weighed. I was 6:1 and I weighed 178 pounds. Came back, I weighed 128 pounds. And my father was wonderful. He said, I don't, I just don't trust this junk. So you're coming home. And I. They gave you some Demerol and coding. I threw it away. We're not going to do any of that. The only way to get off that junk is get off it. So you're going to get on your cutoffs and I'm gonna get the little tractor and you're gonna walk around the ranch, two mile perimeter. You're gonna get tan as a Hawaiian surfer. And I'm gonna feed you eggs, bacon, and we're gonna have a big, big New York cut steak that was big then before rib eyes. And we're gonna have another one at dinner. And then I'm gonna get some ice cream and syrup and we're gonna fatten you up like a. I was tan, my scar, they about cut my back in half. It was about a foot long scar. They had to because they get in there after all the damage. And I had no desire to take drugs. I think my dad said, well, we're going to let you take aspirin and maybe some Tylenol, but it's not addictive. But nothing else. Just. I threw away all that prescription painkiller. I said, I'd like to sleep. Well, you know, you'll get tired walking and then you'll be tired.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. He probably remembered what it was to come off those barbiturates.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I did. I was such a smart ass. Excuse the language. But when he would give me these lectures, I'd say, hey, dad, are you on mission 29 exactly? Or is it 36? Are you going? And then I would. Finally he got mad and he said, you said mission 36 over cob? Yeah, we lost five planes that way. 55 men blew up in front of me. And I felt, you know, like, wow. He slapped me down. I needed that.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I had a wonderful father. I really did. And he was really good.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He was post mission. He was coming down off of the stuff they had to give him to get all the way out there.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He was really good. When I went in, when I had that happen, he said to me, you have torn your tendons overseas and had to have your finger operated on. You almost died and had to be flown home. Do you get the message that you drink the water you don't take care of yourself. You don't study the country. And then he passed away. And I was sitting in, you know, living Libyan Red Crescent. And the woman, they had a nurse that was a Pakistani, and she said, I think you die tonight, but don't worry.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Wow, that's.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You can. You can pray to Allah. You can pray to Allah. And I said, I think I'll play to Jesus Christ and all. It was like this voice came out on me. I said, I don't think I've done any wrong. And good things happen either here in the next world. Good man. She was so wonderful. She said, yes, yes, that's a prophet. That's a prophet. Jesus is a prophet. But my point is, when I was in this shock, 106, 105 temperature, 3 days, 2 days of ruptured appendix, gangrene going up. My dad take out some of my intestine. When this is all going on, I was thinking to my dad, I thought, you stupid idiot, he told you that you are reckless and you go overseas and you've done it on 1973, you did it in 78, and now here you are in 2007 and you're doing the same darn thing. He was right. I wish he was around. He would have told me, don't go there. If you have a bellyache, get it fixed.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah. But here you are today. Because medicine is wonderful.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Because medicine is wonderful. And the guy who actually diagnosed in Greece, they called in right before I went home. They finally called in somebody who really knew what he was doing. And he was the one that took an ivp. It wasn't a very good machine. And the dye was. They gave me too much dye. But he looked at it and he said, who's had you here for six weeks? That's a torn ureter and you're infected and you've got about 36. And I don't trust our medical care to do this type of operation. You get home immediately. And he went and called the American school and they arranged for me to get a flight.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah, he was wonderful.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And he was trained at the Mayo Clinic. He was Greek, he was good. But he was the only. I wish I had knew of him to get a hold of him from the beginning. He was a wonderful guy. I remember his name, I won't mention it over there, but he and the Dr. Abub, I think his name was Abub and Libby. I owe my life to both of them. This person needs to put all that things like that in perspective and get down on his knees and kiss the soil and say, I am so lucky to live in the United States. I am so lucky to have this opportunity at all, this education. I'm so lucky not to have to be a waitress and have to work two shifts to feed my family. I'm so lucky about some of the people I just saw this week, you know, working, working, working, working. I walked through the almond orchard and I saw a guy out there with a chainsaw by himself in the dark, almost chaining the neighbor's almond leaves, you know, almond limbs. I thought just, you know, 100 trees back, 100 trees back, cut, cut, cut. Starting when it's a little bit too dark, but you want to get the whole job in. And I thought, how about I was thinking of this killer today when I was watching that. And I thought, wow, this man needs to go and do that for a week, a month, a year with somebody who has to work like that and to get some dignity and appreciation of this country. Because he didn't get it in his prep school and he did not get it, apparently in the University of Pennsylvania, and he didn't get it on his wandering, meandering, going to Stanford, travels, Japan, Hawaii. No, no. People that do that have the. Somebody made that money. His grandfather made that money.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

His grandfather did.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And I can guarantee you his grandfather didn't give lectures about the evils of the American healthcare system or want to kill an executive. Something about too much money and too much leisure and too much therapeutic empowerment of our youth.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Victor, let's go ahead and take a break in the come back and talk a little bit about Liz Cheney and Kamala's campaign staff. Stay with us and we'll be back.

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

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[Unnamed Speaker]

Her attitude about that was that I'm going to. What would she say? I'm going to put the doj, the Trump doj, on notice if they try to investigate me. Doesn't she get it? She's entitled. She has the idea that doesn't she understand that she was the number three ranking Republican House member who voted almost 95% with Donald Trump? So you're on record, Liz. You were on record of Whole Hog maga. You were on schedule to be the speaker of the House. And I think your father had advised you and said that this is a more powerful position that you're in line for than even Vice President because it has a longer tenure and you can really adjudicate the passage of laws and everything. So what does she do? She thinks that Donald Trump, I mean, you could argue that this was a buffoonish demonstration. You could argue that the President should have said, everybody get back. But there were legitimate questions. We've talked about Mr. Rosenberg, the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter who said he was a joke. He used. No, I didn't say it. He did a joke. He said there was no real danger of an insurrection. You can look at the lie. If it was really an insurrection, Liz, why did you have to lie about it? Why did you have to say that five officers killed themselves when that happened up to six months later? And why did you have to say that Officer Sicknick was killed when he died of natural causes? Why don't you listen to some of the people on the left who said there was was a plethora of FBI informants and why didn't the FBI just come forward? Mr. Reye refused to address that. Andaro, why don't we have the full testimony of all the Capitol officers who made the decision not to come and who told them not to come enforce. Why when you knew there was going to be a demonstration, did you not have enough law enforcement? And if you're going to have an insurrection as you allege, why was nobody found inside the Capitol with a weapon, a gun? Why was Ashley Babbitt killed? Why did you try to hide the identity of Officer Byrd when the moment George Floyd was killed, the officers faces were plastered over all the nation's newspapers, but you couldn't find who shot her and he was protected, protected. And his dubious service record was silenced. Why, why, why, why? And why when Donald Trump finally he did say, I expect you to assemble peacefully and patriotically at the Capitol to protest. Why don't you say that insurrectionists don't tell their people to do that if you're going to run an insurrection, you don't say please assemble peacefully. You don't say that even if it's not sincere. So there were so many questions. So what you would want to do if you had a January 6th, you would do what you always do. You tell the minority leader, you get five people, we have six and we iron it out. We rag the conservative witnesses if we're liberals and if we're conservatives, we rag the liberal. That's what we do. But they didn't do that. For the first time, they refused the nominations of the ranking Republican, Kevin McCarthy. So there was only two people on that committee, and they only had three. They had two things in common. A, there was no way in the world that they were ever going to be reelected. They were completely dead on arrival the moment they took that job as the only two, and that's why they were selected. And the second was they had both voted to impeach Donald Trump prior to that. So here you have two people that were not representative of the opposition, and then you didn't. They didn't want anybody else. And so Kevin MacArthur said, I will give you some names. And they said, no, we don't want your names. We only want those two, because those are obsequious Lockeys that hate Trump more than we do, and they have no political future, and they blame Trump for it. And so they will make ideal bipartisan veneers. And that's what they did. And apparently they interviewed people. And when this is alleged, we haven't proven it, but the allegations are that when they had testimonies that were contrary to that narrative, they didn't. They didn't. They either didn't take them into consideration or they deleted the files on 117 occasions.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So my point is, I don't know what happened, and people listening don't know how. But I can guarantee you, 98% of you who are listening want the following to be done. Just to have a hearing. Not a revenge tour, just a hearing. Just make it. You can make it under. You can do it in silence, make it a confidential, classified hearing, but just say, we want to know where all the information is that was collected and whether it is lawful, if any, is deleted. Was that lawful to delete them and who deleted them and why did they delete them? And you get the impression that they really wanted this narrative to destroy Donald Trump. And Liz Cheney thought, you know what? After this is over, he lost the election. He not only lost the November election, he lost the January 5th special senatorial election. So he lost both Republican seats in Georgia the day before, and Loeffler and Perdue lost. He'll be blamed for that. He is politically inert. He's done for Trump. He's leaving in complete disgrace. And I'm going to rise like a phoenix out of his ashes, and I will be the player, and I'm going to run on the idea that Kevin McCarthy and anybody, any. Anybody who wasn't 100% against Trump. And I'm empowered now because look at this, I turned to the pungent tree and I have David French, I have Jonah Goldberg, I have Bill Kristol, I have David Frum, I have George Will. They're all saying that I'm the next heroic figure. So that all went to her head and she made the biggest political blunders of any major politician I've seen. She refuted all of the earlier conservative positions that she held de facto by signing on to this fanatic never Trump left wing effort to destroy Trump. And she lost 40 by 40 points in her home state.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I know that was just devastating.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And rather than learning from that and saying, you know what, all she had to do was say, you know, I am a conservative and every single thing that I voted For Donald Trump 95% of the time I still believe in, I want a secure border, but not when the people who what funding, funding the PACs and her campaign contributions and all that money's coming from the left and all that support's coming from the left and the never Trump right. She made a calculated decision and it was a terrible decision that she did. Like all of those Never Trumpers, they're in the Orwellian situation now where a, they're on record that everything they told us for 30 years on abortion, on the border, on the economy, on deterrence, they refuted just because Donald Trump's fingerprints were on those issues. So they refuted everything. So it's almost like saying, well, we just wanted to make money. We wanted speaking fees, we wanted columns and books and it was pretty lucrative. And now you know what? We didn't like Trump. He's mean to us and I don't like him. And now I'm just going to flip on all those things suckers don't ever take. And everybody said, well, do we believe you now or then? Which is it? And are you going to flip back when Trump's gone or what? So it was that's who she was part of.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Yes.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And she's destroyed her political career. I have no animus toward her. I've met her, I've had dinner with her before. She's a very bright person. Her father is very bright. Her mother did a wonderful job at the NEH under the elder Bush. But my God, I have never seen a slow motion political suicide like hers. And she doesn't get it. To this day, she has completely destroyed her career. And now the final irony is Donald Trump is in Notre Dame Cathedral and all of these people who said he was Hitler. It's like they're at the Fuhrer bunker. They're all running over to him. I was watching them. They were elbowing each other. There was the German, there was a Belgian guy. I thought Macron was a Siamese. I hate the metaphor. But a Siamese twin. He was clinging to him. He wouldn't let him go. He thought, this is my guy. I invited him here. I got to get all this reflected glory. And then you get the impression from the left in Europe, wow. We never really meant that he was Hitler. We just wanted to defeat him because the left were with the left. But privately, privately, thank God he's elected because he's going to give us the moral support to close our borders and he's going to beef up NATO and he's going to have a deterrent defense, and he's not going to get into embarrassing quagmires abroad, but he is going to retaliate against people like he did Soleimani and Baghdadi and isis. And he stood up to Putin. Putin never went anywhere when Trump was president. He did under the George W. Bush. He did under Biden. He had done it earlier under Obama. He did not do it. That's what they're thinking. And then reaction is the American left, it's kind of like, Logan, act. Logan, act. Logan, act. Logan, act. Logan, act. Logan, act. He's not exercising restraint. He's not the president. He's making foreign policy. Why there is an active president. And then the left goes, wait a minute. There is no president.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

There's no president. Yeah. Everybody's happy. There's a president.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yes. And there's no vice president. Where's. She went to Hawaii and apparently drank it up and partied or relaxed and then made that video. She looked like she was a bag lady and she had no makeup and looked like she was slurring her words. And she's on a permanent. She's kind of like Hillary after 2016. Remember when Hillary would walk through the forest and they ask her, what are you doing? I'm having red wine. She was just drinking. And it was traumatic. They had destroyed Hillary when she lost that election. It was such a. Remember, she was down trying to get a man in Arizona and Georgia and didn't even campaign the last two weeks in the swing states. So there is no president. Joe was not. I mean. And then they had this picture from Notre Dame. Joe Biden, I could not believe it.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Was enjoying his company.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, my God. She was staring at him in a way she's never stared at Joe Biden. And it's like, I don't have to point him in the right direction. I'm now my own person and here's a powerful president. Everybody wants to be around the United States, and I'm going to get near this sun and get a little sunline reflection on me and get a tan from him. That's what her whole thing was. There is nobody right now for the next 40 days who is president.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

I know.

[Unnamed Speaker]

None. None. We're in a big experiment. Maybe you don't need a president because there's none now and Joe can't do it. And it's, as I said earlier, it is a real debatable thing if he's going to be able to finish because he is just. I liked him better when he looked the other day when he took off his stocking cap and he had that white hair.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

He looked like it was electrical, like sort of Einstein looking mask.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, it looked like the guy that was in Back to the Future, that guy. And I thought, wow, he looks more natural now. You know what I mean? He didn't have that reptilian. He just kind of like, happy go lucky. But the point is, we don't have no president. And the left is now just quiet. They're thinking, well, I'm not going to say anything. But it is true that people respect the United States when they see Trump. And it is true that he is dynamic and it is true that a lot of stuff we did was stupid and we've got to blame the Obamas now and we'll just kind of shrug and we'll go after Trump and try to put him in jail at some future date. But right now, thank God that he's in there because he is de facto telling our enemies abroad, don't try it. And he's not saying like Biden, don't, don't, don't, don't. He's saying, in the long storied history of the United States, you will not understand what we're going to do to you. Somebody said to me, I got an email today from a reader and he said, well, Trump, you're a hypocrite, Mr. Hansen. Because Trump said he threatened Hamas and he said he was going to do something to Hamas and there's nothing he can do. It's just empty rhetoric. Like Biden, oh, there is something he can do. He can go right to Qatar and he can say to the government of Qatar, we have that big beautiful billion dollar plus base that you built for us to protect yourself from Your enemies. And you're not very popular in the Sunni world, even though you're supposedly a Sunni country. And we're out, we are out of that base. We want nothing to do with you. You are a backstabbing, Al Jazeera hosting, unreliable ally, if not a friend. And we don't want anything to do with you. So there's not going to be an American to lift their finger when you go the way of Assad because you're a corrupt government. He can do that. And he will go to the people in Hamas and he will say to them, knowing Trump, he will say, this is what we're going to do. You have a cousin in the United States, you have a nephew, and they're all on green cards or student visas. We're just going to declare you a terrorist entity. And anybody who has a passport from the following countries which have you know that you use to come here, they're not going to be in the United States anymore. And then he's probably going to do what he did with the Taliban. He's going to give him a picture from CIA or satellite intelligence or IDF or Mossad and says, this is where this, this, this, this is. And it's not going to be there tomorrow. Yeah, and we'll see.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

You're making every American out there listening smile bigger and bigger and bigger. I hope, hope it all comes to fruition.

[Unnamed Speaker]

They're smiling because they're patriotic Americans and they wake up and they say, what was this nightmare? What was this dream of four years? What was the border? Who was this Majorcas guy? Why were they lying to us? Why didn't they just say, we want to destroy the United States and get it over with? Why did they let in 12 million people? Why these thugs from Venezuela? What was printing all this? Modern monetary theory? What was all the dei? What was the trans dancing and the cross dressing at military bases? And what was this guy in the administration stealing women's luggage? And the assistant Surgeon general? What was it all about? It's just too bizarre. I can't figure it out. That's what they're thinking. And now they're thinking it's gone. It's, it's.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

We've all woken up to a new day.

[Unnamed Speaker]

There's no more wizard of Oz. There's no more Wicked Witch. We're back in Kansas again, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's what they were thinking. And I'm thinking it too.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

Me too. Well, Victor, that's the end of our show today because we're up on a little bit of a hard break. And we'll save Kamala Harris's campaign staffers for Saturday. So join us on Saturday. And thank you for joining the news roundup on the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Thank you, everybody.

[Victor Davis Hansen]

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

[Unnamed Speaker]

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[Sammy Wink]

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

Hank, what's going on? Another hauler full of new ford trucks and SUVs. Sam, so much SUV capability is that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

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[Victor Davis Hansen]

Which means it's the best time to buy. Well done, Sam.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And time for America to get holiday ready with ford. Based on 1977-2023 cy industry reported total sales.