← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
Loading summary
Transcript61 lines
- [00:00]
OpenPhone Representative
In today's fast moving world, your team needs to stay connected to your customers without missed messages, communication silos or slow phone systems. A flexible and efficient business phone system isn't just nice to have, it's essential to succeed. Enter OpenPhone OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or computer, so no more carrying two phones or using a landline. With OpenPhone, your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts like a shared inbox. That way any teammate can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. Plus, with AI powered call transcripts and summaries, you'll be able to automate follow ups, ensuring you'll never miss a customer interaction again. So whether you're a one person operation drowning in calls and texts, or have a large team that needs better collaboration tools, Openphone is a no brainer. See why over 50,000 businesses trust Openphone to manage their businesses calls and texts. Openphone is offering our listeners 20% off your first six months@openphone.com Victor that's O P E N P H O N E dot com Victor and if you have existing numbers with another service, Open Phone will port them over at no extra charge. Open Phone no missed calls, no missed.
- [01:38]
Sammy Wink
Customers hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. This is our Friday news roundup and there's lots of news on the agenda. Tariffs and especially China we're going to look at today. And then Trump also had talks with Netanyahu this week. Those will be our first story, so stay with us and we'll be right back. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only.
- [02:27]
Mint Mobile Representative
Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full terms@mintmobile.com Rakuten is the smartest way to save money when you shop because you earn cash back at over 3,500 stores. Fashion, beauty, electronics, home essentials, travel, dining, concert tickets and more. Your favorite stores like Lowe's, Levi's and Nike pay Rakuten to send them shoppers and Rakuten then passes on a part of that payment to its members as cash back. You're already shopping at your favorite stores. Why not save while you're doing it? It's a no brainer. Membership is free and easy. To sign up. Get the Rakuten app now and join the 17 million members who are already saving. Cashback rates change daily. See rakuten.com for details. That's R A K U T E N Your cash back really adds up.
- [03:16]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor is the Martin and Neal Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, VictorHanson. Please come join us there. It is called the Blade of Perseus and we will probably read a comment later and so I'll talk about the website later. So Victor, China has, well, Trump has. I would hate to be at the gambling table with Trump because even though we kind of know what's in their hands, we don't know everything. And he is a tough player and has raised the Chinese tariffs because they've threatened to retaliate against him to one 104%. And then today I heard it's up to 125%. And I was wondering your reflections on China.
- [04:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, he did something very smart by first of all as he raised, they countered and said we're going to raise tariffs on you. So then he countered and went up. Then they countered at the same time he did that the flat 10%. He put a 90 day hold on for most countries because there are 70 of them want to negotiate. So what he's saying to China is you go ahead and do that. But I've got Europe and Japan and South Korea and Vietnam and all these other countries that I can deal with and we're going to zero or parity tariffs. And I'm not even going to press on this first round. And we had discussed this on the other shows. I had suggested that for round two, he not get into the VAT tax, which I understand is a form of a tariff. He not get into the pseudo health insecurities. You know, like I gave one example. You've you dip your chickens in chlorine. Therefore we're not going to buy all of that fuddy duddy stuff they use in lieu of the word tariff. But he can do that in the second round. The main thing right now is he shows Wall street and the Europeans that we are heading in a zero or parity tariff. And China knows that. So he's got each the more that he can get a concession. All he needs is a couple of big players, a Japan or South Korea, to make a deal to go down and reduce their surpluses. As soon as he does that, there will be a scramble to get into the market musical chair style. Nobody wants to be without a chair within music. And China is going to be the big loser. The other thing to remember about China very quickly is they have nearly a $400 billion surplus. Nobody ever wins a trade war that has a surplus. They have 400. And so morally and ethically, people look at that and they say, why are you running a $400 billion deficit with the United States? Why don't you run 150 billion and, you know, even things out. So they know that, number two, they have a lot more liability. You know how many students are in right now? Used to be In China, about 10,000. It's not even that anymore. There's nearly 300,000 Chinese students. And why are they here besides to enrich these universities with full tuition, full woman board? They're here to. The vast majority are in stem. Stem, they're in mathematics, they're in engineering, they're in the sciences. And they're here for one reason, to bring back technology and expertise to China, because their system does not engender or create spontaneous scientific success progress at the same rate as ours does. If you don't have 300,000 Chinese students here and you cannot steal copyright and patents from the United States, eventually you will begin to fall. By that, I mean, you will not keep up with the F35 or you will not keep up with SpaceX. You can't do it. And they know that. So the third thing is they have, oh, about 400,000 acres. We have about 4% of California American farmland. They were way down and they're starting to inch up. They're buying three or four hundred thousand acres in strategic places. We essentially own no farmland in China. So all Trump has to do is say, well, let's look at the whole relationship. And it's a twofer because he tells Columbia and Cornell and Stanford, you know what? You guys have been denying the First Amendment, Third Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment. You use racially illegal biases on your hiring and admissions. But you know what? And I'm going to tax your endowment, but I'm not going to let any Chinese students come in. How's that? And that would be a big hit to them. It would be welcomed by most people. 1% are considered to be active espionage agents. That's three or four, 3,000 of them. So he's got a lot of levers to play with China. China has no goodwill in the United States after Covid and all the lies and the Wuhan lab. So they're going to wake up. My only worry about this China is if they start to see that they're going to lose the American market and they're cutting deals with their rivals like South Korea and Australia and Japan and Taiwan, whom they loathe and they think they're getting in here and China's not. And number two, if they think the United States is going to deny their students here, they might move on Taiwan. And if they did that, moved on Taiwan, even if they were successful, they would ruin their entire international reputation. They would have the whole world shun them much more than they're doing to Russia. And then we would be far closer to Russia and try to find an alliance of belligerence and neutrals and NATO to him. So I don't see them in a good position, especially when you look at some of the three or four criteria that we talked about that are the stuff of civilizations. Their fertility rate is almost one. They're shrinking and aging. They have only about a third of the oil production and gas of we do. So they got four times the population, but they only have a third of the energy that we do. Our agriculture, in terms of value, is about twice what theirs is. So the stuff of civilization, energy, food, fertility, and then an environment of creativity and encouragement of entrepreneur, they don't have it. That's why they're predatory and they're scavenging the American economy.
- [10:16]
Sammy Wink
Related to this, maybe just peripherally, we recently had this week, Elon Musk put out a tweet that Peter Navarro was a sack of bricks. Like a sack of bricks, because he said that. I think this is the. The thing Elon didn't like that the Vietnam offer of no tariffs was not of any value to the United States. And so I was wondering, well, here's.
- [10:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
Here's the problem. Peter Navarro was way back as a University of California at Irvine economics professor, he's been hitting tariffs. Okay, so Elon personally is getting killed on his stock price. Not that he's getting killed. It's only getting back to where it was three or four years ago. But the Europeans are going after him and certain states are going after him. And then we have this terrorist campaign to intimidate Tesla owners that has resulted in a 13% drop in purchases. So he's concerned about this. Navarro is an academic. That's why he said you've never created anything. And he is advising they don't disagree about the need for tariffs. But what Elon is saying, and I tend to agree with him, is for the first round to stop the stock market. And by the way, when Trump said he's going to have 70 nations in active negotiations and that's going to take 90 days to create these deals and in that 90 day window, he will not have the blanket 10%. The stock market went up. I'm speaking at 11 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon. The stock market has gone up over 2,200 points. It's the highest, it's a single day rise in four years and it's recovered much of what it's lost. And it's going to have a panic in reverse if he sees all we need is one big player to say, I come clean, I want to be a better partner with the United States. I don't have a problem with having no surpluses. Japan, a Taiwan, a South Korea, a Germany, a EU in general. And when that happens, all these frenzied, hysterical stock people, the proverbial 10% and own 93% of the market capitalization, they're going to say, wow, I got to get in there and get these prices. They're a historic low. I think this market could go up to 50,000. As far as the final thing on the Navarro, and he was very brave. I mean, they put him in jail for refusing a subpoena. And I mean, are they going to do that to Merrick Garland? He did too, without any consequences. But I think where he's wrong is Elon is saying there's so much tension and it's so fragile. Let's get the 70 nations here and let's just focus on tariffs. And we know that if you say zero tariffs with Vietnam or zero tariffs with Germany or zero tariffs with Italy, they do things like excise tax or they say this is a dangerous pharmaceutical or this type of machinery doesn't have enough safety components on it or this toy could be swallowed. That's what they do hike their, their regulations for. And so Navarro was saying, let's do it all right now. And even at times he's saying, well, what do we do about the last 50 years? It's almost like reparations, you know, so he doesn't. And then he sees them as revenue producers because he's got another agenda that he, that they want to lower taxes on tips, Social Security, first responders, military personnel. So he sees revenue not just as parity, but also as a big money earner that would substitute, as it was in the United States before 1916, for income taxes. That's a mistake. Right now what he needs to do is parity, symmetry, get down to zero. That's what Elon wants. And then say, round two, you come back, and now we have to negotiate all of these insidious Machiavelli machinations that you guys do. And so I think that Elon's going to win that. I don't think he needs to disparage him in the public square. But that's Elon.
- [14:53]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, that's Elon. A little bit unpredictable and mercurial. I would like to welcome a new sponsor, Vibrance, to our show. Tell me the truth. How many different beauty potions do you have sitting on your bathroom counter right now? If it's more than just Vibrance Super C serum. Listen up. The ingredients in this one bottle can replace your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams, and dark spot reducers. Made in the usa with the highest quality ingredients, including vitamin C, hydrolyric acid, vitamin B5, and vitamin E, Super C serum delivers noticeable results. Simplify your skin care routine, get a healthier complexion and minimize wrinkles and age spots with Vibrance. And if you don't find it better than your current skin care routine, you'll get a full refund. Go to vibrance.com Victor to save up to 37% and free shipping. That's Vibrance V I B R I A N C E. Vibrance.com Victor and I just received the Super C serum and immediately relieved dryness and made my skin super soft. So it was amazing and you should try. Try it. Welcome again to Vibrance as a Sponsor Day.
- [16:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
I need something, too. I'm going to try it.
- [16:22]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, you should try it because I've.
- [16:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
Been getting Freddy Krueger Skeletor illustrations in the mail.
- [16:29]
Sammy Wink
It makes your skin feel really soft. Strangely.
- [16:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think after 75 stitches here, here, here, and starting five inside from a bike accident, I'm hopeless.
- [16:42]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, let's turn then to the illegal immigration. Trump has a great proposal in my eyes that he's going to find illegal immigrants up to a thousand dollars a day if they stay here. And so I don't know how legal.
- [17:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's a 1996 law. It's legal, but the problem is that law was passed when you had very few illegal aliens coming in, maybe a couple million. Not when you have 30 million. So what do you remember? All this stuff is based on iterations, cohorts. He's looking at to address the 12 million right now. And he's going after first the 500,000 that are criminals. Then he's going to go after the million and a half that have already been served deportation orders and they just blew it off. Then he's going to go with the people who have only been the Biden people. They haven't been here more than four years. That will start to get tricky. Some of them have married. They're not citizens, but they've married. Some of them are not on welfare of any sort. Some of them are working. Some of them haven't committed any crimes. He is going to have to adjudicate those on how long they resided. Once you get handled the 12 million, then you've got 20 plus million. These are the people who have been here anywhere from more than four years to 30 years. And a lot of them have not committed crimes. A lot of them are working. A lot of them have long tenures here. A lot of them haven't seen Mexico since they were two or three. So there has to be a pathway to some. And I think out of the 30 million, it might be half who say, I've never committed a crime. I'm working as a carpenter, I'm working for the government, even I am not on food stamps. I don't have Section 8 housing, I don't have any of that. And I've been here 12 years, something like that. And you have to offer them, not citizenship, a pathway and a fine won't be. You can imagine if they charge them $950 a day for thousands of days they've been here. But you could say to them, you pay a $950 $1,000 fine and we will give you a green card. If you meet those criteria, where this will get controversial, there will be illegal aliens who are here for 10 years, let's say. And let's say one guy is a plumber's apprentice, right? And let's say nine years ago he had a dui. And let's say that four years ago he got an EBT card. And so then you say, well, you can get a green card if you've been here 10 years, five years, you decide what. You have no criminal record, you're not on public support and you're fully employed. And that guy says, but it was just a dui. It was just either a low felony or a high misdemeanor. And I haven't had one since. And everybody has EBT cards. I only, I don't get steady. And that's, and then you're going to get the whole left to come out. Oh, look at this person, Joe Blow. He was such a nice person. And they argue, well, he entered illegally. He's been here illegally. He's never, he's not, you know, and this is one reason why they want to use the irs, because they have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of these people that are here illegally that are working are not paying income tax. And that's another reason why the left does not want that record exposed because they not only know there's a lot of people who are getting paid in cash and do not pay income tax, but a lot of them are, are registering to vote as well. As we learned from Elon.
- [20:42]
Sammy Wink
Well, since you're there, the head of the, one of the heads of the IRS has decided to quit, Melanie Kraus, because she doesn't want to volunteer give up information to dhs.
- [20:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
Poor baby. All these people have selective moral. So she gave some little soapbox performance art speech. I am resigning because the initiatives that Donald Trump is enacting will have permanent and irreparable damage to the irs. You know, you know what the permanent and irreparable damage is? It's things like Lois Lerner selectively denying tax free status to particular groups that might galvanize and hurt Obama's reelection. And then lying about taking the fifth Amendment or the irs, looking at Hunter Biden and having two devoted IRS auditors say this guy has not paid his taxes and it's a huge amount. And then having some federal attorney say these people are crazy, they're nutty and dismissing it, except for the judge that and then it didn't matter anyway, it was pardoned. So the IRS has nothing. She knows. The IRS has been politicized and everybody knows.
- [21:59]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, let's take a break and then we'll come back to talk a little bit about the meeting between Bibi Netanyahu and Trump this week. Stay with us. And we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor, I noticed two things because Trump gave a press conference with BB Netanyahu. And the things that I noticed were kind of paradoxical, peripheral, all the very serious issues with the Middle east in general. And the first thing was was that Trump said we are having direct talks with Iran and sitting there with Bibi Netanyahu sort of saying the United States is going to deal with this on its own and not necessarily link themselves to Israel in these talks. And I was wondering your thoughts on that.
- [22:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
Netanyahu appreciates Trump because he's not Biden and he's not putting ceasefires and taking the Hamas line and all that stuff. And the Biden administration was full in USAID of pro Hamas people and the universities are pro Hamas, but their trajectories are in the same direction. Denuclearize Iran, emasculate the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah and get Saudi Gulf money in to redevelop Gaza without Hamas. Okay, but they're not exactly the same. They're parallel. So Netanyahu would want the United States to take care of nuclear, the Iran nuclear mountain. I guess it is. In fact, Trump is bringing, I don't know what he's got, six or seven B1 bombers that can carry this 30,000 pound munition. And he's letting everybody see it. They're not an underground banker bunkers. And then we've got two carrier groups that are going to assemble. So he's ratcheting up the pressure, but he would rather for the economy and the oil markets and especially his MAGA agenda. You saw that exchange during signal where J.D. vance voiced. He said, I don't think this is in the interest of the President's supporters to have a attack on the Houthis. But it wasn't a preemptive, it was a reactive attack. It was like the first term Soleimani or Baghdadi, etc. So Netanyahu would rather see Iran out of the way. And he knows he can't do it unless he has access to the type of aircraft and munitions that only we have. And Trump doesn't want him to get in the way. The problem that Trump is going to have is his offer to Iran is we're not going to try to overthrow your government. We're not going to try to stir up 40% of your country that are ethnic minorities that hate you. We're not going to unleash Israel on you and we're not going to take out your nuclear facilities. If, if you stop stirring up Islamic radicalism, trying to overthrow the Gulf sheikdoms, trying to stop commerce and the Red Sea with the Houthis, trying to revive Hezbollah. You were behind Hamas. Just stop that. And they're not going to stop it because that's without that, they have nothing. They're just a corrupt theocracy that their own people despise. And so I think this will be like the Obama. I mean, he's got a lot more clout and threats, credible. But ultimately they're not going to negotiate because they're not going to negotiate themselves into the end because they're terrorists and they understand that the only way they're in power, they threaten people with their terror. They've tried to kill Trump, their agents have. So I would assume that this is going to go on and on and on, and then he's going to be trying to solve certain things. First, he would like to get a ceasefire in Ukraine. Ukraine, and he would like to deal finally with the trade tariff in China. And at that point, three or four or five months from now, he's going to have to either cut off and ratchet, ratchet up the oil embargo, maximum pressure, or he's going to have to take him out, take out the nuclear mountain. He has the ability to do both.
- [26:38]
Sammy Wink
But you sound like Trump's interest is not to necessary work necessarily worry about nuclear ability. But it's definitely Bibi Netanyahu's probably first.
- [26:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
He said they can't have a nuclear because he knows what they're going to do. They're going to start threatening Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait. They, all the Gulf countries have some Shia minorities stir up. Go back to what the Obama administration envisioned as a counterweight in the Middle East, a Shia Persian underdog who finally gets social justice. And they can do that with a nuclear weapon. And once they do a nuclear weapon, then Saudis say, we're going to get one and they have the money to buy it or create it. And then Kuwaitis say yes, and Jordanians and Egyptians, Turks, everybody will get one. So it's not in our interest that they have any. It's just a matter of Trump thinks he can squeeze them and offer them incentives without violating the MAGA charter of no optional Middle east wars. And Netanyahu was saying, everybody's been down that road. It does not work. These are evil people. They planned basically, October 7th or their surrogates did they deny it, but they really did. You can't talk to these people. And they don't have any air defenses. Now. We, we, in one little raid, we got rid of all their air defense. We got rid of their appendages. We made Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis combat ineffective. So you have a window right now that you'll never have it again. So what you need to do is one morning wake up and send about 150 fighter aircraft, fighter bombers, and take out their military, their ability to resist militarily, their air defenses, such as they are, that are left. And we'll help you. We'll give you everywhere where they are. And then you've got to send these bombers with these 30 pound munitions and just hit this for a week and blow all of their nuclear facilities up. And Trump is saying, and the stock market will go down and the oil price will go sky high. And this is. And my MAGA people will say, you're starting a war and we don't know what will happen. We don't know what if they have a nuclear weapon on one missile and they use that in reserve and then that goes into Israel, then I'll get blamed for destroying the Jewish state. So he's got all these concerns and they're legitimate.
- [29:10]
Sammy Wink
Well, the second thing on that conference with the Bibi Netanyahu was that Trump was friendly toward Turkey and Erdogan. And so I was kind of wondering, I know there's a lot of tension between Israel and Turkey and so why bring that up in this particular conference with Bibi Netanyahu, the friendly sort of.
- [29:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, Erdogan and Netanyahu hate each other's guts. Erdogan hates Israel. He was the one that said during The October Post, October 7, Israel Incursions, that one day the Israelis would wake up and they'd see Turkish missiles coming down upon them. He says that to everybody. He said that to the Greeks, he said that the Cypriots. But there's a difference now, and that is Turkey has upped its reputation by double dealing in the Ukraine and Russian border war, by selling kind of sophisticated but cheap and durable and practicable drones and weaponry to both sides at the same time. Israel has upped itself reputation by doing what everybody said was impossible. You can't take on Hezbollah. You'll never find Nasrallah. These people are not Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. These are shock troops. These are the Uruk Hai of Saruman, and you can't get rid of them. And he did. And then they said, you don't dare go into Iranian airspace. And he did. So Israel's stock has risen, so has Turkey's, and now they've got a void because Bashar Assad is in Russia and the Assad dynasty has collapsed and Syria is a open ground with no government. So Turkey is going in there and carving out border areas and so is Israel. And those border areas are starting to expand. You want to know if there's going to be a. I Don't think there's going to be another Syria under its present, its old borders. I think you're going to have this former Al Qaeda government carve out a central place around Damascus and then isra Israel is going to get security border zones and then Turkey's going to do. And so they're both the most powerful countries in the Middle east and Turkey feels it's a neo Ottomanist regime. It feels it wants to reassert its control over the Middle east which it enjoyed for centuries until World War I. And he's that fanatic and crazy. And so they're going to butt heads and Trump is trying to get them to not fight each other to get along. I don't know how viable Turkey is going to be as a NATO power. It wants now 30F35 deliveries and participation in the assemblage returned. We didn't trust them because they bought Russian aircraft anti aircraft systems. They're very anti American. The regime is. They're Islamicists. They've destroyed the opposition. They're not a democracy. They're the only non democracy in NATO. On the other hand, the Europeans who are so principled. So principled. We don't like a million Uyghur slave laborers. But let's not pick on China. And we don't like what the Turkish government is doing to the Kurds and we don't like what they're doing to the opposition. But they have the largest land force and army in NATO. So let's rely on them and not us for military power and extremists.
- [32:54]
Sammy Wink
Do you think this makes the Greek nation and Israel closer friends because of the nature of their relationship to Turkey? Each one seems very. Yeah, the Greeks and Israel are very tight with each other.
- [33:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
Absolutely. They both, they have so much in common. They're Western and they share a shared Judeo Christian heritage. They're both small vulnerable countries. Greece is 10 million people and it's got a huge 50,000. They both. It has a huge area for the small size of its territory. They've had deals before that. One of the stupidest thing of many stupid things. The Biden administrator. I shouldn't even say Biden. I'm sorry everybody. The waxen effigies handlers did was cancel the med pipeline deal where Cyprus, Greece and Israel had developed a mechanism to tap Mediterranean natural gas and send it into Italy and replace Russian. I hope they can do it. Now Turkey's tried to disrupt it. The United States has said, you know, don't get involved. But Greece has a lot and they're both very close friends now with the United States. When I was, when I lived in Greece for over almost three years off and on they were very hostile to the United States. They had the passoc socialist government. But now they're I think we have some F16s that temporarily base there. Turkey's very angry at us that we're too close to the Greeks. I admit a prejudice right here that I love Greece, I love Greek people. I've been there 20 or 30 times. It's a wonderful country. We should be they're close as possible unless bygones be bygones. Forget about the Papadopoulos and Union Yannidi's dictatorships of the 1970s. I think Israel will be very close with they both have a common worry and that's Ottomanism in Turkey.
- [34:59]
Sammy Wink
Victor, I'd like to take a moment for our sponsor Quince. Quince has all the must haves like mongolian cashmere sweaters from $50 iconic hundred percent leather jackets and comfortable pants for every occasion. The best part, all Quince Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. By partnering directly with the top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices along with premium fabrics and finishes, indulge in affordable luxury. Go to quints.com Victor for free shipping on your order and 300, 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Victor to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com Victor and I love my Quince products personally. I have beautiful sweaters and linen products and the linen especially is going to be wonderful for the summer. So thank you Quint for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So Victor, let's then turn to I know that you and you and Jack talked about the Supreme Court's opinion on Judge Boasberg, but I was wondering, you didn't really talk so much about the fact that Amy Comey Barrett has voted against not stop or for not stopping.
- [36:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. She said that you cannot use that. And the Supreme Court, if you read the rulings said they have no problem that a person who is being deported has a right to question the legality of it. But they just said they can't agree on where that should take place, that adjudication. And so the majority five said if you came here illegally and you're residing illegally and you claim that you're not a gang member or you're not Trin, or even if you were Trin, and you want to adjudicate that under our legal system, the very fact that you didn't ask our permission to be here and the very fact that you're not asking our permission to reside here illegally means that you've broken a number of our laws. So under this Alien act, we're sending you back home. And then when you're back home, just get your legal representatives in the United States to make the case that it was a mistake or that you have a constitutional right as an illegal alien to come back. That's all the Supreme Court is basically saying. And Amy Barrett said no. She joined and this is the second time she's done it. So Supreme Court justices are humans. They're sensitive that every time they make a ruling, they're going to be criticized. And they live in Washington, D.C. which is 93% a Democratic. So they will be ostracized. Somebody like Clarence Thomas or Sam Ali, they don't care. And after what they did to Kavanaugh, he doesn't care. Gorsuch probably cares a little bit more, but he's even more conservative. So they've got four hardcore, predictable, reliable, originalists, traditional. And then there's John Roberts, and he cares about what he envisions as the reputation of the court, that it has to be above suspicion so that it has an equal branch. And he's got a lot of problems because he's got these appellate court, these district court and circuit courts that are freelancing and doing things they know they shouldn't, I. E. Some guy in Kansas or some guy in California says the whole country is his jurisdiction. So. But then they've got Brown and Kagan and Sotomayor, and these are not traditionalists. They believe that it's a living Constitution and they're smarter than the founders and they're going to make up law, depending on what the left says is fair and just and humane. And then you've got Barrett, and she is, on the one hand, a conservative and was trained as a conservative and taught as a conservative. On the other hand, she has a lot of social and cultural capital concerns, I guess you'd call it Catholic. Jack's not here. I can't consult him on Catholic orthodoxy. But she has. I call her a Catholic humanist, not quite to the point of the Pope or something, but she's influenced by that Catholic humanist tradition. And so she obviously has empathies in the same way that Sandra Day O'Connell said that she was going to uphold affirmative action because she said in 20 years it'll be over with anyway. Well, if it is over, it's not because of the left problem with all these people. They don't understand the left. They really don't. This is not kind of Adlai Stevenson, naive liberal left. This is a hardcore Jasmine Crockett, Bernie Sanders, AOC Socialist, Jacobin, Angry Party, 54% and one poll one wouldn't be unhappy if Donald Trump was killed. That's who they are.
- [40:33]
Sammy Wink
Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back to talk a little bit about the policy with universities by Trump. Stay with us. And we'll be back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So Victor Trump has, oh, I just remind your audience you can find VictorX. His handle is @vd hansen and on Facebook, Hanson's Morning Cup. You can also find him on YouTube for video versions of this podcast as well as Rumble and Spotify. So please come join us at any of those outlets. So Trump has frozen now. So he's really ramping up his unhappiness with the university's anti Semitism and racial discrimination. But can I just say how much he is freezing federal funds to Northwestern University and Cornell to the tune of 790 million for Northwestern and 1 billion for Cornell. And so your thoughts?
- [41:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think people confuse what he's doing mean. He is saying that if you look at the 9th, forget the supreme Court's little tweak, tweak here, they've never been clear about it. But the 64, 65 and subsequent civil Rights act say that you cannot use race to discriminate somebody in hiring, retention or promotion or admission. That's just the way the law is. And they didn't even get that specific. And then courts try to tweak. Trump is saying that his legal team says the statutes of the civil rights legislation are in the books. So he looks at these universities and he said, why do they have graduations separated by race? Why do they have dorms separated by race? I know they get around it with theme. They'll say this is an auxiliary. I get email and they'll say, Victor, you said that they have graduation separated by race, but these are auxiliary graduation. Are they not graduation ceremonies? And then they'll say then these are not dorms, they're theme houses. So you get the picture. But he's basically saying if Stanford University, to take my university, puts on their website the last three and a half years that they let in 9% of their student body. About 180 people were white males. And that group is about 33% of the population. Right. So do they really believe that white males, in terms of. Of aptitude or test scores or GPA or whatever they are, they are less qualified than other ethnic groups? No. And so he's saying to all these people, you violate the First Amendment. When you shout speakers down and you don't allow them to speak, you violate probably the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments. I think I said Third Amendment about quartering troops. I don't know if they do that or not. I imagine they would if they could, but they. All the amendments that concern the rights of the accused and evidence. So when Joe Smith is at Stanford and he goes on a date and he and his date get drunk and it's drunk and it's he said, she said. And she files a complaint and said, I was sexually attacked by my boyfriend friend. And he says, no, you weren't. We got drunk and we had a consensual sexual relationship and I just didn't want to see you afterwards. In other words, he was a rogue and a cad. But not. That doesn't matter. They will not say, both of you come before a tribunal and you can have legal counsel. They will be prejudiced against the male, and they won't give him the full array of constitutional protections of cross examination, naming his accuser, etc. It will not be run by a legal proceeding. So all of those issues, and then these universities are systematically allowing people to be harassing Jewish students, anti Semitism. So all of these together, they're saying to them, they're not trying to punish them, they're just saying, we're going to pass on federal funds to you. You, sorry, we support this and we support this and we support this, and then you take it. But, you know, you don't. I think they've been bragging about their endowments. People have said to them, you have. I think Barack Obama said that. He said, well, you have a $15 billion endowment. Use it. Meaning just tell the federal government to blank itself, that you can do whatever you want. Be like Hillsdale College. If you really are committed to your principles as Hillsdale is, then don't take the federal money. Unfortunately for them, there's some other things coming down the tube that they're not going to like. It's not just that they can only charge the government. I shouldn't say charge. They can only rip off the government 15%. They used to do 54, 60% on federal grants, mostly from the NIH. They're going to get a tax on the endowment. I don't know how much it's going to be geared probably to the number of students versus the endowment. That's going to hurt them. And then they're going to get. There's going to be stuff coming in on the student loan program. And once we get all this stuff cleared out, you hear talk that the Senate and the House, if they can survive the midterms or right before the midterms, they're going to go to the university and say, you know what, you're going to have to have some skin in the game and we're going to have to redefine moral hazard so that if you want to let all these students come in and you're only graduating them every. Every six years and 50% of them drop out anyway, and you have all these studies majors that no one's employed, you're going to have to start telling people what major gives you what job at what price. And here's the. And give them some more information. But more importantly, you're going to have to pledge a percentage of your endowment to back up their loan. We're not going to do it all anymore because 33% are late. And they're going to be late on your dime, not ours. So they're going to be in. I don't think if they were wise, they would just look at their budget and say, I'm going to get rid of the center for Therapeutic Counseling. I'm going to get rid of the diversity equity inclusion czar in the Physics Department. I'm going to get rid of the Green Change Initiative. I'm going to get rid of the disinformation and misinformation, Internet, laboratory or observatory, all, all that stuff.
- [47:33]
Sammy Wink
I don't see that happening though, Victor, with these. These are very left wing. Even their administrations are very left wing. They're going to try to protect all of that stuff all they can.
- [47:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's why they have to move very quickly. Why they have four or five votes in the House and four votes in the Senate. If they really stick together, they can do it. But a lot of it can be done by executive order, too. Or to quote Barack Obama, well, I don't care what the Congress does. I got a phone, I got a pin. I got a phone, I got a pin. I'm going to sign an executive order. That's what he did. He set the precedent of the plethora of orders. Until then, People hadn't done it nearly as much.
- [48:16]
Sammy Wink
Well, another thing this week that we're seeing and probably for lots of weeks leading up till now, is that all the violent rhetoric that you and Jack have talked about. Lots of new shows I've talked about, but there was an interesting article in the New York Post by Carol Markowitz and it was called Silence is Violence. And she made the point that the leadership of the Democrats are silent on all of these outbursts that are, are violent and they are guilty themselves of, of the violence that is because of that, that they need to speak out. And I think she's right.
- [48:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
Speak out because they enjoy it. So when Jasmine Crockett talks about hitting Cruz in the head or they call Trump a Nazi or a fascist, or they say that Elon has to be taken down, or Walt says he's an A blank and Senator Mark Kelly goes after him and has. And then these people are here in Clovis, 20 miles from here. They just caught a guy puncturing the tire of some poor woman's Tesla. First of all, these people are really stupid. They don't understand the security system in a Tesla. And number two, they all seem to fit a paradigm. Every time I see them, they're the ex hippies I knew at UC Santa Cruz. This guy was 76 year old, middle class white guy. And it's almost as if all those people that I, I was Mr. Country Bumpkin Yokel. I go up from the farm and I see these people and the first thing I ever saw was everybody was sleeping around, everybody was using drugs. They had drugs on their door of the Santa Cruz dorms with price tags. Psilocybin, lsd, this, this. And then they were all going out and screaming and yelling and calling their professors, you disrupting. And. And I thought when my dad dropped me off, they had a big protest. 71 and he said, this is not good. Who are these people? Said I'm going to be gone, but you're going to have to deal with these people. And I said, I think they're all going to be hippies. You know what he said? Oh, no, no, no, no. I know these people. I know these people. They're going to be the stockbrokers, they're going to be the media people, they're going to be the lawyer, they're going to run the country. This is just a passion, a temporary little play game they do. And then he got in, of course, to World War II. He said, we were flying over Cob, we were flying over Yoko. And these people were the people who were telling us what to do and what. And they never set foot out of the United States. So yeah, that I saw that profile of that guy and I look at all these things. The left though gave us a hint. They said on January 6, we don't care if you went into the Capitol. We don't care anything if you were in the general vicinity. If you touched a barrier, we're going to. They charged 950 people. There weren't that many people in the Capitol. There were people that didn't have anything to do with Putin and they put them in jail for four or five months and they did it, as the French said, to discourage the others. Others. That was the point.
- [51:42]
Sammy Wink
Yes, but 950, they are wasting the people's time by doing that was the point.
- [51:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
But they wanted to be so outrageous and excessive. But my point is if they really believed, and I think it did work, that everybody was paranoid even for a legitimate. And they do the same thing with anti abortion protests. Why don't they use the left for the Tesla people and just say, you know what, we have warned everybody, do not not try to vandalize, firebomb, do any of this. And you keep doing it. And this is federal racketeering across state lines. Because they all have the same signs, they have the same printout instructions. They all leave at noon for their unionized protest lunch. And, and just take, just tell one Pam Bondi said the other day, we're going to go after 20 years for anybody that's caught doing this. And then I hope that they can say, find that these people are being coordinated by people high up in the Democratic Party. Democratic Party is. They don't. What they're doing is really encouraging violence. You think that Cory Booker, when He did his 25 hour Spartacus talk, he would say, I'm very worried. We had the Scalise shooting with. We had a Bernie Sanders campaign worker tried to kill knockoff Republican legislators. We had this Mr. Cooks guy that was mouthing all this left wing crap. We had this other idiot that was in Florida. Now we learn that he wanted to get what, an anti aircraft missile or a bazooka or something.
- [53:18]
Sammy Wink
That was Ryan Ruth.
- [53:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. And so. And then we had the Iranians that were sending teams to shoot trucks. And then we've got people issuing threats. We've got Greene shaking his cane trying to disrupt the Congress. We've got the videos where they're punching at people. Just stop this. Because this is beyond Trump as a Hitler, he's Mussolini you're going to legitimize, you're lowering the bar of what is permissible. And somebody out there is going to say, as I said before, or I can take this guy, I can shoot Elon or I can shoot Trump, and I will be recognized as an iconic hero. And then when you look at these polls where they ask people, would you be upset of Donald Trump? No. 54% of these people, and it's not the same. Everybody, everybody say, well, when I get really angry is somebody says on television or people I know in academia or people write me that I've known and liked for years, and they go, victor, aren't you concerned about the deepening civil, I don't know, civil violence maybe, or the rudeness and we're just tearing each other apart. Can't we have harmony? Aren't you worried that we're. Yeah, I'm worried. And I know who does 90% of it. I'm not saying there's that January 6th was a picnic. But compared to the four months of 2020, we. And they rioted and burned and killed and maimed 2 billion, damaging 14,000 people arrested and let go. Basically, it's the left doing this. When they had the boycott of Bud Mulvaney, remember that?
- [55:13]
Sammy Wink
Dylan Mulvaney. Yeah.
- [55:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
Did people go around and try to vandalize Budweiser truck? I don't remember that.
- [55:19]
Sammy Wink
I don't know.
- [55:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
I do not remember that.
- [55:21]
Sammy Wink
They boycotted the product. That's it.
- [55:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
When people didn't go see Snow White, I don't think that they went to threw eggs at Disney park or Disney World or Disneyland. They don't do that. These people do. And they, they need to be held accountable, account for or something bad is going to happen.
- [55:40]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Their leaders seem to be happy to entertain it, though. And I think that's what Markowitz is pointing is that that's problematic.
- [55:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
When you were have Chuck Schumer saying, hey, we got all these people going into Republican districts and they're, and they're, they're demonstrate. They're going to make it impossible. And then he said, hey, Gorget, Hey, Kavanaugh, you reap the wind. You're going to sew the world when you don't know what's going to hit you. And then people show up at their houses and Merry Garland does nothing. Even when an assassin showed up, if anybody had showed up at Kanji Brown's house or Kagan's house and threatened them, them and some Republican senator had gone to the Supreme Court and said, you don't know. They would have been probably charged with a crime.
- [56:26]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, we're at the end of our show, so I wanted to read a comment you had on your Ultra. And Ultra is for our subscribers. And you can subscribe to Victor@VictorHansen.com and again, the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus.
- [56:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Everybody gets options. Yeah, Everybody gets basically two essays that can't be found anywhere behind the paywall. Seven or 800 words on different things. And then I do eight to 10 minute video for the Ultra subscribers.
- [57:00]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And that video last week was on the Wall Street Journal. And that it has turned left of center at best. I think those are my words. I hope that represents how I feel.
- [57:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
I read you remember, I read the headlines.
- [57:13]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, yeah. And there were lots of people who echoed this sentiment. But this is one comment from a listener. Hello, Professor Hansen. And this is from James Watam. Great piece. And I totally concur. Yet just today I read Carlo Versano's editorial in Newsweek. He's their political editor. He said even though the Wall Street Journal exists only to shift shot, quote, exists only to shine Trump's shoes, unquote. Trump's tariffs have put the Wall Street Journal into meltdown mode. A bit ironic to say the least. I believe that we as Americans will need to be patient. And with the, with the tariffs, time will tell whether this trade war will be successful or not. But from the reports I'm seeing, farmers and fishermen, shrimpers in Louisiana, for example, will be seeing a net gain from the tariffs. Tariffs. Thanks for all that you do. Much appreciated from Milwaukee. And like I said, I'm. He didn't say he had dropped his Wall Street Journal subscription, but there were a lot of them that did.
- [58:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, we had Jim Cramer saying this is going to be Black Monday like the 1929. Here we are on a Wednesday in the market. I haven't checked in the last hour, but it's what, up 6% in a single day, the highest in four days. Who knows what it'll be? But Wednesday, once that news gets out, as we said at the beginning, that 70 nations are not going to have to be punished for 90 days and they're sending teams over to negotiate unique deals. And all Trump has to show is that the trade deficit will go from 1 trillion to half a trillion. That is amazing. Or that the tariffs will be symmetrical or there'll be no tariffs. And then when people hark and say, Peter Navarro says, well, there's all these other things, we can do that with round Two of the stealthy ways they cheat. But right now, the key is that I want to say Scott Besant Bessant, the Treasury Secretary, he's really good. He's calm. He never gets excited. He calms people down. He's knowledgeable. I've never seen him once say, I don't know what you're talking about, or I don't know, I'll get, I'll Jen Saki back to you. He never does that. And he's been a voice that, that's sober and reassuring to people. And I think the Wall street people in the Wall Street Journal are going to look back at what they, how they participated in this hysteria. And it's going to be, some of us are going to remind them forever that you people were like the Russian collusion, the laptop disinformation to get him off the Debalot movement, the Alpha Ping bank, the five criminal and civil lawfare suits, the Kamala Harris surge that said that the Iowa Des Moines Register shows him her winning the election three points ahead. All of that misinformation is what you're doing because you're not taking a deep breath and saying, oil prices look good, inflation rate looks good, job report looks great, Great, great record the first term. The world around is calming down. Great progress on the border and illegal immigration. Repeal of Biden's war on coal, natural gas, oil, all these good things have deregulation on the horizon, lower taxes. No, I am, I've lost this and I'm going crazy. That's what they are. Just remind the Wall Street Journal again, I'm not a socialist by any man. I'm a very conservative person. But I watched every small farm in this area go broke. I'm looking out now west and now south, excuse me, east, south, west and north. And what do I see? I see a childhood. And when there was 40, 80, 100 acre farm farms, the woman usually, but not always, did all the bookkeeping. She was the person who disciplined everything, kept the operation going. And the farmer was out working and the children were working and they all participated in Shriners, Masons, Rotary, Elks Kids, Little League, Hospital Auxiliary. That was what happened. And that was completely wiped out under globalization because we let in a bunch of cheap food from the eu. And then we decided that vertical integration was the only way to survive. And the big got huge. Never in my life did I know anybody that owned 10,000 acres. I probably know 50 of them. Now. I do not know one person, one family that is farming 40 to 60 acres in my Vicinity and that's how they're all they're living. I don't know one, everybody I know went broke. And I tell you, Mr. Wall Street Journal, it's not just, it's not just creative destruction. It's. I know three people who committed suicide during the pandemic. I knew what happened to my family was torn apart. I know my neighbors families were torn apart. I know people just love left. So when you talk about your 5 or 6% market correction, take a deep breath Wall Street Journal and say the market doubled from 2017 to 2025. Doubled. In that eight year period wages only went up about 30% and that was lucky. They hadn't gone up at all until Trump came in for 12 years. But what if you had? What if your wages had gone up 30? What if your stock returns had gone up 30% and their wages had gone up 100% doubled? What would your attitude be by now you have a. So what I'm trying to tell you very politely is half the country who has 1% of the market value of the capital value, capitalization value of Wall Street Street. They don't care about your psychodramas. They care about the inflation rate, they care about the jobless rate. They care about the price of gas. You don't Maybe in the abstract you're saying yes I do, Victor, but it's all academic with them. They never really say this can bring a lot of jobs. 3, $4 trillion investment. This is great. Shutting down the border will mean that a guy in Fowler or Reedley doesn't have to wait in line for his dialysis. A mother might be saved from a criminal. One of the 500,000 criminals float. They don't talk about that. That's what gets me so angry about it. I don't understand. They're so different than Fox News online. You know the two, they're both earned by the Murdoch family. It's almost as if James Murdoch is doing the Lachlan is doing Fox News and Fox website and his left wing brother is doing the Wall Street Journal. Because I look at the names of some of the reporters that are. Some of them have a long history of being hard leftist. It doesn't make sense. And I would just ask for a little. I haven't seen an op ed and the op ed writers are pretty good but it's the news. I haven't seen reporters that the article is. I'm interviewing somebody and he says this could work. We need to take a deep breath and see what's going on. Instead, it's doom and gloom and gloom and doom and doom, doom, doom, gloom, gloom, non stop. They're going to go the way of the National Review. I know that everybody said, oh, Victor, National Review is just tiddlywinks compared to the Wall Street. No, the Wall Street Journal is not liked, by the way. Left. It's not liked by the left. And if it goes New York Times, the people who read it and support it will do to it what they did to the National Review and the National Review. I won't get into it because I have a personal history there, but the National Review's revenue, subscribers, readership now in 2025 compared to when I joined in 2001. Night and day. Night and day.
- [65:53]
Sammy Wink
They need to give Trump's national protection policies, protecting the nation first, that is tariffs, a chance. They just really need to give him a chance.
- [66:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
They need to put it in a context. They need to say, we were worried about the course of the stock market, but we were very happy that somebody finally told the Houthis they're not going to destroy the Red Sea. It's critical. I know Trump did that. And we are very happy that Iran has been emasculated and we're very happy that the oil price has gone down and he's allowing people to explore and he's reviving clean coal. We're very happy about that. And we're very happy that he's, for the first person in three years, is trying to find an equitable ceasefire in Ukraine and stop that Verdun somme Stalingrad. And we're very happy that whatever we felt before about our libertarian ideas of an open border, it's better for the United States to have legal only immigration and not have 12 million people coming across. And whatever he's doing with universities, it was unsustainable to have 340, 400,000 foreign students with no idea what they're doing. And some of them are leading anti Semitic violent protests while they're supposed, supposed to be just say that and then balance it. On the other hand, we don't agree, but no, it's just dang. And they are doing more to drive down the price and then they complain about the price. It's almost as if the left and these venues are telling the Europeans and the Japanese, just, hold on, wait Trump out. We are causing so much anguish and panic that he will have to fold because he can't take the pressure, pressure, and then you'll get your way. Because often they're very sympathetic and they can't answer one question and that is if it is so horrible to have tariffs, why don't you criticize the Japanese, eu, Taiwanese economy? Why don't you say, well, why don't you just give up? It's great, we have a great deficit. Why don't you just run surpluses with everybody but yourself and get a big deficit? Deficits are great, great because they've told us again and again they either don't matter or they're advantageous. Well, they might be advantageous if you have the world's reserve currency like we do and you can manipulate things, but most countries don't. And we don't have complete control over it either sometimes. So it's not a good thing. And yet most countries. I read the Wall Street Journal the other day. I thought to myself, and I'm going to end this rant and this episode, but I thought, wow, I didn't know that everybody who is advising the German government, the French government, the Japanese, all the academics, all the PhDs, they have, all the corporate magnates, all the experienced treasury secretaries, finance ministers, they're all stupid because it's been a policy of the EU to ensure you have a $200 million surplus of Japan. You keep it over 100 million. India, same. Canada, 63, Mexico, they're all stupid. They should read the Wall Street Journal. Deficits don't matter. They could expand their economy by just destroying every tariff they have and welcoming in the United States to run maybe a 300 billion dollar surplus. Why don't they do it? Why don't they read the Wall Street Journal? That's their attitude.
- [69:34]
Sammy Wink
I agree. But they would tell you, for example, like India, that well, we have a economy that is not servicing our population and we don't live at the same standard of living level as the United States.
- [69:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
2%, India's went up 5%. How is that possible when they have a big surplus and they have tariffs? And how about the Chinese? They have a 6% GDP growth and a 400 billion dollar surplus with us. That can't be possible. Somebody writes me these, I get all these, I'm getting very sensitive obviously these, these emails they write and said good old Vic in the great days of the 70s. And I'm thinking, with all due respect, you're an idiot. In the 70s we didn't have this technology of labor saving devices. Of course we're going to have progress. But I remember the 70s and I can guarantee you that if I walked anywhere in this vicinity and I dropped my wallet then and now I'd have a 5 better chance of having somebody return it. And in the 1970s, when I used to walk with my grandfather and irrigate, I didn't find bodies in the orchard and I didn't find somebody coming in with a U haul and throwing stuff, you know, puppies out on, you know, dead cats. And when I. I didn't know what the word M13 meant. I didn't know what nortenos meant. I didn't know what serenity. I never heard of Trent, so. And I knew hundreds of families where there was one person working and the family was supported and there was a nuclear family. So yes, they didn't have the money. And the economy was not globalized. I get that There wasn't a 7 billion person market, but there was a lot of family stability and culture and tradition. It's just the way it was. And then I won't even get into the school system. I was in Selma High School and I was 15 years old in a rural high school that was supposed to be one of the weakest. And we were having discussions about Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and our English clout. There it is.
- [71:44]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, there it is. An interesting question. Why would it be that the United States can provide so much better living for their own citizens when, for example, India cannot? And they have such a huge population?
- [72:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
I met five or six or seven good friends of mine that are entrepreneurs, corporate, really wonderful people. And they all tell me the same thing. They invested in China and then they had to have a partnership with the Chinese and they got. Had to have these rules with the Chinese. And then the Chinese basically did two things. They copied all of their product and then they learned how the management team created the project and then they broke their contract and expropriated it and said, sue us, and they would never do it again. And people, people should ask themselves about the Wuhan Lab and a million Americans who died from a. I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but they covered up that leak. And they could have helped the world by telling us the dangers immediately. And they didn't have to corrupt the who. And they don't have any business buying 400,000 acres of farmland around our strategic area. And we don't need 300,000 Chinese nationals studying engineering, computer technology, etc. Etc. In our universities just because these corrupt universities want to get, you know, make them pay 100, make their governments pay 105, 110% so they can give fellowships to other people. We have a lot of leverage. Boy, we have a lot of leverage with the Chinese. That goes way beyond trade. It's about students, it's about buying, it's about investment, it's about everything. We can do a lot of damage. I don't want to get in an argument with them.
- [73:41]
Sammy Wink
It's about real estate, too.
- [73:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean, they're building ships at 3, 250 times we are. They're producing five nukes a month. But right now, at this particular moment, when you look at 11 carrier groups and you look at every single one of our submarines as nuclear, theirs are not. When you look at the capabilities of an F22 or an F35 versus their planes, when you look at. Do they have a bomber comparable of our. No, no, no. We have about eight times more nuclear weapons than they do. We're more sophisticated even at our nadir and at their ascent. So for a time, we have a great. We have a lot more allies and they are they over play their hand. They thought they were going to go into Panama and just take it over and then threaten us. And now the Panamanians are basically asking us, make sure you've got our back because we want to get rid of these people. And they're trying to welch on that deal where they sold to Blackrock, the entry in the exit. So I would, if I was China, I would cut a deal very quickly because they don't have any understanding of the vulnerabilities they have and the animosity that they have incurred by the American people.
- [75:03]
Sammy Wink
And with that, Victor, we'll finish off Friday News Roundup. Thank you for listening. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen and we're signing off.
- [75:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thanks for listening and viewing.