← The Victor Davis Hanson Show
The Victor Davis Hanson Show
Trump Reassesses Ukraine’s Chances and Olbermann Unhinged (As Usual)
01:04:59
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- [00:00]
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- [01:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. This is our Friday news roundup and there's lots of news this week, of course, and especially Trump who is heading the news stories with his speech at the un so we'll look at that first, but stay with us and we'll be right back after these messages.
- [01:51]
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- [03:05]
Sammy Wink
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- [04:53]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics 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.com the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus and we'd love everybody to join us there. Lots of free stuff, all of Victor's podcasts, his writings and articles and you can find links to his books there. So come join us if you'd like to get the special two articles a week and a video. You can sign up for $6.650amonth or $65 a year. So please come join us. So Victor Trump gave a speech at the un. Lots of shenanigans went on of course, before which was the stopping of the escalator right when he stepped onto it and the teleprompter went down, and it sounds like the volume of the microphone went down as well. So a little bit of subversion, that seems pretty obvious. And I'm sure they know who was at the controls there. And then finally, his speech, he highlighted that the green policy is destroying countries, and I think he especially meant less developed countries. The UN Is running a scam with all this advocacy for uncontrolled immigration. He pointed out that Trump has ended the wars and the UN has done nothing, ended many wars. And then finally he kind of made a call out to China and India to stop buying oil from Russia because you're not going to be able to stop the Ukraine war without stopping Putin's money stream. And I was wondering your thoughts on any of those things or what happened to Trump.
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Victor Davis Hanson
I have to be very careful not to touch my sinuses because somebody wrote in and said, I was hands on your face. Yeah, I have pressure still. But anyway, it's too much of a coincidence that Trump, the moment he steps foot on the escalator, it shuts down. And shortly after he walks up with Malenia and the entourage, it starts working again. Now, the UN said, oh, no, no, it was inadvertent. Somebody walked backwards and said, that's not convincing, but it would. You couldn't prove anything had three other things not happened. One, the Times of London had a story that some people in the UN had floated the idea they might shut down the escalator to remind Trump he had cut UNICEF and things like that. Two, Trump's teleprompter, and only Trump's teleprompter went out. And three, there were people in the audience that said that they had very good acoustics for prior and later speakers, but during Trump, they were. The amplification was toned down. Now, if all that's true, you think about it, people at the un, whether they're UN employees from different countries or America, they're really going to extreme obsessive compulsive lengths to do this. Now, we just like to tell everybody that at the same time this happened shortly, there was an attack on an ice center that killed people. And the gunman was an anti ice person. We know that. And at the same time this is all going on, we have the attack in Charlotte that the media suffocated. And then we also had the Charlie Kirk resolution. We'll talk about what I'm getting at. In Jasmine Crockett's Caucasian racial outburst, the left is really getting obsessive Compulsive. If they're willing to take this anger and manifest it at the UN like this, that's one thing. The second thing is what he said. He was kind of liberated. He basically said, if you're not going to let me get up the escalator and you're not going to let me use a teleprompter and maybe turn the sound down, I'm going to say what I want. Well, he had a written text, but he extemporaneously deviated at points and he had two messages. I'm not going to sit here and say this new version of the League of Nation works, because it doesn't. You don't get involved in any muscular activity to stop war. And most of the people here are illiberal. True, true. You're just not supposed to say that. But since we fund a quarter of the budget and we have now said we don't want to do that, they took it seriously. And then two, he turned over to the Europeans. And that was a lose, lose situation for two reasons. One, One, all the people who are not Western, the African nations, the Asian nations, the Latin American, they'll say, well, you guys are just settler, colonialist, white. So he wasn't going to get any applause for that. And from the Europeans, he was essentially saying what we all know, they're nihilistic and they're suicidal. And he is saying to them, I love you guys. You're part of the Western tradition. However, when you destroy your borders and you let in 20 million people through the continent and you have no mechanism to assimilate or integrate them, and they are not from Catholic Christian countries as comes to the United States more often across the border, but from an Islamic Middle east, dictatorial, autocratic tradition that does not like the west and has no intention of fully integrating in the west, then you're creating hostile enclaves, your own societies. Number two, he said, you have a lot of natural gas and you have a lot of oil, but you're doing two stupid things. You're buying it from Russia while you're asking NATO and General, and us in particular, to help you when you're fueling the very war machine that you're trying to galvanize the world to stop. Now they would say, well, we don't have any oil. Well, then drill, baby, drill. There's still offshore oil in Norway and the British Isles. There's a lot of natural gas in France. Go exploit it. You've got clean coal. Get down the price of electricity, build more nuclear plants. You can have a whole fleet of Tesla, but do something. Don't buy things from Russia. And third, he said, you're basically not armed. You have good equipment, but you're not armed. You're not fully armed. And the Europeans are thinking, well, how dare he? How dare he attack us? But then privately they're thinking, but he likes us. And he's now changed his attitude on Putin, so this is good. And secretly, he's right. If we controlled our borders and we had legal only immigration that was diverse and merocratic and not all from the Middle east, and we developed our energy sources and we cut back and prune the social state, we would be dynamic as we were in the 1950s and 60s. So they didn't like what he said, but he had good reason to say it and it was true. And that's a change for the United Nations.
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Sammy Wink
Didn't he say that too? That I get up here and tell you guys the truth about things?
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Victor Davis Hanson
I'm right.
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Sammy Wink
He said, oh, I'm right. That's right.
- [12:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
There was a developer named Donald Trump who was going to spend 500 million and make this place really nice Terrazzo. And now look at it. You got substandard contractors and this is what you get. So.
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Sammy Wink
And I think he's right. It makes me think again, all these people calling that the UN should be moved someplace else. It really should be moved.
- [12:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think it should be moved. I don't like the idea of half of the 180, 75 nations that are illiberal. They come over here to New York and they enjoy cuisine. They get big fat salaries paid by the un they get beautiful apartments. The only time they ever vote is in the UN when they go home, there's no voting. They're from illiberal places. They want the United States security, they want its prosperity. They love New York. But then they just ritually trash us. And I would think, I wouldn't move it to Geneva, I wouldn't move it to. I don't know why would you move it to Vienna, someplace nice? I have a lot of suggestions, like Johannesburg or Mexico City or Bogota, Colombia, or Addis Aba. Somewhere where a country needs the revenue and the tourism and then the facilities and the security and the prosperity will be commiserate with the values of the membership.
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Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, so did you see Trump said or floated out there that he thought that Ukraine might be able to regain all the territory that it lost to Russia in this current war. So that is a new turn. But my question to you is, why this new rhetoric is he trying to play.
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Victor Davis Hanson
He's frustrated with Putin.
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Sammy Wink
Right.
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Victor Davis Hanson
First of all, he's not talking about getting back Crimea and the Dombes. He said the territory that he took after February 24, 2022, that's about 100 miles westward of where he was on February 23. Second, he came into office thinking that Biden, by calling Putin a murderer and saying, give it what it takes, was closing off dialogue. And he felt that during the first term, he had developed a good relationship as defined by Putin, respected, if not feared him. And therefore, Putin had not invaded Ukrainian space in the way that under George Bush, it invaded Georgia, Osatia, under Obama, it invaded Crimea, Donbas, and under Biden, it tried to take Kiev. But under him, they had not. So that told Trump, I must have deterred Putin. I can do it again. I'll come in. And now he found out that Putin thinks he's winning. It's not 2022. He thinks he's grinding down the Ukrainians, and he believes that the ability to stop him and the targets that would be necessary to stop him, oil refineries, munitions production factories, are either beyond the scope of Ukrainian air power and drones, or if they were to do that, that would incite a counteraction that would be disproportionate. They might take out Kiev. So the things that military necessity demands, if you want to win the war, you can't do. Either you don't have the ability to do it, or if you do it, the Europeans are worried they're going to get in World War Three. So what Trump was saying then is if Europe stops buying oil and natural gas produces more of its own imports, Liquefied natural gas from US Imports more oil from the Middle east, and if it rearms, then it can take back the land with us. He didn't say we were going to help them. We're just going to sell them weapons and be in reserve. If Putin tries to go fly in their airspace and they can't handle it. They have a very. The Euro fighter, the Typhoon, is a very good plane. It's about $90 million. Our F35s are about 110, 120, and some statistics. It has a higher rate of climb, it's faster than ours. It is not a fifth generation Stealth fighter. It's in a dogfight. The Eurofighter, in a dogfight with the F35 would lose, but every other plane in the world would lose. Maybe except the Raptor, but it's a. It's better. Excuse me. It's better than anything China and Russia have. And they've got a lot of them, they've got all of NATO does, so they can take care of themselves. The other final, I think slight criticism of what he said is the worst thing that Ukraine could do right now is mount a counteroffensive. They tried to do that in 2023 and it almost broke their back and they had to retreat. They are not capable when 15 million of their people have left the country and they have to impress people off the street to be draftees, coerce them into the army and they've suffered probably 300,000 dead and wounded or more. They are not capable of a major offensive. They need to dig in like the Finns did in the Winter War and make it so terrible that the Russians cannot go any further west from the defense, stop their drones, dig in and make them pay a terrible price and bleed them white. This war is very similar to 1914, 15, 16 and 17, in which from Switzerland to the North Sea there was a dug in line, you know, 15, 1600 miles. And every time one of the other side tried to invade and go over the top of the trenches and go across no man's land into the other side, it was a complete disaster. Passchendaele, 1st Somme, 2nd Psalm the Germans tried it at Verdun. It didn't work. It was a bloodbath. The only thing that changed the dynamics of World War I and they're relevant to Ukraine, there was a new technology called the tank that the British and the Americans and the French adopted. The Germans never really made tanks. They did very well in World War II, but not in World War I. And then the entry of 1 million Americans in 1917. And by the November 1918 Armistice Day, we had taken 2 million Americans and filled out the western ranks of French and British who had lost combined about 2 million casualties. And that thwarted the loss of Russia. So Russia was consumed with the Bolsheviks, cut a deal with Germany, Germany took 500,000 of its troops, moved them to the Western Front, tried to end the war with a last minute offensive and the American presence stopped it. So I don't see a big infusion of Americans or new troops from foreign nations. I don't think as deadly as drones have been, I don't see one side having a new weapon. So my advice for the Ukrainians are dig in, stay on the defensive, make Putin pay a terrible price. If you have to strategically retreat here and there, do it. And then hope, hope that Trump can force the Europeans and other nations not to buy Russian oil and maybe you can be a little bit more effective with your drone attacks on refineries. And then maybe Putin will come to the table. There's a magic line. I don't know where it is. Nobody knows where it is west of where Putin is now that he thinks he can take back to the Russian people and say, I got 20% or more of Ukraine. This was worth a billion Russian dead and wounded. But right now he doesn't think he's there. Trump knows that because he alluded to the fact that Putin may be very unpopular and has to keep fighting or he can't explain why he had what he used the word aimless. He was fighting aimlessly.
- [21:34]
Sammy Wink
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- [23:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I was wondering, well, he and the Colombian president who right after Trump spoke blasted him for killing Colombians. And there's a better way than killing Colombian. But the subtext of both of them is they're narco presidents, they warp the elections, they're illegitimate. And their chief income for their failed socialist experience is drug cartel money across the southern border and the ports of the United States. It's very important because when Trump closed the border with the wall and he self deported over a million and a half nationals to Latin America and Mexico and he deported 900,000, so we're over 2 million he's gotten back. One of the things that happened was the $70 million, $70 billion that goes to Central America in remittances and the 64 million that goes to Mexico was cut off because there's fewer illegal aliens and they're not sending as much money because they're not working as much and they are self deporting. So the result, if you look at graphs of Mexican income, that was the largest source of foreign exchange, 63 billion. It's dropped dramatically. And it's dropped dramatically. Central America in our favor. So we're keeping US Dollars here. But one of the results is where the southern border closed. The cartels are now stepping up and they are trying to make up for the money. And I say they because the cartels are indistinguishable from the Mexican government. Mr. Obrador's children have been involved with the cartels. The former president. These are narco states in Venezuela now and Colombia. And if they lose remittance money, then there is less monitoring to the extent it even exists of the cartels. And they are trying to push the drugs to earn foreign exchange that trickles down through the whole society. Somebody said, well vicar, it's just the cartel mine. No, they build mansions and they buy cars and they pump up their money. So what Trump is basically saying is the wall is closed. But I know the only way you can get in is through rapid speedboats to come into Florida or Louisiana, through the Gulf or maybe into the Gulf of California, who knows? But we're going to blow them up in the high seas. And that has got them terrified. So Maduro, who has all this cheap rhetoric, how he hates. Trump hates the United States now he wants to talk. And the Colombian president that followed was a pathetic. Gosh, that talk was pathetic. It was a trouncing Trump. It was also, why are you so mean to us? We just have a Colombian youth that got killed. He may or may not be smuggling drugs, but that's no reason to kill him. So that was the. He didn't quite say that, but that was the tone. And Trump just said, we're Going to keep doing it. Gonna keep doing it. If you could stop the fentanyl into the United States and a lot of the opiates and you. That is the lifeblood of a million homeless. And they could, that would be very expensive and they would not be able to afford it and maybe they'd have to go cold turkey. But in the long run, it would be better for everybody and we would lose 70, 70,000 suicides would be curtailed or deaths by OD. So it's a good thing to do. I know the left wants to stop it.
- [27:25]
Sammy Wink
Well, the next topic is, and we'll turn to something completely different here. Keith Olbermann and Scott Jennings have had a tiff. Scott Jennings was talking about Kimmel after his firing and he said he is an insensitive P R, I C K and we don't live in an authoritarian regime, which is obvious too, and true. Keith Olberman then said or texted on or posted on X that quote, you're next, MF to Scott Jennings. And so that was pretty harsh. I mean, scary is what the.
- [28:04]
Victor Davis Hanson
You know, I made a mistake. I said Steve Oberhelman the other day, that was a person I went to school with who's a wonderful person. He's a classics professor. Steve, if you're listening, I'm sorry, I got confused. But Keith Olbermann tweeted all that and he said, you're next.
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Sammy Wink
Yes, he threatened. I mean, it sounds like a life.
- [28:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
Threat, you know, and then Scott Jennings told the FBI and then he had this obsequious, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. He'll do it again because he always does this. He's incapable of acting rationally. But the fact that he back down shows that he knows the current FBI is not going after traditional Catholics. They're not going after anti abortion protests, they're not going into school board meetings. They're doing what they're supposed to do. And one of the things is take threats to kill people, public figures, politicians, media seriously. So if you post and say you're going to be the next person killed, they're going to go talk to you and maybe they're going to indict you. And he knows that, so he backed down very quickly. It's kind of like the. I think I counted 11 marquee generals and admirals in the first Trump administration, all of them who had flagrantly violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They variously had smeared Trump as Mussolini, Hitler, a liar, synonymous with Auschwitz, jailers, a fascist that was Mark Milley Kelly, a fascist. They said it when he was a private citizen. The others, why he was. But my point is I haven't heard a word from any of them. And it's the same effect that they know now if you're John Kelly or mark Milley or General McChrystal or your General McCaffrey or your Admiral McRaven. I'm not picking on anybody. But I don't think you're going to call for an election sooner the better or call the commander in chief a disgrace or say that he's Mussolini or he's a pathological liar or that he's a worst fascist you've ever seen. Because if you do, Pete Hecseth is going to order Article 88 court martial and that would mean the surrender of your pension, etc. Etc. Retired flag officers are subject to the Uniform Code of Military justice even if they're not on active duty as long as they're getting a pension and they're subject to we call an emergency. So they haven't said things that tells you something. Tells you something. The fact that Keith Olbermann apologized quickly or the fact that Jimmy Kimmel went on there and kind of, sort of, kind of meant he didn't. That was pathetic. But. And the fact we haven't heard another general Mark Milley shut his mouth. As soon as Donald Trump was inaugurated, he went, I mean he was really blasting Trump during the campaign, as were other officers. The moment he got in he clammed up. And that shows you there's a new deterrence and people are going to enforce the law. Same thing about harboring or helping an illegal alien, which is a felony. So you see a lot of people now are saying I'm not going to let an illegal alien I know live in my garage like that. I think he was a governor bragged that he was doing that. I think it's no longer critical legal theory. It's old fashioned traditional rule of law.
- [31:46]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back to talk a little bit about Newsom's ban on ice agent masks. Stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [31:59]
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- [32:31]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. If you are on social media you can find Victor and his handle is D. Hansen and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. So please join us there. Just one thing before we go on to Gavin Newsom. Kimmel did make a sort of trite apology as he came back on last night. And I was thinking, I was listening to some commentators. They were saying, well, it was a financial decision by nextstar and Sinclair to not have him on. So they don't expect that he'll last very long. Do you think Kimmel will be back for very long or do you think that he's not making enough money for that?
- [33:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
Bob Iger, the head of Disney, he is supposed to have been a genius. He came out of retirement. He's a complete political animal. He was the catalyst behind all the trans stuff at Disney and the gay stuff and all this new entertainment. And he's making a terrible mistake because by backing down he should have said, the FCC can regulate the content of what is obscene or what is not in the public interest. Usually they just, they go after, they used to go after Rush Limbaugh all the time. You know, he said BS Bulls. Or they went after Howard Stern, but. Or they go after people who threaten people. So I don't think Rendon Carr myself should shut down Jimmy Kimmel. He should let the private sector shut him unless he's swearing and you know what I mean, inciting a riot. He almost got to that point when he claimed that the killer was a MAGA person. That was an incendiary thing to say. So he should be chastised. But it's better to let the people adjudicate whether they want to listen to him. Now where are we? He's got about. Jimmy Fallon has about 1.1 million and Jimmy Kimmel's down to about 1.6 million. Johnny Carson regularly got anywhere from 10 to 15 million. And Greg Gutfeld that you have to pay for is over 2 million. Colbert is under 2 million now. So Colbert is gone for a business decision. And that business decision is we do not want, CBS does not want to pay under Paramount and Larry Ellison's son, we do not want to pay this man $15 million a year to lose us 40 million just so that the Left can have a little sounding board. So they applied that logic to Jimmy Kimmel. They wanted to get rid of him the same way Disney did. They thought, well, if Colbert's gone and he had better ratings than Jimmy Kimmel, we'll just get rid of him. But we got to get a reason and he's going to open his mouth. He always does. So the moment he started denigrating Charlie Kirk and lying about the nature of the assassination, and he never apologized and wouldn't, then they used that, and then all of a sudden he became a folk hero. It's very ironic that the left tried to demonize Charlie Kirk. They didn't care about him getting killed at all. In fact, they welcomed it. But they really thought that this was an existential cause to save Jimmy Kimmel. And Disney bowed to that. And now they're going to bring him on. He had a half hearted kind of sort of maybe apology, which wasn't, he'll be on there. Apparently he loses them more money even than Colbert did, who had higher ratings. He loses them 50 to 60 million a year and he gets about the same salary, 15 to 20 million, depending on bonuses. So he's a much less successful person than the canned Colbert. So now the question is, okay, Bob Iger, you brought him on and all your Hollywood friends are not mad at you and they think you're weak, that you caved to them. But how much of your revenue do you want to waste on this guy? Because he's not going to get any better. He's got a little bump now, notoriety, but he will a go back to his whiny Trump did it conspiracies, obsessive compulsive fixations, and he will get a smaller and smaller audience. He'll still want his 15 to 20 million. He'll be like Howard Stern. And how long do you want to subsidize it? Because the more you subsidize this loss, the more you're getting losses on your Marvel movies and theme parks. And there was some reports this week that attendance at Disneyland and Disney World is way off. If you've got half the country in mourning for Charlie Kirk and he's being denigrated by Disney and Disney backed off and allowed that to happen, then a lot of people will say, fine, go ahead, do. I just don't want to watch any of your movies and I don't want to go to your theme park, let all the left go, see how you like it. That's going to be a very interesting thing. That happens too because people make fun of the East Palestine Ohio Trump supporter, but they tend to be working class and they were some of the biggest customers at Disney World and Disneyland and they were polite and patriotic. But if you're not, if you're going to get left wing people only at that, expect more violence and more protest and more trans and all of that stuff. And I don't think they're going to spend the same amount of money. It's kind of like, you know, it's like saying you're a cruise ship and you don't want anybody on Regent Cruises. You'd rather have Carnival cruises where they have riots and theft and fights and brawls. So, but you don't want, because you think that these other people are too conservative or traditional. But they spend a lot of money and they don't cause you any trouble.
- [38:35]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, Disney seems to be panicking. It has old Meghan Markle and Prince Harry out there advertising for them. And so they got a new, you know, promotion of Disney that is really weird.
- [38:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
I mean, that's not a winning brand.
- [38:50]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, it's weird. That Prince Harry, I don't think he likes all that stuff.
- [38:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think he's in the process, tail between legs, crawling back and saying, I was brainwashed by my soon to be divorced wife. And then he'll be fine.
- [39:05]
Sammy Wink
Once again, Victor, we will put off Gavin Newsom and we will welcome a new sponsor, the Frontal Temporal Degeneration, the association for it. And you may know that frontotemporal degeneration, or FTD, as the disease that recently forced Bruce Willis to retirement from acting. And while it's the most common form of dementia for adults under age 60, many people, even doctors, aren't familiar with it. Uncharacteristic personality changes, apathy and unexplained struggles with decision making movements, people speaking or language comprehension are the most common symptoms of frontotemporal degeneration. It is often misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder, depression, and sometimes just a midlife crisis. It's World FTD Awareness Week. You can learn more about this disease and the important steps you can take to preserve and maximize quality of life by visiting the association for frontotal temporal degeneration aftd.org and you have to have the the in there. So that's the aftd.org find help, share hope. Go now to the aftd.org and we'd like to thank the association for Frontotemporal Degeneration for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor, Gavin Newsom has banned ICE agents from wearing masks, which is craz. And he is, he has critiqued or maybe threatened DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. And this was what he wrote on his X post. Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today. You're welcome, America. And so I don't know, Victor, I just want to put this out there though, that I don't like anybody threatening other people. But when is there a threat, you know, telling somebody they're going to have a bad day.
- [41:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it's like 86, 47. I grew up in a rural area. When you went to school and somebody said you were 86, that were teenage kids bragging that they had some experience with the bar scene. They had to be 21 to be in because bartenders in the Valley would always 86 you. But it didn't mean kill you at that point. Maybe it does. Now the larger issue is this. Gavin Newsom has a multi billion dollar deficit. He has the highest gas taxes and income tax 13.3 in the nation. One third of all the welfare state, local and federal recipients are in his state. Half of the homeless are in his state. 21% of the population, it seemed like they're all in my area or live below the poverty line. Live below the poverty line. The Pacific Palisades disaster has not even started to be rebuilt. That DEI catastrophe with Karen Bass in Ghana and the deputy mayor under house arrest and the power and water coordinator leaving the. All of that he hasn't addressed. And the roads are in terrible shape. The whole state is in free fall. It's got one of the higher unemployment. It's losing 300,000 people a year who are fleeing. And what is his reaction to that? Well, he, he jawboned all about we're going to have the most expensive gasoline blends and higher highest taxes in the nation so that you won't drive. But when you've got a fifth of your population that's poor, can't afford gas and a fourth of them have not been able to pay their power bill, then you have a dysfunctional unsustainable state. So now he's worried that he drove out two more refineries. I think he's down to 12. When I was in high school there was about 50 of them and there were about 50 timber companies. I think there's only two. And we had really, I remember gas. I drove to Selma High School and I was always going to the flying a station and filling up at 26 cents a gallon and it was pumped in Bakersfield and it was refined in Hanford. And it was. That's the way California was. It worked like a clock. So what is he doing? After I outlined all of those misadventures, he's tweeting that Kristi Noem has a rendezvous with a bad day as he comes to his state. I guess that's a very stupid thing to say because shortly afterwards there's been killings again at an ICE detention center with an assassin that tried to kill people and did second, remember in August, he said that he was sick of the bully Trump and wanted to punch him in the mouth. Then he came out a few weeks ago, I think in September and says, I want to beat up and punch bloody all these, punched all these Trump people, all these people in the mouth. So here you have a governor who wants to be president and has found out that the left has hijacked his party. The AOCs, the Crocketts, the Ilhan Omar's, Elizabeth Warren, the Bernie Sanders. So getting Charlie Kirk on a podcast or getting Steve Bannon is not very smart anymore if you want to get the nomination maybe for the general. So what he wants to do now is be the one governor. Hey, Josh Shapiro, you're too wishy washy. Hey, Pritzer, you don't threaten to beat up Trump like I do. You don't threaten to hit his people in the mouth. And I'm going to be that guy. And I've got two little wimpy little spaghetti or mantifa or whatever radicals and they're doing my social media and we're going to take on Trump. Just take on your state. The only reason that people are not leaving like a million a year are people like myself. They're in their 60s or 70s, they live in a house that their parents or their land or they have some tie here or their family. Otherwise there's no redeeming reason to stay in the state except its natural beauty. It's completely dysfunctional. I can say that I'll just, I don't want to get on my little high horse. But two things drive me crazy about this state. One, people usually who come across the border illegally in the millions in California, they love to either take all of their garbage and dump it in nearby rural areas or hire a garbage unauthorized collector who comes out with a big truck. And so this week I saw one of the two things of California's signature. Three things. One, I was walking down to this once artesian pond and I noticed that there was a car there. I thought it was somebody working in the orchard. As I walked, he took off. He. And he left two car seats, a bag of trash in the willows. It's a beautiful area and it's all full of trash. I go over there, all of the note. There's no bills, there's no electric bill. There's nothing to indicate his address. Everything is in Spanish. Two nights later, I am walking on the other side of the avenue where I have 20 acres of almonds, minding my own business, when two large German shepherds and a car, a car is on an alleyway, right? I'm in the orchard on scene, and this guy has opened the door and he's let out two German Shepherds and they make a beeline for me. I had no weapon, no stick anything. And they're yapping at me and surrounding me with no collar, no license. I'm thinking, all I need is a bite and I'll have to get those horrific rabies shots or I'll have to get tetanus or I don't know, I might be. They were big. So he's sitting there watching and closing the door. I said, hey, three rows away, get your dogs. And he called their names, but he was actually dumping them. So as they started to go by, he shut the door and then he started to go slowly and I said, will you get your dogs? And at that point he took off fast and dumped them. They came over back to me, a little bit more conciliatory, like we were going to bite you because our master has taught us to bite people. But now he abandoned us and maybe you might be my new master. So I didn't know what they were. So I said, yay. I yelled at that guy, get your dogs. And then I took off the other way. And so that was incident number two in Gavins, California. And then I was driving back from Stamford on the notorious Pacheco Pass, and in front of the car were two drivers going 70 along the most dangerous hairpin turn of the whole pass. Downhill with a 45 degree angle with a huge double trailer jackknifing, weaving into the other lane. So they were going kind of like they're doing the hula hoop, both of them parallel one trying to race the other one. And you didn't know whether they were going to hit the brakes or you had to get back and let them have room. And that was backing up traffic. And then as you got down into the straight, the other one cut suddenly in front, and then you go by it and then it wants to cut back in front of you. And they're both. I'm not going to be steroid, but they're both Indian. American Indian truck drivers. They're lago. And then I notice the next four are. So what I'm suggesting is we need to acculturate people who are first generation coming to California about the intricacies of our traffic laws and tell them and teach them and remind them that we have a substandard infrastructure. And you cannot take a semi truck and drive 70 miles an hour downhill in the mountains, parallel blocking up all the lanes. And when you're on the i5 or the 99, the left lane because Gavin Newsom does not have areas completely of three lanes because we're ossified 1960s. You can't just stay in the left lane for the whole time going 70 miles with 20 tons of stuff on. So we have to teach that. And we have about. I looked at the statistics, about 35 to 40% of the truck drivers in California are from India. Number two, you have to instruct our Hispanic community who's here illegally that in California you do not routinely dump dogs. I think the little dog that we recently required was dumped.
- [50:57]
Sammy Wink
You mean you recently acquired?
- [50:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
Acquired, yes, recently acquired. He was dumped. She. And of course that means they're either pregnant or they're in heat. You know, you have to take them in, get them all their shots, get the, get them licensed, get them spayed, get them the necessary shots. And that's about $800 which was spent to help that little dog. But if you look around, all the dogs that I have were either rescue dogs at the pound or they were dumped. And sometimes when I see them dumping like last night, I just don't know what to do. And the other thing is anybody that would drive onto your property and deliberately open the door and dump the dogs and then watch them charge you, he's not somebody necessarily. If you're unarmed, you want to go confront. So that's Gavin Newsom's California. From this bird's eye view, that a once peaceful, very nice area that nobody locked their doors. You have to be very careful now because people drive on your property and throw car seats in your driveway or you have to be very careful when you drive because if you get behind two truckers racing and two lane freeway, you're going to be in danger or you're going to have a whole menagerie of pets. If you live in the country by people coming out from town opening the door, kicking the dogs out and thinking, well I don't want to get it licensed. I don't want to feed it. I don't want to make sure the community's safe by rabies shots. But that guy will because he's not like me. He follows the law, but he should follow law because he has more than I do. So it's his responsibility. That's the attitude. And I'm getting sick of it in my old age.
- [53:00]
Sammy Wink
Okay, Victor, well, let's go ahead and take our last break and then come back and we'll talk a little bit about FDA regulations. And Greta Thunberg, stay with us. And we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. You can find these podcasts on, on YouTube, Rumble and on Spotify. So please come join us if you like to watch the video version of the podcast. So, Victor, the big news at the beginning of the week was that the FDA now has is warning pregnant women that they should not be using Tylenol because of autism risk. I was wondering what you thought either about that or about the new fda.
- [53:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's very hard to know what's going on because the statistics that Both HHS under RFK Jr present and his critics present agree that the rate of autism has skyrocketed. So that we're getting a very high percentage of young kids that are autistic in a way that we didn't have before. And then the question is, well, Victor, when you were growing up and people were kind of in their own sensory world or when they spoke, they were unaware of the social context in which they spoke, or they seemed different. You just called your generation cruel, that it was called, hey, they're weird, he's weird. But even if you misdiagnose that, it does seem that it's increasing and nobody knows the cause. And so people have said it's the preservative, the adjunct stuff that's in vaccines, too many vaccines or we don't know. But it has to be something if it is a chemically based or environmentally based catalyst that this whole generation, the last 40 years, is subject to. So that's why they're looking at vaccinations, blanket vaccinations. That's why they're looking at plastics. That's why they're looking at pesticides and food. That's why they're looking at common things that everybody thinks are completely safe. And so people that are pregnant, they've been told in many cases not to take Advil or Motrin because they're strong blood thinners and they're non steroid anti inflammatories and they have more side effects on your stomach and on blood than does Tylenol. Tylenol in too many doses can affect the liver. But what was weird about it was when they said this, they immediately said that this was RFK or Jay Bacharya who was doing this. But if you go on AI, which I did, it's like 40 different scientific studies, many from Harvard and Yale, kind of voices in the wilderness. You got to watch out. This is really happening, that it has a danger. So we don't. You don't really. You don't really know what the deal is. What was sickest. There was a sick element that on the Internet, there were a lot of pregnant anti Trump women who were deliberately taking Tylenol and patting their bellies and saying, see, what are you going to do about it? But they didn't outlaw Tylenol. They just went on a campaign, if you were pregnant, to be careful about taking it.
- [56:46]
Sammy Wink
I think they didn't like what Trump said, which was something to the effect of, you should probably tough it out rather than taking Tylenol for every little pain. And I know he said it not quite like that.
- [56:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
I had not taken Tylenol and Advil in five years until I got seven months of a sinus infection operation and some other problems. And then I've been taking it, and I'd like never to take it. I don't feel good taking it. It does seem to work.
- [57:14]
Sammy Wink
All right, let's turn then to our last subject, Greta Thunberg. And she is part of a flotilla that's trying to break the. The Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. And there are people on that blockade who have either quit their jobs or are protesting having Iran. And they are Khalid Bujema and Mariam Meftah and Samir Al Wafi. And the first guy was the director of it, and he quit being the director of the people that were trying to break the blockade. And the last two condemned the presence of LGBTQ people, their agenda there. And they said because of this, it imposed progressive cultural agenda on the. The blockade blocker breakers and that that was incompatible with Islamic beliefs.
- [58:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
I've been very curious when I see this new alliance of radical free Palestine Middle Easterners with the trans community and their collective hatred of Trump. It's not going to last. As I said, I have been to every Arab country except two in the Gulf. And I can tell you from a stranger's observation, two things, that homosexuality is actually common as a rite of passage because women are segregated. But it's condemned, privately condemned, or it's made fun of privately, but publicly. To be publicly gay is an Islamic offense and you're in mortal danger, especially if you're in Iran. And so that coalition is very shaky. The only thing they have in common, they're both anti Semitic and hate Israel and they hate Trump. But Greta Thunberg is aging badly. I don't mean that she's like me, 72, that's aging badly, but dear little sweet, autodidactic, precocious 10 year old, 8 year old that we all thought would get that growl and smirk or anger out of her veins, then grow up and be a very attractive, reasonable. It didn't happen. She's more angry and she's more left wing and she's more offensive. And I guess the people who were devout Muslims and traditionalists just said, see, I wouldn't want to be you. We don't want your baggage. Sorry, we don't want that. That's something that I think people on the left can't handle that there are various groups of supporters or the causes they support are. They're not Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. Mutually inclusive. They're all mutually exclusive. You saw that with Kamala Harris when she said they asked her about Tim Waltz or she was quoting her book. And because he turned out to be an utter buffoon, a pathological liar who invented all this stuff on his resume and he oversaw the destruction basically of Minnesota, she said, well, maybe, kind of, we shouldn't have appointed him, but it wasn't my idea. I wanted to appoint. Who should I. She had to lie about this. She could have appointed Josh Shapiro, but he was Jewish and her party's anti Semitic. So she said, we wanted to point buttigieg. I just so much wanted to, but I couldn't because he was gay. That was a bridge too far to have a half black woman. No, it wasn't. Be like Charlie Kirk. Believe in your ideals. Try to promote them. If you had a gay person, you could have said, vote for the first half black woman and the first openly gay man for vice president and go with it. But you didn't pick him because you looked at the polls, he was the least popular in the 2020. You know what his poll percentage of black voters was like three. What am I implying, Victor? I'm implying that there's a taboo subject she didn't mention. And what she meant to say was I have to get 90% of black women. And I'm worried that I'm already hemorrhaging 26% of black men. And if I put a gay guy on my ticket in big cities, that will be Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and Milwaukee and Chicago. Well, Illinois, she was going to win, But Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, I'm going to lose those states because the black vote will not vote for a gay man to be vice president. That's what she was really trying to say when she was trying to act like it was the awful white America. White America didn't care. But these are certain things that you can't talk about about the Islamic community, the black community. They have much more greater reservations about people coming out openly gay. Same thing with the Hispanic community. I grew up with about 10 Spanish words that I would heard every day for passive homosexual. And that was what they called everybody. When I was in grammar school, I think there were eight of us that were not Hispanic. But my gosh, I won't even go through all the words that people. I remember Ms. Shipman, she was a wonderful teacher. I think it was Ms. Shipman, she brought us all in. And she said, I heard three words that you people are using. Do you know what these mean? So they said, yeah, Basically everybody said, yeah, queer. And she goes, do you know what that means? That means you're being mean to somebody who has different sexuality than you do. I thought that was very progressive at the time. So she was very good. But, yeah, it didn't do any good.
- [63:23]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, we're at the end of the show, so let's go ahead and turn to some comments. I got these off of Rumble today or yesterday, and what the you and it was from yours and Jack's show. And so I just want to say that one person said that you did a great job on Australia and you're spot on every time you talk about Australia.
- [63:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
And then I've been there once time with my son. I love the Australians especially.
- [63:52]
Sammy Wink
And this was the second Australia comment. It's get the cats wrote it. And he says, apologies from Australia. RPM is a disgrace and is making Australia unlivable. So that was the Australia I like.
- [64:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
To say, Mr. Cat, we know how it feels. We had Joe Biden and he was a national global embarrassment and he did more damage in four years to the country than anybody in the last 50. So we empathize. We don't hold him. We don't hold him against you.
- [64:25]
Sammy Wink
That's true. And we still have Gavin Newsom here in California, so we know how you feel.
- [64:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
We know that there's two Australias like Two Americas. There's the Australia and Melbourne and Sydney, and there is the Australia outside them.
- [64:41]
Sammy Wink
All right. And now since we talked about Disney even today, Kendra Mote says, yes, I have cut Disney loose many years ago. Even their subsidiaries and products with their logo. A Disney boycott is a family friendly thing and America first thing to do.
- [64:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think a lot of people agree with that. All those. I've never watched a. I've never watched at a theater, a superhero movie, X Men, Marvel. You know, I used to as a kid love Marvel Comics. They were in competition with DC Comics. The idea was the old stage, Superman, Batman Comics, Flash, Justice League of America. These were like cardboard cutout. But the guys that wrote the script and did the illustrations were. They were all neurotic and they had personal problems. You know, Fantastic Four, X Men. So they were kind of the cult. But they were never turned into social justice warriors as they are now. But I've seen a couple of them on tv. Disney's. They're unwatchable. They're just a big. They're just people blowing up stuff and then talking basically as if they're left wing social justice warriors.
- [65:55]
Sammy Wink
All right, all right. And so Dean Overlea or Dean Overlai, I'm not sure. But how can can a state demand a federal agent performing federal duties conform to a uniform dress code? I'd wager they can't. But Newsom's an idiot. And much like his unmasked excursions with celebrity buddies during his French Laundry days, it's do as I say, not as I do. And his constituency, who, who has got to be dumber than him, will keep getting their Santa in chief elected. And that's tr.
- [66:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's a good point. Because the odd thing about it, nullification, state nullification of federal law caused the Civil War. It was started in 1831 and 2 in South Carolina when it said we're not going to impose tariffs that the federal government did. And Andrew Jackson said, yes, you are. And he forced them to. And then 30 years later, Lincoln's rationale for calling up 90 day draftees was the south is appropriating federal property. They are taking over post office, federal armories, fortresses, Fort Sumner. Sumner. So that's what Gavin Newsom is doing. He's trying to appropriate ICE territory and say that when you're a federal official in my state, you cannot wear a mask. That's unconstitutional. Their federal officials are in the United States. They're not in any particular state. And it came up with sanctuary cities when this idea came that if you were an illegal alien and you had committed a crime and you were in a jail, you were not just guilty of the crime that you had committed, but you were also guilty of committing a federal immigration crime. And therefore, a federal officer could go into the jail and. And say, we'll save you the trouble. Unless he's a murderer, we will take him and deport him. And they said no. At that point, they were sort of like George Wallace in 1962, standing in the doors of the University of Alabama when RFK and JFK said, you're violating federal law, civil rights legislation. We hadn't had the civil rights light, but you. And he said, no, I'm not. I'm the governor of my state and I don't pay any attention to federal law. And I have the Alabama National Guard. And JFK said, no, you don't. The National Guard has now been federalized. And he. And so they removed him. Well, that's what Gavin Newsom, he's like, George Wallace, I'm going to resist federal law. And it's really dangerous what they're doing. What Trump is. He keeps threatening. He could keep saying things to California like, if you continue to violate federal law, we're going to not give you federal money. You know. But so far, he doesn't want to punish people like us that are, I guess, conservative Californians that would have to pay for the crimes of Gavin Newsom, who I think. I think is going to go down as the worst governor in the history of California for a variety of ways. It's not just these incompetent. Not that he has a spoiled legacy as a Nepo baby, and he has no sensitivity to the damage his policies do. Poor people. But he's arrogant and incompetent. He's really incompetent.
- [69:41]
Sammy Wink
Bad combination. Well, Victor, we're at the end of the show. I'd like to thank you for all of the wisdom today and thanks to our audience for choosing to join us. We really appreciate it.
- [69:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everybody, for listening and watching.
- [69:53]
Sammy Wink
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off.