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Jim Rosenfield
At a time when Americans are more divided than ever, Connecting America is a place where everyone can gather and express their opinions with no disrespect. And what better place than a Jersey diner to host this show? Because where else but a diner can you find a buffet of opinions, ideas and real connections? Connecting America, a brand new national program that aims to truly connect everyday people and is dedicated to showcasing ideas and embracing civil conversation. We'll also include amazing ways to improve your fitness, health and nutrition, revive your spiritual self and give your home a makeover. Connecting America streams live every weekday from 7am to 9am Eastern Time. Our program is led by a group of award winning journalists including me, Jim Rosenfield plus Allison Camerata and Dave Briggs. We'll also hear from America's psychologist, Dr. Jeff Gardier and former Fox News Senior Foreign affairs correspondent Amy Kellogg. Join us wherever you get your podcasts.
Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is the Martin and Nealey Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguish 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 hope everybody comes to join us there for all sorts of things from Victor's work, whether it's these podcasts or the articles that he writes for American Greatness and many other places as well. And his books are all linked there as as well. So please come join us there. We have a lot on the agenda. This is our Friday News Roundup. So we're Going to look at the news of the week and Irina Zaritska is the first topic. I know that Jack and Victor talked a bit about it, but we're going to talk some other angles of that murder. Stay with us and we'll be right back.
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Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen show. So this week, Victor, we had the terrible murder and a lot of video on it all the way through the murder. I know that most places did not play the actual event, but they before and after. And her shocked look as she lay there dying. And what I thought needed to be discussed in addition to what is already is that nobody came to help her. The judges and the officials who let this guy out more than 14 times could not help her or did not help her. And all the people on the light rail did not help her. At least until too late. I understand some did come.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think it happened a little while ago. And the reason we didn't learn that as a nation was the the mayor had suppressed the video and she made this. The mayor of Charlotte had said this is a tragedy. It was not a tragedy. It was an act of deliberate evil. Didn't just happen. Number two, she said that we should not use this to judge homelessness. Why not? Because this happens a lot from homeless people. Number three, she said she didn't want to use this incident for political purpose, but by the very suppression of it, it was a political act on her part. The subtext was we are getting battered because liberal judges, liberal prosecutors, the defund, the police, the Black Lives matter have created a crime epidemic in 2020 21. Now the left says it's going down. I have two responses for that. We all know that left wing jurisdictions, especially big city have not been cooperating with the FBI to send in the full tallies of murders and breakdowns on the nature of the assailant and the assailed. So I don't think that they're that accurate. But more or less, if you look at today's figures, 2024 being the latest, it's still higher than 2019. So it's very high. And she doesn't want that. Nor did the governor, Governor Stein want that to be released. That was the first thing. The second is the media did not cover it for a week and would not cover it. And to the degree that it did cover it, finally out of shame, things like ABC or CBS or NBC said things like the alleged murderer or the purported murder. And when you watch the video, there is no alleged murder. You see who did it. So that was another striking thing. And then when they did report alleged murder and purported and all of this stuff, they did it in the context of Republicans. Pounce this is being used by Republicans. It's not being used. It's just there to see that she left a war torn country and found it more war torn in the United States, more unsafe. And then there was a blanket of silence that this had a racial component. So the usual suspects, Al Sharpton, you know who they are, they all came out and said the the right is using this. Then we found out that he muttered and it was apparently visible on the audio version or people reported I killed that white girl or I killed the white girl. So it was a racially motivated. And that was not. That was not reported the Wall Street Journal that I'd been picking on its news division. It was really late and even when it did we finally reported, I think yesterday it did it in the context of the right that is using this. If you look at the story. So the media was completely. Who are the losers in this? The people culpable. The media did not report it. And why didn't they? Because they have a pre existing narrative that black people as all non white people are victims and they're Marxist minories and you cannot produce stories that suggest that they are victimizers and if you do have stories that they are victimizers, then. Excuse me, turn this off. Can we cut for a second? Yeah. So if we do have stories that contradict the narrative, they either editorialize them or they don't air them. And why do they do that? Because they think for their higher moral purposes, you cannot have black assailants attacking white people because that's not their narrative. The narrative is white people. White police hurt black people. And yet again and again, as we've said, that that demographic, from 15 to 40 of black males, which is only about 3% of the population, they're committing 50 to 55% of violent assaults, rapes, murders. No one wants to talk about that. And to the degree they do talk about it, they have to incur charges of being racist. The black left wing community is completely culpable in the sense that they will not discuss this. They will not discuss why black males inordinately are committing violent crimes, mostly in the big cities, mostly against other blacks. You think they would want to address that of only about 7 or 8% of their victims are white. But that's a lot of white people, given the amount of crimes that they commit. The other thing is in this story, a couple of other things very quickly. This was a total systems breakdown. It's very analogous to the Pacific Palisades where we saw Karen Bass, or over in Ghana, we saw the deputy mayor under house arrest for phoning in a bomb threat. In la, we saw that public works director unable to fill a reservoir. We saw the fire chief not too concerned that fire hydrants weren't fully operative. Karen Bass cut her budget. It was all DEI too. All of the people I met, I just mentioned were dei. In other words, they had run for office on the idea that I'm a proud black gay woman, I am the deputy member because I'm a proud black man who phoned in a bomb, a bomb threat. As a deputy member. I am a proud gay woman Fire chief. I am a proud Latina. The public word that may be true, but that's incidental, not essential. They never said what their standards or what their expertise or education was. And it wasn't much in these cases. So it was a systems breakdown because the judges in that area, the magistrate judges don't have to have law degrees. And the one that let him out into alternative sentencing and treatment had an interest in that herself. She should be summarily dismissed right now for doing that. He had 14 felonies. His father was a murderer. As I, our brother was his brother was. I think the whole family was violent on that male side. And in addition to that, in the larger judicial process in North Carolina, they have a history of just doing exactly what Chicago and New York, Alvin Bragg, and what we saw in Los Angeles and San Francisco under Mr. Boudin, etc. They let people out under critical legal theory and clinical race theory, which says, as we just heard Jasmine Crockett say. She just said it. She said people often commit crimes because they have to. Well, Jasmine, I. Just about a nanosecond after you said that, I looked watched a video of a Los Angeles robbery where a caravan of cars of black males approached an elderly 80 something Asian jewelry store. And the lead car drove right through it. And then somewhere between 15 and 20 black males swarmed the store and they stole over them. They assaulted the owner who was thrown to the ground and they took about $1.5 million in jewelry. Now, is that because they're starving? They have no choice? Are you going to tell me that they don't have bread and eggs at milk at home so they were forced to take valuable jewelry so they could hawk it and therefore they could. I don't believe that. I don't think you believe it either. But I do believe you're a racist and that's why you said it. And I think another thing is the final thought about this murder. To sum up, it's not tragic, it's a breakdown of, of the left wing management of big cities in the judicial system. And it reflects an inability or an unwillingness to talk about a major issue in America, that $20 trillion after the Great Society program, 65 years into the civil rights movement, we still have an existential problem of black males committing about half of the nation's crimes when they represent about that age group and that gender and that race represent about 3%. And it doesn't do any good to say black men are overrepresented in prison. Most of them are not there for dealing marijuana. Believe me, they're overrepresented because they're overrepresenting committing crimes, but they're underrepresented. This is key. If you were to jail them according to what other people are being jailed, they're underrepresented. And finally there is culpability. As I said to Jack, if you have Jasmine Crockett yelling all the time with their videos about white people, white people, white people, and you had somebody like Joy Reid for years at MSNBC talking about white people, white people, white people, white people, and now on her Podcast how bad white people are. And you have on the view sunny host and say the Trump won because of uneducated white white women. White, white. And as I said to Jack, I'm interviewing a book right now, and the author, a PhD, is trying to say that his field is full of white whiteness. And I counted white and whiteness. It's. It's almost two times. Every page, every page, white, white, white, white, white, white, white. This obsession so that. And the person is not a victim of discrimination. So the more that the larger society has talks about reparations and here in California, we're talking about giving back farmland to Native Americans and people of color. And with more of these programs, you get the suspicion that there has to be more racism. But there isn't more racism. There are too many victims and too few victimizers. So the way that square is circled, people like Jasmine Crockett, Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton, they get on the public radio, tv, Internet waves, and they just beat white, white, white to death to convince people that, that their special treatment and their programs are necessary to fight this non existent problem. And this was a turning point, this murder. I really do think it is. I think it was. I've never seen anything like it. I have never seen anything like a person sitting there. He was like some type of predator. And she was like the victim. And she was just sitting there and she was just minding her own business. And then the African American woman to the side of her, and then a man or a woman to the rear were watching this. And then he gets. He slowly takes out his knife and then he stabs her. Something. And he walks away. And they don't do anything. They don't get up, they don't try to put a tourniquet on her. They just leave her. And then she has this. I don't know what you would say. She's just. She's dying and the blood is spurting out and she just looks baffled. She doesn't cry, she doesn't scream, she doesn't say anything. The look is, I am dying. I don't know why I'm dying. Nobody's gonna help me. I've just been murdered by this creepy person. I sat down. I didn't prejudge the area. I didn't avoid the area because there were black people. I'm not that kind of person. I just sat down. I just wanted to be left alone. This man just cut my throat. I'm now falling. I'm out of air. I'm out of cognizant and I'm going to die. And there's not one person here that cares that's going to help me. And she was absolutely right in that last. If I'm correct, that's what she was thinking because the mayor immediately came out and said it was tragic and don't blame homeless people or don't try to use it for political purposes. And then we didn't hear anything from the judge magistrate we had nothing from. And I think it's going to continue. And then this was bookended by the Auburn professor, a retired professor of veterinary medicine who took her weekly walk with her dog, African American male with a history of violence who was let out, strangled her, treated her body terribly, dragged it, just throw it down where dogs defecate and stole her car. And of course, nobody wants to comment on any of this. If it was George Floyd, the country will go into riot for four months and we will create di. Everybody said this on all of the news. People who were honest. Imagine that it was an attractive young black woman sitting on a light rail car and there were three white. There was a white man, maybe a MAGA looking man behind her, and then there was a white woman and a white man around her, and she was just minding her own business. Then the white man looked at her and then he got up and executed her in a brutal fashion by cutting her throat, stabbing her, then walk nonchalantly out. Why no of the other white people did anything. And the white people right next to her watching it, let her fall down on the ground and bleed to death. You know what? We would have, we would have riots right now. It would make George Floyd look like nothing. And so that's the problem. Everybody knows it. And I don't know what you can do about it, but it's a turning point. I think people are going to say, you know what? If the black left wing leadership chooses to collectively represent people, and it does, I speak for black people. I'm Joy Reid. I'm Don Lamone, I'm the View. I speak for black. Then you better speak for black people and you better represent it. Because people are going to say, okay, you're telling me that you're the official spokesperson. What are you going to say now? Because we're going to hold you liable just as you hold larger society liable. If you want to talk in collectives, then we'll talk in collectives. But something has to be done because you can't have a nation where a retired professor just in a very safe neighborhood goes out and walks around and ends up dead and desecrated. And you can't have a society where a person just, I don't know, gets on a train and is brutally executed. You can't have a society with a young kid who's a football player at a track meet. A person from the other side improperly sits down, gets verbal and pulls out a knife and stabs him and then he goes on GoFundMe to get hundreds of thousands. You can't have that. It's not. The society won't work. These people are not gang bangers. You can't have a guy walking in Washington D.C. a young 19 year old congressional staffer shot, just shot and killed. You can't have the doge person just seeing a woman attack and he's beaten to a pulp. And I think most of the people who beat him are out. It doesn't work as a society. It's not civilized. And I know I'm going to get a lot of static for saying that, but I would like people to make the argument that this is nothing or I want to make the argument that somehow this is a MAGA issue or that or somehow Carlos Brown was a victim. As you know, she said people. That's what she implied. Is it by Littles Lytles, the mayor? She should resign in shame, she really should.
Sammy Wink
But of course she was won't. Well, we'll go on with this because we have some more on this topic. But first I would like to take a moment for our sponsor Field of Greens, which I use personally every day, their multivitamin powder. A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb. Participants slowed their aging by drinking Field of Greens. That's all. They didn't change their eating, drinking or exercise, just Field of Greens. Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits. Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney, metabolism, even healthy weight. Check out the university study and get 20% off when you use promo code Victor@FieldofGreens.com that's FieldofGreens.com code Victoria Victor and we'd like to thank Field of Greens for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. So Victor, I had a question, an observation first. I think that wokeisms you've got to be a racist to be an anti racist. I believe meme has been dismantled by this murder. And then also Glenn Reynolds, the one of the editors of or an owner of Instapundent, wrote a great article for New York Post where he argued even more broadly that this shows the incoherence of the Democratic message in that they would love to have dense urban areas built up so that everybody was not using as many resources as they might. And at the same time, they are not crime preventers, which dense urban areas are always going to have cropped. And so it's an incoherent message.
Victor Davis Hanson
He's a very bright guy. I know him a little bit. He's a law professor, University of Tennessee. Glenn is at Yale. PhD JD Excuse me, Yale Law School. He's absolutely right. What he was trying to say, I shouldn't say trying. He said it very effectively. His point was that the left is always advocating dense urban living, high rises, European style, and to surrender the autonomy of your car and depend on light rail and subways for mass transit and urban parks, ostensibly, they say this is a better use of resources. Of course, the people who are saying this, Gavin Newsom has a 9 million dollar vast estate, right? All these people in the East Coast, Barack Obama, who said it has four mansions, none of them are high rises. Nobody wants to live like that, who's advocating it. So his point is that there's another agenda they don't like to talk about. Once you put a lot of people in an urban society and they don't have detached homes and garages and cars, then they're dependent on the city for everything. They don't have a backyard, so they have to go to a park and they don't have a car, so they have to get on a light rail or bus. They don't have a front door, so they have to take an elevator and depend on the elevator. Communal. So it's all a communal idea. And therefore the state, the left, the people who are the engineers, feel that they have leverage over the individual so they can adjudicate the level of safety, law enforcement in the park, on the elevator, on the subway, not the individual. And that's why they hate the Second Amendment so much. So what he's saying is that in their way of thinking, they control your life and by intention. So on this light rail, North Carolina, there was no charge. It was an honor system. So the state was saying, we're not going to discriminate against poor homeless people. They're going to get on here and you can't take a weapon. If you have a weapon, you're going to be in big trouble even if you don't. Look what happened to Daniel Penney, but he had a weapon, because we're not going to look for weapons. But if you ever use a Weapon to protect. Protect yourself. We will get you. So what they're saying is we are allowing a criminal element onto the light rail. And that should remind you of racism and crime and how what the proper way of doing it. More counselors, more alternative sentencing, and you're going to get in your elevator. If you don't like it, then you better reach out and be less selfish and less white and less, etc, etc. And that's what they want. And you can see the effects in Europe where when you bring in a lot of immigrants and the Europeans, not all of them, but a much larger percentage than us, live outside the city in circular high rises that depend on buses and trains and elevators and communal parks. Then they're much more sensitive to 1 million people coming into Germany from the Middle east without audit. And they have to depend on the government to protect them. And the government might say, can't hear you. What do you mean? Oh, I can't quite protect you. Oh, poor baby, you're not safe. Well, maybe you should be a little bit more progressive. Read some critical race theory before I give you another police, that kind of stuff. Would you want to. Would you want to depend on Karen Bass or Vi Lytles or whatever his name for your safety?
Sammy Wink
I wouldn't, no, not at all. So I just have one small question, too. What I found very strange is how can a person without a law degree be made into a judge or a magistrate? What is that? That's just.
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't know. I don't know how that could happen. She had a ba. But it was in something other. How can you be a magistrate that sentenced people and either work at or have an interest in an alternative sentencing? You know what I'm saying? It makes no sense. You would have a vested interest not sending people according to the law to jail or prison. And she said, this was what was really interesting. She said, you can't lock your way out of this. Yes, you can. You can put Mr. Carlos Brown in a prison and presto, we have somebody alive. We can put the killer of the professor in Alabama, Julie Chanel. We can. And presto, she's alive. We can do that a lot. And we have a lot of resources. We can make nice prisons clean. You know, they can be fair, they can be as compassionate as you want, but one thing they will do is tell people, you kill somebody, you hurt somebody, you're going to go in there and you're not coming out. And we don't really care if the people that go in there are all white. Or if white people are 70% of the population, they're 90, tough luck. If they're 10% Asian and they're 50% Asian, tough luck. If they're 12% black and they're 6, tough luck. We don't care. We just don't want you to hurt the innocent. And the real morality are the people who don't care about the defenseless and the innocent. And they unleash these people and they never suffer the consequences of their own ideology. Never, never.
Sammy Wink
Because we all know this was not the first time this guy did evil to innocent people.
Victor Davis Hanson
They have private security. They have homes and the proper zip codes. They can afford sophisticated security systems. They don't need to go into bad neighborhoods. They don't take the subway, they don't take the light rail, they don't do any of that. Same thing about illegal immigration. They don't. I don't want to be too detailed, but I drove around, I would say a five square mile area and I would say a typical compound that I viewed. I won't give any information on exactly. It was a former farmhouse where I knew the occupant. Now, it must have, I would call them, a mixture of garage, lean ToS and trailers that are parked on jacks. It must have over 40 people living there. There's every type of animal that I saw. Menage, chickens, stuff. This is all single family zoned. Everything you could see is in violation. And the person who is renting the place is now subletting shacks to illegal immigrants. It looks to me like I didn't check their status. But my point is the state allows that to happen and they do it because of dei. And they say this is a protected group of people. Poor immigrants, they have nowhere to go. We've zoned everybody out of a home. We, we want to make sure our neighborhood in Atherton and Fairville and Lafayette and Malibu is really good for us. We're wealthy, but we feel bad about that. So we're going to let in 3 or 4 million people that are illegal into California and we'll send them to places like Kern County, Tulare county, the foothills, anywhere away from the coastal zone. And then they can do anything they want. They can live anywhere they want. We're not going to affect dog licensing. We're not going to worry about zoning laws, single family homes. If you can put 50 people on a quarter lot, that's your problem. And that's what they do. Because Gavin is never going to see this boy. He's Very quiet about all this. He's trashing Trump on social media. He has his expert influence that write his X tweets, but he doesn't want to talk about. He's trying to blow up a couple more dams. He blew up four. He wants to blow up two more in Alpa, but he doesn't talk about. There's nothing going on in Pacific Palisades, it's just a desert. Reminds me of Calgagus, the Scottish tribal chieftain that Tassis said these people make it. He says to the Romans, he says to his people, these people make a desert and they call it peace. And that's what they make, a desert and they call it, what progress. So he's doing nothing. He's not addressing the power problem, the brownouts, the quarter people don't pay their bill, the 21% that live below the poverty line, the mad men on the freeways, the crazy truck drivers, the inadequate, none of that. It's just I'm going to run against Donald Trump and make California the model for the United States.
Sammy Wink
Well, well, Victor, just a note. Irina Zarutska, her family said loved the United States, so they're burying her here instead of in the Ukraine where she came from. She's the type of immigrant that we would really like here in the United States. So I like to maintain solidarity with her. Let's go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back and talk about Israel hit on Gaza. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. You can find Victor on his social media. His X account is Dhanson and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. So, Victor, Israel did a major hit on Hamas leadership who were in Qatar and they blew up a five star hotel, is my understanding, in Doha. And I was wondering what the significance of it was by Israel and did they, did they manage to hit the leadership?
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I'm speaking on a Wednesday morning and we don't know. There's conflicting reports. Some people were killed. None were killed. All of them were killed. So I don't know that. I don't think anybody knows. We'll find out in 24 hours. Why did they do it? I think they did it for two reasons. They're sort of like Munich, the Munich murdering anybody who was an architect of that operation, that is a Hamas grandee is dead. In their way of thinking, they're going to kill every one of them. Number two, Qatar has this weird situation where it's fabulously wealthy, it has no Military. It looks across the Gulf from Iran. It's near Saudi and all. So its plan has always been to use its money and, and spread it around everywhere to us. They build us a military base with 10,000 of our troops there, give it to Iran, give it to terrorists like Hamas, pay off the Saudis, whatever they have to do, because they're not a legitimate government and they're very small and vulnerable and they're very rich. So what Israel is saying is, this is a joke. You are the host for negotiations about our hostages that have been here since October 7, 2023. There's been no progress. Essentially, you sit here as if you're neutral, but then we notice something, that all of the Hamas people have been living like millionaires in your country. It's sort of like the architects of the Holocaust. If they were living in Switzerland, you know what I mean? And then somebody attacked Switzerland and they said, this is not fair. It's a neutral country. Yeah, it's not fair. The other thing is the United States. Trump criticized it, said he wasn't happy. I can see that, because it's a quote, unquote ally of the United States. I don't think it really is, but it hosts this base. I would like to see us get out of that base and cut ties with them and stop them giving money to universities where they buy off people in the Middle. Middle east studies. But I just don't believe that Israel, as good as the Mossad and its other intelligence agencies are, would have, even if they didn't get the people they got close. So it's one of two things. Either people in Gaza that they work with and pay as informants, hate Hamas and want them all gone. And said, you know what? I'm sick of these people. There's a bunch of them in Qatar tomorrow. Here's where they're going to be. Or the Qataris are saying, these guys are really inconvenient for us and we can kill two birds with one stone. We can blast Israel as a scientist entity and causing all this trouble, but then we can secretly, in back channels, tell them where they are so they get rid of them. Because it was weird. I haven't heard anybody say there's Qatari collateral damage. I mean, why weren't there a lot of Qatari? I don't know. Concierge, maids, landscapers killed. It's weird. It was almost as if they probably.
Sammy Wink
All disappeared from the scene before the bombs came in.
Victor Davis Hanson
So we don't know. I'm just speculating. But there's more to the story than has been reported on this Wednesday.
Sammy Wink
So let's then turn to the Biden saga again. He currently or the new stuff is national jobs report has been redone downward by 910,000 jobs and it looks like they had over reported during for the year over reported reported during the Biden months in which he was responsible and then those had to be revised down. So it looks bad for Trump, but it looks worse for I think it.
Victor Davis Hanson
Was the blur they got mad at Trump because he criticized the labor bureau as politicized and deliberately downplayed his figures and implied they inflated during the campaign Biden's and that turned out to be true. So anybody remember Miles I think his name was Miles Taylor. He was a small little guy, assistant chief of staff for the Homeland Security secretary under Trump and he was the one that kept he wrote a book, made some money, wrote New York Times, picked up a couple of his op eds. Anonymous, remember him? Anonymous I am a part of a large cabal where we are trying as a republic, he wasn't a Republican, but as a conservative we're trying to stop Trump from the inside. They're still there. So yeah, I think there's a lot of people throughout the permanent bureaucracy that deliberately warp statistics depending on who's the president. I think it's been going on a long time and that's why there's two or three hundred thousand people have been fired because I think the Trump administration wants to get rid of these people who are operatives and send a signal to others. If you do that, you're going to have to be fired. But I don't trust any of those. I just mentioned earlier that the FBI crime statistics are not accurate because they don't report they don't get the feed from all the places where crime is most prevalent in big cities because the mayors and the governors of those places don't want a their state to look bad if that were publicized. And two, they don't want to feed a narrative that protected groups of people are committing inordinate crimes and so they don't report it. And I think what we're seeing here this morning is common denominator. People don't trust the government, they don't trust the bureau and I define the government as a bureaucracy or they just don't believe they're competent, they don't think the judges are competent, they don't think the DA's are competent, they don't think the bureaucrats are competent, they don't think the schools are competent. And you're seeing a lot of people just disconnect. It's kind of a monastery of the mind. I'm not going to put my kid in that school. I'm not going to go to that bureaucracy. I'm not going to. You know what I mean?
Sammy Wink
Well, before we go on to talk about Joe Biden's auto pin and his pardons again, I would like to take a moment for our sponsor, Quince. Quince is where I'm turning for fall staples that actually last from cashmere denim to boots. The quality holds up and the price still blows me away. Quince has the kind of fall staples you'll wear non stop, like super soft, 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at just $60. Their denim is durable and fits right. And their real leather jackets bring that clean, classic edge without the elevated price tag. What makes Quince different? They partner directly with ethical factories and skip the middlemen. So you get top tier fabrics and craftsmanship at half the price of similar brands. Keep it classic and cool this fall with long lasting staples from quint. Go to quince.com Victor for for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com Victor free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Victor and we'd like to thank Quince for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So Victor, Joe Biden's auto pin is in the news recently as there are accusations that he flooded the zone of the auto pin so that he could cover up all of the pardons that he was giving his own family. And I was wondering your thoughts on that.
Victor Davis Hanson
I would disagree with you. When you used he, I don't think he had any idea other than he wanted to protect himself and his family. And he grabbed his pen and said Jim Biden. And then that was it. And then the other people said this looks fishy. Just pardons for his family when he promised he wouldn't do it. Hey, call up, I don't know, call up the Soros foundation, the ties I said earlier, the Tides Foundation. Call up every left wing group there is, every university criminology department. Get me, I don't know, two or three thousand names and we'll just get that autopilot going like mad. They should really investigate all of this. They should bring in the people who were responsible. Somebody knows who was there using the auto pin should bring him in. The FBI should interrogate him and then they should say this. What you did was illegal. You did not have the president's permission to pardon that person. So you broke a federal law. Do you want to tell us who the others are or do you want to go to jail? And they could find out very easily all the people that were involved and then they should revoke all of those pardons. It's going to be very interesting and I'm sure there are conservative groups watching. They're watching every single one of these pardons or reprieves or whatever classification they used. And if any of them commit crimes, and they will, they'll be, as the left says, pounce, and they'll find out who. And it's just, I don't think we're ever going to learn how awful the last four years have been. Poor Tom Holman, every time he's on tv, he'll go anywhere, he'll talk to any left wing group. He's fearless. But he has the same struggle to convince these people that you, you, you left wing people let in somewhere between 8 and 12 million people against the law. You broke the law. You broke the law. They're hurting people, they're killing people. They're charging, they're costing us billions of dollars in health care and legal care and educational care and housing care and food care, and you don't care. And now we're trying to do the right thing and enforce the law and make sure these people go back to their homes and try it again legally. And it's hysteria. It's hysteria. But they have a tough job with all of this. It's very easy, as I said, to have a revolution, but a counter revolution to go back to normality. It's like trying to put the horse back into the barn.
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Before we go to break, since you.
Victor Davis Hanson
Brought up, I say that literally because we used to have horses. And my, one of the things my father would always tell me, do not let the horse out of the bar unless you have a rope around his neck. And on a couple of occasions when I was like 12 or 13, I went down to ride Jim and I patted Jim and we opened the barn door, right, it's about 100 yards from where I'm speaking. And I said, come on, Jim. And then he took off like a madman. And, and then I went to my dad said, I think Jim's about a mile away in the middle of the road. He said, did you let him out? It's very hard to get a horse back in a barn.
Sammy Wink
And funny thing is, we are sitting in an old barn here, but since you mentioned him, there was a term that the left uses all the time now, and they don't provide any examples of it, but Micah was interviewing Tawn Holman and she said that they're arresting criminals. And so they say, but that they're really disappearing people.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, that was really the term disappearing. That was a really interesting word that came, by the way, from the 1970s and 80s and the Dirty war in Chile and in Argentina. And what they meant then was if they were a left wing dissident or revolutionary, I don't know what their status were, they would disappear them. In other words, they'd just go to their home, say, can you come with us? And then they would either like put them in a plane and fly out over the Atlantic and throw them out, or they would kill them and throw them off a cliff more, not a lot. I mean, everybody said it was tens of thousands, but it was considerable. And the word that they used in Spanish or the equivalent was they were disappeared. And that has a root that goes back actually to the great terror of Joseph Stalin and the 20 million. When they asked about people, where are they? They disappeared. It's a common term in totalitarian, fascist, communist society. So that was really a dirty thing to say when he said, you're disappearing them because as he turns, tried to say, we're just following the same things that Obama did and that Biden did and give us a name and we will tell you where they are. Just give us a name and we will show you on our computer where that person was apprehended, where he is now, where he will be. And they don't. And then that was it. That was.
Sammy Wink
It's just intended to be inflammatory.
Victor Davis Hanson
She just kind of said, oh, I can't say that word. Oh, you're smarter than I am, aren't you? Oh, I guess I'll get caught again if I say disappeared. Why did you arrest these people? Been very, very simple, Victor.
Sammy Wink
Let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk a little bit about Europe. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor's podcast can be viewed on YouTube and on Rumble and on Spotify. So come join us there if you'd like. Prefer the video version. So, Victor, the Polish airspace was violated by Russian drones. And I believe they shot some of them down. The Polish didn't. I was wondering, your commentary on Russia new aggression or it's continued aggression in that region.
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, we all know what's happening Putin came over here to Alaska to tell Trump, this is not directed at you, but I got to get a lot more territory before I'm going to have a deal, because I've lost a million Russians on a crazy idea that I had I could take care of. It was kind of like Operation Barbarossa. Like Hitler thought, I'm just going to go into Ukraine and 10 days later I'll have the whole country. So it was one of the greatest military blunders of the 21st century. And he's afraid that people are going to kill him or depose him if he cuts a deal. And they say, you got 50 miles further into Ukraine for a million Russians, that's it. So what he's trying to do is move the demarcation line, DMZ, ceasefire line eastward, probably by 100 miles or so. And to do that, he's unleashing the dogs of hell, so to speak. So what is he doing? He's targeting. There's a tragic story in the Wall Street Journal about Ukrainian farmers who are trying to farm in this area. And they just send drones out to kill them, assassinate them. And they're trying in their tractors, they have jammers, and they're trying to. And they're killing them. And they're going into. They deliberately are targeting with drones, civilian centers to kill civilians. And now they're going into Poland. And the message is, what are you going to do about it? World War 3, that's what you guys would do. And what Putin is really saying is, you guys talk a great game. Macron, Sturmer, any of you guys, you're a joke. You think you're going to stand across me with 6,000 nuclear weapons and I'm supposed to be afraid of your 150 in Britain and France? I don't think so. I looked at you. You're pathetic. And have you seen our friends lately? Not just North Korea, but India and China. And China showed you a big nuclear parade with all its shiny missiles. As I said to Jack, all of its equipment looked exactly like ours. So they stole our B2 designs, they stole our Abrams tank designs, they sold our carrier, but it's all they had, a big military show off. So that's what Putin's saying. I got the Allies, I got the nukes. I don't think you're going to do anything. So I'm going to kill a lot more Ukrainians. I'm going to threaten you with World War Three because I got to get more land. And Trump, it was wise what he did. He bent over backwards to show Vladimir, you know, I can talk to him, and now he knows you can't. So he can't be called by anybody on the MAGA right or the left. The left will say anything because I. Anything he does, they hate. But they can't say, oh, you didn't try to get a negotiation. And the MAGA right said, oh, you're picking on Putin, or you didn't try to. No, he's done everything. So now it is. If you want a peace deal, how much are you going to get involved? That it's not his war and it's not our war against a nuclear power. And that is a dilemma. There were a few, few, very few, Very, very, very few in the Biden administration that understood that, that the more that a demented Joe Biden said, well, we're going to do whatever it takes, or if you come here, it depends on whether it's a minor thing or, hey, Vladimir, if you're going to. I don't know, if you're going to hack our institutions, make sure you don't do hospitals. Okay? That was his attitude. So. But there was a few who understood that, that politically it was very difficult to send them 200, $300 billion in weaponry and get closer and more involved and then realize that classical military doctrine said, if you're going to win the war, you can't just play defense. You've got to send out massive drone attacks on oil refineries. But if you do that, you're basically in a war with ex Soviet, now Russia, nuclear weapons. So it's a terrible dilemma. Trump, I think, misspoke when he said he could have solved that on day one. I think what he meant was, if I had been there on day one, they wouldn't have done it because they didn't do it for four years. Because I told him, if you do it, you're going to be in big trouble. So, you know, and Putin thinks that he's in the driver's seat saying, ah, the India they were. Your Modi was your conservative MAGA counterpart. Now he's on my side because he buys my oil and he buys it cheaply and it's good for him. And you want to stop that. You want to hurt your Modi friend, and now you're in a tariff war with him. So he jumps ship and is on our side. I don't think Mr. Modi sees much with the Chinese, who are their existential enemies. And Russia, that's 140 million people, and the economy about the size of a large US State. And I don't think he wants to get on the wrong side of the US Trade wise. And I know he doesn't want to get on the wrong side. Immigration. India's had a very wise policy. They have gone from about a half a million immigrants to over 4 million. And they see that expatriate community as very successful professionals and that they form a very powerful lobbying group for Indian American relations. But Donald Trump, he has a lot of cards to play. He could say to Modi no more immigration from India if he wanted to. I don't think I'd advocate that. But I don't think India has the cards to get in a big fight with us is what I'm saying, given they run a surplus with us.
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, let's turn to England. And it looks like the recent polls show that Niall Farage, who is the Trump like character or Trump like politician in England, is giving Keir Starmer a run for his money should there be elections again. And I was reading an article and I forget which publication was from, but they were trying to say the reasons that Starmer is growing in popularity. Not Starmer, sorry, Farage is growing in popularity. And they had three things. The economy, sorry, the immigration issue, which I think is the big thing and the real thing. That's behind Farage's popularity but also the economy. And then scandals in Starmer's cabinet it as well.
Victor Davis Hanson
And censorship. He's trying to say that England was the birthplace of the English speaking Enlightenment and now they are Orwellian. They arrest people at the airport that criticize transgenderism and they don't have the problem yet as Germany or France, 16, 15%. But they're getting close. And the difference is that their big cities have minority, majority populations of people from the Middle East, Islamic peoples who feel that under the DEI apparat they're exempt and they're not responsible for their conduct. So they can groom young English girls into sex slavery and they'll be exempt. Or they can walk around and demand people follow Sharia law. And so far represents the the suburbs and the majority of the population that's not immigrant, which is the majority of the population. I think he's got a good chance of winning. The conservatives are discredited. They're not conservative. They're kind of like the British Conservative Party has analogous role of what I would call major figures in the Republican Party right now in the United States. I would say they resemble a Mitt Romney, a Bill Kristol. They're The Never Trumpers. And they're ossified, calcified and shrinking. And that's who the Conservatives are. He's a populist nationalist. And I don't know if he's very skilled politically. I've met him before, chain smoker. But I don't know if he's got the. It's going to be very hard for a third third party to win. Maybe he can get a coalition with some members of the Conservative Party. I don't know.
Sammy Wink
The Tories are the Conservative Party and apparently their candidate, Kimmy Badenoch is not even in the running.
Victor Davis Hanson
She's good.
Sammy Wink
It didn't sound like in the polls.
Victor Davis Hanson
She had many supporters, but they have nobody. I mean, they have nobody there. They allowed dei. Boris Johnson was a disaster, I think.
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, before we go to comments from our listeners, the last thing is, I don't know if you have any comment on this. I, I had this for last week, but a German neo Nazi who was arrested has transitioned to become a female so he can be put into the female prison. And I was wondering. That's a German incident. I was wondering if you had any comments, Comments on that.
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't think I better comment because I'll stereotype.
Sammy Wink
What, Germans or Nazis?
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I don't mind stereotyping Nazis, but I think if they allow him to do that, then it blows up the whole transgender. And I don't know what his intentions are, whether it's free sex, as much as he can handle, or he's trying to discredit it, or he's just a thief. So I don't, I don't know that.
Sammy Wink
Definitely the odds would be on his side as the only male. Said female, but only male in a prison of females. All right, so let's turn to some comments from our listeners. And this time I went to rumble. And we have one from Deb Bin 2025, and she says she really likes your show in the early morning hours. And she listens to Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. But here's her comment or his, probably hers. The only way for the left to stop the insanity is for one or more key players to start to reap the consequences of their ideology. And listen to this, though she goes, until it hits home, they will continue. I would prefer that their wealth and power be removed so they can live the way they have been shoving down the throats of all of us. But make no mistake, there is great power in reaping what you sow. Proud to be an American. And you know what? That Reminded me of wasn't the case. It was either in the ancient Roman world against Milo or against Catiline where Cicero called for all of his assets to be taken away from him and and then thrown out into exile.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, they did confiscate property, but they also have something he was illegally. That's why Cicero was later exiled to Cilicia for an illegal writ by having him executed. But there was something called antidosis in Greek democracy, especially Athenian democracy. Ante means back opposite and donas was we get donor, donor dowry, all from giving. So if somebody made a charge of corruption against an Athenian official anantidosis writ and he was correct and could prove it, then their relative net worth was exchanged. So somebody could say, a plumber from Fresno could say, I think Joe Biden is guilty and I'm going to fire all writ of anodosis. But unlike most people, I've been spending the last five years of my life on the Internet. I know every single fact. And then he would have Joe Biden's three homes. You can see it was crazy, but I'm kind of exaggerating. There were limitations how it could be implemented, but I don't know how you make. There's a good story. There's been a couple of news accounts about who are the people voting for Mom Domini and they turn out to be the children of the rich. And a couple of things in Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Bloomberg. I'm trying to remember where it makes the argument that about half the people in the United States in this generation who were brought up rich fell out of the upper middle class. In other words, their parents were very wealthy. Their parents are retired. Maybe their parents don't have as much money as they planned for retirement. Maybe their parents say, you know, I'm not going to buy you a house, I'm not going to buy you a car, I'm going to go to Europe. Whatever the reason is, their degrees and their investments in higher education did not work out. So I mentioned that before. They're editors at magazines, they're assistant assistant stockbrokers, they're the head of the legal team, legal staff. They're well dressed, they grew up in affluence and they're never going to be able to buy a house. They're not going to get married early, they're not going to have children and they blame the system. And Mondami looks really suave and swarmy and they like him. But that's something to. We always think the rich are rich. The rich no it's about 50% of people go up or down. Because you can see psychologically if you grew up in your lower middle class and your parents worked like crazy and they couldn't, then your attitude is I'm going to work even crazier, you know what I mean? And if you grew up really affluent, oh I can. So people go down and people go up.
Sammy Wink
All right. And another comment, and this one was for Sammy, for me, by the way.
Victor Davis Hanson
Could I say something personal? When I was farming, I was 26 and 27, I would go with my poor dad into the production credit, you know, and the Federal Land Bank. And in the raising crash of 1983 the price as I said went from 1,400 to 400. And he was retired as a, he had farmed a little bit and he was a junior college administrator. My mom was a judge. They had a good income but not a good income to make up those farms losses. So I went in there and he was always really stressed borrowing money. And then the family would always, you know, it was bad and it ended up very badly. They went, my siblings had to sell out. But one thing that struck me when I would go in with him, I looked at him, I said to myself, I am never ever going to get into that situation in my entire life. And I don't care if I'm just a professor, if I'm a professor, I'm going to stay up till midnight to write. If I can speak. I'm going to go on a Tuesday. I mean I'll teach Monday, Wednesday, Friday for classes. Tuesday morning I'm going to get up, I'm going to fly to New York City or Palm beach or anywhere to get six hundred thousand dollar honorarium. I'm going to fly back on the red eye. I'm going to go take a shower in the gym and I'll be there for Wednesday classes. It makes somebody, you know what I mean? It just makes you want to get out of the middle class or lower middle class and get money so you don't get in that situation. But if you're in that situation and everything's taken care of then you get lackadaisical. And I think that's a lot of the people I know who have made money or have been successful were from the lower middle classes. And a lot of people that I know who are really bitter and angry were from the upper middle classes and they don't have the lifestyle their parents had. And remember the parents are the baby boom generation. And the baby boom generation was not known for being generous and caring for others. It was all verbal. And so if you were a baby boomer 65 and you have 8 million bucks in your 401k and your son or daughter is trying to buy a home in LA and where it's a million bucks, see, you wouldn't want to be. You know what I mean? You'll get my money one day, but not now. Better go vote for Karen Bass the socialist because I'm not going to give you a dime because I've got a big agenda to go to Europe every year, you know what I mean? Or something like that. I'm being stereotypically and unfair, but I think there's something to it, to what makes formerly wealthy young people vote for Mondami.
Sammy Wink
So a comment to me is from Hoti or Hot good old boy. And he writes, got news for you, Sammy. Gender dysphoria is mental illness. Don't be playing word games when bullets are flying, you idiot. So he said, you idiot? Yeah, he wrote you idiot.
Victor Davis Hanson
Idiot. You know what idiot is in Greek? Means somebody who's self absorbed. So not stupid.
Sammy Wink
Yes, and I. But while I was asking you that question last time, I was kind of thinking what he had to say, so I thought I should read.
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, gender dysphoria is a long known clinical mental illness. It's in that mental. It's until 2010, it's in the American Psychiatric Association's catalog of mental disorders. And it's, it's a. It's not necessarily primarily physical. I mean mental alone. It's the idea that physically or hormonally that there are people who are very, very small, like 0, 0, 1, 1 or 2 per hundred thousand really feel hormonally that they're men, but they're in women's bodies. Somehow that's expressed by transvestism. And if you go back to early psychological. I said that about Havelock Ellis and people that people who were transvestites and cross dressers, they were not necessarily homosexual. You know what I mean? You get all these stories and Lurid magazine that a woman comes in and her husband's dressed in bra and panties, you know, but he's not necessarily gay. He's just, he's mentally affected. But there's gradations of that. Transvestism, transsexualism, transgenderism, that manifests itself into just kind of once in a while wearing clothes. Or maybe you are gay in some fashion, you start to dress more like a woman or you want to be a woman. If you're biological, but you don't want to get breast and be castrated or you're at the ultimate and you want to completely. Christine Jorgensen, I think was her name when I was growing up that had the operations and all that. They should read Katallis. What poem is that? The attis poem. Not 60, I don't think. 61, where poor attis decides he's in the ultimate category and he gets into a frenzy to the goddess Cybele and he castrates himself. And then Attis referred to as ili, the demonstrative nominative masculine noun in Latin. And then halfway through the poem, he becomes illa her. And then he sits at the shore and he looks out west and says, oh, the frenzy wore off and now I'd like to be a man again, but it's too late. So it's known for a long time and it is a mental disorder.
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And it's Katella. 63.
Victor Davis Hanson
63. Thank you. My memory is fading.
Sammy Wink
Well, since we are on this, what do you make of. Charlie Sheen is out with Charlie, right? Is it Char. It's Charlie Sheen is out.
Commercial Announcer
Yeah.
Sammy Wink
He's with a new book that.
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't want to buy the book. I don't want to hear about the.
Sammy Wink
Particular mental illness, if he has one. What is his.
Victor Davis Hanson
I think the mental illness was that he was a very handsome young guy who had hit shows and movies in his twenties he was flooded with money. He got addicted to drugs. He was completely dissolute. He had no control over his appetites. He went through his money. He got involved in the Los Angeles sick scene. He experimented sexually in every imaginable fashion. He thought for a while he was either bisexual or homosexual. He, according to him, not Victor speculating, he hired male prostitutes, he got hiv. People blackmailed him about that. So he was paying out to his hired male and female prostitutes. And then he finally decided to come out. That was about eight years ago. And he did go cold turkey, I think. And now when you look at him, he looks very elderly. I do too. I don't think I've ever smoked a cigarette in my life. But he smoked everything. But he. But he's had a lot of work. But he's mind. He kind of reminds me of the Beach Boys guy, Ryan Wilson, that had his brain fried from all those drugs. Yeah. Doesn't. If you don't drink and you don't smoke and you don't use drug, doesn't mean you're gonna have a. A long, happy, healthy life. I can attest to that. But it does mean you have a better chance at it, that's all. So. And you don't have to listen to Hunter that says that crack cocaine is not as bad as alcohol. Did you say something that somebody wanted about Russia?
Sammy Wink
Oh, yes. We had an inquiry in one of the comments about the Russian Air Force in World War II, and we also wanted to ask our listeners to go ahead and write questions for us.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, that's a good idea. I've gone through a history of wars of the 20th century. I went through the history of wars from the ancient world that took a year and a half to the present. So that would be a good idea that people could just write in and say, let's talk about this particular historical incident or period. That could be done, in fact. Well, Russian Air Force, they start out with a premise that when Russia started the war, they had wiped out their whole command and control during the purges. And they had enormous resources, industrial capacity, but they had destroyed their military. So they probably had about 50,000 planes. They were the largest air force, but they were fighters and bombers, and they didn't were substandard. So on June 22, Operation Barbarossa, the Germans came in with about five. They had an air force of about 5,000 planes. About 3,500 were on the Eastern Front. They destroyed on the first week 4,000 planes. 4,000. They only lost about 58 the first year. They destroyed 20. 20,000. 20,000 Russians. And so they told Hitler, the more we destroy these substandard planes, we're starting to see something. There's a Yak fighter model, a Yak, and There's a MiG McCoy, and they're good. They're not as good as the BF109, but they're good. And they're starting to appear. And Hitler said, don't hit the factories. We'll be in Moscow in a week. And we don't want to kill the people, destroy their towns, but we want to take their factories because we're going to use them for our own purposes. That was crazy. So when he got to Moscow for subway station, they had moved everything to the Ural Mountains, out of air control. And Hitler said, they'll never be able to do that. At the same time, the British and the Americans decided to fund them, lend lease. So the British and the Americans came up with things that we were not going to use or would be more suited to that ground warfare. And we started to give them Grant tanks, Lee tanks, Stuart tanks. They weren't that great, but they were very reliable. Then we started giving them Sherman tanks. In terms of the air war, there were certain planes that were really innovative that the Americans had, but for a variety of reasons. They were either created by smaller companies or they were too radical in design. And One was the P39 Cobra Bell Laboratories and the P63 King Cobra Super Cobra kind of. And they had an engine in the middle of the plane, not by the propeller. So they had a long crankshaft. And the advantage of that is when you were heading at somebody and they were shooting at you, it was hard to hit the engine and knock you out. And it had a very high speed at lower altitudes. And it had a 20 millimeter. And I think in some it might even have had a 37 millimeter. Not a machine gun, but a cannon. And so when you put it in the Soviet sphere, suddenly they got about. I think we gave them all together two types of planes. Primarily the best transport plane in the world, the C47 DC3. And we gave them these Air Cobras and King Cobras. And they used them as close air support. And man, they could dive down at 380 miles an hour and hit tanks. German tanks hit artillery platform. And they under Russian pilots, a lot of women pilots, they had the Highest kill ratio versus loss of any plane. I think in World War II P47s were pretty good. But in other words, under Russian pilots in that particular ground war, they devastated Germany ground support. And so by the end of the second war, Hitler thought that he destroyed 20,000 planes. And all of a sudden they came to him and said, we've got to start hitting the factories. And then he said yeah. And they said, well, actually it's too late. They're all on the side of the. They moved them. And General Luftwaffe, the head of procurement, Milch and Udet earlier and Goering did not understand that German war production was about a fraction of Soviet take six or seven of the biggest factories in Germany, they were 10% of the Soviet factories. And they started turning out, in addition to the imported Air Cobras, they started turning out Yaks and Migs in the thousands. So by 1943, two things were happening. The Germans were sending back Bf 109 and Focke Wulf 190 squadrons for air defenses because of American and British bombing. And 88 millimeter anti tank guns were being used as flak at that time. The Ural factories were full blast, were sending thousands. So the Soviets made about 120,000 planes even though they lost 50,000. And the other thing I remember about the air war and the Russia, neither the Russians nor the Germans ever built a four engine bomber. The Russians did for a minute because that B29 accidentally landed there. So they reverse engineered it, made a Tupolev bomber just like a B20. But I don't think they use very many during the war. The point I'm making is they didn't have long range bombers that could carry £15,000 and up like the Lancaster B29 or B24, B27, B17. And that was a mistake the Germans made. They believed in dive bombing rather than horizontal bombing. Yeah, the Germans for them. And they believed that two engines would cut air drag. And they decided on the Heinkel exam. Some of their models they put two engines I said earlier, back to back with one crankshaft and the crankshaft could not handle the RPMs. They never got the same amount of power they would have had in of front four engines. It was really weird. They built a Condor reconnaissance aircraft with four engines. It was wonderful. But they never built a four engine bomber for long distance horizontal. And the same was true of the Soviets. So neither one of them had an adequate strategic bombing force. The final thing to remember about the air war is not only did Hitler in 41 and 42 not want to bomb the aircraft factories Russia when he could have before they were moved, but you got to remember that by August 1st of 1940, all of Europe, with exception of parts of Greece and Yugoslavia were under Axis control. Either they were neutral Spain, Portugal or Italy and Germany, they were Italian or Germany or they were occupied, occupied France, nine or 10 European countries and they were assuming they could all of Europe by 41. So my point is that if you look at German air production, they really did believe they were going to cut a deal. And they didn't really believe that they needed to go in the Soviet Union necessarily. Goering didn't want to go in the Soviet Union and neither did Milch and neither did the rest of them. It was mostly Hitler and his closest Nazi fanatics. But the point I'm making is very quickly to finish. They cut back on production because they felt the economy was overheated and they were going to get a public backlash because they'd been promised peace after all these glorious victories. And it looked like in North Africa that by early 41 Rommel was going to run wild, you know, and he did take Tobruk. But my point is this. So German level Germans leveled off aircraft production. And when you look at the United States about 100 and I don't know, 15,000 German planes of all categories. And then you look at about 100 and I don't know, 40,000, maybe 30,000 Russian planes. Then we gave them 15,000 good plane. Then you look at the United States, 300,000. So the United States produced more supply and fighter craft than Germany and the Soviet Union and Italy and I think Japan put together. Britain I think produced about 100,000. But the British and the Americans had decided before the war that the future. They had read Duehet and all of these military analysts in the pre war period and they said that aerial bombing would be the future. So they had invested heavily in long range bombers and four engine bombers. So when the war broke out, they had four engine bombers and the Germans and the Soviets never had a strategic bombing campaign. That was very good.
Sammy Wink
Well, thank you, Victor. So we'll look forward to other questions for our Saturday show. And we'd like to thank our audience for listening and thank you for all of the commentary on the news today. And I also want to say I have a hat on a, for our listeners. I have a baseball cap on in solidarity with Irina Zaritska who, who loved this country and she came to this country, learned English zealously and was trying to get an education assistant. And that's the kind of immigrant we like.
Victor Davis Hanson
That was another thing people didn't remark on because she had kind of photo pictures of herself. So she's very beautiful and she was sexy and full of life. But when she traveled, she tried to mask those, you know what I mean? She had a baseball cap on, she had kind of baggy clothes. So she wasn't extroverted. She was just saying, I'm in America. And she just walked in and she didn't even think, she thought, you know, she wasn't prejudiced. She sat down right in front of a scary looking black male, to tell you the truth. And there were other black people there, she didn't care. And that naivete, I don't even like to use the word in a. That just openness and trustworthiness got her killed. And I think if somebody had just after the first blow, jumped up, you know, just one just stopped him. But I guess the experience of Daniel Penny said do not attack or do not restrain a crazy black male who's threatening people because if you do and he gets hurt in your physical efforts, you're going to go to jail or at least you're going to go broke or you're going to try you.
Sammy Wink
All right, so thanks to everybody again for listening. And thank you, Victor Davis Hansen.
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you for listening, everybody, and watching.
Sammy Wink
This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen. And we're signing off.
This episode centers on the recent high-profile murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian immigrant, in Charlotte, and examines how the event serves as a lens for deeper systemic failures in the American justice system, media, and political culture—especially among progressive and left-wing institutions. Victor Davis Hanson, with co-host Sammy Wink, expands the discussion to urban policy, crime, media bias, the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, Biden's presidency, American bureaucracy, and current events in Europe, including the rise of Nigel Farage in Britain.
“This was not tragic, it’s a breakdown of left-wing management of big cities and the judicial system... we still have an existential problem of black males committing about half of the nation’s crimes when that age group, gender, and race represent about 3%.”
— Victor Davis Hanson (14:50)
“That naivete, I don’t even like to use the word in a...that just openness and trustworthiness got her killed.”
— Victor Davis Hanson (82:36)
“It was not a tragedy. It was an act of deliberate evil. Didn’t just happen.”
— Victor Davis Hanson on the Zarutska murder ([05:09])
“You cannot lock your way out of this. Yes, you can. You can put Mr. Carlos Brown in a prison and presto, we have somebody alive.”
— Victor Davis Hanson on the logic of incarceration ([28:15])
“The state allows that to happen and they do it because of DEI ...Gavin is never going to see this”
— Victor Davis Hanson on elite hypocrisy regarding immigration ([30:05])
“The left is always advocating dense urban living...so the state, the left, the people who are the engineers, feel that they have leverage over the individual.”
— Victor Davis Hanson summarizing Glenn Reynolds ([24:01])
“If you want to talk in collectives, then we’ll talk in collectives. But something has to be done because you can’t have a nation where a retired professor...ends up dead and desecrated.”
— Victor Davis Hanson ([22:06])
Victor Davis Hanson adopts a direct, sometimes combative tone, blending classical references, personal anecdotes, and detailed policy critique. The mood is urgent and critical, especially regarding social and institutional decay. Co-host Sammy Wink offers a measured, journalistic presence, foregrounding listener engagement and serving as Victor’s sounding board.