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- [00:00]
OpenPhone Representative
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- [01:34]
Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen show. This is our Friday news roundup and there's lots on the agenda today. The first things are the war in Iran and also the no kings protest this weekend. I know that Victor hasn't been here for a while and has had an operation. So Victor, I hope you're doing well.
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Victor Davis Hanson
I am today. Seven days ago, this left sinus was no problem. They opened it up and the other one, they hit a bone. So it was a little bit trickier to remove the bone, but they drained the two. Four months sinus infection. I'm just wiped out. But I think there was a very good doctor and surgeon and and had a little extra because it was bony disease bone and it's out. So I feel like in the next two weeks I'm gonna get back to normal.
- [02:28]
Sammy Wink
Wonderful. So let's go to some messages and then come back and we'll start the show. Stay with us.
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Victor Davis Hanson
What is daddication?
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Fatherhood Campaign Representative
The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariona. We call him Dae Date for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge. And there' this huge responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person. I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a good job.
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Victor Davis Hanson
That's dedication. Find out more@fatherhood.gov, brought to you by.
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OpenPhone Representative
The U.S. department of Health and Human.
- [03:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Services and the Ad Council.
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Greenlight Representative
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- [03:43]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow, Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marshabusky 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 hope everyone comes to join us there. So Victor, we've got lots going on with Iran. I think the recent questions are if the United States is going to help Israel with bunker buster bombs. And so maybe we can start there on the latest question.
- [04:21]
Victor Davis Hanson
I wrote a tweet about that today because Trump is having dissensions in the maga. American first ranks. The Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, Representative Massie, Rand Paul are angry that he is considering an optional preemptive strike in the Middle east, which according to the MAGA doctrine, we don't do that. He's arguing that, I think he said because he replied directly to Tucker, called him kooky. He's saying that he is a Jacksonian, a Gadsden flag, don't tread on me or Cornelius Sullus, Lucius Sullus, no better friend, no worse enemy. Kind of a deterrence. We don't want to look for trouble. We don't like to intervene. But from time to time, Baghdadi in the first term Soleimani in the first term Wagner Group in the first term little rocket ban. When people take advantage of our magnanimity, we have to show them who's boss. So I think Trump feels that he has given leeway to the Iranian theocracy and again and again they don't take the offer. And what is the offer? The offer is to become something like Saudi Arabia Ghatar the Emirates, Kuwait, in other words, a very wealthy sheikdom in the Middle east that doesn't support terrorist appendages. I know people are going to say, well, wait a minute, Bin Laden, Saudi Arabia, I know that, but we're talking about right now, I think we kind of set them straight on that. And Iran doesn't want that agenda. They believe in a Shia Crescent, Tehran, Beirut, Gaza, Damascus, Yemen, and it's a rival block to the Sunni Arab block. This is the Persian Shia bloc. And they want to spread turmoil and they feel they're going to inherit the Middle East. And so they're not going to negotiate because to negotiate would put them out of business. But the problem they have right now is they are a terrorist nation without any terrorists. They are bragging that they were going to be a nuclear power without any apparent nukes. They think they're the preeminent decisive conventional threat in the Middle east, but they're not threatening anymore to anybody. And when you look at about around all their assets, Russia is no longer a patron, a power, a protector. The Assad dynasty is gone from Syria. It's flipped from pro Shia, Persian, that Arab dynasty, to at best Sunni, at worst, maybe with ties of Al Qaeda. But whatever it is, it doesn't like Iran. And then Gaza, Hamas is inert, Hezbollah is inert. The Emis or the Yemenis are Houthis. I don't know what to say about them. They're emasculated. So the whole facade of Iran as a dynamic, revolutionary, fervent, boiling state of anger with all these, it's been destroyed, Israel's destroyed it, and Donald Trump has maximum pressure, it can't sell oil and Israel is systematically disarming and denuclearize it. Now we get to one critical point and I'll finish. So Fuhrer and other places there are nuclear piles. That's a word. Inexact. Nobody knows how much fissionable uranium that's been enriched to 60, up to 90% there is. People suggest that there's enough for nine to 12 bombs. And some of these places are under 100 yards of solid rock. So the question is, now that Israel has destroyed their defenses, destroyed their command and control hierarchy, destroyed their physicists and nuclear scientists, going after the armed forces hierarchy, destroyed their air defenses, and what was their air force. Now it has to decide, can it destroy these heavily reinforced nuclear sites? And there's a lot of talk about it. Some people say, well, they killed Nasrallah, they have small 2 to 4,000 pound bunker busters. So. And they have complete air control and there's no hurry. So all they have to do is send one like a pencil, you know, through a pie, and then another one, and then another one, and another one, 7, 8, 10, 12, just keep hammering the hole. Other people say, well no, they need a B2 stealth bomber. Maybe a B1 could handle it, but it's not. It could carry the weight 30,000 pounds. And then do we give them that? They know how to operate it, they could do it, but why would. Then we're a participant directly or do we do it ourselves and the mega base gets bad and we get into this question. Some people have suggested that just like the mother of all bombs, those are the daisy cutters you drop and they send shrapnel and they're just horrific weapons. They are dropped by a C130 that can carry up to £40,000. So people say, well, if they have air superiority and there's no danger of a slow moving transport pane being refueled and shot down, why not give it to the Israelis? Have them. Why not give them a couple of these huge 30,000 pound bunker busters and they can put them on a C130 transport with some radical modifications. So there's all these ideas floating, but they get down to the point that Donald Trump is not a Lindbergh isolationist, he is a Jacksonian, as I said, and right now he's trying to calculate. I do things in the interest of the United States and I do that through a cost to benefit analysis. On the plus side, if you can get rid of Iran, that has killed Americans for 50 years and is the troublemaker in the entire Middle east and will threaten Europe and us one day with a nuclear weapon, then that would be very good. So we support that and we support Israel that Iran has targeted. However, in a cost to benefit analysis, what are the costs of that? Because that's what he is a Jacksonian, he's not a neoconservative nation builder interventionist, he's not an isolationist. And the costs are, he is examining right now, will they attack Americans at other bases, how many? He's kind of, I think, waiting until the Israelis say to him, we've got most of the missile launchers, but we don't know to what degree all these insulations in Syria and Iraq are well protected by patriots. We don't know that. And then second, he's asking himself, what will it do to my domestic agenda? If we have oil prices spike and we have a big war and I'M trying to get inflation down to lower interest rates, etc. And then he's saying, what do I do with my MAGA base? Will they say this is an optional forever war? Will Tulsi Gabbard resign? Will Tucker go on and blast me? He's kind of said he didn't care about that. And then finally, to what degree are Israel's interests parallel to ours? I think 90% of them get the bomb out. They should Trump, when he does this analysis, he should take it out. But here's the final comment, and that is we are at a point in the war, five days in that they have done so much damage to Iran that if they don't put the proverbial bell around the cat's neck, then all of that's for naught. Because what will happen is the Iranians will emerge from the wreckage and they will say, the most powerful country in the world, the United States, with all of its weapons, they gave the little Satan, they bombed us, they did everything, we hit them back, and guess what? They quit. And we still have our nuclear option. So once you cross the Rubicon, you cross the Rubicon. As Napoleon said, if you're going to take Vienna, take Vienna. So if you're going to get into this mess, then do it. And I think right now, Trump is warning the Iranians, you can still get out of this by negotiations. But he doesn't believe that. But he's also telling the Israelis, can't you come up with some type of methodology to destroy these reinforced mountainsides that have fissionable material beneath them? You have all the time in the world. You have superior. Just keep hitting them and maybe we'll give you a big bunker buster. And you guys are brilliant. Just adapt it to a C130. They can carry £40,000, or maybe they'll let him use a B2. But I don't think he wants American fingerprints directly on the attack. Finally, all the MAGA people have said, the base has said, well, this is a wider war, but then you have to break that down. Russia, Russia's been talking some things that are kind of scary, but what are they going to do? They don't need the Iranian drones. The Iranians have already made plants and fabrication assembly ability inside Russia. So Russia's building Iranian drones. Putin doesn't mind the price of oil going up. He would love to see it go from 50, 60, 70 back up to over 100. He doesn't care about that. And if Europe doesn't get their oil, more power to it. So he would like to have more money and he's already bogged down in Ukraine. He doesn't have the wherewithal to go in and intervene. And Trump is pretty smart. He mentioned, well maybe Vladimir wants to negotiate. Well that's kind of throwing him a bone and maybe that will ease tensions in his negotiations in over Ukraine. And what is the Chinese idea? China's idea is that temper, temper, temper. We take 80% of the pre embargo to Iran. Oil was ours. 50% of every drop of oil out of the Middle east that goes out of the Straits. So for moves goes to us. Don't do anything. So they're not going to intervene. So when everybody says a wider war I'd like is it, what are the Arab countries going to do? The Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Saudis are going to say how dare you hit a fellow Islamic nation? No, they're going to privately say look Israelis, we've got to give every noon we're going to have a press conference and we're going to damn you as an Islamophobic scientist entity, but please don't take that seriously and just finish the job.
- [16:07]
Sammy Wink
So Victor, I would like to go back to your discussion of Iran and Iranian capabilities. But first I would like to welcome besthotgrill.com they make those amazing Solaire Infrared Gas Grills. Declare your independence from those low heat, low powered gas grills which in the course of the grilling event wear out every couple of years. Secure your rights to juicy steaks, succulent chicken and moist fish as well as healthy veggies. Pursue grilling happiness with the purchase of a USA made hot fast Solaire Infrared Gas grade grill. Solaire is perfect for today's busy lifestyle, securing its powers from the efficient direct heat of the Solaire Infrared burner which reaches 1000 degrees in just 3 minutes to lock in juices and flavors and grill food faster. All stainless steel and welded construction. It is evident that Solaire could be the last grill you will ever buy. Make grilling great again with Solaire Infrared Grills. Learn more about these amazing USA made grills@besthoughtgrill.com that's besthotgrill.com and we would like to thank Solaire for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So Victor, I wanted to ask you a little bit about Iran's capability at this point. Khomeini, the Ayatollah on his axe, has written that the US entering in this matter is 100% to its own detriment. The damage it will suffer will be far greater than any harm that Iran may encounter. So that's a big bluster. I know that he's lost a lot of men, etc, but they seem to still be bombing Tel Aviv or sending missiles into Tel Aviv pretty regularly. So I was.
- [18:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
90% of them are knocked down, to my knowledge, they haven't killed. They're in a war where you haven't killed one soldier on the Israeli side. So they're just sending. It's like the V2 attack on London. They're inexact, they're not military targets. Sometimes they get close to the IDF or Netanyahu's residence, but mostly they're inexact and they're just trying to create terror like V2s. And they work sometimes because during the first Gulf War, when Saddam did that, that drew a lot of American resources out to look for those mobile launchers where they could have been concentrating more on Saddam soldiers. And it's the same thing in World War II. Churchill, it was, when you get 20,000 people killed, casualties, you can't just ignore it. So the Americans and the British were using resources to go after v2 sites that were not a strategic weapon. They were not sinking battleships, knocking out airports, industries. They were just terror. So that's what they're doing. And I'm kind of shocked, to be frank. I see all these military analysts on television and they say the most astounding thing, I don't want to mention anybody. And they said, well, we know that the fat and the patriot and the Iron Dome and the arrow and David Sling don't work. They're not keeping them out. Hello.
- [19:29]
Sammy Wink
That's crazy.
- [19:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
There's like a hundred, a wave of 100. They take out 90, 93, 94%. That's amazing. Some of them are hypersonic. So that is crazy. And at the same time they're doing that, they're going after the launchers, as the Americans did in the first Gulf War. So the point I'm making is that Iran, when they make those boasts, it's on the fumes of prior passivity. They think to themselves, well, Obama wanted to get into a negotiation with it. Ben Rhodes, his assistant national security, had thought it was a great deal. They sent us $400 million at night on pallets in cash, and Joe Biden begged us to get back in. John Kerry was meeting stealthily with. So they're afraid of us. So they don't quite get who's in the White House. He doesn't give a blank, blank about their leadership or their threats. They said the other night, this will be a historic night tonight. I think that was last night. The Israelis said at the end of the week something would happen. And I am more likely to believe them than I am the Iranians. But right now it's one of the most bizarre wars I've ever studied or looked at because you had this huge country with all these terrorist appendages that sowed terror and fright throughout the Middle east and the capitals of Europe. And the Democratic administrations were worried about it. And all these formidable assets, the Hezbollah shock troops, the Assad crazy Damascus army and air force, the Russian patron, the Hamas terrorists, where are they? They're nowhere. They've just gone down the list and they're killing them all. And they don't have any mechanism to destroy the Israeli ability to wage war. And they've killed, as I'm speaking, about 50 people in a full fledged theater war. Israel is not trying to hit civilian sinners. I'm not defending the idea that it's pristine. I'm just saying that it's going after military, scientific and political leaders, and more importantly, it's going after their ability to resist and to attack. And they said two weeks. So they planned this for years. So I would imagine we're getting into five or six days. I would imagine pretty soon you're going to see very few missiles taking off and you're going to see some type of stealthy operation, car bombings or something like the Hezbollah takeout, where they're going to go after more people. They planned. And then I think they're going to concentrate on these nuclear areas. And I'm not sure that they need those. The bunker buster bomb. Everybody said, bunker buster, bunker buster. As I said, they got no through three floors. I understand that it's 100 yards, much deeper, but three concrete floors below the earth. And if they just keep going after it, just like mowing the lawn, 1 2,000, 1 4,000, just the same, they'll drill down and they can do it. And the role of the United States is twofold, to offer logistical support. So you don't do a Joe Biden and say, if you don't stop it, we're going to suspend all shipments of 2,000 pound bombs. You don't do that. You just say what you need, go ahead and do it. It's what Mertz said, the German chancellor, they're doing the ugly work for us. And what he meant was they're eliminating an existential threat to Europe and diplomatic. So Trump is saying to everybody in Europe, I don't want to hear that. They have to stop. I know you have Arab populations, you're all pro Hamas, but this. Don't dare tell me to cut off these radio. Not going to happen. They're doing this in your interest. This isn't Hamas. This is somebody that wants to destroy you too. And to tell the Chinese and the Russians to butt out. That's all. And that's a lot. But I don't think at this point, even though we have all the assets equipped, crewing, we're necessarily going to intervene if the logistical, scientific, military problem of how to destroy these centers of nuclear enrichment cannot be handled by the Israelis.
- [24:19]
Sammy Wink
And the Israelis have recently said that they have more up their sleeve than what they've already done. So we'll see that in the future. And so I just want to, to note a few things since you've kind of answered the US position but given that you said Trump doesn't want the American fingerprints on this. The USS Nimitz is headed for the region. And the second thing is in the news, I'm not sure I see any importance to it, but the doomsday airplane has moved from Louisiana, I believe to D.C. so I, I don't know. They move that plane around just to make sure it's okay.
- [24:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's where Trump goes in existential wars. But from what we can gather, Iran does not have a ballistic missile that can reach the United States. So he doesn't have to fly around. I think what he's trying to do is he's sending B2s that are capable of dropping a bunker buster of magnitude to destroy these facilities. He's sending the old B1s in there that they have the lift capacity. Maybe they could do it too if they're adapted to it. We have about 40 or 50 of these huge bombs and he's sending two carrier groups. That means he's got two of those Arleigh Brook, what we used to call destroyers are now frigates. It's probably a nuclear two or three nuclear subs in those two groups when they get there. And they've probably got 150 to 180 F35s and Super Hornets. Then you've got basses and guitars. I mean they, it's, I don't think the Iranians, I feel sorry for the Iranian people to be run by these lunatics that keep all this braggadocio. And they've spent all these hundred trillions of dollars over the last 50 years arming all these thugs, Hezbollah, Hamas, and they could have been Doing so much for their own people. And everybody hates them, and they probably do hate them. But it's the old, as I keep quoting, the Aesop fable about the poor mice that need to put the, the bell around the cat's neck. Who's the brave mouse that wants to get killed first and eaten? So who are the brave people that want to rise up against the regime before it's completely weakened and they're going to get killed?
- [26:51]
Sammy Wink
Well, that was my last question. I don't know that there is an answer for this, but I was wondering your assessment of the transformation of the Middle east with this war. And I wanted to make a note that Donald Trump has been on this mission since his first term when he went after the terrorists, specifically killed a couple of the Baghdad terrorists. Yeah, cells. And now it's on to taking out Hamas, Hezbollah in this current administration. And now we're into Iran. So the whole picture is that the Middle east is being, I don't know, emptied is the word, but it's being emasculated. The ship Shia faction and the terrorist faction.
- [27:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, the existential threat was always Sunni radical Islamic terrorism because Sunni era, because they were the 911 perpetrators. Bin Laden was the great terrorist. But from all the misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, we did. People forget that we did kill. I went over to Iraq twice during the surge and naively I said to a high ranking commander, so is the surge about winning hearts and minds and your ability? I was at a park, I think it was in Taji or somewhere or maybe it was anyway, I can't remember exactly which city. And I said, well, he was showing me the park and it was nice and they were. And he said, no, no, no, no, we're killing terrorists. We're killing a lot of them and we're telling everybody we're not. So my point is that we kind of decapitated bin Laden and all. Trump did bomb the proverbial shit as he promised out of ISIS. He killed the loudmouth Baghdad, remember 2016, 17 and 18. He was beheading all those people on the shore. It was horrible. Burning people alive. He was kind of like that guy in lonesome, one of those lonesome dove, the man burner, you know, I mean, they were horrific people. And he got rid of them. So the problem with the Middle east is not necessarily radical Sunni terrorism. You always have to watch that. But it has been the Iranians and the Obama strategy was to build up Iran and tell the Israelis and the Gulf states, Egypt, Jordan. Sorry, you guys. We're not your allies. You have oppressed the Shia and you've oppressed the Persian and they have a legitimate right in the Middle East. So they have a crescent. There's this huge Iran and there's Syria and then there's Lebanon and then there's Gaza and then there's Yemen and it goes way from the Turkish border all the way down in the Mediterranean here. And we're going to let you balance them off from time to time, me being Obama, I'll come in and adjudicate. That was the whole crazy idea. And they said, are you insane? Do you think that Jordan and Israel are morally equivalent to these crazy nuts in Iran or Hezbollah? So that crashed. And so now the existential threat to the Middle east essentially is the money. The money, the money that Iran, as the fifth largest oil reserves in the world has. And if you can stop that being channeled all around the Middle east to kill people, you've gone a long way. Will it solve the Middle east problem? No, because you've still got a strong. Whether it's Shia or Sunni, there's radical Islamicists and they have certain prohibitions that prevent modernity. They, you know, whether it's tolerance for dissent, constitutional government, diversity of religion, treatment of women and their equal, they don't want that. And that those are barricades or hindrances, bridles on progress, social, cultural, economic prosperity. But that's not our business. We're not in there to remake the Middle East. All we want from the Middle east is you guys do whatever you want. You want to make oil, you want to build a city in the desert, we don't care. All we want to know is two things. If you've got a product, oil that the world needs, sell it and we'll keep the sea lanes open. And don't use that money to kill Westerners. If you do, we're going to have problems, that's all. And under that rubric, we have defined Israel as a Western country.
- [31:48]
Sammy Wink
And Western countries, though, are the. And Westernization are, I think, a big threat to that traditional Muslim culture that you're talking about. That's almost what destroyed the Shah.
- [32:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
What destroyed the Shah? Was it because he was a, When I was in college, he's a right wing fascist? No, no, no. He was no different than any other autocrat in the Middle east, except he did believe in Westernization and he did want to emancipate women and he did want to repress the political role of the malacracy. He was paying them off. And he did want to bring in science and secularism and did him in.
- [32:33]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and go to some messages and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about the no Kings protests. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. If you want to find Victor on social media, you can try him on X at his handle is Dhanson, and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning cup. So you can join him there. So, Victor, we had lots of protests this weekend. They seem to be stirring it up a bit, the presses. What I noticed about it was the presses. The mayors of these sanctuary cities and the governors with their sanctuary cities in them have all been trying to argue that there's nothing to with do see here that these are peaceful protests. So I was wondering your thoughts on that.
- [33:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's really incoherent because Gavin Newsom, who, remember he had Charlie Kirk on his podcast and he was going to be the voice of moderation. I believe that biological men shouldn't be in women's sport. All this little bones he threw to the moderates, he thought that's the future of the party. Then he thought, yeah, but I'd never get nominated because my party's insane in the primaries. So what I have to do is move to the left where I was and act really left. And then when I get nominated in 2028, I can go back and say, oh, I had Charlie Kirk on my podcast. So right now, because he has no identity, he doesn't know who he is. He's empty. He's a shadow of a person. He's a shadow of a shadow. And he has really destroyed his political career because everybody has eyes and they see cops pelted with concrete from overpasses. They see the 101 shutdown, they see stores looted, they see people assaulted and they get furious when they and I'm talking about mostly Hispanics who a recent poll this week, 53% of Hispanics support Donald Trump and his efforts. CBS said it was, I think 56%, 54 to 56% supported deportation. But when you see somebody flying a flag of the country they don't want to go back to and burning the flag of the country or spitting on it that they insist they have a right to stay, that is a loop optic and that's what he's aligned with. So the more that he and Karen, Karen Bass, I flew over and it's pretty quiet. Well, then, as you say, take up all the curfews off and let's see, Sunset Drive in Los Angeles is empty. All the stores are boarded up, and they're leaving. That whole city has been destroyed by liberal governance. She's done a lot to destroy it, both concretely and abstractly. So has he. And then as far as the no Kings, when I heard that term, I thought, oh, wow, this is a demonstration against the 400 liberal district judges because nobody elected them. And they're the lowest tier of the tripartite federal judicial system. And they're regional. There are district areas, first, second, third, fourth. They're not national Supreme Court judges. And yet somebody is letting them get away with usurping executive power. They are the kings. They're the most powerful people right now. They can nullify anything. So then I thought, well, I was listening this weekend to the no Kings demonstration. First thing I noticed, why almost everybody was white, elderly. That elderly woman that was crying that, she was so scared. But I mean, there's no offense, but they seem overwhelmingly white, elderly and female. And it was almost, it reminded me that I was looking in the crowd, I thought, do I see any of you from UC Santa Cruz when you were doing this in your youth? Because it's pathetic. And I don't know what they're, I don't know what, what they define as Donald Trump as a king. So Donald Trump is following Barack Obama. Barack Obama said after the whole health care debacle, he said, I have a pen when he lost the house and I have a phone and I'm going to. That's what he did. He had executive order after executive order, and he, the right couldn't stop him because they didn't have the conservative judges in enough number to cherry pick them and do what the left is doing now. But the point I'm making was, what is Donald Trump doing like a king? If he says, I want to call it the Gulf of America, I want to call it Fort Bragg, all he's doing is, well, Biden said, I don't want to call it Fort Bragg. So he said, well, I do. But the difference is that people are suing Donald Trump to stop it so he doesn't have absolute power. You're talking about a president that I would like to talk to the people. This is to you, all of you elderly white women who predominate in these parades. Could I ask you some questions? You're talking about unrestrained power and the use of, of extra constitutional authority. Which president in our history has been impeached twice? Which president in our history was tried As a private citizen, which president in our history has been the object of five local, state and federal civil and criminal suits? Donald Trump, which president, 25 states plus, tried to take off the ballot? Which president, as we speak, is vilified every single day as Hitler, Mussolini, fascist? And we had just this. In this news cycle, we had that North Carolina state representative, and she posted a picture of a woman at a podium with a bloody guillotine saying some cuts are necessary. As a joke, I think, on Doge with Donald Trump's severed head, I thought, wow, they tried to kill him twice. Why are you doing this? Then we had James Comey was going to 86 him. And then we had Spartacus and the 25 hour filibuster. Then we had this crazy Alex Padilla. I don't even know who he is, except that they claim that he's our senator. He's never done anything. And he takes off all id and then he burst into Kristi Noem's press conference without any forewarning, no badge, nothing. And then he wants to have a psychodrome. He almost pulled it off, but unfortunately, the news cycle guillotined him because of the war. So what I'm getting at is that Donald Trump doesn't have a lot of unlimited power, but his opponents seem to have exercised extra constitutional power in a way we've never seen. So maybe the demonstration should be aimed at them. Hey, you people. No lower cut court judges acting as if they're Oliver Wendell Holmes or something. No, no, no, no. And you don't take an opponent off the ballot. And you don't impeach a president twice. The moment you take back the House, you just don't do it. You don't do it. And you don't try to take somebody off the ballot. Come on. And you don't try to pack the court, and you don't try to get rid of the electoral college. So they're the dictatorial ones.
- [40:31]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, they sure are. And they're also a little bit crazy, too. I mean, it might be just that I watch Fox News. And so they bring these people out, they ask them questions, and they'll be crying hysterically while they're trying to answer questions. And you think, man, Donald Trump has more than the border to protect. He might have to bring back insane asylums. I'm joking a little bit, but there you have it.
- [40:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I grew up with them. Mental hospital in Stockton, the mental hospital in Napa. And they. I tell you one thing, when I was growing up, we all had relatives in those places, some of them perhaps were wrongly put in them. But we didn't have homeless people that were mentally ill, defecating, injecting, urinating on the streets. They got care there.
- [41:20]
Sammy Wink
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- [42:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
Are you going to go into Elon Musk Omar territory?
- [42:38]
Sammy Wink
Well, yes. Let's talk about her since she's one of those things. She just recently claimed that we are turning into, meaning we Americans in America are turning into one of the worst countries on earth. Thank you, Ilhan Omar. And yeah, I would like to talk.
- [42:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
She said, well, we're worse than her Somalia, didn't we.
- [42:59]
Sammy Wink
She said that she lived under a dictatorship. She didn't actually. And then. And she's lived under a dictatorship before and she's never seen the National Guard out to protect the city as she's seen this. And she thought that it was an oppressive force.
- [43:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
She was really worried about Somalia and Somalia. She should address one of the biggest financial scandals in the country and that was a Somali group tried to hijack Covid meals during COVID and got a huge government contract and stole billions of dollars. And no one's even talking about that in the Somalia community. She should address that if that's who she's comparing anything to. Somalia. I don't understand that because when she came here, she remarked that she thought it was much dirtier than she had imagined. She came out of a refugee camp and when you look at her biography, she's been the recipient of scholarships, financial aid, everything this country gives a person. She hasn't been oppressed when she's been here. She's really marketed her dei. I am a woman of color, Islamic, foreign national, naturalized citizen person. And then the big elephant in the room is it's pretty clear from her ex husband and her prior marriage and people in the Somali community. As reported, Scott Johnson did it on Powerline and he was collating, correlating a lot of accounts that for purposes of getting in here, she married her brother. That was immigration fraud. But she became a pop figure. And she was always suggesting she was an object of hatred because she was a empowered black woman, all that stuff, but she never had to account for that. And so why would you commit fraud to come into the United States? Allegedly. And then you're here and then you get, you're just lavished with grants and scholarships and college opportunities and then you're a congresswoman with all this power and all you do is damn, damn, damn. The host. And I guess, I don't know, is she a racist? Does she hate the United states because it's 68% white? What is her anger at it? I don't understand. She can hate white people because I just said that at all these no Kings rally, they're predominantly white. She must hate black and Hispanics because the latest Rasmussen weekly tracking poll. Do you support Donald Trump in his current efforts? 54% blacks, 53% Hispanic, 53% whites. So, Elon, Elon, are you angry at Hispanics and blacks and you like whites? Because they're the biggest group that doesn't like Donald Trump? I don't know.
- [46:07]
Sammy Wink
Well, the last thing about the left is there was a very good column by Ned Ryan in Real Clear Politics and he was addressing the phenomenon of left wing talking heads trying to disown the Biden era a little bit. And he said that the thing about the left is they want to and have wanted to destroy the system as it is. And he went all the way back to Obama when Obama said that he wanted to fundamentally transform the republic and Ned Ryan spread the wealth. Yeah, Ned Ryan's argument is they want to destroy the republic as well as Western culture. So they're just going to keep right on at it.
- [46:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I don't know what they want. They don't know what they want. If you sat any of them down and said, what do you want? It's mostly free stuff. And it's free stuff that they want. Somebody produces it and the people who produce it, they don't like and would destroy and then they don't know how to produce it. So that's the history of socialism. Anywhere it's been. Barack Obama weighed in the other day yesterday. He's really taken a hit because almost everybody he endorses loses. And when he starts talking down to people, everybody thinks, did he fly from the new Hawaii mansion? Did he come out of colorama? Does he still go to the Chicago property, or is he back at Martha's Vineyard? But he said, you liberals, you can't. You've had it easy. You just want to have your latte and go to Milan or go all over the world. And you haven't risked anything. I'm thinking, what the blank have you risk other than what was he a content content former for Netflix or something? And they gave him almost 100 million bucks for nothing. He's the most spoiled materialist. She is the most angry, unsatisfied, complaining, insecure person in the public sphere. And he is just. I'm going to take these stupid liberals for everything they can buries with Swahilto. Yeah. I'm going to change my main back to Barack Obama, and I'm going to be esoteric and I'm going to start, you know, hope and change and fundamental transformation, and I'm going to just play these suckers for everything they have. And when I end up with them, I'm going to be worth a couple hundred million bucks. And then I'm going to lecture everybody how they're not a radical like I am. Community. That's what he does. He's absurd. He's what David Mamet would call a tuna fish.
- [48:53]
Sammy Wink
Do you fear the left destroying the Republic and Western civilization at all? Since that's where Ned Ryan's always, you.
- [49:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
Know who's destroying the Western civilization is the universities, because they are teaching. They're doing it by commission and omission. They're not teaching Plato, they're not teaching Aristotle, they're not teaching Machiavelli. They're not teaching David. They're not teaching any of that. They're just teaching this grievance or this postmodern, post structuralism DEI stuff, and it's worthless. It's kind of like phrenology in the late 19th century, you know, bumps on your head reveals certain aspects. Or Soviet universities in the 1930s and 40s, all that research was worthless. Anytime I look at a German book on classics and research, and it was between 1933 and 45 and there were some published, it was worthless because it was just pseudo white supremacy, Aryanism Arianism, Aryanism. And that's what these universities are. They. It's a waste of time. If you send your child to them, to any of these places, they're going to come out unrecognizable with debt. And so they don't teach it, but they do teach a creed. And the creed is hate and destroy. And I see these faculty members at Stanford. Gosh, I go in the parking lot and it's like a. I don't know what it is. It's sort of like a up, up, up, up scale car show. Because I go, oh, Audi 90,000. Oh, BMW 100. Oh, Range Rover, Range Rover, Range Rover. Oh, BMW hybrid suv. I cannot believe these cars. And then I see these people and I walk around the Stanford campus. I have my little apartment. This week I had this surgery, recovery. So I had nothing to do but feel sorry for myself and walk around these neighborhoods and I see this. I would go online and just see what they're worth. 4 million, 5 million. They're just little Leave it to Beaver houses. But they're all so nice and smug. And I'd see people walking and I'm thinking, these are revolutionaries. These are the people who were supposed to feel on the cutting edge. Do they know what life is like in downtown Fresno or something? Southwest Tulare County? Do they care? The universities have become a joke. And they had everything that they used when I was in college, everything I was brought up that was evil. They have embraced McCarthy. Victor, did you know you had to have a loyalty oath at one time? I mean, I had a professor at Stanford. I never took one. And I'm thinking they're doing it now with dei. And, you know, there was a quota on Jews. Well, there's a quota on Jews now, too. 9% of the student body incoming class at Stanford the last four years was white. And that may have been a way of restricting the number of Jews coming in. It did. So they do all the things that they criticize. It's just a matter of power. They have the power now and they're going to. I don't know. It's been. One of the reasons I'm kind of crazy is I've spent 50 years a stranger in a strange land on those campuses, listening to them, talking to them. They're irrational people and they're overrated. And they have a huge and unrealistic appraisal of their powers, their intellect, their influence. And you talk to them after five minutes, it's like, well, you know, Victor, I argued that in my second book on that. If you go to footnote 38, I made this point and I'm thinking this point has nothing to do with the world. You know what I mean? But it's sad how we have idolized and iconicized these universities, but they're the culprit. That's where it all starts. It all starts in the universities.
- [53:14]
Sammy Wink
But isn't it going to be hard to change them when you've had all the faculty hired that are these progressives and the administration is progressive and didn't the business school recently hire an ultra Stanford just.
- [53:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
I can't believe this. Because Stanford Business School was the premier business school and the current Stanford president Levin was the Stanford Business Dean and he was a very reasonable centrist. He had a high regard. So he goes to be president and they just hired a woman. I think the top three business schools are all run now by women. Fine. But she doesn't have a degree in business. It's all sociology. And then in her website introduction or the article, the little puff pieces about her. She's a stalwart DEI supporter at a time when everybody is running away from DEI and racial preferences and stuff. Segregated dorms and she did say she makes good soup. That was something. But I can't believe they did that in this climate.
- [54:24]
Sammy Wink
I can because they're all there with her, all the people that hired her and that means faculty and administrators.
- [54:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Sam Bankman, Reed's parents, I guess.
- [54:33]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, exactly.
- [54:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
People like that.
- [54:36]
Sammy Wink
Well, let's do two things that are positive things about the current administration and government or things that have been changing. It looks like the US murder rate at this point has gone down and maybe the lowest in the last half century or so by the end of the year. So that was a positive.
- [54:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
People have made that argument and Cash Patel has taken about 30% of the Washington force and dispersed it were to zip codes where there's high crime areas. So the FBI is now a partner. They're not going after school. School boards meetings are not going after traditional Catholics, they're not going after campaigns. They're not partnering with Facebook or Twitter. So that helps. But there was a. There's been a lot of discussion by some criminologists on the right that when you deport and most of them were self deportations, a million people and you had a high number of them with criminal records that every time you do that you're just collapsing. It really helps statistically in these cities to get rid of illegal aliens. And there may be 4 to 500,000 of them. But that's who they're concentrating on. And so the first million who have self deported or been deported are disproportionately people with criminal records. And that will affect everything. And when you see some of the people that the protesters are demonstrating for, when you see that ICE had warrants out for people's arrests that were horrific people, then you hear Karen Bask and Newsom, it's La La land, it really is. And you know that her mayoral mansion and Gavin's nine million dollar home like the Pelosi Estates, they're not going to be subject to the consequences of their immigration ideology. One of these criminals is not going to go to the Newsom home. And that's the sad thing about it. They're going to be unleashed right here in Fresno County. And the people who are going to suffer the most are the Hispanic community that people think for some reason are responsible for hosting them.
- [57:03]
Sammy Wink
Well, the other statistic that I wanted to ask you about is there were 773,000 fewer immigrants in the workforce. And so that was also something that was positive for, especially for the American worker that there's jobs opening up for them.
- [57:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
This may be the first time in 50 years that the number of Americans American residents are smaller in December of 2025 than they were in January. Because at the current rate of self deportation, we're about getting close to half the year. And we may have had 7, 8, 900,000 and probably another 204 forest we could have 2 million people leaving, which would be the population might even start to decline a little bit. But what's most important, and when you looked at the Biden employment figures, most of those new jobs, not most, but a high percentage of them were not US citizens and they were low wage jobs. But when you say to the American worker, these people are not to the employers, I should say that you're not just going to be able to hire a bunch of people and explain, exploit them and pay them a minimum wage. Wages will go up and people will be in competition for American citizens. And you're going to, you're going to save a lot of money on social costs. When I drive through this rural area that I live in and I look at certain federal and state offices, they're packed. Health, education, housing, food. I just got back an hour ago from a local market. I think everybody there had an EBT card, so. And many of them were probably not legal. So my point is that we don't even talk about that. The left gets really angry and say, well they pay taxes? No, but we're going to get rid of a whole black market. The black market in the United States is estimated between 2 and 3 trillion dollars. And you know, when I'm looking at myself right now, I go that way. There's a huge swap meet I've been to. It's a lot of cash. I go that way. There's a lot of roadside stands, and I go that way. And I know four corners. It's all cash. And I know from trying to find somebody to do anything from plumbing to electricity, you talk to these people and they won't work unless you get cash. So just to get rid of that element of the economy or to prune it down, we're going to get a lot more federal revenue and we're going to have a lot less black market economy. There's so many insidious aspects to illegal immigration. That's why a Heritage study suggested it costs us $170 billion a year. And not noticeable or covert exactions and debits in all manner of the economy, from federal, local, state subsidies, to the black market, to law enforcement, to drugs, you name it. And so everybody asked me, like, I'm sitting in this house that never had a key. I remember one time my grandparents went to New Mexico. That was the only time they ever left this farm. And they asked my parents to watch it. My parents were going out and they said, victor, there's a key somewhere. So I walked down here. I was like 14 years old. I went through every drawer to find the key to lock that. They had no key. And that was true of everybody today. This is Mad Max, this area. And I said, what changed? Was it human nature changed? No. Was it the culture? Partly. But a lot of it was illegal immigration. It really was. I didn't. I never knew. Nobody knew what M13 was, or the Nortegnos or the Serenos gang or SWAT team. That didn't even exist out here. And I'm not talking about so called, oh, white people. No, no, no, no, no. Our neighbors were Greek American, they were Portuguese, they were Mexican American, they were Armenian, they were Japanese. It was the most diverse, natural diversity, diversity in the world. The only difference was when I went to high school with people in grammar school, nobody said, I'm Chinese, I'm Japanese, I'm Armenian, I'm Mexican. Nobody self identified. But it was diverse. And this open border just polarized everything. Especially the idea that when you walk over the border and you put your first toe in the United States illegally, there's A whole, whole mechanism and industry that says to you, you are a victim. Now, you may have come from Micho Khan and you never saw a white American, but they did something to you. So when you come into their territory, we're here to help you, your children get affirmative action. We will make sure you're not discriminated in the workplace because we're going to assume you're going to be an object of oppression, and we'll help you fight your oppressor. That is the message that the Democratic Party has been giving. And it creates a terrible attitude. And I tried to fight it for 20 years at Cal State Fresno, to my students and say, you know, if you can speak and write English better than people who were born here, and you know Latin or Greek or you can read French or German or you're acquainted, you, you are going to be independent and confident in the university and you won't have to rely on a crutch of your ethnic fides. And anybody who does does that to get ahead career wise, because they're not confident in their power. I get back to what Tom Sowell always said to me. He said once to me, you ever been to a black doctor? I said, I have, once. And he said, I only went to black doctors and that when I was growing up. And I said, well, was that because of segregation? He said, not really. He said it was because of discrimination. I said, I know that to get through medical school and be discriminated, you had to be better than other people. So I said, do you go, oh, no, I try to find white male doctors, because in the academic world, they play the same role that blacks did in the 1950s and 60s. He was being facetious in a way.
- [63:43]
Sammy Wink
But he wasn't the benefits of discrimination.
- [63:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
He writes about that when you are completely audited your entire life. And he mentions that in every realm of politics, culture and economics and many of his works. If you have a press that hates Donald Trump and hates Republicans, then you're going to have less corruption than you do a Democrat. It's not because they're better people necessarily, necessarily, but because they're afraid of what the media is going to do to them and uncover. But when you have Senator Menendez, who went to prison the other day, yesterday, today, he knows that they give him a pass. If you're senile and you're Joe Biden, then it's a cheap fake. But Donald Trump has to go take the Montreal cognitive assessment. And that's what he was saying, that when you have a hostile State system. He doesn't. Don't equate that with approving that he doesn't approve of it. He's just saying when you're confronted with a deterrent or a hostile system, it makes you combative and makes you rise to the occasion. And when you're treated in the opposite way, where people make excuses for you, then you take advantage of that. It's human nature.
- [64:55]
Sammy Wink
Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about the Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Stay with us. And we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. You can find Victor on YouTube and on Rumble. These podcasts are. So please join us there. So, Victor, the Senate Judiciary Committee had a hearing on the Joe Biden cover up. And every Democrat was my understanding, or at least almost all of them did not show up.
- [65:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
A guy from Vermont showed up. 1.
- [65:37]
Sammy Wink
Why did they do that? Like what, what point does that serve? That there was a brilliant Joe Biden administration, that there was no illness on the part of Joe Biden's, you know.
- [65:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
Mind their thinking goes like this. We had a coup in 2020, what we were supposed to do. We had a bunch of insane people running. Were we going to get the Castro, Mr. Julian Castro? Were we going to get Spartacus? Were we going to get Pocahontas? Were we going to get Crazy Bernie? Were we going to get Pete Buttigieg? We had nobody. And they were all one of them. Pete or Elizabeth or Bernie were going to win. So we had to get old Joel from Scranton. So we had a couple. We knew he was senile. That's why we brought him. He was an empty vessel. So we used him. So what? That's what we did. And we got, we got him elected. And then for four years we got the most progressive agenda in history because nobody knew who was running the country. We just said, oh, Joe, get out there. Like the guy on Star Trek, right? His drum, you know, the original Star Trek.
- [66:40]
Sammy Wink
His name was John Gill.
- [66:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
John Gill, yeah. And you know, and then you go. And that's what they did. And then we got caught. So he couldn't fulfill the mission finally. But we got four years out of him. And if he had, you know, he had the stress test debate and he froze. But it could have happened a year earlier. So we take the win. We got four years, okay? And we came close with Kamala. So what are we, why are we going to go to a hearing and hear all this stuff that he was senile. We know he's senile, but what's the purpose of this? It's just to rub our noses in it. And that's what they think. They don't ever think, oh, my God, we tried to put a senile, demented person into the presidency. And although we controlled him, there were periods where he was talking on the phone with foreign leaders. He had the nuclear codes. We gave him the power to destroy the world almost. And he was completely non compos mentive. Oh, my God, I can't believe we did. That's what they should be thinking, let's never do that again. I think everybody knows now that whatever they're guilty of, they project. So they understood that, and that's one of the reasons they kept talking about Donald Trump. They're doing it now. He's saying, 79 years old. Remember when Donald Trump was our 25th amendment? 25th amendment. 25th. Hey, Rod Rosenstein McCabe, can you get a wire? Hey, can we get Bandy Yee or whatever her name was, the Yale psychologist. Let's get her in here. To say that he needs an intervention, a straight jacket, because he's crazy. That's all they did. So then they made all that architecture of mental illness. Then you get somebody who is really demented and they think, how dare you Remember the Robert. Her transcript Psychodrama. Can we just see. You guys will release the transcript. Can we just see the tapes so we can make sure that the transcript actually represents what he actually said? And can we see his notes so we know that his ghostwriter was not having access to classified information? That is terrible. You're making fun of some senile people. That's ageism. Remember all that outrage? It's got a little. There must be a box in Washington called the Outrage Machine with knobs on it, and it has antenna and Internet. And so there must be some little nerd and he thinks, how do you get angry? And he turns these knobs and it goes out to Rachel Maddow, it goes out to the squad, it goes out to the View. And then they say, walls are. Walls are closing in. Walls are closing in. Walls are closing in. Bombshell. Bombshell. Bombshell. And there is somebody behind the curtain doing that. It's almost like they're automatons with the outrage odometer on. Yeah, it is. They don't think for themselves. Then you have this Rachel Maddow at what, 25 million a month for four days? Is it one day a week? Four days? So she's making 6 million bucks an hour. And she's out there preaching this socialist equity and fairness. And you want to think, well, if they're laying everybody off @ MSNBC and CNN, all you have to do is say, I want to raise my hand. I only want to get $1 million an hour, and let's spread the wealth. They never do that. They create this facade of ideological communism, socialism, but it's really a facade to square the circle of their own greed and their insecurity, but their greediness, graspiness, they're really materialist. And then they feel guilty. So they have to say they're socialist in the abstract. But you look at all of them. Nancy Pelosi, insider trading, Rachel Maddow, the Biden Consortium. And that was all veneered over with Kering and how dare you? That's not who we are. How dare Donald Trump. How dare he mention my son. Remember that? No, you did.
- [70:56]
Sammy Wink
When you're talking about the Biden Consortium, I'm just a little bit worried about Jared Kushner and his consortium and the work they're doing in the Middle East. It's going to look really very.
- [71:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, he's been under the radar, but I'm a little worried. They have a new phone out, a Trump phone, and the Trump shoes and this downtown club in Washington where you pay 500,000 and then the crypto companies. So my point is this, is that I think their operative agenda is that they've tried to destroy us every way they can. So whatever we do is going to be audited ad infinitum. There won't be one thing. Even if we wanted to be crooked and sell influence, we couldn't, because they're examining us in a way they never did by. But I would like just to see them not do any of it. And I, you know, I'm out in the middle of nowhere, but every once in a while, somebody will call me and say, you should mention this on this show or you should do this, or, I have a product, you know, and I've never taken any money and I've never called up anybody and said, I can do this for you. It's just I don't have the opportunity. So maybe I'm morally sound because I don't have that type of temptation, but I just don't think that anybody in the vicinity of Donald Trump, Trump, at this revolutionary moment, counter revolution. Excuse me. He has such a thin margin of error. Any little problem, they're trying to destroy him every second, and he's got three and a Half years to go, and you don't want any exposure like that. And just look at the history of the presidential. You've got Iran Contra, you have Watergate, you have the Bill Clinton Monica thing. There's always going to be exposures and scandals. And so you don't want to give them a freebie.
- [73:11]
Sammy Wink
No, not at all. Well, Victor, we're at the end of the show and so I'd like to read some of the comments. This time I took them from our Rumble Channel. One of them, we were talking about Churchill and World War II. I believe the. This was a Saturday show and the commenter said Churchill didn't want to have unconditional surrender because he knew that would incentivize the Germans to fight to the bitter end. Roosevelt was the one who announced the goal of unconditional surrender and blindsided Churchill. And I thought that was interesting.
- [73:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
That did come from Roosevelt. But at the Casablanca Conference, Churchill agreed to it. The one who was blindsided was Stalin. And he was the one, of course, that had made an arrangement with Hitler under the Molotov Ribbentrop. So he had no grounds to criticize it. But Churchill was just. His attitude was, this is how World War I ended. On the plus side, we didn't have to. We lost 17 million people in World War I. We the combatants, but we didn't have to go in and physically take Germany or we will lost another 10. And then the counter argument. Yeah, and that's how we got the Versailles armistice without a clearer victory or defeat. We got the Versailles Treaty and then we got the Nazis. So that was where it came from. It was all from the very beginning, 1940. Not the very beginning, but by 1943, when they had a little bit of confidence, they had stopped the Blitz. They were winning the war of the Atlantic. They had driven the Nazis out of almost out completely of North Africa. They were going to land in Sicily then for the first time. And the Japanese, they had taken Guadalcanal. They were starting to really hurt the Japanese tanker fleet with submarine at that point. They set and they were starting to bomb deeply into Germany and Eastern Europe. Not that it was successful yet, but then Roosevelt and Churchill felt that they could issue a communique about unconditional surrender. But a lot of people criticize it because it means, you know, the Japanese were probably. You could have probably negotiated a surrender, I don't know, somewhere after Iwo Jima, say in March of 1945. And if you had said to them, you can have your military government, you just have to get out of China and you've got to get back into Japan. They probably would have taken it because they were about ready to be destroyed. But that wouldn't have been a good thing. Not at all. But a lot of Americans, the sad thing about this, when you look at wars, they're not like this. They don't start off with few casualties. Then in the middle of them, they reach a crescendo, and then they decline Toward the end, it's more of a slope. So they start out and right before the end they get really bloody. So the worst year of casualties from 1939 to 1945 was late, say June of 44 to August of 45. That's when everybody died.
- [76:30]
Sammy Wink
All right. And then also on Sheinbaum, who is the president of Mexico, two comments, very short ones, but they're interesting. Laura Schiller, President Scheinbaum seems to have found a reason to shut up. You were talking about how she shouldn't be provoking.
- [76:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
She found a reason, I think it's called billion dollar tax on her remittances, a high tariff to stop her 171 billion dollar trade surplus and shutting the border down so the cartel's $20 billion infusion of cash in the Mexicanomy stops.
- [77:13]
Sammy Wink
And then the last one was also on Scheinbaum, too. And very I think all of us have this question a bit. How is a Jewish person named Sheinbaum the president of freaking Mexico is what I want to know.
- [77:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean, how does that happen? There are a lot of people who migrated to Mexico from Europe. Vicente Fox, remember him? Fox isn't a Latin name. So there was I had an in law, my brother's wife was from Mexico and she's deceased now. But her father was prominent in Mexico and her mother was Jewish. And I knew another family that operated a chain of theaters in Mexico. They were Jewish. So Mexico is not a diverse. If you're asking me, is it diverse like the United States, no. It has a lot of indigenous people that have been sorely oppressed by the conquistador elite. But every time I've lived my whole life with people from Mexico, and this is what is so strange about my politics, that it's aberrant. Because when I look over my entire life, of all the people I knew and I grew up with the Oklahoma diaspora, those are people who came from Oklahoma, the million people from 31 to 1945 that came to the United States from California. And they were holy rollers, fundamentalists. I'm just being stereotypical now. And they were from the south, they had Southern accents. So I should have heard just endemic prejudice. I heard some, but when I was confronted with just nonchalant racial bigotry, it always came from the Hispanic community and it was insidious. It was being working with people and saying we have to wear long sleeve shirts so we don't look like an N word. Or I went over to a girlfriend's house and the grandmother said about one of the women girl that I was dating that you tell her not to sit out in the sun too much. Or I have two children, one of them is blank, blank and the other is white. So there was an endemic. Nobody wants to talk about that. But that Latin American culture is the most racially aware culture that I've ever experienced. More so than the so called North American white culture. It really is.
- [80:10]
Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, thank you for all of your wisdom today and thanks to our audience for joining us.
- [80:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you for everybody for listening and viewing. And I finished my first week of new sinuses and they hurt like hell.
- [80:25]
Sammy Wink
But they're, they're recovering.
- [80:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's a new age.
- [80:29]
Sammy Wink
Yes, this is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen and we're signing off.