← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
From Trump Ally to Critic, Joe Kent’s Changing Path | Victor Davis Hanson
01:20:07
Joe Kent honorably served the United States during his 11 deployments to combat zones in the Middle East.
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Victor Davis Hanson
It's a tragic figure because he was 11 deployments into combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. His wife was a CIA operative and tragically killed. He served honorably. He owed a lot to the Trump administration because he had been a defeated congressional candidate twice, and it was very likely that he did not have a political future. And Trump allows Tulsi to bring him in, and he's like the number two, number three people and the Director of National Intelligence. And then he knows that she's vulnerable because people have suggested that her lectures about forever wars put her at odds with this. So you would think to be sober and judicious, he would try to follow the directives of the elected president. And if he could not do that, he would write a very nice letter and say, I'm in opposition, and leave. But he didn't do that.
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Jack
Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And no words right now, because Victor's finishing breakfast, so. But he needs.
- [01:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
He needs that strength. I'm a total wreck.
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Jack
It's all right. Victor is a wreck. Is better than most men in tuxedos and limousines. We're recording. Yeah, on the 21st. Saturday, the 21st. This episode is up on the 24th. Victor Davis Hansen in his own words is brought to you by the Good people. Rob Louie, the great Rob Louie from the Daily Signal. Victor's the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. A man with a website, the blade of perseusvichterhanson.com go there. Tons of free stuff. But Victor also has exclusive material. You need to subscribe. 650amonth, $65 discounted a year. And you get to read two articles every week, one video every week that Victor does exclusively for that site. So I think I got it all in there. Victor, by the way, I saw Rob. I was in D.C. on Thursday for the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, and Rob was there. He's just the greatest soul, but so many people there were after me. We love Victor. How's he doing? How's he doing? I have some special insight about you, but you're beloved. Wherever I go, Victor beloved.
- [02:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
That was very nice. You know, I had a. Just off topic. I had a kind of a bad week because I'm trying to develop my lung, redevelop it, losing the lobe. And then I had all that. Lost half my blood volume and all the second surgery to find the bleed and all that. And, you know, you don't want to press your heart. But I've been. I had been walking about 10,000 steps for three days at heart rate about 75 to 80. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, whatever I did, I mean, I'm get up to get a drink of water, 100, get dizzy, really I'm dizzy, but more dizzy. And then anytime I walk, 95 immediately hadn't done. So I wrote this. I wrote my doctor and he said two things that I kind of sloughed off. He said, well, you were on this beta blocker and then you got off and you've been on a long time, so your heart is overcompensating. I said, well, I wrote him back and said, well, the first three days I felt great. He said, it's called the rebound effect. So if you suppress a heart rate and when. Sometimes, you know, you would get in the 60s when you were walking with it, but it felt very artificial. And then he said something very astute. He said once, the good ecstatic part, you know, you're ecstatic getting off it in three or four days, then the rebound. And that'll last either a week to three weeks even. And that'll mean your heart will be at 10 to 15 to 20 beats higher. And then he said, you lost half your blood volume. It's been hot. I bet you're dehydrated. And I've never been dehydrated in my life. So I went to get a blood draw for a test and the woman said, you have no veins. I said, I have the best veins. I have vampire veins. And she said, no, I can't even get blood out with a pediatric needle. So you've got to drink some water. I said, why? She said, because you're severely dehydrated. And I started drinking 16 ounces and then it kind of oozed out. So four days ago I thought, wow, it's now been seven or eight days since I was off the drug. Maybe he was right and the rebound effect will fade. And maybe I've been chugging water, right? And the last three days I've walked 8,500 steps and the heart rate's steady, 73 to 80. So I'm just very. That's a wonderful doctor to be able to remind me of that.
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Jack
Well, your post op has sort of been that phrase, you know, two steps forward and one back.
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Victor Davis Hanson
It has been some days I get up and I feel. You know what the worst thing I've about it is? It's very humiliating. I was always you know, I was always very physical. I don't mean necessarily particular, but I always did things. I fixed sprinklers, I climb up in the barn and fix a rafter or I, you know, spray weeds. I did it all the time. And I'm like an invalid because these weeks, whenever I kind of forget, oh, there's a sprinkler broken, water's shooting out, I get on my knees and next thing I know, and I look at my watch and it was 155, you know, and then I wouldn't sleep. I hadn't slept more than two or three hours. And then it's very, I can't drive. I tried to drive around the yard and all of a sudden I thought, ooh, I don't want to be one of those people. You read about that older man, elderly gentleman, 72, ran over a pedestrian. So it is very humiliating. But I'm trying to do all the rehab, you know, the spirometer and walk, and all of this is a sideshow because the real question is, is this thing going to come back or not? So I'm also now scheduled for my next blood biopsy and ct. So got to stay upbeat. People been very nice, right? All these wonderful stories and letters. I just.
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Jack
Yeah, no, I was at mass before the, before the prayer breakfast the day before. A couple people stopped me there. I mean, they were praying for you right then and there. So it helps.
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Victor Davis Hanson
It really does.
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Jack
It's a beautiful thing for people to. It's not all about you. I think this has other impact on influencing people's religiosity and the belief that prayer is meaningful. It does matter.
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Victor Davis Hanson
It is, yeah.
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Jack
So, Victor, I think we'll get started today by getting your thoughts on an important essay that's come out in the Spectator by Chris Caldwell. It's titled the End of Trumpism. And we'll get to that when we come back from these important messages.
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Bradley Devlin
Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin and just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen, whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, or his short form content for the Daily Signal. Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. I always leave an episode learning something new.
- [07:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands War.
- [07:39]
Bradley Devlin
And in the age of clickbait and rage bait. That's a really good feeling. Right?
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Jack
The media. Thank you, you can leave now.
- [07:46]
Bradley Devlin
Well, if you agree, you might like my show, the Daily Signals long form interview podcast called the Signal. Sit down. Every week we take you behind the scenes of the biggest battles in Washington, D.C. as they happen with some of the biggest names in politics. We explore big ideas and we analyze the policymaking process from an unabashedly and unapologetically conservative perspective. And that's important now more than ever with the Trump administration back in office, because in 2024, you sent Washington a message it couldn't ignore. It's your government and together we're taking it back. So check us out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you enjoy. Victor Davis Hansen or there too. And drop me a follow on X radleydevlin to stay updated with what's happening on the Signal. Sit down.
- [08:31]
Jack
We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I should have also mentioned at the Daily Signal Victor also does four times a week. Victor Davis Hansen in a few words do check that out. It's about seven, eight.
- [08:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
I just started again after my hiatus of three months, I think.
- [08:49]
Jack
So yeah, you're doing about four a week and about seven, eight minutes each and really spoon sized, bite sized. Victor Wisdom so here's what Chris Caldwell, who's so Chris is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. He used to be one of the most essayists for the Weekly Standard back in its heydays. Terrific guy, but he's written somewhat a controversial essay and it's titled the End of Trumpism. And for the guy who has written the Case for Trump and the forthcoming book, the subtitle, I think the Fall and Rise of Trump, who better than you to reflect on this? But here's what Chris wrote and bear with me, folks. Trump has and he's talking about Iran off the bat. Trump has escaped other predicaments of his own making. But there is something different about this one. The attack in Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of his own base, so diametrically opposed to their reading of the national interests, that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project. Those with claims to speak for Trumpism, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, have reacted to the invasion with incredulity. Trump may entertain himself with the presidency for the next three years, barring impeachment, but the mutual respect between him and his movement has been ruptured and his revolution is essentially over. He goes on at great length to say to be increasingly critical. It matters, chris Caldwell says in the public square. Victor, what are your thoughts on this?
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Victor Davis Hanson
Well, as somebody who you know, have written for about 50 years, it is very, very hazardous to offer a prognosis in what we Say in Latin, in medias rebus, right in the middle of things. So what do I mean by that? Let's just say that the regime in Iran really is exhausted. And they have scattered around certain emergency silos, three missiles here, 10 drones there. It would be impossible to get them all. And they're letting them off to show everybody that they can take this blow. But I don't know why they did it. They have convinced the NATO partners of two things, that they are trying to shut down the straight horror moves that our allies need. They've convinced them that if you let this regime do this, they'll do it again and they will control it. And they've sent an inner range intermediate ballistic missile to Diego Garcia, which is beyond the range of which they said their missiles were capable of 2600 miles. They said, oh, we don't have anything over. You take a map of Europe and you put concentric circles and you'll see that most of the European capitals are now in range of those. So that kind of shocked them. So what I'm getting at is I think Christopher doesn't see that we're in a very fluid, volatile point where I ask myself abroad, strategically, I say, and then I'll get to the domestic very quickly, but I'll say are the Gulf monarchies that begged us not to do it, that triangulate with us, that pay Iran off so they will be safe, they pay them the dangled, and then they secretly fund Hamas or they, some of them fund Houthis and Hezbollah. Okay, are they now angry? No, they're more on board than ever. Because basically they said, if Trump leaves this regime intact and he leaves, we are going to be vassal states of Iran. We already were, in a sense, but now it's overt. They have the ability to ruin our tourist industry, our oil industry, and they're crazy. So what I'm getting at is the world at large has not abandoned the United States like the left has, and part of the right pace. And we don't know where we are right now because the command and control has been wiped out. There's other people that will step up. We don't know if they're capable. We don't know. We don't know what the Iranian people are going to do. We don't know to what degree the Israelis are going to direct all their attention to attacking the Revolutionary Guard, and they've been doing that with drones. When you, when you send in tactical aircraft like Apaches and Warthogs, then you have to have not air superiority. You have to have air supremacy because those are low flying targets and some guy can take pot shots and get a lucky shot and shoot somebody in the windshield. That can still happen. But it shows you that if they're flying freely over the Gulf and along the coast, then they, they're pretty secure that there's not going to be a great deal of danger because there's not a lot of resistance left. So these things can be. Nobody predicted the Berlin Wall would fall. They said it would not happen for years. Other people predicted Tiananmen Square would lead almost immediately to just like the end of the Soviet Union. It didn't happen. So we don't know what's going to happen. But it's very volatile. But let's just say if it did happen Cuba, the Cuban government would probably, and I'm not going to, you know, prognosticate after warning about it, but there'd be a good chance it would lose control gradually if they see what happened in Iran and Venezuela would not want to rebel or go revert back to the Chavez Maduro regime. So everything is in play right now. But if it should happen that Iran has regime change, then you look at a president, you say what were the three biggest worries outside of China? And I shouldn't say outside that the United States presidents have had. One was a nuclear Iran and a troublemaking, subsidizing terrorist Iran, which we don't want to touch because we thought they were invincible. Two, the slow leftist takeover of south and Latin American with these left wing governments that the Chinese, as they had been doing with Iran, they're propping up and the use of Cuban mercenaries, bodyguards and ideological missionaries all over the Western hemisphere. And who's the beneficiary of that? China. And for us to take out the Chinese pipeline, I'm being metaphorically, but the access to Venezuela and maybe Iran you could see as one scenario in three weeks. A collapsed Iran, a revolution in Cuba, six weeks, who knows? And Donald Trump would not have failed. He would be the greatest president in the last, I don't know, 50 years, 80 years. I think Chris knows that, should be aware of that domestically for what he said to be true. If you were going to be completely analytical, you wouldn't cite Joe Rogan, Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens, even though they have a lot of clicks. You would look at polls and you would say what does an anti Trump poll say on cnn? What does an anti Harvard? And you look at them and the MAGA base is much higher than people who poll that? They're just straight Republicans. Straight Republicans that say, I'm not a big Trump supporter. About 60 to 70%. The MAGA peoples. One poll had them 100%. 100 to 90%. So for his article to be convincing, you would have to have demonstrable truth that there is a widespread, not just, you know, unease. Everybody has unease, but I'm saying it translates into actual defections, and I haven't seen that. And the polls don't indicate it. And the other practical question, so you're a Trump person and you didn't want to have forever wars, and you see that Joe Kent resigned. Then you say, well, who are the other people that are avatars of no forever wars and the mega. Oh, J.D. vance, he just came out and said, Trump had no choice, he had to do it. Tulsi Gabbard, she just asked for a vote of confidence from Trump and she got one. Bobby Kennedy, he's been mum. So there's no wise Joe. Nobody followed Joe Kent out the door. Even a good example is right in the crucible of January 6th. Betty DeVos, remember that, resigned, and Elaine Chao resigned. And what did the people say? Oh, there's going to be a mass exit of all of his cabinet officials so they don't go down with his ship. And that was it. And then I'm just quoting from this manuscript that's now in galley proof. I thought when I looked at the evidence that Donald Trump, his fall would have lasted a lot longer. It only lasted about a year. Yes, all of his rivals were out polling him in early 2021, but once the indictments came and the mug shots, he was rebounding very quickly. And there's nobody that had a better record of governance at Ron DeSantis. He was the perfect MAGA. He was the MAGA agenda without the hysterics and the fireworks that Trump can often display. And he pulled out after the first primary. So what I'm getting at is all of these epitaphs and postmortems for Trump have always been wrong. And he's taking a really, really, really big gamble before the midterms. But the midterms are April, May, June, July, August, September, October. They're over seven, seven and a half months from now, if you get the Straits open, you'll have a flood of oil and the price will collapse, just like it has done before after embargo. So I'm not saying this is going to happen. I don't know. But I'm just suggesting it's very perilous to predict the end of Donald Trump and his mega movement.
- [19:24]
Jack
I want to follow up first. If a major disruption happened and you couldn't get to the store, fair viewer and listener, how long do you think you would last with what's in your house right now? If it's anything less than a month, you need to check out our friends at my Patriot Supply. They're America's number one preparedness company with over 3 million satisfied customers. And right now, when you go to preparewithvdh.com, their best selling four week emergency food supply comes with an additional week of free food. This is the best long term storable food you can find. You're getting at least 2,000 calories a day, real meals made with real ingredients, no artificial flavors or colors and shelf life measured in decades. Look, we all know we need to have some food stored for emergencies. Why not get it from the most trusted folks in the business and get a free week of food while you're at it? Go to preparewithvdh.com to get your free week of emergency food today. That's preparewithvdh.com and we thank the good people from my Patriot Supply for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, my follow up is about that word Trump and I don't know what it means. I guess it's pretty variable. But I think one thing that we've seen in the last week, if people have corralled these old Trump video clips that go back even 40 years, one thing Donald Trump has always been consistent on is the need to address the threat to Iran. So if Trumpism does not have Donald Trump of all people being responsive to an immediate threat from Iran or looming threat, I don't know what Trumpism means.
- [21:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
Then he even said he would take Carg island when no one knew what Carg island was. And the thing is there's a lot of things that Trump can do if you take Carg island and whether that means you put a protective airspace around it or a blockade so you don't have to actually put Marines because the whole island is probably now by now booby trapped and subterranean tunnels and you'd be in a Gaza like situation, maybe, who knows. But if you just blockade it by air and sea and you say you're not going to get any oil out and that might spike the world but they wouldn't have any income and they're already freezing their assets. So if you're an Iranian and you're, how do you get paid? How do you have any Money. Look at Cuba. So this is 93 million people. And they can be easily boycotted, embargoed, et cetera. And we haven't really done all of that yet. And at some point, we'll see. As I said before, there's a rock and a hard place and I don't know where the greater laxity is, but they think they can wait Trump out with rope a dope and that because when they cause havoc, they are going to get pressure from the Gulf monarchies on Trump, from NATO on Trump, from his base on Trump and the US economy on Trump, and he'll cry uncle. And then they will be free. The Chinese and North Koreans and the Russians will come in, rearm them, and in two or three years, they will. The first thing they will do is try to get a nuclear weapon with the fissionable material they probably still have here hidden. And now we know they can hit Europe with it and they will threaten Europe and they will threaten Israel, etc. Etc. And the next time you have to go in, it will be very different, much more difficult. So why you have air supremacy, you should finish the job. Whether you support the original incursion or not. I mean, it's not. Everybody said, this is our. This is God. I heard one of the stupidest things. Somebody was. I was watching. It was CNN or something. They said, yeah, but they said, this is Putin's, this is Donald Trump's Ukraine. I said, my God, man, there's two million casualties, probably a million point three dead on both sides. We've lost, tragically, 13 soldiers. Come on. Russia's lost a million people. It's lost a city the size of greater San Francisco. Out, gone, kaput. And Donald Trump, we've never done this before, tried to fight an entire war. We did in the Balkans. But even there, I mean, people were calling, I think after week two for Clinton to quit. And they said, you can't do this. You can't remove, you can't do this, you can't do this. And they did. And when you try to go on a little bit and off a little bit, you get eight months of bombing Libya and Gaddafi. And remember, Gaddafi was in a reform mood after 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was opening the country up. I went there and I can tell you they had cell phones for the first time. And people were ecstatic that the kids were taking over. They were opening the Italian archaeological sites. I spoke there at them. Sabratha, for example, Leptis Magna. It was a very exciting time. And then we go in a few years later and bomb them. And we had no strategy. And that was Hillary, Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and the loquacious Susan Rice is now warning everybody that she's going to take retaliation when the Democrats come back.
- [25:03]
Jack
Pritzker did that too, yesterday.
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Victor Davis Hanson
And let's put it. He is a reprehensible character. He really is. Yeah.
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Jack
Well, let's talk about Joe Kent first, though. I do want to get a, get in something we talked about the last time. This is not a, this is a non sequitur. The devil. What color is the devil? You raise it.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. Did you find out?
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Jack
Yeah. Well, I love our listeners and viewers. I'm just gonna say Jim B. Sent me a, a near treatise email on the colors of the devil from.
- [25:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's what I like about our listeners. It's like having an instant encyclopedia.
- [25:35]
Jack
Oh, yeah, the devil is all colors. I remembered correctly.
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Victor Davis Hanson
He's a multicolored devil.
- [25:41]
Jack
He's multicolored blue, mostly black, red, some green, some blue. And the green I remembered from shocking.
- [25:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's chameleon like or that. And the inter.
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Jack
Isn't there a, is there a reason, like, why is he. When he's green, what does that signify? When he's blue, what does that signify?
- [26:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
There's a word in ancient Greece, poikalos, that means multicolored. Well, I don't know how, you know, how certain fabrics can radiate colors. He's not green, though, huh?
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Jack
He's. He was green. Yeah. No, my point is I do remember him being green at Chartreux, which is the most beautiful stained glass in the. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and indeed he is green there. I thought maybe, was I remembering right?
- [26:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
But he, I thought he looked like a groiper with horns, you know, like the green frog. Pepe the frog.
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Jack
Well, maybe, maybe he'll be on Tucker's show then sometime. So anyway, Joe Kent. Joe Kent. So he was on. Speaking of Tucker. He was on the show. And let me trouble our readers just to give some indication of, I don't know, is this a conspiracy or what? So I'm reading this from MA Rothman, who posts this on X. Joe Kent goes on Tucker Carlson within minutes, not hours, minutes. The same clip, same caption, same outrage. Floods. Hundreds of accounts simultaneously. Labs tracked every amplification event in real time and the data is damning. So there was a trigger quote. The Israelis drove the decision. This is Joe Kent saying this. That was clipped and posted across hundreds of accounts almost simultaneously, not after it trended during the broadcast. Real breaking News takes time to spread organically. This had a running start. Who amplified it? Look at the coalition. Russian tv, Iranian state media, Hamas aligned, Quds News Network, Turkish state broadcaster, Sputnik, Brazil, and simultaneously Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, others. So anyway, Victor, this stuff doesn't happen naturally. Kind of coordinated. I don't know who coordinated it or not, but Joe Kent is increasingly seeming like a troubling figure.
- [28:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
But, yeah, it's a tragic figure because he was, what, 11 deployments into combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think his wife was a CIA operative and tragically killed his first wife. He served honorably. I remember his campaign. I think he was running for a Washington representative, congressional seat in the state of Washington. I might have misspoke last time and said Oregon, but he was very close. I mean, my gosh, it was a very. The first time he ran, he lost by, I think, less than a percentage. And all of the MAGA people endorsed him. Trump endorsed him and he got very close. But the second one was not as quite as I remember as the first. I know these encyclopedia listeners will correct me, but my point is this, that he owed a lot to the Trump administration because he had been a defeated congressional candidate twice and it was very likely that he did not have a political future. And Trump allows Tulsi to bring him in and he's like the number two, number three people and the Director of National Intelligence. And then he knows that she's vulnerable because people have suggested that her lectures about forever wars put her at odds with this. So you would think to be sober and judicious, he would just go to the meetings and he would try to follow the directives of the elected president. And if he could not do that, he would write a very nice letter and say, I'm in opposition, and leave. But he didn't do that. He wrote and said not only did he feel that the MAGA movement or the Trump movement was not being followed, but it was following Israel at the dictates of Israel. So he bought right into the Jewish. The Jews did it. And at that moment, then the whole new world opened up for him. And he thinks that's quite a big world on the right. It isn't as I suggested with the earlier polls that show Trump has overwhelming support for Iraq. But then magically he goes on, as you said, all of these shows, and what he says about Israel becomes the main topic. In other words, had he not said that about Israel, he may or may not have been on Candace and Tucker and all the rest. But once he said that he was insured to be on there. Then there's a second troubling aspect, Jack, and that is, I don't know if this is narratives put out by the administration that have not been verified. So I don't want to suggest that they're actually verified, accurate, proven. But there are narratives now in the meeting that he was a source of leaking and that there was pressure upon him and that he was probably going to resign. And he preempted that resignation by making a statement of conscience against Trump and Israel. And that opened up another avenue. Had he not done that, in other words, had he done what I said earlier and just resigned and thanked Trump for all of the support, they probably would not have leaked that story that he was an object of an investigation for leaking. But you get the impression that at least some people believe that he got wind that he was out, going out the door. So he preempted by resigning with this sensational charge that Israel was controlling the Trump administration and Trump had betrayed the mega movement. And that opened an escape hatch into a very lucrative podcast. I think he's going to start a podcast, too. Podcasting hard. Right? And you know, this is, this is very familiar. World War II. I mean, when we. After Pearl harbor, there was a great. For three days, there was a great debate, and that was whether we were going to declare war on Germany. I think the historical evidence suggests we were not. We were going to beat Japan first. And there was a big argument. Do not get drawn in. As Churchill tried to. We've already given him Lend Lease. He's trying to draw us in. Let's just concentrate on the people who attacked us. And then, of course, three days later, Germany declared war on us for a lot of reasons that don't make sense to this day, but it was the same idea that Roosevelt and the United States were being controlled by the British and they didn't realize it was in the US Interest to destroy Imperial Japan, but especially Nazi Germany. It was in our interest, despite what Daryl Cooper and some of the people that have been on Tucker's show say. But Donald Trump, Trump is not being controlled by Netanyahu. And if you think he is, then ask yourself who blew up all these Americans over the last 47 years? You know, they use this term apparent threat. I was listening to this guy, Jeremy Raskin, Adam Schiff. There was no apparent threat. There was no apparent threat, but there was no apparent threat. They had all these DNC talking appointments. Can they tell me when there was an apparent threat of anything? They have killed anything they've done to us. Oh, they blew up the 241 Marine Peacekeepers, but there was no apparent threat. Oh, they blew up the embassy in Beirut, oh, but there was no apparent threat. Oh, they helped blow up the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, oh, but there was no apparent threat. Oh, some of the operatives may have had help from Iran that tried to blow up the USS Cole, but there was no apparent threat. Oh, they tried to kill Trump, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Ambassador Hook, but there was no apparent threat. When has there ever been an apparent threat with these people? Every time they do it, they're a little bit different. They always use, oh, they've killed 600, maybe 2,000 some of the military, Americans with shaped charges. But there was no apparent threat. They were doing that, so how can we respond? And that's what they, they always had deniability of culpability. They knew exactly what was going on. On October 7th, they greenlighted it. They knew that was part of their ring of fire strategy and they thought it was going to work. And no apparent threat.
- [34:50]
Jack
What if a US Navy plane had spotted the Japanese fleet on December 4th? Yes, the same thing could apply. Well, they're just floating out there. This is not a apparent threat.
- [35:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
They had radio silence. Yeah, what if they had just flown over and somebody said, yeah, I think you should take them out. They're on their way to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason. But there was no apparent threat. And so that's how they operate. Now we know that they have a strategic plan should they be an extremist or if they want to stop the West. And one of them is to take control over the Strait of Hormuz. The second one is to destroy the oil or intimidate the pests petro kingdoms who supply 45% of the world's oil into submission. And the third is to launch test rockets that can reach now we know all of the European, Western European major capital and that's what they've shown us. So if you wanted them to get out now, then you're going to have to say to yourself, well, there's no apparent threat, even though I didn't know that they could reach Diego Garcia. And there before most of Europeans greatest cities. Oh, there was no apparent threat, but I guess they kind of had a plan all along to control the Strait of Hormuz. Oh, there was no apparent threat, but I guess they went and rearmed Hezbollah and have been working to re establish its command and control. But there was no apparent threat. So it's the regime, it's who they are. They walk like a duck, they talk like a duck. They are a duck and that's who they are. They get up every morning thinking I want to destroy Israel. Then the United States and then Western Europe. And they go to bed every night thinking I didn't do enough today to do that. That's how they think.
- [36:41]
Jack
Yeah, because if they die in the process, they think they get 71 virgins.
- [36:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
So they say that they hate the west and then they go for impotence treatment to the West. They say they hate the west and then one of their daughters is a professor at Emory University for a while they ha the west and the common. A family has condos everywhere or apartments in London. So they say, they say, they say, but they hate the west like a moth hates a light bulb. You know what I mean? Yeah.
- [37:14]
Jack
Right. Well, we're going to talk about Ian Musk in a second. But first Victor. This year marks a critical moment for our country as the opposition grows more aggressive and unapologetic. The fight now reaches into the everyday decisions we make. Patriot Mobile has been standing on the front lines fighting for freedom for more than 12 years. They don't just deliver top tier wireless service. They're activists like us who truly care about our country. Patriot Mobile offers prioritized premium access on all three major US networks giving you the same or better coverage than the main carriers. That means fast speeds and dependable nationwide coverage backed by 100% US based customer support. They also offer unlimited data plans, mobile hotspots, international roaming and more. With simple seamless activation, you can switch in minutes, keep your number, keep your phone or upgrade. And here's the difference. When you switch to Patriot Mobile, you'll be part of a powerful stream of giving that directly funds the Christian conservative movement. Take a stand today. Go to patriotmobile.com vdh or call 972 Patriot and use the promo code VDH for a free month of service. Don't wait. That's patriotmobile.com VDH or call 972 Patriot and we thank the good people from Patriot Mobile for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen. In his own words I apologize if you hear my dog in the background. But part of the allure Victor of our show is we have seven dogs
- [38:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
but they've all fallen to cancer. Spotty had they were all Queensland. One of them had something wrong and she got frightened and ran out in the road and got killed. But yeah Gracie but sport died of cancer Spike is still alive. Spotty died of cancer or.
- [39:15]
Jack
I'm sorry.
- [39:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I don't know if it's kind of worried about that because we live in this farm and we were bathed in chemicals as kids and told that they were perfectly safe organophosphides and organochlorides. Oh, man. What?
- [39:34]
Jack
Your liver has processed over the years, my friend.
- [39:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I'm not talking about. Well, I'm speaking.
- [39:38]
Jack
Yeah, you are.
- [39:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
Somebody said for the first time the other day, remember, you're a cancer survivor. I never heard that term applied to me, of all people. I said, no, I'm not.
- [39:46]
Jack
Well, I know from many of the comments, actually, that people feel a deeper brotherhood with you over that.
- [39:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's like a sword of Damocle that just hangs over you because it's what the Romans called cankerer the crab. The crab is always crawling inside, eating you.
- [40:11]
Jack
Depressing me, Victor.
- [40:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
Okay, well, that's where we get the term cancer. I get it, I get it. It's just Latin for crab.
- [40:19]
Jack
Yeah. Okay. More depressing things. I wonder how, when Chuck Schumer goes to the airport, is he waiting in a three hour flight?
- [40:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, he's ushered by a vp. They all are. And you know they all are because the socialist par excellence Bernie Sanders had that. And AOC had those rallies last summer and they were flown in by private jets. She's got three homes. And look at Ilya Omar. She's communist par excellence and she's worth $30 million. How she got that, I don't know. And her sister runs one of these Somali charity entitlements. That's no comment needed. What it is.
- [41:00]
Jack
Well, while America waits for hours to get through TSA and now there's a threat that smaller airports are gonna be shut down and some of them are not so small. Or I travel out of. I saw Bradley, which is out of Hartford and Springfield, is on a potential shutdown list. Here's a headline. Musk offers to pay TSA workers as DHS Homeland Security funding lapse hits airports. He posted on X this morning. We're talking on Saturday the 21st. I would like to offer to pay the salaries of t. GSA personnel during this funding impasse that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country. This dude is truly unique.
- [41:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I don't know how many there are. There must be at least 10,000, don't you think? That are out? No. Yeah. If you pay them $500 a day, wouldn't it be. I mean, he's talking about $5 million a day. Right.
- [42:04]
Jack
I don't know when you're worth half a trillion or more. Maybe it's a rounding error for him or maybe it's a loan.
- [42:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
But still it's a great, it's an amazing gesture. Yeah. And it comes at a time when we were told that you've got to take all the billionaires money and drive them out of your state or tax them to death.
- [42:23]
Jack
Oh my God.
- [42:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
As your former, you were a former New Yorker, you were going to.
- [42:27]
Jack
Kathy, let's talk about that. If you don't mind. Then two related things on the tax front. One is your governor, your current governor, Gavin Newsom told a SXSW conference this is the last week in Austin, Texas. He said, we California have the most progressive tax rates in America. Texas taxes poor folks more than we tax our richest. The question for you is who's the higher tax state, California or Texas? Who are you for? Are you just for the 1%? Are you for the 99%? So he's calling California a low tax state because.
- [43:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, he's not very bright. What he does is he takes the income tax alone and he's right about that. Because of the black market which is huge in California and because of the tax entitlements, 50% of almost 50% of Californians do not pay the state income tax. About 1% pay about 40% of all of the income tax revenue maybe and probably 5%. I put it this way, 5% pay 40% of the income tax and 1% pays the rest 50. So what I'm getting at is yes, he's right that you in California, because they don't. It's socialism. It's redistribution, confiscatory socialism. Half the people don't even pay income tax. But that's not the whole story. There's been study after study after study and they do the following. What is the price of electricity and what is. It's a state run public utility and it's controlled and it's the highest in the continental United States. What is the gas tax? It's higher now in Pennsylvania. What is the sale tax? It's like in theory seven and a half state. But if you look at all of the county and local add ons, it's about 11 to 12%. And yes we have a lid, it can range from 1 to 2.5% on property taxes. But our assessed evaluation is really the highest in the United States, continental United States. So when you look at all of these taxes that hit the poor because they have to pay. If they buy something, they have to pay sales tax, they have to pay property tax, they have to pay gas tax and their controlled utilities are sky high. Then they are the most taxed. And he knows that. I think he knows that. But the thing about him is when he gets. Just think of what he said the last few days, last few weeks. He said that he told the European leaders that they basically need to take their knee pads off. In other words, they crouch down before Trump and perform a foul sex act upon him. That's what he said. And then his team, when the brave young kid who was trying to expose all of the fraud and help the taxpayer comes to California, he tweets out that he's a. With pictures as if he's a sexual predator. Oh, the boy, kids are going to like that. And he's tweeted out that he'd like to hit Trump in the mouth. He's gone to a group of accomplished black people and said that he's. They're no smarter than he is. He's no smarter than they are. I mean, every time he opens his mouth, he says something either foul, vile, mean, stupid, self, incriminating. And then he has these. And then he wows these, you know, these magazine editors and they always say how good looking he does this with. Ooh, ooh, ooh. And he does this strange kind of a Tim Waltz body contortion, California version of Tim Waltz. So that's what he does. And then what does he not do? He has no plan to. We have a $25 billion debacle called High speed rail. It was supposed to be pretty much that cost for the whole thing. It's going to be 300 billion. It's not even going to be close. It's never going to be built. Even when they. Not one foot of track has been laid went from Bakersfield to Merced. If they get that 170 mile link in five years, it'll lose money every day. Unless people like you, Jack, as tourists to California say, oh my gosh, I gotta get to Merced and Bakersfield.
- [47:15]
Jack
Yeah.
- [47:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
Skip Yosemite, Skip Carmel, Skip Malibu Beach.
- [47:21]
Jack
Not knocking Merced. Not knocking.
- [47:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm not making. I live in a. I live here. But people in my experience are not flocking to Selma either. Right? And so. And then he's got no new dams. We're short now water. We have a whole bond that has been already funded that has misused. He blows up dams, he doesn't build them. He's got the highest, as I say, Taxes in the country. The schools are shambles. They're in the bottom 10%. One out of every three people who checks into a hospital has diabetes in California, 27% of the population was not born in the state. And there's no, there's no means to acculturate, integrate, assimilate them. And then we've got these 70,000 licenses that were issued to people who did not qualify. So we've got a bunch of IED truck drivers everywhere that are moving explosive devices that could kill people in a second. And he doesn't talk. And we have the Pacific Palisades fires. We've had all of these fires from his, I don't know what you call it, Green flag forest program or green fire prevention, where you just let them burn out and you promise. Yes, you try to clean the hillsides of Malibu or Palisades. It's against the law. You go into the Aspen fire, you want to clear out, brush against the law. He shut down the trucking, the mineral industries sitting on vast deposits of oil and gas, and we're not developing them. Why? He imports gasoline from Japan and oil from Saudi Arabia. And believe me, as sure as the sun gets up, gas is now over $5 here. And every time I go to Palo Alto or I drive through there, it's seven.
- [49:06]
Jack
I saw a picture of 850 something.
- [49:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. And that's because of our special Gavin Newsom green blend and the highest gas taxes. And he's driven out two more refineries that are left. And so now he has to import that very hard to produce special strain of gas for the summer from the Caribbean or from Japan. And now it's going to be very, very expensive. As sure as the sun gets up, he's going to say, oh, Trump raised your gas prices as if going from $7, $8 to 10 or 9, and it's going to get there. And when he gets there, I think people are going to explode that voted for him. Right now on the polls, we have two Republicans that are ahead of the pack. And this is very ironic because they pushed, as you know, Jack, these jungle primaries and they wanted to put everybody in, in these blue states so that basically they thought they could get rid of the Republicans and then run two Democrats in the final and there would be no choice. And that's happened here. But it looks there might be no choice for Democrats.
- [50:16]
Jack
You know, speaking of Democrats, we're going to take a break, but before we do that, mention the governor of the city where I used to live. I Haven't lived there for I think 40 years. But the accent still is. You can't get away from that. Governor Kathy Hochul is begging wealthy New Yorkers who fled the city to encourage their rich pals to come back and continue padding the Empire State's lavish public handouts. This is from the New York Post article. So in 2022, K. Hochul, running for governor, said, jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong because you don't represent our values. You are not New Yorkers. She was kind of echoing something that Andrew Cuomo had said a couple of years earlier. Conservatives are not true New Yorkers. Well, the other day, Hochul is begging maybe the first to wealthy people who have moved to Florida. Maybe the first step should be to go down to Palm beach and see who we can bring back home because our tax base has been eroded.
- [51:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
Poor baby.
- [51:21]
Jack
Yeah, oh gosh, duh. Is.
- [51:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
But what she said was this insult. Her retraction was more insulting than the offense because she said we need our progressive to help people on entitlements and you got to come back here and let us rob you for more monies to pay for entitlements for people that are their programs that are fraud ridden. That's not going to win, Kathy. I'm sorry. They left. They're gone. Kaput, gone, banished, smoke back, end of story. They're not going to beg you to come back so that you can insult them by stealing their money and then running one of these fraudulent welfare problems we've seen in California and Minnesota. And I remember when she said it, she was running against Li Zone. Get out of here. Get out of here. You don't have our values. Well, they did get out and you should get out and we'll see what happens then. Poor Mandami while she's doing this. Then there's Mandami with Khalil Mahmoud in the governor's mansion, the pro Hamas person right after the IED attacks. And then his wife. It's very funny. She's a daughter of Syrian immigrants and one of these naturalized citizens. I just wrote something called the Ungracious Immigrant. And all these people, whether they're illegal or whether they came in on a student visa or whether they got naturalized, they are on gracious. So she comes here. We're in a war in the Middle east and now we get this whole trove of stuff that she liked social media postings that said that basically October 7th was a hoax, that Jewish girls didn't get raped. And she thinks Tel Aviv shouldn't exist. And then he comes in with his little fake smile and says, this is unfair. She's just a private person. And then the next thing you know, she's got a layout for some fashion magazine dressed up as a postmodern European in the know. I don't know what woke person. And she's commenting on everything. She's illustrated this book that's utterly anti Semitic. And so we have. My point of all this is you have Kathy Hochul begging, who's Jewish, who's begging for everybody to come in.
- [53:43]
Jack
No, she's. She's Catholic.
- [53:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think she's Catholic.
- [53:45]
Jack
Oh, excuse me.
- [53:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
I thought she was Jewish, but she's not because I saw her in a synagogue, but maybe she was visiting. Okay, so she's doing all of this and then she's begging these wealthy people. And then her mayor, who's is powerful in some sense more powerful than the governor, not maybe by statute, but by publicity and everything else power. Then he's sending a message via his wife and via his own past statements that he doesn't want people, especially Jewish people. He doesn't like them. And so you better get your narrative straight. Why don't you just say, we want all the Jewish American financiers and wealthy and successful people that we drove out with our anti Semitic attacks on the one hand and our confiscatory taxation on the other. We want you now to crawl back and give us the money because we have all sorts of socialist dreams that are not realized. And we want your money. And it may be fraudulent, but don't dare object.
- [54:50]
Jack
By the way, Victor, please ignore the mass prayers now happening in the streets of New York like we've seen in European cities. I don't want to say anything untoward to our Muslim prayerful friends, but
- [55:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
there
- [55:10]
Jack
have hundreds of people assembling in parks to do the prayer call. And I saw somebody comment, he says, you know, I've been to. I've lived in United Arab Emirates for 10 years. I never once saw people in the streets responding to the prayer. How come it's happening here in New York City now?
- [55:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Now?
- [55:33]
Jack
So come back to this.
- [55:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
This is the same. It's funny about phenomena. If. You get accustomed or culture aid to something. And I think a lot of the radical Islamic population, whether they're tearing apart Columbia University or they're chanting as we're in war with Iran that they want Iran to win, or we've got all of these naturalized citizens who are yelling Allah Akbar as they kill America and They think they're exempt. It's kind of reminds. And I think a lot of people do that because of laxative. When I was a little kid, I was in a school and there was a market across the street, and we were told it was first to third grade. So obviously they didn't want six, seven and eight year olds walking across, even though there was a crosswalk to this market. Skipping the lunch and buying candy because of the traffic and everything. And I think his name was Mr. Evans. He said, I don't want. In those days, you had Mike. You know how there was no taboo about having a mic coming into your room like Big Brother?
- [56:42]
Jack
Yes.
- [56:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
So they had the Monday every morning. We had the principal's message. Young men and women, I want to remind you, you are not, not, not to cross the street. You were to eat your lunch. We didn't even have a cafeteria. We had to eat outside or in our classrooms. But he said, you're not to go over to the market. And everybody was doing it. And they thought because everybody was doing it, nobody would do it. And finally some people got fed up. Parents got fed up. It was dangerous. Drivers got fed up. The teachers got fed up. He got. And then they just said, if you're going off campus, and they locked the gate and you couldn't get back in. And they called everybody's parents. It was like, I went once to a B.B. king concert in Celindarino when I was 17, and they had like. That was in Fresno, three. And everybody said, oh, you know, you're gonna. You're gonna go to prison if you have marijuana. But if you go in there, there's 5,000 of us, 10,000 of us, they can't do anything. I'm sitting there listening. Everybody was lighting up. Yeah, everybody. And no, this is the marijuana. And then the next. So then Elton John was playing about a month later, and I went to Elton John and wow, same thing. And then Jimmy Buffett was playing. I think it was Jimmy Buffett. And all of a sudden, I swear he started. The lights went on, police came in, and they went down. Yeah. And they just started arresting everybody. What I'm getting at is if you push it it, and you push it and you start humiliating an authority and the law, there's going to be response. And so I would remind our radical Islamic friends, if they're our friends and they're not the radical ones that are committing violence, you keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it, and you think that Islamophobia is going to help you when you say, how dare you, and you think another person like George Casey is going to pop up out of this military and say, well, you just shot 13 soldiers and killed them and wounded 32. And I would be just as tragic if we lose our dei. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. People have reached the breaking point, and I wouldn't keep doing it. There's not going to be a lot of illegal immigration, at least until the Democrats come back, and they're going to be looking very carefully at legal immigration. And I think they're going to be able to denaturalize some of these people who have been committing crime. So I wouldn't push it. I really wouldn't.
- [59:23]
Jack
Totally agree, my friend. We have a hard stop in a few minutes and I haven't taken a break yet. So we're going to take a break and we'll kind of come back with one final question for Victor, and that's about the late Paul Ehrlich. We'll do that when we come right back from these messages.
- [59:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children, the faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep first things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful.
- [60:07]
Jack
We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words, recording on Saturday the 21st. This episode is up on the 24th. Victor, I do have to ask you, though, if the little Victoria crossed the street to the market, what candy was he getting in 1962 or whenever it was?
- [60:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
Do you remember that? Is it called Bazooka Bubble Gum Joe? Yeah, Bazooka Joe. And it had a little cut, so you could break it off easily and give it to your friends.
- [60:32]
Jack
Yeah. You could split it down. Yeah.
- [60:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. I would get that. And then. But what we did was did you
- [60:40]
Jack
save the did you save them to try to send in to get buttermilk?
- [60:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, I never did. But what we did is I won't mention his name because he became a police officer. But he was a great guy. And he would come to us and he'd say, all the little farming kids, it was mostly Mexican American group. This guy was not Mexican American, but there was about 20 farm kids. And they were like, you know, you go up on a farm and you don't cross the street without asking everybody permission. You know what I mean? But this guy Would come around and say, hey, I need 10 cents, I need 5 cents, and I'm going down my market run. And then he would go and come back with this big paper bag and give it to supplier. But in those days there was something called accessory. So then Mr. Evans said, and I want to reiterate that if anybody gives money and has someone do the buying for them, in my eyes, they're just as guilty. And then I remember all of us said, oh, man. And Mrs. Radnor was. Mrs. Wilson said, that's called accessory. And that is equivalent to the crime itself. Can you imagine a success American Graffiti?
- [61:49]
Jack
Remember asking the kid, hoping the guy will go into the liquor store and buy him booze? It's a far cry from buying Victor bubblegum, but so be it.
- [61:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know what I was giving money.
- [61:59]
Jack
Simpler, happier times. Hey, Victor, we were supposed to have unhappy times. If Paul Ehrlich was going to be right, he died a few Stanford weeks ago. Jason Riley at the Wall Street Journal wrote a very interesting piece about him, and here's what the summation of it Jason writes. Making spectacularly wrong predict of imminent catastrophe became something of a habit for Ehrlich over the decades. His dire forecasts about global warming, cooling and warming were wide of the mark. A twofer. He speculated that the US and Europe would be forced to ration food, encouraged couples to limit themselves to one or two children. In 1971, he said that by the year 2000, the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands inhabited by 70 million hungry people. Three years later, he predicted America's economic joyride is coming to an end. There will be no more cheap food. There'll be no more cheap, abundant energy, no more cheap and abundant food. He was also very famous for the population bomb. But Victor, I ask you this only because he is from his bet.
- [63:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Remember his big wager?
- [63:06]
Jack
Oh, with Julian Simon?
- [63:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, yeah. He lost.
- [63:09]
Jack
One of the famous experts of all. And yet he's.
- [63:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
I feel bad. Half of me follows the Roman reminder, Nihil dice nisi bonum de mortuis. Don't say anything except a good thing about the recently departed. However, he was very provocative and he did a lot of damage. He was the one that told us, as I remember in the populate, you can have one child, but you have to adopt another one. And he convinced. And you saw that with aoc, who says she's not having children because she doesn't want to bring them into a. A boiling planet. And he was the first wave population. And then they said, well, it's more than population, Paul. It's also environment, the green movement. He appreciated the green movement. He lived up in San Francisco. He was kind of a cult figure, as I remember. And Population Bomb was. Gosh. When I was in School in 1971 at UC San, everybody had it. Everybody had it. It was assigned in a couple of mandatory courses I had. And it was all. He said that by 2000, Britain would be completely starving and it would have no food or fuel and scattered.
- [64:25]
Jack
That was Johnny Carson all the time. He was a popular figure.
- [64:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
He was a big fan of the. He was very photogenic. He was very well spoken. He was very. He was sort of a public intellectual. He really was. And he was wrong. Yeah, he was a Carl Sagan prototype, and he did a lot of damage. And just. I mentioned UC Santa Cruz. That was a crazy. It had just opened. It was a very good university, but the people were completely insane. In the early 70s where I went. And I can remember, because the lake. We're speaking about people who just perished, died. Cesar Chavez. And I talked about him elsewhere. We can talk about him if you wish. But I can remember the first day I went to my dorm room at UC Santa Cruz Cal College, and it was in September, and we had picked the raisins. And when you pick 90% of the crop, people miss some and then they get very sweet, the remaining bunch or two. So we kids would always go through and get. And these were not table grapes for sale. The big green ones, they were the little yellow ones. Now, they're very sweet, same species, but they have not. Not been girdled or had gibberellic acid put on them to pump them up. People forget that. That those green grapes you buy in the store are not natural. But, yeah, the little yellow ones are. And they make girdling. Yes, and we made raisins. So I bought some that I picked myself and I brought in the next day my parents stayed. We bought a. I don't know what it was, Motel 6. We moved all my stuff in. My twin brother moved in. He was in another college. And then I would straighten it out. And then the next day you could come. So my dad, you know, I think I told you, we went with me, went in the shower and two people were fornicating and the nude. And he said, oh, my gosh. And then he leant back against the picture of Jimi Hendrix and he almost fell through the wall where they'd had a party and they kicked holes in all the Sheetrock. And then they put posters over Them. But I went in there and then he left and I was all alone and I had my door open, going. And then I had a table, you could see, and it had grapes. And I swear everybody that came by would stick their head in. Are those grapes? I said, yes, they're grapes. You're not allowed to have them here. I said, they're mine. Who picked them? Are they union? And I said, they're union because I picked them and I own them and I picked them. Well, you're part of the problem then. You're one of the grower insects that are just doing this to Caesar and all the people. I said, no, no, that's in Delano. That's. That's the table grape. This is a completely. This is a family, small farm, raisin production, not very different. And even the people in Delano, the Jumeirah family, the Zulums, you name it, all of them were small. They came from the Depression with nothing. They came from Italy, they came from Serbia. They came a lot of them, Zanovich, Pandal, they came from Serbia, Croatia, and they were hard, hardworking families. And, you know, Chavez basically said, I'm a non violent, Christ like Gandhi figure. You're all evil. And that spread to the Kennedys coming out there. But all these students, and they were all, most of them for Los Angeles, they were very wealthy. And I said, have you ever picked grapes in your life? No. Have you ever been to a vineyard? No. Do you think that Cesar Chavez is non biological? Yes. I said, he's not. They sabotage driveways with nails. They have sabotaged shipments. When they swarm a field, they use force. They send people down to the border to stop illegal aliens with force. It's high stakes unionization, and it's an utterly corrupt union and it will not, you know. And then this is before he went to Synanon, and you played the game where he was using profanity and force and using the sentinel on thugs to enforce his own union. I should have said. And everybody in these small farming communities would talk to workers that worked that were not in the union, and they'd always say, he's a communist. Not that he was. I don't know whether he was or not. He's socialist. But they said, there's things going on in that union you wouldn't believe. And every once in a while he'd fire. They had a bunch of Anglo or whatever you want to call them, white, great college graduate socialists that were. And then he would get rid of them all as disloyal. Then he'd go down to Tehachapi and his compound where he's buried today. But my point is that nobody was quite aware of it, but it had permeated that he was doing things that you shouldn't be doing. And there were rumors and then it comes out. 95 year old Dolores Huerta says that she fathered two children. I think she was married to his brother too, by Chavez. DNA proved it. And they're in their 60s and didn't even know until recently. And then she says she was raped, forcibly, violently by him in a grapefield and then coerced in a hotel room. And then we find out he groomed two daughters of some of his advisors, supporters and sexually groomed them. They're now quite, you know, in their 70s, I suppose. And he was having inappropriate sexual abuse. I don't know what, I don't want to know what happened. And they were preteens, 812 and there are others. And he was a serial adulterer. So he had this kind of angelic face. I heard him in the park in Selma. He came in the 60s or 70s. I went and listened to him first year in high school I think. And he was a saint. Everybody said he was saintly, but he was doing things that if anybody else had done them and it was known, the people around him knew what he was doing and they didn't say a word because they felt that Dolores welter they said to him why didn't you tell people he was a rapist? You could have helped. Well, I had to save La Casa. I had to help the union. So what happens with the left now? Now the left established that we don't judge people by the bad and good unless you're left. I mean Martin Luther King was a serial adult. David Garrell said he had over 40 liaisons. And there was that Ralph Abernathy memoir where he said that King watched a rape take place in a hotel room and might have egged on the rapist. And we said, America said well that was the evil part of him. But he did a lot of good and he did a lot of good. So therefore the plus and minuses, that's how we. But we don't do that with somebody like Robert E. Lee. We don't do it with somebody like Woodrow Wilson. I'm not a big fan of him. How about Earl Warren? They took his name off, they erased it from Bolt Hall. He was a good man. He was good in his private life. I disagreed with him, but he thought he was doing right. But he was completely Trotskyized. So the left has this propensity and it's going to be very interesting because when they get into situations where you can't character somebody as an old white guy but one of the DEI brethren, then you have a real problem. And all of a sudden, Jack, I walked for 20 years and there was a Cesar Chavez statue. There's a memorial garden at Cal State Fresno, and there's Gandhi and Martin Luther King and they have a big black tarp over it immediately. And the reason is that he should have had Martin Luther King exemption. But he's in the intersectionality. And one of the intersectionalities are women. And when they see coming out of the Epstein files and the MeToo years, people are saying, we don't really care if you do this to women. Women. And so I think they're going to cancel Cesar Chavez Day. He's a. It's a state holiday in California and they're going to call it Farm Workers Day. They're going to change.
- [72:49]
Jack
They have.
- [72:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
Almost every single town, over 30, 40,000 people has a Cesar Chavez building or street.
- [72:57]
Jack
Yeah, highway. You know, I remember from my childhood as a Catholic that he, he came out of a hunger strike and the first thing he did was he had communion. That was the first. And the kenned were involved in it. And so, yeah, he had this whole.
- [73:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
I grew up on what was the Catholic bishop from Fresno. He was from Los Angeles. He was from Fresno. He went to Los Angeles and he was.
- [73:25]
Jack
Mahoney.
- [73:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, he got in trouble himself. Remember later, he's still alive.
- [73:30]
Jack
He's a bad egg.
- [73:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, well, he would give lectures about the piety of Cesar Chavez. He was the bishop here, or not the bishop, I guess less important in the Fresno diocese. Then he went to Los Angele. But he was a big advocate also of open borders, which Chavez, you know, Chavez club had people get clubbed and everything about it. It was so strange because when there were rumors that he was not non violent and his brother was in charge of the strong arm, you know, using violence or when they would intimidate other workers or when he would say things like I hate growers. And then he got this synonym, weird cult. And they were violent, violent people and they played these awful pornographic or not pornographic, but they get together and then they scream at people and use profanity and try to insult them and humiliate them when he was doing all of this stuff. And then the other dark side of the sexual perversion, you couldn't say anything, anything. He was he was saying he was a saint and well, me toos come for him harder they fall feet of clay and it's just a reminder that nobody is exempt. Nobody, nobody, nobody.
- [74:57]
Jack
Yeah, I said me too. Comes to us all, but God comes to us all too. So yes, in Victor, we gotta end this in a minute or two, but I have a couple of comments to read from so many folks. Thank you for taking the time to comment. This One is from R. Bridges, U9M. I'm so glad that people have been praying for you. When I heard you were sick, I was so scared. I kept telling God, please don't let anything happen to him. We need him right now. You are loved, Victor Davis Hansen. You are loved by God and you are loved by all of us. Thank you that a lot of people say things just like that. Raymond Layfield, 2785, writes, it's wonderful to have you back. I grew up on the Central Coast. You are common sense. Your common sense approach to the issues is a breath of fresh air. And finally one from CSBN4UN. I don't know what it stands for, but Victor have encouraged my grown children and a number of teens to listen to your broadcasts and consider your books as a Christmas gift. Sent one of your books to a history loving and plans to be a history teacher high school senior. You are among a very few who give such a good historical foundation for everything unfolding now fits well into our homeschool years decades ago where I attempted with good materials and the Bible to lay such a foundation which I had your publications in those years. Appreciate all of your YouTube videos, but y' all are a great broadcast do always talking about you and the great Sammy Wink. Also love your family history stories which weave into today's events in your life. So all to all to those and all else who who take the time to comment. Yeah. Appreciate it.
- [76:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'll just remind before we leave. Don't jump to conclusions. We're witnessing a rare moment in history. Haven't seen anything like this since the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberation of eastern Europe from 89 to 91. And there are geostrategic political historical forces at play, whether it's in Venezuela or Cuba or Iran, which involve the entire Middle east, which involve all of Latin America's future. And they have a direct bearing, whether by intent, as I suspect, but by collateral effects on China. And we don't know how it's going to end up. But there is a potential to remake the world as we knew it, at least in the United States. As we look at out at our neighbors in South America and the Caribbean and we look at the Middle east, it's earth shaking.
- [77:40]
Jack
It's a new world order. I can get behind.
- [77:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
Victor yes, and don't jump to conclusions that it's over or we know what's going to. We don't know what's going to happen, but we are in the middle of a radical transformation if all of these
- [77:54]
Jack
things play out well, Victor, as ever, tons of wisdom here. Thanks for sharing. Thanks folks for watching and listening. Do check out Victor's website, the Blade of Persia. Do go to civilthoughts.com and sign up for the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Society. God bless all. We'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. Bye bye.
- [78:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you everybody for listening and watching. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.