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A
Well, Victor, I'm going to contradict myself in part because 50 years ago, 60 years ago, the left was as terribly violent. There were bombs going off all regularly in New York City and all different places, California. So they're obviously not immune to it. But 50 years ago, politically, you had a Democrat party that. Yes, we won, you lost. And Tip O' Neill and John McCormick.
B
And you make a good point. The, the authorities were not on the side of the terrorist. Yeah. Now. Yeah, they're on the side of the terrorist.
A
Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen. Welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. And he's a man with a website, the blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. You should subscribe later in this episode. I'll tell you why I think you should be subscribing. And we are recording on Tuesday, October 7th, 2025. This particular episode will be up on Thursday the 9th. Our loyal and frequent listeners and viewers will note that we've had a few days off to the consternation of many. Victor had a little hiatus. He's allowed to take a little hiatus, right, Victor?
B
I mean, Lincoln, I had a diagnostic hiatus. It wasn't vacation, but I'm glad to be back and we're going to have some changes and I think everybody will enjoy them.
A
Okay.
B
Well, we'll be back on track in just a few days. Right? Right.
A
Well, we're doing this show. This will be out on Thursday. And you interviewed Senator.
B
Yes, Kennedy, John Kennedy from Louisiana. He has a new book, how to Test Negative for Stupid. And I think you'll enjoy it. It's got everything in there. We, Scott, his, his standoff with David Duke, when he had debated him and he's got, oh, wow, the latest developments about spying on US Senators, everything. It was very fascinating. He's a very good senator.
A
Well, we're going to talk about that. Spying on senators and plenty of other topics. And again today when we are recording is October 7th. So when we come back from our initial important messages, we'll get Victor's take if whatever he might have to say about this anniversary of. I've always hated using that word, anniversary. But this is the day of the horrific attacks and murders, the mass murder of Israelis by Hamas. But then we'll also get Victor's thoughts on the Gaza deal. We have ICE in Chicago, ICE in Portland. We have Jay Jones, the Virginia Democrat, attorney general, candidate of Immense controversy. Madness in the uk. All that. Victor's take on all that when we come back from these important messages. High blood pressure is one of the highest risk factors for mortality. Nearly one in two adults have high blood pressure and meaning there's about a 50, 50 chance you could be affected. Getting help for taking control of your blood pressure is crucial for your health and longevity. 120Life is not just to help manage high blood pressure, it also can be beneficial for those with diabetes. 120 Life comes with a risk free 2 week trial pack and this offer a money back guarantee if your blood pressure doesn't improve or you're not satisfied. For a limited time, try 120 Life and save 20% off. Just use the code Victor at checkout at 120Life.com 120 Life offers a risk free trial with a full refund. If you don't see lower numbers in two weeks, go to 120L I F E120Life.com and use the code Victor to save 20% and there's nothing to lose except your high blood pressure numbers. Go to 120life.com and use the code Victor to save 20% off and receive free shipping today. Remember, you must use the Code Victor to get this special offer. These statements have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. We are back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Want to remind folks again Victor's website the blade of Perseus. $65 a year to subscribe or 650amonth. And when you do that you will be able to read the exclusive articles Victor writes every week, twice a week for the Blade of Perseus and one video a week. And plus there's tons of other free stuff. Blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. Victor, anything you want to say about October 7th and anything you would like to share the percolating Gaza peace deal?
B
Well, the latter. Second is what I understand. The Europeans who are always terrified of any violence in the Middle east because they have unassimilated, unacculturated, unintegrated minorities ranging from 8 to 16% depending on the country. And they whatever happens, a hiccup in the Middle east they feel is a body blow in their own streets because they don't know what to do with their insane open borders policies. I was on Piers Morgan yesterday, Jack, and there was a radical Palestinian activist and he went on and on about genocide and I think everybody misses October 7th. On October 7th, there was no Israelis, no Jews in Gaza. They had been gone for 20 years and they had left the infrastructure there. And of course we know what happened to the hothouse industry and the whole thing. They ransacked it. As soon as they had control, they had an election that the Bush administration pushed. That was the last election they ever had. And in that election, the only opposition was the Palestinian Authority. They threw people off rooftops. So they liquidated the opposition. And then over the next 20 years, the dupes and naives in the United States, but especially in Europe, gave them both directly and via the United nations relief organizations on refuge. They gave them billions of dollars. And what did they do with that money? Did they make a Dubai? No, they built a multi billion dollar subterranean torture labyrinth and hostage labyrinth. And then they began to wage war on Israel and they became the recipients of Iranian money. But as I said, On October 7, there was no violence. They had their own country, they had their own elected government. Their chief rival was actually the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank. They were on cool relations. And the Egyptians and the Jordanians were scared of Hamas because their chief patron was Iran. And they were one of three satellites, the Houthis themselves and Hezbollah. And there were about 15 to 20,000 day laborers who were going into Israel right across the border and making double or triple what they could make in Gaza. So everybody was talking about a normalization. I wasn't. I think our listeners weren't, because they know the nature of Hamas, but that kibbutz culture down by Gaza was the most liberal of all of the culture, I guess you would call it the rural culture in Israel. So what I'm getting at is if Hamas wanted a complacent, a compliant, a partner in peace, you could have asked for nobody more so than, than left wing kibbutz people right across the border who were, somebody was working in their fields and they were injured, they would take them to the er. They, it was considered a model. Even the Netanyahu government was saying that at least with Hamas, you know what they, what they're like and they're, they hate you and you can, you can, you know, deter them or deal. So there was peace after October 7th. How could you, when they butchered 1200 people? They have a movie coming out, I guess it's on Netflix. And then again they have a documentary and I've seen some of the trailers, but you know, beheading, torturing, and let's just dispel the, the idea that this was Done without the consent of the Gazan people, because we have people maybe 5 to 600. When they heard that the flimsy, I want to accentuate that flimsy border wall was destroyed, they flocked in to rape, kill, murder, loot Israelis several miles into Israel. And then when they were afraid the IDF would finally and belatedly come and they all fled back through the holes in the fence, they were treated as conquering heroes, returning heroes. And any hostages they had, they, Hamas had to protect them from, from their own people because they thought they were prized and valuable and they would prove to be valuable. But the Gazan people, who now we are told had nothing to do with this. They were all behind it. They were trying to kill or assault the hostages before they went subterranean. So my point is, take away October 7th and they wouldn't have any Israelis in Gaza. And it's sort of like they started it. And anybody who knew Israel and the history of Israel and the thin margin of error that it has to survive would know they were not going to tolerate that. And so I'm sorry, but I know a lot of people are very angry about Gaza and everything. But my final thought, Jack, is if you have an enemy who is just murdered, raped, butchered, tortured people, necrophilia, beheading, you name it, every medieval conception possible of horror was perpetuated. And then they go back and they dig themselves into a hole, as I said, kind of like the labyrinth of the Minotaur way down in there. And the only openings are of three types. They're under moss, they're under skulls, and they're under hospitals. Then you tell me how you're going to bring them to account. When I was in Iraq, twice during the Iraq war, I went, I flew over the first time, Fallujah, and then I went on ground to some of these cities where the US Marines had to go route out ISIS and Sons of Sodom. And they looked like a moonscape. They really did. And anytime you have an urban population and there's terrorists in them, much less under the ground, somebody who criticizing Israel should just tell me what they were supposed to do. Because the left never tells us that. They're just supposed to say, oh, okay, we were there in your country 20 years ago because of terrorism. And after the 67 and 73 war, yeah, nobody wanted Gaza, so we were occupiers. And you settler colonials, okay, and then you butchered all of us when we left and gave you back the country. And you had your election, you had your billion dollars of aid. And so you butchered us, so we'll just call it even. That's what they thought. I don't think so. It's like Pearl Harbor. It's like saying, well, you dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and they only killed 2,500 people at Pearl Harbor. No, they started a world war and they were ready to kill a million more Americans if we invaded. And I guess they sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind, so to speak, in biblical terms, but I'm pretty adamant about that. I think that Israel could have done this, they could have done that, they could have done that. But I don't believe anything Hamas says, any of the figures that they cite, any of the incidents that they relate. I don't believe anything. And after listening yesterday to a Palestinian apologist scream and yell, I'm even more jaded. And that's. That's sort of what I feel. So the point is that if by the standards that the British have used, that standards that the Turks have used, if you. If you look at what had happened in Azerbaijan and the recent ethnic cleansing of Armenians, if you look at the US military, what they had to go through in Iraq and Afghanistan, if you look at any counterinsurgency effort, I think most scholars who have looked at Gaza, the civilian death rate versus the rate of terrorists killed is not inordinate. If anything, it's less. Surely in the Ukraine, Russian war, we are not telling the Ukrainians to text people on the receiving end of a missile or drone going into Russia. And we are not saying to the Ukrainians, you have to have a ceasefire. We're not saying to the Ukrainians, you have to have a coalition government. We're not saying to the Ukrainians that we're going to suspend military aid to you unless you do this and this and this, we are doing that to the Israelis. So I don't know how to put it otherwise, but it's been two years. And final assessment is, if we had this conversation on October 7th, it was pretty bleak after what they had done, killing and murdering these innocents. And Iran was on the edge of getting a bomb. We were told that the invincible Hezbollah was on the march and that Hasad was solid as a rock, he's a Russian tributary. Nobody knew what to do with the Houthis. We were told that Hamas itself had eight or nine thousand rockets. We were told that between Iran, the Hezbollah, the Houthis, and. And Hamas, that they would blanket the skies of Israel with 200,000 missiles, rockets and drones and now, two years later, for the foreseeable future, there is no Iranian bomb. It's been humiliated. Tehran has. It has no air defenses. The US And Israel went at their leisure through it. Hezbollah has been, I don't know, decimated. That's an underestimate. It's more than 1 in 10 of their ranks, maybe 4 out of 10, their leadership has been liquidated. If there is no more Syria, Assad dynasty, it's over with after more than a half a century. It's maybe a mess in Syria, but it's not the Assad's. If you look at Hamas, I think they've killed the Israelis, have killed the top seven or eight, even the billionaire class, some of them in Qatar. And the Houthis, every time they send a rocket, they lose a port facility or a power plant. And I think they're starting to get the message. It's a stupid thing to go tit for tat with Israel. And the United States government is decidedly on Israel's side. And because of all that, the deterioration in the ability of Israel's enemies to fight back, there may be peace. It'll be peace that Hamas has a choice between either surviving and maybe facing exile or rejecting the peace terms and allowing Israel to go down the list. That list is in the hundreds and they have the names of all of these people. And I'm sure if there is no peace, they're going to bring every single one who was anyway responsible, culpable for October 7th to account. And that's about it. Jack?
A
Well, Victor, I got thrown off there for a second. I'll have to actually watch and listen to the podcast to hear what you had to say the last few minutes. But I did hear you say at the outset that in your discussion with Senator John Kennedy, which will be a podcast up later this week, that you spoke about the news that just came out that Senator Grassley released, he got information from Cash Patel about the FBI under Joe Biden's administration spying on at least eight United States senators and possibly some Republican members of the House. Also. This is our glorious FBI. Any thoughts on that, Vic?
B
Well, there's irony, isn't it there? Because the left seems to like to do that. They keep talking about a police state, but it's always the left. Barack Obama, remember, spied on the AP reporters, Jack. He had the electronic data on them. And then under Joe Biden, the FBI partnered with Twitter and Facebook to censor news about the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop. Then we had, under Obama, CIA Director John Brennan, who was spying on the Senate staffer computers and then under oath of course lied about it. No need to get into James Comey, but the Democratic DNC denial machines in full steam right now they're saying, well these senators and they were people like Marsha Blackburn, Lindsey Graham, I mean they were the, the senior leadership of the Senate, Ron Johnson, others they were connected with January 6th. That's not true. They were just senators that talked about everything but more importantly said, well, they didn't tap their phones. That's a lie. They monitored their phone frequencies and locations. So if Victor calls Jack tonight and the FBI says at 7:21pm Victor Hansen called Jack Fowler and talked for 22 minutes and 30 seconds. That's not monitoring tapping because they didn't actually take a tape recording that we know of of the phone call. No, that, that's monitoring tapping, interfering. And I think, I think people I talked to Senator Kennedy about, I think they'll file civil lawsuits because all and sue. Although it'd be ironic. Who do you sue? I think they should sue Merrick Garland. They should sue personally. Jack Smith. I don't know if they have immunity now or what for what they did, but Jack Smith's coming off really bad, badly lately. Remember he, he didn't disclose that he got a sweetheart free legal service and didn't report his income from a law, his former law firm Preventive Law Services on the free. And of course we know that he was trying to railroad Donald Trump into insurrection which has never really been charged successfully I think in 100 years, if ever. And it blew up in his face. We remember he went after the Virginia governor and that was reversed his conviction 9 to 0. It's got a terrible record. That's why they appointed him special counsel, I suppose because he has a record for being reckless and mean spirited, but pretty much incompetent.
A
I sent you an ex post and we don't have to go over it because I don't have it in front of me. But it was a list of political prosecutions under the Biden administration from Steve Bannon to President Trump. And it looked like it was about 40 or 50 people on that list.
B
Giuliani, Bannon, all of them. Yeah, it would be as if, you know, Eric Holder said basically blank you I'm not going to, under the Obama administration. I'm not going to follow this congressional subpoena. And so did Merrick Garland and so did the doj. When they said we wanted the transcript of the Robert Her Biden conversation, they said Nope, nope. We'll give you the transcript, but we're not going to give you the actual. And there were discrepancies, as later was revealed. But Peter Navarro, they put him in ankle. Remember that? And man, what. So what would they like that the left, if somebody once showed up at Merrick Garland's house and if they subpoenaed and he already has refused a congressional subpoena and just arrested him on the street. So what happens is when you're on the left and you. This is why they do it. Everyone, this is why they go. They project. They project their own sins onto other people. And they don't do it just for psychological Freudian reasons of guilt. They do it to prep the battlefield so that you get the impression that they're incapable of ever doing this. And therefore they do it. They get a pass because they think, we are the Civil Libertarian Party, we are the ACLU political wing, and we don't do this. And then that allows them to go corrupt. The FBI, the irs, the nsa, CIA send people to board meetings to monitor parents in Virginia or traditional Catholics, you name it. And now this comes on top of the fact that we learn belatedly that after Christopher Wray just went up there again and again and again, I don't have any information about FBI agents on January 6th. I don't know. Yes, I'll get that information to you. And he never did. And then he goes out and now we find there's over 250 FBI agents. This is in addition to FBI informants that I think Matthew Rosenberg, if that's his name, his Pulitzer Prize winner. He was ambushed in an ambushed interview by Operation Civitas. Was that a member?
A
Veritas.
B
Veritas. And he admitted that he saw FBI informants everywhere and it was no big deal. So they. They abused civil rights, civil liberties. And then they pose as a party of the protectors of democracy.
A
Yeah, but kind of related. Victor too, is this Kavanaugh wannabe assassin sentencing of eight years diminished in part because by about. By a Biden appointed federal judge.
B
She said that too. She said it was because of his trans status, Right?
A
Yeah.
B
Yeah. So Jack, if you're pulled over, I don't know, in a couple of hours and you're going 110 miles an hour, like would be Attorney General Jay Jones in Virginia. We found out he was speeding at a high reckless speed and had been. You just say, you know what? I was not watching the road because I was envisioning my transition to the opposite sex. I should say Third sex. And therefore I need equity, diversity, equality, consideration. I don't know. And you'll get off. That's what, that's what, that's what happened. And we're doing that with the trans thing, everything. So if you go in and you kill a bunch of kids in a parochial school and then you, you kill yourself or you're killed. We're not going to get your little book, your little manifesto, your handbook, your diary, because that would be too unfair to trans. And if you're, if you go kill Charlie Kirk and you're in a love relationship with a trans person and maybe you're angry about the trans issue and Charlie Kirk, well then you, you just say, if you're on the left, you say, well, he referred to his trans lover as my love. He's kind of like, as I said earlier, Andrew Marvel or somebody out of English courtly.
A
Sounds like a Hallmark movement.
B
Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's what you do.
A
And so, well, you mentioned, you mentioned Jay Jones there, Victor, and this is really troubling. Right? And let's get your fuller, let's get your fuller thoughts on that when we come back from these important messages.
C
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A
We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show talking on October 7, 2025. This episode's up on Thursday, October 9th. This episode, Victor said we got to do this. I'm going to interrupt my hiatus because there's just so much to talk about. That's how much Victor loves you.
B
I do. A lot of people said, victor, did you forget us? We only, I, we only lost one week and we're transitioning to a different platform. So you'll be able to find us. It'll be a little bit difficult in the first episode or something, but we're transitioning. And then I had to do some tests and so we just took a little break.
A
Yeah. So stay tuned. So Jay Jones, the Democrat, a candidate for attorney general in Virginia who's ahead in the polls. Polls are tightening, but he's still ahead. He texted by mistake to a Republican colleague about killing the then house, I think it was the speaker of the House, the Republican leader, let's just say of the Virginia legislature. Then talking about urinating on the graves and the children of the children. And then separately came someone reported he had conversations about being supportive of cop killings.
B
Yes, killing. And he mentioned that if he had a small number of bullets, he wouldn't. And he had a choice between killing the speaker of the legislature or Pol Pot or Hitler. Pol Pot killed over a million people. Hitler directly responsible for at least 7 million people, but more responsible for the 70 million that probably were killed in the war that he triggered. He would rather kill his Republican colleague. And what was the crime that got him so angry? He gave a very bipartisan and dignified farewell memorial resolution to a black liberal legislator who had passed away and he felt that that was insincere. So then he went on the record and said that he would kill this person and piss, excuse me, urinate on his grave. And he would like to see the face of his wife when she saw her children as little fascists killed. And then other things came out that he said that a few policemen, it was worth having a few policemen die for their inordinate conduct. Supposedly he alleged, we've learned that he was a, he had a high speed ticket and nobody in the Democratic Party feels that they owe it that Neera Tanden, who was kind of a left wing liberal apparat check who worked for I think Obama and Biden or she was turned down for a Biden appointment. She said, well, it's just private. It's just private. Well, it's not now, is it so and then notice that he didn't this was known. He knew that he made a mistake and he never called her up and said, I feel so terrible. Please don't release this. It reflect me. He just said, you know what? She's not going to reflect that. She's probably scared. If I'm willing to kill the speaker, I could kill her too. So she didn't come forward until recently. But he had no contrition. He was not contrite. He had no apologies until he was found out. And then even then, his first public declarations were basically blank. You. And then only when people took him aside and said, hey man, you're ahead in the polls. Early balloting has started. We're going to win this thing. All you got to do is shut the blank up and give some crocodile tears and we'll squeak by because a lot of the ballots have already been counted and we're winning, so don't, don't blow it. And so that's where we are.
A
Did you see the story about all the Democrats that came out and told them to drop out of the race? I didn't either.
B
So didn't Joe Scarborough sort of say that? Kind of, sort of.
A
Maybe John Heilman on the show did and I, I think Mika Brzezinski did also. But that may be, that may be the sum total of people left of center, but certainly nobody on the ticket with him.
B
You know, we're, we'll talk about, in a second about the Chicago nullification crisis, but we're getting to a point now with you look at the Charlie Kirk stuff and then you look at the Carlos Brown butchery of Arena. The beautiful young Ukrainian girl was butchered on the, on the train. And then the reaction of the mayor to that, basically more worried about De Carlos Brown being stigmatized as a murderer than the murder that he actually committed. And you put in what people said after Charlie Kirk was killed and then the sentencing that you brought up about the trans person, believe me, if that, if that shooter had tried to kill Ketanji Brown or Sotomayor and he was convicted and some right wing judge said, you know, I, I just can't see him spending. There would have been outrage, outrage on the left. And then you see what they're doing in Portland. I am really worried because it's escalating like this. And when they say something like Charlie Kirk deserved it, or they reenact him bleeding from the neck as a person student in Texas, or they attack memorials or crazy palace radical pro Hamas people kills two Jewish people at the Jewish museum in Washington, or we have attacks on ice and they cheer them on we're headed to a John Brown Harper's Ferry incident. I really, I'm afraid of that, where somebody's going to say, you know what? I'm going to be famous for taking on ice. I'll go occupy an ICE headquarters or something. I want to be the next Luigi Mangioni or Tyler Robinson, because on the. Or Khalil Muhammad or Wego Garcia, because if you're a felon or you're a thug or you're a killer, they iconicize you. And I want to be that. I want to be famous. And then we're going to have a lot of people who support that. The most disturbing thing, Jack, was in the Guardian, which I used to refer to as I was growing up, the Manchester Garden. It's in Britain. Left wing, the most left wing of the mainstream newspapers. There was an op ed. Do you see that? By that labor lawyer with a Harvard degree, American labor lawyer. And he wrote, it's time now to get all the blue states together, everybody, and we'll have a national voter compact. And what he was basically saying was sort of what John J. Calhoun, Jefferson Daisaloon.
A
Yeah, right.
B
Yeah. And we're going to create an alternate paradigm. We're not letting. We're not succeeding yet. But we're going to go on record that the federal law in its fascistic manifestations has no sway in our local jurisdictions. In other words, they're saying there is no such thing as Article 6, the superiority clause of the Constitution that says that in all matters concerning federal law, the federal government has priority over local, state, county laws. And this is a federal manner. I would remind everybody, since we're going, this other topic that I've jumped into, Jack, without your permission, your show. Victor, in 2010, you remember that governor of. I was thinking of this right now in Arizona, I think her name was Brewer. Was it Janice Jan Brewer. And she was very worried that the border was wide open and the Obama administration was doing nothing. So she was sending people down there to stop. And they passed a law in the Arizona legislature. I know you Arizonans who are listening will correct me, but it was something to the effect of clamping down on illegal immigration to help enforce. Now, mind you, this was not the federal government trying to enforce laws over the objection of a state. This was a state objecting because they weren't enforcing them. They were saying, please come in, federal government, we're subordinate. If you don't come in, we'll pass a law, but we really shouldn't, because it's your Jurisdiction. And of course Obama wanted open borders. So the Obama administration sued and the courts found, I guess properly so that a state cannot usurp, even if it's for a noble reason to enforce a law that the federal government won't. Federal law. So think of this. This is just topsy turvy. Now the left is saying well yes, that was in our interest to keep the border open, but now the federal government is enforcing the law but they don't have any jurisdiction. The state and local authorities do. The mayor of Portland, the governor of Oregon, the governor Mr. Pitzer of Illinois, Brian Johnson, the mayor of Chicago. So that was what the first stage was. Full confederate nullification. And now it is. We're going to arrest you independent reporter in Portland because you are bothering the antifa people who are using violence to attack a federal facility. And you people in Chicago who have just been ambushed by antifa leftists who have blockaded your cars with ten cars surrounding you, one of the, one of whom has a semi automatic armed protester. You we're not going to come to your. Nope, nope, nope, nope nope. We'll just call that plausible denial or nullification, whatever. But where do you go after now that we've broken those precedents the next thing is ICE detains somebody and somebody that is a mayor in Portland or Chicago tells their local police stop ice and then you have a full blooded, full bore 1861 crisis. And believe me, the left is capable of that now. They feel they have the moral high ground and we can do whatever we want. I would remind the Portland is a unique place, Jack. We're just so much morally superior than everybody else that we can nullify any law we want in the federal government except when it's in our interest and we want money. But otherwise we're kind of like I don't know, South Carolina in 1861. We have a unique culture and the federal government in distant Washington has no right to come in and say that we have to protect the federal civil rights of ICE agents or residents near an ICE facility. They have no rights. The only rights they have is what we give them as Portland or Chicago because we're full blooded nullifications.
A
Yeah, well Victor, I'm going to contradict myself in part because 50 years ago, 60 years ago, the left was as terribly violent. There were bombs going off all regularly New York City and all, all different places California. So they're obviously not immune to it. But 50 years ago politically you had a Democrat party that yes, we won, you lost and tip o' Neill and John McCormick.
B
And, and you make a good point. The, the authorities were not on the side of the terrorist.
A
Yeah.
B
Now, yeah, they're on the side of the terrorist.
A
How can it not come to violence then?
B
Well, it is. I mean, Johnson has basically said today that he is going to set aside certain areas of property that it's against the law for the federal government to enter. And I guess he means I'm making sanctuary cities so that all the illegal aliens can come to parks or buildings and we will forcibly restrain ICE from coming on this property. And would Johnson like to be told, well, if you're going to do that, then all the federal property in states you won't be able. And Newsom just sued so that the National Guard cannot be federalized the way that Trump wanted. And would Newsom, like Trump, say, well, you know, 55% of the land in California is owned by the federal government, so we're not letting anybody into Yosemite. Sorry, not, not Sequoia, Kings Canyon. No, no, no federal property. We'll let in people that we like. You're letting in people you like. We're letting in people. And there you have it. And then it gets really scary and dangerous as it escalates. And nobody is turning down the rhetoric. Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, they're all terrified of these nuts in their party. None of them have the guts to stand up to them. And, you know, they all know what they need to do. They need to go full Bill Clinton 92, 96 platform, go to the center, be bipartisan, get elected. But they don't want to do that. They want to go further to the left and they think they can bully everybody in a general election. Boy, if anybody votes for these people in the midterms next year or even in these November elections, we have Prop 50 coming up here. They're insane. It's just insane to empower these people, what they want to do.
A
We're going to talk in the last segment about the UK and probably significant focus on police over there. But I think we should talk a little about police here now because, well, we just talked about the FBI, what FBI agents are engaged, willing willingly in, in this mal. Malfeasance. And then you have a police. I don't know if he was the chief in Portland, but he certainly was a leader, a cop there advising antifa how to avoid ice. And then you have the chief of patrol in Chicago, and my understanding is the. The rank and file were furious Chicago cops. But he's the one saying don't come to the aid of of ICE agents. So we have leadership of the police in various places.
B
What would they have done if the woman that was, I think she was a professor, wasn't she one of them? I don't know. The woman with the semi automatic rifle and her companion. What if they had shot, I mean they were shot, one of them was wounded by ice. But what if they had shot an ICE person and he was bleeding to death? Would they have let an ambulance come in? In other words, I know Antifa wouldn't let them come in. They were blockaded. So let's say an agent said, hey, there's a woman with a semi automatic weapon. Oh, she shot me and called 911. Would 911 respond? And if they were responding, would Antifa let them in? No. And would the Chicago PD or the suburban PD let them force? I doubt it. I doubt it. I think that's where we are now in this country.
A
Yeah, that port, that Portland police.
B
I saw the video. Yeah, you're right.
A
He reminds me of, of not to get into General Millie. But I'm going to call the Ch. I'm going to call the ChiComs and let them know I'm going to deal. I'm gonna, I'm gonna aid my, our enemies. It's, it's just staggering that this is where we are in America.
B
It's very funny about, generally bring up General Milley. He waited until Donald Trump left office and then he let loose with, he's a fascist. He's the most fascist person, you know, just horrific things. And he was strutting around, I think he was writing a book and he thought he was going to be, you know, a la resistance. And then he went mysteriously quiet as soon as Donald Trump January 20th was inaugurated. Mr. Bully Boy. General Milley, Donald Trump's a fascist. Donald Trump's. This, this. All of them went quiet. All of them did. And of course they never said anything about Biden when he humiliated us in Afghanistan. They didn't call him any names. They did call Trump names in the first administration and there was no, you know, Nobody in the DoD wanted to invoke Article 88 of the Uniform Code. But this time they made it clear that if you're a retired officer, high ranking officer, and you disparage the vice president, the president or chief cabinet officers, you're going to be Prosecuted under Article 88. And boy, they have not had one peep out of any of these retired generals or admirals calling the President of the United States in the words of General Hayden, Auschwitz like or General McCaffrey a liar. No, he that was General McChrystal called him a liar. General McCaffrey called him Mussolini, etc. Etc. Fascist. Fascist. That was General Kelly and General Melik fascist. They're not going to hear any of it.
A
Yeah, well, Victor, as promised, we are going to go to Europe and talk about insanities in the United Kingdom, just flabbergasting on free speech and other other issues. And we'll do that when we come back from these final important messages.
C
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A
We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. By the way, Victor, before I get into these UK stories you have told us, our listeners and viewers along the way, about the book you were working on. It is done and off to the editors and it will be out in April. May, I think.
B
Maybe March, I'm hoping. Yeah, it was 127,000 words. I wrote it from January 20th through August 1st and subtitled as the Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and His MAGA Agenda. We don't they're debating the actual title return, you know, comeback, something of that sort but it's, it has to be. It was very hard to write because it was changing so quickly every day. Something had to be updated. And of course, I don't have the. Maybe I can insert it about the surveillance of the senators and things.
A
Okay, well, let me see. All right, well, I am probably on the wrong algorithms or maybe the right algorithms on Instagram and other places where I see a flood of videos about United Kingdom and police arresting, harassing, I'll say. And, and arresting. I think, I think 30 people are arrested every day in the UK for something that they wrote or even saw or retweeted or whatever on social media or carrying or waving a St. George flag. And I saw a video of a guy, a Jewish, you know, Brit, who was wearing a yarmulke, who was arrested because he was near some Palestinian protest. And that was antagonizing. I mean, you was arrested for being a Jew.
B
You know, they've arrested people in Britain for praying out loud in Christian fashion. But of course they never say anything about the prayers from coming out or.
A
To take over a street.
B
So what is behind it? You saw that when Schultz, and it was at Macron or Sturmer the other day, said that they were, they've had all of these violent, you know, they killed Jews in the uk the bomber was a rapist. He had a, I don't know if it was fake or real bomb vest. He attacked a synagogue. They've had the same thing happen in Germany with attacks. And what do these European leaders do? They say that they are worried about right wing violence and they talk in subtleties about the United States, that they feel that Trumpism is spreading and they don't look at themselves and say, why is it spreading? Because you do not believe in constitutional government and free speech. But more importantly, you ruined our country by disarming it militarily, disarming it energy wise, disarming it by getting rid of the border. You have no plans or culture. Assimilate, integrate any of these people from the Middle East. You're terrified of them and they know it. And they feel that they're going to be in control very quickly. And you want to appease them and cut deals while you still can as a majority population. But I don't think they understand there's going to be a big backlash against this. There's going to be a lot of people in Europe who say, you know, I hate to say it, but if we don't get out and vote or change, this is our last chance. These people are Crazy. They want to destroy 2500 years of Western Civ. And if we don't do something right now. And so I think they're going to mobilize. I really do. I think they'll see new government.
A
Well, there have been, you know, massive signs of some of these rallies. A million people in London. I, I thought they were like, I saw a rally of like 1.3 million people in Bulgaria. We're a Christian nation. I doubt many of them go to church, but they, the man in the street understands that the, that we've reached a hinge point here. By the way, Starmer, the Prime Minister, maybe folks have seen this. A few weeks ago, when Donald Trump was over in England, there was a press conference and he was pressed on free speech. And he said, free speech is one of the founding values of the uk we protect it jealous, jealously and fiercely, and we bear down on any limits on free speech, which is just total bunkum, because it's his policies.
B
It's shameless. Yeah. What he meant, means is that people to the left are morally and intellectually superior, so they can say all they want, but anybody else, it's hate speech and disinformation and misinformation, and we're going to prosecute you. And so that's what's, that's why I was kind of surprised by the Wall Street Journal. You know, Trump has this compact, these commandments. He's saying that the universities have to. I understand some of them might be unworkable, but one of them was to enforce free speech and stop harassing conservatives. And I think the Wall Street Journal said, how can you go in there and tell them what to do on their campus? And they had things like, no more great inflation. But to be frank, Wall Street Journal, all they're doing is following the Obama precedent. He came into universities, he said, we want the exact number of athletes for whatever cause that are female, that are male. So they went into Cal State, Fresno, and they said, you know, title nine, you have a football, basketball, track, and you're going to have to eliminate this sport, this sport, this sport, this sport, this sport, because there's too many men and you're going to have to create a huge equestrian and do this, this, or we're not going to give you any federal money. And so they started the idea that they had and they went after Hillsdale without mercy. Hillsdale College, they were always going, they cut the GI Bill. They said, if you have GI Bill, you cannot use federal dollars at Hillsdale. You cannot, because they will not follow our deferment of action, all that. So they created all of these precedents, and then when it boomeranged on them, they're so. I. I think it's good that they don't want to enforce free speech and they will not allow people to speak. Then they don't need federal dollars. Stanford's got a $36 billion endowment.
A
Well, take the great inflation you just mentioned. That kind of stinks of consumer fraud, right? If everybody is an A student, if everybody is summa cum laude and you are bearing that certificate to the job world, you're. It's essentially a lie.
B
I really change, you know, about this. I think you're absolutely right. I've taught 21 years at Cal State and probably 10 years off and on at Pepperdine's graduate school and then 20 years at Hillsdale, and based mostly on my experience teaching. And then I had three children, and I noticed something, that I had a daughter who was very bright, and she went to a University of California campus, and it was all essays. I never in 21 years, in any of these 40 years, ever had a multiple choice question. Never Scantron, nothing. It was all, you write little essays. You know, I would say explain the difference between the Pantheon and the Parthenon and not, you know, a, B, C. You had to write it out. I thought that was what you had to do. But my son went to a Cal State University campus and he. They were both history majors. So I thought, well, my daughter will get a much better education because it's all essay work and the Cal State has such big classes. And as a former Cal State professor, when you teach eight or nine classes a semester, some people thought you had to have multiple choice. But here's what I discovered. When she turned in the essay, they did not correct her grammar. They did not correct her syntax. They did not correct paragraph formation, they did not correct citations. It was all content, but not content. If she wrote on the Russian Revolution, I can remember she called me and said, can you read my paper? I got it back and I did. And it was more or less. You weren't sympathetic to the Bolsheviks. You know, she was writing about Kerensky government, or she started with the Winter Revolt, 1905 and everything. Anyway, she got a B. My son just took a class and he had, like, for the final 200 questions about US history, what date was the Civil War? What was the emancipation proc. ABCD no writing. But there was no interpretation by the faculty is what I'm trying to say, Jack. It was Just straight. And when they graduated, I said to my daughter, your brother got a lot better education. He knows a lot more about history than you do. You're a very good writer, and you wrote these essays, and that's the way I taught. But now when I look back at my career, I tried to be disinterested and not political. I judged people on how they formulated ideas, how they argued, how they used citations, grammar, syntax, spelling, everything. But they don't anymore. All they do is look at your ideology, and you know that. So you wrote kind of fast essays, and then you. You didn't quite get what she wanted, and so she gave you a B. But I said, your brother, my gosh, he has no choice. He has to bone up on every little detail. Now, maybe he's not con. Conceptualizing these in essay form, but. But for practical purposes, he will graduate with more knowledge about American history or world history than you will as a history major. And I thought I'd never say that. I was always a big defender of. You know, people would come up to me and say, Victor, you spent 50 hours correcting these essays in blue books. And then I would put them in a box outside my door during vacation, you know, because that was the last day of class. And I would say, 50 students in Greek history, 50 students in introduction, humanities, maybe five would pick up the blue book. Six.
A
Really?
B
Yeah, they didn't. They didn't pick them up. They just wanted the grade. They get the grade, they see what it was. Okay.
A
Yeah.
B
So I was just. But I didn't. That didn't matter to me because I thought you're a professional and you have to do. You have to correct them. And you never know who's going to benefit. Maybe they'll pick them up, you know, a month later or something. But that's what I'm getting at with these universities. Stanford, Harvard, Yale, 80%, 70% A's, all essays. But it's basically ideal, psychologically tainted. And they don't have just quantitative knowledge that they can assess. And it's too bad.
A
Well, let's close out. Victor, one last thing about. With. With one last thing about the uk and, you know, we've had an advertiser on this show, American Alternative Assets. And sometimes they've talked about Warren about this digital currency. And England also seems on the cusp of that digital currency, digital id under the pretext. And Tony Blair is pushing this aggressively, and you have to think, does he have stock in the company behind this? You know, but, oh, we're going to Use this to control elite. It's so funny. It's like, oh yes, there's an illegal immigration issue. We're going to control it with a national electronic ID card that's also going to track everything you do, everything where you spend and who's to. And the people are across the third saying, yeah, once you have all that info, you're going to tell me I can't buy that third pound of ground beef three years from now or my carbon footprint is too big or et cetera, et cetera. So this, this also using too much.
B
Energy for your body weight or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it's even scarier. When I was writing the Dying Citizens, I spent a couple of months reading left wing legal journals, you know, and it was amazing when they had articles that about the legality of bankrupt Social Security Medicare funds. And they would always say things like, well, besides taxing them at a prohibitive rate, they were things like, well, we can take 401ks and give you credit for every $100,000. So if you have $400,000, the government will take it and you get four years of credit in our system. So the left is always thinking about redistribution and confiscation. That's what Mondami is always talking about. You know, I'm going to go into white affluent neighborhoods and basically confiscate money from you under the guise of higher taxes based on your skin color and your salary. He's even talking about his latest was he's going to get rid of meritocratic honors programs for K12 in New York.
A
Yeah, there's some Bronx High School of Science and other schools where you take a test to get into. Of course there are charter schools that outperform the regular schools and we can't have that.
B
And like every good leftist, when he gets his utopia and we've got X amount of air traffic controllers, pilots, mechanics based on their race or religion or sexual orientation, he will be flying by merocratic means, believe me. He will say, who is the pilot? What do you, how do you do on the test? Who's the FAA controller? That's what they do. It's always for the lab rats, never for the white coated scientist.
A
Amen. Well, Victor, I got, I have two announcements to make and then I'm going to read some, some comments. So. Well, I'll make one big announcement. Where I work, the center for Civil Society, we have some events coming up and one is next week I'm hosting a webinar with Howard Husock. I. I don't know if you know Howard. He's at AI. He just wrote a book on public housing. Yeah. Oh, he's terrific. It's enough to make you scream. So if you go to center for Civil Society, click on events and you'll see a link for this webinar. It's on Tuesday the 14th. You may want to catch it hour long. I'll be interviewing him about his book. And there's so much havoc, so much bad has come from public housing. The technocrats who created this have destroyed millions of lives through so anyway, that's one thing and then the other thing is we are sponsoring and hosting a major conference in early November in Philadelphia on America's 250th, the sesquicent semi sesquicentennial. And I think you'd really be interested in checking it out and attending, especially if you're in the Philadelphia area. So please do regard that and and go to civilthoughts.com go there. Sign up for the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Society. 14 recommended readings every week now. Okay, gave my commercial.
B
Victor now.
A
And I gave your commercial. So here are some comments that came in. I have to read it on my screen here. So one is from from YouTube and some from Apple. I'm going to read for Matthew Maurizio writes. Please stop with all the sound analysis, Mr. Hansen. Please let us follow the no, follow the left off the socio political cliff. Lol. Here's to BDH continuing to saturate our minds with sanity and common sense. Thanks again. Another terrific episode then. Tom Sparr 3013 writes. Victor, please cover more on the special election coming up in November in California. What can we do to get the word out? I've only received one flyer in the mail about voting.
B
That's funny you said that. I just said to my wife I haven't seen, you know, informative ballot. I have not seen. I haven't seen a ballot, a mail in ballot. I have not seen an informative, you know, voter education explanation of the ballot measure. And yet I read that early, early balloting has started. That's really scary.
A
And for folks who are just tuning in ballot but Initiative 50 is to re gerrymander California's congressional seats. Yes.
B
The idea is that in the last election, 40% of the state of California went Republican, 60 went Democrat. But Republicans only have 17% representation in the congressional district. That means their representatives are only 17% of all the representatives in the House of Representatives from California. And they feel that's too much. So now Gavin Newsom wants to redistrict, change the boundaries so he can put incumbent Republicans in the same district as incumbent Republicans and take all of their Democratic people out of those districts and put new Democratic ones. And that way he can elect more Democrats and knock off Republicans. To get down to people suggest maybe 4, 5, 6, 7% of the 40%. So they want about five representatives at most out of 52 or 53. So that's what Gavin Newsom is doing under the idea that it's fair and democracy dies in darkness. And of course Schwarzenegger is trying to stop it because he was the one, quite naively, that said he wanted a nonpartisan, Jerry non gerrymandering redistricting board with half Democrats and half Republicans. But of course they were political appointees and most of them are left wing and that's why we have only 17%. But it's better than nothing. And now we're going to get nothing. If this passes. I think that some of the polls suggest it may pass. Teachers unions are spending a fortune on it. So everybody's got to go out and vote no, no on Prop 5052.
A
Last comments.
B
1.
A
Both are from Apple, people who listen to the show. And this one's from S.J. orangeman, and it's titled Veritas Fortissima. I think you can translate that, Victor. And S.J. writes, yes, the truth is the strongest. And this is what I get from every time I listen to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor explains both sociological and historical matters in the most erudite manner. It's a podcast I do not miss. You shouldn't either.
B
Thank you.
A
That was very nice. And the last one from Greek Cube, cubic cubicle. Can't stop listening. September 29th episode. Addicted to VDH. I found a new drug, one that doesn't cost too much, doesn't come with in a pill. So let's say maybe you can tell.
B
Me he can have my drug and he can give me a recommendation on a sleep drug so I can sleep for a change. Yeah, that's very nice, but we're in scary times. This reminds me of when I was a teenager and the left was running rampant in the country. But it's different because the left was against the establishment. Now they are the establishment. They were marching on the buildings. Now they're inside the buildings. They were marching on the administration. Now they are the administration. They were marching on the Pentagon. They're the Pentagon. Yeah, they're everywhere. That was really smart. What they did. They took all these private foundations, Tides Foundation, Soros foundation, and they funded all of these help democracies, Save America type fake names. And they went and got control of.
A
The institutions and bad DA's to destroy law and order.
B
Yeah.
A
So, okay. But Victor, you've been terrific folks. Thanks so much. Those who take the time to leave comments, there's a ton of them, but we I know the great Sammy Wink and I try to go through them. Victor does too. Thanks for taking the time to do that. Thanks for subscribing to thoughts. Thanks for going to Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus. We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye Bye.
B
Thanks everybody for listening. Sam.
Episode: Spying on Senators and Crushing Free Speech in the UK
Date: October 9, 2025
Host: Victor Davis Hanson
Podcast Network: The Daily Signal
In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson returns from a short hiatus to deliver incisive commentary on critical issues shaping the political and cultural climate in the US and abroad. The episode primarily explores three intertwined themes:
Throughout, Hanson situates present controversies within historical frameworks, drawing parallels and warning of potential consequences.
(05:19–16:49)
(16:49–23:14)
(23:14–38:04)
(40:47–44:33)
(47:11–57:57)
For more content and exclusive articles, visit VictorHanson.com – The Blade of Perseus.*