← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Tim Walz Ruled as a ‘Fascist Dictorator’ Under COVID Decree | Scott Johnson
00:55:24
Does former CNN host turned independent journalist Don Lemon have a First Amendment right to interfere with the First Amendment rights of the worshipers and pastor at that church?
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- [00:00]
Scott Johnson
My participation in exposing Dan Rather took place mostly on the day of September 9, 2004. 60 Minutes 2 had broadcast that segment trying to shame President Bush and assist John Kerry on the evening of September 8th, and I started writing about that segment. I posted what I wrote 7:51am on the morning of September 9th. And if you were following along with our updates online on Powerline, you could see it was all over by about 11:30, you know, with updates. But we got information from people all over the country on the things that were wrong with the documents, the fabricated documents that 60 Minutes had relied on for that segment. There's a famous constitutional test in the First Amendment area called the Lemon Test. Don Lemon wants a new one. Someone who claims to be doing what he's doing as a journalist is somehow immune from the laws that govern the rest of us. In this case, he's indicted under two statutes, one of which prohibits interference with the civil rights of others. And in this case, that would be the First Amendment rights of the worshippers and the pastor. There are eight indicted defendants. Nobody's talking about them. Do they have some special claim to immunity from the laws that Don Lemon is being subjected to?
- [01:28]
Jack Fowler
Well, hello, ladies, and hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words, Alas, without Victor Davis Hansen here. But that's okay, because we have a great, great guest today, pinch hitting. And that's Scott Johnson, who is one of the founders of Powerline, one of the more important conservative, I should say, just truthful media sites out there, and a man of much writing, too. And I'll give you Scott's bio in a second, but we are recording on February 2nd. Happy Groundhog Day, America. And this particular episode will be up on the third. I do want to note for folks that Victor has posted something today. If you're interested in his update on his health, go to his website, victorhanson.com that's the Blade of Perseus. And he talks about inabsentia, and he's very detailed, and it's kind of a slog, as I've mentioned before in previous podcasts, but he is two steps forward, one back. The recovery is cancer surgery, and he's had some issues with the medication post surgery, but he's progressing and he very much wants to be back in the saddle. And he's also said that he will if he can occasionally do one of these or last week he wrote a. Surprisingly, the other day, he wrote a column out of nowhere. There it was, and there was much rejoic. So let me Tell you about Scott Johnson. Scott is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Minnesota Law School. He clerked for the 8th Circuit, Federal Circuit and I would say for the last cause Scott's only 30 years old. The last 10 years, the last somewhat years he has been a practicing attorney in Minnesota in health and finance. But about 20 plus years ago he founded along with Tell us with whom.
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Scott Johnson
With John Kinder Rocker.
- [03:34]
Jack Fowler
Okay. Powerline Blog. And some folks better remember that Scott burst into the national scene by exposing the Rather gate story from 2004. He is a Claremont Institute fellow and he's written he writes every day, several times a day regularly for Powerline Blog and for a bajillion other places. And I will add this before we take a break here and get to the questions and the format of the show is that I will ask Scott five questions and he is in the belly of the beast in Minneapolis. So we're going to focus on that mostly what he's seen there experienced with the ideological attack on not only his where he lives, but I think on the country in general. There was something else. Oh, it's Powerline blog is Victor's. When Victor wakes up in the morning, sometimes mornings he doesn't go to he's awake all night. But when he's sleeping and he wakes up, the first thing he turns to is Powerline. And he has great respect for Scott, for John, and for what you do and for the kindness you share to all people by being a platform to give attention to what other websites are doing. So anyway, we're here with Scott Johnson and the first question is going to be let me get my notes in order here. Well, I think we should talk about some journalists like Don Lemon and we'll get to that when we come back from these important messages.
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- [05:38]
Jack Fowler
We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in His Own Words, guest starring Scott W. Johnson, the founder of Powerline Blog. So Scott, here's my long winded question. You have a long history dealing with explaining, even debunking activist journalism. The ARC Suite from Dan Rather to Don Lemon, who engages in, I'm going to coin a phrase, churchus interruptus in Minneapolis, which he did, I think two weeks ago and he now faces federal charges for doing that. Scott, what is your take on Lemon, or as Victor would call him, Limon? I'm at a loss to understand why people say his antics are protected by the First Amendment. So give us your take on what happened there, and then maybe take our listeners and viewers back to your debunking of Dan Rather. And does it bother you, Scott, that Dan Rather is still. He still has some sort of standing in the world of journalism and in the public square?
- [06:40]
Scott Johnson
Well, beginning where you began. Thank you for the kind words. And I did want to say I've been a fan of Victor for a long, long time. I think I've read just about every one of his books, including his book who Killed Homer that goes Back Away, that he wrote with John Heath. Excellent book. And his histories of the Peloponnesian and Peloponnesian War and World War II, which are just unbelievable contributions to the subject matter. It's really an honor to try to help keep the site going while he's recovering and in our thoughts. So thank you for having me. Don Lemon. You know, the thing that strikes me most about the commentary on his indictment, he was arrested pursuant to indictment that the initial reports pretended like, you know, the arrest came from out of the blue. But a Minnesota grand jury indicted him for his conduct in connection with the video of his participation in the riot that disrupted the service at City's church on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. And it struck me at the time, and I said, so that day, that, you know, here there's a video of what he did and what they did. These people self identified. There's a famous constitutional test in the First Amendment area called the Lemon Test. Don Lemon wants a new one. And someone who claims to be doing what he's doing as a journalist is somehow immune from the laws that govern the rest of us. In this case, he's indicted under two statutes, one of which prohibits interference with the civil rights of others. And in this case, that would be the First Amendment rights of the worshipers and the pastor who are participating in the service at City Church. Uh, the question is they. They've all been indicted. They're. They're now like, I think excluding Don Lemon and one other journalist. There are eight. Eight indicted defendants. Nobody's talking about them. Um, do they have some special claim to immunity from the laws that. That Don Lemon is being subjected to? The. One of the ringleaders whom Don Lemon kissed in the video of this whole thing was a former law professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis. I overlapped with her for a few years. And the claim of immunity, she could claim. Hey, look, I was a law professor at one time. She left in 2016 to pursue full time work as a freedom fighter interfering with other people's rights. But that has about as much substance, I think, in my opinion, as Don Lemon's claim of First Amendment immunity. A subject, Jack, that I've been writing about for 20 years. Initially, I started writing about it in early 2006 in connection with James Risen and the New York Times, who blew a very important national security pro program about how we were tracking finances in Europe that were supporting terrorist activities in the Middle East. And the administration wanted to find out who had leaked it. But it raised the question whether Risen and the New York Times were subject to the espionage laws that were in issue in that case. And it goes back to the Pentagon Papers case and related issues in the national security context. It seems to me a more complex issue. And I thought that the laws did subject the Times and James Rison to exposure. And I wrote a long piece for the Weekly Standard at the time and addressed it as well on Powerline and got a message in response, an open letter. Senator Cotton, who was then serving in Baghdad, patrolling the city with his troops, wrote an open letter to the New York Times that he copied us on, protesting what they'd done, saying the next time some of his men were blown up, he'd know who to blame. And we posted it on Powerline. The New York Times never even acknowledged it. So it's a subject I've been writing about for a long time now. In this context, I don't think Don Lemon has any claim to immunity. The question is whether his conduct violated the statutes that support the indictment of the other individuals he was involved with in that case. Does he have a First Amendment right to interfere with the First Amendment rights of the worshipers and pastor at that church? I think the question answers itself. And the answer is no. And he's therefore subject to the same laws as his fellow defendants in that case.
- [11:42]
Jack Fowler
Well, maybe it's weak to compare Don Lemon to Dan Rather, but, you know, you're here, you've got cred on like your fingerprints are all over an important debunking in American journalist history. So we're just going to take the opportunity to. Before we. We get your take on some of the belly of the beast, the madness of Minnesota. But on Dan Rather, how he has not been living on some deserted island in Hudson Bay or something like that. I Don't know. But does it shock you that he still has credibility, believability, at least from the left, to be dragged out on occasion to give an opinion?
- [12:30]
Scott Johnson
You know, in some respects, the left never gives up. In some respects, survival is the name of the game. And here we are, nearly 22 years after rather Gate, and he's still kicking and people are still looking to him for guidance. Netflix did a special on Dan Rather in his honor that was full of people giving ludicrous quotes about his greatness and more or less skipping over this. And I wrote about it at length on Powerline. I can't remember everything I said about it, but that Netflix special is a classic. And all I can say is the left never gives up. Did I mention Alger Hiss?
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Jack Fowler
I mean, I was just gonna say Hiss, yeah, absolutely. Till he died and beyond. He's still saint.
- [13:23]
Scott Johnson
And Rather as the journalistic equivalent of Alger Hess. And I actually have read his memo. I think it's called Rather Outspoken, with a couple chapters on Rather Gate and all of that, and wrote about that as well when I went back on that Netflix special. And you know, at the time, my participation in exposing Dan Rather took place mostly on the day of September 9, 2004. 60 Minutes 2 had broadcast that segment trying to shame President Bush and assist John Kerry on the evening of September 8th. And I started writing about that segment at 7. I posted what I wrote at 7:51am on the morning of September 9th. And if you were following along with our updates online on Powerline, you could see it was all over by about 11:30 and about, you know, with updates. But we got information from people all over the country on the things that were wrong with the documents, the fabricated documents that 60 Minutes had relied on for that segment. And by about one o', clock, the Drudge Report, it was Andrew Breitbart, who was working for Drudge at the time, linked to Powerline with an upside down screaming siren. By the end of the day, we had about 250,000 readers. And it was really a new era, we thought, where you couldn't get away with this anymore. But here we are, I'm afraid. And the other thing will be my obituary. But I'm probably prouder of a few other things than that.
- [15:02]
Jack Fowler
Well, it was an important and wonderful thing you did there. Now, Scott, I have to tell you, one of the good things about doing just a headshot kind of podcast is you can't see the gut. And if you could see Jack Fowler's gut, you would say this guy had. Even though it's February, he's probably still polishing off the fudge that's left over from Christmas. And we gotta deal with this. So I've been a bad boy. How am I dealing with it? Water. So I'm gonna tell you why water is fundamental folks, for becoming, getting healthier. At least as this new we're still in the new, we can still call it a new year. Here's the thing. Everyone jumps into the new year buying new supplements or trying a new diet or workouts, but they completely ignore the most important basic thing, and that's water. Even mild hydration impacts energy, focus, metabolism. And when you think about all the garbage that's in our water, you're starting behind the curve before you even begin. Now, Cove Pure. And if this was a long shot, I've got my Covpure machine over my left shoulder. It changes all that immediately. Their Clearwave technology is certified to remove up to 99.9% of contaminants. Pretty much anything that isn't water. PFAS, microplastics, pharmaceutical residue, fluoride, twigs, sticks, all gets removed. It's the purest water you can get. And that's why I like it. I don't think water should have a taste. Some people are saying this tastes great. And why? Well, it tastes great because it's refreshing relative to the junk that comes out of the kitchen faucet. Sometimes I think that's brought to you by Clorox. And another thing I like about my Cove Pure, by the way, most people would have it, would have it in their kitchen. I have it in my office because I do find it really refreshing. I like it, I want it there. And I'm drinking a lot, lot more water. And it's hot, it's cold, it's normal. You want tea, it's hot tea. It's 212. Don't stick your finger in it. You're going to burn your finger. So get your Cove Pure. Let me tell you how you can get it. Here's how. Cove Pure makes it so easy to get pure water with the push of a button. So this year, make a New Year's resolution that sticks. Improve your health with clean water, delicious water, pure water. Right now, you can get $200 off for a limited time if you use the link. Our link, covepure.com VDH that stands for Victor Davis Hansen. That's COVPure. C-O-V-E P-U-R-E.com VDH to start this new year, right. And we thank the really good people from COVID Pure for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Scott, five questions. I asked you one. Here's number two. Now I don't want to lionize. We're going to stick to Minnesota. I don't want to lionize Hubert Humphrey or Eugene McCarthy. I served on a board with him, by the way. He was a nice guy. Or Fritz Mondale. But the characters who define the Democrat Party of Minnesota, Mayor Frye, Governor Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, oddball Senator Amy Klobuchar, who I think eats yogurt with a comb from her pocketbook, Congresswoman Omar. They seem to deserve a theme song along the lines of that old Cher tune Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, or maybe an updated version of Dixie since they seem to be the standard bearers for a kind of perverse new confederacy. Scott Johnson, in the belly of the beast living there. Would you assess please the current Democrat leaders of Minnesota?
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Scott Johnson
I think you mentioned Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry. And Hubert Humphrey actually began his career as mayor of Minneapolis and was involved with the merger of the Democratic Party with the Farmer Labor Party, which brought in a bunch of communists. And Humphrey and that generation through Walter Mondale made their careers throwing the communists out of the merged DFL party. They were in everything but hand to hand combat with those people. And in retrospect, I greatly admire what they did. I have said several Times on Powerline. Mr. We could use a man like Hubert Humphrey again. From Hubert Humphrey to Jacob Fry, what a falling off was there, to borrow a phrase from Shakespeare. Jack, you asked me about the current generation and I think you have to take them one at a time. At the risk of worrying the viewers. I'll just try to do that.
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Jack Fowler
Please do that. Do that.
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Scott Johnson
They're each bad in their own way, but it's kind of interesting. Each bad in his or her own way is what I should say. But Tim Walls, he's the worst governor in our history, but that doesn't capture it. You know, like Lake Wobegon, I say our Minnesota governors have mostly been above average. Okay, but he is our worst governor by so far. It really is a historic record. He has presided over his administration and he have presided over an epic fraud that appears to involve something like $9 billion and public programs fund siphoned off by a mostly Somali cast of perpetrators. And as I say, it's a historic disgrace. He will never live it down. And his first two years and he was elected as a kind of moderate, he ran In a primary against the endorsed metro wacko Liberal in 2018. And for the first two years in office, you could kind of ignore him because the Republicans had a small majority in the Minnesota Senate. He didn't get any of the wacko stuff done. But in March 2020, he declared a Covid emergency under Minnesota's emergency law. And he ruled. You know, he talks about fascism and blah blah, blah about ICE. He ruled as a fascist dictator for 15 months under that emergency decree, and in an incredibly arbitrary and destructive way. And you couldn't ignore him anymore as one thing led to another. I think his rule under Covid was a disgrace. I would add that to the fraud disgrace. In 2022, the Democrats took over all three branches. The Minnesota supreme court, the Minnesota legislature, and the governor's office. Walls was reelected. And I said that, you know, the theme song should be princess, let's go crazy. And they went crazy in those first three months they were in office, and they passed, you know, this trans refuge law and a law on abortion that did everything but make it a sacrament. And they spent it. In that three month period, they spent an $18 billion surplus that had been accumulated in the previous years when the Republican majority in the Senate was keeping him from doing anything. They spent it overnight and turned it into something like a $9 billion deficit. So we're in a bad way. And it's thanks to Tim Walls, with respect to this monumental fraud that he has presided over. His characteristic move is to blame everybody but himself. And his classic first move was to blame a local state court district judge, John Guthman, for forcing him to spend money in a lawsuit that had been brought by the Feeding Our Future nonprofit that was the sponsor of most of the Somali fraudsters. And it was so egregious. When the indictments were handed up by the federal grand jury in September 2022, what Walls was saying was so egregious that Judge Guthman did something that I'd never seen done before. He issued a public statement that you can still find online. Responding and refuting, Responding to and refuting the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Governor Walz. And that really is the Tim Walls, a compulsive liar, as we all saw when he was running for vice president and a really despicable human being. So next up in the parade of horribles is Attorney general Keith Ellison. I've been writing about Keith Ellison since 2006, Jack. And initially I wanted to bring before the public that Ellison had been an active member and local leader of the Nation of Islam since his days as a third year law student at the University of Minnesota Law School. Very hard to get it out there. But I wrote about it. I thought I was going to kill Powerline writing about it virtually every day in a series I called who is Keith Ellison? And he was saying that his involvement with the Nation of Islam was for a period of a few months before he knew anything. But he had run for state senator in 1998, towards the end of this period of his active involvement as a leader of the Nation of Islam in the Twin Cities under the name Keith Ellison Muhammad as an out member of the Nation of Islam. And the local black newspaper, the Minneapolis Spokesman Recorder, had an interview with him in 1998. First question they asked him was, do.
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Jack Fowler
You think it's going to be a.
- [25:02]
Scott Johnson
Problem that you're a member of the Nation of Islam? Or something to that effect. I quoted it on Powerline, but he's just lied about it over the years. But that's not the worst thing about him.
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Jack Fowler
Okay?
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Scott Johnson
He's a hustler. He's been an anti cop activist in his career as a practicing attorney and as Minnesota Attorney General. And I've actually gone to the trouble of reading. He has now written two memoirs. The first one was interesting and he dealt with the Nation of Islam in, I would say the most diplomatic possible way. He omitted his involvement with the Nation of Islam. That memoir is called My Country Tis of Thee. It was published by Simon Schuster. I think I've written about it a couple times at length. Once for the Weekly Standard and on Powerline in several posts. And then most recently, you know, he presided over the prosecution of Derek Chauvin and the other cops. I wrote a long piece for City and he wrote a memoir, the Name of It. About that and the name of the memoir is escaping me at the moment. But I wrote a long essay for City Journal called the Anti Cop Attorney General that goes through that memoir. And I would urge anyone interested in Keith Ellison to take take a look at that. He's really, really a hustler and liar without a conscience. Amy Klobuchar, she's probably the most important of these protagonists right now in the DFL party. She is an incumbent senator. She won the office in 2006 and she is now running for Minnesota governor. I think she Pelosi Walz out of his campaign for a ludicrous third term. Walz announced that he was stepping down. And Amy Klobuchar just in the past week or two has announced that she is running for governor. She's the most popular Democrat in the state. I just wanted to recite a personal experience I had with her when she was a young attorney. I had a case with her in federal court in St. Paul and before Judge Donald Alsop and Judge Alsop asked each of the attorneys in the case to identify themselves. And we all did. And there are about six attorneys in the case. And after we'd each identified ourselves, the court reporter asked Amy if she would spell the name Klobuchar for him. And Judge Elsop said, good God, man, don't you read the newspaper? And that was because Amy's father was a local columnist for the Minneapolis Tribune. Jim Klobuchar, who was a sports reporter and then daily columnist for the Minneapolis Tribune. Everybody knew who Jim Klobuchier was. And I would say she launched her political career with great name recognition, as indicated by Judge Alsop's astonishment that his court reporter didn't know how to spell her name. And since then, as a Minnesota senator, I think she has managed to avoid taking a stand on just about every controversial issue. She's kind of dodged the bullets coming her way. And one of the issues she took up that I wrote about that just characterizes her completely is she waged a campaign against the detergent pod, you know, that you throw into the laundry, on the allegation that it was a health hazard and she wanted to get it outlawed. She couldn't even deal with that. She ultimately gave it up, I think, to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But. And there was a point when she was recognized as the senator who had passed the most bipartisan bills, and she appeared on one of the shows on Comedy Central or something like that, recognition for this award that she'd gotten as the most bipartisan senator. And she does have a gift, I think, for making friends on the Republican side, as I've learned over the years. But in that case, I looked up what were these bills that she got bipartisan support in passing for, and, like, half of them were postal office renamings. She is like a character out of a comedy. And her Persona is this Minnesota nice mom. And I think the reality is like a Hollywood reality. There's a different person underneath, but that's.
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Jack Fowler
Amy, a little Dorian Gray going on there.
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Scott Johnson
So that's our current cast of characters. And I would say it's a sorry lot. Yeah.
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Jack Fowler
Well, Scott, I have a few more questions for you. Next one is going to be about some of the covers of the Madness, and we'll get to that when we come back from these important messages. Hey, folks, we're back with Victor Davis Hanson, in his own words and very lucky to have with us today Scott Johnson, the founder of Powerline who lives up there in Minneapolis St. Paul. And he's in the belly of the beast. He knows what's going on. He's been writing about it for years. Because what we've just seen recently is just the latest indication of madness that takes place up in Minnesota. So, Scott, I want to know what it is like to be a resident of an area which has seen such relentless street theater and rage. And if you were a shut in and only got your news from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, what would you believe to be the goings on in the city that many people for years have associated with niceness? If you're reading the paper, Scott, what are they saying about what's happening versus what's really happening?
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Scott Johnson
Well, you make a good point when you refer to the Star Tribune. They do dominate news coverage in Minnesota and in the state. And that really is a problem and it's unreal. And with respect to, you know, what's going on right now, they've done a good job, I would say, on average a good job with respect to covering the fraud that has been going on here since the search warrants were executed in January 2002. It's a story with respect to which there's intense public interest and pretty much all the media outlets have devoted an appropriate amount of attention to it in the state of Minnesota. You know, this thing has exploded in the past few months into the national news. I've been trying to make it a national story for the past several years as I've covered the trials, beating my head against the wall trying to do that. But the start Tribune has done a decent job on that. But with respect to ICE and Trump and anything Trump related, the Star Tribune is like an incessant fog machine. It is impossible to understand what's going on. They are a part of the left. They support the riots. Everything bad that's happening here is presented in the most positive light. You'd have no idea. You know, there's been some decent national coverage in the Washington Free Beacon and a few other spots, City Journal, about the nature of the organized resistance that is supporting the worst activities of what's going on here and I think has led to some of the tragic incidents that have been poorly covered by the Star Tribune. But you'd have no idea about the nonprofit support of the resistance and of the organized nature of the resistance from reading the Star Tribune. So you really have to look elsewhere. And I would say it's suffocating. That's what it's like to live here. With respect to the media coverage, it's really suffocating. Frustration and the media environment is pitiful with respect to the reality of living here. You know, depending on where you live, it's very pleasant. The day to day reality for me is very pleasant. I'm still here. I would like to stay here. I feel like they're trying to drive me out of here and I'm kind of a stubborn guy. I don't want to go, but who knows, it may come to that. And the taxes and every, the political aspects are really difficult to deal with. That's what it's like. I don't have much more to say about it than that.
- [33:51]
Jack Fowler
Okay. No, fair enough. Well, question number four of the five that we're presenting you today, Scott, and again, thanks for joining us. You've had the numbers you just mentioned before of the Somali fraud operation. You've had it, you've reported on it a long time before Nick Shirley started taking his videos and not knocking him. Good for him for doing that. That the fraud is so massive and diverse, it's about far more than just empty daycare centers. That it did not provoke the level of outrage deserved until recently is kind of upsetting. But still, is that because locally is there an, was there an exhaustion mixed with maybe an unspoken acceptance? I feel like I'm walking on an egg saying this, but a sort of a, well, what did you expect of how the large Somali community in Minneapolis, in Minnesota operates? I mean, is it fair to say the Somali community in Minnesota operates in a certain way? Well, tell me if I'm wrong.
- [35:05]
Scott Johnson
I think the premise of your question is mistaken. You would have the impression from the fact that the story of Somali fraud has exploded into the national news since November when Chris Rufone, Ryan Thorpe wrote the City Journal column that drew President Trump's attention. And then the Nick Shirley video that you refer to, you know, generated however many million views it's had as of today. But this has been a huge story since January 22, 2022 in the Twin Cities. That's what you would have no idea of. And I can tell you I was trying to convey to you the intensity of attention and coverage of the local media has been great. It is not like on the national scene and having and attended presentations where the both press conferences and presentations where the fraud is discussed. It's extremely intense on a local basis. And I think there's a rage among average people for having been taken advantage of. It's not necessarily expressed against the Somali community. I think the Somali aspect of the fraud and, you know, I sat through the two fraud trials that have been conducted so far and have some friends in the Somali community. And the thing I would say is it's a very the Somalis are a clannish community. There are two big clans. I think there are a total of maybe five tribes in Somalia. Most of the Somalis here come from the two major clans. And there's an element where things are among themselves and not shared. And I've been looking. I have a Somali friend who actually tried to blow the whistle on what was going on in January 2022, right before the search warrants were executed all around the Twin Cities. But he's really a lone voice. And so I think that that's the Somali aspect of it. They don't seem to have much of a feeling of citizenship obligating them to fellow citizens among the community. And I mean, I've been waiting for a public spokesman. It is a disgrace. And I think if this were some other minority community, there were people rising up from the community who would call it out and who would ask for it to stop and who would address their fellow community members asking for their assistance in getting it to stop. And that really hasn't happened. So I think that's an unobserved aspect of the phenomenon and complicates the answer to your question.
- [38:00]
Jack Fowler
Well, I have one final question, and it's about Powerline, and I'm going to ask you that when we return from these final important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Scott Johnson, Pinch hitting We're recording on Groundhog Day, February 2nd, and this episode will be up on the Daily Signal, the happy home of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. It'll be up on Tuesday the 3rd. So, Scott, let's take us out here by Tell us about Powerline. As I mentioned before, it's one of Victor's favorite sites. Why did you create it and brag on it? And then I should add a sixth question, since we've been talking a lot about Minnesota. If you've got anything hopeful to say about Minnesota, I hope you share it with us.
- [38:56]
Scott Johnson
Jack, thank you for the kind words about the site and about my work on it and Victor's respect for the site. That means a lot to me. It's hard to see yourself as others see you. I would love to hear him talk about it more than Me, but I love talking about the subject because I've been writing for Powerline every day now for what will be what we started in Memorial Day Weekend 2002. So it'll be coming up on 24 years, if I'm not mistaken. You know, that's a long time. I think my contributions to it probably exceed Marcel Proust's remembrance of Things. Remembrance of Things Past at this point. Or John. John used to say more than the Playboy philosophy, which of course we're all acquainted with, but John and I. So John Hinderacker actually started Powerline on Memorial Day Weekend 2002. And for the previous 10 years, since January 1993, John and I had been. We were practicing law together. In 19. I joined Fate Ram Benson, where John was a partner in 1981. And we realized that we had similar political views. As things eventuated. John had been a former liberal. I think he voted for John Anderson in the 1980 election, but he had eyes wide open and became conservative over the years. I bought him a gift subscription to Commentary somewhere along the line. And I think he told me at the time, wow, this is really great. And I think it affected him. But in any event, we started writing together under a joint byline in January 1993, and for the first year or two that we were writing together under a joint byline, we were attacking these Pulitzer Prize winning reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
- [40:58]
Jack Fowler
Oh, those two guys that wrote a book.
- [41:00]
Scott Johnson
Exactly. They actually wrote two books. And their book was like a Clinton campaign manifesto called America what Went Wrong. It was the most successful syndicated series of its. That I'm aware of. I believe it was the most successful syndicated newspaper series of all time. And we started attacking it. We did our own research. What we thought we were doing was using our research and writing skills as attorney to an issue of public policy. And we were defending the Reagan record against this really ludicrous attack by these two reporters who were very prominent. And it was running in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. I remember John putting his feet up on the desk and calling the editor of the editorial page every day. There was a 1500 word excerpt of this book that was being published in the Pioneer Press. And John asked for equal space for us to rebut the series. The editor of the editorial page said, well, I won't give you equal space, but you can write a column. And we did write a column that was the beginning of several on these two guys. Look it up while I'm talking about it. Because then the next thing we did, I was going to say the names of these guys.
- [42:15]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, go ahead.
- [42:17]
Scott Johnson
Then they wrote a book that was even worse than that called America who Really Pays the Taxes. It was about 350 pages long. That, too, was a syndicated newspaper series. And we actually knew who paid the taxes. And we wrote about that. We wrote a long paper about it. We wrote some newspaper columns about it. And as one thing led to another, I had gotten friendly with Rudy Boshwitz and was telling him about this book and that it attacked President Bush's for underpaying his taxes in 1992 or something like that. And Rudy said to me, would you like me to get his tax return? And I said, yeah. So within the day, he had his tax return faxed up from his accountant. And this was great. This was a thrill. Okay, so we had President Bush's tax return, and we compared it to what was in this book, America who Really Pays the Taxes. And we wrote an article that was published by National Review called George Bush's Tax Return. It's now available online. It was really good. It was kind of shocking what they did. And, you know, it turned out President Bush had overpaid. He was unable to deduct. He'd given away something like $700,000. He had charitable contribution that exceeded what he could take in the year that they were writing about. And in his tax return, we saw the causes he was giving to were things like the Bush foundation for Literacy and Ducks Unlimited and some other, like, liberal loving causes that we thought would portray him in a good light for the people who would be susceptible. But in any event, that's what we did for 10 years. And then John got interested in. We moved on from those two guys, but, you know, we wrote a lot about them and wrote something that culminated in this National Review article and kept at it. But then John got interested in the Internet. And then Memorial Day weekend, 2002, he set up a site on the free Blogger software, and with the help of one of his daughter's girlfriends, called it Powerline, kind of a triple pun. And he emailed me and said, would you please start contributing to this as you have been to our columns? And so it took me a few days to get the hang of it, but it was unbelievable. All of a sudden, I could do what we had been doing without the need of interesting an editor, you know, writing from outside the journalistic world. We were able to write what we.
- [44:53]
Jack Fowler
Thought other people might and not in a finite. A column is 750 words, and sometimes you need 1800 words.
- [45:01]
Scott Johnson
And sometimes, you know, I had 250 words. But so, 2002, that was Memorial Day, 2002. And that year there was an interesting Senate race between Norman Coleman against Paul Wellstone, who was the incumbent, was an important race in the midterm election about whether Republicans would have a majority after 911 in the Senate. Hugh Hewitt started. We had good sources. A friend of mine was running Norm's campaign. Ben Whitney and the Star Tribune Russian detective at the gargle. One of the things that's kept me going over the years is my hostility to the Star Tribune. And they were publishing polls that showed Wellstone substantially leading Norm Coleman. And I thought they were probably wrong. I didn't think they were right. And I called up Ben and I asked, do your internal polls jive with this Star Tribune poll? And he said, no, they don't. And I asked him, would you fax me your internal polls? And he did. And I started publishing the results on Powerline. And Hugh Hewitt took an interest. He started talking about us. So by the end of 2002, we had a few thousand readers a day. In 2004, so we were online, we had the site, and John connected with a Dartmouth undergrad. We're both Dartmouth alumni. He connected with Joe Malchow.
- [46:30]
Jack Fowler
I know Joe Malchow. Yeah, sure.
- [46:31]
Scott Johnson
A Dartmouth undergrad who helped us improve the site. We moved to a new platform, and in 2004, we had enough readers. I think we had 3,000 regular readers a day. 6,000. 6,000 views a day, maybe. And we were invited to cover the Republican convention in Madison Square Garden, where President Bush was gonna be renominated. John went out there and covered it from Radio Row. He did a fantastic job writing about it, posting photographs, posting video, posting interviews with Tommy Franks with everybody who came through Radio Row with video of Al Frank, a photograph of Al Frank, and. And in a meltdown, chewing out Loride Ingram, the producer from Radio Row. And then that all led up to Rathergate the next month. This was all a warmup to Rathergate, where the Democrats were holding their fire to attack President Bush for his honorable service, I think, in the Vietnam era. And I mentioned how that went down September 2004. And I just wanted to mention a few other highlights. Was Keith Ellison In 2006, I was writing about every day. In 2016, I was the guy. I am bragging on myself, we want you to contributions. In 2016, as one thing led to another, I started writing about how Ilhan Omar seemed to have married her brother in the year 2009 while she was married to the I'll say her real husband and father of her children. And I think that's a story that has only added evidence over time. I wrote a column in December for the Washington Free Beacon called yes, Ilhan Omar married her brother. And I'd urge your viewers to take a look at it if you want some additional information about that. And that from 2016 to last year, I've covered four on a daily basis for Powerline. I've covered four trials involving Somali defendants. One of them was a terrorism trial in 2016 involving Minneapolis Somalis who sought to join ISIS and chop heads for Islam. And then the two public programs, fraud trials defeating our future, fraud trials in the past year or so. And wrote a long column for the Washington Freebie at the conclusion of the second of these, feeding our future Trout. I thought, man, this is an unbelievable story. People should really be paying attention to it. I wrote a long column again for the Washington Free Beacon where my daughter Eliana is the editor, called Inside the Country's Largest Covid Fraud. And I wanted to pay tribute to than to the people who exposed it, the local FBI agents and the Minneapolis prosecutors who brought these cases to trial and did a fantastic job. That was my motivation in writing the column, but I wanted to tell the story and lay it out before people outside Minnesota who weren't paying attention. I don't think I succeeded too well at that, but they're still worth taking a look at. And I, I hope Victor has found something worthwhile. And some of my personal highlights in that.
- [49:50]
Jack Fowler
Oh, absolutely. The amazing thing is you're like Victor in a way. I mean, you do all this and you also have a day job on top of it also. I don't know how you have been so productive and consequential, Scott, but God bless you for doing all you've done and keep, keep on doing it. I want to thank you again for joining us today and I want to thank our folks who are sticking here who were waiting for Victor's return and he will return again. I suggest you visit his website, the blade of Perseus. Victorhanson.com and today he has posted an update on his health and I'm confident he will be back in the saddle. So, Scott, again, thank you very much. Thanks folks for watching. Thanks for listening.
- [50:40]
Scott Johnson
Let me thank you for your kind words, for your good questions. It's really been an honor to be with you today.
- [50:47]
Jack Fowler
You like nobody. Scott Johnson is the nicest man in America. I mean, you really are a special dude and you're so kind to everyone. You know, if you go to Powerline, you see most websites, they just want they're obviously writing things they want you to read. Read us, read us. But when you go there, the first thing you see are six or eight recommended readings from other places. And that takes a special kind of mindset to not have a zero sum game view of the world to say we're, you know, a rising tide lifts all boat, et cetera. And that is a meaningful thing that you do and it's deeply appreciated and it speaks a lot about you and John, how you conceived Power Line. So anyway, again, thanks Scott. Thanks everybody and we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. Bye bye. 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.