VDH on Kamala Harris’ Radical ‘No Bad Ideas’ Playbook, the Left’s War on Law Enforcement, and Colbert’s Nihilism

Summary

Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words

Episode: VDH on Kamala Harris’ Radical ‘No Bad Ideas’ Playbook, the Left’s War on Law Enforcement, and Colbert’s Nihilism

Date: May 21, 2026
Host: Victor Davis Hanson
Guest/Co-host: Jack Fowler
Podcast: The Daily Signal

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson offers his trademark historical and cultural analysis of contemporary politics, focusing on:

• Kamala Harris’s “no bad ideas” progressive playbook and political metamorphoses
• The left’s ongoing antagonism toward law enforcement
• The phenomena of ideological nihilism in late-night television exemplified by Stephen Colbert (and David Letterman)
• The shifting status of Jewish Americans within the Democratic Party and the rise of leftist antisemitism
• Ongoing class and race issues in American culture, especially the circumstances and perceptions of poor white Americans

The tone is candid, critical, and at times darkly humorous, true to Hanson’s style.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Kamala Harris and the “No Bad Idea” Playbook

Timestamps: 00:00–10:00; 03:52–08:00

• Kamala Harris publicly advocated for a radical, “no bad ideas” approach in Democratic brainstorming for the 2026 midterms: abolishing the Electoral College, Supreme Court packing, Puerto Rico statehood, and more.
• Hanson criticizes Harris for her lack of ideological conviction, instead characterizing her career as a sequence of opportunistic transformations:
  • “She has no real ideology...she has no deep seated beliefs.” (Victor, 00:03; 04:50)
• Harris moved from moderate “tough prosecutor” days to radical post-Obama positions, and now attempts to align with wherever the party’s energy is.
• Hanson highlights what he sees as childlike tantrums among progressives:

  “They're like little adolescents...If everything is my way, then the whole world is wonderful. And when I don't get my way, I throw a tantrum and are mad at my parents. And the parents in this case are the Constitution and 250 years of tradition.” (Victor, 00:42; 08:10)

• He mocks Harris’s public speaking, particularly her repeated fallback on “feelings” and the infamous cackle:

  “Her eyes start to go like this, you know, like Twilight Zone music. And then she starts to babble...then she starts cackling...maybe it’s some affectation, but it’s sad, it really is.” (Victor, 07:12)

Notable Quote

“It's almost as if I just would like to be transported to a San Francisco [of decades ago]...there would be no theses on the ground.” (Victor, 00:31; 25:54)

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2. The Left’s Attitude Toward Law Enforcement

Timestamps: 20:01–26:33

• Discussion of a recent House vote where 173 Democrats opposed a resolution honoring law enforcement and condemning the defund-the-police movement.
• FBI stats on violence against police are unreliable due to underreporting by left-leaning cities.
• Hanson criticizes urban progressive activists, notably affluent white liberals and “Karens,” for their hypocrisy:
  • These same people who humiliate police in public are quick to call them when in need.
  • He’s disturbed by the genre of viral videos showing citizens arrogantly refusing police (“They always have the phone...don't bother me, I have to make a phone [call].” – 24:06)
• The bodycam movement, Hanson claims, made it clear how often police act calmly in extremely hostile situations.
• A societal fatigue: Americans are tired of public disorder, shoplifting sprees, and uncivil public behavior fostered by progressive leniency.

Notable Quotes

“I don't think it's even soft on crime anymore. I think it's pro criminal.” (Jack, 20:02)

“They're so self-important...as if there's some kind of CEO...and the policeman is a security guard at the front door of their billion-dollar corporation.” (Victor, 24:06)

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3. Economic, Social, and Class Realities of Modern America

Timestamps: 13:47–16:19; 46:35–56:35

• Widespread fraud and the misallocation of government funds in blue states; Hanson describes grifting as endemic (“Champagne socialists...they surely don't live the life they advocate for others.” – 13:22)
• The elite left justifies massive waste and fraud if it is, in their view, “punishing the right” or rewarding favored identities/groups.
• Extended reflection on poverty, especially among poor white Americans—an often ignored demographic in elite, progressive discourse:

  “Greatest number of people who are poor are white. Maybe not percentage-wise, but ... all of a sudden, when Obama created this binary, they were put on the oppressor, victimizer [side]. That had nothing to do with class.” (Victor, 47:12)

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4. Jewish Americans, the Left, and Antisemitism

Timestamps: 28:05–37:57; 56:35–67:28

• Referencing Colbert and Rahm Emanuel, Hanson criticizes selective outrage and hypocrisy in the Democratic establishment concerning rising antisemitism.
• Obama-era and progressive tolerance for anti-Jewish sentiment within Democrat ranks is contrasted with historic Jewish support for the party.
• Hanson makes the case that true fascism today emerges not from right-wing boogeymen, but through seductive leftist leaders who are given a pass by the media and cultural elites.

  “If fascism comes to this country, it's not going to come in the form of someone with orange skin... it's going to come by a seductive, charismatic, youthful, smiley, glossy... And the reason that's going to happen is they're going to be given a pass.” (Victor, 28:53)

• On the unique fixation of the world and modern left with Israel as an expression of antisemitism:

  “That's the true sign of antisemitism: when you focus on one particular group and you apply a completely different standard to it. And that becomes an obsession.” (Victor, 64:34)

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5. Colbert, Letterman, & Cultural Nihilism

Timestamps: 40:29–45:40

• Colbert’s last show and his destruction of CBS property with Letterman is discussed as emblematic of cultural nihilism and elite ingratitude:

  “Two multi-millionaire spoiled brats...There’s millions of people in the US that would say, ‘Why don’t you give me the furniture?’...They just take somebody’s property and once you’re told it belongs to CBS...then you destroy it. Why don’t they charge [them] with theft or vandalism? It’s nihilism.” (Victor, 42:53)

• Both hosts, along with other progressive comedians, foster a culture of arrogant, insincere, and self-congratulatory cynicism.

  “Something about the left, they're always smarter than you, they're always cynical, they're always more skeptical… I think we're tired of all that.” (Victor, 45:04)

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6. Race, Class, and Academic Elitism

Timestamps: 46:35–56:35

• Story of an Iowa Democrat candidate feeling “uncomfortable” around white people is used to illustrate the pervasive toxic racial essentialism of the contemporary left.
• Hanson recounts personal childhood and early experiences with poverty, racial integration, and the lack of “white privilege” in working-class communities, contrasting it with the elite, performative antiracism of academic and political circles.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On progressive tantrums:
  “I'm going to get in two states. I'm going to get rid of the filibuster, I'm going to get rid of the electoral college. That's what I'm going to do...it's childlike.” (Victor, 08:10)
• On law enforcement:
  “They're not just protesting [law enforcement], you're trying to humiliate them.” (Victor, 21:58)
• On antisemitism:
  “It’s the disproportionality...That’s the true sign of antisemitism: when you focus on one particular group and you apply a completely different standard to it.” (Victor, 64:34)
• On Colbert and Letterman:
  “It’s like nihilism. It’s disgusting.” (Victor, 42:53)

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Additional Segments & Recommendations

• Movies for Memorial Day:
  Jack and Victor recommend watching classic American war films on Turner Classic Movies, suggesting it’s one of the last American institutions consistently acknowledging the sacrifices of US servicemen and women.
• Listener Comments:
  The episode ends with Fowler reading positive letters from listeners, one referencing Mark Reisner’s “Cadillac Desert” and the vanishing promise of the American West.

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Episode Structure and Flow

1. Main political segment: Harris's radical playbook and ideological vacuity (~00:00–10:00)
2. Societal/structural critique: Law enforcement, leftist hypocrisy, class/race dynamics (~20:01–26:33; 13:47–16:19; 46:35–56:35)
3. Media and culture: Colbert, Letterman, and late-night nihilism (~40:29–45:40)
4. **Deep dive on antisemitism and shifting progressive attitudes toward Jews (~28:05–37:57; 56:35–67:28)
5. Personal reminiscences & audience interaction: Listener letters, personal stories about historical and contemporary issues.

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For Further Listening

• [Previous discussions on Jewish-American politics and antisemitism]
• [Hanson’s written piece: “Four Traits of Antisemitism”]
• [Jack Fowler’s “Civil Thoughts” newsletter]

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This summary highlights the major threads and tone of the episode, providing a meaningful digest for listeners and non-listeners alike, while maintaining the style and spirit of Victor Davis Hanson’s own words.

Transcript

[Jack Fowler]

Kamala Harris torched for a progressive wish list.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

She has no real ideology. I know she's a black woman, half Asian black, and she uses that. But she has no deep seated beliefs. In the 80s and 90s and at the millennium and after there was this sort of Bill Clinton democratism and so she tried to distinguish herself as a tough prosecutor. It's kind of just dreamy. It's almost as if I just would like to be transported to a San Francisco.

[Jack Fowler]

Like I remember, click my heels

[Victor Davis Hanson]

and there would be no theses on the ground.

[Jack Fowler]

There was talk of an effort to remove all the Supreme Court justices from the Virginia Court by the age of 53.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, they're like little adolescents, you know What I mean? 13 year olds. If everything is my way, then the whole world is wonderful. And when I don't get my way, I throw a tantrum and are mad at my parents. And the parents in this case are the Constitution and 250 years of tradition. Democracy dies in darkness. It will be welcomed by the left.

[Jack Fowler]

All right, Victor, we're ready. Here we go. Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words on the Daily Signal Network. I'm Jack Fowler. Victor's the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Wayne and Marshabusky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. He's a senior contributor to the Daily Signal, which not only produces this podcast, but also Victor's special four times a week video series. Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. You should check that out and also check out his website, the blade of Perseus. Victorhansen.com Subscribe 650amonth, $65 a year, discounted. Get it? Give it to dad for Father's Day. Victor, we are talking. I'm talking. I should shut up and let you talk. We are recording on Monday, May 18th, 2026. This episode will be up on Thursday, May 21st. I hope we'll have time at the end of the show because in real time, excuse me, on the 21st, that will be the last day the sainted Stephen Colbert performs for his diminished audience at cbs. So I want to get your take on him yet again, but we'll start the show with your take on Kamala Harris, who is pitching no Bad Idea Brainstorming for the Democrat Party. We'll get to that and plenty more issues when we come back from these initial important messages.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

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[Jack Fowler]

We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Beautiful day here in Milford, Connecticut. I hope it's the same out there. Victor in the Central Valley where it

[Victor Davis Hanson]

was very windy, but it's getting better. Very, very windy.

[Jack Fowler]

People should remember if they eat a salad, they have tomato sauce, they have a nut. It's coming from Victor's neighborhood.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It is. Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Environ so all right, here's the headline. Victor Kamala Harris Torched for a Progressive Wish List. Here's the first few paragraphs of this article. Harris said Wednesday during Wednesday night live stream on the Win with Black Women podcast that Democrats need, quote, an expanded playbook and need to consider radical positions ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, including abolishing the electoral college packing Supreme Court. Look, she says this is a moment where there are no bad ideas. A no bad idea Brainstorm is what I'd like to call it, harris said in the video, which quickly went viral on social media. I know Kamala Harris and the word

[Victor Davis Hanson]

brain in the same oxymoron.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, yeah. So Puerto Rico, statehood, neutralizing red states. She says they're cheating on the maps, blah blah, blah blah blah. Victor, your take?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, I mean she goes through these metamorphoses depending. She has no real ideology. I know she's a black woman, half Asian black and she uses that. But she has no deep seated beliefs. In the 80s and 90s and at the millennium and after there was this sort of Bill Clinton democratism. And so she tried to distinguish herself as a tough prosecutor. She would prosecute parents whose kids were tardy to class or truant. She would go after marijuana possessors. She was a consort of Willie Brown and she was trying to be the moderate voice. And then when the Obama years came, she radicalized and then her bathos point was when we had that five months of 2020 looting, killing, arson, and she got on CBS News and she said it's not going to end, it shouldn't end. I think it was with Colbert. It's going to go on. It's going to go on to the election. Then it was very funny because all the, the left was trying to get Trump, Jack Smith on insurrection because he had, you know, supposedly egged on the crowd. But he did say assemble peacefully and patriotically. She didn't even have that out. And yet they all said, well, she wasn't mentioning. And that day in Washington, of course, they had tried to storm the White House and Trump went into his bunker and the New York Times said he was kind of a coward for doing that. I suppose they wanted him to go out and fight with the protesters. But the point I'm making is they all said it was just nothing. And then she reincarnated herself again under Biden as vice president, as open borders, border czar, all this left swing. And then she ran and remember, she said that she, she didn't really know whether she was for deportations or not. That clip came out where she was going, no deportation. No deportation. So she tried to tack to the center. She wasn't even. Remember she had said she'd eliminate fracking, but now she wasn't sure Pennsylvania was important. So now she's going to go hard left because that's where the Jacobin party is. And then if she gets the nomination, which I pray that she does, then she will go back to left of sin or she doesn't believe in anything. And she said, as I said, I didn't want to be cruel. But it is true that when she starts talking and the word feelings, empathy, any metaphysical term time being come up, her eyes start to go like this, you know, like Twilight Zone music. And then she starts to babble and then when she sees that everybody's going, is this person sane? Then she starts cackling and that's. She knows she can't do that and yet she can't resist. Or maybe it's some affectation, but it's sad, it really is.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, she knew enough as a candidate, a forced on America candidate, to not talk to the press for what was it, like 35 days or something? She didn't answer a question.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, she didn't do it the first. I want to ask the Democrats, you had power for eight years with Bill Clinton, you had power with eight years with Barack Obama and you had the Congress at the beginning. Why didn't you get rid of the Electoral College then? Why didn't you bring in two states then? Why didn't you pack the court and get your, I don't know, your Six liberal judges. Then why didn't you end the Senate filibuster? Barack Obama tried to filibuster Sam Alito. And the answer is that as long as they have power, they put those things off. Then when they get out of power, the system's not fair. The system's fair. That got them power. And then when they're enjoying, they're like little adolescents, you know What I mean? 13 year olds. If everything is my way, then the whole world is wonderful. And when I don't get my way, I throw a tantrum and are mad at my parents. And the parents in this case are the Constitution and 250 years of tradition. You didn't get me in my power. You didn't get me elected. So I'm mad at you. I'm going to get in two states. I'm going to get rid of the filibuster, I'm going to get rid of the electoral college. That's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to. It's like childlike.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Along those lines, Victor, we didn't talk about it, the Virginia Supreme Court ruling and rollout, but between the rejection from the state Supreme Court and then the bank bungled application to the US Supreme Court that had misspelled, even misspelled the word Senate and other things misspelled Virginia, there was talk of an effort to remove all the Supreme Court justices from the Virginia court by the age of 53. Yeah. So. Right. They don't get their. Well, we're going to do whatever we can to shoehorn in.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And I think a lot of this is when you're looking at even the left wing analysis, you know, Nate Silver or Cook, whatever report. Charlie Cook. Yeah, yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

The other Charles Cook.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, yeah. You start to look at it and they're going to pick up about 10 to 14 seats. Probably the Republicans are in this redistricting war and they're going to pick up maybe four or five in the racial germaning wars. And that's not counting this. As I said earlier this census, it'll be long term. But when you look at the actual seats that are up, that are contested, there's only about 25 if you don't count leaning left or leaning right. And it's about 50, 50 in those 25, 11. So I would say that the Republicans have about a 30 right now, 30 to 45% chance of holding the House and it's going to be contingent on there's such little adolescen left. They really do believe that the war is lost. In fact, the President of Iran came out today, Jack, and he said it doesn't do any good essentially for us to lie to the Iranians, said we haven't hurt, we're not hurting, we've suffered a lot of damage. He is more accurate than the left is. They've said that Iran is winning. And my point is whether it's, I don't know what's going to happen, but I have a instinctual gut feeling that sometime Tuesday night to Friday we're going to go back into kinetic operations and it's going to be quick and there's going to be a, you know, a tumult and prices will go up, but I don't think it's going to last. I think it's going to solve the problem. They're going to open the Gulf and there's going to be a lot of speculators with high priced oil that want to unload it. We said last time there's 250 freighters out in seas full anywhere from a half a million to 2 million barrels and they're going to be unloading it. And if Trump can by June or July get back on the economy, the indicators are all strong and I think the left knows that. And then when they look at the redistricting, it's not a done deal for them. And they like, also like little kids, they just get into these temper tantrums or wild enthusiasm. Here in California, when they redistrict, they were just wild, like, well, we did. It's going to be. And then when Virginia did, oh, that's it, that's the icing. I'm like, oh. And then we're going to impeach these people. They go from like this, this, this. And I don't, I don't know. Yeah, this is not a Democratic party. It isn't. These people are really weird. They're, they're, and they're full of anger and hate. And I don't, I don't know, it's, it's a weird mixture of Islamicism and socialism, communism and then dei. It's got all of these, these clouds that make a perfect storm and grifting.

[Jack Fowler]

I mean Stalin and the boys all needed their Dhakas. And these people.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, there's good article today in the Wall Street Journal about champagne socialist and about all, like Bernie Sanders lifestyle that he leads and a lot of these billionaire, the Soros people and all the nice things that accrue to all Hassan Parker, his $200,000 Porsche, they surely don't live the life. They advocate for others.

[Jack Fowler]

No. And the things they spend on too. With the. By the way, today's like any other day you read a story like, oh my gosh, there'750 million fraud program here. Or you know, one after the other or just a totally insane program. Two in California. One is this dental thing, what they spend how many millions of dollars that served 300 people and then the tablets or the whatever. The iPads for the prisoners.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

The porn tablets for the prisoners. Yeah. I mean, they see this though, they get very angry because they see it in two different ways. One, it punishes the right because it'll make them pay more taxes. And then two, the money that is embezzled or stolen goes to favored groups, either DEI groups or poor groups. So it doesn't really matter what they did to get it. The fact is they got it and it came from better off people that paid higher taxes. And that's good. So they don't feel bad about it.

[Jack Fowler]

They never do because that beaks get wet during it. Also,

[Victor Davis Hanson]

there's some pretty. The New York Post had some pretty incriminating top person in Minnesota, she said, I'm the only white person. Basically she was the godmother of the fraud. And then she's basically pointing the finger at Ilhan Omar and, and saying that they all knew what this was going on. Anytime we got in trouble with it, we went to her and it was straightened out. Meaning there was no consequences for stealing the money.

[Jack Fowler]

Maybe we'll wake up one morning soon, Victor, and find that she's all of a sudden is back.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

She's something. I know the right goes after her, but there's something about her that's not good. She's dishonest with her financial matters. She gave that boyfriend her campaign, hired him and then married him. And then she says she's worth 30 million. One day, right at the crest of the. Before the crest of the fraud broke out. And then when that broke out, suddenly her fortune vanished. She did probably allegedly marry her brother or commit some kind of immigration fraud. Her family was involved in a very brutal regime that killed thousands of people. She called this country garbage. All this stuff about her, she's anti Semitic. It's just bad news. Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Well, Victor, we'll talk about crime here in a second. But first to our listeners and our viewers, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise, though, never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into is something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. Physical gold not as speculation but as insulation. Our reputation matters here at Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Which is why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability and an A rating from the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special liberty offer to our listeners and viewers to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in the bank. If you believe as we do that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious. Call 8447-909191-84479, 09191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 844-7909-1918-4447-9091 or protectwithviktor.com History rewards those who take the long view, and we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. By the way, Victor, when I read this copy, the line about nearing retirement or in retirement, I don't know if that applies to you or to me. I don't think retirement's quote, unquote retirement is ever going to happen.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I don't think it applies to our whole generation. Yeah, right. I think our parents my father retired right around 60, although he never really stopped working. He worked on the farm. He was a really industrious guy, but professionally he did. And everybody that was kind of the dream of the 1980s or 70s. You're all going to retire at 55 and play golf or whatever you do for 40 years and die in your sleep at 95. And it didn't happen that way. Yeah, I know. I can't afford to retire. Yes, I like my job, too. I like it. I, I don't. Yeah, I could keep really busy in retirement, do a lot of things, but I like what I do.

[Jack Fowler]

Same thing Yeah, I work where I work.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I like our listeners. I get the nicest letters. I read every one of them. I wish I could respond to everyone, but I got some really nice ones the other day. Of course, Jack. They're written in beautiful penmanship. They usually express a religious aspect of their lives or many of them have had cancer. They try to be encouraging and they go through things worse than mine. They're very nice letters. Well, you have beautiful stationary. That's a lost art that people have flowered stationary or engraved stationery. It's really nice.

[Jack Fowler]

Even I'm getting letters from our listeners at my house, so. Wow, that's good.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Victor, let's talk a little about the to me, the pro criminal party. I don't think it's even soft on crime anymore. I think it's pro criminal. So the headline from Fox News the other day, 173 House Democrats vote against resolution honoring law enforcement. Let me just read the first few lines here. Just 29 House Democrats on Wednesday voted for a GOP authored measure paying tribute to the, quote, extraordinary sacrifice, end quote, law enforcement officers make and criticizing the defund the police movement for jeopardizing public safety. Meanwhile, 173 Democrats voted with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries against the resolution while every GOP lawmaker present supported it. The vote comes as assaults against law enforcement officers climbed to a 10 year high last year, according to an FBI report released Monday. The number of officers killed, though, saw a slight decrease between 20 and 24 and 2025.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

But we should believe it's much higher because we know that a lot of blue states and particularly blue cities don't turn into the FBI their crime statistics. They feel that that's a form of racial oppression to have statistical analyses of who's arrested and for what. So they don't. The FBI statistics cannot be trusted. And even then, I mean, because they're so underreported. But you'd think that with the defund the police movement that people would be empathetic to law enforcement because people are, but they're not at all. I can't get over that image of the Minnesota rioting and attacking ICE and trying to humiliate them, doxing them, pointing those horrific pink phalluses at them, all these bizarre things. Really sick. And then you looked at them and I'd say 40% of them were working class Mexican Americans, you know, Latinos. Hispanics. And then I looked at the crowd. They were like 75% Karens, if I can use that derogatory term, excuse me, but I mean they're affluent, white, professional retired people and you're thinking, well you people all champion DEI people, but here's these people trying to make a living and keep you safe because they're going after 500,000 criminals and you're not just protesting, you're trying to humiliate them. Or you see those people go up to the two Hispanic officers in the airport, did you see that tape? And they start dogging them and screaming at them. Right.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, they're like their traitors. They deserve to be treated even worse.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Right?

[Jack Fowler]

From the perspective of the.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, I guess, I guess.

[Jack Fowler]

But, but the Karens, the Karens, again, not to use that phrase but they would be the ones that if confronted in something on their street would immediately with their cell phone say I'm calling the

[Victor Davis Hanson]

absolutely first ones to do it. And what they go through, you can see I mentioned that before but there is a whole genre on the social media, TikTok, YouTube about what law enforcement people have to confront. I think the worst thing that the left ever did after George Floyd for their purposes was to insist on body counts because remember they said that the police are getting away with murder and now we're going to. Whether they know it or not, they're going to have to show everybody. And when everybody learned what they were doing and had to put up with, maybe it made them more polite, I don't know. But when they pull somebody over, they're very polite, they go by the book. And the person is sassy and rude and confronts them. I'm not getting out of my car, don't touch me. I have to make a call. Wait. And it's really, it's really amazing because what they have to put up with,

[Jack Fowler]

they've created a theater for us to see these lunatics in action. But you're right with the phone, they always have the phone, they're always on the phone.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It's like, don't bother me, I have to make a phone. As if there's some kind of CEO in the. And the policeman is a security guard, you know, at the front door of their billion dollar corporation. They're so self important. Oh, why did you pull me over? And they always say this, can I. What's your supervisors? Somebody's taught all of our Americans to say that. I don't know. But I think people, I don't know, I've seen these pushbacks in my life and I just feel when people feel that we have a whole element of the population mostly on the left who does not follow the law. And they don't, whether they're immigrants that don't have licenses that are correctly vetted or they don't know English and they're barreling down the road with 20 tons at 60, 70 miles an hour. Or we have people flooding stores or trying to. There was one in Washington D.C. just recently, Chipotle. They went in there and had a big raucous fight. And what you see at the airports today, people are just tired of that coarseness and they just want and that's I think the left has it long this new genre where people are just putting on the Internet videos, you know, a drive through San Francisco, we talked about 1950 or what Detroit was like in 49 or during Pittsburgh during the war, you know, very calm looking. And of course the left say, well, they don't show what all the racism and sexism and homophobia. But I'm just talking about the general civilized look of the cities compared to today. It's not a racial thing. It's kind of just dreamy. It's almost as if I just would like to be transported to a San Francisco.

[Jack Fowler]

Like I remember click my heels, skin. Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And there would be no. No feces on the ground. A guy wouldn't come up and try to stick me with a needle. No fornication, no injection, no urination, no defecation. Nothing that makes sense.

[Jack Fowler]

You know what else you'd see? You'd see a black neighborhood and that would exist, that would have houses, et cetera. And 10 years later they're all gone. White liberals steamrolled them, crushed them, put everyone in these hellacious projects.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That was supposed to be a progressive utopian planning. Yeah, they did.

[Jack Fowler]

Nightmare, they did. Victor speaking early, you know about people who police support for police and police engagement. Jews in New York and many other cities are seeing getting the rough end of things. And Carol Markowitz, a columnist for the New York Post has an interesting article on Face it, Jewish liberals, you have no friends on the left. And we're going to get your take on that. We have an Iowa Democrat candidate who is embarrassed by whiteness. Colbert, Letterman and the Obama center is opening in Chicago and Rahm Emanuel has this glowing editorial op ed and the Wall Street Journal will get your take on that. Victor all when we come back from these important messages.

[Daily Signal Announcer]

If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy the Daily Signals flagship show. The Tony Kennett cast the same common sense perspectives you love. Weekdays at 7pm Eastern. And unlike some of the other evening shows we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis and good old American sarcasm. Thom Tillis, I'm pretty sure might have been useful at one time as a doorstop. Find the Tony Kenneth cast on YouTube, X radio, TV or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jack Fowler]

We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. I don't know if there really is Daily Signal Network, but we're saying that. So Rob, Louie, create one. Sounds cool.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think there is.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, there's a number of podcasts, Tony Kinet, and Rob sometimes does his own. So anyway, back on this Carol Markowitz New York Post piece. This is earlier, I'd say about a week ago, five days ago, she wrote this. On Monday, the New York Times allowed a top. We've talked about this before. New York Times allowed a top columnist to stain its pages with obviously fake stories of Israelis using dog rape to abuse Palestinian prisoners. The same day, masked Islamists marched through Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn, assaulting Jewish kids. Jewish liberals ask yourself, where are your friends? Not on the left, Victor. Any.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You mentioned Rahm Emanuel. He's praising that German flak tower of a presidential library, Obama's and why isn't he talking? Doesn't he understand? He's been very, he was very vocal, a supporter of Israel. Why doesn't he say to Obama, why are you silent? You haven't come out. You lecture on everything. You lecture black teens that they're being deceived by Kamala Harris, that you don't know the evil of Donald Trump. You talk about climate change, you talk about trans. You talk about everything. Why don't you talk about the treatment of Jews and the rock solid base of the Democratic Party at one time, maybe it still is Jewish supporters and they're being under constant assault by people on the left. Your word might make sense. Why doesn't Rahm Emanuel say that? And that was the most obsequious, silly article. He never dealt with anything. Obama. He you know, I want to make a statement. I don't know how to put it, but go ahead. They keep talking about dictator fascism. If fascism comes to this country, it's not going to come in the form of someone with orange skin of comb over, a little heavy girth, 80 years old, with a queen's accent that is hated by the establishment. It's going to come by a seductive, charismatic, youthful, smiley, glossy, something in a combination of Mondami and Obama. And they're going to be and the reason that's going to happen is they're going to be given a pass. They will not be judged critically. Trump is judged hyper critically. If he sneezes, they call him a fascist. But these guys get a complete pass. So Barack Obama took 20 phone lines of the Associated Press reporters and he tapped them all their data and nothing happened. People that were tapped, well, I'm really surprised he did that to me, but I guess he must have had good cause. And then in addition to that, he took Lois Lerner's irs, just basically said, we're not going to give nonprofit status of these conservative groups as we head into the 2012 election. We're just going to stop their fundraising. And then she planted the question so she could give that fake confession. And then they came into the office of Obama. Brennan Clapper, Comey, what do you have? Well, we kind of disappointed. Our investigative intelligence team doesn't really show that Donald Trump. Go back and give me the evidence. I want collusion. I want collusion. Basically, we want to subterfuge this new administration, undermine it. And so I could go on and on about his abuses of civil liberties, free speech, due process, and nobody cares because he is a protected person. The same thing with Joe Biden to a lesser degree because he was reptilian. Reptilian in his mannerism.

[Jack Fowler]

But you forgot birth certificates.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah. So my point is that fascism, fascism, fascism, you'll give your. Donald Trump will not be able to take them away if he wanted, but you will give them on a platter to Obama if he asks for them. And that's your true.

[Jack Fowler]

Remember all the Saturday Night Live skits attacking him? There maybe was one joke in eight years. I mean, he did your point about getting a pass.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

There was one little, little clown. All he did was put on an Obama mask. He'd had a mask for every other president in his lifetime that he put on and he entertained as a clown and they banned him for life and destroyed his career. That's what Obama, he was the most thin skinned, hyper partisan and he really inaugurated a vast change. But when democracy dies in darkness, it will be welcomed by the left. It really will. And you can start to see it. People who believe in totalitarianism and dictatorships, the first thing they do is look at the system. And I could use, I won't say these people are analogous as they do the Reductio ad Hitlerum, but when you look at fascism in the 30s, the first thing they do is start to look at the system, to change it. And in that case, in our case, it's packing the Supreme Court getting rid of the 250 year. 200, I should say 237 year electoral college. Getting rid of the hundred and I don't know how long the Filibuster goes from 180 to 200 years. Get rid of that. Bring in new states. We've had 50 states since 1959. They want to change the system, open the border, change the demography. That is what fascism is. It's not following the rules, it's making new, new ones. And somebody says, well, look at Trump, he's going to run for a third term. Well, if he does, he's trying to change the system. He's not going to run for a third term. He's trying to troll you when he says that. But he's already said he wasn't. But they want to structure the system so they can win because like leftists from eternity, they don't have a message that anybody wants. Nobody wants to be in a commune and have a guy lay on the sofa and complain that he's a victim. And then the other guy goes, works, and they split it 50, 50. As Plato says, even thieves, when they rob a bank, they split it up evenly. You know what I mean?

[Jack Fowler]

Right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And that's what socialism plus America is.

[Jack Fowler]

I'll say regular Americans are, have gotten through the fetal position stage. Those who. Please don't call me a racist.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They don't care anymore. They don't care anymore. They think the word means nothing anymore. I don't know what it means, but I've seen a lot of racism lately. But it's always directed at one particular group, white males who are deliberately not let into med schools, law schools, and they're still doing it. When you're Stanford University and there are, I don't know, 35% of the population are white males and you're letting in 9% for three or four years in a row following the George Floyd. And that's deliberate.

[Jack Fowler]

Deliberate. One more thing on Obama. Well, too, because I want to read something from Rahm Emanuel's piece, but do you think it was Obama's crack at Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner where Trump was attending just as Donald Trump, that really Barack Obama may have given us Donald Trump by that one snotty snide.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, I don't know if he added. It was the other line where he said, I'm president and you'll never be president. You'll never be. Yeah, that was the one that really embarrassed him.

[Jack Fowler]

It was a gauntlet.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Zoned out. Whatever your politics are, I Think anybody will believe that Trump has more ambition than Obama did. He said he was gonna fundamentally transform the country. But then he admitted in an interview that they asked him, what's your greatest weakness? He goes, I'm lazy. The year of his term, he just checked out. He was very unpopular. And he thought, you know what, if I wear Bermuda shorts and my shades and look cool and I'm playing golf and everybody dislikes Trump and Hillary, they'll fight it out and my ratings will go up. And he left at over 50%. But he didn't do anything that last year at all. Maybe he tried to. The Iran deal, which he keeps now. It's really sad to see him defend the Iran deal. He just, his heart's not in it. And he kind of says, well, when I did the Iran deal, they didn't have a bomb. Yeah, you greenlighted a bomb. And they enriched up to 60% under Biden. Well, we had a good deal, you know, Ben Rhodes and I. It doesn't work anymore with him. He kind of prances into a room. You see him on TV and he prances in. He looks around like, where is the adulation? I am here now. I'm here, your highness. And then I'm going to give you some trite boilerplate advice and you're supposed to be swooning over, and it doesn't work. Everybody's been. They've been through eight years of the race mongering and the racial essentialism. The victimhood son I never had would have looked like Trayvon. Downright mean country, all that stuff. We're only preeminent, like Greece and England, apology tour, blah, blah, blah.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, I just want to read something from this Rahm Emanuel op ed in today's Wall Street Journal. It's titled President Obama's Legacy of Hope, and it has to do with the opening of this monstrosity. And it's located in south side of Chicago, so there's so much here, but I'll just read one. Here then is another example of President Obama's legacy of connecting disparate communities within our great country and making sure they feel that they belong. I guess not the clingers, but by

[Victor Davis Hanson]

the way, the open. Yeah, not the people in Palestine, Ohio.

[Jack Fowler]

I'll tell you, the opening of the Obama Presidential center this June is a milestone for those of us who fought to make this a reality. A monument to Mr. Obama's vision of progress, the center will remind everyone of what's possible in both Chicago and America. Is he really writing this? Even at moments.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Is he the director of it or is it Valerie Jarrett?

[Jack Fowler]

Valerie Jarrett is. Yeah. Even at moments when we feel all is lost, we can change direction. As in 2008. Our nation can restore its sense of hope. We need now to save the strength, tenacity, wisdom. He doesn't believe that community to build a better tomorrow. Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

At least he didn't say that. This fortress that has no windows. I mean, even the writing on the wall, you can't even read it. Everything about it, it looks like it's a pregnant high rise with no windows. I mean, destroyed a whole park. And what's he going to achieve? What did he achieve? Achieve. What did he achieve? His great view of the Middle east were Iran and Beirut and Syria and Gaza and the Houthis would have strategic tension with Israel and the Gulf states. And then he would every once in a while fly in and be the referee. That didn't work. There is no Assad, Syria anymore. There is no Hezbollah that's going to be around much longer. Iran might not be around. Your dream is in shambles because it was flawed.

[Jack Fowler]

He gave us a beer summit. He gave us cash for clunkers.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Cash for clunkers. It wasn't an Obama phone. He gave everybody a free phone. Yeah, he did a lot of stuff. And then he said, you know, I'm not going to run. Just if I run for president, it's going to be for the change the country. I'm not going to run just to get rich. I don't be famous. And that's exactly what he ended up. He's worth $100 million.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, nice work if you can get it. So Victor, we're going to talk about Colbert and Iowa, maybe some dei. But first to our viewers and our listeners, American homeowners, the FBI has been warning about a type of real estate fraud called title theft. And your equity is the target. With just a forged signature, your ownership can be transferred out of your name. And without protection in place, you're left with an emot emotional and financial nightmare. That's why you should visit Home Title Lock so you can find out today if you're already a victim and protect yourself. Use the promo code [e-mail] to get a free title history report plus a free trial of their million dollar triple lock protection. That's 24, seven monitoring urgent alerts. And if you're a victim of fraud, they'll spend up to $1 million to fix. That's hometitlelock.com promo code VICTOR. Use the Link in the show notes. Don't be a victim. Protect your equity today with Home Title lock. And we thank the good people from Home Title lock for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. At the sheer risk of blowing the minds of those who love to hear this Bronx accent, Victor here's a headline. So today is the day. Thursday, May 21st. The last episode of Stephen Colbert and David Letterman's and so David Letterman was on the show the other day. I didn't watch it. I can't stand him. He is such a punk. But here's this article. Letterman then asks who owns the furniture on the set. To which Colbert said, everything belongs to CBS and Paramount. Are they affiliated with Skydance? That's the new owner, Letterman added. After Colbert confirmed that to be true, Letterman said, it'd be a shame if something happened to it. The the two hosts later climbed to the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater where they engaged in wanton destruction of CBS property. With the help of stagehands, the pair tossed the show's couches and Colbert's desk chair off the roof and onto a giant CBS logo below. And just for fun, they also hurled some watermelons and a cake provided by cbs. In his parting message, Letterman said, quote, in the words of the great Edward R. Murrow, good night and good luck, mother blankers.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And God, that's disgusting. Spoiled two spoiled brats. Two multimillionaire spoiled brats. There's millions of people in the United States that would say, why don't you give me the furniture? I don't have any furniture. That's not nothing about property rights. You just take somebody's property and once you're told that it belongs to cbs, who overpaid both of them. But I think Colbert is making $20 million a year and he's losing and he's lost the the network probably 100 million over his lifetime. And he has no sense of gratitude. So he goes up and takes somebody else's property and destroys it. Why don't they charge him with theft or vandalism or something? And then he throws it down on the. Just destroys something. It's like nihilism. It's disgusting. Both of them have a really bad trait and they introduced it. You saw a little bit with John Johnny Carson, but it was sincere and it wasn't mean to be malicious. I don't think you saw it with Jay Leno at all. You didn't somewhat a little bit with Dick Cabot. But that little side look. And you know what I mean? That kind of cynical. Like, I'm kind of smarter than everybody. And you know, Jon Stewart does it a lot. You talk and then you have a pause and like, only the really cool people like us on the lips get what I'm getting at. And nothing they say, you really know whether it's true or false or they believe it or not. It's all cynical, skeptical. And he brought that element in. Letterman did, and so did Colbert. So if you were talking to him and he said, well, it's really good to see you, you don't know whether he's making fun of you or he's sincere and everything had a double entendre that's kind of characteristic of our society in the 21st century, but it's too bad. And you look at these older hosts of bygone years, they were sincere.

[Jack Fowler]

That they somehow have this they don't believe in anything status as sages or the wise men of America.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Cynical. It's always this kind of make. Bill Maher was that way. He is still, but he's trying to improve a little bit, at least when he gives some talks on things. He gave a talk on anti Semitism. He looks sincere. But something about the left, they're always smarter than you. They're always cynical. They're always more skeptical. And you're kind of a nutty person to take it at face value, or you just have your core values with no nuance. And I think we're tired of all that. That's the whole university, you know what I mean? Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, let's move on to this. Democrat candidate in Iowa admits being uncomfortable with whiteness as she seeks to flip a competitive House seat. So here's the story. Running in Iowa admitted to feeling uncomfortable by the whiteness of her hometown in Minnesota after returning from a stay in New Mexico years ago. Sarah Trone Garriott, who's running unopposed in the Democrat primary she's running against Zach Nunn, is coming under fire for her comments. Yeah, I remember the first time I came back to northern Minnesota to visit. I was kind of shocked at how many white people there were, Tron Garriott recalled of the area where she grew up. In a Resurface podcast episode, the feeling was very different. I was like, whoa. And again, I'm uncomfortable in a different way. Who thinks this way, Victor?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I don't know if you were. If you were a Mexican American or black person. You said, I'm really uncomfortable with blacks. I just don't. I can't believe there's so many black people that People would say you were Uncle Tom, you were false consciousness, you were deluded, you were insane, you're cruel, you're racist. There's no finer person than Larry Elder. And he ran. And they were calling him all sorts of the white. These type of white people were calling him names because they didn't think he was authentically black. When he represented the best of black culture.

[Jack Fowler]

Didn't they call him like a white negro or something?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, they did. You know, it's so when I hear that, it's usually from very upper middle class people that haven't been around, poor white people. One of the unique things of the San Joaquin Valley is it had a lot of diasporas in the late 19th and early 20th century. We had a lot of Chinese and then Japanese come mostly as farmers. We had of course a lot of people came across the border. We had a lot of Mexican Americans, but the biggest from 1930 to 1941, 20 years of the Oklahoma diaspora and that was over a million people came with nothing, Nothing. And so when I went to one, I'll just give you an example in grade one to three at a little school called Jefferson. It's now on the bad side. It was then of Selma. There was a two story house right next to the playground. And I say that that student body that I went, my twin brother and I and maybe five farming families were the only so called white people in there. It was in the barrio, it is today. And nobody knew what you were. Nobody said you're Mexican, you're white. I mean I had no. I mean people would make fun of you being white if you were. But there was no animosity. The teachers were all integration, assimilation, acculturation. But my point is next to the, there's this house had no paint on it. It was an old two story wood house. And there were three girls that lived there and their parents were either divorced or not there or alcoholic or drug ridden. They had nothing. And they were very, very pretty girls, like 10, 12. But they had what I had what they used to call a Welsh, Welsh overbite. You know, I got it from my grandpa, they called him Bucky Bieber. And I had to have braces. But they all had an overbite and people made fun of them, called him Bucky Bucktooth. But the point I'm making is they had nothing, nothing. And the teachers would get clothing and food and bring it over to the girl because they were almost abandoned. And when they came, when they got, I went to also school with them. One of them I'm not going to mention anything that would incriminate. She was absolutely beautiful, but she had nothing white and she lived in that area and they were very mean to her. It wasn't because she was white and they were Mexican, just because she was poorer than they were. And I saw a lot of families like that. I can remember growing up here when a family came every year from Oklahoma. And as soon as they came, I said to my mom, I won't mention their names because I think they're still around. But I said, the Thompsons are still here and he's going to get this big pole and we're going to knock down a possum and the big pecan trees and then they eat it. Can you believe that? They eat it. And she said, don't ever make fun of the Thompson. They're the nicest people, they're hard working and you're no better than they are. But my point is that common white poverty was endemic from Bakersfield up to Sacramento, especially from Fresno to Bakersfield, and they had nothing. And this idea that I'm ashamed of my whiteness, of my white privilege, is that what she's saying? These people had no privilege. When you looked at East Palestine, they had nothing. And when Pete Buttigieg, he didn't even show up when they had that toxic spill. And then when he did, he looked like he was from outer space. He stood out so much. And his voice, it was just condescending. And it was just. They don't understand this country at all, that the greatest number of people who are poor are white. Maybe not percentage wise of the white population, but they're poor. They don't have a lot, but they. All of a sudden, when Obama created this binary, they were put on the oppressor, victimizer. And it had nothing to do with class. The people who have class advantages are Mondami. His dad is a PhD, left wing with endowed professorship. His mother is a filmmaker with subsidies from the government. He came from this settler colonial family and Uganda. Can I use that term, Mandami? Settler colonial. That's what you call the Israelis that have 3,500 years of history. You didn't. I didn't know there were a lot of Indians in Uganda 3,500 years ago, which I don't care about. But you do. And same thing. It's just. I don't get it at all. I don't. That was something in the Democratic Party. When you saw Trump. Trump, there was a whole. It wasn't just the irredeemables and the deplorables clingers. Obama started it when he wrote off poor white people in Pennsylvania. They cling to their guns and religion like they're not as smart as I am. That's what he was saying. And then Hillary did the irredeemables and the deplorable. Then Biden picked up on it with chumps and dregs. He said the dregs and then garbage. And that characteristic characterized the new elite Democratic view of what they used to champion tva, the noble poor white working class. They hated that because they had gone from class concerns to racial essentialism. And your race now mattered, not your class. And if you look at, when you look at what's happened now, it's no longer affirmative action gets preference. It's anybody who qualifies for D has one qualification. Not your salary, not what your parents own, not their degrees, not how privileged you were, just what color your skin is.

[Jack Fowler]

These people want it both ways, not only their status. I'm elite, I went to this school or whatever. Branding, that's important. But it's also important to them to say, and I'm not like them.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It's so funny. You say, I was remembering I was a faculty member at Cal State for 21 years. And there was this woman that detested me. And she would come in and she tried to bait me by at faculty meetings, talking about her latest left wing crusade, but it was always prefaced with, well, I just got back from the Bay Area, I saw my nephew, and of course we packed him off to Harvard. And then I, you know, my,

[Jack Fowler]

my

[Victor Davis Hanson]

sister's daughter, you know, we're getting a big fight. She wants to go to Princeton, but I want her to go to Stanford. And that's what she just name dropped. And then she didn't see any disparity, but she was talking about like a Marxist during the meeting. You know, we need to have more of this in here. And we have to have gender studies and race studies across the curriculum and Classics is no exception. And. And then you thought she was Lennon or somebody. And then as soon as I thought you were going to say sometime I thought I said something I should have never said. She was yelling at me. Once she told me to shut up in a meeting. I was laughing when she was talking. She said, shut up. And I said, do you think your DACA in the Black Sea is bigger than mine? Is that what it is? But she DACA envy. So I learned very early in life that one of the psychological motivations that they hate the white poor is that they love nice homes, wood floors, designer kitchens. They don't like American car. They want a Range Rover, BMW, something tasteful. And they don't go on a cruise ship. They go to, I don't know, some beautiful valley in Lombardy or somewhere in Italy or France, and everything is tasteful. And. And to justify that privilege and that satisfaction of their appetites that no one else can approximate, because they're elitist and they're privileged psychologically, they square that circle by saying, but I hate poor white people. I just can't stand their gross world. That's what Trump. That's the secret to the hatred of him, I think, when he walks out with Dana White and mixed martial arts and he's embossed with gold everywhere he can touch. He's like King Midas. He touches something and gold appears. And then his queen's accent, you know, it's just so earthy that to them, if I can really trash him, I can go to, you know, I can go to Venice again this week and not feel bad about myself, or I can remodel my Upper west side kitchen and make it according to the latest magazine or. That is a psychological mechanism to hate poor white people and keep they. If you're poor and you're brown or black, you're romanticized. But not poor white people.

[Jack Fowler]

No. They will go to bingo. They go play bingo. They go to WWE Wrestling. Yeah. They are branded the wrong brand. Hey, Victor, let's close out. I forgot to mention the other day, a week ago or last week, we mentioned the Bradley Prizes, you were unable to go, but they had the ceremony and I did attend, and Meyer Soloveitchik, Rabbi Soloveitchik was one of the three honorees, and he's been a terrific. I love the guy. I know him somewhat. A great champion for America and patriotism. But he wanted to convey how important the things you've been saying in writing are to the. The Jewish community in America particularly. You had just written the Four Traits of Antisemitism. So he buttonholed me and he said, please let Victor know how much that I appreciate that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I had some criticism on that, but my experience is very strange because I did not know someone who was Jewish until I went to UC Santa Cruz at 17. And I think at that time, I remember the. They said 25% of the population was Jewish, mostly from Southern California. That was kind of the. In place to go for a couple of years. And that's the first time I. So my knowledge was all abstract. And then when I met all these people, I went to Greece and my best friend in Greece was a guy named Paul Roth. He was a very. I guess he ended up as a very successful lawyer in Australia. And another guy named Andy Aronson. The three of us were very good friends, but I never. We really. I didn't see any. There was no. I didn't see any unique. You know what I mean? I don't see any of the animate. I did hear anti Semitic stuff, but it was usually about packers and prices from farmers. I said, well, you know, we sent a semi over to New York and then the price was. I was quoted $2.50 a log and I got 50 cents back because the Jews stole it. Or the Armenians, they were called Fresno Jews. That was really a. It was kind of a racist thing about. In the abstract, though. But my parents, I don't know where they got that. They were absolutely staunch supporters of Israel and Jews all the time. And I never really knew what a Jew was. They had a couple of friends that were Jewish, very close friends. In fact, some of their best friends were Jewish, but I didn't know them very well. They would go to San Francisco with them and meet with them. So for me, it was always the Jewish community. Everything about it was exemplary. I mean, they were law abiding, they were hard working, they gave so much to America. They did all of these wonderful things. And then the Holocaust, what happened to them when people allowed the anti Semitism get out of control? And then they were always a small minority of the population, so they were always vulnerable. So it really shocked me to see a couple of things. The silence of the Democratic Party when the guy with a Nazi tattoo is her candidate for Senate and Maine. Or this crazy Mondami Islamic wing where you're marching and trying to intimidate Jews, children and stuff. And then October 7th, it was just so horrific. And I said that to Piers Morgan when he and I got into it. And this crazy professor, I just said, do you tell me what you would do on October 7th? They come across the border to your community in a time of peace with civilians egging them on. And they rape, murder, kill, torture 1200 people. The most medieval things you. That's not fair. Somebody wrote me from the. I'm a medieval scholar, Victor. And that was so unfair of you to say the word medieval. Medieval people didn't do this. They're probably right.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, Marquis de Sade probably did some of the things.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

But to do all of that. And what would you do in reply? Oh, you would ask for the ringleaders who planned it? Yes, they did. And they didn't give them up. Oh, you would try to negotiate with the hostages. They did, and they wouldn't give them up. You would wait maybe two, three weeks, lose the strategic initiative and see if the world would rally to your cause. The Europeans, the un, the United States. No, they didn't do it. So then you would say, we're going to have to make war. But you would drop leaflets and say, get out of this place. This area is an entry and exit into the subterranean. They did. And there was no other choice but to just wage war. And all the information came from Hamas. So we never knew how many people were getting killed. All we knew is whatever happened, they lied about it and exaggerated as they always do. And so I didn't see this hatred coming in the way it did. And I didn't see it at all coming from the right. I knew Nick Fuentes was doing that and Candace was, but I never saw it from Tucker. And then when I heard it, I thought, well, he didn't mean that. And then I heard another broadcast. Well, he's talking about Israel this week, Jews this week, week, Israel this week, Jews. The thing about antisemitism, and we've talked about that before, it's not just the overt crudeness of it, you know, Farrakhan, they're parasites. It's a gutter religion, or Malcolm X, they're termites, or Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Jaime Town, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the biggest anti Semites was not that the sins of the uncle go on the sun, but Hikem, Jeffrey's uncle, who was a professor and was a complete anti Semite. But my point is that when you see all this, it's the disproportionality. So right now in the world, what's going on in Africa, black Africa against Christians is horrific. What Vladimir Putin did in the Chechnyan war, he leveled gross. He just leveled it. What you see in Cyprus, you've got a whole people who have been displaced since 1973. The most industrious people in the world. We had Max Nikias on here, the wonderful ex president, the president emeritus at usc, he was displaced with the Turkish invasion. They've never gotten their homes back. And yet we don't talk about Cyprus, we don't talk about Grozny, we don't talk about what's going on in Africa. All we talk about is this little 11 million people, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, and all these sins. But once we establish all of the sins of Israel supposedly conducts and is responsible for it, we don't apply it to anybody else, because if you do, it would overwhelm the examples of Israel. And that's the true sign of antisemitism. When you focus on one particular group and you apply a completely different standard to it. And that becomes an obsession. If you look at the Arab world and what happens in those Arab cities and countries, when the city of Hama under Hafez Al Assad, he wiped the whole thing out. Even Tom Friedman wrote about it. He wiped the whole town out, 20,000 people. He wiped out Saddam Hussein, he wiped out the Marsh Arabs, he tried to wipe out the Kurds. That's commonplace in the Arab world. But why is it that you just focus on Israel? Israel, Israel, Jew. Juju Juliet, Jew. Unless there's some intrinsic dislike or hatred of it. Somebody can tell me the. I, I don't know what the answer is, but it's. It seems that. Why would you do that? And when I look at Trump today, I don't see. I mean, Jared Kushner is Jewish, son in law.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, his daughter is a convert.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Witkoff, the Commerce secretary. But they're not controlling Donald Trump, Trump, Netanyahu. I try to read the Israeli Times, the liberal version, and the Jerusalem Post, more conservative, and they're all in there, all the editorials are about how Israel's been had, maybe by Trump and the United States. It's going to be left hanging. There's nothing in there that Netanyahu led us to war. Nothing at all. It's. It's much different. And so it's just a strange phenomenon. And then when you meet, I have a lot of Jewish friends. When you meet Jews that come up to you and talk, it's, you know, they're very scared. They really are. And they're being attacked. I mentioned that before. My wife and I was going to a doctor's appointment in Menlo park, and we went to this very well known cafe, very left wing, in downtown Menlo Park Park. And I'm sitting there and a guy comes up and says, I just love your stuff. Oh, you know, I thought he was kind of crazy, but I was very polite to him. My wife was sitting next to me. And then he, his eyes got really narrow and you could see something was bugging. And I just wanted to tell you something. I praised you, but I got to tell you, he got right in my face and he said, you're a Zionist.

[Jack Fowler]

Apologist.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And the Jews have done this. And he just went. Flipped out. Everybody turned around. I said, don't touch me. Please don't touch me. I wasn't a cancer survivor there, so I could have unloaded on him, but he kept. I said, you're pathetic. You're just full of hatred. Get away from me. And he. And he just turned into a monstrous person. It was just an obsession. And, well, it destroys people when they get into that. It's really tragic because I don't know what, some of the people on the right had those tendencies, and this was an opportunity to express them or it consumed them, but it's going to destroy them. Anybody who is obsessed with antisemitism, they destroy their careers. They destroy everything. Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Frankly, any obsession.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Any obsession. That's right.

[Jack Fowler]

Distorts your perspective on other things. So that's what, race.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

The same thing. The same thing.

[Jack Fowler]

Hey, Victor. Coming up, starting tomorrow, on Friday, Memorial Day weekend, I just want to make note of Turner Classic Movies. Ted Turner passed away, I think, two weeks ago. Maybe the best thing he ever did was to create Turner Classic Movies. And Turner, as much as you watch it sometimes, and if they have to praise some of these, the Hollywood Blacklist. And it just makes your blood boil. But every Memorial Day weekend, starting Friday through the Monday, they run strictly great movies. Military movies, war movies. I really encourage folks, if you have tcm, check it out. Das Boud is not one of them. Victor, I apologize. But they rotate the scale. Okay. Pork Chop Hill, Guns of Navarone.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Guns of Navarone is Gregory Peck. Yeah.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah. Well, that's a Gregory Peck month. So they're highlighting a few of his, including Pork Chop Hill is his. The Red Badge of Courage, the black and white John Houston movie, which is really a sensational movie. Midway.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Midway. That was Charlton Heston, the older one.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's not such a good movie.

[Jack Fowler]

No, it's not, but it's okay. 30 seconds over Tokyo.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's actually a good movie. I read the book, too. The guy's name was Law. I haven't talked to Jack about this, so I'm just extemporary.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, we're just. I'm just. I'm spraying.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He lost his leg. You know, he wrote about. He got his leg amputated. But that was a good movie.

[Jack Fowler]

The Best Years of Our Life.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's an excellent movie. Yeah. Frederick Marsh is a God. Oh, he's. He and Dana Andrews are just great actors.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah, he's. I think we're watching a Frederick March

[Victor Davis Hanson]

movie, Man in the gray flannel suit I just saw.

[Jack Fowler]

Yes, that was it. Yeah. I was comic to my daughter. I was like, frederick is such a great actor. He wasn't. He was a man of. Well, he was.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You know, he was one of those actors that was a good person. And he couldn't. It just radiated in his acting.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

When I. Even when Robert De Niro was a great actor and he is a great actor in particular roles, you don't get. You get the impression that he's a great actor because he's a mean SOB and it radiates through the character he's playing.

[Jack Fowler]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Like, he did a great job on that Max Cady in Cape Fear. It was kind of a psychopath. I thought Robert Mitchum was actually better, but I think that he was playing himself. Those tendencies of being mean and speaking

[Jack Fowler]

like he does, there's something. There's something foul in him. I'll just end this with Seven Days in May and A Walk in the Sun.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's a good movie. Walk in the Sun. That's another good movie.

[Jack Fowler]

Oh, I love that film. That's. Dana Andrews is the star of it. Yeah. So there's about 40 or so movies here, folks. Check it out. And I'm glad some institution in America is finding significant time to pay tribute to those who gave their lives for us. And Turner does. So God bless him for that. Oh, now, Victor, I have to read a couple of comments and then we'll wrap it up here. Hundreds of people leave comments on various platforms on the show, so here are some of them. Lauren Glass writes. Thank you, VDH and Sammy for the rich discussion and including the perspective of history. Once again, Victor's classical education explains much of what is going on in our world. Extra Pencil 2, which is a great name. I learned more in a few minutes of listening to VDH than ours. I no longer waste listening to anyone who disagrees with him or simply doesn't understand what Dr. Hansen does. Thank you for every word. VJN V L4O E. I don't know what that means, but. Right. You talked about what California was in the 1960s, how it looked like paradise and endlessly rising. And how would you destroy it? It made me think about the book Cadillac Desert by Mark Reisner.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I knew that book very well. He died tragically of, I think, leukemia. He was a man on the left, but he wrote a really good book. And he really talked about the water in California.

[Jack Fowler]

Water. Yeah. So he says here. The book talks about building. Building the building. The idea. I did like California was based on harvesting water from the Sierra Madre and the Colorado river. As, as you listed, all the substructures of California that are collapsing. I realized that California could be a desert once more. Strange to think about. Yeah. So.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, Victor, you've been. It was a desert when they, my grandparents, my great great grandmother came here. It was a desert and they tapped the Kings river and they were able to grow things.

[Jack Fowler]

Well, it was a sea once upon a time. Right. The Central Valley. Is that the belief that the sediment there was.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Some of it. But Tulare Lake was the largest freshwater lake east of. Well, actually it was the largest. It had a larger area than Tahoe even, but it was only about 8 to 10, 20ft deep. But it was basically all the way to the ridge route to the grapevine. 70, 80 miles. And it was drained when the Kings. There were a tributary, the San Joaquin. And the Kings both drained when they dammed the San Joaquin rivers. Five or six dam. And then the big one at Pine Platte and the Kings and the Cahuilla. There was a lot of rivers that dumped into it. Okay. But that's one of the richest farm. This is the Boswell Corporation today and the old Salyer Corporation. And that's got some of the richest soil in the world from all those years of sediment and sea life and everything. Or ocean lake life at the bottom. You know, it's nitrogen.

[Jack Fowler]

I enjoy all the greens and. And reds and whatever that come from it. Victor, I want to thank the folks that subscribe to Civil Thoughts. That's what I do. One of the things I do for the center for Civil Society comes out every Friday. 14 recommended readings. You'll do. I know you'll like it. Go to civilthoughts.com sign up. It's totally free. Victor, you've been terrific. Thanks for all the wisdom you shared in analyses. Thanks, folks, for listening and watching. We'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Bye. Thank you everybody, for listening and watching. See you next time. 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 [e-mail] and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.