Victor Davis Hanson: Biden Left Trump in a Lurch in Syria

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Victor Davis Hanson: Biden Left Trump in a Lurch in Syria"

Podcast: Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Host: Victor Davis Hanson (with Jack, co-host)
Date: December 16, 2025
Source: The Daily Signal

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Overview

In this episode, Victor Davis Hanson provides historical and cultural analysis of current events, focusing on the consequences of U.S. foreign and domestic policy under the Biden administration, the escalation of anti-Semitic violence in the West, the interplay of immigration, multiculturalism, and campus politics, and the rise of anti-Israel rhetoric across the political spectrum. Hanson examines recent deadly attacks in Syria, Australia, and at Brown University, relating them to broader social and political shifts, and warns about declining deterrence and the erosion of Western values.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Loss of U.S. Deterrence in Syria

Timestamps: [00:00], [29:28]

• Hanson criticizes the Biden administration for what he sees as a failure to deter attacks on American troops in Syria:

  "For four years they staged over 130 attacks originating in Syria on American bases, security positions. And we didn't do much of anything." (VDH, 00:00)

• This lack of response, Hanson argues, emboldens hostile actors and puts American troops at risk, echoing failures of deterrence witnessed in Lebanon in the 1980s.
• He warns that if Donald Trump returns to power, he will need to reestablish the principle that attacks on Americans will have serious consequences:

  "If you're going to put Americans over there, then you have to tell their enemies, if you kill these people, we're going to make life very uncomfortable for you." (VDH, 00:46)

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2. Anti-Semitic Violence & Campus Climate

Timestamps: [04:12] – [11:03], [37:38] – [42:18]

• Hanson discusses a recent shooting at Brown University, noting reports that Jewish students were targeted and the shooter may have spoken Arabic. [04:12]
• He links escalating anti-Semitic violence in the West—including the Australia Hanukkah massacre and U.S. campus hate—to broader trends:
  • Mass immigration, failures of assimilation, and the Democratic party's increasing sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
  • The DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) apparatus, which he claims has become a shield for radical Islamist ideologies:

    "...this very right wing, fascistic, radical Islamicism has glued itself on to and been accepted by the DEI project. And the result of it is that it's permissible now to push a Jew on campus." (VDH, 05:20)

• Institutional reluctance and incentives to address anti-Semitism (highlighting Harvard's leadership and faculty, as well as recent campus incidents).

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3. Shifting Political Alliances and Rhetoric

Timestamps: [11:03] – [16:44]

• Hanson is critical of new trends on the right, alleging that figures like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and others are enabling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, sometimes for financial motives.
• He describes a shift where these elements find “ideological brotherhood” with the radical left, particularly via anti-Israel sentiments.
• The rise of voices playing both sides of the street (mentioning “Gutter-based Al Jazeera”) and questioning why American influencers on the right are courting illiberal foreign powers.
• Memorable quote:

  "It's got such a predictable history. I don't know why these people keep doing it, except as you said, lucrative. But they should be called because now there is no [watchdog]." (VDH, 13:54)

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4. Role of the Left in Crime and Gun Violence Debates

Timestamps: [22:30] – [26:11]

• Hanson rebuts Senator Chris Murphy's (D-CT) claims that Trump is responsible for rising violence, instead pinning leniency and failures in urban gun control on the left:

  "Nobody believes the right is soft on criminals that use guns. It’s the left." (VDH, 24:40)

• Details systemic issues: abandoned stop-and-frisk policies, critical race and legal theories resulting in bail reforms, and soft prosecutions.

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5. Immigration, Assimilation, and Social Strain

Timestamps: [29:28] – [48:57]

• Hanson examines the integration crisis in both the U.S. and Australia, arguing that Western nations have opened their doors to groups with radically different values, and have failed to demand assimilation.
• Expresses frustration at the lack of gratitude shown by immigrants and at elite policymakers who bear none of the burdens of uncontrolled migration.
• Highlights welfare dependency and fraud in specific communities (notably Somali immigrants in Minnesota), referencing statements by local politicians like Tim Walz.
• Stresses the need for a major shift – similar to 1920s-era U.S. policies – to limit and better select immigrants, emphasizing self-sufficiency and willingness to assimilate.

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6. Institutional Decay in Higher Education

Timestamps: [51:17] – [54:53]

• Hanson lambastes the Ivy League and elite universities for failing to prevent or punish extreme anti-Semitism, citing Columbia's own report admitting harassment and ostracization of Jewish students.
• He argues prestige no longer attaches to many of these institutions, especially outside technical fields, due to ideological monoculture and grade inflation.
• Quote:

  "Why are we still stuck on this idea that, 'Oh, I'm at Stanford, oh, I'm at Harvard, oh, I'm at Yale.' I've seen all these people. ... They’re not prestigious people." (VDH, 51:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On deterrence and ISIS attacks:

  "We lost deterrence in Syria during the Biden administration ... And we basically established this principle that if you want to kill an American, nothing's going to happen to you."
  (VDH, 00:00 / 29:28)

• On immigration and multicultural policy:

  "If you come to the country and you yell Allah Akbar and you try to kill Jews or threaten it, you're going to go home and no one like you is going to come back."
  (VDH, 47:48)

• Western weakness/civilizational crisis:

  "I've never met a more Eloi group than this generation. It's almost like they want to be harvested. Come and take me. … What is so hard to say?"
  (VDH, 46:55)

• Campus antisemitism:

  “Israeli students were publicly called murderers in class. Jewish students were told their people survived the Holocaust just to commit genocide…”
  (VDH quoting Columbia report, 49:29)

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• [00:00] — U.S. deterrence failures in Syria.
• [04:12] — Analysis of Brown University shooting; campus antisemitism.
• [11:03] — Rise of anti-Israel conspiracy theories on the New Right.
• [22:30] — Gun violence narrative and left’s role in urban crime.
• [29:28] — U.S. military in Syria, and broader immigration/assimilation critique.
• [37:38] — Australia attack and comparison to U.S. situation.
• [46:55] — "The Eloi generation" — civilizational warning.
• [49:29] — Columbia anti-Semitism report and critique of higher education.

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Conclusion & Tone

Throughout the episode, Hanson applies his characteristic blend of historical comparison and sharp polemic. His tone is both urgent and pessimistic, warning of deepening crises—from U.S. strategic vulnerability abroad, to the inability of Western liberal societies to maintain their core values in the face of mass migration, rising antisemitism, and campus radicalism. He is skeptical of elite institutions and critical of both left-wing and new-right coalitions that, in his view, enable the erosion of Western civilization and security.

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This summary omits sponsor messages, intros, and outros to focus exclusively on substantive discussion.

Transcript

[Victor Davis Hanson]

We lost deterrence in Syria during the Biden administration. I'm not blaming him solely. But for four years they staged over 130 attacks originating in Syria on American bases, security positions. And we didn't do much of anything. And we basically established this principle that if you want to kill an American, nothing's going to happen to you. So Donald Trump is going to have to find a way to disabuse people of that. We'll see what he does. But if you can't, then you can't put Americans over there as sitting ducks like we did in Lebanon. And Reagan took everybody out of Lebanon. That probably was a bad sign or reaction to the destruction of the embassy and the barracks in 1983. But if you're going to put Americans over there, then you have to tell their enemies, if you kill these people, we're going to make life very uncomfortable for you.

[Jack]

Well, hello ladies and hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. We are recording I'm in the east coast. So it's night here. And this is Sunday the 14th of December. This episode is up on Tuesday the 16th. Victor Davis Hansen, the star of the show is the Martin and Neely Anderson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior contributor at the Daily Signal, which is the happy home of the this podcast. He also has a website, the Blade of Perseus, and Its address is victorhansen.com you need to subscribe. Do that. 65 bucks a year, 650amonth. Stick your toe in the water. Check it out. Today's a Victor, I want to say happy Hanukkah to many of our listeners. Yes, it is not a very happy Hanukkah for a lot of the world's Jews, especially in Australia. We're going to talk about and get Victor's take murder of at least 12 people there in a Islamo fascist terrorist shooting. We also have a shooting at Brown University. Maybe we'll get to Erica Kirk and her stand in defense of herself and her husband against lunacy. And we have some the the killings of three American troops in Syria. So plenty to get Victor's take on. And we'll do that when we come back from these important messages.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Right is still right, even if you stand by yourself.

[Jack]

Mr. Chief justice, may I please the court? This is Hans von Spakowski, host of the Case in Point podcast which looks at the hottest cases affecting politics, culture and everyone's daily lives. But we talk about them without confusing legal jargon. And we have interesting guests like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And we end with reviews of classic.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Hollywood movies relevant to the topic.

[Jack]

Case in point, the podcast, available everywhere you won't want to miss. We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I have to admit, Victor, I didn't expect us to be talking tonight. And I know our listeners and viewers know you've been going through some stuff and you still.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I got a procedure and I'm going to have some more, it looks like, but I'm still upbeat. Anything? I always quote the signature line in Das Boot. Not yet, Kamraden. Not yet.

[Jack]

Right. So your glue factory is over many horizons. So we're not.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Whatever it is, I plan to strangle it.

[Jack]

Okay, well, however we can help you, we shall. So, Victor, let's get started. If you're cool with it, it'd be nice if I had my notes in in order. Let's start with the Brown University shooting which took place in Providence, Rhode island, yesterday. I think. Gosh, I'm confused now. How many? Nine. Two dead. Any number wounded?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think nine wounded. And as we were speaking, I just checked before we came on, and I guess the class in which the primary casualties took place were a Jewish professor in an economics class. Is that right, Jack?

[Jack]

Correct. Yes.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And then the shooter was considered by some, and this is not alleged, not confirmatory, that he was speaking in Arabic.

[Jack]

Yes.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And it was on the same day as what we saw 15 dead in Australia, Jews that were murdered. Yeah. I'll be blunt. If you lower the bar, and Western Europe and the United States have lowered the bar on what's permissible, they've done it in so many insidious ways. They've opened the borders. And when you see all the people who come in under Joe Biden, 12 million that have been on audited, you see, and I'm not saying this person was an immigrant. That's just this, just part of the puzzle. And the same thing in Australia. And then you are so much more afraid of being called an Islamophobe than you are an anti Semite. I don't know why that is, but there's something about the DEI project that this very right wing, fascistic, radical Islamicism has glued itself on to and been accepted by the DEI project. And the result of it is that it's permissible now to push a Jew on campus. We saw that Harvard student who did it. He got an award for doing it, $65,000 fellowship. We saw another person who did it. They were given a ceremonial honorific position at graduation. We saw the Deer in the headlights, presidents, Claudine Gay, just utterly incapable of identifying antisemitism. I saw it firsthand on the Stanford campus when I would walk to my office and saw this camp of pro Hamas people flagrantly, without worry, breaking every rule on campus about overnight tinting. And they were there for four months without consequences. So it's a perfect storm. 250,000 students from the Middle east, three and a half million new immigrants from the Muslim world, four or fifth generation of Jewish Americans in the United States. That diaspora is going the way of the Greek community intermarrying, assimilating. And it's estimated in 10 years there will be more Muslim US citizens at the current rate than Jews. And then you add in Israel. 60% of the Democratic Party favors the Palestinians over Israel. Let me say that again. An illiberal group run by Hamas that is a bloodthirsty terrorism elicits more support than a liberal, humane elected government and democracy in Israel. So if you send those messages and you create that climate, then there are going to be people just like with Donald Trump. If you say he's a fascist, he's Hitler gestap. Just like with ice, if the left keeps doing that, then somebody comes out of the woodwork and feels he'll be a hero and there will not be really punishment. The only difference now is that I know that William F. Buckley, this new right, doesn't like him, but he did a courageous thing by telling a close friend of his, Pat Buchanan, that what Pat was doing was not permissible. As far as the mainstream conservative movement, you couldn't have those anti Semitic tropes thinly disguised as anti Israel. So the right had been immune from that. And that was very important because the right, the conservatives were the big now they were the big supporters of Israel. They were the monitors of anti Semitism. They were the ones who said Jesse Jackson. You said Jaime Town. The left didn't. They were the ones that said Reverend Wright, you said dim Jews won't let me speak to him to about Barack Obama. They were the ones that said to Al Sharpton, shame on you when he said put on your Yarmux and come over and I'll fight you. They were the ones who said shame on you Louis Farakhan for saying gutter religion. Not now they don't. Ilian Omar said it's Benjamin's baby. It's all about the Benjamin's baby map with no Israel on it in the Middle East. So the right then was immune from anti not now and how it appears on the right is in two manifestations. One is the overt, crass, clickbait Nick Fuentes. The Jews, this, this, this, they're horrible people. Okay? The other is the Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson. Just saying, just saying, Jack. I'm just throwing it out there. I'm just saying that, you know, I'm speaking at Charlie Kirk's memorial and it's kind of like, it's kind of like some guys in the Middle east eating hummus and killing Christ. Plagiarism. Who's that about? And if you're going to make that statement, you should read the gospel accounts and secular Latin literature about the culpability. Because the person who maybe the Pharisees wanted him to do, but they didn't represent the entire Jewish community. And the people who killed Christ were the Romans. It was an edict by Pontius Pilate, the prefect. So why say that at a funeral service for Charlie Kirk or why? And then there's this new fascination with gutter. I don't understand that, Jack. Gutter. I have no problem with it. Okay, fine. But it plays both sides of the street. Doaa. They've got all this money. They're trying to block any nation who wants to join the Abraham Accords. They have been triangulating with Turkey and Iran. The Iranian gutter Turkey axis was all, was the most virulent, I think anti Israeli, anti American movement in the Middle east. And then you would read about it in the gutter based Al Jazeera.

[Jack]

And.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It'S a illiberal autocracy. Fine, that's their business. But why would you go out and cater to them as people on the right are doing and glorifying them and interviewing them and then demonizing and creating all these conspiracy theories about a liberal constitutional government in Israel. It makes no sense.

[Jack]

It makes dollars and cents. I think it's about money, but in.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

The sense that they subsidize American outlets and they allow investors. I just hope that keeps away from the Trump movement. In other words, I just hope there are not people surrounding the Trump movement who are in the Middle east making a lot of money by enabling access to decision makers in the. I just hope that's not true. I know that Trump has tried to bend over backwards and be fair minded with the Arab world and Israel. But, and I appreciate that, but I'm not, you know, I don't give Israel 100%. You can do whatever you want. But basically I have been to Israel and I've been to almost every country in the Arab world and I can tell you except for the Gulf states and that's a result of money. And even the Gulf states, there's a whole hell lot class of workers without any rights at all. It's just a different world. It's just a different world and it's.

[Jack]

A well led country. I mean, you have, you know, I don't know, I wouldn't say how well you know, but you know. And you've conversed with Benjamin Netanyahu any number of times. I mean, I would say you might even admire him. Would that be fair to say?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, it would. I, I, I don't understand why. He's a very learned person. I know his brother a little bit. Very lear I go when I've gone to Israel, it's a functioning western society. If you're a dissident, if you wanted to say Allah Akbar on a street corner in Israel, you can do it all day long. If you go into Gaza, West Bank, Saudi Arabia and you say God, greater God, glory to Jesus Christ or to Judaism, any of that thing, you're going to be in big trouble. Yeah. If you want to wear a mini skirt in Gaza or Syria or any of those countries, be careful. So it's a western country. And what I'm getting at is that this new right was the watchdog on the left, but now there is no watchdog except mainstream conservatives. And because it's such a lucrative, as you say, proposition, because Tucker's got a huge audience. Candace Owens has got a huge audience. I don't know what Kania west is doing. Nick Fuentes has a huge audience. Maybe it's manufactured as some people suggest, but they have an irrational, it's just, I don't understand that almost every single story that comes out, Charlie Kirk's assassination, there's a Jewish motive, Jewish motive to it. We take out the Iranian nuclear plant that every single president has said he worried about. Even Obama said he worried about it, even Biden said they were. And it has to be a Jewish plot. Has to be a Jewish plot. And Charlie, you know, it's almost every single thing. Ultimately the Jews do it. And it's got such a predictable history. I don't know why these people keep doing it, except as you said, lucrative. But they should be called because now there is no. And then you know what another symptom very quickly is? Have you noticed that when you do that, then you find ideological brotherhood with the hard left. Like the other day Tucker was talking in terms of Venezuela, this hardcore Marxist communist dictatorial country that replaced eons ago Chavez, eons ago a constitutional republic, that he was almost suggesting that there were admirable qualities in Maduro's government because of a shared dislike of Israel and that maybe we're going to take out Maduro because of the Jews. It's vintage Reverend Wright stuff, you know.

[Jack]

Yeah. And something screwy.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Something screws. And it's not going to end well because when you have all of these professors and I'm speaking to someone, I would say that in my 50 years of academia I found 10% at the most of faculty that were even handed about Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. All the rest is indoctrination. And part of it is driven by anti Americanism, part of it's driven by anti Semitism. But it's mostly pro Hamas, pro plo, pro Arafat. All that stuff was. And it's, it, there's nobody speaking out against it and it's lowering the bar. It's going to continue because I think people are saying, I mean, if you're on a US campus today and you are a professor and you say you support October 7th and what they did, you're not going to be fired. You, if everybody gets draws attention to it, you might have a suspension, but you're not going to be fired. You're calling for the, the death of thousands of people.

[Jack]

Well, you'd have to fire the entire faculty of some college.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You see that in Paris they canceled their annual champ de Christmas because they're scared. Can you imagine? You are a Christian orientated country for eons and you invite in people illegally to come into your country from an illiberal Middle east and they threaten you and they commit so much crime, behead a priest or do kill a schoolteacher and you're so afraid of them that you cancel a Christmas procession.

[Jack]

Well, actually canceling. Here's. I just. I got this tweet yesterday from Yuri Kurianchik. I didn't get it, but I saw it. Who writes over 24 hours a Muslim killed three Americans in Syria. Five Muslims arrested for plotting a massacre at a Christmas market in Germany. Paris concert canceled due to Muslim violence. Two Muslims murdered 12 people at a Hanukkah party in Australia. Islamophobia is getting out of control. And to add on to this, maybe we don't know. Brown. Yes, maybe.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, yeah, it is. And it's not going to stop because there's people. The left is not going to stop. And I just named almost every major DEI leftist person has a record of antisemitism and the old guard, the Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Guard are terrified of the squad, terrified of Ilya Omar.

[Jack]

John Fetterman is the only one.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He's the only one. He's the only one. And he may, I don't know what will happen to him, but they'll try to primary him. Absolutely. But it's going to get worse. It's going to get worse. And I think that's the point of it. I think people want to connect Jews to every conspiracy, all of this stuff. And then when this stuff happens, they say, oh, I'm just throwing it out there. I'm just throwing it out there. Just throwing it out there.

[Jack]

Victor, I'm glad you laid down that, that marker about policing right of center on this, but I have to read something here. So for our we have an advertiser. So 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 is eventually paid a price. The wise, though, never waited for collapse. They prepared for correction. That's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. And that's physical gold, not as speculation but as insulation. Reputation matters, which is why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability and an A rating with the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships built on trust. Right now, right now, dear listeners, they're extending a special liberty offer for our listeners to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in a bank. And if you believe that, the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious. Well, get your get a pen, get a piece of paper, write this down. Call 844-790-91918447 909191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 8447-9091-9184-4479, 09191 or visit protectwithvictor.com History rewards those who take the long view. And we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor to further torment our listeners and friends, I do want us to focus get your attention a little more on Brown before we will take a break and then we'll talk about Australia. But as for Brown, I think the thing to, to get your take on is Chris Murphy, the my senator from Connecticut. And he is just, you know, you just have to find a bad word. We don't say bad words on this show. But he was on CNN with Dana Bash earlier and he was speaking about the shooting. So gun violence rates and mass shooting rates have come down in this country. But this is not shocking because over the last year, President Trump has been engaged in a dizzying campaign to increase violence in this country. He is restoring gun rights to felons and people who have lost their ability to buy guns. He eliminated the White House Office of Gun Violence Protection. He stopped funding mental blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Murphy added of the president, this is staggering. So he has been engaged in a pretty deliberate campaign to try to make violence more likely in this country. And I think you're unfortunately going to see the results of that on the streets of America. So Dana Bash says here, let me.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Ask him a question. What two states, three states have the most strict gun control laws? I think it's New York, Illinois and California. And you're telling me, Senator, that on a Saturday night when 40 people are shot and 20 are killed in the summer in Chicago, that all of those gang bangers who killed people with handguns, got them where they legally went in and they said, oh, I'm going to wait 60 days, 100 days. I'll have. No, they didn't. They stole them. They used them. They have access to them. All you're going to do with your gun laws is mean that when they break into somebody's house, somebody's not going to be able to defend themselves. And who was it who stop and frisk in New York? Hmm. I think it was the left. And who is letting out all of the felons and who is behind critical legal and critical race theory that says that people who commit violent crimes, many with guns, should not be jailed, if jailed, should not be indicted, if indicted, should not be convicted, if convicted, should not be incarcerated, if incarcerated, should be paroled. It's the left. Nobody believes the right is soft on criminals that use guns. It's the left. And it would be in a perfect world if you told Americans tomorrow that there will be some registration or some legislation about making it harder to get guns. And we guarantee if you pass that there will be fewer gun deaths. They would probably support it. But there's no evidence that there is. But there is evidence that people who are legal and use guns legally for self protection, that they don't violate the law, they don't shoot people and the people we'll find out where all these guns were purchased. And the other thing that's very ironic, he is saying that Donald Trump, I'm not defending what Donald Trump says when he says fatty or dopey or whatever, but you're talking about somebody who was almost killed twice by would be assassins. And during those two assassination attempts. And we'll throw in tragically the death of Charlie Kirk. Senator, your party and people ideologically akin to you celebrated that and they made them iconic heroes. And you go over to social media and see what they were saying about Charlie Cook. There wasn't a day that was passed that some entertainer, some Hollywood star, some two bit politician, some professor wasn't gleefully saying things I wish they had not missed. Trump or Charlie Kirk got what he was coming. So don't give us that pious boilerplate. The left are the people who sympathize more with the criminal than the victim. That's just a fact. Obrego Garcia was a gang member. He came in here repeatedly illegally. He was a spouse abuser. He was in a car speeding without ID or a driver's license. He was trafficking illegal aliens. He may or may not, as alleged have been involved in pornography. And who championed him and said, oh, he's just a man from Maryland that should live in the United States. He's a good father. The left did the left. It's always that case. It's always that way.

[Jack]

Well, Victor, we're going to take a little break. And before we talk about the horrific shootings yesterday in Australia and we're and we are talking On Sunday the 14th, we will get your take on the slaughter of three American soldiers in Syria. We'll do that when we come back from these important messages.

[Tony Kennett]

Hey, folks, it's Tony Kennett, national correspondent for the Daily Signal and host of the Tony Kennett Cast. I need to share something with you before we start today. Our goal at the Daily Signal is to cut through the noise and give you the facts you need to stay informed as engaged citizens. Unlike so many liberal media outlets, we're honest about our conservative views and report the news with a commitment to telling you the truth. But I'll Be straight with you. Running an independent news operation isn't easy. While big media companies have corporate sponsors and massive bloated budgets, we operate differently. We answer to you, our audience and supporters. That independence is exactly what allows us to tackle the stories others won't touch and ask the tough questions others often avoid. But our independence comes with a challenge. We need your help to ensure the Daily Signal can continue to counter the liberal media's lies with the truth. Every deep dive investigation, every exclusive interview, every fact check we publish requires time and investment. If you found value in what we do, if the Daily Signal has helped you stay informed or given you insights you couldn't find elsewhere, would you consider supporting our work with a donation today? Even a small monthly contribution makes a real difference in our ability to bring you the journalism you deserve and expect. You can support our work by visiting DailySignal.com donate. That's DailySignal.com donate. Every dollar goes directly into making sure we we can continue serving you with the reporting you've come to count on. Please go to dailysignal.com donate and give your gift Today.

[Jack]

We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. You'll find it on the Daily Signal, except no imitations. If you see something that looks squirrely, it ain't Victor. Report it to YouTube or wherever. But if you see authentically, yes, please do that on the daily signals, YouTube, most of those.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

There are a lot of Victors out there, I can assure you, but they're not me. Yes. And they speak a little bit too quickly. They don't have a little problem with their voice I've had recently. And they say things I'd never say, and they take it. They have a huge audience, maybe bigger than ours. So that's got to be very careful. And then there's another Victor who is me, but he's the old Victor and Victor Hansen show. We don't. He's the wise done for. He. He's had his day. No, not all us. We're like at the end of Das Boot. Not yet, comrade. Not yet. That's right. That's right.

[Jack]

All right. Donald Trump tells ISIS we will retaliate after the ambush that killed three US Troops in Syria. Victor, anything you want to say about that or.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I don't know if we have the whole story, but it seems to be somebody that was supposedly training with him or they knew or somebody in the government. That happened a lot in Afghanistan. It just raises the same question. I think we have 900 soldiers in Syria And I think the former ISIS members who have now flipped and are trying to form a government in Syria and who ousted the Assad dynasty are supposedly pro American. And they are supposedly, according to Trump, outraged at this. And we'll take punish them. But we lost deterrence in Syria during the Biden administration. I'm not blaming him solely, but for four years they staged over 130 attacks originating in Syria on American bases, security positions, and we didn't do much of anything. And we basically established this principle that if you want to kill an American, nothing's going to happen to you. So Donald Trump is going to have to find a way to disabuse people of that and we'll see what he does. But if he can't, then you can't put Americans over there as sitting ducks like we did in Lebanon and Reagan took everybody out of Lebanon. That probably was a bad sign or reaction to the destruction of the embassy and the barracks in 1983. But if you're going to put Americans over there, then you have to tell their enemies, if you kill these people, we're going to make life very uncomfortable for you. And there's nothing more uncomfortable for radical Islamicists because we got about a quarter million of them here on campuses to tell them we really have no problem with you. But if you're associated in any way with these movements or let's just say there's certain countries and Trump has named them, why do we. We just don't. I just don't think there's. It's at this point and this time there's no need. We haven't enough people coming in. There's no need to bring in people from Gaza, from the west bank, from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, I don't know, maybe Jordan, maybe not, maybe some of the Gulf places. But there's no reason. We have enough people. Why would we bring anybody in from Somalia? There'd be no reason to do that. We have enough people here and we've already proven that A, we can't vet them and B, they're not honest. They as a group, immigrants about who they are and what they are here for and that they will all be self supporting or they have a patron that will support them. You have 75 to 80% of the Somalia community on public assistance and they're committing fraud in addition. Then only a Tim Waltz would say we want more people like this. What Tim Waltz said last week, Jack, was basically, if I could translate his gibberish, we have 75% of the Somalia communities on Public assistance, and they've created the greatest welfare fraud in the United States. A large group of Somali. And we want more people just like. Yeah.

[Jack]

Who refuse to assimilate and actually maybe culturally can't assimilate. We certainly know they won't assimilate.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, if you come over from a country, the difference, as I said before, between a Judeo Christian country, where that is the majority religion, and an Islamic, where it's the overwhelming religion, is one of tolerance. If you are in an Islamic country, I've been on a lot of them, and you just watch. You can't be an apostate, atheist, agnostic. It's just almost impossible. You at least have to profess you're a devout Muslim here in the United States or Western Europe, you can do whatever you want. And that's the difference. So that's why people are not. Except for these petro sheikdoms that have all this money. That's why people are not flocking to Egypt. They're not flocking to Morocco, Algeria. They're not flocking to Tunisia and Libya. They're not flocking to the West Bank. They're not flocking to any of these places if they're not Muslim and Arab or Muslim, just not doing it. They're coming here because they have a particular view. They want the security, the freedom, the prosperity of the United States or Western Europe, but they want it in a cocoon as an enclave so they can continue to have all of their traditional customs and values, but with the major exception, they won't be poor. They won't be monitored by the government, they won't be attacked by their tribal rivals. They'll be safe, they'll be rich, they'll be healthy. When they get a problem like I have, they just go right into a university research hospital and bam, $300,000 for a procedure or something that'll be paid for. And then they can vote for somebody like Ilyana Omar, who says this is a trashy country and the dictatorship's worse than the one she left. Yeah, that's where we are.

[Jack]

How would you say, out of many, one, hell, no. In Latin. I don't know. I know. E pluribusunum, but I don't know.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I get it, you know, I get it really upset, because I think I've been in 2ers and maybe, I don't know, seven or eight offices, doctors offices, and maybe 10 scanners the last six months. And I can tell you this is a wonderful country because in every single place, there were sizable Numbers of people who did not speak the English language, and they were immigrants. The one that I just got out of Friday night after procedure had a sign, Jack. It was really ecumenical. It said, do you point to the language you speak? It was at every desk. There were 20 of them. I didn't even know some of the language. Mongolian, et cetera. And for somebody to say, this is a terrible country, or it's trashy, or to see people in Los Angeles waving the Mexican flag and burning the American flag, it just sickened me because this country is so. You know, Joe Biden let in 12 million people, and then he went to the beach and fell asleep. But he didn't say to himself, who's going to house them? Who's going to feed them, who's going to pay for their. And then they all have medical problems. Are they just going to go to Cedars Sinai and walk in the door and say, I don't have any health insurance. I have a kidney stone. Can you give me $50,000 worth of free treatment? And if you don't, you're a racist. Yeah, that's what it was. So it was a good country. It was generous, it was magnanimous. But we don't ever hear any thanks for what we do.

[Jack]

The only thing that raised their ire in that four years about the border was not the sheer volume, but was the guy on the horse with the reins. I think that was the only thing that caused a peak on the left.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That he supposedly hit people from Haiti, causing the river, which he did. And he was trying to rein in his horse.

[Jack]

Right. Other than that, we did. There was.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, we had General Hayden who said that Donald Trump had created cages like those at Auschwitz Birgenwall. And of course, they came in under Obama. Now, the whole. The whole. But it was all done by wealthy people. The people who engineered that 12 million, that project. They were people like Gavin Newsom or Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer or Elian Omar. They all have nice homes. They all have concierge medical care. They all have bias and prejudice when their kids, you know, I'm a cousin of Nancy Pelosi. I want to go to Harvard. Oh, I'm Chuck Schumer's kid. That's how it works. And then the people who paid the price of having to pay higher taxes, having to wait for four, four months for a specialist appointment, that was. Who cares about them? They're just hoi pollo. That's their attitude.

[Jack]

Well, another nation staggering under immigration, unassimilable Is that right? Immigration is Australia. So to. So the horror at Bondi Beach, Hanukkah celebration that ended in a bloodbath. The prime minister, actually Benjamin Netanyahu. I don't know if you saw the story, Victor. He was very strong statement directed at Anthony Albanese, who's the prime minister of Australia. Who's let him in.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Oh, he's an outside anti Israel, anti Jewish person.

[Jack]

Yeah. And part of Netanyahu's, I think attack would be the right word is saying you've created this environment. You have allowed antisemitism to fester, grow and flourish there. And this is what you've got. And the first statement that came out of all but after the he didn't say a word about oh, this is terrible, my brothers and sisters and Abraham, et cetera. It was really cold.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Reminded me of George Casey, who's a great officer, nice person. He was chief of army's chief of the staff of the army in 2013 at Fort Hood when the. Was it neat? Was it Mr. Hassan. I forgot his name.

[Jack]

The major, the psychiatrist, the major who.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Decided to shoot 13 and wound 30. And within about a day he said, well, this is tragic, but I think it would be even worse if we lost our Just as bad bad if this hurt our DEI program. I think it was that comedian who passed away who said famously, can you imagine what would happen if we dropped a nuclear bomb, if an Arab, if Iran hit us and dropped a bomb and killed 50 million Americans? Can you imagine the problem we would have with Islamophobia? Meaning the great problem would be Islamophobia. Who cares about 50 million America?

[Jack]

Let's a little more on on Australia in a second. I just, I again have to read something and happily want to read something and to our listeners and viewers and you know that college is broken. You sure as heck know that if you've been listening to this podcast and Victor's wisdom activist professors seminars that feel like struggle sessions. $80,000 a year to hear Hamas chants on the quad while being told America is evil in class. So what's the alternative? There's a new university in Texas that's doing the opposite. It's called University of Austin, or uatx. Here's what really sets UATX apart and why students are turning down UChicago and transferring from Columbia to attend. At UATX, students are in small seminars taught by great professors. They read the great books of Western civilization to learn from them, not tear them down. They build actual companies on campus with mentorship from a vast network of top entrepreneurs and investors. You can be openly Christian or Jewish without apology. And when you walk into the main atrium, there's a giant American flag. UATX admits students based purely on test scores, so the application takes just five minutes. Oh, and another thing, Tuition is completely free forever. Let me repeat that. Tuition is completely free forever. It's funded by American patriots who want to create the Navy Seals of the mind, not another generation of credentialed activists. To apply to the University of Austin, visit you austin.org that's u a u s t I n dot org and we thank the good people of the University of Austin, Texas for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor back on Australia, I've, I think we may have discussed this once or twice before. You know, there's a sense that Australia is America just with funnier accents and on the other side of the world. But we're kind of kindred brothers and that the countries, we're all patriotic, et cetera. Maybe we are down deep, but it is a country I think in deep trouble. You have any thoughts about that?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, I've been to Australia. I love the country. I would like to say it's in deep trouble. But that assertion would mean equally that we are because on the same day that they were murdering 15 people, this same type of gunman allegedly killed two brown students and nine. So it was just a matter of what lethality or competency in his aim or we would be talking about the same magnitude. So we're no different. Maybe it's even worse because this happened at a so called sanctuary of higher learning at Brown University. And the same thing, I mean the prime minister of Australia was clueless. But I was listening to tapes from the Brown president. It's just the same thing. Just clueless can't come out and just say something truthful and nobody can just kind of say this is going to stop. I don't know what you think about this, but this is going to stop. And if you threaten Jews, we're going to find you. And if you shoot somebody, it's a hate crime. But we're not just going to call it a hate crime. We're going to prosecute you and incarcerate you and put you away. And when we find out whether you're getting money or support or you have ties to your former country, we're going to have an immigration block. And if we find out you are here on a green card, on a student visa, you're gone. You're gone forever. And all the people that knew about this in advance. And I think the thing this is kind of H.G. wellsian. You know, H.G. wells was a socialist and he wrote at the turn of the century, but he was a deep. He wrote a history of the world, was pretty good. But he was deeply. One thing about him was he was deeply pessimistic about the West. And he wrote this. I think some of you have read it, the Time Machine. And in it, when they go to the future, which is essentially in the novel, if everything goes like this and there's a nuclear war, but everybody there's going to be Morlocks. Huh? The Morlocks, they're going to be a subterranean class of slaves and they're going to work for the Eloi, and the Eloi are going to be effete aesthetes who are harvested by the Morlocks. And basically what he was saying was Western civilization, elite with all of their privileges, they don't have firm values and the working classes who are going to harvest them. And what he meant, I think of what he was saying is that you can have all of these university trained people, they can spout all of these utopian vomides. It sounds wonderful. They can make fun of the garbage people, the deplorables, the clingers. But when those people let people coming in who have a very different view of the world, a much rougher view of the world, a much more existential view of the world, they are completely helpless. And that's what Western civilization is becoming. I mean, how hard is it to.

[Jack]

Say.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

We in France, we in the United States, we in Great Britain, we have certain traditions and they are Western, Judeo Christian and they go back to ancient Greece and Rome, Magna Carta, Enlightenment, Renaissance. And to preserve those institutions and values, we can only let in a certain amount, just a few. And they have to be self supporting, they have to come legally and they have to be willing to acculturate, assimilate and integrate. We don't mind if they have different food, we enjoy that, we enjoy different fashion, music. But I want to warn you, should you be lucky enough on our merocratic criteria to be selected as one of the few lucky ones to come here, we're going to acculturate you and if you don't like it here, then we're going to give you a one year, just go back home. Why can't they do that? Why do they just say yes we can? Angela, just come in, come in. Millions. Yes, yes. Oh, we'll respect Your, oh, we won't have a Christmas parade. We might offend you. Oh, yes, yes. And what's even weirder about the left is that their enemies are supposedly conservatives that are traditional Christians, traditional values. And then they idolize people who make traditional values and religion look like mushy compared to them. They ally with people who are fanatically devout and fanatically homophobic, transphobic, and in Western terms you would call them sexist or racist. And yet that's part of the DEI mosaic. It just staggers the imagination. I've never met a more Eloi group than this generation. It's almost like they want to be harvested. Come and take me. Come and. Oh, I'm sorry, did I offend you? Just take. You know, who do these people think when they go to Australia? Who do they think built Sydney? Who do they think built that country out of nothing? It was a bunch of poor people sent to a penal institution. And they came absolutely dirt poor, suffering all sorts of social and class prejudice. Some of them were criminals. And they built that beautiful country. They built it and for them to turn it over to immigrants and then to feel guilty about who they are and bring it. It doesn't make sense. What is so hard to say? If you come to the country and you yell Allah Akbar and you try to kill Jews or threaten it, you're going to go home and no one like you is going to come back. So don't ruin it for everybody else.

[Jack]

Yeah, this Chip Roy, I think I saw some headline. The Congressman talking about a return to a 1920s immigration mindset. Just. No, Victor, you know this better than most, but I assume it was just to say it's 1929, there's just a trickle of immigrants coming into America relative to, you know.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, that was a period that was a reaction to 1870-1920. People just said, we've done enough now. We're gonna have a cooling off period. And that was the cool age, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover era. Just we, we can't handle everybody. And they were especially afraid of 19th century anarchists from Europe. So they, they had a cooling off period and Eisenhower had a cooling off period and deported a lot of people.

[Jack]

But sounds like we need one here. Hey, we're going to get back to talking about colleges and their hatred of our brothers and sisters in Abraham. And we're going to get your take on that, Victor, when we come back from these final important messages. We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words at the Daily Signal. Again, I Want to remind folks, check out Victor's website. The blade of Perseus. Victorhanson.com Treat yourself. Give it to yourself as a Christmas gift. Subscribe. It's $65 for the year and you will be able to for that. To read the exclusive articles Victor writes twice a week just for the Blade Perseus, not for anywhere else. Exclusive videos. Check it out. So, Victor, there's an important report that came out about Columbia, which is in the Ivy League just like Brown. So 70 page internal report. Columbia confirms that Jewish and Israeli students were harassed, isolated, targeted. And here's what Columbia itself now admits, okay? Israeli students were publicly called murderers in class. Jewish students were told their people survived the Holocaust just to commit genocide. A rare class on Zionism was disrupted simply for not being hostile to Jews. Professors read private emails from Jewish students out loud to shame them. Classes were canceled so students could protest Israel. Others were held in Zionist free protest camps, et cetera, et cetera. There's about a dozen more bullet points here. This is one of the most prestigious colleges in America. And I don't think.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think it's one of the most shameful places. I think a lot of. One of the results of all this is all these blue chick names. Columbia, Harvard, I don't have any respect for them. Cal State, Fresno. I know the president very well, and I don't think that he would allow somebody at Cal State Fresno who pushed down a Jew to get a $65,000 honorarium. Only Harvard would do that. I think only Harvard would hire an incompetent like Claudine Gay. The president I just mentioned at Cal State Fresno is far better educated and accomplished than Claudine Gay was. And I think if you look at people like Larry Arn at Hillsdale or other people, Pete Peterson, the dean at Pepperdine, you look at their credentials. So why are we still stuck on this idea that, oh, I'm at Stanford, oh, I'm at Harvard, oh, I'm at Yale. I've seen all these people. I've seen that they're not, they're not prestigious people. They haven't been for 10 years, 15 years. DEI was part of it. But there was another type of dei. It was not racial or religious. It was ideological that I watched people get promoted on their ideology. And that meant the harder and harder left that they could sound, the more likely they were to go through the curses of Norm fast, rapidly. So at the end of it, if they're giving 80% A's like they did at Yale, I think 70 at Stanford and maybe 75 at Harvard. And they're hiring a president that was a plagiarist at Harvard. And they're giving awards to people who push Jews down. We had an 800 page. I think it was anti Semitic Semitism report at Stanford, and it found the same thing. If they're doing all that, why are they prestigious? I think the people who are prestigious are engineers, medical people in the medical schools, the engineering schools, the math, for the most part, they're still meritocratic. But that's not what we're talking about. Most of these people who are doing these things are in the social sciences and humanity and are, you know, so that's where it is. The shooting was in the. An economics class wasn't in a computer science class. And what I'm getting at is I just think we have to have a completely counter revolutionary view about higher education. They rate. They increase their tuition above the rate of inflation. They have these unorm, These humongous endowments that now they're just barely starting to pay a pittance tax on. They're racist. Their admissions are racist. Their graduation ceremonies are racially segregated. They call them additional or addenda, but they were like they're dorms. They're racially segregated. Like, they're safe spaces. So I like a lot of people where I work, but if somebody says to me, oh, you work there? That doesn't mean anything anymore. Used to. Not anymore. Because I've seen the people who have been there. I've seen what the free speech was like. I've read what the professors. I went before the faculty senate, so I just don't have any respect for it. I do a lot for where I work. The Hoover Institution. I think we're very well run and deserving of respect. But not Yale, not Harvard, not these other places.

[Jack]

Well, Victor, we're going to take it a little early today because, you know, you've got. You gotta go, gotta go lay down. I'm gonna say you gotta go. You've been through a ringer and, you know you're gonna need some more ringer to go through. So we're gonna. We're gonna take a little.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I was thinking that in my nine lives of bike accidents and ruptured appendix in Libya and. And rockets shot at you, embedded in Iraq and torn ureters and grease. Too long, Covid. I've always been able to survive. Yeah. And whatever they find out next week, I'm happy with it. Not yet, comrade. I can add a little addendum to that. I was watching Game of Thrones the other day and there's a guy in there, Sergio, and he has a good scene where he tells Arya Stark he's a fencing teacher. You don't watch that, Jack. But I kind of got hooked on it. I don't like the brutality and the sexuality, but there's some good story lines to it and dialogue. And he's teaching her how to use it. And then these thugs break in. They're going to kill him. And he only has a wooden sword because it's a practice session. But anyway, he says to her earlier, she said, I'm afraid to die. And he said, are you afraid to die? And he said, you just get up every day and say to him, not today, not today. Sorry.

[Jack]

That's what I said.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Tomorrow, but not today. But you have to.

[Jack]

Someday he'll disagree with me.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

But not yet, not today, not today. Sorry.

[Jack]

I have two.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Sorry Thanatos.

[Jack]

I have two interesting comments though to read as we typically do at the end of the day show. I'll say first, I got a lot of emails this weekend. I don't know why, but from folks who get Civil Thoughts, which is the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Society, comes out every Friday and it has 14 recommended readings. So if you go to civilthoughts.com, sign up, you'll get it next Friday and you will enjoy it. I'm confident. Free. Totally free. We're not selling your name. Thanks. For those who do, here's two comments. Victor 1 is from Periphron who writes there's not no reason for the AI fakes. As VDH stated, there's always a reason and the primary reason is that VDH is speaking truth and has an audience, just as Charlie Kirk did. And indeed Newsom's quote, relentless hand syndrome, end quote, is a distraction from an empty and vapid message. It's theatrics, which is clickbait as Madame Aoc and Jasmine have all found. That is the superficial, visual gossipy culture in which we now live.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, you know what they have all in common?

[Jack]

What?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Those names. They're all parasitical. Mondami never did anything. He never created wealth, he never worked really. He was a parasite on his parents income.

[Jack]

Who were colonialists, right?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, I forget. And Gavin Newsom was born as a Nepo baby near to well that attached himself to the Getty fortune who subsidized everything he did. And Jasmine Crockett played as the inner city poor girl, but she went To a tony exclusive prep school. And she was brought up in upper middle class to affluence. And she's never really done much of anything. And that's not a good pedigree to be given something than to play act like you're suffering or you're a victim or something. They all do that as well. Mondame is going to do stuff that people are not going to believe. Just the initial appointments he's made. And you'll see the Knockout game come back to the streets of New York on steroids. That's going to be aimed at Jews and he's not. Because they're going to think that our guy is in there. And it's not going to be any consequences. I hope I'm wrong.

[Jack]

He's probably going to handcuff hamstring cops and their ability to stop. Stop such stuff.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

What's the next letter?

[Jack]

The last one. The next and last. From Tracy Aarons. I7Z who writes, I discovered Victor last year. I have now religiously listened to these shows. I wanted to share that I listen to them often while transporting injured or abandoned wildlife to care.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Wow.

[Jack]

I volunteer to do so in Northern Illinois. And it often takes me on the road two to four hours driving time. Victor's soothing voice and knowledge has calmed and educated a lot of creatures in my car. Geese, groundhogs, opossums, squirrels, owls, blue herons, mice, various birds, etc. Thank you. You're a treasure.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And she means part of the animal. I need all the help, but to have some in the animal kingdom is fortuitous.

[Jack]

Yeah, well, God is dog spelled backwards. Don't forget that. Okay. St. Catherine, excuse me, St. Bernard, we're leaning into him for a little help here with you, Victor. Victor, I hope. Well, we're going to try and record one more show, you and I. Yes, we'll do that. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be on the other side.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

By the end of the week, I'll know exactly where I.

[Jack]

Okay, well, thanks for all the wisdom you shared today. Thanks folks, for listening and watching. And we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Bye.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Bye. Thank you, everybody. 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.