Victor Davis Hanson (5:37)

I don't think so. And so willing to bend, warp, manipulate the law for political purposes. I just, when I saw this, I just asked myself, okay, Judge Rhodes, Rhodesberg, you're in charge. And it is the Obama, you're going back in time and it's the Obama administration and Eric Holder. We know. And Barack Obama said, you know, we don't like these leaks that are embarrassing us. From the Associated Press journalist. So they have, we want the data and we want the time and the length of conversations with all these reporters, which they did do. And would you have done that and given them permission to do that and then defended them? I don't think you would. Or would you? And the answer is, I didn't think you would. But I'm sure now that you would have given them permission just like you gave permission to the Biden administration to go after. I guess it was the Biden administration via Jack Smith. Right. To monitor eight senators. And you would have done the same thing before. But now let me ask the final question. Donald Trump now says, you know what, there's all these leaks and we know who's doing it and we want to monitor their record. Would you allow that? No. You would be the biggest, biggest of possible civil liberties possible. So he's, he's not a principled person. He's not a serious person. He's a political opportunist masquerading as a judge. Everybody knows it. I'm sorry to be so harsh on him, but that's the truth. He is, he's not disinterested. And he, I guess he thinks, you know what the, any damage to my reputation because I am warping jurisprudence and I'm manipulating the law and any unhappiness that I incur from the right is more than balanced for my folk iconic status among the left. Did anybody know Judd's Boatsberg before this? No. Now I'm on the lips of everybody in the left who counts. The CBS newsroom, the NPR News anchor, the president of Harvard. Everybody knows me. That's kind of what he's saying.

Jack (8:04)

Yeah. The willfulness of doing wrong. And I say that alleged wrong. Victor, they don't, they, they don't care.

Victor Davis Hanson (8:14)

Right.

Jack (8:14)

Harry Reid.

Victor Davis Hanson (8:15)

Right.

Jack (8:15)

Lying about, hey, who lost the election.

Victor Davis Hanson (8:18)

If I'm wrong, that it's not the stimulus for acclaim and notoriety, then it's just I'm a soldier in the ranks of the anti Trump army and I'm Just going to issue this stuff. And by the time it winds its way into the appellate circuit judge where we have a 50, 50 chance of liberal judges, Trump will be eaten up with all the things he's done. It's not just, you know, the surveilling that it will be a week, two weeks, three weeks, six months that we will hold. We will stop the Trump engine and then we might even if get, you know, a, a positive circuit, they'll appeal. It'll have to go all the way up to the Supreme Court. So I will have initiated a chain reaction in various ways. And more importantly, I will encourage other Liberal 350of the 700some judges, I will encourage them to see if they can match my status, notoriety and effective delaying tactics and we'll get more of them just like me. So he's a very problematic judge.

Jack (9:26)

Victor, I mentioned, I didn't line this up as a topic to talk about on the show, but I did just mention your piece, actually wrote it for American Greatness, your weekly essay, but it can be found there or could also be found on the blade of Perseus. Are Americans better or worse off since January? Would you tell us about that, that piece and answer the question that you, you posed?

Victor Davis Hanson (9:53)

Yeah, I just asked myself, let's just go through data and see what you find. And the inflation rate is about 3% under Biden. It was 21.4, I think, or it averaged 5% over 5% per year. The GDP in the second quarter was pretty high, 3.4. And they, they forecast a 3% GDP. I think that the Biden GDP was about 3, a little bit lower. The inflation rate was about 2.4. Excuse me, not the inflation, but the GDP and inflation we talked about. The unemployment is three something, it's a little higher than Biden, but you can't really adjudicate all of these because, you know, he comes in with the fumes of a prior administration. So it won't really start until, you know, June of this year to the end. But then I also looked at more foreign investment. Biden had about $200 billion of foreign investment. Trump may have 15 trillion. And then I looked at revenue and the, with, despite that bloated, big, beautiful bill, we're going to have a slight reduction in the deficit, slight if mainly due to tariff income and doge cuts. And then when you look abroad, it was true that Putin had not invaded anybody's neighboring borders in the last four administrations. He had only skipped Trump's and he hadn't invaded. He invaded during Biden, Obama and Bush and Jake Sullivan said they inherited pretty much a quiet Middle East. Their war broke out on Biden. When Trump came into office, they were talking about not the time or the if, but, you know, they were talking about not the probability or the. They were saying, when will he get a bomb? It was a certainty. Now, Trump stopped the nuclear project. The Houthis, the Hezbollah, the Hamas entities are all neutered, largely to for because of the work of the Israelis. But they were given a green light by Trump in a way they didn't get from Biden. And the Ukraine war continues. That started under Biden's watch, but at least there's talk now of some kind of movement and pressure on Putin. And. And there's an. I don't think Biden said one time that how many people have been killed. Trump talks every day about the waste of 7,000 lives a month or a week. Just it bothers him. And he's putting. Everybody said he was Clapper, said he was Putin's puppet. He's put more pressure on Putin the last month than Biden did in four years. If this secondary boycott goes through, my gosh, that will really cripple Russia. And they're starting to hit targets deep into Russia. It's scary, it might be dangerous, but they're hitting refineries. They've tried the refineries by about 25 or 30% of their gas. Some areas of Russia are importing gas from abroad. So. And then there's finally the cultural. If we had this conversation a year ago, Jack, we would. And I'd said, jack, you know what? I'm going to vote for Trump. I think he's going to end by fiat dei, just discredit it. So DEI is going to be a pejorative word. You know what I think he's going to do? I think he's going to stop biological men, transgender athletes from dominating women's sports. He's just going to ban him. I do. And I think, you know what, we're going to go from 10,000 illegal entries per day to none, and we're going to be fewer illegal entries in the first 10 months than in any time since 1970 and over a half century. I think he's going to do all that. And you'd say, victor, Victor, Victor, what are you drinking on your farm? It's impossible. So, yeah, I think he's done very well. And that's what I wanted to point out. But it was in the context, as I started the column of there's a lot of verbiage. You know, there's the ICE raids, there's the fascist Trump, the, you know, Gavin Newsom with his. If you notice this little Quigley thing he does now, his hands like he's a puppet. It's weird. But that stuff. There's all this. Trump is trying to troll them capital and. But that doesn't matter. It's just the record. Yeah. And the record is really good. It's much better than Biden. I was shocked that Newsom looked like he was insane when he. They interviewed him. And he said, I think. I think. I think that Joe Biden is probably. He's got the. He's got the best record of any president in history. I'm thinking, what are you. You're more demented than he is. And then that was like saying, I have the best record as California governor. Everybody. We're rated 49th by Reason magazine. And our infrastructure, we beat Mississippi. Hey, Everybody, I've got 21% below the poverty line living here. Hey, everybody. Got one third of all the welfare. I got electric rates up to 40 cents a kilowatt. We've spent 20 billion on high speed rail. I can claim that. I guarantee we haven't made one foot of rail yet. Not one foot. Under my watch. I oversaw two big fires that destroyed all of Pacific Palisades and some of Arcadia. I did that. And I can top that. We have the highest gas prices in the United States. I'm getting all the refineries out. Can you. Can you best that? That's what he should be saying. Yeah.

Jack (15:37)

Yeah. Look at that hand stuff. Victor. Clearly it's. It's David. Yeah. It's like if a drunk at a bar wanted to show you that he could kung fu year. But that's what it came off to me is. But somebody told him, you have to do this and whatever.

Victor Davis Hanson (15:56)

Then he was talking about growing up with Wonder Bread and he was. Poor Sammy and I talked about that. You know, this guy was a protege of the Getty billionaire fortune. They funded all of his business ventures. And his father was an appellate court judge. At night, you know.

Jack (16:15)

Yeah. Your heart bleeds for him. By the way, I'm dumping this on. Not dumping. I'm springing this on you because you brought up. You mentioned ice, and there was a piece today in the Epoch Times. Or the Epoch Times, some people there call it Epoch. This has to do with ICE. About 80 missing children rescued 1700 people arrested in Memphis. Pam Bondi put out something the other day. Federal efforts in Memphis over the past month have led to the rescue of 80 missing children and the arrests of 1700 people, including 126 gang members. This is in Memphis alone. Victor. These achievements city by city are terrific. But also it's, it's, it's so like.

Victor Davis Hanson (17:02)

How, what is a Democratic response? Yeah, why doesn't he leave those child molesters alone? They have rights. Those kids are fine. They're four or five, eight. They can, they can, they can make it on their own. We don't have to go in there and try to save them. Who are you to say that a pedophile doesn't have a right to be a pedophile? That's the kind of attitude they have, that laissez faire attitude. And they're just, they're on the wrong side of all these issues and it's going to hurt them because on the border, on the trans, on the crime, on the ice, all these issues, they end up in Pavlovian fashion, just opposing everything that Trump is for. Right? And he puts them in that situation. I don't know if it's deliberate, but part of me thinks, wow, this is an animal cunning. He writes these capital letters, he puts these exclamation parts. He makes these crazy videos. He gets them so angry and wound up, they can't think. So they just say every morning they get up and say, what did Trump say? He's going to build a ball. We don't need a ball. And we're going to blow it up. We're going to have an agenda. Then the Democratic president who wants to be has to be promised to blow up that, that ballroom up. Well, he's paying for it and for there's no facts. Well then it's all crooked. We got to be go after these donors. It's just, you know, it's just he's that got that ability to do it and they just, they always end up on the wrong end of the, of the demographic or the pop the poll or whatever.

Jack (18:31)

I, I mentioned this two or three other podcast, but the fact that there are so many missing children because of Biden and Mayorkas. God knows what abhorrent and sick and twisted things have happened.

Victor Davis Hanson (18:47)

Something about Mallorca, that guy of all of the Bidenites. When I would see those pictures of those hordes crossing the border and then they would say is the border secure, Mr. Mayorkas? And he'd say yes, yes, what do you. And he was just lie. You know, there was one time he was talking and I think Fox Had a background that day of people coming across. Yeah, it was secure. Then I realized what he was saying. He was saying, you see, the subtext of what he was saying was we're trying to change the demography of the United States. Look, you understand? And we feel a more secure America is a more diverse America. So we have managed to let in 10, 12,000 a day, and we've got 2 million a year entries, and we will get 8 to 12 million people. And that is going to make a more secure America. It's going to be diverse. Now we're going to muss up our hair a little bit with some, you know, millions of people on public assistance. And you might not get into your, I don't know, your dialysis appointment with illegals. And we might have a little extra, I don't know, pedophilia or rapes, but that's collateral damage. But the border is not only secure, it's getting. It's enhancing the diversity of America. That's what he thought. That's what he was trying to say. Yeah.

Jack (20:09)

Well, Victor, to our listeners and our viewers, if you listen or watch the vdh, in his own words, you. You care about where America's been and where we are now and where we're headed. And that's exactly what Freedom Frequency is all about. It's a new online publication from the Hoover Institution, where Victor is a senior fellow, and it's designed to cut through the noise and bring clarity to the issues that shape our country's future. Each week, Freedom Frequency delivers serious, accessible analysis grounded in research and guided by the American values of liberty, democracy, free enterprise, and the rule of law. You'll hear from some of Hoover's most respected thinkers. People like Condoleezza Rice, General Jim Mattis, General H.R. mcMaster, economist John Cochran, and of course, Victor Davis Hanson, providing clear thinking and principled solutions for a complex world. As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation, there's no better time to dig deeper into the ideas that built America and will determine its future. Subscribe now to Freedom Frequency. Do that on substack. That's the freedomfrequency.org Let me repeat that, the Freedom Frequency, and join the conversation that's lighting the way forward. And we thank the good people from the Hoover Institution. I move that paper for sponsoring VDH in his own words. Let's see, Victor.

Victor Davis Hanson (21:39)

What?

Jack (21:39)

Oh, I have to talk about. Get your thoughts on Boohoo.

Victor Davis Hanson (21:44)

Boo who?

Jack (21:44)

Canada's first female Chief of Defense. They don't have a Secretary of War. They have a chief of defense cries while apologizing for systemic racism. Here's what she said. Gosh, I wrote her name down, but I can't find it out. But she wrote, systemic racism, racial discrimination and harassment are an affront to these values. And yet we allowed these injustices to occur and fester within our ranks. Therefore, on behalf of the Canadian Armed Forces, I offer my most sincere and deepest apologies. Victor, can you imagine being the equivalent of a Marine master sergeant major in the Canadian Armed Forces and seeing your boss, your leader, doing this weepy woke thing?

Victor Davis Hanson (22:32)

Well, I saw an article where I think his name is Chin Wei or Chin U h U I Chinway. He's the head of the People's Liberation Army. He is shaking in his boots when he heard that. When she said that she was going to apologize for systemic racism to indigenous people and he used the word colorized, you know, I had never heard that before. It was like I thought about the TNT channel, you know, on DirecTV, the Turner Broadcasting where they colorized all of the black and white. They use that term. That's the only time I'd seen it. But she was saying colorize people. I thought that was kind of racist actually. But she didn't talk about she the subtext. If I could do this again and fill out what she was telling America, she was saying to the Canadians. Now look, some people might think that we promised over 10 years ago to spend 2% of GDP as a NATO member and rearming. But you know what? We always rely on the United States. We just expect that they're going to protect us strategically and tactically. And we're got two oceans, so why the blank should we do that when we can do much more important things like apologize to people who are not white who are in the military. Now I don't have any actual documentation, but I know, I just suspect that there was systemic racism here. And it's like air. You can't see it, but if you were properly trained, you can monitor the oxygen content of it. And I'm properly trained. And that's why I'm saying the problem with us is systemic racism. It's not tanks, it's not that we don't have any missiles. It's not that the fifth biggest navy in World War II is now one of the most pathetic. It is not even the fact that we had a beach on Normandy called Juneau, our own, and we stormed it. And that what I'm trying to tell you people is that heroic group of Canadians that Stormed juno beach on June 6th. They were racist. They were not demographically representative of who we are. That's not us. That's not who we were. Who we are is today a disarmed, impotent, but socially just. Just people. And that's what we're going to continue to do. That's what I got from it.

Jack (25:00)

Canada is a place where these accusations of racism, bogus accusations have had such terr.

Victor Davis Hanson (25:07)

Yeah. Remember the cemeteries thing about all that? All.

Jack (25:11)

Everything that's led to so many churches burned down.

Victor Davis Hanson (25:15)

I don't think anybody realizes and I don't realize that when dei, everybody talks about Didi, but it is very pernicious because it, it does two things. It doesn't just destroy meritocracy, but it encourages people to use criteria other than empiricism to go for an agenda that you can do almost anything. By a DEI argument, you can say, I didn't get the job because of this. The job wasn't done. I didn't come to class because of this. The bomb didn't hit the target because of this. The plane crashed. It wasn't my fault because of this. It's really, it's like Marxism in the Soviet Union. It really was an ideological shelter for people to flee to who were incompetent. And you know, it's just, it's. It's going to be very good for black people as anybody who's not white. It's going to be wonderful because if you truly get rid of it, you will see, I think, some really wonderful people who will compete fine in the merocratic field of ideas and performance. And then nobody will be able to say, as a lot of people did. Corinne Jean Pierre was that brilliant press secretary because she was black. Yeah. No, they're not going to be able to say that she'll either. But when you look at her, Kamala Harris, you ask herself, did the Democratic party have a more competitive vice president as a future presidential than Kamala Harris? Or is that the level of word salads they all had? And you look at Corinne. I didn't. I wasn't a big fan at all. That's an understatement, right, Jan? Is it Gene or Jane Psaki? John. I forget. Jen. Jen. But my gosh, she was cunning. You know what I mean? Anytime she got trapped with deer in the headlight, she's. She sockied back and she evaded. But she was. She had the facts, Karenji. Every time she'd say a statement, the next statement would contradict it or it would be completely antithetical to what she just said. She was even unaware of it. And she had that little girl she'd go like this with, you know, and then she'd get. She'd throw little temper tantrums and walk out or say, this is clothes and is it Peter Doocy she despised? And she just. But she. Every time she called on him, he made her look like a fool. And then she got angry at him. It was just pathetic.

Jack (27:53)

She's getting criticized and she has her book out. And Jim Garrity wrote something to the effect of, where are these reporters who are now giving her some grief for not acknowledging Biden's daughterage? Where were these same people when they were covering Biden and her at the White House a year or two ago? So I'm not. I'm not feeling any sympathy for her, Victor, but she's.

Victor Davis Hanson (28:19)

I am not either. Everybody knew what was going on. Everybody knew. What she did was when she wrote this pathetic memoir and she said she's no longer a Democrat, she opened herself up just to vituperation because it's so incoherent and consistent. She says, well, the Democrats did not support him enough. They should have supported. Supported Joe Biden. But you know what? Because they were racist, they didn't help Kamala Harris win. Well, I thought you didn't want her to be a candidate. Was that racist of you, preferring a white man to a black vice presidential candidate? And then she says, and I'm going to become an independent because they didn't support Joe Biden enough. So you're quitting the Democratic Party because they didn't support Joe Biden enough, But they didn't support Kamala Harris enough? Who did? Who did they support? Who did they not support? And why? Why would you tell us until the last day of office that Joe Biden is completely capable? And now you're mad at people who in your own party said, no, he's not, and he's. I'm glad he wasn't the candidate. It didn't make sense. He didn't, you know, and is she an independent because the Democratic Party is racist or not racist, Too conservative, too left. Then every time I watched about four of those things, she did. I swear, every time she did, within 90 seconds, she said, as the first black gay immigrant woman, as the first woman who was gay and an immigrant and black, as the first black person, but also gay person, but also immigrant. It just. And then she said she was. Did you see that? She was. I, I don't get this, she, she was saying that how awful she had it and how mean people were to her. And then almost at the same time, Michelle came out with her latest wine that, oh, you know, it just was so unfair that they didn't even give us a honeymoon. They just expected us, because we were black, to do so much better than anybody else. And then, as I said earlier, we had to pay for our own food. And when the girls went on my plane, we had to pay for their, their, their fare. And nobody liked us. And it was just, it was so hard. It was just mean because we were black. No, you were elected probably because you were black. That helped you. That was an asset. More white people, Michelle, Michelle, more white people voted for John Kerry and for Barack Obama in 2008 than white people did in 2004 for John Kerry. So don't say that you were elected with. And I asked you another reason. If 53 or 50, I don't know what it was, 50% of white people almost voted for Barack Obama. That shows you that there was still racism when 93% of blacks, not, no, excuse me, 96% percent of blacks voted for Barack Obama. So if you have 96 of one race voting for a person of the same race, it is a sign that they're not racist. And if half the other people still vote for a person of the opposite, that's a sign that they are. Doesn't make sense. I think everybody's so done with her. It's just with him, too. He's out on, he's on here in California, Jackie's. Every night, every, all during the World Series, we had to see Barack Obama on Prop 50. Prop 50, Prop 50, you know, and stop. Trump did this, this gerrymander. Stop the gerrymandering. Stop the rigoring of the election by rigging. The only way to, to stop the gerrymandering is to really hyper gerrymander.

Jack (32:14)

We're going to take a little break, and when we come back from that, we're going to go to Africa. We're going to talk about South Africa and, and immigration and about President Trump threatening to lower the boom on Nigeria. And we'll do that when we come back from these messages. We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I want to encourage our listeners, old listeners who finally found us again, or new listeners and new viewers via YouTube or Rumble, to check out our happy home, which is the Daily Signal, and check out Victor's website, the Blade of Perseus. So, Victor, here's a headline South Africa complains about Trump prioritizing white Africana refugees. South African government has condemned the Trump administration's decision to prioritize refugee applications from white Africanas, dismissing claims of a white genocide. Officials in Pretoria claim that South Africa's crime statistics do not show white citizens being disproportionately targeted, although South African statistics intentionally obscure the racial background of criminals and their victims and branded the US Policy politically motivated and racially divisive. The criticism follows an announcement by the Trump administration setting America's annual refugee cap at 7,500, the lowest on record, and indicating that most of those places will likely go to Afrikaners. President Trump has previously offered refugee status to Afrikaners after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law permitting the appropriation of land without compensation, widely perceived as an attempt to dispossess dispossess Africana farmers. Victor the goal of this guy, the goal of the South African government is.

Victor Davis Hanson (34:06)

They know what they do. They know what they do. They know that they're inordinately attacking white people and the rationale that white people had apartheid and now it's, they're going to have 50 years to catch up to it. They're expropriating land. They keep saying, we're not going to do what Rhodesia did, we're not going to do what Zimbabwe Rhodesia did, we're not going to do what Zimbabwe did, we're not going to do a Mugabe and destroy or the most prosperous farming scheme and central up. Then that's what they're going to do because they would rather all be poor than to have some people a little bit better off than they are. So they're going to make everybody poor. And then the criticism, he's saying, you know, we haven't really had people from South Africa come, they're being killed and their property confiscated and they're very highly educated and they probably have a lot of assets and they don't have a tradition of crime and they might be very valuable citizens. Therefore we shouldn't let them in because we have 55 million foreign born in the United States. Most of them are not from Europe or the former British Commonwealth. And that's the way it should always be. And we let 10,000 people, what they're basically saying is we let 10,000 people a day come in illegally from the southern border who were all Latin or non white. And we don't want to let 70% of one day, one day's entrance into the United States because these people are coming legally but we don't want these 7,500 or so to even approximate the illegal 10 to 12,000 we let in. Coming in.

Jack (35:58)

Right. Coming in by whatever normal people would consider criteria for asylum. Oh, my land's being stolen. I'm going to be. Yeah, because of my.

Victor Davis Hanson (36:08)

Because my wife got raped, my grandfather got shot. I'm broken in every day. They're taking my land. The government says they're cheering me, cheering people killing. And all I want to do is go to a place that used to be, that used to be fair to people, and I think the United States is still fair. They'll let me in and I. I'll try to sell my farm and get whatever money I can. I have skills, I speak to your language, English. And you won't have to put me on welfare. You won't have to do anything. And I will contribute to your. I've met a lot of South Africans in farming, both in the farm supply brokerage and farm owner. They're model citizens. They really are. The majority of them I met are more English than Africana, but I'm sure it's true of the Africaners as well. So I suggest that the people in the United States who are saying it's racist are themselves racist because they're objecting, not on grounds that these people are not authentic refugees or that on the grounds that they wouldn't make good US Citizens. They're objecting on the fact that you don't want any, any zero white immigrants and you're going to get some that are refugees and you only want open borders and 2,3 million illegal aliens to come without any background. That's what they want. Trump is doing. He's very courageous because this is a very volatile issue. Yeah.

Jack (37:40)

Remember he had the President of South Africa in his office earlier this year and showed him the videotape of the. Of the road.

Victor Davis Hanson (37:49)

And the guy just looked at him like, like you're not supposed to. You're supposed to act presidential.

Jack (37:55)

Well, let's.

Victor Davis Hanson (37:56)

Then they showed the crosses and everybody said, oh, they're not real burials. And then Carolyn Levitt said, well, they're ceremonial and memorial. Each person has this white cross. It's a ceremonial representation of a murdered South African.

Jack (38:11)

It didn't, didn't mean to. To chuckle.

Victor Davis Hanson (38:14)

And, you know, there's also were learning that, what, two Caribbean naturalized citizens in Britain killed, what, nine or injured nine.

Jack (38:28)

People, 11 stabbed two, or as we talk on Sunday, of two are in very serious condition. Boy, Victor, I think this may be a lot, a lot More information obviously will come out. And I hope you and Sammy, later in the week we'll talk about. But the immediate take of the British.

Victor Davis Hanson (38:50)

Carlos Brown. They. Yeah, they tried to say, you know, don't demonize. You know, do you remember that 2013. I'm gonna get this right. Major Nadal Hassan.

Jack (39:05)

Right.

Victor Davis Hanson (39:06)

The psychiatrist major at Fort Hood wounded 30 soldiers who were unarmed. He had a automatic pistols, I think. And he killed 13, murdered him. And when he started off his rampage, the first guy was one of his friends he'd worked with, and he blew his brains out and said Allah Akbar. The reason I mentioned that is General George Casey, who was chief of staff, said, well, this is regrettable, but what would be even worse if this led to a stigmatization of Muslims in the armed forces. So that would be a worse tragedy than this one. And I'm thinking, how can you say that? How can you say that? How can you just have witnessed a radical Islamist soldier and not say, I don't know how he got into this army. I don't know the signs that he gave that he was unstable, A and B, he was a radical Islamist that hated non Muslims. But we miss something, and we're not going to miss that again from anybody. But instead, just write off the 13 dead and the 30 wounded. I mean, right off in the sense that you're trying to say that the feelings of this guy or other people, I mean, you can say that we don't want to have Islam, but to say that. And then Janet Napolitano, she weighed in and said the same thing. And that's the first. Every time there was a person, a guy that was walking in London not too long ago, and he saw an Afghan refugee who was chasing somebody, trying to hit him or kill him, and he intervened to save the guy and he stabbed him to the death. And almost immediately they said, let's not judge. Why not? Let's judge the killer, let's judge the Carlos Brown. And let's worry about that. Because if we don't do that, it all tells us that when we get killed or we get die, they're gonna. We know what they're gonna say about us. They're gonna say we were nothing. We were collateral damage into a larger cosmic agenda. It reminds me of Soviet Union. You know, you. You lose 10, 000 people in a battle and you say, you don't worry about, you know, worry about this or this. And it's like, let's not let this bother us. Let's not. The biggest worry is that we can't do this tomorrow. And we have to be fair to the general who did this because this is good Soviet Marxism to send people, you know, through a minefield or something. It's sick. And that sickness has infect in infected the west, especially Europe. But we're getting close. Where.

Jack (41:54)

We'Ll see soon enough. In New York City, Madame gets elected and the people who voted for him will have their own many of them personal awakening.

Victor Davis Hanson (42:03)

If you look at those three polls, those groups of three polls that were the most accurate in 2024, Trafalgar, Rasmussen Insider advantage. They have the New Jersey Republican candidate, he is within one point.

Jack (42:23)

Yeah. Even less.

Victor Davis Hanson (42:25)

Cherelle, is that her name? Cheryl? Yeah, he's within one point and one of them he's ahead and then we're winsome. Sears is in six to seven points. Yeah. And Jay Jones, the notorious candidate for Attorney General who wanted to see a Republican rival's kids be killed. He's a point behind or two points behind. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. And then Mandami is actually, he's closed. I think they had nine or 10. But today just in the New York Post said that there was a poll that Cuomo was in six. Within six points. I don't believe that makes. But something's happened. There's a, there's. It's going to be very disappointing if all. There was a lot of momentum and people didn't get out to vote. And these people win by a hair, these leftists. Yeah, I'm going to get out and.

Jack (43:23)

Vote, particularly in New York. Not because I'm from there, but look, it is probably the most important city in America, if not the world. One can make the claim and if it goes in the crapper, it's don't.

Victor Davis Hanson (43:35)

Take the George Will advice. He wrote a column saying that, you know, time to time we need a little dose of. Of radical socialism and you know, that'll wise everybody up. It doesn't work and it'll show us that stuff. I think Bill Kristol said that. Didn't he say that yesterday? He said, yeah, well, he might open two or three, two or three stores that are, you know, kind of Soviet, but they'll kind of go broke. No big deal. He'll tamper here and there, but it's a big city, can't do much damage. Of course, I'm not living in New York. I'm living very comfortable, comfortably in Washington and I have no plans to go to that city. But, you know, I would vote for him if I was there. That's what he said.

Jack (44:16)

But the here's the dynamics of corrective elections. Victor Correcting things is what happens when the people who have common sense have already split the scene like you have in California, you know, they're gone the people.

Victor Davis Hanson (44:31)

The only reason that that's the biggest thing in California, every Reagan Dukmajian Pete was Wilson Schwarzenegger vote is gone. I think we lost over 10 million over 30 years, 300,000 last year. It's just, it's same thing applies to.

Jack (44:49)

New York City when the people we're out of here. Well who's left to then make the decision to.

Victor Davis Hanson (44:55)

I said that to a person who asked me. I gave a talk in Los Angeles in the evening and somebody came up to me and was asking about California and said that they had a lot of hope that people would wise up. And I said I do too. But if I were a Californian and I was getting free medical and 40% are on the dole and 50% of all births in California were on Medi cal and, and 25% of the people do not pay their power bill without consequences. I think I would vote if I was self interested I would vote for all these whatever the left told me as long as they keep the money coming and they're going to have another proposition that's going to tax billionaires not on their income but on their worth, it's going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. But you think Zuckerberg and all those people are going to stay here when they're going to take, I don't know, 50 or way more than that, you know, 2 or 3% of their net worth. It could be, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars and they're not going to spend it on high, you know, making the state, they're just going to give it away. So you can't ask. I don't see given the present demography that it's going to change.

Jack (46:20)

Well Victor, back to Africa and Donald Trump has gotten religion. Maybe he had it and now it's just the opportunity to come out about it. But this has to do with Nigeria. And he Truth Social posted two really strongly worded criticisms. Here's just one of them. And he writes if the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria and may very well go into that now disgraced country, guns ablazing to completely wipe out the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing Our department of war to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious and sweet. Just like the terrorist thugs attacked our cherished Christians, warning the Nigerian government better move fast.

Victor Davis Hanson (47:19)

The Nigerian government trolled him. You remember they said something to the effect that we share your commitment to diversity, meaning, let's not judge these poor Muslims. We are diverse like you do. And that was pretty funny. And then they're thinking, the MAGA doctrine says no forever wars or ground interventions. It's in Central Africa. How would we go in there without getting a lot of ground troops involved in a Somali like we've been in. We've tried it before in Somali. Somali, yeah. Well, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't work. That's not, that's not conducive to our way of war. Doesn't mean we can't do it, but we can take. We'll take casualties. And then if you just do air power, then some CNN reporter is going to say, oh, this bomb killed this poor person and it's just not going to be a win, win. But he did. Maybe he can cut off aid or boycott, but it's already an impoverished country and it was good. I think it was really good. What he said is that just because you're African and you're distant and people are neglecting you because you're Christian and you're black, we care about you. We don't care what color you are, where you are, but you're a Christian victim and we want to stop that. I don't know how that plays among Qatar and the people in the Middle east that are now our supposed allies. Maybe they'll say something. Yes, we agree. We're going to send an all Islamic peace force to stop Boko Haram from killing people and then misusing the name of Allah to butcher our noble Christian brethren. So we're going to send help. I'm not going to see that happening. It's not going to happen.

Jack (49:03)

Well, I, I wonder what the Pope's going to say. Hey, Victor, we're going to talk about.

Victor Davis Hanson (49:07)

He's going to say. I know what he's going to say. He's going to say, this is a climate crisis and it's all caused by the tensions that poor Boko Haram was put under by climate change and drought.

Jack (49:20)

I had, I had some hopes for this guy, but what are you going to do? Hey, Victor, we're going to take a little break. Final break. When we come back, we're going to talk about at least the Los Angeles fires a year later and some scandals there. And maybe we'll find something else when we come back from these final important messages. We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words recording on Sunday, November 2nd. This episode is out on Thursday, November 6th. Victor, we've mentioned before, he's, you know, he writes for his own website, the Blade of Perseus, Rights of American Greatness, syndicated column appearing eight times a week now, various ways on the Daily Signal. Do check that out. But also if you're on X, Victor's handle is at VD Hansen. And if you're on Facebook, it's not official, but there's a very friendly group. It's called the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club. And you should check them out and maybe even join. So. Okay, Victor, the LA Times did a wrote a piece on the scandals of the Los Angeles Fire Department that allowed the that allowed the Palisades fire to reignite. Let me just read the beginning here. It says firefighters alerted a battalion chief that the areas of a New Year's Day fire in Pacific Palisades that was known as the Lachman Fire, that they were it was still smoldering the next day. And that was according to text messages. Messages the firefighters were ordered to pack up and leave anyway, instead of monitoring the burn area for reignitions. Federal authorities say the Blaze reignited on January 7, destroying thousands of homes and killing 12 people. So the big fire came in the aftermath of this other fire that firefighters had wanted to, you know, the fire's out, it's not really out. Right. They wanted to maintain firefighters mopping up a small brush fire that authorities say reignited as the Palisades Fire five days later were ordered to leave the original burn scene even though they had complained to that the ground was still smoldering and things were hot, etc.

Victor Davis Hanson (51:33)

Etc.

Jack (51:35)

Karen Bass, the mayor, said the buck stops with me, although the only heads that have ever rolled were someone else in the fire department chain. But Victor, this was a disaster that could have been prevented not only if there was water in the empty reservoir, but just by letting the men on the ground have their way and put out the original fire. And that did not happen.

Victor Davis Hanson (51:57)

Well, I was driven through the pch, right through the center. And on my left, as you look up, there's hardly anything being rebuilt. And on your right on the ocean side, the beach side, there's nothing being rebuilt. And it's very strange because here and there you see a house that survived in some brush and then you see these vast swaths on the hillsides of Bern. But then you ask yourself how could a house on the hill survive? And then the fire jumps over from the hill and then goes over four, four lanes of freeway, the pch and then goes into houses that are sitting with no vegetation whatsoever on the beach when there's this moist ocean air. And the answer is that the winds came out of the hills, they blew embers, the embers skipped over and leapfrogged and hopscotched over places that were saved and they landed on places that were, were vulnerable and wouldn't. But there's to a naked eye and an inexperienced person with the LA area, there's just no rebuilding, it looks like at all. And she's got. Are people going to be shocked when they're told that the fire department went out and they arrested the arsonist who they were spotted lighting fires. They put out the original fires and then the fires had burned the roots of plants deep down in and they were smoldering, waiting for another kind of blowing a wick on a candle. I mean blowing the wick on the candle that's not completely out and it flared up and they were warned that it would do that and they didn't do anything. Shocker. I guess I would say, wow, you mean to tell me that in Karen Bass's Los Angeles the fire department knew that the fire was still smoldering and didn't take efforts to put it completely out? That would be like the mayor being in Uganda or somewhere when she was in fire season. That would be like the LA county forbidding people to clear the brush that was tender for fires right next to their home. That would be like the deputy mayor being under house arrest for throwing each other phoning in a bomb threat. That would be like the head of the Water and power agency letting a million gallon plus reservoir be dry for months. That would be crucial. That would be like the fire department emphasizing DEI and letting hundreds of hydrants not being worked. Gosh, that's what it would be like. So when you talk to people in Los Angeles, I talked to a couple of of people in the Pepperdine area about it. They're beyond shock. Any little idealism that when Trump came out and he said they were going to get this done quickly and then Gavin said we're going to, we're going to greenlight this. They, they're so cynical. They knew that was a lie. That they're going to try to re engineer the neighborhood through selective zoning. And I say selective zoning and re engineering the terms of. They'll have a whole new slate of environmental. This is recycled Sheetrock. These shingles have to be made by people who were gay or something like that. They're going to do all of that and then they're going to say we can't have too many single family plutocratic. Can't have too many houses that are kind of like where Karen Bass is living in the mayor's mansion. Can't have anybody else having that. We're going to make high density poor. Yeah.

Jack (55:48)

Portable.

Victor Davis Hanson (55:49)

That's what they're going to do. And but everybody's cynical when you say that it's never going to happen. It's never going to be the same. They destroyed it, they want destroyed and they want to rebuild it and they, it's almost like people in Los Angeles think that the left is so far gone and they're so powerful and they're so numerous and their agenda is not logical, it's nihilistic. They just want, want to destroy things to pay back people who they think are rich with privilege. Yeah.

Jack (56:16)

Well, who probably bankroll the elections of the people who create the bureaucrats who write the laws that allow this all to happen. Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (56:23)

They're spending, they're outspending the no on Prop 50 about three or four, five to one. It's just incredible. Every station is we've got to stop Trump's gerrymandering in Texas by gerrymandering. But it doesn't, that's the message. But that's, we've got to stop in. We've got, we have to have election integrity. We have to have one man meant one vote. We've got to, we've have to, you know, and it's, you know, it's all Elizabeth Warren and Camilla Harris and Barack Obama, the same old bunch.

Jack (56:59)

Well, as, as you're listening to this on, on November 6th folks, you know the outcome of that, the Prop 50. So I hope God has intervened. Hey Victor, let's get one last quick little topic and it's about since we may still be in the midst of a government shutdown and of course the big argument recently is a snap that people are going to starve to death. Although funny, I saw Joe Rogan do something. The people who are on the average weight of somebody on SNAP versus the average of somebody who's is not on SNAP. It's like a 60 pound difference. So I won't get into the numbers, but I will get into these numbers. Food stamps by ethnicity. This is the percentage of U.S. households receiving SNAP benefits. Yeah. On the very low end. This is 36 there. Indians, 4.4%, Italian 7.6. And then white is the next third from the bottom. 8.6 of white U.S. households receive SNAP benefits. On the very top end, 45.6% of Afghan households in the U.S. get SNAP, 42.4% of Somalis. This must be like half of Minneapolis. Iraqis, 34.8. Then you get into Dominicans. 34. But this is. I don't. We talked before about judging. I don't know why we can't make judgments based on this kind of data.

Victor Davis Hanson (58:29)

Because you're suggesting that poor people who come to the United States without English, often illegally, are from the Muslim world, Arab world, Caribbean, south of the border, that they are inordinately on food stamps.

Jack (58:48)

Well, they will be. I mean, we make decisions based on.

Victor Davis Hanson (58:53)

Yeah, I think it's. Yeah. I was interested in this side story where they interviewed people on SNAP benefits and what they would. Look, they weren't really worried about who caused the problem.

Jack (59:08)

Right.

Victor Davis Hanson (59:08)

You know, I think they would blame the Republicans, but they just said they were going to riot and loot. They were warning everybody, stay the blank out of my neighborhood, because when my SNAP benefits stop, I'm going to go take things. That's going to be tragic, but it'll also be fascinating in a macabre sense to see what happens if that's true.

Jack (59:28)

Well, I think we saw some of that a year or two ago.

Victor Davis Hanson (59:32)

Well, we really didn't, though, because when we saw looting in 2020 and during the, the Biden years, it was always sneakers and jewelry stores in Los Angeles and computers and TV sets. But you really, I mean, are poor people going to go out and you'll see them carrying bags of rice? I. I don't know. I don't think so.

Jack (59:56)

Well, we shall. We shall see. Well, Victor, we've reached the end of today's episode, except I want to say something on my own behalf. Please check out Civil Thoughts, which is the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Society. If you go to civilthoughts.com, sign up. Easy peasy. What's going to happen? Every Friday you will receive my emailed newsletter, which will have 14 recommended readings of really interesting articles I've come across the previous week. I know you're going to like it, everyone who gets it. I get a lot of emails from folks, but I love it. Thanks so much. We're not selling the list. There's no monkey business going on. And now I have three things I want to read. We get thousands now, thousands between Victor's website, between Apple audio sites, between YouTube and Rumble. Comments, just so many comments. And here I'm going to read two. One is that this is very short from Rich8304 and he writes, I really like Sammy. All American, sweetie. Yeah, that's a short, sweet and pretty accurate. And then somebody else writes, gosh, I hope this is my name. Does not Matt. Doesn't matter. 8652 writes, I am not on the farm today. I'm in a temporary dwelling. That's something you said on a recent podcast, Mr. Hands. Oh, that's. I think when you were. Maybe when you were at Pepperdine.

Victor Davis Hanson (61:29)

Yes.

Jack (61:30)

Mr. Hansen, how very nice you look. I can picture you with a fedora quite imperceptibly cocked to one side atop a knowing face. We are sick of Obama. That was quite a jump. The Great Divider. What a plague on this country he's been. I think of him as the tip of the Clinton spear, a hooked tip for the firebrand to gut this country. I got here so late. I'm just listening this evening and I know this is going to be a kicker of a segment. Thank you to the duo of the handsome Mr. Hansen and lovely as always, Sammy week. Have a nice weekend. So anyway, that was kind of, kind of funny, different, whatever.

Victor Davis Hanson (62:09)

You know, I, I had this physician who was going over some tests they gave me and I said, well, some people said that I looked at better on the. That I was more. I was tanner. And he said that's because you have a hot. That's not 10. It's because you have high iron in your bronze. It's called rust. He says people that have this level of ferritin that high will be rusty looking. So I was kind of crushed by that. Rusty. Well, although my aunt had a dog named Rusty, so I was. He didn't look bronze.

Jack (62:46)

Not every affliction has an upside, Victor. So you take, take. I mean, if you had jaundice, you.

Victor Davis Hanson (62:51)

I just don't believe that when I go to the beach, and I rarely do, and I see all these bronze bodies, I don't think that person has hemochromatosis. That person has iron, you know, thalassuma or whatever. Thalassema or whatever it is.

Jack (63:03)

Well, you were at Pepperdine where you. Did you go to a beach?

Victor Davis Hanson (63:06)

Yes, I did. I. I did. I walked all around the beaches and it was, you know, it's winter, but, but it was very warm. And then I watched. I got back to My baseball. I watched the best World Series I've ever seen. Seen the Dodgers, it was like. It was the weirdest thing. The seventh game. They had, the Toronto Boots days, had a far better hitting team. They were natural hitters, every one of them. But every time I'd. I'd say to myself, the game is over. The Dodgers have lost. There's no way you could possibly do that. And then the last inning, I thought, they have a guy on third, and there's no Owls. And now there's only one out. He's gonna. Just a pop fly in the out. The only thing that could happen would be the guy hit it. I mean, he's not going to do that, but he hit it on the ground, and they did. And he's kind of heavy, this guy, and slow. And they could get a double play and theoretically win, but that couldn't happen. No sooner did I say that. Bam. That's exactly what happened. So I was. I was a very strong American advocate for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Jack (64:11)

But are you by. By birth and nature, are you. Were you San Francisco Giants?

Victor Davis Hanson (64:16)

Yes, I was. Always. I grew up with Willie McCovey, Juan Marichell, my favorite pitcher, and the great Willie Mays and all of those Barry. Not Barry Bonds, but Bobby Bonds, his father. Yeah. And Hal Lanier was a favorite player of mine. And, gosh, there were so many great Giants. And every year my parents took us up when we were. We listened to the hated Dodgers, you know, Don Drysdale and everything. And I'd look at the paper every day. Oh, no. Sandy Koufax is pitching. Eat those. Too hard. Juan Marichel versus Don Drysdale. Those are great things. But I love the Giants. The only problem with going to Candlestick, you'd go there, and for like, one second it was warm, and then the ocean air would come in, it would be, like 50 degrees freezing.

Jack (65:12)

I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna ask this question, and I know it's going to elicit a response from listeners. Have you ever been to a game in the new Giants Stadium?

Victor Davis Hanson (65:22)

I did. My wife and I went. We surely did. And I think we. We drove once, and I can't remember if we took the train once from Palo Alto, Stanford, where I was. Okay, you. Yeah, we have. And it's a beautiful. And I don't know how they did it, but there's no wind. The way it was in that area, the. The way that was designed. There's wind, but it's not like Candlestick. And then I had to go get these scans for this health problem. I went over to Candlestick and there is no Candlestick anymore. They tore it down and it's it, that area is that. You wouldn't believe it. It's like a secret little Silicon Valley. Utopian medical buildings, tech buildings. It's amazing. It looks like Dubai or something. So was. Yeah, I. I've been to a Giants.

Jack (66:17)

Game and I'm just curious.

Victor Davis Hanson (66:18)

I think maybe two of them. We went across the street and had dinner and then the great John Yu, we had dinner with him one night right across the street from the stadium.

Jack (66:27)

I love John. John. Yeah. He came on a couple of cruises and he brought his mom on some. Mom's still. His mom's still alive. She's a psychiatrist out of Philadelphia area. John is so funny and just so generous with this time.

Victor Davis Hanson (66:44)

He's one of those very bright people. Yeah, I remember he went on some show and they thought they were going to die. Was it. Was it Jon Stewart or something?

Jack (66:52)

Oh yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (66:52)

Attack him. And he just carved the guy up. Yeah. Yeah. He's a very good guy. We have a lot of very good people on the conservative side. The more I get that I meet them. I'm very impressed with all of them. Almost all of them.

Jack (67:05)

Including, including Rob Bluey, our boss.

Victor Davis Hanson (67:09)

He is the editor and chief of the Daily.

Jack (67:13)

Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (67:14)

And he is our new platform, the Daily Signal. And you can find it on victorhanson.com vd x@vd hansen and at the Daily Signal they were advertising it. We're slowly creeping up.

Jack (67:32)

Yeah.

Victor Davis Hanson (67:32)

And getting back to where we were during our two week hiatus. Well, and the Victor Davis Hansen show is ossified, calcified, vestigial. It is reruns and you have to go to Victor. Hans David has Davis Hansen in his own words. A nice new title for a nice new platform.

Jack (67:55)

Wonderful commercial, Victor. Well, you've been terrific. Thanks for all the wisdom you shared. Thanks folks for listening. Thanks for watching and we will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Bye bye.

Victor Davis Hanson (68:08)

Thank you for. Thank you for watching and listening, 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 website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.