Victor Davis Hanson: How California Progressives Created a Medieval Society

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Episode: How California Progressives Created a Medieval Society
Date: November 14, 2025
Host: Victor Davis Hanson, with co-host (“B”)
Network: The Daily Signal

Victor Davis Hanson, author, historian, and Fellow at the Hoover Institution, offers sharp commentary on political and cultural news with focus on California, national politics, and broader societal trends. In this episode, Hanson analyzes recent political events—the government shutdown, the aftermath of the Pacific Palisades fire, the rise of anti-ICE activism and lawlessness in Chicago and other cities—and explores how California’s progressive policies have, in his view, created a “medieval society” divided by wealth, lawlessness, and social dysfunction. He dives into themes of political hypocrisy, the consequences of elite progressive leadership, demographic shifts, and the roots of social dissatisfaction fueling both left and right populism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Government Shutdown and Political Strategy (03:00–09:00)

• Hanson’s Analysis:

  • The recent government shutdown was, in his view, an explicit political strategy by Democrats to derail the “Trump economy” before upcoming elections.
  • Shutdowns generate public pressure: as government services lapse and people miss checks, political blame follows.
  • Hanson points out that internal polling eventually made the Democrats shift stance as the issue started turning against them.
  • He criticizes the Affordable Care Act's “sunset” provisions as a political ploy.

• Notable Quote:

  "They were going to shut down the government anyway, by hook or crook, because they have a strategy in the next 12 months to derail the Trump economy." —Hanson [04:24]

• On Schumer and the Party’s Evolution:

  • Schumer caught between older, moderate Democrats (Durbin, Feinstein, etc.) and a new radical cohort (“the young Turks”)—he can’t hold the coalition together.
  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is named as a likely successor in terms of left-wing influence.

• Quote:

  "Schumer, they're, he had to do it and he's all through. They're not going to listen to him anymore." —Hanson [07:53]

2. Pacific Palisades Fire: Bureaucracy, Priorities, and Progressive Contradictions (09:55–16:09)

• Slow Rebuilding and Political Fault:

  • Debris removal is done, but permits for rebuilding are stalled. Hanson blames Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass.
  • Critique of LA leaders as prioritizing “fighting ICE” and “protecting illegal aliens” over residents who lost homes.

• Elite Progressive Hypocrisy:

  • Affluent, coastal Californians repeatedly vote for left-wing policies that later harm their own interests (i.e., zoning changes, costly regulations).
  • He details how California’s oligarchy—Newsom, Jerry Brown, Pelosi, Feinstein, Boxer, Harris—enriched themselves while their policies produced high taxes, poor infrastructure, rampant homelessness, and social decay.

• Notable Quote:

  "It's a medieval society of a few very wealthy on the cone of the pyramid and everybody else below." —Hanson [15:55]

• Getty Villa:

  • The villa survived the fire due to extensive private fire precautions; symbolic of the protections available to the ultra-wealthy.

  "I think they have their own little mini fire department... their own water system... reinforced walls." —Hanson [16:25]

3. Lawlessness and Federal Authority: The Chicago ICE Crisis (19:00–24:20)

• Gangs & Political Resistance:

  • The Latin Kings gang reportedly threatens ICE agents (“shoot on site”).
  • Chicago officials, including Mayor Johnson and Governor Pritzker, openly defy federal immigration law, undermine ICE, and promote resistance.
  • Hanson interprets this as a deliberate undermining of law and order by leftist urban governments.

• Class Conflict:

  • Wealthy white leftists protest ICE, while actual ICE agents are mostly working-class minorities.

  “The irony is that most of the people who are protesting are affluent white people, and most of the people you look at ICE are Hispanic, black, or poor white.” —Hanson [22:23]

• Potential for Violence:

  • Hanson worries that sustained political resistance could lead to open conflict between federal forces and local authorities.

  “We're going to get very close to giving an order by a mayor, governor, or somebody... and then you're going to have an armed federal officer. And if the Supreme Court does not step in... we're going to have a civil war.” —Hanson [23:40]

4. Historical Parallels, Technology, and Political Polarization (25:23–32:51)

• Vigor of Political Disagreement—Then and Now:

  • Past US political eras (Revolution, Civil War, Depression) had fierce divisions, but technology wasn’t amplifying conflict instantly.
  • Today, social media and AI accelerate and magnify venom, making the stakes—and the risk of violence—higher.

• Leftist Control of Cities:

  • Most lawless protests, anti-ICE actions, and censorship of conservative speech are in left-governed cities, not rural or red areas.
  • Hanson criticizes the left’s “states rights” hypocrisy versus federal authority depending on which administration is in office.

5. Migration, Demographics, and the Blue State Exodus (32:51–36:00)

• Divergence of State Cultures:

  • Increasing divide between states like Florida/Texas and California/Massachusetts/Illinois—a different “country” in political and cultural attitudes.
  • Migration pattern: blue state residents fleeing high taxes, regulation, crime, and homelessness, but sometimes importing their politics elsewhere.

• Economic Disparities:

  • Stories of U-Haul prices illustrating demand for people moving out of California.
  • Gavin Newsom’s leadership is criticized as emblematic of failed blue state policies that can’t be defended on practical outcomes.

• Quote:

  "He would call you names, but he couldn't tell you—and yet no single person has lorded over that change. He was involved at every level." —Hanson [35:28]

6. Populist Dissatisfaction and the Alt-Right (38:25–53:34)

• Rise of Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson's Audience:

  • Hanson explains how young, disaffected white men—often unmarried, in debt, unable to own homes—have become susceptible to alt-right rhetoric.
  • Critiques both mainstream Republicans for failing to offer solutions, and new right-wing voices for giving platforms to demagogues.

  "Their way of thinking is, I'm not even going to try to get into a good college. Stanford lets in 9% white males. ...All they talk about is diversity is our strength." [41:27]

• Root Causes:

  • Economic stagnation, cultural alienation, delayed adulthood, lack of ownership fuel anger.
  • Universities and media blamed for stoking division, anti-Semitism, and anti-Israel sentiment.

• Constructive Solutions:

  • Hanson advises reformers must provide positive policies (housing, jobs, restored meritocracy) and explicitly reject bigotry on the right.

• Quote:

  "If you're not going to debate them, all you do is expand their audience. That's like taking a firecracker and lighting it and then say, I'm going to see if it blows up or not without cutting the fuse." —Hanson [47:10]

7. California’s “Medieval” Structure: Wealth, Welfare, and Dysfunction (Throughout, 10:30–16:09, 66:46–72:31)

• The New Feudalism:

  • Hanson depicts California as a state of a rich oligarchy atop a mass of poor, welfare-dependent residents—with a shrinking productive middle class.
  • Progressives insulate themselves from the policies they enact (crime, taxes, homelessness).

• Healthcare and Immigration:

  • Emergency rooms filled with uninsured and/or undocumented immigrants; taxpayers bear the costs.
  • Letter from a listener/trip8263 confirms these experiences in CA hospitals.

  "I almost wanted to jump in the screen and shout at Elizabeth Warren... I don't mind as long as you don't lie. Why don't just people say, we need to address this." —Hanson [75:20]

• Obesity and Welfare:

  • Obesity among working-class immigrants and SNAP recipients as evidence that the “calories crisis” narrative is untrue, while affluent CA suburbs prioritize health.

8. New York and Mandami’s Socialist Agenda (59:54–66:14)

• Mandami's Inner Circle:

  • As New York’s newly elected leader, Mandami staffs up with avowed socialists—a chief of staff with a background in Middle Eastern Studies (characterized by Hanson as “anti-Israel, anti-Jewish studies” in academia).
  • Predicts upper-middle-class flight or black market expansion as taxes soar.

• Quote:

  "His only question is... how quick can I socialize New York and have a communist paradigm without having it go broke?" —Hanson [59:54]

9. Miscellaneous: The Black Market, Tipping, and Health Policy (65:01–66:46, 72:31–75:02)

• Under-the-Table Economy:
  • High taxes drive vast black markets; parallels between CA, NY, and informal swap meets, underreported tips.
  • Hanson and “B” discuss the changes in tipping regulations under Reagan and cynicism about compliance.

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Notable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On elite hypocrisy in California:

  "The people who destroyed the state and made people in the San Joaquin Valley or Inland Empire foothills have to pay these exorbitant prices never had to suffer the consequences of their own ideology. They made out like bandits and they live in splendor." —Hanson [13:00]

• About lawlessness and ICE:

  "It’s not that they don’t care about enforcing the law. They’re deliberately trying to undermine it and endanger ICE." —Hanson [19:51]

• California’s societal structure:

  "It's a medieval society of a few very wealthy on the cone of the pyramid and everybody else below." —Hanson [15:55]

• Technology fueling polarization:

  "Now you can inject your venom instantaneously. You can find everything you want on an opponent in a nanosecond." —Hanson [25:51]

• On the right’s response to alt-right frustration:

  "If you're not going to debate them, all you do is expand their audience... That’s what you do when you put those people on." —Hanson [47:10]

• Blueprint for reform:

  "We’re going to redo the military so it treats people without racial concern. We're going to address the universities... We're going to offer good jobs, we're going to protect the American worker, we're going to make you be able to buy a home. That's what you got to do." —Hanson [52:49]

• On US and Mexican health policy:

  "Mexico is exporting a million people... their attitude is, we're not going to spend money on the poor people... you’ll either join the cartels or you go to the United States." —Hanson [77:07]

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Additional Memorable Moments

• Discussion of personal stories:
  • A listener comments about working in CA hospitals and the realities of uninsured immigrants; Hanson concurs, giving more personal anecdotes from ER visits.
• Fan feedback:
  • Listeners enjoy Hanson’s “funny voices and imitations,” specifically his parody of academic jargon [82:01].
• Reflections on Veterans Day:
  • Moving recollection of his father's WWII service and reflections on generational sacrifice.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:00 – Shutdown politics and Democratic strategy
• 09:55 – Pacific Palisades fire, rebuilding and elites' hypocrisies
• 15:55 – California as a “medieval society”
• 19:00 – Chicago, ICE, and lawlessness
• 23:40 – Fears of inter-governmental conflict/civil war
• 25:51 – Political polarization in the digital age
• 32:51 – Blue state exodus, demographics, U-Haul anecdote
• 38:25 – Alt-right, populism, and roots of anti-Semitism
• 47:10 – Right-wing media responsibility and the dangers of demagoguery
• 59:54 – NYC’s Mandami and staff appointments analysis
• 65:01 – Black market growth and tipping
• 72:31 – Obesity and changing welfare dynamics
• 75:02 – Healthcare realities for immigrants in California

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Recap

Victor Davis Hanson delivers a blistering, historically rooted account of how progressive policies—especially in California—have reshaped American society, creating new inequalities while failing to deliver promised improvements. He ties national political turmoil, the crisis of law and order, and the restless energy of a disenfranchised generation to technocratic and ideological overreach, and holds out hope for renewal through clarity, honesty, and a return to practical policies. The episode is replete with vivid anecdotes, historical parallels, and sharp-tongued critique.

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Transcript

[A]

I said last week, right after the election, I said they're going to settle because they proved their point. They feel that they won the New Jersey and Virginia, even though they're blue states. They won them because of the shutdown. They'll do it again before the next midterms. These noble people who tragically lost their homes are being used as pawns because they have a lunatic mayor, Karen Bass, a lunatic city council in la. All they're interested in is fighting ice. There's a million illegal aliens in Los Angeles County. How it got to that point, I don't know. But that's what the agenda of Newsom and Karen Bass are. They care more about illegal aliens not being deported than they do homeowners. It's not that they don't care about enforcing the law. They're deliberately trying to undermine it and endanger Iceland. Mayor Johnson has bragged that he wants to physically stop ICE and that they have no jurisdiction within Chicago, as if all the property of Chicago belongs to the city of Chicago.

[B]

Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. We are now in partnership with the Daily Signal. So we have a new partnership and we're really enjoying it. It's going very well. So it's everybody out there who's wondering. We just hope everybody can find our new podcast. And I think pretty much people are migrating to it, so. So welcome to the show. We've got lots of news on the agenda. This is our Friday news roundup. And so Victor will give his opinion on the news. So stay with us and we'll be right back.

[A]

Right is still right, even if you stand by yourself. 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 Hollywood movies relevant to the topic. Case in Point, the podcast available everywhere. You won't want to miss foreign.

[B]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. So, Victor, we've got lots of news on the agenda. Schumer shutdown is about to end. Pacific Palisades fire. New information has come out on it. And then finally in Chicago, the the Latin Kings, a gang has made ICE agents job a lot more difficult. But before we get into those things, I'd like to remind everybody that Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marshabusky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can join him at his website victorhansen.com and the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. So come join us there for all things Victor, his articles, his podcasts and links to his books. So, Victor, the Schumer shutdown is about to come to its conclusion. The Senate passed with the help of eight Democrats, I believe. And the House is expected to pass the change in the bill today. So we will have the government reopened. I guess it's a temporary thing, but I just wanted to point out one thing. One senator that voted to reopen today was Tim Kaine. And an interviewer was asking him why it is he why it is the shutdown went on and he, he said that he was focused on the elections and didn't pay attention to what was going on. And that is not a good reason for a shutdown.

[A]

That's a Freudian sl. He was focused on the attention, he focused his attention on the elections. And that's why they had the shutdown. I mean they were going to shut down the government anyway by hook or crook because they have a strategy in the next 12 months to derail the Trump economy. So this was the longest shutdown in history, 40 something days. And with along with Jerome Powell's high interest rates and then this media, we're having a recession, oh no, the stock market's gonna crash, oh no, the tariff wars, they had a media interest shutdown method to stop this economy because they're afraid with multi trillions of dollars of foreign investment, with record energy production, record revenue from tariffs, all these trade deals, deregulation, the big beautiful tax cut, they were afraid that the economy is going to take off. I think it is going to take off. Even Forbes magazine, no friend of Donald Trump, said it would in 2026. But otherwise they had passed these continuing resolutions 13 or 14 times. So they finally balked and said we have an election coming up In California on 50, in Virginia, attorney general, governor, and basically in New Jersey. And we want to show that we have momentum. So we're going to shut down the government because we know that when you shut down the government you get equal hearing or people say okay. And then the longer it gets shut down and people don't get their checks in the military or SNAP or they can't fly, especially before a holiday like Thanksgiving, it starts to turn. And that's exactly I said last week, right after the elections, I said they're going to settle because they proved their point. They feel that they won the New Jersey and Virginia, even though they're blue states. They won them because of the shutdown. And then they realized that the internal polling was no longer very good for them. So they wanted to, they'll do it again before the next midterms. But it was starting poll wise to be a losing issue for them. And it served their purpose. It had nothing to do with. They had already agreed to continue the subsidy. They were the ones that put the sunset law, as Fetterman said, on the Affordability Care Act. They had told everybody that this is going to revolutionize health care under Obama. You don't need subsidies. We're going to bring all these young, healthy people into the system. System. And of course, there's only about, I don't know, 8% of Americans in it now. It needs multi billion dollar subsidies. And they knew that because when they said, oh, it's the Affordable Care act, but we're going to need multibillion, they did that under Biden. They got it, but they said, well, give it to us and we'll just have a sunset, it'll end. So it was going to end. It wasn't that Donald Trump cut it. They had put the sunset on it to sell it. And then what's the bottom line? The bottom line is it didn't help them. Schumer did all of this because he was under pressure from the young Turks, the older people like Durbin and everybody, they said, you know, these people are revolutionaries, they're socialists, A lot of them are anti Semitic. It's time that just retire, we're done. And Schumer, they're, he had to do it and he's all through. They're not going to listen to him anymore. They're going to get rid of him. So it was kind of to save the old guard. That didn't work. And then it was to call attention to the Affordable Care Act. When people actually looked at it, they said, oh my God, it's a joke. You know what I mean? It gave them negative publicity. So then the wiser people got, the eight of them got together and they said, man, we blew it. It served its purpose. And now we've tarred and feathered the Affordable Care Act. The polls are starting to get against us. We were really doing well with the Nick Fuentes Tucker dissension at Herod and now we're blown it. So that's why they capitulated.

[B]

It seems like Chuck Schumer was in a damned if you do Damned if you don't.

[A]

Yeah, he was.

[B]

He had no way out of that, so. Well, we're glad about that.

[A]

He's. I think he's my age. He's 72, so he, he should have just retired. He should just said, you know what, I had a great career, but I don't recognize this party anymore.

[B]

Do you think that AOC and the far left right of the party will be sliding in there after he. Really?

[A]

Yeah. She's going to run for Senate and we'll see. A lot of it depends on what happens in New York.

[B]

There's no.

[A]

Milton Friedman said there's a lot of rot in a country. What he meant was that a capitalist system creates a lot of wealth and it usually takes a number of years for a Castro or a Chavez or Mao to destroy it. But they will destroy it. But it's not going to be instantaneous.

[B]

No, not at all. Well, let's turn then to the Palisades fire in California and the destruction it wrought. Lee Zeldin, our Secretary of the Interior, has reported that the government, the federal government has finished their debris removal, but residents are still complaining that it is almost impossible to get permits to get the rebuilding going. And he said that it's Gavin Newsom and, and Karen Bass who have not sped up one thing despite their promises.

[A]

I have mixed feelings about this because on the one hand, these noble people who tragically lost their homes are being used as pawns because they have a lunatic mayor, Karen Bass, a lunatic city council in la. All they're interested in is fighting ice. There's a million illegal aliens in Los Angeles County. How it got to that point, I don't know. But that's what the agenda of Newsom and Karen Bass are. They care more about illegal aliens not being deported than they do homeowners. And they have this idea that they're going to rezone the Palisades and make high density housing, or at least small little cottages. I don't know what they are, but they don't want these people who were affluent to build these majestic Romanesque homes again. You know, I drove through there about two weeks ago, at least along the pch, and there's nothing happening. It's just pathetic. And then when I said I'm conflicted. Prop 50, which is going to destroy the bipartisan committee and gerrymander California from nine congressional Republican representatives to probably four or five, they voted 60, almost 60%. So a lot of those people in the Palisades voted for this thing and they keep voting for Newsom. And they keep voting for the Karen Basses of the world. And they keep voting for these crazy people in the legislature. So then they get surprised when it boomerangs back on them. They the voting of the elite along the coast is I want to use other people as lab rats. I want to build massive solar plants, I want to decommission nuclear plants. I don't want natural gas or oil to be tapped in California. I want to over regulate agriculture. I don't want any charter schools, prep schools. I want the teachers unions to run the state and the government unions. I think homeless is really great. I don't want touch the homeless problem. I want to have reparations. And then, ding, I live in Bel Air. Ding, I live in Atherton. Ding, I live in Napa. Ding. I hang out on the shores of Lake Tahoe. And what I just described is the mentality of the Bay Area people who got us to this mess in this state. And I'm talking about you, Jerry Brown, 16 years as governor. Gavin Newsom, maybe 30 years. San Francisco City Council, San Francisco mayor, San Francisco Lieutenant Governor, San Francisco governor. You got about 30 years right there. And then you had Barbara Boxer, she was responsible. The late Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris. What do they all have in common? Well, they all wanted to make a progressive, radical state and they got their wish. We have the highest gas prices, the highest gas taxes, the highest electricity cost per kilowatt. We have 49th, I think reason magazine said our infrastructure and highways were. We're about 42nd in education. We've got. San Francisco's per capita property crime rate was the highest in the country. We've got the most illegal aliens, we've got the most homeless people. One third of the population is on. One third of the United States population on entitlements lives here. Half the births are on Medi Cal, 40. I could go on forever. That's the state. And those people gave us the state. And where did they live? Barbara Boxer went down to, I think Rancho Mirage or somewhere near. Kamala Harris lives in Bel Air. Jerry Brown retired to his woodsy Grass Valley estate. Gavin Newsom has a nine million dollar home. Right. Nancy Pelosi made about $200 million somehow as an insider, knowledgeable person about stock trades as speaker. She has a mansion in San Francisco and an Italian design estate in Napa. So what am I getting at? The people who destroyed the state and made people in the San Joaquin Valley or Inland Empire foothills have to pay these exorbitant prices Never had to suffer the consequences of their own ideology. They made out like bandits and they live in splendor. And people can't make that connection. And they keep voting them in. So what happens? We're in a doom lift. The people that can make the connection, they leave. 300,000 a year. And the people who are left are either the very, very wealthy who are immune from the toxicity of what they plan for others, or they're the 50% of the state who medi cal plays for all their births or the 40% that pays for their health care. It's a medieval society of a few very wealthy on the cone of the pyramid and everybody else below.

[B]

Yeah. Since you're speaking of it, beautiful houses and such. Do you know if that Getty villa with all the classical art in it survived? Or did they. Did it. Did it get burnt down with it because it sits right in the middle? Getty Villa.

[A]

Yeah, it survived.

[B]

It survived.

[A]

Yeah. I just drove by it. They have. I think they have their own little mini fire department, but they had cleared brush around it, and then they had water. I think they had their own water system. They have reinforced walls, too. Concrete. And the Getty Museum was at least 10 miles away, or 8 miles. The main. The new one, the newer one.

[B]

All right. Well, Victor, I'd like to welcome the Hoover Institution and its new publication. If you listen to VDH in his own words, you care about where America's been, where we are now, and where we're headed. 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. 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 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 Hansen, providing clear thinking and princ solutions for a complex world. As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation, there's no better time to dig in deeper into the ideas that built America and will determine its future. Subscribe now to Freedom Frequency. On substack. That URL is the freedomfrequency.org Again, the freedomfrequency.org and join the conversation that's lighting the way forward. And we'd like to thank the Hoover Institution for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. And Victor, I understand you are at the Hoover Institution.

[A]

Yes, I am. I'm here at my office. I'm looking out on a gray day. I can see San Francisco to the north. And I'm looking at the Santa Cruz Mountains out the window 300ft up here.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

It's a very historic office. This was the traditional office of the retired president of Stanford until about 15 years ago. Stanford released ownership of it and it reverted back to the Hoover Institution. So there's three of us up here, three fellows.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Nice place to be.

[B]

It sounds wonderful. Well, to continue with our news roundup in Chicago, a gang known as the Latin Kings has issued to its members a call to. What was it? It was to shoot on site federal agents. And of course, that means ICE in particular. So speaking of law and order that the advertisement we just listened to is supporting, you know, law and order in Chicago, it doesn't seem to be a high priority of its mayor or any of its council.

[A]

Yeah, it's very scary because it's not that they don't care about enforcing the law. They're deliberately trying to undermine and endanger Iceland. Mayor Johnson has bragged that he wants to physically stop ICE and that they have no jurisdiction within Chicago, as if all the property of Chicago belongs to the city of Chicago. That would be like saying Illinois does not have a state property inside or the federal government. They have lots of them. They have probably a billion dollars of property. Every city has federal and state property in it of which the city has no jurisdiction over in most cases. So he's openly. And then you have Governor Pritzer who uses. Now he thinks he wants to be president. So he's a spoiled Nepo baby. He's billionaire based on the work of somebody other than himself that he inherited this huge fortune and bought his way in. And he was an obscure, buffoonish type of governor. And now all of a sudden, the dearth of Canada on the left, he thinks he's the head of a big state like Gavin Newsom, and he's letting off F bombs. Yesterday, he said, I want to tell everybody that Trump's not going to go in there. What Trump basically said, the Department of Education, they cannot teach in the public schools racism and all of this anti white, anti American stuff. So in the twisted mind of the left, they say after we have politicized the curriculum and destroyed meritocracy and nobody knows anything, after they graduate to the degree they graduate, any attempts to reform it and put it back in the middle is interference and propaganda. That's what. But in that long harangue, this is a guy who went to prep school and he grew up as a child of billionaires with every. But he doesn't want to extend a quality education that he got to anybody else because he's a demagogue. But what I'm getting at is he is actually telling people to resist ice. We had that convoy of ICE trucks that three weeks ago or four weeks ago was stopped. It was kind of like John Brown's raid on the federal government. So we're going to get. We're on this trajectory. We hear now with Mondami, he said that he's not going to allow any ICE people to use their facilities and to enforce the law. That's what he said. He said he's going to arrest Netanyahu when he comes into New York for the United Nations. So. And Pritzker said that he's going to not allow ice. So you're going to see a situation. And the threats, according to Kristi Noem, have increased by 800% on the lives of ice. And they've been shot at, they've been rammed with cars. The irony is that most of the people who are protesting are affluent white people, and most of the people you look at ICE are Hispanic, black, or poor white. So there is a class thing. They have disdain for them, for ICE people. And it's class driven. Like, I'm a wealthy liberal, entitled person and you are a fool suffering from Marxist false consciousness and a tool of these Trump people rather than a patriotic American who wants to feed his family by enforcing federal law. Okay, we're getting very close to. We're going to get very close to giving an order by a mayor, governor, or somebody like Mandami to stop them. And there'll be people who will follow that order and they will try to arrest Netanyahu or they will try to stop a ICE deportation. And then you're going to have an armed federal officer. And if the Supreme Court does not step in and say to these lower district judges, you cannot stop the federal government from enforcing federal law, they do not have to report to you, this obscure judge, and say what? You know, the latest ruling was you have to come in every day and tell me what you're doing for me to approve it. No, you're not the president, you're not the governor, you're not the mayor. So they're going to have to step in or we're going to have a civil war.

[B]

Yes, it seems to me that things are very different now from, for example, maybe two decades ago or in my youth. I don't remember this, but I was reading an article about. Or the, an interview of Ken Burns and he's got a new movie out on the American Revolution and he's trying to entice both sides to go watch it. So he's saying it's the greatest event in American history, etc. Etc. But in that interview he said, well, people think American politics have always, are always just, you know, this is the only time it's ever happened. And he, his point is, is that, you know, it's democratic politics. That's why all of this aggressiveness on the part of cities and governors is happening. And I was wondering. He didn't actually say that though, that example, but that was his point. Oh, don't worry about it. This, I, I feel like it's different and new. What are your thoughts?

[A]

The technology makes it different. So when Adams and Jefferson were, you know, the Adams Federalist and Hamilton, they were calling Jefferson a missing adjacentist that he was sleeping with Ms. Hemmings. I don't know if he ever did or not. Probably not. He had half black children, that he was broke or they were saying that Hamilton was the Articles of Confederationists or the, the more left was saying that Hamilton was an SOB that was illegitimate or he was black from the Caribbean. Yes, they were fighting like that all the time. And the Whiskey Rebellion, the Alien and Sedition Acts, they did all sorts of stuff. And they did the same thing in the 1850s, bleeding Kansas, John Brown's raid, firing on sorts. Yes, yes, yes. And they did it in the Depression. That's why Mondami was quoting Eugene Debs. I mean he ran for president four times, an avowed socialist. But in those days you fought with letters and newspapers and muskets or something. And now you can inject your venom instantaneously. You can find everything you want on an opponent in a nanosecond. On the Internet you can, you have AI, you can Photoshop things, you can invent things and you've got weapons that you can get very quickly so you can reify any of that hatred very easily. And you juxtapose that paradigm on a judicial system that picks and chooses who's guilty based on their ideology. I mean that most of these radical confrontations take place in cities. They don't take place in southwest Fresno County. I just drove through three or four county towns and there's not very many homeless people and there's nobody protesting. So all of these things are taking place, attacks on ice, trying to stop Charlie Kirk's turning point booth. And they're all run by left wing prosecutors, left wing mayors, left wing city councils. And so yes, they are in open revolt against the federal government under Donald Trump. If you had a. They, they were not under the federal government's. They were not in opposition to Joe Biden. They loved Joe Biden because he destroyed federal law and he let in 12 million people who they felt were dei constituen. And their attitude was it's very moral to destroy federal law but it's very amoral to try to enforce it. That's what their attitude was. So now they're the biggest hypocrites in the world. Now they're saying they're states rights people. But when the governor of Arizona a few years ago, Jan Brewer, I think her name was, she said the federal government under Obama will not enforce the law on the border and we're being overrun so we're going to enforce it. And Obama said you're a states rights writers, you can't do that, you're not some sanctuary. And he won. He said only the federal government can enforce the law and we choose not to enforce it. How's that? You can't enforce it. So how ironic that the left says that the federal government overrides everything even when they don't want to enforce it. But the moment they want to enforce what they're supposed to do, then they say they can't do it. Yeah, they don't have any principle other than radical equality of result. What they call equity. Everything else is subordinate to the law. Logic, decency. It's just we're going to push this agenda down your throat one way or the other.

[B]

Yes. And so to that point about enforcing law, we had a protest at Turning Point USA in Berkeley. So they were trying to stop the what was going on, the speaking free rights there. You know, obviously it's a commemoration of Charlie Kirk and Harmeet. Dylan now has said that she's going to investigate the police, the Berkeley police. They should stopping things.

[A]

I saw the video and they arrested. There was a guy in a red shirt and he was just there, he was trying, he was trying to hand out things and they surrounded him and they stole his church, they insulted him, they were swearing at him f the migra in Spanish. They were saying horrible things and then they roughed him up and they tried to steal I think a chain he had on and then one guy and then he fought back finally and they Arrested him for defending himself. And so, as we saw in Portland when they were protesting ice, and then ICE came out to defend themselves. And what those little cowards did, they traipsed across the road and hid behind the Portland city police. And then the Portland police were advising them, hey, if you're going to protest, I suggest you do it this way. And that's what the Berkeley police do. So you're basically seeing John Brown resistance and you're seeing bleeding Kansas, and you've got these areas that are an open revolt. And Trump's attitude is, I don't blame him. We've got so many things going on with foreign policy. We're on the verge of an economic renaissance. I don't want to have to take, I say I do, but I really don't want to go into these cities and get a big riot, you know, and they know that. And that's why they shut down the government. That's why they take, you know, they attack ice, they attack Tesla, they do all these things. They always get away with it. And these people added to the equation. You saw that with the woman that she ran her car through a ICE block and then they pulled her over and she says, I'm a mom, please don't do this. I'm a mother. And that's their attitude. They're upper, not I'm being stereotypical, but they're upper middle class white professionals that have a sense of entitlement and they're morally superior to anybody associated with Trump. And they have a right to do anything but don't dare. Because in their own lives, they never come in contact with any consequence because of their money or their zip code or their title or their education.

[B]

Well, back to your discussion from the Ken Burns statement. Every, every example you illustrated was an example in which there was extreme change coming to the country, whether it was the revolution, the Civil War or the Great Depression. And so I was wondering if you think this is going to be a moment of huge change, Maybe it already is.

[A]

Donald Trump changing things. I think we're starting to see something that we haven't seen since the Civil War. And that is if I go to Florida or I go to Texas, and I used to go there a lot, and I go to California, Massachusetts, Illinois. It's a different state, it's a different country. People are just different. And, you know, people are voting with their feet. And you don't see a lot of blue state. You don't see blue states hosting thousands of new immigrants coming from red states. It's just the opposite. And I'm including blue state people who leave. Maybe they go to Colorado, they think they're going to change Colorado, but the subtext is they don't want to pay the high taxes of a of California. They don't want the regulation, they don't want the homeless, they don't want the crime. Now they will go to a place and destroy that place with their ideology. But people vote with their feet. That's why Mexico, you know, is a mess because a million people try to leave it every year. That's why, you know, the blue state model is a mess because people try to leave it 4 or 5 million a year. I think I told our audience about nine years ago, I went to the Fresno U Haul and just act as if I wanted to move to Texas. And he gave me a quote of a little rinky dink trailer of like $1,200. And then I said, well, actually I might fly to Texas and then rent it. I could bring it back. And he said, well, if you want to rent one from Texas or you want to go down to Texas and bring it back and you're willing to put a deposit on it. Yes. I think it was like 300 bucks if I was flying to Texas and I was going to rent a trailer to take it back. And he thought I was kind of fishy. He was right. But that's just a good. It does not work. What these people have done does not work. People vote with their feet. They can't defend it. Gavin Newsom can't defend anything. If you ask him, if you say to Gavin, I will give you an open forum. Tell me why kilowatt costs are the highest in the nation. Tell me why gas is the highest except for Hawaii. Tell me why our housing is so highly appraised. Why is it so unaffordable? Tell me why half the homeless are here in the state. Tell me why half the illegal aliens are here in this state. Tell me why half the births are on Medi Cal. He can't do it. He would call you names, but he couldn't tell you. And yet no single person has lorded over that change. He was involved at every level. As a mayor, as a lieutenant governor, as a governor, as a city council, all through his career. His fingerprints are on all these policies. And the scary that he's going to make. He's going to do for the United States what he thinks he did for California. You as a camp.

[B]

Well, let's go ahead and take a break. Victor and Then come back and talk a little bit about Donald Trump's celebration of the troops at the Washington Commanders game. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show. You can find Victor on X. His handle is at VD Hansen and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. And on Facebook, there's also an unaffiliated club which is called the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club. And they do a lot of great work bringing up, especially digging up old things, but also the new stuff that Victor has been doing. So Victor, at the Washington Commanders game, there was a tribute to the services by Donald Trump swearing in some new troops, and there was significant booing in the crowd. And, and my question here is that these people that are causing so much destruction of our law and law and order, etcetera, they, they have a lot of supporters who are on their bandwagon to not like Trump to have gotten that much the, that many people that were booing him in the stadium.

[A]

I was, it depends on where you are. I mean, the city of Washington voted Democratic and most votes Democratic, about 75 to 80%. So if you go into Washington, it's.

[B]

Horrible with the troops being sworn in. I mean, there are troops.

[A]

That's a whole different issue in their way of thinking. It's horrible to have a demonstration in 2017 and say you want to blow up the White House to people cheering. Remember that was Madonna they unleashed. People forget that they, they talk about January 6th, forget 2020. The whole summer and fall during the inauguration of Trump, they ran wild. They arrested over 200 people, damaging, burning, looting Washington. I don't think people realize that this left, they don't see anything wrong with it. They feel they're morally superior. They've been indoctrinated since the moment they got into kindergarten. And we can have a discussion about why Nick Fuentes has an audience of 5 million people or why.

[B]

Yes, that was my next question. Why don't you go ahead and do that?

[A]

Well, it dovetails into it. So why do you have this anti Semitic right now? When I was growing up, I never met somebody who was Jewish until I was 18 years old, till I went to UC Santa Cruz. But I heard about Jewish people and it was from people who were far right. But, you know, it was like, well, I can't make any money on my nectarine crop because them Jews in New York control the food markets. That kind of stuff, conspiracy. But it was confined to a small right, and then the left took it over. So why are we Getting it now? Well, one obvious reason is the left lowered the bar by giving it a stamp of approval by the universities. Well, Cooper Union, you can chase Jews into the library at Columbia, the president can say, well, Jewish people better watch out where you walk. At Harvard, you can rough up a Jew and then they will honor you at graduation and give you a $60,000 award, which happened at Stanford. You can have a lecture that tells the Jews, hey, Jews, get on that side of the classroom, take your computers, because now you're dispossessed. Oh, by the way, we just tore down all of the posters of the hostages. What are you going to do about it? Oh, we're going to go in and destroy the president's office. So they lowered it and nothing happened to them. And so then people on the right said, well, I'm frustrated. And what was their complaint? Well, If I take 10 people I know, as I will say, they're either friends or family members of white males between the ages of 80 and 45, I will tell you if I'm thinking of names in my head, that all of them are not married. None of them have children. All of them date. None of them own a home. None of them will probably buy a home in the next five years. None of them have a savings account or any money. None of them are free from student debt from 15 or 20 years ago. So that's who the Tucker audience is. That's who the Nick Puente is. It's not a large number, but it's big in numbers. Not percentages, but total millions. And so they are angry and then they look at what's going on and they say, hmm, you know, since I've been in kindergarten, I'm not defending it, I'm trying to unravel it so that they don't do what they're doing. But they say, from kindergarten to high school, I was indoctrinated. Well, 80% of K through 8 are women and 70% in high school are female teachers. So they've heard. And they're all trained in the Department of Education. They've heard about toxic masculinity. They've heard about whiteness. They've heard about Christopher Columbus. Then they go to the degree, they went to college. They've been told that. So their way of thinking is, I'm not even going to try to get into a good college. Stanford lets in 9% white males. There's 35% of us in the nation. Harvard, all these universities, all they talk about is diversity is our strength. And we saw what happened at East Palestine when they had a toxic plume? Everybody said they deserved it. Basically, Biden didn't go there for months. Buttigieg didn't looked like a dork when he did. And so they see all that, and they look at all the DI and they say, we're losers. And then they look at globalization and they say, these guys in insurance and finance and all this made all this money on the coast, and we didn't make anything. Okay? And then they say, well, we were conservative. We want to get back to religion. We want some meaning in our life. Then look at the Republican Party and they think, George H.W. bush, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney. All they talked about was capital gains cuts, capital gains cuts, capital gains cuts, privatized Social Security, privatized Iraq War, this, that. So it wasn't addressing what they think. And then they saw them and said, For 20 years, you did not close the border. You were in power. You ran up this huge debt. You didn't do anything about student debt. You were just for the wealthy aristocrat, you're just the same as now. Everything I said, I don't endorse entirely, but I'm trying to see how you get out of this problem. And Charlie Kirk was trying to do that. I had talked to him right before he died, and he said, you know, I try to tell people they're right. They are revolutionaries, but the problem they have is that the establishment is not the right, it's the left. It's the left did this more than the right did. And then he was trying to say, the last thing he said to me was, affordability, affordability, affordability. How do we get people into homes? If you put a person in a home, suddenly he's no longer a renter. And he starts to say things like, well, I think the neighborhood's gone down and my mortgage is more than the value of my house. Or when you're renting and the. And the living room leaks, you get angry and you call. I'm paying 2,000amonth, and I got a wet thing. When you own the home, it's, oh, my God, the value of the house. I'm going to get up on that roof and fix it. It creates a different attitude. I want to pass this on. So I think we underestimate. The age of ownership goes from 29 to 40 something. When your age of marriage goes from 23 to 29, first marriage, first child, 27 to 33 or something. You've got this prolonged adolescence and that makes that group very vulnerable to easy solutions. And whenever you have a situation like frustration, Germany after World War I, during the Great Depression, somebody's going to come along and say, Dave Chappelle said that when you have the and Jews together, be careful the Jews, or what Rev. Wright called dim Jews. Dim Jews won't let me talk to Barack. Dim Jews. Nobody ever says dim blacks run the NFL. They have 76% of the players are black, but there's only 12%, you know, there's only, I don't know, 4% are adult black males in the country, but they're over represented. Nobody says the donut shops are being. As Joe Biden said, you can't go into a donut shop, not see an Asian. Remember that stereotype? Nobody says that California, 40% of the truckers are from India. But they do say the Jews run Hollywood and they run finance. But they don't talk about any other group gravitating to a particular industry. So they go back to that traditional. And then they get on Israel and they're upset and they see this confident little nation that is not ashamed of itself, it's not guilt ridden and it defeats all of its neighbors. And then they go to the university and everybody knows. It's kind of like you have, I don't know, it's kind of like you're in Russia. You have to be a member of the party or you have to be a small town. You got to join Rotary Club or the Masons, they feel if they're on a campus, they have to attack Israel because that's what the faculty tell them to do. And all these midi students. So then you, you know, I talked to, I would talk to them from my apartment to where I'm standing and they knew nothing. Balfour decoration. Somebody come up. We really see. Okay. Could I talk to you for a minute? Yes. What's the Balfour Decoration? What is the West Bank? West of what? What was Transjordan? Where'd the word Palestine come from? Who, what was you. What was the Suez crisis? What was the Yom Kippur? They don't know anything. All they know is you go out and they're angry and they go out and spout this stuff.

[B]

I would confess it would be imposing to be interrogated by you.

[A]

Yes. So what I'm critical of is two things. You could see this building. Donald Trump, to his credit, was the first person who said China's investment only makes one group of people wealthy. Otherwise they're destroying this country by outsourcing offshoring and copying our industrial base. He was the first person to say, if you go over to China and you invest and you make a lot of money, and he did himself, that doesn't help the United States because these people want to destroy us. And they're not going to, as you say, to defend your profit making the more money that I give China, they're creating. Victor, I've seen it. It's an affluent consumer class and we know the next step is democracy. No, it's not. It's Francoism or something or Pinochetism. So my point is that the Republican Party didn't a long time ago say let's not de industrialize the United States. The Republican Party didn't a long time ago said we don't want cheap labor. When you bring somebody in from a foreign country, you're undercut. American jobs don't do that. They didn't. The Bushes didn't, Reagan didn't. Reagan did. The Simpson, Mazzoli. And it was a joke. It really was. They gave him amnesty, but they didn't enforce the border. So that's number one. And then number two is if you're going not to address this problem of a restive youth, then somebody is going to address it. And that somebody who's going to be Candace Owens or podcaster or all of these alt right, you know, Nick Fuentes or Tucker's going to give them. And the problem is if you think you're going to flirt around with these people like Tucker's doing and give them a platform, you don't understand that they are demagogic. And they rose to prominence because they're rhetoricians and they can speak well. And when they get a public forum, they're not going to be Nick Fuentes making fun of J.D. vance's wife, are calling her a jeet. Not on Tucker's program, on his own podcast. Yes, they're not going to talk about Jews got to go back to Israel. They're not talking about how they love Hitler, maybe Stalin, not Hitler. So he goes on Tucker's program and people listen to him as he voices the anger of the lost generation. And nobody cross examines it. That's like taking a firecracker and lighting it and then say, I'm going to see if it blows up or not without cutting the fuse. And that's what you do when you put those people on. If you're not going to debate them, all you do is expand their audience. So now you have, if you look at the right, you've got all these young people. And they're listening to these people that are blaming Jews, blaming Israel, blaming this person, this person. And they want to have a Christian nation, they want to have a white nation. And they're a shrinking minority of the population. They feel and that a lot of their angst and concerns are valid. But if you don't tell them there's another way, and the other way is we're going to be tough on our competitors. We're not going to just let people come in here and destroy the economy with dumping product below the cost of production. We are going to have a housing program so people can buy houses, address the universities so they don't propagandize you. We're going to get the student loan stuff out. So you can't have universities raise their prices higher than the rate of inflation because they're getting guaranteed money. You can do a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff Trump's doing. They're just not articulating and they're not articulating it. And they have a problem because they have a very thin majority. And they see this group, the alt alt right, it's a new version, expanded. The MAGA version came out of remnants of Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Ron Paul, all of these libertarian to alt right movements. And then they were conglomerated by Trump Tea Party, but he mainstreamed it and he got rid it. Didn't have anti Semitic elements. He's the most pro Jewish book, pro Israel present in history. Which I think that's another, by the way, contribution to this new group is they feel that they lost the hearts and minds of the Trump administration and therefore they want to embarrass them. They're trying to be so outrageous that they force somebody like Trump or J.D. vance to say don't or Kevin Roberts or somebody don't, don't platform, don't platform. And then they say, see, he turned on you, Tucker. And then they caused a big rift and they would want Trump to lose. And if Trump lost, they would say, well, we caused his defeat because we're powerful and the Trump people know that. So they don't want to. As Vance said, it's stupid to divide the party, but it's not that you're going to divide the party. That's not the right answer. The right answer is how do you dissect and get that group of frustrated people who have legitimate complaints away from the easy Jew did it? That's what you got to do. You have to offer a positive, not a negative solution. And you have to speak out and tell people. That is not the solution. What Nick Puente said, this is the solution. We're going to redo the military so it treats people without racial concern. We're going to address the universities so they don't demonize people, they don't admit people on the basis of their race or gender. We're going to offer good jobs, we're going to protect the American worker. We're going to make you be able to buy a home. That's what you got to do.

[B]

Yes. And I think a lot of Trump's cabinet are doing that. Lee Zeldin and the state, they are saying, we have accomplished this up to the state now, Air traffic control, Sean Duffy's on top of it as the Secretary of Transportation.

[A]

They just have to get the word out and they have a rendezvous, whether they like it or not. I think they think they're going to do it after their midterms, but they, if they keep. They don't understand that when Nick Fuentes goes on Tucker and he causes all that trouble with heritage, all that stuff, he's going to do it again and again and again. And I bet you Tucker got more audience than he has in almost any other guest. And he's going to bring in another person, Darrell Cooper, who said, you know, basically, well, we went into Russia, the Wehrmacht, and, you know, we weren't prepared. They weren't prepared. Oh, my God. They didn't know there was going to be a million prisoners. And, you know, we mussed up a hair a little bit, and some Jews here and there got lost and got hungry, but we didn't know there was going to be 2 million dead. That was the attitude. And, you know, Hitler had some bad qualities and, you know, Versailles Treaty and all that. They kind of screwed him. But, you know, he was, he was just voicing the concerns of Western civilization until World War II started. And we backed the damn Commie, excuse me, the commies and the Jews. And then all of a sudden, we were on the wrong side of history. That's, that's, that's how they do it. And you have to address that all the time.

[B]

Victor, let's turn to Trump's administration and things they're doing. Trump himself is currently suing the BBC for defaming him. And what was it? It was defamatory, disparaging and inflammatory because of a documentary they prevent produced called Panorama, and they put into it. It was really horrible once you saw it.

[A]

I'm not laughing because it was not. I'm just laughing at how Horrible.

[B]

It was, yeah, because he was in the midst of a more than an hour long speech and he said, I'm going to encourage all of you to go to that house and where our brave senators are working very hard and you know, cheer him on or something like that. Like that's all he was saying. But then hour later in his speech, he says, fight, fight, fight. And they just.

[A]

So I want you to. I want you to go see our brave senators, some of who are not that interested in us. And I want you to fight, fight, fight. And then what happened in that hour? We're going to go over to the capitol now and I want you to assemble patriotically and peacefully. Patriotically. It wasn't, it wasn't. Kamala Harris, circa June 2020. It's not gonna stop. These demonstrations are gonna go on. They're not gonna stop and they shouldn't stop. This is right after they tried to swarm the White House and Washington was inflamed and we're gonna go all the way to election day and then you have Snopes and Politifacts. Well, she didn't really mean that. Only right wing people are trying to change. She meant really peaceful demonstrations. Only she didn't say that. She talked right about in a city. And it was an inferno where they tried to go after the President. So yeah, that was terrible what they did. And this was the BBC. It was the largest media conglomeration in the world.

[B]

They resigned. The CEO of it and another higher official.

[A]

They should be ashamed of themselves. In World War II, there were were millions of people all over the world in places like Hidden Radio and you know, in Yugoslavia or some. A bunch of families would conglomerate in Holland just to get five minutes of the BBC because they knew it told the truth and it wasn't propaganda. And now look what they've done to it. Everything the baby boomers and generate, they touch turns to dross. I hate to say it, but they destroy every. Look at Hollywood, you can't even see a movie. They could no more make the Best Years of Our Lives or Shane or any of those great movies. They're incapable of doing it. They just either make the third rerun of a great classic that's worse, or it's just a DEI script where they think, if I have this gay character, this radical feminist character, this black character, this Native American, then I don't need character, characterization, a plot. That's all I need. And then people walk and they say, you know what? We're human. We don't care about what you care about. We want a plot, characterization, tragedy, comedy, something. But they can't do it.

[B]

No. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and come back and talk a little bit about Mondami's building his cabinet or the people that are going to help him in his endeavors. So stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen, in his own words. We are with our new partnership with the Daily Signal, which we're very happy with. And let's see. Victor Mandami is building a bunch of staff members. L. Biscard Church is his chief of staff. And she helped him with his campaign, actually, and in fact was associated with him when he was in the assembly, the New York Assembly. So she looks like she has a very Mandami background, meaning that she was is part of the Democratic Socialists of America. She was an activist in her college years. She got her BA in Middle Eastern studies. And so that just seems to be falling in line with Madame's agenda. And it's going to be formidable. New Yorkers are going to really face a lot of changes.

[A]

Yeah, everybody, he's appointed as a socialist. His speech right after he was elected was not ecumenical. It was, get ready, everybody, we're going to stick it to you. And he knows there's a certain type of upper middle class, pampered, affluent person, dash, like himself, shocker. Who went to a private school. She went to Swarthmore. Where did she learn all of this stuff other than at Swarthmore? And when you major in Middle east studies in a university today, that's just simply. I went and I majored in anti Israel, anti Jewish studies. That's the same thing. Because they're not going to. I can't think of one Middle east studies professor that could survive in today's university. If he gave a balanced description of the Middle east or he thought that Israel was the historic home of the Jewish people, he would be fired or he would be harassed. So that's who he's surrounding. His only question is one thing. Mandalmi is only thinking about one thing. How quick can I socialize New York and have a communist paradigm without having it go broke? Because if I do it quickly the way I want to, all these capitalists are going to flee. So I either have to figure out one of two things. How to lie to lure them into stain, or to just tax the crap out of them and hope, you know, just go get the money somehow from them or start really, you know, lure them and start very slowly. And bleed them with a thousand cuts or behead them. That's what he's deciding to do. He's like the jacket.

[B]

Yes, but he really doesn't have. That's the one thing he really can't do is change the tax codes. Except I'm probably municipal tax taxes, meaning taxes on.

[A]

Yeah, I think it's 3 or 4% on top of. They have a 13% tax rate in New York. So you can tax them 17% and they're paying 38. So they're way over 55%. If you. That's like California.

[B]

Oh, you mean what property tax or are you talking.

[A]

No, no, I'm not even property tax. If you're doing 38% federal and you're doing 13.4 New York, work for state income tax and then you're paying a municipal tax of 3 or 4. And then if you add property tax or sales tax, you're doing 65% of your salary.

[B]

Yeah, it's going to be pretty hard on them.

[A]

That's why everybody, I don't want to be too incriminating, but everybody I seem to know when you want them to do something for you, they said, sorry, you have to pay cash. And then you say them. But at the cash I pay you, I had to pay 50% of it. So if I pay you $50 an hour, you're getting $50 an hour. But it's costing me $100 an hour because I had to make 100 to pay taxes to get 50. The left doesn't understand, or they do understand. I think they do understand that when they raise these taxes so high, then they create a huge vast black market. So two miles from where I live, there's 10,000 people there at a swap meet. But it's not really a swap meet with people swapping. They've got mattresses, they've got brand new appliances. It's people buying stuff or somehow acquiring it directly. No sales tax, nothing. And when I go in rural California, I was driving over here and there was a canteen that had neon lights on it. You know, it looked like a. It was huge trailer that he had tables. It was an all purpose store restaurant. So what I'm getting at is California. If they really wanted to settle their debts, if they keep, if they go higher than 13.3, which are talking about 6, they'll lose billions of dollars will leave. They could very easily handle it by just saying, you know what, we're going to crack down on the black market. So they could just visit all these canteens swap meets and say you're going to have to pay income sales tax, but they won't do it because that's kind of a DEI thing. You know, it's like, well, they're breaking the law because they have no choice. So we're not going to go enforce that them. That's true of America in general. The black market is huge. And when Donald Trump says he's going to save everybody by people not paying tax on tips, I have a very. I'm very cynical, but I don't think a lot of people were paying tax on tip.

[B]

I was a waitress 40 years ago.

[A]

Did you pay your whole taxes? Be careful.

[B]

Well, that. They just changed it in the Reagan administration to where if you got it, they looked at your salary and then they. They figured how much you should be claiming in tips based on that. And if you didn't claim it, they charged it to you. If you did not fill out your tax form with some idea of how many tips you earn that year, they decided how much you.

[A]

I don't think they do that.

[B]

They penalized you for none. I don't know. It would be nice. It was.

[A]

I just know that when I'm traveling, I can tell you when I'm traveling. When I'm traveling, yeah, I always try to tip 20. Well, after Covid, I don't know what happened. I was 15 and all of a sudden, Covid 20. And then people were demanding at Starbucks 25% or something. But I always tip 20% on Uber, the doorman, whatever. And I doubt any of them paid tax on that. I know people are going to get angry. I did, but it's very hard to, you know a model. I'm not saying no tax, but I just think the black market is so huge because the regular tax rates are so high that the government feels that it's sort of. I don't know how to put it. It's sort of a way of giving an entitlement because the taxes will be on the wealthy and the upper middle class, and they'll have the money to pay and the poor people will not have the money to pay a regressive tax like sales tax. So therefore, tips and all that, we're just not going to charge.

[B]

Yes. We're not going to tax. Yeah, it was nice when, in the 80s when I. Before the tax was applied. And then after I, before I was, oh, yay, the tips brought so much relief in cash. And then after it was like, wait, they're taking money from me. And so it was A little bit frustrating as a young person who did a lot. I mean, the tips really made.

[A]

I think we're not, I mean, my.

[B]

Ability to pay bills, I understand so.

[A]

But there's just certain things that go on in America that we just, that we just don't talk about. And one of them was what I just talked about, this lost generation of young men. You can't. Because if you, you know, we have. We're in the 70s frame that women are being discriminated against. That was true. I tell you, my mother was discriminated against. She couldn't get a job as a Stanford law graduate in 1946, et cetera. But almost 60% of all students are women, Right? And most teachers are. And in the professions it's no longer that asymmetrical, if at all. But there is a prejudice against a particular type of male that's just happening and we discuss that. It's true that the black market is much, much bigger than it is. It's true that the homeless situation is more than just drugs or not being able to find a home. It is partly a lack of deterrence. If you say that it is not against the law to defecate, urinate, inject, fornicate in public on a sidewalk, you're going to get more of it. So in the old days you still had that problem of affordability and alcoholism, but you didn't have homelessness because you have mainstreamed it. Someone told me not long ago up here in this campus that there was going to be a reckoning because all of the old white population of California was aging and young Hispanics were taking care of them. And therefore it wasn't fair that this aging. And I just said, I'm really worried about the Hispanic population health wise. And this person said, well, we're very young. And I said, yes. But Mexico, according to the UN has one of the highest obesity rates in the United States and the American population. In California, one out of every three people that goes to the hospital for any reason whatsoever has found to have high blood sugar, pre diabetes are diabetes. And obesity is an epidemic among young Hispanics, more so than other groups. Nobody talks about that, that health crisis. I can tell you that when I went to the emergency room the last two times that I would say I was one of two or three people the second and none the first who spoke English. I mean, I was the only one two years ago and there may be three people the last time, and I would say 75% of the people there were obese and When I was actually finally two or three hours later in the waiting rooms where a nurse practitioner was talking to me, I could tell that from the discussions that people were suffering from diabetes. A lot of people in that emergency room had come in because of their blood sugar. But obesity is a secret problem and no one wants to discuss it. No one says, you know, we target all these different groups for all these different things. There should be a national campaign of education among young Hispanics that if you come to the United States, the first generation, this diet is toxic. If you're not familiar with it, but you are familiar with it in Mexico and under globalization, that's the biggest problem Mexico has, is obesity. But what I'm trying to say is we say that if you cut out the SNAP program, everybody's going to starve to death. Why go into a food market? And I sit there in line and almost every single person has SNAP type of subsidies. And I would say 9 out of 10 are obese and the shopping carts are full of Coca Cola processed food. I'm not trying to. Everybody does that. Poor people in general of any nationality tend to do that. But the idea that people don't have enough calories or they're starving or the younger non white population is very healthy and they're forced to take care of the old. When I come to Palo Alto, if I want to stereotype, I drive by people exercising and I see people when I walk around my apartment and they are kind of Karen stereotypes. They're in their 65, highly affluent, they have designer yoga pants on and headbands and they're rail thin because they're very well, you know what I mean? That is the ethos. Live forever. Life is so good. They don't smoke, they don't. You know what I'm saying?

[B]

Yes. They're doing everything super healthy.

[A]

So it's a whole different world. And I see both extremes is what I'm trying to say. But there's certain things we can't talk about and I think we should talk about it. Or if you don't talk about it, you get, you get people talking about it like Nick Fuentes or stuff like that. And that's the problem.

[B]

Well, since you've introduced that topic, I have a comment from a viewer and it's a little bit long here, but he worked in California hospitals for 40 years and this is what he says. And his handle is trip8263. I don't know the documentation status, but our ERs are full of non English speaking Mexicans complaining of any and all health issues. They're never ever turned away. Then there's the grandma from Guadalajara who's having chest pains at home, who was given nitro in Mexico. The kids put her on a plane for a holiday. They drive her her from the airport to the er. She gets full care from heart catheter to open heart surgery, the most advanced expensive care in the world. The hospital gets her address and next of kin address. They send them a bill. Not a penny is paid. It's on the American taxpayer. Then there is the legal insured Mexican English speaking patient wearing the polo shirt with a company name on it like Xfinity or some pest company. Sadly, they come to the ER very ill, short of breath, begging for relief medication. But when they tell them they should have an X ray, they refuse because the deductible on their insurance is $5,000 and they'll not be able to pay the rent. The doctors try their best to to work around it, but it's really sad. I don't know any answers, but that's what I see. I know that Nome is now giving medical insurance to all illegals for $100 a month. I'm on Medicare now and pay 450amonth for my Medicare insurance. And I'm not complaining a bit, but I paid into the system for 40 plus years while the illegals for the most part did, didn't. I would rather see, I would rather send aid to Mexico for health care because our dollars would go a lot further.

[A]

That's another thing we don't talk about. I, I almost wanted to jump in the screen and shout at Elizabeth Warren when she was screaming the Affordable Care doesn't pay very illegal alien. As if. Well, it, it only covers about 25 or 26 million Americans. Technically it doesn't, but I don't know anybody who really uses it when they get medi cal or they go to an emergency room. And believe me, I would say that 30% of the people in California emergency rooms are here illegally. They have to be because we have under Biden, there were 12 million people let in. And the Yale study said in 2017 there were 20 million illegals. That's 37 million. We know there's 53 million who were not born in the United States. I don't know their status, but you've got maybe 30 million people and California traditionally has about half of them. So when I read there's 3 or 4 million illegal aliens in California, I don't believe it. And I go to the emergency room. And I see what's going on and I go to the quest. I was in a Quest lab. I won't mention where. And I was the only person speaking English. And they. I helped one woman try to use the computer to register as you walk in, but she didn't speak a word of English. And so that is a very. I don't mind as long as you don't lie. Why don't just people say, we need to address this. We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars on illegal care and we don't have the money. And we're not giving us citizens who are mostly people of color who are poor and poor whites. We don't give them. And then it's affecting everything. And my med. I pay about. I think it's $850 for Medicare, for my, you know, part of it's out of my pension, but I still have to pay it one way or the other. And when I go to when I had this lung problem, plumologist, 60 days if you're lucky. I just happen to find somebody by word of mouth and intern. Don't even try. So internist, I mean, and I won't mention. But you get the top hospital in California or the medical is like Stanford and you might be in the hallway in a bed. I've seen it. When I went to Tucson, I had a kidney stone. I went to a very big, prestigious hospital and the hallway looked like patient rooms. And so what I'm getting at is, yes, we spend. Illegal aliens are not turned away. There are 30 million of them. They're human. They have health, health problems like anybody else. And when they go. But don't lie to us and say that because this tiny little program on paper says they're not eligible, that they're not going to get health care one way. It doesn't matter the title under which they receive it. And Mexico knows that. So Mexico is exporting a million people. That's what. Mr. Obrador, I think it's beautiful what we did. We have 20, 30 people who came to the United States. There's 50 consulates in the United States. And their attitude is, we're not going to spend money on the poor people of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Michoacan. They're indigenous people and we are an elite. We're not going to do it. And if you don't like it in Mexico, you don't. You'll either join the cartels or you go to the United States. Go to the United States. They'll Take you. And the nice thing about the United States is when you get across the border, you will be eligible for affirmative action. Your kids can get scholarships. They can be citizens if you have them there. And you can join the people who say it's a racist, xenophobic, nativist country, and we'll play up to that. And then when you get to the United States, you get on state, local and federal welfare, so you can free up 2 or 300, 400, $500 a month to send back to US 65 billion a year so that we don't have to support your mother who's 80 years old in Micho, Kan. That's what they do. Everybody knows they do it. They know that it's tribalistic, chauvinistic, it's racist. They know that it manipulates the United States economy, the remittances. They know that it burdens and the Mexican government counts on it. And if you check them like Trump did, then you're a xenophobe, you're a racist, you're horrible. Believe me, all of those people who go out on the street and they play, act like they're zombies or they're going to do dances, those wealthy white professional women, they don't compete with the people who are being deported for health care. It's the ICE people who do. And that's what is so weird about what's going on.

[B]

Yeah, it sure is. And I like that.

[A]

It's a very good letter. It's honest.

[B]

They do get health care. They do have insurance. They. The ER room, which is the most expensive insurance in the world, I can.

[A]

Tell you, under AI and protocols. Now, when you go to the insurance, you can go to any. You can go to the most rural place in the world. And what they do is the nurse practitioner sits there on a stool and she opens up the computer and they type in the sentences, right, the symptoms, and they ask you. And then out comes the protocol from whatever university research hospital it is. In my case, it was pneumonia collapse. Wrong. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. And suddenly it was an X ray, a big shot, a prescription. And I asked people up here at Stanford, if you have a sudden case, that. Is this what happened? Well, exactly what they gave me. And supposedly one of the poorest, most challenged ERs in the state would be exactly what I got here as far as, I mean, if there's no complications. So what I'm telling you is that people get pretty good care.

[B]

Yeah, they sure do. Well, Victor, another comment, since we're on the comment section was sent in to us. So it's a typewritten letter. And she holds, hopes you're well. And she also says, thank you for thanking.

[A]

I like people listening, which is really. We need every. We have. We value every single listener.

[B]

And then the last thing she says is this. And I'm going to read her verbatim here. I love all your funny voices and imitations that you make. I sometimes play them repeatedly as my husband and I chuckle at them. One of my favorite was on March 20, you were talking about universities and you said. And she's got a quote here. You have a righteous, righteous general education program. Science, math, Western civilization, history, philosophy, seminal text exists, required and deep thought papers. And she's saying, oh, they're afraid of papers and they're afraid of education. So those were. Anyway, she says it makes me laugh. And she and her husband love playing them over and over. So there you go, Victor. They do like your imitations of things.

[A]

Well, I appreciate that and I wish I couldn't stereotype academics, but it's too easy not to. And you know, it's. I had to deal with one not too long ago. I won't tell you what type of genre, but it's like, wow, you know, one could argue, but one could also argue the other position. And I. I just think it's very unsophisticated of you. You know, everybody, you know, you know, that kind of. It's like, get to the point. Right. That's not a seminar.

[B]

Yeah. So last thing, though, because you and Jack were celebrating veteran. Yeah, Veterans Day. I was. Armistice Day. Veterans Day. And this person wrote this was really sweet. He says, and his name is Marky. 657. The part where VDH talks about his dad having a Nightmare episode, flying at 29, 000ft in a B29, taking on the IJA. I think that's the.

[A]

No, no, that's the Imperial Japanese Air Force.

[B]

Oh, Air Force in World War II brought tears to my eyes. We own and we owe an unpayable debt of gratitude to the people like VDH's dad and his namesake that risked and gave their lives for our wonderful country. To have anyone say that World War II was misguided is straight good.

[A]

I appreciate that. That's why I get so angry. These people who live in the comfort provided by people who are dead prematurely fighting for us, they don't have any idea what they went through in Okinawa, Iwo Jima, or in a B17 no idea. Okay, thank you.

[B]

Lots of your viewers and listeners were really happy with your decision.

[A]

I was very lucky to have of my grandfather grandfather and everybody in my family talk about it. Thank you everybody for listening. 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.