← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: If Only William Buckley Was Around to Debate Nick Fuentes
01:25:12
On today’s Election Day edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor and Jack unpack the controversy surrounding Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes and how the legacies of William F. Buckley Jr. and “Firing Line”—a show that confronted radicalism head-on—need to serve as examples for how conservatives handle extremists and bad-faith actors, as well as a recent poll out of Gaza showing alarming support for Hamas among Palestinians.
Loading summary
Transcript62 lines
- [00:01]
Jack Fowler
Well, hello ladies and hello, gentlemen. Welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I'm Jack Fowler, lucky man. I am host. I get to ask Victor the questions that you would want to ask him if you were sitting in this chair. This chair is in Milford, Connecticut. Victor's back in the Central Valley. Mad Max world out there. Victor, we are talking on Sunday, November 2, All Souls Day. This particular episode of the show will be up on Tuesday, November 4th. Big day for a lot of places in America. Elections in Virginia, New Jersey, I think Mississippi also has state elections and of course some important mayoral races in particular New York City. But Victor and the great Sammy Wink will talk about that later in the week when the results are in today. What are we going to talk about? Well, the most obvious thing, Tucker Carlson's very controversial interview of Nick Fuentes, the Stalin admiring Jew hating racist. We have other things to talk about. The concept of no enemies to the right. Judge Boasberg has ever been a more partisan federal judge. J.D. vance, his performance at TPUSA, his in Mississippi. And maybe we'll talk about some SNAP recipients. Like we have this interesting chart of who gets by ethnicity. I mean, it's crazy what ethnic groups are addicted to snap. Anyway, there's all that much more when we come back from these important messages.
- [01:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
Right is still right, even if you stand by yourself.
- [01:51]
Jack Fowler
Mr. Chief justice, may it 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. We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And I forgot to say, Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. And he's on the Daily Signal now eight times a week. Four hold up my fingers for those.
- [02:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Who are watching on YouTube.
- [02:45]
Jack Fowler
Four has podcasts and then four five, seven minute videos that he does exclusively for the Daily Signal. And Victor's got a website, the Blade of Perseus. You should visit it. You should subscribe. $65 a year if you want to stick your toe in the water at 650amonth. Victor writes two exclusive articles a week and one exclusive video a week for the Daily Signal. Plus, excuse me, not for the Daily Signal, for his website, the Blade of Perseus. And it's A bonanza of links to all things Victor writes and his many, many appearances. Okay, Victor, I'm talking to you. My apologies to some people. I am a Christian Zionist, but they'll have to deal with it. Tucker Carlson interviews Nick Fuentes. It has rocked the Right. What are your thoughts? Let's start off with just the fact that Tucker would host this guy before I do.
- [03:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
Was you mentioned Christian Zionist. So a Christian Zionist is a person who uses his Christian faith in the biblical sense to support Zionism, which is the historic return of Jews to their ancestral homeland to have an independent nation. Right. And you justify that by the affinity of Christianity and Judaism with their shared Torah dash Old Testament. But also because you feel that the nation of Israel is in some ways biblical. It's fulfilling a biblical prophecy or the people are there where they, the people of the book are back home. And, and that people that Tucker singled out was Mike Huckabee. I didn't understand, but this is my question. Then he attacked Michael Huckabee and he said, jack, I hate Christian Zionists more than anybody. I'm thinking, I'm quoting. I want to be fair. Does that mean he hates them more than he hated isis? Does that mean he hates them more than. Than he does not the Nazis or communism as he hate them more than the violent protesters. What does that mean when he says he hates Chris? Why the venom? That's why. Before we get into Nick Fuentes, why do you think there's all this venom at. And I guess I'm referring back to the Ted Cruz interview where I'll be fair, I was just a disinterested observer. He brought, he brought a level of fact and data. He, he confounded Cruz. I think Cruz was kind of ambush. He thought it was going to be an amicable, you know, fellow conservative chat and boy, what that showed is that if Tucker Carlson wants to be an adversarial or a William F. Buckley host with a unfriendly guest, he can really pin him to the wall. But which opens a lot of other questions. Why the hatred for Christian Zionist above all other groups or peoples or individuals? And why didn't he apply that level of refutation, argumentation, data? He was very skilled. Why didn't he apply that to Nick Fuentes? Surely if you ask Tucker Carlson, he wouldn't prefer Nick Fuentes, Woody, over Ted Cruz. No answer.
- [06:31]
Jack Fowler
If you're asking me, this is.
- [06:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean, Nick, Nick Fuentes has said that. Said he made fun of J.D. vance's wife and said why they have Indian Names and they're not as. And he said as a racist. As a racist. Why are we having a vice president with this non white wife and these kids? And you know, he's, he's basically said he wants to eliminate all Jews. He used to like Hitler. Now he prefers Stalin apparently. And that all that got. What I'm getting at is why that guy. And he used to not like Tucker Carlson, but why did that all not get contested in the way he contested Ted Cruz? Right. And so what I'm getting at is something has happened to him, Tucker, in the last few months. It seems to me Nick Fuentes was a severe critic. They had a back and forth and they. On social media, Charlie Kirk and. And Nick Fuentes. Right. When I say Nick Fuentes, I'm talking about somebody in their late 20s who says he's a virgin and sex with the idea of women is repulsive and he's the head of these gropers. But I can't see any distinguished thing he's ever done except he has a million followers on social media.
- [07:55]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [07:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
By I guess getting clicks with this venomous anti Semitic, anti Israeli, anti conservative. I mean, I know he's been very critical of Trump. Right.
- [08:08]
Jack Fowler
Not a MAGA person, not a supporter in 2016, 2020.
- [08:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
So I'm trying to figure out for everyone why now when we say anti Semitism, I think there has been a right wing anti Semitism. It's different from the. It has a. Historically, if you look at the Pomgroms in Europe or what the czars did, or Jews that were treated during World War II and the preliminaries to it, or here in the United States, you look at a movie like Gentleman's Agreement or you look at that scene Jack in 1946 movie the Best Years of Our Lives where they have that fight in the drugstore where that kind of Daryl Cooper like character says we fought the wrong enemy. We should have. Okay. All of that comes from the right. And it's kind of goes back to the Christ killing Jews, biblical blood libel, right wing, they're not white, whatever Semitic. It's anti Semitism on the right. But you know, your former boss and friend had kind of expelled the anti Semites or so called. And you know, I don't know whether there were varying degrees of them, but he, he excised them.
- [09:21]
Jack Fowler
Well, he tried. I mean he made the case against conservatism and he did on the right.
- [09:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
And you know, Pat Buchanan made the counter argument that he was anti Israel but not anti Jewish. But then, you know, like Mersheimer and all those guys, when they say that, they. Then they cite examples. It's always Jewish examples. And so there is this matter of selectivity. You can say, I'm not anti Jewish, but I'm anti Israel because of the occupation, okay? And then you also, and I don't like the idea of refugees and quote, unquote, genocide. So then you have to say. So you. You're really angry about the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus for 50 years and the ethnically cleansing of every Greek in Northern Cyprus. And you're very upset about what's going on in Nigeria where there's been over 2 million ethnically cleansed Christians that are refugees and probably 100,000 that were killed. Are you really angry about the Christian Armenians that were just ethnically cleansed from the corridor Azerbaijan, 100,000 of them. But when they don't do that and they only focus on Israel, then you have to ask, why are you focusing on the Jews and not the Turks or the Aberrajanis, etc. Or Boko Haram? Because in magnitude and certitude, that's a much clearer case. And then when you talk about genocide, as they do so if somebody comes into your country and kills 1200 people and murders them and then they, with the help of civilians, which I think it's pretty clear, there were hundreds if not thousands who tagged along and then they run back. And the architects of that. Can I say, I can't say genocide because it wasn't a whole people, but mass murder. They. Then they flee to subterranean labyrinth tunnels and their entries and exits are strategically posed under mosque schools and hospitals. And then what is the IDF supposed to do? Well, I was thinking of that right now, Jack, and we have cases in history. What was the United States supposed to do when. Before D Day, when. When There was over 250,000 Germans and they occupied all of the major rail transport centers in France and you were going to invade there, and they occupied all of the major office buildings and infrastructure. Well, I can tell you what we did. We bombed and we killed over 70,000 French people, much more than the Israelis killed Gazans. And we justified it. We said, that's called collateral damage. And we tried to avoid it, but we did it. Or what did the US Marine Corps do in Okinawa when the Japanese were deeply embedded in caves and they were killing. They were popping up out of caves with one man, Little Burrows, and killing Marines, including my namesake, Victor Hansen. What did they do? I can tell you what they did. They killed every single Japanese soldier except for about 6,000 out of over 150,000. And there was a lot of collateral damage. I happened to see Fallujah after the Marines took it, Jack, and it looked like a moonscape. And what were those poor Marines supposed to do when Al Qaeda had taken over the city of Fallujah and they had to go door to door when they were torturing Iraqis? They had all sorts of booby traps. What were they supposed to do? 1 getting at is they were supposed to do what the Israelis did. And all they had to do is all Israel and Israel said is give us back the hostages and please give us back the hostages and please turn over the architects of the mass murder on October 7th. Had they done that, had they turned over the hostages and given back the planners, there wouldn't. They would have never had to go into Gaza. So the reason that I'm bringing all of this up, when you say you attribute all these horrific things to the Israelis and then you either pro. Provide no context or you completely and deliberately neglect specific examples of comparison all over the world where there is even more clear cut violence than Israel used in Gaza, then the question arises, why, why are you doing this? Why are you fixating only on Israel and the Jews? And when you add into the equation, well, there's 500 million Arabs living in over 20 different nations around Israel, Muslim countries, why are you calling Israel a Jewish state as if that's something that's some kind of theocratic state when every other nation in that area is Islamic? You don't say the Islamic State of Jordan, the Islamic State of Egypt, the Islam. And there are more Arabs in terms of percentage, 20% in Jewish Israel than there are Christians in, in most Arab countries. So when I, I get these questions and, and when, when Tucker interviewed that high religious official in Bethlehem and who was an Arab Arab and Christian, but living under the occupation of the Palestinian Authority, and this person said that they, the population at one point had been 80% in Bethlehem and it had decreased, decreased down to 10% of the resident population were Christian. And this was because of the Israelis, you wanted to say, well, the vast increase in relative Arab population and decline in Jewish population took place when Palestinian authorities were in control of the city of Bethlehem, number one. And where did these, where did these Christians go? They went to two or three places for the most part. They went to the United States or Europe or Israel. And why, why is there 180,000, 180,000 Christians living in Israel and there is almost no Christians living in these Arab countries. And given that fact, how could you even imply that Israelis came into Bethlehem and ethnically clan Christians and kicked them out to the anger of this Arab Christian religious figure, when the more obvious scenario is that if I were the host, and I think Tucker's brighter than I am, he's, he's got more experience in television. All he had to do I would do is say, excuse me, where did these people who were ethnically cleansed go? How many Christians are living in, in Israel? How many Christians are living in Gaza? How many Christians are living in West Bank? How many Jews are living in Gaza? How many Jews in settlements? Just ask those questions. But he. There was no intent. So this is what, what everybody is curious about about this new right wing Semitism. I'll just say a couple of other things. We'll get back to our conversation and that is left wing anti Semitism is deeply embedded in the Democratic Party and on campuses and it's virulent. We have a candidate who had a Totenkop Senate candidate in Maine who has a Totenkopf death's head, third Panzer SS Division insignia tattooed to his chest. We have people on campus that roughed up Jews who said that these are areas that Jews can't go to. A lecturer at Stanford said, you Jews go to that side of the room, you go to the others who. These are tuition paying students. We've had Cooper Union students that had to run for their lives and hide in the library. They were besieged. I could go on and on. So this happens on the left and it's part, it's explicable by the new demography. Jack. It's explicable that the left wing Semitism is a result of. There's about 7 million Jews in the United States and many of them are fully assimilated and many of them are non observant and many of them do not identify as Jews. And that number is shrinking relatively. And it's the Jewish lobby that everybody warns us about is about as potent in some cases as the Greek lobby was very potent at one time. But demography had fully assimilated Greek immigrants and there was no more immigration. We're not getting immigration of Jews to the large part, in the large part from Europe or Russia or Israel. We are getting massive immigration from Arabs. There are about 3.7 Arab Muslims in the United States. They're growing at a much faster rate. In the next decade there will be more Arabs than Jews. But more Importantly, there's over 300,000 Muslim students from the Middle east. And they are very influential with gutter money for Middle east programs. And what I'm getting at is the left then looked at, and especially when they're located in these communities, are located in swing states like Michigan or New Jersey is becoming a swing state, Virginia. And they see these groups as very electorally popular, potent. And so all of these things conspire to change the dialectic about anti Semitism. So I think what, what I'm trying to get at, Jack, is the people on the right that are anti Semites or they're coming out of the woodwork, they look at the left and they say, you know, it's kind of okay now the left's not going to say anything if I say anything because I'm saying the same thing they are and they get away with it and the media is there and, and then look at dei. DEI says there's a binary of victims, victimizer. If you're on the victim ledger, that is you're the non white, then you can't be an oppressor, you can't be a victim. You're free to say anything. So if you're, you know, the last generation of prominent black celebrities and leaders, there was Al Sharpton's, tell them to put on their yarmocks and come over here if they, to my house if they want to have a duke fight. There was Jaime Town, Jesse Jackson, there was Farakhan, Gutter religion, remember Jeremiah Wright. The dim Jews won't let me talk to Obama anymore. And then I guess they're superseded by this new generation that Kenya west, where he said, I'm, I'm going to go to DEFCON 1 when I wake up against the Jews. And then there was Candace west said there's a ring basically in Hollywood, basically of Jews and maybe a ring in Washington D.C. and they're up to sinister things. So what I'm getting is when you have a DEI component and says that if you're black or you're non white, you can't be anti Semitic. These all conspire to lower the bar of what is acceptable. And so the right comes out and says, ah, the left controls all the media, they control all the popular culture. And they won't say, you can't get me for anything because to do so they would have to go after Ilian Omar and the Squad and aoc and they're not. And Kanya, and they're not going to do it. And that really encourages. There's one more thing I'm thinking and I'll stop. And that is why are these people doing it now? I think it has something to do with a MAGA movement and I want to make sure that people understand what I'm saying. I think that they thought in the tradition of Father Coughlin or Charles Lindbergh or Pat Buchanan that they had the ear that although even though Lindbergh's father was a Republican congressman and all that he did favor FDR in times and so did Father Coughlin. And they thought that they were going to convince the US government of 1938, 39, 40, 41 not to get into that war and not to follow the so called Jews who Henry Morgan through and all the people, Bernard Baruch that had the ear of Roosevelt. And so they think that they had the ear of Donald Trump. And then they looked at it and they thought, wow, this guy is a standing ovation from the Knesset. The people who were the architects of the peace in Gaza, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, they're Jewish and there's a lot of Jewish high advisors in the Trump administration, Stephen Miller and Lee Zeldin and my gosh, Howard's what's Luke Nick? And we're not, we don't have that influence. And Trump attacked Tucker when he said that somebody tell kooky Tucker Carlson about Iran. And Trump has been the best friend of Jews. And, and I, and I think they got very angry. They thought, you know what? And that's that that explains why we have people on the Tucker Carlson platform like Daryl Cooper, that column from Cornell, a chemistry professor. They seem pleasant enough people, but what they were basically saying is we should have aligned with Nazi Germany and not the Soviet Union. And then don't, don't mention the Holocaust or don't mention the atrocities of Germany, but assume that the Germans were kind of, they overdid it a little bit. They messed up people's hair, to quote Dr. Strange Love George C. Scott character. But by and large they were defenders of what Western Christendom, the white race, Europeanism, Westernism against the Bolshevik Jewish Marxists roaming moguls of the, of the East. And they've updated that argument now and they've been put in place of, in place of Nazi Germany. I think they've said basically the Palestinians and all these people and the Israelis are the Jewish Bolsheviks and we should have aligned with the Arab 500 million community and not the Jews. Because there's a contemporary argument to say that we, we backed the wrong horse in World War II. Why do it now? They wanted a why. And you know, it was absurd. I, I did that, as I said that long Peter Robinson Uncommon Knowledge with Andrew Roberts and Neil Ferguson about World War II and the fallacies of Daryl Cooper and how ridiculous it was that Churchill was a terrorist and da, da, da, da, da. It was all factual and it was all, they just went a little, they, they were unprepared when they went into Ukraine. So, yeah, a million and a half people starved to death. It had nothing to do with the Beck hunger plan. That was premeditated. But they're doing all of that is what I'm getting as part of this new anti Semitic right to show you that we shouldn't, as in the past, have made a bad decision and joined the wrong forces.
- [26:06]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, more on this. Back on these related issues in a second. But first, to our new listeners and viewers, if indeed you do listen to VDH in his own words. And you are you care about where America's been, where we are now, and where we're headed. And that's exactly what Freedom Frequency is 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 James 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, the freedomfrequency.org and join the conversation that's lighting the way forward. And we thank the good people from the Hoover Institution. That big, big, beautiful building stuck right in the middle of the cast.
- [27:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. And you know what that big, beautiful building under. He's a really brilliant guy. One of the nicest people, too, is Eric Waken, or you've met him, the archivist. He's the assistant directors. One of the assistant directors. And he's in charge of the William F. Buckley Depository of Firing Line episodes, which I know them well, which is going to prompt me to ask you a question. One of the questions that came up, who's a good friend of both of ours, Kevin Roberts. But he, he came out in a series of statements and interviews that he, at first, and he's modified his initial position where he gave a blanket defense of Tucker in a way, but he was saying that you, you don't want to cancel people, even the extremist. And he didn't really elaborate on. He just said he, he disagreed with Fuentes. But later the next day he, he detailed all of horrific things that, that Fuentes had said. And they were pretty bad. I shouldn't say pretty bad, they were awful. But the question is, when you have a platform and you bring odious people on, what is the attitude of the interviewer and what is the purpose of doing so? Because if you could remind me, I remember watching Eldridge Cleaver on there, who was a convicted rapist, a convicted assaulter, the head of the Black Panthers, a divisive racist. I remember Huey Newton who shot and killed somebody. He had been a prison convict. He was later murdered himself. He was a horrific human being. They had Shockley, the Stanford physicist, who had made the argument that his, I guess Jensen was the Stanford. He had made the argument like Shockley. Shockley was on that he had scientific proof that blacks were genetically inferior. So then Buckley had them on and you can tell me some more odious people, but the purpose was to count. Wasn't the purpose us to cross examine them and show the people in the world?
- [29:49]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, not for all shows on Firing Line because sometimes Bill had, he had Mother Teresa on Malcolm Muggeridge, Louis Borjas.
- [29:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Ronald Reagan, the James Bond actor too.
- [30:01]
Jack Fowler
Well, Roger Moore was a friend of his and David Niven, the original James Bond. But you know, some conversations were about culture and language and English and religion, et cetera. But there were times Bill had Saul Alinsky on, Bill had George Wallace on. And when they were on George Wal, they weren't to say, oh, say what you want. Isn't that interesting? Oh, you want us. You want to destroy Western civilization. Well, that's, that's, that's interesting. No, Bill saw Firing Line. By the way, the name of the show was Firing Line. It involved some level.
- [30:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
So the purpose was to bring people that the public was aware of. But Buckley wanted to tell or inform the public that these people are extremist and they could be dangerous. And so I'm going to show you how inconsistent, illogical and wrong they are.
- [30:53]
Jack Fowler
This show came out of his debating the 1965 mayoral race in New York City. And yeah, it was to take on challengers of the left, basically. Not always basically, and debate them and challenge them and confront them and try to point out where they were wrong. Not in all cases. Again, he's talking to Mother Teresa. He's not trying to tell her where she's wrong. He's trying to ask her, you know, about, about faith. But having. So the, the concept of having a platform and letting people who are visceral enemies of the things you believe in was certainly not something founded in conservatism. Not founded by Bill Buckley or Firing Line Bill. Bill. I know it adamantly. Adamantly.
- [31:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
So the point that I'm making then is I want to get a context because everybody has been talking about Kevin Roberts and heritage and he was defending the idea of Tucker being allowed to have these controversial people on. You don't cancel people, especially on the right. But I think. And then he detailed the next day all the terrible things. But I think he feels that way. But if he had have just clarified or just stated, maybe he could have used a comparison to Buckley if. I don't think he would have injured his relationship with Tucker if he'd said something like the following. I have seen Tucker in action. He's very knowledgeable, he's very well spoken and he's very prepared. And when he had on a friend of conservatism, his and ours, Senator Ted Cruz, he was not a disinterested, neutral or softball interview. He asked Ted what the population, I think, as I remember, what's the population of Iran? And Ted couldn't answer it. And he came, in other words, ready to cross examine and maybe even embarrass, if that's the word. A fellow traveling conservative. Okay. And then if he. So we expected him with such controversial people who share far fewer views with Tucker than Ted Cruz. I mean, Ted Cruz and Tucker seem to be more aligned than Fuentes and Tucker. Why didn't he use those formidable skills into cross examining Nick Fuentes or Daryl Cooper? That's all I think he would have had to say the controversy. Would have, yeah, would have and he could have. He didn't have to answer his own question because it's, it's a leading question and I don't have the answer to it because for many years I was on Tucker's show and I saw no evidence of anti Semitism. He was neo isolacious in the sense that he said that it was in a cost of benefit analysis. We shouldn't be supporting anybody. Basically, he was very critical. The NATO alliance members who weren't paying their 2%, very critical of Ukraine. That didn't have A strategy to end the war very critical of Israel that was using preponderant force, things like that, which were legitimate concerns, I suppose, but nothing like this nut, this coupe.
- [34:11]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [34:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
Who had been very unfair and hated Tucker. He had been tacky. He had hated Charlie Kirk, Tucker's close friend. I don't understand that. Why I would have thought that he would have really unloaded on Fuentos. And I think if Kevin Roberts had just said that, and I think maybe he will, maybe he's, I think it's an ongoing explanation of Tucker, his friendship with Tucker and why people have been very critical of Heritage for him trying to say we're not going to counsel Tucker. I don't think he should have counseled Tucker. I just think he could have said. Or maybe he should have. I don't some of my. He should have said, as I said, use those formidable skills that we've seen you use with conservative friends of heritage as well as people that are not friends of heritage. You're a friend of heritage. Fine. You went after Ted Cruz and you did pretty well and kind of, you know, drained him down to size. Can you do that also next time with somebody like Nick Fuentes or Darrell Cooper?
- [35:23]
Jack Fowler
Well, I'd like to stick with this a little bit, Victor, if you don't mind, because I think our listeners and viewers do too. And we will get some more take on how about no Enemies on the Right and Stalinism? We'll do that when we come back from these important messages. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words recording on Sunday, September, November 2, All Souls Day for some of us Christians and even Christian Zionists.
- [35:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
Zionists.
- [36:00]
Jack Fowler
This episode is out on election day, November 4th. Victor, I'd like to get to no Enemies on the Right this concept. But first back to Fuentes. And as you've explained so many times, and we know you are so involved, steeped, tortured by the world of academia. And I've never heard anyone say, I can't imagine the ambassador from Cuba saying this at the United nations like Fuentes. I'm a real admirer of Stalin. That was a shocking thing. Have you ever heard even the leftiest, wingiest professor at Stanford or anywhere else talking in glowing terms about Stalin?
- [36:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
I, I, I, I had an argument at my 10 year class reunion, now that you bring it up, and 1981, I was farming and a good friend of mine. I hadn't seen him in 10 years. He was a Hispanic guy, very bright and he was a drug user and he saw me and he confronted me. And he wanted to argue about Stalin and Lennon, and he said they were wonderful people. And we had a big argument, but that's the only time. But he was kind of a crackpot. But I have never actually, I. You're right. I've heard Lenin a lot and Trotsky. Christopher Hitchens used to argue with me the few times we brought a taboo subject up, that he defended Lenin and I mean, excuse me, Trotsky, but no, I haven't. And I haven't heard anybody say he didn't want to have. The idea of having sexual relations with a woman was abhorrent. Torrent. Or they shouldn't be allowed to vote or they should just stay in the kitchen. It's not like he's a worldly person. He's only. He's in his late 20s. He hasn't really startled the world with his writing articles and op EDS books. He surely hasn't had the success of Charlie Kirk and mobilizing a national movement that's changed things. And he has a predictable modus operandi. In that interview, he mentioned Joe Kent, the congressional person who works for Trump now but failed in that close. Oregon, is it Oregon, I think congressional race. And he basically calls up a conservative and says, I will unleash my army of get out the vote people and call and really help your campaign. But I only ask one thing of you. You don't disassociate yourself from me. And so then he goes out and then they start to really help somebody. And then of course, he says some really typical things and he puts that candidate in a bind and the candidate is pressed and he said, those aren't my views. And then he calls up and said, are you broke the agreement? And he starts attacking and he gets in the process enormous amounts of publicity.
- [38:56]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, I'm. I'm not opposed to canceling myself. This is not the Jack Fowler show. It's the Victoria.
- [39:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean, canceling. I. Yeah, that's the wrong world. It just. You don't give people a platform. I mean, in World War II, you don't say to Adolf Hitler, America hasn't really heard your views. And Minister Tojo either, and we'd like to have you and Mussolini and Edward R. Murrow Radio Trio. You don't do that. And somebody's going to say, well, they're not hit. Well, they say they liked Hitler until they like Stalin. And if you say that we. That you should. We should have fought on the side of Hitler. That's what they. Both of those Bloggers or professor in one case, sort of implied, then yeah, I don't think you really want to give a form to someone like that who's not a serious person, unless you are worried that his World War II historical revisionism is, is growing and it's being used for the contemporary purposes of demonizing an ally of the United States. And you think people need to know the truth about it. So you want these avatars of these crackpot ideas and you're going to cross exam, you're going to come, you know, fortified with data and fact. But that didn't happen.
- [40:19]
Jack Fowler
How many crank nations of commies that are called, you know, People's Republic, the Democratic Republic. Oh, they're democratic. Let's treat them democratically. Well, Victor, I want to get your take on this concept of. And it applies to both left and right and maybe off the spectrum, no enemies to the right, which is. We've heard this talked about.
- [40:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
No enemies to the left as well.
- [40:38]
Jack Fowler
Right, Correct. And in the instance, I've written this down so I don't mumble too much. In the instance of Fuentes, why should we concede that he is quote, unquote, to the right? Why should we embrace the general Millie implication that white supremacy is something inherent to conservatives and that it's not inherent to leftists? Isn't Fuentes not quote unquote, to the right, but to something else? Maybe not on the left, right spectrum. Maybe he's on a vertical spectrum. Up or down with him being, I think, down. I mean, I don't think this. We have to accept that someone like him is to the right, that he is conservative in some. With some.
- [41:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
I was thinking about that.
- [41:21]
Jack Fowler
Go ahead.
- [41:22]
Victor Davis Hanson
I was thinking about that when I heard that. So I started thinking about who are all. Because they're. They. They locate themselves in the America first movement and, you know, America first in the sense of, I don't know, America of Christian, white Aborigines, I guess, the original settlers. And so I asked myself, who are the domestic enemies of the United States and who are the foreign enemies? And let's take a. When I listen to Mandami and he says he's going to arrest Netanyahu on site, that's kind of what Nick Fuentes would say. Right? Same thing. And when I walked across the campus in October, November of 2023, and I heard all these demonstrators who were illegally camped out for four months, they said, river to the sea, Palestine will be free. They said all, you know, blank. Netanyahu blank. That's sort of what Fuentes said. And when I look at TVs and they're protesting the United States and they're waving these Palestinian flags and burning American flags, as in Iran and things. So when Tucker interviewed the president of Iran, which I didn't think he didn't, he didn't offer him sharp counter view questions at all. But my question is when I see Iran, it's always negative America, negative America, negative America. So what I'm getting at is Pat Buchanan made the argument that we were a republic and not an empire. We need to be neo isolationists and we need to think of America first. But he also made the argument that we were multiracially decadent. We were this, this, this. And he got criticized for amplifying the criticisms of A, the anti war left and B, are foreign critics. And that's what really was. That's one reason he was not able to mount a campaign of the caliber of Donald Trump or even Ross Perot. So my point is, are they different than the critics of conservatism at home and the critics of the United States abroad? What is their criticism of, of conservatism? That it is not, it is not racial. That is not saying, well, we oppose, I oppose illegal aliens and illegal immigration and support deportation of everybody. So if there is a Swedish American illegal alien and he's an electrician, even if he hasn't broken the law, and they go to the local Home Depot and they are arresting two criminal illegal aliens from Oaxaca or Micho Khan and he happens to be there and they say, you know these guys? He said, no, no, no, I'm just an electrician, so can we see your. And it's clear that he's here illegally, then you have, they have an obligation, whether they want to or not, to deport them. And I'm not going to say this is terrible, he's, he hasn't committed and I'd say we'll go back to Sweden and come back in 10 years or don't make a deal and voluntarily turn all your records in and self deport. But I don't understand what their criticism is. Is it that they don't want any non white people in the United States, is that it? They're against illegal immigration. I am on the concept and you are, but, but I don't really care what the particular race is of the immigrant as long as they fulfill certain requirements. They know English, they have skills, they come with assets, they come legally and they come eager to adopt the principles and the letter of the law. The U.S. constitution. And they assimilate, integrate and acculturate and make good Americans. But I don't think that there, I don't think they agree with that because I watched a lot of. In preparation today, I watched some of these tapes and he keeps talking about white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white. Fuentes does. His father is half Mexican. So I thought, wow, according to your own logic, you would have to get rid of a lot of people in your movement, Asians and others. Cut yourself in half and take half of yourself and say, you're not purely white, you don't belong here. That's some people on the right consider, on their hard right, don't consider Mexican people Caucasian. I don't know, but there's so many incoherences and inconsistencies that I don't know what they're. What do they want? They want a fortress America that doesn't go abroad at all and just lets Iran get a nuclear weapon. Sort of like 1930s America. We just sort of said, well, we don't have to really worry about these people.
- [46:39]
Jack Fowler
Fortress America, unrealistic in one sense that Victor, we just, we. I, I have a, I feel like nations are like people, right? And some people are friends and some people are acquaintances and some people are enemies. Don't we have natural national affinities with England, Canada, you know, the English speaking nations, Australia? Absolutely.
- [47:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think we have certain, we have certain orbits. Naturally, the closest people to the United States should be constitutional systems where there are constitutionally protected freedoms and they're transparent, open, lawful societies. And within that orbit we would include Europe, but especially the English speaking countries that have even maybe a slightly closer relationship. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain. And then in addition to that we would call the democratized westernized countries and places like, I don't know, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan would be our allies. Places in Latin America that are democratic. Argentina, for example, under melee. Governments that are favorable to us. Yes. All of those groups. And then we would have all these neutral countries like Singapore, Indonesia, and we would be not hostile nor particularly friendly. But in that category or that hierarchy of countries we know, look at Israel, it's like, oh, democratic, yes. Constitutional, yes. Free and transparent. Yes. Tolerant of other religions other than the dominant one. Yes. Skilled population, science, educa. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So it's a good investment when they say that. You know, I was reading some stuff that Steve Bannon, he kind of thinks that this is a liability. But you could. I, I always try to be just rational and not get Emotional. So I thought, well, he thinks this is a liability. So does Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Israeli alliance. So then I asked myself, is it in the interest of Europe and the United States that Iran does not have a bomb? Yes, because they will threaten Europe first and a second as soon as they get it. Is it in the interest of Israel? Yes. But we would have not had a lot of trouble taking out those four, those facilities, Jack, if there had been a comparable or formidable Iranian defense system. Israelis took it out. They killed the top command and control, they killed the physicists. They did more to facilitate that American interest. If you look at Hezbollah, forget Israel. They blew up what, 241 marines in their barracks. They blew up the U.S. embassy. We never went on the ground to go get them. We didn't do anything. Reagan took the New Jersey and the sent some 16 inch inch shells into the Beko Valley and then we left and we gave over. Remember Iran Contra, Everybody hostages for missiles and all of that stuff. But my point is that Israel took out Hezbollah, our arch enemy. And the same thing with Iran. Iran killed about 2, 500Americans in Iraq through shape charge imports and to a lesser degree in Afghanistan, and Israel did that. I think that when we go the Red Sea and the Houthis attack western shipping, I like the idea that Israel hits them. So they have the same enemies for the most part as we do. And there may be discrepancies, but they saved Christians in Syria that were being oppressed by isis. They put them under their protection. So I don't understand why this is a bad deal. This is aside from the fact that in 1981 I was farming and I had furrow irrigation of my great grandfather and grandfather and hadn't changed. Sandy soil with concrete. Boy, you should try to push water uphill in a vineyard, on a sandy vineyard, it goes straight down. And then all of a sudden somebody said there's this new product, it's called Netfim and it's a tube and you put it under pressure and it's got these little emitters, it's called drip. And all of a sudden I talked to this Danish engineer at Fresno Irrigation company and he showed me how to do it. He put it in 10 acres. And then my siblings and I, next thing we do, we were putting drip all over ourselves. And I just kept knowing that all the parts came from Israel. Israel, little Israel. So they have done so much for the world. I don't, I don't get this at all. I don't that it's a one Way deal we should be investing in that. You go to. But. So I was in Haifa last year, Jack, and it looks like San Francisco with 25 great exceptions. I walked all over Haifa. I walked at night in Haifa. I didn't see one feces on the sidewalk. I didn't see one homeless person. I didn't see one car break in. I didn't see one sign that said windows down, unlocked. Nothing here of value. All of that I've seen in San Francisco. So something's going on there that we should appreciate and enhance and help according to our own interest. If they, if they're comparable and they're the same in certain cases. And I think they are in a lot of cases, as is true, a lot of European country mentioned Bill Buckley.
- [52:30]
Jack Fowler
A couple times already in this episode, Victor and I, I want you to know, and you wouldn't know this from reading the massive Sam Tanenhouse biography that came out earlier this year, because it went through the last 10, 15 years of Bill's life in about 10 or 15 pages. But the very last board meeting of National Review when he was still alive and I was a publisher and I was there, Bill, after the meeting was over, he emphasizes, folks, I want you to listen to this. I think he knew he was dying or he'd be dying soon. This is what he wanted his legacy to be, was that we have to focus on what he called Islamo fascism. This is the big threat. This happened in 2006. So it was after 9, 11, but still he was very emphatic. And of course, Andy McCarthy at the time, still at National Review, was writing these books for Roger Kimball at Encounter Many about the great threat that radical Islam poses against all of us. But all this is the way of getting back to what you're saying about Israel. They're at the front lines of this fight that is critical to us. They're our allies in the fight against our enemies and the fight for Western civilization and how they could be discounted as maybe an occasional ally when it's in our. In our.
- [53:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, that. That's a good point. And who do what I, I don't understand about the new, if I could say the word anti Semitic. Right. Or anti Israel. Right. Or whatever you want to call it. They keep thinking that an undue influence is being exercised. But I just looked at the Gallup poll, Jack, of March 2025, and of Republicans, 75% of Republicans said they had strong sympathies and favored Israel and the Democrats. How many people had strong sympathies on the Democrat, 21%. So when I hear this, I say to myself, well, you know that you're at odds with 3 out of 4 self described Republicans and conservatives and you're in sync with 75 left wing radical Democrats. You know that that's a. Wow, that's.
- [54:54]
Jack Fowler
A point, a powerful point, Victor.
- [54:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, it is. And when I see Mondami, he said, when Mandami says, well, my auntie, oh, my auntie was going, she couldn't get on the subway because Islamophobia. And then we find out he didn't even have an auntie. And if he did, she wasn't even there. It was some dad's cousin. He made the whole thing up. And he didn't say one word, not one shred of, not even a vowel, not even a syllable. About 3,000Americans who were butchered by radical Islam. And then he says he's going to arrest Netanyahu on site. And I thought who in America would say they wanted to arrest Netanyahu on site? And I think it would be Nick Fuentes and it would be other people like him. So that's what's I don't get. Don't they understand that they are aligned with those people in Colombia that were chasing Jews and screaming and burning American flags and dressed with mask on and antifa. They're on the same side.
- [56:00]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, we're going to, I'm going to drop this on you. I've got a Palestinian poll and I want to talk about that and maybe ask you about Netanyahu. We'll do that when we come back from these final important messages. Hey ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. We're talking on Sunday, November 2nd, and this episode is up on election day, November 4th. Gosh, I, I can't believe I'm saying this. I mean, I do. I hope Andrew Cuomo becomes a mayor of New York City. I, well, you gotta, you gotta, gotta pick what's. Pick the worst option. Hey, Victor, here's We'll end the show with your take on, if you don't mind, on Netanyahu because you've met him, you know him, and I think it would be important to share your own thoughts about him. But here's an opinion poll that came.
- [56:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
Out.
- [56:56]
Jack Fowler
Of Palestinians just released by a firm. It's a pcpsr. And here are some of the takeaways of this poll. 53% of Palestinians say the decision by Hamas to launch the October 7th attack was correct. Overall satisfaction with Hamas's Performance among Palestinians is 60%. When asked which political party people support, 35% said Hamas, 24% said fatal, and 32% said either support none or they don't know. If legislative elections were held today, among likely voters, 44% would vote for Hamas, 30% for father, 10% for other. Yeah, there are a bunch of other figures here, but this is, this is the consistent enemy on.
- [57:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
I was shocked by that. I saw that, you know, I saw that Friday. You know what I was shocked about? What? That the support for Hamas was that low. I thought it would be even higher because I've been looking at different videos of October 7th and it was kind of like, hey everybody, it was kind of the foreign policy of what these looting scenes. When your car goes into a jewelry store, sneakers, and everybody hears about it and they all go in there, just hundreds of people poured across the border and then there were people driving cars back full of loot. And so it was like the idea, hey everybody, you can go kill Jews and rape them and steal. Let's get, just join in. And that's what. So I thought that constituency was even bigger. And given all the ruin and wreckage that Hamas brought to the Gazan people, if they still support them and they've not quite a majority, I mean, it didn't say 51, it said. But if you add up, you know, don't know, or maybe, or the other party is similar, probably is over well over 50%, but it's going to make it very, very hard what, what to do in the post the ceasefires phase two, three, four. Are you going to have an election and you're going to say, you know, vote for, they'll vote in Hamas again. That'll be one election, one time, just like they did in 2006. And it was, are you going to say no elections? And then you're going to say, oh, America's for a dictatorship. So I think the Israelis attitude will be if the Arabs come in and deal with Hamas and negotiate, I'm afraid to say I'm a pessimist, I think the Israelis will gradually just drift back out of Gaza and they will make the walls of theodosis in Constantinople look small comparison to what they'll do, they'll just wall that whole section off and they're going to say, you know what, we're not going to give electricity, we're not going to give anything. You guys do what you want. You can deal with Egypt and each time that you send a rocket in, we're going to send 15 and you're going to work, work, work, work, work. If you do anything, we're going to undo that work. Titford like mowing the lawn. I don't see any other way that they're going to deal with it because the majority of people support killing Jews. Yeah. And it seems to me that, that it is, it's true. And I, I want to hear from, I don't want to hear from Nick Fuentes, but I'd like to hear from Marjorie Tara de Greene and Steve Bannon and Tucker, what is your, what is your advice? Just to do what? To destroy Israel or what? What is it to die? What would it, what would you do? I mean, Pancho Villa came across the US Border and robbed stuff and killed some Americans. And the next thing we knew they sent George Patton and a whole expedition and way in deep into they invaded Mexico. They didn't do much because the war broke out or we were going to enter the war, but we were basically at war with Mexico.
- [61:16]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, let's, I know we said we were going to talk about some other topics and we're going to record another episode for later Thursday this coming week. So we'll talk about your get your take on Judge Boasberg and other other issues then, but since we're Talking about Israel, etc. Would you, you've shared once or twice before but I know you know Benjamin Netanyahu to some degree. You've talked to him in the several times. I, I, I can't quantify but your, your thoughts of him as a leader, not only a leader of Israel, but a leader amongst the current leaders of the world and somebody who's been running the show for a good, you know, generation on and off.
- [61:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I take a, I take two you know, I have talked to him and I, I take, I, I stopped this summer, but I, for almost 20 years, I, I had a little company, a very wonderful person, Al Phillip and we took people all over the Europe and for military history, 10, 12 days and we went to Israel two years ago and I was, I asked if somebody from the Israeli government would be willing to speak to our group. And the next thing I knew was Netanyahu said I will. He was not prime minister then, but he did come and he gave a wonderful talk and then he, I talked to him for about an hour and you know what it was mostly about was books. He was asking about books and books I've written books I wanted to write books he liked and he was out of power. He was very reflective. We talked about his dad and his history of the Jewish expulsion during the Inquisition from Spain. And he was in his hundred and still writing. We talked about his brother who was killed. We talked about Ido, his other brother, the radiologist and playwright. So it was a really good. But I think what he was most interested in talking about was, was not he was going to run for prime minister again or the war, but his, his service under Sharon as economic minister of Israel. And he was trying to explain that there was a kibbutz mentality in Israel. Socialist it was. And the government regulated how many businesses, drugstores you could have on every block. They regulated profit. It was, it was one of the most left wing controlled economies in the Western world. And he broke that up and he pointed out the window at the hotel and he said, see the crane? The cranes were everywhere on the sky, the sky of Jerusalem and Haifa. And he said they weren't any of those because you couldn't make a profit building. And the government determined how many units of, you know, apartment building space. And he said, I just fought, fought, fought, and Sharon backed me and we got rid of this and we turned over the economy to the free market and the rest is history. And he was, people don't give him any credit for that, but he was, he was the most responsible for that. And that's one of the reasons the left hated him, because he really broke the deadlock or the stranglehold the left, going back to the days of the kibbutz and communalism that it had on the Israeli economy and people. And then the other thing is he's very indestructible, physically indestructible. He's had prostate problems, he's had operations, he's what, 75, 76? He's indestructible. He has enormous energy. And when everybody had written his epitaph after October 7th, remember this was during the wilderness years of Trump himself. So on October 7, 2023, Trump hadn't even announced his re, re election campaign for a year. It had only been going on about nine months. And already Trump was facing the E. Jean Carroll civil suits which cost him 83 million. He was facing the 500 million liability from the Latita James Alvin Bragg. So he, and he was under the same thing. He was being sued for all of these things. I thought, wow, you're not that much younger than Trump. You're in the wilderness like Trump. You're a very con, controversial right wing leader that the left not only fears, but wants to physically, mentally, psychologically Destroy that. Your family name is known all over the world, but especially Netanyahu in Israel. And it's very controversial. You like the Trump name. And then I, as I left I said I have a feeling that the next time this was in 2023. Excuse me. Yeah, 23. The next time I see you, you're or hear about you, you're going to be prime minister and Donald Trump's going to be president. And I think he said something like bet on it or I think you're right, he did say something that he was very complimentary of Trump. But then he made a, you know, he, he was very guarded, he was very shrewd. He, he complimented Trump. But then he made a point that even that Israel had a policy that when a conservative president was in the White House or a Republican and a Democratic was that the opposition try to work with each work with the president. So you don't say that Republicans will support is Republican presidents and conservative prime minister, then that supports Israel. When there's liberal prime ministers and there's Democratic presidents, they don't support Israel because they, you just, you have the same policy on both ends toward Israel. It transcends the four year election cycle and the parliamentary cycles in Israel.
- [67:24]
Jack Fowler
Did you know his ever meet his dad? His father is a.
- [67:27]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, I never did. I met his, I met his brother and I've known him very well. He's historian, the brother, he's a playwright. He's written a number of very good plays. He's well known, he's accomplished radiologist. He, I think he, both of them speak English like an American. He lived for a long time, I think in Ithaca, New York. He's visited, I, he's visited my house and I communicate with him. But he's, he is a intellectual writer, M.D. but I think he has retired from that. Very accomplished. And, but all three of the brothers, the one Yoni who was killed at Inab Entebbe, right. They all were in the military, they all were in combat units. Units. They were, Netanyahu was wounded. You remember, he was one of the people who went onto a plane full of hostages. So they're quite a remarkable warrior. Intellectual family. Yeah. And they, they, they earn themselves the same level of vituperation from the left in Israel that Trump does from the right.
- [68:43]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, we were coming across the finish line here of a, I'm say a troubling show, but I'm troubled by what's, what's happening.
- [68:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
I, I am trouble because I should be honest with everybody. I had Been on Fox a lot. And then some circumstances happened where the Fox management felt that I had written something critical of Fox. I don't mean the current management at all. It was Roger Ailes whom I liked. And anyway, it's a long story. I didn't want to withdraw the column. I thought it was a fair column, in other words. And that went to a cessation of my rare appearances. And then when that team evolved out, a new management team came in. And one of the first things I got was a call from Laura Ingram. I owe her a great debt because she was the one that brought me back to Florida, Fox, maybe eight years ago or so. And then I appeared every night. Every. Every Monday or Tuesday night ever since. But at some point in that first year, Tucker called me up and he asked if I would want to come on. And so he was. He. He had developed the largest audience, I think, that, that Fox had ever had, and larger than Bill O'Reilly that he replaced. In some nights, it was 4 or 5 million people. And then his. After his 5 to 8 minute monologue, usually on Tuesday nights, I would come on and he was very complimentary, and that gave me a lot of exposure. And when I was on there, he didn't take these positions that he's doing now. I'll give you an example. If it was on the Ukraine, as late as the Ukraine war of 2022, he didn't say, as he did later, that Zielinski was rat. Like he said, you know, we got to be very careful about Ukraine because Russia has nuclear weapons and this is a European war. And then he asked me, and I say, well, you made a point. This is a proxy war between two superpowers, the United States and Russia. And then the Cold War rules, you don't use your proxy to attack targets of your superpower. And when Russia tried to do it with Cuba, it was very scary. So we got there's going to be. And that was. That kind of stuff, is what I'm trying to say. And the same thing with Israel. He knew that I supported Israel, but he did, too. You know what I mean? It was just that he had more of a he. I guess what I'm saying is he was. He was a proponent of the Iraq and Afghanistan's wars. And then he turned on it, as most people did, and he was very angry at the people who had misled him about weapons of mass destruction. I was angry, too, but I felt that there was 21 United nations resolutions, remember, that justified the going into Iran. They were Harboring the nine, the first World Trade center terrorists. They were involved in the genocide of the Marsh Arabs. They had Abu Nadal there. It was all these other reasons besides wmd. But anyway, he felt betrayed and he felt that the neoconservative group of people like David Frum and Richard Pearl and Elliot Cohen, the group who, Bill Kristol who started the project, remember the Project for American, for the Project for the American Century. And that was formed I think in 98 when Bill Clinton was president and they were critical of Clinton's so called appeasement and they were calling for the removal and Robert Kagan was there too. They were calling for the removal of Saddam hussein before, before 9 11. And I had, when I started writing columns, I occasionally I had criticized that group. I thought this is lunatic. We're not at war with anybody in the Middle east. And they want to preemptively take out Saddam Hussein and get in a big war because he was violating the no fly zones of the 91 Peace Accord. So what I'm getting at is that after 911 I wanted to deal with Saddam. I thought that was a wise decision by the Bush administration. But then when things got bad, all of those people bailed, you know what I mean? They attacked, they attacked. And I said, oh man, I got to go over there and see what's going on. So I went over there in 2006 for a brief period on Blackhawk tours at night in the combat zone. And then I went the next year with HR McMaster embedded in Humvee in Sal Petraeus. And I thought, wow, whatever your feelings are, these guys are right out in the. It got me very angry to see these people fighting, fighting, fighting when the architects of the people said they should go in there now, said they shouldn't. But they didn't get the message to those guys, you know what I'm saying? Because they thought if we got out the way that we did later in Afghanistan it would be a disaster. But what got me the most angry were here were all these 18 and 19 year old kids from the Midwest or rural California or upstate New York and they were fighting like it very well. And I would go on, you know, helicopters with them and Hercules transports and stuff. And then I would look at the Iraqis and I'd read Iraqi stuff and listen to the Iraq and they, they didn't appreciate it. And you're going to say, well why would they Victor were they were in there. Yeah, I know that. But I went into Balad Air Force Base where these Guys landed under fire to deliver, deliver a CAT scan, CAT scanner. And they were having Iraqi people as well as Americans come in and be treated and not just for war wounds. So they were doing all this stuff. Billing. I talked to a Bechtel, very courageous guy on the plane and he was going in there to, he was coming back from building a big electrical station and he said, you know what? This is really disturbing. This thing is more sophisticated than anything we're putting in San Francisco. This is top of the line, high expensive. We could not afford this in most cities. I just hope they don't destroy it, but I know they will. Will. So that was what was bothering me. And so when I came back in 2007, I thought, you know what? There's nothing worse than a bad war except losing it. And we've got to finish out and portray us. Anyway, my point is, when Obama reached office, I wrote an article and I can remember that there were fewer people getting killed in Iraq than the accident rate of the US military per day. It was less than 350 people. And, and so, and yet Obama pulled out everybody abruptly like Biden did from Afghanistan and where Biden gave us the Taliban and $50 billion in equipment to terrorists. Obama gave us ISIS. And then to excuse it, he said they were the JVs. Yeah, well, so that's a long story. But it was bad, bad chapter. But the Project for American History. And that's what bothered Tucker, that these people who had advocated the war did not persist in it and then just said, my good war, your bad occupation, I'm done. And they didn't really care. Well, I don't know. But that hadn't even radical. I don't want to even talk about it because I don't want to impugn my ideas about why Tucker is doing this because it's, it's more recent. If you had talked to him or heard him a year ago or two years ago, you could say that he was a kind of Robert Taft conservative, you know what I mean? Sort of. But he wasn't, he wasn't a Lindbergh conservative.
- [76:55]
Jack Fowler
Well, some conservatives like Bill Crystal eventually become leftists. You know, I'm not saying that's the trajectory.
- [77:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
What did Bill Crystal, he just, he said he would vote if he was in New York, he'd vote for Mondon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what does that tell us? That means that all for 45 years, when he solicited money and said help Bill Kristol stop the dangers of left wing radicalism and then he ends up at the end of his career by saying, vote for Mondavi. And what does he say about the earlier 44? That was just a con. I was, I just changed my mind. Nice work.
- [77:26]
Jack Fowler
Nice racket. Well, Victor, we're going to close with two, three things. One, to remind our viewers and listeners about your website, the Blade of Perseus. Please check it out. I make that four things. Check out the Daily Signal, the website. Go on the YouTube page. You'll find Victor's videos there of his four times a week. Now he doesn't, but go visit the Daily Signal, run by the great Rob, Louie and Katrina Trinco. Terrific journalism site. I, Jack Fowler, write Civil Thoughts, the free weekly email newsletter for the center for Civil Society. Comes out every Friday. 14 recommended readings. Two totally free. We're not selling your name. Sign up@simplethoughts.com I know you're going to enjoy it. And now we have a few comments of thousands of comments we're getting every week. Now this one's from Gail Talman, 1, 22 who writes I like Victor Davis Hansen and I like to hear his thoughts. Today, October 28th is my 75th birthday and I say it is important to listen to Victor Davis Hansen. Sincerely, Gail in Tennessee. Gail late happy birthday.
- [78:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
And.
- [78:37]
Jack Fowler
Your demand has been noted publicly. Charvan R. Writes, thank you VDH. I am 68 and watch you daily. It gives me hope in humanity the true American spirit will come out on top. Your quiet, calm, factual analysis is uplifting and reassures me that the truth shall preserve America. God bless Professor Hansen. God bless America. And then there's one from Tarian Cornelius, 548. These are all age related here. This one says 67 year old retired registered nurse, married to a retired army officer. We have both been conservatives all our lives. I would be thrilled to shake your hand in an air airport. I will agree. Many boomers my age are limousine liberals. Well, thank you all and the many other people who, who write and you.
- [79:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
Know, I, I'll just finish by saying I was at Pepperdine, had a wonderful week doing videos and lectures and we did one yesterday, the final one from 8:30 to almost 12:30. But it was very good and that they were, you know, I was with a great Pete Peterson, the dean of the public policies. Yeah, I think everybody does. But here's my point. When I came up in the break, people said we love your podcast but we, we, we lost it. So I said how did you lose it? And they said we can't find it. I said well did you go to victorhansen.com no. Did you go to VDH VD Hansen an X you can find? No. Did you go to the Daily Signal? No. And then that person said, well, how do I know that? Why would I be do? I said, well, where did you go? She goes, I just went where I ever. Where I always go. And I said, well, how did you. Where was that? I don't know. I just turned on my computer and appears so we've got to remind everybody it's Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Sponsored by and the platform is the Daily Signal. And you can get it at all these different avenues, but you can go to the website or you can just Google Victor Hansen podcast. And Sammy said that she did that. She's been hearing some of that. And so she just said watch. And she just said sammy plus Google. Sammy just did Google VDH podcast and up came the new one. So very good.
- [81:04]
Jack Fowler
Important.
- [81:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
We're climbing back to our former well.
- [81:08]
Jack Fowler
Victor, you've been again, terrific. Thanks for all the wisdom that you shared today, folks. Thanks for watching, thanks for listening and we will be back soon with another episode of the oh, in his words, Victor Davis Hansen. Bye bye.
- [81:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you everybody for watching and 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 website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.