← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: Jeffrey Epstein May Have Been Too Calculated to Leave a Paper Trail
01:27:47
There might not be “a whole [Epstein] list” like U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel have said.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
I just don't think when Bondi and Cash said that there was a whole list. I don't think you're ever going to find that. I don't think he had a notebook. I don't think he had anything. And I don't think that Trump will pardon Maxwell. And I think she's going to sit there the rest of her life. I'm not saying these people weren't creepy people and I'm not saying they didn't traffic innocent young girls. I'm just saying that the idea that this is a massive trafficking with hours of incriminating tapes and you know what I mean, with sex. And I just don't think you're going to find that he was too clever to do that.
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Podcast Host
Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his Own words. 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 can find him at his website, victorhansen.com it's called the Blade of Perseus. Please come join us there for lots of free stuff. All the things that Victor is writing in the presses, his podcast that you see here. And then you can join VDH Ultra subscribers and get the Ultra material, which is two articles a week. And he currently has a a series on about all sorts of catastrophes that he has navigated in his life. Friday video. So those things are available and we also have ad free videos. These podcasts are put onto Victor's site ad free. So please come join us there. Stay with us. We're going to come back with some current news on the Guthrie kidnapping and then we'll look at the Olympics with Victor. So stay with us. Welcome back, Victor. So we just had some current stuff this week that I haven't heard you talk about yet with Jack and that is that they have video of the abductor probably since it was the night of the abduction. And they are now Canvassing the area for other videos, they found two gloves as well. So I was wondering if you had any current thoughts on, you know, the. I. I want to say the possibility. I don't want to talk about whether she's alive or not, but the possibility of even tracking down who kidnapped her.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. It's almost impossible to separate the people who. Person who kidnapped her and the people who are demanding ransom, because we don't know enough knowledge. We don't know if they've given direct evidence to local authorities or the FBI that they have proof that she's alive, and only they would have that proof. There's so many things that, you know, don't make sense. There's a picture of this strange man Trying to disconnect the ring and succeeding the next camera, but he's very inept. In other words, he's putting. He's kind of. If he's trying to break into the house, and we have no evidence. They haven't released any. How anybody got into the house. They got in, but we don't know how they got in. There's no. I don't think there's a broken window or anything. That's what I think. People haven't wanted to explain. But this guy, he comes up, and he puts kind of foliage in front of it. You think that a master burglar or an abductor Or a kidnapper Would have had tape or something. And then he takes it off, and it seems like it might be going as he's walking away. Does he know that? Does he know that the closer that he gets to the camera, they get an almost perfect picture of his glove? I'm sure they've gone through every Amazon, Every store in arizona, anywhere to match that weird type of shiny plastic or rubber glove. So you'd get the. And then he kind of hunches over and walks funny. And you get the impression that it's not some professional or he's not connected with the professionals, that he was hired, maybe freelance, to break in. So there's speculation, but the essentials of the case is nobody knows how they got into the house. Nobody knows where she is, Nobody knows why they took her, Whether it was related to Savannah guthrie, the anchor woman, worth 20 or $30 million, and they thought they could get money or it was just incidental. So I don't. It's kind of idle to speculate.
- [05:17]
Podcast Host
Yeah. Did you find it strange that he had his gun sheathed right in the middle of him his self? Right. It seemed very strange. He seemed very Unprofessional to me in that he did. He had a massive backpack on and nothing to deal with the ring camera at all in it, apparently. I don't know.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I didn't. It doesn't seem like you knew what he was doing. And it doesn't seem like. I mean, if they were really. If they were part of a kidnapping ring, then you want to do it sooner and later, do it meaning have the transaction and you've been delaying, delaying, delaying. And so I don't think it suggests that they don't really have any evidence that she's alive or that they have her, their possession or they can explain why someone. I mean, there's thousands of people listening to us who are on medications that if they didn't have them, say, for four or five days, they'd be very ill.
- [06:18]
Podcast Host
Very ill. Do you think that there's a possibility that it was a home robbery and that he accidentally, in the middle of the night, he thought she wouldn't be anywhere. He was going to go in and rob, and then he ran into her. And so that's why he doesn't. He looks so casual outside.
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Victor Davis Hanson
It could be that he ran into her and decided to kidnap her. It could be he ran into her and I hate to say this, but killed her and disposed of her somewhere. It could be all those things. But I don't. I don't know why somebody would disconnect a door camera and then not go through the door. I know the door was a security type of door, but it's hard. It's hard to know whether it came through the roof or it came. Somehow he got into the house and the whole thing, the subtext of all this are these strange and unsupported non substantiated rumors that somebody like the brother in law had something to do with it. I've been kind of surprised that they've been so promiscuous in the use of that allegation. You know, it's kind of a gossip. There's no evidence that the sister or husband had anything to do with it other than he was the last person to see her. But you would think that somebody would come out and say, I can guarantee you Savannah Guthrie's sister and brother in law had nothing to do. Nobody's done that yet. And so that just fuels more speculation.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, it sure does. Well, let's turn then to recent comments by Ilan Omar who said that Trump is a pedophile and should be executed. She seems to not understand the culture of the United States, that even if she thinks he's a pedophile, he's innocent until proven guilty. And then the whole idea of execution etc is extreme.
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Victor Davis Hanson
She has immunity as a member of Congress of what she says. I think on the congressional floor, the last celebrity who said that said something similar was George Stephanopoulos. He said that, I think 11 times that Trump was a racist. Remember in the Eugene Carroll trial, the judge misspoke or he was so unprofessional when he said Trump was not convicted of rape but sexual assault. But he said, what's the difference? But there is a difference under the, you know, a very broad sexual. You can touch somebody, it's a sexual assault. But so she's, she should be careful because there's no evidence. In fact, she had pretty poor timing because, oh, about 48 hours before she said that, a archive emerged where Trump himself had called 2006 before Jeffrey Epstein was even convicted of anything. So he was saying, you got to get this guy out of here. And the subtext was he had seen him with these young girls. And so it's pretty clear that he didn't go to the island, he didn't partake in what Jeffrey Epstein was offering. Yet she says this, and then she says, at least in Somalia, we execute pedophiles. That is like Trump. But then the point is, well, you've been accused of contrasting in a negative way the United States with this failed state of Somalia. You said that the United States was trashy and dirty. You said that the dictators were worse here. Why would you go back to that mem or theme again, that things are better in Somalia because you execute pedophiles and you don't do it here, especially given your family's history where your father was a general who was one of the military hirelings, I guess his president Barry or whatever his name was, that committed genocide. And that's how you got here. People forget that about her. She poses as a left wing cause celeb, but she was from the elite of the elite government hierarchy that was conducting a war of death, and that's how they fled here. And I think a lot of the recklessness that she's speaking about, because she's getting very reckless now. And that shows me, and I think the people are listening, that she's desperate and she's afraid and she's afraid and desperate for what? For two reasons. One, she filed a report, a financial statement that said she could be worth up to $30 million. And the year before, she had no money so she married this person who she had been paying as a campaign operative and then he had no money. And now suddenly we find out he has a winery worth millions of dollars. He's got all these businesses. And so the obvious implication is that there are people who were giving him money for influence with her, but we don't know that. But they need to. She needs to explain how she can be in Congress. I mean, Nancy Pelosi became worth a couple hundred million dollars, but it took she and her husband 40 years with Inside trading and all that. She needs to say how she made 30 million in one year. And the other thing is, of course, the 8, 9, $10 billion Somali fraud is getting very close to her. She knows that she's the pinup girl for Somalia. She, by her own volition, she wanted to be the face of the Somali immigrant. And you know, 75% of the people are on public assistance, first and second generation Somalis. So if you go, you know, if you want to be the pin up for the Somali immigrant community, then you, when you think that in the post George Floyd woke era that that's cool and neat and you're going to get a Somali mayor, which they almost had, and you were taking over Minnesot. And then when things go south because the real Somali community is disclosed and then all of a sudden you say, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. I had nothing to do with it. Well, she did. And all of these people, everybody in elected office, Frye, Waltz, Ellison, either got money from the Somali committee. I knew what was going on. And that's one of the things we never talk about, dei. DEI is a malicious, venal, toxic ideology for one reason. It gives people exemption to go commit crimes and then say, oh, it's racist.
- [12:54]
Podcast Host
So, Victor, I was wondering on your opinion on the Olympics, I know we've only started since Sunday, but lots of skiing and ice skating and speed skating, which is something I really like to watch those speed skaters. But I haven't noticed any trans athletes yet. So I thought that was interesting, given the Summer games.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I think they've, they're not going to repeat what they did in the Summer Olympics with the boxer from, I guess he was from Algeria or Morocco, beat the blank out of women and now confesses that he was male all along. And so I guess it was Amber Glym. She won a gold medal and she was the one that kind of started it off this. There's been four or five. I think there's two figure skaters and Three skiers. So they wanted to make it clear that they don't represent, I guess half the United States or Donald Trump because of ice. Ice, ice, ice. Problem with all these people is they just say ICE is fascist. But they never really, they never really tell us why they are saying that. They never give us explicit examples because if they did, they're all complex. They say, well, they just tried to kidnap a five year old boy. They don't mention that he was abandoned by his illegal father and he was out in the cold or they don't say that. The two people that were killed, one of them was a professional protester. I know he was tragically killed, but he had a military like pistol that was silly to go to a confrontation and then deliberately go up. Ten days earlier he had kicked in an ice car and broken the light. He'd spit at an ice officer. He intervened in an ICE arrest and then he comes back later and he, you know, it just, they don't talk about that. And the same thing with the Miss Good who was killed. You know, all she had to do is when said, get out of the car, get out of the car, all she had to do. This doesn't mean that she should have died, but all she had to do was not try to hit an officer. And once again, they created the climate. We want you to go out and take their picture. These people are evil eyes. You got to go out and do. And they created this standoff and we talked about last time what Trump should do for the midterms. I'm glad that Homan is saying, you know, we arrested hundreds if not thousands of criminals and we're done. But they're not going to get the 1700 out of the jails. I doubt we have over 30,000 here in California. And it's a very strange left wing idea that when you know that you let in, you, the left let in these people and you destroyed immigration law. And then they went out and raped and killed and maimed and you've got 30,000 of them in jail in California and when their sentences are up, they're still in violation of the law because they're here illegally. But more importantly, we know the recidivism rate is very high. You would not want ICE to come and take them and get them out of the country. And that's what's so strange about it. It's incoherent. So then you had all of these Olympic athletes just mindlessly, it's like they were at the Grammy Awards. But the problem was The Grammy Awards don't represent the United States. These people do. They're the team. And there's thousands of people who compete locally, regionally, state to get on that team. And then when they get these coveted billets and they're going to make millions of dollars, some of them on endorsements, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is they want to virtue signal that they're not part of the United States. Well, then what are they? What do they, what do they want? Why don't, if you don't want to be part of the United States, why do you want to be part of the United States team? It makes no sense. And the other thing that was funny about it is it's a Northern hemisphere sport because it, you know, unless you have large mountains like in Libya or something, you know, the Atlas Mountains or the Andes or the, you know, it's at either pole, northern or southern extreme to have enough snow. So you have athletes who grow up from five years old. So who lives in northern Europe, in parts of northern China and parts of northern Russia, it's mostly parts of Japan, then way to Chile. But it's mostly then, isn't it? White people are some Asians, but there were a lot of people say, where's the diversity? And that, you know, it's, I mean, I think they could say that about the swimming team and the, but it brings up a larger question of can't people emphasize particular areas that have ethnic appeal and others can't? So I mean, am I, am I upset that 75% of the NFL is black or 69 of the NBA is black? No, it's a mere. As long as it's merocratic, I don't care. And if other people want to think that that's a, a participation that they want, that's a, an endeavor they want to participate in, they're welcome to specialize in it. I don't get mad that when I go to California, Joe Biden got in, got in trouble when he said he couldn't go into a shop without seeing. But when I go to particular places, the Hmong community were experts at bakeries. Not that they, they may have been over. I don't care. I, I go to a 711 or stop the people in there, in California, in the Central Valley, or 75% either from the Middle east or India, I don't care, as long as they obey the law and pay their taxes. But it doesn't work the other way. So now all of these leftists are saying, well, where Are the black skiers where the Chicano or the Latino skaters. Well then go do it. It's, you know, you have a lot of affluent people and you go up to Squaw Valley or, you know, Heavenly Valley or somewhere and just ski and say we were a black development thing as they did in tennis. Same thing, but. And then the gay woman who said that gays are having a rough time in the United States, that's why she spoke out. No, all you hear in pop culture is LGBQ3 plus, I don't know, AI plus. And we had the pronouns and they and he, his and all of these. Qvi. We've had more emphasis on the homosexual community in the last 10 years. And Donald Trump is the most gay friendly president there is. Rick Grenell is gay. He doesn't care if you're gay or not. So the idea that Donald Trump has made it hard on gays is ludicrous. It's so weird, it's so disturbing about this therapeutic culture that we created that everybody, as the first sign of any resistance or hostility or opposition to what they think, they go, the first thing they do is retreat to victimhood. Oh, I made fun of the United States and I spoke out of turn. I'm not noxious and people are mad at me and it might hurt my endorsements that I work so hard to get. I want to be a multi millionaire, but it's only because I was a gay person and we're under assault. You know, everybody's tired of that. It's just so sickening. The victimhood.
- [20:49]
Podcast Host
Yes, I think so. Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back. I have a few more things about the Olympics to talk to you about. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back. So, Victor, I was thinking, did you notice that or. I've kind of noticed that of the skiers, etc, the participants in the Olympics, there seems to be for the American team quite a few people that have come out of Eastern Europe, either Russia or the Ukraine. I, I love that about, we took all their athletes.
- [21:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think it's kind of ironic because we have this one American, Gu is her name and her father was Chinese, her mother was non Chinese and she grew up as a US citizen and she's very pretty and she's modeling kind of and she's I would call better than mediocre, but not Olympic caliber. But the Chinese are really adept at propaganda. So they saw that and they thought, oh well, let's see, she's Beautiful, she's photogenic. And we can turn her by offering her 23 or 24 million dollars and then she'll ski for us. And even the hostility of the Americans, that she's a traitor. And people have said that they've used that word will be good for us. It'll be kind of like, yeah, you know, girl that has everything, doesn't have communist China. And we're happy to indulge her and we don't really care if she wins or not. Of course, she was media and she blew out and she didn't do anything. And then she mouthed off about basically saying Trump was contrary to, and Americans were contrary to the spirit of the, to the spirit of the Olympics. And here's a person who sold her country and Seoul to get rich through the and use the Olympics and she's saying that other people are contrary. Again, it's the same theme. I'm a victim now. I'm wealthy. I'm privileged. I grew up wealthy. Now I'm going to be a multi millionaire by reneging on my patriotism and joining another country. But I'm not going to live there. And I'm not going to say a word about the Wegers and I'm not going to say a word about the Wuhan Lab and the 50 million people who died or the million Americans and the 30 million, including me, who got bouts of long Covid. I'm not going to do that. And it's kind of ironic too, is that if you, if you want the reason America has all these Eastern in every area, like skiing they get Europeans and skating they get Ukrainians, Uzbekistan, Russians, and in gymnastics they get Russians, Romanians, Eastern Europeans. But there's a difference. They move to the United States and they become citizens. But China can't do that. It wants. It can't. First of all, it's a racist country. It's monolithic. We knew that Covid when as soon as the COVID broke out, they were putting signs on their McDonald's @Black Students couldn't come in as if they, they didn't create it and black people in Africa did. So nobody wants to go there. So they can't attract anybody to be citizens of China the way we can. And so, you know, it's kind of weird. Americans are really angry that this American has been a traitor and joined the Chinese, but she's not. I mean, they're not inconsistent. They're saying, if you want to be a traitor, you don't have to be a traitor, just be an expatriate. Go to China, become a Chinese, just like all these people come to here and they're on our team. But you won't do that. You want it both ways.
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Podcast Host
Yes, you should go live there. You know, the last thing I noticed about the Olympics was while some of the athletes have done, as you have said, tried to ride the fence, I guess, about their Americanness, there are in the audience quite often lots of Americans and even some of the athletes that have really big and loud USA on there and signs, too. So kind of like that.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, they remind me of Peter Hitchens. He wrote the End of Britain. I like him a lot, but he was Christopher's brother. I don't think I ever met him, but I like what he writes. But when he wrote that End of Britain, he had kind of a contrarian take on World War II. And Americans, you know, they always said, americans are over here, overfed over sex and over here. And he basically said that the end of Britain came from Americans that were loud and rowdy and wealthy and imprinted their awful culture on Britain. But Americans are. I like Americans. I like to see that. That they were very unabashed and unafraid to express their patriotism.
- [25:38]
Podcast Host
Have you seen the shooter in Canada? He apparently shot up a high school, and he injured. He killed eight, I believe, and injured another 25. He killed his own mother and brother. So he was.
- [25:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
I mean, the Canadians had to tell us he was. They. It was a little weird because the transitioning, there wasn't any ambiguity. In his case, he was a male. He had a beard, and he never really looked like he transitioned. You know what I mean? I'm sure he went through all of the stuff. And then when some people on the right said, this is getting a little scary, that school, particular school shootings in the last five years, I think there were two or three of them were trans people. The left went nuts. And of course, they got the fact checkers out, which are not fact checkers. And they'll say, I was reading one. It's like, here's a list of mass shootings in the United states the last 50 years. You know, three people in a parking lot. And trans people are only half of 1%, and they only make up 1.5%. And it was so funny because, first of all, they had to go back all those years when we didn't even know what trans people were. Nobody identified with them. They didn't want to talk about the last five or six years when we. You know, it's been a big Cause celeb. And then they were trying to say that they were a very small percentage of the population. But we've been told that 30% of the brown undergraduate community was considering transitioning and 10% and all these false. So they just. It's so pathetic. But there's something. This comes unfortunately for the trans movement. I think there's a big lawsuit now. A couple of big lawsuit. There was an op ed in the Wall Street Journal as well that a lot of people are saying I was 12, I was 13, I was 15, I was 14, I was advised at school, I was advised at the clinic, I was advised by my doctor. My parents really didn't know what was going on or they were given false information. And I took dangerous hormones, I took damage growth altering hormones. I got my breasts surgically removed or my test. It's terrible. And now I'm 19 or 20 and I see that my problems were psychological. And it's so indicative of the left. What they always do is they try to find an aggrieved group or create one and then they hype it and propagandize it and magnify and exaggerate it and then they try to use that to leverage these concerns about an oppressed group that needs them to represent them. And they created this entire. If you go back and look at statistics, people had known that there was a very rare phenomenon called gender dysphoria and sometimes it was manifested as transsexuals who actually wanted to be operated. Christine Jorgensen was a big name that I remember when I was. And Rene Richards the tennis person or they were transvestites. They wanted to dress up in the clothes of the opposite sex but they still remained consistent in their biological gender. So it was always known, always known. That was a very small. And all of a sudden it became, you know, we've done the civil rights for this group, this group. We don't have another group. So we'll create this imaginary 10, 5% huge group. And everybody needs to be considering transitioning without any worry that your political agenda is going to get a lot of people killed or sick. It's the same thing about the COVID virus. From the moment that came out, there were everybody said, you know what? Covid started in Wuhan. Chinese government no flights out of Wuhan anywhere in China, but you could fly to Europe. Lax, jfk, sfo, pangolin doesn't work bat hundred miles away. Open food, wet meat market, unlikely PLA running the lab, Fauci Collins trying to hide. Almost immediately their Involvement in channeling money through Peter Dasak and green lighting, scientific collaboration and instrumentation for that laboratory. It was a no brainer. But when anybody said that it was, oh, you're racist, it's a yellow peril. It's the whole Japanese internment. Even though it's China's arch enemy with the Japanese. They used every single propagandistic and that's what they do for these causes, DEI and woke. Anytime they want to make this point that a bunch of crazy yahoos from the Ozarks are getting us all killed because they don't understand what the science of how this wonderful Chinese people were struck by this natural pangolin or bat that jumped into it and now they're going to get us killed by not wearing masks. And you stop that whole narrative and say no, no, no, no. The genetics and the viral re engineering of that Covid SARS dash pathogen had certain choices that were like eight and nine in a million. It had to be engineered and everybody knew that. And yet they couldn't, they couldn't admit that because it didn't fit their political narratives.
- [31:35]
Podcast Host
So you mean that. No. No time soon are we going to have hear the UN or the World Health Organization come out and say China did it.
- [31:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, they own that we're out of the world health. That was another thing that China was bragging that their GDP was almost catching up to ours. I think we paid almost 20 or 30% of the WHO budget and they were like 5%. They were free riding. No, no. In the UN we haven't paid a lot of our dues finally because of what they do with it. So I don't know. Everybody's going to learn about China. They're really going to learn that they don't kid around that there are murderous dictatorship and they want to destroy the United States.
- [32:21]
Podcast Host
All right, Victor, let's turn to Cuba since we're in the international scene. Apparently Cuba has told airlines that they should not be not expect to refuel in Cuba because they're running low on fuel. Because Trump has made it very difficult for Venezuela and Mexico to provide Cuba with its oil right now. And I think it seems like, I know we're always embargoing Cuba or we always have some sort of sanctions going on with them. But this is seeming to amp things up for Cuba a little more.
- [32:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
Desperate people have misunderstood, misinterpreted that they think that we have a vendetta against Cuba. All the United States is basically saying is for years we were told by our left that this was paradise. They had great health care. And, you know, when you heard that the Cuban military was all over Africa, it was in Granada, it was in Venezuela, it was in the Middle east, nobody paid any attention. They said, well, it was the end thing for Hollywood celebrities. Say he went to Cuba. But the problem was that it was all subsidized. It was a complete failed system. It worked from 1959 to about 1965 by stealing the money from all the successful Cubans and sending them all out. But when their capital dried up, they couldn't create any. They couldn't do anything. And then when the Soviet Union collapsed, they lost their free subsidies. So now everybody says, well, why are we blockading their oil? Well, for the most part, we're just blocking, blockading, embargoed oil. We're blockading oil from Russia, which is embargoed, and Venezuela. And we're saying that these were criminal enterprises, they're under sanctions, so they can't have their free oil. So then Mexico wants to give it free. And we didn't try to embargo that. We just said, okay, you want to give them free oil, go ahead and do it, but we're not going to give you any free stuff anymore. And one phone call to Sheinbaum, and we know what Trump said. He said the following. You have $170 billion deficit with us. Cut it. Trade deficit or. He said, you're getting $63 billion in remittances. We only tax you now at 1 or 2%. I'm going to do it at 20%. How's that? You're getting another $20 billion from cartel money. Next time. Next time we get a shipment, we're going to send drones into the cartels, something like that. And she stopped. He didn't say she couldn't do it. She just said, if you're going to do it, this is what we're going to do to you, because you are subsidizing a dictator, totalitarian government. We're not going to attack it. We're not going to blockade it. We're not going to do anything. We're just going to tell people for the first time, this is a cancer in this hemisphere, and we're not going to allow illegal shipments of oil to it. And if you want to give it free stuff because they have no money, they can't create wealth. There's no money in there. It's a very rich place. It's a beautiful place. We hotel, industry, tourism, sugar, all that should be booming. But it's, you know, it's communism, so it can't work. So the left is very angry and they're trying to make heroes. The problem is they don't have a charismatic Fidel anymore. Raul Castro is a geriatric apparatchik. So they have nobody that resonates with the left. They just get a thug and they put him in there, and everybody's just waiting for it to fall apart. And Meanwhile, in Miami, 90 miles away, there's some of the wealthiest people, most successful people in the world, who know, you know, their kids have been brought. Either brought here as children or they remember from their parents, or there's people themselves. You know, they were 10 or 12 and they're now in their 80s. They remember what it was like, and they're eager to go in there with their own private money and turn that place into something like Dubai, you know.
- [36:41]
Podcast Host
Yes.
- [36:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
So close to the United States. It's so big and it's so beautiful. And I think they'll do it at some point. And the left is terrified because we got the midterms coming up, and they think they use the ICE thing to nullify Trump's chief ace in the hole, which was the immigration issue, which appealed to 25, 28% of blacks and 55% of Latino males. And then they turned that into, he's killing people, he's a Nazi. Not that he's arresting all these violent criminals. So then the economy issue is really going well. GDP was over 5%. Jobs were not just 130,000, but more importantly, they were all private sector, and they came with a cut in federal jobs. And there's going to be a change soon with the Federal Reserve. I think interest rates are going to go down, inflation went down, and we haven't seen the full effect of the 8 to 10 trillion dollars in federal foreign investment, nor the federal leasing. And the increase in the oil production is going to go up 14 or 15 million barrels. So the left knows that that won't be an issue. So they're trying to find issues and they're not going to find them. And they're really worried right now because on the foreign side, it's possible that Iran could fall before the midterm. We don't know what he's going to do there. We don't know if the plan is to get people inside Iran to organize resistance. And you get another. And the world knows that he's killed 30,000 people and killing them now and executing them, he being Khomeini, and the government and the people go out on the street again. I think if they do that, there'll be a US taking out of certain things. And what I'm getting at is you could get a peace deal in Ukraine, you could get the removal of Iran, and you could get the collapse of Cuba in the summer or fall. And that would be just unimaginable that people that have dreamed for that and Democrat, Republican for years have said the world would be a much safer place if Vladimir Putin's country was neutered or neutralized and Europe started to defend itself and the Iranian kleptocracy theocracy collapsed and this Cuban communist failure evaporated. But to see that all at once, that would be amazing.
- [39:25]
Podcast Host
Yes, I was going to mention Trump's economy, but thank you for bringing up all those statistics. Boy, it is a wonderful boom that is just starting to happen out there at this time of year, which is unusual because the economy is usually a little bit slow at this time of year.
- [39:41]
Victor Davis Hanson
It reminds me, people forget this, but in 1984, Ronald Reagan, as the year started, wasn't that popular because there had been a severe recession. And I can remember 82, 83. And it was part of how do you stop Jimmy Carter's stagflation? You know, 20% interest, 10% inflation, 11, 12. You do it with Paul Voeckler and you raise interest rate and you just break the back and get the bad stuff over. But that hadn't kicked in yet. I can remember here in the San Joaquin Valley meeting a lot of conservative, rugged farmers, you know, and the price of raisins in 83 went from, want to be careful, $1,450 a ton to $440,000 a ton. So people with little 40 acres, they were losing $1,000 a ton in income and 2 tons an acre, 2,000. They were losing 80, $90,000. Not of adjusted money, 1983 money. And that recession hit everybody. I can remember a family member came back and he bought a car and we, none of us had any money. We were farming. And my dad said, well, what did you pay for interest? He said, I got a great deal, a great deal. I got it out the door for 16%, 16% interest. My dad said, well, that's not too bad. And then when I went in to get negotiated a production credit loan, the guy said, well, you got a good. You got some good. You have no money. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll loan you X amount of money for 12%. That's what it was like so my point was Walter Mondale had been vice president and he was a very photogenic leftist. And in January, February of 84, they did some polls and he was almost equal with Reagan, Reagan. And in some, he was ahead. And it reminded me of 1980 when Jimmy Carter was ahead of Reagan almost to the last three weeks, at least according Gallup and other polls. And then Reagan, he was at, I think Reagan was behind by three points. And then he just buried him, partly because, you know that debate where he said, there you go again. I won't hold my opponent's age against him. He's too young. He was pretty good. But my point is this, that in the second, third and fourth quarters of 1984, it all paid off. He had done all this unpopular work. Reagan, he had cut regulation, he had slashed taxes down 28%. He had broken the back of inflation with high interest. And then it just kicked in. Wall street took off and the economy grew 7%. 7% and the rest is history. Mondale was toast. I think the same thing is going to happen.
- [42:54]
Podcast Host
Wasn't the last month, December, a 5% growth rate or something for Donald Trump?
- [43:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
You got to remember that was still the lingering effects of the longest shutdown in history. The Democrats thought they were going to cook Trump and side rail the economy, but it recovered. They're going to do the same thing now as we speak. They're going to try to shut down the government over ICE and see if they can stop the economic momentum before the midterm.
- [43:26]
Podcast Host
Let me ask you then about another Democrat. His name is Wu or Jinwoo. And he, he's a Democrat representative from Texas. And he came out and said that he's.
- [43:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, he's in the state legislature and.
- [43:43]
Podcast Host
He said that Hispanics, African Americans and Asians all have the same oppressor.
- [43:49]
Victor Davis Hanson
And that.
- [43:50]
Podcast Host
And here's a quote from him. We have the ability to take over this country because they're becoming the majority and do whatever is needed for everyone and make things fair. Their problem is, according to Wu, is that these communities are divided rather than intersectional.
- [44:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. I mean, I don't have to be careful what I've said say, but I grew up as a minority in southwest Fresno county and I can tell you the most racist things that I heard about blacks and Latinos came from within that group. You know what I mean?
- [44:35]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [44:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
So there is no intersectionality. Maybe Trump showed that he had a higher Hispanic vote, male vote than did Kamala Harris. So that was shocking. I think he almost split the. The Latino vote Hispanic, vote 50, 50. And he won it in some states that you wouldn't believe, swing states. So somebody who was born in China, as this guy is, and he comes over here and he thinks he's an expert on the long history of American minority participants, he's an idiot. The second thing is, every time someone on the right says. That this is a project of the left, European left and the American left, and it's a great replacement theory, that they can't beat the conservative side at the polls because their agenda doesn't work, and socialism, communism, nobody in their right mind wants. They say that they're going to open the borders and they're going to replace the. And when you say great replacement theory, the left goes crazy and said, this is racist. It's a bunch of dying white people that don't have children, that are paranoid. But the problem is that the left and writes books called Demography is Destiny or the New Democratic Majority, where they brag about this. And I quoted them at length in the Dying Citizen chapter and verse. People who said this on the left. Then you had this character Wu in Texas, where he says it. He says he wants to get rid of these people because he can't defeat their ideas. So he thinks he's going to get rid of them. The Spanish foreign minister said that the other day she used the word great. She was either a foreign minister or high official in the Spanish government and they wanted to give voting rights to 500,000 illegal immigrants. And she said, we want to replace all the white racists and all the white creeps and all. It was right out of the Spanish Civil War, you know, anarchists. It's like reading Orwell's Farewell to Catalon. But in any case, this guy actually says it and she said it. And the problem is they. He comes from China and he says, we're going to make a new country. We're going to get all these people. But why did he come here? Because I don't know what year he came, but I'll just take some years. 1970, the country was 90% white. 1980, it was 85%. Right. 1990, it was probably 80, 78%. 1995 was probably 75, 2000, I don't know. Now it's about 70. So. And the other phenomenon is that people are intermarrying. So what are they? And race is for them as incidental. It's not essential to who they are, because they don't know. Almost everybody I know is interracial in this area. So when he says that, it's very racist. So racist. He's saying that Asians are always going to be Asians and blacks are always going to be blacks and Latinos. And because we hate white people and they're horrible people, we're going to all band together and take over and then we're going to do. Do what? Do what? Like that crazy leftist on social media who said after the Republicans win that she wants to ban all Trump supporters for four years from the Internet. It's funny how all these leftist people get all these crazy concocted ideas that are fascist and then they never think how they're going to impose them. We're going to take all the guns. And you think so you're going to remember Kamala Harris had said that. I think once we're going to come and get them. And you think so you're going to go into Jim Bob, Jim Billy Bob's home when he's got an arsenal, all legal, all registered, and you're going to go in the front door with whom? Spaghetti gorm, antifa people and take it out. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think that's going to happen happen.
- [48:57]
Podcast Host
His, his words were we're gonna do what is needed for everyone. And that if I don't, what I don't understand is the white people that support this racist agenda that he's got because they don't realize that they're going to be as wide as anybody else the people he hates ultimately. So I don't know. That's crazy.
- [49:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
Very brilliant guy Benedict who used the term oikophobia.
- [49:29]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [49:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
And said white people suffer from oikophobia. Not just white people, but Westerners. They hate themselves, they hate their phobia, hatred, oika, oikia, oikos in Greek means house. They hate their own house, their own home. And I think a lot of white liberals feel that the more demonstrably they use the word white in a pejorative context, the more social reward. It's two things they get psychologically rewarded that I'm white and I hate myself. And then second, then they feel there's rewards that they're going to be accepted or they're going to be that the non white population will take over and they'll be a useful idiot or something. But they, I don't think they quite understand that when you go down the racial road and you keep saying white, white, white and Latino, they people believe that. So if you keep saying the Latino community, the black community, well, why would they want you? Because you remember when, right after George Floyd, there were all these marches with oppressed people, and there were all these white liberal women, and they said, get out. We don't want you. And then they cooked up this idea, these very intelligent black people did. And they had this con where very wealthy white people invite you to dinner, these special black guests. And then the black guests would call them names, stick out their tongue and say, you're a race. And then they'd say, thank you, thank you. But it's. You don't want to go down that route. And what's happening now is. I mentioned it a couple of times on a podcast. If you say toxic white, white, white, white, white, white. And they do all the time. And you have jam jazz when you're Jasmine Crockett and you say that from the floor of the Congress, white this and white this or this. Representative Wu and it's or the squad. Omar says it all the time. If you're white, what do you say to yourself? You say two things. They don't like me, and they don't like me because of my skin. So they're racist. And there are more white people who are poor. And if you look at per capita income by ethnic group, whites, or depending which survey, either 8, I think are 6, 15. And up at top are Indian Americans, Mandami. And then you get into Chinese, Japanese, Arab. And so you have all the. There's no demonstrable evidence that your skin color hampers you, is what I'm saying.
- [52:19]
Podcast Host
Or that your skin color makes you an oppressor or whatever that is.
- [52:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
One of the things that I grew up with, and it's still here, was the Oklahoma diaspora. So over a million people came to California between 1931 and 1950, and they mostly came to the San Joaquin Valley, which was the most affordable. And there was farm work here. And they were treated terribly. Okie was. It was. I can remember I was in a primary school where 70% Hispanic, and I was on a team, and there were two guys we didn't choose. And one of the Mexican American kids, we were all about 10, 11, or 12. He said, we're not going to choose Dennis. I said, why? He goes, I don't want his Okie. Excuse me, a SS I don't want it on our team. And I said, why? He said, because he's an Okie trash. And then I said, well, I'm. I'm white. And they said, yeah, but you're a good white person. I said, why am I good white person, they said, because you don't talk like he does, I guess. Southern accent they, they faced enormous, they were very talented too. And they faced enormous prejudice. And so I don't think everybody says white, white, white, white, white, had it, had it made. But you know, I don't think they had it made. They came over with nothing from Europe, nothing. And I if you look at World War II or World War I, I mean, gosh, they died in droves.
- [53:59]
Podcast Host
And they worked. Yeah, they worked. They were hard working people too, which a lot of immigrants are and you know, which is good. Those are the ones we want. But it's not always that way.
- [54:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
I want to go down that road where they, you know, where they say we're going to have a black white basketball all star. Like some idiot said the other day, I just don't think you want to do that because it's not going to work out well. And it's not going to be working out well for the racist who say they hate white people, they want to segregate. It just doesn't work well.
- [54:33]
Podcast Host
No, not at all. Well, Victor, let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about maybe Pam Bondi testimony before the was I think it was before the Senate. I hope I'm not wrong on that. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own words. You can find Victor on X. His handle is at VD Hansen and on Facebook at Hansen's Morning Cup. So come join connect with him there if those are your news outlets. So, Victoria, the Pam Bondi was testifying before Congress and they seem to want to get her on the Epstein files. I did notice that she was pretty feisty fighting back against representative or Senator Raskin, who she said wasn't even a very good lawyer. I think was the gist of it. He's been balance.
- [55:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
It wasn't a good week. The Clintons are going to have to go testify. And it came out that Leon Black and Wexler, the Vanity Fair billionaires, had given him sizable amounts of money. Almost everybody who's appearing now are more left than right. Donald Trump appears now in an FBI affidavit that surfaced that he was warning people, as we said, about Jeffrey Epstein before he was arrested. And a lot of the left says, well, it matters whether you associated with him before he was arrested for sexual assault, trafficking or after. We can see why you did before, but after you knew he was and then now it turns out that Trump got rid of him before and called the FBI about him. And most of these leftists continued their relationship. Reid HOFFMAN but the weird thing about it is it's clear that he and Maxwell recruited young girls under 18 to come and live with them. And it's clear that he gave them certain educational opportunities, one he made into a dentist or allowed her to go to dental school. He gave them quid pro quos. And then it's clear that there were intimate friends of his that I'm not sure that he enticed them and blackmail like we all think. But he created a milieu where they wanted in on it. Okay, but it so far what's strange is they don't have a lot of young women yet who come in and say I had sexual relations with this person and I was under the age of consent, depending on where it was, you know, whether it was 18 or 16 or whichever one of his residents or locale. And therefore I was, you know, Ms. Guthrie who had the auto, I guess.
- [57:36]
Podcast Host
I think it was Gwifra Gwifa.
- [57:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
Excuse me. Her testimony has been challenged in court so often before she died tragically, you know, so I'm not sure that she can be an accurate voice from the grave. And what I'm getting at is I think what's happened is they just say these people were all in on this sexual. I mean they're obviously somewhere like Prince Andrew. But I'm saying that the idea that you're going to find in those files hundreds of powerful men who were having sexual relations with women under 16 or 17, I don't think you're going to find it for two reasons. Reasons either they were more that they were that that number was very small and the small people who engaged in it and then got second thoughts, cut non disclosure deals or gave a lot of money and bought people silence. And so there's people now who may have been underage then, but may have got millions of dollars and they're not going to go out and say that that they were trafficked. When you read more about him, what Epstein really was was kind of a former high school teacher who was a mathematical whiz and an autodidact without a lot of education. And he ingratiated himself into the New York elite and then he wined and dined them and he may initially have been able to bring in young women that these powerful people had sexual relations with. And I don't know if he just said I'm going to show this picture of you or not. But they felt that either he had special expertise on taxes or he was implied that he would embarrass them. And so they let him use their fortunes. I think that was what the Vanity Fair guy did. And he charged, you know, he, he mastered the tax code and he saved them millions of dollars. But then he used that, those, that entree and just kept building on it. And he was, it was like a house of cards that he was just a phony. But he was very bright and he knew how to give gifts to people. And one comes across in all that. I read a lot of the exchanges with all these famous people. Gosh, for people who are so wealthy, they were so greedy. Like this chief counsel, this woman who's so famous for Goldman Sachs, all this, they give her a $10,000 bag, you know, I don't know if it was Vera, and all of a sudden she's captivated, right? And then I could use this type of watch. And they're so wealthy, but they're so obsessed with style and little trinkets and stuff they'll do. It's just pathetic. And then they don't know anything. They just say, you got to get my son here or you do this. Or he says, this or this is what they're doing. It's no independent thought. A person like Elon Musk, you get the idea that he's idiosyncratic and a free will thinker. You know what I mean? He questions everything. For all of his strangeness, these people, God, they were a sorry bunch. And he. But I just don't think. When Bondi and Cash said that there was a whole list. I don't think you're ever going to find that. I really don't. I don't think he had a notebook. I don't think he had anything. And I don't think that Trump will pardon Maxwell. And I think she's going to sit there the rest of her life until she's 80 years old, dropping little hints that she's willing to, to open up about everybody. Most of them, the statute of limitations are over anyway. And it's just a question of can I damage people's reputation or not if you don't give me a pardon. And I'm not saying these people weren't creepy people, but I just. And I'm not saying they didn't traffic innocent young girls. I'm just saying that the idea that this is a massive trafficking with hours of incriminating tapes and you know what I mean, with sex. And I just don't think you're going to find that he was too clever to do that. And it's just, it's more insinuation, flattery and it really shows you that this wealthy class doesn't have independent judgment. No one seems to say in these. Could you please tell me where you learned accounting? Could you please give me a 10 point plan how you're doing it? Can you please show me and your prior client how you were able to save them? X amount of money was always someone, someone said I got a call from him. Oh, thank you for this bag. Thank you for these shoes. Oh wow. You can use, I can use your jet skis when I go down to the island. It's. I don't know how they made their money.
- [62:41]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [62:42]
Victor Davis Hanson
They don't seem very bright. No.
- [62:44]
Podcast Host
All right, Victor, I wanted to finish the show. This is our Saturday show. Just to ask. Yeah because today is actually Lincoln's birthday and I know that this is airing on Saturday, but I was wondering if you had a reflection on the legacy of Lincoln. And this is my question. Was he, was he riding the crest and leading everybody or was he kind of a fence at or sitter that was trying to dodge all and placate.
- [63:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
He was one of a kind. He was probably the without doubt, Washington was a great man, but he was the best president we've ever had. And his. He knew from the very beginning that slavery was not sustainable. And he knew from the very beginning that the south, they had a lot of great traditions. Virginia had produced the most presidents for example, but they were a Scottish, Irish Marshall culture and they had huge amount. This was the most money in the history of civilization up to that time because of King Cotton. And they had huge amounts of capital and he knew that they were never going to give up slavery. And he knew that this North American project would not work if it ended up like Europe with 30 countries. You know, they would fight. There would be Napoleonic Wars, 30 year wars, seven year wars. And it had to be united it. And he knew that there was nothing in the Constitution about succession. It was only about admission. So he. There were people who said it's not treason to leave because there's no what choice do they have? And so he was the one and he knew that there was not support, broad support for fighting the south on behalf of black slaves. Many people. When Sherman went into Georgia, half of the people, the regiments of Minnesota, Michigan had never seen a black person literally. So to the North, I'm not talking about New England, but to the Midwest and The growing Western, there wasn't a lot of support. They didn't, you know, to go down and get killed fighting these very adept Southerners on their homes. But he was able to mold public opinion in a way that nobody else was. The other alternative, Stephen Douglas or George McClellan, who ran against him in 1864, they all were willing to have popular sovereignty. In other words, let's just let him go, Let him go. And he had to figure out how to say, they can't leave, they're Americans and they're insurrectionists and we want them back in and we have to get rid of slavery. And they thought of everything. They thought, well, maybe we can send Africans back to Liberia, create Liberia, or maybe we can buy Africans from Southerners and manumit them, you know, and there were. It wasn't going to work. The south was not going to, to play ball, and some of the abolitionists were not going to play ball. And he had a very strong base of the abolitionists who really pushed him, who wanted forcible liberation of African slaves. But they didn't think it out. They didn't say, we want to be like John Brown and invade this south because that's what you're going to have to do. So he had to move the country along inch by inch. And some of the ways he did it were brilliant. He said, we own federal property. The federal government has post offices, it has military bases, it has Fort Sumter. You know, Sumner, he has all these things and there are. They may be inside your territory. It would be as if somebody said in California, sorry, Newsom. Trump said, said, yosemite's mine. It's the federal government, it's not California's. And that's the principle that he used. So he didn't have to do anything to start the war. He just said, don't attack federal property and you have to obey federal laws. And he let it simmer. And they were the ones then that attacked Fort Sumner. And then he said, I need 90 day enlistment. The other thing he was really good at, He was very skeptical because he had been, you know, a Westerner, grew up in Illinois. And he was very skeptical, not envious or jealous of, but skeptical of the Eastern blue blood and hierarchy and the establishment. And that was a great advantage because he brought people around him. He didn't. He wasn't kind of like Harry Truman. Harry Truman did not trust the Washington League, but he was willing to bring in blue stocking people in the treasury and Secretary of State and not be prejudiced. Against them because of their expertise, but he didn't trust them all. And that was very good because when he looked at, at the military, for example, and he had all of these people that were self promoters, I'm talking about not just McClellan, but Hooker and. Halleck and others that were Burnside, you know, all these people that were supposedly brilliant at the New York papers. And then you looked at this from Galena, Illinois, Ulysses S. Grant, drinking, poor student. Or you looked at this brilliant guy named William Tecumseh Sherman. And he said he had a mental breakdown and he was gonna, you know, they took him out after Shiloh and he said that, you know, he said crazy things like it might take 300,000 deaths to win the Civil War. But my point is he knew those people. So he was committed to the two people who won the war and that was Sherman and Grant. Grant and Sherman and 5 foot 5 Sheridan, who was crazy too. And he, when he, and, and then when he, when he found these people, he felt that they were kindred souls when they came to him and said, Mr. President, Mr. President, Sherman's taking Atlanta. And he said, and he sent you a letter, Atlanta is ours and fairly won. We're going to win the election. But can he just stop? We don't know where he's going. And then they didn't get any telegraph and he was somewhere in the middle of Georgia with 60,000 people. They asked Lincoln what's going on. He said, well, he went in one hole and I don't know what hole he's going to come out of, but I have full confidence in General Sherman. I always have. And then, same thing about, I don't think he said, I can't spare the man. He fights. I'm not sure. Lincoln said, whatever he's drinking, give it to other people. But he could have said that. But the point I'm making is every time in that horrible summer of 1864, they came to Lincoln, his wife as well, who was Southern. He's a butcher. He's killing people. And Lincoln just said, he's putting pressure on Lee. It's going to crack. And he understood the terrible arithmetic that the north had. Three times, almost three times the population and five times the industrial. It was just a matter of time if you had the right generals and so.
- [70:44]
Podcast Host
Well, Victor, I have a question from one.
- [70:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's a brilliant president. He was very compassionate at humanitarian. He's a great man.
- [70:52]
Podcast Host
Yeah. I have a question from one of your listeners, but we're at the end of our time Here. So are you okay?
- [70:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know that I'm, I guess somebody said that to me today. I've never thought of myself that way. They wrote me and said, congratulations, I know you'll be a successful cancer survivor.
- [71:13]
Podcast Host
Nice.
- [71:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
I know what I, I, this is my first long.
- [71:17]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [71:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
So I got my heart rate up to 58.
- [71:20]
Podcast Host
Oh, nice. That's where you need it, right? Okay, so let's. This is one of. From your website, a comment from your one year. And, and it's a question. I'm, I'm sorry. Sean Ford, who wrote it. I'm not, not going to read the whole thing, but I want the thing on the Civil War. So I. He writes, I've come to the conclusion that the shift to centralization in the United States government occurred during the Civil War. The central power into the hands of Lincoln fell practically straight into the hands of leaders of the Progressive Era. Seems to me the right of secession was the final defense against the federal government's centralization of power. But since the War between the States, by which he means the Civil War, decided the right of secession was unconstitutional through an unconstitutional use of arms. So he's saying that the northern powers were using unconstitutional of arms to stop secession, which was unconstitutional. So the secession was unconstitutional through an unconstitutional use of arms against the Confederate States of America on the part of the United States of America. The centralization of power into the hands of the federal government and the emergence of the deep state was inevitable since the Civil War. He said, trying to say, I'm not.
- [72:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
Sure he means that the south thought it was unconstitutional. Lincoln thought it was, but there was nothing in the Constitution that was his problem. That said there wasn't a clause that said clause 5A. No State shall leave the Union without the permission of the Congress or the majority of states. It's not there. It's only about being in there. So he, if he says that, if he means that the south had a right to succeed, constitutionally, he's right. But then he didn't get to the second point, with all due respect, and that is there was millions of dollars of property infrastructure installations that did not belong to the south, that was within the South. So did the south ever come to Lincoln and say, we want to succeed and here are the number of post offices, here are the number of armories, here's the number of bases, here is an amount of Union Northern investment in banks, railroads, and we want to pay all that. No, it was always going to be hostile. So Lincoln just sat there, I mean metaphorically and Said, let's see what they're going to do. And when they fired on, they said that Fort Sumner, they said, get out. And Lincoln said, it's a federal fort and it has been for a while. And they said, don't supply it. And he said, we're going to supply it. And he'd made that choice. And they made a choice to fire on it. And then they went into exultation at Bull Run when they beat. And they thought they really did buy into this idea that the Scots Irish military tradition, agrarianism, created much better fighters. They may have been right vis a vis. I'm not sure they were about the abolitionists in the New England, but they had no idea about people in Michigan, as I said, and Wisconsin and Minnesota and Iowa and Illinois. Those people were not urban people. They were farmers and they were pretty tough and they were immigrants and they were. And when you read about Sherman's, the memoirs of Sherman and the people who marched with him, it's. I mean, they were. When they got into Georgia, they knew how to get. They knew how to cook, they knew how to butcher cattle, they knew how to live outside. They thought that being outside in November in Georgia was a picnic. And they were the toughest people in the world. And I don't think the south really understood that how many there were. And they thought there was just a bunch of Bostonians that they were going to intimidate and they didn't understand that.
- [75:32]
Podcast Host
Two things about his question. Do you think that the use of force against the south was unconstitutional then when it went beyond federal lands protection? And then also what do you think about his statement about centralization? That it actually went well.
- [75:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
He thought that they were insurrectionary. That was the whole premise. He thought that they had. That they were attacking the federal government and there had been the Whiskey Rebellion and prior presidents had put them down. So he felt that he had a constitutional right to protect the interest of the United States and that involved the investment of Americans that might have been confiscated. Or he thought with one qualifier he wasn't. He made. He felt that. That slavery was amoral and a special category. So this, you know, the Supreme Court said that they had. That slaves were property and the Dred Scott that they had a right to go into the north and get back their property. He didn't believe that. But my point is that if he believed that if you try to attack the property of the United States and you are a member of the United States and you try to attack its laws or its persons or its money, Then you're committing treason and insurrection because there was nothing in the Constitution that gave you that right. The south said just the opposite. Well, there's nothing in the Constitution, so therefore we can do it. If they really thought, if those brilliant people in Philadelphia really thought it was wrong to succeed, well, they would have said, don't succeed or else. But they didn't. And that was the poll states rights argument that Calhoun had used. And the nullificationists. As far as the growth, he's right that there was abuses of the federal government. Lincoln declared no habeas corpus in parts of Ohio against the Copperheads. Andrew Johnson, following Lincoln, declared no habeas corpus to break the Klan in Tennessee. So he did suspend habeas corpus and ruled on martial law. And he had to grow the government because, I mean, these armies had never been seen before. There were more people killed at the first battle of Shiloh than all the wars since 1775. Nobody had ever imagined that. Nobody ever imagined the United states would put 65,5000 men in an army with Sherman and 110 with Grant and another army of the Tennessee and then Sheriff. These were huge forces, four or five hundred thousand people. They had to be fed, they had to have munitions, they had to get them. That was all new. So yes, it grew the government. But if he's talking about the administrative deep state, I think, I think we didn't have an income tax until 19. Was it 13 or 16? It really came in, to tell you the truth, with Teddy Roosevelt and the reform movement and you know, that government bureaus, some of them were good, Food and Drug Administration, things like that. And then Woodrow Wilson, partly because of World War I, he really abused federal power. He went after states and put people in jail, you know, and let them pass laws that said it was against the law to speak, to teach German and stuff. They put people who criticized the war in jail. But all that said, yes, the Civil War grew the administrative state by necessary. Yes, Roosevelt was a Republican who could get away with it because they thought that he was rugged, individualist. So when he wanted to be a progressive and create all of these government bureaus to help the American people, he got away with it. And then Wilson, partly under the guise of World War I, but he really created. But all of that was nothing until 1933, 34, 35, 36, 37. And Franklin Roosevelt, he was the one that created National Recovery Act, Civilian Conservation Corps, all of federal visa, all of these things, and FDIC, all of these bureaus. And then the second and Justice Kopo was Lyndon Johnson from 1965 to 1970, and that was the Great Society, Environmental Protection Agency, Division of Civil Rights, Great War on Poverty, eop, all of that stuff. Stuff. It was basically incremental. Lincoln did it to win the war. Roosevelt did it, he felt to rein in the capitalists of the gold, you know, the golden age of the roaring 90s. Wilson did it because he was a socialist and he was very influenced by Europe and the French. And Roosevelt did it after the Great Depression. He felt that he had a mandate to make the government run everything. And then after the death of John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, later Martin Luther King, and the riots in the streets, L.A. watts. Johnson thought he had, as a Democrat to save the party from the segregationists. Got to remember that more Republicans in the House in percentage terms in 1964 and 1965 voted for those two civil rights acts than Democrats did. The Republicans were about 80% in the House and about 80% in the Senate. And I think the Democrats were only about 63% and 70 something in the Senate. And that was because of the solid South. And Johnson was terrified that there would be a. And there was a George Wallace type of Strong Thurmond, 1948, the Dixiecrats. He felt that there would be a third party and the Democrats would lose the election. So he thought, even I am a Southerner, I have credibility. I'm not a northern liberal. Kennedy couldn't do civil rights because the Southerners would never go along with it. In the Democratic Party, I can get their votes, and I can get the Republicans votes. They'll vote for it. But I. For the civil rights, but I can grow the government with the Democratic Party and I'll hand out spoils to the South. And he got this. 1964 was the last election in which Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, they all went Democratic, but it didn't happen in 68. And he was. He saw that Johnson. So he basically said, I have a Southern accent. I'm a conservative Democrat, and I am going to keep the conservatives in the party, and they're going to vote for stuff that they hate, but they're going to get a lot of goodies out of it, and we're going to retain power as Democrats.
- [83:04]
Podcast Host
All right, Victor, thank you so much for that analysis. And happy birthday to Abraham. Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, Abraham Lincoln. All right, thank you for watching us and listening, and Victor, thank you as well. Wonderful analysis.
- [83:19]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everybody, for listening. And we'll try to see how long I can. I have some medical. What's the word rendezvous.
- [83:28]
Podcast Host
Okay, coming up.
- [83:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
Some of them are coming up. And I'm either going to be back here.
- [83:33]
Podcast Host
Yep.
- [83:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
Or I'm not going to be back here for a while.
- [83:35]
Podcast Host
Okay.
- [83:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
Depending on the treatment.
- [83:37]
Podcast Host
So we're happy to see you in this episode of the Victor Davis Hanson In His Own Words show. So thanks, everybody, for listening.
- [83:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you, everybody. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please, like, share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.