
Where did Jesse Jackson fall along the radical racial spectrum, and what did he not do that Obama did, are some of the questions Victor Davis Hanson answers on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”
Loading summary
Victor Davis Hanson
Foreign.
Jack Fowler
Hello, ladies and hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. I'm Jack Fowler, the man who's blessed to be able to ask Victor questions, the kind of questions I think you would be asking him. We are talking on George Washington's birthday, February 22nd, and this episode will be up on the 24th, Tuesday, the 24th, happily on the Daily Signals, vast network of audio and video publishing. Thank you. Rob Bluey. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College and at the aforementioned Daily Signal, he's a senior contributor. I'm a little tired today. I was up at 4 o' clock today, my time, and we're recording at noon east coast time, right before this blizzard is supposed to come and crush us. But I have to say, despite being fatigued, I'm terribly happy today because Victor was also up at 3 or 4 o' clock his time. And I think he sent a text to me early this morning. It's wonderful kind of news. Victor, you want to before we get kicking on the show, it was,
Victor Davis Hanson
well, how do I put this? I had a mucinous. I had it because I hope it's gone. But it is. They cut it out along with a lot of other lung. But a mucus adenoma carcinoma is a very strange tumor. But more stranger is the Let me get this straight. I'm not trying to show off knowledge. It's just it's been imprinted in my brain.
Jack Fowler
Dr. Hansen.
Victor Davis Hanson
No, I am. Yeah. PhDs are not supposed to refer to themselves as doctor under polite parlance. Jack Correct. I understand it is the CR the KRAS C K R A S G12R mutation and that's 1 in 200 of this rare type. And unfortunately, it's one that is found in the pancreas. So people were very worried that it might have come there or would go there. So what they do is they have a new test. They had the Grail test, you know, that's one that people may have known about and you might want to inquire about it, everybody. You take it and it finds circulating DNA of any type of cancer before it appears in a tumor form. It didn't work for me because when I found this, when they found this mass in August of this year, they gave me one of those tests at this longevity center and it was negative. And of course they didn't. And they scanned it with an MRI and a cat, but it was probably malignant at that time, so it didn't detect that, but it's, it's Otherwise, they claim 98% accurate, but it didn't work for me. But this test was very much different. It takes the tumor's foot print signature, that mutation I just mentioned. And then I had another bad one, the stk. Bad in the sense they're aggressive and they recur more likely and you can't treat them. So if it comes back, you cannot use really immunotherapy or chemo. So the only chance you really have is to get it all. And the new test, called Signa Terra, takes the tumor's actual footprint or sign or fingerprint and then takes your blood. You wait 30 days after surgery, and then if a trace of that tumor's DNA, and I mean a trace is in your circulating blood, it'll tell you. And if it was in there, I would have tried, I guess they would have used kind of a last desperate attempt at blanket chemo, even though it wouldn't be targeted because it. And it would have a 5 to 10% efficacy rate. And I'm still getting over losing half my blood volume and anemia and afib and stuff. So I wasn't looking forward to that. And if it was negative, that means that you will not have a tumor likely, although the mucous strain is a little hard to detect. So that's a problem. But other than that, it says that I can wait and watch, watch and wait. And that means that every four or five months, I'll take biopsy test and get a ct. But as I understand it, if you get the initial one after surgery, that's a good sign. And then each test that you get subsequently that's negative, statistically, the chances go down that it won't be positive as much. And, you know, when I, the, the literature, as I was told, was that 40%, 4 out 40% or 4 out of 10 patients with this type of tumor will have it recur. But unfortunately, the R strain of this tumor means you can't do much about it. So it becomes more important with the R mutation and the STKK mutation that if you do get it, you're in bad shape. It's not gonna be immunotherapy or chemo is gonna stop it. And it usually it can come back in the brain or the liver or the pancreas. So that was. I had a very strange dream, and I was kind of floating around, and I asked somebody if I was dead or alive, and they said, I don't know, but you should wake up. And so I woke up and I thought, why not go to the portal of the DNA? But it's been a month, so it's kind of been stressful, you know, a month. The test became existential because it determined your entire post op treatment. Either you're going to have chemo or you're not. And then if it's positive, you don't have a good prognosis. If it's negative, you've got a much better chance. So it was kind of more important in my case because of the inability to treat the tumor should it reoccur. And something said, go to it. I said, no, Sunday morning, that's neurotic. And so I just happened to. And this big red thing said, check results. And I thought, wow, why would it be red? You know how you get paranoid, overthink things. So I did. And then before you, they wouldn't even let you see the results. They said you must read about the, you know, what the results mean. In other words, don't go shoot yourself if it's positive, I guess. Or don't go think that you're cured if it's negative. So I read that. And then if you read that, then you finally get to the results and it said negative. So I was 3:30 or 4 was very relieved. Good. Well, the need for you.
Jack Fowler
Yeah, well, God bless. And the need for you to endure prophylactic chemo is off the table for at least the time being.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I don't think I would have, between you and me, I don't think I would have made it because, you know, I've still got a heart problem from the blood loss and the transfusions and I'm pretty dizzy and you never know. I am getting better. When I got out of the hospital for the first week, I couldn't walk over 300 steps and my wife and I did 7,002 days in a row. So I'm getting better. I can't drive yet, but it's only been seven weeks. And a very good doctor who I consulted two of them, just a wonderful man, Robert Serfalo at nyu. I think he's one of the best surgeons in the world. He was very. And then I had a surgeon at Stanford, a very good surgeon, Dr. Barry. And then a, a friend had a Dr. Nieb at USC who was wonderful. And they all were very supportive and said, you know, it's going to take you a little longer than most people that have a lobectomy and removal of the big, the big globe because of the aneurysm you. You experienced and the bloody, the bleeding. And Dr. Berry was very skillful to get me right out of ICU and right back in and, you know, reopen and find that thing, because I was really bleeding. It's kind of like Arnold. I was reading about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Somebody sent me a nice article. Not a nice article, but a sad article, that he had gone to Cedars Sinai's for a new type of corrective surgery of, I think, a valve or a defect he had in his heart. And it was just the same thing. It was a great thing. And then all of a sudden, he started a massive bleed and he almost died. From what I can tell, that was about four or five years ago. Well, anyway, people don't want to hear about that.
Jack Fowler
Yeah, that's why only millions are praying for you. So your prayers work.
Victor Davis Hanson
Folks I could feel know that that sounds supernatural, but I do believe especially I was overwhelmed. We probably have the things that came at Hoover or to our house or on text or phone. Probably a thousand people. And as I said before, it's so moving to see these people who write these beautiful calligraphy. We had two friends, Jay and Jennifer. She wrote the most beautiful calligraphy I've ever seen in my life. Four pages. And then I get people who will write and say, I'm 84 years old. I remember so well the Korean War. I'm living alone. Don't give up hope. Thirteen years ago, I was told that I had six weeks to live, and they took out my entire lung. They said I wouldn't be able to do it. I just hiked the other day, you know, 86. That was very inspirational. I got so many of those right. And I was really did not expect it. I really didn't. I did not expect any of that.
Jack Fowler
I've got a lot of emails. How can I write to Victor? And one lady wrote the other day, I want to write them because I've essentially. Because she has lovely handwriting, and she liked that you had talked about this. You're getting notes of friendship.
Victor Davis Hanson
I said to myself, I said to my wife, I said, you've. They should start teaching calligraphy again, you know, on cursive handwriting. It's such a beautiful art, and it's so much more personal than just typing. And it was. And then, you know, my mother was an appellate court judge and died of cancer very early at 64. And my daughter died of cancer. So the appellate court judges. This is a big appellate court just in central California. They were very friendly. And one of the justices, Brad Hill, he hand delivered to our house a boysenberry pie and this kind of boutique ice cream and it was just splendid. And then all of a sudden, good
Jack Fowler
kind of person that shows up in the doors.
Victor Davis Hanson
And then yesterday he came through and he just dropped it off in the porch. The same delicious ice cream but this time homemade. You know, bakery. Homemade bakery type chocolate chip cookies and stuff.
Jack Fowler
Yeah, terrific.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I'm very fortunate and you are,
Jack Fowler
but so, so are we. You know, Victor, we could record a 10 hour show today because there's so many darn topics. But we're gonna, we're going to, I think, well, let's tackle Jesse Jackson who's passed away, Tucker Carlson who had this infamous interview with Mike Huckabee. Susan Rice is out there threatening post Trumpian, post Republican rule. There will be payback. That's going to be horrific. And we've got some debanking and financial issues and plenty more too. But we'll get to that. We'll start getting to these when we come back from these initial important messages.
Victor Davis Hanson
Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children. The faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep. First things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful.
Jack Fowler
Hey folks, welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. I forgot to mention earlier, Victor's website, the blade of Perseus victorhansen.com that's the web address and you should subscribe. It's 650amonth. If you want to check it out, there's tons of free stuff. But then Victor also writes two pieces exclusive every week for the Blade of Perseus, does an exclusive video. It's 650amonth but for the full year it's discounted $65. So do go there and sign up. And if you're on XD Hansen, that's Victor's handle. Victor Davis at VDH's Morning cup on Facebook. Then there's a great group, Victor Davis Hansen fan club you'll also find on on Facebook. So I mentioned before, by the way, Victor, that we're supposed to have this horrific blizzard, 16 to 24 inches here in Milford, Connecticut. And I'm sure you saw the headlines and we're not going to focus on this, but in New York City, which still has piles of snow and garbage there from the Storm that hit the Northeast a few weeks ago. Mayor Mondami, the great socialist came out yesterday and I saw this live watching the local news. They want shovelers. You know, come shovel, we'll pay you 20 bucks an hour, but bring two forms of ID and some other paperwork and immediately watching it, you think like what the hell, this is what you need to shovel snow in New York, but you don't need to vote in New York.
Victor Davis Hanson
So it's really something, isn't it, that these socialists don't value the integrity of the whole bedrock of the American. Any consensual government depends on honest and fair balloting. And yet they.83% on a recent Pew poll and a Gallup, I think it was 82%. Even a majority of Democrats, majority of minorities. They all want id and yet this man has said that it's racist and Jim Crow and now because he's in. That's not the primary reason, but one of the results of it. He's in bad financial shape, he doesn't know what he's doing. And he's obviously, I guess, doesn't want a Somali like Frog thing where you just hand out money. I mean, you think he'd be a socialist and he'd say let's just give them some money like they do in Minnesota and we'll get everybody out to. But it reminds me so much of in December 1941, Army Group center was 18 miles outside of Moscow. And that was very debatable what the actual thing. The Germans said they could see the spires on the Kremlin in the sun. And then they also said they were right next to the first subway station in Moscow and everybody was evacuating Moscow and the factories had already been moved on the other side of the Urals and the weather got very bad. And they desperately knew they had signed a non aggression pact in April of 41 with the Japanese. The Russians did. So they knew that they were not going to invade Eastern Russia at Vladostavik. So they desperately brought 200,000 soldier reinforcement. The Germans were unaware of this on the Trans Siberian rail. But before they could get there, the weather turned bad. And then they had a brigade. Jack, this is my point, my long winded point. And they got all the peasants, all the citizens, everybody to go out in front of Army Group center and build this huge trench. I mean you should look at pictures of it. It's I don't know, 40ft wide, 40ft deep. They have concrete pyramid. And all the people did. And they all talked about comrades, they Gave medals for the people who dug the most. This is like Comrade Mondami trying to save New York from an existential disaster. And he's probably read about it, but that worked. I don't think his is going to work very well.
Jack Fowler
Yeah, I hate to say I'm rooting against him because.
Victor Davis Hanson
Did you see the other story? I think. I don't know. I just happened. And I haven't verified this with a second story. I tried to do two, but he gave. Do you remember that story where there's this African American woman, young woman, who was an artist and a reporter went to go talk to her about a controversial thing she'd said?
Jack Fowler
Yeah, she.
Victor Davis Hanson
And she pulled out a knife and tried to.
Jack Fowler
Washetta.
Victor Davis Hanson
Kill him. Machete.
Jack Fowler
Well, he just gave him a New York Post reporter.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. Did you see what he did? He is going to a. It's in your territory. Why don't you finish the story? Because you're from the Bronx.
Jack Fowler
Okay? Well, that's true. There is an article in the New York Post today that she was awarded despite this having happened, some New York City Council, cultural council awarded her $400,000 to $500,000 to construct this jackass piece of art. Some tower with black power fists on it, a phoenix. Who the hell knows what it stands for? Imperial. Planted somewhere in the South Bronx. And yeah, she's. There's. She bore. No penalty for, you know, threatening. She's a. By the way, she was a professor, I think, at City College.
Victor Davis Hanson
So, yeah, almost every day there's some story that some anti Semite, some racist, some person that has a horrible background, he appoints to these lucrative concessions, grants or employment. And he's a Nepo baby who never really had a job in his life. He was spoiled rotten. He thought he was a rapper, he thought he was an activist, he thought he was a local politician. He's never. He was always subsidized by his multi millionaire father and filmmaker professor father with a big endowed chair and his mother with all sorts of government grants for
Jack Fowler
her connections to Epstein.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, so creepy. Never really gone out. He's never really gone out in the real world and tried to make it on his own.
Jack Fowler
No, but he's out in the real world trying to destroy it. Well, Victor, let's talk about Jesse Jackson. But first we're gonna pay some bills here. The world is getting more unstable and chaotic every day. Even without blizzards, it seems like everywhere you look there's another crisis, controversy, conflict or catastrophe. You can't control what happens out there. Folks, but you can control how you prepare for for it. You can make sure that no matter what happens, you have the basics covered in case one of these disasters reaches your doorstep. You know things like having enough food to eat when the shelves are empty. And when it comes to my family's food security, I trust my Patriot Supply. They've helped millions of Americans get prepared and they have over 90,000 five star reviews right now. You can get their best selling 3 month emergency food supply for $100 off. My patriot Supply almost never offers a deal like this, so take advantage of it. Now go to preparewithvdh.com this food kit gives you 2,000 calories a day, lasts up to 25 years and best of all, it's $100 off for a limited time. So go to preparewithvdh.Com and get yours right now. That's preparewithbdh.com and we thank the good people from my Patriot Supply for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So Victor, Jesse Jackson, age 84, passes away. I've heard some people playing what if. Oh, back in the late 70s, early 80s. What if he had done this instead of being a Democrat? What if he had tried blah blah blah. I'll say two things quickly. Stop babbling. Some things Jesse Jackson said back in the day, not Hymie town, but some
Victor Davis Hanson
things that he said, well, somebody's walking behind me.
Jack Fowler
Well no, no, I'm not going to talk about that at all. Just that he said some things that would be sensible today related to jobs and other things, just like Chuck Schumer has said sensible things from years ago related to immigration that are anathema today. But I felt Jesse Jackson really did so much to anchor that victim, victimization centrality to leftism. And I hope we don't speak ill of the dead, right. But yeah, he, he really did not serve America well, despite being a great pro lifer once upon a time. Anyway, Victor, I blathered.
Victor Davis Hanson
What are your thoughts? I know what you mean. He had push, you know, people United to save humanity in Chicago and he, he caught, he had an idea that at the height of the Black militant Black Panther 60s and 70s resistance and the rioting and Newark and Rotts, Watts and Flint, etc. Etc. Etc. He posed as this ecumenical person, said he was going to build a rainbow coalition. And it wasn't like the intersectionality of Representative Wu in Texas. The Texas legislature just said, well, we got enough Asians, Hispanics and blacks to take over and stop the oppressor, meaning white people. It was passed off as if white people would join. And that appealed to a lot of liberals. And then, as you said, he said certain things. I mean, I can remember when he said, when I walk on a street in a big urban city and somebody's walking behind me, I am relieved that it's not a black teen. And that was kind of shocking that he said that. He also said when Obama was on a panel, remember on tv, he heard Obama and he said, I would like to cut off his. Used the word for testicle. And so there were elements, but he had a checkered career because he serially fabricated his role during the assassination of Martin Luther King and said he was the first person there and all of this when he wasn't. In addition, he had a terrible reputation in the 80s of going to big companies, the automotive engine companies, and threatening them with boycotts unless they don't. It was a shakedown operation. And he did. And then when Obama came, he didn't quite understand why Obama appealed to people when he was a more authentic representation of the black experience in America. He kept saying in various ways, well, and he was right. Obama, his father is a Kenyan, not an American. He's half white. He was given all this stuff. He has this white accent. He hangs out with white people. He's not as authentic as I am, and yet he's going to be more successful than I am. And he never understood the essence of the liberal progressive white mind as it pertains to racial relations. And I know them because I've been in academia. They love to champion people at distance, but that is a psychological mechanism because they don't feel comfortable with people, not necessarily race, but they do not feel comfortable with people who authentically grew up poor or in the middle class. And when you heard Jesse Jackson, he was kind of rough around the edges. He had kind of the black patois. And compared to Obama, he wasn't nearly as smooth. He did not reassure white liberals that he was. And yet the irony is as left wing as he was. Had he been in a position that Obama, I don't think he would have been as stridently segregationist as Obama was. Obama was, I think, all of our racial recruitments of racism and problems with the races, which are at an all time low, basically, since the civil rights started with Obama, whether it was the police with that Henry Lewis Gates psychodrama and the police always stopped people, or Trayvon was the son I never looked like the son I never had, or the hands up, don't shoot, or when he gave that horrible speech about the five police officers being killed and said what? Certain people are driven to this. And I think that was in Dallas. Was he. All he did was stir up racial animosity. So Jesse Jackson was somewhere between, I don't know. He was not as extreme as Louis Farrakhan. He was a cut above Al Sharpton. But as he got older and lost influence and resident, he got more and more desperate and grifting and strident and bitter. I felt.
Jack Fowler
I think he's the kind of person some people might have thought. Oh, I thought he had died already because he seemed to have fallen off the.
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't think he was well, and I think that really shook him up. Do you remember his son was mentioned for a Senate appointment when Barack Obama was left the Senate for the presidency and Blago was supposedly. Remember, he was negotiating with the Jackson family to. And there was suggestion. I think the son went to prison, I think for that. Yeah. And that kind of shook him up because he thought that he had an Obama like exemption. And there was talk. Well, why would he. Why did they go to jail when Obama took money from a crook like Tony Resco to get a cheap little discount on an enlarged lot for his home? He had a good point, but he didn't understand. Again, he did not understand there were certain buttons you had to push to win acceptance by the white liberal mind. And that is, you had to reassure them that you felt that they were magnanimous, morally superior to all other white people. And you had to talk in a fashion and have the same taste as they did. And it didn't just apply to blacks, it applies to poor white people. That's why they hate the Trump MAGA so much. That's why Biden came up with all these words, garbage, dregs, chumps and Hillary. Irredeemables. Yeah, irredeemables. And same thing with Obama clingers. They hate the class, they hate the lower middle classes. And if you were going to be a black leader to appeal to that white liberal constituency, you have to have the same class instincts as they do. And Obama knew that he was a brilliant politician and he was a chameleon when he was around wealthy white people. He reassured them that he was one of them. And then he would go out to a crowd of black people and change that. Remember, he had that changed accent, I just wanted to say. And then he would go off just like Hillary. I'm so tired. That same thing. But she was an amateur compared to Obama.
Jack Fowler
Well, Jackson, by the way, Just last note from me is he did win some primaries.
Victor Davis Hanson
He did 84 in 1984, I think 84 and 88. But I think he was very. He was scaring a lot of people in the Democratic Party. He played the same role in 1984, I think it was as Bernie Sanders did in 2016. He really scared people and to a lesser extent in 2020 because. And they did kind of the same thing to Jackson. That Jaime Town really hurt him too. And it kind of confirmed every major black leader of that period who was on the radical side. Farrakhan said Judaism was a gutter religion. Al Sharpton said, put on your Yarmouth and come over here after Freddy's Market it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Jack Fowler
By the way, you just mentioned Bernie Sanders. A couple of hours ago I saw a story Lizzie McDonald at Fox posted that Sanders on his famous anti capitalism climate change tour last year with the AOC spent $600,000 on private jets to attack capitalism. Hey, we're going to take a break in a minute. Well, maybe a few minutes, but Susan Rice is out there threatening, I guess all of us.
Victor Davis Hanson
That was a disaster, wasn't it? It was a train wreck. Of all the people in that, that Obama crowd, she had been UN ambassador and then at the end I think she was national Security Advisor. They knew that she was talentless and was angry and they actually kind of sabotaged her. Because you would think that the Secretary of State after Benghazi would go out there and explain. But the problem was that they had been warned about the Benghazi consulate, pre embassy and the annex that they were not. They had been told that they needed more security and they did not want to have a high profile. And the implication was those people were expendable versus the bad publicity of kind of building up. Kind of like when, you know, Mogadishu, when Clinton wouldn't let our troops, the UN that were working with the UN have tanks. We had to rely on the Pakistanis, same idea that the left does. But anyway, they put her out there five times and she said that the video was a spontaneous eruption. And of course when you have a GPS mortar in about the fourth round, they kill people. They know what they're doing. And it was a preplanned ISIS or Al Qaeda related. But that was bad. And then the red line thing was bad when she said they had forced Bashar Assad to give up his wmd and he didn't. He used it after that. And then the worst I thought was when she met in the office with Obama and other people to frame Trunk in January of 2017, before he'd even taken office. And she wrote that crazy memo to herself that memorialized some fantasy that they weren't unmasking people. So she goes out and she says she's going to threaten the media and the corporate world and the academic world and the institutional world and the political. All you who worked with Trump. But she never delineated what they actually had done. What had they done wrong? That was one thing. And then she said, we're going to come back to power. Well, you should be careful about that. Do you really think that an AOC Buttigieg ticket was going to beat JD Vance and Marco Rubio or. I don't think so. And I'm not even sure that the midterms are assured because if I was a Republican congressperson, I would say vote for, you know, you can't vote for the party of Mondami. And I would have. Do you support him or not? Do you support Mondame? Do you want the border open or not? We haven't got to that point. But you can be assured the Republicans are going to outspend the Democrats, I think, since they've lost a lot of their elite tech money. And so that was stupid. I've heard it. And then finally to issue threats that may be empty. And then when she talked about retribution and basically she was saying, we're going to come after you. And I thought, as I said to Sammy, what haven't they done? If she had said, we're going to come after you, we're going to take your name off state ballots, we're going to raid your homes, we're going to get phony suits. If you dare call a register up, if you get a loan, we're going to look at your assets. If you have some crazy person who says that you sexually, we're going to go out. And you've already done that. What more can you do? Are you going to try to shoot him three times, four times, five times? So, you know, it was like the most politicized DOJ in history was Merrick Garland. That one day in one day in a 24 hour period, Merrick Garland had Jack Smith appointed to go after Trump on the Mar A Lago and the documents, et cetera, and insurrection, which was the joke. And then he had Nathan Wade in the White House charging them, I don't know, 300 bucks an hour to coordinate with Fanny Willis. And then he had Michael Coangelo or whatever his name was the third guy in the DOJ who came from Letita James prosecution and goes back to Alvin Bragg all in the same day. So that was all coordinated. So, Susan Rice, I just, I just think that you've, you've done it all and it didn't work. So your threats are empty, you know.
Jack Fowler
Yeah, Reruns.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah.
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, by the way, you mentioned shooting and we're going to take a break here, but there was news of shooting, attempted shooting today, actually. A shooter got killed at Mar a Lago. But you just. Not a lot of news is. Not a lot of facts are known at this point. So I'm sure you and Sammy, the great Sammy Wink will be talking about this later in the week.
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, if you're going to call him a Nazi, a fascist, and you're going to have a large part of the Senate for the first time in history not show up for the State of the Union. This is a party that had Nancy Pelosi tear up the State of the Union on national TV during his first term. But if you're going to do all of that and then here in California, this Katherine Porter, pathetic candidate for governor, has got F word, F word, S H, I, horrible language. And then you've got Hikem Jeffreys mouthing off again. If you're going to keep doing that, you're going to bring more and more people out of the woodwork. And that's what's happening. Because somebody comes out and says, you know what? I can do better than Ruth or whatever his name was. I can do better than all of these people. I'll be famous forever. People may hate me, but I will be just like Mangione is, a hero to the idiotic Generation X leftists. I will be in the pantheon of leftist heroes if I can get a shot off it. That's how they think. And it's really irresponsible to keep doing that again and again and again. And they're going to keep doing it. And then there was a very instructional thing where they had a reporter, remember, who asked Carolyn Levitt, can you find one example where anybody ever called that Donald Trump a Nazi or racist or something? And they. Almost every, every Internet expert who's on the right side of the ledger just started issuing all of these Nazi fascist racists. I mean, it was one of them I saw. Somebody sent me about four of them and one of them was like 40, 30 minutes. I just turned it on. It was incredible.
Jack Fowler
One day of msnbc.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. There wasn't anybody who didn't yeah. Including Kamala Harris.
Jack Fowler
Well, we're going to talk. Get your thoughts, Victor, about, let's say, tariffs and Tucker Carlson. And we're going to do that when we come back from these important messages. Cut my glare here. Well, we are back. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. We're back with Victor Davis Hansen. And Victor Davis Hansen in his own words here on the Daily Signal. By the way, Victor's once again doing, actually, he's been doing this now, I think three weeks. His other show, which is Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, also carried by the Daily Signal. So you should check that out.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, my wife has a regimen for me. I do one day on and then I do one day off. So I'm trying to do our podcast. Get. We haven't, I'm still not carrying my load yet, but I, I hope to. And I'm trying to do two of the four that I was contracted to each week. And I still have. I've kept up with the, our website, the Ultras. There's still two original essays in a video each week. And then I do, I haven't done the two. I've been doing one of the two columns for the American greatness. But I hope that I can get back to that.
Jack Fowler
This is Victor, like the Karate Kid. One day on, one day off. Wax on, wax off. Okay.
Victor Davis Hanson
I backed up my pickup not too long ago and I felt like I was in a swirl, I was so dizzy. So I'm not going to drive for a while.
Jack Fowler
Yeah, very impressive. Well, you don't want to drive on California roads anyway.
Victor Davis Hanson
My wife keeps saying to me, why don't we go out and I'll go run into the drugstore. I said, I don't want anybody to see me in this depilated state. Oh, my gosh, you're driving for me. It's not manly. I'm going to be an embarrassment. And I'm shuffling around. I have a cane sometimes so I don't fall over.
Jack Fowler
Well, go to Walmart and get one of those carts, Victor. They'll mob you, your fans there. Well, let's talk about get your take on tariffs. The Supreme Court ruled on Friday, 6 to 3, that Donald Trump cannot keep imposing tariffs using emergency powers under 1977 law. President Trump immediately exploded in anger. The conservative justices split 3 to 3 on this decision, but Donald Trump reacted by promising to level 10 to 15% tariffs worldwide. Anyway, big change here, Victor, in important central policy for the Trump administration. What's your take on what happened?
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't know. The law well, enough. But just as a general rule, it seems to me that if the President has very definite powers as commander in chief outlined in the Constitution, and I'll just take an example, the EPA doesn't. It was created during the Nixon administration. And they can go out and say, that little pond on your farm in Kansas that fills up during a rain, it might have nitrates. And you know what? That's an inland waterway. And we have legislation that say inland waterways have to meet our standards, so we're going to go after you. And they do. Or we can say, well, in 1937, the raisin administrative Committee passed a law that says that, that you cannot sell the raisins that you produce from your own grapes, and we own them and you have to bring them into an authorized federal packer, and we will confiscate a portion of your crop, pay you virtually nothing to keep off the domestic market, and then we will sell it overseas. Packers can sell it for $70 a ton or something. If they can do that, then it seems to me the President can say that it meets a national interest to put a tariff. If they're asymmetry, maybe if they're asymmetrical. But that's beside the point. The other subtext of that decision was you're starting to see a clear trifecta on that court. And that means that the three Democratic nominees under no circumstances will ever, in any controversial or landmark case, join the consortium. They just don't do that. They know that if they do that, they're going to have enormous pressures, and I think Sotomayor will have enormous pressure if they get elected again to step down. She did under Biden. They wanted her out because of her health. So my point is that there are always going to be three votes. And the conservatives of Thomas and Alito and I think Kavanaugh now, too, that they're going to be pretty conservative. But Roberts and Gorsuch, to a lesser extent, but Comeybera, they're all going to be transitional, and I hope they don't go the Earl Warren route. I don't think they will. But it's not going to be a solid conservative, at least. And I don't know to what degree Trump affects that or not. The other thing is when he says he's going to have a 10%, he initially said 10% tariff, but if you look at that tariff, it would be, if he had it across the board in actual percentage terms, it would be, I think, less than some of the tariffs he has. And in the Aggregate less than the tariffs that he has. I know that he has much higher ones on China. He had higher ones in India. But if he just went 10 across the board, 10, it would probably be less than he has now. I don't know about 15, but there would be. So we'll see Trump's whole. Trump's prizes, loyalty and magnanimity. He feels that if he appointed somebody, that person should give him the benefit of the doubt in a case in which the benefit of doubt is operative. And they didn't do that. And so that's how he thinks. The only thing I would caution, I would not mention at the State of the Union, attack on the Supreme Court, because the Republicans and conservatives have the high ground. The people who attacked the court were Barack Obama when he lied about them. You remember when people.
Jack Fowler
Right then and there.
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, yeah, Right then and there. And Alito had to shake his head. That wasn't true. Alito was absolutely right. So. And they're always talking about packing the cord or having term limits, only when they have a Democratic minority, of course, just like the filibuster. So I wouldn't go down to that level. I would just ignore it and just say, you know what, there's a lot of different ways to have terrorists, if that's what you want, and just move on. And I think you'll do that. I think you'll have a 10% across the board, and people will scream and yell, and then a lot of the Europeans will look at it and they will say, well, we have a lot higher ourselves, and he was going to go higher than 10, and it's not that bad. Let's just accept him. And it will. And that will be the. You know, the Wall Street Journal is ecstatic, and every. All the libertarians are ecstatic. But for somebody who farmed a number of years when the EU gave about a $400 subsidy on raisins and dried fruit and dumped it in the United States, where we were paying their NATO bills and we had no subsidy on ours, and suddenly the price went from 1,400 to the farmer to 400. And I got all these lectures I got. I didn't. I went with a bunch of farmers to the Sun Maid meetings, and I went to hear the raisin Administrative Committee spokesman for Reagan. I mentioned that once before. And he, with a straight face, said to us, this is good, because now we're operating in a free market, and as the price crashes, we'll get the wheat from the chaff. A lot of you guys are Inefficient, Inefficient. Number one, it'll make you more efficient. It'll get the prices down for the consumer and the Europeans can't sustain it anyway. And somebody said, victor, would you. I was only 26, 25. Would you reply to that? And I said, everything you said was a lie. Everything you said was a lie. The Europeans can do that forever because they have no defense budget because we're subsidizing them. And they show that they treat our magnumanity with ingratitude as a sign of weakness. Number two, you can't make it on $400. You might make it on 1200 or 1000. You cannot make it. And there's going to be people who kill themselves and go out of business. Two, I mentioned in past two people I know killed themselves. One person hung himself, took drugs, shot himself in his garage and put. He was my high school friend and he turned on the pickup so he had carbon monoxide, drugs, bullet and noose and he couldn't make it. So. And then I said, sun Maid is not going to lower their price to the consumer. I'm sorry, it's just the co op is broke as it is and the private packers won't either. So that's just the way it is. And it proved to be absolutely right. So I get a little tired of the ultra libertarian lecture to farmers and workers that we know what's better for you and the market adjudicates. I don't think that's a liberal thing to say. It's conservative.
Jack Fowler
But yeah, it's the absence of. We talked about reciprocity before, of course, matters of immigration and dealing with China, but I don't know why it's not applicable to trade.
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't either. Same thing with rice in Japan. I don't. You know, they'd say your rice is dangerous or it's not as good as ours. And it's. It was wonderful rice. And they. Now they're sort of letting, they're opening up. And as some, you know, I could not buy a Japanese car when my father was alive because he saw a lot of his best friends and his first cousin who was adopted as a brother killed on Okinawa by Japanese. And it was a bitter fight to the end. And if you were in a B29 and you were trying to bomb, I can understand that in war. But if you jumped with a parachute, they either shot you in the air or executed you or put you in. They were very few B29 people ever got out alive. Few, but not many. So he just said, don't buy a Japanese car. I have. I don't know, I've always. As soon as he died, I thought that was silly. But I respected his wishes. I didn't buy. He said the same thing about, by the way, about German cars. He said, I'll let you have a Volvo. I got in a big argument and said, no Volkswagens. That's people's wagon. That's people's car. That's a Hitler car. We fought. Your mother's first cousin got killed and the other first cousin was injured and you're not going to do it. And we all fought that Hitler. And I said, okay, okay. Hey dad, we have a 544 Ladybug Volvo. Guess what? The Swedes gave iron ore to Hitler and they paid the freight charge themselves. I was a really smart. I won't say ass, but I was. He said, where did you get that? I said, I read about it in the world. I read it in the world book. And he said, I don't care, the Swedes wouldn't do that. I said, they did it, they did it, they did it, they did it, they did it.
Jack Fowler
It's sweet. Cards to buy.
Victor Davis Hanson
He's a wonderful person. So I never. I. I don't think I. First Japanese car I bought was a little truck after he passed away.
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, we're going to get to Tucker. But first. Every day, Americans make choices that shape our country's future, right down to which cell phone provider we support. Here's what most people don't realize. Patriot Mobile isn't just a wireless provider. They're an activist organization funded by selling top tier cell phone service. They've been on the front lines defending our freedoms long before it was cool. Standing in the gap when others wouldn't. The best part is they deliver prioritized premium service on all three major US networks, giving you the same or even better coverage, backed by 100% US based customer support. 100% US based customer support. Get unlimited data plans, mobile hotspots, international roaming and more. And when you switch to Patriot Mobile, you'll help grow a movement that fuels the Christian conservative cause. Every bill you pay helps advance the values of faith, family and freedom. Switching is easier than ever. Activate in minutes. Keep your number, keep your phone or upgrade. Take a stand today, folks. Go to patriotmobile.com VDH or call 972patriot and use the promo code VDH for a free month of service. That's patriotmobile.com VDH or call 9 7-2-patriot and make the switch today. And we thank the good people from Patriot Mobile for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, I hope maybe this is the last time we talk about Tucker Carlson and his latest to me, I assume maybe to you. Two troubling foray into the public arena. The claims that he was sort of of poorly treated on a trip to Israel and then the interview he had with Ambassador Mike Huckabee that just seemed, I don't know, pathetic. Anyway, what's your take on it?
Victor Davis Hanson
I listened to it and I always preface things when I talk about Tucker that I always see Tucker. When he was on Fox, he said things that are very different in tone and topic than he does now. And he was very magnanimous and kind to me because for years I followed on Monday his monologue and he and Laura and Sean were very nice to me. And I hope to get back on Fox and I feel a little better. So I'm not trying to be ungracious, but, but I don't know what's happened to him. I think a lot of it was the filters at Fox actually, in an ironic sense, were good for him because when he wanted, if he did want to go into those territories, they would advise him not to. But this latest one, the problem I have is the factual stuff. The factual stuff, Daryl Cooper said things that were factually incorrect about the firebombing of the Black Forest, about Churchill's role at particular times and going to war. He wasn't even prime minister when they declared war. That was Naval Chamberlain and he says that he was treated unfairly by Neville Chamberlain, was invited into the cabinet. Everything he said was factually, historically incorrect. And Neil Ferguson, my colleague and friend, and also Andrew Roberts, the three of us did a Peter Robinson on common knowledge about that that people can watch. But he said some things that I thought were reprehensible about suggesting that if the Hucklebee said this was the historic home of the Jews and there had been Jews there since biblical time, all true. And then after the Holocaust there was and even before that, with the rise of 19th century Zionism, there were Jewish migrants, but there were Arab migrants to the west bank, too. There were people coming in all the time, but the historical people who were there first were the Jews. And that was just a point Huckabee made. And then Tucker said, you think that gives them a particular right? He said, yes, at least they're not strangers. He said, well, why don't they all take DNA tests? Well, the problem with that is that Jewishness is not necessarily confined to be an ethnic rubric. It can be religious as well. There's black Jews, there's white Jews. It can be Asian. Anybody can be a follower of Judaism. I understand that. But the other thing is, given the Holocaust and racial purity and genetics, you don't say that. You know, you have to take a genetic test to show whether you're a Jew. Then what are they going to do? Wear another yellow star to say, I am a Jew, and this is going to be advantageous, and that means I get to stay in Israel? So it didn't come off well. And then he made something that I thought was egregious when they got on to gutter or cutter, whatever you want to pronounce it. When Huckleby. There was an argument. When Tucker made the. The argument that Christians were more numerous and gutter and they were better treated, and Huckabee said that was untrue, and they disagreed. And Huckabee was right. Tucker was referring probably to sheer numbers. I think there's 400,000 people in Gutter that practice Christianity. But that's not what Huckabee was trying to say. He was trying to say that they're citizens of gutter compared to citizens of Israel. There's 180,000 citizens in Israel that are Christians, and they have a right to build a church. They have a right to build a steeple. They have a right to have a bell. They can build it anywhere they want almost, unless it's right next to taking land from someone else. They have complete rights of freedom of worship. They're protected. That is why people are going to Israel from the west bank, in Gaza who were Christians, and from Lebanon. Everybody knows that. What Tucker is Talking about are 400,000 guest workers, but I guess helot would be a better term. They come from Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, and they're paid below world standards for that type of job. They have special enclaves in which they live. They're not citizens of gutter, and they are allowed to worship in prescribed places. They cannot go outside and open a church. They cannot go to one of their bosses and say, here's a Bible. Would you like to read it? They cannot sit in a park bench and pray. Everybody born in Qatar is a Muslim at birth. If they do not want to be a Muslim at birth, it's illegal to change your religion. You can't do it publicly. Maybe you can do it privately. Nobody knows about it. That's not true about Christianity and Israel. It's not true about if you're an Israeli Jew and you want to be a Christian, you can convert. You might have social pressures, but it's legal to do that. So it was completely erroneous what he said. And that brings up, and we don't have time to get into all of them, but that brings up the motive. Why all of a sudden when you leave Fox, you keep on this topic, a topic of Jews and Israel, why, why, why, why, why? And I don't know, I don't know if the effort is to move major figures in the MAGA movement like JD Vance to the right or to be friendly with particular powerful people. And then you say things that are very edgy and that puts them as it did with, with Kevin Roberts on the spot. Do you support your friend or is that the way he's exercising influence? I hope that's not because ultimately he's going to lose that because no one can run for president and Trump knows that nobody can be president when someone is very close to you who says that people in Israel should take a DNA test to prove that they're actually Jews. And, or that this gutter, by the way, and people, please correct me, but I am pretty sure that they did not outlaw virtual slavery to the 1960s or the late 50s. Maybe they were before Saudi Arabia. And that means when I mean slavery, I mean people who were hiring people as workers who were confined to barracks and they were not allowed to move around and their pay was adjudicated only by the employer. No dissent. They had no civil rights. And that came up. And you know, there's a good thing in Powerline today about a new book. I think the man's name was Mazol, I'll have to look. But he wrote about the Islamic slave trade and he points out that it was actually more closer to 16 or 17 million. And no one talks about it. They talk about the 11 million as they should, that came to the new world, but not the much greater number. And then there's in the book, apparently there's some grotesque descriptions of mandatory castration of young African boys with a 90% fatality rate to have the eunuchs of the Arab, the Islamic world, the Ottoman world, and then hundreds of thousands of so called that's where we get the word slave from the word Slav, white people from the Balkans, southern Italy that were captured by the Barbary Pir, et cetera, et cetera. So this idea that slavery was not known as much by the Arab world is completely not true. It was much more common in the Arab world, the Islamic world, than even in the European world. And Gutter had a very atrocious human rights record. And if you, by any modern standard, if you say that if a person is born into a country and they have, have free will and they should have the free will to speak as they want to vote and to choose their own religion, then it fails miserably on all those counts as most. I guess the Emirates is the only exception to some degree. But all those countries fail that contest. And so I don't know why you try to make. Why would you say that? Why would you try to defend that system over a parliamentary democracy in Israel? I don't understand it.
Jack Fowler
You were referring to. I was looking at Powerline while you. Yes, I was paying attention. I was ignoring it.
Victor Davis Hanson
No, I know you were.
Jack Fowler
It's a link from a Free Beacon article, the Islamic Slave Trade by Tanku Bharadarajan at the Free Beacon. I think that's what you're referring to.
Victor Davis Hanson
But Powerline, yeah, that was by Tunku, our friend. Yeah, yeah. And I was. And it's a much needed study and I'm going to try to buy that book immediately and read it. But again, it's very. I think I haven't been to. Well, I've landed in Qatar, but I haven't been. You know, I don't think that. I don't like people who say they land in an airport and they visit a country. But I've been to almost all the Arab countries. I've been a long time at Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Egypt, Jordan. I was in Iraq twice and I can tell you it's not like Israel. It's just not. When you go to Israel, whatever your political persuasions or religious preferences are, it's a breath of fresh air.
Jack Fowler
Most of those countries, yeah, they all had Jewish enclaves in those countries. Many of them. Not anymore.
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't think I've been to Israel once when I have not seen a protest from the right or left against the existing government. Government, put it that way. And when I read the Jerusalem Post or the Israeli Times or Haaretz or whatever these. It's constant back and forth. It's an open, free, combative political system that is non existent in the Arab world. It's a monolithic void. You just echo whatever who is in power and the general Arab narrative in general. And if you want to say I think it's time for close relations with Israel, it's a democrat. You can't do that for all practical purposes and maintain a viable, safe existence.
Jack Fowler
One last thing.
Victor Davis Hanson
Anybody knows that, anybody who's been there knows that.
Jack Fowler
Well, the attack on Benjamin Netanyahu also is like, he's not a real Jew. He doesn't practice religion. I'm not saying Tucker said that.
Victor Davis Hanson
He called Tucker a racist or something. I don't remember him ever saying that. Maybe Tucker could tell us when Netanyahu said that. Netanyahu is pretty careful about talking about American politics. You know, he is. Everybody thinks he shoots from the hip, but he doesn't really get into. I mean, he's controversial on the left here, but I don't remember him ever calling Tucker Carlson a racist. He might have said that he has anti Semitic tendencies, but not racism, I don't think. But I don't know what's going to happen because they're coming up to the midterms, and these midterms are going to be very close. And the election of 2028 will probably be very close. And the anti Semitism that's in the doctrinaire antisemitism is on the left. We all saw that with the student protests, the roughing up of Jews, the DEI woke prejudice, the knockout game where black teens inordinately attack Jews, the statistics on hate crimes, on who are the perpetrators and who are the victims. On the whole Farrakhan, we see that on the left, but we hadn't seen it recently on the right. And you've got to stop it because there's going to be a lot of people who won't want to vote unless you don't. It's not a matter of silencing people or deplatforming. It just says, given everything, I don't want to hear anymore that the Jews are at the root of all evil and that they're killing Charlie Kirk or Mossad is doing this, or Jim Epstein was an Israeli. Epstein was a left wing wannabe. That's what he was. He lavished money, he may have blackmailed people insidiously and he was a pervert, but the water that that fish swam in was left wing. Urban America, elite America and Europe. Anyway.
Jack Fowler
Okay. What? Well, we've got a clock ticking and we got time for one more topic. And we'll get to that after these final important messages.
LifeLock Announcer
It's tax season and at LifeLock, we know you're tired of numbers, but here's a big one. You need to hear billions. That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud. Now here's another big number. 100 million. That's how many data points LifeLock monitors every second. If your identity identity is stolen, we'll fix it. Guaranteed. One last big number. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com podcast for the threats you can't control. Terms apply.
Jack Fowler
We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, recording on George Washington's birthday. This episode is out on Tuesday the 24th. Victor, just one big blob of banking money things. First, Donald Trump is suing JP Morgan Chase, which admitted yesterday that it indeed shut down after January 6th. So Donald Trump's still president. That bank deplatformed him. They informed him that his personal and affiliated accounts were being shut down. And then another financial thing and they're not really related. But what the heck. You talk about what you want. Goldman Sachs announced that it intends to move away from DEI and its decision to use diversity based criteria for board election procedures. The DEI needs a lot more cleaning up than that. But we have two of the big deals in the financial world in America seemingly pushed back a little bit for various reasons. Any thoughts on either of those things?
Victor Davis Hanson
I never understood Jamie Dimon, whom I like. I like him also because of his heritage. He's Greek and he's from the Asia Minor diaspora after the tragedy of the end of the megala idea, the great idea that failed in the 20s. But my point is he said that his bank did not deplatform Donald Trump and that I think he hinted that others didn't. When I was writing this book that comes out, it's going to come out, the fall and rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Notice the order. Fall and rise, not rise and fall. But I looked at that very carefully and it's amazing how that was covered. It wasn't just covered in conservative, it was covered gleefully in liberal papers. You know that Donald Trump, Melania, the kids can't have access to banks. Ha ha ha. So it wasn't even controversial. And when Jamie Dimon, whom I have a lot of respect for, who's very voracious and truthful, when he said that, I thought he said something to the effect, well, come on now, that's ancient history. It was true. And they did do that to punish the Trump family and it was predictable that they did. And if you doubt that, just go back and read or listen to Susan Rice's interview that she did just, I guess 48 hours ago where she says she's going to do that if she gets back in power. Things like that. Punish them, take the knee. So that was the other thing. When they say they're not going to use WOKE and dei, I wish they would just say, we're not going to be racist anymore. We're not going to use racial criteria. We're going to go back to the great Martin Luther King and look at the content of people's character. And we are convinced that if we change the teachers unions and the way the public schools operate and allow people more latitude for homeschooling and charter schools and parochial schools, that African American urban youth will have the same equality of opportunity and they will all be just fine. Just same thing with Hispanic kids. Same thing with Asian kids. We know test higher and have higher GPAs on average than non Asians of all different parts. So my point is that why don't we just do that and just say we're going to work on K through 12 to give everybody equal opportunity, but we're not going at the back end, way back up. When you're 18, 20, 30, 40, go back to a reverse Jim Crow and start institutionalizing racial prejudice. And that's what we've been doing. And I don't think it's going to come back. I really don't. Even if they win the midterms, I don't think they will. And even if they win the presidency, I don't think they will. But if they were to, I still, still don't think that people want it. I haven't seen a. I know two things are incompatible. Jack, I'm in academia at Stanford, and they. I would say 95% detest Donald Trump. And I'd say, in my. Since 2016, I've had 10 to 15 academics tell me that to my face. And by association, me too. And I was up with two wonderful people, Neil Ferguson and Scott Atlas and me. We were all targeted by the Stanford Faculty Senate. The subtext was Donald Trump. Okay, so they didn't like him and he said no more pronouns. Right? I haven't seen any. Every academic that wrote a letter, you know, or email to us, it had they them Xer Z, right? Yeah. What was that Z stuff? It was all this stuff and they've dropped it. So why did they drop it? You would think they'd say, I hate Trump and I'm gonna just put it on every letter now. No, they didn't, because they knew nobody wanted it and it was ridiculous. And that was just performance art, virtue signaling. And people said, been there, done that, move on. And they've quit.
Jack Fowler
They've quit it. Like Latinx or Latinx, but I like Latinx better.
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't think you're going to have more drag shows at children's libraries or in military bases or you're going to have. I think Pete Hegseth just relieved somebody at Fort Bragg who was a teacher teaching at the military school there. And I think he wore a wolf tail and you said he was a wolf drowned or something. I don't get that. That was not.
Jack Fowler
I don't get the pluses on the lg. The plus plus pluses. I don't get most of it, but that especially.
Victor Davis Hanson
You know the first real thing I read in first literature class I took in Latin was Petronius Satiricon. That was One of my PhD focus topics on my orals and written exams. But when you read that novel, you think this couldn't be true. This could not be true. People did not eat all this food and get horribly obese and then count how many times a passed wind at the table. People didn't wear the opposite sex clothes. People were not. Nobody thought bisexuality and everything in there. Everything is now part of the popular culture here. And the subtext of that novel is infertility. I shouldn't say infertility. Abortion and radically dropping fertility in the post Augustan age. And nobody wants to have children. And legacy hunting. If you have no kids, you find an older person and then you court them and you either forge their will or take their legacy. And it's the same. It's affluence, affluence, affluence get to same pathology.
Jack Fowler
You gotta get that book and read it.
Victor Davis Hanson
Because secularism, agnosticism, affluence and leisure are what destroys civilization. It's not poverty or hard work or thrift, believe me.
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, if you had more hours to spare, which you don't, you could spend them and many more reading the comments that have come the last couple of episodes that you've been back. These are comments on YouTube and I'd like to read a few of them. One is from Claude Hopper9813 who writes, listening to Victor and Sammy is like sitting around the kitchen table with really smart friends. Thanks. Donnyd9432 writes, I actually woke up after the best night's sleep in a week. Been dealing with a broken pipe, had no water for a week. Anyway, I was kind of groggy, but my first thought was I hope Victor is better and able to be on today. Man, I woke up fast when I saw his face with Sammy's thank you God. Everyone who felt the same way. Make sure and hit the like and maybe we can educate some of these people who were denied one because they were born after the government took over. Educating your kids, well, that's, you know. First thing in the morning is breakfast with Victor and Sammy and then the last comment I'll read. There are so many good ones. This is from above the cloud 72 Victor, you are looking stronger every episode. I am thankful for that. Continued prayers for you sir. So many comments like that. So to those people, everyone who takes the time to do that, thank you very much. I want to encourage folks to visit civilthoughts.com and sign up for the free weekly email newsletter I write for the center for Civil Society. It gives you 14 recommended readings every week. Civil Thoughts I'm just going to shut up now, Vic. I'm done babbling my friend. It's great to be with you and thanks to the Daily Signal. And we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Bye bye.
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you. Thank you everybody for listening and watching. 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.
Title: Mike Huckabee Is Right. Christians Better off in Israel Than Qatar
Podcast: Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Host: Victor Davis Hanson (VDH) with co-host Jack Fowler
Date: February 24, 2026
Format: Contemporary political and cultural commentary with historical context
Main Theme:
Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler discuss contemporary political issues, tribalism, the state of Christianity in Israel versus Qatar (sparked by recent comments involving Tucker Carlson and Mike Huckabee), and broader shifts in American and global politics. Victor also shares a personal update on his health and recovery from cancer surgery, emphasizing the importance of public debate, historical realities, and the dangers of current political trends.
Victor’s Medical Update
Recovery and Gratitude
NYC Blizzard, Labor, and Voter ID
Historical Analogy
Rewarding Bad Behavior
Jackson’s Political Impact
Race and Class in American Politics
Rice’s Recent Comments
Coordinated Lawfare
Incitement and Political Extremism
Media Responsibility
Tariffs Ruling
Court Dynamics
Global Trade Realities
Tucker Carlson’s Critique of Israel/Huckabee Interview
Comparison: Christians in Israel vs. Qatar
General Political Analysis
Trump Suing JP Morgan; DEI at Goldman Sachs
Cultural Shifts and Academic Hypocrisy
On Gratitude for Support:
“I could feel [the prayers]. That sounds supernatural, but I do believe… overwhelmed.” (09:33) — Victor responding to public concern for his health
On Jesse Jackson’s Legacy:
“He really did not serve America well, despite being a great pro-lifer once upon a time.” (21:50) — Jack Fowler
On Political Tribes and Liberals:
“They love to champion people at distance… they do not feel comfortable with people who authentically grew up poor or in the middle class.” (26:00) — VDH
On Tariffs/Free Markets:
“The Europeans can do that forever because they have no defense budget because we're subsidizing them. And they show that… as a sign of weakness.” (45:38) — VDH
On Tucker Carlson’s Israel/Carlson’s Shift:
“Why all of a sudden when you leave Fox, you keep on this topic… of Jews and Israel, why, why, why… I don't know.” (57:12) — VDH
On DEI:
“When they say they're not going to use woke and DEI, I wish they would just say, 'We're not going to be racist anymore.'” (69:46) — VDH
The episode concludes with Jack Fowler reading listener comments, expressing public affection and support for Victor’s return, and promoting newsletters and Victor’s website. Victor signs off by urging listeners to like, share, and subscribe.
Summary by Topic: