← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: NEW Book, Trump’s Endless War Agenda, Ilhan Omar Immigration Fraud Explained
01:29:16
Victor Davis Hanson provides viewers with an update to on forthcoming book, “The Counterrevolution: The Rise and Fall of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement,” as well as recent comments Vice President JD Vance made on the “The Benny Johnson Show,” where he alleged that Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., committed immigration fraud, and how President Donald Trump can win the messaging war over the ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran.
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- [00:13]
Jack Fowler
Well, hello ladies and hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words, brought to you by the Daily Signal, our happy home. Victor is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. There he is wearing that Daily Signal hat. He is a senior contributor at the Daily Signal. He's a syndicated columnist. He's got an essay every week at American Greatness. Bestselling author, soon to be bestselling author again. Victor, I looked the other day to see if there was advance sales yet on Amazon for your forthcoming book, but not yet, but as soon as.
- [00:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
We haven't picked the COVID yet. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. We have picked the COVID Is it. I had the picture of when he says fight, fight, fight, you know, with the blood. But they thought that for a variety of reasons they didn't want that the publisher. So they picked the one where he's going like this, pointing at someone. Oh, well, whatever.
- [01:13]
Jack Fowler
What's the, tell us the title again. What is going, what is going to be the official title?
- [01:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
Counter Revolution, the Fall and Rise of Trump and his MAGA Movement.
- [01:28]
Jack Fowler
Okay, folks, you heard that. Go on Amazon when it's up.
- [01:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
The first half of the book starts at January 6th and it goes through all the polls and what everybody said about him and that the consensus that he was all through, what, what Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley were pulling out, he was completely written off. And then the series of events, the E. Jean Carroll, the Fanny Willis, the Letitia James, the Alvin Bragg, the Jack Smith, the getting him off the ballot, the Mar Lago Raid, and it examines all those in detail. I think I have some new stuff in there too. And then it says, and then as I describe that the second half of each of those chapters is how he rises in the poles. The mugshot helps him, everything helps him. And he puts DeSantis and Haley in a very strange position because if they criticize the lawfare against him, then they're aiding his cause. But if they, they say that he brought it on himself, then they are termed on the left side, leftist. So it really made their candidacies. I don't know if it was by design. It was hard to say it was by design. But Trump adroitly was able to frame it that he said if they think that I deserve it, then they're on their side. And so when they said he doesn't deserve this, Nikki Haley tried to kind of square the circle and say, well, what they're doing to him is unfair. But he, he should have never been in the position where they were able to do that. That didn't work. No. And then I start in with the primaries and then the campaign. Why? Why Harris lost. And then I try to do his first term from January 21 to January, December 31, 2025. I couldn't really update. Yeah, because it was already in press when the, the, the war, for example, happened.
- [03:43]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, well, it'd be a non stop book in that case. But to me that Mar A Lago raid was just.
- [03:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's horrible.
- [03:52]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Bridged too far even for people who wouldn't necessarily like them.
- [03:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's always going on position simultaneously with Joe Biden. And he had taken these documents out for 30 years and unlike the President, he had no discretion to declassify any of them. And then he. The worst of it was he had a ghostwriter, had no security clearance and he's on tape discussing classified material. And then the speechwriter knows that when Robert Hur's appointed and then he erases it all. And that was going to be subpoenaed. And all he says is, well, he didn't mean it. And he said I did it so I wouldn't be hacked. That was such a lie. And then they wouldn't release the oral record, did not match the transcript. And then Jack Smith, it really helped in a weird way. It helped the destruction of evidence.
- [04:52]
Jack Fowler
Hillary did it with her wiping the drive clean. The January 6th committee, what happened to all this?
- [04:58]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I go through all that. The destruction of. The worst was they said that there was massive files at Mar A Lago that were. They've only found 102. 102 papers. They took 13,000 out of the house. 102. And then they came with labels, they came prepared with labels and they stuck them on the 102. It said classified. And then they scattered them on the floor and took a picture of it. And that was not the way. And then they went into, you know, Malenia's drawers and everything. It was then you juxtapose that, you know, at Mar A Lago, they have a security booth that you can't get in. And then you look at Joe Biden's garage with all that stuff.
- [05:43]
Jack Fowler
The only weird thing is on top of classified documents, the second half of
- [05:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
the book is the rise of Donald Trump when it goes through the campaign in detail. And then the first year and boy, researching that, I saw it firsthand, as everybody else did, but I didn't realize until I started how just inept Kamala Harris was.
- [06:07]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, she did 45 days right without
- [06:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
dealing with 45 days. She wouldn't talk to anybody. And then when she did, you knew why she didn't, you know.
- [06:19]
Jack Fowler
But trump at the McDonald's and Trump on the garbage truck were just two
- [06:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
hundreds of millions of dollars in free advertising. And then she ended up having to pay. I think it was Cardi B and Al Sharpton and Oprah. She was paying the money for the interview.
- [06:38]
Jack Fowler
That other interview. Some, some influencer. I forget her name. Not that I ever remembered it, but they built a fake her set.
- [06:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, that was right. That was $150,000 fake set. Well, you know, there was so much in there, I couldn't get it all in. The book has I don't know how many. Gosh, I guess I got over 8 or 900 footnotes. 700. But I started it when I would. I was ill a year ago. I started March and boy, that was hard to write because I knew something was wrong. But when I was writing it, but I never had any idea that it was cancer. So I kind of wrote it. So when I went back and rewrote it, I could see that. Anyway, I hope it's in good shape now. I think people will like it.
- [07:25]
Jack Fowler
We just mentioned. You just mentioned interviews. Kamala Harris had this one she didn't have. That's with Joe Rogan. We're going to back into Joe Rogan by talking about J.D. vance. And we've got a bunch of other topics, including munitions in Iran, federal not federal judge in San Francisco, letting a murderer out, plus plenty of other stuff. But we'll get to all this in Victor's wisdom on these topics when we come back from these initial important messages. If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy the Daily Signals flagship show, the Tony Kennett cast, the same common sense perspectives you love. Weekdays at 7pm Eastern. And unlike some of the other evening
- [08:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
shows, we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis
- [08:14]
Jack Fowler
and good old American sarcasm.
- [08:15]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thom Tillis I'm pretty sure, might have been useful at one time as a doorstop for Find the Tony Kennett cast
- [08:22]
Jack Fowler
on YouTube, X Radio TV or wherever
- [08:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
you get your podcasts.
- [08:28]
Jack Fowler
We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor's website is the Blade of Perseus. You will find it@VictorHansen.com do subscribe, because when you do, you'll be able to read the two weekly exclusive articles Victor writes for the site and he also does one exclusive video. Plus there's tons of free stuff. It's $65 for the year. But if you want to just try it month, it's 6:50amonth. You can go that route if you so desire. We are recording. I don't think I gave the dates. This is Saturday 28th March and this particular episode will be up on Tuesday, March 31st. So, Victor, let's get your thoughts about JD Vance, who has been much in the news the last few days. And he gets into three areas. One, calling into Joe Rogan, Two, calling Netanyahu and chewing him out. And three, publicly attacking Ilhan Omar, congresswoman for marrying her brother. Your thoughts on what Vance is doing and on these things in particular?
- [09:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, he's doing what the traditional job description of a vice president is. It's to go out, take flack. Remember Spiro Agnew, nattering nabobs of negativity. Negativism, I think. Negativism. Yeah, yeah, whatever. And so that's what he's supposed to do. He's supposed to shield the president and take the flak and detour his enemies. And this was a multifaceted week. So with Joe Rogan, people should remember Joe Rogan endorsed Donald Trump on the last day, the last day of the campaign. So he wasn't interested. And he had voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary of 2008, 2020. So that, and he was part of the entourage with RFK and Dana White and Tulsi, all those people at Madison Square Garden. So he's, he's apolitical in one sense, but I would say that his heart is socially conservative, but maybe left wing politically.
- [10:50]
Jack Fowler
Victor, I don't think everybody knows essentially what he, what he said.
- [10:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. What he said was two things. One, that he was disappointed that the supporters of Donald Trump were either unintelligent or uninformed and they were dorks. And two, he said that Joe, I'm going to get this straight. Not Joe Biden, but Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had secured the border and done a better job on immigration. And that's what JD Vance then called him. And he was quite right about that JD and said those are factually incorrect. You know, Donald Trump inherited 12 million in illegal aliens and he has zero on some months. He has zero entrance. Neither Barack Obama nor what Hillary Clinton said she was going to do, nor Bill Clinton ever had zero. Both of them eventually supported mass scale amnesties, dreamers, whatever you want to call them. Trump did not. And then more importantly, Trump deported more criminals than either one of them. It's true that before Trump's second term, Barack Obama deported More. But they counted people who were turned away at the border as deportations, and that wasn't so untrue. Trump's cases, in every case, at least. And then he addressed the dorks, and I don't know that I thought that was when he said they're unintelligent and uninformed. There's been a lot of studies that show that people who watch, say Fox News know more about world events than cnn. Rush Limbaugh used to quote that data all the time and talk radio in particular. And I think, you know, when Johnny on Jesse Waters goes out to the beach and he talks to people or he talks to people in the street and they know nothing, I don't think he's really getting a lot of conservative people there.
- [13:05]
Jack Fowler
Well, he's getting college students, though, so that says something about the academy.
- [13:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
But they're not conservative, I'll tell you that. Because if he talked to people from Thomas Aquinas or Hillsdale, they would talk his head off with data and facts and analysis. So that I didn't. And then he says they're dorks. But that was kind of a weird word to use because they have been libeled by the left as chumps. I'm going to say. Biden called them chumps, garbage dregs. Obama called them clingers with their guns and religion. Hillary called them deplorables and irredeemables. Those are all Mark Caputo for Caputo, CNN said that there was more teeth. He had more teeth than all the people at a Trump rally. I guess it was Peter Stroke text to Lisa Page that he could smell them at Walmart. Whatever you, those terms of disparagement are not dorky terms. They're, they're kind of tough guy or they're, you know what I mean? They like guns. So I didn't know what he meant by dorks. Is that kind of like nerds or something you could use? When I see and when I hear these people on the left, if I wanted to be a stereotypical, if I was searching for a stereotypical characterization, I'd say they had spaghetti arms and nasal voices or they sounded like they were in npr. And, you know, if you listen to talk radio and the guy is for Trump, it's, hey, everybody, I want to tell you, if you listen to an npr, it's, wow, it's very problematic. There's pros and cons everywhere. Now, while we're not political, I think it's by universal consent that Donald Trump tragically is the worst president in U.S. history, that's that stuff that's dorky. So I don't know. So dede called him up and he kind of did it lightheartedly. You got wrong on immigration and dorks. He said, there's dorks in any group, but we have fewer than anybody left. And then he made another call right to Netanyahu. Now that is more interesting. And supposedly he yelled at Netanyahu for providing false information that gave an unrealistically optimistic picture of the resistance that would rise up sort of what people during the Iraq war, I think it was Richard Pearl said, when we'll be greeted as liberators. And people got latched onto that, that was more problematic because first of all, I don't think and you correct me and maybe your listeners will nod in agreement or shake your head no, but I don't think any vice president calls a head of state without the prior permission of the president. So when he called Netanyahu and blamed him, it almost echoed what Trump inadvertently said about Pete Hegseth. He said he's the one that really wanted to go in. And that suggests to me that Trump feels like he thought it was going to be a three week rather than, I think it'll be a six week. We're going into week four and six weeks could be six weeks. And he regrets that length of it. I'm not sure that he regrets going in there. I think it's been a spectacularly on the military side, we can get into that. Absolutely wonderful. But the politics of it, the explanation of it I think needs work.
- [16:55]
Jack Fowler
Excuse me, Victor. We have Venezuela and you have the bombing in Iran last year. So it gives this impression of things
- [17:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
that are immediately in clean.
- [17:03]
Jack Fowler
Yes.
- [17:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
What he needs to say is this just in a parentheses. He said, I didn't say I was against war or conflict. I said I was against endless forever wars. And I'm talking about 20 years in Afghanistan and 10 in Iraq and the nine month bombing on and off of Libya by Obama. And so when I came in, I wasn't going to say no war because our enemies would take that as chambered, unlike appeasement, and they would take advantage of it. So I had certain rules, opportunistic rules, that I would use mostly, if not exclusively, air power. And I would take out existential threats like Soleimani, who was the architect of anti American terrorism. And I wanted to get rid of Baghdadi, who had killed Westerners and beheaded them. And then I wanted to bomb isis. And I did all of that quickly. And Abruptly, then we were attacked by the Wagner group. I told my field commanders to reply disproportionately and wipe them out. I think they killed over 200 of them. All of those were not forever. They were one off. Then I was elected again and I followed my campaign promises. I went in to Iraq and to excuse me, to Iran in 26 hours of mission. And I bombed the nuclear facilities at three sites. And then it was a one off. I said, make Iran great, we'll negotiate. And then I went and got Maduro. We lost no US Soldiers, we had some serious wounded, but again, it was one. Now I'm in a much more formidable situation. None of those scenarios involve the specter of intercontinental ballistic missiles, massive drone fleets, terrorist proxies, nuclear weapons. And so I'm going to try to abide by my no forever war. And going in there for six weeks, if that's what it takes, is not forever. And I'm going to try to avoid the use of ground troops. Marco Rubio said he wasn't going to use them if possible. And so that's what he needs to say. It's not going to be nine months or seven months or eight months like Obama did with Libya. So he needs to say that. And then he needs to reiterate what he said on March 1 and March 20. He said we had certain agendas and that was to get rid of the nuclear threat. He needs to get the fissionable material, if he can get it. The ballistic missile and drone threat, he's working on that. The proxy subsidies to Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas, I think he's pretty much will finish that and then to stop the anti American killing and terrorism of Iran and as a threat to the stability of the Middle East. And I think he's empowered not just Israel, but vis a vis the Gulf states. They will be armed, they will rearm very quickly to the degree they haven't lost any of their offensive capabilities and Iran has. And then regime change. And he can say he never said, I'm going to go in there and throw out the government. He said, help is coming. Sometimes in moods of enthusiasm, he said, we're going to get rid of this guy or that guy. And he just needs to say, ideally the threat will end when the regime is gone. And I have tried to do my best within the confines of not engaging in a forever war to empower the resistance. And I think the destruction that we and the Israeli Air Force have done to Iran will help that cause. Maybe not now, maybe in a month, but eventually it has weakened that regime internally. And that was one of my agendas. And I would like to see regime change, but that is not why we are fighting this war. And that's all he has to say. And the other thing about Vance's call was I was a little confused because I really like J.D. vance. But when he blames a foreign state for telling his president that the resistance was going to rise up, and it would be easy. Easier than it was. Well, we have a Director of National Intelligence, we have the CIA, we have more intelligence agents, greater budget, more assets than does Israel. So you can consult a foreign country. But if everything that JD Vance said were true, and Netanyahu called up Trump and he said, look, you got to go in there, Donald. My guys tell me that the resistance is going to just flower, flourish once you get rid of that command. And Trump said, really? Okay, well, any President, Trump included then would call up John Radcliffe. What do we have on this? Is this true? Tulsi Gabbard, Is this true U.S. pentagon intelligence? Is this true? And there's 17 agencies. And he would call them up and verify it because it's our sovereign decision. You don't blame a foreign country for offering an assessment that you now post facto find less than persuasive. And anyway, I thought that was kind of inappropriate myself. Yeah.
- [22:34]
Jack Fowler
Even if it wasn't true, Victor, the cause for attacking is that they're at a point where they could create some weaponry that will really harm us.
- [22:44]
Victor Davis Hanson
Exactly. As I said, the point wasn't regime change. It was the US self interest in stopping 47 years of harvesting Americans, killing them, and having the ability, as apparently our negotiators said, of the ability to make 11 bombs and then now lying about, we're finding out that they have the ability to hit most European capitals and perhaps within a two years or three years, us. And since none of them have missile defense, it only takes one nuclear weapon. And so I think anyway, that I thought that misrepresented because what Vance was doing was then he was kind of confirming the West. Excuse me, the left wing charge that, that Trump had decided that the primary objective of this bombing was regime change. Because when he says, you said they were going to rise up and help get rid of the regime. Well, that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was to denuclearize and defang. And it's working. The other thing, very quickly, I think Vance knows that the bombing of Serbia was 72 days. We didn't lose any airmen, but we had. I mean, Serbia was A pathetic target compared to Iran. It was much easier. And we had a thousand plane NATO alliance flying with us, not just one country. And we lost two planes. We lost that F117 stealthy fighter. We lost, I think an F15 or F16. We haven't lost any combat aircraft at all. The first Gulf War, 1991, lasted 42 days. So we're not, I mean that could be what this is, 42 days. But the U.S. air Force, if you just knock the total losses, because they were much greater than this campaign, they lost 20 dead. We've lost, I think 15. And they lost 67. I looked that up the other day, 67 aircraft, if you count helicopters and jet aircraft, fighters. We haven't lost any except a logistical plane, you know, so it's been spectacular militarily, but especially in the modern media age, there's two wars that go on. There's a military war and there's a political war. And they're not necessarily independent and in a very sensitive democracy. And if you're a conservative president, it's not going to be like you can bomb Serbia for 72 days and the left wing will be quiet or you're going to bomb Libya for no reason in a disastrous campaign and the left will be quiet, quiet. You do anything and they jump on your back. So they, politically, they have to be, they have, they're doing a brilliant job militarily, but politically they have to do a couple of things. They need one to say, don't say 93% of the missiles are taken care of, 74%, 88. And then you see a hotel window blown up in a room in gutter, or you see American base hit, or you see an Israeli town hall hit. It's much better to say Iran is a formidable large country of 93 million people, one and a half times the size of Alaska. And we're going to get all of these drones, but they are scattered, they're in special enclaves with regional control and there's going to be vestigial attacks. And all we can say is the majority of the attacks will cease, but it's going to continue. And that's what we're working on. They need to say that and they need to talk about other wars and say this is how long the Gulf War was, this is how long and we're right on schedule. And then remind people that regime change is a wish for result, a dividend. But it was not the original. The original agenda was the US interest in stopping this, this rogue country from killing Americans causing international terrorism and getting a nuclear weapon with a ballistic missile to deliver it to us and our NATO allies. And that's. And they need to emphasize that. And doesn't. When you say we've got 93% of the missiles destroyed and then somebody says, well, you didn't tell us how many there were, 93% of what, 3,000, that's several missiles that are still there. When you say we've destroyed 100 of the Iranian navy warships and that's 95% of it. But then you say, does that include these little kind of cartel high speed motorboats that drop mines and can be used as suicide craft? Or they have a torpedo on them because there's lots of them, hundreds of them, they're not very expensive. So I think that they need to emphasize how difficult the mission was and how well they are doing completing it rather than getting defensive and saying we've almost. They gave the expectation there would be no more missiles by now or drones. And there will be because they have kind of a decentralized, kind of like a Borg or honeycomb. They've got regional commanders everywhere. They're now isolated and can't communicate with Tehran. But they have been told you have nine missiles, you have 50 drones, and you use them as you see fit whenever you want. And they have, they're in tunnels and they brag, you know, they drag them out, shoot, get back in the tunnel, or they launch them and then they leave the site and go to the next cache. So it's going to be very hard to get all of those. And the same thing with the Straits of Hormuz. They need to say every administration has had a plan to block the Strait of Hormuz. I mean to unblock or free or liberate the Strait of Hormuz. We can do it. But what we're trying to hesitate, we want to do it with the least amount of collateral damage. And then they can say, and this is thematic of what we're doing throughout that country because of this resistance and because we believe, as everybody does, the Iranian people have been captured by this 47 year aberration. If you believe that, you should say that and then say we can't hit their water supplies, we can't hit their infrastructure, we can't hit their train station, we can't hit their radio and communications because your power generation, that will destroy the country. But we don't want to destroy the country. We want to destroy the regime that has captured the country. And that's hard to do. It's not like Germany where we say, you know what, in Germany, you guys voted for Hitler and we'd like you to throw him, but you tried to kill him and it didn't work. So we're going to bomb, you know, we're going to bomb Hamburg and Berlin and we'd like to hit targets. But you've got good fighter aircraft. You've got wonderful flak guns. It's cloudy, it's windy, it's impossible. We don't have the technology. We're just going to bomb. That's what the British said. Yeah, you did it to us, we're going to do it to you.
- [30:27]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Look at Coventry. Hey, we got one other J.D. vance thing to pick up at first. Victor.
- [30:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
Third one.
- [30:33]
Jack Fowler
Well, but Utah and Florida just passed bills to ban fluoride in the water supply. So why are a growing number of states suddenly doing a massive U turn on fluoride when they've been adding it to our water for the last 80 years? Well, RFK Jr. Has been warning us about fluoride for a while, and the government now admits to the fact that fluoride is linked to lower iq. In a study done by JAMA Pediatrics, one of the top medical journals, scientists found that the fluoride levels over 2 milligrams per liter of water caused more than 2 point drop in children's IQ scores. You've heard us talk about covpure before. It's a water filtration system that sits on your countertop. If you're watching this podcast, you can see it over my left shoulder. I have it in my office. You don't have to drill any holes or call a plumber to set it up. You just fill it with tap water, plug it in, and it gets straight to work. They're clearwave Reverse Osmosis technology is lab certified to remove up to 99.9% of impurities in your water. Anything that isn't water, meaning fluoride, arsenic, and forever chemicals. All of that gets filtered out, leaving you with pure water. And let me tell you, once you try cove pure water, you're never going back. It's the best tasting water I've ever had. Actually, I say it doesn't taste at all. It's just refreshing. It's refreshing. The water we have here in Connecticut, Victor, I mean, you think you're drinking out of a Clorox bottle anyway. Plus, I love. What I love about code pure is it lets you have water exactly the way you want it, whatever temperature you want. Just push A button. Cold, hot, warm, whatever. If you happen to like fluoride, that's totally fine. There are tons of ways you can get that through toothpaste or mouthwash, but the government should never force you to ingest it. So take back your right to choose, click the link in the description box. Covpure.com VDH and for a limited time only, you'll get a special discount of $200 off covepure. Again, that's covpure. C o v e p u r e.com VDH and we thank the good people at covpure for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words here on the Daily Signal. And I'm going to drink some of
- [32:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
my Cove Pure water.
- [32:55]
Jack Fowler
Salute. Salute. Okay, Victor, one more J.D. vance thing that he called out Elon Omar for marrying her brother.
- [33:07]
Victor Davis Hanson
Now, that was. I think that was long overdue. I'm so glad he did that because I went through when he said that. I saw it on a site, in the news site. So I just went through and I just Googled Ilian Omar, Marry youy Brother, evidence, things like that. And she has never once said, I categorically deny that I was ever legally married to my full brother. She's never said that. She said, you're a racist, you're a nativist, you're lying. It's not true. And then from what her surrogates are trying to say is the person that she married, they're trying to say is not her brother. You know, that he had a different name or he came in the family. Why doesn't she just do this? She said, I resent what you said, Vice President Vance. And I want to show you that the man that I was married to, DA, DA we all know. I mean, she can't say she was married to somebody legal. There's a legal record and there is a record. It'd be very hard for that person. We have facial identification. We have all sorts of. We know who she was married to for a number of years. She lived with him when she was a student. All you have to do is say by testimony, by facial recognition picture, you were married to this person. We just want you to have a DNA of him and a DNA of you. That's all we're asking. And I would have said that instead of she married, I would have said, that's why I'm not vice president, obviously. But I would have said, there are a lot of speculation and rumor swirling around our representative, Ilian Omar. I think it would be in her interest and especially our interest in enforcing U.S. immigration law. If you just come become candid and say, this is the person that I was married to and he and I in a public event will both take a blood test and take, take DNA and you can dispel this nonsense forever. And when it shows you that we are not blood related, I'm going to sue for libel. All the people who made those scurrilous charges. That's all she has to do. But she's getting more and more strident and, you know, in her reaction, she's almost hysterical. And it's success to me that she knows that she committed a felony by engaging in immigration fraud. If that's true and you look at the statute, she can face severe punishment or deportation. You know what I mean? Yeah.
- [35:48]
Jack Fowler
Well, they shot George. What's his name? The guy from New York. I can't even remember his name now. George Stamos.
- [35:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. The police.
- [35:58]
Jack Fowler
What is his name?
- [35:59]
Victor Davis Hanson
Gosh.
- [35:59]
Jack Fowler
Oh, my.
- [36:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
The congressman who got the boot. Well, anyway, Santos. Santos.
- [36:03]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, Santos. Well, we're going to keep on a military footing here by talking about getting your take on some of the reporting on munitions and we'll do that when we come back from these important messages.
- [36:18]
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.
- [36:34]
Jack Fowler
The faithfulness of God.
- [36:36]
Victor Davis Hanson
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.
- [36:48]
Jack Fowler
We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, also on the Daily Signal Network. Victor's got another gig. Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. You should check that out on the Daily Signals YouTube channel. Victor does four of those seven, eight time minute videos a week on specific topics. It's great stuff. By the way, you mentioned before, Vice president, put in mind people, I think we're going to see some comments about. Well, Victor, you should be vice president. And then also Spiro Agnew, nattering nabobs of negativity.
- [37:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
That was William Sapphire. Did William Safire write that?
- [37:28]
Jack Fowler
He was either he did or Pat Buchanan.
- [37:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, one of them did.
- [37:31]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, I think it was actually, it may have been Pat, but I met Agnew once. National Review, if I may use that phrase, Victor, National Review way, way back. Thanks to Matthew Scully, who was the great writer and presidential speech writer also later. But he led this effort to get Agnew's bust in the Capitol and Every vice president has a bust there. And Agnes had been overlooked. So he led an effort and they did it. And they had a ceremony and I went. Represented NR on that. And he was a really nice guy. I'm a ceremony.
- [38:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, he was. I was living in Greece when he came. You know, he came correct me. I know we have a lot of Greek Americans. I hope Max is listening. Max Nikias, because he's the expert on the Greek American diaspora. But I think his name was Agnostopoulos or something. It was a long. And he was from a village in the Peloponnese, usually from my experience. And I think the data showed if you're south of the Isthmus of Corinth, except for the tourist areas around Napoleon and stuff, it gets very conservative. Much more in Greece is kind of like blue and red states. The northern part, Thessaloniki, and up in that area near the Balkans, what we call the Balkan states is much more liberal, and the islands are much more liberal, at least most of them. But he was there, and it was during the dictatorship. He was, of course, very well treated. Then when he never really pled guilty, he just said, no contender. I remember. I just don't want to deal with it. And there was always that great controversy whether Trump. I mean, Nixon had picked him because he was kind of a terrifying or incompetent or corrupt, whatever you want to term him. And then you couldn't impeach Nixon because you'd have Agnew. And then they. The left solved that by taking an old charge. Remember, it was very old that he, as a governor of Maryland, he had had payoffs for contracts. And then they dragged. They drudged it up, and then they got Jerry Ford, and then they said, wow, we can impeach. And so that's. That's what they did.
- [39:42]
Jack Fowler
Glory days of American politics. Well, Victor, let's get your take on this headline. This is from the D. Daily Mail. It's today.
- [39:51]
Victor Davis Hanson
Can I just say one thing?
- [39:52]
Jack Fowler
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [39:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
That charge resurfaced, and I made it, too, that that was the reason that Kamala Harris picked Tim Waltz, the Agnew employee. That if she was ever elected and we found out how incompetent she was, she would be preferable to Tim Waltz because nobody would want to impeach her and convict her and have him. Somebody needs to write a book on vice presidential selections on the basis of incompetency to protect this chief executive during an impeachment trial. Okay. Sorry for interrupting.
- [40:29]
Jack Fowler
No, no, it's your show.
- [40:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
You talk about Whatever you want.
- [40:32]
Jack Fowler
Headline from the Daily Mail today. Panic inside the Pentagon after staggering report Lays bare Tomahawk Missile Crisis as Iran keeps stranglehold upon the Straits of Hormuz. And there was another article from last week that I had thought of raising. We ran out of time and it was a Wall Street Journal op ed by Seth Jones. The US Ammo shortage is worse than you think. So Victor, is it worse than we think or is there a mix of is there a little bit of media overreaction here or what?
- [41:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, I mean it didn't just happen. We're not making enough. And it came up in some conservative media during the Biden administration when we talking about various types of artillery shells. Remember that to supply Ukraine, we had to go into Israel and take I think several hundred thousands in a depot and send it to Ukraine because we didn't make enough. And that prompted a new factory to build artillery shells. But nobody ever said anything like that during the Biden administration. Everybody should have said, well, we're short TAMA because I don't know how many we've expended. 800 or so. And the problem is more existential in the sense that you don't shoot down a $30,000 Iranian drone with a seven million dollar missile. And we learned that with the Houthis, they were just trying to exhaust our supply. So we need to either do an iron beam type laser system or what the Ukrainians are doing with anti drone drones that can cheap drones that can knock other drones out. But the idea that you're going to spend 7 million bucks for the most sophisticated anti ballistic missile to knock down a drone, or you're going to hit a site with a Tomahawk when you can use a $5,000 JDAM bomb, there's something wrong there. And it's either that we don't have the right technology and we don't have enough of it so that we don't use these expensive rarefied weapon systems, or we need to ramp up production and do it in a much more economical fashion. In the meantime, I'm not so worried because you use Tomahawks basically from ships and things that are way off the coast because you don't have, you don't have much less. You need air supremacy. You might have air superiority better than air parity, but if you don't have air supremacy even with the superiority means you're going to be in the air and you're going to see an enemy and you're going to have to shoot him down. There's none of that in Iran. So you can take all varieties of US aircraft with very sophisticated targeting and they can use so called old iron bombs that have been retrofitted, you know, to be smart weapons and you can do it for a fraction of the cost and without little danger, with little danger to the pilot. So the purpose of a Tomahawk is to hit a very well defended enemy in lieu of using air power that would endanger the pilot's life and a hundred million dollar aircraft. But I don't think that's quite the situation now because if we get low on Tomahawks, we'll just fly more missions. I don't think you're going to really increase the risk to the plane and the pilot given that so far there doesn't seem to be very many anti aircraft capabilities with the Iranians. But we should. You know, it's just part of this western laxity. You know, you just think you're at the end of history and I don't know, I'm a NATO member or NATO's there and you don't really calibrate what you actually nobody sits down and said how do we beat the Soviet Union? Yeah, oh we had Pershing missiles that were better than their, you know, Scuds or whatever they were. Oh, we had this many tanks. Oh, we had this. And then we're at the end of history. Now it's all over.
- [44:46]
Jack Fowler
Well, do you think, do you think you've talked a lot over the years of the generals and admirals retiring into, immediately into board chairmans at defense technology companies. If that didn't happen, do you think the outcome on armaments would be radically different today?
- [45:03]
Victor Davis Hanson
Because I, I have to be careful because I know some of them. But I will say this, I'm a little surprised that we have so many generals now that are coming out of the woodwork again and are very critical of this war. And so many of them have been lobbyists or board members of Defense. And I'm talking about the Big Six or Big Seven, you know, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop, Lockheed, etc. And they were integral in trying to coming out of the Pentagon with a whole array of subordinates in procurement and positions of authority to buy weapons. And it's not that, it's not necessarily corruption, but they use their influence. Hello Colonel, you remember me? I was your commanding officer. Hey, we got this new rocket. It's much better than Lockheed's or it's much better than Northrop's or it's much better and the result of it is the consensus was that we were, they were selling and the Pentagon were buying very, very expensive systems, but not enough of them to fight in asymmetrical wars that with countries that had very deadly weapons for a fraction of the cost. And we should have been going to startup companies that came to us and said, I can provide 100,000 drones for $5,000 or a shipbuilding country. And so I can take a cargo ship and put a landing deck on it, a new one, and you can put 5,000 drones in storage and you can take them off at 50 at a time and you can be 500 miles away from the target or something like that, and you can buy this ship for not 14 dol billion, but for 50 million. We didn't think like that. And I think that part of it as a result is of the revolving door. I think it wouldn't have been hard at all to say that anybody above the rank of one star, one star to four star when they retire from the Pentagon, that they should take a hiatus of 5 years or 10 years from working for a defense contract just makes it. We already have rules like that. You have to get a special waiver if you want to be a civilian official like Secretary of Defense. I don't know why we don't do that just to protect them so that people don't make charges that impugn their objectivity. I just don't think that it's, you know, it reminds me of. I had a really. You know, I've had some really good doctors. I won't mention all of them, but one of them who was not a general practitioner but a specialist, said to me he was a really good guy. He wasn't my favorite country doctor that I've mentioned before, Marshall Sorensen, but he said I had a urology problem and he was talking about this particular drug and that particular drug and he said, well, you go, and the guy that sells me as an ex doctor. And I said, that's good. And he goes, no, he's just trying to. He comes in and he gives me all these samples and I don't know which ones are any good, but he's peddling stuff and he's drawing on my friendship, you know what I'm saying? So it's the same idea. And I think the result of it is the United States does not have enough weapons. And we need to go back to the World War II paradigm. We're not going to make Tiger tanks that are 70 tons or Panthers that takes a week to get the transmission fixed, we're going to build Shermans, and you're going to be able to take the transmission out in three hours. And they're going to be a fraction of the cost. And we're going to build Mustangs, and they're going to be really good engines and really good airframes, and they're going to be as good or better than the Focke Wulf 190s. But we're going to make a lot of them. And Thunderbolt. We're going to just flood the zone. And that's what we did. We're going to make B24s. It's not a great bomber. It's good enough. It's faster than B17. It's harder to fly. It's more vulnerable. But we're going to make one an hour at Willow Run. That's what they did. And the Germans, I think it was Hermann Goering said we can't beat the Russians because they're automatons. He said they've got these blank, blank American trucks, GM trucks, and six wheeled trucks. Deuce and a half, they call them tons. And they had all the. They had 400 divisions and they were mobilized, automated. In fact. The German term for putting troops in the back of a truck and going 70 miles a day versus the German army that was using horses. And that's what we need to do, is just build lots of really good stuff and then have our. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have the most sophisticated fighters and all of that. And I'm more power to the next bomber that cost a billion dollars or whatever. But you've got to have. I think our whole bomber fleet is probably under 100 planes with B1s and B2s and B50. I think. Well, maybe a little more. We have about 70 B52s. I'm just doing this all off the top of my head. We probably have, I don't know, 40 B1s and I don't know how many B2s. 30 or something. And it's not like we have 500 bombers.
- [50:45]
Jack Fowler
Yeah. Also, if you had to replace them, let's say something, you know. Remember the Ukrainians sent those drones and destroyed all those Russian planes.
- [50:53]
Victor Davis Hanson
Exactly.
- [50:54]
Jack Fowler
What. Something like that.
- [50:55]
Victor Davis Hanson
That was a very timeless. Yeah. And we just had. At our main B52 base in Louisiana, we just had a report there were mysterious drones that came out of nowhere that were immune to being jammed, and they were more sophisticated than off the shelf. We don't know who had them. But I think we all have a suspicion that there's people in the United States from China that are doing things like that.
- [51:21]
Jack Fowler
Well, we're going to get domestic in a second here, Victor. But first, to our listeners and viewers, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise, though, never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history, physical gold, not as speculation, but as insulation. Our reputation matters here at Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, which is why we've partnered with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability and an A rating from the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships that are built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special liberty offer to our listeners and viewers to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in the bank. And if you believe as we do that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious. Call 844-79091, 799191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 8447-9091-9184-4790, 9191 or visit protectwithvictor.comb history rewards those who take the long view. And we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for once again sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, before I get to two domestic stories, I just quickly, you know, we were talking before about the devastation of after World War II. You mentioned, mentioned and I just want how long did it do you think it was, say, 1962 or 65? And there were parts of Germany or France that were still picking up bricks and rubble and rebuilding or how long did it, how long do you well,
- [53:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
in East Germany, I mean, they were still East Germany, but West Germany rebuilt very, very quickly. I mean, the German miracle, the German miracle where they were achieving GDP rates of 7 and 8%, you know, and they were exporting Volkswagens and Mercedes. That happened within a decade. They were really booming. And it was just. And Japan was the same way. The Japanese miracle. I mean, when I was growing up, when I'm five or six, there was a term that people use, made in Japan.
- [54:30]
Jack Fowler
Made in Japan, Yeah.
- [54:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Remember that? It was like junk. And it was like a little. You'd go to the Fresno district fair and they give you. Hand you out little fake umbrellas, you know, the toothpick with a little thing on a hamburger or something. It said underneath, made in Japan. But. And that would be my earliest memory, 1958 or 59. But the Korean War really jump started the Japanese economy because that's where we based all of our troops and went to Korea and all of the munitions. And that really jump started. But I can remember being in high school, I could not believe it, where I had this. There was four nerds. We call them the four nerds.
- [55:09]
Jack Fowler
They weren't dorks, they were nerds.
- [55:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
They were nerds. Imagine being at a very tough high school where fights were common and you had four guys. I think one went to UC Berkeley, one went to Caltech. They were geniuses. And they all ended up very successfully. But they were. They were high IQ people. And they were. One of them was a fanatic, expert in cameras. And I used to talk to him about it and he said, oh, I wish I could get a Nikon. This was like 1967. The Nikon lenses are so much better than. And I thought Browning and all America, come on. No, no. And so they were. Within 20 years, they were leading the world in a lot of things. Germany and Japan. But the Palestine, we can't do anything here. And I'll give you an example. The Gavin Newsom, as I mentioned to Sammy, the Gavin Newsom Bobcat, mountain lion and coyote overpass on the 101 and north.
- [56:15]
Jack Fowler
Did that cost a billion dollars?
- [56:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
No. No. 100 million, 114 million. But it's not done. It's already in its fourth year. It's not going to be done to the year it might be five years. It's landscape, it has no on or off ramps and they call it the butterfly bridge. But it's basically. Nobody cares about rats and mice. It's basically large predators that they're worried about endangered species. But it's going to bring them from a more isolated area into the backyards of very excl homes on hilltops, right where they'll poach their dogs and cats. But the thing is, in 1932, they started the. I mentioned that to Sammy. They started the Oakland Bay Bridge, 26,000ft and the Golden Gate Bridge, I think 55,000ft long. This thing is 200ft long. And they built both of them at the same time in four years. And so they can't. That generation, who was poor people, were destitute. It was right in the worst part of the depression. 32. They built together almost 30,000 linear feet of the two iconic bridges in San Francisco that are still there. And our worthless Generation cannot build 200ft at the pinnacle of our affluence for a bunch of animals. That's completely unnecessary. And when you add that. I gotta calm down. If you add that to Gavin Newsom's Mojave Desert solar plant, with federal help that they're dismantling, I think that was a billion and a half. The Monterey Battery factory that stores solar power at night, that's blown up twice. No need to mention the Solyndra assembly project that Obama and our governor said would produce limitless solar panels. Better than China. That's closed down. And you add this bridge and then of course, we have the high speed rail. 15 billion, $20 billion. Not one foot of track laid Merced to Bakersfield. Add all of that up and compare it to what our ancestors three generations ago, they said, you know what? California has 15 million people. Someday it's going to be out of water. And we get three times the state's water to the north of Sacramento. We only have 1/3 to the south, but we have 3 times the population to the south and 1/3 to the north. So we're going to go up and we're going to dam the Klamath, the American river, their tributaries, and we're going to build an aqueduct and we're going to take that water all the way down to the Central Valley. Central Valley Project for irrigation, California Water Project for water storage. And we're going to ensure communities as diverse as San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, but especially Los Angeles, we're going to pump it over the top of the grapevine. I think still that is the largest lift of water in the world. And they did all that In, I think, 78 years. California Aqueduct. We couldn't even build a mile of
- [59:31]
Jack Fowler
that today, so you couldn't get the permits in seven or eight years.
- [59:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
There's a whole corpus of ancient thought. If you read Livy, Horace, Suetonius, novelists, dramatist, it's all the same leisure and affluence. Have Ruined us. Catullus writes to himself, catullus, you are lazy. Leisure has ruined you and Livy. We cannot live with a remedy nor the disease. And he's talking about Polybius, I think it was Sallust said it would have been better that Rome lost the Carthaginian war than have destroyed Carthage and got that huge amount of slaves and money coming into Italy. Something about affluence. It just creates among the elite a false sense of utopia that they're so powerful, they're so wealthy, they're heaven on earth. Many of them are agnostic and atheists, so they don't believe there's a world beyond. They think that this is the here and now and they're going to make heaven on earth. So you know what? We are so sophisticated and we've got iPhones and we've got apples and now we're going to worry about bobcats and coyotes or I'm so well off and I can get in my Gulf Stream. I see that guy and he's injecting heroin, defecating urina, fornicated on the street. We're going to get an NGO to give him $100 a week to help him out for his drug habit. And they do things. And then we have the average person that the more affluent and leisure they are, the less they work or the less they're not connected with nature. I can see it with myself, you know, I work pretty hard, but compared to my, my grandfather or father, God, he, I remember, he, he. I came to work when I was 15 to irrigate with him and I was there at 7 o'. Clock. He said to me, in the summer, did you sleep in? I said, well, no. And he said, well, I've been out here since 4:30 in the morning. I said, well, how do you see? He said, I have a flashlight. I said, well, seven is pretty early. And he said, well, I've been worked two and a half hours and I'm 76 years old.
- [62:00]
Jack Fowler
And he had one lung, right?
- [62:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
That was my Swedish grandfather. He said to me, you should ride his. Actually there's a song called Old Paint, but he called it Paint. It was a dappled big horse. He was about 72 and it was completely wild and he had broken it and he got on it and he could actually make it go on its back legs like in the movies, you know, and take his front like he was boxing. 70, 72 years old. He broke horses. And then, you know, he would just. He was the one that I think I Told you cut his finger off in a grind. My brother did in a grinder, but he did in a saw. And then he put. He used to cut the horns off his billy goats. You know, he had a flock of them. So he took horn stopper, you know that, and he just put it on his finger. And so we went down there. My father said, well, what happened? Well, you know, I lost the top of my finger. Well, when did you do that? Oh, I lost it this morning. He said, well, you're going to get tetanus infection. No, I put the horn stopper on it. So they took him into the Kingsburg Hospital and they. I had to cut all this was basically Elmer's glue on steroids. And then they had to tie off I don't know what and take the clean bone. And then he came back that night and he showed me. We went down to see him and
- [63:27]
Jack Fowler
he had his trophy.
- [63:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I give credit to my twin brother. He was grinding. He was so busy. It was late at night and he was trying to get a disc done and he cut the end of his finger off the next morning. There he is. Yeah, it works.
- [63:43]
Jack Fowler
No time off for farmers and ranchers. Well, Victor, you're talking about leisurely people. And I think I have one. I don't know that she is or not, but let's get. This is the local part. And we'll round out the show with these two situations in big cities. Let me just present them in the new Swing for the fences. The first headline here judges outrageous reason for letting grandpa Vika kill her walk free. I think it's Vika, how it's pronounced. But this judge is Linda Colfax from San Francisco. And she. Here's the story begins the New York Post. San Francisco judge said that throwing the killer of Grandpa Vicha in jail would have been a, quote, poor impact, end quote, on the violent attacker as she revealed her decision to let him walk free. Judge Linda Colfax explained her ruling as Antonine Watson, 24, was set to be released on probation for the 2021 killing during which he fatally shoved beloved Thai grandfather in an unprovoked attack. So where does this madness come from? And then the other story, which is about Chicago, and this is either today's or yesterday's Daily Mail headline. I think it was yesterday's nightmarish moment. Hundreds of lawless teens overrun downtown Chicago as stores looted and bystanders maced. And then this. I'm not going to read all this other than to say several police cars were stationed nearby, yet they apparently failed to intervene. So this is what has become of the rule of leisure class over our major cities which are turning.
- [65:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
Are you suggesting that when they break into stores they're not getting sacks of flour, rice, shovels that they're buying?
- [65:38]
Jack Fowler
Yeah, they're hungry in its wellness. Yeah.
- [65:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
They're after sneakers and jewelry and gold. I think there's two themes to these. The first on the tie, I remember that the judge obviously believes that she is not going to be walking back from the San Francisco Opera to her car and this fellow is going to be out and confront her if she was, or her daughter or her son. So she believes that she is part of a network that has indemnity, that either she lives in a particular neighborhood or she has a bailiff in the courtroom or whatever. But I'm speaking as the son of a superior court and appellate court judge. And although my mother was a Democrat, she would always say to me when sentencing and I have to think not only about the deterrent that we have to show people you can't do this, but I have to think about if I were the victim, if I were the victim and what that person must be going through and there has to be some recompense. The other thing is the Asian community in this last election voted more for Republicans than they had in the past. I think that was a combination of the idea that dei, at least in the university realm, was aimed at in large part at them, that Asians, you know, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans were being systematically discriminated and to an extent people from India as well, and that the people who doing that were left wing. And the other thing is in a community like San Francisco that has a large Asian population, there had been a number of these attacks in which a lot of these criminals view the Asian community as they do the Jewish community in New York, especially the orthodox Jewish, that these are very law abiding people, they are not likely to be armed with a concealed weapon, they are not likely to fight back and they're going to be vulnerable and they're going to be a little bit and I'm going to go after them. And that's what they did. There was about six or seven repeated attacks on Asians when this took place in San Francisco. And I think these things are making the Asian community a little bit more conservative. And so that was a horrendous thing that they did. And they do the same thing with the knockout game and the Hasidic Jews as far as the riot and the Tumult in Chicago, when you have an existential problem like that, it's the old nostrum. If I can't enforce the felony, I better make a big show that I'm enforcing the misdemeanor. So those police stood idle by and the government, what are you going to do with that? So what they're going to do with it, they're probably going to feel good that they pull over some guy that went 70 miles in a 60 and throw the book at him. It's like as I mentioned, I think with Sammy, Victor wants to put solar panels. So they want me to get a plan of a building that's 100 years old and go through all these regulations when quarter mile away there's gang members, there's been a shootout and they don't even know how to touch that. And so in that case, think Jack of the Taboos, if you were going to address that problem that black teens, say from the age of 12, 13 to 30, inordinately commit 50%, there are 3%, 4% black males of that age of the population, population is 12%. Males are 6, maybe 4%. 4% are committing 50% of violent crimes and murders in that ballpark. So how do you address that? Well, if you incarcerate these people for a deterrent effect like we did in California with three these people, and I'm not focusing on African Americans alone, but anybody that does these things, you focus on that 3% of the population creates, we're told by criminologists, 3% account for about 75 to 80% of all crimes. If you, and they're three strike type people and you put them in jails, we built all these prisons and the crime rate plummeted in California. And then of course people said, this is an inordinate incarceration of people of color and this is draconian. And then we relaxed it until Trump started deporting people. Now we've got the crime going down in some areas, but what would you do? How would you do it? If you were a politician, what would they say? You're Jack Fowler and you say, you know what? We've got a terrible crime. We've got these bands of African American young men, predominantly, not exclusively, but predominantly. And they assemble at certain points. And we've got to make sure that we protect people, especially people of color in their own neighborhoods. First thing, they'd say, you're a racist. You are a racist. How dare you. And second thing, what would you do? You'd tell your police, could you Go. And they said, not this pig. Mr. Mayor, I saw what happened in the George Floyd. I saw Officer Chauvin. He did a police approved neck thing and maybe he was too violent, maybe he wasn't. But the perpetrator was passing counterfeit bills. He had a long record of violent home assault and he was on dangerous drugs. And I'm not going to be that guy. I'm not going to touch that. I don't want to go in there and try to use sufficient level of force to stop that rioting and gang activity. I'm not going to do it. Well, they don't say that, but that was why they didn't do it. Especially in a city like Chicago with the Soros prosecuting DA and attorney and Mayor Johnson. He would turn right around. If you caught one of those guys that was beating somebody up and they were almost killing somebody on the ground, kicking them or breaking into a store, he would let the person out. The police know that, they would let him out with no bail and then they would blame the police. So they're not going to do anything. So the attitude, as I understand it, of the general population from observation is what's going on in Los Angeles, Chicago, it's I don't want to get near this. I don't want to talk about it. Because for 50 years, starting with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, people have talked about the black family. Thomas Sowell spent his life trying to show people that before the era of the Great Society, that the black communities of resistance had comparable, if not superior rates of marriage. They were no more likely to have out of wedlock, wedlock children than any other community. And the Great Society that targeted them for all of this largesse, accompanied by an exemption from criticism. As Tom pointed out, Walter Williams did the same thing. It only encouraged the breakup of the family and it empowered women to have children out of wedlock and then it empowered men not to be responsible. And that was true of other communities as well. But it fell most heavily on the black community. And so people for 50 years have said, we've got to talk about manhood, responsibility. Da, da. And when anybody did that, Bill Clinton, remember Sister Soulja, he had the sister soldier moment. He backed that was that got him elected maybe. But then he backed off. Barack Obama talked about for about a week about blackmail, responsibility. And Jesse Jackson got caught in that, that interview off Mike said, I'd like to cut off his blank, blank think that. So he, that's that. Then Obama went back to the Obama, you know, it's everybody's fault but the Trayvon Martins of the world. And so people just said they went back to Patrick Moynihan. Benign neglect. Remember that term that almost got him Persona non grata for the rest of his life? He spent most of the rest of his life Mea copa, mea copa. I didn't really mean it that way. And then he became a liberal Democrat more than a conservative. But he was right when he said that you can't do anything unless people are going to be honest about it. And so if you can't be honest about it and say the problem is the black family on the Underclass, not all 50% of the black community and the fathers have enormous rates of single. I mean there's single parent families and there's multiple children by multiple fathers. All of this and it can be addressed because half the black community is doing very well and the half that's doing very well have marriages and nuclear families at rates commiserate with other groups. But this underclass, we know what it's like. What I said earlier when Livy tried to say what was wrong with Rome. We know what the medicine is, but we feel it's worse than the morbidity. We know what you would have to say and do and the policies you would have to enact and the. The previous protocols you'd have to reject. Say they don't work. Great Society stuff doesn't work. But to do that would require a level of vituperation and paranoia and slanders and smears and nobody wants to do it. Yeah.
- [75:48]
Jack Fowler
By the way, so what the idea
- [75:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
is move to Tennessee, moved to Kentucky, moved to South Carolina, but don't stay in Chicago. That's what people say.
- [75:57]
Jack Fowler
The destruction of black communities, that predates the Great Society by a generation. These slums, this neighborhood was a slum. We're going to tear it down. They tore down families and churches.
- [76:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's very dangerous because when you read a story like this in any of the major. I don't care if they're conservative or liberal. You read these stories about subway and there's two things that strike. The official news account will not give you any precise information about the description of the perpetrator. They won't say black, they won't say teen, they won't say anything in compensation for that or as a reaction. You read the comments. New York Post comments. You won't believe the comments documents. They're not just critical, but they're almost unimaginably racist and stereotypical. And yet those newspapers Print them. And so what you're seeing in the media is if you have a person of color who shoots somebody or rapes somebody, or slits their throat on a subway or has been just let out and set somebody on fire, or a recent perpetrator who goes on a pier, maybe for gang initiation, shoots a girl in the head, he's illegal. And what you hear and what the reaction is, they don't give his name. They don't want to tell you that he's an illegal alien for days unless they're forced to. And then you'll have an alderman who said, well, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and let's not base it. And then you read the comments, and the comments are you blank, blank, blank. You're blank, blank. These people do it. And you get the impression that the media thinks, well, I'm not going to take the hit by telling the truth, but I can really get circulation by not telling the truth because it's going to enrage so many people from so many different groups and they're going to write such stuff that's way over the top and I'm going to print that. So the average person is going to look at the story and spend a nanosecond to say, unless the guy is a white male, they're not going to mention his sex or his race. But I'm going to go to the comments because they're. That's how I'm going to do it.
- [78:15]
Jack Fowler
You're so right that looking at reels on Instagram or wherever, Facebook, and you see something outrageous, increasingly you're drawn to see what are people, what are the comments. And so it's.
- [78:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
I saw something the other day that I could not believe. I mean, there were some that say we should have picked our own cotton and that was racism. But then that is mild compared to what they're putting. And the papers, I don't understand the attitude or the policy of these online famous papers. Why would you not describe, in a way you would do to anyone else who was white or male the description of the perpetrator? And yet you would print the comments on your policy that are abjectly racist if the reason was not to jack up circulation and interest? It's really dishonest. If they had just told the truth, then you wouldn't get a lot of comments. And that, that paradox is typical of this. It's not just race, it's homelessness, it's transgender stuff. And what they're doing is they're taking incidents where common sense, people think there's two sexes. You can't have a man beat the brains out of a girl boxer. That's just crazy. Or they're thinking, you don't walk down the streets of San Francisco and give $100 to somebody who's urinating and defecating and killing himself with drug. And yet they keep doing this. And they put it under the guise that we're liberal and we're more moral and this reflects our superior ethics over yours. And they won't discuss it. And so what people do is they go subterranean and they go into dark areas of discourse. Different sites, they get more radicalized, they're angry, and we're building to a really huge civil reaction. I think it's coming. And it might be. You know, you might get a charismatic Bill Clinton or Barack Obama for a brief hiatus that might be elected if you have a poor Republican. But you're going to see. I just think people are so tired of it. They're just. They're just tired of the crime. They're tired of the line. They're tired of the lectures.
- [80:35]
Jack Fowler
Yeah.
- [80:35]
Victor Davis Hanson
They're tired of the universities. They're just sick of it. And.
- [80:40]
Jack Fowler
Well, Victor, we've gone a long time here, you know, and it talked about reading comments, and I've read comments for our YouTube channel.
- [80:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
I always.
- [80:51]
Jack Fowler
I.
- [80:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
When you say Victor, there's two Victors. There's a Victor before I had this operation. And I. I know him as the old Victor, but the new Victor is a shadow.
- [81:04]
Jack Fowler
What do you. What do you think?
- [81:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't have any. I feel like I. I search for words. My voice fails me.
- [81:09]
Jack Fowler
No. Oh, my.
- [81:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
You have.
- [81:12]
Jack Fowler
Dude, you're clueless. You are. You are a rock star. And then people love it. And let me read some of the. Let me read some of the love letters in the comments. And we thank the people who do take the time to comment. I've got five. I didn't read any of the other times. I'll be quick. There's one that's mildly. It's not even negative. It's. Let me just read it. Kitty2005 writes, no Victor. Everything that Mr. Newsom touches does not turn to dross, it turns to feces. Even though I worked in a factory for 50 years. I'm not ignorant. I know what drosses and feces fits the bill.
- [81:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you. I tend to agree with him. Yeah, I know you.
- [81:54]
Jack Fowler
Richard T Ardo5170 wrote, I recognized every player Victor mentioned. We were talking about opening day and your love for the Giants. I watched the Red Sox so I got to see American League players Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and the rest. We're old, no? Dak721 writes, listening to Victor calms my spirit. He explains things so reasonably and well I can easily follow his line of thinking. Thank God. Robert Blakeman 9978 writes, in the UK. In the UK. Loving to watch Mr. Hansen, the number one political intellectual on earth. You got to bear that mantle Victor. And one more comment here. Lake Hawke writes, what an incredible interview this is. You talking to the great Sammy Wink the other day. I've heard a lot of clips but this is my first time listening to a full episode. What a blessing to be able to get this kind of high level thinking wisdom commentary so frequently. Also, speaking as an anesthesiologist, I really got a kick out of his last little story about his surgery in a foreign country. It illustrates a different, more old school mentality about human health and surgery. There's a lot of wisdom in the old ways of practicing, but that comes from with different sets of expectations.
- [83:16]
Victor Davis Hanson
And you know, that's a very good point. When I got back from Libya, I went to a specialist because I didn't know what had happened, right? He took a CT and he said, you know, they removed a lot of your colon. And I said yes. And he said this scar is much bigger than our laparoscopic scars. And I said I know it. And he said they didn't have section. I said no. And he said how did you have a drainage tube? I said no. They just left three stitches open. I had a pad for a week
- [83:45]
Jack Fowler
and
- [83:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
he had a little kind of like a squirt gun and it was kind of like a little. It did squirt and then he had a silver tray and there was all the stuff that he collected. He didn't have suction and ether. And you know what he said to me? He said, you know, I don't empathize with you going through that. But the fact ether, it wasn't a good sedative anesthesia, but there were certain advantages of it. You couldn't calibrate it well. It could have side effects but. And obviously you said you woke up but it didn't have the lingering effects on the body. It was a gas that some of ours do. And then he said the problem with laparoscopic is you can't always clean out a ruptured area as well. You can do it. And then he said the problem with Drainage tubes is. They're very good, but they can clog at night, especially when if the nurses are. Wasn't attentive. But the old day when you just seeped out, it's more open to infection. But you said, I think you're going to have a quicker recovery because you didn't have all of this multifaceted anesthesia and you were actually almost awake. You didn't have constipation and you didn't have a laparoscopic process. You got it out and you got everything out of there. And then he just went down and he went 2 or 3 inches below. He should have. We wouldn't have done that much of your colon, but it was a good margin. And he stopped the gangrene and I think you'll be fine. And he said, I'd like to. He said, you know, I'd like to see more of you people. Because he said I forgot what it was like to in the old days with ruptured appendix. He said we sometimes can't even operate laparoscopically. And he said sometimes we have. We don't because we're afraid that it's such a volatile climate environment, you know, with the peritonitis that we use massive antibiotics first and kill everything then go in. But he just went in and the danger is you'll spread it. But maybe by taking the toxic part out, he nipped it in the bud. So. Yeah.
- [85:59]
Jack Fowler
Did he get any cigarette ashes in your.
- [86:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
He was smoking, but the anesthesiologist just yelled at him. There was a trio. There was a Pakistani nurse who spoke some English and then the wonderful Egyptian surgeon and then the Iranian student anesthesiologist with the gas. I was very lucky. I was lucky there. And the recovery time was about. I flew three weeks later to Florence and did a tour. Four weeks. I don't think I could get in a car and drive one mile after three months. So maybe it was being 20 years younger.
- [86:40]
Jack Fowler
Well, you mentioned the word lucky. We are lucky, Victor, to have you dispensing this wisdom and insight. Appreciate it. You're terrific today as you are every episode of this Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And again also on Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. So thanks for doing that for me, Jack Fowler. I. I really appreciate it, folks. If you subscribe to what I Do, Civil Thoughts, it's a free weekly email newsletter, comes out every Friday. It's going to come out this Friday and it's going to have 14 recommended readings. Go to civilthoughts.com, sign up, not selling your name. Easy peasy to do. You're going to like it. You've been terrific, Victor. Thanks again. Thanks folks for listening. Thanks for watching and we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his Own Words Words.
- [87:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thanks 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.