Victor Davis Hanson: Secret Service Needs to Prioritize Marksmanship, Not DEI, Moving Forward

Summary

Podcast Summary: Victor Davis Hanson: Secret Service Needs to Prioritize Marksmanship, Not DEI, Moving Forward

Podcast: Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Host: Victor Davis Hanson | The Daily Signal
Date: May 1, 2026

---

Overview

In this Friday news roundup, Victor Davis Hanson analyzes significant contemporary political and cultural events, focusing on their historical context and global implications. Central themes include the ongoing war with Iran and its geopolitical aftermath, the fracturing of OPEC, European political hypocrisy, U.S. military and security competence (especially after the Trump assassination attempt), and broader cultural debates regarding Western decline and the role of identity politics in state institutions like the Secret Service. The episode’s title highlights a pointed critique: Hanson argues that the focus of critical security agencies (as epitomized by the Secret Service) should be on operational excellence, marksmanship, and discipline—not on DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) initiatives.

---

Major Discussion Topics & Insights

1. Ongoing War in Iran and OPEC Upheaval

[03:54–08:37]

• Victors’s Analysis of the Iran War

  • Despite critical media reports, Hanson argues the war has significantly weakened Iran and served U.S. interests.
  • European and Middle Eastern countries, while publicly equivocating, are privately encouraging the U.S. to finish its mission against Iran.

• OPEC’s Potential Disintegration

  • UAE considering leaving OPEC, frustrated by production quotas; could trigger a trend with other oil producers also wanting to maximize profits.
  • OPEC's original role (as a cartel) may become obsolete if members prioritize individual advantage, potentially driving oil prices down.
  • Hanson underscores that U.S., Russia, and Saudi Arabia now drive global oil markets, lessening OPEC’s historic influence.

  Quote:

  “If they break up OPEC because of the war… You could see the price of oil not go any higher, even though the blockade continues, and it could go lower and start a panic...”
  — Victor Davis Hanson [07:36]

2. Critiques of Western and European Responses to U.S. Foreign Policy

[13:45–16:12, 23:36–25:41]

• German Chancellor’s Criticism

  • Hanson rebuts Chancellor Mertz’s claim that the U.S. entered the Iran war without a strategy, noting articulated objectives: nuclear containment, degrading ballistic capabilities, stopping terrorism, ending the Iranian threat to the West.

• European Political Hypocrisy

  • European countries, especially Germany and Britain, maintain a tone of criticism and distance toward U.S. policy, influenced by domestic left-wing constituencies and large, unassimilated Muslim populations.
  • Hanson claims European leaders want the U.S. to do the “dirty work” but posture publicly for internal political reasons.

  Quote:

  “They wanted to get on their soapbox and announce how they were resisting the United States. That was for what reason? Because of their domestic constituencies...”
  — Victor Davis Hanson [23:55]

3. Western Decline: Britain as a Case Study

[29:52–35:57]

• Hanson outlines Britain’s decline: energy mismanagement (betting on green, decommissioning existing power sources), immigration policy failures (leading to non-assimilated enclaves), declining military power, and the collapse of financial leadership in London.

• The recent visit by King Charles and his approach to the U.S. is interpreted as a plea for patience, acknowledging Britain’s current weakness.

  Quote:

  “If you look at Britain… under Tony Blair… If you had said, ‘I want to destroy Britain,’ what would you do? ...They’ve just about done it.”
  — Victor Davis Hanson [32:09]

4. The Trump Assassination Attempt & Secret Service Critique

[43:02–54:22]

• Assassination Attempt Analysis

  • Melania Trump is praised for immediate alertness during gunfire ([44:25]).
  • Hanson critiques the Secret Service’s operational lapses: shooter accessed the hotel with weapons, agents failed to neutralize the shooter despite multiple shots, and overall strategic site security was lacking.
  • Points to a shift from traditional operational excellence to complacency and perceived distractions like DEI and other non-meritocratic priorities.

• Security Recommendations

  • Calls for a “red alert” posture in the Secret Service: prioritize marksmanship, constant drills, and practical security over political correctness or image.
  • Mentions prior lapses with intruders near Trump and calls past attitudes complacent, warning more attempts are likely.

  Memorable Quote:

  “Get back to the range. Get politics out of everything… They need to be in a crisis mode… not complacent.”
  — Victor Davis Hanson [52:22, 54:16]

  On the culture of would-be assassins:

  “All these arrested development young men… They all feel that they are going to be heroic, they’re going to be famous… They all have a feeling, ‘I can go and shoot the president… and be a hero.’”
  — Victor Davis Hanson [47:23]

5. The Media’s Handling of Assassination and Trump

[56:19–66:19]

• Trump’s combative response to CBS’s Norah O’Donnell’s questions about the shooter’s manifesto is discussed. Hanson argues that the media’s willingness to repeat unsubstantiated allegations (pedophilia, rape, traitor) is itself a symptom of a wider effort to legitimize hatred and violence against Trump.

• Contrasts mainstream media’s reluctance to cover violent left-wing rhetoric or actions with their willingness to air slanders against conservative figures.

• Draws a line from slanted media, social media echo chambers, and elite accusations straight to the environment that encourages lone actors to attempt violence.

  Quote:

  “She wanted to get those lies on national TV and then say, if you hadn’t, Mr. President, if you hadn’t been a rapist, a pedophile, and a traitor, you probably wouldn’t have been shot...”
  — Victor Davis Hanson [65:10]

  On Trump's appeal:

  “That’s why people voted for Trump: because they were tired of the Marcus of Queensberry rules… They didn’t want to get dirty. And the last guy who wanted to get dirty was Lee Atwater… He got Bush elected. Then they thought, ‘I’m never going to do that again—I’d rather lose nobly than win ugly.’”
  — Victor Davis Hanson [66:19]

6. U.S. Defense Procurement and Strategy

[74:32–80:12]

• Discussion of the debate within the U.S. Navy over whether to invest in large, expensive battleships versus a greater number of more flexible, modern platforms (such as drone carriers or missile frigates).

• Hanson advocates for dispersion and technological adaptation: smaller, more numerous ships equipped with drones and advanced missiles, rather than “all your eggs in one basket” with giant, expensive platforms.

  Quote:

  “It’s very dangerous to put $13 billion into a carrier… and then one night… the Chinese could send 5,000 missiles at 2 feet above the ground.”
  — Victor Davis Hanson [79:26]

7. Cultural & Philosophical Segments

[81:16–86:44]

• Discussion, prompted by listener questions, of theological concepts such as limbo and purgatory, referencing Dante and classic Christian doctrine.
• Light banter about ancestral backgrounds and podcast comments.

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

OPEC & Energy:

“Russia is pumping like crazy, we’re pumping like crazy, and if Saudi Arabia gets in… that’ll be a spinoff on the war that nobody talks about.”
— Victor Davis Hanson [06:38]

On European Hypocrisy:

“All they had to do was say, ‘We support our NATO ally, period, stop,’ and then call up Trump and say, ‘What do you need?’ And then just not talk about it. But they couldn’t do that…”
— Victor Davis Hanson [23:44]

Secret Service & Security:

“Why wouldn’t you just say, ‘We are in a red alert, we’re going to look at every operation of the Secret Service because we’ve had three breakdowns…’ If they don’t do it, they’re going to kill Trump.”
— Victor Davis Hanson [50:30]

On DEI in Government Agencies:

“The key to all that is, he just got rid of all the ideology… We’re not here to fast track DEI, we’re not here to fast track trans… You use us because you don’t have any of the sturm and drang and none of the back and forth in Congress. You tell us to do it and we do it.”
— Victor Davis Hanson [52:44]

Media and Political Language:

“You keep doing that and doing that and doing that… inundate social media and communications… then somebody’s going to say, ‘Well, I want to be a Luigi Mangione, because the coolest guy, Hassan Piker… He’s a commie, this is great, he’s cool…’”
— Victor Davis Hanson [62:20]

---

Timestamps for Major Topics

• OPEC, Iran, and Geopolitics: 03:54–13:45
• European Critique & Western Decline: 13:45–25:41
• Britain’s Place in the World: 29:52–36:12
• Trump Assassination Attempt & Secret Service: 43:02–54:22
• Media, Narrative, and Political Violence: 56:19–66:19
• Defense Policy & Naval Debate: 74:32–80:12
• Cultural/Theological Q&A & Banter: 81:16–86:44

---

Overall Tone

Victor Davis Hanson’s tone is scholarly, direct, and often sardonic, especially when criticizing Western self-sabotage, media hypocrisy, and the decline of professional standards in government institutions. He combines acute historical analogy with commentary on current events, tying cultural rot, weak political leadership, and misplaced priorities (like DEI, over merit) to both domestic dysfunction and weakened global leadership.

---

Summary

This wide-ranging episode offers Hanson’s signature blend of historical context and present-day analysis. Its focal contention is that America’s elites—whether in security, policy, or media—are distracted by fashionable ideologies at the expense of functional excellence and public trust. He urges a “return to basics” in national defense and public rhetoric, insisting Western societies cannot afford to indulge in self-denial or tribal ideological crusades when facing mounting external and internal dangers.

Transcript

[Sammy Wink]

There is a CBS report out that the war was not as successful as the administration has presented it. And this is what they say. Half the missiles and launchers are still operational.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

How do they know that?

[Sammy Wink]

I don't.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They don't know how many are there. They have no idea how many are there. So when you have that lowering the bar and plus all of the Hitler stuff, these people are going to keep coming out of the woodwork and every one of them is going to think, I can be like Luigi Mangione, only on steroids because look what they're making out of him. And he didn't even even get killed. And Alan didn't get killed either. I can go and shoot the president. I might live. And then if I live, I would be like Hinckley or somebody. I'd be a hero to people.

[Sammy Wink]

You mean we don't have capital punishment is what you're saying. So if we had some capital punishment

[Victor Davis Hanson]

day, if they had been able to shoot straight. I'm not. I don't know what the angle of the shots were. But the five shots at somebody in the same room and you miss every one of them. So I don't know.

[Sammy Wink]

You and Jack were mulling about. About the concept of limbo and somebody has an answer for you. Bemused. Berserker says limbo was always a theological hypothesis and never really formal Christian doctrine.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's true. I think you're gonna go to heaven. You were a Catholic, right?

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And were you baptized?

[Sammy Wink]

I was baptized.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And I'm gonna go. I guess I'm going to purgatory. Limbo doesn't exist anymore.

[Sammy Wink]

Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own Words. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Mar Shabusky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, Victor Hansen. The name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. And just so everybody knows, we're having it completely overhauled and it should be ready in a couple of weeks. So we hope to be launching it sometime soon. So come and have a look at the new website if you have been there before. We have a lot on the agenda today. This is our Friday news roundup. And we're going to be looking at the war in Iran and opec. Some things are changing in the Middle East. Maybe not as fast as some of us would like it, but nonetheless they are changing. So we'll start with that, but stay with us for these messages.

[Bradley Devlin]

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 shows, we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis and good old American sarcasm. Thom Tillis I'm pretty sure might have been useful at one time as a doorstop. Find the Tony Kennett cast on YouTube, X Radio TV or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sammy Wink]

Welcome back. So, Victor, we have had a lot going on this week. Visit by the English king to Donald Trump, the assassination. I know you and Jack talked a lot about that. Maybe there'll be a few more things we'll say about it much later. But also opec, the United Arab Emirates is talking about getting out of opec, which is the Organization of Petroleum Producing Countries, I believe is what it stands for. And they're Middle Eastern countries and opec, I mean, United Arab Emirates has said we're tired of the restrictions on how much we produce, so we might just leave this. And that is a huge change since 1973. And I was wondering your thoughts on it.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

There's 23, I think, producers in it and they control about half the world's oral. And the key thing to remember is that what they produce and what they could produce, I think or about in today's levels, 7 or 8 million barrels short. So the Emirates in Dubai, they've had some damage, as has Oman to the refineries and pipelines and they want to get it back up and running and capture this high price of oil. So they are saying I'm not going to restrict I think in the case of Dubai, it's something like they can, they're allowed to pump two and a half or something and they could pump four. And if that starts a trend, and I think it will, when Venezuelan oil is coming on the market, the United States is pumping more, Canada is pumping more. You could see the price of oil not go any higher even though the blockade continues and it could go lower and start a panic because again, if you've got 40% of the world's oil and it's 10 or 20% less production than it could be. They could if there's no more opec, then you would get to the situation there was why they formed opec? Why did they form opec? Because everybody was trying to outproduce each other and they drove the price down. So they created a cartel. So Saudi Arabia and I think is the key because it's the biggest OPEC producer. But the world's oil now is governed primarily by the three largest producers. The United States is number one, I think Russia's two, and Saudi Arabia is three. And Russia's pumping like crazy. We're pumping like crazy. And if Saudi Arabia gets in and these other opec, then that'll be, that'll be a spin off on the war that nobody talks about. There's so many spinoffs from the Iranian war. I mean, if you think about it, if they break up OPEC because of the war, if the Gulf Council, all six of those countries starts to be in alliance with Israel and basically says, I'm more worried about Iran and you can help us with Iran, and I'm not worried about the crazy people in Gaza. That's a spinoff. Russia is completely out of the Middle east now, and it's out of Venezuela and China is out of Venezuela. It's going to be out of Panama, and it's going to be out of Iran. And so everybody who said that the war was a disaster, 50 or 60 billion dollars to weaken some country that threatened the west in general, the United States in particular, for 47 years, and killed really thousands of Americans, if you count what they did with their shape charges in Afghanistan and Iraq, in addition to the terrorism. And if you could get rid of that government and one of the ways you could, if they're losing as estimated $500 million in economic input per day and their oil is now maxed out and Carg island is full, all their storage tanks are full, they can't get at their world fleet of tankers, nobody can get in to buy it and take the oil off their hands. So they're trying to find wreck tankers or trying to find anything to store it, because allegedly these older wells, if they can't pump, then the well collapses and they'll lose not just the oil production, but the investment. So that could happen as early as two or three weeks. So a lot of people in the Trump administration are suggesting that he just go home and say we won. But I think if he would stay at least two or three weeks, he'd still have five months before the midterm. And I think the price of oil will go down and Iran will be desperate to make some type of concession. And so what everybody said when you read, read, read, the war was terrible, it costly, it wrecked the Middle East. It's all untrue. It's just a result of kind of anger at Trump for various reasons, but not, we've never seen A more asymmetrical war in history.

[Sammy Wink]

You know, speaking of the critics of the war, there is a CBS report out that the war was not as successful as the administration has presented it. And this is what they say. And I don't know what you think about this. Half the missiles and launchers are still operational.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

How do they know that?

[Sammy Wink]

I don't.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They don't know how many are there. They have no idea how many are there.

[Sammy Wink]

They say 60% of the naval forces, which are all those small boats, those are still operational.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You're talking about three or four hundred million dollar ships. Over 100 have been destroyed. And these motorboats are probably three or four hundred thousand dollars. You can, I mean it's nothing. And you can destroy them. What are they going to do? One of them is going to go up to a destroyer or a carrier. They're going to blow. If they want to, they can blow it up the moment it leaves port. So that's nothing.

[Sammy Wink]

That's ridiculous. And then the last thing they said in this report, two thirds of the Air Force is still usable. Where they get that, where they get that?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I don't know. They same. They're in tunnels or something.

[Sammy Wink]

I don't know. The Air Force in tunnels.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah. I mean, I've never seen a war, not even Vietnam when I was in high school. You know, people really oppose the. And a lot of them wanted the North Vietnamese men, but I've never seen people so overt that they want the United States to lose and they want Iran to win and they want it

[Sammy Wink]

to look like the United States is losing.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah. And it really has a lot to do with what the nature of the left is. It's like the 60s left, it's even creepier because it's got this Islamic element in it. But if you actually look at dispassionately and you look at the entire Middle East, 500 million Arab Muslims, it's hard to find a country that's not on the side of the United States, even with Israel as an ally. That's what's so strange. They all are terrified. This Iranian Shia theocracy and they're happy to see it defanged. And countries like Egypt or Jordan, they'll keep quiet about it and the Gulf states will be quiet. But they're egging us on all the time. Finish the job. They're giving us money to finish the job. They're helping the Israelis. They say, whatever you need, we'll help you. Just finish the job. And the only Iranian strategy is delay Delay, delay. And when everybody said, well, what are we going to do? Well, what can't. That's the wrong question. What can we not do? You want to take out the bridges like Clinton did in Serbia? You could take them out tomorrow, all of them. You want to take out the power plants like Clinton did in Serbia. You could do it tomorrow. You want to take out all of the port facilities, destroy everyone. You could do it tomorrow. You can do anything you want. There's only one taboo, and that is nobody wants to put ground troops in there. And the other taboo is you don't know to what degree the status of the resistance is. So if you start to destroy stuff to hurt the regime, well, it hurts the resistance. That's the only consideration. But you can do anything you want to do. In fact, for the next three years, you could do anything you want to do if you wanted to attack Iraq. So when Chancellor Mertz in Germany, who's all over the place, two faced, he's like a one eyed Jack. You flip him over and he's got the opposite. What he says. And now he says, there was no strategy, there was no, just. We went in there mindlessly. No, we went in there to do four things and it was articulated again and again. We went in there to curtail or destroy their nuclear potential, to stop their ballistic missile and drone fleet, to stop their subsidiation, subsidizing of terrorist groups in the region, and to make them not a threat to the United States in general and the West. The United States in particular and the west in general. And it seems to me that they're not going to be able to do much with their missile fleet. If we're hitting the factories and the economy's ruined and they have enriched uranium somewhere, I don't know where we're going. That's one thing we need to get. But I would be, we can always bomb that again and again and again. They don't have any money. If they're losing $500 million a day, the people are not going to allow that money to go to Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis. 50, 80 million a month. They're not going to allow that to happen. They'll go and they have a population that's on the verge of revolt and they've lost all of their command and control, first and second echelon. So I don't understand that we're losing or we haven't done anything and we haven't suffered anything other than tragically 13 dead, period. That's it. 75% of the people who were wounded are back in action. So the left just keeps trying to glob onto things, but so does the lot of people on the anti war. Right.

[Sammy Wink]

The Hot Air had this website. Hot Air had a great article on the German chancellor and they were talking about just that, where he said United States went into this war without a strategy and you just addressed that. But he also had other things that he said and I would like your opinion on these. He said the US Is being quote humiliated by Iran. And he said too, the second thing, Iran's non negotiating position is a winning position. I believe those are my words. But basically that's what he meant.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Ah, yeah. It's hard to know what's driving him, does he? It's hard to know whether his hatred of the United States is greater than his fear of Iran. Is he saying that you're going to leave the area and you wounded him but it can recover and it's going to attack us? Or is he saying I'm glad you got your nose snubbed after you berated us about NATO questions. But what he's really making the mistake is he's in a theater wide war with Russia and the Ukrainian resistance cannot stop. Russia, with European help alone, we've given them over $200 billion and Trump says he's cutting, but they're still giving them money and they're giving them satellite reconnaissance, they're giving expertise, they're doing everything. So does he just think that he can say all these things and then we're going to say thank you, what do you need? No, he's not going to do that. And so when you look at all of these countries and their glee that they thought the United States was bogged down, no strategy, impulsive hurt Trump. But on the other hand they want us to pay for 20% of the budget. But really at 65%, when you look at the control command, logistics, all the things we do for the Europeans in addition that are peripheral to NATO. So I don't know what he's trying to do.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, he is at a 15% approval rating in his own country and his economy, the statistics on his economy have just been hit really hard and the welfare state is creating such debt.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He says strategy. You don't have a strategy. Trump said to him, you don't have a strategy. You've done four things to ruin the powerhouse of Europe. You had open borders. Now you have 16% of your population that hates your guts and does not want to assimilate acculturate integrate. And they're radically Islamic, number one. Number two, you took a cold, cloudy climate and bet your future on solar power and wind and you shut down, down nuclear plants, you shut down coal plants, you shut down oil, and now you're paying twice the price of your competitors for energy. Number three, you created a new, I don't know what it is, postmodern cult. You European. So there's no children, that's 1.3 fertility rate. So the population is shrinking and it's getting older and older and there's few people to support them. And then fourth, they disarmed they completely when the war started with Ukraine, they had nine operable tanks that could work. And Israel has, I don't know, twice the number of fighter aircraft that Germany does, 10 million people versus 80 million people. So whatever the strategy was, it was a suicidal, nihilistic strategy. And you know what the sad thing about it is? If he thinks this is a divergence now, when you look at all the indicators just passionately energy, the United States can go, it's up to 14 million barrels, it can go up to 16 with new oil fields offshore and in Alaska that are coming on it nuclear. Even now, in our decline, we were the largest nuclear generating power plant. If you look at what they're talking about, they're talking about 100 nuclear plants in the next 10 years for AI. If you look at the military, they're going to increase the budget from 1 trillion to a trillion and a half. If you look at recruitment, 65,000 people over what was in the military when Trump took office. So we're in a renewal and economically we're going to get stronger and stronger and stronger. And it makes no sense to attack the United States like this. You can see that Prince Charles, when he or King Charles when he came, he had to be strong, patriotic, nationalist Britain. But he was a. I mean, he was not a beggar, but he was. It's not Churchill, Roosevelt, it's not even Thatcher, Reagan. It is a colossus that's striding over the world. And then you've got this diminished Britain that has done the same thing as Germany and it has no navy to speak of anymore. The Royal Navy is nada. And it doesn't have a sophisticated air force and enough numbers to make a difference. So it's. When you look at its potential enemies, they are Iran, which we neutered for them, they're North Korea that can reach them with ballistic missiles. Now they are China, which they couldn't do a thing about if China got entangled in China and it's Russia, which they couldn't handle without the United States. So I don't understand why Stormer and Mertz and Maloney and now we had it wasn't just Macron but the former ambassador to the United States from France, Arun or something, he's been mouthing off and saying that this United States is in terrible shape and Trump is horrible and it's the wrong time to do this because the United States has just about shown the world with its military that has absolutely humiliated and devastated Iran. And the only problem is to what degree do you want to inflict a level of damage to make it inert? Because if you do then you're going to run up world opposition that you're destroying the there's nothing left to destroy basically unless you want to go after civilian dual use targets. But you couldn't inflict a greater level of damage by air than they have on the Air Force, Navy, army, everything. And they can keep doing it at a very cost of benefit analysis. They're not going to lose airmen doing it. It's just a matter of do you only want to bomb them back to the stone age. It's all self controlled. The restrictions and prohibitions are ours. They're on ourselves. They're the midterms, they're popularity, they're polls, they're people in Congress that come to Trump on the Republican side, please, I'm in a purple district. You got to stop the war and get the economy on the front page, that kind of stuff. Yeah, but it's not a military problem. No, it doesn't seem Iraq was a military problem. Yeah, Afghanistan was a military problem. Vietnam was a military program. We were using strategies and tactics that were not working and they weren't Afghanistan, we could not, you know, we couldn't control the entire country. We can control the higher the whole country by air if we want.

[Sammy Wink]

Well Victor, let's welcome back a sponsor My Patriot Supply. There's a lot going on in the world right now. Escalating global conflict, threats to infrastructure and supply chains. Growing concerns about food shortages. It's enough to make you stop and think is my family actually prepared for what comes next? I've talked about preparedness a lot over the years and if you've been sitting on the fence about it, it's time to get started. That's why our friends at My Patriot Supply have created the family starter pack. Each kit is gives you an emergency food supply that feeds your family for a full week plus the tools you'll need to actually use it, like off grid cooking gear, water filters and backup power, all for as little as $100 per person. It's in stock and ready to ship right now@ preparewithvdh.com Take this one simple, affordable step to make sure your family is protected with the essentials. Go to preparewd with vdh.com to see everything included. That's preparewithvdh.com preparewithvdh.com we would like to thank my Patriot Supply for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, do you. I think I feel like it was an unanticipated response by these European statesmen that they were to come out so much and so hard against the war itself when they could have just taken a neutral position of nothing. Nothing. Right. And yet they didn't. And I there's something about this war that we hadn't anticipated.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think it's the subtext is when they saw, when we pushed back that they were not letting us use their airspace, all they had to do was say, we support our NATO ally, period, Stop, and then call up Trump and say, what do you need? You can use all the airspace you want and then just not talk about it. But they couldn't do that. They wanted to get on their soapbox and announce how they were resisting the United States. And that was for what reason? Because of their domestic constituencies, because they've got large Muslim populations, they've got these splinter parties and they've got the left that is pro Islamic. So they especially in places like Italy and France. So they thought they were going to be really loud. The United States wasn't going to listen. Oh, this is just the Europeans letting off steam and they were going to pander to their domestic constituencies. And then they thought the United States would take care of business. And they were going to have a big conference with Sturmer and Macron and they were each going to give 10 ships and then they were going to get this big pan European fleet after the enemy was done, defeated, conceded. And then they were going to steam into the Strait of Hormuz and tell the world that they were occupying it. And then they were going to call us up and say, keep a carrier, an air carrier, please, please. But when Trump said he was negotiating and that government's still viable, they haven't come. And then the question is why they haven't come. They can't come because they don't have any ships that could do the job. They don't. There's navies have been Decimated. What is the German navy today? How many aircraft carriers have none? What is the French navy? One aircraft carrier. The British have two, but there always seems to be in port under repair. Where's the Dutch carrier? Where's the Belgian carrier? I don't see them.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, they're all competing with China for just having one carrier. That's a substandard.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

China has three.

[Sammy Wink]

Do they have three now?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They're big. They're big and they're copying everything we are. They've got everybody all over the United States. So when you see a Chinese carrier and they even have the. The colored uniforms of the people on the flight deck to usher planes in and out, they copy that. They copy everything we do.

[Sammy Wink]

Because they're great copy artists, but very good.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Sometimes copy otters can do a better job than the original.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, that's true. Since we're on China, I was wondering because I saw an article about their helping to build a hospital in the Bahamas when Biden refused to help the Bahamas with this hospital. And it's part of their Belt and Road Initiative. And the article was interesting because as we all know, that the Belt and Road Initiative, China's influence everywhere. But it specified things about this particular project that they were doing. And those things were that in making or helping third world countries or other countries, China requires them to use. Half of the labor in this particular case had to be Chinese, and so half would be, of course, from the Bahamas as well. They had to get loans and financing from Chinese banks and they had to use a Chinese construction company.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They do. So, you know, found out in Africa that a lot of the bridges they build and aqueducts aren't substandard. There's no code or anything. And they are pretty tough loan sharks because none of these countries, most of these countries think that they're going to outsmart the Chinese and not pay the loans back and then say, well, they're using us for geostrategic reasons. But they have a way of trying to get the money back. Believe me, they get the money back in exported goods or food or entered something. They're very unpopular. But all these countries, there's a big movement in Greece. People have talked about, they've invited them into the Piraeus and they rebuilt the Piraeus and now they were building rail approaches to the Piraeus. And I think a lot of people in Greece are now saying, let's just buy them off and pay off the loan and get them out. Because they know what they're there for. They have A dual use choke point. They want dual use at Haifa. They want a dual use at Piraeus. At Naples, they would like to be, if they could, at Gibraltar, you know, anywhere the Panama Canal. They'd look at the map and they say, these are choke points. We can have tankers that look like tankers, but they can be, you know, in a time of war, you can throw the canvas off and all those cargoes are full of missiles and we could launch, you know, 300 missiles from every oil tanker if we had. We want them all over in the choke points so the US Navy can't move. That's what they want to do.

[Sammy Wink]

We'll see what they do with all of that in the future. Right, well, the royals came this weekend, so Charles and Camilla. And he gave a speech before Congress and I was wondering your thoughts on it. There were a couple things that people have been highlighting that he seemed to want to make the point that the balance of power was especially important to checking an executive's power, as obviously the revolutionaries in the United States threw off the King's power in such a fashion. And I'm not sure that that wasn't a tacit suggestion towards Trump. And then the second thing is, and you've kind of touched on that, he seemed to want to bridge what Starmer. The kind of rift that has been caused by Starmer. He even used a quote from Starmer where he said, our Prime Minister has said how indispensable the partnership between the U.S. so, any thoughts in general, though?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think he knows that Stormer's the worst Prime Minister they've had in 100 years. He's got, what, 8 or 9% approval rating. He's got to delay elections as long as he can. The first election will throw him out. He's anti American, he's incompetent, he is deeply involved in all sorts of scandals. That whole grooming scandal he's involved in with Knox turning a blind eye to it. Mendelssohn, one of his envoys, is a complete crook. Epstein associate. So he's just bad news. But that's just the symptom. It's not the disease. The disease is, if you look at Britain and you said 30 years ago, under, say, Tony Blair, who wasn't that bad, I mean, I wouldn't have voted for him, but he wasn't that bad. He was in the mainstream. If you had said, I want to destroy Britain, what would you do? I said, somebody said to me, what would you do if you're going to destroy Britain? I would say, well, first of all, just stop drilling natural gas and oil and discovery and go green and just get wind and solar and get your kilowatt charges up by threefold. Number one, that would make all of your products uncompetitive. Number two, bring in millions of illegal aliens, but predominantly those from war torn Islamic countries and Pakistan. And then I would say make no effort to assimilate, acculturate, integrate no melting pot, carve out enclaves and then get DEI and pander to them. Then I would say disarm, just disarm. Don't get rid of the Royal Navy. Get it down to, I don't know, there's 40 Admirals, none of them have even a ship. There's only 30 major ships in the whole navy at any time. I think there's only 15 that'll float. So I would say disarm. I don't think they could send a division like they could. I don't think they could go to the Gulf War again. They surely couldn't do the falcons now. So I would say disarm energy, immigration, and then I would say expand the social net, raise taxes, give more entitlements without restrictions to as many people as possible, especially illegal aliens, and become financially insolvent. And that's what they've done. It's almost like they willingly tried to do it. So when the King and Queen came by, even in the 50s when it was losing the empire, when Queen Elizabeth, but the second on Charles's mother, you know, she would get on one of their intrepid or one of those new battleships they made at the end of World War II and they were kind of out of date, but they were big, beautiful ships or a British aircraft carrier and they would sail steam all over the former Commonwealth Africa, Hong Kong, and they'd come and visit the United States and they were very impressive. They were an empire in decline, but compared to now, they were confident. Now he came over and he was very eloquent. He made jokes that were really funny, I thought. But the whole subtext was treat us like we're just a little notch below you. Don't look at reality because if you looked at reality and you took away our glorious history together and you just looked at what we are, there are a lot of countries in Latin America and Asia that are more powerful than we are and are ascendant. Argentina is more ascendant now than Britain. In fact, as I said earlier, if they were going to fight that war again, except for the nuclear angle, I'm not sure they would win, and I'm not sure we'd help them. I think there'd be a lot of people in the United States would say, you think Milley is worse than Stormer? He's a lot better. He's a lot more pro American, too. So everything has changed. And. All the pageantry, all the titles, all of that is very impressive. And as a big fan of Britain, I'm glad it's impressive. But they have taken the wherewithal. So it's a facade. When Churchill came over here, when Thatcher came over here, the city of London under Thatcher was having a renaissance. It was the financial capital of the world. They made all those movies, early 80s and late 80s, about all these. You know, remember that one with Russell Crowe when he inherited a house in France and he worked in the city of London. He was a financier.

[Sammy Wink]

A good year.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Good year. Yeah. The whole subtext of that movie was these people are making a lot of money and they don't know what matters in life. But the point was, you couldn't do that movie today. It's not the center of anything, and it's very rapid, the decline.

[Sammy Wink]

I think the king kind of noticed that, or at least he noticed and felt that he was there to bridge any sort of wounds created by Stormer.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think he's basically. If he could say what he did, he would say the following. We've made a lot of big mistakes and we have a buffoon right now who's offensive to you, but just ignore him and just have patience with us, and we will never be as strong as vis a vis you were in World War II with an empire, but we'll get back on our feet and make reforms, and then we'll be a solid European friend of the United States. And that was the message.

[Sammy Wink]

He interestingly said a little bit about the Ukraine war, how necessary it was, but he did not say a word about the war in. So there you have it. He was trying to stay out of that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

The thing about Ukraine war is that Trump hurts himself because he snaps at everybody about Ukraine and we're not going to do this, we're not going to do that, we're not going to do that. But he never really articulates all that we have done that he's done for them. He should say to people, when I came into office in 2017, Obama had canceled Javelin missile. If I hadn't approved Java missiles, they would have taken Kiev. So he's done a lot for Ukraine, and Charles should be very careful and the British should all be careful. There have been a lot of people. Prince Harry went over there. That's really tragic or pathetic. When a royal who is really a royal and not an outcast or a pariah has an event then. Then Harry and Megan. What's her name?

[Sammy Wink]

Marle.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Marle, yeah. I don't know what. I say that because I don't know what her last name is. Now. Is it the Duke of. Duchess of Windsor?

[Sammy Wink]

Duchess of Essex.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Essex. I don't know what she is, but I don't know if she, she's a Windsor or what. But anyway, my point is that whenever the royal family, the official do something, then they try to steal the headlines. She does a cooking TV show or they travel somewhere. So he went to Ukraine and he kind of gave a little tantrum talk. Well, why isn't the United States doing more? And I'm thinking, when does a quasi official of another country yell at the major supplier of help and then argue that they're not doing enough? When your entire country is disarmed. And if you really think the United States should do something, then why don't you do something? Why don't you reform your social estate, tighten your borders, drill oil, do something to create national wealth, but don't tell us what we have to do. And as I said before, I want Ukraine to win. I don't want the Russians to win. I want us to help Ukraine. But it's a psalm, it's a verdun. It's not like the Iran war where there is a definite movement fluidity and the Russians have lost a million and a half. So when people say to me, or I've got critical email, well, you don't understand. You're just like Russia. You're in a jam. Oh yeah, we're in a jam. We've lost 13 people and spent 40, 50 billion. And they've been at it for four years, lost a million and a half, probably dead. And 50% GDP is going down that hole. And so they, they're in a. The Europeans are in a jam. They just. Ukrainians are fighting heroically. They're innovative. The drone drones, they're much better than the Russian drones, are creative, but they're being gradually worn down. And the Europeans should, should be very careful what they say to the United States. Because one of my colleagues who will remain nameless kind of said, I think he was referring to people like me who said they don't get it, that we were asking them to help us, but we were not engaged in NATO Operations, you know. And so I thought to myself, Falklands wasn't a NATO operation, that was a unilateral. Chad wasn't a NATO operation, that was a French unilateral. And then the two that had NATO powers were never authorized by NATO. The bombing of Milosevic in Serbia in 1999 and the 2011 bombing of Libya, those were cooked up by whom? The French and the British. And then they came to us. We are moral philosophers and we have to stop the genocide in this ancient war between Muslims and Christians in the Balkans caused by the Ottoman Empire. And there's another tribal warfare in Libya and we're going to intervene because we're more moral than anybody. And you haven't noticed how moral we are. But before we intervene, we're inviting you to do all the flying and killing and bombing and we'll explain it to the world. That's what we did. And so when somebody says, well, why would they have to reciprocate? For the same reason we did, because we didn't. Half the country didn't want to go into Serbia, it's on the Europeans border. And they were in a jam. They were terrified that Milosevic was either going to kill all the Muslims of Kosovo or there was going to be. That war had been going on for almost a decade, it was going to to spill over into Eastern Europe and they wanted it stopped and they didn't have the wherewithal. So they asked us to go in and then they said it's a coalition of the willing, not a NATO approved intervention. Same thing with Libya, it's a coalition of the willing. And Obama went in there and he really got into it. He bombed for seven months. He bombed the last day he was in office, he bombed up a camp in Libya. He bombed, bombed, bombed. No congressional authorization ever.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk a little bit about the assassination attempt. Stay with us and we'll be right back.

[Bradley Devlin]

Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin and just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen, whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words or his short form content for the Daily Signals. Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, I always leave an episode learning something new.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands War.

[Bradley Devlin]

And in the age of clickbait and rage bait, that's a really good feeling, right? The media. Thank you, you can leave now. Well, if you agree, you might like my show, the Daily Signals long form Interview podcast called the Signal. Sit down. Every week we take you behind the scenes of the biggest battles in Washington, D.C. as they happen with some of the biggest names in politics. We explore big ideas and we analyze the policy making process from an unabashedly and unapologetically conservative perspective. And that's important now more than ever with the Trump administration back in office. Because in 2024, you sent Washington a message it couldn't ignore. It's your government and together we're taking it back. So check us out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you enjoy. Victor Davis Hansen, we're there too. And drop me a follow on X radleydevlin to stay updated with what's happening on the Signal.

[Sammy Wink]

Sit down. Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. You can find Victor on X. His handle is Dhanson and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. So, Victor, the assassination, of course, was well talked about by you and Jack and a lot of the, even the critics of that assassination, Kimmel himself. And I think I felt like the only thing that hasn't really been talked about very much in the press is that they had all those videos that were taken. Like you could get all sorts of different ones. But they had one in particular that showed the Diaz where Donald Trump was. Melania and Carolyn Levitt I believe was next to her in the head of the conference was there too. And when the shots went off, you could see Melania was the first one that was looking like, oh, there's something going wrong here. I mean, she was immediately on top of it and then she was immediately looking for cover. And I thought that was pretty impressive of our first lady. And two things about her that and she has a bunch of supporters who are now boycotting Jimmy Kimmel.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

She wrote a horrible joke about her. Yeah, she was the only one. She was the first person to reply back. Don't you remember her jacket that she wore in the first administration? I just don't care. She doesn't care anymore. She's going, this is her. She doesn't have to run. Her husband has to run. She's going to say what she wants to say and she knows that. It's been two years in July. It's been not even two years, 20, 24, when Cooks tried to kill Trump. Right. So three assassination attempts, if you count the Mar A Lago with the Martin fellow. The young kid went in there and tried to kill Trump, but he wasn't there. 4. At that rate, we're going, he's got two more. Two and a half years. So we could see five more of these for. I'm not trying to be funny. It's tragic because on the one hand, I really thought from the videos that the Secret Service was really brave inside the actual ballroom. But when you look at that video very carefully, it looks like they were almost dismantling one of the. There was those Magnum monitors, but they looked like they were already, you know, closing up shop. People gone in and they were going to. Just. The other thing was, and I don't know if this is confirmed, he shot once and his magazine, I think, had six shotgun shells and he had a bunch of pouches and maybe had 30 or 40 shells. He had a. Sometimes people said it was a.45 or.38. I didn't know what they meant when they said it was a 1911. I thought 1911 automatics were.45s. But nonetheless, he had a. And he had a lot of knives.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. He had taken selfies of himself, all armed before. You know, he had those pictures.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He was a narcissist. He had a little red tie on. But my point is that he's running fast. And then they tackle. Why did they shoot five times? There were six shots, and they couldn't hit him once. And why, when you look at the whole thing, I understand that he wasn't on the same floor. He had to go down into the basement to get to the ballroom. But that being said, what would have been so hard to say that for two days before the event every single person who checked into that hotel would have to go through a magnetic. A magnetic corridor and have everything checked every time they went in and out just to do that. He wouldn't have been able to come in there. And then why wouldn't they have a Secret Service person during two hours before the ballroom and during the festivities? Why wouldn't you have Secret Service people going up and down the stairs all the time? Because you thought if a guy wants to shoot somebody, I mean, do you remember Fugitive, where. Oh, no, it wasn't. Yeah. Wasn't it the Fugitive where the guy goes and tries to burst in? Oh, no. It was a Clint east movie with John Malkovich. He was a psycho and he was ready to shoot people. But the point is, even in the films and fantasy people take. You know what I mean, they try to think what the person would do if I was going to kill somebody. So what I'm getting at is when you look at the breakdown with Crooks, the breakdown with Ruth, there's individual really great agents that are willing to. When that guy, as soon as he heard that shotgun blast, he stood up in front of everybody, in front of Trump, like, shoot me, but don't hit the president. But my point is that I think maybe it's a carryover from the Obama Biden years, but, but. And the director under Biden. But I don't know if it's DI or what, but why don't they emphasize shooting ability all the time? It seemed like the old guard, the old breed in the 1960s and stuff, they were pretty good about that. I mean, there was a lot of assassinations. But my premise is this. They're in a unique situation, that they have a president that has now been the target of three attempted assassinations in which shots were fired one way or the other. We've never had that in the history of the country. We've never seen this level of abuse. Not against Lincoln, not against Roosevelt, not against lbj, not against Nixon, not against George Bush. There's hatred out there and there's a whole melange, a whole series of little clips on social media now about all the people who posted that. They were crying, upset that Cole Thomas Allen missed. Missed. Oh, he missed. Oh, he missed. It's really sick. So my point is this. Very quickly. Why wouldn't you just say, we are in a red alert, we're going to look at every operation of the Secret Service because we've had three breakdowns. Crook should have never been on that roof. Ruth should have never been anywhere near that golf course. You should have had somebody patrolling the whole golf course on a golf cart with a machine gun, 10 of them. And this man should have never been in that hotel and especially not in the lobby areas. So they're not doing that. And if they don't do it, they're going to kill Trump. Because another thing is, if you read the guy's manifesto, he was even arrogant that he was giving them a critique of why they didn't stop him. He was making fun of how bad the security was. And then he talked about himself and all of these arrested development young men. They're sick, but they all have a feeling of. They all feel that they are going to be heroic, they're going to be famous. And when you have this nut, Hassan Piker, telling everybody, you know, that, hey, somebody has to do it. Somebody has to do it. Oh, you know what I mean? Meaning Trump has to be killed. And then he says, you know, Luigi Mangioni was a he murdered. That was a social murder. That was okay, meaning we declare him an enemy of the people. Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare. So when you have that lowering the bar and plus all of the Hitler stuff, these people are going to keep coming out of the woodwork and every one of them is going to think I can be like Luigi Mangione, only on steroids, because look what they're making out of him. And he didn't even get killed. And Alan didn't get killed either. I can go and shoot the president. I might live. And then if I lived, I would be like Hinckley or somebody. I'd be a hero to people.

[Sammy Wink]

You mean we don't have capital punishment is what you're saying. So if we had some capital punishment,

[Victor Davis Hanson]

it might help deter. We were. If they had been able to shoot straight. I'm not critique. I don't know what the angle of the shots were, but the five shots at somebody in the same room and you miss every one of them.

[Sammy Wink]

So I don't know, get back to the range.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Get back to the range. Get politics out of everything. And just constantly. That was, you know, when I saw that they wanted to impeach Pete Hexseth, I thought, what do you want to impeach him for? He got 65,000 additional soldiers when we were short 40,000. Under Lloyd Austin, he helped organize the bombing of his Pentagon. The bombing, the first one of last June, where there was nothing lost. He took out. He was oversaw the kidnapping or extradition of Maduro or this particular program. They've all worked flawlessly and recruits up and he's trying to get new sources of procurement and, you know, more is better than a few platforms. But the key to all that is he just got rid of all the ideology. We're not here to fast track dei, we're not here to fast track trans. We're not here to do any of that. You use us because you don't have any of the sturm and drang and none of the back and forth in Congress. You tell us to do it and we do it. So they look at the Pentagon as a fast track social network. And from what we've seen the last years, especially under Obama, all the agents that remember in South America, they were being partying and they had to kick some off and drinking and carousing. You get the impression that, I don't know, there's other concerns other than I am going to ensure Donald Trump, he's not going to be shot. And when you add the other thing to the equation that no president takes More risk than he does, does open rallies, talks, walking down a corridor, hey, Mr. Pres. Stops, turns around, walks over, talks for 20 minutes. Somebody else yells, talks, gets on the phone, talks to anybody. You know what I mean? He's everywhere. And so it's a. They need to be in a crisis mode is what I'm saying. And not complacent.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes. Well, Victor, we want to welcome back our second sponsor of this podcast, Patriot Mobile. Everyday Americans are making 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, 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 service. 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 a day. 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 972-patriot and make the switch today. And we'd like to thank, thank Patriot Mobile for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. So, Victor, Donald Trump was actually a lot easier on his Secret Service and the others that were protecting him that night than actually you were. He was interviewed by Nora o' Donnell and he kind of said in that interview and this is incidental to other things but, well, you know, things happen and nothing goes quite as you expect in life. And he's, he was kind of philosophic about but I was wondering your thoughts on the interview. She seemed to want to bring out what the manifesto said by the shooter that he, that Donald Trump was pedophile, rapist and traitor. And he said this is a shameful question to ask. Of course I am none of those things and you shouldn't have this job. He was really combative. I loved it. And he was that the lock, the she asked him about the mocking of law enforcement and that's where he was kind of good on it by the shooter. Saying that this level of incompetence is insane.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Again, it's not. The individual officers, you could see the way they reacted tactically in that room. As soon as they heard the first shot, they jumped up, they dispatched people into the stairway, go downstairs. They could tell where the sound came from. They got everybody out, protected them. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that if somebody's running by you and you have some agents there with firearms and you shoot five times and they're all missing, that's a problem. And you should not. That shouldn't be in that venue with Trump. I know It's. It seats 2500. I've been there for a White House correspondence thing, and it's kind of a maze, but strategically is the breakdown. They didn't have anybody to organize correctly, a means of security to get in and out of that hotel. If that guy got off the train with a suitcase, with a shotgun and all that stuff, and he had to go through the main door of the hotel to check in, he wouldn't have been able to go in there. And if they had everything covered, all the exits, he would not have been able to go.

[Sammy Wink]

You know what you're reminding me of the guy in Las Vegas who got into that room on the upstairs, but he was there for an entire week before. So, you know, how long before would they have to. I think Donald Trump's right about that building, that ballroom on the White House.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah. And everybody said, well, it wouldn't have a hotel. I got. So there was somebody in National Review. I'm not trying to single him out. But he said, oh, you know, it's a terrible idea because it's a government building. You can't have private. Come on. You can have a government. A related event by the White House. White House. White House. Even though it's a private foundation, you can allow them to come into the government. They rent all sorts of facilities from the government. They can do that. And it's an advantage not to have a hotel because that just gets rid of a lot of your worries that you don't have to look at every single room. They all have to come to your place. Bulletproof windows, cameras everywhere are completely designed for security. And I don't know why they don't do it. I know why they don't do it. But it's after this. As far as Nora o', Donnell, I mean, she's been humiliated by so many people, I think J.D. vance and people. But think about it. It would be as if FDR is Doing a Fireside chat. And all of a sudden, I don't know, Edward R. Mural in World War II says, could I read you something? Here's what Goebbels said about you. And he said you. And this is. I'm almost quoting verbal. What Goebbels would say. FD Rosenstein, the Jewish puppet is. Caused a whole war and attacked us and is committing atrocities and we're fighting the Bolshevik communist Jews. All this crazy stuff. And what would Roosevelt say? Oh, let me reply to that. How could you reply to it? So nobody would do that. But she was airing a manifesto that. It's really weird because the press was always telling us when the trans shooter in Tennessee had the manifesto that basically said from the little bit that leaked out, that trans was great and anybody who opposed crayons and she. He hated Christians. Well, we can't let that out out because it might incite people against trans. Oh, no. But we can voice this thing because it will incite people because he's going to. I can get on national TV that Trump is the cause of his own assassination attempt. Trump didn't have to be. Let's check it off. Pedophile, rapist, traitor. And she wanted to get that out. And then she wanted to say, how do you feel about. Basically, if you translate what she was saying, here's the subtext. It wasn't much. Hey, Mr. President, how do you feel now that you committed rape and pedophilia and you were traitor. What came around. Came around to you went around and you got a boomerang. Do you feel like that's what she was saying?

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, she was saying she agreed with this guy's manifesto because. And it in turn reflected hers, the lefts and ideas.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And as I said to Jack, it was a petri dish. Where did she get this? Well, she got it from all these people repeating it ad nauseam. Jimmy Kimmel every night, Robert De Niro, Jeremy Raskin, Tim Waltz, when he went over to that commie socialist conference in Barcelona and he trashed the United States and trashed our military effort, why were it fighting? And said that it was fascism. That was the eighth time, seventh or eighth time he's called Trump a fascist. So if you keep doing that and doing that and doing that and you inundate social media and communications with all of these alleged stuff, then somebody's going to say, well, I want to be a Luigi Mangione, because the coolest guy, Hassan Piker, he's got a weird little great Islamic first name. He's part Turkish. He's kind of DEI and he drives an $80,000 Porsche and he's a multi millionaire and his parents were multimillionaires and he's a commie. This is great. He's cool. Well, when they echo all of that, then they come out of the woodwork. And where did they get it originally? Well, it's a petri dish. If you go through the rapist. The rapist came from Judge Kaplan in the E. Jean Carroll case. That was a complete travesty. And if you want to read about it, as I said to Jack, I wrote about it in Counter Revolution at length. It was the biggest travesty of a thing I've ever read in my life. Life. She's completely. They had a bill of attainder which is illegal. The New York legislature, just to hurt Trump, passed a law that said for one year there will be no statute of limitations on sex allegations crimes. And that was for her. And then she immediately filed it. And she didn't know the date. She didn't. Anyway, my point is that that thing was a joke. And they acquitted him of rape. They said he was guilty of sexual assault and they don't know what happened in that. He said she, she said she accompanied him willingly to a dressing room and they closed the door and they engaged in contact, but she felt that he went too far. So they called that sexual assault. According to. No witnesses. Nothing.

[Sammy Wink]

No.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

In a left wing jury 10 years later, 20 years later, said her favorite show was the Apprentice and she thought Donald Trump was great. So when she saw him, he was a celebrity, she thought, even then. But my point is that that's what the judge said. Well, he wasn't convicted of rape, but it was equivalent to it. It wasn't or they would have, or they would have convicted him. And then Stephanopoulos got that and said, rapist, rapist, rapist, rapist. Raped 11 times and lost that they had to settle.

[Sammy Wink]

That was cbs.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It was. I thought it was abc.

[Sammy Wink]

Was it abc? Well, he said that CBS was paying him millions. He was on 60 Minute. Donald Trump.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, they both are, I think. And then, then pedophilia came from the Epstein files. All these people said, he's holding the Epstein files. And they never said why Biden held it for four years. Well, there were a lot more Democrats in the Epstein files than Republicans. And one of the victims said that Donald Trump and so did Maxwell had nothing to do with it, with the sex crime. But they issued that Democratic talking point traitor that came from James Clapper, said that Donald Trump was Putin's poodle. And so did Brennan. He said he was working with the Russians. All of them did, during Russian collusion. That was all bunked even by Mueller. Couldn't prove it. So they were all lies. And she wanted to get those lies on national TV and then say, if you hadn't, Mr. President, if you hadn't been a rapist, a pedophile, and a traitor, you probably wouldn't have been shot. How do you feel about the. That? And that's what made him get angry.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. And he didn't let her do that because he just said, those are all demonstrably untrue. And nobody that was a professional interviewer would ever do that. You are the worst interviewer. It was a fascinating interview to watch. I recommend it to everybody. Yeah, she deserved every bit.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Donald Trump is. Everybody gets angry that he is. This can be crude and uncouth, but just ask yourself real quickly, she would have done that with any other president that was a Republican. She would.

[Sammy Wink]

She wouldn't have done that with him.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think she would have if she could go. They did it. They tried to do that with George W. Bush, with the National Guard, and they said he was a coward. And they tried to do it with George H.W. bush. He was a war hero. And they tried to. I think a guy wrote an article in, I don't know which magazine. He said he had bailed out too early and he got his two people killed. It was crazy. But my point, and if you look at what they said about McCain, he can't remember which house. He has 11 houses. He doesn't know where he is. He's had an affair with Romney. They said he hazed people in high school. He put his dog out there. Remember that, all that stuff. But none of them would have ever said to a report, you should be ashamed of yourself. That is disgusting. And that's why people voted for Trump, because they were tired of the Marcus of Queensberry rules, that every. Every Republican candidate, whether it's the losing track of Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney, or it was the winning track after Reagan, of George H.W. and George W. They didn't want to get down and fight, fight in the gutter. I'm not saying it's the gutter, but they didn't want to get dirty. And the last guy that wanted to get dirty was Lee Atwater. And he got dirty and he destroyed Michael Dukakis and tore off his. He called it the bark. Boston harbor ad, tank ad, Willie Horton ad. And he got Bush elected. And then they thought, I'm never going to do that again. I would rather lose nobly than win. I ugly.

[Sammy Wink]

All right, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and we'll talk about what do we have left here? California high speed rail. Stay with us and we'll be right back.

[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 life. 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.

[Sammy Wink]

Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. We are a subsidiary of the Daily Signal. And you can find this at the Daily Signal site and lots of other articles that you might find interesting in the conservative world. So go to the Daily Signal. Well, Victor, the legislative Analyst office finally came out with how much they think this high speed rail will ultimately cost. And it's a price that the state can afford. 231 billion dollars. Apparently it's already at 14 billion and projected 33 billion just to get from Merced to Bakersfield, which not very many people travel or at least wouldn't travel on train. And so I was wonder your thoughts. There's a lot of, there's a lot. There's some conservative or Republican representatives either in the California state or in the Congress that are saying this high speed rail should just be jeopardy.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

But when he was mayor of San Francisco, that it wouldn't work.

[Sammy Wink]

He said that they wouldn't be able to build the wall.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That was before he was woke. But nope, it's not just a crime of commission, it's a crime of omission because the Santa Fe rail runs parallel to the Southern Pacific, which is freight no longer passengers that came right down the middle of the valley next to the 99 Freeway. But the Santa Fe track is a much more scenic ride and that's where the Amtrak is. But my point is it's mostly single rail. And I've been on that train. I used to take it. We had trips in high school and stuff. You could go to Hanford, to Bakersfield or Hanford or Fresno or something. And you had to stop. There's no two tracks. So if a train's coming in the opposite direction, you find a little sidebar and you sit there and there's no overpasses. So if I drive to the coast and I happen to cross that track as I do, you just have to sit there, there because the train's coming for a long time. But the point I'm making is they went out and they bought all that land and spent billions of dollars for eminent domain and lawsuits. And then right next to them in some places just, I don't know, a few thousand yards, hundred yards is the Amtrak. All they had to do was, and the Amtrak was pretty wide. They just had to say for $20 billion we can make from Bakersfield to Sacramento a high regular train. I don't mean high speed, I mean a regular Amtrak with two tracks, no stopping for opposite traffic and a brand new bed. And they could have, if they wanted to spend a little bit more money, they could have put a few underpasses, etc. And they could have done that. And you could have got from Bakersfield, if you drive Bakersfield to Merced, it's 3 hours, 172 miles or something and they could probably have got you there in an hour and a half on Amtrak. And I think they're going to say they can do it in an hour and 30 minutes or something. But my point is all they had to do was do that and they didn't do that. And they've caused so much economic damage. They plowed through all these little towns and they've destroyed farms and they've shut down cross streets here. Mountain View Avenue has been shut, it was shut down for four years and it's, they, they've just ruined the avenue in front of my house. The truckers come in with 20 tons of gravel and sand to go down five miles to the high speed rail overpass. And many of them are what are part of the group that we're worried about. You know, In California, the 40,000 drivers that were issued licenses couldn't speak English or read. And they go about 65 miles, 70 miles an hour. And you should see the condition of the road. They've just destroyed it. If you go 60, 75 miles an hour with 20 tons on a semi, it's really, I can be in my house and I look at the chandelier and it shakes, it shakes. It's like an earthquake. And they don't drive 55 miles an hour. And the laws on a country road is 50 miles an hour. And it's everything about it was ill conceived and arrogant and stupid and part of that green crazy religion that is so intolerant and so destructive to people's lives.

[Sammy Wink]

I was wondering the last thing the Naval Secretary John John Felim left his fellow Phelan.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Oh, I thought it was Lehman, but maybe it's Phelan.

[Sammy Wink]

He left the guy that left his position and he was in disagreement with that person.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I was thinking, talking about Reagan's Secretary of the Navy.

[Sammy Wink]

Oh, no, no, he was. He left his position. And the story is out there he did it because of differences on a new expensive battleship that he was supporting and Hagseth apparently did not. Now, I don't know if Hagseth did not, but they. The reason he left was because they were in controversy.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He wanted to build the Trump battleship, new, expensive battleship.

[Sammy Wink]

And Hegseth. So I was wondering if you thought,

[Victor Davis Hanson]

well, Trump wanted to build a new battleship. Yeah, I think part of the problem is that we say battleship. Traditionally In World War II, if you go by the 1928 arms limitation that tried to outlaw war, there were a series of naval treaties, and they define what a destroyer, a light cruiser, a cruiser, a heavy cruiser, a pocket battleship and a battleship were. And something called a battle cruiser, like the HMS Hood. And those don't apply anymore. So A World War II, 30s, World War II destroyer was about displacement about 2,500 to 3,000 thousand. That's a little frigate. And a light cruiser was about, oh, 6,000. And a regular cruiser was about 10,000 or 8,000. And a heavy cruiser was 10. A battle cruiser was 15 to 20, and a battleship was usually 28, unless you're the Yamamoto 72,000. But just because it's today called a destroyer doesn't mean it wouldn't be a cruiser. In other words, they're inflated. And the biggest aircraft carrier the Japanese built, the biggest one, I think it was a TA tao it blew up. They turned the ventilation system on when they had a gas leak. It was about, I think it was about 45,000 tons. It was huge. But during the war, the Essex class was 27,000 tons. So we're building monstrous ships. Right now. We're not building any battleships because we're not building rocket like the R.D. burke class or any of our. What are really heavy cruiser size. We're not going to the next level to build a ship. And Trump talked about a battleship. I don't know what he meant by that, but if he. He meant a $10 billion ship with cruise missiles and drones. I think the argument is in the other, other direction that for the same amount of money you could build 10 frigates and displace them and disperse them. And that goes back to World War II when the mushashi and the Yamamoto were the biggest battleships ever built in history, 72,000 tons. And we blew up the. We blew up the. We blew up the Musashi, we bombed it. And the Yamato we blew up off Okinawa, had just enough fuel to get to Okinawa, but not. So it was hit by air power. My point is it was at Rabaul. They called it the Hotel Yamato. The Japanese, it was so expensive to run, had 18.1 inch guns. It was huge. But when I wrote the book on World War II, I calculated what they could have done if they had. Spin it, they made the best destroyer in the world. The Japanese, they could have made 20 destroyers for that. So I think what we're getting at is we're in a mood now where we're starting to go back to the World War II paradise and not the 90s. And I mean, by that, make a lot of really good ships and disperse them everywhere with drones and missiles. But don't concentrate all your money on just a few big platforms that are easy targets. And we already have 13. We have 11 of them with the big aircraft carriers, 100,000 tons. So I think they need to have a lot more frigates destroyed, destroyers and half craft. You know, there was a good picture of an Iranian ship they had built for them, and it was kind of a. I don't know if you saw it, it was stealthy, was kind of flat on top, and then underneath it was flat, and you could fly in underneath. And it was a drone carrier, so it was kind of like an aircraft carrier. But I think we're just getting Hexeth and these people are talking about making something like 8,000 tons or 7,000 tons and have 400 drones on it. And they could go underneath and, you know, they could be protected, and you can work on them and have a flight deck and just saturate everything. I think that's where we're going to,

[Sammy Wink]

but sounds a lot more.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It's very dangerous to put $13 billion into a carrier and, you know, 5,000 crewmen and then. Then one night have. Iran's not capable of it. I mean, they're very well protected with their carrier group. But in theory, you could send. The Chinese could send 5,000 missiles at 2ft above the ground, about 6ft tall, each one of them aimed at its water line. It would be very hard to stop all of them. And they could send, you know, a thousand drones at once, months. And then you're taking out something that takes six or seven years to build, and you're putting 5,000 sailors on one platform. So I think we're going the other direction is what I'm saying.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. Well, Victor, we're at the end of our show and I have some comments. This time I took them from Rumble. Nora Nits says, and these are on yours and Jack's, I believe. I don't know what is funnier. Victor Vane or Victor going to Costco for hearing aids. Thanks for keeping it real. Since 1963. Says, yes. I had a great aunt who said Norwegians hate Swedes. Funny thing is when I had my DNA done, I'm more Swedish descent than Norwegian.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah. I don't know. Because they used to be one country, you know, And I have never. I have. It's very funny about the diaspora. There's not a lot of Finns or Norwegians in America compared to Swedes and Danish gains. But always thought that Swedes, they were dour, you know, but they were always happy go lucky. And they had a bad rap of drinking too much, although my father drank and my grandfather drank and they smoked.

[Sammy Wink]

And you and Jack were mulling about about the concept of limbo and somebody has an answer for you. Bemused, Berserker says limbo was always a theological hypothesis and never really formal Christian doctrine.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's true.

[Sammy Wink]

The Bible doesn say where the unbaptized infant or those that die and never accepted the gospel, where they go, should those souls be condemned to eternal damnation when they never had opportunity to hear. No answer for that, of course. And he says that's why Benedict XVI ended the debate about it. And now the church's official doctrine is trust in God's mercy for unbaptized children and those that never had the opportunity to hear the gospel. So there you go. That's not official Dante.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Dante has limbo, you know, and that's why Virgil was everybody. Why is Virgil in Dante's Inferno the guide? Why did Dante writing in 15th century, first really major work in Italian and not Latin? So why does he go back all the way to antiquity and get what?

[Sammy Wink]

Go ahead. That's what he goes to antiquity because those were the things he learned from the classics, right?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

No, but there was a lot of people in antiquity he could have used as the guide.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes, but Virgil was the. Dante admired him for his poetic verse.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He admired Homer, too. And Homer was translated in the Renaissance in Latin. He did it for one reason. His fourth echelon catalog is called the Messianic. And he's talking about the new grandchildren of Augustus are going to be born. And that's where we get novo order seclorum. It's on our dollar bill. And annuit coeptis, he nods on our undertakings. The founders took the fourth eclogue, just like Virgil did, and they thought that it was a prophecy for a new covenant country. A new order of the age is the U.S. but in the Renaissance, they thought a new order of the ages was. Virgil was given a divine message, even though he was a pagan and he lived 30. He probably lived 40 years before Christ was born. So he was given a dispensation from God that gave him this supernatural messianic insight that somebody was going to be born. And even though the people at the time said, well, he's talking probably about Augustus's two sons that are going to be the new co. You know, the lead of Marcellus, I think was one of them. But Dante reinterpret that, as people in the Renaissance did. No, no, no. It wasn't. It wasn't topical. It was universal that Virgil was given a divine message from God even though Christ wasn't on earth. But to tell people that Christ was about to be born, because if you read the whole eclogue, it's about what's coming, a new age. And they reinterpret that. That's why Virgil was considered. Even though he couldn't go certain places, he can't go up to heaven. But limbo, the writer's right. There's no textual support for limbo. It was a church doctrine that appeared to explain when people ask practical questions. And then, you know, I'll have to ask Jack that, but I think I have before, unfortunately. What if a person tries to or does live a virtuous life according to Christian principles in Protestant doctrine? I think think depends on the sect or church. And I know people. If you read the New Testament and the Bible and you try to model your life on Christian values and you believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and you believe in the Christian God and you're not baptized or you don't go regularly to a particular. Can you go to heaven? Depends on the religion. I don't think you can. In the Catholic Church, you have to be practicing.

[Sammy Wink]

Practicing.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think you're going to go to heaven. You were a Catholic, right?

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And were you baptized? I was baptized and I'm going to go. I guess I'm going to Purgatory. Limbo doesn't exist anymore. I haven't been baptized. I went to my. With my grandmother, to the Methodist church.

[Sammy Wink]

You weren't baptized?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They never baptized me, but I read the New Testament. I taught it for 20 years in Greek. I just ordered it. You know, I just ordered a New Testament in Greek. And then I had worn out my other one. I ordered one in Latin. It's really good. I bought a new one 50 years ago. It was $10. It was $79. It's Greek text on one side and Latin on the other. St. Jerome's 4th century translation. Translation. So it's really good to read it in Greek, the first page and then you read John or Matthew and then you turn it and you can read the next page in Latin or you can read both in Latin and Greek. But it really helps your Latin and Greek.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. All right, Victor. Well, thank you for all your wisdom.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes. The message is not for the linguistic. It's the divine message.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. Thank you for all your wisdom today. And thanks to the audience for choosing to join us on this Friday News Roundup.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Thank you, everybody, for listening and and watching. And we'll be with you very soon

[Sammy Wink]

on this Saturday edition. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. And also check out my own [e-mail] and see subscribe for exclusive features. In addition,

[Bradley Devlin]

she does a lot for your family. Mother's Day is your chance to show her you see it with a gift from a brand trusted for generations to help people get the moment right. 1-800-flowers with double blooms from 1-800-flowers. Buy one dozen roses and get another dozen for free. It's a bigger Gesture backed by 50 years of experience delivering fresh flowers so you can feel confident sending some something that lands. Show up for her with Double blooms at 1-800-FLowers.com Spotify. That's 1-800-FLowers. Com Spotify.