← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: The Left’s ‘Assassination Chic’ and the Inevitability of Another Attack
01:31:36
On this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc explore the Left's troubling and growing acceptance of political violence.
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- [00:00]
A
Why is Europe going to the right? We forgot the alternative for Deutschland. And those are the people in Germany who are very conservative and they're second most popular party and they have been demonized. They're usually off ballots, they're censored because they feel some elements are neo Nazi. But the majority are conservative. They're not extremists. And this young generation that's coming up is being lectured in their universities and their popular culture by this baby boomer people my age and younger who had a lot more opportunities because the post war governments backed by the US were moderate or conservative. Right? But they're gone. So these people get lectured about climate change and diversity and open borders, lgbtq. Sound familiar? Same here, but over there it's much more intense. And they're saying, I don't want to hear this anymore. All I want is a house. Like you have a big fight on the conservative side. I'll go back to my little devil angel. Similar. There's a little angel on the right. He whispers in the conservative mind, don't do that. We're better than that. That's not who we are. And more importantly, tit for tat, tat for tit. Every administration would do this. So we are better. We're not going to do that. And then there's a little devil on my left. You idiot. What the. Where'd you come from? We live in the real world. We don't live in heaven. They're going to keep doing it. It's called deterrence, dummy. And if you don't understand it, what do you think? The.
- [01:37]
B
Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. This is our Friday show and it is the Thanksgiving weekend. So we're doing something special and new on both the Friday and the Saturday show, and that is to look at threats to the west or this, the health of, of Western culture in the Western world. And today we're going to start with Europe and look at the different European countries and those countries that are fostering Western and trying to protect West Western culture. And I, I think what I would like to say even before we go to our first ad, is that the pillars of Western culture are consensual government, individualism and freedoms, which bring in as well, obviously free speech. So those are the things that we're looking to have protected and defended. And we see them in, in crisis in places. And so we're going to start with Europe, but stay with us and we'll be right back from these important messages.
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C
Freedom is on the line and Time is running out. This Giving Tuesday, your help is urgently needed to defend innocent lives, protect Christian ministries and safeguard the future of American families. This is a critical moment to act. We have four cases before the U.S. supreme Court this term that could shape the future of freedom in this country. Real people are counting on you. Courageous clients are stepping forward to fight for justice. And your gift gives them the power to keep going. We need to raise $250,000 by December 2nd. Thanks to a limited time match, every dollar becomes $2. That means twice the impact, twice the defense, twice the hope, but only while funds last. There's no time to wait. Give now. Help protect freedom. With God's blessing, we'll keep winning in the courtroom and in the culture.
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B
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor is the Martin and Ellie Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Instit Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website. It is victorhansen.com and the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. Please come join us there for 650amonth or $65 a year for his VDH Ultra material, two articles every week and a short video particular for the subscribers to the website. But there's also free stuff and all of his podcasts and writings are collated there and links to his books as well. And probably the most important book to our current discussion for this Thanksgiving weekend is his recent the Decline of the West. Is that. No way. Sorry.
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A
I wish I'd written that.
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B
Yeah. Okay. The Dying Citizen is His most recent.
- [04:49]
A
One name is not Dr. Al Spankler. He wasn't a doctor. He was a high school teacher, actually.
- [04:56]
B
All right. So Victor, we are, we want to look at Europe so we can get a sense of since it was western even before the geographic area that is now America became western some of the state of the political health of Europe. And that is, I think the nationalist right wing parties are the ones that want to defend the pillars of the west most. And we see them strongest in places like Italy, Hungary and Finland. We see some movement in France and maybe the Netherlands and Britain, it seems like, has a very progressive government right now under Keir Starmer. And he seems to be very right. But go ahead. What are your thoughts about the before.
- [05:43]
A
We go on, you know, when you say the west, that term came from the Greeks and Romans, but mostly the Greeks. And it refers to the Latin word occidere, which came from a Greek precedent. And the oriens. And oriens means to rise and okidere means a set. So you're in Greece or Italy in the Greco Roman tradition. I think this became popularized in the Hellenistic period. So we. Everything to your east was considered the Aegean was a dividing line. So there's where Persia was and Babylonia and the known world to the east. And you said all of those are where the Orion. The Orientes are the place where the sun rises. The people of the rising sun. The sun rises in the east and then everybody to our west is where the sun occadens Occident sets. So it's very. Yes, it's very chauvinistic. Everybody that Greece and then the inherited tradition of Rome who transmogrified using it specifically Latin words. Consider the world divided between everybody where they were and to their back all the way to the Straits of Gibraltar. Spain was west and everything Kipling said west is east is east and west is west and never the queen shall meet everything to the east. And we still use that term today. Oh, no you don't. If you say. If you say I'm majoring in Oriental studies, I think you're going to be kicked out of the university. I feel like an Occidental. No, even Occidental college is being in Los Angeles. Every two or three years they get some crackpot administrator said this is chauvinistic. This is. And they want to change their name from. But I think they can justify it. But they say it's not a place where you study Western. It's just an ecology in the West. So let's get started.
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B
Yeah, back to Europe. Since that was the center of this western culture that we have in the United States.
- [08:10]
A
Why is Europe going to the right? We forgot the alternative for Deutschland. And those are the people in Germany who are very conservative and their second most popular party. And they have been demonized. They're usually off ballots. They're censored because they feel they're some elements are neo Nazi. But the majority are conservative. They're not extremists. But anytime you have a third of the country and you want to deny them a right to express themselves politically, you're going to be in trouble. But everybody has to remember that they are in power. It's like California. It's going to be hard for in the next governor race for somebody to say I want to continue what Gavin Newsom did. And they won't do that. So you know that Representative Swalwell's running. He's not going to Say, I, I'm going to continue, continue the energy policy, the fire prevention policy of Gavin Newson. Or he's going to say, donald Trump, Donald Trump, Trump, gay, Les Man Ill. You know, immigration. So anyway, whatever was in Europe, people do not like. And it's 70, 80, 80 years since World War II, mostly of socialism. So there's. And the young people didn't know the difference. And they're growing up and they can't afford a house, they can't afford energy with the green. And they say, we've got oil, we've got natural gas, why don't we develop it? They're saying, wow, people in the United States can say whatever they want. Why do they censor me? Why do they knock on the door and say, I went to a right wing site on my own computer? Why do they drive around with little sensors and say, I have two televisions and I didn't tell the government that the second one wasn't taxed? You know, like Germany or something. They have to know how many TVs you have in your house.
- [10:09]
B
Is that real or did you just make that?
- [10:11]
A
As I was in Germany walking down and some German person was arguing and I asked him and he said, that was a surveillance truck. And I said, well, what is it doing? I don't know if he was kidding me or not. He said, it's surveilling. Just make sure that I have as many devices that I registered with that can be taxed. I said, are you serious? He said, a lot of countries do that. We have to find out what everybody's doing. So they're not free and they don't have affordable energy. And they, you know, it's a cramped country. The dense populace, population density, even with a declining fertility, is quite high. So they don't have developments like we do. And this young generation that's coming up is being hectored, lectured in their universities and their popular culture by this baby boomer, People my age and younger who had a lot more opportunities because the post war governments backed by the US were moderate or conservative, right? But they're gone. So these people get lectured about climate change and diversity and open borders and lgbtq. Sound familiar? Same here, but over there it's much more intense. And they're saying, I don't want to hear this anymore. All I want is a house. Like you have an apartment and you, you're the Bureaus of Weights and measures of the EU branch here in Salzburg. And you're making $200,000 a year and you're only at work three days a week, and I make nothing. I want that job and they can't get it. It's a static. It's a static economy. And so they're, they're looking for people who say, I'm going to open the economy up, I'm going to close the borders. We're not going to have all these people coming in from Afghanistan, Tunisia, Libya, Somalia, the Sudan, and then, you know, get on a boat, get over here, come in here, and then we have to pay for €50, €60,000 per family per year when our young people don't have housing or they can't afford to get a computer. So I think people don't realize that, you know, on this military history company that I ran with my wonderful partner Al Phillip, we went there almost 20 years in a row. And then I probably did 40 or 50 cruises with different affiliation. So I got European itis too much Europe. Six, you know, 30 to 40 days in Europe every summer for 25 years. And then I lived there two and a half years. And when you're especially the antithesis is not San Francisco or New York, it's the San Joaquin Valley, it's Red America. So when you go over there, you just start to notice certain things. You were told in the university how everything's free, it's wonderful, and you get over there and it's just not. They don't have. You just don't go in and buy an affordable computer. I took my son with me once and he had a pair of sneakers that tore apart. And of course, being 16 at the time, that's all he packed. So he was walking around with one foot and he. It took some just to find masking tape to tape it up. So I went all around these shoe stores to find it. And first of all, it was very hard to find his 12 and a half foot size. And then when I found it, it was like this was like 15 years ago. It was like $130. And they weren't this big sole America. They were flat sole, like slippers. And you go, it's. It was so much more expensive for just common thing, you fill up and it's. It's basically liters of price of gas a gallon here. So it's $8 a gallon, 8 or 9. And people got sick of it. And the universities are all politicized and they've lost their edge because we weren't politicized as much as they were. So Cambridge, Oxford, the Sorbonne, Heidelberg, University of Turin, all these majestic names that were the best places in the world for centuries lost their competitive edge to our merocratic universities. Now maybe we're at their level because we have politicized their weapons. But you know, I still think Caltech and places like that are far ahead of them. But so this generation is rebelling. And that was what Charlie Kirk taught young people being conservative, you don't have to say that's my father's religion or I'm an old fuddy duddy or traditionalist or just squares. No, the squares are the left. They run all the institutions. All these fuddy duddies that are spouting at you, that's like conservatives. When I was my generation, we built the establishment in Europe. The United States is left wing. So the natural youthful rebelliousness is cool because you're, you're attacking the establishment and the establishment has to be left. That's why the left gets so freaked out. They think, well, we brought in granny glasses and long hair and you know, trashing things and the F word and all of a sudden we're conservative and these little nerdy young people want to get married and have kids. That's radical. That's what Charlie Kirk wants. Before he was killed, was trying to talk about. I talked to him a long time when I was in, two weeks before he died on a video. But I talked to him before when I visited there. That was what people failed to comprehend. That was one thing. The second great thing he told us is that you can be a lot smarter by not going to college. So he had only gone, what, dropped out. He never got a degree, never was in college more than a semester or two. He goes to the Oxford Union, supposedly the most sophisticated debaters and he kind of wipes the floor war with that guy. But anyway, that there, there is a youthful rebellion against the static European economy which is controlled, regulated, socialist. And there is a control. There's a rebellion against climate change over there. And that means they're building wind and solar subsidized energy in lieu of what they have a lot of. France has a lot of nuclear generators and nuclear power. Germany is buying. Germany doesn't want to build nuclear plants until recently. And they're buying nuclear generated electricity from France because they shut down theirs and wind and solar won't do it. And Britain doesn't want to go out in the North Sea and see if they can redo the North Sea energy, the oil fields and natural gas like they used to. So self induced. And then the other symptom is they're disarmed that's always a sign of decay. We haven't gotten to that. When we talk about the United states, we're spending 3.8% on GDP. When Donald Trump came in office in 2017, almost all of them, except six in the 31 NATO members were spending under 1.51. They weren't. They were disarmed. So I don't know if it's true, but when I was in Europe the last time I was there last year, 2024, somebody remarked that Germany at that time had 12 active Leopard tanks that actually worked and were being used well in use.
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B
So how does the Russian threat work into these, turning these countries more. Right. Because it seems to me that the Central European countries, many more of them, like Hungary, are a little bit more. Right. I know Poland recently elected a liberal president, but nonetheless, the other ones tend to be.
- [18:36]
A
Well, their attitude was, we don't have to do anything because the United States is here and we have a. Since the 1991, when the Cold War was officially ordered 89 to 91, it collapsed the Cold War, and they disarmed because we were Neanderthals under Reagan. Right. And Bush. Reagan was spending almost 5% GDP. You saw what he did in the 91 Gulf War. We had this spectacular victory. All these new weapons, everybody. So basic point, we kept the Russians out. Remember NATO? It's to keep America in, Germany down, Russia out. That was Lord Ismay, General Ismay's supposed slogan. He was the first NATO high commissioner. So they were complacent. And then Putin comes in, and in 2008, he goes into Georgia and Osatia. 2014, he goes into Crimea and Donbas. 2022, he goes and tries to take Kiev. And they are, wow, we made fun of Donald Trump. Remember when he's not president, but four years ago, the guy sat across from a table and said, you guys are suckers. You're sending. You're buying gas from Russia. He wants to eat you alive. All you're doing with Nordstrom is just giving him all this foreign exchange so he can kill you. And you're not spending 2%. You want us to come over and save you? Article five, we're not going to do that. Everybody said, oh, Trump is a monster, but he kind of shocked more of them in to defend themselves. But the problem is that Putin thinks that, especially now after he's stuck there in Ukraine, that he wants to recapture the parameters of the Soviet Union. So he wants to get the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia back. He wants to make the Eastern Europeans, a what the French call a sanitary cord corridor. Right.
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B
A buffer zone.
- [20:51]
A
Buffer zone, yes. It's always traditionally Eastern Europe was a buffer zone between Ottomanism and Europeanism, then Russia and Europeanism than communism. And so these countries woke up and they thought, well, the United States is going to protect us, we don't have to do anything. So Trump comes in and they basically say, ah, we're Greek philosophers and you're Roman soldiers. So we tell you what to do. Hahaha. We make fun of America. Yeah, you do stupid things like buy, you know, make, still make these expensive carriers and we don't need any. And then all of a sudden, oh my God, the Red Army's back. It's not now, it's in Ukraine. It almost took Kiev. Kiev's right is Kiev is European. Western Ukraine used to be Poland until 1939. They're right on our doorstep. We used to make fun of the Eastern Europeans. We thought they were backward. They're the only armed people in NATO. We all we have is nuclear France and nuclear Britain and we can't use nuclear weapons. So they're all shocked now and so they want us to go back in and protect them. And they thought Trump was going to not do that. And they found out that Trump being Trump, playing Art of the Deal, whatever you want to call it, he was shouting and screaming at them for their own good and that he wanted to protect them and he liked strong Western powers. He would love if they were armed to the teeth. And even as we speak, he's got a peace plan for Putin and basically it is what everybody's talked about. They get to keep what they stole. Crimea and Dombass, they had historical claims to him, I understand that. And they have a ceasefire line right where they are now. And they get to have a little bit more of the Dawn Bass. And they won't be. Ukraine won't be in NATO, but will have security guarantees. And the Europeans are furious. They said we. He's losing, he's falling apart, he's lost a million and you're giving him all this stuff. Why don't you just make him go back to where he started? And Trump is saying, look, we just gave 170 billion, we voted for six different bills and we're not even over here. It's your problem. And you. All you do is yell and scream at us when we offer solutions. And you don't offer solutions. So you want to. You really think Ukraine is going to battle itself back to the borders of 2013? It's not. You can't. You don't have the ability to do it without us. And we don't want to do it because we're worried about China and we've got other responsibility. We got a crazy guy in Venezuela and all this stuff, and that's where we are today. So the Europeans are saying now saying, well, Trump's peace plan that he introduced this week doesn't push Putin farther back, but rewards him to where he is. And we say, Putin's not going to go farther back because he knows if he goes back to the Kremlin and says, I got a million Russians dead and wounded and destroyed our economy and ruined the reputation of the Russian army, and I'm no more where I was when I started On August, on February 24th, they're going to kill me. So I got to show them some. I got to show the oligarchs. I got to show the military. I got something, and I got something. Right now, I'm 150, 80 miles west. And the Europeans say we can push him back or don't give him any more sliver. And that's what the argument is about. And Trump is saying, okay, you guys have 500 million people. We only have 342 million. Your GDP, if you take the EU and the entire continent is about what ours is. You got these supposedly superior French and British and Swedish jets. You make the Chieftain and Leopard tank. You guys are really good. Just stop him and we'll kind of be leading from behind. Like Obama give you support. That's where we are right now. And the Europeans are saying, donald, we talk a great game. That's the point. We talk. Mr. Macron this week said that his defense minister, his ranking general, said, people of France, people of France, be prepared to sacrifice your children to save Ukraine, because the reputation of France is at the stage. He thought he was Napoleon, you know, he might as well said, like Napoleon, Napoleon, the territory of France, the boundaries of France are marked by the graves of its soldiers. And then he always, you know, skedaddled back to Paris. Napoleon. But my point is that they're trying to, and I have a lot of empathy, but they cannot get him back. They can't make any settlement against except with the US and the US Says you, he won't take what you want, and he'll only take what you want if you destroy him and beat him in a war. And to do that, you need to rearm and spend about a trillion dollars. And we're behind you. We'll be right at the rear to make sure he doesn't go into Paris. But we're not going to wage ourselves another three or $400 billion to get him back another 50. We did. This was not a rewards. It would be like us if we had a problem with Canada and Mexico. And all of a sudden you said, well, we're going to come over there and protect you. You know, no, we're not going to do this. And that's where we are. I don't know what the answer is. I see both sides, but.
- [26:54]
B
Well, let me just take a moment to welcome back a sponsor, Allegiance Gold, before we move on because I have some questions on this. But 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 pushes its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. That's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are allocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history, the physical gold not as speculation but as insulation. Reputation matters, which is why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability and an A rating with the Better Business Bureau. For years they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships built on trust. And right now they're extending a special liberty offer for our listeners to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in retirement account or sitting in the bank. If you believe that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious. Call 844-790-9191. That's 844-790-9191. Visit protectwithvictor.com that's 844-790-91991. Again, 844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com History rewards those who take the long view. And we'd like to thank Allegiance Gold for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.
- [29:17]
A
Well, we're coming a long way with the way we're printing money. You know, when I was a little boy, my grandmother was born in 1890 and she won a speaking award when she was 15 for the women's Christian Temperance Union. That was a big thing then to get people not drinking given the alcohol. And her winning speech was reflecting her agrarian populist roots was the cross of Brooke Gold. Speech by William Jen, you shall not labor. You should not nail labor on the cross of gold. Remember it. And so the whole issue was free silver. Silver was plentiful. And that would back up the currency versus gold. And the people who supposedly had money had gold, and that made it more valuable. And they didn't print unless they had more gold. And they were kind of. The gold rush was over, they thought. And so they had. Everybody had silver. So they said, well, let's just back dollars. So when you get a paper dollar, you can go in and get silver. You can give silver for it and it will expand. But think about that. That was a legitimate argument between gold and silver backing a currency. But today it's what the federal Jerome Powell's word. There's nothing backing the currency. So they print as they feel they would like to. And people that have gold have a point. They really do. It's actually stable and it goes up and it'll always go up in value because it's basically a finite source compared to printing money. Yeah. And you can print money a lot faster. You can find gold.
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B
You know that politician William Jenning Bryant, I thought four. But anyway. Anyway, wasn't that Frederick March who played him in that movie? That's right, yes.
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A
And it was Spencer Cravy.
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B
What a brilliant.
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A
Spencer Tracy played Clarence Darrow.
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B
Yeah.
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A
The problem with that movie was that Clarence Darrow was arguing for the evolutionist, the high school teacher, Mr. Scopes, the CO Scopes trial. He was teaching us, teaching the kids that we came from apes. That was when Darwinism was really big and they were basically intelligent design. They said that William Jennings Bryan was defending the school district. That finder was going to fire Mr. Scopes because he. They believe the world was created 5,000 years ago or by, you know, in the Bible, there were genealogists that had actually counted the generations on the Bible. And so Hollywood, being very left wing, made. Frederick Marx was a brilliant actor, but Spencer Tracy was their kind of hero. And he was Clarence Darrow. And he was sophisticated, kind of salty. And. And you were. When you watched the movie, Daryl was kind of hysterical. I mean, Bryant, William. I think Frederick March was a better actor actually than Spencer. Both great actors, but he was really one of my favorite actors. Great actor. But if you actually look at Clarence Darrow, I read his Autobiography once he was kind of a, he was kind of a socialist left wing neo. I don't want to get into it. But he was not the great crusader and William Jennings Brian was not the satanic figure.
- [32:42]
B
Everybody thought, well, just to finish up with Europe, it seems to me if you look at a, a political map of Europe, you see that the right nationalist, you know, pro Western parties are all in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Italy. And they are proc. Their proximity is closer to this array. Ukrainian war. And the ones that are further left, like England, are much further away. Do you think the proximity of the war makes a difference? Because the populations are electing people who are saying we're, we want to defend you. We act like our culture and we don't want to bring in a lot of people un. Unassimilated into that.
- [33:33]
A
Well, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, they've all lived under. They've all had the misfortune of being part of the Third Reich, conquered by it or incorporated within it. And then they had the, they only had like a year of freedom and then they were part of the Soviet bloc. And since 1989, in the fall of Berlin Wall, in 92, the retreat of the Soviet Union, they have been independent. And because of that traditions, and you got to remember that everybody says, well, Eastern Europe is backward, it's Western. Yeah, but they were the bulwark and they kept the Ottoman Empire out of Europe for 400 years. Talk to somebody that lives in Greece that was occupied by the Ottoman. So they've always been the door that people had to get through to get to Western Europe. So. And they're very smart people and they realize that they don't have any margin of error and these Western Europeans are not going to help them. They want them to, you know, fall on their sword and stop, you know. So they're much more like we are and their attitude is we're going to have. They're trying to have big families. Their universities are much more. They're much freer in the sense of open expression. Their Polish army is really getting formidable. So is Finland's, by the way, in Sweden's. And they're basically more like the United States and they're deathly of afraid of Putin. And it puts a kind of a strain on the Trump administration that wants to kind of get out of the whole thing that their closest people, that Victor Orban and people like that, are the ones that want the most resistance to Russia. And the countries that are the most pro American are the Most anti Putin. And the ones that are most anti American, they're not, not very many are anti American. They're, they're safer from Putin. They don't like Putin. So when they talk, they talk a great game. But the people in Eastern Europe will be attacked first. And historically they have not been able to stop Russia from going west and they have not been able to stop Germany from going east. So they're, they've had a lot of problems. And the other day, As I said, Mr. Macron's top general said that the French were going to get ready to sacrifice her children. And everybody said, not me, I'm not going to do it. And they want to get more nuclear weapons, they want to do all this stuff, but they're way to the west. And Sturmer is a weak leader. He's got 12% approval rating in Britain. They're flat broke. He's let in what, 4 million, 5 million recent illegal aliens. Germany's got an energy problem, got an illegal alien problem. There's right wing governments threatening to take over Le Pen and national rallies got more support than Macron. And same thing in the Netherlands, same thing in a lot of these countries. So it's, Putin is looking at all of this and he thinks that as weak as he is and as bogged down as he is, that he could recapture his reputation if he could get to Kiev and maybe swallow something that would be a lot easier, like Estonia or Lithuania or something.
- [37:32]
B
Yeah, he seems to be on an expansionary quest, even given the history of.
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A
I have a lot of friends, you know, at the maga, and a lot of people listening are saying, victor, Victor, Victor, we don't want forever wars. I don't either. I don't want to give them Tomahawk missiles, which geostrategy should justify in a war. If you really wanted to win the war, then you should have Tomahawk missiles hitting all of his oil fields and factories. Right. I don't want to do that. It's nuclear. You'd have a nuclear standoff. I think you would. People say, ah, he's just bluffing. Maybe, maybe not. But on the other hand, if you don't help them, it's going to be humiliating like Afghanistan. And they're going to blame the United States. They're going to say, you just got out of Afghanistan. That was one thing. There was a Taliban, but now you Taliban, Ukraine, it's Europe. You just left. And they just overran because they would. Until we can make it clear to them that this is the amount of NATO support they have. And it was very hard. It's been four years. It's going to be four years. How do you get these NATO countries to rearm? And the only thing that's made them rearm, not logic, not begging, not the United States forcing them and threatening. It's, it's Putin, period. And they are terrified of him.
- [38:57]
B
All right, so Victor, let's go ahead and turn to another topic on the west and that is the issue of free speech. And I think this for me comes from the Democrats inevitably are telling their constituency I'm doing such and such for democracy, to save democracy from the authoritarian Trump, which we all know is he's not an authoritarian since he was an elected president. But nonetheless, that's their rhetoric. But where we see the crisis in problem for a democratic government is in free speech and censorship. And recent, the most recent and clear case in the last few years, of course, has been Twitter, pre Musk that colluded with government to censor things that they were called, they were calling it misinformation, but it was stuff that important information for voters to know before they went into the voting booth. And that's where I think the crisis is in this social media, its ability to control or not control. I mean, I'm glad Musk bought Twitter. And it's definitely Facebook was doing it too. Facebook was doing it too. And I was wondering your thoughts on the crisis or the problem of free speech in the modern world.
- [40:18]
A
Well, first of all, everybody should remember that our companies, Google, Facebook, Twitter, they have the same, they run Europe social media, but they have a different attitude in Europe. European liberalism started in 18, the Revolutions of 1848. And these were against monarchies mostly and their legacy, their inheritance was the French Revolution, not the British Enlightenment, not the American Revolution. And when you look at the French Revolution and compare it to the American Revolution, it's not about freedom of speech. They talk about it, but it's about the rights of man. And that is defined with the slogan fraternity, egalitarianism. Nobody ever said in America we're fighting this revolution because of fraternity and equality. It was give me liberty, liberty, liberty or give me death. Or it was the Bill of Rights. Later it was the idea you want to be left alone and do your thing and have property to pass on to your kids and freedom of speech and worship. So that there is no Bill of Rights in these constitutions like ours. So they don't really, they misinformation. And disinformation is not a left wing tactic over There, it's the government, because their interest is not in what a person should say, has a right to say things. It is in the right of everybody to be made equal. And when you speak, that is an enemy of equality, because people are born not equal. And to make them equal, as Europe does not, like China or Russia did, but more mildly socialism, not communism, you've got to force people to shut up, because it's not the natural condition of people to work hard and turn the fruits of their labor over to their neighbor. So these companies, when they go over there, they censor them, they find them, and that's how Trump won them over. He's called in Mark Zuckerberg and he called in all of those people from Google and Amazon, all of them, and he said, you know what? You hate me and I don't like you, but these Europeans are going to censor you. And I want you on our side. And I won't regulate you. I won't bring you in a room like Joe Biden did. According to Marc Andreessen said, you're going to do this and you're going to do that. You get to have AI. You can do AI, but then you can't. No winners or loser. It's lucha libre, you guys, you're free to do whatever you want. I'm not going to get the antitrust division down your neck. You can be multi trillionaires, I don't care. But I do care about one thing. It's called America Pro America. So you go overseas, any country that wants to screw around with you, excuse the language, I will protect you. I'll call up Macron and said, you touch Facebook and you're going to get in trouble. And that was, that was the difference. So over there, you can't express yourself to the same degree as you can here. And that goes back centuries to the two different. The differences between the French and the American Revolution and the Scottish Enlightenment versus the French Enlightenment, very different Rousseau and Voltaire from David. You know, David Hume was a leftist, but Bentley and all those other people, Adam Smith particularly. So we have a big difference between. But here, here the left doesn't. They're always attacking our own revolution. And the Founding Fathers, they prefer the French model. They really do. They're always saying that we should get rid of the First Amendment now and get rid of the Second Amendment. And we really, you know, they just don't believe in the Founding anymore because it allows people to object. And they feel that with race in their race fixations and diversity, equity Equity, that's egalitarianism in France and diversity, equity, inclusion. And if you don't like it, shut up. That's their attitude on the left. And so they want to suppress things. That's why if you go on a Google search today and you search something. For example, I searched today, I was doing the edits for my second volume of the Trunk Trump book and I said I had a statement in that Cash Patel was surveilled by the FBI. And I, I have an editor, not the editor, but one editor who's very left wing, said no evidence that that took place. So I have to almost footnote every. I sneeze and I have to footnote it. So I did a Google search, Patel surveilled. Although there were allegations, there is no evidence that Cash Patel, he was surveilled because they accused him of leaking information from the Senate, the House Intelligence Committee, of which he was a chief advisor and legal for Devin Nunes. But my point is every fact, the AI takes a left wing view. And then when you search, it's all. The order of the search is all, all the left wing, New York Times, Washington Post, political. You won't find any truth to its, you know, Victor Hansen out on Selma, California type stuff. Yeah, but, and so that is what we're trying to, that Trump is trying to, he's trying to get these people on his side and decide by letting people to express themselves on social media without censorship in exchange for making them nationalist companies that they, he wants them to make a lot of money even. And that has to be everybody. But, you know, when he saw Mondami in the White House and everybody thought that his attitude was, I don't know what this guy is. Privately, he didn't say this. He was very friendly to Mondami. I knew he would be. And he had two motives. One was to show icomb, Jeffries and Schumer they're irrelevant, and then to say to the squad, hey, Crockett, aoc, you're not the speaker. This commie is because he's here and we're getting along now. And that's the guy I'm going to call up when I got a problem with you guys. That was, number one, trolling or insulting them. And then the other was he's basically said, I don't really care if you're a commie or not. I just want New York to be beautiful and strong and make new. So. And that's what people forget about. He's transactional. So he, you know, he Calling. He probably called in Zuckerberg and said, Usob, you spent $419 million and destroyed me in 2020 with all that money. And I'm going to help you now and make sure that you don't get censored. And even though you spied on, you spied with the FBI to suppress the news of the laptop, when the FBI had it in their possession, they knew it was authentic. If they had just released that, I could have, when I said that in the debate, people would have believed me. You sabot. He doesn't care. It's not like he's got a long memory. He just thinks, you know what, you can make a lot of money overseas for us. Just hire Americans, bring the money back. And that's his attitude. It's a nationalist attitude.
- [48:40]
B
Yes, but in terms of free speech, I wanted to just add to the, the censorship and the social media, the now presence, as you've just introduced it, of AI. Does it add a problem of false reality being spread across? I mean, that's even more than AI is.
- [49:00]
A
I've used this metaphor so many times, but AI is a pump information. Knowledge is water and it's the water information just out there. It's what's true. But how you deliver that, you do two things with a water delivery system. It's the volume and the filtration. So when you have AI and people are programming it, who are the people and where are they? You know where they're going to be? They're going to be in Research Triangle in New York. They're going to be outside the Cambridge, Mass. In the Harvard area. They're going to be in Silicon Valley, they're going to be in Austin, Texas. And they are going to program AI and they're going to make it faster and faster to get information. But those AI. And what do I mean by that? I mean, when you ask AI a question, in 1 nanosecond, it goes through 70,000 newspaper articles, right? The first 50,000 are the ones that they're going to use the most to come up with their conclusion. Are going to be left wing because they are left wing. And people don't realize that. Okay, I've used it a lot. I've noticed already certain things grow. Capedia is fair. Wikipedia is not. Grok is kind of crazy, but it's more accurate than Google AI. It's not as, it's not as biased and that's just because of the inputs. And that's what AI is. It can be very good or it can be very dangerous. It depends on who programs it and for what purpose. And science, science is politicized now. So I'm sure that if you, you ask a question to AI and it has anything to do with justice accessibility, you'll get a left wing propaganda. But if you just said what are the five best drugs for the heart? You might not. It might just go through the whole corpus of medical knowledge and be really valuable.
- [51:16]
B
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and have a few questions or one question about that about AI and its fear. If we're going to fear authoritarianism, it's not Donald Trump. So stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own Words. You can find Victor at X. His handle is at VD Hansen and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. And I just wanted to also welcome to our show a little fly that's been flying around here. So if we're making movements to shoo it away, it's trying to get into the video. Oh, you got it.
- [51:56]
A
I liquidated.
- [51:57]
B
Oh good.
- [51:58]
A
I gave a prayer and then I liquid. Yeah.
- [52:00]
B
Well, as you were speaking about the AI powers of AI, I was think. You just made me think. Well, how long then is it going to be until we're completely controlled by a technocracy? Because it seems to me that the Internet and cyber world is shaping our reality and a false reality is as.
- [52:19]
A
Good as here in Europe is is the more the left can't control people and the more that they have issues that we don't want. We being the people. Nobody wants an open border. Nobody wants mass illegal immigration. Nobody wants a bunch of biological men competing as trans athletes in women's sports. Nobody wants wind and solar and then just all this nuclear enormous and all these new technologies that could make life to borrow it, some crackpot idea that AOC is not going to have kids because of global warming. There's nothing that they have that people want. So what they do is they have to come up with a solution for that. Sometimes it's open the border and bring in 53 million people who weren't born in the United States. Sometimes it is to control the institutions. Get your hands On Network News, NPR, PBS, Corporate Boardroom, K12, academia, right foundation. They have done that and it's still not enough. Then they look at these technologies. Well, what if we were able to censor the news and call fair stories. Let's say something that came on FOX News or something that was in. I don't know a conservative magazine or we'll call it disinformation and misinformation. And we'll call the Monitor the Stanford, we won't call it the Internet Validity Project, we'll call it the Stanford Internet Observatory. And we'll just go in and we'll get anything we disagree with and we'll say disinformation. And we have PhDs in communication and computer science. And we, and the same thing with fact check, we're politifact, we're nopes, we're dissent. No you're not. You're just left wing people masquerading as fact checkers. And every time they do a fact check when they're embarrassed, they said ostensibly this, this could be true but on closer examination you have to consider and it's, it's just so they don't have the people. What I'm getting at is these technologies are seen to them like the institutions or the border is, ah, maybe we can overrule the will of the people. Like we brought in everybody across the border or we took control of the corporation with ESG or we took control of the universities with di. And maybe we can get Internet searches to make sure that they only give people this particular, you know what I mean? And that's what they're doing. And I don't think it's going to stop until people on the conservative side say I can't just worry about my family, my community, my church. I don't like to get involved in politics. I got to get involved because these people mean business. And I say that because in 2020, Donald Trump lost by 7 million people, 7 million votes. There was 10 million Trump voters that didn't show up. We're pretty sure of that. The latest elections in Virginia, New Jersey, if all the Trump voters showed up, they would have stopped that crazy J. Jones for example, in polls after the 2024 election, for the first time in my life, they polled people who did not vote systematically and scientifically. They being a lot of pollsters, you know what they found out? If all the people who wanted to preferred Harris and all the people preferred Trump, who were eligible, not kids but over 18 and registered had voted, Trump would have just, he would have just blown her out of the wall. He would have won by 54 points. So what's happening is the Democrats used to say, well we represent the people, the poor people. And, and they're always trying to suppress voters. They're suppressing voters by having mail and valley by to liquid to. I don't know what the word is. Nullify, nullify, bastardize. Liquid. You know, make it inflate the vote. But if you got everybody who is eligible to vote and only eligible to vote to vote, conservatives would be in fine shape and they better do it because the left know the more desperate they get that they do not have the votes, the more they're going to be relying on technologies or institutions to warp public opinion and communication. That's what left us. That's what it is. Because it's all based on the principle of an equality of result. And people don't believe in that. You know, it's just, you get two little kids and you say, I want you both to clean up your room. And one guy says, I'm sleepy and he sleeps for five hours and the other kid cleans up his room. Then the parent comes in, we'll say we'll clean up his room too. And then you give him the same size ice cream bar or something. They said, that's not fair. I did all the work. And that's how. That's the problem.
- [57:50]
B
Yeah, that is.
- [57:51]
A
It's not natural.
- [57:52]
B
Another threat to democracy, I think, is lawfare, as even our viewers understand it, that lawfare is the abuse of power to subvert democracy. And we've seen it. And I know that most of the viewers understand the cases against Donald Trump, the only one being the, I think it was the Letitia Dan, or was it Alvin Bragg that got 51 indictments by multiplying the 13 different entries. And, and that was all about Trump, whether he paid personally or paid through his campaign. He paid personally, Stormy Daniels, to not talk. And so anybody who looks at that would say, well, if he would have paid with the campaign money, they would have indicted him.
- [58:40]
A
It was even worse because the federal government, that was a federal law, campaign financing, he was running in a federal election. And the liberal people on the Fed side said, I'm not going to touch it in New York. It's just a joke. He's, he's a celebrity. And this, he had, he was alleged of. Had this quickie sexual act with this pornographic stripper. And it's embarrassing. Anybody with his power would want to make sure that she just got some money and disappeared. It had nothing to do necessarily with his campaign because when was it done? 2012 or so. I mean, she, she. The incident was 2012. It was, but they said he was a camp. It was a. I should correct that. Alvin Bragg said, I'm representing the federal government. And even though they don't want to enforce their federal law. That doesn't apply here. I will kind of stretch a state law to take place of the federal law that the federal prosecutors think is a joke.
- [59:42]
B
Yes.
- [59:43]
A
What he did and he said basically the subtext was, I can do anything I want. I'm in New York.
- [59:47]
B
Yeah.
- [59:47]
A
So 73% of the people voted against Trump.
- [59:50]
B
Yeah. Well, okay, so given that and given that the other cases fizzled, we know that there was no criminal action whatsoever against Donald Trump and we can call it lawfare. But now the left is saying that the indictment of Comey, James Comey, the referral of John Brennan to the Justice Department and John Bolton's indictment are all lawfare. And I was wondering your views on that. Who is using lawfare to destroy democracy?
- [60:23]
A
The left or the big fight? Number one, there's a big fight on the conservative side. I'll go back to my little devil angel. Similar. There's a little angel on the right and he whispers in the conservative mind, don't do that. We're better than that. That's not who we are. If we emulate Letitia James and Fanny Willis and Jack Smith and E. Jean Carroll, if we were to stoop and Alvin Bragg, we'd be no better than they would. And more importantly, tit for tat. Tat for tit. Every administration would do this and they would recognize the. So we are better. We're not going to do that. And then there's a little devil on my left. You idiot. What the. Where'd you come from? You live in the real world. We don't live in heaven. They're going to keep doing it. It's called deterrence, dummy. We do it back one time and then we say, do you want to go this? Because we're going to do it every time you do. Do you understand that? And if you don't understand it, what do you think the left does? We are short 20 congressional seats based on national voting totals underrepresented in the House. So Texas just wanted to even the score a little bit. And did you guys on the left say, well, we're not going to reapportion? Because to do that would be to destroy the nonpartisan reapportionment committee in California. And we're better. No, they did this. They got it passed. Then they did even worse. They got their little friends, the cherry picked judges. So a left wing judge threw out the Texas. And nobody's going to sue here in California because we're all left wing. So we're going to end up with a twofer. We got California, five more seats and we punish Texas. They're not going to get any. That's how they think. So I don't know the answer, whether it's a devil or an angel saying if you don't do it, you'll have no deterrence and they'll go off, they'll keep doing it or if you do it, we'll both go into a cycle. I tend to have the Old Testament point of view, eye for an eye rather than the Sermon on the Mount on this particular case. Number two, can I just say something?
- [62:42]
B
So you must think it's going to have a positive impact on the elections and the electorate if you do bring cases against these criminals, Comey, Brennan and Bolton.
- [62:54]
A
I don't know about that. I just know two other points. Number two, if you are going to conduct lawfare, where was E. Jean Carroll? Manhattan. Where was Alvin Bragg? Manhattan. Where was Letitia James? Manhattan. Where was Fannie Wilson? A 70% left wing Atlanta suburb jurisdiction, Fulton County. You could say Jack Smith was in Florida. Iffy. So they were all left wing jurisdictions, left wing judges, everybody right, left wing prosecutors and left wing juries. They were all 60, 70% left wing. Now it's on the other foot. Donald Trump has to go in. Not what a prosecutor says. He had to go before a grand jury. Donald Trump's people. So they went after Bolton and they went after Comey, but they had to present the case as right wing Trump affiliated people in left wing jurisdictions to left wing grand juries and they got an indictment. That means a lot more than getting an indictment if you're conducting lawfare on the side of Joe Biden against Donald Trump. Right. So they could, they have to have something because a, it wasn't the prosecutor's ultimate decision, it was a grand jury's ultimate city. And they got 21 or 25 or whatever the size of the grand jury was to agree with them. And they did this in a blue anti conservative environment. That's number two. Number three, they're going to present evidence and they will be found guilty or innocent. And then you're going to see the whole lawfare idea adjudicated on whether they're guilty or innocent. Donald Trump discredited lawfare because Jack Smith folded and because Letitia James is going to be a repel. I mean they already have reduced the fine and it's a joke and Fanny Wills blew up. It's not even, you know, just they'll try to do something and Alvin Bragg, everybody thinks he's going to be on appeal. So. But three. So it's going to depend on whether they're convicted or not. Number three, the two people who have been indicted. Let's just take John Bolton. The charge against John Bolton is that during the 2020 campaign, he had been fired. Right. National security advisor, number three, there was Michael Flynn, there was HR McMaster, then there was John Bolton. And he got in a fight with his ego and thought he was going to have a neoconservative interventionist. He wasn't Secretary of State. And so Trump basically said, the Secretary of State is Mike Pompeo. He does what I've said, you're fired. He got so angry. A normal person would have said, I owe that man a lot because I have never been able to get a Cabinet level of position because the left hates me and they never get me confirmed. I couldn't even get confirmed in the Bush administration for UN Ambassador. It had to be a recess appointment. Now I got my chance of a lifetime because I'm National Security Advisor and you don't have to be confirmed by Congress. So now, even though I'm hated, he didn't have that attitude. He was an ingrate. He disagreed. He got angry. And so he said, I'm going to write a tell all book and I'm going to time it right toward the campaign, right after that first impeachment. And that's what he did. And the allegation is that every day that he was on these secret meetings overseas, he saw Trump, talked to Trump, he went on his little tablet and typed out what he did, and he sent it to his wife and his daughter, just like I'd send to you or any of our listeners. Not secure or anything. And some of that was classified. So when he wrote the book, the Trump campaign sued him and they said, you can't do this. And the judge ruled, it's too late. The book is already coming out in a few days. You should have done this earlier. But, Mr. Bolton, what you did was wrong, and you're going to find yourself very soon in legal and civil exposure for what you did. He looked at everything. That case then was going to go forward, couldn't stop the book. But the case that he had violated a felony case, violated national security. And Joe Biden's da, Merrick Garden, said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He doesn't have a pitchfork and horns and a forked tail anymore. No, no, no, no. He's got angel wings. He helped us beat Trump because he was on TV every single night telling everybody that only John Bolton knew. I can assure you I was at the meeting. I can assure you that Trump whispered in my ear. I can assure you that I know him better. He's more dangerous than you can imagine. That's what he said every night. So they didn't press that case. So then Pam Bondi comes in and looks at the information, looks at the old case about stopping the book, reads the judge and said, well, how did we know that he was sending this stuff to his wife and kid? How did the Biden administration know that? Well, they knew it because a foreign intelligence agency from Iran had intercepted it. So the Iranians, apparently it's at a foreign service, but we think it's Iranians tapped into it and got all that information from him. That's the allegation. I don't know if it's true or not. So what's going to happen is he's going to go to trial and he's going, his lawyers are going to tell the jury two things. Either the stuff that he sent his wife and daughter anonymously was anonymous. For what reason? Well, he just thought it would be cute because he didn't send anything that wasn't in the public domain. Does anybody believe that? That's the argument he's going to have to make. Or they're going to say Donald Trump is a horrible person, he's horrible and you guys are all left wing juries and you got to nullify the evidence and I'm the good guy, one of the other and we'll see who what happens. Then you have James Comey, he's charged with lying to Congress and they're therefore obstructing their investigation. They ask him point blank, did you or did you not know of people leaking FBI classified information and you either did not stop them or you in some fashion gave them the green light. And you said when we asked you this question three years ago that you didn't. Now the statute of limitations is over with. But we want to ask you that again and we want to apprise you that if you say it now, you've got another five years of exposure. And he said, nope, I stand by what I said, I never did it. And they said, well, you have. We have two high ranking FBI people, including Andrew McCabe who has told the truth that he lied. He tell the truth that he lied four times and said that he did not leak. But on those lies that he said that he did not leak. He was caught, caught. And when he was caught, he was not prosecuted. Because he was just fined and with no prison, no anything. He confessed. But he did as part of his confession say that he was told by you, James Comey. So we have. And well, I don't remember it that way. So that will be taken before a liberal jury and they will say to the liberal jury there are people who say that they leak classified information on the prompt, prompt of James Comey. And now we have certain little private messages. He wrote and when he heard about leaking, he said great and complimented. So that's going to go into evidence that shows that he knew people were leaking and he approved of it and whether they did it explicitly because he said we don't know that's going to be adjudicated.
- [71:43]
B
Well, if this left wing jury finds him guilty, they're only going to find him guilty of perjury because that's all they can get him on.
- [71:51]
A
Because he said no, they can get him on perjury. Perjury.
- [71:56]
B
But you said statute of limitations is.
- [71:58]
A
Over for the actual lease, for the actual leaking of the classified documents. I think the federal prosecutors will try to make the statement that by lying about that that he empowered the leaking of the, I'm not sure, a conspiracy or something. But they have him on two counts and that one is obstructing. No, they won't get him on actually trying to disseminate. That's all over with. But they will get him on A line and B, by, by lying then. And then when he was asked explicitly lying again, he was obstructing justice, the justice of the Senate committee to find out the truth that he was a hostile wit of he was a neutral witness that deliberately tried to sidetrack the, that federal investigation as it was conducted by a Senate committee. So my point is that he will either be found and is that Lawfare? Well, I'll tell you one thing, it's going to be much harder if you want to conduct Lawfare from the right to do so in a left wing, to get a left wing grand jury and to get a left wing verdict. But if you do, then it's pretty clear he's guilty. I myself think there's a much stronger case against Bolton and I think Brennan has a lot of problems because he has already admitted on two occasions that he lied under oath. That's statute of limitations. He said under oath to the sinister. I never told anybody in the Senate, I never told anybody in the CIA to spy. I never knew about it. Spy on your staffers, computers. Then he apologized that I did and then they said there. He also said, I can assure you that there's no collateral damage. We're not killing civilians on prep. He knew at the time they were. So he apologized on both counts. And so now the question is, was he at a meeting with James Comey and was he at a meeting with James Comey and James Clapper? And when Barack Obama said we've got to find something on Trump, they said that on the, during the, during the election and after, don't you guys have something on Trump? And they went back and they looked at, they asked their people to find it. And then they said to the president, I don't think we do. Our subordinates can't find anything. And he said, get something. So they went back and they adjusted their assessments and now they're trying to find out whether that's a crime or not. Maybe they can just say, well, bureaucratic decision. But it looks to me like both Comey and Clapper and Brennan probably massaged the intelligence report to continue the collusion hoax when there was no evidence to do that. I don't know whether that's a criminal, you know what I'm saying? But, and I don't know at what point he was asked because I haven't kept up with the case in detail. I don't know at what case within the last five years he was brought before a committee and asked, as Comey was Brennan, do you still maintain that there was Russian collusion and that you had an assessment from the CIA? Is that what you're saying? Because you've said that before and see what he says.
- [75:46]
B
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take our last break and then just come back for some quick discussion of assassin culture and socialism. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So, Victor, I wanted to just get your reflections on. We've had two assassination attempts of Donald Trump two years ago. And then just recently in this last year, Charlie Kirk, of course, by a was assassinated. So is this something that is growing and going to be common, or is this an aberration and going to die off in our culture?
- [76:27]
A
Well, the most four noticeable ones. That's a pretty good pull to make a generalization. There was Tyler Robinson who tried who did kill Charlie Kirk. There was Luigi Mangione who killed the United Health Care executive. There was Ryan Ruth who tried to kill Troy Trump. And there was Thomas Crooks who hit Trump in the ear and killed another person and wounded two. Is there a pattern? Yes, they're all for people of the left. They're all for not just people of the left, but activists are incited by particular left wing dogmas. In the case of Tyler Robinson, he was into the trans movement, this weird furrier movement and felt that Charlie Kirk was probably an obstacle to that. In the case of crooks, he had gone from either isolated crazy conservative to hard left and he had bought into the idea that Donald Trump was an existential threat and he hated him. If you look at Luigi Mangione, he was an over educated Nepo baby who believed that the health care and the whole corporate world was on fair to poor people and they weren't getting health care. So he was going to take out one the biggest united health care. So he thought that's what he claimed if you were Ryan Ruth. He said so many crazy things, but he thought he hated Trump because he thought he was going to cut off aid, Ukraine, everything. So now we have the idea that they are all trying to kill conservatives. By the way, there's more of them than the opposite. If you count the eight or nine trans cases and somebody just sent me something, it was on the Libs of TikTok. I can't assess the veracity of people who commit shootings of over four people based on their race or sexual orientation. The largest group were people who identified as trans shooting people or were in the trans movement of some. I don't know how you adjudicate all of those, whether you count Thomas Crook or you count Tyler Robinson who were somewhere there. But whether pronouns or furry animals or whatever crazy cookie thing they are. But my point is this, that that seems to be more common and you go back to Stephen Scalise and other stuff. Okay, why are they doing it now? If you were an Old Testament person you would say that they're pretty convinced that nobody who shoots anybody goes to the death penalty and very few get life imprisonment without parole. And there's a good chance if you shoot somebody and you're young enough you'll be out, number one. Number two, the invective on social media, and that's where they live, on social media is all anti Trump, anti Trump, anti corporate slough. There's a huge left wing and the invective they're using. Fascist, fascist, fascist, fascist, Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler. So in that environment, these people who are mentally ill or deranged or into some sex call or into some left wing bazaar are idolized and they think if they shoot a conservative activist like Charlie Kirk or a health care executive Or Donald Trump. They're going to be canonized, famous. They're not going to be demonized. And the post facto results show they're absolutely correct. They're making an opera out of Luigi Mangione in the Bay Area, Tyler Robinson. People were already making fun of how Charlie Cook died. They were reenacted holding their neck. They had T shirts with blood on their neck. They were crazy.
- [80:30]
B
You mean Charlie Kirk?
- [80:31]
A
Charlie Kirk, yeah. So I was talking, you know. Yeah. About Charlie Kirk. As far as Trump, there were people almost immediately said, oh, he missed. They weren't upset on the left. So to review if the general jurisprudence is weaponized and in general, it's therapeutic now and that people who shoot and kill, even decarlo Brown that killed poor arena on the North Carolina subway, I don't think he's going to get the death penalty. I don't even think he's been out so many times. And the guy who just burned the. Tried to burn to death the girl on the. So the system sends a message to these four. You're not going to really pay the ultimate price. And then it sends message number two, that if you do do this, you're going to be canonized as a political hero in some quarters. And number three, you're going to be famous. You add all of that up and there's a fourth. It's going to be lax, the security, because these are not popular people. I don't mean that conspiracy. Like some people are saying that Donald Trump was set up. I do believe that the head of the Secret Service, Trump was not president. So it was Joe Biden's Secret Service. And we. She was fired. There was a general laxity that said, ah, that's just Trump. Just go down to, you know, Pennsylvania and go through the motions, but don't scour every building or don't, you know, if somebody comes in and he's kind of lets off an alarm. Yeah, that kind of attitude, which they didn't have with Obama or Biden. So that. And that was pretty much part of the idea. If you do it, there's not going to be a lot of consequence, but you could get away with it. And if you're at a university and you're walking around and somebody see Charlie Kirk is speaking and you just walk in broad daylight, you know, kind of limping around with an odd object or whatever, you had to have a. And then you go up on a roof, nobody says anything. And you're right. So laxity, laxity, laxity. And so, yeah, that's explains it. Is it going to happen again? Absolutely.
- [82:57]
B
Yeah.
- [82:58]
A
Because if somebody gets shot tomorrow, if Donald Trump is his assassination tomorrow, it'll be two things will be much harder. He's got a good Secret Service now and he's going to be much better protected. But if somebody gets close enough to try it, that person. Will that person be canonized?
- [83:18]
B
Yes.
- [83:19]
A
Just look at who's attacking the ice people. Shooting, trying to shoot ice. And so we have assassination chic right now. There's one thing very quickly before we quit. We also have insurrection. Sheik. We had all the generals in the first term. I won't mention their names, I know many of them, but they were saying Mussolini, Hitler, Lyer, architect of Auschwitz, retired generals. That lowered the bar of what you could say. Then we had Mark Milley. I contacted my Chinese counterpart, I tripped him off and I said, look, if Donald Trump sounds crazy to me and we're in a DEFCON 1 situation, basically I'll call you first. No, by the way, I'm going to violate the chain of command and not going to be an advisor. I'm going to tell all these regional people, Centcom, AfricaCom, you name it, they report to me. Not the department. That's illegal. Not the DoD secretary, which the law says. And then when you add to that the insurrection of 600 jurisdictions. We don't listen to the federal government, state law. If you're an illegal alien, we're not going to turn you over. Or I'm Mayor Johnson. I'm going to. Oh, poor babies. You're trapped in a convoy and you need help. I'm not. We're not going to send suburban police out to help you. No, no, no, no. Or you're Mondami. I'm going to arrest Netanyahu. I don't care if it's against federal law. I hire, I obey a higher law, international law. I'm an international. And then you get the video by these eight congressmen, say everybody, all 1.3 million of you. If you get an order, wink, nod. Donald Trump. If you get an order, you don't have to obey it. Uniform Code of Minute. If it's unconstitutional. If you think, you 18 year olds, that you are smarter than your commanding officers and he's disobeying the Constitution and he's for Trump, then just disobey it. Can you imagine what will happen? I'm flying a helicopter in support of somebody down in the ocean who's just got crashed on an F35. I think it's unfair that he's asking me to risk my life to go into a storm and rescue it. I think that's unconstitutional. I'm not going to do it. That's what they're doing. When you tell 101.3 million soldiers that they can disobey orders and then you quote the Uniform Code of Minimalists of Military justice and I read it 90 article 90 and 92, it doesn't say that it's very rare. It has like seven or eight specified situations in which you can. It's not easy to do that. Not like they said, well, they said.
- [86:08]
B
If he asked you to do something illegal. But then they left it all vague. And so any, as you said, an 18 year old decides what he thinks is constitutional or not.
- [86:19]
A
I just went through the stuff that they in the past have said, oh, you can't send federal troops the city. Colin Powell basically called up George H.W. bush. Hey, Mr. President, I'm head of the Joint Chiefs. We need some guys. You need some help with the Rodney King riots? I got 5,000 Marines, Bush, send them in or you can't kill people who are overseas unless it's authorized by Congress. Ask Harry Truman, Bill Clinton, the two Bushes, Barack Obama, oh, I just killed a U.S. citizen with a Predator drone. That's Obama. And then not only did he not have congressional authorization, at the White House correspondence dinner, he joked about it. He said, hey all you guys who want to date my two daughters, I want to warn you, I'm commander in chief. It's called Predator P R E D A D O. Remember that. So they couldn't come up with with one example. Yeah.
- [87:21]
B
Well, Victor, we are at a hard break so I'm going to have to say goodbye to you. But thank you for all this wisdom today. Please view our Saturday show as well. We go over some very big topics from the last year on things that are destroying Western civilization. So thanks to our audience for joining. Thanks to Victor.
- [87:44]
A
Thank you everybody for listening and watching.
- [87:46]
B
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen and we're signing off.
- [87:50]
A
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.