← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s Democrat ‘Lose, Lose’ SOTU Strategy
01:32:56
Donald Trump’s first State of the Union speech of his second term was long as it was a ‘good slice of Americana,’ argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” with Sami Winc.
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm getting used to the term cancer survivor. I'm on the oppressed and victimized side of the binary and I'm just trying to find out who my oppressor is and my victimizer, and I can't find one. Is it me? My habits? If I could just find somebody who did this to me, I could be a victim. But I am going to use that term cancer survivor when it's appropriate. In need for pity. Just teasing. There were so many things to that speech. The critical side of me said, oh, wow, it's almost an hour and 47 minutes. It beat Bill Clinton's record. He really baited successfully by. By the way the Democrats stand up if you want to preference Americans over illegal aliens. Apparently they don't. They didn't want to fall into Trump's trap, but they did fall into it by not standing up.
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Podcast Host
You should be ashamed of yourself. Not standing up.
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Victor Davis Hanson
You should be ashamed of yourself. When he spoke our time Pacific at 6 o', clock, it was nine and he spoke for two hours. He had the Democratic response coming on at 11 o' clock at night for a lot of the country, and that meant nobody was watching it. And it was so funny when she was talking about affordability. And if you go over a list of the things she's taxed, Uber and mattresses, anything that moves or speaks, makes a sound, she's going to tax whatever people say about Bill Clinton. I'm one of his biggest critics of his lifestyle. He did good things for the United States. Not all, but some because he was talented.
- [01:22]
Podcast Host
They say he was personable like Donald. Trump is also very personable.
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Victor Davis Hanson
He was like Trump, he was a partisan. But deep down inside he liked people. So he would be nice to people he didn't associate with. You know what I mean? But Gavin Newsom is no Bill Clinton. He's no Barack Obama. I don't think he's going to be viable because he can't help himself.
- [01:56]
Podcast Host
Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his Own Words. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marshabusky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hill College. You can find him at his website, victorhanson.com and the name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. So please come join us there. For all things Victor, you can find lots of free things, his recent columns that are out in other publications, his podcasts have links there and then we have VDH Ultra material that you can subscribe to. And those things are a video once a week on a current topic and two articles. And so please come join us there. So, Victor, we. Oh, sorry. Let's take a moment and go for a break and then we'll come right back.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children, the faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive as long as we keep first things first. We've only just begun. America the Beautiful.
- [03:17]
Podcast Host
Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. We're affiliated with the Daily Signal, so you can find lots of Victor's videos in particular at the Daily Signal. He does short form and long form. So, Victor, the state of the Union was last night. We were recording on Wednesday and Trump put on a wonderful show. I think my own feeling was just generally that it went from a speech and it turned into sort of. And not to discount the people that the war heroes that he's bringing up and those who have been injured by illegal aliens, but definitely Judge Judy's court and the Democrats were the defendants. And I think the only thing I noticed different from last year because the statistics were so good on his side was that he said they should be ashamed and said things like that to the Democrats. So I thought I felt good about that. But I'm not sure how State of the Union that was. But what are your thoughts?
- [04:25]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, is this our fourth, my fourth podcast? Yeah. I'm getting used to the term cancer survivor. I'm on the oppressed and victimized side of the binary. And I'm just trying to find out who's my oppressor is and my victimizer. And I can't find one. Is it me, my habits? But if I could just find somebody who did this to me, I could be a victim. But I am going to use that term cancer survivor when it's appropriate. And need for pity. Just teasing. There were so many things to that speech to use an image that the devil side or the critical side of me said, oh, wow, it's two hours, almost an hour and 47 minutes. It beat Bill Clinton record. It had all of these extravaganzas, appearances by the hockey team. He really baited successfully, by the way the Democrats stand up. If you want to preference Americans over illegal aliens. Apparently they don't or they didn't want to fall into Trump's trap, but they did fall into it by not standing up. So There was a lose lose situation for them but what was interesting was was the I saw the what was her name Berger Schauberger. What's the Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger and that was that kind of a traditional it's all about me I did the I'm the She's obviously thinking that Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom are stumbling and they might want a fresh and she was articulate but it was just that same pablum that you know politician this, this, this, this this vagaries and stuff. So in contrast Trump was kind of unique. It was not really a speech as you said it was just a series of episodic events and he got in he had to get in at first all of his economic achievements and it's really amazing Unemployment is steady or down the GDP is up, interest rates are coming down inflation's but and then he made the point that it's much cheaper than the things are much better than the 5% average 21% of inflation under Biden that was divided by 4 is over 5% every year on average he's already best that so the Democratics argument is not too I don't think they knew what was going on is what I'm trying to say. They 70 something people didn't show up that just made them look worse and then you had Ilion Omar and Representative Talib yelling liar and murder. We were told by the left when I think it was Joe Walsh or some congressman did that in liar that to or interrupted Obama or when Alito kind of nodded his head no that was intemperate. You're not supposed to do that But Ilyan Omar looked when you looked at her she alternated from being crushed and depressed and oh my gosh they're almost onto me the next step is that I'm wor $30 million and then they might find out I married my brother and then there's rumors they know about my dad was part of the genocidal regime and I'm not a victim. I was an oppressor all of that you could see on her face that the gig is up. She can't hide behind Di and then when he called he used the word pirates double entendre with the actual Red Sea Somalia involvement she got very angry and that she didn't do her cite any benefits but there was a lot of nuances to it when I'm not saying he planned that but when he spoke our time Pacific at six o' clock it was nine and he spoke for two hours and Then there was all. So he had the Democratic Response coming on 11 o' clock at night for a lot of the country, and that meant nobody was watching it. And then the response in Spanish, it was just incoherent. I don't know Spanish all that well, but I looked at tape, I could understand it because he broke into English and I think a Spanish commentator said his grammar was contorted, but it was just the same old, you're being oppressed by ice. And he never understood the essential truth that Mexican American ICE officers are overrepresented in their demographic by about 3 to 4 to 1. So, and so it's a, it's not a white Mexican thing at all. It's a lot of Mexican American people are tired of people coming across the border with drugs and violence and gangs and then they populate their residence. Everybody in the white community says, well, you take care of them, it's your community. And they're saying, no, I'm an American. It's all of our communities. I don't want it. And that's why he continually polls. If you ask the question in the right way, do you support deporting people who came here illegally, Overwhelmingly criminals, but even anybody who's here illegally, probably 50, 50. This is despite all the bad publicity that he got. The only thing is he's going to up the defense of the budget to a trillion and a half. All these tax cuts, if you look at the statistics, he's going to need about a 5 or 6% GDP increase to pay for it with increased revenues. And the deficit is. The deficit and the debt are something that nobody wants to talk about. It's, it's kind of, I don't know, it's not on my watch. Just so it doesn't happen on my watch, the music stops, I'll have a chair. The next guy won't. And that, that's what musical chairs, the attitude toward the debt.
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Podcast Host
Did you, did you see when he said he was going to ban politicians from investing in things? And he even said Nancy Pelosi. And I thought she wasn't there, but she was there.
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Victor Davis Hanson
I don't know, she seemed kind of dumbfounded. And Elizabeth didn't help her that Elizabeth Warren was clapping and it isn't, I think they've called it indirectly or by slang, the Pelosi bill. So was very long, it was episodic, as I said, disjointed. But when you praised all those people that were wonderful and there was a good slice of Americana, young people, old people, minorities, Soldiers, civilians, all representative of the Trump counter revolution that he wants to see. And then the hockey players came in. They didn't even stand up for the hockey players. I guess that they would rather stand up for what Ms. Guy, Eileen Gu, the Chinese national, she says she is, who was born in America.
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Podcast Host
I think at that point more of them stood up because Trump said, well, they're standing up. I can't believe it.
- [11:29]
Victor Davis Hanson
Some of them did. Yes. And then he said, you should be ashamed of yourself. When they didn't stand up for the heroes and the people. They're just a sad bunch of people. Their faces are contorted. I looked at Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and I thought, wow, used to give us lectures in the 90s about closed borders and protecting union labor in your party and help for Israel, and you just got so buffaloed. Actually, it's kind of ironic. You kind of didn't do much on the border and then you had this influx. And then, to be frank, the reason that we have di and woke is immigration. We have 50 million people, 53 million people that weren't born in the United States. 30 of them are probably here illegally. 30 million. And they are a constituency for the Democratic Party. And immigration has changed the demography as it was intended. And these old white fossilized dinosaurs of the Democratic Party don't know what to do about this Frankensteinian monster that is now consuming them. The AOCs, the Talab, the squad and everybody. Al Green was there, as was usual annex. He had a. He had a sign that I think it said we aren't. Yeah, but he had his hand over the R, the A when I saw it. So it looked like we rent black apes. Because he had R, you know, a R, E and T apostrophe. Well, he had his hand over the A, so I didn't know what it says. Yes. I thought, wow, he doesn't mean that. So they didn't come off well. And Trump had all of these little IEDs that they just walked on. The thing about these speeches is nobody watches them in their entirety. Nobody meeting maybe. I don't know what. The audience was 10 million at most, and there's 340 million people. But they do hear on radio on the way to work, or on their computers, online, or on evening news clips. And the clips are not good for them because it shows that everybody's going to have a clip of Ilya and Omar until that was really bad. Look. And then sitting there and then Trump goading them on. And the Democrats don't understand America. They're going to say, well, Trump was goading people and he turned it into a political. And they're going to show Trump saying, you can't even. You should be ashamed of yourself. But that's going to help Trump. And that's what they don't understand.
- [14:03]
Podcast Host
I thought that all came off well. In fact, I was kind of mesmerized. I liked the State of the Union speech, which seemed to be about the first half. Half of it. But I was mesmerized by all his
- [14:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
war heroes and that pretty amazing somebody 100 years old. That was in the Philippines campaign of 1944.
- [14:20]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Korean War pilot. Yes, it was. It was just.
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Podcast Host
And the pilot into Venezuela who had
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Victor Davis Hanson
been a victim of an illegal alien truck driver was simply beautiful young girl. Whole life is. They couldn't even stand for that. In honor of what she's gone through. It was kind of despicable, but wow.
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Podcast Host
And I think the, probably the even powerful one was that Irina Zyrutska's mother, because I think we all participated in it because we all saw that.
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Victor Davis Hanson
I get nightmares.
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Podcast Host
Yeah.
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Victor Davis Hanson
That video when I see her there and then that guy is staring at her. You can see him staring at her. And then he gets up and slits her throat. And then she has a shock of what happened to me. I know I'm going to die. And nobody comes to her aid. There were four people on the other aisle, across the aisle and behind her, and they sidestepped her. She bled to death. I'm not saying that when you cut your jugular vein that you can survive, but somebody could have just rushed up and tried to stop the bleeding and nobody did. And the mother has a reason to be outraged. Her daughter came here to be safe and what did she find? A career criminal. The only good thing is the South North Carolina governor did, who's, I think, a left wing Governor Stern. He did sign a capital punishment by firing squad. Not that I'm going to be grotesque, but if anybody deserves a capital punishment, it's that guy who killed her. Because he had committed, I think, 11 felonies. He'd been out. He had a whole lifetime of violence against the innocent. And what he did was reprehensible. It's just grotesque. It's medieval.
- [16:05]
Podcast Host
Yeah, it sure is. Victor. We'll continue with this, but let's welcome back one of our sponsors, Pure Health Research. If you want to drop extra pounds, boost energy levels, or reduce swelling in your legs and feet, then this message is for you. Pure Health Research. Is on a mission to make America healthy again. And two of their best selling health supplements are leading the way. First is Liver health formula. Over 100 million Americans have a sluggish liver riddled with fatty deposits. This can kill your metabolism, pile on the pounds and make you feel tired. Liver Health Formula takes care of all that. It supports thriving liver health with special nutrients like artichoke extract and milk thistle. This is one of the easiest ways to slim down and revitalize your energy levels. Next is lymph system Support. If you struggle with fluid buildup or swelling in your legs, ankle or feet, this is for you. The natural ingredients in lymph system support help gently flush extra fluids and toxins out of your body. And right now, for a limited time, you can get 35% off liver health Formula and lymph system support along with all 50 plus health supplements pure Health Research has to offer. Head over to PureHealthResearch.com and use the coupon code Victor at checkout. That's Pure Health Research with coupon code Victor to save 35% on your order today. And we'd like to thank Pure Health Research for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. And it sounds like a great place to get supplements, so we hope everybody joins them and uses their products. So, Victor, I wanted to just one last thing. It seems to me that the Democrats are probably going to try to say Trump turned it all into a circus by all of the various episodes, as you put it, he showed. But I have a feeling they don't realize that the people who came there to be part, as they would call it, part of his circus. These individuals who came are probably extremely happy that he has pointed out the Democrats as the source of what has occurred to them, at least the victims of illegal immigration. I think that they were more than happy to be there, as hard as it probably was to be there. And I think the Democrats have that all wrong. They probably think, oh, these people are being used by Trump. But I don't. If I were those people, in other words, I was Zarina, Irina Zaritska's mother, I would be more than happy to be there and see him point out the Democrats for them.
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Victor Davis Hanson
She said that?
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Podcast Host
Yeah.
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Victor Davis Hanson
She said, can't. They can't even stand. And then ask yourself, Time magazine had a picture, I think February 9th or something of Miss Goo Goo, and she looks like a model. And then compare that. This is a person who came over. Her parents came over here. Her father, I guess, had the benefit of a liberal, affluent, tolerant society. Grew up quite affluent, was given every opportunity that was not available in China and then decided I guess to re emphasize her woke credentials. She's very naive, her woke credentials. She thought she would be cool. In the atmosphere of anti Americanisms that infects our elite, many of the other skiers had voiced such things that she was going to ride a crest of popularity. Maybe she did on the left. But when you can contrast that picture with Jack Hughes with his mouth bloody and his teeth missing and somebody had clobbered him and he had kind of a off the wall voice and attitude. And I was struck that when I looked at the Canadian players, they looked beefy and big, kind of mean. And these guys were kind of long haired Americans. I know they play in the NHL, a lot of them do, but they were slighter, you know what I mean? And they were just kind of laid back. And what I'm getting at is they, they sort of conveyed generations that, you know, the Sean Gen Z it is. Yeah. And that Sean Penn when early when his. He had that Spicoli, Ms. Spicoli voice and attitude. So you thought these are the most unlike to be. To beat this Canadian, that's their national pastime and to be fervently pro American. And they were both. And they were greater, they were greater than the Canadians. They overcome all of these predictions. They couldn't win. They were very patriotic. And then to see how he got his teeth knocked out and he, you know, we're so used in America to Debbie Downers. You would think he would say if he was like, like the laugh. Wow, I hurt my lip. And I don't know if it was worth it. You know, I don't. There's one thing I was fighting for my teammates, not America. He didn't do any of that. He just said, well, it's great. I love America. I'm so happy to be back. And you said his face was just tormented and he didn't care. It was like it was very refreshing to see him. And then Trump understood that. So when they came in, they were all happy. You couldn't feign that. It wasn't like having, you know, a rapper like Lamar, what's his name, Kendrick into the White House or another guy with his ankle band going off and disrupting things that Obama did. These people really liked the United States and that swept through the hall. So there were a variety of things that should not have worked. And it was almost like he hijacked the State of the Union and turned it into a TV extravaganza. And he got the initial message and then it was just story after story after story. And then you realize that everybody's sick of politicians going up there. As president we decided I'm going to do on the. And he broke that monotony. So as long as it. And then the length it was sort of like, well, I had all of America's attention and you can talk to them at midnight, you know, it's your turn. And. And it was so funny when she was talking about affordability and they if you live, if you go over a list of the things she's taxed Uber and mattresses, anything that moves or not speaks, makes a sound, she's going to tax right out of the New Testament. Caesar Augustus had the whole world to be taxed. That's what she taxed, everything.
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Podcast Host
Well, what frustrates me about the Democrats is they always say cost rather than rate of inflation and they're the ones that brought the costs up in the first place. And Donald Trump is the best you can hope for is a decrease in the rate of inflation if you're not going to have a great Depression.
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Victor Davis Hanson
I know I had a white during the COVID epidemic right at the. I had a washer dryer stack and it was really good. It was an old Kenmore and It was like 20 years old. I thought it would never end. But it went out. But it was going out. So I looked online right when the 2021 it was like 700 bucks, 800 bucks. And by the time it actually went out it was about 2020. But when it actually went out and I had to replace it in 2022, it was $1400. It doubled and then I bought a pickup and it was. I never heard of a $75,000 $80,000 pickup. People forget it went up 9, 9.1% in 2022 alone. And no, they don't want to talk about that or they can't talk about it.
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Podcast Host
Victor. So let's go ahead and turn to the cartel wars in Mexico. The cartel drug lord who was killed, as your audience probably knows. I thought his name was interesting. Nemesio Osiguera, which Nemesio is for nemesis. So an act of justice apparently. But anyways he was known for his violent and brutal murdering of various and asundry people.
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Victor Davis Hanson
But anyways the National Guard Mutilation, torture.
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Podcast Host
Yeah, Mexican National Guard lost 25 in getting him. And there seems to be be almost a war going on in Mexico right now. And so I was thought what were your thoughts on and updates with the
- [24:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
the difference is, under Biden and Obama, the attitude was we're going to treat Mexico with soft gloves because they have the cartels. They can't deal with it. We're going to give. We're going to have the North American Free Trade association, but we're going to let them cheat when assemble Chinese products and have a big surplus with us. We don't really care if 80 or 90,000Americans die of fentanyl overdoses. That's just collateral down. They didn't do anything. And we're going to have to have an open border because as Obrador said, oh, I think it's beautiful that 40 million from our citizens went to the United States. And then it was just so asymmetrical. And Trump comes in and he just looks at it completely different. He said, wait a minute. It we're in a free trade situation and you've got, what, $170 billion surplus with us. You have an open border. You're sending 10,000 people across our border. 500,000 of them were criminals. 4 million, 5 million a year. This is insane. And then he's saying, you have, what do you need 50 consulates for? No country has as many consulates. You're getting actively involved in US Politics. And then he says, China is sending you raw fentanyl product, and you know that they're assembling it and they're killing Americans and it won't wash anymore. Well, Americans shouldn't take drugs. Well, the drugs are disguised as prescription drugs that people sometimes take. Recreation. The whole point is to kill people. And so especially on China's end. And so he just said to Sheinbaum, I have so much leverage over you, I can shut the border. And you're not going to have a safety valve, are you? So maybe they'll march from Oaxaca or Chiapas or Micho Khan. They'll march on you in Mexico City for your oppression and racism rather than come to us. We're not going to be your, you know, Frederick Jackson Turner safety valve no more. And you know what? You better get the $170 billion down or else we can put tariffs on you and stop you completely. And then he said, we don't need to have a. We're not going to have all this fentanyl coming in the United States. We're not going to lose 50, 60, 70. It's hard to know how many are actually killed. People, quote, 100,000. But we're not going to do it anymore or else. And the or Else was, you're going to have to stop the cartel. And so she had no choice, and I don't know if she can do it. The only thing else is that people have this notion that the cartels are separate from the culture and values of Mexico. It's almost like saying the Mafia had nothing to do with Sicily. Sicily had a culture that encouraged or tolerated the Mafia. I won't get into it out of deference to my Italian American friends, but that culture was not present, say, in Naples. Well, a little bit in Naples, but it wasn't in Milan, for example. It was a regional culture. It had historical factors that created it. But for the cartels not to exist, then you have to have a Mexican government that's not corrupt and a transparent judicial system. And you can't have the Mordita, and you can't have a Spanish conquistador elite in Mexico City and indigenous people all around who are not treated the same way. And then say that you're all woke and DEI and we're Mexico. No, no. They're much more racist in Mexico City than anybody in the United States, I can tell you that. And I can remember being. I won't mention the place I was at, but I was at a think tank once having lunch with two professors from Mexico City, and they were very anti American. And they started attacking me in America. And then they said something I'll never forget. They said, you idiots. We're sending you all. Are Oaxacans. We're sending you all of our Indian. We're getting rid of all of our Indian people. And you think they're Mexican. They're not Mexicans like us. Almost sounded like Gavin Newsom. And I thought, wow, I always knew this about this elite, that they're racist. But they've got to change that culture or that you're going to. The cartels are a symptom. They're not a cause of it, is what I'm trying to say. And that country should be the wealthiest country in the world because it's got oil, it's got a great climate, it's got a beautiful coastline, it's got tourism, it's got rich natural resources. It's got everything to boom. And it's not. And you know.
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Podcast Host
Yes. So well, let. We'll hope for Sheinbaum that the war against the cartels goes well. But I have my doubts that she's up to it as well. But we'll see. I wanted to turn then Victor to Newsom, since you brought him up. Gavin Newsom. He's had his recent gaffes are very bad, calling his audience mediocre at best. But what Newsom has said recently are two things. One, in an interview before a black audience, he said, I'm a 960sat guy. Like, I'm, I'm like you. As though the whole audience, which probably wasn't because these were elite blacks, was, can I say it? Stupid like him. I, I doubt they were.
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Victor Davis Hanson
So it was so insulting to now some of you 940 people. I'm not, I'm not boasting. I would have been nice to have him in the audience and have a black guy come up and say, I'm going to talk to you. But I, I'm a thousand SAT guy. I'm not like you. White people, people. And everybody would. You know, I never agree with Cornel west, but he was right when he said it was disqualifying racism. And the thing is, as I've always said, that white liberal elite, that's really segregationist, the working class people, I'm sure the thousands of people I hope that are listening to this right now are working people or they are small business people, but they live and work with people who are not like them every day. But it's a natural integration. They don't condescend, they don't patronize, they just treat people like people. But for the people who are not comfortable with that and live in these white wealthy enclaves, they create a veneer that they're carrying and they call people racist. But that really is very thin. And every once in a while they get caught. I can't think of a major Democratic politician that has not voiced a racist thought. Think of Joe Biden, President, United States. Remember the corn pop saga stories? Those were so racist. Remember, Barack Obama was the first articulate black that could basically that could speak English. Remember that? Remember that? He said, I represent a slave state with a big smile on his face. Remember he called two of. I'm going kind of on autopilot now. He called two of his aides. Boy, hey, boy. He called. He used the word Negro and they didn't say a thing. Nancy Pelosi said, we can't deport people. Who's going to pick our fruit and food? Remember that? As if all Mexican people, that's what they do. She should come to my hometown. The whole hierarchy, school superintendents, police, they're all Mexican American. But not in her world, in the palazzo and Napa or her San Francisco mansion. And so that was the other thing was, you know, when I went to the Hoover Institution. I was thinking of that when I heard him say that it's a very competitive situation, environment, atmosphere and there's some very brilliant people. So when I was got up there, I met Shelby Steel and I met all of them and I was, you know, Cal State Fresno from a farm 2003. And then I introduced myself. I think Chiron Skinner was there. And my point is, if I were to say who would have the highest SAT scores of the people I met, I would say probably Tom Sowell, Shelby Steele, Chiron Skinner and Condoleezza Rice. You know what I mean? That was based on their conversation and abilities and performance and record. I knew a lot of mediocre people there too, but they weren't black. So what I'm getting at is who would come up with that stereotype except a privileged Nepo baby? And what is he doing now? He went over to the security conference and he kind of just bombed. He knew nothing in Munich. Then he has this insane group of foul mouthed vulgarians that do his social media. When Sean Hannity said something, he tweeted, you f use the F word and the S H I blank. He uses this horrible foul. He says I'm going to be fouler than Donald Trump. But he doesn't understand that Donald Trump is successful not because of his foul language but despite of it. And he's under constant pressure from people in conservative communities, Christian communities, me too, not to use those words, but he thinks by using them he will be as popular as Trump. But he has none of Trump's negating abilities that negate that. In other words, he has nothing else to offer. So we just focus on his filthy mouth and he does it. These punk kids that do his social media are just bringing it. He's just. What I'm getting at is day by day, insidiously so, he is disqualifying himself from serious contention. And then he's got this memoir coming out and he wants to read. We configure himself not as a Nepo baby who was born as almost the Getty Oil family was his caretakers. His father was an appellate court judge. He knew my mom who was on the appellate court in California. And he was very well connected with Jerry Brown. And the family got a concession from the first Brown, not second at Squaw Valley, the former Squaw Valley ski resort. So they were always privileged, they were insiders, they were wealthy. He had that plump Jack company that he started through his father and Getty money. And now he wants to tell Everybody that he's just a good old boy that ate Wonder Bread and was. And part of that narrative is that he says he's dyslexic. Okay? Dyslexia is a definable, actual, real serious problem. So I think her name is Susan Crabtree from Real Clear Politics. She just asked a question. Could you please elaborate on the diagnosis or when was he diagnosed? And they said if his team told
- [36:06]
Podcast Host
her that, yeah, they wouldn't do it.
- [36:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
Oh, no, of course not. And then remember that I think it was. And our listeners will correct me because I'm doing it again on autopilot. But I think not long ago he said he was bragging that he read a 260 page book in an hour and a half. He said that. How could you do that if you're dyslexic? He said. Then he said, I can't read. And I say to you, Gavin, I don't know one major politician who could say and perform the office of his governorship by saying he was not able to read. So then all of us started to boomerang and he thought, well, I'm a liberal Democrat. There's always a last refuge of scoundrels, and that's victimhood. So I'm going to retreat now into my dyslexia. And so he's going to mention that to this audience, thinking that's going to, oh, I'm dyslexic. And then he mentioned that he is really historically illiterate. He said that the federal government had never been called in. And I wrote an article about that about eight years ago. I think there's six major occasions. I mean, they broke up the pension riots for World War I veterans. Colin Powell sent in 5,000 Marines during the Rodney King riot. Riots. They had the draft resistance in the Civil War all during the 60s and 70s. They used federal troops. So Ted Cruz tweeted, you're historically illiterate. Now, historically illiterate doesn't mean you're illiterate because you have the adverb historically. It means that you don't know anything about history or you don't read history. And then he said, I can't believe that you would talk about disability, that you were making fun of my disability. So everybody said, do you know the difference between illiterate and historically illiterate? So what I'm getting at is we have a scenario of a mediocre Nepo baby who was handed everything in a very segregated, privileged lifestyle. And now his policies have completely destroyed the state, the High speed rail. Boondoggle, the fire. Boondoggle. The highest taxes in the country. Boondoggle. The highest gas taxes. Boom. The highest electricity. Boom. Driving out oil refineries. Gas will be $7 a gall by August. One third of people on welfare are here. Most of the homeless, almost half the homeless. 27% of the state was not born in the United States. No effort to acculturate, integrate, assimilate people. Reading scores are much higher for grade school kids. Not much higher, but higher in Louisiana and Mississippi than California. And we spend about double what they do. So it has been a train wreck. So he's not going to be president. On saying, look like Ron DeSantis, say, look what I did in Florida. He can't say that because he ruined the state. It's destroyed by him. So now he wants to be Gavin Everyman.
- [39:18]
Podcast Host
Wait, you mean Gavin can't say. He used California as the example.
- [39:23]
Victor Davis Hanson
Look what I did in Florida. No, he can't say any of that. He ruined this state. And the sad thing about it is then he has nothing else except his looks and his herky jerky stuff. And he thinks he's going to. He's flying all around the country and everybody's going to. Well, we in California say, good, because he can't do any more damage. The more that he's not in the state and campaigning to make the United States look like California, the less damage he can do to us because he's a fop, a complete failure. But the thing is, he can't hide the fact that he's a child of privilege. He's a snobbery, he's a hypocrite. He had, you know, resting people on the beach. People were in California, were arrested on the isolated beach without a mask while he's at the French Laundry or he's in, you know, down at the super bowl, you know, without a mask. That's how he's been brought up to think that he deserves privilege because he's better than everybody. And he was. He's allowed too. I mean, he was. He had drinking problems, he was fornicating with his. His A's wife in his own office. It was just. It's not very impressive.
- [40:37]
Podcast Host
No.
- [40:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
And what he's done to the state is what he's done to other people. And now he wants to be present because he sees that there's nobody there. He says to himself, well, Camila, Harris was a train wreck. And we in the Democratic Party don't want Jews. We can. We don't. You know, Josh Shapiro is not going to do it. He's the most qualified. And AOC is a Joe joke. And Pete Buttigieg, he's so sanctimonious, nobody wants him. So who is there? Well, there's me. And so now all I've got to do is change myself from a Getty brought up spoiled brat into a man of the people. Gavin Everyman. So I'm going to write a memoir about how rough it was and how I was dyslexic and how I was a victim. I don't know anything about foreign policy, but I'm going to fly over to Munich, sort of like aoc And I don't think it's going to. I think he's. I mean, you can see people who could pull it off. Bill Clinton could pull it off because he was 10 times smarter than Newsom. He spoke better, and he really was a child of adversity and it showed. And he was slick and he did whatever people say about Bill Clinton. I'm one of his biggest critics of his lifestyle. He did good things for the United States. Not all, but some. Some because he was talented.
- [42:00]
Podcast Host
They say he was personable. Like Donald Trump is also very personable. I think that that's what I think he is.
- [42:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
Bill Clinton was a lot more personable than Barack Obama.
- [42:09]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [42:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
And he was like Trump. He was a partisan, but deep down inside he liked people. So he would be nice to people he didn't associate with or without. You know what I mean? But Gavin Newsom is no Bill Clinton. He's no Barack Obama. And I don't think he's going to be viable because he can't help himself. Every time he opens his mouth, it's going to be a four letter word and it's going to turn people off or it's going to be a vicious attack or it's going to be a nothing. And he thinks he's going to do tweets. He's told his team, use capital letters, copy Trump. But what he doesn't see is that 90% of what Trump does, people like. They like the no taxes, the deregulation, the more energy. They like the deterrent, foreign policy, they like all that. The end of dei. What they don't like are the F words, but he's focused on the things they don't like and thinks that's what's gonna make him as powerful or well liked as Trump. He's gonna out. Trump. Trump.
- [43:12]
Podcast Host
Victor, we need to take a break really quick and then come back and finish up on this topic. So stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [43:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with epglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema after an initial four month or longer dosing phase. About 4 in 10 people taking EBGLIS
- [43:31]
Podcast Host
achieved itch relief and clear or almost
- [43:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
clear skin at 16 weeks, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. Emplis Lebricizumab LBKZ a 250 milligram per 2 milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children twice 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Eglis before starting ebglis. Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection infection. Ask your doctor about FGLISS and visit fgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979.
- [44:20]
Podcast Host
Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. You can find Victor on X. His handle is D. Hansen and on Facebook at Hansen's Morning Cup. And there's also a Victor Hansen fan club on Facebook which has lots of people that have joined it. It is not affiliated with us, but they do really good work. Bring things that Victor has done in the past. So Victor, I was just thinking, you said earlier that maybe the Democrats are hoping that this Abigail Spanberger will provide a different model for success in a campaign. But I think listening to her speech, it was all about affordability and Donald Trump is not making us safer in America. All both of which I can't believe she can convince populations.
- [45:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
You just heard that Donald Trump said that the murder rate is the lowest in 100 years and the crime rate of all aggravated assaults and violent crime has dropped 40% in the last two years, year and a half. So I don't know. She should have said he's absolutely lying. It didn't happen. But she didn't do that and then she didn't say, we raised prices 21% in his first year. He had 2.4% inflation and it's down below 2% in the last three months. I didn't. And then she talked about herself a lot. I'm governor. And I guess what she was trying to say is I'm going to put myself out there, even though I've only been governor for a few months and these other candidates are so pathetic that you might look at me. And then I thought, you're just talking about yourself and you're trying to pass yourself off as a moderate. You're using the Joe Biden 2020 model. Good old Joe Biden from Scranton. He's not Pete Buttigieg. He's not Bernie Sanders. He's not Elizabeth Warren. He's not Julian Castro. He's not Spartacus. No, no, no. He's the Bill Clinton Joe Biden, like, of the 1990s. He said there was a racial jungle. He said he was going to clamp. His mother was in danger by crime. He said that we've got to be tough overseas. That's good old Joe Biden from Scranton, a moderate conservative Democrat. That's what he ran on. He didn't run on. His handlers did. And then as soon as he came in, he just faded. And Jill and the Mafia around him, the puppeteers ran it, ran the country into the ground. And that's what she does. That's their whole play, if you've noticed that. They all talk about affordability, they all talk about nonpartisanship, why ICE is being attacked in the streets, why they won't vote for voters. Her idea. They're very, very radical. But this time around, they say, you know, the problem with Kamala Harris, she didn't lie well enough. They caught her at certain times supporting trans stuff and di. And they showed pictures of no deportations, demonstrating. But we're not going to do that. We're going to run as a Bill Clinton centrist. And then once we get in, we're going to flip and go back and be even further to the left than Joe Biden was. And everybody should be warned about that. That's what they're going to do through all the midterms in November. They're not going to talk about the trans issue. They're not going to talk about woke. They're not going to bring in Jasmine Crockett or AOC to their district. No, no, no, no. They're going to talk about affordability and middle class values and something. And I Hope they don't get away with it.
- [47:59]
Podcast Host
Yes, I hope the.
- [48:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
Because they won't rule like that. They will not go government money.
- [48:03]
Podcast Host
No. And the truth is that most of what she said had another side to it. Meaning she said affordability and it was costs that Donald Trump hadn't brought down when, as we said earlier, you can't. It's very difficult to bring down prices. But you've got to work to keep the inflation rate, the rate at which they increase.
- [48:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
What you need to do is possible
- [48:27]
Podcast Host
and allow for wages to come up.
- [48:30]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes. You have to grow the economy at 3 to 4% and that will. And you have to cut taxes and incentives, grow the economy and then people's real wages will grow faster than inflation. That's what they did during his first term.
- [48:45]
Podcast Host
And then her safety call. I just can't see the American people losing sight of the fact that the Democrats were the anti cop, anti ice, anti.
- [48:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
You should just ask who.
- [48:58]
Podcast Host
Gas Guard, anti everything that Gascon.
- [49:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
Who was Gascon in la? Who were all these Soros das? They were all. Who's Alvin Bragg? Who's Letita James? Who let the killer out in North Carolina? Who let all these people out? They were all left wing people. They believe in critical legal theory and critical race theory that people don't commit crimes, that society commits crimes and so society must be punished.
- [49:25]
Podcast Host
Yes. And so we have the most current example of that. I think all of our viewers saw the snowball assault on cops in New York City that Mondami said was just a little snowball fight. Kids in a snowball fight. And I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that quickly.
- [49:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
Everything he said was a lie. You know, first of all, they showed pictures that people throw in. They weren't kids. They were in their 20s and 30s. Some of them looked in their 40s. 40s. And number two, a snowball fight is sort of like, oh, it's cop day. The cops will throw snowballs and then they will. The civilians will. And they'll get in kind of a friendly. No, cop threw one thing. They were being attacked and given the temperatures and those things were sharp, they sent some people to the hospital. So here you have a mayor who in the past has had to apologize for calling the police racist and fascist. Fascist. Comparing them with Hitlerian images. That's when he was a local politician. And what does he do? He can't help himself. He can't. He's a communist. So he has to be on guard 110% of the time. But he can't so his natural impulse when he was asked that question, he didn't expect it seemed to me like a kid's snowball fight. Well, people, if you have a police force and you're always under attack by the mayor and they get attacked with snowballs that are frozen objects, that's a felony to assault a police officer. What he's saying is in Mondami's New York, there's no such thing as a felony to assault a police officer. We just don't. And it reminds me of the 2020 that five months of rioting and arson and killing, assault when police officers, officers, 2,500 of them were injured. Almost none of the people who were arrested ever had to stand trial for that.
- [51:20]
Podcast Host
So, Victor, let's then turn to another topic before we go to a break again, I was wondering your thoughts on Iran. I know that Trump has moved assets into the region that the regime has now killed, from my source, 32,000 demonstrators. And Trump has said he's going to do something and not so much much what will Trump do? But because obviously you couldn't know that. But what's in the realm of possibilities of what Trump might do and what is the grand strategy of Trump right now?
- [51:56]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, he's looking at he always looks at these situations of intervention or bombing on a cost of benefit analysis, whether it was killing al Baghdadi or Soleimani or the Wagner group, or bombing ISIS in his first term or hitting the nuclear facilities in his second second in Iran or the Maduro, kidnapping, capture, etc. And so that's a good way to look at what are the downsides. The downside is if he starts bombing, who does he bomb and can he hit them? He has to have the revolutionary groups guards. He has to get the theocracy. They all know he's going to be after them. They're in bunkers. Will he be able to do he's going to have to get their missile depots. He's going to have to get all of the means that that regime exercises to create deterrence missiles, nuclear facilities. He missed tanks, get rid of them all. And he should expect, as we saw with Hamas in the tunnel, that they'll all be parked, stored like they are in Beirut in apartment buildings, in hospitals, in mosques. And so they want a lot of collateral damage. And then he has has to understand that he needs a popular uprising at the same time, we've already had one. And that prompted him to send the assets to the region. But he said, and you said 32,000 people were killed and they're probably executing thousands that we don't even know about. So if you're afraid to go out on the street and you see American planes, maybe even Israeli planes and they're hitting targets, are your, is your reaction good? Good, I'm glad they're killing my government or I don't really care anymore they've killed us. Why are they hurting Iran? I'm an Iranian and will that create a counter patriotic fervor? Then he has to think, look what happened in Libya when we bombed. We got rid of Gaddafi, the Obama, that triad of Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power and what did they give us? They gave us all ultimate chaos. And we went in and took out Saddam, we had chaos, we went in, got rid of the Taliban, we got chaos and we had to stay there. So do we want ground troops in there to over. No, we don't. So who is going to take the place? The Shah. And if we could get the Shah's son, we could have him say I will not be in power for more than three years. I'm a transitional to get a new constitution and bring in outside observers for fair elections. And we're going to outlaw that theocratic Khomeini party, sort of like the Germans outlaw the Nazi party. So that's a lot of. And then he has the weather and then he has other considerations is Israel has a whole list of targets and they may not be the same number of targets as we are. They have killers that have killed Jews, they have terrorists, they know where they are. Once people see Israeli planes, does that confirm the propaganda of the regime that it's Israelis, et cetera. Then he's got the MAGA base to worry about. Tucker Carlson said just the 30 minute incursion into Iran was going to start World War Three. Steve Bannon that group and, and so he has the assets. You can't take a 105,000 displacement, 100,000 ton displacement, huge carrier, $14 billion, 5,000 people and just stick it out there forever. You know what I mean? It has a shelf life, maybe three, four months at most. So he's assembling these assets and they're almost in place. They're in the Mediterranean, they're in, in the Gulf of Hormuz, they're in the Persian Gulf, they're in the Red Sea. They can come at a 360 degree angle, but they're reaching their climatic point and they're at extreme readiness. That means if you're a young sailor, you're not sleeping well, you're going to be called at any moment. You're having drill, you're at a state of readiness that's not sustainable for more than three or four weeks. So at some point, the commanders are going to come to Trump and say, you've got to pull the trigger or we got to go back. And that is going to be a decision, I think that has political ramifications. So then his other advisors are going to say, we're nine months from the midterm. If you're going to do it, you got to do it now. And this is what can happen. If we have a bloodbath and we hit a hospital and the Europeans. Don't expect the Europeans to be there. Don't expect the British to let us use Diego Garcia. Don't expect anybody. And expect the Chinese and the Russians to be very angry because they're going to lose their asset and they will cause us problems somewhere else. Maybe they'll start threatening at a higher degree Taiwan or maybe something Putin will escalate in Ukraine while we're doing this. So there's all these things that he has to filter out as important, somewhat important, irrelevant. And then he has to say, what is the timing on the world stage? Well, the Olympics is over. You can't bomb somebody during the Olympics. I mean, there's this pretense.
- [57:38]
Podcast Host
Things come in. That's true.
- [57:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
And you can't bomb somebody before the State of the Union. So my anticipation is the Olympics are over, the State of the Union is over. The weather and the seasons are getting better. And if he is going to do it, he would probably do it in the next 10 days. And then he will not have ground troops because he was, you know, he said, George W.B. bush should have been impeached for going into Iraq. So it's a very difficult thing. Very quickly, then there's a grand strategy. I just want to say, you know, H.R. mcMaster and Nadia Sladlow created the first national security strategic assessment in the first term that was updated. I think Michael Anton and others updated. It was a little bit different, but it had the same theme. The theme was that Trump is not an interventionist. He doesn't want to go into ground, but he's not an isolationist. He is a Jacksonian. He is a preemptive deterrent. That's what he wants. And his main fear in the world is China. And if you think about that, and it's been pretty brilliant what he's done the last 13 months, because if you take, say, all these isolated incidents that everybody said, oh, he's herky jerky. We don't know what he's going to do on any given day. Oh, there's no point to it. There is if you just go down the list of say 9 or 10 things. Take the Panama. He goes in, he starts. We might take the canal back. We might do this. We might. But what was the whole point of that? The whole point was to get the Chinese out of the entry and exit and tell the Panamanians you violated the spirit and the letter of the Panama Canal Treaty and we have a right to revoke it. So you got one choice. You get them out of here now and you restore the Panama Canal to a partnership between us and you, or else. That worked. Take another one. He got rid of Maduro. Maduro had a communist enclave that was a drug and drug exporting conduit to Mexico or the United States via Mexico and, and partnership with the left wing government in Colombia. Anti American and embargoed and stealthy. Sending oil to China. And he said, nope. And we're going to do what? We're going to starve Venezuela out of its oil. We're going to blockade it and we're going to take him out and we're going to restore the Monroe Doctrine and China. We should have warned you in Panama, now get out. And they did. And now he's saying, who was the person behind all this? For the last 50 years it's the Cubans. They always send their advisors or security guards to corrupt these governments. So now we're not going to let them have any oil. And if they lose Cuba, then the Russian, Iranian, Chinese, they're all out of here. And we've got the Western back to. And it will have an effect. We're already seeing conservative governments in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia. That's new. And we'll get more, more of them if they want to be part of our alliance. And so that was planned. When he looked at the Ukraine war, he said to himself, I will try to find a peace, but I'm not going to cut Ukraine off. For all our rhetoric, we'll keep giving Ukraine money. Maybe it'll be stealthy, but they're not going to lose the war.
- [61:19]
Podcast Host
Can I go ahead and take a break here? We need an ad break and then come back to the Ukraine war. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Lifelock, how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.
- [61:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
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Podcast Host
What do I do? My refund, though. I'm freaking out.
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Victor Davis Hanson
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Podcast Host
I'm so relieved. No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way.
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Victor Davis Hanson
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- [61:59]
Podcast Host
to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, affiliated with the Daily Signal. So, Victor, the Ukraine war, in fact, I was going to ask you something about that. I know we're talking about Trump's grand strategy, but we're one day after the beginning of that in the war, in 2022 and. And to date they have approximately the Ukrainians, 500,000 dead and the Russians. The count is, or the estimates are somewhere around 325,000 dead. And I was wondering, while you're.
- [62:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
The Russians have lost more though than the Ukrainians.
- [62:34]
Podcast Host
They. They have the. Well, the estimates I saw. So somewhere short of a million dead,
- [62:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think they've lost a million dead and 500,000 wounded. I mean a million wounded and 500 to 600,000 dead Russia, that would put it the world. They're losing 20.
- [62:51]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [62:52]
Victor Davis Hanson
And so for all the talk and that blow up last year in the White House, we are still supplying them at levels equal to or greater than the European, so that it's part of the same grand strategy. He's saying to himself, I want to make sure that Ukraine does not lose, because that's going to be intolerable and it'll eventually mean more U.S. assets to protect, protect Europe. I want to enrage, Chide, Poke, leverage the Europeans to spend more money, 2% to 5%. Get people like the Finns and the Swedes that take care of themselves. They're on the border with Russia and I'll be there at the same time. They call him Putin's puppet, but he's not. He's trying to say to Putin, what in the world are you doing? You made fun of us in Vietnam. You made fun of us. You're doing things much worse. This is the worst, worst bloodbath for Russia since World War Stalingrad. You're an idiot. What are you doing? I'm your only out. So make a peace and tell Zelenskyy we'll give him some territorial so he can take a bone back to the oligarchs. And then why is he doing this? Because he wants to triangulate with China. He wants to say to Putin, you have 140 million people in the biggest territory in the world and you have a border with China and they eye everything you have. And whether you like it or not, you have more security and we're not going to threaten you that Europe's not going to invade you, we're not going to attack you. China, you don't know and it's getting much stronger every day and you're getting weaker in Ukraine, you've destroyed the reputation. So why don't you cut a deal? And that's way and then if he cuts a deal, he can go to Putin, say let's be careful about China. Go to China and say let's be careful about Russia. That's what Kissinger did. So there's a point there. Then he says the same thing. Why take out the regime? And he's saying, you know what, the Europeans people in the Middle east, they all want that regime gone. In Tehran, it's the cause of all the problems. Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis. You get rid of that regime, all good things happen. Because then you have no foreign influencer. Who is supplying the Iranians with all these drones and missiles. North Korea, China, Russia. Russia has already lost Syria. That was good. If we get rid of Iran, China will have no proxy there and there will be no money for Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis. And then the Israelis can take care of them at their ease. They will cease to exist. So that is another thing that he wants to do. Get rid of Cuban. If you get rid of the communist government in Cuba, and they deserve it, what they've done, and Iran and you got rid of Maduro. These are not just haphazard. They're all aimed at a larger goal. To diminish the influence of China, to break up this nexus of North Korea, Russia and China, which is the cause of all our problems. And to demonstrate to the Chinese, you better not fool around with the United States. Given what we've done, we're not going to. We're not the United States that has DEI and drag shows at Pentagon, at military bases. And we're not running away like we did in Afghanistan. This is a new military. So all these events are actually cost to benefit analysis. So he looks at this turmoil in the world and he says, if I intervene, what are the downsides? What are the upsides? And, and can I pull it off with an upside that will strategically enhance the United States? And what are those goals? Restore the Western hemisphere to a Monroe Doctrine American protectorate and encourage democratic constitutional Governments, not Marxism. And get the Iranians and the Russians, but especially the Chinese out. Get Europe to defend itself, make them so mad, insult them, do whatever you have so they have to. We don't care if they're arming themselves because they're mad at us or they're now having patriotism. Just get them armed. Because in the final analysis, they are our allies and they will deter Russia and they'll free us up to go to Asia and partner with Japan's health, Korea, Taiwan and Australia to deter China. And that's what he's doing with NATO and it's working. And the same thing with the Middle East. Pump as much oil as you can, lower the price, bankrupt this Iranian regime, boycott its oil, tell China it's not going to get any oil from Iran or Venezuela anymore. And, and Assad and the Russians are out now. You Chinese will be out too. And we won't have these regimes fueling terrorists. And eventually it'll calm down. That's what he wants to do. With America in charge, almost everything that he's doing that seems herky jerky has an ultimate strategic purpose is to diminish the power of the Chinese and to turn Russia and China against each other, each other, and to have a cultural revolution, counter revolution in the United States that makes our adversaries think that we are serious and dangerous, whether it's closing the border or having immigration reform or pressuring Mexico about fentanyl or recalibrating the Pentagon, you name it, and economically more powerful. Instead they just say, well, he tweeted this or his tariffs, but actually there is. Is a plan and it's working.
- [68:37]
Podcast Host
Yes, it sure is. You know, since you mentioned those pesky Europeans, I recently saw the series the House of Cards and do you remember that NATO secretary, Deputy Secretary, I think he was, who said, called Trump Daddy. Yes, I'm way behind the rest of the audience, I'm sure, on this, but I think that was a reference to that British version of the House of Cards where that absolute villain. I've never a worse villain. I mean, a. You know, obviously it was a stroke of genius for the producers, but he. I've never seen a villain.
- [69:14]
Victor Davis Hanson
He was a murderer and he was called.
- [69:17]
Podcast Host
He had that. Yeah, he was called Daddy by somebody,
- [69:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
by his girlfriend, as I remember. I think that's what the reference was to all European. Any compliment from a European has to have a double entendre. They just can't do it. I mean, here they sit with 550 million people, a territorial expanse the size of the United States, the superior culture, they think. And they look over at the United States and they have 20 trillion GDP, we have 30 trillion. They have per capita incomes of 44,000, 35,000, we have 80,000. And they look at us Mongols and they say how they do it. And they can't. They can't figure out that out. And they look at the way Macron is a dandy, or they look at Sturmer or whatever his name is in Britain, they look at all those people and they say, these are gentlemen, these are professional diplomats. They come out of this at Cole, they come out of this university, and then they look at Trump and they just can't fathom at all. And that makes them very angry and petulant. And then when they carry their petulance and anger too much, then the Americans start to notice. When the Americans start to notice, they say, see? You wouldn't want to be. We're sick of you. And then they get worried, and then they start getting angry, and then they start getting passive aggressive. And then we send Marco Rubio over there and he gives that brilliant speech, which was really the most brilliant speech since Dean Acheson, probably, and it was brilliant. And he just said, we made the same mistakes as you do. We are you. You created us. We were the colonies of you Europeans. We want to help you. We're the same civilization. But if you make the mistakes that we almost did, you're going to fall apart. So let's get together and get back in the game. It was a brilliant speech.
- [71:14]
Podcast Host
Yeah. Well, anyway, it's going to cause problems
- [71:17]
Victor Davis Hanson
because Marco was supposed to be a former Trump critic that had gone to the Trump side, and he was supposed to be kind of like a Mike Pompeo, who was a good. I thought he was a good Secretary of State, Mike. But all of a sudden, he's the fireman of the whole administration. Got a problem in Panama. San Marco. Venezuela. San Marco. What do we do about Cuba? Talk to Marco. How about Ukraine? Talk to Marco. And that upsets the J.D. vance obsession. And I don't know what's going to happen, but he's really come into his own. He's. Remember in 2016 when he, Chris Christie, tore him apart when he kind of froze, or he gave a response once to Obama speech when he had to drink water. That's not Marco today. He is seasoned. He's serious. He's got a little bit of ruthlessness, which is good. And. And he's really the rock of that
- [72:20]
Podcast Host
administration, posed to be very successful. Let's hope. Well, Victor, we're at the end of our show and I'd like to read at least one comment here from Christine L. Hancock. She says, I am an independent from Massachusetts, a very blue state and I support Trump 100% and always will. Massachusetts has a large support group for Trump. However, the media will not let that be seen. I'm assuming you are getting your information from polls that we know are not truly accurate. He is not a bully, as you say. He stands up to all the assaults that have been thrown at him during his administration. Out and out lies. Not one accusal has stuck as an independent. We do not vote for a party but for the best person for the job. And that was Trump. Close to 80 million people at his rally last weekend tell me that his supporters have not weakened one bit. If anything, Biden has added to his support. This must have been.
- [73:24]
Victor Davis Hanson
What did I say? What did I say? He was a bully.
- [73:27]
Podcast Host
You know, I think she got that wrong. I was going to say I think she that you, you.
- [73:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think I said when he was looking at the midterms that he might refine some of his remarks and I was mentioning Rob Reiner, you know, after he died and that video lapse. I don't think there was a mal intent about the Obamas and primates that snuck in. You know, we mentioned that. But I agree with everything she said. And I've got a book called Counter Revolution the Fall and Rise of Donald Trump that will come out in August at 500 pages and I spent a year, 12 hours a day and I agree with her.
- [74:10]
Podcast Host
While you had that cancer growing in you, Victor Davis Hanson, not to remind you of anything, but you got some good news this weekend, I think you and Jack. Yeah, very good news.
- [74:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
I, I did the thing as I said it was it's a rare, there's lots of cancers and one type of. I know this, you know, because I said to myself if I have this, I'm going to spend two hours a day every day and I'm not just going to read, I'm going to read double blind scientific studies. So I've spent probably since thanksg November, December, January probably not. I probably spent 500 hours reading. And the mucous adenoma carcinomas are rare. And the mutation, the crass G12R I think it's the same mutation that causes pancreatic cancer but it's rarely in the lungs. So it was a rare variant 1 in 200 of a rare tumor. So there is no immunotherapy it has no protein, no elements that sustain its growth, that can be attacked by a targeted immunotherapy or even a combination of chemo. So the whole question is, can you get the. It looks like kind of a jellyfish, and it's called pseudo pneumonia. So some people have said to me, well, you were sick all March, April, since March, and you had the flu. Didn't you have a cough? Yes. And did you go to a doctor? Yes. And did you get a PET scan? Yes. Did you get an mri? Yes. Did you get a ct? Yes. But when somebody has never smoked in good health and you look at this on a scan, it looks like pneumonia because it's called a ground glass opacity. And it masks the primary tumor inside, which at some point, the irritation and the inflammation. I think I had it from long Covid because that's when I started a year and a half. It mutates and returns cancerous. So I don't blame anybody because it's very. Almost impossible to see it. The only thing that was quite astounding is a really gifted Stanford radiologist. And I got kind of angry when I saw it. It can't be a mucan. I got this test and I had the grail test, and it said it wasn't cancer. But he was right. And so that led to a biopsy, which even the surgeon was very gifted. And he said, I don't know what to tell you. You'll have to wait for pathology. This is very strange. And then it was diagnosed as this mutation. So they took it out. It was about the size of a baseball or bigger, but the component was probably a size of golf ball inside. And then they. To be sure, they took the whole lobe. Your right lower lobe is basically half your lung on the right. It's. Of the five lobes, it's the biggest. And I think I would have that surgery. But then I had an aneurysm and inexplicable bleeds of artery and two things. So I was smiling and everything. And then the surgeon, brilliant, brilliantly sized it up. And it wasn't just a little bleed. It was a big bleed. And so the next thing I knew, there was. Everybody was in motion. And he didn't hesitate. It was, get back in the or, get the or, get an. That's when I. The last thing I remember, it was 11:30 in the morning. I'd been there for four hours. And they. Somebody said, do you have a religious objection to transition transfusions? And that's the last thing I remember. And I woke up and I thought it was noon and it was almost 5:30 in the, in the evening. And I had another four hour operation and so they had to. And then I saw the X ray and there were clips on. I said what are these clips? You left them in? No, no, we had to go in and clip these and stop the bleeding. Anyway, I had, you know, as I said, five transfusions and I think another one of platelets. And then I had anemia. And then I had, because of the trauma and the inflammation, I never afib in my life. I didn't even know what it was. And I started getting these terrible 150 beats a minute back and forth. So most of what I'm doing right now yesterday was eight weeks is fatigue and vertigo. And it's from the, not from the first operation or the cancer. It's from the blood loss. I think I lost 55% of my volume.
- [78:56]
Podcast Host
But you also got test results. You do not have cancer in your blood. The cancer is not in your blood. As far as they found in the five vials.
- [79:06]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, it's a little bit more complicated than that. This tumor was big. And there was a disagreement whether you count the tumor stage four because it was a baseball or just the invasive cancer inside it. If you just count the invasive cancer inside it, it's stage one C. If you say no, no, that ground glass has elements in it, then it would be stage three or four. And that makes a big difference on the prognosis. So basically to shore it up after we got rid of all the other stuff, they just came and said these are the pros and these are the cons. The cons are you have a bad mutation, STAS, STK, as I said, G12. And no immunotherapy that we know of has been developed for this, so we can't kill it that way. It doesn't respond to chemo. Now we can blast it with chemo and it might give you a 5 or 10% edge, but you're still pretty weak. So that's where I was. And then they said, on the other hand, it's quite unusual and you're lucky given you didn't know it for a year. Whatever it was, you have no lymph node involvement. It wasn't in the blood vessels, it wasn't in the pleural cavity. It was differentiated G1. That's good. And it had a low PET scan, uptake 2.4 to 3.1-which is borderline, not the Big Ten cancer. And they didn't take just the cancer tumor out or part of the lobe. They took the whole lobe out. And they call them margins. They look to see if there's cancer in a circumference. There was only for 2 cm cm it was clear. So then they said well the mutation won't matter if you took it out and doesn't come back. And then they said the size is. Everybody's arguing over what stage but it won't matter if it doesn't come back. And then they said the biggest problem is there's something called spread through the airspace's stas and that means a mucinous tin. They took some, some air sacs away from the tumor and they found DNA in there and they said that is a bad prognosis because it could have gone up your trachea and got into your other lung or the upper lobes. But then another. I've been reading all these, I'm just paraphrasing them and looking at, looking at AI too. It said, well it won't. Luckily the surgeon made the decision not just to take the tumor or part of the lobe, he wanted the whole lobe out. I was kind of. And that turned out to be a very good thing because maybe the air sacs, it didn't get up out of the lobe. So that was where I was and I was waiting. I had the blood test on January 26th and I thought it would be about two weeks but it's hard to stage. It's called the Signa Terra test. And they take the type of tumor mutation, think about it. And then they create a paradox and they take your blood and they go enough of your blood that goes through and they see if there's one DNA cell that matches the tumor they took out. And if there's not, that means one of two things. You don't have circulating cancer in your blood or it hasn't appeared yet and it might have gotten in. So what does that mean? That means that they still want you to do procedures, prophylactic chemo. Even though. And I don't want to do it because the cost of benefit analysis. 5% edge in survival rate for 90 days of old fashioned blast stuff. I don't mean old fashioned that the old but you're just trying to kill something that you can't target. And I would rather get well and fight it with, you know. So I waited every morning I checked the portal, I thought and then on a Sunday morning, this Sunday, two days ago or three, I happen I said it wouldn't be at there on a Sunday. But at four in the morning I went and said, gee, it was a red thing, and it said results, but it was in red. I thought, oh my gosh, this is how neurotic you get when you've had cancer. And then they said, go to. So you hit it, but you can't get the results. They have to go to a place that said, let me explain the test as if you're going to have a nervous breakdown. So then they have to explain what a positive to make you feel good. But you read what a positive is, and it says a positive is basically 90% you have cancer, which in my case you can't treat because if it comes back, there's no treatment other than just cut, cut, cut, you know, but it's metastasized. So then finally I said I didn't care. And then I went into the signetera. And it just said negative. I thought, this is the first good news I've had in a year. And what that means is it's legitimate now not to do the prophylactic blast with chemo, but in four months I get a. Another one to see if it got out, but it hasn't manifested itself. And I get a ct and I have to do that every four months. And then I think from what I've been reading the data, if you get three or four of those negatives, then you are categorized in remission. And it's a really landmark idea because it's revolutionized. I think everybody was very skeptical of these blood biopsies that would find one little DNA. But they've been out now three or four years and they've had time to say, what is the prevalence, what is the prognosis of somebody that has one negative, two negative, three negative? And I think the first negative, it's like 25% can come back positive. The second one, 15%, you can revert to positive. And the last third one or fourth one is like 4% and you don't. If it was a targeted mutation and you reverted to positive, then it would be great because all you do is take the immunotherapy and kill the tumor. But I can't do that. And so it's kind of became existential
- [85:28]
Podcast Host
in my case, but good news nonetheless. I know it's not final news, but it was.
- [85:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
No, it gave me a reprieve. I dodged the bullet. And so I was thinking, I'm so dizzy. And when I got out of the hospital, I couldn't walk a hundred steps, and I'M walking some days, 7,000. But I'm really weak and anemic and I still have a little bit of feeling of afib. So I thought, do I really want to take this poison? I shouldn't say that. I mean, a drug that is meant well, but I think it would do more damage to me than give me a cost of benefit for a 5% survival rate. But I don't have to make that decision now. Not until May if it was so.
- [86:09]
Podcast Host
All right, well, congratulations. I hope you danced a little too.
- [86:12]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm not trying to be self indulgent. One thing I should say is I am struck again by how many nice people write letters. And I've already mentioned they're beautifully written. The calligraphy is astounding and it makes me want to write better my own cursive. But there's so many people that have had cancer. Everybody is very religious. That's very encouraging. They said, you know, prayers help. I do feel that happened. I just got a feeling on a Sunday morning. Morning I thought, don't be neurotic. Don't be fixated on this. You have a rule. You only check it in the morning or evening. But don't do it on a Sunday morning. You can't sleep. And then I thought, Sunday morning. So many prayers. I have a feeling that's going to be negative. And I did. And it was so prayers, I think, count. And people have all these tragic stories. I had stage three pancreatic cancer. I had stage four. This, this. It's just terrible about cancer. And I just hope that we'll develop the. I think they're developing really fast. When you read an article about mucus adenoma carcinomas written in 2020 and you read one in 2024, the one in 2020 is completely outdated. So they are making fantastic progress.
- [87:37]
Podcast Host
Yes. And I know that there's new centers being built and proposed and people that
- [87:43]
Victor Davis Hanson
are for cancer centers and I think you're going to have a. I think they have completely misread the J. Bhattacharya appointment at National Institute of Health because he's. And even rfk. I don't think they're cutting back on cancer. What they're doing is 30% of those grants applications were basically DEI. Is this community underserved here? Is cancer more prevalent in this race? You know what I mean? But they're not talking about how to kill cancer people for everybody. And I think now it's kind of like the Pentagon. They've reverted attention to battlefield efficacy. Not social therapeutic agendas. And now with the health government agencies, they're saying, let's get back to help everybody. 100% of these grants are going to go to find ways to stop this disease or kill this type of cancer mutation. And I think you're going to see accelerated progress. I really do. Yeah.
- [88:44]
Podcast Host
Our hats off to Jay Bhattacharya on that.
- [88:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
He's a wonderful guy. He's a Hoover colleague. I was very lucky that I should say, in addition to Jay, who's a colleague, I had Scott Atlas. So he wrote. You all know Scott Atlas is the Trump advisor during the last months of COVID of 2020. But he was also the author of a. Gosh, our editor, author of a huge book, the Brain and the MRI in the brain. And so I've had a lot of these scans to see if it's metastasized. And when I have a radiologist, I just call Scott and say, hey, Scott, I don't want to bug you again. What is it, Victor? I said, I know you're busy, but can I send you this scan? And then he usually calls up and says, he gave me this book, it weighs about 20 pounds. And he said, could you look on page 584 paragraphs, paragraph three. I've answered this question in the past. So if we forget that Scott was a brilliant and probably the brilliant neuroradiologist in the country and he's a wonderful asset for the Hoover Institution.
- [89:58]
Podcast Host
Well, thank you, Victor, for all of your patience with us today and all of your information. It's been wonderful. And thanks to our audience for joining us, choosing to be with us on this Saturday show. I know that we missed the Greek Gods, but we had so much to talk about. But we'll be back with the Greek Gods as a middle segment next week.
- [90:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
So, yes, we will. Thank you for listening. And one last thing, I don't know. I don't have a little schedule, you know, yet because I never know how I'm going to feel. But I'm going to try to build up and get back to our two a week.
- [90:37]
Podcast Host
All right. Thank you. You enjoy your weekend.
- [90:40]
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. You can also check out my own website@victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.