← Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s Impending Venezuela Quagmire
01:07:52
In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc weigh our military actions against Venezuela and the charge the U.S. military "executed" narco-terrorists who were "prisoners."
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- [00:00]
Victor Davis Hanson
It derives a lot from the Charlie Kirk entrance of Patel when he flew there. And he said initially that they had a person under surveillance or a person of interest. What they didn't yet. And that got people angry. And then the most sensationalized aspect, that he didn't have his FBI protective vest on. So he asked for one and there was none there. And they just gave him a female one.
- [00:29]
And it didn't have the right insignia. And he demanded it. Well, that's you can say that about everybody, you know what I mean? The larger question is, is it good for the FBI director or assistant director to comment on things on social media?
- [00:57]
Sammy Wink
Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hansen In His Own Words show. This is our Friday news Roundup where we look at the news of the week. And we've got lots on the agenda, the Venezuela drug runners and the hits on boats in the Caribbean and in international waters. And then immigration will be our first two topics. So stay with us for that. And we'll be right back after these messages.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Right is still right, even if you stand by yourself. Mr. Chief justice, may I place the court?
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Hans von Spakowski
This is Hans von Spakowski, host of the Case in Point podcast, which looks at the hottest cases affecting politics, culture and everyone's daily lives. But we talk about them without confusing legal jargon. And we have interesting guests like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. And we end with reviews of classic Hollywood movies relevant to the topic. Case in Point, the podcast available everywhere you won't want to miss.
- [02:05]
Sammy Wink
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History at the Hoover Institution and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne Marshabusky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. And you can find him at his website. And we hope everybody joins joins us. There it is, victorhansen.com it's called the Blade of Perseus. And you can join us for $6.50 a month or $65 a year for a subscription. And get two articles a week from Victor, exclusive for subscribers and a Friday Ultra video. So please come join us. And if you just want to come in for the free stuff, there's lots of his articles that are available for free and links to his books and links to these podcasts, too. So stay with us. So, Victor, Venezuela, the news out this week is on this Operation Southern Spear. I have to say I'm impressed by the military assets Donald Trump has put into the region. I think he's got 11 gunboats and an aircraft carrier yeah, he has the largest.
- [03:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, Gerald Ford. It's the largest warship ever made, over 105,000 tons. Yeah, it's the next, The Ford class is the next generation beyond the Nimitz class, and it's the first in its class. So it's the most advanced, sophisticated, biggest warship in history. And it's docked off fairly close to Venezuela.
- [03:35]
Sammy Wink
I've seen pictures of it. It's very impressive. It looks like it's well manned as well. So the issue this week, we know that Donald Trump has hit, I think somebody, I heard somebody say 20 or 21 drug running boats. But this week we have the Democrats out there trying to suggest that there was something, a war crime committed by the hit of one of the most recent boats. And they said it wasn't the first hit, it was the fact that they, they called it double tapping. But they went back to hit the boat, the area again because there were survivors. And so, Pete, they're trying to.
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Discredit and accuse of war crimes. Pete Heth, and I do love one thing, and I would love you to explain that, but he was at the cabinet meeting and he said, we've only just begun. So I love that he doubled down on them. But what are your thoughts?
- [04:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
There's four issues here, and that is one, how do we ever get in a situation where this dictator was reliant on billions of dollars of fentanyl and cocaine, heroin.
- [04:45]
Free entry into the United States both by air and boat and across the southern border with impunity. And he used that foreign exchange to buy off the oligarchic class, to buy off the media, buy off the military, cancel an election. But he was killing Americans and he had an impunity the last four years. That's number one. Number two.
- [05:12]
Did Pete Hexseth say kill survivors? Well, the New York Times says he did not. He didn't know it. He just said, take it out. That was a decision at the operational level by a regional admiral. So the Washington Post is in conflict with the New York Times.
- [05:30]
Sammy Wink
You mean the regional admiral called for the second strike to hit the rest?
- [05:37]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, that would be his decision. So then we get into the third issue.
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And that is when you hit a military target.
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At what point do people. This is an age old, goes back to antiquity. At what point are people prisoners? So if das in das boot, they sink a merchant ship and the survivors paddle and they leave them alone and they die or they're burned up, is that murder or not? The fine line is so you're in a tank and you see an enemy German tank in World War II and you blow the turret off and then these people scramble out and you hit the, hit the tank again so that they don't come back. So is this a wartime situation where there are drug people in there? They're in a boat that is in a combat status as far as we're concerned. You hit it. You're not sure what the status is, so you hit it again to ensure that the boat and its occupants don't do it. Or as the left says.
- [06:48]
Is it a situation where somebody is shooting at you? They shoot, then they're cornered and they say, no, no, I'm a prisoner because I'm clinging on the boat now and I'm not going toward your country anymore, so I can't hurt you. I'm a prisoner, prisoner. And that's a, that's an age old problem. It's not like they went out and executed the people. So, and then the fourth issue is to what degree does this.
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Synchronize, deviate, has nothing to do with what Barack Obama and other presidents have done. Barack Obama killed hundreds of people on the Pakistani border with Afghanistan. You kill an American citizen, at least one.
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And.
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They say, well, we don't know who these people are who are being killed. We didn't know anybody who was being killed by predators. So what is the difference from blowing up a.
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Ship that's bringing drugs in the United States then blowing up a car or a house where we know that they're attacking Afghanistan, loyal ally at the time of us And I don't think there is much difference. So I didn't hear any of these people complain about Obama.
- [08:07]
Sammy Wink
I didn't hear anybody arguing that it was a war on narco terrorism, which is what Pete Hagg says. So he's at there we're at war according to our Secretary of War. And nobody argues with that. So if we're at war, I think we learned in Vietnam that the micromanaging.
- [08:26]
Victor Davis Hanson
Of I don't think you want to go into Venezuela on the ground.
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Sammy Wink
No.
- [08:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Because let's count the ways. You've got the mega base that does not want optional military engagements, the Rand Paul's, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson. Okay.
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That'S clear. And then once you've staked so many assets and you're, it's like he's put a frog in the pot and turned up the temperature. So they can't fly in and out of Venezuela, they can't use ships, can't go in. It's basically an embargo, how long can you sustain it? Put soldiers at sea in a combat situation. And what if he just says, I'm going to wait it out? So what's the next step to ratchet up the pressure? I don't know what that is, but once you've committed these forces and you put them right off the coast and you said he has to go, you've committed the prestige of the U. S. Military. And if you back down, it's, you know, it's kind of like what Joe Biden did when he said, you know, it depends on whether it's a minor invasion with or Anthony Blinken was dressed down in Anchorage by the Chinese or the Chinese balloon. Any indication that there are not dire consequences once you've made that decision, it's very hard. So I'm not sure that I would have put all of those assets so quickly right there because now it's a question of willpower. And if he says, I can survive without my drug revenues or I can get them from other countries and he may be able to survive. We did this once before with Noriega. He was a drug smuggler. The other problem is he just pardoned the president of Honduras, who was a conservative who had been convicted in a US court of drug smuggling, sentenced to 40 years. So it doesn't look good to say we can't tolerate any drug running from Latin American countries and we're going to go to war almost. But this guy right north of you has been convicted of drug running and yet you pardoned him. So that that's problematic. He problem, he pardoned them because he said that the Biden administration was politically hostile to his politics. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm just talking about optics.
- [11:03]
Sammy Wink
Well, back to. I was asking the question of didn't we learn in Vietnam? And do you feel like it still stands that micro managing military affairs on the battlefield does not work very well, that we as citizens should expect our president that we elected and our military to be given orders and then understanding.
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There'S some laws. But in general, the orders were in this case, hit the drug boat, sink the drugs, or destroy the drugs and destroy all the drug runners. And that's what the orders were to that regional commander.
- [11:45]
Victor Davis Hanson
So, yes, and that's what orders always are. And then the question is.
- [11:52]
I'll give you an example. In the battle of the Bulge, the Germans, under a lot of irregular troops.
- [12:03]
Went in at Malamide and executed prisoners. And during the Dieppe raid, they executed Prisoners. In the Dunkirk evacuation, the Germans executed prisoners. And the question is then.
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Did they get that at Nuremberg? Did they get that command from the general or not? And the US does not execute prisoners.
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But it's happened where at M. The people who executed the Americans, the ss, when they were captured in elements of the Battle of Bulge subsequently, they were, some of them were executed by American soldiers. I don't know any American soldiers that were held captive. I mean, captive to the law and culpable. So again, it's a fine line when you hit a military target and the target is still there, so you know that there are people in there that can't fight back and that are suffering. So do you hit it again to eliminate the threat, or do you consider those people prisoners of war, even though you're not even near them? What I'm getting at is this.
- [13:21]
They say they were executed prisoners of war, they weren't in possession of the United States. It would be one thing if they had.
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Come up quickly with a PT boat, so to speak, and got them, put them on the boat and then started going out to high sea and throw them overboard. But they were part of a kinetic operation is what I'm saying. It was still ongoing. So I, I, it's all part of a narrative that we saw with the video, this seditious six, so to speak. And out of nowhere, Senator.
- [13:57]
Mark Kelly has decided that he's going to be a prominent anti Trump spokesperson. So he made the video. He was subject to the Uniform Code of Military justice, where he called for people to disobey orders if they thought they were illegal. Now he's weighing in that Pete Hexess should be impeached. Now he's weighing in and weighing in, and this has been an avenue for his media exposure, but he has to be careful because.
- [14:28]
No one believes that if the person is not in your possession and he's still part of a kinetic, ongoing battle, that he's a prisoner. You know what I'm saying? Do you shoot people? My grandfather, I asked him in World War I, when I was a little boy, I said, what were you doing? He said, I'm a Lewis machine gunner. He was a Teamster. And they put him in a combat unit and he was gassed and disabled. But he basically said, I got sick of shooting young Germans and old Germans as they were running away. We were told we had to. We were chasing them and they weren't surrendering, but they obviously couldn't fight back. They had given up and they were running back and the Americans were chasing them with arms and shot them. So I don't, I don't know what the left means by prisoners shooting prisoners or executing prisoners. They weren't prisoners.
- [15:20]
Sammy Wink
No. Well, Victor, I would like to welcome back Allegiance Gold as one of our sponsors. 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 at that 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 reallocating more part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. 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 a better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships with built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special liberty offer for my listeners to help you get started with real gold, whether you, whether your funds are in a 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 or visit protectwithvictor.com Again, that's 844-790-91991. The number again is 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 Hanson Show. So, Victor, there was one thing on those seditious six. I was wondering and I don't think I got it answered last time. They're telling these troops that they have to evaluate whether something's legal and to not follow disobey if it's illegal. What if they do they think what would happen if these soldiers disobeyed when it was actually legal and it comes out that it's legal? I mean, it seems like they're putting these soldiers into a very by suggesting.
- [18:09]
Victor Davis Hanson
Those things, they're telling 1.3 million active duty soldiers that they're, they are their own legal counsel. So every time they receive an order. So let's say you're on an aircraft carrier and we're one of the Signal Corps, and you're trying to wave a F18 Hornet onto the deck, and you get an order from your captain or.
- [18:34]
Commanding officer, and they say, you know what? You've got to get closer to the plane because you're missing the signal. And he says, that's too dangerous. You're putting me in danger. I refuse to do that. Well, then that will spread. Right. So the number of orders that are disobeyed because they're illegal, they're almost minuscule. And the Uniform Code of Military justice, and I think it's article 90 and 92, discusses it, and it's very detailed. When you can disobey an order and it's, it, it puts you in legal jeopardy and it endangers people, unless you're absolutely sure what that is. These people did two things. The seditious six, so to speak, they never cited an illegal order. It was named, let's be honest, it was named at Donald Trump. He never gave an illegal order. And then number two.
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They never really said how that person was to determine whether it was illegal or not. And then the other thing is, very quickly, Donald Trump, they said that he's per. He's going after people. But.
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He was President of the United States and he found out post facto that Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chief, had violated clearly the law in two instances. One, he had ordered the CENTCOM commander, Commander Africom, all the regional commanders to report directly to him. If they got an existential order from Donald Trump, that's against the law. He's an advisory only. In other words, if there is an order to attack, that goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense, now war, and he issues the order, it. Joint Chiefs have nothing to do with it. They're advising. Number two, he contacted his Chinese counterpart, the head of the People's Liberation army, and he phoned him and he said, if I get a call that I think is irregular or too dangerous, I'm going to notify you first before I act on that order. Well, nothing happened to him. Nobody said.
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He should be court. Nobody instituted court martial. So the left is a little fuzzy there. They, they have condoned behavior like that, but now they're going after Trump for things he hasn't done. When we know there's people who have done bad things in the military and there there's also, as I keep saying, there's also.
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Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military justice says very clear.
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Officer subject to recall. That is, they're still getting a pension and they're subject to recall, which are flag officers, four star and above. But even I think captains in the Navy or colonels and the lieutenant colonels in the army and Air Force, they cannot disparage the Cabinet, vice president or the president. Okay, so we had General McCaffrey say that Donald Trump was Mussolini. We had General Hayden who said that he erected Auschwitz like.
- [21:58]
Cages on the border. He did not. We had Admiral McRaven said that he should be removed sooner than later. Sooner the better. Even though we had scheduled elections, that was almost. We had two lieutenant colonels, Colonel Nagel and another lieutenant colonel who said that they should intervene, the 82nd Airborne should intervene and take Donald Trump out of office. And said as far as Trump's little green men, they don't stand a chance against real soldiers.
- [22:30]
Sammy Wink
What did you mean by green men?
- [22:32]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm sorry, I think he meant MAGA supporters or something. I don't know.
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Sammy Wink
Wow.
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Victor Davis Hanson
I could go on. A good friend of mine, General Mattis, I don't think he meant ill will, but he said that Donald Trump reminded him of people on the wrong side of D day, which would imply Germans.
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Sammy Wink
And not just any old Germans. Nazis. Right.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. So my point is that none of them were ever called up. And then you know why? I know that they knew what they were doing. So Donald Trump came in the second time and his. Unlike Lloyd Austin under Biden or unlike General Mattis who was Secretary of Defense, and Mike Esper, his. All the people who followed him.
- [23:17]
They don't know whether they're going to be charged. They don't know what Pete Xs is going to do, but they do know that he has a right to charge people. If you say things that disparage the commander in chief in public and you're subject to military recall as a commanding officer. And what's happened? It's quiet. Not one person has said Donald Trump is a Nazi that's subject to recall. You know why they haven't? Because they know they would be court martialed and they would lose their pension.
- [23:47]
Sammy Wink
Nothing like the old checked income check to stop people. No, that's true.
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Victor Davis Hanson
All these people were patriots. They were very effective commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan. I just think that they got into the.
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The emotion of the first term and they said and did things they regret and they didn't. And somebody wised up and told them don't do it again because they're going to enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
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Sammy Wink
All right, so let's turn then to immigration. And Donald Trump is facing the terrible problem, of course, left by Joe Biden. And you'll be happy to know, because I know you've been saying this, that he, Trump is banning immigration from over a hundred countries coming in this week that was announced. And then he is, he has, I wonder, you think about this. He has fired immigration, eight immigration judges in New York. And I was wondering if there was something particular about New York or.
- [24:50]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's a place where people.
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Sammy Wink
Good idea.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. They have a history in New York of granting temporary residencies for people who are of suspect qualifications.
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Mark Kelly said that because Donald Trump used the word Third world that he was a racist. Well, Third World doesn't mean that they're brown people. As he said, the term came from the Cold War of the world in between the Soviet Union and, and the United States. You could have been in communist Bulgaria and be Third world, or you could be in Yugoslavia and be Third world.
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Sammy Wink
But it also tends to mean non industrialized. I mean, it did originally.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, it's poor. So my point is.
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What he was saying is. And he said it was racist. But what is, you could make the argument that today's immigration patterns are racist because it's almost impossible from the former British Commonwealth are from.
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Europe to have people come en masse to the United States. He's trying to get people from South Africa and it's very hard. And they have real refugee claims that are valid. I think there's 8,500, 7,500 of them, and people are calling them racist. So what I'm getting at is the left sets the rules and says that 90% of everybody who comes in here legally or illegally are non white. But if you try to bring in anybody else and demonize these people's third World, you're a racist. Well, they're the racist. They're the ones. And we saw that with a recent columnist for the New York occasional columnist for the New York Times. And he said, basically, I'm here to change the demography. You lost and you white people let us in and we outbreed and women like white women like us better. It was the most racist diatribe. It was right. It was no different than Nick Fuentes. And he kept, he just gave an interview. He said, white women like us, you have bad music, you white people. And we're coming in and we're going to take over.
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Sammy Wink
And was that the guy that said, we're breeders too? Yeah, he said we're breeders.
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Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, he's a Pakistani. So that was the. He just gave the game away. What the open borders were. So Trump is just saying, we're not going to have people from civilizations and cultures that are antithetical to the United States because when we do.
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Bad things happen. And I think everybody realizes now the question is not just illegal immigration. So we had 2 million a year under Biden, but we also had a million green card holders, we had a million naturalizations, and we had a million foreign students. In addition to that, 16% of the population was not born in the United states. And that's 53 million people. In California, it's 27%. 11 million people. That's a vast project of assimilation, acculturation. We're not doing it. So what Trump is saying, let's just slow down and don't let in people that do not want to assimilate. And then people are saying, well, give me an example. And he's saying, okay, we've got the whole Somali community that seems to be anti American. It's not assimilating fully. And you have Ilyan Omar, who came over here destitute. The first thing she said was this was a trashy country. And then she expressed a lot of anti Semitic tropes. And then she said that we were under a dictatorship, no different than where she came from. Do you really want that community to come here and express such hostility? Kelly and others said, well, you're just stereotyping. No. There it was widespread, the crime in the Somali community. California issued 17,000 Commercial Driver's License to what they call non domiciled illegal aliens. People weren't even living in California. And the idea was, if you're an illegal alien, they don't ask questions. They didn't take any English tests. At least.
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Somehow people passed. The majority didn't know English. So there was a terrible wreck in Florida, there was this terrible wreck in LA there. Now there's a terrible wreck in Oregon. There's another terrible wreck in Northern California. So people are saying, do we really want people from Pakistan and India coming in here illegally, not assimilating, not learning English and then not playing by the rules that we have to to get a commercial and then getting on the freeway and driving in a way that's not consistent with American tradition? And they're not. I can see it. I can look out my door and I see three or four truck drivers going every 10 minutes with loads for high speed rail project going 70 miles an hour in a 55 mile zone. I saw one two days ago passing, passing 20 tons, passing a Honda Civic and the vast majority of them are from India because they have a turban on or the ritual beard and stuff was. I see them as. So Trump is saying.
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Look at the truck driving thing, look at the Somali thing. Look at the Oberg, you know, the.
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I guess we would call him deported illegal alien to El Salvador who came back. He was a wife beater, spousal abuser. He, he was a gang member. He may have been trafficking in smuggling people and trafficking in child porn, we don't know. But it was pretty bad. We have almost daily an illegal alien kill somebody driving intoxicated. Then we look at the 1 million foreign students and 300,000 of them are from the Middle East. Is that any coincidence that suddenly our elite marquee universities have an epidemic of anti Semitism? Since when does American students say from the river to the sea we'll be free, we're going to destroy Israel. And since when do they go and push Jews around or chase them into libraries or separate your class whether you're Jewish or not? So that's all coming from foreign people for the most part on student visas. So Trump is just saying we don't go to your country. I have no idea. He's basically saying what he said about Somalia, but it was true. We don't want to go to Somalia and we don't want to go to Gaza. We don't want to go to the west bank, we don't want to migrate to India, we don't want to migrate to Pakistan, we don't want to go to any of the Arab countries and let maybe the Gulf because they're fully westernized in some sense. So if we don't want to come to your country, but we let you to come here, but then you don't even follow our customs and traditions. You don't like us and you berate us and you try to chisel us. And so we're tired of it. So let's just have a timeout. That's all he's saying. He didn't articulate it like that, but that's what he meant.
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Sammy Wink
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk a little bit about the fraud in Minnesota. Stay with us and we'll be right back.
- [32:14]
Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And you can find Victor at X. His handle is Dhanson and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning cup. So join him there if those are your social media outlets. Well, Victor, there was a reporter, I believe, that was following the fraud in Minnesota the whole time, Bill Gan Glan. Sorry. And he's been on the news programs and his account of this fraud done largely by Somalis. There's I think they've arrested.
- [32:51]
65 and 57 of them are Somali or something to that effect. And he says that it involves more than a billion dollars, although that has been the floor that has been suggested, but up to $2 billion. And I was wondering, you know, the accusations then are also against Tim Walz, who was governor and his staffers have a X site or some staffers do where they've been accusing Tim Waltz of.
- [33:27]
Ignoring the fraud that's going on and even inhibiting whistleblowers who are trying to who have tried to expose it. And I was wondering your thoughts on walls.
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Victor Davis Hanson
I could add to that that the attorney general, Keith Ellison, remember he was the one that held up an antifa handbook.
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He was recorded at a Somali gathering basically saying, I'm here for you and you can donate to me quid pro quo because he hasn't been prosecuting any of these. They've all been federal attorneys. The left makes no distinction, as we know from Alvin Bragg, between federal and state. They pick and choose. But they, they found no state statutes that Keith Allison was worried about. It was mostly federal, even though there were aspects of the cases that could have been tried in state courts. But it's a larger issue and that is the issue of diversity, equity, inclusion. Everybody thinks it's just a kind of a continuation of affirmative action.
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For hiring and admissions. If you're black or Latino, we're going to let you in with lower test scores or lower because of historical it's not, it's an Obama relic that said, the world isn't divided in the United States at least, and oppressor, oppressed, victimizer, victimizer. And that's 30%. It's a third of the country. It's 110 million people have claims against the other 220 million. And therefore all policy must reflect that victimization and how it permeates is.
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Just pick a topic. Covid well, we're going to have the vaccinations not by age, that's colorblind, but we're going to do it by underserved communities. First get the vaccination. So if you're a young 12 year old or 14 person of color, you get it before a 90 year old person who's very vulnerable.
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Who happens to be white, it can affect the border. So all immigration, believe me, right now.
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If you had 17 South Africa, 17,000 South Africans, and they didn't speak English, they spoke only Africana, and they had been involved in five, six, seven serial accidents and you found out that a right wing governor had given them 17,000 licenses even though they didn't all live in California and they couldn't, all they knew was Africana, they couldn't read English. You would have an outrage. It would just be outrage. So what I'm saying is it, it affects and it warps everything. Everything. Does anybody believe that Claudine Gay, who had enormous effects on Harvard, would have ever been hired, given she was a plagiarist and given her thin resume? No. And same thing. It affects immigration, it affects the New Green Deal. Anytime you have an ideology that supersedes empiricism and this does. And then it's bad for the people who are the beneficiaries. They never know whether they earned it or not. They feel defensive about it. The locus classicus is Michelle Obama. She can't open her mouth with being insecure and defensive.
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She's. Her husband got elected, she was first lady. But because she thinks that di. She's a victim, she looks for offenses that aren't there. And then she leverages that to sell books or to be popular. And in my case, it's, I've watched it for 50 years.
- [37:18]
And it's, it's, it's destroying the country. It really is. And there's a huge backlash now against it. And let's hope it doesn't manifest itself under Nick Fuentes. But people are sick of it. They just don't want to keep talking about race, race, race, color, color, color, personal color. There was a story, I was watching MSNBC and they were talking about some appointee and they said she's the first gay woman of color for this job. And then when Corrine Jean Pierre, she kept saying every interview when she was hawking her memoir, I was the first female black gay immigrant. We don't really care in America. All we care is did you come here legally and did you do a good job? The answer is you probably came here legally, but you were incompetent and you lied to the American people that Joe Biden was not cognitively challenged. So who cares whether you were the first black press secretary, gay woman? It makes no difference. So I think we're over that. So all these people who Keep saying that. People just roll their eyes. I'm a person of color. I'm the first person of color in this. I'm the first gay person. I'm the first woman. Nobody wants to hear it? Sorry.
- [38:37]
Sammy Wink
No, nobody wants to hear it. So let's turn then to the Tennessee 7th district elections. The woman, and I'm going to leave her nameless, who said she hated Nashville and she hated b bachelorettes and she hated the pedal bars that go around Nashville. She lost by almost 9 points to.
- [39:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
Matt Vanne, almost 10, I think 9.
- [39:03]
Sammy Wink
Plus to Matt Van Epps, who is now the representative in Congress of the seventh District. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that race.
- [39:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't think she was ever close. Number one number, remind me of the NPR poll, last one taken before the 2024 election that said Kamala Harris was four points ahead beyond the margin of error. Or the Des Moines Register who said that.
- [39:33]
Donald Trump was going to lose Iowa by three points. He won by 12. So when they said that it was neck and neck, there were some chat. There was a, an off off year. So it wasn't even a midterm. It was a special election. And the left gets galvanized for that. The out party always does. They're the out party. But when it was all said and done, it's very wealthy areas of Nashville. It's kind of your proverbial white elite that votes. But.
- [40:05]
The Republican candidate was very good. He was a veteran. He was spoke well and she was crazy. How can you run for office and say you don't like Christians, you don't like the hospitality events, you don't like Nashville, you don't like country music and get elected from Nashville.
- [40:25]
Sammy Wink
I don't know. But I think she said those things before she decided to run. But why she ever decided to run is my question.
- [40:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
She decided to run because people on the hard left win blue city mayoral elections in congressional districts and she thought she was in a blue city. Nashville is somewhat a blue city. It's in a red state. But it's not like, you know, it's not like Knoxville.
- [40:50]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. I was going to ask you, is it a gerrymandered district she was in or.
- [40:54]
Victor Davis Hanson
Because it was about, oh, Donald Trump won it. He overperformed. I think it's 10.10 up Republican. But he won it by, I don't know, 18 or something.
- [41:07]
Sammy Wink
I think I read 22.
- [41:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah. So they consider that a 4 fall off. I don't, I just. They out. She outspent.
- [41:15]
The Republican 2 to 1. And then the PACs kind of evened that out. There were a lot of Republican PACs that came in late.
- [41:23]
Sammy Wink
She sounds like she was a bad deal anyway. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and go to our last ad and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about the report on Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. And I believe it's an FBI report, 115 pages. And we'll talk about that when we get back from these important messages.
- [41:47]
Welcome back to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Please come to our website, the Blade of Perseus, and join us there for all sorts of things from Victor, whether it's podcasts or articles or links to his various books. And he does have a new book coming out. Not until next September, although you're almost done with it, aren't you? How do you feel?
- [42:10]
Victor Davis Hanson
I'm all done. Yeah. I'm reading the, the edits and I've made the edits. It's next thing is copy editing. I thought it was going to come out in March. A little worried that it's going to be outdated, but I've kept up with it. Adding things.
- [42:29]
That'S one thing. So I'm looking forward to that. It's a large book. It's about 130, 40,000 words. But it's called.
- [42:40]
Donald Trump is called.
- [42:45]
Donald Trump and the Counter and the Maga Counter Revolution. And then the the subtitle is the the Fall and Rise of Trump and the MAGA Movement. And it's about how he was at the very bottom of his popularity after January and how he came back and why he came back and when he came back. And so I learned a lot writing up.
- [43:12]
Sammy Wink
I know that you were arguing with your editor over the picture on the front of it. Did you finally get your choice of picture?
- [43:20]
Victor Davis Hanson
I don't know yet. I wanted the shaking the fist in defiance with the blood coming down. I think there was a matter of who owns that picture and how much does it cost. And then there, I think there were people that might feel that it was too gruesome or, I don't know, too downbeat. I liked it, though, because it showed that he had come back.
- [43:44]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, I feel that picture is much more upbeat than downbeat, that's for sure.
- [43:48]
Victor Davis Hanson
I mean, he's the picture very carefully. It's kind of the if the subtitle is the Fall and Rise of Donald Trump, well, he was down on the ground and then he rose and then if you look at the profile, it's very similar to the famous flag raising at Iwo Jima, the profile of the people around him. So I thought it would be a good.
- [44:09]
Cover.
- [44:10]
Sammy Wink
Well, then, let's turn to the report on Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. And here are some of the things that came out of that report. It is not flattering just to warn everybody that the FBI. These are quotes from the report. The FBI is a rudderless ship under Kash Patel and Dan Palgino is his deputy director as well. So that things are, quote, all effed up. And Patel and Bongino are both inexperienced and, quote, obsessed with social media, unquote. So there's a lot of dissension apparently among the FBI. I don't know why they ran this report, but what are your thoughts?
- [44:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
It was an internal group of FBI agents that had been very critical of Comey and.
- [45:05]
Andrew McCabe and Christopher Wray. So they got credibility. And while they had nice things to say about Patel and Bongino, they said they as what you just said, it derives a lot from the Charlie Kirk entrance of Patel when he flew there. And he said initially that they had a person under surveillance or a person of interest. What they didn't yet. And that got people angry. And then the most sensationalized aspect, that he didn't have his FBI protective vest on. So he asked for one and there was none there. And they just gave him a female one and it didn't have the right insignia. And he demanded that. Well, that's. You can say that about everybody. You know what I mean? The larger question is, is it good for the FBI director or assistant director to comment on things on social media.
- [46:04]
They're not quite like the president, United States or they're not elected. So my advice whom. And I am in no position to give advice, but if I were, I would say to get off social media and stick to business.
- [46:20]
And just announce things and allow as the, as the director now and then to have the assistant. The assistant. The assistant director or.
- [46:30]
Be point person. You know what I mean? So if there's a local sensational shooting or mass shooting or political shooting, you fly there and then you're flanked by your whole team and you say he's going to say he's going to speak and then don't get on social media.
- [46:47]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, that would be some good advice. Well, the next topic is this week, Trump had an mri and it sounded like it was a complete MRI of his entire body because they said his brain was fine, his cardiovascular was fine, and so was his digestive system, fine, nothing wrong. But it seemed to be quite a stir in the media. Yeah.
- [47:13]
Victor Davis Hanson
I was very interested in that because I had an MRI, a total scan on August 27, and I am seven years younger than Donald Trump and I would say I'm not quite as heavy per height as he is.
- [47:29]
Until recently, I've been very active. But I would love to have had his MRI scan because my scan showed some stuff that I'm working on right now that are. They're going to have consequences and his didn't.
- [47:42]
Sammy Wink
I concur with that. I would love to have his MRI scan.
- [47:46]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes, because he had no heart abnormalities.
- [47:52]
And then usually what happens if you have abnormalities, as I did, then they take CAT scan and then once they take CAT scans, you go down a rabbit hole. PET scans, CAT scans, X rays, and then the radiologist can't figure out what's going on. Meanwhile, you're not feeling better or you're getting worse. But that's not what's happening to him. So I don't know why the left always does that. I don't know whether he baits them or not. He says, well, I have an mri and are you going to give it to think about? Oh, he thought about it. He hesitated. That means there's a spot on his brain. No, it means the same thing as the Epstein files. Kind of like to relieve some kind of not. Oh, that means you have something to hide. Well, actually, when they come out, you'll see that Larry Summers, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, not me, I cut him off before he was even convicted. So it's hard to know whether his supporters, of which I count myself, always say he's playing dimension multi dimensional chess. But I just think he knows those people so well that he just says, I'm just going to say something and let them put their neck in the noose. And they do, on spec.
- [49:02]
Sammy Wink
They sure do. And speaking of those Epstein files, the stuff that came out this week, which is probably not so important, were pictures inside of his lair on the island in the Caribbean or off the coast of the United States. And it had pictures of bedrooms and stuff. But there was one picture in particular. I don't know if you saw it, it looked like it was a dentist chair, as though they were practicing some sort of medieval torture in somebody's orthodontics.
- [49:34]
Victor Davis Hanson
He was a very disturbed individual, but he 70 to 90%, we'll see, were Democrats. And he was. He felt at home with the New York left wing crowd. So I don't know why they would demand everything to be released, thinking they were going to get Trump. By this time, they would have known that they were Wile E. Coyote and he's Roadrunner and he just runs, you know, he runs off the cliff and doesn't fall down. They run after him and they collapse. They go down the canyon.
- [50:07]
Sammy Wink
Yes. So Epstein lives on, I guess. Did you see the Portland holiday tree lighting ceremony where they called it the Native American Heritage Day? And there were shouts for Free Palestine. And they played the Strong woman song. And not that I have any problem with the strong Woman, but it just looks ridiculous when they kind of put it in there because it's their DEI favorite, I guess.
- [50:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
And if you're strong, you don't want a strong woman's song. No, of course I don't want a strong man song. I. I just, I'm hitting, you know, excuse me. I'm a broken record. I just don't think Native Americans pro Palestinians. There's all this tribalism. Yosemite is going to give an adjacent area to indigenous people. The problem with these binaries is if you go back and look and read any scholarship on the Native American wars before, from oral traditions.
- [51:17]
The Comanches were butchering everybody around. The Lakota Sioux were butchering people. The land traded hands, people were beheaded, people were eaten. In the case of the Aztecs. So it wasn't. They were humans, they weren't gods, they were just humans. And they had a very lightly populated, rich continent and the people in Europe were humans and they had more sophisticated technology and they were very densely populated. So obviously, if they had the ability to get here, they would do it. John Keegan made that. The military historian John Keegan said that years ago. But it doesn't work to say that I'm a member of a particular group and therefore I have claims against the majority, whoever the majority is. For recompense.
- [52:07]
Gavin Newsom right now.
- [52:11]
Will probably have a $17 billion deficit. California has the largest unfunded liability of 250 billion billion that they don't have the money to meet.
- [52:26]
Largest number of homeless, largest number of illegal aliens, most expensive houses, highest gas tax, highest electricity tax, highest sales tax, Some of the worst public school scores depending on the district.
- [52:42]
I could go on, you know, drop not one foot of high speed rail, 15 billion down the rat hole. Solar plant blows up. Battery plant, Monterey, remember that? Two of them, $1 billion. Solar plant in the desert. Oh, it doesn't work anymore. That's just $2 billion. Oh, 17,000 driver's license. This is Gavin Newsom. But.
- [53:09]
My point of all that is why then is he giving funding a reparations commission? Or why does he give 500 million in medical when medical is broke and he needs 2 billion from the federal government and 50% of the births are on medical and 40% of the population are on medical and he gives.
- [53:33]
Illegal aliens medical? He says he didn't, but he did. He said $500 million and now it's gone.
- [53:41]
And, and how did he end up, does he ever understand that he has a $17 billion deficit looming? Maybe that was the reason why if you have the highest income taxes and the highest sales taxes and the highest gas taxes, you would think that you would be flush with cash. But when you're the DEI mantra and you start handing this stuff out to victimize groups, supposedly for political purposes, then you're broke. And then when you keep saying white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, oppressor, oppressor, victimizer, but they leave. So I looked at the statistics the other day.
- [54:26]
You can make the argument that from 1995 until now, 20 million people left California and the most of them were Reagan, Wilson, Dickmasian, Schwarzenegger voters. And you can make the argument that one out of every two illegal aliens came into California.
- [54:46]
And if you do the Silicon Valley Elite with 11 trillion in market capitalization, you can see we're a medieval society. But my point is Newsom whips up the DEI and all of that and he's, you know, he's going to run for president.
- [55:02]
I don't know what he's going to do. Is he going to say I'm going to do for California, I'm going to do for America what I did for California. I was just looking the other day what he's been saying. Here's my plan to lower electricity. Here's my plan to lower gas. Here's my plan to build six lane freeways and stop the carnage. Here's my plan to address high speed rail boondon. Here's my plan to deal with the most homeless in the nation. Here's my plan to lower sales taxes. This is my plan to make housing the most expensive per square foot in the country. No, I'm going to hit Donald Trump in the mouth. He's a bully and that's all he's doing. And he's just appealing to all these tribal concerns, but he doesn't care about people.
- [55:46]
Sammy Wink
Well, the last thing I wanted to talk about was the Republican National Conference or Congress is suing the Secretary of state in Michigan for allowing non residents to vote. And I was wondering how far you thought this would go. Let me just explain to you who the non residents were. They were children of Michigan residents who were born not in, you know, probably a part of the military and born outside the country. So they're non resident and then spouses that married into military. And that's about it. And it seems like a very small number of people that would have been. I think the bigger prize would be to, you know, things like.
- [56:33]
Suing for states who are allowing illegal immigrants, for example, to vote and sending out.
- [56:40]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yeah, I agree. And at some point, I think we're already there. The victimizers are too small for the amount of victim. So when they say we're going to sue, we're going to give land to indigenous people outside Yosemite, we're going to give $500 million to illegal aliens, we're going to give this people in Michigan, we're going to do this. We're this. It's all predicated on dei. But what if the people, the golden goose is squeezed too much? You know what I mean? There's no more eggs to be had. You're killing it. And that's the problem. And that's why people in California have left, because they're 1%. 1% of California households pay 50% of the income tax. And when you keep telling them that they can give up those beautiful homes on the coast and they'll leave. And that's what's happening.
- [57:35]
Somebody asked me the other day, well, why don't you leave? Who knows? I'm 72. I might have another renaissance as a septuagenarian.
- [57:44]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. Well, Victor, let's go to comments from your listeners. And these this time they are from YouTube and yours and Jack's recent podcast. And we are recording today. It's Wednesday, so the Tuesday podcast and very nice one. Lots of nice ones in the beginning. R. Denham4250 I. I'm always so happy when Victor goes on a rant because then I can save my breath. I love that.
- [58:17]
All right. And Choo Choo B2P says iScore. He's referring to a channel on YouTub has an AI video of VDH which we have.
- [58:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
It's driving me crazy. I can just tell everybody that I get emails every day that. Did you say this? Did you use the F word? I didn't. These are all AI fakes. Anything that is not originating from the Daily Signal, either the daily short videos or for weekly, they're all in the same place now. Daily Signal. Anything else that does not originate there is not me.
- [58:57]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [58:57]
Victor Davis Hanson
I think there's six different shows now that I'm on.
- [59:01]
Sammy Wink
Oh, yes.
- [59:01]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I'm competing against myself again. I'm competing against the old genuine Victor. But now I'm the fake Victors too.
- [59:09]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. The AI Victor. I like this comment because they went on to explain how they noticed and I. These are things I noticed about the AI too. He says my spouse thought it was real, but the hundred percent eye contact and the slow glitch blinking gave it away. The real VDH moves. Moves around, pauses often and rarely makes eye contact. Gotta know the real deal to identify the fake.
- [59:38]
Victor Davis Hanson
That's the scary thing is I've had some problems with my voice and they. The voice is better and it looks better than the real thing.
- [59:46]
Sammy Wink
So it doesn't really. It looks kind of like claymation, if you ask me. A claymation Victor Davis Hansen. But maybe AI will improve on those things. This is from Concert Rat. 1104. Victor, I'm so glad you're here. You're a voice of reason and sanity. I look forward to listening to your show. I think their AI appropriation of your image and voice is a form of identity theft.
- [60:18]
Victor Davis Hanson
It is. Thank you.
- [60:19]
Sammy Wink
Yes. They're effectively impersonating you by conflating a false image of you with a narrative of. Of their choosing.
- [60:28]
Victor Davis Hanson
Yes.
- [60:28]
Sammy Wink
In order to push an agenda.
- [60:31]
Victor Davis Hanson
Amen.
- [60:32]
Sammy Wink
Yes. And if they misrepresent you, I think there's an element of slander. You've got a lawsuit too.
- [60:39]
Victor Davis Hanson
And I've got to be very careful because where I work, I have people who disagree with me and they. I'm going to get in trouble.
- [60:46]
Sammy Wink
Yeah.
- [60:47]
Victor Davis Hanson
Especially I've already had a person who took one of my books and put it online and said he was a co author and wrote a diatribe and I was called in about it. I had nothing to do with it.
- [61:00]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. So there's an element of slander. It's no different from them saying Victor Davis Hansen said such and such than it is for them to say audiobooks.
- [61:11]
Victor Davis Hanson
I have 18 of the 26, 27 books I've written. Have now audiobooks that are AI have nothing to do. I get no royalties or nothing to do with. With basic books or a Random House or Alfred Knopf. They're just somebody out there bootlegging them.
- [61:27]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And last comment is on some content from the last show, which is from NATO so. Com. So Southcom. I guess if you read the Preamble, the Constitution, it says very specifically. And he's agreeing with you, right. Quote. To secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Our. And he's emphasizing ourselves and our posterity, not the illegal immigrants that come. Came in, not the entire world.
- [62:02]
Victor Davis Hanson
He says the left doesn't seem to understand that when they bring in thousands of people and they just say, you're here, I feel good about myself, but. And wouldn't want to be you. Then what happens? The next. Next. Next level. The next level is they swarm into the emergency room because they have no. They have no choice. They go. They swarm into. And I can tell you that after this medical problem that I've had for what, since March.
- [62:36]
50% of it is you can't see a doctor. You cannot see a doctor. And every time I've gone to see.
- [62:43]
A scan or doctor, everything is crowded in California. And the people who did this. Do you think Gavin Newsom waits? Do you think Nancy Pelosi waits? Do you think, I don't know, Kamala Harris waits? No. Do you think the tech woes. Wait, no. It's always hoi polloi.
- [63:06]
Sammy Wink
All right, Victor, thank you very much for.
- [63:08]
Victor Davis Hanson
Well, thanks, everybody for listening.
- [63:10]
Sammy Wink
Yeah, hold on one second, though. I just want to say this last comment, it's about Jack and his work, because I agree with this. They really good comment here. He says, jack, you do a superb job. And I think it's. She says, sorry. Debbie Denno, 3202. Jack, you do a superb job of drawing Mr. Henson out, and I admire you, Jack, you are an excellent host.
- [63:33]
Victor Davis Hanson
He is. He's a wonderful. He's a wonderful host, and I deeply appreciate his presence. I've known him for. I joined National Review the day of 9 11, and I met him on the phone the next day, I think. So that's 24 years.
- [63:48]
Sammy Wink
Yeah. And I thought that that comment was very apt because I thought every time we finish recording with Jack, I always think, wow, he did a great job drawing Victor out. So good, good comment. Well, thank you to our audience and thank you to Victor. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off.
- [64:05]
Victor Davis Hanson
Thank you. 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.