Victor Davis Hanson: Why Alvin Bragg Refuses To Recognize the Awesome Power of the Second Amendment

Summary

Podcast Summary: “Victor Davis Hanson: Why Alvin Bragg Refuses To Recognize the Awesome Power of the Second Amendment”

Podcast: Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words
Host: Victor Davis Hanson, with Sammy Wink
Date: December 6, 2025
Episode Focus: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, New York firearms prosecutions, Second Amendment in historical context, deepfake/AI impersonation scandals, California politics, immigration, and a deep historical dive into the Crusades.

---

Episode Overview

Victor Davis Hanson delivers incisive historical and contemporary commentary on recent legal and cultural developments. Major topics include the prosecution of self-defenders in New York, the historical logic of the Second Amendment, AI-generated deepfakes targeting public intellectuals, immigration policy’s fault lines, the collapse of governance in California, and a wide-ranging historical segment on the Crusades. Hanson’s expertise as a historian, classicist, and analyst shapes the tone, combining erudition with polemic.

---

Key Discussion Points

I. The New York DA, Firearms, and the Second Amendment

• Theme: The prosecution under DA Alvin Bragg of individuals who defend themselves with firearms in New York is, in Hanson’s view, an intentional policy to deter lawful self-defense and reinforce state control.
• Context: High-profile self-defense cases (Daniel Penny, Charles Forner, Lashawn Craig).
• Historical Context: The Second Amendment as the linchpin of individual rights and deterrence against tyranny.

Notable Quotes:

• “They want to send a message out, don't be armed in New York because if you are armed... you're going to be able to defend yourself without counting on us... That's how we have power over you.” – Victor Davis Hanson [00:00]
• “Some of the founders said you don't need nine other amendments, you just need the Second Amendment because as long as people are free to defend themselves, everything else falls in place.” – Victor Davis Hanson [00:48]

Timestamps:

• [00:00]–[00:48] Opening monologue: On Bragg’s motivations and the Second Amendment.
• [13:31]–[14:29] Hanson expands on New York cases and state power.

---

II. AI Deepfakes and Identity Theft

• Theme: Hanson describes an escalating problem with artificial intelligence “deepfakes” using his likeness and voice for online content he did not author or approve.
• Issues Raised:
  • Fake videos discrediting him, attacking others (notably J.D. Vance), and using profanity contrary to his standards.
  • Tech platforms (YouTube, X/Twitter) reluctant or slow to react.
  • Personal/family distress and brand confusion.

Notable Quotes:

• “Anything that is on the Internet that... does not originate from the Daily Signal... or our website victorhansen.com is not me. Is not me.” – Victor Davis Hanson [03:37]
• “...They are admitting their content would not be popular unless they expropriated somebody's identity...” – Victor Davis Hanson [09:51]

Timestamps:

• [03:09]–[11:15] Hanson and Wink on AI, legal efforts, and the emotional toll.

---

III. DOJ/FBI News – January 5th Bomber

• Theme: The recent “solve” of the pre-January 6th pipe bomb case is politicized, with authorities slow-walking or leveraging the narrative for political aims.

Timestamps:

• [12:01]–[12:41] DOJ/FBI’s handling and political implications.

---

IV. Prosecution of New York Self-Defenders

• Theme: Recent cases of people (Charles Forner, Lashawn Craig) prosecuted for using unlicensed firearms in self-defense illustrate selective criminal justice and reinforce deterrence against self-reliance.

Hanson’s Thesis:
Punishing lawful defenders emboldens criminals, undermines deterrence, and increases public fear.

Notable Quotes:

• “...you have no control over people if they have second amendment rights... if you... will not enforce a law and they are in danger, they will use those guns in self defense and that will create deterrence and then crime will fall...” – Victor Davis Hanson [14:29]

Timestamps:

• [12:53]–[15:16] Discussion of Forner, Craig, Daniel Penny, and deterrence dynamics.

---

V. Race, Crime, and Social Commentary

• Theme: Hanson explores racial double standards on crime and public reaction, asserting media and public outrage are selectively invoked by the racial identities of perpetrator and victim.

Notable Quotes:

• “[Had the races switched]... you would have George Floyd riots... But we live in an alternate bizarro world.” – Victor Davis Hanson [16:11]

Timestamps:

• [15:16]–[17:00] Commentary on a high-profile murder, bystander effect, and perceived race-blind justice.

Personal Anecdote:

• [17:31]–[20:52] Hanson recounts a gun-related self-defense incident from his past to illustrate his support for the Second Amendment.

---

VI. California Governance and Gavin Newsom

• Theme: A scathing assessment of California’s governance under Governor Gavin Newsom; focus on unsustainable debt, failing public works, homelessness, wealth exodus, high taxation, and fraudulent licensing.
• Immigration Aspect: Policies like issuing commercial licenses to undocumented immigrants who may not read English, and the hazards posed when such drivers cause tragedies.
• Political Future: Skepticism about Newsom’s national ambitions and the likelihood of his success outside California.

Notable Quotes:

• “I'm going to do for America what I did for California. Think about it, everybody...” – Victor Davis Hanson [26:53]
• “If you leave California, they're going to audit you for three years... it's harder to leave California than it is to do almost anything.” – Victor Davis Hanson [31:38]

Timestamps:

• [25:23]–[35:18] Deep dive into California’s fiscal/social woes, tax climate, and political structure.

---

VII. Limousine Liberalism and Class Segregation

• Theme: Critique of California (and broader coastal) “limousine liberal” elites: wealthy, insulated progressives advocate policies from their protected enclaves, fostering growing inequality and social pathology.

Notable Quotes:

• “...millions of these people from Berkeley all the way to La Jolla... are living in 2, 3, 4 million dollar homes and they're all left wing... and their kids are in prep schools...” – Victor Davis Hanson [35:05]

Timestamps:

• [34:23]–[35:18] Limousine liberal attitudes dissected.

---

Featured Historical Segment: The Crusades

• Purpose: Respond to popular misconceptions about the Crusades, their motivations, and their characterization as “racist” or purely Western colonial aggression.
• Summary Points:
  • The Crusades arose as a reaction to centuries of Islamic conquest in historically Christian/Jewish lands.
  • Medieval Europe, beset by internal strife, undertook the Crusades as (1) a reclaiming of pilgrimage sites, (2) a response to Byzantine appeals for military aid against Seljuk Turks.
  • Later mischaracterizations of the Crusades ignore similar or more aggressive campaigns in Islamic history and the lack of modern self-criticism in non-Western societies.

Notable Quotes:

• “If you're in the Islamic world, 99.9% are going to have a particular point of view. And if you do not believe it, try going to any of the 25 or 30 Arab countries and saying anything negative about the Prophet Muhammad…” – Victor Davis Hanson [36:28]
• “It wasn't this massive conspiratorial, huge European, so called white effort to go kill brown people. It was a bunch of feuding warlords...” – Victor Davis Hanson [45:09]

Timestamps:

• [36:28]–[64:17] Comprehensive review of the Crusades, their origins, outcomes, and comparison to Islamic conquests and British colonialism.

---

Immigration, Assimilation, and Cultural Critique

• Theme: Criticism of mass, unfiltered immigration and the lack of assimilation, particularly referencing communities like Somali-Americans in Minnesota and policy failures exemplified by Ilhan Omar.
• Jon Stewart Response: Stewart’s critique of Donald Trump’s rhetoric as dehumanizing and collectivist is flipped—Hanson argues the left essentializes white Americans while ignoring needed distinctions.
• Assimilation Standards: Advocates for a “melting pot” expected of all immigrants—English language, civics knowledge, patriotic integration.

Notable Quotes:

• “If you come from Somalia, you have no tradition of democracy...It would be very hard to assimilate you if you wouldn't listen to us...But that's not happening.” – Victor Davis Hanson [72:13]
• “95% of the immigrants that have come into the country the last 50 years have not been white in Republican and Democratic presidencies. Okay? Nobody is.” – Victor Davis Hanson [75:14]

Timestamps:

• [69:03]–[77:13] Immigration assimilation debate, media hypocrisy, and the Somali “food scam” in Minnesota.

---

Listener Feedback and Closing

• Listener Comments: Audience takes issue with details, appreciates the show’s correction of errors, and provides engaged, informed feedback.
• Closing Thoughts: Hanson emphasizes the importance of free, truthful, and empirical debate, regardless of establishment consensus.

Notable Quotes:

• “I like a lot about our audience is nothing gets by them...” – Victor Davis Hanson [81:58]

Timestamps:

• [80:10]–[83:40] Listener comments, corrections, closing banter.

---

Memorable Moments

• Personal Self-Defense Anecdote: Hanson’s 1980s encounter with armed intruders on his farm [17:31]–[20:52].
• Crusades Explainer: In-depth and unscripted, drawing on original sources, debunking common contemporary critiques [36:28]–[64:17].
• Jon Stewart Parry: Hanson’s combative rhetoric inverting Stewart’s accusations of collective judgment [71:14]–[73:40].

---

Tone and Language

Hanson adopts a conversational, authoritative, and unapologetically polemical style, laced with historical analogies, cultural references, and a blend of personal anecdote and abstract argument. Sammy Wink adds structured prompts, fact-checking, and intermittent levity.

---

Summary Table of Major Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |----------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–03:00 | Bragg, New York, Second Amendment, and state power | | 03:09–11:15 | AI Deepfake crisis, identity theft, personal implications | | 12:01–12:41 | DOJ/FBI January 5th bomber, political narrative | | 12:53–15:16 | NY gun self-defense cases, impact on deterrence | | 17:31–20:52 | Hanson’s own farm self-defense story | | 25:23–35:18 | California’s collapse, Newsom’s record, political climate | | 36:28–64:17 | The Crusades: myth vs. history, colonialism, historical lessons | | 69:03–77:13 | Immigration, assimilation, Ilhan Omar, Jon Stewart, media hypocrisy | | 80:10–83:40 | Listener feedback, fact-checks, closing discussion |

---

For Further Exploration

• Find Victor Davis Hanson: victorhansen.com, The Blade of Perseus
• Contact: Official Victor Davis Hanson YouTube, X (@Hanson), Facebook (Hanson’s Morning Cup)
• Referenced Works:
  • The Federalist Papers (on Second Amendment)
  • “Bin Laden Reader” by Raymond Abraham
  • Historical texts: Aristotle’s Politics, British colonial histories

---

In short:
This episode weaves together current events, policy criticism, and deep historical context, all filtered through the historian’s insistence on the enduring relevance of the Second Amendment and skepticism toward technocratic progressivism. Hanson is at his most trenchant dissecting the legal, social, and cultural transformations he argues threaten the rule of law and individual liberty.

Transcript

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They want to send a message out, don't be armed in New York because if you are armed in New York, you're going to be able to defend yourself without counting on us, the criminal justice system that is. ALVIN BRAGG and we won't. That's how we have power over you. We won't prosecute people that commit crimes against you because we feel they're part of the oppressed. But if you should be a Daniel Penny, try to protect yourself or protect others, or you should have a gun and stop somebody who's a criminal, then we lose that currency. We don't have control over you. ALVIN bragg that is why there's a Second Amendment. It's discussed in the Federalist Papers.

Some of the founders said you don't need nine other amendments, you just need the Second Amendment because as long as people are free to defend themselves, everything else falls in place.

[Sammy Wink]

Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. This is our Saturday Edition where we look at a few more news stories from the week and then Victor does a middle segment and this week he is doing a segment on the Crusades. So stay with us for that. But let's go to these messages first and then we'll come back and talk a little bit more about the current news. Stay with us.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Right is still right, even if you stand by yourself. Mr. Chief justice, may it please the court. 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.

[Sammy Wink]

Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in His Own Words. Victor is the Martin Annealy Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhansen.com is the URL. The name of the website is the Blade of Perseus. So please come join us there. So, Victor, there's been we have a lot of news stories, one of which is the DOJ and the FBI have solved a five year old case of the January 5th, the day before the January 6th bomber and he left bombs. And we want to get to that. But I know that you've been having trouble with AI recently and you wanted to say a few things about that. It's just getting really bad out there. It's very. For especially for you, there seems to be a lot of desire to imitate you and put words into your mouth, your thoughts.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, I was just trying to look what I got from one of you readers and listeners about it. And I want to say that anything that is on the Internet that does not originate, I can't be responsible for YouTube or but does not originate from the Daily Signal where I have five weekly five minute broadcasts and the Daily Signal platform.

Or our website victorhansen.com is not me. Is not me.

[Sammy Wink]

You do have a YouTube channel and it's called the Official Victor Davis Hanson YouTube Channel.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

You can find the YouTube word originates that's coming off the Daily Signal. The reason I'm saying this is.

I've known JD Vance a little bit for years and I really admire him. So when I wake up and I get emails that saying, why are you attacking JD Vans?

I don't know. And it gets in the mainstream news. I've never said a ill word about him. But this, this creature that has my head, the very books that I'm talking about, they've taken my own room and they have my clothes and my body and then they have me speaking, but the words are not mine. Nothing. They're just reading a script. And even though the only way you can tell is that it's faster than I speak and they don't match, I've never. One of the things about this broadcast, from the very beginning we said we would not use the F word, the shi word, all of those words, because a lot of you like to listen with your children or you're working out with your wife or whatever. That's what that's all about. And one time someone said something and we had a big outrage from a lot of ministers and we addressed that and to see my face with F U C that word right on the headline of my broadcast. I never said that. So I get people saying, why are you a hypocrite? I, I didn't say that. It's very frustrating.

To see people. And then this is what's even worse is I get from my daughter who writes me and says, you know, dad, did you see? I'm quoting her now. Did you see? For a split second, split second, she said they pop up a disclaimer at the beginning of their deep fake AI videos and disclaimer says this is for legal protection. I guess.

The content draws on Victor Davis Hanson's public commentary, historical analyses and long standing perspectives on politics, culture, and national strategy. It is not written by him, endorsed by him, or affiliated with Victor Davis Hanson or any institution he is associated with. We use ITT voice technology to recreate Mr. Hansen's tone for educational purposes. All research and data collection collect cited in this field are factual, sourced from public available information, grounded in broader historical and political context. This is strictly educational material intended to explore how Hansen's ideas may illuminate current events and modern American.

Challenges.

This is not political, legal or investment advice. Well, that's not true. It's not just educational because there's probably ads on it.

[Sammy Wink]

There are ads on ads on it.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And they're using my brand. And to be frank with everybody, we were rated number five or six in the nation. And when we moved to the Daily Signal, for reasons I can't disclose.

Our former site put 8 or 900 episodes out. So that was a problem. And now we have the. On the other end of the spectrum, AI. So what. What's very frustrating to me is.

I get up in the morning and some of my emails are clogged. And there are two types. One is, did you really say that? And that's the AI generated fake. And then they say this is generated by voice. That's not. They're using my picture, my head, everything. And if they really did want to want to be honest, they wouldn't just put it up for a nanosecond, they would leave it up in the corner. This is not Victor Hansen. And then the second thing is I have other people who say, why did you quit after October 2nd? I didn't quit, but on the just the news platform, all of the old episodes are there and they have new, some of them. I guess I must have new ads or something because people are going there and thinking, that's the Victor Davis Hansen podcast, which it is, but which no longer exists. It's Victor Davis Hansen in his own words on the Daily Signal. And we're starting to get our audience back, but we're having two spectra where people are being diverted. And it's not just one site. It's five or six sites are doing this. And I'm not that important a person, so I don't know why they're picking on myself. I don't know if they're leftists or trying to confuse the MAGA movement. I don't know if they're alternative, right, that are angry. I don't know if they're foreign hackers or they're just entrepreneurial people want to make a buck without working. But I Do take these very seriously. I read every morning, I wake up at 4:30 and I read till seven, two and a half hours. The news commentary, analysis so I can prepare for this. So I don't have to use notes and that you don't have to tell me in advance, nor does Jack, what we're going to do. I have no idea exactly what the questions you're going to ask because we want it spontaneous and not scripted. So I don't have an answer for it.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, just to add to that for your audience, we've been working with a lawyer to get YouTube to take these things down and it is not easy to get YouTube to take these AI fakes down because they keep sending back to us. Well, we don't see where the content is copyrighted and that's all they have. They don't have a system. Legal.

Exegesis on somebody who fabricates your head and your voice and then puts their own script into it.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I know they do that but the problem is it's not just they steal my body and face and voice and environment.

And then put their content in. They are admitting their content would not be popular unless they expropriated somebody's identity and falsely implied that that person. So it's.

It'S an intent to deceive. And if it wasn't an intent to deceive, they wouldn't use me or they would keep the disclaimer up the whole time.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, they would have. On the top of this is not Victor Davis Hansen written across the top.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

So I know that, you know, I've been a little slow because I've had these health problems and they're gonna, I think I'm gonna have some big problems coming up in the next couple of weeks. But it's kind of. We're trying to deal with that and then we're trying to deal with moving and then we're having the AI and it's very.

[Sammy Wink]

Time consuming.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Time consuming, yes.

[Sammy Wink]

And then the last thing for your audience is we were trying to post on our X account that there were fakes out there and we had one, you know, here's another fake and a link to it. And X took that down. And you, I think they didn't like the words that you used that I think you said it was. It's confusing and distorting. It is, I know it is, but they took it down because I don't know why you were accusing a YouTube channel of just confusing and distorting for people. So I don't, I'm not sure what why X did that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

So making it impossible if you see things on the Internet and they don't originate from the Daily Signal or have some association with it. Yeah, it's not mine.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And I don't use swear words and I don't attack people like J.D. vans.

[Sammy Wink]

No, of course not. All right, so we're dealing with that problem or trying to deal with that problem, but there's lots of pitfalls. Well, let's turn then to the current thing today that the DOJ and FBI came out and said we didn't have any new evidence. We just took all the evidence that was gathered by the Biden administration, DOJ and FBI and put it together and we caught the guy who planted the bombs on January 5th before the January 6th incident.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They've been very careful, but have they identified their ideology?

[Sammy Wink]

Know they haven't said anything. They just. Brian Cole is the name of the.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Person that, because the left, remember, has implied that he was a right wing bomber and he was a terrorist.

And they could have found him earlier. They had the information of had Biden wanted to, but they found that useful to kind of spring it, let it float out there that they're looking for a terrorist that's connected with January 6th for obvious political purposes.

[Sammy Wink]

All right. And then the second thing I wanted to talk about was this phenomenon in New York where they are sentencing people who defend themselves with firearms.

That are not licensed. And that the two defendants that I looked at, Charles Furner, is the current one he's going to be sentenced to and he's taken a plea deal of four years in prison because he defended himself against an attacker with a firearm and it was unlicensed. And there was the same an incident even earlier by Lashawn Craig, who had done the same thing in his own apartment this time. And now he's going to be up. So the New York DA is coming down hard on people who are defending their lives.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, it's racist because usually the person they go after is a white male and sometimes a perpetrator is white or not white. But they want to send a message out, don't be armed in New York because if you are armed in New York, you're going to be able to defend yourself without counting on us, the criminal justice system that is Alvin Bragg. And we won't. That's how we have power over you. We won't prosecute people that commit crimes against you because we feel they're part of the oppressed. But if you should be a Daniel Penny Try to protect yourself or protect others or you should have a gun and stop somebody who's a criminal, then we lose that currency. We don't have control over you. Alvin Bragg. That is why there's a second aminion. It's discussed in the Federalist Papers.

Some of the founders said you don't need nine other amendments, you just need the second amendment because as long as people are free to defend themselves, everything else falls in place. You have no control over people if they have second amendment rights. Because what they will do if you will not enforce a law and they are in danger, they will use those guns in self defense and that will create deterrence and then the crime will fall and then even you will be emasculated in your efforts to make it rise as a social weapon.

So. And then the second thing is they get people killed. Once the, once the message went out that Daniel Penny was going to be prosecuted for saving people.

Then you know that the Carlos Brown thought, you know what, I'm going to split this. What he said, and this is controversial, but I killed that white person. That's what he said. Blank. And everybody. Oh, he didn't really say. I listened to it twice. I know it's AI. Maybe somebody faked it, but it was on a tape. The point I'm making is there were four people surrounding him and she was bleeding to death. And she had that tragic look in her eye or last moments on earth like I'm dying, this wasn't fair or how is anybody going to save my life? And they just stepped around her. And I guess they were all African American. She was white, but I don't think it was a racial thing. They stepped around her. I think it was. I don't want to get involved because if I try to restrain him or do anything, I'll end up like Daniel Penny. They've destroyed deterrence. Same thing with Mr. Reed in Chicago.

Although I will say with a footnote, some of you were saying, Victor, you pulled your punches, had a white person slit the throat of a black young girl, God forbid, and then walked out and said, I killed that black. Blank. And four white people stepped around her while she bled to death. You would have George Floyd riots. You would say, what happened? You people have no morality. How can you allow a young black girl with her life ahead of her to have this white creepy criminal cut 14 times this white guy was arrested. You let him out. She's bleeding to death. She's an extremist, she needs help. And you just stepped around her. Callous that's what they would say. But we live in an alternate bizarro world. We really do.

[Sammy Wink]

Well in that bizarro world. It seems to be mimicking film and art because the Charles Forner, he was out late at, he was out late at night and he had a gun with him. And it reminded me so much of Charles Bronson in Death Wish. And I was thinking, you know, know, they're even. Well, what they've done is the. Anybody who would be a vigilante or just defending themselves is definitely who they're after rather than the criminals.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I'll tell you a story that I could say now that's.

1988, 87. So I'm sitting in my farmhouse, same house I'm sitting in now. Two in the morning, my eight year old son who was upstairs, I always up in the bottom.

Runs down and said somebody's throwing rocks at my window.

And they're yelling. I go outside and there's three gang bangers, I can use that term accurately. And they say blank, blank, blank. You let us in or we're going to do blank, blank, blank to you.

And so my family called 911.

Obviously they didn't come in a minute and they came toward me. So I had my great grandfather's 1892 Winchester 16 gauge. It has a hammer on it. So I had four shots in it. So I pointed at the first person and said, I don't know if this is going to go off or not because when you push back the pump, I didn't say it so scientifically, but I am going to cock this. And when it goes, when I go back, I don't know if the hammer will stay on it because sometimes it would go on, it would go with the pump and shoot.

Because this is a hundred years old. So anyway, I told him that, but I said it in a very fast way. You know what he did? He got on his knees and prayed. He did. So I said, where is your car? And he said it's out in your vineyard. So they'd hid the car to break in. So I said, can we walk out there? I didn't say it that way. I had a gun. I was waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for 9 11, 91 1. So he gets in the car and I took the keys and I said, you're going to push the car. And I followed them armed and the three of them pushed it about a quarter mile to the corner. And it was foggy, it was kind of dangerous. I mean it wasn't Dangerous, but, you know, it wasn't 100% visibility. And then I took the keys and I threw it in a vineyard. And I said, now you can go look and see your car's on the side of the road and maybe you'll find it or maybe it won't, but the police are coming. So I walked the quarter mile back at that time. They came 30 minutes later. I don't know what would have happened if they hadn't been armed. They would have killed us or something. They were armed.

They put the gun back in the car, one gun. So the cops come and they said, you shouldn't have done that. But quietly, you should have done that. And then about three weeks later, they called me, said, Mr. Hansen, that man was out on parole. We, we got the license. The car was on the side of the road. They said they didn't do anything. We couldn't do anything there. We couldn't find a gun. They hit it probably, but we did run the license. He was just let out of Folsom Prison. He's a gang member. And they named the gang, it was a Hispanic gang.

And I thought to myself, I will never, ever, ever, ever question gun rights in America. I never did, but that was really important.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Victor, let's go ahead. And welcome back our sponsor, Allegiance Gold. If you're studied enough in history and you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its current beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. That's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are allocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history. 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 plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships built on trust. And right now, they're extending a special liberty offer for my listeners to help you start with real gold. 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 844-790-991. That's 844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 844-790-91991. That telephone 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 Hansen Show. So, Victor, our next topic is CH Schumer apparently had his offices in New York and I believe in D.C. no, in New York and other places in New York State threatened by bomb threats. And so he was set up. You know, he seemed to have had a real problem this week with anger against him. And we don't know whether it was Democratic or Republican.

You think it's the Democrats, his own party?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, to the Republicans, he's irrelevant. To the Democrats, he's an obstacle to the socialist takeover, the party. So I'm never going to speculate if I don't have the information. But if you put me on a spot, my life depended on it. Or as.

A great man once said, hanging makes a person clarify his thoughts. If I was going to have a noose and I had to guess, I would think it would be somebody on the hard left.

[Sammy Wink]

That would be my guess.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Partly because if you look at the pattern of a Tyler Robinson or Luigi Mangione or Ruth or crooks, they have legitimized the use of violence. And Josh Shapiro's house was firebombed. I could go on. You look at ice, you look at the National Guard, you look at what they say, Charlie Kirk.

To them, violence in the pursuit of equality by result is justified. That's what Mangione said. That's why he's a hero.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, perhaps Chuck Schumer will be lucky he is in a blue state because maybe they will go out more aggressively.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He's riding the proverbial tiger. He can't keep going and he can't get off. If he gets off, they will go after him as a impotent. Nobody's senator if he's not senator, minority or majority leader. But if he stays on, he's not able to control the parties. Humiliated as a weakling. He would be better. I think he's 73 or something. Why doesn't he just take a noble retirement? Victor, why don't you? You're 72. Yeah, but I'm not a public official. You know, people don't depend on me like that.

[Sammy Wink]

Well, Victor, you have a person from your own neighborhood, Fresno. And that is Harjender Singh and.

He'S here illegally and doesn't even have a passport.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He didn't give his name, did he?

[Sammy Wink]

He was driving a commercial truck and he had a California commercial driver's license. Yeah, they gave his name Harjini Point and he killed two newlyweds outside of Bend, Oregon. Yes, I And so he and Newsom's current.

Effort and he. What's the current thing with Newsom? Is he still giving out those driver's license to a non residents and to illegals who cannot read or write in.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

English and well, you mentioned a trifecta. Non domiciled is the word they use. They don't live in California necessarily. They're here illegally. And three, they either can't speak English or and read English or they read it very poorly and we don't know how they pass the test.

And there was 17000 of these licenses issued minimum. And Sean Duffy said he was going to cut off millions of dollars of funds if they continue. And Gavin is yelling and screaming but.

[Sammy Wink]

He hasn't acted so far to stop this.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Then I just gave a talk 30 minutes to a great group of farmers 10 miles and I said I don't know what Gavin Newsom campaign is. I'm going to do for America what I did for California. Think about it, everybody. $250 billion in unfunded liabilities. $17 billion deficit. It he gave $500 million to illegal aliens in Medi Cal, then broke the system. And 40% of the state is on Medi Cal which is welfare, medical insurance. 50% of all the births are on Medi cal. He needed $2 billion from the Trump administration to bail him out federal money. He had this big solar plant in the desert. It blew up. It's no good. It's going to junk it. It's $2 billion. He had the Monterey Battery plant, remember that was. We're going to store all this excess energy we make. It's $500 million in fires. Then he had high speed rail, 20 billion road to nowhere, track to nowhere. Not one foot of track laid.

Then he had the greatest number of homeless people in the United States. Half of all of them are here almost. He's got the greatest number of people on welfare. One third of the country on welfare is here. Highest sales tax, state sales tax rate, highest income tax rate, highest gas rate. I'm out of breath. The highest gasoline price, the highest electricity Price, the highest homeowner's price, the fourth highest insurance price.

And what is he going to run on?

I protect you from forest fires in Pacific Palisades. I protect you from truck drivers. 99 Freeway, which is two miles from where I'm speaking, Judge, the most dangerous highway in the United States based on miles driven. I can attest for that.

What is he going to say that he's done?

[Sammy Wink]

Can I answer the question of how he's going to finagle this? He's going to do it based. I was just listening to, to some commentators on Fox News talking about this. He's going to just get out there with his Gavin Newsom good looks and convince people he's good looking and he's going to get votes. And Donald Trump, Donald Trump.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Donald Trump, he said that. Donald Trump, he liked to hit him in the mouth.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

He said the God. He said SOB he said fu. To Donald Trump. Trump, it's all he talks about.

[Sammy Wink]

Just to do justice to the Fox News commentators, they did end up saying that they didn't think in 2028, given what he, how he would try to win, he would win at all. They thought that he wouldn't win and it wouldn't be passed over on the American.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think he thinks this. Well, Mondami is appointing all Islamicists and he doesn't like Jews. And he said he wanted to seize the means of production. He got elected. And Jay Jones said that he'd like to kill his opponent and kill his kids too. And he got elected. And there's a guy in Maine that has a third panzer at SS Waffen Division tattoo until he just erased it Totenkopf. And he knew what it was and he may get elected. So the fact that I've done nothing but destroy California, 1%, everybody, 1%. 1% of the entire 41 million people, I should say their household who file taxes pay 50% of the income tax. So if you're a Californian and you're in the top 13.3 bracket, you pay half the taxes that are collected, which are half of all revenue. And you know what? They're leaving at the rate of 300,000 a year and there are not enough of them. So if you leave California, they're going to audit you for three years. I talked to a very good friend of mine about 10 years ago and you know what he said to me? I think I've said it on here. I said, well, how did you get get out of California? And he said, well, you know, the first year I came in and he still had his home and his business but he moved. And they subpoenaed my Visa card and they saw that I filled up at gas station so they charged me a big penalty on all the 13.3 in California.

[Sammy Wink]

He filled up with gas station and.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Then he said I got smart. I used cash. Second year they subpoenaed my credit card and saw if I got large cash amounts out.

Third I said no cash, no credit card, I'm just going to go there and not spend any money.

And they got me. I said how? And he said.

I did not leave my power on. So they subpoenaed my power records and they saw that it was going way down for three or four days a week and then back to normal. So I said, and now he's said after three years they can't get you anymore. I think they can now. But that's what he said. And it's harder to leave California than it is to do almost anything.

[Sammy Wink]

Wow. What investigation? It's very hard for us.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I know there's thousands of you that like me that were born here under Pat Brown. Jerry's dad, he wasn't a bad governor. Ronald Reagan was a good governor. Dick Mason was a good governor. Pete Wilson was a great governor. Schwarzenegger I thought at the time was a poor governor. But in retrospect compared to Jerry Brown, especially Gavin Newsom, he was a great governor. Now it's the judicial appointments are all Marxist. There's super majorities of Democrats in both legislatures. There's not one, not one, not one state Republican office holder. Only nine of 53 congressional representatives are Republican. And that's going to go down to five with a new gerrymandering of the gerrymandering. So if anybody can just say, well wait a minute Victor, here's what Gavin Newsom really did. That's good. Okay, say it. Well, he has a very sophisticated fire prevention plant. No he doesn't. The Aspen Fire, the Paradise, the Pacific Palisades. Well, he's fast tracking homes. No, I just was down there in Pepperdine. I drove on the pch. There can't be more than a half dozen homes that are being rebuilt. He wants high rise, high density inner city people living there. He doesn't like the people who were living there. They're not. That's not his group. I mean he would, he has a nine million dollar home as they are all the leftists, Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Kamel Harris, they live in Brentwood or they live in Presidio Heights or they live across the bay somewhere in Mill Valley.

[Sammy Wink]

Area but insulated from these people. They want to.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah, their attitude is well this guy inherited a house in Pacific palace heights built in 1920, a classic Roman beautiful home, Villa Tyle Wolf and it got burned down. And that's choice real estate. And we can put a high rise in there and let some deserving people who are. That's kind of what Karen Bass wants. I don't know if they'll be able to pull it off but that's why it's hard to get up.

[Sammy Wink]

But maybe people are double thinking whether to rebuild because if they get these high rises in their neighborhood and they've rebuilt and spent all that money to rebuild and then, you know, who knows who what sort of criminal may be able to get into these high rises. Right.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

That's the neighborhood rule in the United States. The people who ensure that there is not criminal deterrence, that criminals are not locked up punished are people who live in are a left wing and they all live in very secure areas. That's a very weird phenomenon. I mean we used to have a world word when I was growing up called limousine liberal. The Kennedys or John Kerry or somebody like that. But this idea, there's millions of these people from Berkeley all the way to La Jolla on the coast and they are living in 2, 3, 4 million dollar homes and they're all left wing and their kids are in prep schools and they're at 70 degrees year round.

A lot of them are Prop 13 homes. They don't pay that much taxes and they have all these destructive policies so they that people do not live like they do. Nobody in the middle class could ever aspire to what they have because of them.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, I know that.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And they feel great about it.

Of course.

[Sammy Wink]

Well everyone let's go ahead and take a break and then we'll come back and Victor's going to talk a little bit on the crusades. I know that he's had some questions from some of the viewers. So stay with us and we'll be right back.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Ordinary checking a $300 head start on checking Ordinary savings High yield savings that.

[Sammy Wink]

Your money Ordinary mortgage A mortgage with.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

A rate that drops when the market does. Why settle for with Oregon State Credit Union you get all sorts of. Welcome to human to human banking Oregon State Credit Union insured by NCUA equal housing lender $25 minimum balance required subject to change terms and conditions.

[Sammy Wink]

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson show. You can find Victor on X his handle is Hansen and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. So if social media is your outlet, your place to get news, you can find him there. So Victor, you haven't let on to me what these questions were or anything. So I'm just going to let you take it away. The Crusades.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, I did a segment for Piers Morgan History and they had the host was not Piers and it didn't go well because it was like can you prove that the Crusades basically were not racist or western centric or are used for political purposes? And I basically said compared to what I said, if you're in a western country that's self critical, Europe, the United States, the former British Commonwealth and you mentioned the word Crusades, half the population are going to criticize it, half are going to support it or not support it, but empathize with it. If you're in the Islamic world, 99.9% are going to have a particular point of view. And if you do not believe it, try going to any of the 25 or 30 Arab countries and saying anything negative about the Prophet Muhammad or the government in power. See what happens to you. Come to the United States if you're from the Middle east and blasphemy, Christianity and our president and nothing happens to you. You so don't tell me they're morally equivalent. Think about the Crusades where you have to start with a very the idea of reclaiming what is now Israel and parts of Jordan and Lebanon and I'm talking about what we call the Holy Land, the topography and geography of the Bible where Jews were there for 3,500 years.

And the, the famous cities that are mentioned in the Bible and early pagan literature. Ty.

Tyre for example, Antioch.

[Sammy Wink]

A C R E Acra. Is that Accra?

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, outside of Haifa and.

Jerusalem. So what is the history of those? Those were Jewish until the, the Babylonian dash Persian Empire conquered them. Then they were liberated, so to speak, in the fourth century B.C. by Alexander the Great and they became part of the Hellenistic Kingdom, Salucid Empire. And then they were annexed and absorbed by the romans.

From the 2nd century A.D. until the 5th century A.D. they were part of the Roman Empire. With the collapse of the empire they became Byzantine, Christian, orthodox roughly from 4, I don't know, 70 to 630. And then something called Islam was born and it swept through northern North Africa and took traditionally western places that had been colonized or absorbed from the Berbers, Carthaginians and made them Muslim. And they took over Jerusalem and the Holy Land around 6:30.

Christendom was divided between Orthodox, Byzantine and so called Catholic West. And it was fragmented. There were Frankish, British, Germanic kingdoms. So the Pope would say then by 1100 we have to reclaim the Holy Land. That was part of the West. And it was.

And one of the reasons he said it was the Byzantines, the. The other half of Christendom was saying we are being attacked by the Seljuk Turks. Take off the pressure. So they appealed to the chiefdoms. And there were about a hundred little kingdoms all over Europe. Europe, it wasn't a lot of people. And they took the cross, so to speak. And there were two ways of getting there. You could go by sea mostly from Messina in Sicily.

And you could go straight in to dock at Cyprus and then go to Rhodes and then go around the corner and go there or go straight across. Or you could take the old via Agnesia.

And go through Thessaloniki and then up through Thrace to Constantinople and be harbored by the Byzantines, recoup and go south by land. And that's what they did. And the first crusade was around 1095.

And it was very poorly organized. It always was poorly. Or they fought. Some of the leaders just wanted to steal stuff. They fought the Byzantine Christians, their host as much as they did the Islamic people, the Middle East. But that was the only crusade that actually took Jerusalem. And they took it. They did slaughter everybody in it in a way that Saladin did not do after the third crusade. That lasted as Christian for about 80 or 90 years. And so did those Christian cities I mentioned and forts. That's why today in Lebanon there's still people who are Phalangites, they used to call themselves. And if you go to Lebanon, I've been there before, you see people that look like they're French and they're Christian and they are the original inheritors of the Crusader kingdoms. They're still there. And you can even see people in Israel that they're still Christians there that are Marianite Christians and people like that from that tradition. And then it was lost. Okay. And second Crusade failed. It lost. It failed. The third Crusade was Richard the Lionheart, and it was very successful. Second one, I mean, we had Frederick Barbarossa, who was probably the most innovative and deadly.

Chieftain in Europe. And he was killed on the way to the Crusade. And then his army dissipated and they never really recovered. And they couldn't do much, much.

The Third Crusade, Richard. And they had lost at the Battle of.

Hattin. The Horns of Hattin. You can go there today and see the horns the two mountain peaks it was, that's in Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. It was very hot and they went out without water and they were annihilated. But the battle of Arsuf later under Richard they demolished Saladin's troops and they could have taken.

Jerusalem but he was called back because his brother John supposedly was an usurper back in England. And they were fighting and he made some conditions where Christians were treated better within Jerusalem. Then the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh Crusade they were all efforts to go to Egypt or go into that area and free Jerusalem and they never did. And then finally by the fourth or fifth or sixth Crusade those crusader kingdoms gradually were. The fourth Crusade was the worst because it got to Constantinople in 1204 and it decided this is too rich and it's too, it's just there for the taking. And they were the only, was the only time until 1453 the walls were broken. They never went through the Theodesian walls, they went through the sea wall and they ravaged, killed, slaughtered, horrible. And it never recovered. Constantinople didn't. I know it existed for another 400 years but it never was. At one time there was a million people there.

[Sammy Wink]

That was Christian on Christian fighting.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, right. That was western Christian. The Pope about five years ago apologized to the Orthodox diocese for that. But it weakened the Byzantines. When Byzantium fell, when Constantinople fell in 1453 on May 29, that Tuesday afternoon there was only 50,000 people in that huge city. There was farmland inside the walls but that was diverted. And at that point they lost the will of the Byzantine people and they weakened it. It was the stupidest thing that ever happened in Christendom. They divided them forces and then you can see what was happening. There was dissensions in the west. By the 15th century the Reconquista was still going on. That was a crusade inside Spain. But by 1500 Martin Luther, you know, and the had nailed the demands on the wall.

And there was a trisection, there was Protestantism, Catholicism, Byzantium and the split Shia Sunni was much smaller. So what I'm getting at is I tried to tell the host it wasn't this massive conspiratorial, huge European, so called white effort to go kill brown people. It was a bunch of feuding warlords who over about 180 years got it in their head that they were going to go somewhere and for take the cross and lead people who really did believe that this land.

Was. I mean I said to the if people go to Mecca for the pilgrimage, what's so horrible about going to Jerusalem for the Christian pilgrimage to see where Jesus was crucified. That was the whole point. They had no answers. And then she asked me, well, don't you think today contemporarily the west used the Crusades? I just said, in the matter of what that bin Laden. I said, have you ever read Raymond Abraham's Bin Laden Reader? The original words of bin Laden and Dr. Zawahiri. They talk about the Crusades. They think they're taking over Europe today. They say things like, what we couldn't take by the sword, we're taking by the womb, their fertility rate. And so.

Anyway, I said to the person, she was talking about colonialism, British colonialism, French colonialism of the 19th century, 18th and 19th century. I said, well, as a colonial person myself, who is an American who was colonized, I'm glad for the British colonial system because we learned habeas corpus from the Romans, but also from the British. The rule of law, the English language, English, it was a rich tradition. When we grew up, grew strong enough, we cast it off, but we're still English in our customs. And that helped India, it has a national language, may not have been intended that way, but there were good. The good outweighed the bad. But my point is.

So you object to Europeans going and colonizing, but do you object to 16% of Germany being.

Islamic? And she said, well, these were colonizing. And I said, well, how did the people get into Germany? They came illegally. They were trying to colonize Germany. And I said, at least the English were not hypocritical about it. When they went into India, they tried to get rid of suttee. You know, when a person dies, the wife has to get on the pyre. And they stamped it out. Remember, they said, you can't do this. And they said, you have your customs and we have our customs and we have cannon. And the next person that does it, we're going to strap them to a cannon and blow them apart heart. So we were not going to kill the widows. And they did a lot of. They tried to get rid of the caste system. That didn't work.

[Sammy Wink]

So the British brought things.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I had a good Indian American friend. I won't mention any names, but he said once to me, I shouldn't say this because it's very controversial. He's a wonderful guy, but he was in a moment of candor, he said, you guys are all played out. Meaning. I think he meant the original California population. We from India know how to. We know much better I said, well, could you explain what it is? He said, well, we're the Brahmans now. We're controlling the agriculture, we're taking over, we're harder working and we have tighter knit. All true. They were tighter knit and we all live together in multi generation mansions compared to your houses or nothing. And he went on, he was kind of kidding, but he was kind of kidding, seriously. And you guys are sort of the middle cast. Cast, but you're shrinking and you're played out. And then the Mexican population are the untouchables. He said that to me. I said, what do you mean the untouchables? He said, they're the drone. I mean the worker class that do our labor and everybody knows their spot.

And I said, you know why caste systems don't work in the West? Because they're arbitrary and they're based on race. That's why slavery was ended. He said, what do you mean?

And I said, why do you think that slavery was never outlawed in the ancient world, but it was in the modern world? Well, people got, I said, wiser, more moral after the Holocaust.

[Sammy Wink]

No.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And I said, he said, well, what was it? And I said, in the ancient world it was not based on race.

Aristotle in the politics says there is a natural slave and that people should remember that, meaning there wasn't.

So what I'm getting at is if you're in the ancient world and you have a slave named Euclid and he's a Greek and he's working for your Hellenistic family, that may be, I don't know, salute or hell and take a note. And you say, luke Euclid, you know math better than I do. You're tutoring my kids. He said, yes, and I have invented a lot of theorems. And he said, good for you. Well, because I'm smarter than you and better of you, can I be free? And he said, I never said that you weren't smarter than I was. I never said you were not better than I was. I just said you were unlucky and you were either born to a slave or you were in the wrong place at the wrong time when we took the city. City. And that's what Aristotle meant.

[Sammy Wink]

Can I ask you something about that though? Because it seems to me that the Romans knew different ethnic groups. Like they would have recognized a Celt.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They did.

[Sammy Wink]

Or a Gaul.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes.

[Sammy Wink]

And. And so they understood that there was ethnic differences between slave and those who.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Were not slaves, but they didn't think one was inferior to any other.

[Sammy Wink]

Here's what I'M saying, go ahead.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

So if they got a guy from Thrace that had red hair and white skin, or somebody from Ireland that had freckles and red hair, an Iberian from Spain or a blonde haired Gaul or a black Ethiopian, it didn't matter. They were slaves because they were conquered and they took them back to Rome. And if you look at that crazy show Spartacus, they're always making about Gaul and Ethiopia and there's black guys. But the point is that they never said that the Gaul is stupider than an Italian. And by the second, you know, they didn't because by the second century A.D. most of the emperors were non Italian. And so what I'm getting at is if you have an insidious system like that that makes no investment in racial inferiority, then there's, it's harder to get rid of. You just say, I can be a slave tomorrow. You can be a slave. It's not fair. But we don't discriminate. Plato was a slave. He claimed for a little bit. Okay, 15th, 16th century, the Portuguese and the Spanish, everybody starts going to Africa, New World, trying to get to China first. They go to the New World as well. And they see people that do not have architecture, they do not have sophisticated sailing. People in the Spanish explorer class say, well, we're in the Dominican Republic, what was then Hispania and all that Hispaniola, they can't get over to Barcelona, these Aztecs, they're inferior. So then they started a new wave of slavery that said people in Africa and the New World are slaves because they're inferior by their race. And look at their civilizations compared to what we've done. Done. Okay.

That'S a cultural thing. It's not a genetic as they said it was. We'll forget the Muslims who took more people from Africa over to the Middle east than the Europeans did to the new world. About 12 million to 11 million. But once you set that system up, what happens if you see a guy who's tuting your kid named Euclid, and he's black and he's really smart and that happens a lot. And then the white master says.

Well, you're, you're a slave because you're inferior. I can't trust you. And he said, but I can teach. Oh, you can? Oh, well, I thought I was a master because I was genetically. And so then you have to what, pass laws that slaves can't be educated? Or you could see a guy like Frederick Douglass and what do you think about him? Right? It's an ex slave and he's smarter and better. So the point is once you invest.

Pseudo racial superior superiority into slavery and you find exceptions and the whole system becomes bankrupt. And that was one of the abolitionist arguments against it, that there is no aristilian natural slave, then we're thinking that by race we have natural slave. The south said that they quoted Aristotle ad nauseam, the.

Governor of Georgia, or even people like Jefferson Davis or John Calhoun alluded to it to the ancient world where they said all we're doing is finding the natural slaves that never existed in Greece. And then the northerners who were class. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Homer and Herodotus said the Ethiopians were noble people and the best of all people. And they said the Thracians, those white guys were bandits and, and thugs. So I was, that's a long exegesis and excursus on my friend who was trying to tell me that there's Brahman classes. So I was trying to tell him what happens when a member of the lower classes is smarter than a member of the upper classes and vice versa. Because.

It'S based on culture that maybe you could argue that the immigrant from India is better educated than the immigrant from Mexico originally, or has a tradition of entrepreneurialism more so. But after a second or third generation that's no longer true. And so then if you still believe that it's going to be overthrown because it's idiotic. I tried to explain that to him with no success.

[Sammy Wink]

I don't know how we got from the Crusades to slavery, but I have a feeling it was because the woman that was questioning you was trying to say that the Crusades were a colonizing effort by the European, mostly that we.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Were in the west bad. I tried every little banal argument. Why are a million greenheart cardholders, a million legal, formally 2 million illegal, a million students, 4 million people of various statuses coming in every year. And almost no one is going to Egypt, nobody's going to Syria, nobody's going to Lebanon, nobody's going, they're going to the Middle East. It's for oil, you know, wealthy little tiny kingdoms that are rich. But she didn't want to talk about that. And I says because we're self critical and we, we can criticize our system and then therefore, with challenge, response, argument, counter argument, we were empirical in the Middle east and Islam is not. The difference between the whole Crusades is. Even in those early so called barbaric times, Christianity said there could be people outside.

Christianity, the kingdom of God and they weren't necessarily going to be treated worse.

Islam said nobody was going to be out outside the Omar or the religious community of the world. And if you were, you were going to be a feudal, in a feudal sense, a secondary person that had to pay a tax. So Christianity was live and let live, more or less. I know it had Crusades, but there were people and they fought each other constantly, Protestant and Catholic. But the premise was a Sermon on the Mount. It wasn't Old Testament anymore. Eye for an eye.

[Sammy Wink]

I think the historian, pundit or commentator. Was his name Robert Spencer? Yeah, Robert Robert Spencer, yeah. Wasn't he the one that said the Crusades were delayed.

And ineffectual and not as powerful as the initial Islamic onslaught before the Crusades came on 400 years later? He said, oh, I came on late and it was more impotent than it was potent.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

It wasn't very potent. It was very directed at getting the city of Jesus back. Because if you got the city of Jesus back, you had a pilgrimage where people could find God by going to Jerusalem. And then there were entrepreneurial chiefdoms that said, I like to have Antioch and have my own kingdom. And it became colonial. But the tragedy of it was that it was originally an effort, effort also to check the power of the Islamic Seljuk Turks that were starting to invade what is now Turkey, Asia Minor. That had been Western for centuries. And the Byzantines were, when they, they fought at the Battle of Manzakirk and lawless. So they were being pressed and they thought that the Western Christians would be a help to them if they took the Middle east, that would be a shoulder. And they had the other shoulder in Asia Minor. They could stop the, the, the inroads of Islam. And the people in the west said, that will be our sanitary corridor. We can stop them. And if you talk to people today, from at least when I was young, maybe not today, from Eastern Europe or Greece, they would say, yes, British France.

English have more money than we do. It's because we for 400 years kept.

Kept nostalgic Kurds. We kept the Islamic hordes. We kept the Turk, we kept the Ottoman out of Western Europe. Now we lost a lot of battles. They took over Albania, et cetera, but we kept them out of Western Europe. That's what they tell you. As I said, I was in my apartment on May 29, Tuesday, and it was.

9:30 in the morning. I got.

Oh, curious Hanson. And the woman said, yes. I said, fine. She said, oh. I said, well, what is it? He said, this is Black Tuesday.

And the archangels came in and they couldn't save everybody in the. The floor of Haga Sophia. So. So they took Constantine, the last emperor of the Byzantines, and they marbleized him. I said, they marbleized him? Yes, they marbleized them. He was taken up to heaven in a suspended animation. I didn't fall at all in Greek. I knew Greek pretty well then, but not as well now. And they put some in the walls of the cathedral. I said, are they still there? And she said, it's so sad. You know, we had the megala idea, the great idea in the 1920s. We were 100 miles from Constantinople. We had all of of back to our original Greeks. And they. We lost because the British traders, they cut off our supplies and we were stranded. True, they were even beyond that. They were near Ankara and Venezuela was betrayed. So they pushed us back and we lost Smyrna. A million Greeks and they butchered us like animals. And now we lost Bazan and we. Could you please give us to 100 drachma?

[Sammy Wink]

So all for a hundred drachma.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I went into church and, and I just said, I don't know if they still do this, but I said, I'd like to. If I. I would have liked to be married in this church. It's beautiful. Married. You want to be remarried in the Orthodox church? And I said, think about it. So she handed me a. A little sheet. It said, Electricity, 200 drachmas. Use of bathroom 100 drachmas. Window tinted, windows clean 300. That whole thing remind me when I had a torn ureter. I was in a hospital for six weeks, eight weeks in Athens. And my ureter was torn completely. I was very sick. I had to be flown home for emergency surgery. And I get a little bill. And it said it was a private little hospital. I was in evangelismos. On the bottom floor was like Dante's Inferno, but they had a little thing, it said shave 50 drachmas. Toothbrush. Toothbrush and 200 drachmas. Washcloth. So it was all. It was kind of good. You paid for whatever care and new sheets you paid for. And it had a price. It was like a menu.

[Sammy Wink]

While you'd be giving surgeons and doctors ideas about not just delineating all of the. Their medical services, but to add the bathroom to it.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I can tell you that the. The hospital that I transferred myself to because I had no money and I was in this public hospital, it was like, oh my God, I won't even mention it. It was so bad. Not as bad as where I was operated in Libya, but bad in those days. I'm not making fun of Athens. This was 1974. No, excuse me, 78. Second time I was there. But my point is, when I got to this other little tiny. It was like in a nice neighborhood. It was like an apartment building. It was sparkling and it wasn't that expensive. It was private. And they kept saying, we are private. We are private. And it was much better. I think we should do that. They could. They should have privatized. Evangelist mode.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, that would be good. I just have one more question, because my favorite movie is. One of my favorite movies is Robin Hood, the one with Russell Crowe. And at the beginning of that movie, this is what it is. So you said, Richard, I think it's the first. And he was coming back and is it true that he was laying siege and then he was trying to get back to England and he got killed.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

A lucky arrow killed him.

[Sammy Wink]

Killed him.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And he got sepsis.

[Sammy Wink]

And then John became king.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Well, he was already excerpting, so he was on his way back.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And.

[Sammy Wink]

Okay.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Then of course, there were all these rumors he was gay and everything, Richard. But he was a very successful military commander and he saved the third Crusade was more successful than not. But it didn't retake Jerusalem. But he was only. I don't know what people will correct me. He was like 30 miles outside of Jerusalem. And he made a deal not to take it. But he probably could have taken it, but there would have been a bloodbath.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah. Well, let's go ahead and take a break, Victor, and then come back and talk a little bit about the Oxford Debate Society president. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson show. You can find this podcast on YouTube Rumble and on Spotify. And I think we. Oh, the audio outlets are iHeart. And Spotify as well does audio as well as video. So, Victor, the president, or now the former president of the Oxford Debate Society, got a no confidence vote and so had to leave his position because he had written a post on his social media celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And he claimed his name is George Aberdeen Rony. And he said, he claimed that the real reason why he got this vote of no confidence was because he was black. And so he tried to make an argument in a conversation he was having that he really didn't do anything wrong. And he was, you know, he was a moral coward. Worried about it. He was, he was somewhat apologetic for what he had done. But, yeah, yeah, that's right. He was the one that was doing Charlie Kirk's brand.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Charlie Kirk, I think will be known for two things, as I said earlier. Number one, he told the present generation, be revolutionaries. Don't make people say you're old fuddy duddies. You are revolutionaries because the establishment is left wing, ossified, calcified, tired old democrats. They control everything. The left, they control the foundations, they control Media, they control K12. They're all really reactionary. You are the real radicals. You conservative. That made it kind of neat to be on campus. And conservative number two, he said, I know you're all here, but don't ever think today's university was the old university. It's not. It's a con. It's raise a tuition higher than the rate of inflation, bring in a million foreign students, gouge them, DEI pandered to race, separate graduations and it doesn't teach you. And I don't need. You don't need to go to college. He didn't go to college. He dropped out. So he went over to the Oxford debating group, private group.

And what did he do? He out debated the president. And then the president got mad about that and so he thought he was going to play. He was selected, voted because he was black. If he had been white with that level of talent, he wouldn't have been and no way. But he had the whole nine yards, Jimmy Cliff down, perfect. The dreadlocks, the tennis shoes, a deliberate mockery of the formal attire in the Oxford Union society. Okay, so then he was so obnoxious about go, basically rooted for the assassin. And that was so embarrassing scene that the board of trustees and people said he's going out and they spread the word and he was voted out just like he was voted in. So then he thought, I've been such a very effective racist. I've said so many horrible things about white people. I rejoice at their murder. But now I lost my position and I can't shame them anymore. I can't call them racist, I can't say all these terrible things about them. They're not guilty anymore and I'm out in the cold. And now I've got some crazy St. George and the dragon or something, English flags flying around and they don't like me. So I'm going to go in and make a public lie and say I feel so bad that I made fun of Charlie Kirk now that he's dead. I didn't really mean. You read what he wrote. It's just again and Again and again.

I liked him better when he was an upfront crook, you know what I mean? He was just a, a racist and he was not proud of it. And I thought, you're a racist from day one. And the English are very funny people. They lectured us all during the 80s. We don't have PC like you people do. We have. And then they went whole hog and they're more. I think they're beyond the point of salvation myself.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, I don't think they can recover.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

From the immigration and the political correctness and the hatred of the white working class. Yeah, the elites hate the white working class more than the left. Elites hate the deplorables, irredeemables, dregs, garbage.

[Sammy Wink]

Clingers in the United States.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yes, we're fluid in the classes. They're not.

[Sammy Wink]

No, that's true.

Well, Victor, let's then look at Jon Stewart's comment. He's commenting on Donald Trump's characterization of third world illegal immigrants. And my question here is how do you get around? I'm going to read what he said in just a second. But how do you get around this argument that is made that they're not going deep enough to. This is a cultural statement when he says Somalis come from a country that is messed up and that's cultural. And then they come here and they deploy the same culture and they start destroying and act fraudulently for our government. Right. So Stuart says this about Donald Trump's characterization of third world illegal immigrants. He said, if you are from the so called less desirable countries, he does not view you as an individual. You are just part of a larger amorphous blob of suspicion that deserves no grace. If one of you F's up, all are condemned.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Who said this?

[Sammy Wink]

That's Jon Stewart said that. So he, but he was, he was characterizing Donald Trump.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Talk about how many times does she say the word white? She doesn't look at individualism.

[Sammy Wink]

No.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

How about aoc? How about Jasmine Crockett? I just heard Jasmine Crockett. I want to tell you white people, you white people, they talk about white people as a monolithic block that says to me, Victor, you have the same ideology as George Clooney and the same thing as Joe Biden and Hanna. No, I don't. I have a lot more political affinities with the Mexican American people I know in Selma that are conservative than I do with white liberal. They don't. They characterize people in terms of the left does. That's how they get their power. So the other Question is empirical, is it true or not? And what Donald Trump has said, Jon Stewart, is if you come from an antithetical society and there are layers of antitheses, if you come from Australia, antithetical.

[Sammy Wink]

To the United States, right, the tradition.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And values of the west and American culture in particular. So let's say you come from Australia.

We don't care about white. Let's say you're, I don't know, you're an aborigine person in Australia, but you've been fully Australianized. You come over here, we say check. You know English, Czech, you come from an allied country, Check. You come from a consensual society. Check. You come from a country that has a tradition of literature, parliamentary government that's similar to our own or at least was our basis. So that when you come over here, it's very easy to assimilate you and you come wanting to be assimilated. But let's say you come from Somalia, you have no tradition of democracy or consensual government government. Islam is antithetical to Christianity. You have no notion if a person does not want to be Muslim that they are going to have a perfectly normal life.

Number three, you don't believe in Western self criticism or individualism or any of the things or Somalia would look like France.

Number four, your country has been plagued by violence and strife and tribalism. So you want to come to our country. That would be very hard to assimilate you if you wouldn't listen to us. But it requires two things. Number one, we have to believe in our civilization. We say you wanted to come here, we didn't want to come to Somalia. Therefore we're going to make you into an American. So you're going to come over here and you're going to learn English. You're going to salute the flag. You're going to learn God bless America, America the Beautiful, my country. Tis a vis. We're going to quiz you on your citizenship paper. You're going to have to tell us who Ulysses this Grant was. We're going to have to tell you what December 7, 1941 is. You're going to have to tell us who Andrew Jackson was. You're going to have to tell us who Harriet Tubman was. And then you'll start to acculturate and you're no longer a Somali. You can be proud of your food. You can probably, you know, talk about Somali dress. You can wear your little scarf like Ilian Omar, but you're going to be in America. But that's not happening. The host has no intention of doing that. And the image immigrant wants to cling to their culture. And they are hypocrites because they come over here and they want capitalism, freedom.

Consensual government that makes it safe, prosperous, secure.

[Sammy Wink]

Apparently they want to steal from the government as well.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They want to. 70% of them or 30% are on welfare and 70% are not fully employed. So they come over here and say, we got the best of both worlds. We want to leech off, you get welfare, con you out, then play dei, make you feel guilty, guilty. And then retain our Somali customs. But we can do it like Arabs do in Dearborn. We don't have to assimilate. And finally, people are saying, no, we're going to go back to the Teddy Roosevelt melting pot. If you want to come over here, you got to assimilate. And for now we realize that 4 million people with green cards and students and legal. And this is too much. We can't handle that many. So stand in line. We'll let the people in who like us the most and the most qualified. That's all it is. If they're black, fine. If they're brown, fine. If they're white, fine. We don't care. She's a racist. When they said they were going to bring in 7,500 or 8,500 white Africaners who were being losing their property to black violence, he's just mad at brown people. He's just. I was so shocked that Senator, was it. Mark Kelly said that. That was horrible what he said. Don't. Trump is calling third world because it's brown people. Senator Kelly, John Stewart. 95% of the immigrants that have come into the country the last 50 years have not been white in Republican and Democratic presidencies. Okay? Nobody is. So if you bring in 8,500 white people after 2 million came in every year under Joe Biden, excuse me, 3 million, and you say that that's racist, then you are a racist because what you're saying is that you only want non white people. And when a very minuscule amount come in, you go hysterical because it doesn't fit your racist mindset. We need to say that more.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And they'll stop it. I always do that. Today, though, people will say, do you love. So I said, these are racist. Yeah, I don't want to talk to them.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Before Tucker started getting into the Jews and the anti Semitism, he was very good on that one topic. He would call them racists. Who talked about people as collectives about black this or brown this or white, just collectives or white spout. The book I reviewed of Daniel Peralta Padilla, as I said, he mentioned the word whiteness, I think 75 times on 160 pages ages. He was obsessed with whiteness, whiteness, whiteness, white, white, white, always in a pejorative context. And he was an immigrant, illegal immigrant. I thought, why are you coming here illegally? At the age of 10, a Wall street capitalist puts you in the most exclusive school. Then you get a free ride to Stanford, then a great free ride to Princeton, Then you get fast track as a professor. You've only written one academic book and you're tenured, you're making all this money and you hate white people. And all you do is talk about how you hate white people. And classics is white, white, white. And nobody wants to go to the Dominican Republic. We're free to go there. We just don't want to go there. It's not because you're black or dark. It's because it's not fully Western, at least like this country. And by the way, you agree with me because you're here and your parents wanted to come here for that reason because they had more freedom, security and prosperity. And that's just a fact. And Dominican Republic could be like Switzerland tomorrow if it would change not the race, but the culture.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes. And just as a note, the investigation on the fraud going on by Somalis in Minnesota, there's always the question of how much Ilhan Omar knew. And so the latest news is that she had her celebration dinner for winning her election at a restaurant of one guys that did it.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Not only did that, she cut a video bragging on that fake restaurant.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

And it was. They were going to introduce it into the court to show you that the fraud was embedded. And the judge said that you could introduce the video, but you couldn't have her in it. She was the video. And then you have Keith Ellison, the attorney general, the guy who held up the antifa book, as I said earlier, he's on video basically saying, if you guys want to help my campaign, I'll protect you. Tim Walsh is on the campaign lying on the campaign trail. He's running again. And he says, well, the federal feds handled it. We gave them. No, you resisted and resisted. So the feds had to step in. But they violated a myriad of state laws in addition to federal law. I think he's done. I think he's cooked one of her.

[Sammy Wink]

Can I just finish with Ilan Omar, one of her staff members had one of these restaurants that was scamming money off of the act. She introduced into Congress, the 2020 Meals act, which was the source of all of this. So she's needy.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

She deserves Donald Trump. When she came in, she said this. I came in here and we thought it was clean. It was so trashy. And the dictatorship of Trump is no different than the one in Somalia. Go back then if it's no different. And how did you come to America with nothing? And you're worth, what, 20 or 30 million because you gave business to husband, your third husband, and he's a investor. And people are investing for the sole purpose that you'll give them influence. And by the way, you've never, ever come clean and said under oath, I, Ilan Omar, swear under penalty of perjury, I did not formally marry my brother. I did not do it to get either him or me citizenship. I didn't do do it. I didn't do it. She just always says, you're a racist for bringing it up.

[Sammy Wink]

All right, Victor Rowe, let's go to the comments at the end of the show. Oh, go ahead.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They should subpoena her under a federal investigation of this food scam and they should ask her under penalty of perjury. Have you, speaking of immigrants, did you ever at any time legally marry your brother, brother, yes or no. And make her swear to that? Because the others out outside the statute of limitations. That wouldn't be for perjury. And she would say, I, I will guarantee you. She said, I plead the fifth Amendment.

[Sammy Wink]

All right, Victor, so some comments on your and Jack's podcast. George W. May said, there is no criminal. There is no doubt in my mind that the modern Democratic Party is a criminal enterprise. Tony Sopran looks like the town librarian compared to these bastards. I thought that was funny because I just saw a some episodes of the Sopranos.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

They don't see. They don't look at the word crime like we do. Crime to them is a social construct. Crime is what poor people are forced to do by wealthy people. Crime is not going and looting a diamond store in la, crashing a car in going in with a hoodie and stealing all of them from a poor Taiwanese businessman man. Because under critical legal theory and critical race theory, who made that law that says you can't steal diamonds out of a store? Wealthy white people did. Why? Because they have diamonds and they don't need to steal them. Therefore, they created a law to oppress other people. That's critical legal, of course.

[Sammy Wink]

Yes. All right. And then this one was, I thought he made a good point because I kind of noticed this myself. I didn't. Not in these words. So dumb bunny 986 says, Jack, you pushed right past Victor's comment about Biden checking his watch while the bodies of our heroes were being disembarked from the C130. That was appalling and unforgivable. I mean, what Biden did not. I mean, what Biden did not you, Jack.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I think Jack, he just nodded that he knew that.

[Sammy Wink]

No, I know. She was saying that Biden's actions were appalling. And so.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Oh yeah. But what I kind of like, I like a lot about our audience is nothing gets by them. They're like all these, if I was doing a left wing thing, I could just lie my head off. If I was had no morals, I would just say all kinds of stuff and they'd say, God, that was great. If I say anything, I get so many emails. I try to be very careful what I say, but everybody is so informed, so confident in their knowledge. I'm glad about that. And they write you immediately.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, they do.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

When I said the P47 turbocharger, I said, I think I did a mistake. Supercharger. Victor, Victor, Victor. Do I have to explain that a turbocharger allows a force fuel mixture due to the recapturing of the exhaust fumes and recycled back through the cylinder wall, whereas a supercharger is a mechanical advice to increase the pressure of the intake. Then I made the mistake of saying it was an Allison rather than a Pratt Whitney double wasp. Of all the people who should know that when your father flew in. And so it's.

[Sammy Wink]

I like that you're reminding me. I have an apology to your audience. On our Friday episode, I said that the Democrats had not had disappointed me because they weren't arguing that the war on narco terrorism shouldn't be a war at all. It we're not, you know, you can't define it by fighting terrorists that we. We recorded on Wednesday, during the day and Wednesday evening news, there were all these excerpts of these ARGU Democrats making that exact argument. So I apologize to our audience.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

I mean, there was no narco narcotics.

[Sammy Wink]

There's no war. Donald Trump doesn't even have a right to.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Yeah. They also said there's no such thing as narco terrorism.

[Sammy Wink]

Yeah, exactly. So how can you be at a war? And so dar everything Donald Trump's doing.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Terrorism, everybody, let's be very clear about the definition. Narco means you're selling drugs for a profit in the United States. That's a narco. A terrorist is somebody who has a tactic to terrorize Americans or hurt them for political purposes. You combine the two and you say we can kill two birds with one stone. We are sending drugs into the United States to make a lot of money and to hurt, in a political sense, the Americans by using violence and killing Americans through accidental ODs. That's narco terrorism.

[Sammy Wink]

Anyway, that's my apology to your audience because I was wrong. They were in fact making that argument and so should, and I'm not surprised. I was expecting them to be. Well, Victor, thank you very much and thanks to our audience as well for joining us.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Thank you very much for watching and listening.

[Sammy Wink]

This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen and we're signing off.

[Victor Davis Hanson]

Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com. and subscribe for exclusive features. In addition.

The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US Based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.