Trump’s Strait of Hormuz ‘Jujitsu’ vs. Iran, Europe’s NATO Weakness, and the Swalwell Scandal Fallout | Victor Davis Hanson

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Eric Swalwell may also know about other people, etc. So do you think there'll be any pressure to cut him a deal and keep him out of jail? Well, it depends on what the DAs are all crooked in New York. We know that from Alvin Bragg, Matita Jane, the state. They could. You could say, I'm going to do the Solomon strategy and pull the temple down on everybody. Yes, exactly. But people did that with Trump. Yeah. He said, go ahead and do it. What are you going to say that I'm an adult? I am an adult. You've never been married three times? Yeah, I am. He didn't care. But they did it. Yeah, but the difference is here, Swalwell will be pulling down, maybe other Democrats, maybe Republicans, because we know this problem is not. Well, he better watch out for his wife because Democrats don't fool around. All right, fair enough. Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. This is our Friday News Roundup. So we'll be looking at the news of the week with Victor Davis Hansen. For those of you who are new, Victor is the Martin Nenele Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution in the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about Iran as usual as there's always changes there. Then we will look at the Swalwell case, which is turning new every day up new evidence. So we'll look a few things at that. And maybe at the Pope and his alliances in the United States. Stay with us for those stories and we'll be right back after these messages. Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed. But some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife. The importance of passing along our values to our children. The faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive. As long as we keep first things first, we've only just begun. America the beautiful. Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. We are a subsidiary of the Daily Signal. And you can find Victor at his own website at VictorHansen.com. The name of the website is The Blade of Perseus. So please come join us there. Well, Victor, I was wondering just on Friday to just do a little bit, or if you had more things to say about what's going on in Iran, given that we are controlling the Straits of Hormuz. And that the United States now has sent 10,000 troops there. So we're starting to get closer and closer to active war. I'm a little puzzled why we didn't hit on this strategy earlier, but in the defense of the administration, I think it's predicated on air, not parity, superiority, but supremacy. That means they must feel that the missile threat is much diminished. And they have upped the threat of taking out their generators in Kharg Island. So that has had a deterrent effect. And that has allowed Trump to, I think Larry Kuddle called it, Jujitsu, flip the Iranian. So the last time we talked, they were boastful. They thought I had, they had delighted the American left. The American left said, oh, we're losing. Even Joe Scarborough today said, there's been a change in the temple of the war. I think maybe Iran is on the defensive. And that's what they're doing now. They're all doing now. And what happened was Iran boasted that we're going to close the strait. And we don't have any Navy, but we're going to do a bunch of PT boats. We have no air force and our drone and missile forces, two thirds gone. And if we do any hidden American ship, they're going to wipe out all the power. And Trump said, they did it for a day. And everybody said, oh, they hadn't thought of this. The United States never, and you know, every military colonel in the world got on TV and said, sorry, we planned this down to the T for 50 years. So these people, I don't know if they're stupid or they're just malicious or both. But so while Trump did and all administration did was saying, that's a good idea. Close the strait and let only the good ships come in. But sorry Iran, you don't have the wherewithal to do that. But we do. So we're going to take your strategy and flip it upside down and let in everybody except your guys. And we, unlike you, can do it. So then the foundation for the defense of democracy is a great organization. And they had some economists, many of them Iranian, who have been publishing these revelations. They said, wait, wait, wait, wait. And Jack and I talked about it. One of them, $430 million in economic damage a day. They're still pumping and that they can't unload because their storage tanks are about quickly filling up. What are they going to do with the oil? They got to stop pumping. If they stop pumping and it has damage to the oil fields. The regime said they lost $257 billion in munitions and infrastructure. Most people think if you count the underground tunnel work and the nuclear, etc. And the arsenal, it's more like a half a trillion. So all of a sudden it was sort of like the elephant in the room was the economy. Everybody knew that. We've been talking about, they're going broke. They have no money. Before the war started, there was hyperinflation. Now that their currency is worth nothing. And China doesn't have the wherewithal, strategic or tactical, to force their way in. If one Chinese carrier comes in there, it's going to be met by three American carriers and they're better, much better, the pilots. So my point is, didn't a Chinese carrier go through the straight to home news just right when they, oh, you mean, oh, you mean a military. I bet one of their ships went through. One of them did right when they were starting, but now we're turning them back. They buy 80% of Iran's oil. So nobody's going to miss it, except China. So basically what the United States is doing is saying, we're going to control the straight and we're going to let anybody who wants to do business with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, but not Iran. And Iran's island, Kharg-Iran, were almost 90% of its oil is. You think they were so smart that they would, they have a port on the other side of the straight, but they were so arrogant and thought that they were always going to intimidate everybody and no one was ever going to intimidate them. They never did what Oman, the Emirates did and put a port that was a sizable, they have one, but a sizable port in front of a straight and then had a big pipeline and they could have got around it because it would have been harder to police in the open outside the Gulf. So basically now where we are is Iran is quickly going broke. It's going to implode. The population is restive and we're in the driver's seat. So if you gain it out, you say, well, how many days can I survive? Probably a week, 10 days. So maybe we should do what they're doing. They want to just drain it out and they can go back to the old metaphor. Can't hear you. I don't know what you want. Oh, you want to negotiate. It's Friday afternoon. Let's start next Tuesday. Oh, you want to go to Pakistan? Oh, it's too far. Let's go to Saudi Arabia. You could do that all day long and we're not killing anybody. We're just sitting here and it's not that costly. And if they keep, if they say, well, you know, if you're going to try to do this, we're going to unleash hell on Saudi Arabia and we'll destroy. Oh, you are. Are you? Well, we've got 10,000 Marines and we have to decide whether to blow up Carg Island or take it from you and take your oil. But we can do either one. So they're in a rough spot. Then there's another dimension, two more dimensions that nobody talks about. So they got this population that's restive and all this is coming out. They don't have internet, but the word's getting out that they're broke. And the population is thinking, do I really want to spend half a trillion dollars and build more tunnels and more missiles and drones and give it to all these Arab terrorists? No. And they justified their reputation and their oppression of our 93 million people on one thing. Well, you may hate us. This was the subtext, but we are the terror of the Middle East. Everybody's afraid of us. United States doesn't dare go in here. 47 years we've killed Americans with impunity. We've got proxies in Syria. We got proxies in Iraq. We got proxies in Yemen. We got proxies in Gaza. We got proxies in Lebanon. We have a ring of fire. Everybody's afraid. Europeans come begging and they make these little deals on the side that nobody talks about. Well, we'll let you in the Gulf and you can buy, you know, we won't harass you, but we don't want any support for Israel. So that's what they were thinking. And now what? The people are going to say, you incompetent buffoons. You told us that everybody, we didn't like you, but at least everybody was scared of us. And now we're the laughing stock of the Middle East. The Israelis are laughing at us. The Gulf States know that we're nothing. Even the Europeans now say that they want to open the straight after the United States has opened it. Medicine, please, we want to get credit. I'm Macron. This is the Napoleonic fleet. As soon as you take all the heavy lifting and maybe you guys Americans can go home and turn over this prize to us. And so the people are going to get very, very angry. They're going to say, I don't want you spending any, any money on Arab terrorists or any more money on your stupid missiles and nuclear program. I want to eat and you're stealing our money. And you know what? You were not feared anymore. We're laughed at. So I think that this, you know, as I said earlier, the Berlin Wall fell and then some of the Eastern European countries were free within a month, some three or four months in the Soviet Union took two years. But it was all predestined once the Berlin Wall fell because they saw what's going on. The Germans couldn't stop it. So I think if we don't give away the prize, because now what the left is going to do, European and American, they're going to say, oh my gosh, this thing, we didn't anticipate this. He's flipped the whole narrative. If, if he bankrupts Iran and they come crawling on their knees to negotiate or if the people rise up, we could lose the midterms. He could have a big, a big foreign policy success. It would change the entire world. And with Venezuela and maybe Cuba next, and then the economy coming back and all this oil money, the U.S. is, this is bad. So we've got to stop it. So they'll do everything they can to stop it. And the only thing I'm saying is I hope that Trump does not stop and negotiate with these clowns. I hope he drags it out. I hope he goes in there and says, these are wonderful people. Let's talk and then gets on the phone. How many million do they lose today? Keep it up. Keep it up. And then at some point they're going to unplug. Because if you let them off the hook and you say, well, you can't have any nuclear weaponization for 20 years, you're going to get Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg as president one day and he's going to say, oh, I feel so bad. What we did up. Can you take my apology? Morocco gave you 400 million. Well, I'll give you a billion at night on a pallet. And please, please, please, that's what you'll get. So this is a once in a lifetime chance. Yeah, it sure is. I think that the left and the presses sort of rely on the frailty of human memory when they're, they come out with all. Because I heard you and Jack talking about the Wall Street Journal and all it picks on every little thing it can just to say things are going back. Every day, every day. And so they're. The columnists have even got in on it. We were superb. I don't know what's happened. They've lost the narrative. The narrative. I don't understand why they're in Wall Street. Do they understand that they're going to lose all their credibility with their conservative audience if they keep this gloom and doom and everything's are terrible as this Iranian monstrosity may, may, may just implode. The editorial board has been good in a sense that they said to Trump not to negotiate. But the news section is the one that's. They're all, as I said earlier, their ex political Atlantic Washington Post. New York Times reporters. And I don't know why they can't get people out of that circle that are empirical. Yeah. Victor, before we go back to some more discussion, let's welcome a sponsor, my Patriot supply. 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It's a simple step you can take now before these warning signs turn into something more. Go to preparewithvdh.com and get prepared today. That's preparewithvdh.com. And again, preparewithvdh.com. We'd like to thank my Patriot supply for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. So Victor, on that same topic of how the press is presenting things, there's the most strange thing in the daily mail. A headline, Iran-Newt Confession Blows Reason for America's War. So the daily mail said, and they went all the way back to an Iranian official, Ali Motahari, comments in 2022 where he claimed, and I'm paraphrasing here, Iran only wanted nukes for deterrence, and that Khomeini, the guy that's with his 72 versions right now, forbid building the bomb. And that was a 2022. Yeah, he was, why did they do this? I don't know. It was strange. People are childish. They've just been told that the Iranians had enough uranium enriched for 11 bombs. They didn't start enriching it during Donald Trump's first term. They enriched it under Obama, excuse me, Biden. And they swore that they could, were never, the Ayatollah, the supreme leader, does not want ballistic missiles with ranges over 1,800 miles. And then they said, watch this, we're going to hit Diego Garcia, 2,500. Everything they say is a lie. Of course, this guy basically said four years ago, well, we were always going to get the bomb, but it was only for deterrence. Well, that's the point, isn't it? Pakistan has a bomb, they haven't used it. It's for deterrence. And Pakistan can be a renegade Islamic fascistic state under the guise of democracy, but nobody can do anything with it. India is much bigger, it's democratic, but India and Pakistan are at odds. They've got 180 nukes. And if Israel didn't have the bomb, they would have had everybody try to destroy it. One of the reasons that Germany is so behaved now, it can't have a nuclear weapon. That was kind of the NATO, France, Germany down, Russia out, America in. So Britain and France are nuclear. So no third war from Germany. So what I'm getting out is everybody knows that the acquisition of a nuclear weapon gives you automatic deterrence because it's coupled with lunatic talk. And that's what North Korea is mastered. I'm going to destroy Portland and you think, nice, crazy, 99%, oh, wait a minute. What if he says that 99, 100 times and 99 are crazy, but the one time he's serious, he can take out a whole city. So that's what they wanted, a sort of Damocles over the head of Israel and over the Gulf. And they're not going to get it. As long as there is a sane president. And my second question on this same topic is reflecting on the week and prior weeks, etc. Do you feel or do you agree with the statement that the war has revealed the strengths of all the independent nations involved in this sense? We now know that NATO, some of those nations can't be relied on. We're all sort of afraid of China and Russia and their strength, just like Iranian strength. And then the Middle Eastern nations, the ones that are on our side have had to show their allegiances, I guess, as well. So it's made these things really clear. It revealed things, but it also changed them. So the big loser here is Europe because they didn't, all they had to do is they could have just said, look at what Greece is doing. Greece is letting the Gerald Ford, the biggest warship in history, come into Sudebe, joint NATO base. They're not bragging about it. They're not condemning it. They're just letting the Americans come in there and fix the fire damage and the toilets. And they'll be on its way. That was great. And Greece earned a lot of points. Why didn't Spain do that? Because it had to grandstand and so did France. We're not letting them in. And the reason they, and so did Italy. Malonia has lost all credibility with the Trump administration. Sad. Everybody liked her. That was unnecessary. Or she could have called up Trump and said, I want to apologize, but I'm in a domestic jam. I got a crazy electorate. Is there any way that we could come in at night or something? But they didn't even make that attempt. And so they thought they were really tough because the war was going to be Trump's Vietnam. Well, now it was never going to be Trump's Vietnam. That was just a mythical unicorn that the left made. So now they're all impotent and they're all on the wrong side of the United States. Except countries like Greece, Eastern Europe, probably Finland, Sweden, the ones that matter now. So then they are bragging that they're going to make their own NATO now. We have to get ready if Trump gets out. He's not going to get out of NATO. He's going to say, can't hear you. Oh, you want to go into Serbia and you want to bomb all the Danube bridges again? Oh, we did that once and did 80% of it for you. And we got, oh, you want to go to the Falklands because you think Mali might take him again? Oh, can't hear you. Oh, oh, France. You've got some problems with Chad and you want airlift capacity and you want, oh, we can't hear you to call us again. That's what they're going to do. Oh, Ukraine. Oh, it's on the border of Europe where you want another 200 billion dollars. Can't hear you. That's what it's going to be. And he's not going to say the United States is not honoring the NATO commitments. It's just, he's going to say this, the United States has discovered that Europe has a new interpretation of NATO commitments and we agree. They're fine commitments and we're going to emulate them. And that's what they're going to do. As far as China, when you don't have lunatics writing that this is really good for China because they're going to really stress their wind and solar. That was in the journal. I don't know more comment because I like the journal, but that was completely insane. 80% of the Iranian order they buy, I don't know, they get 2 million barrels, a million and a half. And they're sending ships to the United States right now. They are desperate for oil. And I don't know how long fracking and horizontal drilling will give us this. It's a finite supply, but Trump's visions are to open up Alaska. Not just to Anwar, but new things and leasing and nuclear power and the United States is going to be in a very good position for a decade at least. And China's not. Russia, I think that everybody, I got so angry with these people that said Russia, all these pundits, this is somebody at the Hoover Institution who will remain on name, we have a rule, they'll shall not speak publicly in disparagement of us, fellow fellow. But he had this really eccentric article and he said, this is very bad for us because it empowers Russia because they're going to get top dollar. Yeah, they are for a while. And then they're going to think the market is collapsing, but maybe the straight is, is they're blocking Iranian oil and China needs oil and the world needs oil and it's a good time to pump oil. So maybe we should cut a deal with Ukraine and get all the sanctions off. It's not that Trump is saying, what are you doing, Vladimir? They're trying to squeeze the oil markets and we got a temporary law. It's time to jump in with us and make a bunch of money. So cut a deal and stop killing Ukrainian. It's much more logically do that. And the Gulf sheikdoms are really, I mean, it's hard to follow them because they say, Donald Trump, please, please, you've got to get rid of Iran. You got to stop them, stop them. And then publicly, it would be too fragile a situation. Please don't destroy the status. And then did you just disregard that? Now, oh, keep bombing, please. And then we think there should be a harm assist ceasefire so we can have some calm. Don't pay any attention. I just put your boot on their neck and squeeze it. So that's what they're doing. And they have 600, as I said before, 600 fighter bombers. Israel has 300. Why don't they join in and finish them off? They could have done that. But the fact is now they're pro, there was a, it was either a Kuwaiti or Gattari, they asked him about Israel. And he said, Israel never hit us. I mean, they did that one time. But he said, we're not afraid of Israel. We're not afraid they're bombed. We're afraid of the people who are going to get a bomb. And the same thing about Turkey. Turkey's a NATO member. Turkey has said in the past that wanted to send rockets into Athens. Now they say, Erdogan says, he wants to attack Israel. He said he was going to invade. He would be, everything he had would be sunk before he ever got near Israel. But he says he, if they had an air attack, it would be the end of it. They would lose, they would lose a lot of assets. And more importantly, for all these NATO fanatics that say, oh, it's the best that they don't want any changes in it. They don't want any, they should ask themselves, why is Turkey in there? They've already threatened in the past during the coup that they were going to have proprietary rights to our nukes. Thank God we're secretly getting them out of there. I hope we got them all out by now. But it's a NATO. So what is NATO? NATO has an Islamic fanatic anti-democrat maniac with the largest army except ours. And then it's got these countries that won't let another NATO power secretly use their airspace to protect them from intercontinental ballistic nuclear tip missile. That's what we're dealing with. So NATO is a big loser and the Europeans are a big loser. And the Middle Eastern states are banking on the United States and Israel. That's what's so weird. The European states are not banking on them or not the scene, well, this is going to come out in their interest, but the Middle Eastern states are seeing it's going to come out. Well, I'll tell you, I was in junior high in a very tough school and this maniac said he was going to beat me up. You know what I mean? And I had gone to the city junior high from a rural Mexican American. So I knew a bunch of guys. I'll just call this guy Geronimo Rodriguez. I knew him really well. It was one of my best friends. But some of the friends that came up to me and they said, oh, that guy is crazy. And they were all bragging. They looked wades and they were tough. And they said, and I walked to my aunt's house after school. It was about a quarter mile away. And they said, we're not going to walk with you because he's going to beat you up. Well, I had got, I just made a fork, a big metal fork, barbecue fork and shop. So I was kind of arming myself with it. I had no friends. And then nobody liked this one guy I'm talking about because he was crazy, the bad guy. But there was the good guy, Geronimo. And he was kind of quiet. But he didn't, you know, he wasn't cool. So he came up to me because I knew him. And he said, I won't emulate his accent. He said, basically, I never liked that guy either. This is translated. It said, can I join in? So he started walking with me. And then he, that guy came out with me and he said, hit him with a fork. So he's tacked me and I did. And then he said, let me out him. The point I'm making is that everybody thought that he was too weird and not cool. Well, that's like the United States. And they're looking at all their little allies and they don't do the Europeans and all, they don't do anything for them. So now they think the United States is too unpredictable, but man, it's powerful. And so is Israel. So we want these guys on our side, even though they're kind of, well, it's not cool. They're not cool. And they're pariahs at the United Nations. And they're pariahs in the Arab world and they're pariahs everywhere. But when nitty gritty comes down, we want a bad pariah rather than a therapeutic, snooty, self-righteous, sanctimonious Pete Buttigieg nation. And that's what, you know what I mean? They would take Trump. He asked, if you brought all of the golf council nations, you brought them in a room and said, would you like Donald Trump to be president or would you like Pete Buttigieg? What would they say? You know what they'd say. Pete Buttigieg will never be president nor will Kamala Harris. So they like the United States and they like Israel. If you said to them, would you like the golf people, would you like Turkey to have a bomb? Would you like Iran to have a bomb? Would you like Sudan to have a bomb or would you like Israel to have a bomb? They would say privately, privately Israel because they know it's responsible and it has no beef with them. And those other countries are completely fanatical and crazy and they never know what they would do with a bomb. So that's what's the whole Middle East is like that. They have to be like that because if you look at what just happened, Iran started bobbing bombs at Qatar. Yes, the United Arab Emirates. They have Israel because they hate those people and they've had to take crap off around for years. Excuse my language. They've had it and they're sick of it and they just, they see this opportunity. They think for the first time in our life, this theocracy could be destroyed. The golf would basically be ours and all of our oil would be here and they were going to take a half century to rebuild and there's a good chance that the people will withdraw them and be friendly to us. If only the United States will finish them off. You know, that's what they're saying. Trump should call them up and say, can you send 300 planes over and take out their power plants? Cause you gotta do something and it's going to be easy. We'll give you the target list. And they say, no, no, no, don't be hasty. Yeah, exactly. Plus it might cost them something. Let's go to a break, Victor, and then come back and talk a little bit more about Swalwell. I know you injected, but there's more just a piece said, stay with us and we'll be right back. Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin. And just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen. Whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, or his short form content for the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, I always leave an episode learning something new. I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands war. And in the age of clickbait and ragebait, that's a really good feeling, right? The media, thank you. You can leave now. Well, if you agree, you might like my show, the Daily Signals long form interview podcast called the signal sit down. Every week we take you behind the scenes of the biggest battles in Washington, DC, as they happen with some of the biggest names in politics. We explore big ideas and we analyze the policymaking process from an unabashedly and unapologetically conservative perspective. And that's important now more than ever with the Trump administration back in office, because in 2024, you sent Washington a message it couldn't ignore. It's your government. And together we're taking it back. So check us out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen or there too. And drop me a follow on X at Bradley Devlin to stay updated with what's happening on the signal sit down. Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So Victor on the swallow allegations, some of them are particularly heinous. The Lona drew drewies who came out and the press and did an interview that was, it was very convincing because boy, she seemed like she felt it when she talked about how she was drug raped and then almost choked to death. I guess she was choked to the point of passing out. So these are very serious allegations. And my question is merely, what do you think are the chances that and she's not the only one there are other ones, but that was the most striking. What do you think are the chances that Eric Swalwell will actually have to go to jail for this? It's a very good chance. I'm not acquainted with it. Each particular state statute of limitations. But as I said, Donald Trump, if you looked at the evidence, I'll put a plug in for my book, Counterrevolution, the fallen rise of Donald Trump and the mega movement. It's out. I have a whole chapter on the lawfare. And when you examine the Eugene Carroll case, there is no way in the world that that should have ever led to any type of civil victory. And they charge him with sexual assault, not rape sexual assault. But that was a he said, she said where she had no details. She couldn't remember anything. She couldn't even remember that she said she had the dress on and the dress that she referred to hadn't even been made yet. Everything was bogus. So my point is that the New York legislature passed a bill of attainer to say that for one year, there would be no statute of limitations on Eugene Carroll, basically. It was for everybody, but it was her bill. So I don't know what they're going to do, but there are two women who basically said that they were raped. There's another one that came forward and said she was sexually harassed. There's a bunch of others that got pornographic things. That's all demonstrable because some of the women actually told people a minute moment had happened. And what I'm getting at is everybody knew it. Everybody knew it. Pelosi, they asked Pelosi. She's speaking, she knows everything. She knows when people sneeze in the Democratic caucus, especially California. She used to get a free plane and fly all the house members home, no free government plane. And so they asked her, did you know, I didn't know that. It's just, you knew it. You knew it all. And in fact, everybody knows right now that if Eric Swalwell was ahead in the gubernatorial race by 20 points, those people would have shut all those people up like they have for a decade. Right? The latest thing, he flew out and met all these people in France and then they got on this rented yacht and they just had a Petronian satirica. And he's pictured like half out of his mind. They got another video where he's, I don't know what he's doing, but it's all there. They knew about it. And the only reason it's coming out now, they all got together just like they did with Biden. And I said, Joe, you're senile. There's no way you can make it. Your debate was an internal polling. So if you can't win, you said, I'm president. Yeah, you're president, but we're getting rid of you. So you go out and give a nice talk, get a month to think about it. But you're going to, if you don't, we're going to get rid of you. You're not going to get any money. And we're going to get Camilla. Well, isn't there going to be a vote at the convention? No, we're going to appoint her, but she didn't win a delegate. It doesn't matter. That's what they're going to do to him. They're going, that's what they were going to do with him. And they got him out of the race. Had he been way ahead and a sure winner, they would have had a coat of silence because they, and they got panicky. They thought, you know, Porter is an incompo. He was a crazy man, but he's ahead, but they were both behind. They were third and fourth. And they looked at these two Republicans, they thought, they could end up alone in the runoff. And then they looked at the second tier, Becerra and Villagrosso, and they were mediocrities. They had nobody. They have nobody now. So their strategy now will either be to put Camilla Harris in there, or to let either Chad Bianco or Hilton will win. I think Hilton would. And then we call him. That's what they're planning and get one candidate. So they knew, they knew, and he can't get out. These are going to be rape charges. How can a person go? Usually these are incremental. How can he be a house member and go from perfectly beloved? And, you know, the guy was a complete lunatic on the House Intelligence Committee. They knew about Fang Fang. They knew about that he was using campaign funds improperly. They'd heard all these rumors about these young girls that worked for him that were harassed. There were other rumors that he was a rapist. They knew all of that and they let it go. Yes, but Eric Swalwell may also know about other people, etc. So do you think there'll be any pressure to cut him a deal and keep him out of jail? Well, it depends on what the DA's are all crooked in New York. We know that from Alvin Bragg, Matita Jane, the state, they could. He could say, I'm going to do the Solomon strategy and pull the temple down on everybody. Yes, exactly. But people did that with Trump. Yeah. He said, go ahead and do it. What are you going to say that I'm an adult? I am an adult. You've been married three times? Yeah, I am. He didn't care. And they did it. Yeah, but the difference is here, Swalwell will be pulling down maybe other Democrats, maybe Republicans, because we know this problem is not. Well, he better watch out for his life because the Democrats don't fool around. Okay. All right. Fair enough. Especially when they keep replaying those clips during the Brett Kavanaugh Conformation hearings and he keeps saying, well, there's one and one and one and one and one and one and there's either a pattern here, he's the unluckiest man in the world. Oh yeah, that applies. I believe in divinity in the Christian sense. And I think God sees everything. And although the ultimate judgment is in the next world, there are forces in the world that reflect his sense of justice. And one of them is what comes around, goes around. Now, other cultures saw that the Indians call India, it's karma and the Greeks, it was nemesis. But I don't know whether that's a psychological condition or what it is, but it seems to me that anytime somebody engages in this serial deviant behavior, and then he judges everybody else, that either psychologically he's sloppy or he's projecting, but that's a human phenomenon. I think it has a divine phenomenon, but whether you're a secularist or you're a believer, it exists. And so this guy for 10 years was giving these soapbox lectures to everybody about me too, and everybody must be believed. And he was at the center of some kind of sex obsession. And so, but they waited until the chief moment. Somebody said, divinity said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I know, don't get impatient. We have to let him keep going, going and magnify himself. Wait till he runs for governor and he gets all this attention. Then we'll let nemesis or karma or divine retribution come out. And that's what happened. His ego, I don't know why he didn't say, man, I missed that bullet with Fang Fang. It could nail me because I was sleeping with a Chinese spy. All he did was kick me off the house intelligent. That nondisclosure, that's bad. Oh man, I remember that. I took a picture of my genitalia and sinna. I got to clean up my act. I'm going to run some. He didn't. He didn't. And it shows you that he's a little bit clueless. So is there something, and I know this is the elephant in the room, is there something sympathetic about this clueless individual that, you know, I don't know. I think there's people in our audience, they saw him when he was taking a picture of himself lifting weights and he was in a pool doing nothing. And he said, the Republican shut down the government. And so I'm, and people said, you lazy SOP. Well, they even did. And we don't care if they shut down. We didn't pay you to sit in a swimming pool, but he's stupid. And you know, as I said earlier, when Fang Fang walked in my office, I didn't even have to wait until she walked in. I heard her voice and she said she was going to visit as a consulate officer and school me on my wrong columns about China. I just said to my assistant, will you still be here? This should be interesting. And as soon as she walked in, he just, he just rolled his eyes. So my point is everybody knew that. It's all obvious that yet for Eric Swalwell, it is not obvious apparently. My point is she's been a Northern Cal State Hayward or something. She, she had a fake Chinese accent. She had a fake Valley girl accent. Anybody that comes in your office and says she's a consulate with boots on up to her knees, skin tight, leave eyes, a blouse with no bra on and sunglasses tucked in it is, you know what I mean? And tries to give you a T set. And anybody who takes up on that, it's a little bit clueless, right? Yes. Eric Swalwell. Oh, Eric Swalwell thought, wow, I am such a stud that this consular official, this, this Chinese person must really feel I'm so handsome and dynamic that for the first time in her life, she might sleep with me. What an idiot. But he's sympathetic. If your point is that he's sympathetic because he's so stupid, but people of that district deserve, well, they voted for him, but they deserve better. Yeah, that's true. I feel sorry for his second wife and then three kids. Yeah, that's tragedy. Because I mean, she probably doesn't have a job. She had a pretty, pretty good job when they met. They're completely broke. He's unemployable. I don't think he's gonna, I don't know what's gonna happen to them. It's really sad. But that was, you know, I wish somebody had warned her. Maybe she knew. I don't know. Yeah. It's kind of like all these, all these people on the left, I mean, Epstein files, Epstein files, Epstein files, Epstein, and then we hear that Bill Gates, he blew up his reputation completely. Just, and then Eric Swalwell, and all of them are just, the long run of me too has taken its toll. Yeah, it has. And they have a much greater, you know, even so to my ear, she attacked Cavanaugh the other day and said that he was a child of privilege and didn't really understand when this ICE had to deport somebody. And when she wrote, she said that when she was nominated, I said, this person is incompetent. She gave a speech and she said she was a wise Latina. And then she's, I think she said wise Latina, like 10 times in the speech. And then Latina, Latina, Latina. And then she said that she would be more empathetic than a white male judge. So I said that she, this woman should not under no circumstances be confirmed because she's a racist. Everybody, I got a lot of nasty comments and so that that was the same thing. She, there was no consequences and she just got, now she's really the first Supreme Court justice in memory that attacked personally, another justice. I haven't heard that before. Cavanaugh. You know, that was, that's horrible who do that. Yeah, that is. It's a horrible precedent now. Well, Victor, let's welcome back Allegiance Gold, another one of our sponsors. If you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. 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So Victor, I know that you and Jack talked about the Pope or the bishops, whichever one it was, but there was something else about the Pope that I thought was interesting that came out this week that he met with David Axelrod, who is a political strategist for Obama. And one of the CNN financial analysts claimed that they are conspiring to bring down the Republican Party in the midterm. So the Pope and Obama's associates, Obama's associates are conspiring to bring down the Pope. My point is, as I said to Jack, Jack was empirical about the Pope. He thought the rich lorry or former colleague, he wrote a devastating takedown for the Pope. He basically said, if you're going to be a political animal, you should at least get the fact straight. There is nothing in Catholic doctrine that says that this war does not qualify as a just war. Just war does not, from a, from a gust into a quinas, if you read about it, sometimes Michael Walzer, I think, missed that in his just war book. But it's not who starts the war, the actual shooting. It's which particular nation prompted the climate that if somebody didn't stop them, they were going to continue their reign of terror. And that's what the Pope didn't understand. And so, yes, was it wrong for Donald Trump to photoshop himself as Jesus? He said he thought he was a doctor or whatever. Yes, was it wrong for him to talk to the Pope as if he was just a political opponent? I don't know if it's morally wrong, but it's politically wrong because he had got a record 55% of the Catholic vote in 2024, all-time high, including Hispanic Catholics. And he was tenuous anyway because of the left anti-Ice stuff. So you don't want to offend a devout community right before the mid-trump. So I wouldn't have said it. That said, Donald Trump's argument was essentially, if I could expand upon it, Pope Leo as an American citizen, as a bishop prior to when he was the normal Robert as a bishop, he was in, he inhabited social media quite frequently. And he was a gadfly on it as a Catholic bishop. And his targets were whom? Donald Trump and JD Vance. And he kept blasting them as a moral, for their enforcing federal immigration law. And in his Catholic ecumenicalism, I guess he believes the world is just all full of God's creatures and there's no such thing as arbitrary borders. But the point I'm making is, he was a Chicago fixture. He was close to David Axelow, the Obama people. He was a man of the left. He intruded into politics as a bishop and attacked particular people on the right. Then he became Pope and he had a very strange selectivity. So if he wants to talk about, this is not a just war or whatever, then he didn't mention the 35,000 that Iran just butchered, or maybe the 150 that it's butchered for the last 50 years of its own people. He didn't mention the Christians been slaughtered in Africa. He only selected this particular war as a wrong war and attacked Trump because it's Trump, I guess, or because he thought he was an American. And Trump attacked him because he was the first American Pope and Trump thought, well, I'm not referring to you as a Pope necessarily. I'm talking, referring you as a Chicago bishop that has attacked me for a long time. Yeah. So maybe it's Obama pulling the strings or his, yeah. I'm very careful, careful not to say that because conspiracy theories are so rife on the right now. I mean, poor Charity Kirk's, Erica Kirk had to cancel her appearance because people had threatened. That was only because I'll be frank, Candace Owens has whipped people up and said that she could maybe, should maybe, kind of maybe allegedly was involved in her husband's death, the Mossad, and they've really demonized her. She's wearing tight leather pants and she's hot and she, she squeezed JD Bantz's hand when they hugged or something. It's just, I don't like this. Tucker is doing this a lot. He says certain things, then he just said, I'm just throwing it out there. I'm just throwing it out there. I don't have any evidence, but it's something we should think about. There's some clues there. That's not, that's really disingenuous. You shouldn't say things unless you have a pretty good idea that they're accurate. You know, you, you could say almost anything. Yeah. When Candace Owens the other day said, I want to be very careful. I don't want to use her language, but because Donald Trump attacked her and said, you should, you're kind of crazy attacking Macron's wife. And by the way, I think she's more attractive than you. I don't believe that's true. I think Candace is more attractive than Macron. You're probably true. She tweeted something like Donald Trump may have had a relationship with her as a, with a man or something, or he's attracted to her because she's a man as if he was gay or something. That's crazy. You kind of think she's just trying to get clicks so that she can get advertising revenue. That's so sad. There's more than this phenomenon is just clicks. Do you think that's clicks are as revenue and clicks mean you're hooked up with a barter. That's the Aristotelian prime mover. That is what is motivating all these people, but there's two other things that are going on. Number two, they, it's, if you're on the right and you're vocal, you're a target. And you know the people who have the power. It's not political. It's not military. It's not, it's cultural. They run Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, New York times, New York Review books, NPR, PBS, NBC ABC, professional Hollywood entertainment. And if they like you, look what they did to Mel Gibson. You know, he did to himself, but look at how they, and John Boyd's another wonderful person that they have attacked. So the point is you're, you're out in the cold. So there's always a temptation. This is what they say about Supreme court justices. They, you, you nominate a very conservative, I mean Earl Warren, you do, you know, all of these conservative judges, half of them flip because they're in Washington and they're ostracized and nobody says nice things about them in the Washington Post or the Washington Monthly or they don't spit. Once you flip, then you're one of them. So if you've noticed what's happened in places like the Daily Beast or High Clinton Post, they refer now in reverential tones to Tucker and Candace and other people, they say, well, you don't agree with them, but they're onto something. And so that's one motivation. Klick is a motivation. There's another motivation. Trump has a Rolodex and he calls it all sorts of people, hundreds of them, to get ideas, right, or just to talk. And then he has people, but if you're a journalist or opinion journalist, you, you've got to be careful not to go to more logo every night or frequently or think that you can call him back. He's the president, the most powerful man in the United States. When he would call you, that doesn't mean you call him back immediately. You wait till he calls and then you, you don't go tell everybody he calls and then you don't feed your ego and say, he called me, I'm an intimate, I have power because you don't, you don't, he's calling. So, but these people like Tucker and the other, they, Candace, they thought they had been at Milago. They were on Air Force One. They were intimate with him in the sense that they knew the family. He was very friendly and fair to them. And that gave them a sense that they had leverage on him. You know what I mean? That I can call, I'll call Donald Trump up and say this is World War three. Tucker, whom I like, said that he had called repeatedly to influence Donald Trump. But why would you do that? Call once. He's not going to listen to you, but he thought he was going to listen to him. So, they all had, once you get intimate with the most powerful man in the world, you think you have influence on him, but you never think to yourself, well, he's four other, there's 400 other people he calls. Do they all think that? Because it can't be 400 people, but they don't. So, they're very angry that he just basically said, if you keep attacking me, you don't call me anymore. I'm done. And so, that was like a guillotine for them. They're completely cut off. I don't think any of them can call the president. I don't think any of them will go to Milago. I don't think he wants anything to do with them, which the irony is that might make them more empirical journalists, but they don't look at it that way. They feel that they've been hurt or betrayed or ostracized or trusted because they really enjoyed that intimacy and could tell people, I can call Donald Trump. So, that's my take. There were three or four catalysts for their behavior. Yeah, that's true. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break for a few messages from sponsors and we'll come right back and talk a little bit about European nation states and some of the things going on in Europe. Stay with us and we'll be right back. If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy the Daily Signals flagship show, The Tony Kinnitcast, the same common sense perspectives you love weekdays at 7 p.m. Eastern. And unlike some of the other evening shows, we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis, and good old American star cast. Tom Tillis, I'm pretty sure might have been useful at one time as a doorstop. Find The Tony Kinnitcast on YouTube, X, radio, TV, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Again, we are a subsidiary of the Daily Signal, which is run by Rob Bluey, who does an excellent job in his position as president or CEO or whatever they've called him at the Daily Signal. But Victor, so let's turn to I think Czechoslovakia, I thought was the most interesting because I I don't know. I guess I'm fascinated with things Israel, but Czechoslovakia has this week made deals with Israel to expand cooperation on defense, smart thing to do, trade and technology. And I thought that was an interesting Czech Republic. Did I say Czechoslovakia? I meant Czech, the Czech Republic. Yeah, the Czech, Skoda Arms work. That was what Hitler indeed, before World War II, was the largest arms maker in Europe. It made wonderful personal arms, machine guns, and they have expanded on that tradition. And they're pretty courageous because they don't care what people say. The whole thing about Israel is it's all fabricated, constructed by universities in the United States. That's where it started, and the media. And it's all tied in with DEI and White Gill and the Marxist binary of oppressors and oppressed. And that means you don't look at the empirical data. You just go to the university, if you want to get along with people, you say you hate Israel and you identify. So when I was walking to my office for that Hamas protest after October 7th, I just looked at these kids from the Middle East. The girls were immaculately dressed, designer dressed. They had gold stuff on their rings, and they were posing as if they were victims. These were the children of the wealthiest people in the world that stand for. And then everybody was, you know, they had their signs, don't wake protesters as you walk by. They were in their tents. The tents all looked the same, and somebody bought them like some foundation. And that was a cool thing to do. And you looked at the other Israeli kids, there was like five of them. And they were putting posters up, and they were, but everybody was ostracizing. And it wasn't cool because Israel was powerful, and it was Western, and it was white supposedly. Well, I looked at some of the Arab women, and they were whiter than the Israelis. That big deal. So what I'm getting at, it became a cult. So anytime one of the, one guy stopped me, I remember when I was walking by October 7th, and said, I said, well, there's October 7, take that away. You wouldn't be here. And he said, well, October 7th wasn't an attack. That was a retaliation. I said, for what? And he said, for stealing our land. I said, you had a whole, all sorts of peace agreements you could have taken. They offered you under Clinton, the whole West Bank, that you didn't want it because you believe, well, that's what I meant. He meant to destroy all of Israel. So if he couldn't destroy all of Israel, you had to attack and retaliate. But what I'm saying is that he thought all these things were unexamined. So then when I see a student was yelling, and they, I was walking kind of like a gap, why I just listened. And I said, what would you do after October 7th? What would they do? They never answer that. What would happen if Canada came across the border gangs from Canada and killed 1200 American? And then they'd say, well, you started you, Trump said he wanted to take Alberta. You know what I mean? So the funny thing is, if you take October 7th out of the equation, it never happened and do a counterfactual reconstruction of history. There would be no war against Hezbollah. There would be no war at the Houthis. They would have continued to do what they were doing. They would have had a pass from Biden, but there would have been no destruction of Iran, nothing. Iran dreamed this up, armed Hamas, armed the Houthis, and armed Hezbollah. And they, the first thing they said, remember on October 8th, we had nothing to do with it. They did have something to do with it. They planned it. And so I thought it was interesting that it's cool to trash Israel and it's not cool to defend them. Yeah. And I thought it was interesting that the Czech Republic was betting on Israel rather than other things in the world. You know what else is sick about the whole thing? What? Who? This is even sicker. All these leptis will talk about ideals and principles, but basically they're human and they're kind of like bin Laden, the world react to the strong horse. And anytime Israel is muscular and uses its full array of talent, its most talented per capita country in the world, and devastates their enemy, then people glom onto that and they respect it. And anytime they have a left-wing labor party in there that gives all these concessions, all they do is add more and more to humiliate them and then they have contempt for them. Even the Arab world, that's what, if Israel had gone over and said, we're going to help the Gulf and lost a hundred jets, the Arabs would have turned on them. The only reason I just hate to say that. Strength is the only reason. It's a powerful PR tool, that's for sure. As I said before, it's like San Francisco 49ers, they're 10 and 0 and they can't find a ticket. It's still entertaining when they're 5 and 3 or 3 and 5 or 3 and 7. Nobody wants to go. It's the same thing when you write a book. If you write a really good book and it sells 3,000 copies, nobody talks to you. If you write a book that you don't think is as good and it sells a quarter million copies, then you have all these friends. But most people don't realize that. Now that Israel has said, you know what, we're tired of don't do this and don't do that because they hate us anyway. We're worried about avoiding the second Holocaust. This maniac regime that has nuclear weapons pretty soon and ballistic missile. And we're going to take care of business. As soon as they did that, you're starting to see that people in the Arab world said, you know, I'm not afraid of them. They're democratic and they're rational and they're strong and they're successful and they get the job done. Trump said that about our allies. Would you like to have Spain as a NATO ally or Israel? No, Brainer on that. Well, let's turn to another country in, I don't know, do you consider Hungary part of Eastern Europe or Western Europe as much? But Orbán, Viktor Orbán lost. That was the old divide. Lower down on the Danube. About Viktor Orbán. Well, he was there for what, 16 years? Yeah. And now he's lost. And I was wondering, do you think there's a big turn against this conservativeism? I don't really think it is. I think it's 16 years. I can't think of anybody who's been in power 16 years. If Netanyahu is ever defeated at the polls if he runs again, it's not because there's been a big shift, I think. I think they just think he's there so long and they want a fresh face. So very funny because the left said Viktor Orbán was a Taiwan. He was an autocrat. He'll never have an election and he had an election and he lost. And they said he controls the media. He controls corporations. You'll never be able to, they defeated them, didn't they? He didn't, he stepped down, didn't he? So it's- Democracy is live and working in Hungary. I don't understand why shady events went over there right before the election. Maybe as a personal favor that Orbán called in. But I don't think an American is particularly popular anywhere in Europe right now. So I don't know if that was effective and I don't think it's necessarily wise for us to go into the internal politics of these countries. That's true. I feel bad about Maloney because I really thought, I really admired her and I thought there were so many ways that she could have allowed us to land in Sicily without alienating the Italian voter. But she took the easy route. All right. Let's just go to one more. Britain has this week said that it's going to cut from its already impotent military. 3.5 billion pounds. That's a huge cut on the military. Any thoughts? I don't understand it. They've got 40 admirals and they only have like 16 major ships. They had an aircraft carrier that was going to join us. It's like two years ago, it's propeller broke and it just sat there. They attacked Akrotiri and Cyprus, Iran did. Stormwring said, we're going to protect Redish and so their little destroyer was the only one operable. And then they said, well, we can't send it because it's the weekend and it would be too expensive to have union wages. So they're like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm right at call about all the weird things that happened from this war. And one of them is you kind of rethink the Falklands because if you ask yourself, Anderson, Stormer, which country has more free speech now? Millays, Argentina or Stormer, which country has a more capitalist Western economy? Which country has a more sane immigration policy? Which country is more pro-American? Stormer, who said this is not our war or Millay, who said that he supported the United States. And he said something very interesting the other day. They asked him about the Falkland. He said, it's ours, but we don't want to cause any trouble right now. So for now, we're just going to let it be. But what I think he was saying is there's going to be a lot of pressure on me because everybody is sick of the UK government. And the question is not whether Stormer is an aberration, but whether given their population and changing demography, if he's going to be the face of every fine minister in the future. Because he's very weak. I don't think the British understand how he is seen over here or what he's done to NATO. They all say Trump, Trump, Trump. But when you tell a US president who wants to stop this renegade anti-Western regime from having missiles, especially nuclear-tipped missiles that can hit every European city, and they're willing to do it on their own, as the German Chancellor Merz said, to do the dirty work. And then you say, you make a soapbox speech and say that this is not a war and you're not going to help them. All you had to do is say, Donald, would you please land at night? And I will say I'm not aware of there's any unusual NATO joint activity. But he couldn't do that. He had to appeal to his Islamic population. The other thing very quickly about it is the Islamic population of Europe is much more radical than the Islamic population in most of the Middle East, in Egypt, in Jordan, and the Gulf States. So Europe is sitting on a volcano. It's not like they've had Middle East people who are moderate come. They've led in radical people who are political extremists that have come in and they get more and more radicalized when they see how wealthy and affluent Europeans are, how sexually liberated they are, how tolerant they are, how therapeutic they are. They look at them as sheep to be sheared. And it's not going to end well. I don't know why the country, it's kind of like what Biden, if Trump had not won, Kamala Harris would have doubled down on the Biden immigration. And instead of these ICE rights we would have had, I don't know, another 10 million, we would have had 40 million illegal aliens. Instead of trying to round up 600,000 criminals, we'd have another million. All right, Victor, so we're at the end of our show and we're going to do some comments. You know, speaking of dealing with radicals in your population, on our Saturday show we'll talk a little bit about what Rubio is doing to apprehend and extradite radicals. He's doing a great job. Star keeps rising. He really knows, I mean, most unsympathetic people in the world are the spoiled rotten children of that awful, theocratic apparatus. And when he goes after them... I know, it's wonderful. It's a win-win-win. All right, so Patty Chapman, 7296, this is Haley New from Indiana. Patty Chapman? Yeah. I knew a Patty Chapman. She went to high school. Yeah, I don't know if this is her, but great to be here for a live show from Booneville, Indiana. I'm praying for Victor's, for your health, Victor. God bless you. I love Indiana. It's a very good state. My friend Greg Garrison, I was on a show for, I think, 10 years, radio show in Indiana. A wonderful guy. All right, C.M. Cine 854 VDH, Elaine, awesome show. Excellent interview, Victor. Elaine, love your positions and all that you are doing for the U.S. here. Your quick interview with Raman on real talk was great. This is Elaine. She did another interview. Please meet with him again. God bless you both. Which one? She had done another talk, another interview on a real talk channel. So he was referencing that. Curcus rubra 77, I hope I got that right. States like California spend money wildly banking on Democrats winning the White House. That way, why would you do this? According to this person, that way they get blue bailouts and they can say, see, socialism works. That's kind of unfair. We're not that radical. Today, they announced they want, they just always said as they want the state to pay for sex change operation for homeless illegal alien. That's not that bad. Oh, gosh. Oh my gosh. 17 billion in bill. No comment. Tom Kunich 9401. Jerry Brown, oh, this is a little controversy Jerry Brown was not and never was fiscally conservative. It simply took him a long way to get enough legislative support to spend money on ridiculous things. He did not leave a surplus. That was the public employees retirement fund. Your support of Jerry Brown simply gives a Democrat and undeserved reputation. So somebody was a little bit unhappy with it. I could plead half guilty. He was frugal. He slept on the floor and I mean, the problem was that his frugality and the green and all that stuff was the catalyst that went way beyond what he wanted. And then he was in an impossible situation because he had run for president as kind of a maverick, kind of like an RFK guy, unpredictable. And once he was governor, the Democratic, once the Democratic party started to gain control, they were insane in California. And I talked to him on the phone. I admit that a couple of times. I like him. I've always liked him. And I've met him. I've had dinner with him. But do I agree with his policies? He'd probably be very angry when I said, no, most of them I don't. And what I was trying to say in elegantly, and I sympathize with what the letter, there was Pat Brown, who was an old fashioned liberal Humphrey, but he wasn't crazy. He did the California water project. He finished the Central Water Project. He did a lot of good things on the highway system. And, you know, he wasn't a complete nut. And then there was Ronald Reagan. And then we had George Dutmation. And we had Pete Wilson. We had Jerry Brown. I should put Jerry Brown first term. And then we had Arnold Schwarzenegger. So we had four, almost 32 years of Republican governor. And if you add Pat Brown in there, he raised taxes like everybody thought he would. You had 40 years. And if you put Jerry's first term in there, you had 44 years where it was in the margin, it was in the playing field. And then Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown's latter part of his second term, you had super majorities in the legislature. So that's when it started, but it didn't really get to full fruition. It being crazy spending, 13.3. I mean, that came in, I think under Jerry Brown, 13.3. But I may be mistaken. People will correct me. Taxes, the whole homeless thing, the illegal migration thing, the trans thing, the reparations thing. What I'm trying to say is Gavin Newsom managed to do in six years, he overturned all of those prior governors. This was a well run state for a while. And there was a bipartisan consensus. The Democrats spent too much money and the Republicans, they felt were too interested in, I don't know what, capitalism. I didn't think they would, but they could agree on things. Now it's just lunatic. What happened? I don't think, I think it was very quickly, three things, and I'll shut up. One, we have half of all the illegal aliens in the United States, at least until Biden, and they were very poor. And we created almost instantaneously very expensive, unfunded mandates for them. Half of all the bursar on Medi-Cal, and 40% of everybody's on Medi-Cal insurance, that's expensive. And then we're losing 200,000 to 300,000 each year. And these are upper middle class and professional small businesses. And then we had 11 trillion dollars in market capitalization come into Silicon Valley, or that's what it's worth now. So you put all that together and you have a medieval society. All the poor people want to come in because it's much better than what they remember in Latin America, or people from other states want to come in because it, welfare is so high. Then you have all this money on the top that doesn't really care about taxes because they have endless money, but they do care about their soul. They want to be good. They want to feel like people love them. They're guilty. They're too wealthy. They're too white, whatever their thing is. And they back candidates that are radical trans, radical green, grab all of this stuff. And then the bulwark against the demagoguery of pandering to the poor and the crony capitalism of the rich was the middle class and they've left. And the result is, it's a total mess. And I don't know how you, the only hope would be is if the former poor who were immigrants, 27% of the state is not born in the United States. And they're mostly Chinese Americans and Mexican American. If that, some Indian American, if they would look up and say, I'm not going to be ideological, I just want to be afford, I want to afford gas and electricity and car insurance and house insurance. I want fires put out. I want water. I don't want to leave it. I don't care about a three inch smell. We need nuclear plant stuff. We want to drill oil. Let's have a timber. And they would just do that. And they may, the state would be okay because they would take the place of the people who left, but I don't see that happening because I think the left says, oh, you're a victim of racism. You're a victim of this. You're a victim of this. You're a victim of this. You need reparations. You need affirmative act. You need this and we're here to give it to you. And it steals the airways. I could say it. I know that maybe a couple of my students listened to, but I had students that were brilliant. For 20 years, I taught classics. I started a classics program with Bruce Thornton at Cal State and they were brilliant. And I had, I made no distinction whatsoever, whether they were Hmong or Asian or American, I didn't care. Many of them were poor many of the white students were poor because of the Oklahoma diaspora than minorities. But the point I'm making is they were all level headed and they were all better educated because they knew Latin or Greek or that they got an MA. Many did. They had language facility in French and German. We were very tough on grading. They were very, and they were wonderful kids and they left. And as I retired, DEI hit started and it told everybody like that, we don't really care what you know because they were better educated. I'd have people in the history department call me up and say, this student in my class was trained by you and he corrected me. And I said, what did you say? It was some outlandish thing about the asset. So they were known to be really smart. But when I'm getting, when I'm getting, I'm putting around the bush, but my point is you take in DEI and all these new things opened up and they were no longer interested in hiring these people because they spoke beautiful English and they knew languages and they were analytical and empirical, but because they were not white and that meant that many of them turned left wing. So I kind of got, I kind of lost contact with most of them because I was very close to all of them, but every time I would meet one, they would kind of give me this little Obama critique, you know, and I thought, this wasn't you, you flipped. You flipped for career purposes because all of a sudden people looked at the color of your skin and not the content and character or the knowledge in your head. And you could have been very successful as an independent thinker given the skill sets you developed at Cal State. You took the easy way out. And then I feel bad about it because some of them had kind of, I don't want to talk to them at all. Anybody who does that, who becomes a tribalist, I'm done with them. Yeah. Well, Victor, thank you for all of your wisdom today. I really enjoyed the talk and thanks to our audience for choosing to join us here at the Victor Davis Hansen's In Your Zone, show. Yes, everybody has a choice. Thank you, Victor. Thank you for listening and viewing everybody. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen and we're signing off. 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. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, an audit dread. It's time for Vantor. Vantor automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it compliance. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vantor to prove trust. Get started at vantor.com slash com.