Victor Davis Hanson: Why $29 Billion for Iran War Is a ‘Bargain,’ but Only if It Works

Donald Trump is off to China. In fact, he's there today and he's looking forward to doing some great things. What are your expectations of this trip? As sensibly, he has the upper hand. China's surplus with us has gone down substantially. China and the United States both stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. We should be partners, not rivals. China has been operating on cheap oil. It was buying millions of barrels a day from Venezuela and Iran, maybe two or three million, maybe more, I don't know. But they were sanctioned, so they got a discount because it was against international so-called law. That's over with. The expense of the war was highlighted this week and it's $29 billion so far. Well, given we spent a trillion dollars plus in Iraq and maybe more in Afghanistan, the idea that you would spend less than $30 billion and with a chance to overthrow the worst government in the world that's killed a lot of Americans, it's a bargain. Hello and welcome. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words and we are on our Friday News Roundup. So we're going to be looking at the news of the week and of course kicking off that news is Donald Trump is currently in China and so we'll look at that. And Israelis have been alleged to have used dog rape against their Palestinian prisoners and we want to have a look at that story as well. Stay with us for those stories and we'll be right back. As an advocate of truth, you know that women shouldn't have to share locker rooms with men. Women shouldn't have to compete against male athletes and they shouldn't be punished for speaking the truth. But across America, that's exactly what's happening. Men are being allowed to compete in women's sports, robbing girls of scholarships, medals, titles and safety. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has heard two cases, West Virginia versus BPJ and Little V. HACOPS that happened on January 13th that could decide the future of women's sports nationwide. 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And please come join him at his website. VictorHansen.com. The name of the website is The Blade of Perseus and you will find there all of Victor's current writing and his podcasts, etc. And a large archive of everything that we could find from the past. So please come join us at The Blade of Perseus. So Victor, Donald Trump is off to China. In fact, he's there today and he's got his, he's got trade in mind and businessmen in tow and he's looking forward to doing some great things. What are your expectations of this trip? Well, if, ostensibly, he has the upper hand because China's surplus of us with us has gone down substantially. There's 300,000 Chinese students in the United States during the Cold War. We had almost no Russian students over here. China has been operating on cheap oil. By that, I mean, it was buying millions of barrels a day from Venezuela and Iran, maybe two or three million, maybe more. I don't know. But they were sanctioned. So they got a discount because it was against international so-called law. That's over with. The United States now controls de facto the Iranian export out of the Gulf and Venezuela. So they don't have that oil and they need it. And the Persian Gulf, where they get about 30% of their oil is shut for them. I don't know what they can buy from Saudi Arabia. Maybe they can go into Oman and buy some on the other side of the Gulf, but they're hurting for oil. And it reminds them that unlike us that are completely now self-sufficient in oil and gas, they're not. And they're desperate to put factories here in the United States to make up the money they've lost on exports. They look at the geo-strategic situation and they've lost their hold in the Western Hemisphere. They can't. They're not going to control the Panama Canal. And that has created other parties who said, wait a minute, maybe they shouldn't be so prominent in places like the Piraeus in Greece and that port. The other thing is when they look at the military situation and they're always focused on one topic and that's Taiwan, they look at a big power like Russia that should bulldoze Ukraine that has about a fourth of the population now and they can't. Oh, bless you. And the Ukrainians have turned the tide and Russia probably wants a deal. So they're thinking even though we're this huge country, even Russia couldn't crush at something right on its border and we have to go 110 miles across the South China Sea. Then they look at the performance of their air defenses and missile launches. When they look at Iran and they were knocked out in the first day or two. So they know that the United States can knock out their state-of-the-art missile defenses if they want to. Then they looked at the United States Navy and Air Force and they basically disarmed Iran along with the Israelis in a week. The rest was just piling on so they don't get a good picture. And then the nature of war now is marine drones on top and below the sea. We have drones under the sea now out on the Gulf looking for mines. And you can see the United States has finally caught on and we're talking about a million drones that they're talking about purchasing. So the idea of picking a fleet across the Taiwanese strait under a cloud of drones and then beneath the ocean drones and then on the ocean drone. It's not a very inviting scenario. So I think Trump is going to try to get concessions on trade from them or mostly I think unfortunately he'll be looking at a ram. He will want them to tell the Iranians to open up the Gulf and stop it or he's going to allow the United States or he won't say anything. We stop it. Trump has intimated to the presses anyways that he feels like Xi has been very helpful with Iran by just not getting involved so far. But I don't know if that was just an appraisal to soften him up before he went over to go to China. I think it's a reminder unfortunately for China that they have to accelerate the size of their Bluewater Navy. They have two carriers that are operable I think and they're billing another one but they don't have a let 10 like we do 11. So they still are reminded that for all the talk about China outproducing us it won't in Navalcraft. They'll take another five or six years before they reach parity. And I think the main subtext of the whole thing is they're going to go in there and work out some kind of arrangement with Trump and they'll ask him for some stuff. Can we put a factory or two? I don't know if he should in the United States. Can we have more students so we can steal more stuff from you? And then they're going to say well we'll help you. We will distance ourselves from Iran. Do you have a blank check? But ultimately what they're wanting is something on Taiwan and they're saying why don't you just keep out of Taiwan or that's an inner Chinese business. We have no problem with you and Panama or the Caribbean but just keep away from Taiwan and that's what they ultimately want. And I don't think Trump has to negotiate that at all. Why is Taiwan so valuable to them? I mean it is a relatively small island. Just add another aspect of responsibility to their regime. It's an irritant for about 20 different reasons for them. One is it's a capitalist free society and although it's not as stark a contrast now that China has adopted an autocratic market system. It still reminds everybody that right under their nose, it's kind of like Cuba to us. Cuba is an anthropetical system but it's failed system. The problem with Taiwan is they're the biggest semiconductor producer in the world and they're right under China's nose and they're successful and they're free. And that reminds that its own population. Because the elite can go to Taiwan. Wow, why couldn't we be like Taiwan? And then if any future military operations were to happen, it would be like Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's a big aircraft carrier for Western Japan, South Korea, the United States. If there was a war and if we wanted to help preserve Taiwan, we would be airlifting stuff into Taiwan and using bases in Taiwan. To attack the invasion fleet. So that's another problem that they have a strategic liability right on their doorstep. And then the third thing is it's getting richer and richer and richer and it's getting closer and closer to the United States, the Taiwanese. And now they're going to put semiconductor and chips things inside the United States. And it's only going to make China, Taiwan, wealthier and wealthier and wealthier. And it's hard to see what China can offer us. And more importantly, as I said earlier, there's so many things we can do to China and they know that. And we can say, you know what, let's just make a deal. We'll have 10,000 students in China and you'll have 10,000 students in the United States. We won't buy any farmland in China next to any. We won't buy it at all. Much less. And you won't buy it at all in our country. How's that? And we won't have any bio labs in your country and you won't have any bio labs in our country. So it's such an asymmetrical situation now that Trump could get a lot out of them just by saying, we're not vindictive. We don't want anything from you. We just want to be the same. Here's the amount of number of people who are immigrating into China from the U.S. Here's the amount of people from China that are immigrating in. You know, we there's suggestions at one to 5% of students. When you're talking that are active espionage agents to China out of the 300, you know what I mean? So talking about 4,000 or 5,000 people have been actively collecting information for China. When you look at their uniforms, their military, you look at their military academies, you look at their aircraft carriers. It's all come from the United States or it's been created by U.S. strange engineers. So we don't get much out of it. And the old idea in the Bush years that elder Bush and Reagan was the more that we open up. And the more that they're exposed into our culture and Western liberality and the more they'll be captivated and then the more wealthy they'll be with capitalism and then they'll start to reform and then they'll be a member of the rules based. Well, that's not going to happen. They see Westernism as decadent, wrong, but its economic system is better. So they took picked and choose. They took our economic system and then they grafted it on to their dictator and there's no freedom. And they think that's a superior system. And I think Trump being the businessman that he is can't has in the back of his mind that they've got a billion people in that country and Billion point four billion point four and many of them are impoverished. So they are going to be a wonderful market for any goods that could go back and forth. They need vast amounts of oil. The vast amounts of fertilizer. They produce more tonnage of food than we do now. But to do that, they need enormous inputs and imports. And we're our food in terms of market value is much more valuable than their food at commodity prices. But they're very dependent on imports and they're trying to figure out ways. That was a whole Belt and Road. They want them kind of like the Roman, they want client states all over that would supply them at a an advantage for them. They build a bridge and then they go into Nigeria and say, we want your oil or they go into Greece and they redo the Pyraeus. And then they say, we want all the traffic tolls and the luxury liners and we want your olive oil or whatever they want. That's how they do it. And Trump's biggest problem is that he's a good deal maker and it's a he gets a lot of adulation for his deals. So there's always a temptation to give away too much in order to get a deal. And everybody in America is sort of therapeutic. We would all we have a deal with China. That's a relief. We have a deal with Russia. That's a relief. But you can't make a deal on their terms because they're basically Mao Zedong's successors and he was the greatest mass murderer in the world. It's funny how all these people in the university talk about genocide and genocide, genocide, Gaza, Gaza. And they don't ever talk about Mao, the greatest genocidal leader in the history of civilization. Yeah, I think he by some accounts has 70 million to his name that he killed. Victor, let's welcome back to the show. My Patriot supply is a sponsor. 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Get your complete preparedness set up today at preparewithvdh.com. That's preparewithvdh.com. And again, preparewithvdh.com. So we'd like to thank my Patriot supply for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and look at the Iran War, speaking of things that the Chinese are only peripherally involved in. But this week, the two Middle Eastern countries have attacked Iran or sent bombing missions in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This almost sounds like a pile on of dogs after the enemy is down. Trump has said he's going to get a deal or he's going to attack. And since the Iranians are not good at bringing in deals, everybody has the feeling you get out in the press. There's an imminent attack coming along. And then finally, the last thing about the war is that it's come out. Not that anybody was hiding it, but the expense of the war was highlighted this week. And it's $29 billion so far. And I was wondering your idea on any of those three things. Well, given we spent a trillion dollars plus in Iraq and maybe more in Afghanistan, and we didn't get the desired results and Joe Biden left $50 billion in equipment, the idea that you would spend less than $30 billion and with a chance to overthrow the worst government in the world that's caused most of the problems we've had in the Middle East in general and killed a lot of Americans, it's a bargain if it works. And I think it will, but when you look at the UAE and Gutter and Oman, excuse me, and Oman and Saudi and Kuwait, you're talking about 600 combat aircraft. So when they kept pushing, pushing, pushing the United States, if you're going to come here, finish, finish, finish, finish, because we're getting hit with 5,000 drones or missile, you would have thought before now they would have said, well, we're going to pledge 100, they could have gone to the United States. I guess they didn't want to be bombing the same time Israel was, because that would be a domestic problem for them. But the point I'm making is they could have carved out a whole section right across the Gulf and said, this is your responsibility. You have 600 aircraft, they don't have any, they don't have much, go to it. They didn't do anything. And now they're sort of worried that people have talked about that and they want to come in and say, well, we'll help you destroy them, but they haven't committed the bulk of their forces. That's the first thing. And the second, behind all of this tension, so we had 32 days of war. Now we've almost had 40 days of merchandise, you know, haggling. I wish we had have just finished it because you can't trust these people. You can't talk to them. If we had spent 40 days and just taken out all of their dual use, I don't know, their bridges, all their loading facilities on Corg Island and that corridor across from Corg Island and the corridor across from the straight and just devastated it, then I think we'd be in a lot better position. But what's happening now is, I think that these negotiations are going on and we are saying we don't really know who's in control, but more importantly, there must be people in Iran who are talking in a bellicose fashion and want us to bomb. That sounds crazy, but I have a feeling they know that if we go back to war, they have given us back channels that we will represent. We don't need to have a democracy. You don't need to let the people, you can use us and we won't use terrorism anymore. We won't get a bomb, but we can't say that we have to sound bellicose or they're going to kill us, but they're going to sound bellicose in hopes we do something and target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the theocrats and some members of the military. So I think that's what's going on. They're all playing these games with each other to sound who can sound the toughest to protect themselves from each other. And then they're all trying to send in back channel signals that if you do take out the hardliners, we're here to help. But they can't say that again. All right, let's turn then to this horrible article in the New York Times. It was an op-ed piece and by Nicholas Christoff and he accused the Israelis of having used dog rape against some of the Palestinian prisoners that they had from the Gaza war. And the evidence they said came from a site called or group called the Euro Med Human Rights Monitor. So I went on to look at it and it's all just clearly anti-Israel, almost to the point of like Al Jazeera. I mean, there's just not one article except to accuse Israel of all sorts of crimes. There's so many things in this story. The main subtext is that Israel had announced that after exhaustive research, which was open to international observers, they had taken the captured cameras from the helmets of the murders from Hamas. They'd collated that with photographs. They had got witnesses and they had irrefutable evidence that on October 7th, the Hamas terrorists and civilians who came along didn't just shoot and kill and wound and rob and didn't just rape and mutilate. They did things that are beyond the comprehension of civilization. They cut off heads with shovels. If I could be so gross, I hope children are not listening. They mutilated sexual organs. They mass-raped. They tortured people. They cut off breath. They did unspeakable things and it's documented. And that was coming out as it did. So the left, international left, they knew that and they knew that the New York Times was a useful idiot. So this Euro Med was fed and where did they get that's coming from Hamas? It's no different than during the Gaza war, we were told that Israel deliberately missled and bombed a hospital when actually it was a Hamas rocket that came up and came back down and hit it. They did it themselves by accident or I don't know what. But the point is there was no independent people. There was maybe a Leptis professor or so, but nobody went over there and said, I want to know exactly which prisoners because they must be released if they have these up tails was sodomized by a dog. And then people cited that that's impossible. And then Nicholas Christoff, the author, cited a couple of studies that show that dogs are able to copulate with humans, but they were bestiality. In other words, when a willing partner, if I could be explicit in maybe medical terms, was coaxing a dog on or was stroking a dog, maybe they could perform a sexual act sort of. But there was no documented evidence that you could say to a dog, just go pounce on that person and sodomize them. There's no way you could do that. There's no instance in medical history that that's possible. So here you come, Nicholas Christoff, and he wants to be, he always, he's a columnist for the New York Times, but he always poses as the humanitarian conscious of the New York Times. He's always for the little guy, but he's got a terrible reputation of accuracy. So during the anthrax scare right before the Iraq war, he cited the scientist, worked for the government, he said he just pounced on that guy and he was innocent. I think he settled for six million. So he's done other things that are not, they don't suggest that he is a careful reporter. He's a hard leftist. And so when he saw this angst that Israel was going to come out and tell the real story about the beloved Hamas, who these people really are, who are now romanticized by Christoff and other people. And then he heard this old story circulating around, then he called some people, a professor here, he read the Ural Med, but he never really said who are the people that this actually happened to and who are the people they talked to and what was the evidence because there was not. So now after his adulation from the left, he's scrambling because it's such an absurd story that you can see where it came from. This is so horrific what they did to Jewish women and boys and grandmothers that they needed some story that could top that. And they couldn't because even a single, this was mass rape and it was medieval. So they came up, well, how about dogs, animals? And that's what he did. And then they used this person or they didn't, he wanted to be used. And I think it's going to destroy his reputation and he's done for. I think he's going to be done for. I really do. I don't think they're going to be able ever to substantiate that. And I think he's going to be done for and it's overdue. Always. And it always brings us back around to how humanely the Israelis always treat their prisoners. Well, I mean, they're human. In comparison to how the Palestinians treat their prisoners. Yeah. In comparison, I'm sure that when you brought in people who were participating in mass murder of 1200 people, they were roughed up. But compared to the way they treated the hostages, sexually abused hostages that were documented and the way that what they did in their own words, they had translations made for them into Hebrew. When they came over, little cards that said, spread your legs and things like that, instructions to women and that the hell they were going to be raped. And they were stupid enough or they're smart enough. Maybe they're smarter than Victor. They filmed it and they thought that that would be really a great thing to their own people, but maybe they're smarter than I did. And they thought the international community is going to love this because we are raping and murdering and torturing. And that seemed so absurd to me. But given what's happened since, I think that the Western world is so sick that they would feel that the Jews got what they deserve. It's that sick at this point because I don't see any outrage right now. I mean, the story is a day or two old. I don't see anybody saying, I'm never going to march on behalf of a mass. They'll always say, well, they wouldn't have done that. See what Israel reduces people to? This is a cry of the heart. They're so desperate that they do this. They've been dehumanized. And if you say to them, I don't want to get back to that again. I said that on Piers Morgan. What are they supposed to do? People come in in a time of peace. Thousands of them, three or four thousand, they come in, they break through, they invade your country after you had allowed 20,000 of them to work. And they deliberately coaxed you into thinking there was no longer going to be animosity. And they come in and they know the place well because they worked there and they had scouted it out. And then they slaughter 1200 people, mutilate them. As I said, torture them. They're horrific things, film it all. And then they take the loot, the cars and 240 plus hostages back. And then they, the leaders who plan this descend into their headquarters that's subterranean that was built by expropriating relief funds from the West, probably over a billion dollars. And then to get in there, you have to go to a person's address, a private home, or you have to go to a hospital or a mosque or a school. And you can't hit that target without being called a war criminal by the UN war criminals. And then you, what are you going to do? Well, you do what the Israelis do. You say, please give us back all the people, turn over all the people who plan this. And we know the names of the Hamas. Just give us the, no, please do this. We don't want to go in day one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, two, three weeks. They didn't, I think go on the ground for four weeks and they didn't start bombing till three. Just do it and they would not do it. So what do you do? And everybody says, well, you come, you, so you, you go in there and you go, what, house to house? And that they did that. And then when they found a group of people with missiles that were being sent every night indiscriminately into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, they targeted the house and they sent texts and said, get out. And they leveled it. What were you supposed to not send text or not do anything? And you know what would have happened if these Israelis said, it said, give us all the people back who perpetrated this horrific deed. And they said, no, come and get them. And they said, well, we, to come and get them given how they made war and given civilian shields and hospitals and mosque and schools. We'll just kind of forget it. We'll go to the criminal court and file a complaint. Then everybody, and I know this because I know the left here in the United States and especially there, they say, see, they didn't do anything back because they knew they were guilty. So that shows you that's proof. So it was a no win situation for Israel. And they just, all Hamas knows is where is Hamas now? Maybe they still exist, but they're not anything like they were before that. And the next time they do it, if they try it, they're not going to be able, it's going to be worse. And Iran is the one that orchestrated the whole thing. They are the ones that subsidized the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah and they don't have any money right now. And they have paid enormous half a trillion dollars in infrastructure and military stuff. Just to sum up the $64,000 question when Iran keeps threatening us is nobody knows how many missiles they have and drones. And I don't think they pose a existential threat to us because the Navy had been batting them away like flies, but they terrify the Gulf that they'll overwhelm their air defenses and they'll destroy their, and they have legitimate worries. So that's the only leverage they have over and then trying to damage tankers coming in. But if Trump wants to stop all that, I think he could do it in a week. And I think they would concede because I can tell you what would happen. He would go in and he would try to hit all of the bridges. He tried to hit all the oil unloading docks, all the ports, probably some of the pipelines, probably the generation plants. And then the Israelis would be having a long, long list of the Republican Guard and they would go down that list and they know where they are and they would eliminate them. And then probably the Gulf States would be opportunistic, go in and do whatever they needed to do. And within a week or two, Iran would be a mess. But it's not now. I think Trump is getting close to that. Because he knows that what Iran is doing, they're trying to help the American left and their whole strategy is even if they make a deal, the deal will be for four or five years. And it'll be contingent on hoping that Trump is so unpopular that Vance or Rubio wouldn't win anyway and they'll get a Joe Biden, Barack Obama figure. Any Democrat, look at the Democrats. Just to say that in 2029, Iran is still trying to rebuild it and there's President Buttigieg. Are there's President Newsom or President Harris? You know what they're going to do? God forbid. Yes, they're going to help them and they're going to give more money to them and relieve them of sanctions because they like them. They feel their Islamo leftists like they are. And they feel, I think people got it wrong. They keep saying, well, Trump doesn't understand that they want. They haven't won, but they feel in the propaganda war, they have tapped into anti-Semitism. And here in the United States, most Americans, they feel are either anti-Israel or pro-Iranian. And I thought that would be absurd, but I think there's some truth to that. I think there are a lot of people on the left want Iran to win. I really do. Well, Victor, let's take a break and then come back and talk a little bit more about this, but from a different angle. Pope Leo XIV has given an award to the Iranian ambassador to the Vatican. 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, but always leave an episode learning something new. I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands war. And in the age of clickbait and rage bait, that's a really good feeling, right? The media, thank you. You can leave now. And 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, especially 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, we're 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 to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. You can catch Victor on X at VD Hansen and on Facebook at Hansen's Morning Cup. And we'd like to also encourage you to go to the VDH fan club on Facebook where they do a lot of dredging up of old talks and articles and all sorts of things. Victor, wait, wait, did you use the word dredge? I'm not sand in the bottom of an ocean or a sandy river. I wanted to emphasize the hard work that they do. How about they can rediscover or they can collate or they can collect or they can file. That's not too easy. Dredge sounds like they're working harder, but they also do the recent stuff as well. So it's a good place to go. So Victor had very strange this loa-pope-loa-pope Leo the 14th, who is the first American pope, has given the Order of Pius XIX, which is a 19th century award for a good ambassador or official of some sort, to the Iranian ambassador to the Vatican. So I was wondering your thoughts on our first American pope. I feel ashamed of them, to be honest, but go ahead. Glad you didn't hear you say that. Well, I don't know the particulars of this person's record, but I do know the government that he represents. And the government that he represents rapes and tortures prisoners before women, before they execute them. They hang adulters, supposed adulters from cranes. They throw homosexuals off roofs and they murder people and they just murdered 40,000 people. So here you have the pope, supposedly the representative, Chris of them in the West with a divinely appointed portfolio. And just weeks after this horrific government killed 40,000 souls, you have the Vatican giving honors or thanks or something. I read the certificate. It's written in Latin and it's even more obsequious in Latin than it is in English. So I don't understand. He should read the letter of Constantine the 11th, right before Constantinople fell to Mehmet the 2nd. In fact, there's a whole series of letters throughout the centuries between Byzantium and they all have something common. We don't seek to go and take your land. We don't seek to kill Muslims. We just seek to be let alone. And then can we be let alone? Can we have concessions and you can come in? No. And they basically is we believe in jihad and that anybody who there is no such thing as a neutral, we have to forcibly convert you. And we're going to take your city. So our deal is you can leave the city alive without it, you know, one day's food or whatever it is. But there's no he doesn't seem to be the pope doesn't see he doesn't seem to be as learned as other popes were Italian popes who knew something. They had, you know, they were school schooled in history and they weren't naive like that about communism or or Islam. So he's really sending a bad message to a murderous regime really is. Seems to be more critical of the United States than he is Iran. Yeah, he seems to he he wants to on the one hand condemn the United States going to war in Iran. And on the other hand, to say he condemns the use of nuclear weapons. And I don't know how he squares the circle of the Iranians threatening everybody with the use of nuclear weapons. Is this really naive? He's very naive. I'm not saying that he's not a good person or saintly or divinely appointed. That's out of my purview. But what I'm saying is he should ask himself, why hasn't there been we had World War One and World War Two, but there hasn't been 70 million people killed in World War Three. That's because of nuclear deterrence, whether you like it or not. And if Israel did not have approximately 170 nuclear weapons, it wouldn't exist. Because every Iranian leader, whether it's Akhminijad or Rafa Jani, is threatened to wipe it off sometimes explicitly with a nuclear weapon. Wipe it off the map. So he should know all that. And he talks about just this, just that. But there is such a concept going back to Augustine about just war theory. And if he didn't believe that, he should ask himself what he would have done. I don't know. On September 1st, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, just say, well, we don't believe in violence. And then when they invaded France, and then they invaded Belgium, and then they invaded Denmark, and then they invaded the Netherlands, and then they invaded France, and then they invaded Greece. And then they cut a deal with Spain and Portugal, and they turned, they invaded Crete, and then they invaded, at any point of those invasions, where he had said, we can't condone the use of violence and just let all these people be wiped out. Because as soon as the Nazis came over, they started killing Jews and anybody who resists of them, I don't understand that. He doesn't see it. The Vatican had a sacred role. Some people in the Vatican during World War II were very brave. Some of them were coddling fascists of the Italian fascist parties. So I don't know. I'm glad there's an American pope for a change, but this particular pope is an American leftist, and he seems to be interested more in secular matters or as much in secular matters as he is in divine matters. And if that happens, then people who are in charge of secular matters feel they have an entree to talk about divine matters. So when he starts talking, and he's been very critical on social media as a cardinal of Trump, then Trump then fires back and people said, oh, you can't attack the Holy See. Well, he shouldn't, but that line is now blurred. And so the pope to restore it should just stay out of it. And there's no need to give a highly publicized letter of gratitude and honor an honorific certificate to a member, a representative of this horrific. I'm not even getting into the difference between Islam and Christianity. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Victor. So let's turn into JD Vance. He is leading a task force on fraud, as we all know. And they have found 1.4 billion in healthcare fraud in California, Minnesota, and some other states that they've been looking at. So not. But what they think is out there in this Medicaid, Medicare fraud is probably some I have 94 billion dollars in fraud. And once again, we see a mess created by not necessarily just the Democrats by past administrations, but largely Democrats and administrators who just turn their head the other way. That's what I mean. They're going wild. They're going wild about 27, 76 billion for the war. But that's nothing compared to the fraud. And all they want, the Democrats are more taxes and then to they don't look at it as fraud. They look at it as money that is an Obama's mind spread the wealth. Here's the money. You spread it all around to your constituents. They give you political contributions in return. They come out to the polls. That's the whole system. And there's another subtext that nobody wants to talk about. And I know I'll talk about and I'll get my normal little angry reader. You're mean. You're racist. But if you look at the fraud in Chicago, the fraud in Minnesota, the fraud in California, then you see that the DEI constituency is heavily overrepresented in general and foreigners or first generation immigrants in particular. And then you get the impression that a Gavin Newsom, that a Tim Walz, that Keith Ellison knew what was going on and felt either that they were that wasn't really fraud because they were victimized people or it was fraud. And if you try to clamp down on them, people would see demographically DEI constituents were overrepresented and you would be called bad name. So they let it go. And then that message in turn reverberated among that community was, well, we're so blatant about it. And we have a youth program for foreign students. If you come over here, we'll train you and then you find out there's nobody at the school. There's nobody working and the money is going back over to foreign countries. And if you cut it, then they're saying, well, they're not going to do anything to us because our guys on the left, if they investigate us, they're going to, we're going to call them racist. And they're so afraid they'd rather be called a child molester than a racist. So that's how it all worked. And only Trump, you know, crashed in and said, I don't care. We're going to bust this up. And it's big and it's fraudulent. And it's one of the other things that is happening, what Donald Lumsfeld called the known unknowns before the midterms. We don't know how all of this is going to play in the Democrats are heady because they have a in the polls, 10 point lead. And then historically, there's only been, I think, two, two elections, three elections since in the last hundred years where the end party gained a seed or was not. I didn't lose seeds. So they're, they're just so excited about this. But what they're not looking at are a lot of things. Doesn't change the fact that every time an issue comes up, they're on the wrong side of it. They're on the wrong side of the trans issue, according to polls. I know that ICE has hurt all of that performance art stuff has hurt the administration, but they are on the wrong side of that issue on open borders and illegal immigration. They are really on the long side of no cash bail and revolving door criminals. Nobody likes that. They are on the wrong side of drill baby drill. They're at the green. That doesn't have the same. So they know that they can't appeal to people on the issues. So then they know that they have to say, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, fascist, fascist, fascist, cut off his head, shoot him, stab him, burn him up, that kind of stuff. Kill him, put him in a coffin. All that. That's what they're doing. But they are very afraid because if they were not afraid, they would not be talking about when we get power. We're going to do the following. One, let in two states, DC and Puerto Rico and we'll get four magic senators. Ha ha ha. Two, get rid of the electoral college because the census is coming up and we're going to lose 10 or 20 congressional seats and we're going to lose electoral college votes. And the national voters compact, short version of it, that name means the state legislature can get around the Constitution without an amendment. It's illegal, but they'll try it. And they've already said they're going to pack the court, even though FDR at the height of his powers could not do it because it was so shameful. And they're going to try to get rid of the filibuster. So they're going to do all that. And why are they trying? Why are they telling everybody they're going to do it? Because they're scared to death that nobody wants them. There are issues and they can't win with a transparent election. That means voter ID, the SAVAC, curtailments on early voting, maybe a week before, but not months before. Curtailments on mail and balloting. That's really fraudulent. They don't want any of that transparency. They don't want an end to illegal immigration because those are constituents that they think can vote in various circumstances. And they don't understand that people don't like that. And then when you look at the redistricting, they forget, they said, Texas started, Texas started, Texas started. Texas said, this is the number that Donald Trump got in Texas. And this is the percentage of our seats. And we're about even, but we're looking at Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Delaware, Vermont, Maine, and some of those states don't have one representative, even though Trump got 40. And nobody's doing anything about it. So we're going to go in and redistrict and we're going to go up. We're going to reduce their 40% anti-Trump vote or 45. Maybe they'll, their congressional representation districts will only represent 20, 25. Then California went crazy and then they, Virginia went crazy. But what they don't realize is the crazier they got, the more of the rhino legislatures such as Indiana lost power or change their mind. And if you have a redistricting war, I don't know if it'll all take place before the midterms. The Republicans are slated to pick up 10 or 15. They have more legislatures if they want to play that game. And then when you get rid of these racial districts carving out districts on the basis of race, they could pick up another eight to 10. And then the census could pick up another 10 to 15 in 2030. So they look at the longterm and they say, nobody wants our left wing Islamic pro Islamic pro socialist agenda. And they're moving out of the blue states and Democrats are not having children. They're only having 1.3, 4 compared to everybody else. And it doesn't look good. And we're going to lose power in the house. So we've got to change the system. We, I come, Jeffery said it, we're going to go to every state and we're going to go after every state judiciary. You know, we're going to find out basically, he's going to say, what's the youngest Republican and that will be the retirement age. 54 in Virginia. Everybody 54 has to quit. People are not going to like that. The thing that they don't understand either is that their leaders are, I mean, unappealing. Yeah. They keep saying JD Bands and Trump, but Heikam Jeffries is Heikam Jeffries is really unappealing. I mean, he's a radical. He started out, I mean, a disciple of his racist uncle. As I said, Lionel Jeffries, who wrote a book on ice and sun people was abject racist and anti-Semite. And he says crazy things. We're going to be at war. I'm going to take a baseball bat and I'm going to go to, I'm going to do it. It's always about, he's going to retaliate and he's a tough guy. And then you look at Pete Buttigieg and he's a sanctimonious, self-righteous person. Camila Harris knows that every time she goes out there, there's two things she should not do. One, slur her words so that people think she's drinking again. And two, don't talk about certain topics. One, being two, time, three, fate, four, metaphysics. Don't talk about any of them. And what does she do every time? Oh, yeah, I was thinking about what it means to be alive and time and memory is so important memory. And that's, and then she, and then number three, don't charcoal. And that's not going to work. And so you can do some and he's got this contortionist act he does with his body. And then one day he says that trans shouldn't be in women's sports. The next day he's saying that anybody who opposes biological men and women's sport is a transphobe. And now he's giving prisoners their own tablets to use or replacing ones that were given to him in 2018. And they can trace the histories and they're using those tablets to look at. Democratic Party is, I hate to say it's not, I wrote in a column last week, it's not the Democratic Party. It's not even recognizable. That was a left center mainstream party under JFK or, you know, I mean, they were naive, but they were reasonable in some case. These people are Jacobins. They're completely crazy. They're so hard left and every, they don't like the American people. They don't like its founding. They don't like its mature. They just don't like them. And their dream of an AOC or Rashida Tlaib or any members of the squad or you name it is to fundamentally the Obamas to transform the United States into some kind of socialist, hard left culturally in state. That's what they want. And they hate people that are traditional and conservative and they're racist too. They're racist now and they're anti-Semitic. So when Mandami says, I'm going to go after white neighborhoods and he allows a bunch of writers to go in. Doesn't say a word and criticism specifically when they go in and try to beat up Jews. That's the Democratic Party. Are you having Nazi tattoo? They said earlier, it says 1960 and Kennedy is running and for president against Nixon and there's a senator and he's got the Democratic Party. And he undoes his shirt and he's got the totem cop. What does World War II hero John F. Kennedy do? He'd say, get him out. And today it's almost like, I almost think he did it. It's better. Yeah. I think he, I think he'd let it be known so that people would know that he was a certified Jew hater and therefore they elect him. That's who the Democrats are. That's who the Democrats are. Victor, let's welcome back another sponsor for this show. Allegiance Gold. 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, let's turn then to the Rand Paul has a committee that is investigating the COVID coverup and central to that of course is Anthony Fauci, but they have a whistleblower from the CIA that said that the CIA were monitoring analysts in under the director of national intelligence who were looking into the origins of it. So the CIA got its hands in it and that's the new thing. I think it's this week for offenses. I mean, he was pardoned for certain things by Joe Biden, but I think that the statute of limitations in this week for his other non pardon legal exposure. Very simply, it was pretty clear that when gain of gain of function research was outlawed in the United States, that people in the US government, maybe in the military especially, but clearly that had associations with the Center for Disease Control, the National Institute of Allergies and infectious diseases and the National Institutes of Health, they felt pressure from or they created the pressure themselves to continue that research. So they knew that the French had built a lab in Wuhan, China, and they knew they were doing gain of function and they knew that a lot of those people who were doing it had been trained in the West and their names were apparent. And they knew they couldn't deal with them. It was illegal. You couldn't do that. So they got their friend Peter Dossick and he had his own little foundation and they started funneling money to him with the expectation that he would go over there and help fund and seed this gain of function and then they would get access to the research. And maybe if given the benefit of the doubt, maybe they would know whether the Chinese were going in ways that were bio weaponry, right? Who knows? But they knew it was wrong and they knew it was dangerous and they knew that that place was not secure and they kept doing it. And in the process, they allowed other people to have scholarly relations with that lab. We know that there were people traveling back and forth and we know that instrumentation was exchanged. So they were green lighting that and then COVID broke out. And for the first series of messages, it was clear that they were very, very worried that that came out of what they had helped create. So then the alternate exegesis of the Chinese floated that it either came from a dead bat or Pangolin and a wet market or from a bat cave 100 miles away. Their problem with that is they had never, they could never find an animal that transmitted the live virus to a human. And yet they persisted on that. And there were other people who were saying that this is too much of a coincidence. It's too much of a coincidence because China had canceled all flights out of Wuhan to any other major city in China while green lighting flights to the United States. And you get the impression that they knew what was going on. The People's Liberation Army had a big hand in it. They were probably trying to super start viruses with consultation with the Red Army that thought that maybe they could make a weapon out of it. They were working on vaccinations at the same time and the whole thing blew up. And then they thought, well, if we're going to go down, this will really hurt us economically if it's confined here. So we're going to let people fly all over the world and spread it. If they're going to, and given the West is decadent and they're free and they won't have the coercive powers that we do, that's pretty much a theory. And I think it's probably accurate. So in central to that theory were Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci and maybe some others. And from the moment they opened up their email after the news came out, they were discussing on emails. This doesn't look good. And we've got to get active. So they had in their domain $50, $100 billion of grants. So they started consulting people. They had symposia about the origins of COVID and there was just one rule. You don't ever say it came from the Wuhan lab. And that's what they did. And then Peter Dossick got a bunch of bot academics and they had a Lancet investigation. They went over there and then they said it couldn't. So for 2021, 22, 23, it was all if you and I wrote an article about it and I had that. I wasn't a scientist by any means, but I did feel like I was a rational thinker and given the idea of the proximity of the lab, the lack of animal transmission, all of this stuff. Just like a lot of science writers for the New York Times. And I gave an interview to a radio. Next thing I knew, I get a letter from the head of the Stanford alumni situation that I was trying to act like I was a doctor and I were going to be this. You know, so they were trying everything they could to suppress the truth. And so now Rand Paul and certain things, Ron Paul is good. Certain things he's not so good, but on this particular item about big government and its abuse of civil liberties. So they were trying to refuse freedom of information act orders. They were trying to hide it. They were trying to, one of Fauci's lieutenants was bragging in his emails that he had a freedom of information expert, how to suppress those and hide the information. They were using different types. So they got a lot of exposure. I don't know what to degree that they're protected now. It's been over five years, but we'll see. They were trying to run out the clock and Biden help them. Did Biden pardon some of them? I think he offered a blanket. Not a blanket. He just gave a general pardon, but it doesn't mean that that pardon is for a particular time. It doesn't mean that what I'm getting at is if you bring Fauci in and you say, did you or did you not write this to a person or did you not have somebody destroy that email or did you not? He can't be prosecuted if he's pardoned for the contents, but if he lies under oath at that moment, then that's not part. So we'll know the truth. The pardons were not for future sins and get him under oath and he will sin in the future because he's got exposure. All, unless he does a Comey and says, I can't remember 245 times. And he probably will. Victor, let's go ahead and take our last break and come back and talk a little bit maybe about Mondami. 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 Kennetcast. 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 sarcasm. Tom Tillis, I'm pretty sure it might have been useful at one time as a doorstop. Find the Tony Kennetcast on YouTube, X, radio, TV or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, so Mondami is finding out that he can't finance all of the free buses, child care, health care that he has promised everybody. So he is looking to the state to increase his budget by four billion. So Hocal, who is the state governor, has offered four billion more. So they already pay four billion to New York City. So the collective New York taxpayers are going to have to help finance this. And he's starting to nickel and dime or finding ways to nickel and dime by increasing fees on ambulances, auditing fraud in a system that gave kickbacks to people who were tax relief from school collections. So he's looking in all sorts of places that the average New Yorker is going to start feeling it. And they voted for him. No, it doesn't sound good. They voted for him. All they had to do is look at Cuba or look at Eastern Europe during the Cold War or look at Latin America or look at the Middle East. Anywhere you have a socialist government, all it does is impoverish everybody. And Alexis de Tocqueville, 1831, you said, unfortunately, the problem with consensual governments, which he has supported, by the way, is that most people would rather be equal and poor than all better off at some better off than few. And that's the problem with him. And of course, he doesn't live any of this. He, he, he's a gifted, elite, exempt, wealthy person. He had his own subsidized house. You know, he's like Hassan Parker with his, Piker with his 200,000. He lives a lifestyle that's just not like anybody else. So everybody knew he was going to spend all this money and increase for free stuff. And we know that the free stuff then destroys the will to participate in the labor force, personal responsibility to get something for free. And then we knew he was going to send a message as an Islamist, which he is and his critic. He said he was going to arrest the Israeli prime Netanyahu when he came into New York. So we knew that every Islamist would come to New York and the ones who were there say, it's open season on Jews. Let's go beat them up. Let's go into their neighborhoods. Let's go terrify. And that's what they're doing. And then he would never criticize it. He just said, well, we better watch out for violence. And he would go, I didn't think he would be, you know, he'd go to Ken Griffith's little place and tap, tap as if he was intimidating. He knew, I know where you live. I'm going to get your money. I guess what I, I guess the only thing that is positive about it. He did what nobody thought could do. Nobody thought you could destroy 200 years of Wall Street, global dominance, but he's going to make a Miami Wall Street. He's going to, if he keeps it up, anybody who works in Wall Street with capital and has a high profile, they should leave as quickly as possible because it's going to get worse and worse because there's no money for the things he wants to do. And he's also, he's, he's a socialist communist. He's a racist. He's an Islamist. So he doesn't like Jews. He doesn't, I'll be honest, he doesn't, and he doesn't like Christians and he doesn't like, I don't, I don't think he, when he says white people, he uses that term a lot. And as I've said so many times before, when he talks about privileged white people, the people who have the highest per family income in the United States are people with his ethnic profile. So he's, he's a hypocrite as well. He's just bad news. The only thing that got him where he is, he's got this smiley little look about him and he's pleasant and he's, you know, he's not like Bernie Sanders with a skull on his face and shaking those arms up in the air and humped over. He's not like, you know, wow, Pete Buttigieg, you know. So he's got this little stick and people that are young fall for it. And they're not, people that are young, I was young, you don't have any responsibilities. You don't have any money. You just want stuff. But I was never that stupid in my defense. Stupid, but not that stupid. Well, Victor, the last thing I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on the Hanta virus and I feel like it's been overhyped because it doesn't seem to me anything like COVID that could be spread so easily through the air and just minimal touch that it's not going human to human very easily is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I don't. It's not a new virus and it doesn't seem like it's a new mutation. And it does seem to have a peculiar genesis that somebody went out into a fetid dump where there must have been a million rats. And I mean, it's not like going in your old garage and seeing mouse droppings. It's going to somewhere where you probably, they probably walked on a carpet of rat droppings that were infected. And so I just, we're going to have, I hope, Stephen Quay, the very distinguished medical researcher, PhD, MD, he was on our show about his book on COVID. He was absolutely right about the origins of COVID, the genetic profile. He testified to that effect before Congress. He's rumored to be up for big appointments in the medical team of Donald Trump. And I'll try to get him on and he's an expert in, he invented the dye element in the MRI and he's an expert in virology, genetics, and we'll see what he says. But I have a feeling that he's going to tell us that there's elements of the COVID like hysteria in it. Yeah. Well, Victor, we have some comments. These are coming from YouTube and I'll read the short ones first. Michael Silber 9059 says, BDH is a refuge of sanity, fearlessly drawing rational conclusions about current global events. Grain or Grain 3241 says, if they could get control of fraud in this country, it will take care of our deficit. That's true. And you know why you were talking, I was thinking as well that they're, what JD Bounce is trying to do is save Medicare or Medicaid for the people who really need it. And then you have to get that pressure, don't you, that when they got hysterical and started attacking Teslas, that they knew there was something there all at the state, local, federal level. And they jend up through all of these foundations that funded all of this stuff because they knew that if Doge kept going, see Doge, if it was in existence right now and hadn't been forced out, it would have found all this stuff because the federal money was going to the states and they could follow the money trail. And so that's why they preempted that very quickly. They just made it into a racial thing or a class thing that, you know, Bill Jones lost his job. So you're evil. I'm going to go attack a Tesla dealer. That's what they did. All right. Oh, and they really liked, there were a lot of comments on this, the term toxic empathy that you used. Great term. Learn something every day. The wonderful, I've got to remember Saad. Yes. Somebody mentioned him. Yes. Saad, S-A-A-D. Yes. He's a Canadian professor. I've been on his show. Yes. He's wonderful and he has a book I would recommend. Suicidal Empathy, I think it is. Yes, they mentioned it. And people have been talking about this before for years, but he, and I haven't read it yet. I've just looked at some of the reviews. He has collated a whole exegesis on how detrimental and toxic it is, both in a psychological individual fashion, but also for a collective. And it's been, it's old, as I've said, goes back to the Greeks and stuff. At least the Greeks, you know, I mean, Greek morality was hurt your enemies and help your friends. It wasn't. Part of it is, which is, you know, that Sermon on the Mount was a revolutionary art. Blessed are they, may it love your name, all that stuff. But that fed a climate of affluence and leisure. When it met an affluent, leisureed Western society, then you got the ingredients that you would get empathy, which is good, except it could be self-hating empathy. And like we saw that good example, I think you mentioned about the guy that went out and killed that poor teacher in New York and he had done something before and the teacher said, I didn't want another black man. That was the woman that he had assaulted before, said, I didn't want to put another black man in jail. In other words, I cared so much about my own suicidal empathy or toxic empathy that I didn't really care about what the results of that would be to other people. And I think all of us in this age have a tariff, you get terrified because you think all but for the grace of God, there goes I, that I could be walking, anybody listening right now thinks I could be walking in New York and somebody could play the knockout game and hit me in the back of the head. And I could be in San Francisco and walk by and a homeless person could stick me with a needle, with AIDS, whatever. But the thing that scares them the most about those, that the person who perpetrated that crime would be let off and the greater society would forget completely about you and you would just be in statistic, nobody would care. So that's the worst thing for the families of all these people who have been harmed and killed by repeat offenders that nobody cares. And look at the Democrats when you try to tell them that 500,000 criminals that Biden let in have destroyed the lives of thousands of people, not just the ones that were murdered but assaulted and stolen from. And just threatened in the neighborhoods and stuff. And threatened on the street and drugs they've sold and then they would say you're racist or you're mean or you're nativist or you're zineful, but that's what is bad about the left. So I'm glad that we do have a book Suicidal Empathy. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, let me, it was Steve Lucas and he said toxic empathy, great term, learn something new every day by listening to VDH. I am the same age and have never experienced a teacher like VDH. And the last comment is from Craig Close, one to five. I was in the Middle East after 9-11. We had third country nationals supporting our base functions. Many were Indian Christians. They came on Sunday mass and when speaking to them afterward, it was clear that they couldn't openly worship in the country we were in and were grateful they could attend our services until you've lived or worked in other countries. You can't really know how blessed we are in the U.S. Thank you, Craig. That's very good point. And I wish that our friends on the conservative side who are now praising Islam and saying that they had been brainwashed or I wish they would just take a deep breath, take a hiatus and do a favor for all of us. I'm going to fly on a plane and fly to Saudi Arabia and then drive into Kuwait and then I don't know, go into Oman and then fly into Egypt. Well, maybe Egypt's a little bit different because of the Coptics, but they're second class citizens. And then go into Iraq or somewhere and just say to themselves, I'm going to look for Christian churches. I'm going to see what people say about the government and see what they find and then go to Israel and walk all through the Arab villages and see if there's mosque and they will find a lot and then look at Christian churches. And then maybe fly to Turkey and see all of these beautiful Byzantine churches, Armenian, all these Orthodox branches closed. I was there two years ago and it seemed like every Orthodox church that I'd seen on eight or nine previous trips was closed. And then I saw the holiest church for a thousand years in Christendom, Hagia Sophia, and they're making into a mosque. It's a mosque. You in special site, historical site, and Erdogan just said, you know what, it's going to be a mosque. Not as if there weren't two mosques right next to it. Yeah, exactly. That blue mosque, I think it's called. And well, thank you, Victor, for all of your wisdom today. And thanks to our audience for choosing to join us on this Friday News Roundup. Thank you, everybody. See you next time. Thanks for listening and viewing. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen and we're signing off. Visit VictorHansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.