VDH on Iran, Xi Summit, Clarence Thomas vs. Progressivism & the Left’s Double Standards

Well, you mentioned the war, Victor. So the Straits of Hormuz are the Iranian say they're in control. Donald Trump's saying we're now in control. Anyway, what's your take? Nothing that the Iranians say can be taken at face value because there is no Iranian government. Maine, I don't know, was less weak or two past the law. For homeless, a cop in Maine can now not arrest a homeless person. For public urination, illegal entry, public drunkenness. If you were I did it, Victor, we'd be in handcuffs. But if you're homeless, the Obama people are all on TV saying people don't understand. He's just reinstituting the Obama, you know, the comprehensive plan, joint plan of action. Are we sending pallets of cash over? Yeah, exactly. We're not it's nothing the same. Obama was re arming a ascendant Iran that was scary and indomitable. So people thought we are dealing with a prostrate, weakened and feeble corpse. And we're dictating. We're not negotiating. We're dictating to it. Hanson seems more interested to impart his ideas without inflaming passion or outrage. This is funny. He isn't sexy, but he's thoughtful. OK, not sexy. Yeah, I am not sexy, but I haven't heard that since the one that didn't sting me. What did sting me was the guy who I think I told you four years ago said I look like Skeletor. Skeletor? Yeah, that's just. Well, hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hanson. In his own words, we are recording on Sunday, April 19th, 2026. This episode will be up on Tuesday, the 21st. I'm Jack Fowler, Lucky Man. I get to ask my friend Victor Davis Hanson. Questions, I think you would like him to answer. And Victor, who is Victor? Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Wayne and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in history at Hillsdale College. He's a senior contributor at the Daily Signal, which is the happy home of this podcast, where he also does Victor Davis Hanson in a few words, four days a week. And Fina Alamente, he's a man with a website, the blade of Perseus, VictorHanson.com. More about that later. Victor, as ever, tons, tons, tons of topics to get your take on. We will, since the, every two days or three days is another 180 or something going on in Iran, so we'll get your take on the most recent updates. We'll love to get your take also on the forthcoming. How do you think the United States and Donald Trump position for the forthcoming visit with Chairman Xi of China? Clarence Thomas has given a very important speech on progressivism, like to get your take on that. And maybe we'll talk about taxes in New York. We'll see. We got lots of lots to get your take on. And we'll do that when we come back from these initial important 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. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Victor, I just back myself from down in Tampa. It's about, I think, what time is it here? It's 1 19 in the afternoon in Connecticut. I was down at the Philadelphia Society meeting. And let me tell you if there was, there were about 450 people there. And there are 450 fans that picked to Davis Hanson. They said, everybody, everybody loves you. How's he doing, et cetera. So there's a huge cheering section. And these are the elite scholars, conservative scholars in America. That's very, that's very good to hear that. I gave a talk on Zoom to the Heritage Spring meeting. And it went, you know, you don't know how it, because you, yeah, I mean, my interlocutor, my friend and your friend, Rob Bluey thought it went well, but it's a different medium when you're talking to a screen. But given that I can't really fly now, given this unpredictability of when my heart's going to go crazy for a little, probably for another month or two, at least. And then I have to get the, you know, the 120 day biopsies scan to see if the thing got out, the monster broke out of his cage. But anyway, I've been doing a lot of Zooms and trying to get back to normal. Yeah. Well, I told some people, let me get to this. Victor does four podcasts a week. He does four of the, in his, in a few words with the daily signal, weekly essay for American Greatness, weekly column, you do two pieces for the blade of her, is she doing, you do a video for the blade of hers? Yes. Is she doing, and this is you part time, Victor. Yeah. And I did this, this, the last three weeks, I did a 4500 word essay for the new criterion, and I did a 2000 word essay for a Swiss paper. Yeah. Fox three nights a week again, right? So yeah. And I still do Fox or Newsmax three, three nights a week. So I haven't changed. And I have now 170,000 manuscript, a word manuscript that's in galleys. And because the pub date was, it's been altered, it was originally envisioned as being out. So I stopped everything on January one last minute. And now there's a debate I have to do tomorrow, whether I have to update the galley proofs, which is very hard to alter. And that's a lot of work. And then, you know, the war and everything. So anyway, it's, it's. Well, people should still go on Amazon and pre-order the book, pre-publication, counter-revolution. Yeah. Counter-revolution, the fall and rise of Donald Trump and his magma, maga movement. Well, you mentioned the war, Victor. So the Straits of Hormuz are the, the Iranians say they're in control. This is from two days ago, where clearly Donald Trump saying we're now in control. Anyway, what's your take on the latest headline? Well, nothing that the Iranians say can be taken at face value because there is no Iranian government. The, the first and second echelon of that are apparatus gone. So you have the people in the military, that's one click. You've got the theocracy that Comanay, Comanay, you know, surrogates. That's another, you've got the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It's probably the most dominant. And then you've got these elected politicians and they have two driving concerns. One, they are terrified that one of the other three groups will think they're weak and are negotiating with the Americans and either kill them or marginalize them or cut off their revenues, such as it is. So they always want to outdo each other. At the same time, they want to outdo each other by saying, ah, you know, we're winning and all this crazy stuff. They are also afraid of an uprising because if there's an uprising, any of their hardline stuff that protects them from each other is going to put a noose around their neck in a Nuremberg-like trial, given they've killed 30 to 40,000 people. So you've got the schizophrenia that on one day they want to be moderate and signal the right Iranian people that maybe we might transition someday with me as a figure. And the other day it's hardliner, please don't kill me if you're in the Guard Corps. So it's almost impossible. The other thing that's going on is they did it and everybody says, well, why didn't he blockade Iran and open this? He had a sequence that makes sense. He destroyed their air, capital, navy, air defenses, most of their military, industrial, nuclear complex. And then he said, let's talk. And he had negotiations. And now he started a blockade that reportedly is costing them $430 million a day in revenue. Now this is on top of losing probably a 50-year investment of about half a trillion dollars in a missile arsenal, barracks, military apparatus, vehicles, planes, drones, nuclear factories, you name it. It's wiped out. I just make a little footing on that, Jack, because Ben Rhodes and the Obama people are all on TV saying, oh, Trump, he's just, people don't understand. He's just reinstituting the Obama plan of joint, you know, the comprehensive plan, joint plan of action. Are we sending pallets of cash over? Yeah, exactly. We're not, it's nothing the same. Obama was arming, re-arming a send-it Iran that was scary and indomitable, so people thought. We are dealing with a prostrate, weakened and feeble corpse of Iran. And we're dictating, we're not negotiating. We're dictating to it. So if these negotiations break down and Iran thinks it's going to send some missiles into Saudi Arabia or storm a tanker, Donald Trump will take out their bridges the first day, probably he will take out their power plants. And the only, what is Iran thinking? Well, Iran is thinking that we're going to go into the traditional rug. I don't think that's an ethnic stereotype. I've been in the Middle East and I bought a rug in Turkey once and one in Greece. And it's, you barter, but that's what they think. They're going to go to the bazaar and barter and yesterday, today and tomorrow, whatever they say doesn't matter and draw out the negotiations, hoping that, A, the left will win the midterms, the midterms will be lost, Trump will be impeached. And the Republican Congress people will put pressure on him before the midterms to get out. The Europeans will put pressure. Japan. Everybody, they think time is on their side and he will fold and then they can reconstruct and they probably feel they have some fishable material. They can fish out. Okay. Time is not on their side. Not when you're losing 400 million plus a day. All he has to do is not give in for the next five to six, 10 days. And he still has plenty of time during the, for the midterms, just don't put the foot boot off their neck. Make sure they suffer 400, 450 million dollars in lost revenue. And that'll mean finally these people who are living lavishly and sending their children and their friends all over Europe, the United States money, it'll cut off. And when that, and then they will negotiate. If you want to accelerate a little bit, if they start to do crazy things, then yeah, take out their bridges or something. If anybody complains from the left and says that you're going to impeach them, just remind everybody that Bill Clinton took out every bridge on the Danube in 1999 when he bombed and he also bombed all the electrical facilities in, in Belgrade. So don't, don't fall for that hysteria. So I think we're in a pretty good place. I think a lot of people are getting nervous that it's going on too long, but he's got another week or two to put, he's right on the verge. If he can hold out against all this European and domestic pressure and Asian pressure and the golf pressure, the golf pressure is either cut a deal with them or destroy them, but don't leave them. How do you cut a deal with liars? So you can't, you can't, you can't, you have to dictate. It's like talking to the Japanese after World War II. We learned that they bombed Pearl Harbor while they were telling us that they wanted to have peace and they were working right, right in the middle of negotiations with Cordell Hall. Did they plan and that, that fleet was already, you know, it was already on its way to Pearl Harbor when the negotiations started. So they knew that. And so when we saw them on September 2nd in Tokyo Bay, MacArthur handed them a list of demand on conditional surrender, free use of your country by the United States military, United States military will be the occupying power and the military government to reform. And they looked around and they thought, we do not want another atomic bomb. We didn't have another atomic bomb for months, but we, they didn't know that. We don't want crazy Curtis LeMay bombing us back to the Stone Age again. And they agreed. Same thing with Hitler. They thought as soon as Hitler killed himself, all these people came out of the woodwork, Durnett's, Gurrain, you know, even Hemler. Oh, we're the government. Deal with us. Will, will you not? No, no, no, you were defeated. And here's what's going to happen. You're going to be occupied. You're going to be zones of occupation. You're going to have no military, nothing. And this time you're not going to cheat like you did after World War one. And that's what they did. You don't, they don't have any cards to play. They have none. The only card they have is the dream house of the democratic media nexus. It thinks they're, that this is a disaster. And by the way, not to get off topic. Did you, did you see Tim Walts, Jack in Spain? No, what happened? He went over to Spain to this international socialist conference. At a time. To a socialist conference? Yes, in Madrid. Yeah. And he goes over there and he's one of the keynotes. Now he's now being hosted by this anti-American government. Yeah. That's utterly corrupt and stolen money and is very unpopular and knows the next election it has, it'll be thrown out. But it has just denied the United States at the time of war, the, the use of its air spaces and its joint NATO base in large part paid for by the United States. And he gets up in front of this foreign audience at a time when Americans are risking their life in the Gulf. And he says that this is a fascistic agenda enterprise. This is fascism back, what we're doing is fascism. In other words, you go into a foreign country and you basically say to the soldiers out risking their lives, you're engaged in a fascist enterprise and I'm going to trash you to your enemies, which are our enemies, the socialist government of Spain as an enemy. And I've never seen anything quite like that. I never have. He's, uh, maybe he was trained well when he was in China, the communist China. How many times did he go there? 17. You know, it's funny about all these, uh, have you noticed all of these left wing icons, they all had these flaws that they covered up. Now we knew that guy was a pathological liar. He had gone to China and they rebooted him as working man that changed his own oil coach coach coach, coach Tim. And now he's just a complete and they did the same thing with juicy smaller. They said he was this, this is, they did the same. And he was, you know, everybody knew that guy was a faker. Unless you believe the laws of chemistry don't apply. When you throw bleach out at minus a cold 40 degrees and it doesn't freeze. And you can, you can kickbox holding your sandwich and one hand and your cell phone and the other against two huge attackers and you're a diminutive bustle. Yeah. Yeah. You believe all that and Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden did believe that. And then there was Jeffrey Epstein who was kind of, well, you know, Jeffrey's got some girl, he's kind of a, he always wants to be an intellectual. He wants to office at Harvard. And then there was Swalwell. Well, you know, he's a little Randy. He has this little tendency to get a little drunk and get a little handsy, but he's our guy and they do that with all the, you know, George Floyd. Well, yeah, George Floyd put a gun to a woman's stomach. He had a home invasion. He was a four years in prison. He was a career felon. When he was arrested, he was high on fentanyl. He was resisting arrest. He was passing counterfeit, um, curancy, uh, and you know, but he was a martyr and he has the wings on. Yeah. That's, that's what they do. They take all of these people and they manufacture them into something they never were and it ends up just the opposite. I mean, they end up as just, they implode and then they go to the next one. And the other one is that lawyer for Stormy Downeyles. Oh yeah. Michael Evanetti. Yeah. That guy was a complete crook. And remember he was on CNN and they said, he's so handsome. He's dynamic. He was going to run for president. Yes. He was going to run for president. He stole Stormy's. Yeah. By the way, another one was Stormy Downeyles. She was put out. She had to put out in this, she had to go into this sorted career because she was a working mom, all this stuff. And she had it. And then, you know, she never paid the fine. The court ordered her to pay Trump for violation of the non-disclosure. I think it was four or the, the attorney fees, 400,000 on her fields. She never paid, but they had a picture over the other day. It was very sad. Did you see her in the eye? I did. Yeah. She kind of covered with tattoos and obese, smoking a cigarette. Yeah. A lot of sitting miles on that later. Where are all her leftist champions? Now, why don't, why doesn't any of them that had her on TV every night call her up and say, Stormy, I'm really sad that you're destitute. Here's 10,000 bucks. Yeah. And I'll never do that. She was a useful idiot. And then one final thing I want to say, I just looked at something. Did you see that Tucker had on Russell Brown the other day? Yes. And selling a, selling a, some kind of religious book. Yeah. And did you see? Russell Brand's Bible. I don't know something crazy. He read this long passage, you know, about the, you know what, it's in, even I know it. And I don't know the, the Old Testament very well. The book of Daniel about the Antichrist and the King will come and he will sweep his invasions. He will take the gold of Egypt. He will do all this. And then finally, you know, he's going to meet his maker and Tucker was saying it's, and he will insult, Tucker was trying to take, have Russell Brand read that. Right. And then correlate it with Trump. Right. Now Tucker sees Trump as the satanic Antichrist and the war in Iran, mere images, this biblical prophecy or narrative, which it doesn't. When you look at all the details, it doesn't fit at all. But, and then his son has just resigned from JD Vance's. So I don't know if that's crazy, like a fox or just crazy. And maybe a mix. Candice, yeah. Candice Owens is completely, she's trying to destroy Erica. Yeah. She put out some just atrocious attack on her. Oh, it's just, it's just crazy. Marking her crying. I mean, yeah. Marking her crying. And then you've got Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that Donald Trump wasn't real. The assassination was fixed. It was a ruse. He really wasn't in danger and that he cooked this up. Marjorie Taylor Greene. What important. If there is one thing people got to realize about Donald Trump, anybody who gets in the ring with him, literally, he's been in a ring arresting me, but anybody gets in there and wants to go toe to toe and trade insults, including the Pope kind of back down today. And he said, I don't, I'm not interested in trying to get in a fight with Donald Trump, which is good, but they don't win. Kathy Griffin with holding her head. Her, her career was destroyed after that. And all of these, where is Liz Cheney today? She was number three in the house. She was destined to be a vice presidential candidate very soon. The full force of the justice department went after him and concocted evidence. And the New York state justice department, same thing. Yeah, same thing. It's the, it's the, you know, it is the Wiley, Wiley E. Coyote, Wiley, Wiley E. Coyote Roadrunner Phenomenon Syndrome, obsessive, compulsive. They get obsessed and they get compulsive and they can't get on any other topic. And then they keep driving it to the grid. Look at the bulwark. Same thing. They do this, they do this and you do this. Where is the careers now? Bill Crystal or David Fromm or Charles Sykes or Max Booth. They were all very gifted writers and they, it was, they, and they were staunchly conservative and tried to convince America through their speaking and writing. And Marquis television appearances that they should all embrace the conservative agenda. That was their life's work. And now they're basically saying, Mona Sharon or former colleague. I love it. I know. That's sad. It's sad. It's really sad. But now they're, they're spending the same energy with two different, with two qualifications. Now they're on the other side saying basically everything I told you and wrote about and tried to advocate and ask money for, just forget it. It's Trotsky eyes. It's gone. Now I want the exact opposite messages to, I want you to believe the exact opposite of what I told you for 30 years and more, and I want money. Right. Well, they're getting it from some leftist money bags. So they're driven by, don't you know who I am? Donald Trump was the source. I don't mean he caused it, but he was the source of their derangement. He's raging in their brain all the time. They, and apparently the Jews, because they can't sit 70, 70% of the stuff. Tucker, he used to have a wide variety of interests, but now it's just the Jews and that Yahoo in Israel nonstop. Yeah, it's funny. You mentioned, you know, Bill Kristol and as you know, Victor, you and I, where are many cruises, National Review Cruises together. It's an interesting point is that, and on some of these trips with you and Bernard Lewis and Bill Buckley, Milton Friedman, I mean, great, great, great people. But when the weekly standard cruises, they never had anybody that would never had some like Victor on it because Bill Kristol never wanted anybody who might outshine Bill Kristol. Where a Milton Friedman would outshine practically Bob Bork would outshine Michael Novak. These are the type of people on our cruises. I hate to make cruise, cruise politics here, but it was really indication of his immense ego. Just, you know, I would say whatever one thinks of Max Boo, politics, the early, he wrote some very good books. Yeah. And he was very prolific. I don't think I think after he went up, pivoted 180, the biography of Reagan was received. Well, it was it reflected his new agendas, his wife's problems and all that. But he has talent and he did. He wrote some good books, but Bill Kristol never did. He was all hype. He never, he never, I mean, whatever people say, disagree with George Will. He was very productive. He wrote books and they were good books. And the same thing you can disagree with David From, but he wrote a good book on immigration. They wrote, they were very productive, but Bill Kristol wasn't. Yeah, he was the armchair intellectual that appeared nonstop on television. And he was the hard hard and the irony was he was the hardest conservative of all of these. There's a big schemer, uh, Jean and his DNA. Well, Victor. Do you know what, Victor? Every day, Americans make choices that shape our country's future right down to which cell phone provider we support. And here's what most people don't realize. Patriot Mobile isn't just a wireless provider. They're an activist organization funded by selling top tier cell phone service. They've been on the front lines defending our freedoms long before it was cool. Standing in the gap where others wouldn't. And the best part is they deliver prioritized premium service on all three major U.S. networks, giving you the same or even better coverage back by 100% U.S. based customer support, get unlimited data plans, mobile hotspots, international roaming and more. And when you switch to Patriot Mobile, you'll help grow a movement that fuels the conservative Christian cause. Every bill you pay helps advance the values of faith, family and freedom. Switching is easier than ever. Activate in minutes. Keep your number, keep your phone or upgrade. Take a stand today. Go to Patriot Mobile dot com slash VDH or call 972 Patriot and use the promo code VDH for a free month of service, a free month of service. That's Patriot Mobile dot com slash VDH or call 972 Patriot. And make the switch today. We thank the good people on Patriot Mobile for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And Victor, we have another Patriot ad to read a little later, but it's interesting. Today is April 19th when you and I are talking. This is the 251st anniversary of the battles, three battles. We all know Lexington and Concord, but also Monotony. And there were 50 American, 50 minute men killed today, 251 years ago today. The oldest, this is like really nobody knows who these people are. The first person killed in the battle for our freedom was Ensign Robert Munro. He was 63 years old. And then there were two. Josiah Haynes was 80 and Deacon Haynes was 78. And they died today. Again, Henry Putnam was 70. I mean, it's striking how committed to liberty the colonists were. And boy, oh boy, we have to take them, revere them more and live up to their legacy. So anyway, well, little April 19th tip of the hat to those who helped found this country. Victor, one other thing you mentioned, we're talking about fraud and the Spanish government, I don't know, fraud, any leftist government, there's fraud. And on our own turf, where we know fraud is rampant in Tim Walz's Minnesota, Gavin Newsom's California, we'll talk more about him later. Here's a little headline. It's something I picked off X. The Democrat governor of Maine, Janet Mills, just filed to give back any taxpayer dollars to fraudsters if the Trump administration defunded them during the this ongoing crackdown they have on fraud. She is literally using taxpayers to fund admitted fraudsters. This is from Eric Darity on X. They are bald about the demand of money. They're just, it's theirs. They're going to use it and they're going to take, they're going to use our money. I don't understand that. There were something similar where Gavin Newsom was trumpeting that he was going to pay for the sex change operations of people that were here illegally with our money. And this is on top of right now where Chris Rufo and others have suggested that the amount of theft from California's handling of federal money is $250 billion, billion, billion dollars. Could be a quarter of a trillion dollars. And all Newsom said was, well, it's federal money. They should have won. In other words, federal money has passed through the states to administer and then states stole it. And then they said, well, it's your fault for giving us the money. That's essentially Newsom's position. I don't know where it is that this sense of atonement for criminality that, you know, we saw that whole thing with a Brego Garcia that this guy came into our country uninvited. He was a gang member. He was driven out of his own country. He came here. He was in gang activity. He was a human trafficker. He abused his live-in girlfriend-spouse. He broke computers. He was violent. He had drugs. He was pulled over without a license, speeding. And we're supposed to feel like we owe him something now that we deported him. And some left-wing judge said that we owe him recompense or something. And it's just, it's, I don't know what it is. It's like the same thing in Europe right now where Spain is giving 500,000 illegal immigrants. Not just legality, but permanent residents and pathways of citizenship. And they're going to be able to go to any EU country with a passport. And, or passport or some type of exempt certification. It's, you know, it really is suicidal. If you think about the people, the progressive impulse, it is a suicidal, you get to a point where people become so affluent and so free to say whatever they want without any documentation or consideration that they end up just bored. You know, they hate their, they hate the system that enriched them. They're bored. They have no purpose. They, they're atheists. They're agnostics. They're secularists. They're globalists. And then they try to destroy everybody around them. They make a virtue of criminality. They do. They love the criminal from a safe distance, albeit. They love the criminal. They think, you know what? He's in touch with nature. He's in touch with, with raw emotion. And I, I'm kind of in a feat now, but I want to look at him like he's in, I'm in a zoo and I like looking at these strange species, especially, and I don't want to open the door once in a while and see what they do. And then their natural habitat. Can I, can I, along those lines back in, still in Maine, I just saw this before we started talking. Maine, I don't know if it was a last week or two passed the law for homeless. If you, you cannot, a cop in Maine can now not arrest a homeless person for public urination, illegal entry, public drunkenness. There were two other, there were two other things that if you were, I did it, Victor, we'd be in handcuffs. But if you're homeless, you're, you're, it is, it is against the law for you to be arrested. And that is, that's because the psychological phenomenon that the bureaucrat, they want to feel that they're doing something and they can't even contemplate the felony. They don't know what to do with 12 million illegal aliens. They don't know what to do with two million homeless people. They don't know what to do with people on their street that are defecating, fornicating, urinating, you name it. But they do know what to do with a guy who has a nice home and he put a new, his mailbox in and it's six inches below the required code. So they'll go over to his house and scream and yell at him because he will listen and he will pay the fine and enrich the coffers of the city, county, state, government. And he will make the inspector, officer, bureaucrat feel good about himself. But if he goes on the subway and somebody sees a guy with a 15 inch open blade that's illegal, he's not going to say anything because he's stared stiff of that guy. Or if he's going to go into some of the neighborhoods very close to Mont, where I live and go in there and I, as I've said numerous times, I got this verbatim from a county inspector when I suggested that rather than worrying about what year the shed that had solar panels was built because it was, after he admitted it was in perfect compliance with the code, but he wanted to see the structural diagram of something that was built. And basically 70 years ago, I just said, go down the road and go into there and you will see 30 or 40 people living in hovels, Winnebago's, lean twos with animals that don't have proper protection from wind or cold or sun, you know, horses, donkeys, mules, cows, and dogs that are online. You'll have a field day with your little red book of red tickets. Oh, I'm not going to go down there, Mr. Hanson. I am not getting near. I know all about those places. I said, those are dangerous places to go. So I said, you would rather spend your time harassing me because if you give me a red ticket, I will pay. Well, something like that, I guess. So that's what happens. The existential problem they cannot deal with. So they fixate on either the non-existent misdemeanor or the law-abiding citizen to go after him. And it's just incredible the way that they do it. I even see it when people send me these, sometimes I look at, you know, these YouTube videos of cops pulling people over. Yes. I want to see your supervisor. Yes. Yeah, these people are violent and the cops, I've been pulled over by a lot of cops in my life. And four or five of them have been very, please, I said, I asked, no, you cannot ask what, you show me your license or proof of insurance and immediately I said, yes, sir, don't move. Do you have any contraband? Do you have any, no, could I ask what, I'm not done yet. So they know that I'm really polite. I'm going to do what he wants. And then he says, you were going nine miles over the speed limit. Okay, thank you. And then when they see somebody that I'm not going to listen to you, I screwed and just the cop just goes, now, wait a minute, now we're trying to resolve this. Whereas you would think that he would just say, that's it. The way that they treat the law body, and I don't blame them because it's a matter of their survival. When they pull somebody over and they go pull Forma and get a little tough and they know that person's a law-abiding citizen, of course they're going to be workman-like. But when they see somebody, and that's an increasingly, I think the majority of the people they pull over are crazy. And they have to be very careful, but they've been backwards to accommodate them. I wonder, Victor, if I, you know, because I see these videos too, I've seen a ton of them. And I wonder, am I in algorithm? Is this why I'm seeing them? Probably. But is this really as widespread as I think it is just from the sheer volume of things that I've seen? So I don't think these, these are all, everything's an anecdote. But I think this is really a trend, what you're, what you're, well, I noticed, I have in the past, and I will resume when I feel I have breakfast about every two or three months with highway patrol and law enforcement in this area. Yeah. Almost all of them are Hispanic. They're wonderful people. And they will tell me exactly what you just said. That they, it's not that they profile people, but by the, they have to stay alive, but by the type of car and certain things. One of them was once telling me, when I see a car and I see a license plate, you know, jiggling around, or I see a bunch of dents in it, or I see a headlight missing or a tail light, I know something that the odds go up. Not that they're stereotyping anybody, but the odds go up and they get tense, because they know that this has a greater potential from somebody who's driving a Honda Civic, well-dressed, you know. So I don't blame them, but from what they tell me, especially with truck drivers now that are not here legally, it's an epidemic. It is. It's more dangerous to be a, I say I don't blame them because they, they, they encounter some people who are really scary. And when you add the DEI element into it, if that particular person feels that because of their race or whatever particular category, they find themselves on the oppressed side of the binary, that they have legitimate complaints against the majority, then they're going to say immediately to that officer, you're just harassing me, don't touch me, I don't have to do this, I want to see your supervisor, they'll say all that stuff, because they feel that the society will let them out if they use violence or, there's no deterrence because of these prosecutors and the general left-wing progressivism in the country. Well, when is the next Daniel Patrick Moynihan going to come along and do a study on, I don't mean to get us in trouble here, but many of these videos are about black women, younger black women in America. And I can see them, a segment of black women being abandoned by men and just, you know, affected by the social problems we have. But it's not for me. I mean, Fannie Willis' testimony confirmed what you said. So there's a real violence aspect to this. Fannie Willis basically told the court, the judge, I'm not going to even talk, I'm not going to deal with you people, I'm a proud black woman. And if I say to you that I don't have any receipts for all the money that Nathan and I, Wade, that I spent when we junketed, I'm going to tell you that, you know, black people in general have a tendency to use cash, I thought that was very racist myself. But she just refused to do that. When Latita James, she just got out on the campaign trail and said, if you elect me, I'm going to go after Donald Trump. And so there was a sense of anger there. And, you know, Michelle Obama kind of played on that when she said, I'm not the angry black woman, but... Really? Yeah, I mean, when Michelle said... No, I know she said it. I'm not sure. She took off tense while she was First Lady and went a woman at Target. She said, ask her to reach, she's like five nine. This was a short woman, just said, could you help me get this package? And then Michelle took offense at that. People can take offense because other people let them do it. And they take that seriously. It won't stop until somebody says race means nothing, nothing to me. I don't care what color you are. I don't give advantages. I don't give it disadvantages. I don't have... It's just oblivious. It's incidental to my view of you. But when two of you get to that point, and when you saw Al Sharpton host all of these pathetic Democratic grandees traipsing to his convention and begging him for some type of endorsement or something, and then he announces spits on their face and says he's not even going to celebrate the 250th anniversary. It's their holiday. And that is an exact result that he got away with tax fraud, back taxes. They gave him a pardon during the Obama administration. And he defiled and tried to ruin the career of a New York man. Remember the prosecutor? Yeah, Steve. Yeah, up in Alderney. Yeah, he tried to destroy his reputation. He got away with that. And he's got away with everything his entire life. He's never had to account for any of the wild charges he made that damage he did to other people. So, why would you expect him to not feel as if he could say or do anything you wanted? Well, this is the... When you wake up in the morning, you see yourself, the first thing you think is, not what I'm having for breakfast, but I'm a victim. This is what I think flows. The only time I ever got in trouble in, I guess, 50 years of academic life was I was teaching humanities of the ancient world. And I had a young woman very bright. But every time we discussed the Odyssey or Hesiod or Herodotus, she would say, as a Chicana, this does not relate to me as a Chicana. And I said, finally to her, you have mentioned the word Chicana 17 times. I counted them. And she was always sitting in the front row and lecturing everybody. I said, what is it matter? You're a reader, you're a person, you're a human being. You're trying to discover what Homer's trying to tell the ages about human nature. Homer doesn't say, you know, that the Trojans are only this way or the Greek. He's trying to talk about a human propensity. And we can't explore that if you say it doesn't involve you. And she goes, well, you're not a Chicana. Well, I said, I'm a white male. Would you like to hear it? And she said, yeah, I would. So I said, okay, from now on for the rest. So I said, as a white male scholar, I can't relate to Homer because he was probably Greek. I'm Scandinavian. And I just can't relate to that. But as a white male, I can relate to him more than I could to a black author or a female author. So we're not going to read Saffo. We were reading, we're not going to read her today. I can't relate to her. She's a woman. And as a white male, as you should have seen her face, she got so angry. And then she started tearing up. And the next thing I do, one of the nicest people my entire life I've met in academia was Luis Costa. He's a wonderful guy. He was our Dean. He calls me up. Victor, Victor, Victor. What did you say in class? I have a very angry woman that said you said, as a white male. And I said, she said Chicana every single day and finally she said it 17 times. She's very bright. She needs the units. I think I have no bias in migrating. I will give her an A if she earns it. But I don't want her to tell everybody every single day that her race and her gender are all that matters. And he says, well, you know that and I don't. So why are you stating the obvious? Because I said it wasn't obvious to her. And he said, what kind of punishment should I inflict on you, Victor? And then he said, we're going to have to have coffee and discuss this. So then we go to coffee. And he says, Oh, by the way, and then we did not discuss it. But you dodged a little bit of there. So yeah, I did. He was a good guy. He died of a brain tumor tragically, but he was one of our best deans I ever encountered. Well, we are going to move on, my friend, because we have to get your take on Donald Trump's forthcoming tete-a-tete with Chairman G. And then what else? Oh, Clarence Thomas' body slam of progressivism. And we'll get to all that, Victor, when we come back from these important messages. 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 Sitdown. 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, we're there too. And drop me a follow on X at Bradley Devlin to stay updated with what's happening on The Signal Sitdown. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. Victor also does Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, also for the Daily Signal four days a week. Victor's website, The Blade of Perseus is victorhansen.com. It's $65 a year to subscribe or 650 a month. When you subscribe, you can read the exclusive articles too every week that Victor writes for the site. And he does a an exclusive video also plus his tons, tons, tons of free stuff there. So check that out, please. And if you're on X, Victor's handle is at VD Hansen and Facebook VDH's Morning Cup. And there's the great friendly group Victor Davis Hansen fan club also on Facebook. Okay. So Victor, yeah, Donald Trump, Chairman G, meeting in mid May. Is America coming to this meeting? Is Donald Trump coming to this meeting from a position of strength? And is it, if he is, is it stronger today than it was say a month or so ago? What's your take on what's coming up? Yeah, I think it is. Donald Trump said, she's going to hug me. I don't know if that's true. But a couple of things. China is always as a predator looking at Taiwan. It's 110 miles across the straight south China. She's straight, separating the island from the mainland. And what he looked at in Ukraine, this drone war, and now the US Air Force drones, marine drones, we're clearing mines with marine drones. There's technologies that when a missile is launched within two to three minutes, you know, where it was launched for retaliatory strike. My point is, the idea that you're going to send three or four or 500,000 Chinese amphibious troops across that China sea and not be met with these, this new emphasis the United States is doing that more is better. And just a whole fout, tens of thousands of drones in the air and marine drones on the surface and under the water, in addition to conventional air power and satellite all the, I think that'll, that has made a big impression on him, the use of American power in such a derratic way. And then the other thing is China thought its belt and road initiative was winning over the Western hemisphere and Venezuela was its, its test case. It was basically running along with some help with Russia, a little bit of from around the Maduro government. They were getting sanctioned oil cheap and they were getting sanctioned and there that blew up and the Panama Canal effort by China to take a gradually and then suddenly that blew up and then the Iranian thing blew up and for the Russians, the Syria thing blew up. So there really isn't any rogue nation now in the Middle East or the West outside rogue nation that has any influence because Donald Trump blew them up. He's about ready to blow Cuba up in the sense of its foreign entanglements. So that's one thing. The other is China wanted the, wants the straight open and it has contempt. I think everybody should realize that about Iran. Russia and China don't like Iran. Nobody likes Iran. China is terrified of radical Islam. It's got a million wagers that are collect, indentured serfs. It doesn't care. It's callous and Russia, when you had the Chechen and third Chechen war, it went in and just leveled, grasning, just slaughtered everybody. That's how they treat Muslim people. So the idea that this is a radical Islamic country is only valuable for China and Russia for two things. One, it is a nexus to put pressure on the United States and drive it out of the Middle East and then control that straight and the oil and as a collateral benefit to hurt Israel or destroy Israel. That's it. And then two, to use Iran as a useful idiot so they can use it as a proxy to commit terror or to do any other things it orders it to do in exchange for sophisticated weapons and it will buy it's sanctioned oil on the sly for about 70% of the actual cost. But if it's endangered, it's like when Assad was falling apart, where's the 50 year Russian relationship? They just let him go. And then basically when Maduro was going, they just let him go. And when Iran is now near Armageddon, they're going to let him go so that when he gets over to China, they're not going to say to him, get your hands off Iran. They're going to say, can't you cut a deal with us that we can buy some Iranian oil? We'll pay the full price on the high seas or can you make it up to us with your oil or can't we work this out? We don't like them any more than you do. They were just useful idiots. And that's, I mean, they don't want a representative westernized government there. So that's what they're going to say to them. One of the weirdest things though in this whole in Broglie was Stormer, the British prime minister, as soon as the United States that blockaded Iran and opened the Gulf, he gets up and basically says, we've got 30 European nations are now going to open, open and keep open the straight under French and British leadership. I was asked to comment on Sean the other night, I said, this is shameless. It's funny, but it's shameless. They had the U HMS dragon and it took 20 days, Jack, once they ordered it to go to Aquitiri Cyprus and protect its interests that had been targeted by the Iranians, the base there, it took them 20 days. If they had the Falcons again, I got a little flack, by the way, Jack, I said something on Sean that I think was accurate, but it was insensitive. I got something from the Times People wants me to elaborate, which I did for the Sunday. I don't know if it came out today or not, but I said, A, that they could not go to the Falcons again. They don't have the werewithal to go all the way over the Atlantic Sea with a reputable fleet. If somebody contested it with a modicum, they can't muster a thousand men right now. No, they can't. They have more animals than they do ships. Number one, number two, I said, if they said Donald Trump or any American president, as Margaret Thatcher did, can we have logistical intelligence, resupply help, fuel help, which without it, they wouldn't have been able to go. They wouldn't say yes. They would say, they would just quote Stormer. This is not our war. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Prime Minister Stormer. This is not your war. The third thing I said is most controversial. I think it's correct. I don't want to be bombastic or exaggerate, but given the status of free speech in Britain, where they're arresting people for almost as bad as Germany and given the exemptions they're giving for the groomer Pakistani rate community and given their radical green ideology that's hamstrung the economy and given their socialism, they said it's something the other day, a statistic that most of their annual revenues will go to, that come from income tax will go to entitlements. To social programs. Yes. You add all that. I would say that Millie's Argentina, and I put this to two AI engines, I said to Grock, I think, and it was either chat, chat PT or the Google one, I said, is free speech more protected in Argentina than in Britain? And they both said Argentina. And then I said, is the economy more open or more government controlled in Argentina or Britain? And they came up with Argentina. So we would probably say if Millie's already said he's not interested in the Falcon, but if he went over there, Jack, they would probably say, I think Trump would say something like, well, maybe Argentina want to liberate the Falkland so they could have an open society and a market-based economy. There's no question he'd say that. I don't want to get into the Pope again, but you saw the comment the other day about Iran killing people, and Trump says, why don't you go talk to the Pope? And so he would say something like you're saying. I think the Pope is a good man. He's a leftist. He's a hard leftist. He's a political cardinal. We all know that. They know that. That was one of the reasons that Trump was onto something when he said they appointed him because of him, but I don't know if he meant it in the correct way. They may have wanted an American Pope so that they could understand Trump and to navigate around him or something. But all of that said, as we said earlier, Jack, it's on wise for the U.S. president to get into politics and to get an argument with the Pope. And it's on wise for the Pope to comment on U.S. political policy and immigration. It was Trump's very snappy answer that he gave on the Iranian question that I was. It's not a good idea for either one of them. There may be, actually, though, there may be more combat-worthy Swiss guards than there are British soldiers right now. We never know. All right, Victor, hey, while everyone's focused on the conflict in the Middle East, something else is happening here at home. And if you connect the dots, it's not good. Last month, the U.S. posted some of the worst job numbers we've seen in years, nearly 10,000, excuse me, 100,000 jobs lost. And at the same time, consumer debt delinquencies are climbing to multi-year highs, meaning more Americans are falling behind credit cards, car loans, even mortgages. Now, layer on top of that gas pushing past $4 a gallon, diesel nearing a $5.50 a gallon, and economists are warning another wave of inflation could be on the way. So ask yourself, what happens if all of this collides at once? Because you can't control the economy, but you can control how prepared you are for it. That's why we trust my Patriot supply right now at PrepareWithVDH.com. When you get a three-month emergency food supply, they'll include a free, mega-protein upgrade, an incredible $200 value. It's a simple test you could take right now before these warning signs turn into something more. Go to PrepareWithVDH.com and get prepared today. That's PrepareWithVDH.com. And we thank the good people from my Patriot supply for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor Clarence Thomas. I'll tell you a story about him someday. He's a fellow Holy Cross graduate, just like me and I remember that. Anthony Fauci. He gave a talk at the University of Texas in Austin. It was on the Declaration of Independence, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, published selection excerpts of his remarks. And he really went after progressivism as an enemy of the Declaration and the Constitution. And he took Woodrow Wilson to the woodshed. So I know you've seen his remarks, Victor. Anything you'd like to say about them or about Clarence Thomas? Well, he's probably... And I blame Joe Biden for that, but he was pilloried and misrepresented and demagogued when his confirmation came up with all of that crazy stuff. And then one of the subtexts the left used was he, after telling us that affirmative action was essential to the survival of the Republic, then they used that against him and said, oh, he's just an affirmative act. He's a very, very bright, learned man. He always was. And he's probably the most consistently conservative, principled person on the court, along with Alito. Not that I don't... I have nothing... I mean, the other ones that are conservative are fine, but I'm just saying he's a... he's singular, so is Alito. And what he was trying to say, and he did it very well, I don't want to say try, he explained it was the whole racial obsessions and fixations are contrary to all men are born. And for so long in our history, people like Frederick Douglass, who had been saying to presidents, Lincoln included, honor, we didn't write this, your founders wrote this, just honor your own white founders and treat people equally. We're equal. And that was a very... And now we've come full circles that the formerly oppressed 10 generations later are saying, don't treat us equally, some of them, the elite. And so he was... And the other thing is, from what I got out of it, the entire thrust of the US Constitution is based as the founders had said, it would be easy for a constitutional republic or a democracy if we were saints, angels, and not monsters. So it's all based on the simple premise that the human nature being what it is, it plays to the ego, it plays to narcissism, it plays to power accumulation, it plays to oppression. So how can we get a document that will resist time, it won't be changed by particular temporary flights of fantasy or fads, or with the centuries that will reassess the way governments work in the world up to now, and we'll have a legislative, a judicial and executive branch that balance each other and prevent autocracy. And we're going to have a bill of rights that will be internal, and they will protect individual liberty, and we will have a federalist system that returns power to the states, so that if there is popular unrest or dissatisfaction, you can go to another state with a different premise, things like that. So it was really a talk about the progressives believe that they can, if they get enough money and power, they can change the nature of man, and therefore the constitution will be irrelevant because they have a new voter, a new official, a new everything. And that's why James Carville, just what Thomas was warning us about was somebody like James Carville who just said the other day, hey, don't tell, I think he was channeling Spanburger in Virginia, he just said, don't don't tell him what we're going to do, just keep quiet, and then get in there and make DC and Puerto Rico states and get four senators, and get rid of the 67 year 50 state union, and get in there and get rid of the 167 year nine justice court, and get in there and get rid of the 220 year filibuster. And he went on and just destroy all these traditions because we're going to need power and we're not going to play by their rules anymore, and human nature, they don't imply any way, they're from an old system that's outdated. And so that's what he was trying to say, the internal applicability and relevance of these foundational documents, because they're based on very learned people who understood humans, and that humans, their technology changes, their appearance can change, their health can change, their longevity can change, but they're still humans, and therefore they're predictable. And the constitution assumes that, but progressivism doesn't. It says whatever the new fad of the age, whether it's phrenology or masters in Johnson or transgender, we can change the constitution to fit us our superior age. That's what he was saying, it was a really good talk, it was very good reminder. He has a certain way as voice, I don't know what it is about him, but I guess it's his voice and manner, he really resonates seriousness, you know what I mean, and respect. I like him a lot. He's aces. I love the Michael Pack documentary that came out a few years ago. And there's one point he said, you know, had a clip from the hearings and Biden, who was chairing the judiciary committee, was going on with some convoluted jurisprudential point, and then it cuts to Clarence Thomas commenting on it. He says, I don't know what he was talking about. So he was just so funny. Anyway, God bless him. Victor, let's wrap this up with a quick take. I'm going to ask you to talk about Gavin Newsom, so I don't know how quick it's going to be. But Victor, I think you talked about, you have this book coming out, Counter Revolution, what you need is a pack. I do. And your pack then could spend like Gavin Newsom's pack. I have a good idea. Yeah, what is it? Go ahead. Well, we have subscribers to the Blade of Perseus, our website, and they pay $6.50 a month. So I guess I could go out and buy a bunch of books and jack up the membership or something, and then give them a free complimentary copy so I could ensure that I would be at least for one or two weeks on the New York bestseller, because they calibrate how much books you sold in a week. And then I could save the rest of my life New Bestseller. And then I would get more sales. I would be a complete fraud. If I did that, I would never think of it. But then I'm not governor of California. Too bad. It's so funny to watch this guy because he's like a, he's like he walks through a minefield and he steps on every, it's like there's a minefield and I want to blow myself up every week. So hey, this would be a good idea. Why don't I buy a bunch of copies and then we can juice the New York Times rating. Hey, I got an idea. I'll speak to black people and say, I'm just as dumb as they are on the test. Hey, I'm going to go over and tell the people at the security conference in Munich that they get on their knee pads and commit a sex act on Trump. Hey, I'm going to have my idiotic wife get up and try to tell everybody about, you know, and make everybody turned off. Hey, the state is in complete free fall. It's entirely broke. We have the high, it's good. Gas is now six to eight to $10 a gallon. There is no water. They let it, we're finding out Ed Ringler, a great column again, one of his many great columns about letting the water go out, not dredging the canals as had been done. Hey, we, the Palisades neighborhood is still flattened. We don't, we're not going to give them permits because we want to reintroduce high, you know, kind of a European high density mass portable housing. Yeah. Yeah. Nightmare. Hey, half of all Californians burst are on Medi-Cal, but we're going to pay for sex transit. Hey, we're facing a $250 billion fraud. Hey, we have the most dangerous highways in the country that are decrepit. Hey, the high speed rail $20 billion boondaggle is, has no apparent funding to continue. Hey, he could have not, he could have talked, we have half the homeless people. He could have talked about any of these, he never talks about them. He just sits there and he shoots a breeze. I guess his little conservative podcasts imploded member Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon and stuff. That's no longer there. But I don't know what he's trying to do, except I mean, all I can say about him is that the most anemic feeble Democratic nominee in the, since George McGovern was Camilla Harris, and Camilla Harris now is handily ahead in the polls in the Democratic primaries. That's a commentary on Gavin Newsom. And then he wrote a memoir, this memoir, its entire emphasis is to create a complete false narrative that he grew up with a Appalachian like poverty, like JD Vance. And he was, he was neglected and he had to scrounge around and live on Wonder Bread and macaroni. Why he was pretty, why he was the adopted proxy of one of the wealthiest families in America, the Getty conglomerate, which subsidized him throughout his business and political career. And he wants us to believe all this. And it's a complete lie. And, you know, people had their criticisms of Gray Davis and Jerry Brown, but they have never, the Democrats, they look like George Washington compared to him. Yeah. That's what gets me about Carvel before. Carvel starts in politics about Bob Casey or Harris Wofford, you know, who was a senator and, and, and settling for what now these, these lunatics, but they're all about the party. That's it. The party matters. That's the same thing with the reader, erotitas and the, the Lydian episode called, no man happy until he dies. He had a career reputation as a bar fighting, loudmouth, profane activist who would say anything to anywhere, anywhere, kind of like Trump. But he did understand like Rahm Emanuel and the Clinton advisors, where the soft spot was in American politics. It was the middle class. And they could push their left wing agenda through the middle class if they worried about the middle class viability. And they had to get politicians who knew that. And now he's thrown that all the way because he's taken that paradigm and nobody fits it. And he wants to say that they do. And so he ends up supporting people that are contrary to everything he's told us. Well, I spent 40 years just, policies destroying the middle class. So far fewer of them to, to, uh, the one result of all this scheme, scheme against new some and the whoever was running the Biden effigy and, uh, Camilla Harris, all these crazy spam burger and all these crazy mayors and they make Bill Clinton look like socrates. They do. I mean, he was a scoundrel, but he was a smart scoundrel and he did understand American politics far better than any of them. And when he, you know, he raised taxes and he was only successful because of Newt Gennrich and balancing the budget, but he balanced the budget. And he, you know, he looks like a right, he looks like Barry Goldwater compared to Montgomery and those people. Well, if there was a statue of the, of him, they'd feel obligated to tear it down, I guess, because of the welfare reform or whatever, you know, that he was relatively, relatively, uh, horticoric and I'm going to write a column today called the, all the dream houses of the left. One of the dream houses just to finish is now they're going to try to impeach Pete Hegceth. And I thought, what were his sins? Well, he inherited a military that was 45,000 short on enlistment and he exceeded that within recruitment goals within a year. Well, he got rid of racial preferences, sexual orientation, gender preferences and re-emphasize the quality of opportunity, meritocracy and battlefield efficacy. And that was very, and that's, well, he oversaw the summer, the mechanics of the summer bombing that was so successful, 25 hours to take out the nuclear facilities. He oversaw the Maduro extraction. Nobody killed in the first one. Nobody killed. And then he oversaw waging a 60 day war with 13 tragic losses, but 13 in a theater wide war. So everything he's done has been working very well and they want to impeach him for recklessness, disclosing class. I died when I saw classified documents because of that signal chat. I thought Bill Clinton, Joe Biden had them for 30 years in four places and then his ghostwriter had access to them and then destroyed the tapes under subpoena, which is a felony and they never did a thing. I'm very fond of Pete, by the way. Again, this is a cruise thing, but he came on one of our cruises as a speaker. And on a few of these, and our cruises, we would have three mornings, we call Burke to Buckley. And it was people who wanted to get up at seven o'clock and for an hour and a half talk about Tocqueville and Burke and Buckley, etc. Real deep dive into stuff. And Pete was there every morning. I mean, people say you can have whatever impression you want about him, but he is no dope and he is a big mind and it's a strong thinker. No, he never talks about, he never talks about his Ivy League education, except that he burned his diploma, I think. His diploma, yeah. So he's not a name groper. He's the first to admit he had difficulty in his marriages and with alcohol, but he's now a devout Christian. And they're mad at about that. More so, if you're a leftist and you want to criticize Pete Hexeth, you're much more likely to criticize that he's a devout Christian than he was prone to alcoholic ballots, alcohol ballots. But they say they're going to impeach him. That's a joke. Should give him a medal. I love him. All right, Victor, we've got to wrap this up today. I have several comments to read. Most of them practically all I'm shorting. Here we go. Ready? Hold on. Yes. This is from Virginia, Gaskon, 6089. Ever since the Tucker Kelly fiasco, I tuned out everyone, but for TUSI, Tauci TV, I never, T-O-U-S-I, never heard of it, but you learn something new every day here. It has live streams from the Mideast. It has live streams from the Mideast and the calm voice of Hanson. Hanson seems more interested to impart his ideas without inflaming passion or outrage. This is funny. He isn't sexy, but he's thoughtful. Okay. I'm not sexy. Joe Trenchfoot writes, please don't crap on flea markets. Sorry to say crap. Well, LOL, I love them and regularly enjoy hunting for treasure amongst the trash. Mark Stewart, I think our flea market that Sammy reference is a little different. Yes, you could buy anything and everything there. Mark Stewart, 7527. I greatly respect Victor Davis Hanson. He excuses himself when he uses the word crap. Excuse me. He is a real gentleman. Deborah Levine, 2869. I don't know how anyone could not love and respect Victor. Drum Alta Berriam, 5 says this Hanson guy is a genius, very sharp, very straightforward, a pleasure to hear him. Two more, Victor, just two more. Robert Graham, 5619. Again, brought to tears listening to VDH, tears of gratitude for a man whose mind is sharper than most I know. It is a great joy to see him wrap the wisdom of knowing history so intimately around present day events. This makes me sure of my gut reactions to present day events. Unfortunately, for me, I am unable to help so many by recalling such pertinent facts so readily at hand for VDH. VDH's dialogue clearly makes me stronger in character. Thank you, Victor. You're greatly appreciated. That's really wonderful. And last one. I didn't even have a set recess, silver, steel, eight, nine, three, my apologies for mispronouncing. Often when I'm thinking of how to approach something, I ask myself, what would VDH think or recommend? I'm Gen Z, born I think 2001, and you are my absolute favorite political commenter, commentator, and one of the most admired thinkers I know. Thank you for your wisdom and thoughtfulness. Thank you. Everybody loves Victor. Yeah, I am not sexy, but I haven't heard that since the one that didn't sting me. What did sting me was the guy who I think I told you four years ago said I looked like Skeletor. Skeletor? Yeah, that's just yeah. And then the other the other thing about if one thing you always worry about if you're losing your mind. So when I woke up, one of the residents who was involved in the surgery said, well, you know, you had your four hour normal operation, then it was three to four hours, we had the follow up. So you were under for eight hours. And I said, does that mean I'm had brain damage? He said, no. And I said, well, and he said, well, we've taken out a good part of your right lung. And I said, does that mean I won't get enough oxygen to my brain? And he was curious. I kept asking him because the biggest scare I had wasn't even dying or coming back, but being on a podcast and not remembering anything, you know, because of too much anesthesia or no oxygen to the brain for critical seconds when I was under or something. An elephant is jealous of your memory, Victor. So but your your lungs were already had a had they not accommodated to the that's what the pomologist said that apparently what they call ground glass opacity or consolidation, which can be caused by non malignant factors. In my case, it was pretty clear it was that two ballots of long COVID. So this mass actually, I didn't know it, but it appeared he he was a very the pulmon just a very good guy. And he said, go back and look at go on these websites of hospitals and anywhere you had a kidney stone or whatever you went in for an ER, see if they took and I had found one 2016 that said that the right lower lobe had been collapsed. There was a there was a ground glass opacity and most 90% of them are or and then it disappeared on another one. But my point is, apparently, at least since for the last two or three years, but maybe even earlier, I had a propensity when I got the flu or pneumonia or something that that weak spot would collapse. And then after COVID, I had two long COVID ballots in 23 and 24 for four or five months, each. And apparently, that's when it it got bad. And at some critical point, they gave me a cancer test, the new Grail DNA, which is not that accurate, I guess, and a CEA test, which is more accurate. And in August, I did not have cancer, according to those tests. But that mass was getting bigger and bigger. So I probably did have it, but it didn't show up. So sometime in the summer, I started getting fevers and coughing on our podcast around June. I was getting about 100, 101 in the afternoon, every single day, and it would go away. So I think it mutated into cancer six months, eight, nine, 10 months ago. But otherwise, and what to answer your question, yeah, he said, because I took a lot of he said, you're got pretty good, your lower light, your lower right low lobe is pretty big. It's about 30% of all your capacity. And he said, it's the most difficult to take out. And he said, you've got pretty good capacity, you've already started to make up some of it. So, well, I, my problem is, when I'm walking, or I try to do like yesterday, I try to putt around the yard, and I outdo my the lungs capacity to keep, you know, to supply oxygen. Yeah. Then the heart, it's over, I'm over AFib, but what happens is my resting heart rate's like 58. And then when I'm walking normally, he said, try to keep it between 75 and 85. So as you build up before you go, you know, jog in or do something, but it'll just go, I'll start getting burping and I'll start getting dizzy and it'll go from 85 to 110 within 10 seconds. It's not AFib, and then if I just take a deep breath, stand still, stop walking, stop. I was trying to put together an outdoor table yesterday. Just stop it within a minute or two, it'll go back, but it'll keep being volatile for about 10 or 20 minutes, especially, I have this mastocytosis problem, so especially if I eat bad foods, you know, that have histamine release. So that's, that's my problem right now is that you do things that you don't have enough oxygen capacity to do and your heart reacts by pumping faster. And it's, the guy, I have a very good cardiologist, and I went on GROC the other day and asked, and he had given the same answer that the AI gave the same answer as the cardiologist. My echocardiogram was normal, my EKG was normal, my two week monitor was normal. They just said, this is at week 14, it's very common as you start to do more activity that the heart at certain periods can't supply enough blood that's needed because of the oxygen. Is that week 14 because of the removal of the lung or week 14 because of all the transfusions? I think, I think, or both maybe. I was told, given the size of the mast, it was very big, it was not all cancers, but the mast itself was big. They just said, normally a lebectomy, if it's a smaller tumor and everything goes right, which most of them do, you'll be driving in two months and three months should be mostly, and then when this happened, and they said, we had to take you right back in 25 minutes later, you ended up almost three liters of blood, five transfusions, one platelet transfusion, and you're very anemic, you've had GipGOT AFib, it's going to take you double the week. I'm at 14 weeks, three and a half months, and if I hadn't have had that misadventure, I think I would have been on the way. It's kind of like an IED, this cancer is very recurrent, and it's not treatable by immunotherapy or chemo, so I don't know why. If I'm speaking to you right now, I have it or not, but I'll find out next week, I take a blood biopsy test again. We're keeping up our prayers. Victor, you've been terrific. I want to ask a thank people who sign up for civil thoughts, that's what I do for the Center for Civil Society, comes out every Friday, 14 recommended readings, go to civilthoughts.com, sign up, you're going to like it, we're not selling your name, and it's just great stuff that I've come across. Blade of Perseus, that's Victor's website, the VictorHanson.com, thank you, good folks at the Daily Signal, and we will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Thank you everybody for listening and watching. 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 VictorHanson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.