Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words

Victor Davis Hanson: Iran War Update, Dem ‘Fascism’ Claims, and California’s Newsom & the Nick Shirley Act

79 min
Apr 24, 20264 days ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Victor Davis Hanson discusses the Iran War strategy, criticizing Democratic opposition as propaganda that emboldens the regime, analyzes accusations of fascism against Trump as baseless given his actual governance record, and examines California's political dysfunction under Newsom including the failed high-speed rail project and the proposed Nick Shirley Act targeting investigative journalists.

Insights
  • Iran's survival strategy relies on delay tactics and propaganda influence on American left rather than military capability, as the regime loses $400M daily and faces economic collapse
  • Democratic accusations of Trump fascism lack definitional substance—Trump hasn't canceled elections, weaponized government against rivals, or raided opponents' homes like Biden administration did
  • California's Democratic supermajority has created unsustainable policy failures (homelessness, wildfires, energy costs, rail projects) that no single governor can fix without party accountability
  • Mainstream media's failure to investigate welfare fraud and urban decay has been replaced by freelance journalists using minimal resources, exposing the institutional media's political bias
  • Political authenticity matters—candidates like Newsom and Booker fail because they lack genuine identity and resort to performative gestures rather than substantive policy solutions
Trends
Decline of institutional media credibility as freelance journalists outperform major outlets on investigative reportingDemocratic party shift toward Islamist sympathies evidenced by anti-Israel rhetoric and Hamas support among elected officialsState-level policy failures creating migration patterns as wealthy individuals and businesses leave high-tax, high-regulation statesPerformative political theater replacing substantive governance in Democratic leadershipChinese strategic investment in Iran as geopolitical tool facing collapse due to regime's economic deteriorationAmerican left's rhetorical escalation (fascism accusations, war crimes claims) disconnected from actual policy outcomesGenerational divide in Democratic party between establishment figures and younger progressive/Islamist-aligned membersFailure of high-speed rail and green infrastructure projects due to regulatory complexity and union labor costsIntelligence community politicization continuing to undermine institutional credibilityMedia blackout of Democratic candidate scandals while amplifying Republican controversies
Companies
Wall Street Journal
Criticized for failing to investigate California welfare fraud compared to freelance journalists
New York Times
Mentioned as major institutional media outlet with large budget but limited investigative impact on welfare issues
Washington Post
Referenced as major news conglomerate with significant resources but institutional bias in coverage
Los Angeles Times
Included in criticism of major media outlets failing to investigate California policy failures
ABC
Major broadcast network mentioned as part of institutional media conglomerate
CBS
Major broadcast network mentioned as part of institutional media conglomerate
NBC
Major broadcast network mentioned as part of institutional media conglomerate
NPR
Public radio network mentioned as part of institutional media conglomerate
PBS
Public broadcasting network mentioned as part of institutional media conglomerate
MSNBC
Cable news network referenced for Democratic propaganda and biased coverage of Iran War
The Daily Signal
Victor Davis Hanson's affiliated media platform for publishing analysis and commentary
Hoover Institution
Think tank where Victor Davis Hanson holds position as Senior Fellow in Military History
Hillsdale College
Educational institution where Victor Davis Hanson is Distinguished Fellow in History
People
Victor Davis Hanson
Host and primary commentator analyzing Iran War, Democratic politics, and California governance
Donald Trump
Central figure in discussion of Iran War strategy, fascism accusations, and governance record
Gavin Newsom
Extensively criticized for absent governance, high-speed rail failure, and lack of political authenticity
Cory Booker
Criticized for performative Baptist preacher style and lack of authentic identity in political messaging
Chris Murphy
Accused of spreading Iranian propaganda and undermining Iran War strategy through false statements
Tim Walz
Criticized for attending socialist conference, calling Iran War fascistic, and military record misrepresentations
Ilhan Omar
Discussed for filing false financial disclosures regarding net worth on federal forms
John Fetterman
Noted as only Democratic senator with semblance to Bill Clinton's party, likely to lose primary
Kamala Harris
Referenced as target of potential Trump administration legal action and Democratic leadership
Joe Biden
Criticized for Iran policy reversals, sanctions lifting, and empowering Iranian regime
Barack Obama
Referenced for Iran nuclear deal and lifting sanctions that funded Iranian military expansion
Thomas Friedman
Criticized for opposing Iran War success to avoid strengthening Trump politically
John Brennan
Accused of trafficking in Russia collusion hoax and lying under oath about Senate surveillance
James Comey
Referenced for claiming 245 times he didn't remember during congressional testimony
Anthony Blinken
Accused of coordinating false Hunter Biden laptop disinformation letter before 2020 election
Adam Schiff
Criticized for orchestrating first impeachment based on hearsay and colluding with whistleblower
Jane Fonda
Criticized for returning to anti-American activism and Pro-Hamas protest participation
Tucker Carlson
Discussed for apologizing for supporting Trump and moving toward irrelevance like other Never Trumpers
Elon Musk
Credited with helping Trump's 2024 election through Pennsylvania voter registration efforts
Charlie Kirk
Credited with mobilizing youth voters in swing states for Trump's 2024 election victory
Quotes
"Don't confuse a ramp in the war and having very few resources with its survival. Because you can survive for a limited time with almost nothing."
Victor Davis HansonEarly in episode
"They don't define their terms because if you look at what they did during the Trump years... Did he cancel an election? No. Did he try to gerrymander? Well, not as well as the Democrats were doing."
Victor Davis HansonMid-episode
"This Democratic party, it's not the Democratic party at all. It's something different, something weird. It's almost becoming an Islamist party because of the intense anti-Semitism."
Victor Davis HansonMid-episode
"If you're Donald Trump and you're in the Oval Office, this is what's happening. Someone comes in and says, I'm up for reelection. And we were a red state plus 10, but my polls show me even."
Victor Davis HansonMid-episode
"The irony was, the more they tried to destroy him, the stronger he got. Because more people said, this is outrageous, what they're doing."
Victor Davis HansonLate episode
Full Transcript
Don't confuse a ramp in the war and having very few resources with its survival. Because you can survive for a limited time with almost nothing. I do think there's porous areas are being resupplied, not necessarily by air because we control the air spaces. For now they were being supplied by sea, but they have a rail link to China and they can be supplied across the Caspian Sea. I don't know if we're going to blow that up or not. We should if we decide to renew hostilities. I know that we have these the critics against the war, but I was watching Cory Booker the other night and he was giving a speech. Spartacus? Yes, Spartacus. I am Spartacus. I am Spartacus! There will be a regime change, not now. Just like the fall of the Berlin Wall. Once you destroy the edifice of communism in that case, then the Soviet Union fell within two years and Eastern Europe was free within six months. That will happen. So his view is that this is a existential moment because it's going to change the entire Middle East. It already has. Hello and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. This is our Friday news roundup and we've, as always, got lots on the agenda. The Iran War will be first, but we'll be also looking at Donald Trump's critics and then California, what happened to Newsom and the Nick Shirley Act. Very strange thing, but we'll get to that in the show. Stay with us and we'll be right back from these messages. Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children, the faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive. As long as we keep first things first, we've only just begun. America, the beautiful. Welcome back. So Victor is the Martin and Nellie Andersen Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, victorhansen.com. Please come join us there. It is called the Blade of Perseus. So Victor, the Iran War, just a few things update from this week. There, Donald Trump has extended negotiations, grace to the Pakistani negotiators who asked for it. And the U.S. military has stopped a ship in the Gulf and it had Chinese ballistics and missiles on board. So they're trying to rearm themselves as these negotiations were extended. And then finally, the women that the IRGC has that were to be executed, they've stayed the executions and in fact, they said they were going to free four of them and four of them would have a month term for their transgressions against the regime, which I don't really know what they are, but I think it was because they were protesters. So we'll take that. Protesters. Well, as I said in an earlier video, don't confuse a ramp who's in the war and having very few resources with its survival because you can survive for a limited time with almost nothing. And they're losing 400 million reportedly a day. I do think there's porous areas are being resupplied, not necessarily by air because we control the air spaces. And until now, not by sea, excuse me, before now, they were being supplied by sea, but they have a rail link to China and they can be supplied across the Caspian Sea. I don't know if we're going to blow that up or not. We should if we decide to renew hostilities. But basically their strategy is delay, delay, delay, delay. Now we're into month two. It was nine, it was eight months before the midterms. Now it's six. The left is getting emboldened. They can't really stop Trump. The, so the War Powers Act, they look like hypocrites because they gave Obama a seven month blank check without even enacting it during the Libyan bombing, Serbian bombing, etc. Clinton. So they're hoping that by rooting for Iran and the manner of Tom Friedman who said basically that Chris Murphy went over to Europe with Tim Walts to Spain, socialist conference. Waltz called the effort fascistic, why Americans are fighting. Murphy had tweeted Iranian propaganda that their 12 ships go through. He was then other words promulgating and spreading lives for the regime. And then he said it was awesome. So he's on their side. He can deny it, but he is. So that's what emboldens Iran. So their strategy is delay, negotiate, delay, would go two steps forward, one back, and we can draw this out. And then the American level bails out. It's not going to happen because I think they would go broke first. The stock markets have adjusted to this new reality. Venezuela is putting more oil on the market. Russia sees opportunity. So it's putting more on oil on the Gulf States are now free to export under American protection. The Saudis are already maxed out on the Red Sea. So the world is adjusting. It'd be nice for it to be over so Trump would have five months or five and a half months to concentrate on the economy, get the message out, raise money, et cetera. But as of right now, their only card is to negotiate. If they start to try to break the blockade or send missiles into the Gulf or Israel, they're going to lose all of their transportation system, a lot of their power generation. And they're going to start targeting the Republican Guard leaders. As far as the Chinese, this was China's pet project. They had invested billions of dollars in it. They were in charge of building their infrastructure. They're in charge of their air defenses, their missiles. They use North Korea as a surrogate to arm them with rockets and drones themselves. They help create the Iranian drone system. All the chemical and electronic components necessary for their drones and missiles, as we saw with this detain ship come from China. Russia's kicked out. They lost the Assad regime in Syria. They have no contact. They can't really maintain their old relationship with the regime. But China's in a bad shape. But it's afraid that what's going to happen in Iran happened in Venezuela. In other words, there might be, if Donald Trump persists, and I think he will, that if he forces them into bankruptcy, or if they lash out and he inflicts a lot of more damage on their economic system, then there's going to be some type of change in the government in the next year. And whatever it will be will not be friendly to China, given they had supported this regime. As far as the girls, young women that were destined to be hanged, the resistance took pictures of them, and they didn't come across in burkas. They were western, they were beautiful young women, stunningly beautiful. They had western clothes on, and they appealed to all over the world. And so the regime thought, we're in a propaganda campaign. And if we execute these people, there might be more than just John Federman that's against us. It'll put so much pressure on the American left to be supporting a regime de facto that's killing young women and hanging them. Up to now, they didn't care. 35,000, 45,000 that were killed, the lefts, things happen. And we illegally attacked a regime. You know, that's what they say. They never say that we tried to remove a regime, they just murdered 45,000 people. And then they say it's fascist, but the 45,000 people were out in the street trying to get democracy, and we were trying to help them. So it's a very bizarro world that the Democrats live in. It's an alternate reality on almost every issue. I had just along that line, I had a question. You know, you listen to the news accounts of the U.S. military maintaining control of the Persian Gulf. And, you know, so I say, for example, they've stopped ships and a cargo ship with a bunch of Chinese missiles, et cetera. And then you hear the left saying, oh, they're committing war crimes by controlling this Gulf. But in the undercurrent of all of that news coverage is that that's what the Iranians were doing, even worse, even more so when they were in for years and years. And they weren't just stopping something to stop military arms. They were hijacking and stealing. They took British prisoners. They took the hostages. Whenever they had a Democratic president, Obama or Biden, they were emboldened. It's really disgusting to hear this Ro Khanna, this Democratic congressman saying that Obama was a great statesman and they didn't do the under Obama. They lifted sanctions, and that was where the first initial cash infusions came in. So they got all of this money. They were so embarrassed of what they were doing. They had to ship $400 million at night in frozen assets. They unfroze their assets. And then the Iran deal did not stop them from getting a bomb and just delayed the trajectory. So Trump came in in 2017 and stopped it. Well, they didn't even try to cheat because they thought he was crazy after he killed Soleimani and Baghdadi and ISIS. Biden came in. The first thing he did is he removed the terrorist designation of the Houthis. He separated us from Israel. Hamas got that message. Hezbollah, he did a deal with natural gas and Lebanon, and he empowered Hezbollah. And then with the Iranians, he begged them to get back in the deal. When they didn't do it, he rewarded their negativity by lifting sanctions. And that's where that period of 21 to 24 is when they went up to 60% in Richmond. So we have this congressman there who just gets on Maria Bartoloma and he just starts lying. He's been really one of the more unfortunate spokesmen because unlike Chris Murphy or Tim Waltz who are buffoon, he always starts this moral argument. And the other thing I think everybody's getting sick of is they say, this is fascism. Trump is a fascist. It's not that fascism is coming. They don't define their terms. What do you mean by fascism? Did he cancel an election? No. Did he try to gerrymander? Well, not as well as the Democrats were doing. Did he use the government to go after his presidential rival? So is he going to have Camilla Harris or Gavin Newsom being five separate civil or criminal trials like Alden Bragg, Ladita James, Vanne Willis, Jack Smith going to do that? Eugene Carroll. Maybe he's going to try to get them off the ballot. 25 red states, are they trying to get a Democratic leading candidate off the ballot? Did he raid Camilla Harris's house? Did he raid Joe Biden's house? They hadn't done any of that. Did the Attorney General say, I'm going to put Steve Bannon, I'm going to put Peter Navarro in jail for not honoring a congressional subpoena, but I'm going to, I'm going to marry Gardner. I'm not going to honor it. I'm not going to. He hasn't done any of that. So they don't define their terms because if you look at what they did during the Trump years, and I haven't gotten in, got into the two impeachments, which we're learning now that the Michael Atkinson, the Inspector General, he hand in glove with Adam Schiff and Eric Saramella and Venman allowed that second, the first impeachment to proceed. And remember on the first impeachment, this is very important. There were 15 or 16 people in the National Security Council in that room, and they listened to that phone call with Zelensky. It had no problem whatsoever. Some of them were holdover Obama people. Only Venman did. And Venman didn't even have the courage to become a whistleblower. So he called his pal Saramella. And then based on hearsay, this is what I heard. And then Saramella was basically saying, I heard what he heard. And then he disguised his name and played the wounded fawn. So you couldn't even talk about him. And then he lied as did Venman when they went into Adam Schiff and cooked up the whole process. And then each of those three people lied and said they had never colluded. And the Inspector General knew they did, and he did nothing and allowed it to go on. And that was the second, that was the first impeachment. And that followed to the day after the Mueller collusion collapsed. As soon as that collapsed, they said, take a deep breath. Now we go into impeachment. And they ate up the entire 2018 and 19 presidential term of Donald Trump. So this idea that Trump is a fascist and the war is fascistic, it's on the side of people who want to be free. But more importantly, that's a subtext. The main thing is these people have been killing us for 47 years, blowing up the embassy's barracks, shooting diplomats, trying to kill the president, trying to kill the secretary of state. They're a horrific regime. They killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. They're horrible. And they hijacked the Iranian illustrious Persian tradition. They're an aberration. And they have no popular support. Everybody hates them. The Gulf hates them. Israel hates them. The Arabs hate them. The Europeans are too timid to express their hatred, but they are terrified of them and hate them. The Chinese don't even like them. Chinese are one of the greatest Islamic oppressors in the world. They have a million Muslims in camps, the Uyghurs. The Russians do not like Muslims. They leveled Grozny in the Third Chechen War and killed 100,000 people, Muslims. So their alliance with Iran is Iran is a useful tool, a useful idiot. They say, this is what we want you to do. We want you to sell us sanctioned oil. We'll buy it off the books. You got to give us a discount, and then we'll give you credit for our weapons. And then when we get those weapons, try to destroy Israel and any pro-Western country. Intimidate the Gulf States. That's what their strategy was. Well, Victor, let's welcome back a sponsor, Allegiance Gold, to our podcast. If you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. For wartime, we've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. And policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushes its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. 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History rewards those who take the long view. And we'd like to thank Allegiance Gold for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. So, Victor, I was wondering about this. So, as we move forward, if we think about what Donald Trump needs to do, I think that warning the Iranians that they're going to hit the bridges and the power plants, etc., just gets them out to, as you said, they don't have any concern for people. And so, they'll just bring their women and children out to protect these things. They will, but there's hundreds of bridges in Iran. So, you just say we're going to hit the bridges, and are they going to get people to come out every single day from dawn to dusk? No. You don't tell them. You just say one bridge today, one power plant. I'm not going to tell you where they are. If they start shooting at tankers, or if they send missiles at the Gulf States or Israel, or our ships, our ships most importantly. And the point is that while everybody says the war is going south, we're losing, they're going broke. And they've lost half a trillion dollars in a 50-year investment, essentially, in military, industrial, nuclear infrastructure, and investment. It's gone. They had over 12,000 targets, the Israeli-American Air Force. So, they're going broke, and the question is now, will they be able to delay, delay, delay before they give up their enrichment, and any claims that they're going to try to stop the blockade? Or will the propaganda campaign in the United States so embolden them, and be so successful that they can drag this out for months, and then get the Democrats elected to cut off funds? I don't see that happening, but that's their deranged strategy. Yes, it is deranged. And yeah, if I were Donald Trump, I would just say you can even dallying too much. Take a bridge out, take a power plant, just you. Don't let him dally. If you're Donald Trump and you're in the Oval Office, this is what's happening. Someone comes in and says, I'm up for reelection. And we were a red state plus 10, but my polls show me even. I was five ahead before this war. The Democratic propaganda is killing us. Another senator comes in, gas prices in my state are too high. When is this going to end? And the point is that he's trying to do something for the next century. If he can destroy this regime, or destroy its ability to cause havoc, there will be a regime change. Not now, just like the fall of the Berlin Wall. Once you destroy the edifice of communism in that case, then the Soviet Union fell within two years and Eastern Europe was free within six months. That will happen. So his view is that this is a existential moment, because it's going to change the entire Middle East. It already has. The Gulf States are now partners with Israel. And this is very interesting because if you look at the Democratic party and the paleo right and Europe, they are more anti-Israel than are the Gulf States right now. No question about it. And this is ironic because a lot of the people who have been hammering Trump about the war on the right have financial ties with the Middle East. And they are telling them, what are you doing trying to call off Trump? He's trying to eliminate this threat right across the Gulf from us, that for 47 years is threatened to destroy us. And for the first time, we've had American president that might just neuter them permanently. So be quiet. The whole thing is so misrepresented. And I guess it was an MS. That's what they call MSNBC now. I think it was an anger woman and she was listening to some Democratic guest come on and she finally said, so you are saying, as Jimmy Kimmel said, that you trust the Iranian government more than you do us. And you want to think, well, what do you trust that they were telling the truth about nuclear enrichment? They just admitted they could make 11 bombs. Were they telling the truth about missile range? They said only 1,800 miles. It was going to go 2,500 miles all the way to Diego Garcia, but had not been knocked down. So that's what they do is lie. But this Democratic party, it's not the Democratic party at all. It's something different, something weird. It's, I thought it was just a socialist party, but it's almost becoming an Islamist party because of the intense anti-Semitism. That candidate who's in the Democratic primary, El Sayeed, not only did he get caught on a hot mic saying that his constituencies in Michigan might not want him to quit his job to celebrate the death of Khomeini, but he is saying things now that are openly anti-American, anti-pro, Hamas, pro, and the other guy that he's aware of that was going to be on the Michigan Board of Regents, he's a pro-Hamas person, pro-Hisbalah. So they're not, the Democratic party, if you look at them, they're not even hiding it anymore. The only person in the entire party who has any semblance to Bill Clinton's party, I guess, is John Federman, and he will probably lose the Democratic primary in two more years. When it comes to his reelection. Yeah, I don't think he's going to make it because, unless the people of Pennsylvania wise up, or the Republicans vote for him in the primary and cross over, if I don't know, I'm not acquainted intimately with Pennsylvania law, but this party is, it's nihilistic. And this is what, another thing just off the top of my head. When I hear Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker apologize for supporting Trump, first of all, it's ego narcissism. When Tucker says, I worked so hard to get, I was helping him get elected, you didn't help him get elected. The people elected him. You were a part of a vast machinery in 50 states. If anybody helped him, it was Charlie Kirk getting the youth to come out in six key swing states and Elon Musk, who spent a fortune in Pennsylvania to get registration and everything. But what I don't like is they said they regret it, and yet they want us to believe they're still conservative. So you're saying, I regret Donald Trump was elected because if he hadn't been elected, the border would be open. And we'd have 10,000 more illegals a day. We'd have now 20 million. And that would be a good thing. And the crime rate would be at historical highs. We wouldn't have the National Guard or anybody going into a city like Washington. And thank God we'd still have diversity, equity, inclusion. And the trans thing would be on question. And we'd be full blast into wind and solar right now. Gas could be $10 a gallon. I'm Stephen Chiu. I like that. That would be great. Well, that's what they're supporting when they say that. So they have no, because I really like Tucker, I knew him very well. And do they understand what their trajectory is, where they're going to rendezvous with, they're going to rendezvous with the relevance of Bill Crystal and David Fromm and Charles Sykes and all those people at the board. They have no constituency other than the left from time to time, pats them on the head and says, you're a nice, useful, this idiot. And now they even think, well, I don't want to be a useful idiot. I'm not even a Republican or conservative. I want to be a hardcore leftist. So they're now all endorsing Mondami, you know. So that's where they're headed. And so I hope they can come to their senses. All Tucker had to say was, I really disagree with the Iranian war. I know a lot of you do. And I thought, I would categorize, I know a lot of you would criticize me, but I would call it a forever endless war, which he campaigned against. Now, I know it's only a few weeks long and there's no ground troops, but maybe we can still say it's an endless war. But, but, but I voted for him on the totality of his agenda. And I like the border. I like the social conservatism, the DI, the trans, the crime. I like the idea that we've regained deterrence abroad. I like the tax cuts. I like the reform on deregulation. So 80% of it is exactly what he said to do. Now, a lot of people disagree with me. They think this is not an endless war, but this is a reaction to 47 years of Iranian provocation. So I'm not going to let my disagreement impair my support for his overall war. That would be very easy to say, but I don't think it would get the traction in the media nor the clicks if he had done that because it would be sober and judicious. Yes. And what does apparently get clicks are people like Thomas Friedman who says he doesn't want the war to go well because he doesn't want it to strengthen. Has anybody heard of Thomas Friedman lately? He's a has been. Yeah, I haven't. Wasn't he the guy that went over to China and was led around on China by minders? And he said it was such a great place. They showed him a monorail and an airport and he came back and said, oh, we could just have a dictator like the Chinese. Well, that's the left for you. And then he's calling Trump the fascist. He supported fascist China. So now we hear about him all of a sudden because he basically said, well, I've always written about, he can't get rid of his record. He was at one time a critic of this fascistic Iranian regime and he knows that. So I always wanted him gone, but not gone if it empowers Trump whom I detest, Arnais Yahu. So what does that mean? What does it mean? It means the same thing as when Senator Murphy says, well, I trafficked an Iranian propaganda and this led the American people by trying to further their war aims by lying to you that they had 12 tankers get through and the American military was incompetent. And I said, awesome, but I was being sarcastic. Means nothing that they showed their true colors. And John Brennan, who has said that the war is part of the evidence that Donald Trump is unhinged given how his rhetoric has been, how did that go when he impeached that was Brennan's thing? Well, the third time, how'd that go the first two times? He wasn't convicted. It was a complete waste of time, Brennan. What you should be worried about is there are going to be people who testified in the CIA that you had intelligence reports that Donald Trump did not, did not collude, collude with the Russians. And yet when Barack Obama told you to find evidence, you ignored that and made up and trafficked in this collusion farce. Number two, you went to Congress, as I said earlier, and lied under oath, bald-faced lie and said that your CIA did not spy on Senate staffers. There were Democrats that wanted him to be impeached and removed. And he was not. Then he lied and said there were no collateral damage on drone assassinations. And by the way, he never got them. They went on for months and he killed four citizens. Obama did. Man, Brennan, nobody said he was a fascist for doing that. John Brennan, you're a fascist. You had 500 assassination missions. You never got authorizations on the War Powers Act. You killed four American citizens without due process. Nobody ever said that to him. And then when, as I said, when Anthony Blinken wanted to lie to the country and be rewarded with a Secretary of State ship under Biden, he cooked up the idea, well, this is going to hurt us in the last debate. The last thing the American people are going to hear before the 2020 election is that Hunter Biden on his laptop confessed that his dad was Mr. Big Guy and Mr. 10%. And it's all there that they were a family's crime syndicate. And he never gotten the credit for shaking down all these foreign governments and distributing the money to all the, even, you know, and then there were a lot of racist things. Oh, I don't do Asian. Remember all that stuff? So what are we going to do? Well, I want to be Secretary of State. So watch this. I'll call up Mike Burrell and we'll get former interim CIA and we'll get Brennan and Clapper to round them all up. 51 intelligence authorities and we'll word it in such a way that it's clear to the American people that Hunter's laptop was Russian and Trump is back to the old Russian collusion stuff. But we'll word it that when we know it isn't that we can't be culpable because we'll say disinformation, we won't say disinformation, we'll say information candidate. And she got away with it. So what I'm getting at is when Trump tweets stuff about the Pope that some of us disagree with, not that the Pope wasn't political himself and kind of asked for it by, as you said, meeting with Axelrod and other things he'd done, criticizing Vance and Trump when he was a cardinal. You don't want to get into politics if you're the Pope and if you're the president, you don't want to get into religion in the sense of interfering with the inner working of a church. But that all said, when Trump does stuff like that, you got to remember the context. No one, no one, no one has had his house raided for what, 100 files out of 11 to 14,000 they took, fake photographs that that floor was messed up. No one has been. That was that Mar-a-Lago. Mar-a-Lago, two impeachments, trying to get him off the ballot, five criminal, they just wouldn't stop. That's one of the things, you know, in this new book that's coming out, the counter revolution, the fall and rise of Donald Trump, I tried to go through every all of that. And I said to myself, I cannot believe this stuff when I went through it all. And that's the first part, the fall of Donald Trump. The irony was, the more they tried to destroy him, the stronger he got. Because more people said, this is outrageous, what they're doing. And whatever they're doing is, we don't even care anymore whether it's true or false. It's just horrific. And every time they did something, Donald Trump's holes recovered. And it put DeSantis in a very strange position, Nikki Haley, and what were they going to do? They're going to say, they had two choices. Well, Donald Trump asked for it. And so you're going to side with these crazy Democrats? Or you're going to say, this is outrageous what they're doing to Donald Trump. So you're going to agree with Donald Trump that he's been a victim? You see, so there was no way out for them. And it ensured, when I'm getting out, I'm not trying to judge anything. I'm just saying that ensured the nomination of Trump. And it gave him enormous amounts of leverage in the general election. Yeah. Just have one question on the things you've been saying. And not really for us or your audience, I'm sure they're very well informed about the cases that were brought against Donald Trump. But if you were a left-wing person, what you would say is the government right now is indicting people that were in the former Biden administration. Like who? And while they have John Brennan that they have. They did Comey. And they did Comey. And they couldn't get a grand jury to indict him. So no, he was never indicted. And they seem to be having trouble with John Brennan as well. They've been investigating them. Yeah. The problem they have with all of these people is, if you go anywhere near Washington or New York, which are ultra, ultra blue states, you're not going to get an indictment from a grand jury. And that was, there was no accident that the left, whether it was Alvin Bragg or Latita James or the Eugene Carroll case, or Fannie Wills down in Fulton County, Georgia, they deliberately targeted blue areas. So I think John Brennan is indicted in, I think it's either Georgia or Florida. I think Florida. And that'll be different. And the judges will be different. But they have not. The reason they went after Comey was that he went into the House Intelligence Committee, or maybe it was the Oversight Committee on 245 occasions. He said he didn't know. And I've mentioned that before. You know, once the IRS called me up and there was, it was a mistake on their part and they said, you owe us $10,000. Can we ask you some question? If I had said, no, I don't remember. I can't think of anything to say that was out of my purview. What would have happened? I would have a guy knocking on my door in a day from the Fresno IRS. So that's why they, they thought they could indict him. Yeah. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk a little bit more about these Democrats. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. It's a subsidiary of the Daily Signal. And so we invite everybody to go to the Daily Signal as well. They got lots of other articles and information there that is very pertinent. So it's a great website for news. So Victor, I was thinking just in, in the left broadly, I know that we have these, the critics against the war, but I was watching Cory Booker the other night and he was giving a speech. Spartacus? Yes. Spartacus. I am Spartacus. And he seems to be mastering that Baptist preacher style and he thinks it's going to work to bring people in to his campaign. I think you think that sort of Reverend Wright shouting and hysteria is going to work with the, a 50% of the population. That's all I'd ask to him. First of all, it turns off people. Al Sharpton turns off people, Reverend Wright. But Reverend Wright was at least effinically, like when he said, chicken's coming home to roost. Cory Booker, you know what I mean? It couldn't do it. And remember who he is? I was a visiting professor at Stanford when he was on football team and he was kind of the smart football player and he grew up, I think in a gated community with two parents that were corporate executives. So he has no experience with the inner city whatsoever. He is the type of person that the racist Joe Biden said, and he, he's articulate and he doesn't speak like a normal black person. That's what he said. And everything he's done is crazy. Like the Spartacus speech about Kavanaugh and then the 26 hour filibuster. Was that the filibuster? Yeah, I looked at it. I mean, it was impressive that he could do it without urinating. But it's like a dog, as I said earlier with an anecdote about what somebody said about knowing Greek. It's impressive like a dog that walks on two legs, but what's the point? Or, you know, I think Samuel Johnson said something to the effect he heard a woman, brilliant preacher, but it was, it was at that point in English history, it was for what point? So he's not going to go anywhere because anybody who hears him knows that he's a showboat, that he's a spoiled, Nipo kid, and he's masquerading as authentic. And he's never, he never has an initiative or a policy or he's not a serious person, you know. And so I don't, I agree. And he's like Newsom. Newsom, all these people don't have identities. That's the problem. You know, Hillary Clinton, I'm so tired. I didn't come here. And Obama remember, he was just want to tell you that black, fake, patois and then Camilla Harris is doing doing it lately. The worst is Gavin Newsom, he gets in a room with people and he says, you don't have any states, you don't have any statesman's credentials. And he probably says, I don't know anything about foreign public. Well, go over there to the Munich security and say something trashy, get some clicks. Hey, you Europeans, you've been on your knee pads with Donald Trump. Well, that didn't work. Hey, we have to have a version of Trump. He uses capital letters and the F word and he does all these crazy things on social media. You got to go hire a team to do that. Okay. And then they come back. It doesn't work. They're not Trump. It looks, you look like an idiot. And then somebody says to him, you've got to, you know, there's the big wide middle out there. You've got to kind of be a Federman for a while. Get, get an old podcast and get old Bannon on there and Charlie Kirk. And he did. And then everybody said, you fool, you're not a left wing socialist like you should be. And he dropped it. And then they said to him, you know, Gavin, your problem is you come off as a swarmy little rich kid with your little hair fixations and you were, you also were a Nipo baby of the Getty family and you never really had it tough. So you got to write a memoir. Can you put some stuff in there? Maybe your parents got a divorce and you grew up on macaroni and Wonderbrand and you were dyslexic and you were, you had a physical disability and people made fun of you like Trump. So they tried every little face they could put on him because he's not authentic. He doesn't know who he is. Cory Booker doesn't know who he is. And I give credit to Elizabeth Warren. She knows who she was. She was a rock solid Oklahoma Republican conservative that wrote a book about how to make money flipping houses at one point. But once she saw affirmative action and she was going nowhere from the University of Oklahoma, she said she was the first Native American lawyer and got hired in Texas. And then Calhoun went to Harvard and said, you don't have any indigenous people as lawyers on your law, on your law school faculty. It was brilliant. And that's how, but she did after that, at least be consistent. Oh, I shouldn't say them. Sorry. She was talking about million, billionaires the other day and they just caught her on a brand new private jet. She got off the jet and she saw people taking pictures. So she put her aid out in front of her and she kind of huddled behind and walked behind like he was some kind of blocking tackle and she was a running back. But all these, it's like AOC and Bernie Sanders going to all those rallies on private jets. Well, since you brought up California and Newsom, there has been a lot of criticism of Newsom. I don't know if you want to say anything more about him, but the criticism this week has been that he's kind of absent from California and all the problems of California. So I don't know if you have more on that. I have some, what is he going to do? Somebody says to him, you know, this high speed rail is killing you, Gavin. Well, let's go down to Salma, California and go down on Mountain View Avenue and we've got a big overpass and yeah, Gavin, but you spent $20 billion and there's not one foot of track late. There isn't and we have no money. Okay. Give me another idea. Well, can you go to Civic Palisades and get your little Abercombe and Fitch best on and dig some stuff? But you can't, Gavin. Why? Well, you haven't built anything. The regulations are killing them. Well, can you go out to that oil refinery and say that you're going to stop it and shut it down? Well, Gavin, two have already left and now they're trying to pump and gas is $8 a gallon on the coast and six inland and it's all because of you. Well, can we say that the refinals are doing it? Well, I said, well, they're leaving because they're going broke here in California because of your regulation. Well, can I go up and say that I have a new fire plan? No, because you've burned down the Paradise Fire, the Aspen Fire, because of your forest management, suicidal balls. Well, how about water? We got a rainstall. No, you let out 90% because you wouldn't dredge the Delta canals. So what is he going to do? Oh, how about the billionaires? Can you get, they support me? Not anymore. They're leaving. They're all leaving because you went after them and they're part of the 1% that pays 50% of your taxes and you've got everybody in the SEIU and your supporters saying, make the rich pay their fair share when they pay 50%. The 1% pays 50% of your income tax revenue. So he can't stay here. So what he has to do is fly around and hubbub with celebrities, go overseas, get on TV. You and Jack talked about the problems of Gavin Newsom. The only thing that you guys did not discuss, and I don't know if you think it's significant or not, is his wife, Jennifer, and how she's been inserting herself in all of the worst ways. And I just remembered that and I was wondering, do you have any comment on that? Did you think that a wife can really make a difference? I thought Jill Biden, she makes Jill Biden look like Madame Carrier or Helen Keller or someone. I mean, she's just inept. And like Jill Biden, she's like a moth to a flame or she can't keep away from the spotlight. So she interjects herself. And so the worst thing she said was that she basically said that she was taking her two kids on a safari type of trip to look at the natural habitat of Mississippi, Georgia, as if there were some freaks. And then she was going to lecture her kids about here was the birthplace of racism, segregation and all of this stuff. She wants to know where segregation and racism, she's just going to Stanford University and look at a graduation ceremony or a safe space or a segregated dorm. And then she said she was trying to be empathetic to somebody who'd lost a child and said, well, I happened to kill my sister accidentally on a golf court accident or something. That was inept. Everything and she, when you see her, Gavin thinks, well, I married my second wife after I got caught cheating on my first wife, Kimberly Gurf Corp for him. And she's very attractive and younger and her family is very wealthy. So it was a wise move. But then he starts to look at her when she talks. And after two seconds, you know, she's off to the races about herself and hurts him. So, you know, it's kind of like Michelle Obama in 2000. Oh, not proud of her country. Yeah. Michelle Obama was told, we were told that she went to Harvard and Yale, Princeton and Harvard. And she was this brilliant woman. And she was the brains behind Barak and they were a power. It was kind of like the Hillary Bill thing. And then she got out on the campaign trail. And it was, I've never been proud of my country. And this is a downright mean country. And they always raise the bar on me no matter what I do. And then David Laxwell, I just said, get the blank and they put a muzzle on her. She disappeared. Had she had that, if she had that prominent role, the whole 2008 McCain would have been a lot better. Can I ask you, historically, do you know of any woman that has been a benefit to their husband among presidents at all? Yeah. Jane Adams. That's going pretty far back. FDR used Eleanor Roosevelt to great effect, especially during World War II, but she was to the left of him even. So, she was very popular among leftist circles. She's very bright and she's very well spoken. And at that point, there was a lot of racism and segregation. And when she attacked, she addressed that it was very effect best Truman was known as a common sense. She, and she wasn't a professional woman, but she was a big source of comfort to Harry Truman. Dwight Eisenhower did not have a good relationship, I think, with his wife at least. Because, you know, there were problems there. She was a nice person. And then Jackie was a big help. Yeah, I was going to say. She was glamorous. I mean, everybody loved Jackie. They didn't know much about her. They didn't know about the whole debutante aristocratic debouch New York scene. All they saw was she was beautiful and she had kind of that affected voice. And she brought style to, and they liked the idea that they're, they liked the idea even in the heartline here that an American first lady went and awed the European. Melania Trump can do that. I was going to say, don't you think Melania is giving her a run for the money on that? She does. They don't know what to do with her because they hate Trump so much. So, they keep her off vogue. They, you know, fashion magazine, they never give her any credit, but she's been an asset. A lot of women were misunderstood. Lady Bird Johnson was a very solid wife to put up with him. And she had that beautification campaign that helped. And Pat Nixon was long suffering. She was very supportive and they tore her and said she was plastic Pat. And the left one after her for no reason. Betty Ford was very positive. She did a good job, I thought. And didn't she have a drug problem or something to the prescription drugs? And then there was Rosalind Carter. She was kind of, she was bright, probably brighter than her husband, but she knew not to steal the spotlight or freelance. And they made fun of Pat. The left always makes fun of a Republican wife that doesn't have a PhD from Harvard or law degrees. So Pat, Nixon they made fun of, they made fun of Nancy Reagan. Nancy Reagan. Man, she was the brains. I mean, she, she was pretty a strong influence and moved him to the left. Yeah. She was always trying to say this is too unpopular and especially she and the two children, the second two. And if you go through, Barbara Bush was really outspoken. She helped him. At first people didn't like it because she was blunt, but I think she was a moderate. Most of the women are not as conservative as on the Republican side as their husband. So that helps them. And Hillary Clinton was a mixed bag. He kept saying, well, if you're, if you're up for me, Bill Clinton, you get to us, to us for the same deal. You get to Hillary and me and everybody's like, okay, she's got a law degree from Yale. Then they saw her and the thing she said, you know, she was a lousy candidate. What kind of candidate goes to West Virginia and says, I'm going to cut, close down the coal industry? Okay. So anyway, I could go on, but Barbara, I mean, Laura Bush, she was very dignified and helped George W. Bush. There's no doubt about it. Michelle was too outspoken, controversial and resentful. And she always said, they were always portraying me as the angry black woman. Well, you just don't have to act like the angry black woman and they won't do that to you. Yeah. Well, Victor, then let's turn to back to California again. And next question is, Swalwell obviously is out of the race. Leave him out of there. But That was mysterious. So he went from being a heart throb. Yeah, I know. And we know that how the Democrats work is what that showed us. But what I was curious about was this Xavier Becerra has, is the one who's benefited the most from Swalwell stepping out. I was wondering your thoughts about his possibilities versus that Tom Spire. It's a hard one. Tom Steyer is a perennial candidate. His problem is he's worth a billion and a half dollars. And when you look at the source of his money, he started out financing coal plants in Indonesia. And then he became a big green crusader and he calls, talks about that he's the billionaire that wants to tax billionaires. Well, if you're really that way, Tom, why do you have all these tax accountants and investments offshore? So, and he's not a very good photogenic candidate. He has this weird commercial where they tell you that the commercial is over and now we're spontaneous. If you have to tell somebody that he's spontaneous, then he's not spontaneous. But the lighting, he looks like he's been drained of his red blood, you know, I had five transfusions and somebody's told me that I looked the same color as the white wall. Well, that's how he looks. Somebody has drained him. And he's not, you know, after the, I have a raspy voice sometimes, but because of the surgery, he has a natural, he has a Gavin News raspy voice. And his, what's, what's his argument that he's going to do more of Gavin Newsom? He, he's going to help the SCIU. All the problem with the Democrats is California is destroyed and their party did it. Not just the governor, but they had the governor with Newsom and Jerry Brown, who was the earlier Democrat, not blaming Jerry, but Jerry had went along with the legislature and they had supermajority. So there's nobody else they can blame. And so when you have a Democratic candidate, he's got to say, I got to continue Gavin's work. I've got to get more Democratic programs. We've got to get more transgendered operations for illegal immigrants. We've got to find a new plan number 98 for the half million homeless. San Francisco was really beautiful today. Downtown LA is Santa Monica. It's just everything's going the right direction. That high speed rail, have you seen those overpasses in the valley? They're impressive. Are they going to say that? I don't, I don't know. And well, the one time I saw Newsom in California doing something, he was bragging about they're finally going to lay the first rails on the high speed rail. You've been saying that for five years. And I like, love Bakersfield. I love Merced. I grew up in this area. I'm five miles from the high speed rail overpass. But trust me, you're not going to get anybody that wants to save one hour off their 170, 170 miles from Bakersfield to Merced. I don't know. Merced's about 100,000 people. Bakerfield, maybe three or 400,000. You're not going to get the traffic that's going to want to go to Merced or vice versa. A lot of studies have shown that if you gave them the high speed rail, the entire project, the 20 billion and say, it's yours, we paid for it. Let's just say Elon Musk said, I'm worth 400 billion. You spent 20 billion and wasted it. It's going to cost you another 10 billion. I will give you 30 billion to pay all your debts off. Just run it to break even. They couldn't do it. They're going to have a union run it and it's going to be DI and it's going to, they've already downgraded the speed. Everybody said, it's in some places almost parallel to the Santa Fe tracks. You had a line there and the only problem with the Santa Fe tracks were they were old and they didn't have two tracks the whole way. For maybe a quarter of what you spent, you had the light of way already. You could have put a track right next to it and trillions go in either direction. You could have improved. You could have got the speed up to 90 miles an hour. You spent 20 billion to go 40 miles faster, 50 miles faster from Brekersfield and Merced. Insane. Then they got the problem is, Californians are incompetent. All the talent that people are leaving. I don't think that if you hired people to run it, it would be dangerous to be in it because I think it would be a unionized hack group of people running it and there would be no accountability. Yeah, it's a real problem. I understand as is Gavin Newsom. Well, we have the Nick Shirley act that has, or it's in the California assembly and so I wanted to get your views on that after these 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 policy making 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. Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. If you want to find Victor on X, his handle is at VD Hansen and on Facebook, he's at Hansen's Morning Cup. And there is a Victor Davis Hansen fan club on Facebook, which is not associated with us, but they do a great job of looking for his new things that come out and old stuff. So they'd be a good site to follow as well. So Victor, the California legislature doesn't like investigative journalists talking about how much fraud is going on in California. And so they are going to pass what is being called the Nick Shirley Act to stop investigative reporters. And that's very embarrassing. Here's what's embarrassing that you have this huge Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, conglomerate, with these huge budgets and all these reporters. And it takes some young kid, two young people, all these freelance journalists that basically their overhead is an iPhone camera with a tripod and a rental car and they go there and they're courageous. They have nothing to lose. They're in their 20s and they wade right into the Somali community and they get chased out. They go right into downtown LA. They see what's going on and they're not politically correct. So if they go into the $250 billion welfare morass and there is a guy from India who's an immigrant or a guy from Mexico or a guy from Somalia, they don't care. It's not like, well, I graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism and I have a five-year pedigree at the New York Times and I just think that if I were to uncover this scandal, it would hurt people of color and hurt me. So I will just ignore it. We don't do that. Everything's, they're like cowboys, you know what I mean? And they take enormous political risks. Look at the young Hispanic girl that that family tried to push, the Oshunkels or whatever their name was in Minnesota. Oshunkels, I think. Yeah, they're now say, I love America, man. They go on there. They're on tape, this big, heavy set guy in the blue shirt. He's on tape telling his daughter to get right in, what's her name, Savannah's ear and blow this thing and pop her eardrums out basically. And then the mother is confronting her in inner space, pushing her back. And then he has to be restrained by people because he wants to hit her. And then once he sneaks around the side, she's looking around and he runs at full speed and pushes her flat on the ground. Yeah, from her back. Yeah, this big guy. And then they get on TV and say, people don't like us. We have go fund me. We just need eight or $9,000. We might, we might have to move. We might move to another country with promises, promises. Get on the plane. We don't want you. Your bullies, your thugs, the whole family are. And so they remind me so much, not to, not that the Waltz family is that bad. But when you look at that Waltz family, his unit, he's bragging on his military record in the National Guard and they order them to go to Iraq and then he just retires right before there. And then he lies where he says he's in Tenamon Square. It was a complete lie. He goes to communist China as a high school coach or teacher for what, 17 times on Chinese communist fellowships. And then his daughter, when Minnesota's up in flames, gets on social media from inside information and said, my dad's going to call their National Guards, come he's going to let them in. You better be careful, tips them off. And then the mother says, I had the window open so I could smell burning rubber of the riot. I wanted to get a good authentic, who was being burned up, Ms. Waltz? Somebody was being hurt. 35 people were killed in the four month riots. So I don't know what it is about Minnesota, but those two families, if they're representative of anything, they're, the Minnesota left, they're completely crazy. That's where Corey Booker was when he was doing his Reverend Wright Baptist preacher thing. So he was getting a lot of response from it as well. I watched Gutfield the other night and somebody made the point that the audience was like 45 people. Yeah. It was not very many people there. I could see that. And they, you know, I used to speak a lot, maybe 50 or 60 times a year. And my mom was a debating, she was on a debate team. She went to University of Pacific and then she transferred to, she got to be there, be there, and then a B8 Stanford and a law degree from Stanford, but she was a masterful debater and she said to me once, because I was speaking right before she died of cancer. And she said, you're speaking a lot and remember something. She used to give me tips, you know, don't use notes. If you're going to use notes and read off something, people might as well just send it in the mail and they could hear somebody else read it. So I never did. I tried to memorize it or add libid. But she said, if you don't ever order the audience to do anything, if they want to stand up and give you, they will. But don't say all unless you're Billy Graham. She said that. And so when I saw him say, stand up. If you're, everybody looks around and goes, why should I stand up? But that shows you that nobody wants to stand up for what he was saying. So he has to have a prop or a prompt or something. Everything, I don't know. I just find him off-putting something about him. I don't know what it is. He sure is. He's, because he never talks in normal tones. He's just, you know, he just screams and yells. He's like a talk show, but not, not most talk show hosts. He's like the very extreme, extreme, extreme. That's how he conducts himself. He's never going to make it. I hope you're right. He seems to think that that style is going to get him somewhere. But because he's been mastering it, like it's been over a couple of years that he's been in. If you watch this recent thing, he's definitely a lot better at it than he was two years ago. All these people are competing with each other. So they get up every morning, they open their computers and the DNC, ACK Blue, they have their talking points. And last week was, be sure you say that Trump is a fascist. This week it was, be sure you say that Trump's copying Obama's or and deal, right? So first of all, they just mouth that. So they're all the same. But the second thing is they're in competing for attention. And they're all crazy. So Tim Waltz said, I got to go over to this socialist conference and call him a fascist. And then Senator Murphy says, well, I'm not going to say awesome and lie about that. That'll get me into and Spartacus says, I got to scream in the air. And that's what they're doing for attention. Elizabeth Warren with that shrill voice and about millionaire and billionaire. I wouldn't mind if the screaming about millionaires and billionaires, but you know, Bernie Sanders has three homes and he's affluent now, all from government. He's never been in the pro never had a job outside of government, essentially. And she's very affluent. She lives in a very exclusive area of Boston and gets tiring to hear all this about millionaires and billionaires. And when you see how they travel, they dress who they associate with, they're all wealthy elites. You know what I mean? Well, speaking of that, and our last topic today is, did you notice or see that Elon Omar, in her millionaire $30 million said that there was an accounting error and that she was really worth. I couldn't get the exact figure, but it was somewhere around a hundred thousand or so. Yeah, what she basically is saying is I lied to you when I said that we were worth 30 million. And now I'm lying to you when I say I'm worth a hundred thousand, but it's better for me to lie the second time because I'm broadcasting myself as a woman of the people. So I took a lot of flak when I, when that came out, people said three things about her. This guy is either a crook because he didn't have that kind of money recently. So he's been using your name for, or you're, he did have money and you didn't know about, but you, we didn't know about, but you did and you're a gold digger or you're a flat out liar. And so when the flat out liar stuck, it stuck to her, then she changed. But my only question about the whole thing is, those are federal forms that have to be signed under penalty of perjury. So if she's a federal elected official and she deliberately lied, getting back to the IRS, if you say to the IRS that you made a hundred thousand dollars when you made 200, right? And then the IRS says you misreported your actual income and you say the account, it was just a computing error. Well, they're going to subpoena all the records. So why doesn't she says this bogus accounting firm she went to, she's got to show us the form and she won't. So I think that the truth is somewhere in between that her husband made a fortune using her name for entree into government deals in Minnesota. I have a feeling that she's so well known. If you wanted to have a social welfare agency, a childcare center, a green project, you had to go through her husband who was a political consultant and she was hiring him on her own money when she was so friendly sexually with him. If I could use that term, co-boarding with him. This is her third husband. If you count her brother, it's not her key. Yeah. And I think she was one of the authors on the legislation that made all of those childcare things available, that path available to her. Yeah. Well, Victor, we're at the end of our show and we're going to look at some comments from your viewers. I've got three quick ones and then one that's a little bit longer that was interesting. So Jimmy Yolson Blues says, love to Jack and Victor. This show is a beacon of light in a fallen world. Happy Easter and he has risen. This is on your recent podcast. Pegstah54 says, Oikophobic, I always learn something new from you, VDH. You truly bless my 72 year old heart. May God heal, strengthen and grant you his favor. Lisa Gemini said, so sad that these older baby boomers cannot get over TDS. They need to leave our great nation if they hate it. We won't miss them. They are insane. That's a good point. They always say they're going to Europe. Even Rosa O'Donnell didn't stay away. Yeah, I know. Promises, promises. No, they can't. And here's the longer one, but it's from Stacy Winters, 7884. I remember my father sitting at the dinner table with the New York Post and screaming about the Vietnam protests and that woman, Jane Fonda, and she's still at it. But while she was now holding up placards with horrendous singham slogans like Pro Hamas, when asked why she was there, she responded, come on out, have some fun, meet some people. Singham hands these people a placard or a slogan a day and that's just a prop to get them out and create chaos. They have no idea why they're here. Thank you, Stacy Winters, 7884. Do you know what Singham is, Victor Davis Hansen? I like Jane Fonda and Barbarella, you remember that? Yeah, when she was on the screen. I guess she was naked. She floated around. But I liked her in Cat Blue and Clute, is that the name? She was with Don Sutherland in a movie. I think it was called Clute. The funny thing about her was in, say, 82 to 86, she created that video exercise for women. Remember, she wore those little tights and then she did all these exercises and she was fanatic and she had a huge following because her career kind of plateaued. She was in her 40s maybe. Yeah, you could buy the tapes and then she was like a trainer only. So women at home would do this with her. That's why she's, what is she, 88, 89? So that's why she's alive probably today. But the point I'm making is at some point, the fact that she sat on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun that was shooting down planes and we had these people who were tortured, the pilots, became unsustainable for her. So she made a big public apology. She staged some veterans and she said, I really want to apologize. But that was so phony because then she married Ted Turner and he was the largest landowner and this is when he was seeing in was roaring and he was before his crash. And so she was a political then, not a political leftist, but not obnoxiously so. Now she's gone full circle and back to where she was. So all those maya culpas and context, that was all fake. She is the same James Fonda. If she could, she would go over probably to a randed day and find a Sam Missile site and sit on it to be photographed because it's really tragic when you think, you know, Peter Fonda was okay actor, but he was very hard left. Henry Fonda was a Democrat, but he wasn't hard left. He was a great actor. He was married, I think four or five times, but he and Jimmy Stewart, they weren't like these people. And they want to know why nobody's watching these movies and the Oscars have no attendance and no viewership. Just look at the actors, the way they conduct themselves. It's kind of, I don't know, they don't have no class. I'm not saying that Hollywood was always, I mean, we didn't know the whole story. It was pretty decadent in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, but at least publicly, there was a sense of decorum. And they didn't support, you know, even when they supported the commies, the commies were on our side for a while in World War II. And then when they, in the Cold War, they got exposed and anything, but this, this Jimmy Kimmel stuff and this, all these people who are actively rooting for Donald Trump to fail and around to win, it's really disturbing. As I said earlier, I thought the Libyan thing, because I had been in Libya and it was reforming and the Qaddafi dictatorship was handing over, they had given up their nuclear centrifuge program. They had handed over a lot of the authority to the second generation or Western educated. There was a transition, in other words, the kind of what we're looking. So then to listen to Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice, who cooked up the idea that the Arab Spring means democracy and the French and and British are there and we're going to be left behind. Let's go bomb Libya. And they bombed, they bombed an area right where I stayed at one point and the clinic that I went to, I think, got bombed where I was operated on. And then he did it for seven months. And yet, I don't think I ever wanted the Libyans to win. I thought this is a misadventure, but let's get it over with and win. Yeah, which is the only sane position to have. It's still a mess. And so we agree with our reader here that we just read that they are insane. So thank you. Victor, we will be talking about some people who have left the administration this week and the Southern Poverty Law Center financing their own enemies, if I can call them that, on the Saturday show. And I know that you were going to do another Greek god, another two great gods. I will. And we'll see that. So join us for the Saturday edition. This has been the Friday news roundup. And we'd like to thank our audience for joining us and thank Victor for a great conversation. Thank you for watching and listening and you can pre-order the counterrevolution. Ah, the counter. Well, yeah, we should talk about that on Saturday. The fallen lies of Donald Trump and his mega movement. Yes. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hansen and Sammy Wink and we're signing off. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. 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