Iran Crippled, Media Confused: Trump’s Strategy Has Everyone Guessing | Victor Davis Hanson

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I know Victor has a little bit more to say on Iran today and then a little bit on Artemis and we'll start to look at Trump's new budget proposal and Melania's Take It Down Act. So stay with us and we'll be right back from these messages. If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy the Daily Signals flagship show The Tony Kinnit Cast. The same common sense perspectives you love weekdays at 7pm Eastern and unlike some of the other evening shows, we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis and good old American star cast. Tom Tillis, I'm pretty sure might have been useful at one time as a doorstop. Find The Tony Kinnit Cast on YouTube, X, radio, TV or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. For you who are new, Victor's the Martin Anil Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Buskie Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can find him at his website, VictorHansen.com. The name of that website is the Blade of Perseus. And I'd like to say we are in the process of getting a makeover of our website. We hope to be done sometime this month. So hopefully we'll have something up and running and new. And I hope everybody likes it when we get there. So Victor, I know that you wanted to say a few things more since we talked yesterday. I know that the ceasefire has brought out a lot of controversy among the pundits, if I can say that, and commentators. And I thought that probably the most interesting discussion of it was, and I forget where I saw this article, but the writer was saying everybody's acting like the ceasefire is the end, but this is not the end. It's only the Churchillian beginning of the end of the beginning. So your thoughts? We were in a surreal situation as I mentioned that Monday Trump was Hitler and Tuesday he was Neville Chamberlain. And so the left never, they had one constant, whatever Trump is for, we're against and we're going to smear him and impeach him and shut down the government and get in the street because we despise him and everything he represents. Therefore, if he wants to bomb Iran infrastructure, then he's Hitler. But if he says he doesn't want to do that, then he's Neville Chamberlain. And by the way, I mentioned that earlier, I think everything's calm down now about I'm going to end your civilization. It's very clear from what he actually does in the past and what he's done in the present that he's never hit dual use, except for one bridge in Iran. So he's deliberately not hit power plants, sewer, water, rail stations. So that's the first thing. So they knew that. And a person who says, a president who says help is on the way and addresses himself to the Iranian people was reluctant to hit those things. Even though every president, I think except Trump, has felt that they were due use. So FDR leveled Japanese cities, he leveled, helped level Dresden. We mentioned that. Harry Truman leveled all the power and bridges in North Korea. Lyndon Johnson and Nixon devastated the infrastructure dual use in North Vietnam. In the Serbian River, Bill Clinton, he was basically running it. It was a French, NATO, British idea, but we joined and end up the 99 bombing was 80% ours. And we knocked out every bridge. We paralyzed Belgrade. A lot of people died. We knocked out the power and it hurt Milosevic and it worked, but let's not be naive. And then we had the, the misadventure in Libya. That was seven months. And they all said, we didn't hit the infrastructure because we're trying to help the airspeed, but you actually look at what they hit, communications, radio, port facilities, and no need to look at Ukraine. We're supporting the Ukrainians and I don't blame them. They're infrastructure is being hit. They're going after oil refineries and civilian factories and everything. So let's be honest, what the left is doing. And Trump then had his deadline, his existential deadline, when he meant regime, he meant the theocratic radical Shia regime, that civilization of radical Shia Islam that has hijacked this wonderful great Persian country. Okay. So the left doesn't know what to do. So now he's entered these negotiations and they said, we're going to keep the Strait of Hormuz open if you don't bomb us. Well, Trump is relieved because he has one consideration, one, it's not the Iranians. Everybody thinks the Iranians have leverage on them. They have no leverage on him. The leverage is the midterm elections. And Republicans are saying we're only seven months away and you got to stop this thing by the end of June. So we have four months to get the message out and get the price of oil down and get the investment coming if we even have four months. So and the the left knows that. So what I'm getting out is everybody knew that when they say that Iran won, there's nothing left of its military. There's nothing left of its command. I've never seen, no one has ever seen a more asymmetrical war where one side lost 13 people, probably killed 5,000 of the Republican, the revolutionary guard and the army destroyed their command, destroyed their Air Force, destroyed their air defense, their capital warships. There are a bunch of PT boats. That's what they've got. So anytime the United States wants to go in there with the fleet and clear that out and take out the sanitary corps, make a sanitary quarter on the north side, they can do it. And if they don't want to do that, they just have to tell the Iranians, we're going to take out the oil and the world will adjust because we're letting out a million barrels in the strategic reserve and we've got another pumping a million barrels and we're getting Venezuela back online. So you're not going to have your two million barrels and do it if that's what they want to do. So all the cards are on ours, but it's a self-imposed leverage by domestic opinion and he's got to get his ratings back up to 47, Erasmus and said they were, but along broad poles, 45 or so, the Democratic Party is pulling less popularly than the Republican. He's got a 50-50 chance that he can hang on to the house if he can get out by June. And so then how does he get out? He's got choices. A lot of people are just saying, you know, you destroyed their military, they won't have a bomb for 20 years if ever. You've inflicted a trillion dollars of 47-year defense investment if, you know, just leave. What are they going to do? And somebody said, well, that's a failure because the straighter Erasmus. Well, that's, there's a time capsule on that. It's important now, but believe me, the Saudis are going to increase their pipeline capacity to the Red Sea. They're even talking to the Israelis to go across to Haifa from their oil fields and the Omanis are building and expanding their pipelines to the Gulf of Oman. Well, you wouldn't even have to go into the Persian Gulf. So in the long term of two or three years, in theory, the straight of Erasmus could be irrelevant because these oil producing countries would have ways to either go through Israel to the Mediterranean or through the Indian Ocean without going into the Persian Gulf or to the Red Sea and out the Red Sea or through Suez. So they know that and Trump could just say, you know what, you're going to be irrelevant in three years and I invite all the countries that think it's important. We did the heavy lifting. We neutered this regime. We're going to have some assets around. Go in there and open it up. You've got about a hundred ships, you know, all of EU, NATO countries, Japan, Taiwan, so just go in there and if you need air support, we'll help you. It's all he has to say and then leave. Or he can say, I can't negotiate with you people. You lie, you change the conditions and I'm just going to take out Kargai and that's my negotiation. Or he could go back to his original position. I have tried to, but he doesn't see, he doesn't need to go to that bombastic language. A lot of people praised him on the right and they said, well, that's the only language they understand. Yeah, but it has political ramification. It would be much better to say, I don't want to do this. You guys put me into this position. It's been a long habit of warfare to take out dual use infrastructure and this bothers me because I want to help the Iranian people and I address you. When your power goes out and your trains are not running, it's not me that's doing it. It's your regime. I'm just going to finish their control over you and then he can do that and see if they want to negotiate. If they don't, then he can leave. So he can do a lot of stuff. His only worry is the midterms and that's a time limit. The other problem is everybody says, well, he was humiliated. They gave 15, he had 15 points and they gave 10 demands and then they want compensation and they want, yes, yes, yes, yes, but there is no Iran anymore. All those people, who wrote those up? Nobody knows who they are. There's not any statesman who's the, because of two reasons. One, he's wiped out the entire command and control of both the theocratic and the Islamic revolutionary guard corps and then the army and the intelligence people are being wiped out. So nobody wants to say, I am the representative. So it's kind of like the comedian say, it's him, he wrote it, not me, and that's a problem. And then the other problem is everybody knows that they've got this, they're sitting on a volcano, everybody hates them and they don't know, they're kind of like musical chairs. Which one of you is going to be the transitional strongman and join the majority and leave us high and dry? You both, you said that you would open the streets, maybe it's you. No, it's you. So they're all afraid that some madman, theocrat or Islamic guard person is going to kill them. So they're all giving, we don't know which is official and which is just, I'm the toughest guy. I told everybody they have to pay compensation, reparations, but it's just, it's chaos and this is something that nobody appreciates because when we leave, that chaos is not going to, if we leave, they're not going to say, well, they've left, it's calm now. We have a motion in parliament to have a 10-year plan costing $1 trillion to rebuild all of our ports, all of our drone fleet, all of our ballistic missile capacity, new factories, start in Richmond again and gets all of our military, call everything back together. And we have to also now restore all the billions we're giving to the Arab terrorists, Hezbollah, Houthis and Huma. They're not going to like that. So they got all sorts of problems. I don't understand, I don't, I understand them, I don't understand people on the right or it used to be the influencers. And I said, this is a catastrophic failure. It didn't work. What didn't work was believing anything they said about their ballistic missile capacity or how much enriched uranium we got. We destroyed their ability to make more in last summer's raid, but we had no idea that they might have, if they're not lying again, had enough stored away somewhere to make 11 bombs. So So the war is going well for us. Trump has a lot, as I said, he can leave, just leave as it is now and tell those Europeans, there's your oil, or he can take out their oil if they don't want to open it up. And then he can tell the Europeans, I took out their oil. So there's no reason for the Chinese to come in here. Don't sell the Chinese. And I will give you air support if you bring your fleet to protect them. And if you don't want to do that, then I will renegotiate another deal with them. And but the only leverage I'm going to have is I'm going to go back to my position. I'm going to take out the following infrastructure. And it's not going to be pretty. He doesn't have to say existential end of all that stuff. Just give them a list of targets. And these are all going to disappear. I don't want to do it. But you don't want to negotiate. So he has a range of things to do. Yeah, he sure does. Last thing is all of our, Kenrod on the right, they were so critical say that we didn't sign up. We should mind our own business. We did mind our own business. They found us. It's not like, you know, that old saying, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. We weren't interested in the Iranians after that hostage. They were interested in us. They blew up our barracks. They blew up our embassies. They blew up our soldiers in Iraq. They tried to kill our president and official. They tried to kill the Saudi ambassador inside the United States. They took hostages. They killed, that's what they do. You know, that's what they do. And that's who they are. So they were, they were that way. And there was no, but now that we've neutered them, the whole game has changed because China wasn't able to help them. They saw what we did to them. China's thinking, how could I get a fleet over to Taiwan when the United States has got this new drone and missile? And they would just get their carriers on the other side of Taiwan where we couldn't get them because of their air cover. And then they would just send massive fleets of drones and they would, they would take their Air Force. I don't know. They just mined the whole sea of China. We couldn't do it after what we saw. And they can lose their oil any day. Trump's going to see Chinese going to say, you know what, if you don't want to help open the, we're going to bomb Karg Island and you're not going to have your 80% of the Iranian oil. Well, why don't you help us and we'll have a daytime. You can do that. And then of course, Russia is lost Syria, Russia's out of it. So the whole world is changing. And whoever thought that the Gulf monarchies would hate Iran more than they do Israel. Israel's never endangered them. I mean, they hit one time because they had a Qatari conference with Hamas, but they didn't kill anybody. And the point I'm making is they know that the 300 combat aircraft of Israel can do whatever they want in Iran. And if they're smart, they're saying the people who get us in trouble or the Iranian subsidized Arab terrorist Hezbollah, Houthis, and Hamas, and they only operate because of Iranian money. Now that they don't have any, we're not going to give them anything either. Because as much as we hate the Israelis, they actually were the enemy of our enemy. And we know that if they attack us, they'll attack the Israelis and the Israelis will reply. If they were smarter, they would say, we have 600 combat aircraft, you have 300, we have almost a thousand here. And we can monitor these people together. But we'll see if that happens. Yeah. And I understand that Haifa in Israel, as their port has been taking some serious hits speaking, speaking of hitting things. I think they've had several billion dollars in reconstruction damage they'll take. Yeah. And it's not like the Iranians try to avoid the public population. We have all these philosopher kings on TV who are saying, this is horrible. They're dual use, not in my name. And then I'm thinking, well, what do you think Iran is doing? That's all they're doing. They're hitting the airport in Emirates. They're going after in Kuwait. They're going after hotels. They're going after factories that make food. They're going after desalinization plants. They're going after civilian targets. But all these people who hate Trump more than they do radical Iran are basically, I don't know how to say it, they're mouthpieces. I don't think they willingly, they're useful idiots is what I'm saying. Yeah, they sure are. They are. Well, you know, I just to connect this up with Artemis II, because I wanted to see your views on the Artemis II flight, which is coming back on to Earth tomorrow night, which will be Friday at about 8 p.m. Eastern time into the Pacific, though. But there was a Forbes article written and its title was Artemis II is rekindling hope at humanity's darkest time. So I thought, wow, what are humanity's darkest times? Because, boy, I could think of some pretty dark times. And I saw, I read into the article and there was only one sentence and it said, this is their darkest times that war, recession and greed and technocracy are making our times. We're not in a recession. No. A, B, we're not even in a war. We're in an asymmetrical bombing campaign against a pathetic paper tiger. And it has no ability to hurt us in any demonstrable, significant way. I'll tell you what a war is. A war is 20 years in Afghanistan. A war is seven months of bombing day after day Libya. A war is 72 days bombing Serbia. A war is Vietnam, Korea. This is not a war and we're not in a recession. I don't know where they get. The only thing that's dark about them, the Artemis mission is they went to the dark side of the moon and it's the longest mission. But a few, I was talking to a Swiss person the other day via email and he wanted me to write what their view was that there's, to quote that line from Shakespeare about Caesar, he doth stride above us like a colossus. Just look at the last week. American pilot gets down. He's injured. He's surrounded by Iranians. They think it's neat that they announce a bounty on him. So everybody with a hunting rifle thinks he's going to get 60,000 bucks and kill the American or torture him. And then they send in 150 drones and airplanes, 200 people and they get him right out of the center. It would be as if an Iranian jet wandered into Nebraska and he got shot and the Iranians said, well, we're going to go get him out of Nebraska. No, you're not. Nobody could do that. And that's the same time where we got this Apollo, I mean the Artemis mission. From what we can tell, it has 50 year old technology. So it's the last of the ancient technology because of pork barrel spending by senators that didn't want to update the factories or replace them. But this isn't even Elon Musk's grand plans to fabricate things in space to go to the moon and make a permanent state. He's going to be in on this. Where's dominating all of AI. I just looked at the cultural influence of American, even Hollywood as bad as it is and streaming and it's 75% of international box office revenue. Then I looked at universities, the Times Educational Supply had to put three universities and written them and popped in. The other seven are all American and the next 10 are mostly all American. And so you look for these cultural indicators, then you look at GDP and we've increased labor productivity since 2037%. Europe 13%. Even with a Navy that was hollowed out by Obama and Biden, it's still the most powerful Navy in the world, 11 carrier groups. The British were attacked at Akrotiri and say, because they said they were going to go get a British ship. They have one poor little dragon, poor little ship can't even get over there. He's just crippled. Remember about three years ago, they were going to go join the American carrier fleet with their new, brand new carrier and it got out and it broke its propeller shaft and just kind of limped home. They don't have any Navy. So you look at the United States in terms of culture and the economy. It's the biggest economy in the world. It's the biggest pro capita economy in the world. It's the most labor productive economy in the world. It produces more goods and services than China does with 340 million versus one point. So one American can produce more goods and services than China. It's the greatest producer of oil and gas in the history of civilization. And this week, it sends all at the same time. It sends a spacecraft, the longest any spacecraft anywhere in history from any country has gone. And it's probably, I'm speaking, I don't know if it, I hope it's going to be successful. I think it will. And it brings it back with a technology that's already superseded by other American projects. And then it rescues this thing. And then it is negotiating with this country that everybody thought was, for the last 20 years, if you talked to anybody in Washington and I have or the military, it was, you can't deal with Iranians. They're crazy. We don't know what they have. They've got a million men and they are made. You see those people, the Islamic revolution, they're crazy. And they've got missiles. They've got 10,000 ballistic missiles and they're proxies to it. It's a ring of fire. We just, we've got to give them pallets of cash. That was Ben Rhodes. And even the Democrat, the Republicans were scared to do it. Now we've just flattened them and five weeks, the cost, tragic cost, but cost of 13 soldiers, maybe 50, $60 billion in munitions and loss. More people got killed in Chicago in one weekend than we lost in over Iran. And all of this, the planes that we've lost and the equipment and the barracks and things, that's a fraction of what we're looking at in California with $250 billion and stolen funds. So what I'm getting at, what country in the history of civilization, all at the same time could spend so much effort, so many men in danger, then go all the way into the interior country for one life. That's how valuable it was to them and to us. And then send people to the far side of the moon and then at the same time, decimate the so-called powerhouse of the Middle East and didn't break a sweat. So I think people, this doom and gloom and this dangerous time, I don't get that at all. I think we're on the edge of a renaissance with AI and cyber and genetic engineering and these huge break, just from my own personal experience, dealing with lung cancer and aneurysm and stuff. When I get things that people send me about lung cancer, I don't know if I'll be in time, but my gosh, it's amazing that they're keeping people alive, that we're dead. So we're in a, it's a very exciting time. The only thing that's depressing is that we don't have two political parties. We have the Republican Party, a populist party now, and then we have this unhinged Marxist socialist, I don't know what it is, but it believes in three or is it 26 genders? Open borders, trans, appeasement abroad with Biden. I saw where Michael Morris said that, unlike Biden, Trump got into his over his head and he's called, compared to Biden's perfect withdrawal from Afghanistan. See, they don't live in the real world. And then there's Larry Lawrence O'Donnell and he was all angry because we leave no man behind. Yeah. And he said, well, it could have been a woman. Yeah, Larry, but maybe they, maybe it wasn't a woman. So maybe they said, maybe they just said on this occasion, we leave no man behind, but if it had been a woman, they would have said, we left no woman behind. We would leave no woman behind. And given your ideology, as I think Greg Gutfield pointed out, why limit it to two? We're told there's three at least. Well, we leave no, he should have said, we leave no woman, no man and no trans behind. So they're all, they're lost their complete mind. Historians look at the legacy of Donald Trump. You had a great agenda and all that, but one of the things they're going to say is he single handedly destroyed the Democratic Party. It has no semblance of Bill Clinton's party. It doesn't. Yeah, it sure doesn't. Victor, let's welcome back a sponsor, Pure Health Research. If you want to drop extra pounds, boost energy levels, or reduce swelling in your legs and feet, then this message is for you. Pure Health Research is on a mission to make America healthy again. And two of their best selling health supplements are leading the way. First is liver health formula. Over 100,000, sorry, over 100 million Americans have a sluggish liver riddled with fatty deposits. This can kill your metabolism, pile on the pounds, and make you feel tired. Liver health formula takes care of all that. It supports thriving liver health with special nutrients like artichoke extract and miss milk thistle. This is one of the easiest ways to slim down and revitalize your energy levels. 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I know that the response and the weirdness of calling it dark times when it's not dark at all around here, around in the United States is strange on the part of Forbes magazine, but Artemis, too, just any reflections on... I was shocked... Because we had the problem on the space station, and we had Elon step in, and Artemis had a bad reputation. I think they wanted to show not just that they could regain the confidence of the American people, but the technology was time-tried, if not obsolete, and they could go where no man has gone before. And they did, at least when I'm speaking, they're on their way home. Let's pray that they make it safely, I think they will, but this is... What I'm getting at is it was kind of like the last hurrah, because there's a whole new technological wave coming of assembling things in space, colony in the moon, and whether we like it or not, it's going to see private industry AI and people like Elon Musk and the other private competitors, and they're going to be fused with NASA, I think, and they're going to have... It's going to be even more sophisticated than it is now. But then ask yourself, I mean, China just launched a rocket that blew up, and China has no... There's nothing like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk at all in China, or Russia. Where's the Russian program? They're going to be broke for 20 years after this Ukraine war, and China is really hurting right now, so they're not capable of it. So I think... I get so tired of people, some of them who are my colleagues, it's like China's going to bury us, China's going to do it. No, they're not. It's a corrupt government. He just basically liquidated his entire military top echelon, liquidated by kick them out, but who knows what happens to them. And so the United States is... If it can... If he can have the counterrevolution succeed and get rid of the ethnic and racial tribalism in DEI, close the border, go back to the melting pot, not the salad bowl, rebuild the defense, really get the people angry about the massive fraud in this entitlement industry and get it lean and mean. And then the fossil fuel agenda, it's amazing, we'll have a big booming economy, and then he has to address the debt and the deficits. Well, speaking of a new budget for 2027, Donald Trump has proposed a budget for 2027, and it has 1.5 trillion in defense spending, and he's proposing increases by four times in missile procurements. He wants to increase the space force by 77% and double the Navy and Navy procurements. So I was wondering, obviously it's out there, they're complaining this is a terrible budget. I mean, it's not a terrible budget, it's a very large budget for the military, the greatest of all times, so they say. And there was a really interesting article by Ira Stoll in the Washington Free Beacon where he took a New York Times, this is the biggest spending of all times on the military, and he showed that it was 4.5% of GDP. It's another lie, we were spending 25% of GDP in World War II, maybe 40%, and during the Cold War, we were spending 10 or 12% of GDP. But that argument's not going to hold very well for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's going to be very hard for the Democrats after the Somali fraud, and this stuff that's happening in Cal, there's even the Attorney General is looking at this, you know what I mean, in California. It's all a democratic monopoly, and it's not just the hospice, it's not just the COVID money, it's unemployment, it's everything. People in prison were getting millions of dollars. A rapper wrote a song about how easy it was to steal 70,000 in California. So what I'm getting at is people are not going to be sympathetic that we need more money for social programs when we're losing billions, maybe a half a trillion dollars in complete waste, and when they know that Donald Trump tried to use the doge and Elon Musk, and they basically drove them out, they made it impossible for them to finish because they harassed the left. So doge did some good things, and they cut back the number of bureaucrats, but one of the reasons they were not successful to cut their half a trillion dollars was the left just went bizarre, and lost their mind. But now they're going to have to, what do they do, and what's Newsom going to say? What is Camilla Harris say? What do they say California is, we want more money, and Minnesota wants more money, and we think it's as bad in New York? And there's a subtext that we can't talk about. A lot of the people who are there that are coming out of the shadows that were involved in the autism, the meals, all that in Minnesota, not all, but a lot, and in California are part of what they would call the DEI lobby. And so they feel, and this is a good moral lesson, once you tell people that you are going to give exemptions, we're going to let you have lower SAT scores, we're going to let you have lower GPAs, we're going to hire you. Once you start doing that, then you give a message that certain people can act a certain way, and there's no consequences, and then there's the crime element to that as well. When there's no deterrence, whether it's real deterrence in military or crime or social or cultural deterrence. So the people involved in this were so convinced that they were getting money from a federal, liberal government, and there would be liberal people, especially in Minnesota at the state level in California, and they were DEI people, right? That you couldn't touch them, you couldn't order them, and it was true, especially in Minnesota when they started, they said, oh, you're racist, you're racist, you're racist. And this is going to be, when this is uncovered, it's going to be a death melt to DEI, it's going to be very hard for the Democrats to say we don't need this, and when you look at the defense budget at a trillion dollars, $950 billion, it's not just going to go, we're going to go buy just F-35s and another big carrier fleet. I'm not saying they're not necessary, but when you look at these young people coming in, they, into the defense industry, it's not just anymore we're going to get a bunch of retired generals and put them on the board of Raytheon and General Dynamics and Lockheed and Northrop, and then they're going to call their former subordinates from the Pentagon, hey, I got a great $170 million fighter. It's not going to be that way. It's dispersed now, and there's young people saying, look, you don't have to spend a million dollars on a missile to knock down a $5,000 drone. We've got automatic machine gun-like platforms run by AI, they're incredible. They can take out drones very easily, and we've got all sorts of drones, submarines, landcraft, it's a whole new thing. So if it's not just the money they want, they're going to redirect that to more is better, rather, more good stuff is better than a few excellent, impressive stuff, and that'll be different. The other thing is, Powell is a very vindictive person at the Federal Reserve. He won't leave, and he's talking out of both sides of his mouth as are the Democrats. They're saying, recession, recession, as you just mentioned, but he doesn't want to lower interest rates because if he lowers interest rates, if he just lowered them by a third, you would save a third of a billion dollars. It's $3 billion a day. So what Trump is trying to do with Jerome Powell is saying, lowered, lower, lower, lower, and he's doing all of the Trump antics. But the bottom line is, he's thinking that if you lowered them by 30%, so if it's, say, just to take an arbitrary number, 6%, and it could go down to four, then right there in interest cost, you have about 60% already for the defense budget of half a trillion. You've saved somewhere around, I don't know, $350 billion, and you're almost there. So that's what he's doing. So I don't think that we need to spend more money on domestic entitlements and welfare and all this when you see the fraud is going to work. And I think the interest rates, if he can get them down, will give him more latitude. And when you look at the U.S. military, people are impressed with it, and they want to fund it and invest on something that works. Same thing with the space thing. So the American person sits there and he pays his taxes and he thinks, well, who insults me and says that I'm a rich oligarch and who says that I don't pay my fair share when I pay 58% in a state like New York or California and federal, local, and state taxes? And then they take the money and they steal it. And I don't mean a million. I'm talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, but the people in the military, they don't insult me. They do a great job and protect us, and they're good at it. And they're a lot more honest. And so are the people in the space program. So I think people have missed what Trump is trying to do. He's basically saying, look at this, look at this, we need to invest in this. Look at Tim Waltz, look at Gavin, we don't need to invest in that. And I think he's going to tap the genius of America, as you were suggesting earlier, by spreading it out, opening up the market. That's another thing that people don't get any credit for. He's gone over to the tech brother Rose and he's just said to them, they're going to drive you out of California. They hate you. They're going to, this billionaire's tax, it's going to turn into a millionaire's tax. It's not just the tech billionaires, it's going to be the quarter billionaires. It's going to be the many billionaires. And they don't like you. And I like you because as long as you don't try to spy on me and don't try to rig elections like Zuckerberg did with $417 million, we poured into the 2020 to expropriate the role of the registrars. But as long as you don't do that, and as long as you put America first and you want to make better weapons and pivot, so use your high tech, AI, GP, all that stuff, you give me a whole fleet of ships, give me a whole fleet of drones, and I will be at your, and they like that. Absolutely. Well, Victor, before we go to a break, I was wondering if you had any views. Melania Trump's Take It Down Act has had its first victory in Ohio. And if I can read the case, James Sturr, the second who is 37, pleaded guilty in federal court after authorities said he produced explicit images and videos using AI and sent them to victims, co-workers, and family members over time. So he was producing photos. And then, you know, I got the feeling, I got the feeling, I got the impression, there were some legitimate naked photos of these people, but then he produced other ones through the AI. And then it says that the Justice Department says he installed more than two dozen on AI platforms and ran more than 100 web-based models to generate material. And I thought, wow, that sounds a lot like the AI productions of your show. I mean, obviously, I'm getting really angry because there's videos of me that look sort of like me, and they've got sort of, but they're talking a lot faster than I do. And it's not me, but they've even used some of the backdrop here. And they have me saying things I never said, but it doesn't quite look like me. And then it's very intru- it's kind of a novelty where these people in high school and things are taking, it's largely boys, and they look at attractive girls, and then they type in their height, their weight, and then they want them AI to create an image of them nude. And then they send it out, and it's so realistic that people think it's actual, that she is an influencer on the internet that's stripping down. It's crazy, it's sick. And they need to, you know, they're right where the smoking industry was about 1960 when they said, well, we didn't force you to smoke. We don't know, we don't know what the damage is, but it's a free country when it was an addictive thing. So AI is addictive, and they know how it's being used, but they say, oh, well, you know, we don't approve of that. Some people, of course, will misuse it. Well, it's not that, that they're deliberately allowing that technology to be used by minors or perverts or anybody, and they have to be subject to the same laws as plagiarism. You know, I went to, I was speaking on a book I wrote with my friend John Heath who killed Homer, nearly 30 years ago in Greece, and I walked into a book store, and there it was. I was very proud, it was translated in Greek, but I noticed that it wasn't the Greek publisher about the rights. So I asked the books in pneumonia square, I said, well, what is that? And he goes, then parasi, then parasi, it didn't matter. So that was plagiar, I mean, that was theft. And so when somebody takes your product and steals it from you, and changes it a little bit, and this book had a little different cover and all that stuff, it's still theft. And they have to be held accountable to ancient rules of proprietary rights. And if they're not, they can be sued. And they'll have, when they start losing money, they will change. So kudos to Melania Trump for starting the first bill or laws that are going to address this through, about AI. So we're happy with that. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break, and then come back and you can talk to us about Hades. Stay with us and we'll be back. Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin. And just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen. Whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, or his short form content for the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, I always leave an episode learning something new. I think they forgot the 1982 Falklands war. And in the age of clickbait and ragebait, that's a really good feeling, right? The media, thank you. You can leave now. Well, if you agree, you might like my show, the Daily Signals Long Form Interview podcast called The Signal 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. Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. You can find Victor on X, his account or his handle is VD, at VD Hansen, and on Facebook at Hansen's Morning Cup. So Victor, I am anxious to hear about Hades. I know that the Christians have a hell, but and Hades is an underworld of sorts. I don't know if they're even close to each other. He's the Roman Pluto. Well, remember, he, there were three brothers of the Olympians. There's Zeus and Poseidon and Hades. And according to the myth, when they over through their parents, the Titans and Kronos and Rea were their parents. And Kronos devoured them, and then they broke out, you remember, and they had lots to see which would be which. And so the most important aspects of our universe are the air. And that was where Zeus sat up there on Olympus. Poseidon got the sea and the earth, i.e., below the earth, was Hades. The Greek word for Hades is opaque or hidden. Somebody who you don't really know, you know what I mean? And they often, the Greek word for wealth, which is the Roman word for Hades is pluto. And it just, so they took a word, sometimes they referred to Hades as pluto. It was a euphemism because they nobody wanted to talk about death. So they said the wealthy one, it's kind of like the words for left-handed, the good side, because they know it's the bad side. And anyway, his realm is the underworld. And the underworld is in this period of the Greek city-state that emerges in 800. And you can read in the poetesia the hymn to Demeter and all of this about Hades. And he's in the Iliad. And the Odyssey, Odysseus goes down to Hades. So he is a king on a throne. He's always portrayed by Caribus, his three-headed dog. And then there's Charon, the boatmaster. And he's on the Styx River. Sometimes it's the Akaron. And then when you die, then you are having a little coin put in your eyes when you decompose. But your spirit then has to pay the boatman to get into Hades. And then there's a tripartite. If you're really noble and wonderful, that means you're sort of a hero, like Achilles or somebody. You go to the Elysium Fields. And then if you're not, you go to the Asphodel Meadow. That's kind of a good place too. But if you're a bad person or you deserve to be punished even, you go to Tartarus, the low depth. This is very important because this is what Dante's Inferno is based on. He tried to elaborate. And there's a geography there. And these places are real. So if you want to go to the Styx River, you can go up to and Lake Stemphilis, that whole area. It's in the border between Arcadia and Achaea. And there is a Styx River. I've been to it. If you want to go to the Akaron River, it's in northwestern Greece. And you see it. I went in there and I thought, I went swam in there when I was 20. And I thought, well, is it going to be swallowed? We were kidding. A bunch of us kids were students. We thought we're going to be swallowed up into hell. And there's the River Leith, the River Forgetfulness. There's Flagon, the River Fire. And the thing to remember about this concept of Hades is that there is no intricate, no exegesis about an afterlife. It's pretty dismal. So when Odysseus goes down there, he doesn't really go into Hades. He conjures up the spirits. Because once you go into Hades, you can't get out. If you eat anything in Hades, you can't go out. So Persephone, the daughter of Demeter is kidnapped by Hades for his queen. And she goes down there. He takes her down there and they want to bring her back. But remember, he tricked her and she ate a pomegranate seed. So then Zeus, the justice of Zeus, decides, well, my brother and my sister Demeter got a bounty, got a this fruitfulness, et cetera, got of basically fruitful women and everything. She gets to have the nice daughter Persephone in a good time of year, spring and summer. And then the baleful late fall and winter, the world mourns because Demeter is back down with him. But every once in a while, somebody tries to go down there and hijack, bring somebody back. So Orpheus goes down for Eurydice. And he almost pulls it off because he's this beautiful liar player. And then the only thing is she can't look back. So he doesn't know that she's going to come. He doesn't know, he can't hear or see her. But so he makes that, you know, if your wife is supposedly kidnapped and you say to follow me and I can't look back, how many people wouldn't look back? And then she's lost. And Theseus and Heracles and Pythius, they all go at one time or the other. Heracles kidnaps Caribus, the dog. And I think Theseus, Perthus wants to carry off Demeter. And so they have all these stories of people go down there, but they don't, none of them fare well. It's a shady place. But what's interesting is by the fifth century classical, the great castle Renaissance, these become metaphorical. In other words, people don't believe necessarily that there is a Hades and a lesion fields. They start the philosophy philosophical schools, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Platonic Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum. They all have different views. Just to take one, Plato's idea of trans migration of souls. So you go when you die, you go down to Hades and you go through the river of Lath and you're all everything's forgotten. And then there's paradigm. That's the Greek word and it's in the Republic, the myth of her. And then you were given a lot of ticket. And then you're re incorporated. I'm using the word corpus literally, you're given a new body. And then you have that new life that you picked and then you're reborn again. And your soul is transmitted into another body rather than the Christian idea that your soul is in heaven. And then during the resurrection and the final battle between good and evil, then you regain, I guess you live on earth again in the sense, depending on the particular type of Christianity. But this was very influential in Roman life. The Greek, the Iliad and Hesiod and all of these myths about Hades and they transferred to Pluto and that Annias went down and the Anniad copied the book six of the Anniad, they copied the book and the Iliad were Odysseus, it did. So Virgil copied Homer and Dante copied Virgil to a lesser extent and created a really a nightmarish place where almost every Italian count that he had come in contact that had done him wrong was either a sodomite in a particular level or a liar or a murder or an adulter. And they all had, I had somebody in my family once that I belonged in the seventh ring of Hades inferno, I mean of Dante's inferno. Well, I've never heard the description of hell or sorry, Hades and where Hades, the underworld, until just now from you. And it does sound a lot like Dante's underworld. He has Acheron, he has the river Styx, you do have to get across it to start. We had no other frame of reference as a Christian, you know, a Renaissance Christian, there's nothing in the Bible really, the book of revelation has a little bit, but the only reference points you have are classical Greek and Roman literature, what the geography of hell is like. So he expropriated that into Christian sense. And then of course, the purgatorio and the paradiso or the, people forget that it's a trilogy and you know, the second third, they're not as powerful as the first abandoned hope, all ye who enter here. And Virgil is, I guess he's, I gotta be very careful, Jack might listen to this, the Catholic expert, but I don't think he's, I think he's in limbo because he was born before Christ, but he was a good person. So I don't know if he ever gets a chance to get the purgatory, but he's the messenger or the leader that leads Dante to see all what's going to happen. Since you're there between Virgil and Dante, which one do you think was the better epic poet? Epic? Yeah, poetry, most skilled. Hard for me to judge because I read Latin very well and I've read the whole of Nia in Latin, but I don't read medieval early Renaissance Italian very well. I've read parts of it in Italian, but that was a long time ago. They're both very good. What was weird about Dante, almost nobody was writing in Italian at that point. So the language is very, in an early literary stage, it was mostly still Latin. It's a wonderful story that it's more elaborate, put it that way, the characterization. And he takes, Virgil has certain people in Roman history that he can get back at and show you where they belong in hell, but Dante takes that to a new level. The only problem with the inferno, when you read Homer and Virgil and their visitations into Hades or Pluto's realm, the names are all familiar from mythology. There's Achilles, there's Ajax, there's Sisyphus with his rock, Heracles, but when you read the inferno, it's like who's who in Florence, who's who in the Papal States or who's who in Venice and they're very obscure. Some of them are not, but it's kind of like reading an Aristophanes' comedies, that he has so many attacks on contemporary Athenians, but they're not just Pericles or Cleon, they're people that are hyperbolas, nobody knows who are Cleon, nobody knows who they are. So you have to, with those types of things, they're very topical, so you have to have a guide to Dante or a guide to Aristophanes. Well, the inferno is a very clever book and it does have a whole bunch of Dante's enemies in it, but before we go on to talk a little bit more about current news, let's welcome back Silent SLNT as a sponsor. Everything we carry today is broadcasting a signal, your phone, your laptop, even your car key fob. Most people don't realize it, but these devices are constantly sharing location data identifiers and wireless handshakes with networks all around you. That signal can be tracked, collected, or intercepted, making you and your data vulnerable. That's just the reality of the world we live in now. That's why you should start using Silent SLNT. You don't want big tech, the government, or anyone else knowing your every move. You want to control, you want control over when you're connected and what you share. When you place your phone, laptop, or key fob in a Silent Faraday bag, the signal instantly stops. No cellular, no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, no GPS. Your device is disconnected from the grid and here's the part that really got my attention. SLNT has been awarded nine military contracts. This is the same type of signal blocking gear used to help protect our soldiers from GPS detection and electronic threats. That's the same technology is available for everyday people. If you want to check it out, go to slnt.com slash vdh. That's slnt.com slash vdh to save 15% plus free shipping on qualifying orders. Again, that's slnt.com slash vdh. We'd like to thank Silent for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor, speaking of politics in the lives of people, in Dante's time, Florence was relatively democratic and he was putting people of political nature into all sorts of, as you said, levels of hell. The politics were very intense there. We have a you-gov poll that was taken on people ending relationships with their families. In that poll, they found out a lot of different things that were- We know who the perpetrator and who the victims are, don't we? We know a lot about- They had a lot of other questions, but 41% said they would lose contact with their family or quit contact with their family because of political issues. And did they say who would inaugurate that ostracism? Yes, they did and that was the bigger story. Well, wait a second. No, it wasn't whether you were Republican or Democrat and that it was whether you were the parent or the child. The child was more likely to stop communication. Of course, of course, because it's a therapeutic aid. Okay, so my question about this poll- I didn't get the job. My parents were mean to me. That's kind of stuff. But my question is this, is it worse now or- Because the articles that are being written from this are like, oh, it's just so terrible now, politics are getting involved in personal relationships. Is it worse now than it's ever been or is this just the state of democracy? No, I grew up in a family of Democrats and I got along with my uncle, Tango. He was five, six, and he wore cowboy boots that had six inch heels on them and a cowboy. So it was big Stetson and his cowboy boots, he was five, eight, five, nine, but he was only five, five maybe. And he was a brilliant guy, but he was the most far right person. He would come every Sunday and visit us and nobody would talk to him. My parents were very, they were very polite to everybody, and they, but they would tease him, you know, he'd say to my dad, you know, you Democrats are colleagues. And my dad goes, well, how many missions did you fly in a B-29? That kind of stuff. And then he, he was deaf. So he was, he would have been, but he was, so yeah, there were tensions in it. I remember he would always say, I'm gonna make a Democrat about you. I'm gonna make a Republican out of you. You're the only guy that doesn't have his head blown off. But so we had all these factions, right? But nobody, we didn't have the internet. So there weren't people, you know, like ambushing a person and saying, you're an idiot and then have a little smiley face that says, you know, Lutus, who is that? It's all anonymous character assassination. And I must say that people on the left, this is documented in psychological studies, sociological, they spend more time than the average person that's a conservative because the average person conservative is much more traditional with family, religion, community, but the person on the left, it's more likely they have a college education. And that means they've been indoctrinated and politics is front and center. And they feel they're more morally superior because they're for equity. And they want everybody to have a good shot, even though they're exempt from the cost of that, given their own, they're pretty affluent, people who are especially, but in my experience, I'm 72, looking at families that I know, it's usually people on the left who have disowned people and won't speak to them or friends. I don't think there's one person in my family who is a Democrat, and there's a lot of them, are friends that are left wing that I have disowned or I don't want to speak. I like them all, but I would say, how do I say this very carefully? I'd say I'm persona non grata in my family, not my kids, they're wonderful. And my parents weren't like that. When I started, when my mother was before she became ill, I was 34, and I was pretty conservative. She kid me. She said, you know, I thought you were a conservative Democrat. You're getting over into Republican territory, aren't you? And I said, well, not the Republicans that you grew up with that were golf-gorsi and they were snobby when you were at Stanford and you were a farm girl and all that. No, no, no, no. But she would tease me. She was good, but it didn't make any difference. But that attitude is not there. I know so many people who was telling me, my kids don't talk to me, and it's all about Trump. And I don't know anybody who said to me, I'm not going to talk to my daughter, my son, because they voted for Camilla Harris. And last, that person called them up and said, if you don't vote for Camilla Harris, I don't want to talk to you. But I've had some people who are really hysterical friends I've known, some of my best friends. I mean, I've got stuff, I've called them and tried to renew our friendship or something. And when I got sick, I thought a few people wrote me, but it was just a cursory one line or something. Hope you're better. But I tried to respond. I never heard back from them. So I think it's something about the left-wing brain that feels that politics and mandated equality and spiritual superiority and morality, all of them, they have a monopoly. And anybody who doesn't believe them is suspect. And if they don't want to agree with them, then they're lost souls. They're in Tartarus. Well, speaking of a lost soul, how about Eric Swalwell? I'm not sure what level of Dante's hell he would be in, but he is running for the California governor and now has sexual harassment of his interns and his campaigns on his hands and forced nondisclosure agreements. Forced does not sound good for him. Think about Eric Swalwell. You don't have to oppose him or criticize him because he's, he blows himself up. And it's always a tip off when he was yelling about stormy downyoles and nondisclosure, remember all that? Well, that's what he was doing at the same time when he was talking about leaking and he was leaking on the house intelligence only was with Fangfang. He hired, I think, a friend of Fangfang's on his staff. And then he's completely flat broke. He really is. And he's borrowing out of his 401. It's, and then he's got all of these, I guess they're consensual relationships, but he's married with kids or at various times of his life. He's with his wife, but he seems to have had sexual relations, allegedly can't prove it with staffers. And then he's made him sign nondisclosure. But what an idiot, what does a nondisclosure mean? Nondisclosure means this, give me $20,000 and I'll keep silent and I'll sign a nondisclosure. And then I'll go to the press and leak out what you did and make another $100,000. And then if you sue me, I'll say it's harassment. So they're worthless, but only Eric Swalwell would think they're valuable. Only Eric Swalwell would think he could have relations with a communist spy. Only Eric Swalwell would find a way to be basically insolvent. You know what I mean? He's kind of a, I don't know, he's just a, I don't want to be too cruel, bumbling idiot or incompetent. What is he? Don't worry, anything you say will be generous. Yeah. I mean, he's just, he's so awkward and he's full of hatred and anger, but he's, it's hard to get angry at him because he's just, you know, it's kind of like John Federman, but he's a much better person. I know that when everybody was really partisan and Federman had the stroke and he debated Oz, I thought it was just a one-sided slaughter on the part of Oz. But there was something about Federman. I never wrote anything cruel about him. I said he was cognitively challenged, but there was something nice about him. You know what I mean? He wasn't mean at all. He could be sharp. He could bite back if he was attacked, but Swalwell is, I don't know, there's no, put it this way, there's no chance that people are going to vote for that guy. And they've got a real problem because the other person, Porter, is on tape screaming and yelling and not just on one or two occasions, three or four, and she's a bully. She's unlikable. She's obnoxious. Forget what her politics are. So those two were running and the two Republicans, you know, even we had the independent Kulati Elaine, she was wonderful. She's attractive. She's charismatic. She's personal. It'd be nice if she got all the Democratic votes. You know what I mean? And I think she's appealing to them, the same Democrats because, and we know what's going to happen. Either Hilton or Bronco, Yonk or going to win, I think, and then they're going to, they're going to immediately recall the governor and then they're all going to rally around one Democrat. I don't know who that will be because it's kind of a zoo now. There's no normal sane Democrat. No, there isn't. Well, Victor, let's take a break in our last break and then come back and talk a little bit about Judge Dugan who let the illegal aliens slip out her back door to avoid ice. And George Conway has been in the news on impeachment. So stay with us and we'll talk about those two issues. Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children, the faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive. As long as we keep first things first, we've only just begun. America, the beautiful. Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So Victor, I was wondering if you noticed that Judge Dugan, her case has been in court and the judge that is overseeing her case has said there's no special immunity for judges and that she was acting outside her purview in the first place. And I was wondering your thoughts on that. She got off the bench and she deliberately misled agents of the federal government and aided and abetted a criminal to flee. If there was justice in the world, they would have slapped her with about five felonies and put her in jail for five years. So that was a no-brainer. Even a left-wing judge couldn't quite pull that off. Yes. Wasn't that a Clinton judge that did that? I think it was. But I mean, every day we get, I don't know how to say it, but every day we start to see these federal district judges lower. They're all political. They don't know the law. They're all appointed by Obama or Biden. We saw the judge that said that on the state level, D. Carlos Brown, the killer of our poor, Irania, the Ukrainian. Irania, sorry. Irania. Yeah. He's now declared non-composment. As he was delusional, he had 11 or 12 felony convictions, but he's not going to be even tried on the state level. Let's hope that the federal level said that he broke some federal statutes. What do you have to do in America to be convicted of murder when you cut a beautiful young girl's throat while you were lurking over some goblin from the behind? It was almost out of a Dantiesk illust, Gustav Dorey engraving. Here's this beautiful, nice girl, and here's this goblin-like figure just leering down at her, gets sneakily pulling out, and you want to just jump into the video and say, stop, help, run, please. And then you had the reaction about the media. Well, she didn't have situational awareness. Yeah, you're supposed to have situational awareness when you walk in, just get on a public transportation. Yeah, you're a star game if you don't. And then the four people who stepped over her, basically why she was bleeding. I'm not sure that he cut her juggler vein. I'm not sure they could have saved her, but they could have tried. They just stepped over her, just like she was a piece of meat, disgusting. And then the whole D.I. thing came in and said, he's black, and the people who stepped over her are black, and she's whiter than white, and then they were all off to the circus. You know what I mean? It was horrible. Well, Victor, let's do one last- It's Daniel Penney on steroids. Yeah. The whole thing that people are sick of. Yeah. One last thing then, George Conway, who is a commentator, and he's a Democrat, and he was talking about how when the Democrats get back in, they're going to change the rules in Congress so that they can not just impeach Trump, but they can impeach J.D. Vance too. What has Vance done to them? Well, he humiliated Tim Walts in front of 50 million people in the vice president's debate, and he represents an unapologetic white Appalachian guy who went to Yale, who's smarter than they are, and they want to say that he's a deplorable clinger and they can't because he just represents everything they don't like, and he knows them when he said Cat Lady, that summed it up. So George Conway, I never understood that because he was married to Kellyanne Conway when she was working on the first term, and he was just out there absolutely subversive. So every time you saw Kellyanne Conway, you think, do you have a safe at home? So when you go home, a safe room that you can go in and lock yourself in and then talk to the president or somebody because he's in your house and he hates Trump and he's actively hating Trump. He was in the Lincoln Project or all that. So he's kind of, and then there's these stories that he was considered a Romney Republican, and then in 2016, he wanted a high job in the Justice Department, but somebody obviously scouted him out and knew he was unhinged, so he didn't get that appointment. If I may, I think all of us don't want to be reductionists, but a lot of the hatred of Trump from the right are people who lost influence with him. I can tell you or want it, I won't mention the person's name, but he is one of the great luminaries of the Republican Party, and he came to Hoover in 2016 when it looked like there was no chance that Trump could win. That was after the Access Hollywood tape in the summer, and I gave a lecture, and he gave a lecture at a luncheon, and he asked me to have coffee with him, so I was having, and he went on this spiel, very famous guy in the Republican Party, never Trump, and then I said, well, from what you say, you're so convinced that Trump is a novice and he has no expertise in Washington, are you suggesting that he would need somebody familiar with the atmosphere of Washington that could guide him? Yes, and I said, would that be you? And he said, well, do you know him? I said, no, but I think he's going to win. I had written that. Well, he's not going to win, but if he ever needed help, if he ever needed help, and I said, well, you've written very negative things about him, why would he? Well, if he ever needs help, I'm here. That's what he said. Sounds like Mitt Romney to me, but no, it's not an official, it's an activist or a political, and I was really shocked, but when you start looking at a lot of the never Trumpers, it's, they're either humiliated by Trump or they didn't get a job or he fired them. Remember how Rex Tillerson flipped out and Scarimucci analysis is going to run for president? Remember Scarimucci? He's, they all do that, and a lot of the people on the right, Trump said something that was missed by the media when he asked him about Tucker, and this was right at the height of Tucker's anger out. He said, well, he calls me all the time. I don't answer the phone. I don't know if that's true or not, but it seems plausible that it could be fact checked. Why have Tucker said that he was, his, his thing was evil, the bombing was evil, or now he's desecrated Easter? Why would he want to call him? You know what I mean? Yeah. So you get the impression that Marjorie Taylor Green, Trump said the same thing. I don't answer her calls. Don't they understand that just because you've met the, I've met the president, I've talked him on the, just because you've met the president, or you've called him on the phone that you're significant. My God, man, he's the most powerful man in the world. He's got the whole world trying to get a hold of him. Do you think he's going to call you or care about you? He can't if he wanted to. So, you know, if I were to say, oh, I talked to Donald Trump, who cares? You know what I mean? But it's, some people magnify that they think that because they went to Mar-Lago or they met Trump, that they had the inside, you know, lane with him and they're important, but there's so many people who would claim that it would be physically impossible for Trump even staying up till four in the morning to call and talk to them. But they, they magnify their value. And then when he doesn't call back, apparently they get angry and he cuts them off. Yeah, that's true. And think about it. There's pictures on the internet of, I, I, Candace Owens would make America great. I met the one time I'd been at Mar-Lago, somebody brought me there for dinner and there was the Trump people there. And Marjorie Taylor-Green was there and she was so raw, raw Trump. And I know that Tucker, after January 6th, he's on tape that was released and the Dominion that he said, I hate Donald Trump, but he didn't act like that. So at one time he was close and he got closer during the 2000s. But now he's gone from riding an Air Force One to thinking Trump is almost the anti-crime, you know what I mean? This wild swings is not explicable in policy because you have to ask all these people, what is the alternative? So if somebody now says that Trump is a fool or a buffoon or is a warmonger and you're done with him, then you say, okay, then the Camilla Harris, Gavin Newsom agenda on trans, the border, crime, spending, defense, abort, social issues, that's all what you want, judicial. And so apparently they get so hurt over one disagreement because they thought their influence was so overwhelming. How dare he? I said this and he didn't agree with me. Yeah, but he agrees with you on 80% of the other things. Can't you just say I weighed in and he disagreed with me? So I'm still going to vote for him because it's better than the alternative. You don't have to be perfect to be good. No, not at all. I think also the clickbait podcasting is part of the radical swings in opinions as well. That way it works as you say something completely crazy. You just level a bunch of F bombs about Trump as an idiot or a fool or you say this about it. And then the next thing you know and all these daily beast or something, that clip is there on YouTube and you get more and more clicks. And then people say, I'm going to turn in. I don't know what this guy's going to say. Well, Victor, you have a lot of people who are happy to listen to you and they sent a lot of their well wishes, but also things with it. I have three letters that were written, handwritten and one of them was actually printed, but nonetheless. And I'm just going to read bits and pieces of them. This is from Holly Ashworth. Ever since I read Why Trump, by which I think she means the case for Trump, although I do like her title, I have been reading, listening, and sharing. Thank you for your work, your wisdom, your courage. So nestle in, get well, rest, read, and be well cared for warmly. Holly. It's very nice. Yeah. And she sent crocheted bookmarks. So you can put these in your books and I'm doing, oh, there you go. Yes. And they're very nice. Hand crocheted, very beautiful. Boy, that's nice. I don't have courage. I'll tell you who has courage is a pilot in the middle of a round hiking up to 7,000 feet when he was wounded. Courage and strength. On the helicopters that came after him. Yep. That's courage. And this is from Sarah Stark on some very beautiful stationery. She said, I like many, that she's going to go from I to we, and I like her translation into we very quickly. She goes, I, like many others, feel like we know you. We are compelled to reach out to you and lift, sorry, and lift you up during this challenging season we're in. That's nice. It's very nice. I have to reciprocate the connections you, you, oh, sorry, you have achieved when you speak, write, interview, to reach a person like me. Kind connections like the community you and Dr. Rice have actively, have actively kept, have actively produced. Connelly's Rice has been very, very, she's always nice, but she's been very, very accommodating for my absence. And that wouldn't necessarily be true of all everyone. So I'm trying to work almost full time with potting and writing. Because I have what they call episodic tachycardia. I never know when all of a sudden my heart's going to go 40 beats. And they say it's self-limited and it's not AFib. So, and then I have my big signetera test in two weeks to see if anything got out again. The next one, the DNA to see if it's the cancer is anywhere. Yeah. Well, that Sarah says that's what keeps her heart beating or the communities created by you. That's very nice. Nice. And then the last one is from Eileen Barbara Holton. And she says, Dr. Hansen, I'm sure I'm not the only one to tell you that you are a 21st century Socrates. You are surely Socrates for me. Your profound knowledge of history coupled with your gently offered wisdom is a rare gift to those of us struggling to make sense of a senseless era. May you recover your health quickly and totally. You are in my prayers. May you soon be offering us once again the sage comfort of your words. And I think Eileen, he's getting to that point. So thank you very much. As I said before, I texted almost every other night or every night with Rush this last year. And I really learned a lot from him. He was in a lot of agony and everything. And he had lung cancer as well. And he, he said, you got to go to the, you got to just go, go for it. In other words, work as long as you can. Keep going to the bitter end. Yes. And, and then you have to have a defiant as my friend Max Nikias and I talk about. Not yet, comrade, not yet from dust boot, or maybe you would prefer the game of thrones, not today. Not today. What do we say to death, Richter? All right. And thanks everybody for joining us on this Saturday. We're happy that you chose us and thank you, Victor. Thank you very much, everybody for watching and listening. 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. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, an audit dread. It's time for Vantor. Vantor automate security and compliance brings evidence into one place and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it calm clients. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vantor to prove trust. Get started at vantor.com slash calm.