Trump vs. the Pope, Iran’s Economic Squeeze, NATO’s Weakness, and Left-Wing Street Violence | Victor Davis Hanson

Meet the new Hoker Speed Goat 7. Proven grip, comfort and control. For runners who meet the wild head on. From steep climbs, to slick descents, and loose rock. Speed Goat 7. Run Wilder. Explore more on hoker.com. But the news is what it is. So the Pope has been critical of the United States. Not directly. There's nothing he's attacked Donald Trump directly. But in the wee hours of Sunday, Donald Trump took to Truth Social and just went on a very aggressive critique of the Pope. And then on top of that also portrayed a picture of him. I don't know, some AI generated picture where the president clearly seems like Jesus is healing somebody. Jack, we're ready. I hope this doesn't endanger our beautiful relationship. It won't, Victor. It won't. Victor, we've lived through all the depictions of Barack Obama as an old crown of Thor. Oh, absolutely. They had all those pictures with a halo around him. Savannah Hernandez bullied and pummeled at a rally. She's a reporter for TPUSA. He was talking on Jen Psaki that she was beaming because he was talking about, he was all about love and peace and he was stabilizing. In fact, he and his wife and his daughter were the primary catalyst for the violence against Savannah. Well, hello ladies and hello gentlemen and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. I don't know if it's a network, Victor, but that's what we're going to call it. And you're wearing the Daily Signal hat there. Ever loyal. Victor is a senior contributor there and he's got two shows, this one. And four days a week he does Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's the Wayne and Marsha Buske Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Author of forthcoming book. Many best sellers, man with the website, The Blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. Please do subscribe. It's $65 a year, $6.50 a month if you just want to test drive it. You do that because Victor writes tons of exclusive articles and he does exclusive videos for that site. So again, we're talking on Tuesday, April 14th, 2026. Somebody told me to mention the year, Victor. I don't know if they're being sarcastic or not. This particular episode is out on Thursday the 16th of April. So much to talk. Victor, this could be a daily show with everything that happens and with all your wisdom you need sharing. But we're going to talk about, I guess, Chip Hope, Leo and Donald Trump. Jack, we're ready. I hope this doesn't endanger our beautiful relationship. It won't, Victor. It won't. Don't worry about it. I mentioned that we have a history in this country of Rome, Rome and rebellion. Yeah, Romanism, right? Yeah. Rome is a... I don't know. Was that aimed at more Southern Europeans or was it still, Irish had already been here for 30 years? I think it was more Irish related. The Italian diaspora was a little 1890s and there on. Most of them, where I am in Milford, Connecticut, they came... I think Connecticut, New Haven had the largest collection of Italians outside of Italy. But yeah, it was mostly the Irish, Victor, who were denigrated then. So we have this, the Sarah Hernandez, Savannah Hernandez, the TV USA reporter who was bullied. That was awful. There's some really interesting things you've spotted, Victor, about how the efforts against Iran are working economically or really harming Iran economically and some misleading media stories. So we have just a ton to talk about and we'll get to that in your wisdom when we return from these important messages. Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin and just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen. Whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words or his short form content for the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, I always leave an episode learning something new. 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We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So, you know, Victor, I get attacked. Where's this Catholicism on his sleeve on the show? Shut up about all your papal or whatever. But the news is what it is. So the Pope has been critical of the United States. Not directly. There's nothing he's attacked Donald Trump directly. But in the wee hours of Sunday, Donald Trump took to truth social and just went on a very aggressive critique of the Pope. And then on top of that also portrayed a picture of him. I don't know if somebody, some AI generated picture where the president clearly seems like Jesus. Was it the one with the surgery room? Is that what? Did you see the AI one when there's a patient and he's at the door and he has a robe on. He says he was thinking he was some kind of doctor. A doctor. But was that the one you were referring to? No, the one I think he was holding his hand over. Oh, yeah. He had a robe. Yeah. I mean, that wasn't a Jesus. Victor, we've lived through all the depictions of Barack Obama as a crown of Thor. They had all those pictures with a halo around them, remember? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, Victor, what's your take on this? Was it was, is this something Donald Trump, I'll ask the question. Was it a mistake for him to have done this? Yeah. I think there's two general rules. Number one, no matter how political the popes, because it hasn't, it's not the first time. They become, they represent so many millions of people, practically billion, that you don't attack the pope and you by extension then don't denigrate Catholics. And that said, there's the second half of that corollary is the pope, anytime a pope starts to sound off against a Western elected government vis-a-vis, if it's in a war with a non-Western autocracy, it's a losing proposition. Pope John, when he attacked Russia, he was talking about that he was a guiding light, a guiding inspiration for Eastern Europeans who are under the yoke of the Warsaw Pact. But when you attack a George W. Bush or Donald Trump and they're engaged in trying to liberate a country, it's just a no-win situation. Even if he didn't do it by name, the problem is when you condemn all wars, then what are you saying? World War II, you could condemn World War II. You let Hitler go, you let Russia go during the Cold War, you let North Korea go, you let this horrible regime that just killed 35. So the pope didn't quite realize, I think, that when he does that, both sides, men, as we say in Greek, men day on one hand and on the other hand, then people who, let's say, have suffered under the yoke of Iranian oppression get kind of upset that he's morally neutral, even though he didn't intend it that way because the church doctrine is to, although as someone who's a great admirer of Augustine, he did inaugurate just war theory that sometimes the kingdom of heaven is on earth and you have to use earthly powers to destroy him. Yeah, Catholicism is not a pacifist religion. No, it's not. But that's what I just think it would have been wiser had he not stepped on that turf, especially the problem with it, there was a second problem with the pope's declaration. He was doing it at a time when Trump was very vulnerable, that the left is attacking him mercilessly and very unfairly and saying the war is lost, da, da, da, da. And when he mentioned that, the direct illusion was to Trump and it came off as if he was piling on to the secular left wing criticism of Trump. And that, with the midterms coming up and Trump making such enormous inroads in the Catholic vote in 2024, that pulled a trigger in Trump's mind that, you know what, the pope is now trying to help the left and I had a very tenuous new Catholic constituency of independent Catholics that have joined me and now I'm going to lose them in the midterm. So he lashed out, which is a big mistake. Copability on both sides, but given their styles, the pope came off as smoothing, matter of fact, and Trump came back as trigger happy. So I don't know, but had the pope could have easily said, in these, we don't, the church cannot adjudicate every single war as to victim or, but our position is we want to mitigate the damage. So we're asking, even though if you want to be stupid enough, excuse me, if you want to be reckless enough to comment on a very tricky political situation, he could have said something like, it's not our purview to advise the United States what to do. All we ask is to make sure that innocent civilians are not harmed, something like that. He could have done that very easily, but he is a man of the left, so he couldn't. That's true. He's interesting compared to Francis. Oh, well, he's a much better pope than Francis. Well, it's just as I think as a person, as a Catholic and as an American, he's likable. Even though he's wrong-headed, I think. I was going to ask you, was he a native Italian speaker? No, I don't believe so. I mean, I think he's second generation. He grew up in a home in a suburb of Chicago. But I thought I saw a clip of him. He speaks Italian, right? Well, I think it's probably learned over the years. Yeah. He may have studied in Rome. He probably knows Latin very well, too. And if you're the pope, you are the bishop of Rome, so it kind of behooves you to speak the language of the locals. He's also, I mean, he seems like a likable guy, whereas for many of us, conservative Catholics who chafed about Francis, I mean, he's our pope, too. But he was a, he was kind of a nasty guy, it seemed. That's how he came off. And he seemed like he didn't like Americans. America? Francis? Yeah. He was an ex, he was an ex, he was a, what do you call it, a security guard in a bar. That's how he started, right? Well, I don't know about that. But maybe he's falling. Also, Victor, one other thing, the background is, you may or may not know, it's 60 minutes the other night, they had a segment with three American Catholic Cardinals and one's from Chicago, Washington. And I forget where the other one was from, but all very, very left. And the church in America itself, the priest, became much more conservative. So this is real tension within Catholicism in America. It's not good to get political. Yeah. Well, we shall say our rosaries. Protestants have an advantage because it's decentralized. So you have all these freelancing people, you know, Francis Graham or one on one, Jerry, former Jerry Falwell, then you have all of the Anglican, Episcopalian, Congregationalist leftists. And nobody can control it all. But when the Pope speaks, given the nature of the church and the history of the church, he's speaking as the de facto head of Christianity and also Catholicism. So it carries more weight. Well, let's, before we take, we have a couple of ads to read and I know that that shapes some people. Let's get your take, Victor, first before we head into Middle East about Savannah Hernandez bullied and pummeled at a rally. She's a reporter for TPUSA, bullied by these elitists. I think they're from Minnesota. Yeah, they were. Or a guy, some dude who was actually on Jen Psaki's show once. They're all, they love you until they punch you. So anyway, your thoughts on this? He was talking on Jen Psaki that she was beaming because he was talking about, he was all about love and peace and he was stabilizing. In fact, he and his wife and his daughter were the primary catalyst for the violence against Savannah. And then they had the idea that we're in a public place. We are demonstrating against ICE at a federal facility, which is the people's facility, and we're, you know, in a public place. And no one has a right to come and look at us and report or ask questions because we're morally superior. And when this brave young girl did, they started to be raider. They started to intimidate her. That daughter, I think it was the daughter of the guy in the blue shirt, got that whistle and blew right in her ear, which was really bad. And they tormented her and they kept tormenting her. And then this buffoonish guy, he was a very big, he was a big coward. He took this small girl and he came around the back and pushed her to the ground like blindsided her. And that's so, I, if they were in the Biden administration, they would have all been heralded. But not this, I think Harmut Dillon and civil rights, they're going to really throw the book at him, his wife and his daughter. And I hope that he gets a federal prison sentence for assault on a federal facility. I hope they put him in jail. He was a complete ogre what he did. That face of full, I was watching those videos. He's full of hate. He was, before that happened, he was egging on. And then he did this pseudo masculinity macho thing where he had to be held back. You know, he was going to go after her and everybody was holding him back like he was going to kill her. And, you know, it was just, oh, I hold me back. I want to beat up a petite little girl. And I can't even do it in front of face to face. I want to blindside her and hurt her. And so I hope they throw the book. I hope she sues him for everything he has. I hope that she sues all of them. And I hope she sues if they find out, which I think they could very easily, that he is a recipient of some of these left wing philanthropic quote unquote funds that are funding all this. They should sue them too. Yeah. Victor still lives in our head these that the left, the flower children and give peace a chance, etc, etc. Like they just come by, but they are truly violent. They've been violent for decades. They've been, they're always, you know, the, all the bombings of Bill Ayers, you know, and company they, they were. I was given a great gift because I came from this very conservative agrarian atmosphere and I went to UC Santa Cruz and I saw the left in its heyday in 1971 at this new experimental campus. And they were the most selfish, violent. They had all sorts of protests. They'd go in classes and throw chairs and try to kick people out. I've talked about, they tried to disrupt our Greek history class. They went on the stage with Mary Holmes, who was a saintly art historian and Jasper Rose was a provost and they tried to shut down their lecture and call them bourgeoisie sellouts. And who were they? I read the alumni, they're all screenwriters and lawyers and activists and politicians. They're all wealthy. That's what they always were. These are, this is a phenomenon on the left. Not all, but the ringleaders are upper, upper middle class, white, privileged people who feel guilty and their counterparts in the DEI movement, wealthy, minority, black, Latino, Asian. And it's a class thing. And they think they can just, they're morally superior. So any means necessary justify their violence. That's what their aims. And they're, they've always been that way. But anytime a person says, I'm going to correct injustice. If you give me the tools to do it, then what follows is Robespierre and the guillotine, you know, it's a logical, logical next step because there's the same thing with DEI. If you say, I'm a victim and I'm oppressed, then it's sort of like I'm a Soviet commissar working for the people. I'm a Klansman. I'm an upstanding guy in town. Don't dare prosecute me because what I'm doing is for everybody. That's when you ever have that mindset of exemption that the law will not, then you're going to have a disaster. Yes, the status as you say, but it's also the expectation of wealth. You say they're wealthy, but if they, if they're not born to the man or born, they then expect to rig these NGOs and nonprofits. It's a psychological condition. It really is. It's built on envy and anger at people that are better off of them. I've talked to people and I must, a hundred times in my life, I've talked to a leftist who was middle class, but had a PhD or an MA or JD and they would say things like, can you believe me? I'm a professor and I, I'm driving an old car and there's a guy at the 7-Eleven. It owns it and he has a, he's got a Jaguar. You know, they really feel that their talents are underappreciated and that the plumber, the electrician, the small business person who's really much more industrious, much more creative, smarter, harder working, etc. Don't deserve it because they're not as articulate or they don't have a bunch of letters after their name. Do you know who you're speaking to, Victor? Yeah, you know who you speak to. Yeah. You know that I have two BAs. Do you know that I have a master's degree? You know, it says that a lot are teachers, teachers, teachers, teachers. Doctor. Okay. Yeah. To our listeners and to our viewers, 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 and to one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent, whenever permanent, at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. 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And right now they're extending a special liberty offer to our listeners and viewers to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in the bank. If you believe as we do that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious. Call 844-790-9191. 844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com. That's 844-790-9191. 844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com. History rewards those who take the long view. And we thank the very, very, very good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, I have two personal things I got to get Catholicist of Tolia early. I think I've told you I sing at my church, I sing at funerals. And there was a funeral this morning from Mrs. Barr and God rest her soul. But one of the ushers, one of the Paul Barons from the funeral home came up to me and he wanted an aspect to doing. Wait, wait, wait. You're relating a situation where somebody was inquiring about my health at a funeral and he was a Paul Bitter. Does that mean like, is there a future funeral on the horizon? Well, there is a future funeral on the horizon for all of us. All of us, we all. Yeah, and I was at an event last night in Manhattan. A couple people came up to me saying, how's Victor doing? Where were I going? I was nervous because I have my second blood biopsy, 120 days a week from Friday. And that'll tell me whether anything escaped. And if they're negative, the blood biopsies are negative, then you have another three months till the next one. Is that how they operate? Is that the schedule they're on? Yes. And the good thing about a negative test is that the odds that it will be, the next one will be negative increase because the idea is that once you take the tumor and the whole lobe out and nothing got in the airways, because I did have spread in the airways in the larger mass, if that hadn't, that didn't show up in 30 days, but that doesn't mean that it might have just shown up and been inactive, you know, like a inert cell. But by 120 days, it should have sprouted. And the next, so it didn't, if it's negative, then the next time, and another 90 days, then it continues to decrease. It doesn't mean that you can have three negatives. I've talked to people who said they've read about three negatives and they get a positive for some reason. It can be a different type of cancer, but it's a good sign. But if, unfortunately, in this mutation, if it's positive, there's no immune or immunotherapy or chemotherapy. Chemo-therapy, yeah. But then you're kind of sitting on an IED because it says, well, you have at least one DNA cell of your mutation that got out and it's going to come somewhere in your pancreas lung or brain in the next four to six months. So then you have to have, you have to wait for it, but nobody really knows what to do in that intern. Yeah. Because it's resistant to chemotherapy and other things. Well, you will continue to be a machine, as you have always been. Whatever. You have to go, you have to work as long as you can. Yeah. I would go crazy if I just sat around thinking about it. Painting birdhouses, wondering who's wandering around through your obmitaries, dumping things. Yeah, I would go. Straight dogs and running loose on your property. I would. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's, you know, I want to save, maybe save the Iran stuff, the sizeable things to get your take on when we come back from the break. But before that, I had sent you this little link and I just think it's interesting to get your brief commentary. And it's about the British Army. And I saw a, I don't know if it was a parliamentary committee. There was a British general being questioned by an MP and the bottom line is that the British Army today cannot deploy 1000 troops, cannot tell you what certainty. Yeah, absolutely. We need a thousand guys here. No question we can do that. So that is a public thing. They don't have the logistics. They don't have the ready troops and they don't have the logistical lift capacity to do that. They can't put them on C 17s with fighter escort and be refueled in the air. They don't have the ability to do it. And, you know, the only ally that I hate to say it, but the only two allies that have been impressive are the Ukrainians, the way they're fighting their fanatic fighters and the Israelis. And you think the Indians could mount something? I don't know. I mean, I think the time they fight with Pakistan, I think most people root for the democracy, the Indians, but they, Pakistanis have a very good, I think they have maybe a better air force. I'm not sure, but India has, it's got more nuclear weapons. It's got a much bigger population. They've got very talented people in India, but I think Modi has been re-arming very rapidly. And Pakistan is very close to China and uses that card. But everybody's talking about the future of NATO and it is an embarrassment that Spain and France and the UK and Italy were not there, even though they've said, go to Serbia with us, go to Libya with us, you know, go to help us in Chad, help us in the Falklands. But the point I'm making is a lot of it is just they don't have the ability to do it. They don't. Right. They don't have the maintenance. They don't have anything. What help could they be if they even wanted to help? By the way, interesting on this X thing that was posted, someone comically responded, just in case you missed it, King Harold Godwinson put seven times more men in the field at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 than the British Army could do today. That is, that is. We're living in a surreal world, you know, and everybody mentions the Monty Python Black Knight scene where he loses all of his, that's Iran. The Knights of Ney. We'll get to Iran, but I mean, they, just because they're defiant, the left thinks, oh, they're defiant, they're winning. It would be as if after we dropped the two atomic bombs on the sixth and ninth in Japan and we've leveled 12 of their cities and we destroyed the entire Imperial fleet and they've got basically a million. They have about two million men under arms and they're arming women with javelins and maybe they have about six or seven thousand comic causes. So they have, invading Iran would be difficult, but invading Japan would be difficult, but that didn't mean Japan was not completely destroyed. Its economy was ruined and we were going to see it fall apart. Okay. So it would be as if we were at September 2nd, we send the Missouri in there. We've got all of our luminaries, MacArthur and the Japanese dignitaries and their top hats come up and say, we're not going to surrender. We demand that you get out of Tokyo Bay. We have a list of demands and you better listen to us or you're going to have to invade. They wouldn't have put up with it. They had us on the run. Yeah. We won this war. Or the same thing, Hitler or the South. Somebody mentioned that not too long ago. I don't know where I read it. Somebody sent it to me that, the guy wrote that, these are the demands that we want. We want slavery and succession. That's what Iran is doing and we'll talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about Trump. He flipped it. He flipped that paradigm. You're going to do a blockade? Well, watch mine. It's going to be a lot better. Well, let's talk about the blockade and its economic consequences and we'll get your take on that, Victor, when we return from these important messages. If you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, you might enjoy the Daily Signals flagship show, the Tony Kennett 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 starcast. Tom Tillis, I'm pretty sure might have been useful at one time as a doorstop. Find the Tony Kennett Cast on YouTube, X, radio, TV or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words talking on Tuesday, April 14th, 2026. This episode is up on Thursday, the 16th. Victor's handle on, if you're on X is at VD Hansen, VDH's Morning Cup on Facebook. If you're on Facebook, check out our good friends at Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club. And of course, again, the blade of Perseus, VictorHansen.com. Do check that out and do subscribe. So Victor, you had shared with me a long thread off of X by Miao Mulecki. I think, I'm sorry if I mispronounce your name, sir. And that's, it's a 10 points about the success, the economic success of the blockade, the US blockade. Would you like to take that on, my friend? Well, I like that article because it was analytical and empirical. What he was saying were certain aspects that people had forgotten that they are receiving in their aggregate income about, was it 430 something million a day, Jack, in oil, oil, petrochemicals and... Just to say the collective economic damage. Yes, collective... Is that 435 million a day? And you can see how, because there's everything they have from washing machines to tires, that has to be imported. And you can stop everything if you control the straight over moves. And everybody talks about, well, they have the Caspian Sea or they have a port on the other side of the straight, like the Gulf of Oman. And I know that he points out that those are very minuscule areas of oil export. The big enchilada is Karg Island. Unfortunately for the Iranians, it's way deep in the Persian Gulf. So they came up with the idea they want to blockade that fine and they say, we're only going to let pro-Iranian ships in fine. But they don't have the wherewithal to enforce that. They want to take out their narcotic like PT boats, the warthogs, and they can destroy them. If they try to blanket the Gulf states in Israel with missiles, Trump will lay the blow. He will just take out... He will take out their dual use generation and stuff. And that will stop that very quickly. So what Trump basically did, Jack, is he said, okay, blockade. Hmm, good idea, but you're the wrong people blockading it. We're going to have a blockade, but we're going to borrow your idea that it's selective. So we're going to flip it upside down. You say nobody but pro-Iranian people can come in. We're going to say nobody but anti-Iranian are going to come in. So any ship, and they're going to have a problem with China because that's 80% of the ships coming in to get the oil will be Chinese. But they're going to have to turn back. That'll be explosive if they try to do it. I think eventually Trump will do it and China will get angry and we'll see what happens. But we have the wherewithal to stop it. And a couple of things are going to happen as he points out. They don't have the storage capacity just to keep pumping oil and add it into Carg Island. Fuel storage depots are into ships that are idle there. At some point very quickly in a matter of days, they're going to fill all those things up. And as he points out with oil wells, if you just shut them down, they have to be maintained and they get water seepage. And it's very hard and expensive to reboot them. So it's a very intricate process. And he said they're not going to be able to have any petrochemical or oil income because they're not diversified with their ports like the Saudis or the Emirates. And he made another good point. I had written about that this morning, but I wrote it a couple of days ago that they don't understand the Gulf. They think it's going to be forever 20% of the world's oil leaves. And therefore they are critical because you've got to go close to their shore and they're going to enter. And they just keep talking about that. And while they're talking, they don't see the world is changing and it's changing rapidly. The Saudis now export most of their oil to the Red Sea. If the Houthis get orders to stop it, well, Trump bombed them for 56 days. And the Israelis and the Americans can shut down their power, their war, everything if they try that. They're going to build probably another pipeline to the Red Sea. They're talking about building one across the desert through Jordan to Haifa or near Jerusalem. They're talking about expanding the one that already exists in the Gulf of Oman where you could get the oil before you got near the strait. And at the same time, they think that nobody will touch their oil because it's critical to the world price. Maybe, maybe not one or two million barrels a day, but Ukraine and Russia are talking about a ceasefire. You put Russian oil at full capacity on the market. You put Venezuela, which is increasing every day a little bit, their oil output. And Trump says he's going to have another million barrels. You could say to the Iranians, as long as your regime is in power, you're not going to export any oil, not today, not six months from now. And the world economy would make the necessary adjustments is what the writer is saying. So he's basically, I think he's basically telling us that it's a political, it's a political challenge to Donald Trump. They have counted on the left to embolden them. So their strategy is to be indulge in a crude stereotype of the middle. They want to do a rug deal and they want to barter and barter and barter and fain anger and back and forth. They want to draw that out for three to four to five months and they want the economy to stall, the world economy, and then they want the left to come in and take the house and take the Senate and cut off funds and stop the war. I don't think that's going to happen. That's their strategy. But what he's trying to argue is that strategy requires a quiet population that can be intimidated as it is now. But permanently so. And it requires some economic viability to survive. And they're already can't afford food. They can't afford gas. They're under attack. They've lost probably a half a billion dollars, half a trillion dollars in weapons and infrastructure that was accrued over 47 years. They can't rebuild that and they can't give money to the Arab terrorist that they there are three or four proxies, five proxies in Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza and Yemen without angering further the population. And as I said in this article, it's one thing to tell the population, well, you don't like us, but we restored the Iranian credibility. Everybody's afraid of us. We're the terror master. And now the people are saying, no, you're not the terror master of the Middle East. You're a paper tiger. You're buffoons. They've wiped you out. We're going down the toilet with you. This is what you did. Nobody's afraid of you anymore. You're a bunch of clowns that is fatal to a dictatorship to be humiliated and to be an object of ridicule. So he, he points all of that out, I think quite successfully as did Michael Duran, who always has important things to say. He says seven myths about the Iranian war. So I guess to sum up the left is in a bubble. And it, it, it's all frenzy because Trump is under such criticism by Tucker Carlson or Megan Kelly or Candace Owens and they say, oh, the mega movement's blowing apart and everybody's saying it's lost. And they don't look at the situation. You know, they don't look at the actual mill. It's the most asymmetrical war in memory and Trump can adjudicate when it starts and when it ends. And if he wants to take up the Iranian challenge, I'll, it'll be very interesting when American warships go through there and they've completely demined, demined the area this week and tankers follow them and they start to bring in those little mosquito boats and see what happens. I think you'll see a whole fleet of warthogs in the air and they will blast them out of the water and I think they will hit any missile within two or three minutes. They'll know where it was launched. They'll take that out and but they're not going to stop there. They're going to tell them, okay, you're broke now. You've got $400 million in economic damage plus per day. Wait till you don't have any power and that, and that will really shake up things. And somebody said, well, that would be, that would be in your main. Well, then talk to Bill Clinton because he shut down the power grid at Belgrade almost per day or two every week he did and talk to Barack Obama. He shut down television stations and lilies, shut down the ports. He tried to do a lot of stuff, which he said he didn't do. So there's a long tradition of dual use targeting. Yeah. I mean, outside of what we shut down the United States during COVID. Something more controversial. I really liked the Wall Street Journal, but I'm getting very, very disappointed. I look at the headline stories in the news section and I can't distinguish them from the New York Times. It's all doom and gloom. Trump did this and this is this. Then I'd say to myself, well, at least the editorial page, I really like Dan Henninger, Barton Swam, is that it? Barton Swam? Don't forget Bill McGurran. Yeah, but I love Bill McGurran. I like Holman Jinkin, Kimberly, of course. But today, Gerald Baker, whom I really like, I really like him. He's a very brilliant guy, but he has succumbed to the pessimism of the news stories. And he's basically saying the war is lost or it's not going well. It's just anti-empirical to say that, given the great difference in damage. I can see that he's upset with Trump's exclamations, but that doesn't disguise the fact that we've done so much damage to this Iranian military. And the economic damage hasn't even taken its toll, full toll yet, but it's now at a crisis point and they know it. And that's why they wanted to negotiate. And their- Inflation is nearly 50% there. Yeah, they're broke. And everybody said, was it brilliant? Nobody- Nobody imagined they would close it. Now they knew they were going to try that, but they don't have the naval facilities to close it, not against the U.S. Navy. And all they're going to do is say, well, we're going to close it. And the Americans said, well, we wouldn't- we weren't going to do that, but because you gave us the idea or you think it's okay, we'll do it. But none of your friends are coming in and all of your enemies are. And we're going to- they're all going to get oil from the Arab exporters, but they're not going to get any from you. And so it's going to flip back on them. Yeah. Victor, can I add to the journal what you're saying? One of the- I think it's probably the most popular website in the world is the Daily Mail. And I'm on it all day to see that they're usually on top of something that has just happened. But they're headlines too. And I don't- No, they changed that. They're very negative too. With those little mosquito boats, like, oh my gosh, this is a crisis that they're in. There's 500 of them. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so this is alarmism that is not- We had 500 PT boats in the Pacific and they were the most, you know, John Ford made a movie about- They were expendable. They were expendable and they were expendable. And they were- they saved MacArthur coming out of Corregidor True, but when you actually look at the losses they incurred versus the damage they inflicted, it was sort of like Daylight B-17 raids over Europe in 1940, late 42. It was a death mission. And if you look at the cargo- the cargo- the narcotics cargo boat, these little speed boats, doesn't- maybe they're only 25 feet- they look pretty big on a photo reconnaissance bomber, fighter bombers, radar, whatever, cameras. So they can knock them out very easily. And I don't get the pessimism. And the other thing I always look at were the news, as I said before, the journal- It seems like it's made a radical difference because I look at the bylines of these reporters, you know, that are writing that Trump dumbfounded our economy going to get worse or oil situation. When you get good news, it says, it's not all what you people think. It's always negative. And when you look at the bylines, where do they come from? They come from Politico. They come from the New York Times. They come from the Washington Post. They come from the Atlantic. They don't come from National Review or Daily Caller or the Federalist or- you name it. They're all from liberal left-wing outlets and they're hiring them. That's new, I think, for the journal to do that. And it must indicate a change in direction. I worry not because I don't like the journal, but because I really like it. And I think what they- insidiously are doing- and it's not just me. I get about three emails a day from listeners who say, why don't you talk about the journal? I'm so angry at the journal. And you look- and it's going to lose it. Maybe it's going to pick up- there must be some brilliant marketing analysts behind this who will- who's looked at the demographics and said, well, you're picking up all these left-wing liberals now. Maybe. But it seems to me that there's going to be a lot of people who are just- they're going to look at it as the New York Times and not read it. Yeah, who needs it? Hey, Victor, we're going to stay on the media and around because while America is losing, somebody's winning to some people in the media, and that's China. We're going to get your take on that. But first, to our listeners and our viewers, everything we carry today is broadcasting a signal. Your phone, your laptop, even your car key fob, and 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, and that's why you should start using silent. You don't want big tech, the government, or anyone else knowing your every move you want control over when you're connected and what you share. And 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 our attention at Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Silent 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. Now that same technology is available for everyday people, just like you, Victor, and me, where everyday people. So if you want to check it out, go to silent.com. And it's silent to spelt. There's no vowels. S-L-N-T.com. Let me spell that again. S-L-N-T.com. To save 15% plus free shipping on qualifying orders. Again, that's silent.com. S-L-N-T.com. S-L-N-T.com. We thank the good people from Silent for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, you drew my attention to a Washington Free Beacon article by Ira Stoll, the misleading media group think on China's renewable energy. Somehow China is the winner, is winning on energy in this area. That came out of the Wall Street Journal too, you got a good point. That was a Wall Street Journal argument. Yeah. Actually, it's an image of a Wall Street Journal article. And the Wall Street Journal is based on the Associated Press, which is based from what we know, getting a lot of its sources from what? Subsidized left-wing news outlets. And that got me very angry when the Wall Street Journal ran that, because only what, 6% to 8% of Chinese energy is coming from wind and solar, and 70% of their electricity is coal. So basically China is the biggest user of fossil fuels, coal in the world. And we're supposed to believe that this is so shocked China, because they've had some delays in getting a million barrels of oil out of Iran and the Gulf, and they can't easily make it up, supposedly, with North African oil or Russian oil, or you name it. And the result of all of this is they're going to be very formidable because they're going to turn to wind and solar. Well, I hope they do, because what they're doing right now is they are building wind and solar assembly plants to ship this stuff all over the western world so that we spend trillions of dollars in subsidies to go green and that's why they build three coal plants a month. And they're going to continue to do that. So it was not factually based, it was ultimately traced to foundations and left-wing outlets that the AP consults for data picked up by the Wall Street Journal, and I was told what did a really great job exposing all of that. And China, they're not a big winner. If they want to go wind and solar, 50%, they'll be a big loser because it will be very inefficient, and they will not be able to supply their grid with the type of AI demands that we put on, especially at night, but they will continue to build oil and continue to say they're green. That's why we are green and we have a lot of oil and coal, and we don't fully use it, especially in Europe. Right, so, hey Victor, I do want to spell out who we were talking about before, and this is M.I.Maleky on X. If you want to look at this 10-point analysis of Iran's economic state because of the blockade. Let's keep on Iran, Victor, if you don't mind. There's a headline I sent this to you from. It's about the U.N. This is a question we could ask every day and get the same answer why we're even in the U.N. now. So this is about the U.N. watches reporting. This is last week. Canada, France, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, and the U.K. voted to nominate Iran to lead the U.N.'s 54 Nation Economic and Social Council. And what does that council do? It shapes policy on women's rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism. So this is the, you know, our allies. It's disgusting. Why are we, why is there, if we left the U.N. would anyone know, would anyone care? No, they would. They are broke right now. They're on the markets trying to get loans. China doesn't pay their way. Russia doesn't pay their way. North Korea doesn't pay their way. Europe doesn't pay. We do. We pay a quarter of their budget. And the strange thing, you know, about all of this is that people think that Donald Trump is the disruptor, that he is destroying, that he's always destroying the WHO, the International Criminal Court, all our wonderful relations with Canada, Spain. No, he's a catalyst. He's a catalyst for things that are already well in progress. He is ripping, as I said before, a happy face scab that you think is healed and looks fine. And this guy comes across and says, be careful. I'm going to pull it off. And he agitates and pulls it off. And what is the wound? It's not healed. It's putrid. It's infected. When you look at Canada, here at Canada with this illustrious war record prior World War I and World War II, can't and will not pay 2% and freeloads on us. And then they've got this ridiculous prime minister who keeps boasting that he's going to triangulate with this dictatorship that's enslaved a million wagers as the moral equivalent of the West. And then he's going to try to run up a $60 billion surplus with us in a supposedly free trade zone. And then on top of that, they're going to adopt internal policies like euthanasia that is contrary to the whole Western Judeo-Christian tradition. It's basically suicide sanctioned by the state. In theory, the veneer argument is that it's, oh, we're humanitarian. No, no, it's a way of save money to tell you the truth, that you don't have the wherewithal, you don't want to spend on somebody who's depressed or seriously ill who might not necessarily be doomed. And I'm speaking to somebody who, if I get a negative test in two weeks, they've said there's no treatment. So I guess if I was in Canada, I'd go to my Canadian and say, you know, I have a, the cancer is going to come back in four months and they don't have a way to treat it. Well, Victor, are you depressed? Not really. Well, have you thought about euthanasia? It might be a way to alleviate the pain and the discomfort to come. And then their little mind was going, oh, he looks to me like a million dollars wasted in health care costs for him. We better get this guy, you know, get him into the ground as soon as possible. It's same day service there now. Yeah, it is. It used to be a waiting period. There was no cooling off period. And they embrace that. I want to get into their immigration policies or all of the lunatic things. So Trump saw that and I know he mentioned about Alberta and all that stuff, but he just exposed something that polite conversation and presidents would say, you know, they would say, oh, well, you know, we love the Canadians, but we don't, we don't want to get on the topic of NATO or they're, they're running up this trade surplus. They have open borders. We've got a lot of unsavory people coming across the northern border. They've got this kind of European anti-American strain. They got this euthanasia thing now, but we'll just talk about same thing with NATO. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to pay 2%, but they're, you know, they're near Gibraltar and they're strategically located, but they hate us, but we can't use that NATO base, but we get along with Maloney, but you know, we can't land at the NATO base in Sicily and Macron is Macron and the French are the French. We can't use their airspace. And that's the, that was the status quo. And then this disruptor, he reminds me of somebody as I said earlier, and Aristophanes would play called the Knights and there was a guy named, his name was Delac Clion, which is translated, I hate Clion. The hate, I hate Clion character. All he does is he's just so crude. He goes in there and Clion is this demagogue and he just bulldozes him. You know what I mean? And that's what Trump is doing. He's just, ah, you don't pay your fair share. You don't pay your 2%. You know, you're running up all this stuff and don't kid us about your oil. You can't transport all the way to the Pacific. We, we refine it right across the border. So it's good for you too. And he just, they can't handle it. So they say, well, Trump destroyed. It wasn't for Greenland. We would have good relations with NATO. No, we didn't. Obama called them freeloaders 15, they were shocked when Obama said that. And they knew exactly what they were doing. What they were doing was having us pay for their defense so they could use all the social programs. And then they could say, we're an enlightened society that has great old grave medical care, education free, unlike the cowboy United States, who still believes in the power of the gun. And then anytime they had a little problem, oh, Melissa bitch is killing people. Oh, Gaddafi's bad. Oh, those dictators and the Falklands. Oh, the Chad or former colony is being over. Would you help us? You cowboys, you dirty people that believe in violence. Will you, you Roman legionnaires, will you listen to your Greek philosophers? That's how they did it. I assume Trump's dealing on perspective as he would deal with an individual. Yes. We see diplomatic as some sort of, well, it's only the select few who can discern the proper ways that members of the Council of Foreign Relations only have the magical keys to that kingdom and negotiation and discussion. So they're particularly peo'd at him for they don't understand not genuflecting to their. They don't understand what Trump is. He is an exposure. He's a person who, he doesn't care about titles. He doesn't care about past traditions. He doesn't care about any of that. He just looks at something and then here and now and says, this is asymmetrical. Why is this asymmetrical? And then people in the first administration would whisper in his ear, well, you know, NATO has been, well, we're paying all the thing and they don't like us and they're not armed. And then everybody arms and then people forget that he forced them to arm in the first administration. And then they come back and say, well, why is he mad? They're arming their meeting their 2%. Yeah, they're meeting their 2% because of him. Trump. And they'll meet the 5% because of him. And that's a commentary on them, not us, that you have to be yelled at and screamed at and threatened by a guy like Trump before you would do what you should have done voluntarily. If you were community and alliance minded, which you weren't. And that's, you know, and people got mad. Well, Trump said he was going to destroy their civilization. And I said before he was talking about the theocratic civilization that had hijacked Iran for 50 years. But it is a commentary, isn't it that you'd have to talk that way, rather in sober and judicious. We're at John, I'm John Kerry, and we've got the basic outlines of a joint peace deal on the Iran. You can call it the Iran deal, but it's going to work out pretty well. We have some give and take. There was some spirited conversations. I'll admit that, but we can now. And then when that blows up and Trump's president, you what do you do after causing accusing everybody of this ossified our cake calcified Logan. You start meeting in Paris in secret with the Iranian foreign minister to undermine the Trump administration. So that's what diplomatic civilized behavior is. And it leads to neilism. I'm not saying that it always leads to neilism, but it does explain some of the frustrations and the quick solutions. In other words, it's a very intricate Gordian knot that we're supposed to respect every loop and curl and everything. And Trump comes in like with a big, big sword and he cuts it right in half and said, problem solved. You didn't pay by the rules. You were supposed to unravel it. No. Well, we have, we have three big topics we're going to hold off on because they're, they're germinating and probably be best in a day or two when you and the great Sammy Wink talks of the Hungarian elections. JD Vance is ongoing negotiations with Iran and Ireland's really big ongoing protests, which may collapse the government that may happen tonight may not happen at all. But I'll leave those on the table for you and Sammy to consider when you meet. I just think we should, I have one last topic to raise with you. And that's about how sharp and this is like big fat pitch down the plate here, Victor, but just sharp and that is having is the National Action Network had his group's annual convention this past week. And of course, several 2028 Democrat presidential hopefuls went there. Wes Moore of Maryland governor who was seems like the guys in really big trouble. I don't know why he's a president. Yeah, you can't tell the truth. Yeah. Kamala Harris, JB Pritzker. Anyway, Sharpton this that it's talking about the America 250 that ain't my party. Al Sharpton says it will be crazy for black people to celebrate America's 250th as 2028 dem hopefuls pay homage to him. And he talked about I don't think I have it here in the suit. Oh yeah. We may need to do our own rally and Philly or somewhere that day. That's July 4. Yeah, we know what that means. That's not our background. Yeah. Well, the subtext is was very disgusting to see these people go to that to go to the Sharpton event and get on their knees and beg this guy. Remember that Kamala Harris did that. Apparently she held she had to pay for it. Pay to play. She had to get that. And that's what he always was. He was a shakedown artist that would threaten demonstrations or protest or boycotts unless you paid him dangill. And the funny thing is he's never he caused a lot of horrific things in New York that Jack knows better than I but the whole Freddie's market and people died put on your that gender riot put on your your mocks and come over here. And then the Tawanna Brawley farce that he perpetrated perpetrated against the district attorney. He's got blood on his hands and he never really was exonerated and then the Obama administration came in and they rehabilitated him and they suddenly all the money he owed the IRS was what disappeared. I guess they settled with a sweetheart deal for him. So he's an unsavory character. He always has been. And when he says that black people five years ago I think it was the heritage foundation adjudicated or judged or guessed or analyzed the great society programs in existence from 64 till now. And they came up with what 20 trillion dollars in redistributed money and they calibrated that by things like affirmative action expanded welfare benefits that primarily went to the black community 20 trillion dollars. And we have had affirmative action since 1965 and six. And so whatever that repertory bill was for slavery in the southern south Jim Crow has been paid and paid and paid and paid. And I'm not saying there's not contemporary discrimination etc. But it's a tribalism that everybody has now after Obama who introduced it. So Hispanics Asians why they're all trying to identify by their particular tribe because that's the new salad bowl. Don't strip of our culture. And I said that I said that to a friend not too long ago I really like him but I went by the local Sikh temple one of the biggest in California and I said I love the Sikh community but don't you think it when you have your Sikh national flag. Don't you think you could put the American flag there too and put it on top of that. It's a public building now and you know you guys have a huge influence on the community but when you see and I go by these canteens near my house and I think wouldn't it be good if you just put the American flag on top of the Mexican flag rather than just the Mexican flag. And because the message that you're giving is that you want to be in the United States and you want to take advantage of the freedom and the security and the prosperity that was not allowed in India or in Mexico. But you don't want to assimilate fully or you don't want to identify fully you want to be ethnocentric and tribal which is okay. But that has to be subordinate has to be incidental to who you are not essential as a citizen. Your primary outlook is American and it should be reflected symbolically and having the American flag on there. But Sharpton's essentialism apparently is you saying I'm not an American. And then you know who are the wealthiest blacks in the world. The Nigerian Americans maybe. Well I mean in the world it is a black man living in the United States. Oh yeah. By far. The black community of 12% of the population has a larger GDP than most African countries. So it's been a big success story. To the degree you see problems in the black community it's not because there hasn't been enough money. It's a culture. Well maybe according to Tom Saul and others the late Walter it has been because of money because it subsidized single parent households women would get money without the need of a steady marriage or nuclear family. But the problem in the black community and that was what has destroyed a lot of people who were candid about it is it's a lack of a nuclear family. Not that other groups don't have it. Just a higher percentage of the black community is being raised by single women on federal or state or local support. And you don't have the input of a two parent household. And then you combine that with the exemption given by a guilty white hierarchy that doesn't really enforce a law as we see in these big cities. And you've got the you've got the equation so you see these Julie's stores or what we saw in Detroit this week where they youth came and swarmed the downtown they do it in Chicago they do it. They do it in LA and it's not sustainable. It's not left. Well left the leftist destruction of black communities in order to put up these projects which then in turn applied that kind of income restriction that made it prefer preferable to have one one income parent one parent family. It's all comes from the left. It does. Al Sharpton knows that and he knows that if a Martian spaceship landed here and somebody looked at the entire racial calculus of the United States and the two political parties the Martian would say well gosh it looks to me like the Democratic Party deliberately enacted policies that made them feel good but never really analyzed the result on the people they were supposed to help and then when they the data came in that it was hurting the people putting them in high rises destroying small businesses urban renewal. All of these affirmative they they kept doing it because they wanted a captive constituency that would deliver votes for their party. And it was deleterious and injurious to the black community. That's what they would say without knowing anything else because that's how it appears to anybody who looks at it. Well Victor we're we've come to just about the end of your. Display and provision of great intellect and wisdom and common sense here so as we do at the end of God gone through the just so many comments on YouTube and your. And the blade purses I've got five small ones I want to read. Jeffrey a lot of you writes we should have handled these people after we had started by Iran after we got our hostages back years ago instead we left them to harass the world for almost 50 years. DT dash DZ one JC writes you to Victor and Sammy are simply the best thanks for another fantastic episode habitual excellence. We're thankful for your health Victor and Sammy your eyes simply sparkle while you're listening to Victor elaborate on those Greek myths so sharp and articulate and impossibly cute. Sammy you have plans out there. Yeah. Be be smitty fireman writes absolutely love VDH so grateful to have the ability to hear the calming wisdom of such a brilliant Renaissance man selfishly I say please stay healthy good sir Joe Guy be writes today I'm 10 years cancer free stage four lung you're looking better every day Victor. Wow that's. That's impressive. Yeah. Keep the positive attitude and you'll be fine you're in my thoughts and prayers and Fina lament they can my shoulder in 1935 writes biggie D. H. is such a treasure. Someone who thinks it through and is so plain spoken telling the truth to those and everybody else who takes the time to leave comments we thank you again I want to repeat Victor's website the blade of Perseus do check it out do subscribe and as for me Jack Fowler. Go to civil thoughts.com and when you get there sign up for civil thoughts that's the free weekly email newsletter I write for the Center for civil society it comes out every Friday and it has 14 or 15 recommended readings that were not selling anything when I saw your name. I know you're going to like it. I get lots of emails from folks were kind of you to write me who do enjoy it civil thoughts.com sign up. Okay Victor. Thanks about it. Thanks. It's terrific. And thanks for all the wisdom you shared and folks will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Thank you. Thank everybody. 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 Victor Hansen dot com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.