Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words

Victor Davis Hanson: Iran in Shambles, Rubio Targets Regime Families, and the Return of the Impeachment Hoax

87 min
Apr 18, 202610 days ago
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Summary

Victor Davis Hanson analyzes Iran's military collapse following Trump administration pressure, discusses Secretary of State Rubio's extradition efforts targeting Iranian regime families, and examines the impeachment hoax involving Ukraine aid allegations against Trump. The episode covers geopolitical realignment in the Middle East, corruption in the Biden administration, and Pete Hegseth's Pentagon reforms.

Insights
  • Iran's economic and military devastation under Biden's appeasement strategy reversed Trump's deterrence model, enabling proxy expansion until military strikes restored U.S. leverage
  • The Ukraine impeachment was orchestrated by partisan operatives (Vindman, Salawell, Schiff) using hearsay and coordinated leaks to manufacture a false whistleblower complaint
  • Trump's actual foreign policy record shows tougher action on Russia, Iran, and China than predecessors despite media narratives of weakness or collusion
  • Regime elites hide stolen wealth in Western banks while preaching anti-Western ideology, creating vulnerability to asset freezes and visa revocations
  • Decentralized Ukrainian defense innovation (drone jamming, maritime drones) outpaces centralized Russian military despite resource disadvantage
Trends
Geopolitical realignment: U.S. reasserting dominance in Middle East, Venezuela, Cuba, and Western Hemisphere while isolating Iran, Russia, and ChinaWeaponized immigration: Progressive cities using welfare fraud and DEI protections to shield criminal networks while enriching political alliesDrone warfare evolution: Low-cost autonomous systems replacing expensive platforms as primary military doctrine across Ukraine, Iran, and Pentagon strategyRegime vulnerability: Authoritarian governments facing internal pressure when military losses mount and economic sanctions restrict elite wealth accessInstitutional corruption: Career bureaucrats (inspectors general, NSC staff) enabling partisan impeachments through selective enforcement and coordinated leaksAsset freezing as deterrence: Treasury and State Department targeting regime family wealth in Western financial systems as primary pressure mechanismDecentralized governance advantage: Ukraine's distributed command structure outperforming Russia's centralized control in innovation and adaptationMedia narrative collapse: Left-wing outlets unable to sustain false collusion narratives when empirical geopolitical outcomes contradict claims
Topics
Iran Nuclear Program and JCPOA RenegotiationUkraine Military Aid and Impeachment HoaxTrump Administration Foreign Policy RecordPentagon Recruitment and DEI ReversalWelfare Fraud and Immigration EnforcementRussian-Ukrainian War Dynamics and CasualtiesMiddle East Geopolitical RealignmentRegime Asset Freezing and SanctionsDrone Warfare Technology and StrategyBiden Administration Corruption and NepotismGreek Mythology and Poseidon SymbolismWhistleblower Protection AbuseNATO European Defense SpendingHunter Biden Legal ExposurePete Hegseth Pentagon Leadership
Companies
Vantor
Security and compliance automation platform sponsoring the episode; automates audit prep and evidence management
Pure Health Research
Health supplement company offering liver health and lymph system support products with promotional discount code
Patriot Mobile
Wireless provider positioning itself as conservative activist organization with U.S.-based customer support
The Daily Signal
Parent organization of the podcast; conservative media outlet producing long-form and short-form political commentary
Hoover Institution
Think tank where Victor Davis Hanson holds position as Martin and Nellie Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History
Hillsdale College
Educational institution where Hanson holds Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellowship in History
People
Victor Davis Hanson
Primary commentator analyzing Iran policy, Ukraine impeachment, and geopolitical realignment from conservative perspe...
Ben Rhodes
Criticized for defending Iran nuclear deal and creating media echo chamber to manipulate liberal journalists
Alexander Vindman
Alleged whistleblower who leaked Trump-Zelensky call details to Eric Salawell, enabling impeachment hoax
Eric Salawell
Coordinated with Vindman and Adam Schiff to manufacture false whistleblower complaint against Trump
Adam Schiff
Orchestrated impeachment hoax by coordinating with Vindman and Salawell while denying contact under oath
Michael Atkinson
Failed to properly investigate whistleblower complaint, enabling partisan impeachment by ignoring hearsay evidence
Marco Rubio
Leading extradition efforts against Iranian regime family members and targeting their Western-held assets
Tulsi Gabbard
Filed criminal referrals against Salawell and Atkinson for their roles in Ukraine impeachment hoax
Pete Hegseth
Praised for eliminating DEI, exceeding recruitment goals, and modernizing Pentagon drone strategy despite impeachment...
Vladimir Putin
Facing economic pressure and military losses in Ukraine; seeking ceasefire to declare victory and restore oil revenue
Volodymyr Zelensky
Denied feeling pressure over Trump aid; prefers Trump's deterrence approach over Biden's ambiguous support
Joe Biden
Criticized for senility, stage four prostate cancer, and enabling Iran expansion through appeasement policy
Hunter Biden
Hiding in South Africa to avoid legal exposure; received presidential pardon despite tax fraud and corruption allegat...
Scott Bessent
Praised for expertise in locating and freezing Iranian regime family assets held in Western banks
Donald Trump
Credited with Iran deterrence, Ukraine weapons support, and geopolitical realignment despite impeachment hoax
Ilhan Omar
Implicated in Minnesota welfare fraud scheme involving Somali community and DEI protection networks
Tim Walz
Criticized for ignoring welfare fraud in Somali community and using DEI as shield against prosecution
Abigail Spanberger
Ran as moderate but implemented sanctuary city policies enabling repeat criminal offenders to avoid deportation
Sammy Wink
Co-hosts podcast with Victor Davis Hanson, conducting interviews and managing episode segments
Quotes
"It's like a huge jigsaw puzzle of the world and somebody threw it up in the air. Now the pieces are all being reconstructed, but maybe in a different way."
Victor Davis HansonOpening segment
"Iran is in shambles. And to say that an Iran that's in shambles, that's begging us for negotiations is the same thing as a fully armed, aggressive Iran that's about to destroy the whole Middle East is absurd."
Victor Davis HansonIran policy discussion
"The bill of rights doesn't apply to foreign nationals here on a visa. It protects them while they're here with their feet on the ground. They have free speech. They have the rule of law. But they don't have to be here."
Victor Davis HansonRubio extradition discussion
"People have had it with the Soros crime philosophy, critical legal theory. They've had it with the DEI, critical race theory. They've had it with NATO. They've had it with Iran."
Victor Davis HansonPolitical realignment discussion
"You can't let your emotions drive and destroy your intellect and reason."
Victor Davis HansonImpeachment hoax analysis
Full Transcript
Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit dread. It's time for Vantor. Vantor automates 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 appliance. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vantor to prove trust. Get started at vantor.com slash calm. CNN has been supporting the view that Trump will ultimately get the same deal or worse than Obama had. And so the implication, I think, is that the war was unnecessary. That's being peddled by the former deputy national security adviser for Obama, Mr. Rhodes, Ben Rhodes. This is so absurd that we have all these people who hate Donald Trump, or they think they're going to win the midterms by leveraging this. Chuck Schumer has a whole list of all the things that went wrong. Now he throws it away and he gets another one, because they're all right now. There are things in play right now. Major changes of thought, ideology, philosophy, politics that are radical right now. They're changing. People have had it with the Soros crime philosophy, critical legal theory. They've had it with the DEI critical race theory. They've had it with NATO. They've had it with Iran. It's like a huge jigsaw puzzle of the world and somebody threw it up in the air. Now the pieces are all being reconstructed, but maybe in a different way. I don't know. It's very exciting to be alive at this time, because I think in a year from now, the United States and the world are not going to look the same. Hello and welcome. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, and we are on our Saturday edition. So welcome everybody to the weekend. We have Poseidon as our middle segment. So Victor will talk a little bit, which I think is a good topic, given that we're in a blockade in the Persian Gulf. So that will be interesting. And then first we'll look at some news stories. So we'll start with Iran and Rubio's work as Secretary of State. So stay with us for those stories and we'll be right back. 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 7 p.m. Eastern. And unlike some of the other evening shows, we work up until showtime to bring you the latest breaking news, analysis, and good old American 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. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, a subsidiary of the Daily Signal. And Victor is the Martin and Nellie Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. So Victor, I know that there's a lot on the Iran war always going on and we talked about it on Friday, but there's more out there yet. Today, I noticed that CNN has been supporting the view that Trump will ultimately get the same deal or worse than Obama had with his... And I never can remember the name of the joint whatever deal Obama did, but... And so the implication, I think, is that the war was unnecessary at your time. That's being peddled by the former Deputy National Security Advisor for Obama, Mr. Rhodes, Ben Rhodes. He's famous for bragging that he created an echo chamber, remember? And he said that the young journalist who are liberal and acolytes of Obama, he said they know nothing and he was easily manipulated. Of course, he never even took that treaty to the Senate, but it's absurd because think about it. He did this treaty. He didn't say they were not going to have a bomb. They said for 10 years, they wouldn't enrich up to a certain point. Okay. And what did they do in that 10 years? He had no sanctions on them. So they were getting hundreds of... We're told that they were making almost a half a billion dollars a day in petrochemicals, natural gas, and oil. So half a... They were making $175 billion, $200 billion a year, every year. So when they did that deal, it was pretty much a bonanza for the Houthis, Hamas, the people in Syria and Iraq that are their proxies, and of course, Hezbollah. And then Trump came in and he stopped all of it. He stopped all of it. He sanctioned them. They did not continue enriching because they were scared. Not they would have because now he said the deal doesn't... He got out of the deal. Well, then why didn't they go enrich all the way up? Because they were scared of him because he'd killed Soleimani. He'd killed Baghdadi. He'd bombed ISIS. He had bombed... He had had people take care of the Wagner group, et cetera. And so during the first administration, he declared Trump the Houthis a terrorist entity. He's hit them as well. And when he left office, the U.S. had great deterrence. Such to effect that Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, bragged that his portfolio right before October 7th was his least worrisome. And that was what he inherited from Trump. And so what did Biden do? He resurrected the Obama-Shia crescent strategy. Houthis, Gaza, Beirut, Damascus, Tehran. Pressure against the Arab monarchies and Israel. And they knew it. And so then he did... He crawled on all fours and begged them to get back in the deal. He said, no, why are we gonna get in the deal? Now we can enrich. And that period of Biden between 2021 and 2024 is when they did go enrich up to 60 percent because they weren't scared of anybody. The other thing about that absurd statement that we could have had the Obama deal or it's no deal. When Obama made that deal, they had an air force, a big air force. They had about 200 ships. They had ballistic missiles they were requiring from China and North Korea and Russia. They were fully armed. The Iran that we had to confront today was built during the Obama administration and during the Biden administration. And now it doesn't appear. So what they're saying is our deal that allowed them to enrich when Biden came in and our deal that never said they couldn't have a weapon. They just had to wait to delay it. And there would be no snap inspections. Our deal allowed them to get all the revenue they want and rearm. And then Trump stopped that and they were scared stiff to enrich to weapons grade or near weapons grade. Then when they saw Biden, what he's did in Ukraine, oh, I'll be active. It's a minor major invasion. And, you know, please, Vladimir, don't hit hospitals when you when you hack our infrastructure and et cetera, et cetera. And they were giddy, giddy, giddy, giddy when they saw that their proxies and they had helped plan October 7th. And they saw that we were kind of ambiguous about who was morally equivalent. That's when they really pushed the envelope and got up to what they later said were enough in which uranium to make 11 weapons. So what I'm getting at is that deal was inseparable from the rearmament and the enormous amount of money they had to invest in this largest arsenal in the Middle East. And the result of that is that Europe was terrified of them because Europe knew what they were going to because we knew now that they were always going to build a ballistic missile that could hit Europe. And they knew the Gulf was terrified of them. And they knew everybody was terrified of them except Israel and us. Now they have no military. They're flat broke. This isn't a negotiated two-way. Let's see if we could have the deal. This is here are the demands. We gave you a chance. You just wanted to continue. You thought it was cute to blockade. That's right. You started it. We finished. Now we're blocking it. And your ships are not going to get anywhere near the strait. Nobody going to you. Nobody going out and you're going to lose $450 million a day. And here's the demand. Now take it or leave it. And where are their proxies today? The Houthis haven't said anything. I thought they were going to shut down the Red Sea pipeline of Saudi Arabia. They do. They're going to lose all of their electrical plants and they'll be bombed to smithereens. Where is Gaza? They're hiding in the tunnels. Where is Hezbollah? They're going to try to cut a deal. So where is Iran? It's in shambles. And to say that an Iran that's in shambles, that's begging us, begging us for negotiations is the same thing as a fully armed, aggressive Iran that's about to destroy the whole Middle East is absurd. It's just crazy. What's happened to the left is in this 24-hour cycle of hysteria, you know, Tom Friedman, I'm glad that Trump is kind of disarming Iran, but I want him to fail because he'll be too powerful. And then all these articles, the leftist are writing this, Trump might be too powerful, or this is bad, or it's imperial, the Pope, Leo, Wayne, all of this stuff. It's ahistorical. It doesn't look at the long term. And the long term is what is the geostrategic position of China now versus before? What is the geostrategic position of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis? What is the geostrategic position of Iran? What is the geostrategic position of Europe? And it seems to me that it's all diminished and the one nation that is controlling the oil in Venezuela and keeping the Chinese and the Russians out of the Western Hemisphere and shortly going to squeeze this 50-year, 70-year problem in Cuba, and now is going to solve the 47-year in the Middle East and will be the adjudicator, at least in the near-term, who comes in and who comes out of the Gulf, to the benefit of the Saudis and the Kuwaitis and the Emirates and Oman and Qatar. And they are going to not forget who attacked them, and they're going to build pipeline that will bypass the Gulf, and Iran will find itself irrelevant unless they have regime change. And now we're in, where are we now? When Obama came into office, they had a green revolution. Million people went out in the streets. They were begging for US verbal support. He didn't do anything because he and Valerie Jarrett and Ben Rhodes had this idea that they were going to create a friendly theocracy and balance it off the hated Israel and the hated Gulf states. And it was a disaster. And now the regime is down to the third tier. They've wiped out dozens of theocrats, politicians, army people, revolution or guard people, and they've lost, according to them, 260 people, said more likely a half a trillion dollars in military installations. That's not, including the tunnels, the nuclear facilities, the petrochemical plants, the steel plants that they use to create their drone and missile fleet under two leads from the Chinese and North Koreans. So all of that, and what are they going to do when this is over? They're going to tell the people, well, this is what we accomplished. We took on the great Satan. And everybody talks about the Black Knight and the money. We got our arms cut off, our legs cut off, and we won. And as I mentioned earlier, it's going to Tokyo Bay to deal with the Japanese and the Japanese. And we're not going to negotiate. We don't have any cities. We don't have any Navy. We don't have any, but we won. Well, that's what they're doing. And it's a joke. And so the people, not in a day, not in a week, not in a month, but they're going to be restive, especially when this crooked regime and these newcomers that don't know how to run it are going to start to say, we have to rearm. We got to take your money and we got to give it to Hezbollah. We've got to resurrect Hamas. We've got to get, they're going to get so angry at that. And they're going to have an open, they're going to have internet again. And we're going to do our best to tell the people who caused their misery. And if they say they're not going to negotiate and they're going to attack our ships, well, they have a whole target list, an existential target list. Our military does. Yeah, our military does. And they can do it tomorrow. They can do it in a day. They can put it in a medieval darkness. They don't want to do that because they don't want to hurt the Iranian people. So this is so absurd that we have all these people who hate Donald Trump or they think they're going to win the midterms by leveraging this. And Chuck Schumer has a whole list of all the things that went wrong. Now he throws it away and he gets another one because they're all right now. They embargo, they never thought of the Strait of Hormuz. Not only did they think of the Strait of Hormuz, they enacted it in one day, but they were smart enough to let the Iranians put their head in the news and try to do it first so they can say, we tried to negotiate. They're the ones that started it. So we're going to finish it. It was brilliant. And yet I don't know what to say about these people. They're wrong, wrong, wrong. You can't let your emotions drive and destroy your intellect and reason. Yeah. And while the article I was reading from CNN claimed that two days or one day before the war started, the Iranians had agreed to a significant reduction in their nuclear capacity in very significant ways. And they said that they were in control of the states of Hormuz. What did the UN and the International Atomic Commission say? Every time they went there, they found a new facility they didn't report that was enriching uranium or it was had centrifuges or they did something. They can't tell the truth. They lie about everything because they think that lying to enhance their radical Islamists' cause is not lying. And that's what they do. Only a few naïve's in the United States would be stupid enough to believe them. The only time you can believe them is if you have a gun to their head and you're going to say, this is where you are now in rubble. And if you don't agree to this, you're going to be in permanent rubble. And even then they're going to lie. So not only was the war necessary and not unnecessary, but it's going to have benefits far beyond what happened at the war. The change is going to change the entire Middle East. The people in the Gulf states are going to say, you know what? Israel didn't attack us. It attacked the enemy. Its enemy is our enemy. So the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And if we put a big pipeline across the desert into Haifa or somewhere near Haifa, we know one thing, the Jews are not going to blow it up with a bunch of terrorists like what the Houthis will try to do in the Red Sea. It'll be the safest pipeline there are. It'll be in their interest. And they have a rules, they have a society that's legitimate and it's based on the rule of law. Well, Victor, we have a sponsor, Pure Health Research for this Saturday edition. If you want to drop extra pounds, boost energy levels or reduce swelling in your legs and feet, this message is for you. 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That's purehealthresearch.com. And use the coupon code VICTOR at checkout. That's purehealthresearch.com with coupon code VICTOR to save 35% on your order today. And we'd like to thank Pure Health Research for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show. Well, associated with that is Rubio's work as Secretary of State. And he's currently involved in extraditing Iranian nationals that are relatives of the theocracy in particular. I think that this week, his most important extradition is they called her Screaming Mary and she apparently... I remember her when I was in college watching her. In 1979, she was the spokesperson for the people that had kidnapped all those... She was a young, mildly attractive woman, but she was decked out in the burqa and she was screaming and yelling. And she was the most radical of everyone. She was the one calling for... And I just make one statement. It wasn't her extradition. I'm sorry, it was her son. Yes, it was her son's extradition. But I remember her. And he was a part-time teacher at a community college or something. It's very funny how these people get out in the street and they rev everybody up to the great Satan and they preach about Western decadence. And then whether it's the 9-11 hijackers or the mass murders or want to party in Las Vegas or it's the sons of the theocrats and these radical Islamists, they come over here and they're everywhere. And the only reason we know them is because we have over a million expatriates from Iran that are against the regime and they keep outing them. And of course, they've been doing that for years and the Biden administration and the Obama administration thought, this is okay. They've let a monogod come in. Remember that? He spoke, I think, at Columbia. So they like these people and these people are not just serious scholars. They're knee-deep in this culture. You could see Soleimani's niece and grand-nice. My gosh, they were decked out as if they were salacious internet influencers and they were knee-deep in the lavish culture of Los Angeles, which is kind of bankrupt. So these people are not sincere people. They're not really theocrats. They're hardcore dictators and it's not some religious purity. They are the most corrupt government in the Middle East and that's saying a lot. And each one of these luminaries, whether it's the Soleimani's or the Comanis or the Comanis, whoever they are, they have huge fortunes that they have stolen from the Iranian people. They have beautiful homes in England. They have beautiful homes throughout France, Europe. They have bank account. It's lucky for us that one of our best secretaries of treasuries is Scott Besam and he knows this. And he's a master of finding their money and canceling it and freezing it. And he's going to do that. But Marco Rubio is really good at that. Every time he does that, they get angry and go, there's a bill of rights and he tries to say, the bill of rights doesn't apply to foreign nationals here on a visa. It protects them while they're here with their feet on the ground. They have free speech. They have the rule of law. They can do what they want, search and seizure, but they don't have to be here. We invited them. We gave them a visa. And so we just say the visa ran out and go home. You love Iran so much. You're much needed in its hour of need. You've been broadcasting hatred toward the United States. You're better off there to do it and rally the troops all the best. Sia wouldn't want to be. You said something about the Iranians that they keep their money in Western banks rather than having their own banking system. Do they not trust each other? No, because they know that they, I'll mention a member of a foreign group and I won't mention the foreign group. I like him. And I said, why are all of your ethnic group doing so well here? And you seem to be overrepresented in tax evasion. And he said, whoop. And he said, you know, we're all very cheap. When we're back in the home country, we have to compete against ourselves and nobody falls the rules. So it's dog eat dog. And we come over to a society like you. You're all very sheepish and you pay your taxes. You do it this. And it's easy to do it. And we don't have any competition here because everybody follows the rules. So we do very well. And if it's true, they'll be like the rest of everybody. And you can see that with the welfare fraud. If those Somalis had been in Somalia from Minnesota and they were stealing from the government, they would have taken them out and shot them all. If they weren't in the right click, if they were stealing from the government, which I think Ilian Omar's father was involved in, they would have been the thieves. Here they're thinking, oh, we'll play the DEI card. Tim Walsh is a joke. Jake Fry is an idiot. The whole Minnesota people are so wishy-washy. They'll never touch us. We'll just call them racist. And these Americans, you can just steal and blind. Same thing in California. That's a subtext of the whole government fraud. There is a demographic of recently arrived immigrants and second generation. And they are overrepresented in the demographic involved in this. And they have perpetuated this for so long because they felt under the aegis of DEI, they were exempt. And they were. And Walsh knew what they were doing. Ilian Omar knew what they were doing. Mayor Fry knew what they were doing. You can't tell me Gavin Newsom didn't know what they were doing. You can't tell me Karen Bast. They were brothers in crime. They were fellow DEI people that these other people protected. Well there was an article this morning. I'm sorry, I don't know where this is because this is off the top of my head. But that the agencies, the welfare agencies that are handing out the money were told to deprioritize anybody that they thought was practicing fraud. But you know why that is? I did that in Colorado. Because the more people they have on their roles, the more money they get from the federal government. So they have no incentive for stopping fraud. More money they get from the federal government. And the more money they, it's like the 19th century big cities, the Irish say in New York, Damati Hall. So what they do is they enrich the Somali community or the Hispanic community or whatever the Chinese immigrant community with these big programs. And then they go to them and say, we want this money for political donation. So it's a circular process. They distribute the money and then they get political fealty and they get donations from them. And that's why no politician would ever cross the Somalis on the left. Well, it's going to, it's, we'll see. I guess what I'm saying is there are things in play right now. Major changes of thought, ideology, philosophy, politics that are radical right now. They're changing. People have had it with the Soros crime philosophy, critical legal theory. They've had it with the DEI, critical race theory. They've had it with NATO. They've had it with Iran. And things, it's like a huge jigsaw puzzle of the world and somebody threw it up in the air and now the pieces are all being reconstructed, but maybe in a different way. I don't know, but it's, it's very exciting to be alive at this time because I think in a year from now, the United States and the world are not going to look the same. Well, Victor, before we go to break, we have another governor that is part of these progressive project and big government, et cetera, Spanberger. And she has an illegal alien in her state who has attempted to rape somebody. But I think more important about him is that that was going to be the 25th crime he would be picked up for. Yeah, the only one the bus stop that was killed. And she's at Sanctuary City. I don't know how long. Abigail Spanberger. She's smarter than Gavin Newsom and she's smarter than Tim Walz. So she did what Biden did. The whole democratic playbook was the more you can act moderate, the more radical you can become when you're elected. So she ran, oh, I've been familiar with intelligence agencies, law and my family law enforcement, all that stuff. And then when she got in, she went full anti-ice, not going to work with them, raising taxes on everything. But she doesn't understand that she and these sanctuaries, they send a signal in these blue states and blue counties to whatever of the six or 700,000 criminals that came in under Biden and were here earlier have not already been incarcerated or deported. There's still hundreds of thousands of them. And the signal is, and as well to career criminal society is your enemy, not us. You don't have to atone for any of your crimes. They don't say that, but that's the message that filters down to them. If you're an illegal alien, you're a victim of racism and Donald Trump and fascistic ice. And I'm here to help you. And the guy thinks, well, if you're here to help me, I've been arrested 20 times. Nothing's really happened to me. I think I'll rape again. And there's a woman. Let me just go rape her. And what will happen? Send me to ICE? No, ICE are fascist. They wouldn't send me to a concentration camp. And then you hear this Tom Steyer really saying, I'm going to hold ICE accountable. I'm going to open the border. I'm going to do the, oh yeah, the border's, what more could you do to California? I mean, it's already completely lawless. If he doesn't believe that, come to the Central Valley. And I can take a, I don't know what I would call it, a four mile circumference drive. And I could point with my finger and dictate to an iPhone and say, that is illegal. That is illegal. That is illegal. That is illegal. Whether it's a car on the side of the road dumping their trash into a vineyard or it's 17 trailers and shacks around one home or it's a bunch of dogs, a pack of dogs sitting in the middle of the road. That's what California is. Or it's the flea market down the street. The no sales tax, flea market, the no income tax. Exactly. Don't touch that. That's an iconic thing. Yeah, sure is. Well, Victor, let's go to a break and then we'll come back and you're going to talk to us about Poseidon. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin and just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen. Whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words or his short form content for the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. 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 or there too. And drop me a follow on X at Bradley Devlin to stay updated with what's happening on The Signal Sitdown. Well, welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words and Victor can be found on X. His handle is at BD Hansen and on Facebook at Hansen's Morning Cup. And there is the Victor Davis Hansen fan club on Facebook as well. They're a large group of people who seek out Victor's work. So they have the current stuff and they have stuff that is, he's done years ago that they can link you up with. So they're a good place to go. So Victor, I'm anxious to hear a little bit about our God of the Sea Poseidon and I'll let you have it. Yeah, we're talking about the 12 Olympians and the three most famous were the first generation that overthrew their father, Kronos and Mother Rao. And that was Zeus who inherited the heavens and they're partially now the human experience and Hades the underworld and Poseidon the sea. We're going to talk about the meter and I think the two most interesting gods, Athena and Apollo and subsequent shows. But Poseidon is nominally the God of the sea. And remember that these peoples in Italy and he's Neptune as I said in Roman, but especially in Greece, they're seafaring peoples. Zeus has 1500 islands around the Greek peninsula. It's got one of the largest coastlines for a country of that size. And in the ancient world, seafaring and transport is one-tenth the cost of having oxen or horses. So everybody in the ancient world in the Mediterranean is a seafaring people and therefore the primary aspect of their God of the sea is Poseidon. He has a multiplicity of tasks. He's portrayed with the beard and the trident and you worship him when you're sailing. And believe it or not, the ancients had very sophisticated bottom-ary loans. Those are insurance loans on importing grain from the Black Sea. And so they were very sophisticated in their navigation techniques and in their financing of it. Poseidon was the person that they set altars through or there was particular temples for. So if you're coming into Attica, for example, to Athens and you want to go around Sunium, Cape Sunium, it's a cape that sticks out, then you have the temple of Poseidon at Sunium. The first thing you will see as a seafarer is that you will honor Poseidon that got you. He also had other aspects too. He was a God of earthquakes and he was also the God of horses. A lot of people have tried to explain why that was. They combined it local cults into one person. The name Poseidon, it's disputed like all of the etymologies of the Greek gods. Apparently it was something from that Greek word, poses. It's an early word for Lord or master of the house, poses. And then Deidon might be related to a day by extension, gay, Lord of the earth. But he's worshiped in places like Arcadia and Thebes, but not necessarily as a God of the sea because they're both landlord, but a God of horses and a God of earthquakes. As everybody knows, Greece is a very seismically active country. And because of the nature of temple building, almost every temple there at one point, they take years to build and they're very vulnerable to earthquakes. So they were constantly evoking Poseidon, both to protect commerce as the God of the sea and to protect them from earthquakes and to protect them. And what was their gasoline? Their gasoline was hay and horses to move. And so in some ways, he's the greatest commercial God because he's the one that you have to sacrifice to and give things so that you have a safe voyage. One thing about the Mediterranean, remember, it's a relatively shallow sea and it's enclosed and it doesn't have high waves, but it has sudden storms, especially in the Aegean. It's very treacherous to see. I can remember once when I first got degrees, I went to the island of Cirrus for Thanksgiving and there were 40-foot waves. We had a little boat and they locked the entire, they put ropes through all the doors so we couldn't go out and then they had us all sit. You couldn't go to the bathroom. You had to sit down. There was no seat belts, but it was everybody was vomiting over the floor. It was never been so terrified. It looked out the window and I couldn't see anything but water. It was higher than a ship and the ship wasn't that big. So it was a terrifying experience to sail the Mediterranean, especially the Aegean and the autumn and the spring. One thing, remember, about these gods are that it was very popular in the 60s and 70s to champion polytheism and the idea that the gods are just big humans. They have no superior morality. They don't. They fornicate. They commit adultery. They murder. They kill. They have illegitimate children. They mirror image and people would say, I remember taking mythology and religion courses as a graduate student. I'd have students in the seminars say, these people are so much more sophisticated than we are. They're so much more confident in themselves. They don't have to create a god or a Jesus. It was crazy. And polytheism, which is always considered a mark of pre-civilizational countries until they become monotheistic, they were saying was a better because you had a more variety or diversity of gods. And more importantly, they liked the idea that Poseidon would try to rape the Chosephony or he had illegitimate children with various demigods or he had homosexual partners, young boys. All of that they thought, well, this is really good because these Greeks were so confident, but it was kind of pre-civilization. You can see what's going to break down once you make the gods like Poseidon, the representation of the sea or of earthquakes. And you're still a rational society and the age of reason is upon you in the fifth century. Then you have people like Democritus, apocrates, scientists, and they're starting to seize things that maybe there are underground forces, earth, water, wind and fire that are moving the earth, not just Poseidon or maybe we're constructed of atoms or as apocuras and Lucretius had said, when you walk by a statue and everybody touches its hand, the hand wears off because they're knocking away little atoms off it and that we're just reconstructing atoms. And when you bury a corpse and you dig it up 10 days later or 10 years later, it's all decomposed. Well, where did it go? The atoms then separated. What I'm getting at is they were starting to see electricity. Now, they didn't quite know it was electricity, but they saw lightning as something other than Poseidon's thunderbolt. And they saw there was not necessarily a cause and effect. They saw people who were very pious, always sacrificed to the gods and died early or were killed and people who were complete scoundrels and their morality didn't take an account for that. They thought that it was a ritualistic. Everyone was considered devout or not. It wasn't a private thing. You didn't talk, you didn't go on a seafaring voyage and say Poseidon, strongest of all the gods, I've been a very good person. I've not lied. I've not fornicated. I don't have a gauge in adultery. I'm completely representative of Hellenic values. Would you please help me and I believe in you. No, what they would do is catch a fish and cut it open and see what the liver looked like and then maybe on the Triremus or a galley, they would burn a little bit and give it to throw it into the sea. You know, I was wondering that about Hephaestus, who is the craftsman god. Did craftsmen in ancient Greece keep a effigy or something of Hephaestus? Yes. Oh, they did? Absolutely. They did. They did the other gods as well to deal with, but Hephaestus was their main guy. There's two types of patron gods. So if you're down near the Isthmet, the Corinth, there's the sanctuary of Isthmia, Poseidon, because you see, you know, it's only six miles wide. There's Poseidon in the Gulf of Corinth and Poseidon in Aegean. So they have a temple of Poseidon and that city and that region and worship him as their primary protector. If you're in Arcadia or Thebes, you can worship Poseidon, the protector from earthquakes or Poseidon, the cultivator of horses. And that's one thing you do, but then there's also, if you're engaged in particular avenues of trade or commerce, if you're a sailor, it's Poseidon. If you're a craftsman, it's Hephaestus. If you're a soldier, it's Aries. So you privilege the particular patron saint of your occupation and your locale. And that's led to problems because the Greeks thought that with 1500 city-states and all of these different gods, you had to have some unifying aspect. And so they had what they called the Panhellenic Games and they were staggered. Every four years, there was the Olympic Games. That was the big inch a lot of the Super Bowl. And that was at Olympia and that was honoring Zeus. Olympia, there's a huge temple. It was at one time the biggest temple in the Greek world. You can still see it, the foundations and some of the column. It's a beautiful area in the Peloponnese, the northwest Peloponnese. And then Delphi was the next biggest one. And that was honoring Apollo and God of seercraft, reason who might have had aspects of the sun god with Helios. And that was the Pythian, Pythian game. Pythia was a legendary snake and there was a oracle there. Those were the two big and they were every two years and then every four years. And then in between them, they had, so you almost had something to do every year. They had the Ismian games at the Ismus where you honored Poseidon. And then every two years, you went to Nimia and honored Zeus. And there's a temple of honor. So he got double credit. But the point was, at some point, every year, there was a sanctuary where you could go. And people from all over Greece went and they competed in music contest, rhetoric contest, speech contest, running, boxing, wrestling. And there were oracles there and there were, there was a lot of rivalry among wealthy people to build treasuries there. So when you came or little hotels, you say, well, I'm from Mantenea and our richest guy has a little Mantenean treasury where all the people from Mantenea can put their shields or swords or statues there to honor the God and they'll be protected. And they also have a Zenodokia, a little hotel for us to rest up. So it was a way of getting everybody together and encouraging that they had the same religion and the same language, even though they had no word in their vocabulary for nationhood. So we'll talk about Apollo and Athena maybe next. Apollo and Athena. Okay, that sounds good. And we're going to talk sometime about Hephaestus maybe and how about Escapius? Is that the God? A minor. I was going to do the Olympians first. We still have to do Hestia-Vestia, Hermes-Mercury. Got it. Yeah. And Demeter-Dass. Demeter. We'll do those next. And we're going to talk a little bit about Kelsey. Tulsi Gabbard's referrals after we hear from our sponsor here. And that sponsor is Patriot Mobile. Everyday Americans make choices that shape our country's future right down to which cell phone provider we support. Here's what most people don't realize. Patriot Mobile isn't just a wireless provider. They're an activist organization funded by selling top tier cell phone service. 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So Victor, I know that this is a very complicated case. This is about the impeachment of Donald Trump by the House and he was impeached on the, for using U.S. assets or threatening not to use aid that he had with the newly elected President Zelensky in the Ukraine unless he looked into prosecuting Burisma. So that was what Donald Trump was impeached for. But apparently the gathered criminal referrals are for two people that led to that lie. Well, the context remember was that during his first year, 2017 in office, almost immediately by March, excuse me, April, May, June, the left had already engineered the Russian collusion hoax that was engineered by John Brennan, James Comey and James Clapper. We know that because they met in the White House along with the Clinton campaign. So Robert Mueller had his 22 month investigation. It found nothing. And everybody thought Donald Trump was exonerated and now he'd have a normal presidency. Then they had to cook up something to run out the clock on so he couldn't do what he was elected to do. And remember, this was the first administration. This had people who were, I don't want to say swamp creatures, but they were people who were part of the establishment. Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, Bill Barr, John Bolton, that kind. So almost immediately, they left cooked up a new idea that the National Security Council listens in to presidential calls. They're under statute not to divulge that. When they divulge it and it's a Democrat, then they say that the phone call wasn't classified. If it's a Republican and a Democratic president, then they say it was classified and they try to prosecute them. So there's where Mr. Venman comes in. And he was listening and he was a dual citizen. He was a U.S. citizen, but he also, I think, had retained Ukrainian citizenship. And in the call, Donald Trump called over. And the context was that Joe Biden at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, a public event, had wanted to brag on himself. So he said, Victor Shchenko was the prosecuting attorney of Ukraine. He said, well, you know, I went over there and I said, I looked at my watch and he looked at it. And I said, before I leave, you're going to fire that SOE. And he didn't tell us why he wanted him fired. He said, well, you know, corruption. But his son Hunter was getting over a million dollars a year to do nothing by sitting on the barisma energy board. So when Biden went over there, there had been congressionally approved aid through Ukraine because it had been invaded in 2014, both in the Crimea and the Donbas. So Biden actually was threatening to suspend aid as vice president. He said, you know, before I leave, you're not going to get your money. And now he's relating this story years later. And it was very incriminating. He said, well, I can't say it. He said, son of a guess what? They folded. How hard I'm tough Joe Biden and they got their money, which they had a right to once the Congress approved it. So Trump remembered that. And so he basically was thinking these people are totally corrupt, the Bidens, because they threatened the Ukrainian government with cutting off a congressionally approved aid. So unless they stopped their investigation. They fired the man who was looking into Hunter Biden. And of course they lied about all the circumstances. So in this phone call, Donald Trump said to Zelensky, we've got aid approved. And we're going to send it. But you better look at this Biden stuff and barisma because you and he referenced it. And Zelensky said, okay, well, Venman was on that call. And he broke his oath of confidentiality and he'd close it to his friend that he had worked with who had worked for Biden, Eric Salamela. And he called him up and he said, guess what I've heard. And he related that. He said, you can do something about it, but you know, I'm, I'm, I don't want to lose my job. And I, so we never heard that Eric Salamela never was on the call. He had no, this was hearsay. It was all Venman's version. So then what did he do? The first thing he did and Salamela, who later would refuse to testify if they even talked to each other, they did, they cooked it up and they went over to Adam Schiff who was on the House Intelligence Committee, the ranking Democrat. And they said, Hey, you know what, I'm at Libby now, but you know, the Mueller thing didn't work, but we can get Trump using political power. Trump using political pressure on designated aid. And Schiff said, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then they introduced articles of impeachment. And the role was that he declared himself a whistleblower so he could remain unknown. Everybody knew he was, everybody knew that he had talked to Venman who put him up to it. Everybody knew that Schiff had coordinated it. But because you couldn't mention his name when you ask under oath, Schiff, did you ever talk to either one? I'm not, either he said, no, I'm not going to talk about, but how dare you try to endanger the identity of a whistleblower? And then they said to Venman, did you talk to the whistleblower? I can't tell you that. Why can't you tell me that? Well, he's a whistleblower. He's protected. Can we bring in the whistleblower? No, you can't bring in the whistleblower. So it was a charade. And then there was the inspector general. So the inspector general Atkinson was given a referral about this and he was asked to look into it. And he said that Ceremella, who was a Democrat and work for Biden was not a political operator. And he didn't even call in Venman. He didn't even call in Schiff. He just said, they're not political. And this is genuine. And he forwarded that Trump had done something wrong. And that's where they had that circus that went on and on and on and took Trump's things down down. And they brought that Fiona Hill. They bought everybody and they embattled all these people. And the subtext was, it was very ironic. They thought the Ukrainians had played a very active role. The Ukrainian ambassador to the United States had written an op-ed in the 2016 campaign. I think it was in the New York Times or Washington Post, damning Trump and saying, don't vote for him. Vote for Hillary. And they were very invested in her. And so that was part of the Russian collusion. See, they're going to, we're the victims of Russian aggression and they're working with Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, he's Putin. That was the Ukrainian line. So Zelensky was basically, even in 2024, he came into a factory in Pennsylvania, remember, and was obviously being used by the Democrats for that, for the election against Trump, but he didn't want Trump to cut it off. But here was the final irony. Trump didn't do anything. I mean, Biden did. Biden said, if you don't fire him, you're not going to get the aid. And they did fire him. And so they got the aid. Trump didn't say, I'm not going to give you the aid. If you don't investigate, he gave them the aid and the aid that he had given them, that he approved from the Congress were things like offensive weapons, like Javelin missiles that proved crucial and defensive Kiev later on in 2022. And the funny thing was that Obama had never approved offensive weapons. And then they said in the impeachment hearing, this is part of Donald Trump's, you know, they brought in these left wing career, deep state swamp creatures. And they said, well, Donald Trump is kind of inexplicable love for Russia or he's a puppet and all this stuff. And that was the subtext of why they were not the official reason. But the point I'm making is Atkinson didn't interview very many people. He knew that Sarah Mellah was a democratic operative. He knew that it was all by hearsay. He never really got Venman in and grilled him and then he sent this. And now Tulsi Gabbard has got all the transcripts and Sarah Mellah looks like, well, he looks like a democratic operative like he is. And so does Atkinson. And that's worse for him because he's an inspector general. And the final irony was. They invaded under Obama, Crimean Donbas. Obama did nothing. In fact, he encouraged it by earlier saying in Seoul, South Korea to Medetov, Medetov, the Russian president, go tell Vladimir that this is my last election and I'll be flexible and missile defense. I cancel it just for you. If you give me some space, meaning don't invade why I'm up for it. And they both kept their word. They invaded after the election and Obama did cancel what would have been a very valuable missile defense system. The checks and the polls were collaborating on. And then the other thing about it was, what did Donald Trump do actually vis-a-vis Russia compared to Biden and Obama? Well, he gave them offensive weapons that saved them at Kiev. They hadn't done it. He sanctioned the oligarchs even more severely than they had. He told the Europeans, you're crazy to have this Nord Stream 2 pipeline. And now you're fueling this Russian war machine by buying their natural gas that wants to destroy you and Ukraine. Stop it. He was the first person. He killed more Russians than anybody then during the whole Cold War. He said, if the Wagner group gets near you, American insulation in Syria, destroy them. And then he got out of the asymmetric missile deal. He got out of that. So if you look empirically about his relationship with Putin, he was much tougher on Putin. And the result is the proof. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. He invaded Ossetia under George Bush. He invaded Donbas and Crimea under Barack Obama. He tried to take Kiev and all of Ukraine under Biden, but only within those four presidencies, only four presidencies, 24 year period. There's only one space that he didn't go in anywhere. And that was during Trump's first term. So once again, the Russian hoax was bogus against Donald Trump. And these two people that Gabby Tulsi Gabbard has a criminal referral against our Eric Saramella, who was the quote unquote whistleblower, who took conversation that was had between between Donald Trump and Zelensky. But he took information about that from Vinman. And he never really disclosed where he. It was the people who watched the hearing. It was very clear that Eric Saramella had already leaked out that he was the whistleblower. It was very clear that he was nowhere near that phone call. It was very clear that all of the information that he used for the impeachment of Donald Trump came from a even more partisan activist, Vinman. And they couldn't talk about it because he said he had exemption as he didn't even show up. And he was supposed to be this saint. And this Inspector General knew all of that. And he knew that Adam Schiff had met with him and he lied about it and said that there had been no conversation between Schiff, Saramella and Vinman. And there had been and he knew it. So he's being referred. And then Michael Atkinson, who let it just go by the Inspector General, is being referred. And they should get both of them. Yeah. And then on top of that, Donald Trump has been was he just had Zelensky in his office or he had conversation and they were both saying that Zelensky goes, I didn't feel under any pressure about the aid. Donald Trump says there's no pressure. But he at this time when Gabbard has put these referrals forward. Zelensky had always said that. He had always said that. You could argue while he was afraid Donald Trump would cut off aid if he said otherwise. But even in the very beginning, when he didn't know Trump, he said that. And the weird thing about it is no one complained louder about aid to Ukraine. And no one did more to help Ukraine. When Trump came in, they heamed and hawed, but he did not cut off aid. And now he's giving the green light for the Europeans to step up. They don't have the ability, but he's saying to them, you've got money. You can buy all the weapons you want from us. There's no holds bar. Just buy it and give them the Ukraine and step up to the plate. It's right on your border. And Ukraine privately knows after looking at Venezuela and looking what when he did his first term and looking at what he did to the Wagner group and looking at what he did to Iran, that if you put it this way, would Zelensky rather have a loud mouth, supposedly unstable Trump that comes through and is not afraid of the Russians or anybody? Or would he have a sober and judicious NPR sounding Obama who will never come through and everything is just empty smoke with him? He prefers Trump. For good reason. Yes. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take our last break. And then we will come back and talk a little bit about Putin's Russia. Stay with us and we'll be right back. 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. Victor has social media accounts. You can find him at X at VD Hansen and on Facebook's at Hansen's Morning Cup. So Victor, there's in the Moscow Times, there was an article about a report given to Putin on the Russian economy, which is in the dumps by all the measurements. And he told his government reporters that this was insufficient, but he didn't seem to have any reflection, even according to the Moscow Times, that maybe his war in the Ukraine might be part of the problem for the Russian economy. It's taking 50 percent of all government expenditures. They have hyperinflation. We don't know. Nobody gives the figures, but people believe there's been at least a million Russians dead and probably a million and a half wounded casualties. Total casualties are probably over two million. There's probably been 300,000 Ukrainians killed and probably 600,000, probably three million on both sides casualties, but inordinately Russian. And because of the radical fluidity of the battlefield and the Ukrainian, Ukrainian is more decentralized than Russia is. It doesn't have that. It doesn't have to the same extent that corrupt, Stalinist, Communist, aparat that controls everything it might want to. But it's so decentralized now as a war that you have all of these people that are. Ad, Hawking, at their thinking of things, and they are creating drones of every type. And the result is after four years of war, they have developed a way to jam drones from the Russians and they have a way to make them on jammable and they are really killing a lot of Russians on the infantry battlefield. They've really confined the Russian Navy to its ports with mobile maritime drones. So it's he's in a bad shape economically, political Putin is. And so I would think that the battlefield is undulating if he had a DMZ in some places, he might be 30 miles only beyond what the border had been when he when he first invaded in 2014. And some other places, there's pockets where he might be 75 or 100. But the point is, Ukraine could probably live with that if they had a fortified border and they were armed to the teeth. And so I think what's happening is Putin is under pressure from the oligarchs and the military to stop this because it's not going to work. They've got to the point now where in a cost of benefit analysis, what little additional ground they could gain is not worth the deaths and they harmed the economy. So he's looking for an out. He's looking now at the whole picture in the Middle East. They're thinking. Assad gone. That was our proxy. We could cause trouble all over to Israel to the to the Gulf state. Iran, our best friend, we armed it to the teeth. We got their oil. They gave us oil credits. They they gave us drone. They're gone. They're gone. And China is prone to pressure now. And Venezuela is gone and Cuba will be gone. We have no toehold and the communist governments in Colombia and others are on the ropes. Chile's conservative. Argentina is conservative. Maybe are holed out as Mexico, but they don't have anybody in the Western Hemisphere anymore. They don't have anybody in the Middle East. They don't have anybody in Africa. Europe is arming to the teeth. Thanks to Donald Trump. So at this point, I think he's thinking oil prices are pretty high and there's still sanctions of some sort on us. Not always by the end. It's a good time to cut a deal and get in on just flooding the zone with Russian oil to pay for all this and then declare victory. That I, Vladimir Putin, move the borders westward and I nullified the Ukrainian threat, whatever that be, it was not existent. And and then he's looking at NATO when he thinks, you know, I kind of like the idea that Spain didn't let the United States use any airspace and that led in 500,000 immigrants. I kind of like the idea that that tough nut Maloney kind of folded and she didn't allow them to land in Sicily. I kind of like the idea of France just kind of sold out the Lebanese government didn't help them at all. Get rid of her and they won't let the Americans use it. I kind of like the idea that Turkey said it's going to own, going to invade Israel. And and of course, I really like the idea that Britain wouldn't let the United States land at Diego Garcia. So the whole thing is a mess. And I can, if I'm not stuck in this war, I can weasel my way in between the United States and flatter both sides and play them off and then maybe when we we coop ten years, there might be alternatives and opportunities, but that's what he's going to do. He's going to try to get a ceasefire, declare victory, make some money on the oil. And then he he's he's going to go to the Europeans and say, you think the United States is going to save you now after you snub them? I don't think so. So this is what I want from you. Rebuild the pipelines of gas. Do this, do this, do this. And then they're going to do what? No, no, they're not going to say anything. Now, of course not. Don't Trump will stop you. No. Well, under Donald Trump's second administration, they don't seem to be able to get together an impeachment of him, but they have. They will, if they lose the if the Republicans lose the house, there will be no legislation for two years. It'll be just impeachment, impeachment. They won't be strong. They won't teach Pete Hexett. That's they've just introduced articles, six articles of impeachment. That's what I was going to ask about. They were a complete joke. I thought Pete Hexett comes in. All they talk about is his past drinking marriage tattoos. Only the Democrats could say tattoos are really important when they had the Jerusalem cross and they're holy, but they're not important when. Graham, Latner, Latner down in up in Maine has a Nazi Tottenham Assassin tattoo. And by the way, he has just basically admitted it to their embarrassment. Well, I didn't know what I was doing. I was drunk and I got out of there and I woke up and I had this tattoo. And now he's saying I didn't know what I was doing. Yes, it is a Nazi tattoo, but I was brainwashed by these evil white racist Pentagon death cult military industry. So he's lying and it's making himself. So anyway, they're going to go after Hexeth. Here's what the impeachment should be. Pete Hexeth inherits Pentagon with 40,000 recruits short. Pete Hexeth in six weeks, army, navy, marines, air force, all recruitment goals exceeded. Pete Hexeth, there is no more transsexual, there's no more DEI, there's no more racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, prejudice. Morale has skyrocket. Pete Hexeth, the budget will go from 900 billion to a trillion and a half dollars as they're going to try to rebuild the flu. Pete Hexeth, we've got to look away from not away, but in addition to Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Northrop, the usual gang and the revolving door to Andaril and smaller companies that are making drones. So quantity, a quantity of good weapons is what we're after, what we see. We don't want a few perfect weapons that cost. We would rather have a million drones. We think a million drones at $20,000 a piece could beat 10 F-35s by flooding the zone. So that's what Pete Hexeth has done. And then we look at the record. Well, what has he done since he's been here? Oh, he got us into Venezuela. Well, it was perfect. It was a perfect idea. He got us in Iran. Well, the rescue was perfect. How did they pull it off? The Iranian War, they only lost 13 soldiers. That's what Obama Biden lost in one day on his skedaddle from Afghanistan. Oh, Cuba's on the ropes. So notice that the impeachment doesn't have anything about what he's actually done. It's he was rumored to be drunk or he was an unprofessional or they're really angry because Pete Hexeth, I think, channels people like Patton and Curtis LeMay. So when he says we're going to kill them or we're going to we bombed him in the smith, they don't like that language. It's more like tragically, we were forced tragically, we were forced to hit a munitious plant and there was a terrible explosion. We regret terribly the loss of life. But they forget that Colin Paul, one of their heroes, after he became a trump pater during the First Gulf War, he had a little map and he said, there is a Republican guard and he kind of took his pointer around it. I said, well, what are you going to do? I'm going to encircle it and kill it. Oh, wow, Colin, you really want to kill people. So they prefer the Bill Clinton. Remember when he hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and he came out in the morning and he said, oh, there's been this terrible accident. We accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy. I don't know if it was an accident. But he he claimed that the next day he did the whole Bill Clinton. We're so sorry. This was an accident. They hit it. They nailed it. They had two apartments in a big, long building. You couldn't. I'm not saying that that approach. When I went to Iraq, as a so-called journalist, 2006 and 7 right at the heart of the surge, I went all over one time with Blackhawks and the other the next year. Few days with Humby. And the one thing I noticed was I went to some of their press conferences. I read the military. They said, this is the surge and we're we're concentrating on civic infrastructure. And we're trying to build parks and electrical and we're trying to win the people. We're setting and then you talk to some special forces going on now. We're killing them like flies. We're killing them all over. McChrystal has just gone crazy. He's killing all of the baths, the sons of Saddam and the ISIS people. So what I'm saying is that Petraeus had a pretty good strategy was saying that we're not interested in just kinetic activity and it was true. But the kinetic activity was never more kinetic. And it was almost like, oh, 500 jihadists were killed with that bomb. I didn't know that. You know, that was kind of stuff. But Trump would have said or Hexeth would have said, yeah, we bomb in the smithery or Curtis LeMay, you know, a cigar in his mouth. Yeah. Yeah, we got to bomb him back to the stone age. So there's two ways of approaching it. I really don't believe when Trump said existential, a lot of his supporters, I saw someone, Fox News said, well, he spoke in the language of the Middle East, so that's why he said that he wanted to destroy, you know, you're going to wake up and your civilization is going to be dead. But he didn't mean the Iranian people. He wasn't using that to scare them. I don't think by saying they're going to take out. I think he was talking about the civilization of the regime, the radical Shia who had kidnapped or hijacked Persian history and culture. Some of them weren't even Persian. Yeah, that's true. And we're at almost to the end here, Victor. And I just wondering, have you seen that Hunter Biden is in South Africa? Yes. Reading about it, I got the impression that he's trying to avoid problems here in the United States, probably tax problems. But he got pardon and he got off on the tax thing. But he owes 17 million dollars to lawyers and anybody stupid enough to let him stay in their house for free or fly him on their jet. He was a leech. The weird thing about it was he was kind of an amateur grifter. So he had all that exposure every time that he comes out. If he's in the New York Post, they show those pictures where he's stark naked with a prostitute snorting and gross sexual activity. So he's never going to live that down. And he says things like they were talking that Donald Trump might be a cocaine addict. And when they had cocaine under the Biden administration and one of the the bookcases as you came into the West Wing and with Hunter Hunter Biden is on record saying that crack cocaine is a good thing. Everybody should try it. Basically, it's not as bad as alcohol. And then everybody wants money from him. His little artist thing. Everybody's the left made a feeble argument and said, you know, yeah, he may be blowing paint through his straw and his nose and he may be. But they were actually very they'd always wheel out some phony Manhattan art critic who would say, despite popular belief, I've examined the corpus and the ove of Hunter Biden. And it's it's very impressive. Stylistically, it reminds me of the French impression. They would get that. And then they get these crass guys who would buy it for a million bucks so they could go in and tell everybody that tell, you know, get some. They'd tell everybody I gave a million dollars to Joe Biden. And I want you to give me an exemption for my grandma or something to come in. And as soon as Joe Biden went out when they kicked him out, it was like Zulu. And did you see that his mayor, Corporal, he sold one painting. He has no income at all. And he's lazy. He's still in his mid fifties. I think he does. He have a law degree. I think he does. He's supposed to be a lawyer. Hunter and Hunter and co or something or Hunter and son or Biden and Biden. He won't doesn't want to work. He likes warm climates, you know, like LA or South Africa. He married this woman, very attractive. And he's down there hiding out, I guess. Like any thief would. He did. He did. He did challenge either of the two Trump older boys to a cage fight. Yeah, I saw that. Greg Goedfeldt said that he would be a good correspondent for Goedfeldt. You know what I mean? I think he was half serious too. Yeah, like a Johnny that does Jesse Water. Yeah, exactly. And it would be a novelty. So he would get it. I don't know how to say it, but I don't wish that type of familiar ruin on anybody. But while this was going on, Joe Biden, who is senile, suffering from dementia, has stage four prostate cancer. He was up on the podium and he looked over at somebody in the audience and his challenge mind said, that's Barack Obama. That's what it told him. So then he said, brah or something and come up here. And the guy didn't want to come up here, come up here. And then as he started to get closer, you could see that he might have thought that it wasn't Barack Obama. And then he said, you look like Barack Obama and he engaged in the biggest stereotype that people of one race all look like each other. Asians all look whites. But blacks all look like each other. And then he had that gravely. It's it's really sad because they really were going to make him. They thought they could have him in the office right now. But when he was talking, he'd say, well, you can't get your buddy. I mean, uh-huh. Yeah. Nobody knows what he's saying. And that's true. I feel bad. Then he had that crackpot doctor. Ronnie Jackson was a good doctor. He was a doctor for Obama and Trump the first term and then he's now in Congress. But Biden's doctor knew all this stuff. How could Biden be the president of the United States and you wouldn't even give him a PSA test? How does the president United States sitting right before your very eyes have stage four metastasized prostate cancer? It doesn't make any sense. It's treatable. If you can catch it in one of the ways you can catch it and they say, well, you don't take that was Obama to save money. So well, you're after 70, don't take a PSA. And they found out that the death rate skyrocketed because a new longevity is 90. So yes, it can take 10 years to kill you, but a lot of people will live from 80 to 90 and be productive. So why didn't they do that? I don't know. I don't know. It's almost like they wanted them to die. I don't know. I don't know. But as you were talking, Hunter Biden was reminding me of our Eric Swalwell. He got kicked out of a mansion that a millionaire owned. And that guy just said, I don't know him anymore. It's the left mindset. Remember that's always projectionist left. If they're committing a crime, they say you are. If you're a horn toad and you're sexually assaulting women, then you give a soapbox speech about Brett Kavanaugh that that's just and if you are one of the tax all wealthy people like Mondami and Eric Swalwell, then he hangs out in a mansion in Mondami, likes nice things. And his wife especially likes nice things. And his parents really, really like nice things. So a lot of the left wing political manifestations reflect a deep seated neurosis that that's what they secretly covet. So they accuse other people of doing what they want. And sometimes they can't repress their appetites. I mean, weiner Anthony Weiner and Eric Swalwell were loud advocates of me too. And women, as Senator Hirono said, women must be believed. Women must be believed. Well, you didn't believe apparently you knew about Eric Swalwell. Everybody did. Eric Swalwell said almost the same thing. Haven't you ever talked to women? You should believe them. Yeah, about Brett Kavanaugh when he was what, 17? Well, when there's stories and there's stories about him and there's stories, then they're either true or he must be the unluckiest man in the world. You know what? That was very prescient, Eric. He was the most unlucky person in the world because he ran into likes of you who fabricated all these stories just so you wouldn't have a conservative on the Supreme Court. And now there's stories and more stories of Eric Swalwell and more stories and even more. I think that I don't think he was in Congress when he made those commercials. That was another projectionist idea. He was on that raft floating around when he said Congress was out. He was lifting weights. He was kind of showing that the Republicans did this to me. They made me they made me relax and maybe why don't you stay in Washington and study legislation or something? He was partying all the time and he was married with three kids and the people in the district knew it. Yeah, everybody. Nancy Pelosi knew it. Schumer knew it. Ruben Gallegos, his his friend knew it, his amigol. Yeah, he knew it. And the last thing I just need to, I don't know, assure our audience that I did understand or know that Tony Gallegos was the Republican who's having trouble similar to Eric Swalwell in Congress. And so there is it's a it's a bipartisan problem, harassment of women in the D.C. area and in the political arena. It is except there's a difference. It's not that Republicans are not as that they're always more moral, although I do believe they are, but they have deterrence. They know that if they step out of line, the press hates them and they're all going to be exposed so that that deterrent effect makes them behave a little bit better. The Democrats know that they can do anything and the press like they've learned from Clinton and Biden. If you don't believe me, look at the difference between E. Jean Carroll and Tara Reid with Biden. That was a much more clear cut case of rape, sexual penetration. And then Jean Carroll's story was full of holes. Tara Reid told her mother about it. Her mother called in to CNN about it. Everybody knew about it. She told people about it. We all knew it, but nobody in the left was going to do anything. Well, Victor, we're at a pretty hard break here, so we better go. Thanks to our audience for choosing to join us on Saturday or the weekend. And thank you, Victor, for watching and listening to everybody. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off. 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 VictorHansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.