How Democrats Illegal Immigration Failures Led to a Deadly Chicago Tragedy | Victor Davis Hanson

When I heard this tragic shooting, first thing I said is it's probably going to be another illegal alien. It was. The second thing I thought is how is this prince going to blame Trump? And I thought, well, he can't blame Trump because Trump has offered to go into Chicago for months and do what he did to Washington and other cities. So he can't say that Trump wasn't there to help him. And then I thought, well, he can't say that Trump's not going after criminals because he's deported thousands of them and arrested thousands of them. And then third, he can't say it because he's a sanctuary state. Chicago's a sanctuary city. So when Trump wants to get these people like this person who was here illegally and then shoplifted and he was arrested and all ICE had to do, and they did obviously, is call up the Chicago police and say, who did you arrest today that is illegal? Oh, we want to cooperate. We have this person here and they would have turned him over to ICE and then he would have been back in Venezuela now. But that didn't happen because of the governor Pritzker. I get frustrated because so nihilistic what they're doing, there's no rhyme or reason. Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. We are recording on March 24th. It's a Tuesday evening here in the on the East Coast and Victor's out in beautiful Central Valley. It's the evening there. And this episode will be up on Thursday, the 26th. Lots of news today. Victor will share his wisdom on analysis of these things. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson senior fellow with the Hoover Institution, the Wayne and Marsha Busky distinguished fellow in history at Hillsdale College, senior contributor. Of the Daily Signal, which is the happy home of Victor Davis Hansen in his own word. The Daily Signal. My daily signal. Yeah, got your hat on? Yeah, there you go. It's team player, Victor. I have to write Rob and get more caps because now that I'm a quote, cancer survivor, I'm losing things. Oh, here. I forget. Well, that happened. That was incidental, not essential, by the way. No, but I placed things everywhere and I placed this hat everywhere. Oh, and I scrambled to find it. By the way, between when we're talking today and Thursday, the major league baseball season will open and my former favorite team, the Yankees, because I really don't root for them much anymore, playing the San Francisco Giants, which was your team growing up? I love William. All I did when I did our little farm chores, they had just come out with transistor radios. Yeah. And I had one that went into a belt, you know, so I would go out and I'd listen to Willie McCovey, Harvey Keene, Willie Mays, my favorite pitcher, Juan Marichel. Oh, I love Timmy. They're Lou brothers, all of them. Yeah, Bobby Bonds, he came a little later, but Hal Lenear, all those guys. And then every year, my parents saved up money and they took us all up to a Giants game. It'd be 110 here and we'd get up there and it would be 62 degrees at Candlestick. Wendy, yeah. So I love Willie McCovey. And he is really good. I wish I, yeah, I never saw Willie Mays play. Willie Mays play, unfortunately. That's a bit, just a last but great play. Well, anyway, Victor, we're going to talk about Iran and breaking news coming out today about a possible settlement, 15 point plan, et cetera, ceasefire, et cetera. We'll get your take on that. General Mattis critiquing Donald Trump. We have an airline madness, plenty more. When we come back from these initial important messages. Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin. And just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen. Whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, or his short form content for the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, I always leave an episode learning something new. I think they forgot the 1982 Falcons War. And in the age of clickbait and ragebait, that's a really good feeling, right? The media, thank you. You can leave now. Well, if you agree, you might like my show, the Daily Signals Long Form Interview podcast called the Signal Sitdown. Every week, we take you behind the scenes of the biggest battles in Washington, DC, as they happen with some of the biggest names in politics. We explore big ideas and we analyze the policy making process from an unabashedly and unapologetically conservative perspective. And that's important now more than ever with the Trump administration back in office, because in 2024, you sent Washington a message it couldn't ignore. It's your government and together we're taking it back. So check us out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen or there too. And drop me a follow on X at Bradley Devlin to stay updated with what's happening on the Signal Sitdown. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So Victor, headlines came out earlier today and new ones keep piling up on top of it. From late afternoon here on the East Coast, the headline was Trump claims Iran agreed to give up nukes as his war chief Pete Hagseth fumes. That is such like a side thing now. There's supposedly a 15 point peace plan. What else we have Jared, his son-in-law and Steve Whitcoff are being rejected as envoys by the Iranians. Anyway, what do you think about all these breaking headlines and developments? Well, I want to be optimistic, but there are periods in history that there are governments you cannot negotiate with. Every agreement, the Anschluss, Czechoslovakia, Poland, he lied about. You could not negotiate with Benito Mussolini. You could not negotiate with the Japanese military government. They were negotiating just with us as they had six carriers steaming to Pearl Harbor. And this is a government that over 47 years has never kept its word. And the most recent and egregious example was they had sworn that they had no ambitions to extend their lethality beyond the Middle East. And they were not going to build medium range ballistic missiles with ranges greater than 2,000 miles. And then they shot one at Diego Garcia. We don't know whether it was a light version or whether it would have made it or not had it not been intercepted in one case. But that's over 2,500 miles away. So why would you ever trust anything? So the question is, Trump has been a master of negotiating with, I think, people that he understands can't tell the truth and won't be sincere or follow up. And then that gives him an out. So if he says, I sat down with these people, whoever these people are, we don't know, not many left. And we've negotiated something and then they will inevitably break it. And then if that is true, maybe he'll just go medieval on them and take out their grid or something. But it's going to be disturbing. But if he, in reference to General Mattis, we'll get to that later. But he said there was no strategic agenda. The military, and he was insinuating, the military was almost on autopilot. And despite Trump not because of him, they did so well. Okay, I disagree with that. But that's a legitimate view, I suppose. But I don't know what he meant when he said there was no strategic agenda. He laid it out on March 1st and he laid it out on March 20th again. He said there were, the first point was that they shall not have a nuclear weapon and we will take all steps to stop their procurement of one. And that was the uranium that has been enriched and it has been the facilities that enrich it. And then he said, second, they're not going to have ballistic missiles. And he's been doing exactly that. He's trying to find all the silos. He's trying to find all of the factories that produce these or reassemble them from North Korea or Russia. And then he said third, they are not going to keep subsidizing the Houthis, the Hezbollah, and the Hamas terrorists to disrupt the Middle East. Now he's destroyed almost all of their transport planes they use to carry weapons to these groups. He's frozen all their bank accounts. He's, those two groups, the Hezbollah and Hamas are just vestiges of their former selves thanks to the Israelis. The Houthis have talked a great game, but last time they came in, they lost all their port facilities and some of their airports. And they've been told that if they want to come in again, there's going to be gloves off and the U.S. and Israeli Air Force can render them medieval to use that term again. I mean, they won't have any power. They won't have any, I don't think they're going to do that. And Iran is not there to help them. And then finally they said they're not going to be a disruptor of Middle East calm. And that meant, you know, they're not going to do what they're doing now, claim international waters in the Strait of Ramuz as if it's their own, and kind of be like a bandit in, you know, 15th century Greece up in the hills and, you know, a bridge across a river and you take, you charge people tolls to use it. That's what they're basically saying they're going to do, outlawry. So that was a very clear strategic agenda. He didn't say in there regime change. That would be a cherry on top of his dessert, but he didn't say that. So I don't know what the anger is. I think if you want to say, General Mattis could have said, now he's had a brilliant campaign and he's outlined three or four strategic objectives, but those strategic subjectives will not be viable given the perfidy of that particular government unless it is removed. But he said just the opposite. He said, you know, then regime change, that's just fantasy. That's not going to happen. But then if you don't believe regime change is going to happen, but that the war could be justified on strategic grounds and he named four strategic grounds and it's incumbent upon you to say the president named four strategic grounds, the removal of nuclear ability, the removal of ballistic ability, ballistic missile capability, the subsidies to terrorist groups, and the interruption of international waters and calm in the Middle East. And I disagree with them or I want to, they're insufficient and here they are. General Mattis says, these are Mattis' strategic objectives, one, two, three, four, but he didn't. You want me to share with our listeners what Mattis did say? Yes. He was speaking to Katie Tur on MSNOW on Monday, which was yesterday in Houston, and he said this, what we're seeing is a situation where targetry never makes up for the lack of strategy. And by that, I mean 15,000 targets have been hit. There have been significant military successes, but they are not matched by strategic outcomes. Now some of the strategic outcomes early on, unconditional surrender regime change, we're going to dictate who the next supreme leader is. Those were clearly nonsense. Those were delusional and you don't hear those bandied about anymore. There are some that have been achieved in the military realm. They no longer have a Navy of any note. They no longer have the numbers of ballistic missiles and the defense infrastructure they had before, but the bottom line is it is not matched by success in the strategic area. And that's a bad thing. That means that we're now in a position where either one side or the other side escalates probably to be matched. And you saw the threat rise over the last 48 hours. It's been pushed off five days, but right now we're in a kind of show me. One side is saying, you show me that you're willing to do something that we want. The other side is looking for the same thing in return and neither one of them is making a move in that direction. So that's his attack. I have great respect for him as a colleague of mine at Hoover and we don't publicly try to disagree with our colleagues, but I must say that he's confusing military objectives and strategic objectives. I just said that Trump outlined a strategic objective, that he did not want this government to have even nuclear materials or ballistic make. And Madda said, well, they have had military success in their objectives and the removal of ballistic missile capability in large part. That is a strategic objective that Trump outlined. It's not just a mere military fact. And when he says they've destroyed the Navy, that is a strategic objective because that is part and parcel of making sure that on the long term, they don't have the ability to permanently shut down the straight of her. Straight of her moves and be gatekeeper. So they're they're integral. And he said, he said, well, they gave up on regime. I don't remember Donald Trump said when he went to war, we're going to remove this regime. He said help was coming to the protesters and it did come. And I, as far as unconditional surrender, he did say that, but it was in a tactical sense. We want them to quit, quit, no discussions until they quit. The other problem is he said one side is going to do this and then the other side is going to escalate. Would he please tell me how they're going to escalate belong beyond what they're doing with the straight of her moves? I want to know how. How are they going to do that? Are they going to suddenly open a missile factory and start showering with more missiles? Are they going to say China is going to come in with a big load of more drones and don't dare touch it? No. Are they going to say we have the naval drone and mine capacity to keep the straight of her moves closed under our jurisdiction for the next six months? No, they don't have that. So what I'm getting at is it's one sided. It's asymmetrical. And the only, the only reason that perhaps General Mattis thinks it's not is that there's self restraint on the part of the administration and it's self imposed. There's no symmetry there. They have absolutely crippled, if not worse, made all of the Iranian ability to wage war and nurt. Now I know that when they say 83% of this and 96%, I wouldn't do that. That's just a linguistic matter. I wouldn't say that we have impaired or blocked or destroyed 93% of their missile capability. Because it doesn't matter what you've destroyed, it's what's left. When I was used to thin plums, when we had a really heavy set and the trees were almost falling over with these little plums about the size of your fingernail, and they would never size unless you thinned them. And so I would, you're supposed to have a plum every eight inches. So I would climb the trees and thin it and you look at the bottom of the ground jack and it was just covered with green little plums. I say to my grandfather, well, look, I did. I thinned the orchard and he said, it doesn't matter what's on the ground, Victor. It matters what's in the tree. And look at that. There's still too many in the tree. You didn't do enough. I said, but look at the ground. What he meant was it doesn't matter how many you've taken out. It matters how many are left. So they've obviously have secreted places or they've escorts with some missiles in certain deserted areas or they're in the middle of this town that we don't know about. And they're going to continue to use these and couplets, doublets, and that's going to be a problem. But it's not, we can say that that we've got the vast majority, but they have hidden places that from, they're going to be sporadic and episodic. That's fine. But otherwise, there's no ability on the part of Iran to resist. And as I said, it's all self-imposed. And what are the self-impositions? One. Donald Trump does not want to use the full scale of the United States military to destroy that country because he wants somebody to take over other than the regime. He wants them to have water, power, sanitation, communications. So he, and he knows that the regime will use those, but he has decided that I don't want to completely emasculate them if it's at the expense of popular resistance. Number one. Number two, he's got the entire world on his back yelling that the price of gas may go up. So it's very, I mean, California people in states are going, it's four dollars. I can't remember when it was four dollars. I mean, it's five, we were paying five dollars when they, and California economy is still operating with five dollar gas. It has been forever. So it's, what I'm saying is it's an unfortunate situation, but the United States economy can withstand this for another two or three weeks or two or three months even. But he feels that psychologically or the media driven narrative that that is a restraint, that he has to get a solution. Then there's third. There's the midterms. He's got it. He's getting down to seven, eight month period and he's got to get this out of the voters mind, erasure, get it out. So you don't, I can't, I don't think most voters, if I said to them today, Jack, well, what happened in September? They don't even remember. I don't remember. So this won't be a memory in November if he can stop it within the next month. And that is a self-imposed restriction. And there's a final one. He's got very vocal critics, Joe Rogan now, Megan Kelly, Tucker Carlson. Of course, I don't consider Nick Fuente as a viable critic. He's in his own category and Tucker Carlson and they have constituents. Polls suggest they have very few supporters, at least in the sense that they think that one issue in which they disagree with Trump nullifies or neuters the whole Trump candidacy or presidency. So that'll all work out. But if Proust comes to shove when he says one side is going to escalate on the other and there's not going to be any dialogue, there's not going to be any dialogue, not because one side is going to escalate or that Donald Trump doesn't have any strategic agenda. Is that this particular entity cannot negotiate. It's not trustworthy. It's inherently a line. It's by nature a line. It's not dependable. So what does that mean? That means that you set the parameters of the damage that you inflict and maybe you don't get the ultimate solution. You don't claim you will with regime change. I would prefer that we try to seek that and arm some of the, but that's something else. And I understand people's reluctance. I have reluctance after Afghanistan and Iraq or you can take Karga Island, which is probably going to be mined. It's probably patrolled by thousands of drones. We'll take a lot of Cal, but you could stop all of their oil revenue and squeeze them and just say, you know what? We like you. We want to negotiate with you, but you know, we don't, we don't get along very well. And until you want to negotiate, we own Karga Island and you're going to have no oil revenues. Sorry. We're just going to sit here and twiddle our thumbs to you. We consider, we can do it longer than you can. And we're going to open this. We can open the straight up and we will. So that's where we are. And I guess you can say we and the Israelis destroyed the Iranian ability to make war in the region and threaten Europe and Western interests for what? Three years, four years, five, depending on the next administration's ability to restrict the importation of weapons from China and Russia and North Korea. So that's pretty much where we are. And I think it's pretty clear that he had strategic objectives. He's obtained nearly all of them. They don't have ballistic missile capability pretty soon. They don't have the ability to resupply the Houthis and Hezbollah and Hamas, either financially or with the transport capability. They've been, those people have been kicked out of Lebanon, for example, their agents, the Iranian agents. And they'll find the fissionable material. If they have to barman underground, they'll do something, but they, I think they'll find it. So I don't see the big problem. Yeah. Well, I have one Iranian follow-up, Victor. But first, everything we carry today is broadcasting a signal, your phone, your laptop, even your car key fob. Most people don't realize it, but these devices are constantly sharing location data, identifiers, and wireless handshakes with networks all around. 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To save 15% plus free shipping on qualifying orders. Again, that's SLNT.com. We thank the good people from silent for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor, you mentioned the next administration and if it's a yes sooner or later there someday in America, God help us. There will be a Democrat administration. I can only imagine it will be in the same path and mindset or worse than Obama slash Biden. And who bankrolled who bankrolled Iran? I mean, the why were we even in this position to be at imminent? I'll use imminent risk from them. It's our past Democrat administrations gave them billions dollars. It started with Obama. He was the one that reversed anything that George W. Bush did after they had sent, you know, shape charges, IEDs into Iraq and killed hundreds of not thousands. And main American Obama had this crazy idea that they were going to be a counter to the Sunni Petro nations and Israel. And then he would step in once in a while and be the referee between the Shia Persian Crescent from Tehran to Beirut to Damascus. Beirut to Gaza, I suppose. Ben Rhodes was the architect of that full hardiness. And then we had, and then they had the Iran deal and they, Mr. Constitutional Lawyer, Obama ran it right through. It was a treaty and he ran it right through the Senate without the constitutional two-thirds majority. And he had people like Bob Corker, remember the Republican Rhinos that joined him and gave us lectures about what great guy Obama was. And then we had Trump and Trump stopped them. He sanctioned them. He had the maximum pressure. Mike Pompeo was very good on that. And H.R. McMaster was very good on that. Bolton was good on that. They were all good on that. And then Biden came in. He lifted the terrorist designation of the Houthis. They began shelling, miscelling, droning the Red Sea. Then he said that he was going to lift the sanctions off Iran. They made $100 billion in oil revenues and began spreading their money to Hezbollah and then people in Syria and Hezbollah. They tacked 200 installations in Syria and Iraq. We didn't respond, I think, than any of them much. And there's where we are. Then Trump came in and he's got to deal with it. But they did it. And then remember one other thing, Jack. Last year, Trump was negotiating with him. And he said, right before he bombed, he was going to do this and he was going to force them, but he was willing to negotiate. And then it just dragged on and dragged on. And he said, I'll give you a note. And then Chuck Schumer and Heikham Jeffries. And I think Heikham Jeffries is the worst speaker, minority leader we've ever seen of the opposition party when he was speaker. He said, they coined this term taco. Trump always chickens out. And in other words, they flip completely and said that Palma Donald Trump is that he's too weak that he doesn't back up his threats. And then when he did bomb the nuclear, then they said, World War Three, World War Three, World War Three. It's kind of a nealism on the Democratic Party. They have no consistent agenda other than whatever Donald Trump says at the moment they're against. No matter of the inconsistencies that that poses for them. Yeah, well, we see that at airports, Victor. Let's get your take on some of these. Oh my gosh. He said that they're going to kill people at airport. Can you imagine that? Jeffries said we don't want to put ice there because they'll kill people at airports. Yeah. Well, you know, do you love America or hate America? And it's kind of tough to see a leader of one of our two major parties actually hating America. But yeah, so we have ice agents now helping out at airports in number of places. It's relieved the wait times. But I did hear you were tonight as we're recording on the 24th and you were on earlier this evening with Laura Ingraham on Fox News. And she said something about a friend in Houston who waited four and a half hours in Houston to get through today and missed a missed a flight. So it's still insane in many places. I've also related interest. I love this headline Delta takes major perk away from Congress until they end the DHS shutdown. The airline has temporarily yanked its special congressional desk service to lawmakers and staffers on Capitol Hill until Congress finally funds the DHS quoting now the company company statements due to the impact on resources from the law enforcement. And the DHS says from the longstanding government shutdown, Delta will temporarily suspend specialty services to the members of Congress flying Delta. Unfortunately, Jack, it's not going to hurt the Democrats because as we know, Bernie Sanders and AOC fly private jets. They've went through $40,000 of flight jets as we learned from their rally for the poor in the middle class. So Jeffery said, well, they're going to put ice in there and they're going to shoot people and everything. And it was kind of good that if you think about it, what Trump did was pretty his subtext was that ice. And by the way, when you look at the ice people, whether they're in Minnesota or here in California at the airport, I would say 40% of them are would be minorities, mostly Mexican and Hispanic. So then you have this dichotomy of these Karen, excuse me, everybody, I promise I did not want to ever say that. I've had so many Karen's write me and say, my name is Karen. We love you Karen, you're so lovable. Yes, we love you Karen's of the middle of the West and the middle. We really do. I'm sorry. But anyway, we had this wealthy liberal stereotype screaming and yelling at them. And it was kind of funny. They were very privileged and the ice people were not. And yet we were supposed to think they were the liberal people and the ice people were the reactionaries. When in fact they were there to mostly not all get criminals that would prey on people like the people that were protesting against them. So it was ironic. But what Trump is basically saying is if you take the protesters away and the insane politicking in Minnesota and waltz and fry and all those creepy people and just let Walt the just have people meet ice. There would have been no problem. They weren't going out. They weren't going after pregnant women. They were going after people that had criminal records or collateral when they go into a house when there's a molester and they arrest them and they look around and they say, can you give me an ID and they can't then they have a they're bound by the law to arrest them and detain them. But the point I'm making is once you took those people and transplant them into the airport and people were the victims of the third Democratic shutdown. I mean, last year was the longest. The current one is the second longest. We had another one a week long and all three of them involved DHS. So three shutdowns because they couldn't win the house after they gave lectures that if Republicans ever did that they were crybabies because they couldn't. They were trying to do what they couldn't do at the election box, but ballot box. But then people, did you see the people's faces? They had all these ice people and they were smiling. This is great. They were trying to help out. They were polite to people. That's who they are. Oh, and then they said, well, they don't have mask. Well, they don't have mask on because they don't have lunatics like you taking pictures of them and putting them on the internet so the cartels can go after them. Gosh, it's just so simple. And so what Trump did is he alleviated the problem somewhat. They'll get better as they get a culture age to the job and there's more deployed. But he also reintroduced ice to the general public as public servants, which they always were. And so now the Democrats, what are they going to do? Are they going to get all those crazy people in LA and Chicago and Minneapolis and have them drive to the airport? And try to disrupt a disruptive system? The only thing I have a problem... You know what? I think you may be onto something though, Victor. Yeah, I think they're stupid enough to do it. I mean, they went down to Cuba and rented a private hotel. And they got all this gourmet mood. Then they got this high-end Irish rap group and they got their own generator. And then they blew out the power grid to the hospital apparently where people were being operated on. And then the next day they showed... It was almost like Marie Antoinette. They were throwing candies to the poor, you know? Or maybe shiny dimes like John D. Rockefeller gave to people. Yes. We'll talk about that Code Pink travel excursion to Cami Land a little later on. Well, anyway, I'm glad you have given up traveling for the time being. Not by car, of course you got to travel by car. Can you imagine if you were getting a connection, your heart rate, you'd say, I'm at Fresno Air Terminal and I have an hour connection in Denver and you get there and the line is out. And seven hours later, you... Yeah. It's like torture. They're torturing these wonderful people that are trying to get to work or see their family. Easter's coming up and they're deliberately doing it because they could not win the house. And they think they're going to punish so incoherent because ICE has funded through the big beautiful bill. So they're just punishing people and just trying to... That's not incoherent. Punishing people is part of how they operate. It's chaos theory. We keep saying on this program, whether it's shut down the government or no kings or scratch Teslas, keek Teslas, or fire bomb, or George Floyd, we're going to just cause so much mayhem. You're going to be confused over who's at fault, but we do know you'll get into a fetal position. Put your hands over your ears, curl up and say, make it all go away. Who did this? And that will hurt the incumbent. That's the strategy. I haven't heard an agenda from them. I still haven't. Well, chaos is the agenda. We're going to take a little break. When we come back, we're going to talk about this terrible murder in Illinois and this attempt to, in Virginia, to pass a new constitutional amendment there to gerrymandor out some Republican house seats, and we'll do that when we come back from these important messages. Since the founding of America 250 years ago, many things have changed, but some things never do. The commitment of husband and wife, the importance of passing along our values to our children, the faithfulness of God. Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive. As long as we keep first things first, we've only just begun. America, the beautiful. We're back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. Victor also has a side show there. It's not a side show. That sounds like a circus. Another show. A marquee show. Yes, marquee. Yes. The appetizer. It's Victor Davis Hansen in a few words. Four times a week, you'll catch it also on the Daily Signal. If you're on X, Victor's Handel is at V.D. Hansen. If you're on Facebook, VDH is Morning Cup. There's also a great group of friends there, the Victor Davis Hansen fan club. And Victor's own website is The Blade of Perseus, and you'll find that at VictorHansen.com. And if you'd like to read the exclusive pieces, Victor writes that website. It does two pieces a week and one video a week. Well, do subscribe. There's tons of free stuff there. But subscribe. It's $6.50 a month or discounted for the full year at $65. VictorHansen.com, The Blade of Perseus. Victor, this is terrible. This girl is Sheridan Gorman, a Loyola University freshman. She was shot and killed last week in Chicago by Jose Medina, a 25-year-old in the country illegally. J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, said, part of the blame, I'm reading now, I think this from a New York Post story, the governor, part of the blame for the murder belongs to the administration because they have not stuck to their edict of targeting the worst of the worst when it comes to illegal migrants. What does he think 500,000 people have been, they think they've got almost 500,000 people, 400,000 people. So, you know, it's funny you said that because when I heard this tragic shooting, first thing I said is it's probably going to be another illegal alien. Maybe that was unfair, but it was. The second thing I thought is, how is this Pritzker going to blame Trump? And I thought, well, he can't blame Trump because Trump has offered to go into Chicago for months and do what he did to Washington and other cities. So, he can't say that Trump wasn't there to help him. And then I thought, well, he can't say that Trump's not going after criminals because he's deported thousands of them and arrested thousands of them. And then third, he can't say it because he's a sanctuary state, Chicago's a sanctuary city, so when Trump wants to get these people, like this person who was here illegally and then shoplifted and he was arrested and all ICE had to do, and they did obviously, is call up the Chicago police and say, who did you arrest today that is illegal? Oh, we want to cooperate. We have this person here and they would have turned him over to ICE and then he would have been back in Venezuela now, but that didn't happen because of the governor Pritzker. And so, I don't know how to get frustrated because it's so nihilistic what they're doing. There's no rhyme or reason. When you look at all the things they're doing, I saw Adam Schiff, he was on some, maybe it was Bill Marney was saying, when we get back in power, just as Susan Rice said, we're going to go out, I thought, what have you been doing? You warped the legal system. You had five different courtrooms, you went after Trump. You tried to get him off the ballot, you impeached him twice, you tried him as a private citizen, you raided his home. And then they said, well, we're going to go after people and that's what you've been doing, that's your brand. You surveil Congress people, you surveil senators as Jack Smith, you warped the law like Alvin Bragg, you got biased judges like Judge Mershan, Judge Kaplan, all of these crazy judges, Vosberg, that's what you do. You warped the legal system and you say, well, we're going to do this. Well, that's what you've been doing. And you're going to say, well, you just see Gavin Newsom, Jack, I don't know if you saw that today, but he said, we're going to get ruthless. Yes, we're going to get ruthless. I'm thinking, well, you've already said you were going to hit him in the mouth. You already said people in Europe that listen to him have knee pads as if they are performing a false sex act in your filthy mind, Newsom, what else can you say or do that would be ruthless? That's who you are. You're a ruthless person, you always have been. And the dividends of your ruthlessness is that while you're campaigning for president and posting all these obscenities and claiming that an investigative reporter is a pedophile, which you did, the state is falling apart. It's crime is high, its economy is stagnant, gas is out of sight, electricity is unaffordable, homelessness is crested. You're short billions of dollars and you build an animal pathway to nowhere so Bobcats and mountain lions can get into the hills of L.A. County and eat more cats and dogs in the backyard. This is what you do. They're trying to bring bears back in. Oh yeah, I know. Northern California. We have wolves here already in the foothills of the San Joaquin Valley that come down. Now Victor, nobody's like, you watch the end of the bridge on the River Kwai when the general would suit the colonel. Madness? No, before the madness happens. When Alec Guinness essentially says, what have I done? It's very rare that there's an admission. Like, oh my gosh, I've done something terrible here. Thankfully he falls on the plunger and blows the thing up. But we will never see an admission from any of these people about the palpable madness they've done right in front of them. Yeah, I was thinking about the other day. You brought up, we in California are like Bill Holden in that movie Bridget and River Kwai. Everything, we get proverbially taken advantage of by all of these incompetent would be moralists at lecture. He's like Alec Guinness. He's a sanctimonious incompetent. Yeah. That's actually not fair to the character of Alec Guinness. But it's also like in the Bridge of River Kwai, the guy always gets, ends up in a ditch dead, is Bill Holden again? Bill Holden, yeah. And it's always because of some stupid idea to go to the tertiary target when you didn't have to. And the point I'm making is that Gavin Newsom, he gallivants around, he does that, he compares himself to movie stars. He does this little body gymnastics or wriggle. I don't know what he's trying to do. His wife mouths off every once in a while about trans or gay or feminist issues with why she's making a fortune consulting highly unethical with a state that her husband runs. And then he tries to write a book about how he grew up in a log cabin kind of idea. Yeah. And he was a self-created spoiled Nipo baby that had well-connected father. They were very close to the Getty family. They were very close to the Pat Brown senior and Jerry Brown. He had everything paid for him. He's a child of privilege. And you know that the way he acts. He talks about dyslexia. And then if everybody says, well, you don't, you're historically illiterate, which he is when he talked about that federal troops had never been sent into quell writing. And when Ted Cruz called him on, he said, oh, I better go return to Victor. How dare you make fun of a dyslexic person calling me historically illiterate? No, that your problem is you're stupid and you're uneducated because you don't know the difference between not knowing history and the inability as someone would dyslexic to read quickly and incompetently. So he's been, you got to remember Jack, he was of all the people culpable for high speed rail blowing up dams, subverting the bonds. So we didn't build three reservoirs, the Delta smell, the Pellis, Pellisides fire, the Paradise fire, the Aspen fire, the high taxes, the 500 million to illegal immigrants, the bankrupt, Mckay, Medi-Cal, the homeless, 10 billion. Who was at the center of that storm? One person, eight years San Francisco board of supervisors, eight years consecutive mayor of San Francisco, eight years Lieutenant Governor, and now six years Governor. He's almost got 30 years that he was at the center of all that decision making. And he takes no responsibility for the fact that 300,000 people are leaving the state or most productive citizens. And he never mentions it. He never mentions it. And I don't know what's going to happen. He's ruined the state, but I don't know how a guy like that can run for president. 20, 30, 40 billion dollars on high speed rail. I just, we drove over it today on the way home from Stanford Med and my gosh, they haven't laid one foot of track. Yeah. He'll be dead and buried before that. Yeah. Over, I saw them, all they're doing is building big berms where the track will be. And the over, it's just a disaster. And everything he's got the on Midas touch everything he touches, whether it's the Monterey battery storage that burns up or the Mojave solar plant that's being dismantled or everything he touches, turns to draw. Yeah, it really does. Except the foothills in the forest that turned to ashes. Yes. And Victor, I got another Chicago thing. The first, if you studied enough history, you start to see a pattern nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt division until one day realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all today America is spending at levels once reserved for war time and we've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations. 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For years they've guided Americans through transparent education and long standing relationships built on trust 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, protect with a victor.com. Victor just to return to the scene of the crime up in Chicago, there's an Alderwoman Maria had and I don't know if our listeners or viewers have heard this reaction. I think it's mediaite in a now viral clip quote from what place the world is at the moment. Victor just to return to the scene of the crime up in Chicago, there's an Alderwoman Maria had and I don't know if our listeners or viewers have heard this reaction to this murder. And she is rambled. I forget where I'm reading from. I think it's mediaite in a now viral clip quote from what police know from speaking to the students who were with her. It seems that she, just her name Sharon and Gorman, might have, they were just out. You know, people go out to the beach all the time, right? And they go out on the pier, they walk around so that the kids were out doing normal, normal things people do in the neighborhood. And it sounds like this might have been a wrong place, wrong time situation, running into a person who had a gun. In other words, it's kind of her fault. I thought I read something to mine where she maybe startled him, you know. Yeah, we love our illegal immigrants and you know, not saying they don't mess up your hair once in a while, but they get to roam just as much as you. Who do you think you are just because you're an illegal American citizen in your law body? That's not fair. That's her attitude. It was so sickening and amoral, but you know, it's so funny. I don't know if all of these Marxists, and that's what they are. If you classical Marxism, they believe in a mandated level and level everybody to the lowest common denominator. Take from these people, give to these people, you adjudicate it and you're exempt from your own ideological damage. But it's what she just said was sort of like the Stalinists, you know, if you're going to make, when they're talking about the Revolution in Russia. And I'm not sure he's the first to say it. When you make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. So if you're going to have a bold new immigration policy, there's going to be collateral damage. We can't avoid that. Of course, she can as an older woman because she'll have security and she'll be away from the chaos that she helped create. But they have contempt for people's lives. Just nobody's. They're just collateral damage. We're just like lab rats. They have the white coats and they're in the lab and they think they're going to experiment with all these utopian Romites. So hey, let's, why don't we bring up that old gender dysphoria and make it into a civil rights thing called the trans movement. And we'll operate on teens and take off their sex organs or do something or inject them with dangerous drugs. Okay, why don't we open the border? That would be great. Who needs borders? Let's let in 12 million people. Ah, I got an idea. How about critical legal theory? It's society's fault, not the criminal. Let's let these people out. Let's not even indict them. Critical legal theory. How about critical race theory that everybody's a racist and the whole society is in a binary of victims and victimizers. That's what they do. They have their little white coats on and we're all in cages and then they inject us with these drunk stuff and then we're collateral damage. They're really reprehensible people and I don't want to be, you know, trying to stigmatize anybody, but they do so much damage to so many nice innocent people. Yeah, they're just money. Why don't they just say, you know what, you don't agree with me and I don't agree with you and we're all going to agree that we're going to keep the roads working and we're going to keep the stop lights working and we're going to get the garbage collected and the power. And beyond that, you know, as the Roman said, summa, summa hominae non di, we're just you, just men and humans. We're not gods. We don't have no pretensions that we're going to remake mankind as they do. That's what their whole idea is. Give me enough money, power, and I can remake you into something. New man. New man. Well, Victor, before we head to our final break and we'll talk about Code Pink after that, just want to get your thoughts about this Virginia. Jerry Mander referendum, which could result in the Republicans losing four house seats if it passes and it's interesting. So voting has started on this ballot proposal. Early voting. Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections while ensuring Virginia's standard. Redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census. So that's the resolution. By the way, the state adopted a referendum in 2020. So just six years ago that the Democrats supported and 60% of the people backed it. That was aimed to prevent partisan Jerry, Jerry Mandarin. So it's just, you know, when it suits them, it suits them when it doesn't, it doesn't. So, but I, this is an off year, a special kind of referendum, low turnout. And there is real concern that this may pass your thoughts. Yeah, I think it will. I think in California, at least they were subtle. They always said, we're reformist and we believe in non-partisanship. So we're going to have non-partisan, districting by impartial boards. And then they would get the Democrats would go in and they get socialists for their five guys. And then they would look around and find five rhinos and say, it's bipartisan. And then they would Jerry Mandarin. The result was under the old system of the 53 representatives in California. I think we had 11 Republicans. And then they said, you know what, that's not fair. We're going to get it down to seven or five. So we're just going to get rid of the pretense and just go full partisan. And that's what they're doing in California. And again, it gets back to this idea that they can't win with people showing up and showing an idea and voting on election day. They can't win. They know that. They can't win if you have to register lawfully and according to set rules that are enforced. And they know they can't win if the districts, it usually when you have a congressional off your election or even election, you're congressional. It usually reflects the Democratic or Republican makeup in the state and often the presidential. They can't win that way. So they have to cheat. They don't call it cheating. They call it more their superior morals. They're always moral. We're going to do the right thing. We're in the right side of history. The arc of history, the arc of justice, it bends. We do it. It's right. Yeah. I had sent you a few ex posts about some guy was doing these analyses of state of Delaware has, you know, let's say 279,321 people who are of voting age. Yet the registered voting numbers are. I know that's what's happened in more than Delaware. Oh, yeah, much more. Yeah. So it's theoretically impossible given the number of people demographically that are over 18 versus the number of people that are registered and even vote. And they know that. But they have a big explanation for it. And that is that this is recompense for years of sexism and racism and colonialism. And that there's a few little improprieties they don't, they pale in comparison to slavery and misogyny and racist. So all we're doing is equally, we're trying to get a little equity back. That's how they feel. They really do. Yeah. Everything's fluid with them morality. If it's for the higher cause of humanity than any means necessary to achieve that cause or justify, that's the whole thing. Everything, if you think about what their agenda is, it's radical equality of result in every aspect. And if you keep that in mind, it makes sense. If you're a criminal and you shoplift or you drive your stolen car into a jewelry store and then you get your buddies and you steal everything and you don't ever get arrested. If you get arrested, you don't really get indicted. If you get indicted, you don't be convicted. If you're convicted, you don't go to jail. And then you think, well, since they were a disadvantage because of racism, poverty, discrimination, I'm going to equal it out by not punishing them. And maybe that will be kind of recompense for the corporate raider who sits there and doesn't even work and makes money on his computer speculating. And that works with the border. Well, there's all these wealthy white exploitative people who killed indigenous people and they live in this country. They have to have 10 million people from Michoacan and Oaxaca and Ecuador come in. Well, that's going to level the playing field. That's how they think. With the one qualifier caveat, but it doesn't affect themselves. Yes. You know, AOC says, I don't think I can have children because I would bring them into a climate change boiler. This planet's boiling. I can't do it, but I can rent a jet and have a carbon footprint a thousand times more than the guy in the middle seat going trans up, you know, pans carbon in. That's how they think. And it's, I think you're being too nice to them. I've been given a great gift. You know, I was farming and I didn't understand that because the people that I grew up with and for four years when I did it full time and then I did it as an academic for 15 years, they didn't think like that. But when I got into the academic world, it was kind of schizophrenic, go up to Cal State and come home and see two to go to Stanford. But you really get, if you have that experience and you understand them because the nexus where all these things meet is academia because it's La La Land. And they're 10 year and there are no consequences. You have lifetime employment. You teach two or three classes at the most of semester. Your summers are off. You whine all the time. And then you just dream about the lab rats and what you can do with your white coat and experiment, give them a shot, amputee. Do whatever you have to do to make, make utopia heaven on earth. Well, I think you're too nice. So as much as I think you would say that it goes back, I agree with you to agnosticism and atheism that they believe that there's nothing out there after you die. And they want to make heaven on earth and they want to freeze their bodies or take some kind of magic serum to live forever because they're terribly afraid of death. Yeah, but, but, but they do hate also. I mean, the guy, the lake up in the mountains, right? They hate the fact that the electrician has that house. They hate him. They hate the idea that he gets this Winnebago when he gets this little trailer with two jet skis and he's got a big smile on his face. And he's got four kids and they putter up there the grade and then they go into a campground. They have a little generator and a TV and they're beneath the pines and they're happiest larks and they're not bothering anybody. And they come in there, you know, I'm in a sake, air club and who are these people are and they're polluting the alpine. And then they do great damage. They say, you know what, we're going to let the bugs and the sparrows eat the mulch from the downed trees. We're not going to let you glean the forest. And then every once in a while we're going to get a catastrophic catastrophic fire and that's good because you deserve it. Yeah, big weenie roast. Well, Victor, we're going to, we're going to talk about, you mentioned before Cuba, we'll do that as our final topic when we come back from these finals. It's not Cuba. You didn't listen to JFK. What is it? Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba. We can't have missiles in Cuba. Can't have missiles in Cuba, Jack. We can't have missiles in Cuba. That's how my in-laws talk. I can't do it very well. My dad could do it very well. He would always say, he would act like it was 1960 election. He was Dwight Eisenhower. We would be sleeping like at five in the morning and you'd get us up on Saturday morning, five in the morning to go pick up walnuts or something. Boys, get up, get out and vote for Dick Nixon. That's what Eisenhower said. My dad was a Democrat and we go, no, he goes, get up or get out and vote for Dick Nixon. I loved, I really liked that. My dad did too, but he didn't vote for him apparently. All right, Victor, we're going to take a break here. We'll come back to more, more invitations right after these messages. Okay, folks, we're back with the final segment, quick segment here of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words coming out on the 26th of March, Thursday, the 26th. By the way, you mentioned before, Victor, on the list of things, talking about trans. And I want to thank you for allowing me to, I did a special episode with Stella O'Malley on detransitioning. You did me a favor. I didn't do you a favor. I was temporarily incapacitated. Well, we maybe did the world of, she was terrific and I want to thank you for the opportunity to do that episode. So anyway, PJ Media, Sarah Anderson's written a story about the, the cube with the Code Pink trip. And you mentioned some of the things, Victor, the opulence of the sheer poverty of the Cuban people that doing without electricity, the need for mass of electricity for them to have their, their rock concert, staying in a hotel that costs 500 bucks a night, flaunting it, flaunting the Michelin lifestyle in the face of this poverty. These people are just, they're rat, I'm not going to say the word, rhymes with asterisks. They are really nasty. Yeah. If that's true that why they would did the generator and then they needed more electricity and they, they had to crash the grid where the hospital didn't have emergency power and didn't have a generator. I was thinking, because I had two back to back surgeries and I think what would it be like if when I heard them say, we got to get another operating room, you're bleeding, we got to go back in it. And then all of a sudden the power went out and I heard a bunch of wealthy Cubans that were here and they were kind of demonstrate on behalf of somebody and they sucked all the power out of Palo Alto. They're, they have no conscious. They really don't. They're just performers. Yeah. I don't know where they, I mean, I don't know if it's an innate brain defect or whether it's their affluence and leisure. The Greeks in Romans said it was affluence and leisure corrupted people and if they had too much free time and they didn't have moral instruction and religion, then they would end up where we are. And that's, that's where we are to tell you the truth. You have had major surgery in Cuba like conditions. I do. And, and I had ether. I woke up and I will say that I have a soft spot for Iran because when I ruptured my appendix, I couldn't get back to my minders. We couldn't get back to Tripoli for over a day. And I came in the next morning at two in the morning to the hospital wouldn't let me in and there was a red crescent clinic and there was an Iranian there. And he was a tech and he said, I had a ruptured appendix and he said, you can't get in broken English. You can't get operated to get your AIDS test and we can't give it to you because you have to have a proper. So I waited from two in the morning to almost seven in the morning for the AIDS tester to come. And once he said I was negative, then they had to get a doctor and they called and they found an Egyptian smoking a cigarette who walked in his pajamas. We were a wonderful man. I didn't speak English. I didn't speak Arabic, but they had a Pakistani nurse and then the Iranian guy who was at the desk then doubled as an ether operator and he had a big tank. And he put this thing and I, I smell, I recognize the smell after 50 years because when I was six years old, my twin brother and I had our tonsils out. If we didn't both of them at the same time, we got two for one and they put that awful smell on. I could smell it, but then I woke up and I kept seeing all this stuff piled on my, you know, my chest on a towel. You know, like they had to take out eight or nine inches on my colon because it was getting. They put it on your chest. Yes, they put it on my chest and then they yell get him back. I'll get him back. And then they put it back and then I woke up and that was what anyway, on the fourth day from all that, I went home and I never realized to this recent surgery. I thought when the doctor said, well, this is going to take, if nothing goes wrong, it'll take about a month for partial and then three months. But it's not. I mean, I'm pretty wiped out three and I had the two, but I thought, how can I do the other one? Then I remembered I was 20 years, almost 20 years younger, but more importantly, they didn't give me eight hours of anesthesia. They gave me a light ether, you know what I mean? Just enough to, and then they had, they had a law that said no narcotics, no painkiller whatsoever. And they had no antibiotics. I had to wait two days for the peri-antonitis to a guy, a Libyan American came with it. But my point is, and then they made a big incision and they just washed it out like with a hose. And my point is all of that primitivism allowed me not to, you know, be constipated and be full of drugs. But maybe the operation of taking out a ruptured appendix is not nearly as traumatic as taking out a cancerous lung and then having aneurysms. You did come out of the ether during the surgery, didn't you? Three times, I think. Yeah. But it didn't, you know, I just woke up and they just, it was kind of like, put that mask on and bam. And then I just remembered that the guy had a long tube and the surgeon every once in a while would smoke and ether is combustible. So they'd made him get the tank and the other room and there was a snake-like thing. And then I wanted to wash myself in the bathroom and it was overflowing. The toilet was. So I thought, they yelled at me. And the Pakistani said, why do you want to get all dirty before surgery? I said, well, the point was to get clean. She says, no, you don't go in there to get clean. You go in there to get dirty. Get out. So it was a learning experience. Yeah. Wow. Well, Victor, that's, I don't have any, I had notes here of nice things people have said. I'll find them for the next time. We record plentiful. Again, many, many people. Very nice. Off I get them every day. I just wish I could. I'm, I think we've got well over a thousand now. I get them at Hoover and they're all the same. They're, they're very sweet. They offer prayers. They offer support. They mentioned some things that they went through that are more horrific than I did. And they give you confidence, you know, they say, I know you, you've had this cancer. I know you've had some problems, but I had stage four and I'm alive. You know what I mean? And, and they said I would be dead. So it's very encouraging. That's the people who keep the country going, those people. I'm not saying just our listeners are those people, but basically people who care about people, they, they believe in a deity, Christianity, in most cases, Judaism, and they follow the rules. They don't get, they don't cause trouble, but they add to the security and prosperity of the state and they don't get any recognition. Instead of the people get recognition or the Hollywood buffoons and people like Jasmine Crockett or Nancy Pelosi, it just, it's very disturbing, very disturbing. But if you ever tamper with those people, you know, the irredeemables, the clingers, if you tamper with them and you get a man, that's a bad thing to do because if they ever went on strike, we'd be done for. Yeah. Well, they get up every morning and go do it and keep the country prosperous. I think we'll, I think we're coming to a head somehow. Well anyway, Victor, you've been terrific. Thanks for all the wisdom you shared. Thank you, Tar. Thanks everybody for listening and viewing. Thank you, amen. So we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Thank you and bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.