NATO’s Double Standard on Iran, Europe’s Drift, and the Fraud Crisis at Home | Victor Davis Hanson

Blowing out budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in... Dashboard Confessions! I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend 200 pounds on your first campaign and get a 200 pound credit. Go to linkedin.com slash lead. Terms and conditions apply. I think you want to discuss and address France's recent role in the Straits of Hormuz and just in general, its participation in the Sefert against Iran. We didn't expect Spain, Italy, Britain, France either to forbid the use of their NATO bases or their airspace, or both. And we didn't expect two-faced comments like the German president, you know, that this is not a legitimate war. They have different agendas than we do. They don't have a First Amendment. They don't believe in it. They don't believe in the nuclear family and reproduction, so they have a 1.3 fertility rate. They don't believe in the utility of nuclear power other than France and fossil fuels, so they have the highest electricity cost in the West. They don't believe in defense until they're bullied and screamed at. They think they're Greek philosophers and were their Roman legions to enforce their utopian visions. And of course, the most important, they have open borders and they have up to 10 to 15 to 16% of their populations are Muslims. So you put all that together and that was reflected in their foreign policy. Our letting NATO, most of these countries, get away with not fulfilling their defense obligation is essentially underwriting their social policy to destroy Western civilization. Yes. It's even worse than that because then they make fun of us that we don't have the social policies that they do and we're greedy and we're capitalist. We don't in part because we're defending them and the West in general. People don't realize that when they get a problem in the Red Sea and they can't get in there through the Suez Canal, they call us. When they got a problem with the straight-over-mose when we had the Iran-Iraq war, they called us. They have any problem they call us, but that's not going to continue, I don't think. Well, hello ladies and hello gentlemen and welcome to Victor Davis-Hanson In His Own Words. I'm Jack Fowler. I'm the host today. I do two shows a week. The Great Sammy Wink does two others with Victor. We're very blessed to be able to ask Victor questions that we think you would like him asked. We're recording on Saturday, April 4th. So the day before Easter for many Christians, not all Christians, some Orthodox are a little later in the year, but this episode is up on Tuesday, April 7th. Victor is the Martin and Neely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he is a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, which is the happy home of this podcast. Victor also does Victor Davis-Hanson In His Own Words for The Daily Signal. Victor's website is The Blade of Perseus. Check it out. Victor writes exclusive articles, two a week. He does one exclusive video a week there. $6.50 a month if you want to subscribe or subscribe for the full year at $65. Tons of free stuff there. Tons of links to Victor Galore. Also, Victor, I want to add that this week, Amazon listed your forthcoming book, The Counter-Revolution. So if people want to pre-order, I think it's, I know the difference between pre-order and order. You want to order the book, and it will come, I believe, in August or September. Yes, it will. It will. So that's called The Counter-Revolution. Yes, the fall first, the fall and rise of Donald Trump and the Magnum Movement. It starts the first page is January 6th, and the last page is January 6th of 2026. I want to see if we can get this book to already be a best seller, Victor. Six months of five, four, five months out. Well, we got a lot to pick your brain about today. France and NATO, we haven't talked yet about the Bimbo, Kirstenohm's husband and that. Oh, my gosh, I don't know. And then there's a, Democrats are trying to concoct a new way to appeal to the white working class. Pam Bondi is gone, Chris Rufo is done, and some of his colleagues at City Journal have done some truly important investigative reporting on massive fraud in California. We got some other issues too to address you if we have time. We're going to get to all of 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 are back with Victor Davis-Hanson in his own words. Again, we're recording on Saturday, April 4th. This episode's up on Tuesday, the 7th. Victor, let's just start out with, because you've talked at some length about, you've written a couple important pieces recently about NATO. You've talked with Sammy about this, but I think you want to discuss and address France's a recent role in the Straits of Hormuz and just in general its participation in the Sefered against Iran. Yeah, I think everybody has bewildered that, while we didn't, this wasn't a joint NATO operation to bomb Iran, that it was in the general common interest of the West. Especially when we learned that they had, we didn't know that they had, after the first bombing, they claimed they had enough for 11 bombs of enriched uranium. And now we know they have a 2,500 mile range for their missiles, which puts, in theory, had we not acted all of the European capitals under nuclear blackmail. So this was in their interest, not to mention all the terrorism that Iran has sponsored in Europe and the West in general, particularly in the United States. So we, but we didn't expect Spain, Italy, Britain, France, either to forbid the use of their bases, their NATO bases, or their airspace, or both. And we didn't expect two-faced comments like the German president, you know, that this is not a legitimate war, and things like that. So very quickly, we've discussed what is it? Well, they have different agendas than we do. And it's time to admit it. They don't really believe in the first, they don't have a First Amendment. They don't believe in it. They don't believe in the nuclear family and reproduction. So they have a 1.3 fertility rate. They don't believe in the utility of nuclear power, other than France and fossil fuels. So they have the highest electricity cost in the West. They don't believe in defense. So they, until they're bullied and screamed at, and they think they're Greek philosophers and were they're Roman legions to enforce their utopian visions. And of course, the most important, they have open borders, and they have up to 10 to 15 to 16 percent of their populations are Muslims, and they're not integrating, they're not assimilating, they're not a cultural rating. So you put all that together, and that was reflected in their foreign policy. So when they look at the Middle East, the first thing they say is, we don't have any oil. We don't have any military to get it or to allow it. We don't have a stable population that would support us if we were to do it. We don't have many people, young people to go fight. So we're not going to participate. That's okay. But they shouldn't have denied us, as I said, the use of bases, because they always want us to go in on their shenanigans. Would you please bomb Libya with us? Would you please bomb Mosevich with us? Would you come over to Ukraine? It's not a NATO country, but would you come over and defend it? We don't have enough resources. Would you please help us go into Chad? The French said, we need refueling, we need intelligence. Margaret Thatcher, would you please help us with the Falklands? Please, please. It's always the same old story. And the French, we mentioned that on Sammys, I don't know if there was cash money, but there was implicit leverage the Iranians had on the straits of Hormuz with Europe. And it was basically, we're not going to bother you unless you are antagonistic to our theocracy. And then we may hassle you. They would take those kind of like PT boats, and they would circle around ships, and they would take hostages. But Iran was okay with countries that appeased them. And that's just what's happening now. France just said, well, this is not our war. And we're not going to let you fly over our country. So we're going to get to go in and trade. It'll be better for us anyway, because now we can send stuff to the Middle East. Maybe we'll be the only exporter allowed to do it. And so Trump's attitude is, well, I did the dirty work, as the German president said. And now the straight of Hormuz is yours. The problem he's having real quickly, Jack, is that he's hemorrhaging on the political aspect of the war, because there's a Europe, the Europeans on the one hand says, and the left says, he's a taco. Trump always chickens out. And he doesn't, he won't finish the job. And as sure as the moon comes up, sun comes up, the natural world functions. I guarantee you that if he doesn't open the straight of Hormuz, or there is not a regime change, the left will flip on a dime and say, you didn't finish the job. We told you to do this. And if he wants to do what I just said, it will take two or three weeks. And they'll say, oh, this is another Vietnam, why you're dragging out the war? So you can't win politically. But I think his rhetoric and the administration's narratives have to sharpen a little bit. You don't want to say I want to get out of NATO. You want to present it in a tragic fashion. I don't know what happened to those people. We like them. They're Westerners. We have a common heritage. We're an expression of New World Western civilization. We've helped them in two wars, but they're drifting from us. We hope they come back. It's not us that's drifting from the ideals of Western civilization. We're right down the center on it. They're not. And that's expressed in their foreign policy. So we'll do all we can, but we cannot count on these countries in extremis. And why we want to be reciprocal and symmetrical, it makes us, it makes it almost impossible. So we want to tell you that we're going to be in NATO, but there's going to be new conditions of our membership. We're not going to carry, whether it's the direct budgeting, 16, 20% of it, or the indirect cost patrolling the world for them and all of the overhead. We're not going to do it anymore unless they step up. And more importantly, we're not going to get involved in any, any individual European expeditionary gambit. So if you want to go into your former colony in Chad, forget it. We're not going to help you. Britain, if Argentina wants to take the Falklands or something like, forget it. We're not going to help you. It's just not going to happen. That's the new terms. And then we might have to strengthen our bilateral relations with particular European nations. Portugal's been really good. They said, yeah, you can use the Azores anytime you want. That's a key base. We've got good relations with you. Greece has said, oh, you want a carrier to come down to the Suda Bay near Hania? I mean, you want to fix it and repair it to get it back in the action? No problem. We're here to help you. So there are European countries, Eastern European more likely that want to, we could just say, we're still in NATO, but these are the eight or nine NATO nations that we have a special relationship with. Yeah. And the rest of them, it's pro forma. Our letting NATO, most of these countries get away with not fulfilling their defense obligation is essentially underwriting their social policy to destroy Western civilization. It's even worse than that because then they make fun of us that we don't have the social policies that they do and we're greedy and we're capitalist. And yet we don't thank God, but we don't in part because we're defending them and the West in general. No, when they get a problem, people don't realize that when they get a problem in the Red Sea and they can't get in there through the Suez Canal, they call us. They can't do anything with the Houthis. When they got a problem with the straight over Moose when we had the Iran-Iraq war, they called us, you flag US tankers. When they have any problem, they call us, but that's not going to continue. I don't think I would say just about the narrative. I think the administration has to put this context in a sorrowful rather than angry term. They love anger. Just say, we really want to help you, but it's kind of like my kids used to go. They have a very wonderful aunt and she would go out of her way to help them. And they take them up to a lake, all of them, like 12, but they were disobedient. And so when it was time to go, the kids would get in row boats right offshore and they said, it's kind of go, we got to get home. And they'd say, what? I can't hear you. And they'd go a little bit further. Will you get in here? We can't hear you. Do you, what do you say? We can stay longer? And that was that kind of an attention that we need to show to them, I think. The other thing very quickly is I don't think there's, we're a data obsessed nation, but we should not go into 93% of the missile launches have, we're 93% treated or we got 68% fewer drone attack. Don't do that. We don't know the denominator. We don't know how many drones, we don't know how many missiles. We just know a couple of things. It's 93 million people and it's almost double the size of Texas. And it's an enormous undertaking. But the military is so capable that the political dimension of it, it's like it's post-mortem. It's all done. They're so great. And then this recent downing of an F-15 and a Warthog, which are still amazing that we've only lost two, we've lost 50 to 60 aircraft in the first Gulf War. But the point I'm making is we need to remind people how difficult it is and how sneaky and clever the Iranians are in hiding all of these assets and why it's taking as long as it, I don't think it's long at all, but the people seem to do. And I think that would be far better. And then I think they should, a little bit articulate people's, you know, just four or five topics. Regime change, ideal collateral dividend, it's coming probably, this regime will have to spend a half a trillion, a trillion dollars to rearm. The people will be angry. They're almost starving. They don't want their money to go to Arab terrorists in the Middle East. But, and we've set the conditions for regime change. We've done all we can and we hope it ensues. And if it happens under our bombing campaign, we will directly, tactically intervene to help them. But that's not our initial objective. We were, we're preferring the Venezuela solution of finding someone we can speak to that can control the situation and maybe serve as a transitional figure. I think also we should say, you know, he needs to talk about Israel. He needs to say, this is absurd. Nobody tells Donald Trump what to do. And Benjamin, yet now who have an agenda as a proximate and vulnerable state, and we have an agenda as a distant and less vulnerable state. We're vulnerable, but less so. And we have other global responsibilities. And sometimes our agenda is dovetail. And often they dovetail because we're best friends. And that's what we're working on. And thank God we have the Israelis when these agendas dovetail, and not some of our European partners as we've seen. The contrast between tiny little Israel that helps the United States and has a larger air force than any other of the 32, 31 nations in NATO is a blessing. That's not a curse. He can say that. I think that would be really good to say that. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I'm really upset about is, did you see these clips of Carney again? He's talking about that he was ready to defend Greenland against us if we were going to invade. And then there's a clip of him talking about the new middle group of nations. We're talking about the prime minister of Canada. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. And I would like to tell him Trump didn't create these tensions. There was a happy face scab. It was an ugly scab, but it was happy face between Canada and us. Trump came in and ripped it off. And underneath there, there was a putrid wound. And that wound consisted of, for 20 years, Canada would not carry its weight. Stephen Harper, the wonderful prime minister, tried to get them to do that. And they refused. They would not pay a measly 2% of their GDP. And they're not going to make 5%. They insidiously ran up the surplus to over $50 to $60 billion with us. They didn't need to do that. They could have come to us and said, we're running up a big surplus. And let's find ways where we can get it down to $10 or $20 billion. They did not do that. They have certain policies in their healthcare system. They're not just antithetical to ours, but they're dating. The 83,000, 5% of all deaths in Canada are done by state-sponsored or coerced euthanasia. That's contrary to the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's also contrary to Western civilization. And yet they do that under the antiseptic shield of the government and it's doing it. But the subtext is, we're broke. We have an inefficient healthcare system. People are waiting two years for a simple operation. And we have all these people that are over Victor's age and they have lung cancer. And they have a 40% chance it's going to recur. So why don't you come in Victor and talk it to us? And then, well, you know, I'm kind of depressed lately and things are, well, there's a way to get rid of it. You can get rid of the cancer. You might go with it, but it would save all of us. It would be the very generous to our fellow Canadian. That's how it's posed, or at least maybe not so explicitly so. But so there's things about Canada. And then, of course, if anything happens in China or around, we're to send a missile into British Columbia, the first thing that Carney would call up, he'd say, Mr. President, Mr. President, we, there's a missile aimed at British Columbia and it's coming from Iran. And it's going to be here in 15 minutes. What is, what are you going to do about it? What is the United States' missile shield going to do? We need that. And Trump could say, well, we'll try to, but we have a limited number of missiles. And if there's one coming at you, it might come one at us. And so, you know, you might want to, you still have 15 minutes to arm yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I would suggest that the next 15 minutes, you spend 5% of your GDP on defense. Or you want to buy one of our Patriots, we can, you know, truck it over from Seattle in 10 minutes. To Victor, this, I'm glad you mentioned the healthcare nuts. We've talked before about the MAID program there, the euthanasia program in Canada, but the esteemed by American Liberals, Canadian healthcare system, going back 40 years, is all bogus. If you were mildly sick, fine. If you were on the fringes of, or needed extra care, you were not going to get it in Canada. You were going to Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Seattle, yeah, you, for tests, they would put a dog in an MRI machine before they would let you go in an MRI machine. I had a very good friend who owned Imaging Labs in Canada. And they had a strict quota on where you could put them and how many you could do it, under what conditions you could do it. The last thing they wanted was some entrepreneurial American-like person who for, you know, 4% or 5% profit on his operation would put 100 MRIs all over Canada. And they would be cheap and accessible. That would be the last thing the government wanted. No, they've gone full European and they're embarrassed of us. And, you know, it's a larger question too. They have an insane immigration policy. It was similar to Joe Biden's, which was insane. And if you look at the news, I don't want to be too explicit, but we had this DEI racial and ethnic essentialism. And it serves as an exemption from an honest discussion of what's happening with immigration, because when you look at three weeks ago, we had four serial attacks individuals, though they were, of naturalized citizens that had Hezbollah ties or they were followers of ISIS or whatever, four separate terrorist incidents. We had this Somalia community involved in one of the biggest frauds we thought. And now when you look at the people who are coming forward with the FBI, they're either naturalized citizens for the most part or they're green card holders. But what I'm getting at is it is racist not to talk about this. They just say, how dare you mention that? We're a nation of immigrants. No, we're a nation of audited and legal immigrants. Assimilating immigrants. Assimilated immigrants. And somebody who comes over here from China or Mexico or Somalia or India, and one of the first things they do is engage in fraud against the U.S. government. And we're talking about in California, according to Chris Rufo, 250 billion, billion. And the left is always screaming, worry, we're going to spend 40 or 50 billion in five weeks. Well, it's five operations to take out nuclear weapons in Iran. That's the cost of it in California alone. So it's very disturbing when you see any immigrants. Because if you come over to a country, it's not that we ask you to follow our laws, but you're a guest. You were originally a guest and we're the hosts. And when you go, when we go to people's homes, we don't just prowl around and look in their bedroom or go, you know, go in their backyard and jump in their pool. We show them a special deference until we can become more acquainted. But the immigrant, the immigrant ideology, whether it's illegal immigrant or naturalized citizen seems to be our green card holder. Well, I crawl fly for DEI. And because you've got it on the brain, I'm part of your 30% victimized class. So how dare you suggest that I stole $9 million out of a hospice? That's that we wouldn't do that. How dare you say that I got $4 million from COVID money? I shouldn't. Or how dare you say that we didn't have a breakfast program in Minnesota? You're a racist. I don't think people are going to put up with that because that's racist what they're doing. They're hiding behind a rubric. And as I said earlier in a podcast very quickly, when any time you give any group an exemption for any reason and they're not accountable, you should expect human nature as it is to produce fraud and crime. Every small town in America I can attest from growing up here has one or two children of the local millionaire. You know what I mean? Sometimes they're in car dealers, sometimes trucking. And that kid usually, when he would come to school, he had everybody if they ever skied wore jeans and nobody could afford a ticket anyway. And he came with Ray Bands and nice scheme equipment. Everybody had a 56 or 57 Chevy that always broke down. We had a 1963 Volvo used and this guy would always come in with a Firebird or a Camaro or a Charger brand new. And he thought he was exempt. So if he went down and took a BB gun and shot out street lights, the police would call his dad up first. You know what I mean? You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that same old boy, rich boy exemption, it was very toxic. Same thing about college admissions. They said this is one of the hardest places to get in as a stem. Hi, I gave you $50 billion, $50 million. Remember me? And bam, I'm not saying it's not a bad system, but sometimes if the person was qualified, but often they're not. So what I'm getting at DEI is just the modernistic successor to that old boy network. Only it's the old racial rubric. And when you do that and you give that message to people, they're going to get insolent, just like those kids that were so wealthy and privileged were insolent. I remember I was with one guy and he pulled, I won't mention any names. He pulled us over for a cop pulled us over because we were going too fast next to a school zone. There's about five of us. And he said, what are you doing? What are you doing? You know who I am? What are you doing? That kind of attitude. And that's what we're creating. And that, then we should expect that fraud. Ilya Omar has showed not one iota of remorse that she championed this entire federal pipeline and state pipeline to her community. It's all that the Somalis are the best people in the world. And I can refer to them as collectives and not individuals. Collectively, we are perfect. And then when something happens, it's a collective sin. How dare you collectivize and stereotype us? We're individuals. Well, it doesn't go both ways. It has to go both ways. So we marry our brothers every once in a while. What's the big deal? Must up our hair as George C. Scott said in Dr. Strangelove. Not saying we're not going to get our hair messed up. All right. Well, Victor, Utah and Florida just passed bills to ban fluoride in the water supply. Why are these states suddenly doing a massive U-turn on fluoride? When they've been adding it to our water for the last 80 years, well, RFK Jr. has been warning us about fluoride for a while. And the government now admits to the fact that fluoride is linked to lower IQ. And a study done by the Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics, that's one of the top medical journals in the country in the world. Even scientists found that fluoride levels over two milligrams per liter of water caused more than a two-point drop in children's IQ scores. Well, as you can see, if you're watching this podcast over my left shoulder, you can see behind me, I use Cove Pure to get pure, clean water. You've heard me talk about Cove Pure before. It's a water filtration system that sits on your countertop. You don't have to drill any holes or call a plumber to set it up. You just fill it with tap water, plug it in, and it gets straight to work. Their ClearWave Reverse Osmosis Technology is lab certified to remove up to 99.9% of impurities in your water. Anything that isn't water, meaning fluoride, arsenic, forever chemicals, these microplastics, all of that gets filtered out, leaving you with pure water. And let me tell you, once you try Cove Pure water, you're never going back. It's the best tasting water I've ever had because it doesn't taste like anything but pure, clean water. Plus, it lets you have water exactly the way you want it. Whatever temperature you want, just push a button, hot, cold, warm. You want six ounces, eight ounces, 16 ounces, whatever. You can do it. If you happen to like fluoride, that's totally fine. There are tons of ways you can get that through toothpaste or mouthwash, but the government should never force you to ingest it. So take back your right to choose. Click the link in the description box here at CovePure.com slash VDH. C-O-V-E-P-U-R-E, CovePure.com slash VDH for a limited time only, and you'll get a special discount of $200 off Cove Pure. We thank the good people of Cove Pure for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, and Victor, I'm going to drink to that. Thank you. Delicious. Without taste. Hey Victor, you're in that car with those five guys. What if you had said, do you know I'm the son of Judge Hansen? I wonder what would happen when you got home. I can tell you exactly what happened. She gave us two, when she was appointed as Superior Court Judge, I was in college and she said, I'm not telling you how to behave, but I just, two rules in the family. Number one, under no circumstances, under no circumstances, do you mention that your mother is a Superior Court and then a Pellet Court? You do not mention it. Not because I'm embarrassed or you just don't ever want to leverage that. Please don't do that. And the second thing is we all make mistakes and I'll be here for you, but I don't want, she said to me, I don't want marijuana use, drug use, excessive alcohol, if you're not 21, none at all. I don't want you to have one drop of alcohol and drive. I don't want to have to get a call from UC Santa Cruz that you're, and because you're, you're shaming the family name, basically, she said, I can't sentence people to, to severe penalties if I can't handle my own family. And I think one of us, I won't mention who said, that's not fair. You're asking us just because of your career. Well, she said, yes, I am. And if we all get it on this together and we all act like good American citizens, it'll be, it will reflect well on us. And that includes me and your father. So once, my dad was a big sweetie, like to have a little bit, you know, too much to drink and she'd call me and say, I am at a judicial conference. I was in Palo Alto in San Francisco and I think your father's had three martinis and he insists he can drive, he cannot. And I'm, would you, are you going to be coming up here? I said, you can take a taxi. Yes, but I, so I would go up, I did that three or four times. And he was perfectly fine. I saw him. I said, well, you know, I didn't know anything, 0.10 or something. I said, he's fine. He's six, three and a half. He weighs two 10. He's solid muscle. He's can handle it. He was in the, he flew missions over Tokyo probably with more alcohol. So come on. And he says, did you hear what I said? So it was, yeah, that was what it was. But we didn't have, she was appointed late in life. We didn't have any money. And it was funny because it was, every time I went to a small town, I'd, I'd see that there was one or two families and I'm not making fun of them. They were very successful upright citizens, but the children always felt they had an entitlement, not always, but I should say often. And when I was in college, you know, there was a big pharmaceutical company. I won't mention the name and the daughter of one. Billionaire in today's money. And I was in, you know, I was in a lot of classes with her, but just her attitude, you know, and that attitude reflected the fact that they felt that they were going to be given exemption. And I think that's part of the problem why you would have two naturalized anchor children, Chinese, whose parents were illegal aliens and been here for 27 years without being deported. And then they go plant bombs at a U.S. military base, the two anchor children did because they were American citizens. Nobody audited them or why we had, when you're looking at some of the names, the FBI, and look at the that are finding with these frauds and they were just, they were interviewing a guy as they let him off and they said, did you know what you were doing? Do you know how much money I've been investigating here for five or six years? Like, you know, I'm exempt. I don't have to do that attitude. It's just, that's what DEI encourages. Well, let's talk about another attitude. Oh, no, that's the wrong segue. We, well, we got two now former secretaries to, with news stories, maybe we'll take, we'll take, let's take Pam Bondi first and we'll take a break and get into the more salacious stuff. But so Pam Bondi has been given the boot as attorney general. Do you have any thoughts on that, Victor? Well, I don't know the, the intricacies. So I'm a very, she's very pleasant. She's very close. She's a very good, nice person. She had a good record in Florida, but she came in late because of the, the Matt Gaetz misadventure. And so they needed somebody and I think Trump expected two major task force for her. One was fraud. He talked to, Elon Musk said that from the very beginning when they were doing the doge and the doge, I thought, I thought there would be indictments, you know, left and right from what they found out and there haven't been. So the very idea that JD Vance, a non, he's a lawyer, that's really good, but he's not an attorney in the sense of a prosecutor. The fact that he's leading a commission and it's not a Senate like a Harry Truman investigation during World War II, but that shows you there hasn't been people to DOJ. There should be a very high famous prosecutor who should be doing it. I'm going to have a federal task force on fraud. We give this money to the states and that hasn't happened. And then the other thing is all the left says, well, you can't, you can't, you can't conflate the, the AG and the president. They have to be, they have to have a firewall. How dare, come on. What do, who do you think Bobby Kennedy was? He was the attorney general when John Kennedy, I've seen those pictures about every five minutes they're, they're walking together. He didn't do anything unless John Kennedy. Who do you think John Mitchell was? He was the bond lawyer for Richard Nixon. Who do you think Eric Holder was? Why do you think that he said he was the wingman, the wingman of Barack Obama? Why do you think he defiantly refused the congressional subpoena and he knew he had complete exemption in a way that Steve Bannon, for example, or Peter Navarro didn't because he, because he knew what Obama would say, he would back him. So they needed somebody, what I'm getting at independently, but to investigate the misuse of the federal government to go after people and they, and people are getting frustrated. They didn't do anything with the IRS under Obama that went after targeted groups on their political affiliations right before an election. They didn't do anything for Operation Crossfire Hurricane. They didn't do anything for Clapper and Brennan Line Under Oath. If anybody believes that James Comey for 245 times and FBI director said he didn't remember or didn't know while under oath and that's not Line and they didn't do anything for, they should have indicted Joe Biden's ghostwriter when he said to Robert Hur, I just erased that subpoenaed oral transcript. I was worried about hacking so I just took it upon myself to destroy federal evidence. When they were doing the Mueller investigation, they were missing all sorts of FBI phones that remember that? They turned them over and they said, oh, I don't know, somebody erased them. And when Andrew McCabe said, I can, don't worry, I can, he's not going to be elected. We need an insurance policy. They had it all. Then there was Durham was a very good guy and he was very thorough, but it was just a nothing burger. And so people got really frustrated. They got really frustrated when Fannie Willis got up in that stand and light her head off. Oh, it's a black thing that I use cash. How dare you suggest they should have receipts? Or she used federal monies for at-risk use to go after Trump or that crazy Alvin Bragg shoehorning or bootstrapping or whatever you want to call it, a minor federal offense into a state mega felony. It wasn't even an offense. So what I'm getting at, there were all these indiscretions and nobody in the Justice Department ever seriously did anything about them. And yet when the redemocrats were in power, my gosh, I'm not asking the Republicans to appoint a Fannie Willis or an Alvin Bragg or a Jack Smith or Latita James. But my gosh, I think people get very frustrated, Jack, because they saw all of that lawfare, get him off the ballot, raid his home. They're not asking for that. They're not saying we should be like that. But what they're saying is these Democrats did all that. It was all illegal. It was all politically inspired. We're not asking to go down to their level. We're just asking to hold the people who did something wrong accountable. And we're not doing that. At this time, we're not doing that. The Democrats said, when we get back in power, hello, I'm Susan Rice. We're going to go after all of you. I'm James Caravall. And I just say, you know, you better be careful because as soon as you get back in there, we're going to get the Trump family. We're going to get the Trump family spouses. You know, and Victor, if I may backdrop to this too, it's not Pam Bondi's fault, but you see these judges in Minnesota who are giving these pathetically tiny sentences to these terrible fraudsters. So you think, how come how come these people are getting away with it? Yeah. And I think you're absolutely right. I think that I think sometimes the administration is not communicating well. They need to, there were two big issues. They weren't the biggest, but they were big issues when he got reelected. One was what are we going to finish the wall? And the second is why don't we, you know, Leonard Leo and the, he had a falling out with Trump and all that problems he's had, he's gone off in a strange direction, I guess, but he did get these people appointed. So why have we, I don't know. I have no idea whether we have the same amount, fewer amount. The Democratic opposition is more rabid than the first. I don't know, but it does seem like we're not getting all of these federal judge billets filled quickly with conservatives and time is running out because if they do, they're never going to confirm them. They could be, I don't know, they could be Thomas Jefferson and they wouldn't confirm him. So we need to get the judges appointed, audited, confirmed, and we need the wall all the way to the canyons of East Texas. The whole thing, it's 2000 miles, I guess there's four or 500 miles that the train makes it impossible, but we should then, you know, cover that with sophisticated electronic surveillance, etc., etc., and then just build this wall all the way. And we're not doing it. At least we're not being told we're doing it. That would very, that would help people during the midterm to be apprised of that. Well, Victor, we're going to take a little break when we come back. Maybe we'll pick up on some of the politics as we look towards the midterms and some polls, and then the appeal, the attempt appeal, the the shtick that Democrats are going to put on to approach white middle class, lower middle class men. And what else have we got? And the Chris, you mentioned Chris Rufa, we'll go a little deeper into that California fraud, all that when we come back from these important messages. Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin, and just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen. Whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, or his short form content for the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, I always leave an episode learning something new. 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. 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In Abraham, I've had a blessed Passover. So Victor, there's some polls, you're gonna forgive me here, I gotta recite a thing or two, but I wrote a note to you, like if so many people find that Democrats are nuts, why are they the prank of taking back Congress? And there's a survey done by YouGov, which shows in every group, except white men who are college graduates, but in every group, people have been becoming a more Republican and less Democrat. This is since in the last 20 years. So for example, black women with no college degree in 2007 to 2009, 83% lean Democrat. But now it's plus 59% lean Democrat. Okay, that's still excessive, but the movement is towards Republicans. Then there's a story about CNN poll that came out that shows real disappointment with both parties. But even it seems like a majority of Democrats are troubled by the Democrats. Let me just read this. The poll found that 74% of Americans believe congressional Democrats have the wrong priorities. That includes 55% of Democrats and Democrat leaning independent. So Victor, we have these issues. So why is the allure there? And is it really just hatred of Trump? And then if you talk to about this masquerading that Pete Buttigieg and others are going to attempt to appeal to white men, their bet noir in the last couple of elections. Well, I think, I don't know, I'm 72 when I watch these elections. I think political scientists and pollsters might confirm that who have a lot more expertise than I do. It just seems that when a president is up at the midterms and it's these 435 congressional elections and 33 Senate elections, elections, people don't really vote on the opposition party. Because I mean, it's in the midterms and they vote on the status of the president at that time. And that becomes a reflection of it. When Joe Biden in 2022 midterms, I thought he was going to get killed at first. And then I started to see things he was doing. He started forgiving student loans. Remember that he forgave marijuana convictions and pardoned them. And more importantly, he started draining it a million barrels plus a day. The strategic petroleum is everybody's wanting about gas. It was much higher under Biden then he started draining it and just flooding the refineries with oil to get the pro all and it worked. So the Republicans really didn't do that well and they didn't take the house in 2018. Excuse me, 22. And so I think that's a lot of it. And then I know that there's a lot of Democrats who are disaffected, but I'm not sure that I know those are their affection deliberately a result that they want to be Republicans and they want to be more conservative. Or are they angry that the left doesn't be even crazier? I don't know what that is. But it does seem that there's a movement to reject Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer type of Democrats because they're not left enough. But I'm not sure if that's true or not. I don't see, in other words, Jack, a major Democratic leader who would reflect the polls that you just that are accurate that you just quoted, it would say, look at the polls 55% of Democrats are and that means they want to go back to a Bill Clinton ism. Remember that, everybody? We're going to have balanced budgets. We're going to have 100,000 federally funded police officers. We're going to charge violent juveniles that are 17 as adults. We're going to have zero tolerance for early. I just don't see that. I don't. So I don't know what those polls mean, but you're absolutely right that dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party that actually in a lot of all the polls polls less favorable than the Democratic part Republican and less favorable than Donald Trump. You know, so you would think that people would get up in the morning and they say, ah, Trump said that, you know, he's going to bomb this and do that. I'm tired of it. But on the other hand, I don't want women, my daughter dressing in a, you know, in a room with some male who's transitioning. I don't want my daughter being a long distance runner and have all that work for nothing because there's some guy who's, who's biologically male winning. I don't want to see 10,000 people come across the border every day with no health audits, no background checks, no criminal audit. I don't want to see that. I don't want to, I'm tired of DEI and race, race, race, race, race. I'm tired of that. I don't want people getting special privileges based on their superficial appearance. I don't want any more Afghan humiliations. That was the worst thing I ever saw people falling off an airplane, 13 Americans blown up, generals blabbering about, well, when they land, they're going to have ethnically selective food for the refugees, you know, after 13 Marines were, I think, you know, all of that you would think would have lost Biden the midterms. It didn't. So my point is, it's a referendum on what the, and the good news is that it's still, we've got all of, got all of, basically, if you count, it's in the end of November, we have all the April, May, June, July, August, September, October, you still have seven months and people have a short memory. So if this is really going to be over as a president and secretary will be, will be, oh, said two to three weeks, that is, it's a seven to eight week campaign. And they haven't taken the gloves off, believe me, they say that they talk about all the sorties they do, all the sorties they do, they never talk about what they haven't done. There are targets out there. I mean, they can, they can hit every highway overpass, they, that transfers military equipment, just like they took out this key bridge, they can take out, I don't want to see that happen, but if they have to, they can take out the electrical generation, they can take out the oil, they can do a lot of stuff. And the, the, the tragedy, if they have to do that to stop this evil regime, once it's over, they're going to have trillions of dollars to rebuild that sophisticated country. And that's going to be money that can't be spent on arms. And if it is spent on arms, as I said earlier, the people are going to be really angry. Can I tell you, Victor, while we were, since we began recording today, Donald Trump posted, he just posted on Truth Social, this has to do with Iran, so I wanted to bring this up. Remember what he writes, remember when I gave Iran 10 days to make a deal or open up the Hormuz Strait, time is running out, 48 hours before all hell will rain down on them, glory be to God. He just wrote that now. So, yeah, there's a pattern to that. And I think his critics, they have a point, but they're not, it's not their point. They say, well, he gets angry at two in the morning and he tweets, and then he's contradicting, he does that. I don't know if it's deliberate to confuse the enemy, but he can be contradicting. We're going to have negotiations, they're going great. They're, they met all our demand. We're going to hit all, but he always gets to a point where he gets exasperated. And then he gives an ominous last warning, like he did with the earlier bombing of the nuclear facilities last summer, or when he did with Soleimani, or when they kept hitting us and hitting us and hitting us in Iraq and Syria. And then, or ISIS started beheading people and that guy held up heads, you know, by the hair and all that stuff. He finally said, you know, I'm going to bomb, this is terrible. These are monsters. And everybody said, I don't need just to blow her, and then he daks. So when he says finally, and I think the two planes shot down and the missing pilot, I think he's reached the end of his tether. And I would say that this one is a little different than all of the others that were contradicted by the next day's events. There is a plan that you can dissect an autopsy you can take of everything he's doing. I saw what Fareed Zakaria mentioned the other day in Newsweek, he said, this is never had he seen a war that costs so much and obtains so little. But as we said earlier, you compare it to the Serbian campaign or the Libyan campaign, or the Afghanistan and Iraq wars or the First Gulf wars, you name it. And it's been far more successful in trying to the enemy. The enemy has been far more formidable than Saddam Hussein or the Taliban or Milosevic, you know, or Gaddafi. It's much harder to do. And the losses, we don't know if this pilot is dead or not. God forbid if he is, but we haven't had any fatalities in a month almost. Yeah, but we would have had millions of fatalities with a nuclear Iran. So I don't know what Zakaria is. We would. So I don't know what he meant. And then so we've gained all these objectives. Whatever, if the worst comes the worst, and Trump just says tomorrow I'm done and leaves, he's leaving rubble. And they are going to have to spend, as I said, a trillion dollars to fix it. And it's going to take them years to get back. And we can watch that. It's not an ideal situation, but it's better than the prewar environment. And so this time I would take him seriously. But there is geo strategic for all the rhetoric. People don't say, what is the status of Russia right now and China vis-a-vis say, when Trump left office? Well, China has no footprint. It's been basically kicked out of Panama or it's been in the process of getting kicked out. There's a conservative reaction to the communism under Biden. Nations like Venezuela have now been liberated from Chinese influence. Argentina, Chile is now conservative. Bolivia, I think is that way. Colombia may go that way. So there's a right wing conservative backlash in Latin America. The Chinese are not there. The Russians are not there. The Iranians are not there. They were really having developing a profile in Latin America. And then how about Russia? It's not in the Middle East anymore. It lost Syria and Assad. It's lost a million people. It's got probably another million and a half casualties and it's bogged down. It's going to be hard to get drones to Russia from Iran maybe Russia can send things through the Caspian Sea, but we can stop that if we want to easily. Maybe they're going through a third party country, but probably they're sending things on the Caspian Sea right to the shores of Iran, but you can stop that. What I'm getting at is, I don't know what Zarkaria means because our Chinese and Russian adversaries are in much weaker position. They've seen the display of American expertise. It's a deterrent factor. He says that Russians, it's a big beneficiary. Why? Because they're the price of oil. The only thing that was worrisome, I don't think he said much, was the Nord Stream pipeline that the Europeans were buying natural gas and on the world market, Russian oil until finally Trump sanctioned it. And the Strait of Ramos, this is a good development in a strange way because it's going to shock the Europeans and people who use it and to manning up to their responsibilities. And we'll see what happens. Well, we're going to get you talking back on the domestic stuff about the Buddha Shadr, first, every day Americans make choices that shape our country's future, right down to which cell phone provider we support. And 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. They've been on the front lines defending our freedoms long before it was cool, standing in the gap when others wouldn't. 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Do you want to make fun of him? He seems a nice guy, but he exudes, I don't know if he means to, he exudes sanctimonious, self-righteousness. I don't know much about him. He was an ineffective mayor of South Bend, Indiana when he came on the national scene in 2020. He was loved by the academic lounge people and the media people because he spoke, I don't know, he claimed he spoke four or five languages. His dad was a professor. He went over to Afghanistan. He did go over there and he had a military, he was just a perfect candidate. I think he was a Rhodes Scholar too. People can check me on that. But he came across as kind of, I don't want to be too mean, but kind of wimpy and out of touch. He had no common touch at all. When he went to East Palestine to see what that train leak had done, it was like a catfish walking on shore. You know what I mean? He couldn't, he was so out of, he couldn't relate to anybody. He was just offended by everybody. When he was transportation, here, you know, you go to LA, well, the old LA, I don't know about the new LA, everybody's fleeing, but the old LA, you get locked on the 405 or the 101. It's horrible. And what was he doing as transportation secretary? He was talking about racist clover leaves and racist overpasses. He was just, you know, when he wanted to ride a bike for green energy and then they have to let him off in a photo op. So somebody said to him, Pete, we lost the 2024 election because the old lunch bucket union white male and indeed even the middle classes in general, Hispanics and black, did not come out or they don't like us. And they had that audit, that famous audit. Remember they didn't release the full, we all knew what it was that nobody cares about their boutique issues. So they had a message. And so Pete grew a beard. And remember he had, I think he tried once to have a trucker cap, you know, like he's, well, he has flannel now and he wears caps and he's got a beard and it's like he's a good old boy. And it's somebody said, you remember Joe Biden, Pete, how'd he get elected? He didn't get elected by being a far left maniac, cognitively declined person we saw when he actually got in there, a puppet for the old Obama crew that had the most radical four years in history since the Roosevelt. He got in there because he was old Joe Biden, the devout Catholic middle class working guy from Delaware. So we just put him in the basement and we told him to shut up. And we campaigned against horrible Donald Trump and good old Joe Biden. And every time we would leak a video that he said that he didn't want a racial jungle or he didn't remember all that stuff he did from the 70s. It was really crazy. And that got him elected. And then the veneer was over. So we need a better veneer. So then they told Tim Walts that too, you know, after he lost. And so he gave some clips and you know, like, I guys don't like me because, you know, here's a white guy and he's a very liberal guy. And, you know, I drive a truck and I can change the oil. I don't think he can change his shoe, shoe strings, but I'm a hunter. And you know, there's a lot of guys don't like liberal guys that are good old, you know, good old boys. It was complete fake. And then we so when then they said, you know what, maybe we don't need these old guys read boot, let's get some new ones and put veneers on them. So we get this James Tellerico. He's in Texas. And he's a white guy and he's supposed to be a middle class guy. But best of all the Hamlet say, I think it was all these media outlets. Well, he's very devout. He's a he's not he's an evangelical. And so he's Pastor Tellerico. And this is going to win that most crazy people in Texas. And so then he's on the scene like two minutes. And he's, you know, they find out, Oh, God is non binary. The most dangerous people in the world, the most dangerous terrorist or white white guys in Texas should go easy on the trans and hard on the billionaires. And he's got he's to the left of Bernie Sanders, but he's he's still speaking in pious tones and quoting scripture. It's not going to work. It worked with David French, but other than that, it didn't work with David French. He's the locus classicus of why it failed. So then they said, Well, we got a guy in Maine. Oh, my gosh, Graham Platner. Remember him? Wow, he's got a beard. He wears flannel. He was an oyster man. I think he was a bartender. Wow. Now he did go to the Hotchkiss Prep School and his parents were very wealthy, but he went to the Marine. He was a veteran. He was a combat theater veteran. And he's going to be the new Maine and it may work. And they've repackaged this guy as a good old middle class guy. And then of course, they did the telereco audit on him. And he said, you know, I'm a communist. Yeah. And he said to rural white people are, what do you say, the stupidest people there are. And he hates them apparently. And then he gets a Totenka special. And I couldn't, I looked at it and it's either from the third Panzer division that killed people on site in Poland, or it's from the special Einzen group and, you know, the special groups that were in charge of extermination at the camps. And that was their insignia. And then he put it on and there were people said, he knew what it was. That's why he put it on. And some anti-Semitism surface. So I don't know. I don't know that great white middle hope will veneer facade because they are facade. The problem just to conclude, Jack, is that they can't, they can't get over it. They hate the white working class. It represents everything they hate. They don't like people who are smarter than they are. And that intelligence is expressed through muscularity. They don't like a guy that comes to their house and he looks at their electrical panel and he says, hmm, you know, there's 220 amp, you need 400. And let me go walk around your house. You need 15 circuits of 110. You need about five, two, 20s. It'll be about 5,000 bucks. I can do it in one day. And then, you know, this Einsteinian brain of this electrician fixes it. And they think, wow, what a peculiar thing is that they don't like these people. And that's why they can't, they can't stop it. So when Gavin Newsom's wife says this, that she took her kids, that the males have female, we have the males, our boys have girl dolls and our girls have male things. But I thought I should take them, you know, to show our despicable history of these red states like Alabama and Mississippi. So it was like going, I'm just kidding, but it was like a safari. We got our cars, we rolled down the windows and like the giraffes and tigers and elephants that might hurt us, we just looked at them, these creepy people. And that was really good. So our kids can be guilty and hate their country and hate themselves as white people. But it's good to see, and that's what we did. I took them on tour. She really literally did that. Or that's Peter Stroke. I mean, how can incidentals that to Lisa Page? I went to Walmart and I could smell Trump supporters at Walmart. Or that reporter for, I'm taxing my brain, Mark Caputo, for CNN. And he said he went to a Trump rally and he said, I've got more teeth than the whole people in the rally. And it goes on and on. And it's, how can they reform that when it's Obama deplorables, Hillary irredeemables, deplorables, it's Biden, dregs, chumps, ultra maga, garbage, semi fascist, they can't. And so they're going to try and they're going to dress up all and the locus, I mean, the target was the proves the point was Sarah Palin. I remember David Letterman said that she's, she's going to put on her lipstick like some slutty airline hostess. And then he said, remember her daughter Willow, 14. Oh, he was stand up comic. She's running for the vice president. Oh, Willow, he didn't say Willow, but Sarah Palin discovered that her, her daughter was been pregnant by Alex Rodriguez and the dugout. Talking about a 14 year old girl. David Letterman. Yeah, absolutely. He'd said both of those things. And it was just like Jimmy Kimmel. Oh, Mark, we got a plumber at Homeland, no, you have a guy who was a brilliant guy, you could plumb your house and created a very successful plumbing services with a 10 year congressman, a US senator. And he's, you know, so they can't help it because you can see it, it just oozes out of them that they hate people like that. Yeah, we're not the point where England is on this, I don't think Victor, because there you have all the, you know, the relentless rapes of these women. And I think the, the similar, the British elite parallel, you know, equivalent to the American one. They hate the poor, poor ones. Yeah, but they think they have a coming to them. To, you know, they deserve to be. They do. No, they hate them. They hate them. And they think the British elite, the left wing aristocracy really does hate the average working class Brit. Their accent is wrong. They have the wrong views or an embarrassment. They need them during wars. That's all they need them for. And then they love the Pakistani and other Muslim groups, because they feel that the more we let in, the more those people will be beholden to us for our moral smug superiority. And we will have a new constituency. And we won't have to appeal to these horrible working class people. And that's pretty much what the left believes too. That's what the whole, I think everybody should realize that. Don't, don't fall for these fake news left. Oh, you people, the great replacement theory. Oh, you're already, no, no, no, you, they believe in it. They open the borders. They let 10,000 people in. They say, this is our constituency. And if you don't let us have mail in ballots and you don't let us just vote without an ID, then you're a racist and you're a nativist. And that's, and I think that's what they're doing. And they, and that's aimed at, they hate the deplorables. They don't like them. Well, the deplorables are paying lots of taxes in your state, Victor. So let's close out with your thought on this story mentioned before, Chris Rufo. And he's written this with some others at City Journal. So if you go to City Journal, I think cityjournal.com or.org, this is a quarterly publication of the Manhattan Institute. But it also has a lot of news every day. Victor's actually a contributing editor, too. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a Brian Anderson's a wonderful guy. Myron Magnet was a wonderful guy. All of them are wonderful. I think isn't, I think James Pearson is, isn't he? He's on the board. And he writes, I think he's a fellow too, though. Yeah, he might be. Yeah. He's a wonderful writer. Yeah. Well, he, Rufo and his team have written a piece, Gavin Newsom's Empire of Fraud, and it starts out saying the state collects California highest income business fuel taxes. It now spends more than $300 billion a year and everywhere you look, as Rick D'Anos, he just has to go out his front door. It's falling apart. So from unemployment insurance and Medicaid to failed homeless initiatives and welfare programs, seemingly every state program has been compromised by criminals. The best estimates suggest that on the governor's watch, fraudsters, scammers and organized crime rings have stolen at least $180 billion from taxes. You said 250 before, maybe this number's been updated since it's first reported. But Victor, that's just like, I mean, it's almost an incomprehensible amount of money. Yeah, it is. I was looking at payroll taxes I paid and Medicare. Taxes and the state rate hits everybody at about 10% at $70,000 a year and it goes up to 13.3 state. And then there's sales tax that should be about 8%, but all these local places, because of what you're talking about are broke. So they add on a municipal or a local onto the sales tax add on. It's about 10 or 11% in reality. And then you look at the federal 37%. And I figure I paid 55% of my income, at least in California. And so you're working, I don't know, from January to, I don't know, end of July for the government, for the governments. And then you get Gavin Newsom and you try to confront him with that. And he said, it's Trump. He did it. It's federal money. Yeah, Gavin, he gave you, he inherited programs that he tried to cut because of people like you and you demonized Doge and you said he was a racist and he was cruel. So you take the federal money and they trust that you'll spend it. They're the purse. You're the bursar that pays out. But you are corrupt. He was like, it's like, he blamed Trump for the crime in Chicago when Trump begged him to go in there. And every time he's gone in somewhere, you know, there's a whole, have you seen this phenomenon now? If you go on the internet or people, people send me clips, but it's really taken off. It started with San Francisco. And we've mentioned at Jack about what San Francisco looked like during Vertigo. There's all these people who will take San Francisco between 1950 and 1965 or Detroit in 1948 or Boston. I saw a picture of Boston 1960 something compared to, and they show you the same street, the same buildings, the side, everybody was downtown. They were well dressed. There was no litter and there were no homeless and the left then jumps in on these sites and always said, whether there was racism and you don't count them down and there was income. No, California didn't have as much income inequality as it does now. And California had a wonderful fire protection policy and it pumped, it was the largest producer of oil and gas in the country. It had a, I think it was number three in timber production, mineral production. It had the most sophisticated water program in the world, the highest lift from over the grapevine into LA from the valley of a pin stock. Everything was number one. The UC, the tripartite community college, state college, UC was the model for the country. And it always was, it was very, very hard to get into a UC campus. It was considered very prestigious and he came in Jerry Brown. The first time was, he was not so ideological, but more frugal. He slept on the ground. He didn't, you know what I mean? He didn't, he wanted to save money, he wanted to balance the budget. He was a liberal, but he wasn't like Gavin Newsom. But the second time around, I don't think he had a choice. He had to deal with the most radical super majorities in the legislature and the courts are completely crazy in California. And look at it and all you, it's just decline, decline, decline. I can drive, you know, I can drive a half mile. I don't want to be too specific in which direction. And I can tell you a 72 year old person that I used to walk down this road and I would make a left and buy eggs from one of the farmers for my parents. I was six years old by myself along the side of the road. And then I would go on the other side of the road and there had been little house that had been a market. And then I would cross the street and there was an Italian guy. These were all by the way, what we would call either Italian Americans or Portuguese Americans or Mexican Americans. And then I would walk across the street and a guy had a five acre wine orchard and the most tidy, neat house in the world. And he was a welder. So when I was 12 or 13, 14, my grandfather would say, take the Oliver tractor and drive down there. And if I was too young, he said, go around the back way and drop that off it. And he would fix it. Okay. If you go there now, I would say each of those places that I talked about, there must be anywhere from 15 to 30 people living. There are dogs out in the middle of the road that are on license, no callers all the time. There has been about three gang raids, federal joint task forces to go in for raiding. There must be, I would say, on average, at least four, in one case, eight or nine, Winnebago, Shacks, you know, separate things dotting their little one or two acres. And it's, there must be three or 400 people living where these three families are. And when you talk to people, anytime a person comes to my place from the government, and sometimes it would be a mosquito abatement, fish oil, sometimes it would be a building inspector, I've mentioned about solar panels, sometimes it would be about PG&E cutting trees, sometimes it'd be the county about widening the road. I'd always say, would you please go down there first? These are the problems that you're trying to address. And if I'm in violation, it's a minor misdemeanor, and you know that I will comply. And they've all said the same thing. I could sum up, are you crazy? Are you crazy? And what they're saying is that if they went in there, there are gangs and it would be dangerous. And they're saying, even if there weren't gangs, and I don't have a red tag booklet enough to put red tags on everything, everything is illegal. And even if I did, these transgressors are a protected group of people, and nobody would want the Fresno Bee to publicize it, because they would say something to the effect. A poor disadvantaged person was harassed by the government. Meanwhile, you know, Mark Zuckerberg or somebody has billion, that's what they would say. So the, and of course, when I have friends that visit, and that's the way you come to my house, they can't believe it. They said, wow. In fact, I think I mentioned I had a Fox crew, I don't want to mention the host, I really like her, she was a wonderful person, and she came here, and she was doing high speed rail and the decline of California, and we drove over there. And finally, and around the block on the other side, it's even, the next road over is even scarier. And I, she said, I've been all over the Middle East in places, this is really a much scarier, much scarier. I've been there, as you know, several times, I say Mad Max. Yeah. And I, as I said, right before I had surgery, I walked and a guy was driving there. He saw me, he opened the door, and he kicked out two German shepherds that charged me. And luckily, I started screaming at him, and then they turned around to their massacre and he took off and he left them. And I'd say in the last 60 days, oh, maybe 120 days, there's been at least four starving dogs that come in, they just pull up. Oh, that house looks pretty well kept, open the door, bing, get out. No one talks about that. And Gavin Newsom can talk all he wants, but you know, he just bought a $9 million home. And Karen Bass can talk about it, but she lives in the mayor's mansion with a big wall around it. And everybody knows that about the left. Bernie Sanders can talk all about it, he's got three homes. Barack Obama, we never know where he's flying from. Martha's Vineyard, Kalorama, or the beach house in Hawaii. End of story. So I'm glad they're going to uncover it, but I've already seen the coverage jack here in California, and it is Trump, it's either Trump tries to distract from the war or right wingers are now going after the poor or Trump's new defense budget is higher than what he cutting $176 billion. And it's going to be very hard, especially because people are leaving California. 50,000 people left Los Angeles last year. It's not the same Los Angeles. So the people, the only thing that I can see is they're not going to be enough people to pay for it. Exactly. By the way, you mentioned on LA, I move close on this just to make a note that we talked about them on the last episode, you and I did that Spencer Pratt is a headline of the Daily Mail. He's gaining in the polls after he launched a long shot campaign to replace Bass as the mayor of Los Angeles. So, well, whatever, it seems to be noticeable. I think he has a chance if there's enough voters left. He's very bright. I had a long, I had an hour talk with him. He's very quick. He's got a sense of humor. And he's not really political in the sense that he's a physical conservative. He wants to clean up Los Angeles and bring it back to the glory days. And I think the whole Karen Bass, I mean, you can say so many things about she was in Uganda. They haven't built many houses really in Pacific Palace. You can say whatever you want, but it all goes down to one thing about LA. The vice mayor during the whole crisis was arrested for phoning in a phony bomb threat, blaming Jews and Israel. And now he's in prison. He was the vice mayor and supposedly in charge of the city when she was on a junket to Uganda while her city was up in flames. So that and then the city water and power woman was making 700,000. She's gone now. And the main reservoir that could have saved Pacific Palazines had been dry for months on end. And then the fire chief was cutting commercials about DI and her that other woman said the African American person who was, I think, third or fourth in charge said when she goes into what you say, if I go into a house, I'm not going to really worry about if, if he, they said, can you, I think people said, can you pick up a man? She like, I don't really, but I can't pick him up. It's his problem. Yeah. So I'm going to drag him down the stairs by his feet, I guess. Let him roast. Yeah. So well, Victor, you've been, I mean, that's what she said. It's actually, yeah, right. Okay. I got three comments that want to read Victor from the many, many people who comment on YouTube and your, your blade of Perseus. So here's from Republican forever 25. OMG, Victor, you are true believer in America and you put your medical issues behind you. I love you so much. Thank you. Lots of people love and Victor. DK Mark 719 writes, Dr. Hansen is such an admirable man and so blessed. He so graciously shares his knowledge and talents with those of us less talented. He is such a breath of fresh air and makes me feel so much more knowledgeable after each of his presentations, which I rarely miss. Thank you, Dr. Hansen for keeping my mind active and alive. God bless. And finally, HS Black Widow writes, no Kings rally in Montgomery County, Maryland, the county borders, Washington, DC. While driving home, I was stopped at a red light. I ended up alongside a rally. I was able to ask three questions. First, I asked if it were so white supremacist rally. I said, it sure looks like it as there were zero minorities. One man said that it kind of looked that way. After pulling up a bit, I asked, since the country, the county, excuse me, is 60% minority, why didn't you invite any of them? Their reaction was that of dismay with heads dropping. Finally, asked another group, can anyone participate or do you have to be white and retired? Once again, you could see that my question hit home to the reality of their rally and the stark lack of diversity in an overly diverse community going against everything they preach. So anyway, that's that was good. I saw Robert De Niro, they actually were talking to him when he was snarling, you know. I can call him a snarl poos, rather than a snaggle poos. But he was snarling, I thought, he was talking about no Kings. And I thought, how long has Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi been in office year after year of 50 years? Donald Trump has only been in office six years of his entire life. Lawfare, raiding his home, trying to take him off the ballot. That is, that's what Kings do, try to destroy somebody personally. And then they give exemptions to the rest. So I mean, he's sad because he's just, he's just full, he's so full of hatred. And I saw a clip from the view where Joy Behar said that, getting back to the white working class, the last comment, she said, well, they all say, so be willing that Trump is basically is so awful. And then who votes for him? And they said, we'll have to name and she's, and then Joe Behar, it says, and they're poorly educated. And I'm thinking two things. Yeah, a psych degree over nine years at a university that it's great inflation, that means anything compared to a crack sheet rocker or a roofer. I know a guy, I'll call him Chad, he's a roofer, he owns a roofing company. He reminds me of a surgeon when he comes up to my house, you know, he surveys everything. And then he tells me exactly what type of roof and what, what are the, what the conditions of the rafters are. And then he, in his head, he gives me a very competitive, it's like a genius, right? And what's her name was looking at this in this clip, whoopie Goldberg. And I may be mistaken, I haven't checked this one, Joy Behar goes, well, the front people are just poor, poorly educated. I'm thinking, Joy whoopies next to you and she dropped out of high school. Well, she's as liberal as you are with your college degree. The advanced degree psych major will have a debt of six figures and the sheet rocker will own two houses and have seven figures in bank. Absolutely, as it should be, as it should be. Yeah, I know it. Then they, I don't, it's too bad because what made America different, I'm writing an essay for a Swiss newspaper and they asked me, what makes America different? And I, I'm going to say it was a traditional meritocracy and we never had a landed aristocracy, a class system. We, plutocracy, yes, but money is easier to get than titles. You know, if you, if you, nobody, unless you're a baron or you have land and you can be what, what I like about the United States is I know people who've come, I know a guy who came up from Mexico legally, he's a U.S. citizen, he has a tree trimming service and the amount of money he makes is just staggering. And he's, he's got prestige, social prestige. And only in America can you do that. And when I look today and, and see what this disdain for these working people, they, so, they always talk about being, the Trump is on America, no, you guys are on America. That's the great strength of this country that we allow people to get practical knowledge and do very useful things for society and then compensate them accordingly. At least we used to. And we shouldn't compensate. I mean, a guy who's living in the basement and he's six or seven years, so he can say he gets a BA and he runs up 150,000, then he welches on his student loans and he's got a psych degree or community studies degree or D, what, what good is that to his society? He deserves, he deserves an income. Just right? He's, you also said they, why aren't these people, you like, why aren't there more Mexican guy, Mexican American guys out protesting? They're at work. Most of these retired white people are on, you know, California peres or big SCI due pensions. Yeah. I'm serious. Well, Victor, we've, we're gone, coming up against the wall here. I just want to thank folks who do sign up and subscribe to Civil Thoughts. That's one of the things I do for the Center for Civil Society. If you go to civilthoughts.com, sign up, you'll get the free weekly, every comes out every Friday, email newsletter. And it's just 14 recommended readings. You're great articles I've come across the previous week. I know you're going to like it. We don't sell your name. So check it out, please. Again, go to Victor's website, The Blade of Perseus. That's Victor Hansen.com and subscribe and go to Amazon. Get the counter-revolution. Sign up for it now. Yes. And I even, I signed up. Victor died. No free, every, Victor has so many friends and friends, what do they want from authors? They want free copies of his latest book. But I, but I always buy Victor's books and you should, too. I think you'll like it. It's, it's a little different. It's not a rah-rah. It's just trying to analyze the most amazing comeback in political history. Starting on January 1, I just quoted all what they said about it. They said he was completely Mitch, Mitch McConnell said something that was finally this SOB got what he deserved. And now he's, how did that happen? How did he become from that point to, it's a fascinating story, I think. Oh, look forward to it. All right, Victor, I note in real time, it's Easter's tomorrow, so I'm going to wish you, and in hindsight though, I hope everyone has had a happy Easter. Victor, have a happy Easter though. Thank you. Thanks, folks, for watching. Thanks for listening. Thank you Daily Signal for carrying this podcast and we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen and his own words. Bye-bye. Thanks everyone for watching and listening. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.