Return to Normality and Meritocracy

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Speaker 3 Hello, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 3 Welcome to the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

Speaker 3 I'm Jack Fowler, the host, the deranged namesake, as he calls himself, Victor Davis-Hansen, is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Let me pull my microphone closer.

Speaker 3 And the Wayna Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. We are recording on February 1st.
It's a Saturday.

Speaker 3 This particular episode will be up on Tuesday, the 4th of February, Groundhog Day, will have come

Speaker 3 in the midst of that. And Lord knows, Victor, what else? We could say this every show from now on.

Speaker 3 By the time we, well, when we record, and by the time it comes live, there will be about 10 important things will have happened.

Speaker 3 And a lot's happened in the past few days.

Speaker 2 Trump's making everybody's head explode at warp speed.

Speaker 3 Yeah, warp speed, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So it's every day. I'm enjoying it.

Speaker 3 I'm taking it too.

Speaker 3 A number of people have

Speaker 3 called me. Some call me.

Speaker 2 They're not.

Speaker 3 People are like, they're very happy that Victor's happy. Eeyore's.
I'm very happy.

Speaker 2 I am very happy.

Speaker 3 All right. Well, Well, let's see, Victor.
We're going to start off the show today by talking about Donald Trump's activities related to Colombia, Venezuela, Panama.

Speaker 3 We have some Ivy League topics to discuss later on.

Speaker 3 Democrat dis

Speaker 3 their ongoing disconnect with reality. Actually, part of it involves blueberries.

Speaker 3 We'll get to that. Money being pulled from DEI foreign aid programs, FAA standards, so much more.
And we'll get to all of that when we come back from these important messages.

Speaker 3 We are back with the Victor Davis-Hanson show. I did not mention Victor's got a website, The Blade of Perseus.
Its web address is victorhanson.com.

Speaker 3 Go there, check it out, and I'll tell you why later in this episode, why you should be subscribing.

Speaker 3 victor the news today on the first is rick grinnell donald trump's special ambassador i guess he's got a portfolio of do whatever the hell donald trump wants him to do and he's a big uh he's a big tough dude uh he's he came back yesterday from venezuela with six americans who have been imprisoned there um it just seems like another example of donald trump tough guy don't mess with americans

Speaker 2 He just went to Venezuela and he said, we want the hostages back and you're going to take all of the criminals you deliberately let out of your jails and mental institutions to screw up the United States.

Speaker 2 And if you don't want it, we're going to boycott all of your oil. And who knows, we might embargo the whole thing because we don't need it.
We have more oil than anybody else in the world.

Speaker 2 So that's the beginning. So he just gave him a list of steps and he probably said, I don't want to do this.
This is be mean, but you force us to do this.

Speaker 2 Whereas Biden would either be incoherent or he'd send

Speaker 2 some special envoy that would apologize and say, your mental patients are completely welcome here. We're an open borders country.
So it's a big change.

Speaker 2 And the weird thing about all these things is the Venezuelans will like the Americans better

Speaker 2 when

Speaker 2 they're treated as adults rather than indulged as children. Aaron Powell,

Speaker 2 yeah. Well,

Speaker 3 I think you like people you respect.

Speaker 2 Yes, that's what you like.

Speaker 3 You clearly don't like people you disrespect.

Speaker 2 Everybody gets mad when Trump said,

Speaker 2 every time he speaks,

Speaker 2 we're not respected across. And they think, wow, he's a machismo.
Oh, and no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 He's saying that countries will be easier to get along with and they will not do something stupid if they understand who we are and that we're serious and we deter them.

Speaker 2 And then they sort of respect us. But they have no respect.
They have contempt.

Speaker 2 And then they do something stupid as go into, you know, the Donbass or Crimea or attack Israel or send a Chinese balloon over the country. That's all a sign, a symptom.
They have no respect for us.

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, hey, about the Chinese balloon, Victor, since you raised it, floated it,

Speaker 3 the stories that came out this week were

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 American intelligence knew about it from when it lifted off. I think the Chinese island is Hainan, something like that.

Speaker 3 And yet

Speaker 3 no news of this was shared with the U.S. military until the balloons came too close to America to shoot them down.
If they landed,

Speaker 3 God knows what disaster they may have caused. But this seems like a Biden administration

Speaker 3 Keystone cop

Speaker 3 situation. I mean,

Speaker 3 it was known.

Speaker 2 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Yeah, there's two interpretations of it. That's probably the most likely, that

Speaker 2 they're incompetent. They didn't want to offend the Chinese.

Speaker 2 Remember, Blinken and

Speaker 2 Sullivan were dressed down in Anchorage, I think, in March of their

Speaker 2 first month or two or three months in office, and that set the tone. And then they appease.

Speaker 2 Or you could have the minority view that the Bidens are highly compromised and that Tucker, I mean,

Speaker 2 on Hunter, on Air Force II, Air Force Two went to China with his father when Joe Biden was vice president and made a lot of financial commitments, and the Chinese know that.

Speaker 2 And part of the quid quo quo, when they had dealt with these Chinese oligarchs, were if your dad's ever president, we expect special treatment, and he's afraid that would come out.

Speaker 2 The Chinese, I think, do have information about the Biden family.

Speaker 2 Nothing else explains why he said they're not right.

Speaker 2 He didn't say they were enemies. He said they were not even rivals.

Speaker 2 So he let China walk all over us. There had to be a reason, either senality or naivete, or he was compromised.

Speaker 3 Well, Victor, back on

Speaker 3 Donald Trump and Central America, South America, any thoughts about

Speaker 3 the Brinksman? I don't even think it's Brinksmanship, because that implies there's some like uber sensational risk nuclear war on the brink of. But his dealings with Colombia, I mean,

Speaker 3 folded like a cheap suit or suitcase, whatever folds cheaply. Your thoughts?

Speaker 2 I don't think people in the United States realize how many people want to come here, especially the elite of other countries. They come over here.

Speaker 2 They feel that if they're not white males, they're treated exceptionally well as DEI people. They're exotic.
They're from the aristocratic class. They love the hotels, the universities, the billets.

Speaker 2 They love to spout their fashionable anti-Americanism to willing ears.

Speaker 2 And when Donald Trump said, you know, I'm not going to let you people come over here, and he suspended the visa office at the American Embassy in Colombia. And so that really hit them.

Speaker 2 And then he put a travel ban on

Speaker 2 the entire family of the President president of Colombia, and then he said that he was going to have these reciprocal tariffs. And of course, that machismo first impulse, well, go ahead.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, I'm going to drink whiskey with you, and you're a white slaver. And then people whispered and said, no, no, no, no.
He's not Joe Biden, Mr. Presidente.

Speaker 2 He's crazier than you are. And he means it.
And you better be careful because we have no leverage in a trade war with America nor an immigration war. So we know what we did.

Speaker 2 We let all those people out. Remember, you thought it was really cute? The criminals, the felons, the insane people.

Speaker 2 We put them on planes. We let them go.
We cleaned out our, we saved millions of dollars in penal cost. We made America's be our penal institution.
Remember that? Well, he caught on to it.

Speaker 2 And he's not Biden, so we've got to take him back. I mean, we just got to shut up, or he can do great damage to us.

Speaker 3 That's a great line, Victor. They made America be our penal institution.
That's a great way of capturing it.

Speaker 2 That's what we were. Yesterday, he slapped a 25% tariff on Mexico, and everybody got very angry.

Speaker 2 Why is he doing this? Oh, my God. You know, the Wall Street Journal is really strange.
They just keep attacking him. And I would ask the Wall Street Journal: do you find anything wrong when

Speaker 2 we pass NAFTA that over the last 25 years, the trade deficit with the United States has gone from $2 billion to $10 billion to $50 billion to $100 billion to $170 billion?

Speaker 2 Or do you feel at all worried that $63 billion is sent back in remittances?

Speaker 2 Or do you feel at all worried that probably almost a million Americans have been killed over the last 12 or 15 years from fentanyl deliberately packaged to appeal to Americans?

Speaker 2 Do you feel bad about that? And do you feel that the cartels are making billions and they're infusing the Mexican economy? Do you have any idea that Ms.

Speaker 2 Scheinbaum, like Obador, was saying now, let me think,

Speaker 2 $170 billion trade surplus here because we're assembling Chinese parts into computers and cars and helping China evade the tariffs.

Speaker 2 $20, $30 billion here because our cartels are making a fortune by disguising fentanyl and every type of drug, even candy.

Speaker 2 And we've got $63 billion because we encourage our people to go work for low wages and then rely on American entitlements to free up $400 or $500 a month to send here. That's a great deal.

Speaker 2 But if they ever get smart and get rid of Joe Biden and object,

Speaker 2 then we go right into, you know, what?

Speaker 2 Racist, nativist, Mexican War of 1848, where we used to have the lost empire of Atsalan,

Speaker 2 you're Yankee imperialist. We do that.
And then somebody whispers to Shin, it doesn't work with him. You are an academic.
You've lived in the United States. You know what he's like.

Speaker 2 He's not going to listen to that. So we'll see.
And I have a feeling that very quickly

Speaker 2 they're going to make some concessions on the border.

Speaker 2 And I think we should not fly anybody back to Mexico. We really shouldn't, Jack.

Speaker 2 We should just make a huge hinge and have a hinge door in that wall and have a huge transit station right on the border, bus station.

Speaker 2 And every hour, buses would come in, and we would swing over the door, and we give people lunch, water, survival pack, and say,

Speaker 2 You have to go back in the way in which you arrived here.

Speaker 2 You got all that publicity, you had your wonderful caravan, everybody waved you on, now you're going to get in your caravan and go back to your home country.

Speaker 2 And if they want to fly you back, they can fly you back from a Mexican airport. We should just do that.
And that would

Speaker 2 solve the problem very quickly. That and

Speaker 2 the wall being completed and no catch and release and refu status required in your home country.

Speaker 2 One thing we haven't talked about, all of these radical protesters from the Middle East, and I don't know what percentage of the protesters are, but a large percentage surely in fact are.

Speaker 2 He's going to deport if they break American laws or the university expels them or suspends them, and he's going to call in their student visa. And then they will get their wish.

Speaker 2 They hate the great Satan.

Speaker 2 At Columbia, Jack, the protesters took cement and they put them in the toilets of the university buildings to destroy, they said, hundreds of thousands of dollars of plumbing.

Speaker 2 Think of these entitled kids, these spoiled brats.

Speaker 2 both Americans and Middle Easterners, who come over here and use our hospitality and then ruin a university's sewage system. And then some poor person who's a plumber, who's probably,

Speaker 2 you know, maybe an ethnic, poor white guy, he's got to go in there and break up all those pipes and deal with all that sewage all over him and get very little in compensation compared to what these students do.

Speaker 2 These are the most selfish,

Speaker 2 pathetic generation of students I've ever seen. They're so

Speaker 2 self-centered.

Speaker 2 Now they're talking about micro-retirements. And they're angry they have to go in five days a week, micro-retirements.
Well,

Speaker 3 we'll look on micro-retirement

Speaker 3 later in this episode. Victor, that

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 3 donor base at Columbia or any of these colleges, I can't imagine. Why would you give a dollar?

Speaker 3 Well, you should anyway, but now, even now, those who stuck it out think, like, I'm giving money so they can, what,

Speaker 3 replomped the busted room?

Speaker 2 We have 17,000 people classified as administrators or administrative staff at Stanford. And we have about 16,000 graduate and undergraduates.
And we have about a $40 billion

Speaker 2 endowment.

Speaker 2 And they get about 6% on it.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 they're getting $7, $8, $9 million, depending on the interest rate billion a year and then they should pay income tax on that if they had to pay thirty percent on the endowment income and uh

Speaker 3 that would

Speaker 2 that would be a lot yeah and then or

Speaker 2 pay not only an endowment which is only about half of the annual revenue but annual giving and take away the tax deductibility and all of a sudden these universities would say we got to cut a billion dollars we cannot afford all these administrators we cannot afford all these DEI people.

Speaker 2 Go.

Speaker 2 And that would stop a lot of it.

Speaker 2 I can tell the difference on campus, Jack, already with Trump. I don't see these big protests that were going on for a whole year.
I don't see the tents.

Speaker 2 I don't see the people coming up to you and screaming in your face. I don't see at the law school the trans crowd going in and shouting down the likes of a judge Duncan.

Speaker 2 I don't see students going into the president's office and trashing it.

Speaker 2 You just don't see it. And I think

Speaker 2 it's because of this, Jack, that deep down in the dark heart of every university president, he's thinking like this.

Speaker 2 This is really wonderful that Trump is here. Now, I'm going to do my boilerplate trashing Trump.
But now I have levers on these crazy students. I'm going to say something like this.

Speaker 2 This is a memo from the president of the university.

Speaker 2 We're in tough times. We're living under Donald Trump's tyrannical rule.

Speaker 2 But unfortunately for us, it means that if you violate university, we would be forced by statute to report you and suspend you, and you may have to go back to your home country.

Speaker 2 Now, we wouldn't want that, and we deplore it, but we want to warn you. And then the campus gets quiet.

Speaker 2 Where before they just trash the campus, and the guy just keeps lecturing, they just say, shut up, we're not going to listen to you. So they like Trump, just like the bankers in Davos like Trump.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Because he brings back normality. You know, they can trash him for being normal and then appreciate his normality.

Speaker 2 And he's the greatest gift that ever happened to a college president because he takes away the punishment from them.

Speaker 3 I'll handle you guys.

Speaker 2 Just expel the student, just put him on suspension and send him over to Tom Holman and Tom will get take care of him.

Speaker 3 I love that guy.

Speaker 2 You'll put him on a bus back to Jordan, a bus. You'll put him on a cargo ship to jordan or egypt or syria or iraq or gaza or the west bank

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Speaker 3 Victor, I saw a little nugget on Sweden. I don't know why

Speaker 3 it has nothing to do with you, my fellow

Speaker 3 son of Sweden, but for some reason I'm on a number of

Speaker 3 Swedish accounts. I follow some people on Twitter or X, excuse me.
And

Speaker 3 there's a lot of ruckus going on in Sweden right now with the

Speaker 3 Muslim population there. But a headline was, this has to do with what you were talking about before going back to your home country.
70% of refugees in Sweden go back home, like on vacation.

Speaker 3 What are they refugees from if they have no problem returning to that terrible place?

Speaker 2 I have been to Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria,

Speaker 2 Lebanon,

Speaker 2 Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait. I think I got them all.
And if I lived in those countries, even though the Gulf countries are very affluent, I would want to come to the United States, even in our decline.

Speaker 2 So for them, they come over here and it's heaven. They can say,

Speaker 2 if they're from an affluent oil-producing country, then it's the freedom to do whatever you want. If they're from a repressive dictatorship that destroyed the economy, then they can get an iPhone.

Speaker 2 It's everything.

Speaker 2 And then they look around, this is the key, Jack, and they look at the camp. These are mostly younger people.

Speaker 2 And they look at the woke progressive DEI, whatever, and they think, I qualify for that. So as long as I'm a victim and voice anger at my generous host for his magnanimity,

Speaker 2 then I will be accepted in the areas where it's important to be accepted. The media, academia, and the welfare state, the administrative state.
And so they like that two-face attitude.

Speaker 2 And Donald Trump, I don't think, is going to

Speaker 2 he understands that. He's a very blunt guy, and it's like, you want to come over here, then you follow our rules.
And you apply legally, and you can come. Now, if you don't want to do that, go home.

Speaker 2 End of story.

Speaker 2 It's not complicated.

Speaker 2 They want to make it complicated, but it's not.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I think it's... one of the

Speaker 2 now they're the Wall Street Journal especially. Well I don't understand.
The Wall Street Journal columnists are wonderful.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 They're really good, with some exceptions. I like Bill McGurn.
I like Daniel Henneger. I like, especially like Kimberly Strassel.

Speaker 2 But the news division, it's all negative, negative, negative. This Molly Ball was tweeting about how everybody hates what Donald Trump's doing and he's causing chaos.

Speaker 2 This is the person who wrote in Time magazine in 2021 the cabal, this conspiracy that stopped Donald Trump and praised all the tech lords for

Speaker 2 stealth money, praised all the censorship that they did, praised the change of the voting laws, almost smugly triumphant. And then the left got angry about it.
Don't give the game away, Molly.

Speaker 2 Come on.

Speaker 2 And as a reward for that, they hired her at the Wall Street Journal. And now she's writing how Donald Trump is doing nothing positive.
It's the old chaos. Well, for you, it's not positive.

Speaker 2 But if he can cut a trillion dollars, it's very positive. And if he can lower taxes and lower regulations and get the economy moving for people here in Fresno County, they're going to be very happy.

Speaker 2 It doesn't matter to you, maybe.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I don't know. I was surprised that the Wall Street Journal showed that level of venom in almost every news story.
There's a subtext that Donald Trump can't do this and he can't do that.

Speaker 2 And they're really criticizing him for the tariffs. And I want to say to myself,

Speaker 2 well,

Speaker 2 at what level of trade imbalance would you be bothered? At what level? And do you really think that Mexico and Canada apply the same standards to American imports that we do to Canada? No, they don't.

Speaker 2 I can tell you they don't, nor does the EU.

Speaker 2 It's all based on this ossified, calcified, post-World War II idea.

Speaker 2 The United States is so strong, it's so big, it came out of World War II, it's got a duty to rebuild the world, it's so infinitely wealthy, we can screw it over on trade, we can do this on immigration, that

Speaker 2 we're not that way anymore. So they can't do it anymore.
Doesn't the Wall Street Journal see that? We just want reciprocal trade.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, I agree with you with the Wall Street Journal

Speaker 3 reporting side, and actually the editorial side,

Speaker 3 the actual editorials as opposed to the columns,

Speaker 3 they are often not friendly to Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 No, they're fifty percent of them. I don't know who writes those.

Speaker 2 I like Jason Riley, he writes some good stuff, but I like Morton Swam a real a lot.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 2 but they have negative it's mostly negative, negative, negative, negative. Yeah, even the New York Post has some negative stuff.

Speaker 3 Oh, they've been go the Post's been going hong tongs and hammer after

Speaker 3 RFK uh and his uh nomination. So uh yeah, I get Victor Pe some people have a tough time realizing they're not the vanguard of the proletariat any longer, right?

Speaker 3 Bill Crystal's had that problem for a long time. Bill Crystal, but you know, you're supposed to listen to me, not him.

Speaker 2 I'm writing a book about Trump's comeback.

Speaker 2 So yesterday I was looking at the, I have a chapter on Never Trump people, the enemies of Trump, the media, the universities, I examine each one and their motives and what the effect of any they had on him in terms of stopping his comeback.

Speaker 2 So I looked at Bill Crystal for 10 years. I didn't realize that 2015, almost there's a pattern there.
Almost every

Speaker 2 other op-ed he wrote, and they're usually co-op eds, right? He didn't write them himself, but

Speaker 2 there's something to the effect that,

Speaker 2 yes, Trump has temporary popularity and some of his, but don't worry, he's doomed to fail. 2015, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
And then, see, I told you.

Speaker 3 After five years, he failed.

Speaker 2 And then, don't worry, 23, 24, he can't be elected. He's failed.
And then, you know,

Speaker 2 almost everyone was wrong.

Speaker 3 Permanent transitory.

Speaker 3 Hey, Victor, we're going to be.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 And we saw that during the Senate confirmations. We have to talk about those people hysterical.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 we will get to a bunch more things, including

Speaker 3 we'll talk about Panama a little. We'll close up maybe foreign policy and get on to blueberries and much more when we come back from these important messages.

Speaker 3 We are back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

Speaker 3 Quickly, Victor's website, The Blade of Perseus. Web address is victorhanson.com.
Go there, subscribe. It's

Speaker 3 $65

Speaker 3 a year. That's discounted from the monthly rate of $6.50.
You can do the the math on that. I don't know, is that $72? I forget.

Speaker 3 $78.

Speaker 2 A lot of people, you know, I was writing three articles a week. And I haven't missed one, by the way, to our subscribers.
I'm very loyal to them. And they paid the money on Tuesdays,

Speaker 2 Wednesdays, and Fridays. I had been writing 7,500 words, 6,500 sometimes.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 2 a lot of people said, well, why don't we get a video? You know what I mean? Why don't you just talk to us? So that's why on Fridays we have an eight to ten minute video.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's excellent.

Speaker 3 And you get those two articles and you get the video when you do subscribe.

Speaker 3 So go there, The Blade of Perseus, and please do

Speaker 3 check it out and subscribe. So, Victor, yeah, last thing on foreign policy.

Speaker 3 Who knows, we may

Speaker 3 straggle back into it. But

Speaker 3 Marco Rubio said, Donald Trump is not kidding when he talks about America wanting to retake the Panama Canal.

Speaker 3 This is not some bluff, some seven-dimensional chess.

Speaker 3 What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 Well, take can be interpreted a lot of ways. When Donald Trump makes his criticisms of Panama,

Speaker 2 if you look at them very carefully, he is saying, we had no problem with Panama about

Speaker 2 2010.

Speaker 2 But Panama knew of the special relationship that is enshrined in our treaty documents about preference for the United States ships in times of crisis, tolls, etc.

Speaker 2 And then they

Speaker 2 did not feel that they had enough toll money to improve the canal.

Speaker 2 So they joined the Belt and Road Initiative as one of China's many clients,

Speaker 2 knowing that anybody who does that is essentially an imperial colony of China. But they did it nonetheless over our objections.

Speaker 2 And then they invited foreign concessionary ports along the transit of the canal. But they reserved the two choice locations, the entry and exit,

Speaker 2 for Chinese franchises, not American.

Speaker 2 There was a story today, yesterday in the Blagosphere that people who live in Panama, who are Americans, noticed they were taking down Chinese signs quickly before Rubio got there.

Speaker 2 In other words, they're everywhere.

Speaker 2 So, what Panama did, everybody, is they took a special relationship with the United States, and as a way of shunning us or resonating the old, tired, weary charge that we were imperialist

Speaker 2 or whatever the reason was,

Speaker 2 or to get rich, they invited our arch enemy into an area that we had a special relationship. We didn't do that.
They did.

Speaker 2 And we warned them that when you do that, the Chinese are quid quote pro.

Speaker 2 So now you're joined at the hip with China. They're even going to build a bridge, a bridge over the

Speaker 2 Panama Canal.

Speaker 2 Can you imagine in times of tensions over Taiwan, if we need six or seven cruisers or frigates to come from Northwick through the canal, they're going to go right under a bridge that China controls.

Speaker 2 And you're going to say, no, it's just a traffic bridge. They control it.
And they will control the entry and exit. And they will be able to do a lot of things.
And does Panama really want that?

Speaker 2 And so that's what Trump's trying to say. He's trying to get some leverage.
And he says, you broke all the agreements of the treaty.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, what's really frustrating is the people who attack Trump, when you look at it,

Speaker 2 they're all in groups like the Panama American Friendship Group, the American Advisory Group to the Panama Canal. They work for a canal company, they work for a shipping company.
See what I mean?

Speaker 2 And they don't want to get on the wrong side of Panama. But

Speaker 2 I don't think he's talking about using armed forces and invading. Last time we did that, that was George Bush.

Speaker 2 That was when you and I talked about we broke the Geneva Convention because we played Barry Manilow to

Speaker 2 Admiral, General Noriega. That was worse than waterboarding.
And we drove him crazy and we extradited him. He said, I'll give up my entire country.
Just don't play Barry Manilow anymore.

Speaker 2 But we could do that again if we had to.

Speaker 2 Anyway, I think that's what he's doing. He's doing that with Canada.
He's just saying, you know,

Speaker 2 We're a big country. We can survive without your imports, or you'll have to reduce your prices or whatever, but it's up to you.

Speaker 2 All you have to do, Canada, is get that $50 billion surplus down to $10 or something. And all you have to do, Mexico, is get that $168, $67 billion surplus down to $10 or so.
And you can do it.

Speaker 2 Buy more products, sell us less. But we're not going to keep doing this.
We're not Joe Biden. And he's telling

Speaker 2 Trudeau, you know your borders open. You know people come across it.
You don't do anything. You know drugs come across it.
Not to the same degree as Mexico. But

Speaker 2 you know better because you're supposed to be a closer friend to us than Mexico. And you've abused that relationship, just like Mexico has abused that relationship.

Speaker 2 And it's all this is a common-sense counter-revolution, and that's why people are upset.

Speaker 3 Speaking of that, and I lied about leaving foreign policy behind us, Victor, here's a headline from the Daily Mail: Trump strips millions from DEI foreign aid programs, funding Irish musicals, LGBTQ programs in Serbia, and more.

Speaker 3 And here are the first few lines of this article. One of the big ticket items that no longer will receive U.S.
funding is a pro-LGBT group in Serbia through a group called

Speaker 3 Grupa Izadji, which in English translates to group come out.

Speaker 3 This NGO received $1.5 million in Biden's administration to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities by promoting blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 3 I mean, this is madness. Serbia, we're promoting.

Speaker 2 Yeah, put it in real terms, that people are listening to this. Some of you are paying $20,000, $30,000

Speaker 2 to the federal government, and you're not getting good interstate freeways. You're not getting good FBI service.
You're not getting good State Department.

Speaker 2 You've got problems in the Pentagon. Well, you're paying for that.

Speaker 2 I don't know how many, if you're, you know,

Speaker 2 1,000 of you who pay $1,000, you're paying for that. And that's going, and that's minor, and that's what has to stop.

Speaker 2 Again, it's not just the money, it's the idea that Serbia is very anti-American given the NATO incursion in the early 90s.

Speaker 2 And the idea that we're sending money over to the LGBQ community in Serbia, I don't think they're saying, oh, thank you.

Speaker 2 It's more like, you owe us, give it to us.

Speaker 2 You bomb Belgrade.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 it's got to stop. And then when it stops, people will like us better.
They'll like us in two ways. They'll like us because they can't shake us down.

Speaker 2 And if we start to balance their budget, they'll like us like they secretly like Malay in Argentina.

Speaker 3 They think, wow.

Speaker 2 Whatever you say about the guy, he balanced the budget and he's got inflation on it. Wow, what do you think about the United States? It's the biggest power in the world.

Speaker 2 Now it's the biggest natural gas, oil, and it's almost balanced its budget. That's amazing.
And they'll respect that.

Speaker 2 But they don't respect us now, printing money and just throwing it around the world on stupid causes.

Speaker 3 I did not tell you this ahead of time. Have you ever been to any of Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, etc.? I have been to

Speaker 2 Turanya, Bulgaria, or is that Albania?

Speaker 2 When I was in Greece, I took a flight there for three days.

Speaker 2 And I've been to the border of Greece and and Albania. I've been to Montenegro.

Speaker 2 I'll have to ask my wife. We took a cruise

Speaker 2 in the Tyrrhenian Sea, Adriatic, both sides of Italy.

Speaker 3 I related Trieste.

Speaker 2 We went from Trieste all the way down to Dubrovnik.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Dubrovnik is one of the

Speaker 2 you know, it's one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Hey,

Speaker 3 Victor, before we get on to the unalienable right to blueberries,

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Speaker 3 So, Victor, yes, here's a CNN, here's a headline.

Speaker 3 Maybe this is from Daily Mail. The unalienable right to blueberries.
CNN guests' horrific take on illegal aliens proves libs don't know how voters think anymore. And this is a Democrat strategist,

Speaker 3 Jenna Arnold. And here's what she said on CNN the other day.

Speaker 3 I can't wait until American women can't get blueberries for their smoothies.

Speaker 3 I cannot wait until there is a full crackdown on all small business, as if that's going to be the solution to the immigration problem, she claimed, is just going to put immigration-related issues further into the darker corners, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 Victor, I cannot, maybe American women are going to go

Speaker 3 anti-trunk too because they can't get blueberries, but this is a disconnect with reality still.

Speaker 2 Two or three percent

Speaker 2 of

Speaker 2 agriculture, I mean, of the 12 million are engaged in agriculture labor. Another thing people don't understand,

Speaker 2 we are in a radical revolution in California, especially

Speaker 2 in terms of hand labor. And what I mean by that, when I was growing up, we had about 400,000 acres of, say, Thompson seedless grapes, and we had about 250,000 acres

Speaker 2 of what I would call soft fruit. That's what my grandfather, that's what I did on the farm.
It's all gone.

Speaker 2 And it's gone because it's been taken over by conglomerates that have vineyards and orchards in Chile, in Peru, in Colombia, in Venezuela, in Central America, in Mexico. And

Speaker 2 they just start right about now, and they're shipping grapes up from Chile and Peru, and it'll go all the way until May or June.

Speaker 2 And then just for a tiny window, the American, because the cold storage is so improved, you can put a bunch of grapes in cold storage for months.

Speaker 2 And then sometime around June to October, they'll be local. But the point I'm making is the reduction in hand labor is just astronomical.

Speaker 2 I'm looking out the window, and we used to have 180 acres, but I have 43 acres. And when I had a Thompson

Speaker 2 vineyard

Speaker 2 at a time when there was about 400,000 acres,

Speaker 2 you had people come out and prune. And then you had people have to come out and tie the canes.

Speaker 2 And then you had to shred the brush, and then you had furrows, and then you had to irrigate down the middle, then you cultivated on a tractor five or six times down the row in the spring and summer, and then you had to pick hand labor and put them on trays, and that's all gone.

Speaker 2 When you see, I don't see anybody, it looks like a ghost orchard, it's beautiful. And a computer has hydrometers, they signal the pump, it goes on.

Speaker 2 There is no irrigation, nobody walking with a little twister like I used to with valves. It's all drip, foggers.

Speaker 2 And then fertilize, I used to have to go in there with shanks and shank

Speaker 2 fertilizer between the rows. No, there's about a 400-gallon tank and it's full of nitrogen, different types of nitrogen.
And when the

Speaker 2 analysis comes that the soil needs nitrogen, then bam, it's injected into the drip system and it's going... it's just spread to every tree.

Speaker 2 And then harvest constitutes one guy coming in with a machine. It's like a little hand that grabs the trunk.
It's got a computer.

Speaker 2 It tells you exactly how long it should be shaken so it won't damage a tree, but you'll get 95% of the almonds off. And as he goes down the row, they kind of have a little blower that puts it out.

Speaker 2 You wait two or three days. That's one man does 40 acres.

Speaker 2 And then another man comes in and a piece of machinery and it just, after they're dry, he just puts them in a nice row with blowers.

Speaker 2 And then the third person comes in with a scoop, sucks them in, gets the dirt, the leaves, the insects, and it goes right into a bin to the sheller.

Speaker 2 And literally, you don't, there's no pruning, there's no thinning, there's nothing, no hand labor. And that is replicated with pistachios and all the row crops.

Speaker 2 So we're talking about when she says blueberries, I live around 5,000 acres of blueberries.

Speaker 2 And that is hand labor, but it's not hand labor the way blueberries used to be. Used to be, you had guys out there every day with irrigation and furrows and cultivation.
Now they're micro-rows.

Speaker 2 They're planted very densely. It's all drip.
It's all automatic. And they're trellised in such a way that a person just comes by and goes very quickly and picks them up right exposed.

Speaker 2 And they're getting to the point now where they're bringing machinery in to do it. It'll be mechanized.
Even raisins are mechanized now, believe it or or not. And picking grapes are mechanized.

Speaker 2 The only people that don't mechanize grape harvested are the boutique wineries in Napa unless they have to because of a rain or something and get it hurt. So my point is she's an idiot.
And

Speaker 2 most California, the amount of agricultural laborers needed

Speaker 2 is probably dropped by 70%. And then you have another thing that's going on.

Speaker 2 She's got this old Democratic idea. It's kind of weird.
It's like the South. We have slaves in the Democratic Party.
Now we're the Democrats for open labor and cheap labor and imported.

Speaker 2 It's the same condescending, creepy idea because if you take a big concern, say the world's

Speaker 2 one of the world's largest producers of mandarin oranges, cuties, you know, those little,

Speaker 2 they're very delicious.

Speaker 2 It's maybe five miles from where I'm speaking right now. But it is the most sophisticated.
I've gone into the factory, they've got the most brilliant people in the world at Fowler Packing.

Speaker 2 It looks like a spaceship.

Speaker 2 There's almost no hand labor in processing.

Speaker 2 I don't mean processing, but when the

Speaker 2 orange is dropped in a bin inside, it is washed and cleaned and packed and kept cool in a process that has almost no human interaction. They've had lasers that see which

Speaker 2 mandarin fruit is damaged, which is not ripe, everything.

Speaker 2 And to get there, there is some hand labor, but they've redefined it into expertise, like a plumber or electrician. And so they have signs.

Speaker 2 Pickers must meet these types of standards. They have to be legal immigrants or not immigrants at all.
And they're paid about $20 an hour. But they're experts at it.

Speaker 2 And then when they come into the big plant each morning, park park their car, go out to pick,

Speaker 2 there's a dental clinic there. There's a beautiful cafeteria for a free lunch, breakfast, dinner, or cheap subsidized.
There's a doctor on call. It's nothing like what she thinks.

Speaker 2 It's a high-tech

Speaker 2 emphasis on skilled labor.

Speaker 2 And what they're saying is, if you can find somebody who will get up at five in the morning and go out and operate machinery that pick crops, are themselves pick crops, then we're going to pay them a high premium because

Speaker 2 they're not just what she thinks,

Speaker 2 exploited cheap labor. These are master pickers.
They're redefining it into almost an apprenticeship, like a plumber, as I said, or electrician. And they make a lot of money.

Speaker 2 And I don't think she has any idea what farmers are paying people these days. $20 an hour, $25 an hour.

Speaker 3 The other idiocy of this, though, Victor, is the lifestyle. What if there were no blueberries for some reason? That I'm not going to have my smoothie.

Speaker 3 Would there be a revolution over these upscale liberal women?

Speaker 2 People in America are all machine harvested. And so when I was on a tractor in the 80s for every day,

Speaker 2 it was pretty bad. It was 110 as an old Massey or an old

Speaker 2 Oliver tractor

Speaker 2 or a Ford 4000, 5000, or whatever. It was very hot.
There were no such thing as cabs. There was no such thing as music.
There was no such thing as headphones. And today, when I see my neighbors,

Speaker 2 it looks like a luxury car. They have air conditioning, they have stereo systems.

Speaker 2 They have sound protection.

Speaker 2 It's not tractor driving as we used to. They have computer laser guidance.
You know, when you're driving down a 12-foot row and you've got a

Speaker 2 9-foot three inch tandem disc and the berms are one foot on each side and one foot, then you've got 10 feet and you only got three or four inches on each side. And if you

Speaker 2 talk to yourself, you daydream, you will take out vines.

Speaker 2 But you just have to, you had to put your the little crease in the the hood, the line, you put it right down the middle and you're just staring there and you say, no matter what, I know that if I get the steering wheel and I'm guiding right down the middle, and that line on the hood is absolutely down the middle of the row, then I don't have to look back and see what I'm doing because I will have an inch on two in each side.

Speaker 2 It's not easy.

Speaker 2 But now, there's all sorts of automatic laser-driven appurtenances. And it's what I'm getting at is they have no idea about agriculture, how it's

Speaker 2 evolved. And we're getting to the point where they said that crops that you could never pick.

Speaker 2 I went by a strawberry field last year and there were people,

Speaker 2 it was weird, Jack, they were kind of on

Speaker 2 laying down almost on machines and the machine was about two feet and they were going over the top of the strawberry and they were just picking them like this and they had fans cooling them.

Speaker 2 It would be like you were laying down and you were looking at a hole in your bed and as

Speaker 2 you were doing that, strawberries appeared. You know what I mean? And then you just dropped them on a conveyor conveyor belt.
It wasn't stooped labor. And it's getting so now.

Speaker 2 If you talk to the people who are doing these things,

Speaker 2 we're not going to have hand labor very much anymore. It's going to be automated like the auto industry.
And

Speaker 2 you've got this idea that she has to have. The same person, I forgot his name,

Speaker 2 he's the delegated

Speaker 2 czar who's going to rebuild Los Angeles, at least temporarily. And he said Trump is going to send back all our workers, all our illegal aliens who are going to do all this work.

Speaker 2 And my answer to him is, look, if you want your house rebuilt, there's 62% labor participation rate in the United States.

Speaker 2 And I told that to Sam the other day, and that is able-bodied, 18 to 60.

Speaker 2 So we have 38%.

Speaker 2 Some of them are home with children, but 38%

Speaker 2 are not participating, and it's gone down under Biden to about 60%.

Speaker 2 So there's a lot of people who are in their basement, and if the wage gets out, why don't they get out and work? And said, are they zooming? You know, are they not going to work every day?

Speaker 2 So let's get out and get the country moving.

Speaker 2 There's nothing, there's something noble about physical labor, and we're not getting people to do it. So Ms.
Blueberry, why doesn't she go out and pick some blueberries once a week? That would help.

Speaker 2 Get her hands dirty, meet

Speaker 2 the other that she so condescendingly thinks Donald Trump is.

Speaker 2 believe me,

Speaker 2 if you're a U.S. citizen and you're a very skilled farm laborer and you're getting $20 an hour, you're not heartbroken that an illegal is trying to come in and get $8 an hour.

Speaker 2 You're not heartbroken about that, that he's going to go back to Mexico or Central America.

Speaker 2 Speaking of agriculture, it's strange for the left to want cheap labor. I never got that, you know, cheap, exploited labor.

Speaker 2 It's like, well, I'm going to rebuild my 3,500 square foot home and I want to have perfect cedar flooring, and I've got to get about six illegals in here to do it because it's very expensive, the flooring and the granite counters and the copper ceiling and all this.

Speaker 2 And I don't want to skimp on the materials. I've got to have it tasteful, but I need cheap labor, cheap labor, cheap labor.

Speaker 3 Speaking of agriculture, California, fire, water, Donald Trump, all those things.

Speaker 3 He got some water unleashed. he did.

Speaker 2 He's not going to be able to do it all because Newsom's got his hand on the California Water Project,

Speaker 2 and he can unleash the Central Valley Project, which is a federal project

Speaker 2 that has a claim to the Sacramento tributaries. And he will do that.

Speaker 2 Gavin Newsom, as I said, Sammy has been lying.

Speaker 2 The reservoirs are not full. They're not even 80%,

Speaker 2 which

Speaker 2 at this time of year you expect a large s snow melt soon, so you keep them at 80% or 70%. But we're not going to get a large unless we have a mir miraculous February and early March rain, we could.

Speaker 2 But they're about 60. I just go by some of them.
They're about 60 or 70% at most.

Speaker 2 And that's because the aqueduct is not completely full, and it's not filling up the reservoirs as it goes south to Los Angeles.

Speaker 2 And it's not doing that because he is letting water in the delta out to San Francisco Bay because of environmentalists. And he's proud of it.
He's actively very proud of it.

Speaker 2 When he blew up the Kalamath Dams, he gave a great speech. Isn't this wonderful?

Speaker 2 We got rid of these artificial obstacles to white water and salmon and indigenous people restoring their ancient customs of spearfishing salmon in the Kalamath.

Speaker 2 And then you said, yeah, and you destroyed four beautiful lakes, recreation, irrigation, flood control, and 80,000 homes, Hydro hydroelectric. But

Speaker 2 I don't know. You know, it's one thing in California, very quickly, Jack, the special session that was called to trash Trump

Speaker 2 disappeared. They decided not to do that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I was going to ask you, was it not the same thing?

Speaker 2 Somebody said, they're so brilliant.

Speaker 2 Somebody, when they were all posing right after the fight, we're going to have a special session and we've got to have a fund, a war fund, to stop Donald Trump's racist, sexist, homophobic protectionist measures.

Speaker 2 Then somebody said, well,

Speaker 2 we have $77 billion in debt that we blew and the federal government is cutting back.

Speaker 2 And if we start suing Donald Trump and ridiculing him as a racist and a sexist and a homophobe, he just might not want to extend federal funds to us. You don't, oh, he wouldn't do that.
Yes, he would.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, let's just cancel that special session and start praising him. And that's what's happening.

Speaker 2 He's got a very good attitude. That's why I resented that Molly Ball.
She said he hasn't changed. He's a disruptor.
He's very philosophical. They asked him yesterday, is there any chance that the 25%

Speaker 2 tariff could be stopped? No, it's going in. It's Friday as scheduled.
They said, well, aren't you afraid it's going to destroy the economy?

Speaker 2 It'll take a little adjustment, but then we'll get back to normal.

Speaker 2 Why are you doing it? Well, I'm doing this to protect all of us because they're deliberately running up one-sided trade surpluses, and they don't want to

Speaker 2 share the wealth and be fair. And they also are letting Fenton alone.
It's killing people. I'm worried about people being killed.
It was really good what he said.

Speaker 3 I bet in one week he has answered more questions than Biden answered in the entire presidency. He's very good at it.

Speaker 2 He looks tired, though. I'm really worried about him.
He looks very tired. He's 78.
I'm 71, and

Speaker 2 I just got back. I flew to Chicago one day and flew back the next.
And it took me about four days to get back to normal.

Speaker 2 But he doesn't seem to, I don't know, I don't understand what his metabolism is. You know what I mean? Four hours sleep.

Speaker 3 Four hours sleep, Diet Coke, McDonald's.

Speaker 3 I'm game for that plan.

Speaker 3 I got the four hours sleep day.

Speaker 2 I hope he's going secretly to some health clinic and laying down and getting intravenous

Speaker 2 turmeric or goofy ion or a supplement mix.

Speaker 3 You know what I mean? Yes, you would know what I mean.

Speaker 3 You're

Speaker 3 the king of supplements. Hey, Victor, speaking of you flying in a plane, we should maybe get your thoughts on.

Speaker 3 Yes, I know you talked with Sammy about this terrible collision accident, but let's get your thoughts on FAA standards, and we'll do that when we come back from these final important messages.

Speaker 3 We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. We're recording on Saturday, February 1st.
This episode will be up on Tuesday the 4th. We have another topic or two to get Victor's wisdom on.

Speaker 3 And let's start off, Victor, with the Federal Aviation Administration. And in the

Speaker 3 light or in the aftermath, immediate aftermath of news on this

Speaker 3 accident, not only in

Speaker 3 Washington, but in a Philadelphia

Speaker 3 area.

Speaker 3 Lots of stuff has come out about FAA standards.

Speaker 3 Today's New York Post has an article about a lawsuit of representing, I think, a thousand people who were denied, who wanted to be air traffic controllers, but were denied because they were white.

Speaker 2 I think Adam Waxalt was the spearhead lawyer on that. A thousand people.
So Trump,

Speaker 2 everybody got mad mad at Trump because they said he was jumping the gun. He was demagoguing because he said he was going to take a look at DEI.

Speaker 3 And he said, and

Speaker 2 I thought to myself, here we go again, but not in the way they think, here we go again. Here we go again in the Los Angeles thing.
He said the same thing almost immediately.

Speaker 2 He said, we've got to stop the DEI. And then it came out that Karen Bass was

Speaker 2 finding her African roots in Uganda when she had been warned about the chaparral and the the high winds and left. And then it turned out that her

Speaker 2 African-American DEI appointee as deputy mayor was under house arrest or suspension for phoning in a bomb threat.

Speaker 2 Then it turned out that her DEI fire chief had been bragging about she was going to hire 70% DEI and she was the first

Speaker 2 gay woman why there was what 100 vehicles that were needed maintenance that were inoperable and there was she said foolishly, that's not my

Speaker 2 responsibility starts when the hydrants pump water. No, they don't.
They don't, Fire Chief.

Speaker 2 You're responsible to tell Water and Power that you don't have enough fire hydrants, and then you're to partner with her.

Speaker 2 But in her defense, the Water and Power, it was Miss Kiones, who came under a checkered career at PGE.

Speaker 2 They paid her $750,000, and she drained a 117 million-gallon reservoir because it had a tear in the cover, which would have saved basically

Speaker 2 they only had 3 million gallons, and that 3 million gallons last four to five hours. They had 117 million,

Speaker 2 it would have probably lasted 100 hours. They could have saved Pacific Palisades.
But then I could go on. The assistant deputy chair notoriously said that she had to pick up a man.

Speaker 2 He was in the wrong place.

Speaker 2 I was really funny when she said,

Speaker 2 well, we have diversity because everybody feels relieved or they feel comfortable when the first responder looks like them when they come to the door. I had a bee sting

Speaker 2 last March, Jack, and I went to total anaphylaxis and my blood pressure went down to 70 over 35. My heart rate went up to about 160.

Speaker 2 The last thing I remember was calling my wife who called 9-11 and then I fainted. And then I woke up and I crawled to the front door and who met me at the door? The Selma ambulance.

Speaker 2 Two young Hispanic women, the paramedics and the driver was Hispanic. And they were wonderful.
They gave me two EpiPens immediately, and they made me take off my shirt and look at all the welts.

Speaker 2 And then they looked at my closed mouth. They gave me liquid Benadryl.
They gave me

Speaker 2 pretisone. And then they said, you need to get in the ambulance right away.
And did I say, Jack,

Speaker 3 I don't feel comfortable because you don't look like me.

Speaker 2 I would feel, can you just go get a white guy? Because

Speaker 2 I would feel much more home. No, I thought that they were heaven, I thought they were angelic.

Speaker 2 They were competent.

Speaker 2 And I said, I am yours. You saved me.
Take me to the hospital.

Speaker 2 And then they kept, we're going to give you another anti-pen, some more steroids. And then by the time I got to the hospital, I was stabilized.
And they were wonderful.

Speaker 2 But the idea that I would feel more comfortable if they had been white, I don't think so. I was happy.
I wasn't happy that they were white or not white or Hispanic.

Speaker 2 I was just happy they were competent. And then how they looked was a secondary.

Speaker 3 Your theme of the Confederacy is pigmentation rules, and that is.

Speaker 2 They fixated on race. And so all of that, Trump kind of predicted.
And that's in addition to the timber policy, the insurance policy, the water policy. So then this thing happens.

Speaker 2 And Trump has information that we don't.

Speaker 2 So somebody, this was a multitask, multifaceted systems failure.

Speaker 3 No

Speaker 2 plane should be flying at four,

Speaker 2 no helicopter should be flying at 400 feet at night in the pathway of jets.

Speaker 2 We don't know why they were doing that.

Speaker 2 No one. should be having night galgals in a one of the most heavy trafficked airline areas in the world.
Why would you wear that?

Speaker 2 I wore them in Iraq on the guy who let me wear them on a Blackhawk. First thing I knew I had tunnel vision.
I thought I had cataracts, glaucoma.

Speaker 2 So and then any light you saw was like an explosion.

Speaker 2 So my point is if they had night vision gallgles and they were on this training mission and they were flying at the same level that typically, that was an administrative error. Somebody had told them

Speaker 2 something, and they either didn't follow that or the instruction was wrong. And then the air traffic controller, we find out, was doing two jobs because one air traffic controller wanted to go home.

Speaker 2 And he had one frequency for the helicopter and one frequency to the plane, and they could not communicate.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Donald Trump said,

Speaker 2 air traffic controller. So then they got angry at him.

Speaker 2 At the Caroline Levitt News Conference. This is you just had to jump the gun and say this about.

Speaker 2 And then we learned, as you just pointed out, that they had plenty of aircraft control people the last four years.

Speaker 3 Plenty of them.

Speaker 2 They were encouraging at one time people in college

Speaker 2 who were interested in avionics or math to go into apprentice programs right during college or from the military to take their air traffic controllers or pilots. And there was a thousand of them.

Speaker 2 And guess what? They were white. And so, and we have this overwhelming evidence.
The assistant FA director got on a video, which is roundly played. And he says, We're here to get diversity.

Speaker 2 If you're in a Native American school or black school, we want you, but not white. And then we had the

Speaker 2 former nominee to be the head of the FA, I think he was rejected or withdrew. And they asked him a series of questions.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 how long does a jet need for its air runway?

Speaker 2 What level do you react? How quick? He didn't know one thing. Have you ever been an aircraft? No.
Have you ever been a pilot? No. Have you ever run an actual

Speaker 2 airline? No. He was kind of an administrator of the Denver airport, but knew nothing about airplanes.
So, yes, Donald Trump was right. So if he's wrong, then let us get the information out.

Speaker 2 But you know, we don't get the information out. So when Ashley Babbitt is lethally shot,

Speaker 2 lethally shot while she's unarmed, we have a rule in America. Look at George Floyd.

Speaker 2 When anybody dies at the hand, supposedly, of a policeman, and that person is unarmed, then the policeman who does that is immediately put on suspension, and whether it's good or not, his picture is plastered over every newspaper in America.

Speaker 2 Officer Byrd was not. As soon as I saw that, that we were not going to disclose who Officer Bird was, then everybody said he is a DEI person.
And then we find out he had a checkered record.

Speaker 2 He left a loaded gun in a bathroom in the Capitol. And then he said he played the victim and said, oh, they're going to hurt me.
Or, oh, I need compensation for all the trauma.

Speaker 2 And so whenever we had the same thing was at the Scott Bridge off Baltimore where that tanker ran into it, all they asked is who was in control. They never told anybody.

Speaker 2 They were so careful not to release. I don't know who was to the day.
Probably nothing. It was probably some old white guy, but they didn't want to talk about it for certain reasons.

Speaker 2 And when you went on their website of the tanker company, what was the first thing you saw? I wrote a column about that. D-E-I-D-E-I-D-E-I-D-E-I.

Speaker 2 And so now they don't want to release, they release the two people who died in the Black Hawk, but they do not want to release the identity of the other pilot, female. I don't know why they don't.

Speaker 2 Why don't they just do it? And they'd say, well, I've never heard of of that before. They don't want to release the name of the aircraft, air traffic controller that went home early.

Speaker 2 And they don't want to do any of this. They will, because of the Trump administration.
But the point I'm making is: if you believe that DEI

Speaker 2 enhances

Speaker 3 efficacy, then let all the information go out.

Speaker 2 Let people

Speaker 2 win that argument. But when you try to repress it, after you've made the argument that if you're good at math, are you

Speaker 2 flew an airplane, are you ace the FA test, that's not so important. It's your color of your skin that's important because that makes us better.

Speaker 2 Okay, if that makes you better, then give all the information out when you have these disasters. If you look at the statistics in 2023, there was a record number of near-misses.

Speaker 2 It went down a little bit in 2024, but it was really high. And people

Speaker 2 like NPR, the New York Times wrote an article, Jack. It was in 2023.
It said, what's up with all these near misses?

Speaker 2 And of course, you know what the liberals said. They said, oh,

Speaker 2 everything's too crowded.

Speaker 2 We've got too many people flying. There's too many flights.
The airline people are too greedy. Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2 But also, we didn't have enough air traffic controllers because we put racial limitations on who could participate.

Speaker 2 And we drummed out people who had been there for years who were disgusted with that racist policy.

Speaker 2 And that's what Trump was saying.

Speaker 2 And all they have to do is disprove that. All they have to do is disprove that.
And they won't. Instead, they do not release information.

Speaker 2 And I have no, I mean, it's probably that the woman was a great pilot.

Speaker 2 Who knows? She may be a multi-millionaire, white as snow, great, more power to her.

Speaker 2 But when you don't release the information, then people get suspected why you don't, and it hurts your cause.

Speaker 2 It's better just to come out and give the information on everything and let people decide and make the argument.

Speaker 3 Well, we deduce

Speaker 3 when that happens, somebody from a protected class is being protected, like the trans shooter, the murderer in the manifesto from Tennessee.

Speaker 2 We can't do this, we can't do that. It's always this administrative state person who decides in his infinite wisdom what to release and what not because of the agenda.

Speaker 2 And usually when it's a white male, nutty guy like the Las Vegas shooter, in two seconds you know every despicable thing about him. And that's great.
I approve of that.

Speaker 2 But if it's the remember the police chief, New Orleans that didn't put the barriers on? Right.

Speaker 2 We didn't get any information.

Speaker 3 From Oakland, right? Wasn't she a failure?

Speaker 3 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 She was an advisor to the FBI, and she was a DEI hire.

Speaker 2 And then after everybody's killed, then she goes out and does a news event. Well, these are barriers we put up.

Speaker 2 The horse left the barn. People got killed because you didn't do that.
And then

Speaker 2 we didn't get information about who you were, what was your record, and why you were the police chief. Because based on meritocracy, you should not have been the police chief.

Speaker 2 Based on meritocracy, we should have had different people in Los Angeles. And that would have made a big difference.

Speaker 2 Had you had water in the reserve, in the reservoir above Pacific, had the hydrants all been pressurized, had all of the vehicles been on the road and not in the shop?

Speaker 2 Had the mayor been there in a control environment? Had the vice mayor not phoned in a bomb threat and been her delegate as the safety deputy mayor? Yes, it would have made a difference.

Speaker 3 And so people die.

Speaker 2 People die.

Speaker 2 The thing about DEI, everybody, is they don't.

Speaker 2 There's certain things about it. It doesn't start,

Speaker 2 just, it doesn't end when you, I should say, it doesn't end when you're hired.

Speaker 2 If you're hired for reasons other than meritocracy, then you will be retained and advanced and promoted for the same reason. You've got a lifetime insurance policy.

Speaker 2 So if something happens and you've you were at fault, you're going to use the same DEI argument. And in fact, I was thinking of that, Jack, and then I started to read about the FFA

Speaker 2 changes in their protocols. And one of them is if you've been cited

Speaker 2 for poor performance,

Speaker 2 you're not sent home with a fine, you're not anything. You're sent into a

Speaker 2 remedial program, but nobody knows about you. That cannot be disclosed.
And then you're back out.

Speaker 2 And that's because of DEI. And so it keeps going.

Speaker 3 And there's no life to it.

Speaker 2 Remember, there's no tenure. There's no sunset.
We're 60 years into the civil rights movement. And the thing about DEI is

Speaker 2 no one is saying in the DEI

Speaker 3 like

Speaker 2 Sandra Day O'Connor when she ruled for affirmative action said, I think by 2000 we won't have this problem because of integration and assimilation. No, they think DEI is DEI,

Speaker 2 if I could echo George Wallace on segregation, DEA today, DEI yesterday, today, and forever. That's their attitude.
There should be no end to it. It's not a means to an end.
It's an end in itself.

Speaker 2 And the other thing about it is, it's not getting smaller.

Speaker 2 20 years ago, before Barack Obama, there were certain categories of, say, if you were rich Arab American, if you came from India and you were techie, you were not eligible for DEI.

Speaker 2 You didn't have that. It was a call to affirmative action.

Speaker 3 Now,

Speaker 2 it's been completely redefined by Obama and Biden, not that you are from a group that has suffered historical, demonstrable demonstration, and it's evidenced by

Speaker 2 your

Speaker 2 lack of parity in income, health, etc. No, no, no, no.
It's just one criteria. You don't look white, you are not

Speaker 2 a male, and you are not gay. And that's what it is.
And you can be a wealthy gay person, you can be a multi-millionaire Argentine aristocrat that trills his art.

Speaker 3 You can be anything. But

Speaker 2 it's now 30%, well, it's 80% of the population almost. If you think about it, white males are about 33%, I should say.
It's everybody but 33% of the population. So the DEI is the majority.

Speaker 2 If you're a woman or you're gay or you're non-white, non-whites are about 66, 67% of the population, about 48% of them are males. So you're talking about 31, 33, 34%,

Speaker 2 depending on the state, I suppose.

Speaker 2 And it just got bigger.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 yeah.

Speaker 2 It's like any system. I mean, if you go to the, I keep telling that story.
Every time I go to the Middle East, I always ask people why things don't work.

Speaker 2 And if I see a government official, I was interviewing one in Libya, and he said, Victor,

Speaker 2 off the record, we hire our first cousins. We have hundreds of tribes here in Libya, and we don't trust people outside our tribe.
I said, Don't you have civil service and marriage?

Speaker 2 Yes, but nobody cares. We hire our tribe.
We can try our,

Speaker 2 If we can. The doctor that treated me for the ruptured appendix, he said, oh, I can get you on that plane back to England because that guy that is one of the stewards is in my tribe.

Speaker 2 In Libya, I said, thank you. And he did.

Speaker 2 And in the Soviet Union, it was if you were a Marxist, Leninist, ideologue, and a member of the party, then the criteria for your performance was different.

Speaker 2 If you were a national socialist, if you were so-called Aryan and can prove it, a member of the Nazi Party, then you were not held to the same standard. And that is the bane of civilizations.

Speaker 2 That destroys civilizations. They always implode.
And when you use race, as in

Speaker 2 the Nazis with a yellow star,

Speaker 2 or southern plantation owners with 1/16th drop, or six categories of apartheid colors and ewes in South Africa, then the society is going to implode because you're not going to be merucratic.

Speaker 2 Very ironically, we started with the idea, Jack, that there were millions of talented African Americans. And this is what Martin Luther King taught the nation.
We don't want an equality result.

Speaker 2 We want to be able to be evaluated on the content of our character and not the color of our skin. And then when that was open,

Speaker 2 then slowly and insidiously over 60 years, it was the color of your skin and not your qualifications necessarily.

Speaker 3 I don't think

Speaker 2 there's going to be a lot of resistance to the end of DEI. I think it had a rotten foundation.
It's like a house, and it was shaky. I think Donald Trump will just blow on it, and it will collapse.

Speaker 2 It will collapse because a lot of very talented African-American, Hispanic people are sick and tired of being stigmatized that they got their job for reasons other than their talent.

Speaker 3 And there's a lot of them.

Speaker 2 And I know them personally, and they do not like DEI.

Speaker 2 And then the people who, yeah, the people who use it are mediocrities. And people know that, and they'll be glad to see them gone.

Speaker 3 Well, let's end the show with a little staying on this theme. I was going to ask you about some FBI stuff, but we can do that on our next recording because the headline from the other day

Speaker 3 is

Speaker 3 everyone's favorite person, Ibram X. Kendi, the person who must be read by General Milley,

Speaker 3 his center for anti-racist research at Boston University is permanently shutting down, laying off his employees.

Speaker 2 No, no, it can't. He had $50 million.

Speaker 2 Oh, well,

Speaker 3 he went through 50 million dollars. It doesn't go as far as it used to.

Speaker 2 He laid off all his anti-racist employees. And he went to Howard, didn't he?

Speaker 3 Yes, he's going to Howard University. Yep.

Speaker 3 Quite a grift. Quite a grift.

Speaker 2 Yeah, the late great career of Professor Kindy in the aftermath of George Floyd, he was charging, what, $30,000 or $40,000 for a Zoom 30-minute

Speaker 2 pep talk to corporations and universities.

Speaker 2 And then people said, you know what?

Speaker 2 We went crazy during the COVID scare. We went crazy during the lockdown.
And that craziness burst out with George Floyd, with the fumes of the craziness craziness of Me Too,

Speaker 2 and we woke up and were no longer insane.

Speaker 2 That was a temporary madness and all the things that occurred in that madness are now going to be rectified and we're going to go back to a merit-based society and it's not going to be racially fixed or sexually oriented.

Speaker 2 orientation fixated and not going to be genders fixated.

Speaker 2 I think it's going to be an exciting time. It really is.

Speaker 3 I still think it's going to be tough for some of these people, especially remember these ladies who would pay a ton of money to go to a dinner to be... To get insulted.

Speaker 3 Did I really do that?

Speaker 2 No, because

Speaker 2 if your theory is correct that it wasn't specific on a particular topic, that was just psychological sadism,

Speaker 2 or I should say, masochism, then they can hire some old white guy, come in, and he can yell at her and just insult her. Because those dinners dinners were always, how do I please talk to people?

Speaker 2 You're a racist. Well, I'd like not, you can't be.
All of your privilege you have to give over.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I guess that for wealthy white women, that was therapeutic.

Speaker 2 But they could find another person to do it for them. They don't have to be all of a particular race or color.
In the post-DI area. You could have somebody about environmentalists.

Speaker 2 They could go to somebody and say,

Speaker 2 I have a big SUV. It gets 18 miles.
You

Speaker 2 oh, thank you, thank you. Harder, harder.

Speaker 3 Slap me. Spank me.

Speaker 2 Or they could do it with imperialism and settler culture. You're as part of the settler colors.
I saw you in San Francisco looking at the Pioneer Monument. Didn't you spit out it?

Speaker 3 I know I should have.

Speaker 2 I really wanted to. But I did try to tear down the Honipeo Serra statue.
That kind of stuff. Theater.

Speaker 3 Theater is important to them.

Speaker 2 Performance art, virtue signaling, that's what it is. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Everybody

Speaker 2 have resonance resonant. They want to resonate in some way.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 you have been

Speaker 3 terrific as usual. We want to

Speaker 3 cross the finish line here. I want to recommend again folks check out Victor's website, The Blade of Perseus.
If you're on X, Victor is there at

Speaker 3 V D Hansen on Facebook,

Speaker 3 V D H's Morning Cup. There's a very good and friendly group there, the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club.
If you're on Facebook, check it out. Maybe even join.
It's for me, Jack Fowler. I write the weekly

Speaker 3 free email newsletter, Civil Thoughts. I do that for the Center for Civil Society, where we are trying to strengthen civil society.
Please go to civilthoughts.com, sign up.

Speaker 3 It's free, and every week and every Friday, I should say,

Speaker 3 the newsletter comes with 14 recommended readings of important articles I've seen the previous week that I think you will enjoy a lot of folks rate this show on Apple we thank them for doing that and

Speaker 3 4.9 plus percent

Speaker 3 well it's not it's it's zero to five stars so Victor's average is 4.9 plus stars

Speaker 3 Thank you folks who do that. Those many folks leave comments also.
Actually, I have a comment to read, Victor, that somebody sent me

Speaker 3 as an email.

Speaker 3 And it must be a subscriber to the newsletter. Hello, Mr.
Fowler. Hope you're well.
I'm an avid listener to the show. And

Speaker 3 I'm a subscriber to your newsletter. I wanted to comment on something VDH mentioned in an earlier show that was very pleasing.

Speaker 3 When discussing the 51st state, Victor mentioned how close of an ally Canada was in the world wars and how we, Canadians, I guess, punched above our weight, Given our population size, thanks to the incompetent leadership we Canadians have suffered under the past decade or so, many have forgotten the great nation we once were.

Speaker 3 Obviously, not VDH. It warmed my heart to hear something complimentary said about Canada for once, and these days making such comments is not an easy task.

Speaker 3 I'm thrilled our American friends now have a leader that will restore your beautiful country, and I anxiously await the day I can say the same about my own land.

Speaker 3 Thank you for the informative information you provide each week, the fantastic conversation you facilitate with Victor. Well, thank you.
I would like also to share.

Speaker 3 Oh, this is fun. In a previous email of me, you suggested I once again attend a Mass.

Speaker 3 I have done so, and I'm on the path of exploring my religious beliefs.

Speaker 3 This is signed by Emmett

Speaker 3 Blackney. I don't remember recommending going to Mass, but geez, maybe she can

Speaker 3 aim it as a matter of fact. That's good.

Speaker 2 I think as General Creer in World War II, the Canadians had, as I said, at the time, one of three of the Normandy landing beaches. Right.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they fought superbly, especially in Holland. Even Canadians who helped liberate Holland, they were on the northern side of the push to end of Germany.

Speaker 2 Patton had a lot of good things to say about them.

Speaker 3 They were the

Speaker 3 Dieppe? They were the force at Dieppe, yes.

Speaker 3 They were treated very badly.

Speaker 2 That was a British-designed operation, the Dieppe raid, and they landed them to see what would be the difficulty at the port there.

Speaker 3 I think it was. It was kind of a suicide mission, in a sense.
It was.

Speaker 2 I think they landed 10,000, and only 1,500 got back. The rest were killed or wounded.

Speaker 2 Prisoners were treated very harshly because the Germans tried to say they were saboteurs, but they were very brave.

Speaker 2 And if you look at the size, I'm doing this by memory, but the American fleet, as I said, was larger than all the other fleets put together by tonnage and ship numbers by 1945.

Speaker 2 But then the British fleet, then what was left of the Japanese fleet, then the Canadian fleet. It was huge.
And it was very necessary. And

Speaker 2 it guaranteed,

Speaker 2 even before we went into the war, they were the ones escorting

Speaker 2 most of the materiel coming from Canada to Great Britain.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 2 the Canadians, as well as the British, told us when the war broke out, they told Admiral King,

Speaker 2 you've got to have a convoy system and you've got to have destroyers and destroyer escorts there to stop this. And he didn't listen to them.
And we took a terrible beating in 1942 because of that.

Speaker 2 My only point is

Speaker 2 Canadians have a, I mean, they have fought so well in World War I and World War II. They were in Korea.

Speaker 2 This latest manifestation, this left-wing Trudeauism,

Speaker 2 it's really not reflective of the history and traditions of Canada. Stephen Harper, whom I know a little bit, is a great Prime Minister.
He really was.

Speaker 2 And he was very learned. He was very careful, sober.
He knew how to get along with Donald Trump very well.

Speaker 2 And it was just a pity that, and I think he was there one of the longest tenures of Prime Minister, 10 or 12 years, but it's a pity he's not there now.

Speaker 2 Pierre Polivera, he's going to be, I think, wonderful. And I think if he gets in there, he will know how to deal with Donald Trump and talk to him and say, let's negotiate

Speaker 2 from a position of mutual respect. But how can you respect Trudeau? He's a joke.
He's a toy boy, and no one respects him.

Speaker 2 And And as soon as Donald Trump was elected, what did he do? He got into a podium and he said that he was sad that the first black woman wasn't president.

Speaker 2 That was really smart, Trudeau, when you're running a $50 billion

Speaker 2 surplus with the United States and you have an open border.

Speaker 2 That did your country a lot of service.

Speaker 2 This is an aberration, everybody.

Speaker 2 Canada is a great country, and especially

Speaker 2 Ontario, Calgary, and places like that. And

Speaker 2 when you saw those Canadian truck drivers, those were very tough guys. They were very brave.
They took on the Trudeau government. That's the Canada that we remember.

Speaker 2 And we don't want to make it a first.

Speaker 2 We like them, and we like them to be an autonomous country.

Speaker 2 If Ontario wants to be a 50, that's another thing.

Speaker 2 But we don't need all of Canada. They've been a good neighbor.
We just want them to be a partner partner and not a subservient country. Pay your way so you're under our nuclear shield.
We're in NATO.

Speaker 2 You pay your 2%, maybe up to 5%.

Speaker 2 You can do it. You did it before.

Speaker 2 Even out your trade deficit with us, maybe

Speaker 2 run up $4 or $5 billion at most. Close that border so you're not letting drugs and illegals in.
We're going to get along just fine. Or as Frenchie says, and

Speaker 2 Rick says in Casablanca to Frenchy, I think this is going to be the start of a beautiful relationship.

Speaker 3 Frenchie.

Speaker 3 Claude Reigns, I don't think so.

Speaker 3 By the way, you mentioned

Speaker 3 the convoy escorts. I just saw again recently The Cruel Sea.
I think folks should look it up. This is one of the best war movies ever.

Speaker 3 Jack Hawkins.

Speaker 2 Just terrific. Jack Hawkins is a great.

Speaker 2 He was in Ben-Hur, too.

Speaker 3 Oh, he was in everything.

Speaker 3 He died. He was young.

Speaker 2 He was in his late 60s. He was a heavy smoker.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yeah.
I think he died of lung cancer. Hey, I want to thank Emmett

Speaker 3 Blackney for the kind comments and for Victor and me. Go to Mass, everybody who should be going back.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening. Thank you, everybody.
We will be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye-bye.

Speaker 2 Thank you for listening.

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