Dawn of a New Era: Inauguration, Executive Orders and Pardons

If you've been with us at all over the last six months or so, you are probably familiar with one of our favorite new brews, Wired2Fish Coffee. As you may know, their coffee is delicious and smooth, but more importantly, the company has amazing commitment to give back.
Wired2Fish Coffee gives back 25% of profits, 25% to conservation, clean water, and things like missions and evangelical outreach. From river cleanups and initiatives for fish habitat to programs that give people in slums clean water and spread the word about Jesus, Wired2Fish Coffee is in it to make the world a better place.
They also have just launched a medium roast decaf, and for avid coffee lovers, their much-loved brew is now available in two-pound and five-pound bags. Join us and enjoy your coffee while making a difference in the world, and join a community of like-minded coffee lovers.

Subscribe and save today and enjoy discounted coffee and free freight or just give this great brand a try with discount code JUSTNEWS or JUSTTHENews. For 10% off your first order, head over to Wired, number two, fish, coffee today, and make this year a year you align your coffee with your values.
Hello, and welcome to the Victor Davis Hanson show. Victor is the Martin and Newley Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marjabusky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.
You can find him at his website,

victorhanson.com, and it's called The Blade of Perseus. And prices have gone up.
So it is

$6.50 by the month or $65 for an annual subscription. So please come join us there.

And we'll talk about that later for some reasons. Stay with us and we'll be right back after these messages.
We'll be back to our show in just a moment. But first, an important message for anyone concerned about their financial future.
Have you seen the headlines? The Department of Government Efficiency has uncovered a staggering $115 billion in government fraud with investigators suggesting this is just the tip of the iceberg. Financial analysts are now confirming what many suspected.
The previous administration's economic success was largely artificial, propped up by funneling trillions through NGOs and creating an economic mirage. As this corruption is exposed, experts predict we're heading toward a short but deep recession when this false economic support evaporates.
What does this mean for your retirement savings? Throughout our history, when governments manipulate economies and currencies collapse, physical gold has been mankind's most reliable store of value. Shouldn't you consider protecting part of your retirement with an asset that governments can't create with keystrokes or devalue through corruption? American Alternative Assets is offering a free wealth protection guide to help safeguard your financial future from the coming economic

correction.

Call 8332-USA-GOLD or visit victorlovesgold.com today for your free guide and learn why now may be the perfect time to add precious metals to your portfolio. That's 833-287-2465 or victorlovesgold.com.
Protect what you've earned before the fraud economy collapses completely. Vacation season is nearly upon us.
This year, I'm treating myself to the luxe upgrades I deserve with Quince's high quality travel essentials at fair prices like lightweight shirts and shorts from $30, pants for any occasion, and comfortable lounge suits with premium luggage options and durable duffel bags to carry it all. The best part? All Quince items are priced 50 to 80 percent less than similar brands.
By partnering directly with top factories, Quince cuts out the cost of the middleman and passes the savings on to us. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes.
I love that. Quince is my favorite store for affordable luxury at home or on vacation.
Everything from Quince is not just affordable, but the path to easy, comfortable living even when traveling. With spring vacation season here, I look to Quince for classy, comfortable, and cute.
I just recently added a light blue linen vest and a short crop sweater to my Quince collection and I'm excited to wear them as I go off especially on my travels this spring. For your next trip treat yourself to the luxe upgrades you deserve from Quince.
Go to quince.com slash victor for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's quince.com

slash victor to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash victor.

And we'd like to thank Quince for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson show. Welcome back.
This is the Friday News Roundup. But as everybody knows, this week, we had the inauguration.
And so, Victor, I was hoping to get some of your reflections on the inauguration speech and the affairs going on. Before I do, I'll give you a piece of advice.
You said prices have gone up. They have.
If you were Joe Biden, you said you inherited those high prices and they have not gone up. That's you inherited 9% increase and somebody else did it.
So don't take credit for it. I'm just trying to lower them.
I inherited it. That speech that Trump gave was unlike most presidential speeches, even his own that are aspirational.
In other words, they're idealistic, they're utopian. We can do, there was elements of that, but it was more operational than aspirational.
this is what we are going to do. We are going to have an executive order.
We're going to lower prices on gas. We are going to unleash all of our natural resources.
We are going to beef up the military. We are going to have a renaissance in crime reduction.

We're going to get rid of DEI.

It was dung, dung, dung, dung.

It was a complete refutation of the people who were sitting right in front of him.

And he mentioned the Bidens by name.

And a lot of people got very angry at that.

George Will, whom I know and I respect, said that that was the worst inauguration dress he'd ever heard. And he said it was mean-spirited.
You know what's mean-spirited? Not talking about the people who did that, but doing it. So here you're Donald Trump, and you're looking out there, and here on one eye you see Barack Obama, and you know that he cooked up with James Comey and John Brennan and

James Clapper with help, Operation Crossfire Hurricane, to go after Donald Trump in 2016, and basically lie about him with a cooked up dossier. Then the other eye, he looks at Hillary Clinton.
And he thinks, well, yeah, I ran against her. And she, through the DNC and Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS, paid steel to destroy me.
And then they destroyed George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, but she destroyed classified subpoena documents, 30,000 emails. She destroyed the servers.
And she's sitting right there. She made my life miserable.
She and Obama right there created basically the basis for which ate up 20 months and $40 million to go after me under Robert Mueller. And then he sees Biden and he's thinking, I might've won the 2020 election.
Have you just kept out of it? There was a laptop. Your son took it to a computer repair person.
The computer repair person looked at it, and then he found out your son never picked it up. High on crack, no doubt.
And he waited, and he waited. And then according to the terms of the repair contractual arrangement, it was his.
You forfeited it, you being Hunter Biden, in exchange for not paying your bill. So then he opens it up and there's nudity.
There's drug use. There's mention of Joe Biden as a recipient of 10% of all these ill-gotten gains and Mr.
Big Guy getting his power bills and utilities paid by Hunter.

And it's all coming out. And the FBI has had this for a year and knows it's authentic.
And you, Mr. Biden, you and your wife and all of the Biden family who have now been pardoned, except for you and your wife, you knew that.
You knew that it was authentic, but you got Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State, to call up Mike Morrell, interim FBI, and round up 51 intelligence authorities to lie in front of the American people that it has all the hallmarks of a Russian information dash disinformation campaign. And we know afterwards that that affected a lot of voters because it made me look like an idiot when I was trying to debate Joe Biden, and it was all cooked up for the debate.
So every time I said, Joe, this computer is, don't believe me, it's prima facie evidence that you're a crook. No, no, no, 51 intelligence authorities, independent thinkers.
And so he's sitting there giving the speech and he sees Hillary and Obama and he sees what they did to him. And so then he starts to get a little angry.
And then all of a sudden, it's not sober and judicious, according to George Will and others. This is terrible.
You can't do that. No, it's not terrible.
What's terrible is impeaching him twice and trying to get him off the ballot and 91 felony indictments and destroying the jurisprudence. So it was a good speech and it was a revolutionary speech.
I call it Novos Ordo Seclorum, that great line from Virgil's eclogues, fourth eclogue, the so-called messianic. People had used that, you know, wrongly, that Virgil was given divine guidance, pre-Christian advice, pre-Jesus Christ, that he knew there was going to be a resurrection and a new Christian age.
That's not what it was about. It was about, I think, the grandsons of Augustus were going to take over and have a new enlightened rule after the end of Augustus.
They both died. But later in the Christian period, but even before that, people said, interpret that new order of the ages.
And those are words that were in that line of Virgil that were cobbled together. And that was why Virgil was the guide in Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio, because he was the one pagan who, even though he wasn't given the salvation of his soul for not accepting Christianity, but it was the realization that he was given a divine message that Christ was coming, and as a pagan, he was selected according to the medieval church, and therefore he predicted with Novus Ordo Seclorum.
And then our founders looked at that, who were much better educated than we were, and said, that's exactly what we're doing. It's a new order of the ages.
And in the Aeneid, when they're fighting, there's a line where it says, Jupiter looks down favorably or nods. The word is neo in Latin.
I knew it coept us. he nods on our undertakings.
He favors it. And they put both of those Latin phrases, one from the Echologues, one from the Great Seal, which is on our dollar bill.
And that's what Trump, when he says golden age, new order, it's the same spirit of 1776. And it's an idea that anything is possible.
That's why everybody was so freaked out. I mean, you've got Snoop Dogg who cut a video how to kill Trump, and now he's telling people to vote for Trump, and he's happy that Trump is here.
and then you've got RFK over here and Tulsi Gabbard over here and Hulk Hogan. It's just too much to comprehend, but they all have one thing in common.
It's like we woke up from this nightmare and there are really two sexes. There is a border.
There is a thing called legal and illegal immigration. There is

something called you don't leave Afghanistan and give $50 billion over to terrorists. There is

something that if you go into a store and steal something, you don't get off scot-free. If you

beat up somebody or kill somebody in the subway, not in self-defense, but you do it

gratuitously, you're going to pay. All of that was the nightmare.
And now it's over. And people are ecstatic.
And apparently there's also something called the Gulf of America. I thought about that.
He didn't put that in his speech. I love it.
Yes. And he's, again, as I said, he's saying, think about all of those things.
It's kind of like Cooper Ross's four stages or five stages of death, you know, shock, anger, acceptance. Well, when you hear all Greenland and Canada, oh, yeah, look at Trump.
He's James Polk. He thinks he's the 19th century imperialist.
And then you think, hmm, it must be art of the deal. Hmm, Greenland? Well, let me do my research.
Didn't the British take over Iceland in World War II and we kind of took over Greenland? And isn't it kind of a colony of these postmodern imperialists called Denmark? And didn't they kind of panic and put all of a sudden Greenland's image on their world. And maybe global warming will make the Northwest Passage, and Russia and China are like birds of prey, and Greenland's like a little fat pigeon to be.
And maybe we can step in and facilitate. Yeah, it makes sense.
And isn't Greenland closer to New York than Copenhagen? Isn't it properly part of North America? Why are these European colonials coming into our continent, etc.? As far as Gulf of America, it took about two seconds for people to say, that's crazy. And then two more seconds.
How long is the American coastline on the Gulf? What? It's 1,700 miles long? Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida. Well, how long is Mexico? What? 1,700 miles? So we each have a shared claim.
We have the northern part. They have the southern part.
Maybe it's the Gulf of, I don't know, northern America and southern Mexico. I don't know.
But I know one thing that they changed the Woodrow Wilson Center.

They changed the Earl War.

And so there is no more Bolt Hall.

There is no more.

My little address at Stanford is no longer Stanford is no longer Junipio Seracourt.

They do it all the time.

So Trump says, I like that idea of year zero French revolutionary name changing.

The left taught me a lesson.

And we have good reason. So

now it's the Gulf of America. You guys like to change names? I joined the club.
And what's the message to Mexico? We're going to make a map and show you that we used to go ahead and own most of America, which Scheinbaum did. And the answer is yes, you can do all that.
And we can say no more caravans, no more $63 billion in remittances. We can put tariffs on your asymmetrical trade patterns, and we have all the leverage.
They have none. Before, it was like, well, you have a history of colonialism, you Yankee running dogs, and you've exploited people of color, and you've been mean to Mexico.

And we remember the Chucolayas, and now it's – that was then.

This is now.

We're just equal people, and you guys are taking advantage of us, and you hate us for letting us take you advantage.

So for us to get along better, you have to respect us, and you won't respect us unless we treat you the way you would treat us.

Isn't he already looking at 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada? Thing is, it sounds so ridiculous. And then you start to do a little digging and you realize the amount of military subsidies that we provide Canada, if they were to put themselves under a nuclear deterrent shield to protect their national security, if they were going to have a credible –

and by the way, Canada was one of the most effective of our allies in World War II.

They punched way above their weight class.

They had a whole beach in Normandy.

They had the fourth largest navy in the world.

So they can do it when they had a much smaller population.

And they could police – they know what they're doing.

So they're do it when they had a much smaller population. And they could police, they know what they're doing.
So Trudeau, what the Canadians basically said is, we've been taking the Americans for a ride. We call them all sorts of names because that kind of obfuscates the fact that we're taking advantage of them.
And we always could because we're just small population compared to their 330 million. And now they caught on.
So Trudeau is just aggravating. And Trudeau being the world's worst politician in the middle of this conundrum, what does he say? I think I want to give a speech about the sadness of Kamala Harris is not winning the presidency as the first woman of color.
That was really smart, you idiot. All you did was tell Trump that he, I'm an idiot and I should go.
And he did go. Exit stage left.
And then Mr. Polibearer, is that his name? Polibearer.
The one that ate the apple while he insulted the journalist. And now he's going to be in there and they're all going to him and saying, now look, you're a right-wing guy and you believe in Trumpism and you are a nationalist.
You can deal with Trump. And so they expect him now to go to Trump and say, look, let's split.
I will patrol the border and I'll spend a little bit more in defense. It's in our interest, but you have to help us out and buy our oil and build Keatstone.
I think they got the beginning of what Humphrey Bogart told Frenchie. It's the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
I think so. And that was the whole purpose in the beginning.
Well, I have some more questions on the inauguration executive orders.

Victor, I have a new sponsor for our show. Boy, do I have a great movie for you.
The new heart pounding military thriller Valiant One has everything you need in a movie. With tensions

high between North and South Korea,

a U.S. military helicopter crashes deep in North Korean territory.
With the platoon leader dead and no rescue coming, young Sergeant Edward Brockman must find a way to get the survivors back to safety. He must rise to the challenge to lead his team on a daring escape through treacherous and hostile territory with enemy soldiers hot in pursuit.
Only courage can bring them home. Valiant One has all the grit and explosive action you'd expect along with a story of survival and bravery under fire that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
All you need is the popcorn. Don't miss this new action thriller from Briarcliff Entertainment and Monarch Media, Valiant One featuring Chase Stokes and Lana Condor, only in theaters January 31st.
And thank you, Valiant One, for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show. I can't believe it's not a psychodrama, melodrama about an urban metrosexual who's unsure of his sexual ambiguity and he wants to date somebody, but he doesn't know which gender.
I know. But this sounds like a great movie right out of the genre of The Great Escape or The Dirty Dozen or Operation Crossbow of missions and enemy territory.
Yeah. I like that.
I like the word valiant, too.

We never hear that word, valiant. No.

It sounds like a really interesting movie. It's too judgmental to say something.
I'm going to see it. Yes.
I'll see it. I will see it.
We try to taste, example, use all of our products. Yeah.
So, Victor Donald Trump made or signed at the end of his gala affair, at least in the afternoon, a bunch of executive orders that were amounting to 76, I think, was the total executive orders on everything from the border to immigration to cartels being considered foreign terrorists, to tariffs to China to energy,

to getting out of that Paris climate accord and DEI. So Donald Trump is on the job moment one on the very first thing.
Yeah, the thing about all those, and I think there's an anticipated 300 of them, they roughly can be divided into two groups, the ones that can be accomplished by fiat

and the ones that can be accomplished by fiat and the ones that require lawfulness and legality by subordinates to enact them. So if you want to get out of the parish, bam, it's out.
There's no problem there. No low-level diplomat is going to say, hey, I'm going to keep us in.

Trump won't know.

He'll know it.

So you can get out of that easy.

When you go to the other one, take one example.

Getting rid of DEI, that is so entrenched in all of those cabinets.

What that requires is that he call in all 13 of his cabinet secretaries and the next level of things like NIH and FBI and everybody and get them in and said, look, I want you to go through everything. And I do not want any more DEI.
I know they're going to sue us. Just get rid of it.
Let them sue us. And then here's my DEI auditor, Tsar, and he's going to go back in about a month, and he's going to examine every one of your cabinancies.
And if you didn't do it, you're fired. And I'll get somebody who will do it.
I'm Lincoln trying to find a general, in other words, that can fight. And I think he, but it will be difficult to, it reminds me when I was younger and I was a professor in the California State University System.
So we passed Proposition 209 in California. And it said, you cannot use race, religion, or gender as the primary criteria to hire or to promote or to retain.
In other words, you have to use merit. So everybody said, wow, affirmative action is over.
And two things happened. I was on two hiring committees that year.
So I said, well, this candidate is not nearly as good, and the affirmative action offer was still there. And she said to me, well, wait a minute, this is a woman.
And I said, yes, but she doesn't have the same publication record or teaching evaluations as this guy does. But this is diversity.
They didn't quite use that word yet. They said affirmative action.
And so then I complained to the dean. I said, why are we even having in front of victor federal laws can you imagine a

cal And so then I complained to the dean. I said, why are we even having a federal law? Can you imagine a Californian saying this in the age of sanctuary city? California law is subordinate to federal law, which supersedes.
So we can vote whatever we want, but I follow federal law. And so then the next, somebody had told him that that wasn't accurate.
So the next search that was almost simultaneously, the same kind of conundrum came up. And so I called the dean who's now passed away years ago.
I was in my rambunctious 32 or 33. So I said, look, if I'm going to be chairman, I'm going to get the best candidate.

And this guy, there was somebody who said he was Latino and he was pretty good, but not as good as this other person. But he was an Argentine.
You know what I mean? And he had trilled his R's and he had gone the whole, you know what I'm talking about, the whole I am a self-created affirmative of action. And you know what he told me?

I don't care what the law is.

And I said, what do you mean you don't care what the law is? Because you're going to go into the meeting and you're going to hire that person. And when the meeting is over, you're going to give me that name and I'm going to send it up.
And I said, you're going to hire somebody that doesn't have nearly the teaching. So I went around his back as a young idiot and talked to the provost and told her what he was going to do and showed him the two files.
And I said, I'm not going to show you the names. Just look at this file, the publication.
So she said, I'm on board. He called me up and said, I'll fire you.
If you keep this up, I'm going to call. And you're going to sit here and listen to me talk to the provost.
So I had to sit there, but I knew the provost was on my side. And she said, you're going to hire the hiring committee's choice.
So I did that. And then I walked out and I said, what gives you the right as a bureaucrat to try to overturn the will of the people? The people have spoken.
They don't want this. My point of all this excursus is that when Donald Trump says DEI, these people in the bureaucratic administrative swamp state are lawless.
And they feel that they've been so pampered that they are a law unto themselves, judge, jury, and executioner. And they'll just say, yes, we do it, and they'll just ignore it.
And you have to be tough with them. There's another problem with executive orders like DEI.
So when you're a dean, let's say in an academic, then you have a, if you're, I'm dean of humanities, I get fired. Well, then you're a tenured professor in a legitimate, if you're a DEI, where do you go back to? There's not, you know, the economics of race, maybe, but most of these people were created, they got their degrees in critical race theory or, you know, gender studies, And those departments don't find that they want to use a billet to accommodate them.
So when you're talking about getting rid of DEI, you're not talking about reassignment. You're talking about firing them.
And we forget that these people are among the highest paid post-George Floyd administrators, 300, 400,000. And so you're talking a massive amount of, on the one hand, savings and a massive amount of outcry, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia.
We're going to hear it all if he really tries this. I hope he does, by the way.
I'm not trying to suggest he shouldn't. They'll have to buy some of them off, I bet.
No, we can't because of Doge. We can't spend any money.
Yeah. We'll see what happens with it all.
It seems to me they'll buy off. Well, stay with us, and we'll be back after these messages to talk a little bit more about the inauguration.
Stay with us. In today's fast-moving world, your team needs to stay connected to your customers without

missed messages, communications, silos, or slow phone systems.

A flexible and efficient business phone system isn't just nice to have, it's essential to

succeed.

Enter OpenPhone.

OpenPhone is the number one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer

communications.

It works through an app on your phone or computer, so no more carrying two phones or using a

Thank you. one business phone system that streamlines and scales your customer communications.
It works through an app on your phone or computer, so no more carrying two phones or using a landline. With OpenPhone, your team can share one number and collaborate on customer calls and texts like a shared inbox.
That way, any teammate can pick up right where the last person left off, keeping response times faster than ever. Plus, with AI-powered powered call transcripts and summaries you'll be able to automate follow-ups ensuring you'll never miss a customer interaction again so whether you're a one-person operation drowning in calls and texts or have a large team that needs better collaboration tools open phone is a no no-brainer.
See why over 50,000 businesses trust OpenPhone to manage their businesses' calls and texts. OpenPhone is offering our listeners 20% off your first six months at openphone.com slash Victor.
That's O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E dot com slash Victor.

And if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge. OpenPhone, no missed calls, no missed customers.
Are you a yo-yo dieter? You diet, lose weight, but gain it all back, plus a few extra pounds, then later you lose it and regain it again and again. It's dangerous.
Studies show that can increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and other health problems. Breaking free of your yo-yo diet pattern is a main reason doctors created Lean.
Lean is a supplement, not an injection, and you don't need a prescription. The science behind lean is impressive.
It's studied natural ingredients target weight loss in three powerful ways. Lean helps maintain healthy blood sugar, it helps control appetite and cravings, and it helps burn fat by converting fat

into energy. Listen, if you're tired of losing weight and gaining it back, if you want to lose meaningful weight at a healthy pace, Lean was created for you.
Let me get you started with 20% off when you enter victor20 at takelean.com. That's code victor20 at takelean.com.
Welcome back. This is the Victor Davis Hanson Show.
You can find Victor at his X, at X, and his handle is at VD Hanson, and on Facebook at Hanson's Morning Cup. So, Victor, I was wondering just broadly if you had some reflections on what will be new in this administration of Trump that will be maybe different from the last administration.
You mean compared to Biden? No, I mean compared to Trump's earlier administration. We know he won't take money from the Chinese like the Biden consortium.
There's a lot of differences. When he came in in 2017, he said he'd only been to Washington, D.C.
17 times in his life. He said he had no interest in politics prior to that.
He didn't think, I don't think he thought, and this is speculation, but there is some accounts that support this exegesis. I don't think he thought he was going to win.
The polls had him down eight points, seven points. So when he won, he only had 90 days to have a team.
And the people around him didn't necessarily think they were going to win. It was a movement.
It was like tea party. It was sort of, we're going to get close, but he won.
So then all of these people in this uniparty deep state collapsed on him. And they said, look, we are the experts.
And so you've got Rex Tillerson and Jim Mattis and quote unquote anonymous, and they all offered their services, but they weren't on the same page. And a lot of them made the decision that Donald Trump is too uncouth for me.
I'm going to suffer reputational harm because the deep state doesn't like him. And I was always accepted by the deep state.
So I'll kind of wink and nod and either try to obstruct them or at a cocktail party said, you don't know what I'm putting up with at state. If it wasn't for me, we would do all sorts of things.
So I'm kind of a resistant. They had those people.
And then there was the other people who said, well, I don't like what he's doing, but I'll use my skills to help him, kind of. But he didn't have these people that he could count on.
In fact, they were obstructive. He wanted to build the wall.
He said, I'll use the Pentagon. The Pentagon said, I don't think so.
So the DOJ, they were below Jeff Sessions, all of those political. And the left was brilliant.
They say, you can't dare. They fire everybody who's Republican when they come in.
But they say, how dare you fire a professional prosecutor? Well, they do it all the time. But Trump was inexperienced.
So he had internal disloyalty, resistance. And he did a lot of great things.
But they ate up 20 months of his administration, and they went from collusion that was discredited to the first crazy impeachment, which was based on nothing. So this time, I don't think we all appreciate it.
He said, when we hit the ground, we only have four years, and we're going to get everybody on the same page. And we know what they're up to.
They're going to use the courts. They're going to leak.
So I want all of your employees to be loyal. I want you to fire people who are not on the same thing now.
And so it's a different attitude. So before is, I'm Donald Trump in 2017.
Mr. Trump, Homesland Security does not want to build the wall.
Mr. Trump, Secretary of State does not want to get out of the Iran deal.
Mr. Trump, the Pentagon says you shouldn't use that language about threatening NATO to make the 2%.
That was all day long. Now, it's 2025.
Mr. Trump, I got a better idea.
I think I can get this mega thing quicker than you even you thought. Oh, good, go ahead.
And it's a different climate. And that's going to make an enormous difference.
And the other thing is, I don't know how to say this without offending people or offending Trump. I don't mean to be, but I believe in kind of a divine province.
The Indian culture calls it karma. Greeks call it nemesis.

But... But I believe in kind of a divine province.
The Indian culture calls it karma. Greeks call it nemesis.
But there is a divine plan. And I had this idea, or I've been thinking about it, dreaming about it, that if you take away all the things Trump suffered in the interim, the 91 felony indictments, the two assassination attempts, getting them off the ballot, five different lawfare jurisdictional suits and indictment.
There is something positive about what happened for two reasons. One, we flipped over that card, that jack.
It was a one-eyed jack, not two, and we saw the other side.

So we had four years, and we were always thinking, well, they're kind of crazy. We saw how they were not crazy.
They were mean. It wasn't a porous border.
It was no border. It wasn't, well, we'll be a little permissive on crime.
It was no crime. We're not going to charge anybody.
We're going to go after the J6 people, but not the May, June, July riot. It was crazy.
And there is three genders. And if you don't say something, we're going to get you.
We're going to cancel you. We're going to shadow ban you.
We're going to de-platform you. We're going to check you.
All of that stuff. and we got a whole belly of it.
At the same time that was happening,

Donald Trump, because he was so targeted,

became an empathetic. People said, that's not right.
That's not right. They're just trying to get a mugshot.
They're just trying to use the term convicted felon. These crimes will never, ever be charged about any other person but Donald Trump.
And after they're over with, they will never use these laws again to anybody. And if Donald Trump had just said, I don't want to run, I'm tired, they wouldn't have invited.
This was the worst miscarriage. So what I'm getting at is he became a very empathetic figure, and he became much more experienced in that period.
And the left showed who they were, and they were despised. And all of that came together in this next term.
He's much more experienced. He's much more knowledgeable about the nature of his enemies and opponents.
He's got a lot more public empathy on his half. And there is a much greater disgust with the squad, with the Obamas, with Elizabeth Warren.
Just look at those confirmation hearings. That's who we have been run by the last four years, those crazy people that were screaming and yelling.
And so it all worked out in the end, I think. Yeah, and he seems to be somehow, I mean, maybe it was due to being shot at or nearly assassinated.
It does do that. A lot more circumspect and a lot more mellow, I guess.
Comparing a teeny weeny thing to a majestic thing, in 2007, I was in Benghazi and I had a little kind of sore abdomen. And I'd had it for about a year and the doctor said it could be chronic appendicitis.
And I was way, way from Tripoli with my Gaddafi minors and I had a burst appendix in Libya. And I had 105 temperature.
But the thing is, when you boost your appendix, you feel good for about five hours. So I didn't take care of it.
So by the time I got back to Tripoli, after lecturing on the mosaics, these Roman cities, it had been almost a day of a rupture. And I had 105 temperature and they just dumped me.
They didn't even go into the clinic. They just drove up.
It wasn't even a hospital. It was a Red Crescent.
And I went in there and the guy said to me, and he was an Iranian student studying in Libby. He said, you're going to die.
I said, why am I going to die? He said, you have a ruptured appendix. I can tell you that right now.
And he said, we have no surgeon. We don't even know how to take out appendixes.
We can take them out, but we've never taken in this clinic. I said, well, how about the hospital? But I was incoherent.
So you can't get in the hospital and you have to get an AIDS test. I said, well, where's the AIDS test? It's going to be not till tomorrow morning.
And if you're positive, you're going to go, we're going to take you out to a camp and you'll have to die out there. And I said, okay.
So I called my son. I think I'm going to die, but call this number.
And that's a long story. But my point is, then when the surgeon showed up in his pajamas, like almost a day later, he was asleep.
He'd been all up all night. He said, I can take it out, but I've never taken out a ruptured appendix.
But I can do it. I know how to do it.
But he said, I need an anesthesiologist. And I said, no anesthesiologist? He said, well, Qaddafi won't let us use opiates for painkiller either.
So you're going to have to have ether and no painkiller. Oh, no.
So he gave me the ether. I woke up three times.
They took out this appendix. It was jet black, gangrene.
He took out eight inches of the intestine. He said, I don't know if you're infected or not, but we don't have any antibiotics because your president put a blockade on pharmaceuticals.
It was during the Iraq war. And then all of a sudden I thought, wow, I'm going to die.
It was so stupid, Victor. Of all the ways to die, who would want to die if a ruptured appendix in Libya under Gaddafi? And it was all your own fault because you neglected every simple warning sign.
And the weird thing about it, you said about it makes effect on people. You know, religion is very private, but this Pakistani nurse was interpreting because the surgeon didn't, there was only two people.
There was a kitchen table, wood table basically with a pillow on it, and a Pakistani nurse who spoke a little English and the Egyptian surgeon. And she said, you should pray to Allah because it doesn't look good.
And I said, it came out of nowhere. I said, I'll pray to Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, and nothing ever happens to a person who tries to be good.
That was kind of from Socrates' apology. And she said, yes, he's a great prophet, Jesus.
Although when I woke up, it was pitch black. They put me in a room with no lights.
I thought I was in the inferno. I thought I died.
I was looking for a guy in a red union suit and horns and a forked tail or something, forked hooves and a tail. Then the surgeon came in and he held it up and he goes, look, look, it's your appendix.
It's black. It's all gone.
And I said, it's kind of big. Oh, that's some of your intestine, but I had to take it out.
You're going to be fine. Now all we need is antibiotics and we've called Americans.
There's some Americans. They're going to bring some, you know, and it was everything.
But that made a big impression. It still has made an impression on me.
Every single day, we all have to realize it could be our last. So you have to live it to the fullest.
Yeah. And that's what Trump is trying to do.
Yeah. He's starting a new age as a new man.
Think about it. He's just thinking if I had not turned my head, that crazy kid's bullet would have blown off my lower jaw and killed me.
And I would have probably got shot again as I fell down. And so he said, why did that not happen? And it would be very hard to be the same after that.
And so I think he's much more philosophical and resolved. He understands why people hate him.
It's not personal necessarily. It's just that he represents a revolutionary correction of madness.
And he feels he's almost divinely appointed. I don't think he's messianic at all, but he feels no one was going to stand up to the transgendered people, the open borders people, the globalists, the Davos people, the critical legal theory, critical race theory, and I'm going to do it.
And I don't really care what happens anymore. I've had a good life, and God will do what he wants to.
That's a very powerful motive. Well, let's turn to great men, and one of them is, of course, Martin Luther King.
We know that we just had Martin Luther King Day on Monday. Yeah, Jack and I talked about it.
Yeah, Jack talked about it. But there was a piece by Eli Steele.
He has a substat called The Man of Steele, and he writes all about, not all, but he writes about racial issues and those types of things. He's one of the producers of the documentary What Killed Michael Brown.
And his father had a white mother and a black father in the age of segregation in the 1950s, 1940s and 50s. And he was writing a piece, and he said, I didn't really feel like writing on Martin Luther King Day, But since everybody has it out there, I want to tell you about my father's reflections on having seen Martin Luther King.
And he says this, my father thought it would be segregation to the end of his days, and that race would be the dominant power in his life. But that afternoon, when he saw Martin Luther King, the power of King to inspire conviction and certitude for a better America in such a profoundly oppressed people made him, in my father's words, Christ-like.
Men like King come once every several hundred years. And I thought that was an interesting reflection on...
Well, Jack and I talked about Martin Luther King, and I mentioned that in March of 1965, my parents drove off the same farm that I'm sitting at and took us to Grace Cathedral, where he spoke. And it was so crowded that we were unfortunately the first people to be shut out in a long line.

Two-thirds of the people didn't get into the cathedral.

It was just packed.

The line snaked almost a mile, I think.

But she pushed me.

I almost fell down.

I was only, I think, 11.

Maybe I was 12 at that time.

No, I was 12, I guess.

And I heard him.

I heard his whole speech, and it made a profound impression on me, especially two messages.

One, as I mentioned with Jack, that whatever station you are allotted in life, you do the best so that people admire you for your professionalism.

So if you're a janitor, you're a tractor.

And that really, when I got a Ph.D., I was just ready to turn 26. I was 25.
And it was clear that I wasn't going to get a job. And I thought I'd done very well and got through the PhD program in four years.
Plus, I'd been at the American School in Athens. I had a thesis that was going to be published, but I couldn't get a job.
And rather than get bitter, I came back here, and I started to remember what Martin Luther King had said. And my mother was very similar in the attitude.
I said, I'm going to have to drive tractor and prune. And I tried – this is a confession I never mentioned.
I went to some rural grammar schools and offered my services as a part-time substitute teacher and could not be hired with a Ph.D. in classical languages from Stanford because they said I was overqualified and I would want too much money.
I said I just want to be able to come, you know, make $40 a day. But my point is this.
It was whatever you do, if you're going to drive a tractor, then drive it straight down the middle of the row. So you don't take out a vine.
And when you look at your job or when you're pruning, you want to look at that tree and say that is a piece of art. And that was a message.
The other thing that was really important about his messaging that I always took to heart was in a series of speeches, but he mentioned it at Grace the Keithville, that unlike the 1619th Project and unlike this hard left BLM movement, mostly very wealthy minorities or upscale minorities who dictate to everybody else the joy reads of the world, right? She makes two

million dollars a year. But my point is that they damn America for its sins.
And they, you know, 1770, now it's 1619, that kind of stuff. But if you read what he wrote, and I remember what he said it was an appeal to to Americans to live up to the promise of these brilliant founders who were white, but said in the declaration, all men are created equal in the face of God.
And there isn't anything in the Constitution about racial exclusion. There's that one passage about slavery, but not, you know, two-fifths, three-fifths, but not about race.
And King was saying, all of you people, we were all blessed as Americans to be the inheritors of this great constitutional idealism and the Declaration, and yet we haven't lived up to it because there's people that you do not consider fully human and fully equal. And so I appeal to you and I'll be a partner with you.
Let's reclaim the visions of the founders and what they did. And in other expositions, he was getting to the point where he said, and these were white men who could not even always live up to their own standards like Thomas Jefferson, but they were aspirational.
And they thought one day, everybody, everything in the Constitution and the Declaration will be reified. So it was always a call for an appeal, a Lincoln-esque appeal to the better angels of our nature.
It wasn't an angry. I know that later there was a change in King as the FBI surveillance mounted.
And as rumors leaked out of affairs or drinking and they were trying to destroy him and blackmailing him. He became very fatalistic.
And he said, you know, I don't think that the forces that are opposed to me are going to let me live. So when he would give a speech, he said, we're going to get to the mountain, but I might not get there with you.
So at the end of his life, it was very, it was kind of messianic that he had started this crusade, but either because of the forces of raid or his inability to always himself live up to a strict code, which would have been impossible given the pressures on him. But nevertheless, there were stories coming out about adultery, and I think that affected him.
And he understood that there might be a different role for him to play, but it wouldn't be there when the civil rights legislation was finally passed. Yeah.
Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and come back and talk a little bit about Biden's preemptive pardons. pardons.
Hi, I'm Kristen Bell. Carvana makes car buying easy.
Isn't that right, hon? Dax? Dax? Sorry, did you know about this seven-day money-back guarantee? A week to evaluate seat comfiness, you say? A week of terrain tests? Yeah, I can test the brake pad resistance at variable speeds. Make sure all the kids' stuff fits nicely.
Make sure our stuff fits nicely. Oh, the...
Right. Still need to buy the car.
Getting ahead of ourselves here. Buy your car with Carvana today.
Instacart is on a mission to have you not leave the couch this basketball season because between the pregame rituals and the postgame interviews, it can be difficult to find time for everything else. So let Instacart take care of your game day snacks or weekly restocks and get delivery

in as fast as 30 minutes, because we hear it's bad luck to be hungry on game day.

So download the Instacart app today and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees apply for three orders in 14 days, excludes restaurants.

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson show. You can find Victor at his website, victorhanson.com.
It's called the Blade of Perseus. And again, we have new prices, $6.50 a month or $65 a year.
So please come join us there. Well, Biden has given out his preemptive pardons.
First off, I would like to ask you just, is that unusual for a president? And then to address all of the ones, Fauci, Liz Cheney, Milley, his family. It's only been done one time.
I don't know if you remember, but Trump said before all of the January 6th people were even pardoned, he thought about preemptively pardoning them. And you can go on and see on record what people said, like Adam Schiff and others.
Oh, you can't do that. That would be destroying the country.
That's exactly what they did. There's only one person that ever did that.
And that was Jerry Ford said that I pardoned Richard Nixon for any crime that he has committed up to this point or will surface, but not new crimes. The thing to remember about these preemptive pardons are three things.
One, when they say, I don't want to take it or I won't, they don't have a choice. If they say, I don't want it, it doesn't matter.
It's law.

It's law.

They're pardoned. Number two, if they can't for any crime in which they are asked to give testimony, they cannot invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Because they can't – there's no such thing as self-incrimination jeopardy because they're pardoned. However, a preemptive pardon are for information that surfaces that implies criminality or legal exposure after but in association with the crimes before the pardon.
So you don't get a pardon for things you do after. So what do I mean by that in practical terms? If somebody says, I found out, say next year, somebody says, well, you know what? It just came out.
I found a check by Jim Biden. And eight years ago, he wrote a check to Joe Biden, and he put Chinese disbursement on it.

You can't charge him for that. However, if you ask him in the here and now, a year from now,

did you write that check? And he denies it, and it can be proven he's guilty, then he's guilty,

and they hear a now of perjury. So how do you, what does that distill down to? The House and

maybe prosecutors will look at other people who have not been pardoned, and are in investigation

Thank you. So how do you, what does that distill down to? The House and maybe prosecutors will look at other people who have not been pardoned or an investigation, and they're going to bring in these people, the Bidens, or maybe about the Wuhan lab, they'll bring in Fauci.
And they're going to ask them questions, and they're not going to be able to say, I refuse the testament to self-incrimination. but if they don't tell the truth, they're committing a real-time perjury.
And I think there's going to be a lot of legal exposure. And I think it will have the effect of wanting to investigate these people.
And the other thing is, these are not theoretical crimes. I mean, there was $4 million in income that he was originally pardoned for.
And you add it all up and we can trace almost $5 million that Hunter Biden didn't pay taxes on. And then if any of you go into Walmart or Target or Big Five and buy a pistol and you lie on a federal affidavit, and that comes to the attention of the guy, they're going to go after you.
It's not just everybody says, well, they don't, they do, they do enforce that. And when you, believe me, everybody, if you want to give $200,000 in income to your brother and you don't want to pay gift tax on it and you don't want him to pay income tax if it's not a gift or whatever and you write disbursement, the IRS is not going to go for that.

Just because you write it doesn't make it true.

You've got to prove it.

You have to have a formal loan application. I mean, a document that shows you that it is a loan, and it's a loan repayment.
But I shouldn't say disbursement, a payback. So all of these people have really abused the law.
They've committed felonies, and it's highly ironic that they kept calling Donald Trump a convicted felon. The other thing about the January 6th committee, Liz Cheney is now on the attack again.
But Liz, with all due respect, you did call up a witness and you did call her up on the presumption that her lawyer was not in the room and you would be talking to her. And you did talk about methodologies of her testimony.

And under most state jurisprudence, you were tampering with a witness.

So if I'm a witness that saw a murder and the defense attorney calls up and say,

Victor, is your lawyer there?

No.

Well, look, I'm going to call you as a witness. And here's my strategy.
Here's what I want you to be. You can't do that.
And if you have all of the records, she said that's all there. Well, if it's, I don't think it's all there.
They found recordings that are not in transcripts that are missing. And so she had criminal exposure.
And so this preemptive pardoning, the only thing it did is it also made a sad president, as I wrote, sadder because he is a pathological liar. He said on six occasions, you're going to pardon? No, I wouldn't pardon Hunter.
The first thing he said when he took office in 2021, they asked him, President Biden, and they always ask him in this fashion, you know that Donald Trump is thinking of preemptive pardons in the last moment.

I just don't think that's a bad idea.

You don't just run out of the door and just preemptive pardons.

No, I wouldn't do that.

I'd never do that.

This administration is not going to be doing anything.

That's exactly what they did. But they did it.
If you look at a graph of all the presidential pardons from Harry Truman on and you add them all up, they don't equal Joe Biden's. He pardoned Peltier, the person who murdered two FBI agents.
He killed a Virginia murderer who killed a law enforcement officer. I don't understand the purpose of it.
And I say he, he didn't. They just handed him.
He has no idea what he's doing. But it really, it did a lot of things.
I mean, now you would think that by pardoning the January 6th people, they'd go hysterical. Have you noticed that today when I'm speaking on it, Tuesday, nobody's talking about that in the left.
And the only people that are are people like Tim Kaine or some senators who say, well, you know, now that I kind of think about it, I can't really say that I'm angry about the preemptive pardons that Donald Trump is giving for the January 6th because Joe Biden set the precedent. And he took my – cut my legs right out from under me.
And he just jailed those people the entire four years. I've never been tried.
They've been in jail. You see the pictures of some of them? They're in boxer shorts laying on the cement floor.
And then you have to juxtapose that with May, June, July, August, September, October 2020. 14,000 arrests.
99% let go. 35 people killed, murdered, $2 billion in damages, what, 1,500 police officers attacked and injured? And then you have to juxtapose that.
If that was really an armed insurrection, why did they not find anybody with a firearm in the Capitol? Why did they have to hide Officer Byrd's identity for lethally shooting

an unarmed woman, which is a misdemeanor for entering a broken window? Why did Mr. Ray now,

just now, tell us there were 23 affiliated informants or people attached to the FBI?

Just what Matthew Rosenberg had said, the New York Times reporter, that, hey, everybody, what was the big deal? I saw all the FBI informants that I work with, you know, as a reporter. And so they didn't want to – why did Nancy Pelosi have to lie and say there were five officers killed? Killed, not died, killed.
When four of them committed suicide for various causes, weeks, days, months afterwards. And why the only person who did die in direct association from the events, Officer Sicknick, died of natural causes, and yet they told everybody he was murdered.
The only people who died were Trump supporters with the exception of Officer Sicknick. The only person who died violently was a Trump

person who had she been accorded the George Floyd treatment in the United States that when a law and a law enforcement officer and it was much more egregious than George Floyd. Excuse me, because I know everybody's going to write me an email.
Yes, you're right. It was much more egregious.
He shot an unarmed woman who other people who were armed in the room did not think posed an existential threat.

She had no arms. She had no knife, nothing.
And when George Floyd was killed, and we can argue about whether his neck was pressed or not, given the conflicting autopsies post facto. The point is that we had Officer Chauvin's picture in what, real time? Seconds? And he was in mortal danger.
We learned everything about all the officers. Officer Byrd, no.
That's what the left does. When Trump says fake news, fake news, he's got a point.
He's actually right. And so, some of these people were put in preventive detention.
It was almost like the archipelago of Solzhenitsyn. It was just a gulag.
And they just tried to punish him. And it was horrible what happened.
It was the counterpart to what they did to Trump with these five, E. Jean Carroll, Fannie Willis, Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, Latita James, miscarriage of justice.
On to another subject. Did you see that Bishop, Episcopal Bishop, Marianne Boudet or Bud, I'm not sure how she pronounces her last name, but give her sermon while Trump and his family were sitting there and then turn to him personally and say he needs to have mercy because immigrants and transgendered and LGBT community and others are afraid of him.
No, I would tell her, I would have said if I was in the room, I said, shame, shame, shame on you. 80,000 people die.
You don't care anything about fentanyl that's disguised as Valium, it's disguised as painkillers, coding tablets, deliberately sent into this country by the cartels across an open border.

There are 300,000 unaccounted children that came in. We have no idea where they are.
They were trafficked for the most part. You don't care about that at all with an open border.
There are 500,000 estimated felons, rapists, killers, thieves that were brought in from South America, Latin America, Mexico, and nobody has any idea where they are. And you don't care one whit that there are people in Hispanic communities and black communities and poor white communities that can't go to their dialysis appointment.
They can't go to the urologist. They can't go to, because it's flooded with 12 million people who overtax all of the facilities that you, Bishop, never have to use because you are of a social economic class that has access to health care.
You should come into the San Joaquin Valley and try to go to a doctor when you have thousands of illegal aliens swamping the system. These people are really culpable people.
And they're so, even the Pope was very sanctimonious. You know, he was, everybody lectures Donald Trump.
They didn't lecture Barack Obama when he had cages. They didn't lecture Joe Biden about the 300,000.
They only, they're not principled moral people. They're political activists, and they have an agenda.
And if she didn't have an agenda, she would have said the same thing to Biden during the inauguration if she was there, but she wouldn't. The inaugural ball and festivities had all sorts of people that were dressed in absolutely stunning gowns and out for the night.
Lying in a helicopter hat.

And there was one person that was the most interesting of all the dressers in the inauguration itself, and that was Fetterman, who came in his gym shorts and sneakers and hoodie on as well. The audacity of the guy to show up for that.
I don't know why he does that. I mean, I can't really speak because I'm not well-dressed.
As my father once told me, when I first got my job, I had no clothes. I was farming.
I had Levi's torn T-shirts. I went up to teach, and he heard about it from somebody, and he arrived in my office with polyesterester suits and I said, Dad, I'm not on the love boat.
Oh, harsh. But he gave me these ridiculous, Bruce Thornton, who was a colleague of mine, he said, this isn't the Brady Bunch, mister.
So anyway, I can't talk, but I don't know the logic behind the shorts. Is it because he's kind of overweight and he wants to hide his girth? There's other ways to do it.
Or is it just he's a natural slob? Or is it because he just feels comfortable in it? Or does he realize that, like, Trump's comb hair and orange skin, that's his trademark now. And not to do that would be...
Counterintuitive. This is about the only country where nobody cares.
You know what I mean? Yes, I do. I was in that mood for 20 years when I was farming.
I deliberately underdressed when I went to school. I don't think I wore a tie.
And then I started as I got older. I remember my parents echoing my head.
You treat people with respect, and one of the ways you show it is by the way you dress. That's true.
I hadn't thought of that, but I remember that warning. And I wasn't a very good dresser.
I don't have, I don't think I've ever bought a suit that matched maybe one in my life. So I always,

I And I wasn't a very good dresser. I don't think I've ever bought a suit that matched maybe one in my life.
So I always, a pretty well-known politician said to me once, when are you going to update from your Costco wardrobe? I had a pair of Costco Hager pants on Okay, we won't expect commentary

on all the other dressers who were all

very stunning looking

so it was a fascinating inaugural day, lots of festivities. So, Victor, we're at the end of our podcast and we are in our videocast.
And I have an observation made by a reader at your website. And I thought it was interesting about nuclear weapons and your thoughts on this.
He says, Twitter is the name, the handle that he goes by. Hopefully Trump will realize the U.S.
has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world a few times over. The country doesn't need new multi-billion dollar weapons systems and a three million plus manned military to defend the country.
The U.S. was last invaded by Great Britain in 1812.
I was wondering your thoughts. Well, we have somewhere between 6,000 and 7,000 deliverable nuclear weapons.
Not all those are ready to be launched. And we roughly have parity with the Soviet Union, former Soviet Union.
They may have 7,000. And China is now billing them.
They used to have about 300. I think they're up to 1,500.
And they want to get up to our level. So I thought that too for much of my life.
And then at one point, this is interesting, very quickly, I said, Obama had said that we're going to reduce it to, I think, 1,500 and then down to 500 deliverable weapons. And these range from a Hiroshima 18 to 20 kilotons to a megaton or more.
The biggest bomb I think that was ever was the mother of all bombs dropped by the Russians. I think it was 50 megatons.
It was inconceivable. Wow, that's amazing.
Thousands of 2,000 Hiroshima's at once. Scary.
But here's my point. So I wrote something about how many nuclear weapons do we need.
And it's not the number, it's deterrence. So I just forgot about it.
I gave a talk in Carmel, Carmel, California. And it was on farming.
And there was a very strange person in the audience who had a very well-dressed suit. And he was from South Korea.
And he came up to me, and he had a very lavish gift. And so, I went to have coffee with him after my talk.
And he was a member of the Korean Armed Forces, very high. And he said, you were writing things that are very dangerous to our interest.
So, he got a piece of paper, and he pulled it out. And he says, you have 1,500 deliverable weapons.

I said, yes.

He said, now, how many do you need to detour for the United States so Russia doesn't attack you?

And he wrote down maybe 1,000.

In other words, if they know you can hit 1,000 targets of their military bases in cities, they'll leave you alone.

I said, what?

He said, how many in China?

I never thought of things in such a fashion. And he said, it's bigger than Russia.
They have more cities, maybe 1,000. I said, yes.
Now, how about Japan? And I said, I don't know. 50, 60 would deter people? And he said, how about Australia? And he went through all the European countries.
And then he said, how about Canada? And how about Mexico? And I said, who's counting? He said, everybody is counting. They know that.
North Korea knows exactly how many nuclear weapons the United States would put at the disposal, not actual use, but pledge them to protect South Korea in a nuclear conflagration.

If you don't want us to gain nuclear weapons, then you better have them pledged to the defense

of South Korea.

If you think about that, he's got a point.

The other point is, very quickly, and I'm doing this extemporaneous because I didn't

know what you were going to ask, but the history of military affairs is challenge, response, counter-response, counter-counter. And those are long periods of history.
I'll give you one example. You have stone walls in antiquity.
Somewhere around 340, there was the invention of not just catapults, but torsion catapults that were human hair twisted and then wound back. So you had power stored in the catapult and those projectiles could knock down a wall.
And suddenly all of those impressive classical fortifications were rendered by Philip of Macedon and Alexander useful, useless. So when he went into Thebes in 335, he destroyed the city's walls in one day with torsion catapult.
However, there was a response to it. And soon people began to make an outer wall stone face and then fill it with dirt, maybe eight feet deep,

that would absorb the shock and then have an interior stone wall.

So when the next generation of Hellenistic besiegers tried to use the torsion catapult

and hit a city wall, it might make a hole in the stone facing and some dirt would come,

but it could not penetrate.

So my point is, it's never static. So we think nuclear weapons, that's the end of all things.
Beside the fact that nobody can use them because they're afraid of nuclear escalation into the end of everything, it doesn't mean you're not going to have war. More people have died after the invention of the atomic bomb than

during world war ii in conflicts because everybody says you can't use them or the other person will use them the second thing though is as crazy as this sound i don't think that the history of response counter-response given it's predicated on human nature is the end of history. So what we're already talking about, field-grade lasers.
We saw the whole dynamic changing as we saw with the 500 projectiles against Iran. Prior to those attacks on Israel from Iran, there was the idea that Israel had to be very careful because one nuclear weapon would wipe it out, and the chances of stopping a hypersonic missile were nil.
Suddenly, with their multi-layered iron dome facilities of low-level, medium-level, high-level, augmented by the United States, they had a multi-dimensional anti-missile system. So 98% of those projectiles didn't get through.
And you can see if those were improved faster than the rate of improvement on missiles, then you would get to a situation when augmented by lasers and artificial intelligence that maybe people would say, well, they have bombs, but you can't deliver them because you can knock them down or blow them up in their face. Or you can tell the Iranians.
I think there was a report out that about 10% of the projectiles never left the launching pad. They were defective or they were incompetently administered.
So my point is nuclear weapons are not the end of everything. We're going to find an anti-nuclear weapon, and then we're going to find an anti-anti-nuclear weapon.
And it's going to go on for history. So my point is that you want to have more offensive weapons than the enemy to create deterrence.
And you want to have a better defensive system than the enemy. So I know this sounds crazy because 400 nuclear weapons will destroy a nation's modern, turn it back into the Stone Age if it hit the right network and infrastructure.
But the absurd idea that you have 800 rather than 400 will give you additional deterrence. It doesn't sound possible, but human nature is being what it is.
It does. It really does.
What about his second point on the numbers of personnel needed in a military? Is there any short answer to that or is that long? Well, he gauged the number of people in the military based on the protection of the homeland. And that is a tenet of the MAGA philosophy that we avoid optional military and gainness abroad and we just protect the homeland.
But Donald Trump bombed ISIS because although he was a MAGA creator, he said that we need proactive defense of the homeland. And he couched that attack on ISIS by using U.S.
air power based in Turkey, based in the Middle East, and based on Syrian airfields where there was 20 U.S. installations.
There's U.S. installations in Jordan, I think the planes.
And his theory was after 9-11 and when we saw the Taliban offering sanctuary to bin Laden and he took out the World Trade Center and killed 3,000 Americans. And he did what the Japanese, the Germans, the Italians in World War II and nobody in World War I had ever done and nobody's ever done since.
Create a major attack on the continental United States. Only the Japanese had done it at Pearl Harbor on the extra continental.
But after that, Trump was saying, I have to destroy ISIS, and I will take out Soleimani, and I will take out Baghdadi, and I will put maximum pressure. And to do just what I outlined, you need thousands of troops.
And whether we like it or not, there's all these countries, some of them are, I don't know what the word is, they're conniving, and they're using us to defend them, and they won't pay their 2% GDP for NATO, but not all of them. And they really do think that China or Russia would bully them with nuclear weapons unless they gave concessions.
And wait to the – the only reason that the Philippines and Australia and Taiwan and Japan and South Korea are free, independent, autonomous countries, is not because China is afraid of their military forces. It's because they all have agreements with the United States that protects them, and they protect them under their nuclear shield.
And that's a scary thought when you get down to the reductionists that we pledge American cities to protect them. And we do it by conventional forces that are...
You know, my father, I've never been to the Mariana Islands, but he always told me graphically what Tinian was like. And he was based there on a B-29 313 wing.
And lo and behold, somebody sent me a video the other day. Yes, in the United States.
Wow, that's cool. It is.
The United States has now uncovered those jungle. I mean, they showed a picture of a guy with a machete and he was going through there with a GPS.
Where are these airfields of crushed coral? And he found them. They found them and they went in and cleared them all out, and all those B-29

runways are reappearing on Tinian. Why? Because they realize that if we get in a war with China, or we're forced to protect our friends from China, our aircraft carriers are going to last about an hour because of their huge numbers of shore to sea missiles.

You know, how can you stop 5,000 missiles, you know, going two inches above the ocean at night aimed at a carrier? But they're taking these strategic assets and they're dispersing them over all these bases, and one of them is Tinian. And that makes sense.
If you have 30 F-35s here, 40 there, you don't have, you know, one big base in Japan or Okinawa or something. So it's never ending.
And that requires, I think he, I praise the writer because he's trying to say, isn't there an end to this? And that's what Trump's point is. He's trying to go from nation building, interventionist, imperialist, whatever you want to call it.
And he doesn't want to be isolationist because he knows what happens in history when you're isolationist. But he wants to be Jacksonian.
And that means don't screw around with the United States. We take care of our friends.
We don't take care of the UN. We don't take care of the EU necessarily.
We take care of our NATO partners and our friends in Asia and maybe some of the North. And that's it.
So don't screw with us because we have overwhelming power and we will hurt you if you try. And that keeps the peace.
Yeah. So you foresee in the future that the U.S.
military will not change in size in terms of personnel and the soldiers? Well, I think it's getting smaller. I think with the increase on reliance on robotics and drones and AI, you'll see fewer and fewer human people fighting.
I think you'll have robotics, submarine ships, drones. You'll never eclipse a need for humans.
Of course you have to have them. But the idea we're going to have a million men on an infantry battlefield, I don't think it's going to happen.
Well, I shouldn't say that. I just said that history never ends.
We'll find uses of them, but I don't know if we're going to need 3 million people. But we should point out that after saying that, the determinative factor right now in the Ukraine war, there's been 1.7 million dead, wounded, and missing two years.
we're coming up to February 24th. So that's all 22, all 23, all 24, three years.
And the determining factor on who's winning or losing is not just a dearth of armored vehicles, a dearth of manpower. They've killed too many Ukrainians, and they're running out of manpowerpower and the Russians are running at least out of 18 to 25 year old Russians that are willing to fight.
So manpower counts. It really does.
It does. It's a lost generation.
And that's what worries me. I don't want to, just to finish, I don't want to give it away, but I was at a conference in a non-disclosed location, and I made the statement that I was worried that we were 40,000 soldiers short.
And I said I had trouble finding Pentagon data to find out where those shortages were most egregious in terms of recruitment. And the military does have figures on diversity,

not for diversity mandates.

And it looks to me, if you look at the data,

that African Americans are pretty much represented

at 13% to 16% that Hispanics the same

and women are starting to get parity. I think there's a quarter million, not yet, but there is one group that is falling off.
White males were over, they represent about 33 percent of the population and they are overrepresented in the military. But more importantly, contrary to the mythologies of Vietnam and everything from the left, they died, as I've often said, at twice their numbers in the demographic.
And so when you look at them, they're not there. They're not joining.
Multi-generational families. So I mentioned that, and everybody kind of looked at me like, you use the word white? You're not supposed to do that.
You're supposed to say middle class.

And I made the further suggestion to this undisclosed location and undisclosed group and unaffiliated to me, I was a guest, that I thought, in speculation, the causes of that shortfall in this demographic were not what I was being told anecdotally by members of the highest echelons of the military. I had been told, well, you're sorely mistaken, Victor.
They are not joining because of a wide transracial that transcends race.

They're too obese or they're tattooed or they're gang members or they have criminal records or uh we're competing with the private sector and a 3.5 percent unemployment they're all legitimate but that's not the reason because those are with had been with us for years they were. So why now? And I said, encounter, and I said this again at the meeting, I would suggest it is when you deliberately cashier 8,500 people out of the military who had COVID natural immunity because they didn't want to get the vaccination or they got it and refused to get a booster.
And the majority of those were white males. Or you tell people in front of the nation, as General Milley did and General Austin did, that you were now going through the ranks post-George Floyd to look for white rage, white privilege, and white supremacy, and rumors that there were cabals of such segregationist races, and you were recommending that people read, which I think is a total bankrupt piece of crap, but Professor Kendi's work.
And then you implement that in reality, DEI, and that governs promotion, retention, and recruitment. And so if you're a young person who's a major, and you think, you earned the impression, I'm not saying it's accurate, but if you're an artillery officer and you believe that you will be promoted, not on the basis that your unit hitting the target, say in a GPS artillery platform again and again, but on the basis of how many women or minorities you had in your field, you're going to react in a certain way of discomfort, especially

if you were an excellent officer and your artillery unit had the best record of hitting

the target of any comparable unit, but you didn't have the demographics to match what

they wanted, and you're not going to get promoted, and that's going to filter through the ranks.

All of those things then account for this shortfall.

And you know what I was met with? Derision. That they met all the requirements.
They met all the requirements. And they met all the requirements because they lowered the requirements.
In other words, if you go look carefully, the numbers of people they felt were necessary to operate an efficient military mysteriously began to shrink to the actual numbers of people who signed up. Whereas before, they had independently adjudicated how many people they needed and then they recruited to meet that goal.
and they didn't meet that goal. So whether they admit year and year after failure, they began adjusting that goal downward to meet the actual numbers of people they had.
So military, I don't know how to say it because I really admire military officers, especially captains to generals. And as I said, I was embedded a couple of times, and I feel sometimes that H.R.
McMaster I was embedded with one time was very protective, and I owe a lot of my safety to him. But they are very sensitive.
I don't mean him in particular, but military officers are very sensitive to criticism, very sensitive. They do not want to talk about it.
And I don't know why that is, and they disparage people who bring it to their attention. And so I've had a kind of a revelation where I used to kind of idolize military officers, but I've had so many who've confronted me in harsh language and stuff.
Well, I mean, it probably might have an impact on their careers, so they get worried. They're in a possible position, I understand that.
But it's not going to change unless you speak out. The thing I don't quite understand is, from what I've read and the people I've spoken to, the most unpopular person is Pete Hexeth among

four-star. Not rank and file, but one to four-stars, flag officers, admirals in general,

they don't like him because he says they don't have dust on their boots or they're not in the

front lines or they're not, you know, Sherman or somebody riding to war at the front of the

vanguard or whatever. But he's very unpopular.
And I feel like I'd like to see him have a chance to

Thank you. riding to war at the front of the vanguard or whatever.
But he's very unpopular, and I feel like I'd like to see him have a chance to reformulate the military, get rid of DEI, get rid of the political general, get rid of the undue influence of Washington onto the Pentagon. And he's basically right that the left looks at the Pentagon.
They used to hate it. And then they said about 10 years ago, wait a minute.
It's not democratic. It's chain of command.
Wow. We don't have to go through Congress and pass legislation.
We'll just get our president or we'll make some kind of ordinance and we'll tell them you're going to have DEI. And then they can just right through the chain of command in dictatorial fashion.
We like the military because of issues of transgendered and DEI and EV vehicles and biofuels. We don't want to mess around with the general economy.
We can go to the military and tell them, you know what? You want to get promoted? You want to have a life in the military, all good things happen when you do what we tell you. And because it's kind of a rah-rah macho thing, it has to be.
It's really difficult for a warfighter then to have to make those compromises to survive and be promoted. And out of that frustration, they get very sensitive.
So if you suggest to an author, sir, you guys are completely inundated with DI,

they get very angry.

And I can understand their frustration.

Yeah.

Well, Victor, we are at the end of our videocast podcast.

We would like to thank our audience for coming,

and thank you for the discussion of the new era we've just entered. Novus Ordo Seclorum.
Yes, and we have great hopes for it. I think everybody does.
Everybody's been saying it's palpable in the air. Yes, I almost did YMCA dance to the TV, and there was nobody in the room, but I thought, no, not quite there yet.
I might get there. All right.
Well, thanks to the audience. Thanks to you.
This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis-Anson, and we're signing off. Thank you, everybody, for listening.
It's much appreciated. Happy New Year.
Before you go, you may want to hear this urgent financial alert that could affect your retirement savings. The recent Doge investigation findings should concern every American with retirement savings.
As government investigators continue to uncover billions in fraud and economic manipulation, financial experts are warning of potential market instability ahead. Throughout Throughout history, physical precious metals have served as a reliable source of value during economic uncertainty.
When paper assets falter, gold has consistently maintained its worth. If you're worried about what the coming fraud economy correction might mean for your retirement, American Alternative Assets has prepared a free wealth protection guide specifically addressing these concerns.
This comprehensive resource explains how a modest allocation to physical gold could help shield your hard-earned savings from the economic turbulence that many analysts now predict. Call 833-2-USA-GOLD or visit

victorlovesgold.com today to request your complimentary guide. You'll discover why the current economic climate may present an ideal opportunity to diversify with precious metals.
That's 833-287-2465 or victorlovesgold.com.

Protect your wealth, secure your legacy while

there's still time.