The Promise of Trump

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Speaker 3 Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen.
Welcome to the Victor Davis-Hansen Show. I'm Jack Fowler, the host.

Speaker 3 You are here to get some wisdom from the great man himself, VDH, Victor Davis-Hanson, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayna Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

Speaker 3 Victor has a website, The Blade of Perseus.

Speaker 3 What's the VictorHanson.com is the address

Speaker 3 Victor's alive still? We see him.

Speaker 2 I am.

Speaker 3 Those on Rumble can see him. He's actually alive.

Speaker 2 I don't look alive, but I think I'm alive. It's day nine of my flu, and I'm getting a lot of recommendations.
You should have taken Tamiflu, Victor. I'm sorry I didn't.
I didn't get a prescription.

Speaker 2 Somebody, a very good friend of mine who's a renowned doctor, said,

Speaker 2 Your cough

Speaker 2 is a bacterial remnant from the viral infection. Take a ZPAC.
He said he did. He was over his cough in one day.
I've had it for nine days, so I respect that.

Speaker 2 Completely wiped out, still

Speaker 2 angry at myself, looking at the ceiling, re-examining my entire life before me,

Speaker 2 making radical changes, and then coming to the conclusion that I've had pretty good health the last six years, except I've had three COVIDs and two flus, and they all had one thing in common.

Speaker 2 What? Long flights.

Speaker 2 and long flights and then going into huge receptions and book signings and meet and greet so 71 I am if I ever get over this I am going to have a new leaf no more speaking out of state no more traveling out of state comfortable

Speaker 2 existence in California how's that

Speaker 3 I guess I'm gonna have to go out there every once in a while yes you're gonna have to come out and see I'm gonna make a self a compound I'll bring a flatbed truck and I can pick up some washing machines and drinks.

Speaker 2 It's very insidious how things do. My mother, who died tragically at 66 of a brain tumor, when she was 65, she was working as an appellate court judge like a dog.

Speaker 2 And she was trying to help us on a money-losing ranch, 180 acres. And she once said something, and she goes, at the rate that I'm going, I will have to work to 70.

Speaker 2 And I thought of that yesterday. I'm 71, so

Speaker 2 my dad retired from his junior college job at 57. He went and worked on the farm, but he lived to be 76,

Speaker 2 and he was a heavy drinker and smoker.

Speaker 3 There's some hobbies you can pick up,

Speaker 2 Victor.

Speaker 3 I'm going to ask you about smoking.

Speaker 2 Oh, I can, my father gave me a lifelong lecture that he would always say to me very politely, do not smoke. Asterisk, your twin brother smokes, your older brother smokes, I smoke.

Speaker 2 When the flu comes, you and you alone get the flu.

Speaker 2 And then I've seen some

Speaker 2 isolated theories that the nicotine fumes are an antiviral in your lungs. But whether that's worth the damage it does, I don't know.
But I've never smoked a cigarette.

Speaker 2 I've smoked two cigarettes in my life.

Speaker 3 You answered the question I was going to ask.

Speaker 2 They were both cools. I was 18 and I was at Yale University taking,

Speaker 2 what do you call it?

Speaker 2 Intensive Greek for nine weeks.

Speaker 2 I got strep throat, by the way, and I was walking down the street and an African-American young man wanted one dollar. I gave him one dollar.
He gave me two cool cigarettes in exchange.

Speaker 2 I went back and I smoked one of them.

Speaker 2 It just reminded me of Vic's Vapor Rub.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was menthol. Yeah, delicious.

Speaker 2 That's the last time I ever smoked. All right.

Speaker 3 Well, I'm going to ask Victor about a pipe, and we'll do that when I come back, when we come back from these initial important messages.

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Speaker 3 We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show. By the way, we're recording on Saturday the 15th, and this particular episode will be up on Tuesday, March 18th, which is the day after St.

Speaker 3 Patrick's Day and the day before St. Joseph's Day.
And later on, Victor, at the end of the show, I'll do a little Catholic, Irish-Italian, Catholic riff.

Speaker 2 Did you ever smoke a pipe? Nope. Never? I had a professor, a very wonderful professor, John Lynch.

Speaker 2 I met him when he was 26, and he smoked a pipe.

Speaker 2 And a lot of the

Speaker 2 graduate and undergraduates emulated him. So he would have people over to his home, and they would have red wine and they would all smoke these various Irish brands.
He was Irish.

Speaker 2 Blends of. He died very tragically at 75 of Parkinson's disease.

Speaker 3 But he was a smoke.

Speaker 2 That was a big thing in the

Speaker 2 70s on campuses, pipe smoking. Pipes, yeah.

Speaker 2 Professors, you know, it was kind of like total.

Speaker 2 They had little patches on their sport coats and all sorts of pipe pipe cleaners and wire rimmed glasses and beards and natty dress. No, underdressed, I'd say.
But he was a wonderful professor.

Speaker 2 I really liked him. But I never got, I never,

Speaker 2 it's something that my father, who was a wonderful person, would kid me, you know, about you don't drink, you don't smoke, I never use drugs. And

Speaker 2 the result was

Speaker 2 I was kind of sickly my entire. When I was a kid, I was known as the sickly child.

Speaker 2 Pumped through antibiotics all the time.

Speaker 2 And then I've had, I think, six or seven, but it's always, my mom always said you overdo it, you sleep about four or five hours and you're kind of crazy, so you self-induced. I don't know.

Speaker 3 You've proven with all these COVID bouts and other

Speaker 3 burdens you've had to bear, you, again, I say you're indestructible, Victor. By the way, you know who is not indestructible?

Speaker 2 Who?

Speaker 3 Abdallah Maki Mosley al-Rifey, also known as Abu Khadija, the head head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He was killed by a joint effort by the Iraqi government and the United States.
So

Speaker 3 that's a good one. Yes?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, that's what Trump said he was going to do the first term. I'm going to bomb the proverbial SH

Speaker 2 out of ISIS. He did.
He got rid of Soleimani. He got rid of Baghdadi.
He got rid of the Wagner group. He got very little credit for that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, the question is, why was he operating with impunity under the four years of the Biden administration? And the answer to that is,

Speaker 2 well, why was the Yemenis taking control of the Red Sea with impunity? Or

Speaker 2 why did we allow a Chinese balloon to go all the way to South Carolina before we shot it down? Or why were there two theater-wide wars under the Biden watch?

Speaker 2 I only mention that because I'm getting really tired of listening to all of this hysteria from the left.

Speaker 2 We've only been here eight weeks with the Trump counterrevolution, and it's like,

Speaker 2 oh my god, he deported somebody. Well, what do you think is the reason for that? Who led in 12 San Francisco?

Speaker 2 You people did. 12 of them.
12 one million person cities.

Speaker 2 And out here on ground zero, you could see the difference, whether it was an increase in people throwing trash or people

Speaker 2 gang activity

Speaker 2 or as happened three days ago, two huge dogs just dumped out of a car wandering into our yard.

Speaker 2 The system isn't ready for that shock. And it wasn't 12 million dispersed over the continental United States.

Speaker 2 It was 12 million people flown into particular locales along the Texas-Mexican border, in the San Joaquin Valley, in the inner city. It wasn't the people in Malibu, and it wasn't the people in

Speaker 2 Newport, Rhode Island. It was the other people who bore the consequences of their policies.
And the same thing is true of the Sorrels crime wave.

Speaker 2 The same thing was true of borrowing $7 trillion and getting a hyper 9% inflation in 2022. The same thing was true of what we're learning from USAID.

Speaker 2 So I guess what I'm saying, Jack, is what is the alternative?

Speaker 2 He's cut off

Speaker 2 $100 billion.

Speaker 2 That's nothing. Nothing.
We are borrowing $3 billion a day in interest. $3 billion.
That would mean that every single day, before Elon Musk can cut anything, he has to cut $3 billion

Speaker 2 to make up for the interest,

Speaker 2 which is about over a trillion dollars. And then he's only done $100 billion and the country is falling apart.

Speaker 2 So what was the alternative? Same thing about the Ukraine thing. You can't do that.

Speaker 2 You shouldn't do this. That's naive.
That won't work. Okay.

Speaker 2 What was the plan before Donald Trump? He didn't start the war. The war occurred because Joe Biden, like Barack Obama, lost deterrence and

Speaker 2 signaled that he wouldn't do anything. So then Putin went in.

Speaker 2 Maybe a million, a million and a half dead, wounded, and missing. What is the alternative when all these people are screening? He's naive.

Speaker 2 I like the Wall Street Journal, Jack, but have you noticed that almost every article is negative now in the news section? I was looking at it today. It said

Speaker 2 people cutting back.

Speaker 2 delaying trips, cutting back. And then there's a little article below that says gas prices.
I'm thinking another one is people sneaking in eggs from Mexico. And I thought,

Speaker 2 well, why don't you just have a little article that say egg prices have dropped $2 a dozen since Donald Trump was elected, rather than saying that there's an egg shortage or it was why not say it was caused under Biden and it's getting better.

Speaker 2 But they never do that. And then they said, people worried about prices and cutting back.
And why don't you say, Actually, gas is the lowest it's been in four years.

Speaker 2 Or why don't you say the consumer price index was much less than

Speaker 2 well, everybody expected? And after, what, eight weeks, you can't really have a policy.

Speaker 2 But I don't know who is writing, but when I see names like Molly Ball writing for the Wall Street Journal, this is the woman in 2021 for Time magazine, wrote that triumphalist essay about the cabal, her words, not mine, the conspiracy that

Speaker 2 modulated street protest, partnered with the government to censor news, and change the voting laws, and ha ha ha, we won. And that is one of the Marquis Wall Street Journal reporters.

Speaker 2 So I don't know what it is. I like a lot of the op-ed writers, but I wish when they start in on it, and they all do now, they would just tell us what the alternative is.

Speaker 2 And when they get on Ukraine, I just feel like saying, the closest historical model to what we see in Ukraine on a larger scale was World War I.

Speaker 2 No one in the Allied camp had any idea how to stop the German juggernaut. They tried at Verdun.
They tried at Somme. They tried at Paschendaele.
And after two million dead, Russia was knocked out.

Speaker 2 and 500,000 German troops were transferred to the At that point. The only,

Speaker 2 was there a change in strategy? No. Was there a new technology? Tanks, airplanes didn't really.

Speaker 2 One thing stopped it. Two million Americans were drafted, and a million were sent in 1917 and early 19th, and that stopped the German offensive.
So my point is:

Speaker 2 if you think you're going to break up this Stalingrad or this World War I Verdun, what is your new technology? What is your strategy?

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 I don't see a United States sending 2 million people over there.

Speaker 2 And unless you can come up with 10 divisions, as I said earlier, NATO non-American aircraft, 2,000, maybe Sweden, Britain, France, they could all get together and send 1,000 jets and run surface

Speaker 2 air control. I don't know what they can do.
They can ground support. But let's hear something rather than

Speaker 2 we're going to do what it takes. We're going to go stand with the end.
Well, what is the strategy? It's very easy to say that Trump doesn't understand Putin, that Putin is sneaky.

Speaker 2 We all understand that. But

Speaker 2 who was making any effort to find a resolution to this other than just give what it takes? We're 36 trillion in debt, just send another $200 billion every year or so.

Speaker 2 Or,

Speaker 2 as I said last time, 500 million Europeans screaming about a war of 140 million Russians attacking a country that's got no more than 30 million left while they're all faulting and blaming a 330 million Americans 7,000 miles away.

Speaker 2 It doesn't make any sense. But I just want to hear something positive, that's all.
Just a constructive, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Why doesn't the Wall Street Journal have a long essay and say this is the strategy that will lead to Ukrainian victory, recovery of the borders in 2022, or maybe 2014, a strategic resolution?

Speaker 2 This is how why don't they do it? Outline it. This is how much more money we have to borrow, and this is how much it will cost each year.
Just say that. But they don't.
Same thing with Doge.

Speaker 2 Have you noticed, Jack?

Speaker 2 Where are you going to get the cuts? In 2019, do you remember Barack Obama had something called the Simpson Bowles Commission for Debt Relief and government efficiency, basically.

Speaker 2 And they came back to Barack Obama. And it was Al Simpson who just passed away.
He was a good friend of mine. And it was a wonderful three-tier tax

Speaker 2 simplification, just three tax brackets,

Speaker 2 cutting government. And had we adopted all of those modest Social Security reforms,

Speaker 2 I think we would owe something like $8 trillion now had we done that. And this was a liberal president, and he could have easily reformed entitlements in a way no conservative ever could have.

Speaker 2 He had the House, he had the Senate. And what did he do? He said, that's a great job.
Sia wouldn't want to be a, that's it. And they just canceled it.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 you know, we've tried this before. Everybody talks about waste fraud, and

Speaker 2 nobody does a thing. Nobody does a thing.
And so,

Speaker 2 and the judge that just

Speaker 2 one other rant, the judge, did you see Judge Furman? Is it Jesse Furman in New York that issued the stay on Mr. Khalil?

Speaker 2 Turns out his mother was a very big liberal donor to the Tides Foundation who is funding some of the various activities that this Mr. Khalil has engaged in.

Speaker 3 The Tides Foundation is like, for our listeners like Arabella, part of the huge funding of these very poor people.

Speaker 2 I know if I was a judge and if I was a judge and my mother was a big donor to a liberal organization that

Speaker 2 had a role in the case that I was, if this is true, I read it today.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to verify it, but I would have disqualified myself. But then if I was Judge Murshon, I would have disqualified myself when my daughter was making a fortune on

Speaker 2 her Democratic

Speaker 2 consultancy

Speaker 2 ship while I was adjudicating the Alvin Bragg case. Or maybe Judge Kaplan,

Speaker 2 I would have disqualified myself the minute I said that Donald Trump had basically committed rape when a jury found that he had not.

Speaker 2 And on and on and on.

Speaker 3 Well, Victor, I want to, that was

Speaker 3 quite a rant, and there's more, I think there's more juice in that orange to be squeezed. But first,

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Speaker 3 American Alternative Assets for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Victor, two things.
One, I want to plead my continued ignorance on one thing you mentioned. It had to do with immigration.

Speaker 3 I still don't get

Speaker 3 the flying illegal immigrants into the United States.

Speaker 3 I can't get my arms or head around how the Biden administration actually put people in airplanes overseas

Speaker 3 and flew them here.

Speaker 2 I saw them come in.

Speaker 2 I saw them come in. I was at the Fresno airport on a late flight.
I saw them come in. They came in with apps from Mexico.

Speaker 2 They just went, got on a little app and they applied for asylum, and there was no diplomatic passport control when they arrived. And they were some of the,

Speaker 2 I felt bad for them. They looked like some of the poorest people in the world.
And they were coming in on two or three flights in the middle of the night.

Speaker 2 And there was no accident that flights from Mexico were scheduled at

Speaker 2 12.30, 1.30, 3.30 in the morning. And the airport took on a whole new life.

Speaker 2 That, you know, I'm sure there were some people who were legal aliens and citizens that were on those flights, but it seemed like the majority of them from you talking to security were not.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, this was an area where a lot of people were brought in.

Speaker 2 Governor Newsom just announced that

Speaker 2 he doesn't have $3.4 billion in

Speaker 2 Medi-Cal, what we call Medicaid here, for illegal aliens mostly. It's exhausted.

Speaker 2 And I could have said, if you'd gone two miles from my home to a big medical center and you had gotten there at 8 o'clock in the morning and seen the line, you would have seen why that is.

Speaker 2 Or if you'd gone to one of the specialists that I go to in Fresno and see the waiting room as compared to five years ago, you would have seen why.

Speaker 2 I don't want to be reductionist, Jack, but

Speaker 2 do you think if

Speaker 2 Jill and Joe Biden had to, let's say they had the flu and they wanted to go somewhere to get Tama flu and they went into the local ER and it was like the Fresno County ERs, what would they do?

Speaker 2 Somebody would say, this is your policy, stand in line.

Speaker 2 And I don't think they would have said, well, who did this? I got to get my health care.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that's how this whole bicosto elite functions. It's all based on everybody is a lab rat, we experiment with all these ideas.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 what do you expect?

Speaker 3 Picking up, Victor, on your

Speaker 2 I think grants the wrong word, a soliloquy, but regardless of. Exegesis.

Speaker 3 Okay, exegesis.

Speaker 2 There you go.

Speaker 3 On Ukraine, two things.

Speaker 3 One is the experts, the Kvetschers, actually part of the Kvetching crew on the Bush administration, they were glorifying or obsessed with that countdown to was like, when was the 3,000th American soldier going to die at the TV screens,

Speaker 3 and millions of people are dead in Ukraine and the oceans of blood, and

Speaker 3 doesn't even come across in their minds.

Speaker 2 No, they don't care. No, no, no.
They want to.

Speaker 2 It has some sick thing to do with the Russian collusion, Russian disinformation.

Speaker 2 In other words, what I'm saying is they felt that James Comey and Andrew McCabe and all of them had the goods on Donald Trump in 2016

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 it dealed a and the whole thing blew up as a farce and then they thought four years later they had the goods with Russian disinformation and laptop and then that blew up

Speaker 2 and they wanted to say that Donald Trump is a Putin asset.

Speaker 2 They looked at the actual way that Donald Trump had treated Putin and I've gone through that before whether the Wagner group's destruction or warning about Nordstrom II as a bad idea, sanctioning it, or flooding the world with cheap oil, getting out of a missile deal, etc., etc.

Speaker 2 It didn't matter to them. So they had this obsession that by

Speaker 2 and then when you looked at Putin and you said to the left, and I've said this to people on the left, well,

Speaker 2 who were the people who

Speaker 2 pushed that jacuzzi button in Geneva? It was Hillary. You were the people who wanted reset, not the conservative.

Speaker 2 You were the ones that said George Bush was too hard after Ossatia and Georgia on the Russians. You did.

Speaker 2 You, you, you. You were the one that did the worst thing in the world.
You appeased him. You let him go into the Donbas.
You let him go into Crimea.

Speaker 2 And then you went over to South Korea at Seoul. You had an open mic and said,

Speaker 2 this is my last election.

Speaker 2 Tell Vladimir I'll be flexible on missile defense if he'll give me space. That was an open invitation.
And then when he started to mast you, you, Obama, forbid the

Speaker 2 gifting of javelins to Ukraine, and then Biden came in and he reversed the bur the Trump order and he put a suspension. And you hear none of that from these people.

Speaker 2 It's always Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, and we have to fight to the last Ukrainian to stop this horrible.

Speaker 2 Yes, but you were the one that empowered Russia.

Speaker 2 And there was a reason. It's almost a heresy among the left.

Speaker 2 If you say something like the following, and I've had this conversation, well, who do you think in the last four presidencies, Putin, during the last four presidencies, he did not leave his borders?

Speaker 2 Well, don't even go there. That had nothing to do with it, Trump.
That was just an accident. Maybe it was because he liked Trump.
Oh, whatever.

Speaker 2 But he did not leave his borders during the Trump administration. And I understand Trump's art of the deal rhetoric and all of this stuff, but this was not his war.
It was not his mess.

Speaker 2 He inherited it. And he was the only one trying to stop the bloodletting.

Speaker 2 And they have destroyed that country, Ukraine, and they are running out of people.

Speaker 2 And one of the biggest problems he's having is that Vladimir Putin is using this meat grinder to wear down the Ukrainian manpower reserves. And if this thing goes on much longer,

Speaker 2 the Ukrainians are going to crack. And Putin knows that.

Speaker 2 And so Trump is trying to find some leverage to call him off before he just goes in there because he doesn't think the Europeans are going to send more tanks and planes.

Speaker 2 And he doesn't believe any of their rhetoric at all. Not a word.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 Victor, there's an interesting article I've come across on the German military on that point.

Speaker 3 Let's get to that and some other thoughts still related to Ukraine when we come back from these important messages.

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Speaker 3 We're back with the Victor Davis-Hansen show recording on Saturday,

Speaker 3 well, this is the IDES of March, actually, the 15th of

Speaker 3 March. This episode is up on March March 18th, Tuesday, March 18th, Victor's website, The Blade of Perseus.
You'll find it at victorhanson.com.

Speaker 3 You should be subscribing if you're a fan of Victor's writing. He does two pieces a week, exclusive for The Blade of Perseus, plus an exclusive 10-minute or so video on a hot topic.

Speaker 3 There are links, galore, to everything else Victor writes there,

Speaker 3 this podcast, his books, etc. So do subscribe $65 a year, which is discounted from $6.50 $6.50 a month.
The blade of Perseus. Victor, here's a headline.

Speaker 3 German military faces massive shortage of soldiers.

Speaker 3 An official report on the state of German military painted a grim picture on Tuesday with a whopping 28% of positions among the lower enlisted ranks unfilled as of the end of 2024.

Speaker 3 The numbers were slightly better at higher service tiers, but the Bundeswehr was still missing nearly 20% of the required commissioned officers, the document said.

Speaker 3 By the way, the average age of a soldier in Germany is 32.4 years. It was at the end of 2019, and now it's 34 years.
Maybe they'll be handing out canes eventually

Speaker 2 along with guns. Yeah, I mean, the German defense minister, remember he dressed fans down at the security conference.
They all do that.

Speaker 2 Stormer and Macrone were, as soon as Zelensky had the blow-up in the White House, they started grandstanding. I did a Telegraph daily, I mean, a

Speaker 2 London Times interview where the host was pretty rude, and they were all sky-high.

Speaker 2 The other guests, oh, this is a new era. We can't count on the Americans.
We have all this wherewithal over here. We're going to redirect.
We're going to rearm. We're going to be independent.

Speaker 2 And I'm thinking, I don't think so. I wish you would, promises, promises.

Speaker 2 But since the EU was created, you were roughly the same GDP as the United States, and you've added a lot of countries and population, which should have had you just soar ahead of us as far as gross domestic product.

Speaker 2 And you're about 60%.

Speaker 2 Your per capita income is about what Mississippi is,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 Germany, the powerhouse, or the former powerhouse of Europe, spends about $1.65 on defense.

Speaker 2 And nine other countries say if Germany's not going to do it, we're not going to do it.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 that's just the way it is.

Speaker 2 They have a lot of

Speaker 2 500 million people. They have 2,000 jet fighters.
They've got more artillery platforms than Russia does now. And Russia's exhausted.
I mean, they've lost a lot of wherewithal and manpower.

Speaker 2 So they could step up big time. They could spend $400 or $500 billion.
They could send 500, 600 planes tomorrow.

Speaker 2 And then they wouldn't have to start yelling and screaming about how tough they are and how independent and they don't need the U.S. anymore.
But they don't do that.

Speaker 2 They just, you know, they have a socialist, state-run economy, and it's never going to be very productive at that way.

Speaker 2 And they hate Trump and they hate the MAGA movement. And all they want to do is appeal to their bi-coastal kindred in the United States.

Speaker 3 Victor, one other, pick up one other thing, and we'll move on to some other topics about Ukraine and the meat grinder.

Speaker 3 I just finished reading de Gaulle's memoirs, which are, I recommend, it's a big book, it's a doorstopper, it's a tremendous bit of writing. I mean, he's a terrific writer.

Speaker 3 But so France and War is on my mind, the bloodletting of World War I and the depletion of men in France.

Speaker 3 So what happens in Ukraine now is, I mean, it'd be possibly setting up some crisis 10 years from now or 20 years from now just based on the bloodletting.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, they're not going to have a, they've lost a whole generation, and nobody will tell us how many people. I think both sides are lying, and they're lying and underestimate.

Speaker 2 They probably have 500,000 wounded casualties, dead, missing, prisoners, in a country where they've lost 10 to 12 million people have left the country.

Speaker 2 They're very brave fighters, but you know, the whole cohort between 18 and 22 is missing. I mean, they're not in the Army.
The Army is average age is in their early 30s.

Speaker 2 So, and yet they've held out. But if you try to talk like this, Jack, and

Speaker 2 I work in an area where we have all of these famed experts in foreign policy, and you say just something

Speaker 2 empirical, like, can you give me an example during the 50-year Cold War in which according to

Speaker 2 the protocols of the Russian-American nuclear tension and standoff,

Speaker 2 there was a war on the border, the direct border of either the United States or Russia in which the other proxy tried to

Speaker 2 use a third party to harm its nuclear rival.

Speaker 2 And the closest I can come to is Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of Florida, in which Russia thought it was cute to give them both conventional and nuclear-tip missiles

Speaker 2 and we went berserk

Speaker 2 and went to DEF CON three about it.

Speaker 2 I think actually we went up to DEF CON two, but I'll have to check that.

Speaker 2 DEF CON, I g I guess DEF CON four, huh? Is that what it is? It gets bigger

Speaker 2 or smaller.

Speaker 2 I wasn't being DEF CON myself there.

Speaker 3 I was just I'm trying to get a little bit more.

Speaker 2 I'm just uh I'm just dra what I'm just trying to say is you're not supposed to say that it's a dangerous thing to feed an army right inside Mother Russia right now,

Speaker 2 even though they have every justification to be there. They were attacked first.
But there's just

Speaker 2 and then nobody can say, I mean, I don't hear anybody saying, you know, at least Donald Trump talked about the bloodletting. He always does.

Speaker 2 He always talks about the human costs and how horrific it is. And that alone has suppressed some of the tensions with Russia.

Speaker 2 And you're not hearing all of these things, you know, that we're going to nuke this and we're going to send a missile there that you heard for the last three years.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 we'll see, and you have to be very careful with Putin. And he thinks he's in the driver's seat, but

Speaker 2 Donald Trump is going to have to have some lever to say to Putin,

Speaker 2 if you don't come to the

Speaker 2 conference table, we're going to sanction anybody

Speaker 2 who buys your oil, and that can include Turkey or oil, India or anybody, China.

Speaker 2 Or is going to have to do something like that. If he's going to have any...
I'm not advocating anything, Jack.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying, as an outside observer, if you're R to the deal and he will not make a deal because he thinks that Europe is finished and Ukraine is exhausted and he can take over the whole country and you don't want that, then you're going to have to find some pressure on him.

Speaker 2 And the only thing I can think of short of just,

Speaker 2 and it's not politically possible to send another $300 billion to Ukraine, or $200 billion, or whatever we've sent. Politically not feasible.

Speaker 3 The Americans don't want it. Well, Victor, let's talk about a little Trump rhetoric that's domestic.

Speaker 3 The President was yesterday, which I think the 14th, he was at the Department of Justice giving a speech, and this is from a

Speaker 3 New York Post article.

Speaker 3 Trump says, as the chief law enforcement officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred, Trump said in remarks that repeatedly focused on the criminal cases that the department's attorneys brought against him, quote, our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice.

Speaker 3 But I stand before you today to declare that those days are over and they are never going to come back, Trump told the crowd that included department members and members of Congress.

Speaker 3 Final paragraph here, folks. We will expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government.
We will expose and very much expose their egregious crimes and severe misconduct, of which was

Speaker 3 levels. I'm sorry about the English here.
You've never seen anything like it. It's going to be legendary.
Victor, your take on Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, nobody wants vengeance, but if there was wrongdoing and there was wrongdoing, and it went back to the 2016 campaign when you had Loretta Lynch, the former Attorney General, meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac and the Phoenix airport,

Speaker 2 basically negotiating about what would be the fate of Hillary Clinton after she committed a felony of using an unsecure server to transmit

Speaker 2 State Department communications. Then she destroyed subpoenas under

Speaker 2 subpoenaed documents or emails, and she destroyed the devices, the hard drives. And no nothing happened to her.
And then we went full

Speaker 2 we had everybody involved. We had Bruce Orr

Speaker 2 at the DOJ.

Speaker 2 We had Nellie Orr, his wife, working

Speaker 2 to to disseminate the false dossier.

Speaker 2 We had

Speaker 2 Sally Yates who was trying to

Speaker 2 Logan Act to destroy Michael Flynn on set up and sent Comey in there, or Comey went in there and tried to, and did, without any warning.

Speaker 2 So that was all politicized, the DOJ. And then,

Speaker 2 excuse me, I go back on that iconic date of, I think it was November 18th, Jack, 2022, when Joe...

Speaker 2 You've got to remember what happened right there at that period.

Speaker 2 We're talking about the weaponization of the DOJ.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 Donald Trump

Speaker 2 declared his candidacy on November 15th of 2022, and he probably did it in reaction to the week earlier spectacular victory of Ron DeSantis, who won by a million votes in the 2022 gubernatorial race.

Speaker 2 Remember, that was supposed to be a red wave.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 Trump was being blamed, fairly or not,

Speaker 2 for using MAGA candidates like Blake Masters

Speaker 2 or Dr. Oz

Speaker 2 or

Speaker 2 the guy

Speaker 2 I thought he was pretty good, Adam Laxalt. But the point I'm making is they thought they were going to the Senate and they didn't.

Speaker 2 And they felt that the MA candidates who had been endorsed by Trump in the primary were not effective in the general election.

Speaker 2 More importantly, the only bright spot they did take back the House, but Biden only lost nine seats, which was historically pretty good.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I wrote about it at the time. Well, maybe it was because of Roe versus Wade.
Remember that was in this early summer.

Speaker 2 They had rejected, overturned Roe, and that got a lot of money for the midterms. Then he tried to cancel student loans right on the eve of the midterms.
He drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Speaker 2 But whatever the reason was, the one bright spot was Ron DeSantis. He won by a million votes.

Speaker 2 Everybody should remember in 2018 he was an obscure congressman, and he was going nowhere in the primaries. And then Donald Trump endorsed him.
And he won primary, I think, over the Ag Commissioner.

Speaker 2 And then in 2018, he only won by 30,000 votes. You remember that creepy guy, Gilliam?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Didn't he end up in a hotel room naked with a couple of other men taking drugs? But in any case, he was a mind-nest type of.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was. And I think

Speaker 2 neither one won 50%. But when he came back four years later, he won by a million votes.
And everybody, I went back once and looked at the polls. He was leading Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 So Donald Trump then immediately, a week later, declared his candidacy on November 15th, after the midterm. And then all hell broke loose.
The left went crazy.

Speaker 2 And three days later, on November 18th, think of it, everybody, three things happened. Mr.
Ko Angjalo, the third-ranking DOJ, we're talking about the Department of Justice corruption.

Speaker 2 He had been hired by Merrick Garland after he had been working with Letita James and had gotten that mega settlement.

Speaker 2 originally $400 something million reduced, I think, $380 million on a bogus real estate civil suit as Attorney General. So then he was riding high.
He went to the DOJ

Speaker 2 to formulate, obviously, anti-Trump policies. And then he quit on November 18th, and he turned up four or five days later working for Alvin Bragg.

Speaker 2 The same day,

Speaker 2 Nathan Wade, the paramour of Fannie Willis, went to the White House and met with Biden's legal counsel team, formulating strategy, obviously, about that.

Speaker 2 And that was on a RICO Act. That was so bogus, the idea that Trump said, I know there's votes there, find me the 15,000 that are there.
Oh, you broke the RICO Act. You're a mafioso-like character.

Speaker 2 They indicted, I think, 19 people.

Speaker 2 So that was the second thing on the same day.

Speaker 2 And then, you know what the third was, Jack? He appointed Jack Smith special counsel.

Speaker 2 All on the same day. And then they said, they had nothing to do.
We're not coordinating. It was that type of corruption that Trump was talking about.

Speaker 2 Five civil suits. And then I think they coordinated with, what, 26 states, tried to take him off the ballot until the Supreme Court stopped that in March of 2024.

Speaker 2 So they waged war and they politicized the DOJ. They went after parents, school board meetings that objected to trans stuff.
They went after abortion protests, anti-abortion protesters.

Speaker 2 They did SWAT team,

Speaker 2 Virtues, the whole Mar-Lago thing that didn't need a SWAT team to find, what, 102 classified files out of

Speaker 2 13 or 14,000.

Speaker 2 So they were out of control.

Speaker 3 Sins of omission there, also, Victor. Do you remember the people threatening the Supreme Court justices? Nothing was done by the DOJ.
Actually, Merrick Garland said, oh, that's a matter for the

Speaker 2 Marshall Service.

Speaker 2 The guy was ready to kill Gorschitz, except he called his sister and she talked him out of it. Remember that? And that followed, what, a year and a half after Mr.

Speaker 2 Schumer, who was in the news again, got out in front of a big

Speaker 2 pro-abortion mob that were hitting the doors of the Supreme Court when it was in session, and he was yelling, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, You sowed the wind. You're going to weep the whirlwind.

Speaker 2 You're not going to know what's going to hit you. That was a direct threat.
If any private citizen did that, he'd probably be arrested.

Speaker 3 Well, let's talk a little more about him. But first, I just want to take a moment for our sponsor, Quince.
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Speaker 3 Victor, we have a couple of Senate things, so let's take one of them, and that is the just aforementioned

Speaker 3 Charles Schumer, who has, I think he's been in the Senate for since

Speaker 3 late 90s, so about 25 years. He's up for re-election in 2026.

Speaker 3 He, I know you talked about this with Sammy, about the

Speaker 3 reconciliation bill, and he moved to have Democrats, some Democrats vote for it.

Speaker 3 House Democrats wanted him to fight.

Speaker 3 He caved, quote-unquote, caved, and now there's a push to get the great AOC to challenge him in a primary. And she was asked about that and did not say no.

Speaker 2 Your thoughts? Yeah, she won't win if she tries it.

Speaker 2 The problem they all have is that when they were spending $7 trillion

Speaker 2 and the Republicans had retaken the House and they were dead even in the Senate, so there was a possibility of a Senate filibuster or a House shutdown.

Speaker 2 They're all on record. Pelosi and the House, Schumer,

Speaker 2 the squad, how horrible it would be, how terrible it would be to shut down the government. That's what they said.

Speaker 2 And now the shoe's on the other foot, and now they're saying that's the only thing that can be done.

Speaker 2 If you shut down the government when the Doge people are trying to cut out superfluous positions after about two weeks and the government's still functioning, I think it's a bad strategy on their part to do that.

Speaker 2 It really is.

Speaker 2 Everybody's got to remember that

Speaker 2 the left is so hysterical about a paltry $100 billion in cuts

Speaker 2 that that's not enough. We're not even on schedule to save.

Speaker 2 We've got to get a trillion dollars or a trillion and a half,

Speaker 2 even to get close.

Speaker 2 And we're not getting there. But yet, if they're that hysterical about this small level of cuts and this huge budget,

Speaker 2 what do they recommend? What do they recommend? They're not even faking it like Obama and Al Gore and Clinton. They're not even faking it.

Speaker 2 They don't have any solutions other than, I don't know,

Speaker 2 eliminate the Defense Department. That's Bernie Sanders' idea, I suppose.
So

Speaker 2 I don't know what they have no they have no it's like why don't they just say look we ran up seven trillion dollars and we're happy we did we destroyed the border because we don't believe in borders and we got twelve million really poor people and we were alleviating poverty in Oaxaca, Micho Khan, and Chiapas.

Speaker 2 That's what we wanted to do, and they're here in the United States now, and they'll be good Democrats in about three or four years. That was the plan, and we're not ashamed of it.

Speaker 2 And we don't believe that people should be responsible necessarily for shoplifting or taking things that are not theirs because,

Speaker 2 you know, a bunch of wealthy white people made laws about stealing sneakers because they don't steal sneakers, and they're fing arbitrary. That's their whole philosophy.

Speaker 2 And why don't they just say, you know what?

Speaker 2 This is who we are. Well, they did in 2024.
And people said, we don't like you on the border. We don't like you on energy.
We don't like you on crime. We don't like you on foreign policy.

Speaker 2 We don't like you on inflation. We don't like you on trans.

Speaker 2 We don't like you on anything. And they lost.

Speaker 2 So.

Speaker 3 Viva Nero. Hey, Victor, one other Senate thing.

Speaker 3 We're going to take a break soon. And I want to get your thoughts on Alan Simpson, who you mentioned before.
We'll do that after the break. But

Speaker 3 your favorite Mayor Pete Boutig

Speaker 3 from the former Mayor of South, Ben, the Feins Racism and Highways Department of Transportation, Secretary under Biden, who was going to move to Michigan, was talking about running for Senate from Michigan, announced he is not running for Senate.

Speaker 3 He wants to spend more time with his family. I don't know, maybe he wants to chest feed another future child.

Speaker 3 Anyway, have we seen the last of Pete Boutigej? Your thoughts about him?

Speaker 2 No one out there who's listening believes any of that, Jack. They believe one thing, that he commissioned a pollster in Michigan and said, what would be my chances of winning the

Speaker 2 senatorial or gubernatorial primary and winning a general election?

Speaker 2 They came back and said, you're the antithesis of the working class in Michigan, and you would have zero chance because you're a sanctimonious,

Speaker 2 irritating, arrogant f,

Speaker 2 and we don't want you here. Go back to wherever you came from.
And that was what he found out. So now he's going to turn his attention elsewhere.

Speaker 2 He was the one that gave us equity highways and equity this.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 if we, to the degree we have a problem with the air traffic controllers that came in during his four-year tenure, where it was all DI, A to Z.

Speaker 2 He'll never live that down where he got into a limo and he pulled out his little bike and rode the last mile to work with that ridiculous hour.

Speaker 3 Again, performance art is

Speaker 3 the

Speaker 3 modus operande for that party. Hey, Victor.

Speaker 2 He was terrified to go to East Palestine for months. Remember that? Right.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 we're going to take a break here, Victor. We'll kind of come back and get your thoughts about

Speaker 3 your late friend Alan Simpson. You have one more topic to talk about also.
We'll do that right after these final important messages.

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Speaker 3 We are back with the Victor Davis-Hansen Show. It's Saturday the 15th of March when we're recording.
This episode is up on the 18th, Tuesday the 18th, the day after St.

Speaker 3 Patrick's Day, the day before St. Joseph's Day.
These are important matters when you live in New York, Victor. I don't know,

Speaker 3 out on the West Coast, but the Outer Borough.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're about the Irish versus the Italians.

Speaker 3 You know, it might as well be the Sharks versus the Jets in West Side Story.

Speaker 3 Victor Alan Simpson, the former senator, the aforementioned also Simpson Bowles Bill, I think he was the son of a senator too, or a governor. His dad was.

Speaker 2 I think his father was governor. He's from a political family.
I think his son ran for political office and almost won.

Speaker 2 I know his brother well, who's a wonderful person, was a professor at the, you know, I think it was the University of Wyoming.

Speaker 2 I knew him for 20 years, and each summer I saw him. And

Speaker 2 we had a polite debate maybe 15 years ago on Simpson Mazzoli, the 1986 Immigration Act.

Speaker 2 And I was very polite.

Speaker 2 And basically,

Speaker 2 it was: we gave an amnesty before we had any mechanism of enforcing the law.

Speaker 2 And so the idea that the Border Patrol pulled back from the border, and then we turned over the enforcement to the employer with those I-9 forms, which were flooded with fake forms, and there was no mechanism to verify them.

Speaker 2 E-Verify didn't work. It was a great idea, but it was smashed.
So

Speaker 2 I think the Simpson Bowles,

Speaker 2 he was in his 80s. That was 2010.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 that was 15 years ago. He was 93.

Speaker 2 So he was, my gosh, he was about 78 when he did that. And he was magnificent.
He was tireless.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 people forget that he and Erskine Bowles, when they chaired that committee, came up with those recommendations. They didn't just end there.
He spoke all over the country in his 80s, travel.

Speaker 2 I remember talking to him. I said, Al,

Speaker 2 you look tired. Oh, I'm having a great time.
Don't worry. I'm flying all over the country trying to save the country, Victor.
We're all going broke. We've got to save the country.
And he was.

Speaker 2 The thing about that, I went back and looked at it. It was very modest.
It was gradual. It would have been very little pain.
It was a simplification of the tax code. It encouraged investment.

Speaker 2 It was just stop the spending and get to a balanced budget within five to eight years and then slowly pay back the debt.

Speaker 2 And had we done that, as I said, we would be about maybe $8 to $10 trillion right now instead of $35 trillion and with balanced budgets.

Speaker 2 And we could do that again.

Speaker 2 All we'd have to do is say, let's just go back to the budget we had before COVID 2019. We'd have a huge surplus.

Speaker 3 He had

Speaker 3 a very strong reputation for being a funny guy.

Speaker 2 He was very funny. He told a joke every time I saw him.
Hey, Victor, have you heard the latest? He told everybody jokes. And they were all, some of them were off color, but they were all funny.

Speaker 2 And he had a wonderful, beautiful wife and children who were great, very close to the Cheney family

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 very close. with all the Wyoming politicians.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, they've turned out some powerful people out of that state. Some of them have

Speaker 3 great disappointment, but nevertheless, powerful folks.

Speaker 3 May he rest in peace. And I love that phrase.
I forget exactly what it was.

Speaker 2 The old kick of the kazoo. Kick of the kazoo.

Speaker 2 He said his mother was going to get angry if she heard him say that. I remember.

Speaker 2 That was

Speaker 2 think of when you have the Senate today using the word

Speaker 2 in a video.

Speaker 2 And gentleman Alan Simpson apologizing for using the word kazoo. Kazoo.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that was.

Speaker 2 Well, he was an independent maverick.

Speaker 2 He was hard to pin down politically.

Speaker 2 He was very conservative on some issues, but on gay marriage and abortion, he was a moderate.

Speaker 2 So he was very different.

Speaker 3 Well, he was fierce on the judiciary committee also. So

Speaker 3 he was a powerful figure. Victor, we're around the home stretch here, and let's talk about one more thing.
We talked last week or the week before about

Speaker 3 Jamie Dimon,

Speaker 3 the head of J.P. Morgan Chase.
He's the CEO there, and he issued some...

Speaker 3 He actually had a very

Speaker 3 viral phone call with staff about, you guys, enough of this viral CRPOLA. You're going to come to work five days a week, work hard, work in the office.
You can't make it. You can't cut it.

Speaker 3 You're not going to work here. Anyway, there's a piece in the Daily Mail out today

Speaker 3 as J.P. Morgan Chase, C.
Jamie Diamond, pushes forward with an uncompromising return to office mandate.

Speaker 3 Hundreds of JPMorgan employees have quietly banded together in what is shaping up to be a full-blown corporate mutiny, but the workers are not gathering in boardrooms or on the office floor, but in secret, encrypted chat groups in a kind of digital underground, growing network of frustrated bankers and managers are plotting a response to the company's strict return to office orders.

Speaker 3 How dare? How dare he make them go?

Speaker 2 Isn't it funny that everybody that

Speaker 2 and Vance and Moscow are these singularly polarizing public figures, and then when anybody else tries to shock

Speaker 2 the country back into normality, normality, or whatever term we prefer,

Speaker 2 they're demonized in the same fashion. So what he's trying to do is so modest.
It just says, you know, we pay you lots of money. And so, we need to have in-person meetings.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I just don't think those guys have a lot of leverage. I really don't.
I don't.

Speaker 2 I always, there's something about him I've always liked, about Jamie Dimon.

Speaker 2 I know that he was very critical of Trump, and then he was less critical, but every time they put him on the spot to make a predictable announcement, he always is unconventional, you know what I mean, Contrarian.

Speaker 2 He's very well spoken. I think he's a cancer survivor.
I think Diamond, he's, and I'll have to check this, people, so I'm just doing this by memory.

Speaker 2 I think he's from an Anatolian Greek family, isn't he?

Speaker 3 Be correct.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I checked that out last time we spoke. Yes, he's.

Speaker 2 Yeah, those are the toughest people in the world. They're the toughest people in the world.

Speaker 2 They're the inheritors of the Byzantine Empire. I mean, they were the

Speaker 2 they lived in the roughest neighborhood in the world, and a million of them were ethnically cleansed during the Smyrna disaster.

Speaker 2 So many of them came to, as I said in an earlier broadcast, I lived on Asia Minor Street in Athens. I got to know, and that was in 1973, and they had been there for 50 years.

Speaker 2 So I met these young people, people who had come there in their 20s and they were in their 70s. And they would say, Victor, Victor, Favma, Favma, you was a one, you would not believe what they did.

Speaker 2 They drove us into the ocean. They burned our synagogues.
They flayed our priests.

Speaker 2 They beheaded people. But they ethnically cleansed all of the remaining population that had been there for three millennia.
So

Speaker 2 he's from that diaspora.

Speaker 2 People forget that that was the wealthiest part of the Greek Byzantine Empire, was the coast of Ionia. It's like the San Joaquin Valley.
It's just the most beautiful, fertile area in the world.

Speaker 2 Smyrna, we always know from figs, the Smyrna fig varieties. And I've been there a lot.
It's a beautiful country.

Speaker 2 It's the richest in antiquities at Miletus and Ephesus and Didyma, Haliconarsis down near Bodrom.

Speaker 2 It's just a wonderful place.

Speaker 2 It's a great tragedy because that was the breadbasket of the Byzantine Empire for a millennia.

Speaker 2 millennium. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Kind of interesting, some of the places that were once the great centers of wealth, even here in America, New Bedford, Massachusetts, which is

Speaker 3 a little old now. Natchez, Mississippi.

Speaker 2 There's a little town that my grandfather was from.

Speaker 2 He lived in it.

Speaker 2 Kingsburg is a big Swedish town even today, but about six miles away, there was a little town called Traver,

Speaker 2 and it has like one store today.

Speaker 2 But in the 1880s, it was one of the greatest wheat production era centers on the railroad, shipping for it it had the highest per acre production of wheat anywhere in the country.

Speaker 2 And it was just a very prosperous place. And I'd always say to my grandfather, when did you come to Kingsborough? Yeah, I live in Trayver, not Kingsburgh Trayver.

Speaker 2 So it was it's still there. I drive by there once in a while.

Speaker 2 There's all these little towns in the San Joaquin Valley that are deserted. It's kind of like Michigan.
When I'm in Hillsdale, I used to get my bike and go to all these semi-ghost towns.

Speaker 2 You know, I'd ride my bike out there. They're everywhere.

Speaker 2 They're eerie, eerie. I'd go to Osteo.
It's very eerie Michigan.

Speaker 2 Because they had all had been so prosperous.

Speaker 2 They were all on the trunk rail lines

Speaker 2 and they were booming in the 1910s, 20s, and 30s as sub- contractors and sub-suppliers for the auto industry.

Speaker 2 And then they had farming areas, and then they'd had little factory, mom-and-pop little factories, and then they would put their product and send it on the rail to Detroit.

Speaker 2 And so it was like Detroit was the hub, and there were all these rural communities, and they're all wiped out.

Speaker 2 It's another thing I don't, you know, when I read the Wall Street Journal, I get this tariff, tariff. They have tariff, tariff, tariff, tariff, tariff, tariff, tariff, tariff, tariff.

Speaker 2 They should come. When I graduated from high school here in this local high school, there was a Fruhoff trailer

Speaker 2 production. You wouldn't believe it,

Speaker 2 Jack. They built semi-trailers.

Speaker 2 And everybody in my high school that didn't go to college, which I think there was eight or nine of us out of 240 that went to the four-year college, but they all, when I would come back from UC Santa Cruz at Christmas, they'd go, Victor, why are you in college?

Speaker 2 We're making $7 an hour union wages at the Fruhoff.

Speaker 2 And then some of them worked at the upright harvester making world they sent them all over the world it was a mechanical grape picking machine and then they used a in another

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 libby canning calcan or there were all these big cooperatives that shipped canned peaches all over the world this is before the eu flooded the market with subsidized canned fruit and This little town had all of these fabrication and factories, and the whole middle classes were prosperous.

Speaker 2 And that was completely wiped out in the 70s and 80s. Just desolate.
And that happened to all these little communities. And some of them have revived a little bit, but

Speaker 2 why can't people just say these people were not lazy, they were hardworking, and they had a good product? But they, under George H.W. Bush, and then Bill Clinton, and then George W.

Speaker 2 Bush, and then Barack Obama, the idea was go to China and hire a bunch of cheap labor and move your factory over there and then send it back to the United States, tariff-free, undercut prices,

Speaker 2 allow us to keep spending a lot of money and you'll because

Speaker 2 lower inflation by dumping Chinese assembled products in the United States.

Speaker 2 And you are very patriotic because you're prosperity and you're becoming billionaires and you will show the Chinese about the way of capitalism.

Speaker 2 and then they will be capitalist and then after a while they'll be so affluent they will become EU

Speaker 2 Democrats. That was the whole thing.
Freedom will ring, right? Yeah, I mean I've had people write that to me. I've had people tell me that.
I've heard that for 20 years where I work

Speaker 2 and it didn't happen that way. It destroyed lives for multi-generational.

Speaker 2 Same thing with agriculture. It was the same idea.

Speaker 2 Well, let's go plant all of these tree fruit and vineyards all over Latin America.

Speaker 2 You see, they'll just synchronize with our, they won't compete against our harvest dates, but they'll give the American consumer a winter vegetable or a winter fruit, and then they will buy yours in harvest time.

Speaker 2 And the problem was that they can keep something in cold storage for six months. And it destroyed the whole small f uh fruit industry in California.

Speaker 2 But I'm not suggesting pro protectionism, and I have, you know, I'm a free market person, basically, but this idea that tariffs are evil,

Speaker 2 and I just, I wish Trump could articulate and just say to all of us and to people overseas, the Canadians and the Mexicans, the Mexicans are running up $171

Speaker 2 billion this year. It's a record.
And the Canadians are doing $63 billion, record.

Speaker 2 And why don't they just say to them, you were part of a

Speaker 2 free trade organization at one time.

Speaker 2 The whole idea was that we were all going to be brothers in trade and we were going to have open borders and there would be parity, symmetrical parity, and no one would have taken advantage.

Speaker 2 And then what did you do? You invited in the Chinese, they assembled your product.

Speaker 2 Does Mexico have a better infrastructure, a better judicial system? Are you much more

Speaker 2 productive than we are? Why are you running running up a $171 billion surplus?

Speaker 2 We shouldn't make fun of you. We don't want you as a 51st state.
That's wrong of us to do that. But please tell us why you deserve a $63 billion.

Speaker 2 Just tell us. That's all we want to know.

Speaker 2 Is it okay? You need to protect your butter industry, 293% tariff on butter or milk, timber? Just tell us. And tell us why you don't want to spend money as a NATO partner.
Just tell us. 1.37?

Speaker 2 Just tell us. Build some icebreakers.
Help us.

Speaker 2 But don't just sit there and say, how dare you, Americans, you bullies, you bullies, this is a modest little surplus. If it's a modest little surplus, then you have a $63

Speaker 2 billion.

Speaker 2 And that's a big deal. And say the same thing with Ms.
Scheinbaum.

Speaker 3 Well, it's no big deal, she says.

Speaker 2 Well, then you run up $170. And then you know what?

Speaker 2 We'll send 12 million Americans illegal into your country and see if you like it.

Speaker 2 The same thing with the cartel.

Speaker 2 So my attitude is,

Speaker 2 I think the people listening, the attitude is we just want them to explain and justify what they're doing. Just say we can't control the cartels.

Speaker 2 We're sorry we're killing 70,000 Americans a year, but we need the fentanyl from China.

Speaker 2 We do make $20 or $30 billion off coyotes and drug sale. And we do get $63 billion in remittances from our illegal aliens who you subsidize to free up cash.
And we do get 171. And Canada does get 63.

Speaker 2 And you put it all together, you're getting close to $300 billion

Speaker 2 in capital leaving this country.

Speaker 2 And they hate us.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? Yeah, well.

Speaker 2 They do.

Speaker 3 Victor, you know who doesn't hate us, doesn't hate you? Our listeners. They love you.

Speaker 3 I love my listeners well good and we're we've come essentially to the conclusion of this you've been terrific today my friend

Speaker 3 you know our listeners do catch us on various platforms and including Rumble now some people are watching this on Rumble as a video I'll shave next time Victor I promise

Speaker 3 Those who are on Apple can rate the show zero to five stars. And once again, practically everyone gives Victor five stars, 4.9 plus average.
And we get lots of comments.

Speaker 3 I even get some comments by email. And here's one

Speaker 3 because St. Patrick's Day is kind of in the air.
Sorry to ram it down your throats.

Speaker 3 This was quite coincidental. Got an email.

Speaker 3 It's titled Sincere Thanks to You and Victor from Ireland from Thomas Murtag, who writes, Dear Jack, I want to thank you and Victor for the excellent weekly Current Affairs Analysis and the VDH podcast.

Speaker 3 Over here in Ireland and Europe in general, over 90% of the English language media commentaries are consistently filled with irrational, liberal babble.

Speaker 3 Victor's clear, logical, reasoned analysis has become my template to deal with and counterbalance that said babble from the mainstream media.

Speaker 3 On a lighter note, I notice that you and Victor often express as being underwhelmed by your great Italian and Irish Catholic heritage.

Speaker 3 At least the Italian elements benefits from the great history of the Roman Empire. However, I fear the currency of the Irish Catholic heritage element is much lower in his view.

Speaker 3 My theory is that the outcome of the Battle of Klontarf in Dublin in 1014 A.D., never heard of it, where the Irish comprehensively defeated the Vikings, may be a factor.

Speaker 3 I don't know about that, Victor. There's a lot of good.

Speaker 2 We have some setbacks, but we usually beat the Irish. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Just to end, to let you know, this St. Patrick, St.
Joseph, you know, it's very interesting here. Well, having grown up in New York City and these neighborhoods, thickly Italian, thickly Irish.

Speaker 3 And the Italians always had a chip on their shoulder. I'm half Italian, they always had a chip on their shoulder about the Irish.

Speaker 3 A, because they came over here and the Irish spoke the language and they didn't.

Speaker 3 And B, because their big Italian feast day is St. Joseph's Day, but it comes two days after St.
Patrick's Day. Nobody treats St.
Joseph's Day like St. Patrick's Day gets treated.
And

Speaker 3 there's some resentment.

Speaker 2 I had an Irish grandmother. She was completely Irish, and she used to say to me, she had a slight southern accent.
she was born in New Mexico,

Speaker 2 and she said,

Speaker 2 I got to apologize. I gave you monkey eyes, Victor.
Your eyes are so reset in your head. And I said, No, they're not.
I like my eyes. No, they're Irish monkey eyes, like mine.
And then she would say,

Speaker 2 And no, no, she had 12 brothers and sisters, and she said, None of us got over 5'6. But didn't you?

Speaker 2 Our daughter, dear Pauline, married a 6'3 and a half Scandinavian and saved you.

Speaker 2 Saved you.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 3 the Irish

Speaker 3 are conscious of what they think of their.

Speaker 2 She was of all the people in my family

Speaker 2 the most upbeat and

Speaker 2 smiling, you know, always that Irish.

Speaker 2 I know everybody says it can be brooding, but she was so upbeat. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Victor, to our listeners, too late, but hope you had a happy St. Patrick's Day.
Hope tomorrow you have a happy St.

Speaker 2 Patrick. Yes, well,

Speaker 2 I'm going to be flying out and seeing if I can kick this final vestigial fatigue flu, and I got to go work for the Hoover Institution in Palm Beach for a week.

Speaker 3 Hope there are no dogs sitting next to you on airplanes. Victor, you've been terrific.

Speaker 2 At least the dogs that don't pass wind. How's that?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Bring a canopy for breeze with you.

Speaker 2 Thanks, everyone. Okay.
Everyone for listening.

Speaker 3 We will be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Speaker 2 Bye-bye. Thank you, everybody, for listening.