Trolling Politics: Trump and the Art of Provocation

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Speaker 2 Those of you who are expecting that the great Sammy. I was Typhoid Mary.
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I'm 71. I flew a long flight home.
I felt great.

Speaker 2 I had another nine-hour day when I got home. And I woke up seven days

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Speaker 2 It was like Saint Wartberg, a very interesting uh name. I'll look it up.

Speaker 2 Saint not Nazo never helped me with my sinus infection.

Speaker 2 There's no Saint Nazo. Okay.
Nostril.

Speaker 2 What the hell?

Speaker 2 Stick to your heathen Protestant ways. All right.

Speaker 2 It is the 12th of March. This episode will be out on Friday the 14th.
We've

Speaker 2 got plenty to talk about, to get Victor's wisdom on.

Speaker 2 Speaking of saints, Saint

Speaker 2 Mahmoud Khalil, patron saint of anti-Semitic protesters, pray for us. We can get Victor's views on that character.

Speaker 2 Gosh, Donald Trump is trolling Canada. Again, Donald Trump is trolling Chuck Schumer, calling him a Palestinian.
One I love, one I don't love, and there are other things we can talk about. And

Speaker 2 we'll get to the Khalil when we return from these important messages.

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Speaker 2 We are back with the Victor Davis-Hanson Show. Victor, I want to read this from a Fox News article.

Speaker 2 White House press secretary Caroline Levitt told reporters Tuesday that Marco Rubio reserves the right to revoke former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil's green card or visa.

Speaker 2 Levitt said that under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Secretary of State has the right to revoke a green card or visa for individuals who are, quote, adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America, end quote.

Speaker 2 Quote, and Maumoud Khalil was an individual who was given the privilege of coming to this country to study at one of our nation's finest universities and colleges, and he took advantage of that opportunity of that privilege by siding with terrorists, Hamas terrorists, who have killed innocent men, women, and children, Levitt said.

Speaker 2 And she went on to say many other things, including him being an advocate of pro-Hamas propaganda. So, Victor, he has become, though, a pin-up boy for the left, kind of like the guy Mangioni in a way.

Speaker 2 I mean, what is it with the left with these weirdos?

Speaker 2 Oh, they like killers.

Speaker 2 They like killers, apparently.

Speaker 2 There's been so much misinformation. We get lecture after lecture from the left that let me tell you that

Speaker 2 the constitutional protection for free speech by court decision is

Speaker 2 entitling everybody who is a resident, a resident jack, on American soil. You don't have to be a a citizen.
So this is a violation of First Amendment rights. No, it has nothing to do with it.

Speaker 2 He's not being arrested because he said something.

Speaker 2 There's 300,000 Middle East students that say stuff every single day that is pro-Israel, excuse me, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel. They're not being deported.
What makes him different?

Speaker 2 The State Department says that it can revoke the privilege, i.e., either the green card or the visa. He had a student visa.
He was a graduate student. He married an American citizen.

Speaker 2 Now he's got a green card.

Speaker 2 But he was a negotiator of people who forcibly took over areas of Colombia, the radical, radical Hamas that were disrupting classes. He was their spokesman.
He was their pro-Hamas spokesman.

Speaker 2 So all Marco Rubio's State Department is saying is, you can say whatever you want. You can break Colombia's statutes if you want.

Speaker 2 You can be an anti-Semite if you want.

Speaker 2 You can help organize these demonstrations that attacked NYPD.

Speaker 2 You can be a great heartthrob negotiator with the spineless

Speaker 2 Columbia University administrators. But just don't do it on my time.
We don't have to allow you as a guest to come over here.

Speaker 2 So, all we're doing is we looked at you and we think, you know what, in a cost-benefit analysis, you're a losing proposition.

Speaker 2 We've got enough problems with out having Algerian nationals coming over to the United States and then participating in often violent protests that help fuel anti-Semitism on campus.

Speaker 2 So, given our drothers, we just won't renew your visa, and I think it's time for you to go back where you came from, and you'll be much happier, because you'll be with people who

Speaker 2 like Hamas, promote Hamas, are Hamas. And that's all we're saying to you.
Nothing to do with free speech. It's just a violation of the State Department's policy on the issuances of visas.

Speaker 2 And if you read the statute very carefully, it says that the State Department can revoke any visa if it feels that the person is an advocate of terrorist interest or other interests contrary to the United States.

Speaker 2 It's not that he's saying, we're going to go punish you. It just says, you know, we don't think we're going to extend the privilege any longer.
You're just a loser. And that's what they did.

Speaker 2 And yet they're so desperate for a cause celeb that now they're protesting and violent, and

Speaker 2 no one's talking about

Speaker 2 this

Speaker 2 Khalil and people like him coincide with the rise of anti-Semitism. Because who is where what is the anti-Semitism coming from? It's coming from two different groups: a left-wing American

Speaker 2 radical student group that feels whatever the Orthodox cause is, they will participate, and a large contingent of foreign students from the Middle East who feel that once they get to the United States, they have a right to try to affect U.S.

Speaker 2 foreign policy through any means necessary. And so that's what they're doing.
And, you know, I think at Stanford University, where

Speaker 2 I work,

Speaker 2 that they have to be very careful because we had a statute that says you cannot camp for more than 24 hours out on the free speech.

Speaker 2 They were camping for months on end, and they would get up in your face. Some of them tore down posters of the hostages, river to the sea, screaming yellow.

Speaker 2 And some of them broke into the president's office. And are you telling me that that's all protected?

Speaker 2 If any of them are foreign students, I would assume that the State Department would just look at that and say, how many Stanford foreign students from the Middle East were pro-Hamas and broke either university protocols or the law?

Speaker 2 And if they did,

Speaker 2 we think you'd be happier where you came from. Just to live and let live.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? If I was,

Speaker 2 I don't know, if I wanted to go over to Gaza or West Bank and I started waving the Star of David flag or the United States, how long would I live? I wouldn't even live very long.

Speaker 2 And when I was in I lived three, two, almost three years overseas, two of two and a half years I was in Athens.

Speaker 2 And there were some very tense situations there. The 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the November overthrow of Papadopoulos.
There were violent anti-American demonstrations.

Speaker 2 I saw firsthand the forcible forcible attack on the Polytechnion by the

Speaker 2 Papadopoulos government. I think there were some people killed there, Greek students.

Speaker 2 But if I had been protesting with an American flag and say, yeah, USA, USA, or if I had said, and I was very pro-Greek and very pro-Cypriot, but if I had wanted to say,

Speaker 2 oh,

Speaker 2 I think that Turkey is a better ally than Greece,

Speaker 2 and the Greek government said to me, well, we have free speech. We just don't think you're a plus, Victor.
So get the blank out of our country.

Speaker 2 You're a guest, and we have enough problems without you siding with a terrorist government that invaded Cyprus or your own government that put in a dictatorship. And I would understand that.

Speaker 2 So I was meticulous to respect the sensitivities and the laws and customs of my host. But that's people

Speaker 2 it brings up a larger question, Jack, that

Speaker 2 of reciprocity. I think what's happened under this waxen effigy of Joe Biden, that the country went insane.
And just to bring it back to the middle seems very radical now.

Speaker 2 And so every time Trump mentions a tariff or he mentions a deportation, everybody goes insane,

Speaker 2 or a ceasefire, or Zelensky shouldn't do this. But why don't they just give us the alternative? If I would switch to the Canada situation, why doesn't Mr.

Speaker 2 Kerry, the new Prime Minister, say, you know what?

Speaker 2 Donald Trump, you're right. We run a $51 to $53 billion surplus with you.
And we're proud of it. We think that we're a small country and you're big and you can afford it.
You always have afforded it.

Speaker 2 You never really complained much until you came in. But we're going to continue to do it.
It mostly is because we sell you oil at a good price. We sell you electricity at a good price.

Speaker 2 And we feel that your butter and milk and agricultural goods and timber would overwhelm us. So we don't want them in here.
So that's why we have a 300%

Speaker 2 tariff. And you know, you guys are warmongers.
You always get in wars. So we only spend 1.3%

Speaker 2 on

Speaker 2 GDP on defense. And we're happy with that.

Speaker 2 And we're not going to change. That's all we asked from them.
But instead, they said, Donald Trump did this and Donald Trump did this and do toy tariff for that. No, he really, he's just saying

Speaker 2 you guys have your choice and you're doing certain things and you don't seem to want to talk about what you're doing. And you just expect us to the same old game and it's not.

Speaker 2 And the same thing with Mexico. And Mexico, you know, it's like, well, you are running $177 billion surplus.
Ross Perot said that great sucking sound. Remember that, Jack?

Speaker 2 We have NAFTA, there will be a great sucking sound of jobs. Everybody said, oh, he's crazy.
The idea of the North

Speaker 2 American Free Trade Association, defunct though it is, was to have parity in trade.

Speaker 2 Now we have one group to the north with 53 billion surplus and one to the south manipulating our tariffs for the benefit of the Chinese at $177 on top of $63 billion in remittances sent by

Speaker 2 I don't know, 20 or 30 illegal aliens, most of whom have some sort of subsidy from the federal government to free up up the cash they send to southern Mexico.

Speaker 2 And then the cartel, 20 or 30 billion, they reap off 100,000 American dead. And I don't know

Speaker 2 how much blood and treasure

Speaker 2 exhausted and wrecked lives and drugs and stuff. And at some point, people just say, well, you know what you're doing.
Just admit it. Mexico should just say that.

Speaker 2 We think we have a right to run a $170 billion surplus with you. We can't control the cartels.
That's your problem. And you know what? It's a beautiful thing, Mr.
Obadar said.

Speaker 2 It's a beautiful thing for 40 million illegal aliens that come to the United States. So we like the $63 billion.
What are you going to do about it?

Speaker 2 And I think the only mistake Trump is making is the trolling because

Speaker 2 he says things that get too much attention, like the 51st state,

Speaker 2 and then you get into all this Canadian nationalism. If you look at the present Prime Minister, Kerry,

Speaker 2 he is a rootless, itinerate person. He's not really even Canadian in the sense that he was the chairman of the Bank of England.
He's a Davos guy. He lived in Britain.

Speaker 2 He's just a Goldman Sachs globetrotter. Globalist thing.
Yeah, everything that he

Speaker 2 everything that he espouses is bankrupt. The New Green Deal, ESG, DEI,

Speaker 2 open borders. It doesn't work.
And so what Trump should be doing is trying to

Speaker 2 get tough with him, but in a way that allows Pierre Pulver,

Speaker 2 Pulver,

Speaker 2 however we say it, the NAPA leader,

Speaker 2 but gives him some traction because he's a very good leader. And he's not some wacko.
He's a moderate conservative. He's sort of like the wonderful Stephen Harper.

Speaker 2 And he will try to bring Canada back to more free market and more defense spending, and he will be a good partner of Trump, and he will try to work to reduce the surpluses, or at least find a way to accommodate Trump.

Speaker 2 But when you say 51st, 51st day, all you do is create this impulse of Canadian mindless nationalism. I say mindless because how can you be nationalistic and support Mr.

Speaker 2 Kerry when he's not a nationalist?

Speaker 2 We're so angry at the United States,

Speaker 2 we're going going to unite together and get a real Canadian to stand up, and then therefore we're going to get a Goldman Sachs globe-trotting guy who was the

Speaker 2 president of the Bank of England as a pure-blood Canadian advocate. I don't think so.
Well,

Speaker 2 it not only maybe is undermining politics in Canada because they will have elections soon.

Speaker 2 But here, Victor, I don't want there to be a Canadian 51st state.

Speaker 2 Why would you want to have that, Jack? We would get 50.

Speaker 2 It's the same size as California, 41 million people. We have 52 House seats.
Why would you want 52? Probably 48 of them would be left-wing, and then two senators.

Speaker 2 I don't want Puerto Rico to be a state.

Speaker 2 When I heard the other day that it wants to be independent again, I thought, promises, promises. That would be wonderful.

Speaker 2 That would save us a trillion dollars every five years.

Speaker 2 You know, and then Washington, D.C.

Speaker 2 wants to be an independent state. This was all cooked up by the left to get four senators.
And so, no, no, Canada, we like Canada as Canada, autonomous, independent. We want it to be a friend.

Speaker 2 I love Canadians. As I've said so many times,

Speaker 2 when they had a population of about 10 million people, they had the third largest navy in the world. They were the bravest people in the North Atlantic.

Speaker 2 Before we got in the war, they helped save Britain by their convoy system across the frigid North Atlantic, bringing North American oil and minerals and ores and fabricated assembled goods to

Speaker 2 besieged Britain. They had Juneau Beach on D-Day.
They're capable of having a wonderful military and a heroic tradition of defense.

Speaker 2 They saved thousands of American lives by fighting the Nazis before we did.

Speaker 2 I just think that it's just a shame that they don't recapture that legacy.

Speaker 2 With that country almost four times as large as it was in World War II, they could easily do it.

Speaker 2 I think Dieppe must have been one of the braver things at any time. Yeah, they were just used by the British.
They were kind of like sacrificial pawns.

Speaker 2 I don't know what, 10,000 Canadians went into Dieppe, and only about 2,000 came back. The rest were killed or captured.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's

Speaker 2 so it, I hope Donald Trump keeps that in mind, that we have a long tradition of friendship and shared wartime alliances with Canada. And the problem is not us, though.
It's under Mr.

Speaker 2 Trudeau, they've decided that they were going to be a globalized, pacifist, international criminal court, UN,

Speaker 2 open borders, pro-Chinese country.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they disarmed. Well, they kind of disarmed.
They disarmed and expected us

Speaker 2 to protect them. I think the best thing

Speaker 2 any new

Speaker 2 prime minister could do to win back this alliance and friendship with us is just sit down with the United States and say, Look, the Chinese and the Russians are intruding on the Arctic Circle in our sphere of North America.

Speaker 2 We propose to build 20 icebreakers. Would you build the same and we'll make a combined Canadian-American fleet and patrol the Northwest Passage? We will control and keep the Chinese and Russians out.

Speaker 2 We'll both try to discover valuable mineral deposits, energy deposits. And then we're also faced with the same existential threat from China, Russia.

Speaker 2 So let's work together on a North American iron dome. And you probably will need Canadian bases, and we will be happy to provide them.

Speaker 2 You share the expertise, we'll share some of the cost and the bases. Together with the Anglo-American Canadian, it'll be a great idea.
Just do something like that.

Speaker 2 Instead of just say, we're going to cut off all the electricity to the United States.

Speaker 2 Doesn't make any sense. I understand Trump's trolling and all that, but there's a way to deal with Trump, and that is by reciprocity.
Just say to him, we understand why you're angry.

Speaker 2 We run a $50 billion plus surplus. We don't spend what we promised.
We broke our promises. The border was not secure as it should.

Speaker 2 We're going to fix those things, but give us some time and partnership and encouragement and let's still be friends and then see if they actually do it. And if they don't, then

Speaker 2 go ahead.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Victor, I want to pick up back on Khalil point you made, but

Speaker 2 and then maybe get it, since we have so many new listeners and you're talking about tariffs, you've had your own experiences. with tariffs.
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Speaker 2 Victor, when you were talking about your time abroad, I I thought

Speaker 2 my kids had a friend who was,

Speaker 2 let's say,

Speaker 2 not Scientology, not moon, but let's say something like that. And some nations are friendly nations in Europe, maybe Switzerland or Poland.

Speaker 2 They don't want proselytizing there. And you can get thrown out of a country.
And I think we said, well, you shouldn't have done that. They don't like that there.
You should know that.

Speaker 2 That's, I think, a typical American's understanding of when you're abroad and if you're you're not acting in the way that country expects people to act, even if it's a friendly country, because a lot of people don't, you know, they don't have First Amendment rights in all these nations.

Speaker 2 We don't have much sympathy for the one who gets kicked out. I don't anyway.

Speaker 2 I don't. You remember under the Carter administration where we had that little upstart teenager?

Speaker 2 I think he was on his parents where they were in the corporate world and he was in Singapore and he started.

Speaker 2 I think he keyed cars or something, and they sentenced him to caning. Remember? Oh, the caning kid, yeah.
Yeah, and we all got upset, and they had to negotiate.

Speaker 2 I was only, you know, I think I was only in 20-something. I thought, Grant,

Speaker 2 my dad said that guy should be caned. And I said, I agree.
And my mother, of course, said no.

Speaker 2 But the point is, he was a guest. I lived in an apartment one year in Athens, and there was a group of people that were Mormon

Speaker 2 proselytizers, you know, on their mission.

Speaker 2 And they had on those black,

Speaker 2 very nice kids, and they came to the door, and they were riding a bike. And I think, I don't know how they got into Greece, but they must have not been wearing, because that was not allowed.

Speaker 2 It's a 99% Greek Orthodox traditional society. In those days, it was.
I'm talking 50 years ago when I first got there.

Speaker 2 52 years ago, when I first, but my point was that they came to the door,

Speaker 2 and then the concierge called the police.

Speaker 2 And the local policeman whom I knew, he was kind of patrolling, kind of a roly-poly, nice guy. And biggest problem was dogs defecating on the sidewalk.
So he came in and he was very polite.

Speaker 2 And then they kind of got obstinate. And so

Speaker 2 I was the only American, my wife and I, so the concierge asked me to walk over there to the door. So I said to them, you guys are a guest here.

Speaker 2 You're trying to take people who have been here for 500 generations back to biblical times. This street is called Osios Mikross.
Do you know what that means? They didn't.

Speaker 2 I said, this is Asia Minor Street. You know what that means?

Speaker 2 A million Greeks were ethnically cleansed from their ancient homeland in Asia Minor in 1921-22, and they were butchered in Smyrna, and they fled here. And this was the Asian

Speaker 2 Asia Minor Greek community that was kicked out of their ancestral homes. and they're very devout.
And you come in and think you're going to peel off Greeks. Well, we're giving them a free choice.

Speaker 2 I know you are, but this is not free choice United States. You've got to obey the customs and traditions of

Speaker 2 their country.

Speaker 2 Another thing came up.

Speaker 2 Five years later, I was at the American School of Classical Studies, and we had a bus driver, and he was completely out of control, Greek bus driver. Every

Speaker 2 town, you know, whether it was, I don't know, Olympia, Delphi, he had a girlfriend there. So he would take the bus and use our gas.

Speaker 2 We had to pay for the diesel, but he would take off and go have a tryst. And then he would, at the end of the trips, we had to, you know, chip in to pay his diesel fuel.

Speaker 2 But anyway, he would, he didn't want his, he owned, and you know, in that practice, they owned the bus, the driver. So he wanted it meticulous.
So everybody was American. So when they ate their

Speaker 2 tiropata or or whatever they were eating,

Speaker 2 they would put it carefully in a brown bag during the day. And sometimes we didn't get to a stop for four or five hours, and they had cheeses and everything, and it would smell all the food.

Speaker 2 So he would come by and he'd start screaming. And as we were he would driving, he'd slam on the brakes and then come back and grab all of the stuff and throw it out the window.
And we were appalled.

Speaker 2 And he got so angry that he said if we didn't do it and then he just threw a fit.

Speaker 2 And everybody had this big argument that we have to teach the Greeks not to throw stuff out the window, which is, I never did. I would never do that.
But as I said to them,

Speaker 2 the best thing to do is

Speaker 2 get everybody to trash and put it in a bag and then maybe find a place where we could just say you have to go to the bathroom and find a way around this.

Speaker 2 But don't start lecturing him about his own country. If he wants to have trash on the side of the road, that's his business.
It's not your business as a guest. It isn't.

Speaker 2 Even though you're on the right side of conservation and the environment and everything.

Speaker 2 And most Greeks would agree with you. They don't appreciate that either.
But I don't get this idea of people think that the United States of all places is theirs and they can come over here.

Speaker 2 And it's the same idea in Britain when remember during the election, the Labor Party started bragging that it was sending volunteers to Pennsylvania, the key swing state, to start to tell Americans and try to swing the vote.

Speaker 2 And you and I talked how bad it was for Zelensky the audacity to fly into Pennsylvania at a critical moment in the campaign and go to a munitions factory and basically be surrounded by Democratic politicos and try to tell the workers there that their jobs depended on Joe Biden winning, or excuse me, at that time, Kamala Harris winning, to keep sending shells to.

Speaker 2 JD Bance reminded him of that. Yeah, don't go into another country and start bossing people around, telling them what to do.

Speaker 2 That's why that's, I think, why Brexit happened, because Obama injected himself into that referendum and said, if you guys don't stay with the EU, you're going to get to the point of the business.

Speaker 2 All of them did. Hillary did.
Hillary did.

Speaker 2 They all did. They all started telling the British what to do.
And anybody could see what they were going to do, at least the ones outside of London and Manchester and the big cities.

Speaker 2 They were going to vote to get out of the European Union. Especially when they started lying and said that Britain would fall apart.

Speaker 2 And you'd say, well, the greatest days of Britain were when they weren't in the Union. Why would they fall apart? They ran the world for 200 years.
It's not like they're incompetent.

Speaker 2 Hey, Victor, we were just talking about trolling, so I want to set this up. I want to get your thoughts on something.
Then we're going to take a break. We have so many new listeners,

Speaker 2 and we were just talking about tariffs that I believe believe it would be a good idea for you to revisit your own tariff struggles as a farmer. We'll do that after the break.

Speaker 2 But Trump trolling, here's a Trump troll that happened

Speaker 2 today about Chuck Schumer. He's in the White House, and he says, and Chuck Schumer, I wish I could imitate Trump.
Chuck Schumer, Trump Schumer is a Palestinian, as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 2 He's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish.
He's not Jewish anymore. He's a Palestinian.
Wow, that's kind of.

Speaker 2 I think what Trump, if you translate Trumpes,

Speaker 2 he's correct. What he really is trying to say, I'm not saying he can't say it, but he says it in a different way than I would.

Speaker 2 Maybe a more effective way. What he's saying is that the current Democratic Party,

Speaker 2 including its Jewish American members, are indistinguishable from the position of the radical Palestinians. There's not much different.
Jeremy Raskin was out talking about Khalil and defending him.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 it used to be there was a quote, you know, I don't understand the right wing. There's still a vicidual right wing that hates Israel, and they keep saying the Jewish lobby, the Jewish lobby.

Speaker 2 There's not much Jewish lobby anymore. If you look at Congress on the Democratic side, at least, most of the Jewish members of Congress that are

Speaker 2 on the Democratic side are completely leftist and secular. And they have no particular allegiance with Israel compared to their conservative counterparts.
It's just a radical change, it's true.

Speaker 2 So that's what Trump was trying to say.

Speaker 2 I think if he would say that I'm not Jewish, although I'm the grandfather of Jewish children, my daughter is married to someone who's Jewish, but I have another daughter who's married to someone from the Middle East.

Speaker 2 And I'm trying to adjudicate this crisis, but I find myself as a much stronger advocate for Israel and take a lot more heat for that advocacy than do Jewish Americans. And he knows Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 2 He has known him for 50 years. He did business with him in New York.
Donated to him.

Speaker 2 Donated to him.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 You were going to ask me about tariffs. Well, not yet.
I'm going to ask you about that when we return from these important messages.

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Speaker 2 We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Those of you who are fans of the great Sammy Wincon, you should be fans of her.
Probably disappointed. Why is this ugly guy here?

Speaker 2 Well, Sammy's not doing all that well today. I'm pinch-hitting for her, so we'll say prayers to.

Speaker 2 I wrote the saint's name down, Victor, Saint Walberga, who's the patron saint of coughing and things such as that.

Speaker 2 She's got a bad cough, and so do I, but I've been taking a suppressant before I came on the air.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 brain suppressant, I'm afraid. No, no,

Speaker 2 you're doing fine.

Speaker 2 I want to mention about your website, Blade of Perseus. Folks, if you're a fan of Victor's writing, go there.

Speaker 2 You'll find Victor's weekly syndicated column, weekly essay he does for American Greatness.

Speaker 2 He writes two articles exclusively for the Blade of Perseus every week, and he does an exclusive video there.

Speaker 2 Links to the archives of these podcasts, every episode that we've ever done, you can find it there.

Speaker 2 Links to his books, other appearances. So

Speaker 2 yeah, what's the damage? $65 a year, discounted from $6.50 a month. The blade of PerseusVictorHanson.com.
Victor, two quick

Speaker 2 legal things. One is

Speaker 2 I'm getting this on my phone. My pal Richard, whose name

Speaker 2 I will not mention, he's a phenomenal lawyer. And he sent me a note.
He says, I'm looking for, so we know Perkins

Speaker 2 and Covington, the two big law firms of Donald Trump, revoked their security clearances for their hijinks with the Democratic Party and national security antics, etc.

Speaker 2 And Richard sent me a note, says, I'm looking forward to the discovery requests in the Perkins-Coy challenge to the executive order barring it from representing the U.S.

Speaker 2 government and entering government buildings. That may in fact have been the reason for the executive order.
So that law firm is fighting back against the removal of its status.

Speaker 2 Covington, he goes on, chose not to challenge the executive order. They are smarter.
So, yeah, maybe

Speaker 2 a chess game going on. Has Perkins

Speaker 2 ever apologized to the American people for disguising the payments that they transferred to Fusion GPS to hire under the radar Christopher Steele to warp a U.S. election? I don't think they ever have.

Speaker 2 They were knee-deep in it, knee, knee, knee-deep, along with Glenn Simpson and Fusing GPS and the DNC.

Speaker 2 And, you know, he, if you look at those revocations, he revoked Anthony Blinken because Anthony Blinken was the one who thought up the whole 51 Intelligence Authority.

Speaker 2 He called up Mike Moralan, basically the former interim FBI, a CIA director, and said, hey, there must be some way we can get old Joe some ammunition because he's going to get killed in the debate in three or four days.

Speaker 2 Because that laptop is lurid, man. It's drugs and sex and Mr.
Big and Mr. 10%

Speaker 2 paying the... We've got to do something.
Well, I'll round up.

Speaker 2 I'll call the old gang. I'll get Brennan on the phone.
I'll get Clapper. I'll get Panetta.
They'll do anything.

Speaker 2 And then they got 51 people to lie to the American people with the caveat that they did two things. All the hallmarks of, and they didn't say Russian disinformation, they said Russian information.

Speaker 2 So then then later when they were caught lying, they could say an owl. So why would you give any of those people anything? As far as Jake Sullivan, he was the architect of the

Speaker 2 alpha

Speaker 2 ping-ping hoax. Remember that, that Donald Trump was supposedly communicating with his machinery and Trump Tower with Russians?

Speaker 2 I think that was, he was one of the people who kept promoting that. So I don't know why any of them have, why do any of these people need a security clearance? They're right.

Speaker 2 They're entitled to it, aren't they? Why? The more you give, the less valuable they are, the more exposure you have to leaks and things.

Speaker 2 They should be a very tightly held treasure, a privilege, not just handed out to these people on cable news that are hawking their wares. It's just pathetic.

Speaker 2 Tulsi Gabbert was really good. She's been...

Speaker 2 She's taken the lead on a lot of this.

Speaker 2 Well, I agree with the great man here. Now, Victor, speaking of the great man, you were once a great farmer, or you were a farmer, a struggling farmer, but it was your whole life

Speaker 2 back on tariffs here.

Speaker 2 Tariffs hurt you as a racing farmer. And I just want to say, I'm not sure.
Well, it depends on what you're doing.

Speaker 2 See, farming is very complex because sometimes they want tariffs and sometimes they don't. They want tariffs when overseas companies

Speaker 2 dump soybeans and corn below the cost of production or wheat into the United States.

Speaker 2 They don't want tariffs

Speaker 2 because what happened on industrial goods, because say, let's take it

Speaker 2 take Europe, for example, they charge, say, 8% on our trucks or

Speaker 2 cars, and we do two on theirs. So if we say, let's each do 6-6,

Speaker 2 they may slap a tariff on corn and soybeans and stuff like that. So we don't like tariffs because farmers beat kit.
But in my case,

Speaker 2 in 1982, the price of raisins per ton that Sunmade Raisin Cooperative, of which I was a member paid, was $420.

Speaker 2 And you could get 2.5 tons, so that was a phenomenal amount of profit

Speaker 2 to make, you know,

Speaker 2 $3,100, $3,200.

Speaker 2 Of course, it took you years to get your money from the co-op, but $3,000 an acre probably cost you, I don't know, $1,500 an acre. You could make $1,500 clear.
The next year, the price was not $1,000.

Speaker 2 It wasn't $800,000. It was $440 a ton.
It dropped by $1,000.

Speaker 2 And I saw people blow their brains out. I saw people sell off.

Speaker 2 I used to talk to a poor woman that had been divorced, and she bought 20 acres, and her whole dream was to grow raisins and she bought this land for $15,000 an acre at the high point.

Speaker 2 And she was out there

Speaker 2 all year with hula hose and her three children in a dress and they were always weeding. Now they didn't have enough money for sophisticated herbicide or anything.

Speaker 2 And then the next year when the price came out,

Speaker 2 she was out there pruning her own vineyard. And I stopped by and I just pulled over and talked to her and I said, your land is worth $3,000 an acre.

Speaker 2 You're going to have to walk off it. Everybody's going broke.
And she did. She lost everything, all of her money.
And so

Speaker 2 they were, what we did then was we cut off the canes of our vines. Whatever your last crop was, you could take a certificate from the packer and you could tell the Raisin Administrative

Speaker 2 Committee, which owns your, that's another story, they own the grapes on the vine, that if you cut off all the canes and did not produce grapes and turned them into raisins, then you would get a certificate of all this stacked up.

Speaker 2 We had two years' supply jack of raisins rotting in these warehouses. So

Speaker 2 you got your share of the next year, and then they subtracted for harvest cost.

Speaker 2 So you might get, I don't know, four or five. You could stay alive.
So in 84 and 85, my brothers and I, we didn't have any money to hire.

Speaker 2 We pruned 90 acres and pruned the canes off and produced nothing for two years. But anyway, the Raisin Administrative Committee had a guy come out from

Speaker 2 the Reagan administration, and he was a farm economist. I forgot his name, but I went to the meeting.
He was very nice, and he tried to tell us this was wonderful.

Speaker 2 And I said, do you know why the price collapsed? And he said, no. And I said, well, it's partly

Speaker 2 the correction from the Carter inflation. Everybody was buying inflated things and the interest rates.
My first loan I got from the production credit was 14%.

Speaker 2 I was lucky to get it. First car I ever bought was a truck at 19%.

Speaker 2 We bought a tractor at 19%, I think.

Speaker 2 First house my mortgage was 11%. I thought it was great.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, anyway, we were

Speaker 2 so there was a correction in the economy at large, but at the same time, the European Union was being formed,

Speaker 2 or at least a proto-European Union, and they were slapping a huge

Speaker 2 tariff,

Speaker 2 not so much a tariff on U.S. raisins, but subsidies, a reverse tariff.
So that meant if a U.S.

Speaker 2 baker wanted to buy raisins, they could buy Turkish or Greek raisins for half the cost of American raisins, because

Speaker 2 this European Union, proto-union, would pay

Speaker 2 an import discount for the baker.

Speaker 2 In other words, if the world price was $800 a ton, they could buy raisins at $400 or $300 a ton because they would be given a discount and a subsidy would be then paid to the grower to pay the difference, the European grower.

Speaker 2 So all of a sudden, people who would love to buy a superior sun-made raisin were buying European, And it was at the time when the world was in a recession. So the whole thing collapsed.
But I was,

Speaker 2 this guy came to explain this, and he said something I'll never forget.

Speaker 2 He said, this is really good for you guys. And I said, why? He said, there's too many raisin growers.
I said, there's only 5,000 in the world here. And he said, yeah, that's too many, apparently.

Speaker 2 And he said, you know,

Speaker 2 The strong survive. That's creative destruction.
I said, there is no creative anything when the price is 430. He said, yeah, but, you know, you'll go out of business or your neighbor will.

Speaker 2 I said,

Speaker 2 and then somebody will tear it out because it's not profitable. Then some guys will find a way to be profitable, and that's how our system works.

Speaker 2 I said, yes, but you have to understand that these people are subsidizing their raisins for export. They are getting money from the European governments to dump raisins to destroy our product.

Speaker 2 And they don't have any defense budget. We are defending them.
We are paying at that time a a lot more than we are now, even.

Speaker 2 So they don't have a defense budget and they're subsidizing and protecting European agriculture. And we, and he said, well,

Speaker 2 I look at it as win-win-win. You're either going to get more effective or

Speaker 2 you're going to go broke. American consumers are going to get cheaper raisins.
I said, no, they're not. They're just going to get European raisins that are less quality.
And then he said,

Speaker 2 and more importantly,

Speaker 2 you may find a way, a new machine or something to be more more efficient. And I said, could I ask you a question? And he said, yes.
I was really smart ass, excuse the term, but I was about 25,

Speaker 2 and we were farming 185 acres and losing a lot of money. And I said, what do you make? And he said, that's none of your business.

Speaker 2 I said, let me just say you make $58,000 or something like that, I said.

Speaker 2 He said, what if I just told you that the United States is running a deficit, and we were, a big one, because that was Reaganomics. Everybody was making fun of Reagan for these mega deficits.

Speaker 2 So, why don't we do your part by cutting your salary by half? And then, you know what will happen?

Speaker 2 You'll find ways to, I don't know, you'll find ways to drive more cheaply, buy groceries more cheaply, and guess what will happen?

Speaker 2 Some guys can't make it where you work at that salary, but you will because you are the most clever. And then, when the other guys quit, there'll be more money for you.
How's that?

Speaker 2 And he looked at me like I was insane. But the point I'm making making is that all of this,

Speaker 2 I am a big advocate of the free market, but when you're in this globalized trade, American agriculture is in crisis right now.

Speaker 2 So many countries have so many different policies that we don't. And they put tariffs on our country, on our products, and then when we put a tariff on their industrial goods, they pay us back

Speaker 2 by

Speaker 2 taxing our agricultural goods. You know, the last year that Trump was in office was the first year, and then all four of the Biden years that we're a net food importer, Jack.

Speaker 2 We've never been that way before. Not for a long time, at least.
We used to be the world's greatest, I think

Speaker 2 we were until about five years, greatest exporter in value of crops. China is the greatest exporter.

Speaker 2 But with the advent of sophisticated farming in Argentina and Brazil, former Ukraine, China, Russia. It's been very hard on American farmers.

Speaker 2 And here in California, we have millions of acres that have been taken out of production

Speaker 2 because of the water. And

Speaker 2 somebody should just take a little drive down Manning Avenue and see the thousands of wonderful acres of farmland taken out for these huge solar farms. I mean, they're massive.

Speaker 2 Thousands of acres are used for solar farms. So agriculture is not a given anymore.
It's a very tricky business. And

Speaker 2 whatever the tariff is, the American farmer goes crazy because he has no clout. He doesn't know whether it's going to be retaliated.
He doesn't know if it's fair, it's unfair.

Speaker 2 He doesn't know if they're going to dump stuff product in our country.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's the toughest business in the world. I don't think sometimes we appreciate American farmers.
They're just.

Speaker 2 well, as you say, Victor,

Speaker 2 layered on to all that is the. I wrote a book about it.
It's actually called Fields Without Dreams. And,

Speaker 2 you know, you wake up one day and you walk around your farm and you say, well, today I just paid those pruners. I bought 500 gallons of diesel fuel.
The alternator went out on the John Deere tractor.

Speaker 2 Got to get that fixed. The insurance premium came.

Speaker 2 The broker's statement came and said that last batch that we sent of persimmons persimmons went bad in cold storage after four months and we've got to go get the rotten fruit and then pay for the cold storage fee that he threw away.

Speaker 2 That was every day. And then you think, well, what's coming in?

Speaker 2 So whatever was going out was sure and expensive and whatever was coming in was unsure and not that good.

Speaker 2 And so that's why so many people went broke. And today American agriculture is mostly a corporate enterprise, especially in California.

Speaker 2 I want to talk about, get you to talk about another one of your favorite topics, and that's flying. First, I just want to make note of two things.

Speaker 2 We have a very good

Speaker 2 person associated with this podcast named Sue.

Speaker 2 And Sue's husband suddenly passed away the other day, Billy. And then

Speaker 2 also, I shouldn't say similarly, you know, mentioned before that there is the Victor Davis Hanson Fan Club on Facebook, and one of its founders is Paul Ernest. And Paul was a moderator there.

Speaker 2 He passed away. So,

Speaker 2 for those of you who listen, who are prayerful people, very sad,

Speaker 2 yes,

Speaker 2 our friends who hopefully are in God's arms now, please say such for Billy and Paul Ernest.

Speaker 2 Victor, a story out

Speaker 2 this afternoon on the Daily Mail

Speaker 2 list

Speaker 2 was

Speaker 2 audio file, listened to leaked audio of DEI activists sharing air traffic controller exam answers with minority candidates. Let me just read part of the story quickly.

Speaker 2 A top DEI activist is caught on voicemail allegedly offering minority air traffic controller candidates the chance to cheat in a make-or-break entry exam.

Speaker 2 Shelton Snow, a powerful figure in the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees,

Speaker 2 can be heard promising advance access to test answers in a shocking audio clip obtained by Daily Mail. It goes on.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to read more, but cheat. I mean,

Speaker 2 I don't know

Speaker 2 where we would find cheating on tests

Speaker 2 permissible or turn a blind eye to it, Victor. But with FAA, with air traffic controllers,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 dummies, excuse me, sorry, dummies.

Speaker 2 Well, Sean Duffy has shown, he's released documents where the FAA was deliberately turning away qualified white male candidates to become air traffic controllers with military experience, top test scores.

Speaker 2 because of DEI. We know, as we've said so many times on this show, that United Airlines had a pilot training that would only accept 50% white males.
50% had to be DEI.

Speaker 2 They're playing with people's lives.

Speaker 2 I don't know one African-American friend, and I have many, if you said to him, you're going to be in a plane landing at Reagan Airport, would you rather have a white,

Speaker 2 Asian, Hispanic, black air traffic controller who went through the process and got his post meritocratically?

Speaker 2 Or would you like right now in the control tower to have somebody who is a minority who got the answers and cheated on the qualification? I don't think anyone would say the latter.

Speaker 2 So who is the beneficiary of this other than this fellow who wants as many minorities in his association that he can get, I suppose?

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 again, like all these things we've discussed today, they're all predicated on the idea the United States is so strong, so wealthy, so powerful, so unique that it can take these stresses, these deliberate stresses.

Speaker 2 It can have big

Speaker 2 budget deficits. Yes, we can hire all these federal employees.
We can spend a trillion dollars over five years on DEI, just waste of money, commissar system. Yes, we can

Speaker 2 we can

Speaker 2 juice the air traffic controller system, but we're American, and you know what?

Speaker 2 We're very vulnerable and fragile and it's all coming home to roost and we've got to go back to basics, square one, and start being merocratic, merocratic, lean, mean, take care of ourselves and get rid of this therapeutic idea because it's destroying the country.

Speaker 2 And when I read the other day that

Speaker 2 a close forensic examination of a lot of Joe Biden's orders showed that the vast majority were signed by AutoPenn, and there was only one that had a unique signature.

Speaker 2 What does that mean?

Speaker 2 That he was unaware? We've talked about it.

Speaker 2 Does that mean that he didn't know that, as he said to Speaker Johnson, that he had canceled new construction of liquid and natural gas terminals for export? I don't know.

Speaker 2 Who has been running the country?

Speaker 2 I suppose the people who are angry right now that they're not running the country.

Speaker 2 Even Woodrow Wilson went to work after he left the White House for a short period of time, proved he wasn't able to do anything, but he wasn't completely out of it.

Speaker 2 It's very troubling. Well, we know that I forget what's, maybe it's the Missouri Attorney General has pressed the U.S.
Attorney General Office to investigate this further.

Speaker 2 So we'll have more on that in coming weeks, Victor.

Speaker 2 We're coming around to

Speaker 2 the last segment, and in that, we will get Victor's views on Democrat governors.

Speaker 2 They have a playbook to give Donald Trump the middle finger, and we'll talk about that. And maybe we'll end the show with yet another Kamala word salad.

Speaker 2 We'll get to all that when we come back from these final important messages.

Speaker 2 We are back with the Victor Davis-Hanson Show recording on the 12th. Today is Wednesday the 12th.
This episode should be up on Friday the 14th of March.

Speaker 2 Victor, here's, this is from the Daily Signal. They got this exclusive story.
It's out today. Democrat governors playbook exposed.

Speaker 2 get template for defying Trump.

Speaker 2 Democrat governors have a resistance playbook created for them that includes draft executive orders to defy the administration's immigration policies, as well as instructions on deploying the National Guard.

Speaker 2 The Governors Action Alliance, a Democrat organization that founded the group Governors Safeguarding Democracy,

Speaker 2 provided such guidance to the staffs of Democrat governors across the country after the election of President Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 The 126 pages of the playbook, including emails, talking points, and a quote, firewalling for freedom template gubernatorial executive order, end quote, were obtained in public records request from the office of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro by a private nonprofit watchdog group, Government Accountability and Oversight.

Speaker 2 I guess we shouldn't be surprised, Rick. I thought we were all supposed to rally around the president, right?

Speaker 2 Weren't we supposed to involve Obama? Right?

Speaker 2 This is the Out Party's second win strategy after their effort the last last four years to destroy private citizen ex-president and candidate Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 So they conspired together and tried the Mar-Lago raid. They reinvented January 6th to an armed insurrection.

Speaker 2 They did the Letita James

Speaker 2 no victim loss settlement, tried to break him. They did the Alvin Bragg.

Speaker 2 bootstrap a federal offense onto a state statute. They did the Eugene Carroll, had no idea what year she was supposedly assaulted by Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 And they did the Fannie Willis, Nathan Wade, Imbroglio, and they did Jack Smith, who got what, $140,000. He didn't report in free legal help.
And then they did the Mar-Lago raid. They found 0.007%

Speaker 2 of the 13,000 classified files is actually classified.

Speaker 2 And then they tried to take him off the ballot. Then we had the two assassinations.
And then he became president. And then it was, well, that didn't work.
The Mar-lago-lay didn't work.

Speaker 2 That was the first time in history we'd done that.

Speaker 2 Getting them off the state ballot,

Speaker 2 what was it, 26 states tried it? That didn't work.

Speaker 2 The five lawfare cases didn't work. The two assassinations didn't work.
I know.

Speaker 2 We'll all get together, all the Republican, the Democratic governors, and we'll get a playbook where we will cherry-pick judges. We'll get our Act Blue type of PACs to go after Elon Musk,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 we will try to

Speaker 2 dodge, delay,

Speaker 2 fund protests, get teachers' unions involved.

Speaker 2 We will have dances, we will have profanity, we will try to disrupt the state of the union. We'll just make total chaos.
And that's where we are. And the question is,

Speaker 2 will the American people put up with it? We'll see.

Speaker 2 It's going to be rough because when you lay off hundreds of thousands of people and you stop printing money and you tell other governments the old way you're not going to take advantage, there's going to be a transition, as Trump said, and it's going to be

Speaker 2 It's going to be tough for a few months. But I don't know what else the Democrats have in store other than Donald Trump the Satan.
We're going to try to disrupt everything we can.

Speaker 2 We're going to call him names.

Speaker 2 Chris Matthews was out the other day, Jack, said that now he's convinced he's Mussolini, not Hitler. And

Speaker 2 the people, as I said, that Simone Sanders was bragging and laughing her head off

Speaker 2 that Elon's rocket blew up. They're torching Tesla chargers, they're torching Tesla dealers, they're vandalizing the price of the stock of Teslas dropped in half.

Speaker 2 I think you can buy a used Tesla with not a lot of miles for like $10,000 now.

Speaker 2 They're trying to drive down that, they're all trying to put their Teslas up for sale. I don't know what the car did to them.

Speaker 2 Is it like, wow, on Monday, Elon Musk was giving money to Democratic candidates. It's great.
It was not warming the planet.

Speaker 2 But on Tuesday, he gave money to Donald Donald Trump and suddenly it's a polluting vehicle. Something like that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, Victor, let's...

Speaker 2 Josh Shapiro, though, I never quite believed the facade that he was the new moderate politician and he was a can-do, technocrat, apolitical.

Speaker 2 Every time I heard him speak, he was always seemed to me very non-

Speaker 2 non-moderate, but pretty left-wing.

Speaker 2 And he didn't sound like the new fetterman that's for sure no well uh fetterman's only fetterman sounds like fetterman i think uh he was hiding behind the issue of school choice as if he was uh going to back that which he did not and he

Speaker 2 he was the he was supposed to have been the choice right that's what everyone said well if she picked kamala harris picked him i'm not even sure though i don't think that would have i at the time i thought he would have been better than kamala harris but nothing it wasn't the message Messenger, it was the message.

Speaker 2 Nobody could have saved them. Everybody was sick of it.

Speaker 2 I agree. But let's say he was the should-have-been poster boy.
And now

Speaker 2 this great state organization, Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth Foundation, and

Speaker 2 they put out, they've exposed, he too is now into performance art. I don't know what Democrat is not into performance art anymore, putting out a bunch of videos, TikTok videos.

Speaker 2 One of him listening. you know,

Speaker 2 that's he was doing that teenage mutant ninja, power puff girls, turtles, whatever the hell thing that was. No, he was, oh, I'm listening when my, when my pro-life,

Speaker 2 he wouldn't call them pro-life, when abortion foes

Speaker 2 speak, and here's what I do, essentially, and he's just ignoring,

Speaker 2 very rude, rude type. You can take your cane and shake it, or you can be like Jasmine Crockett and said, I'm just a proud, I guess we don't have any of those mediocre white boys.

Speaker 2 Everybody's afraid of my legal acumen, that kind of ragadacio. Yeah, well, I'm going to, we're going to talk about that at the very end.
About, we have a reader comment on Mr. Green.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but Shapiro is using state money to

Speaker 2 do performance art.

Speaker 2 Gavin is doing Michael Savage.

Speaker 2 He interviewed Michael Savage. I don't know why they get the time to do that.
Gavin has a,

Speaker 2 was it a $96,000 bust of himself made made by private donors? It's kind of like Hunter's artwork. Are you serious? Maybe you could hire a Hunter.
Hunter said he was broke the other day. Hunter, go

Speaker 2 get commissioned by Gavin's fundraisers and do a portrait of Gavin for the California hallway in the Capitol.

Speaker 2 You know who Gavin Newsom won't hire to go out and raise money, and that's Kamala Harrison will lend on this victor that she had.

Speaker 2 Nobody in their right mind will ever give her money again because it'll go to Cardi B or Al Sharpton or Ultra or those young staffers jetting around in

Speaker 2 Gulf Streams.

Speaker 2 She was at an AI conference the other day. She gave, I think, her epic word salad.

Speaker 2 I wrote it down here to read, but it's not, I assume most of our listeners have seen this. Guttfeld

Speaker 2 tore into it last night on his show.

Speaker 2 She's just,

Speaker 2 and I don't think she was, people want to say, she's like my drunk auntie. She's just dumb.

Speaker 2 It's based on the reason, but every time that you listen to her word salad, you look at the reaction of the people. They're usually clapping and laughing.

Speaker 2 They're bewildered, but they're saying

Speaker 2 she's a woman, Czech. She is black, Czech.

Speaker 2 She seems wealthy and elegant, Czech.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 she seems therapeutic and

Speaker 2 talks in a mushmouth, which is what I like, therapeutic stuff, Czech.

Speaker 2 Everything's rosy.

Speaker 2 Kahil

Speaker 2 Kabrim, you know, whatever. Ibrim.

Speaker 2 It's all self-improvement. It doesn't mean anything.
Right.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's not like what the that she say. They feel like, wow, I feel enlightened.

Speaker 2 It's like watching Glengarry Glenn Ross with that Al Pacino character, and he's talking to that guy,

Speaker 2 he's sold the land to, and he's got all these one bromide, strange, meaningless bromide after another. It's a great performance, but what the hell is he saying? What the hell is she saying?

Speaker 2 I wouldn't know. Victor, I'm sorry, because she's, as we've discussed in a recent show, she is still the leading candidate in polls to become governor of the Golden State.

Speaker 2 I don't think she's going to make it. I really don't.

Speaker 2 Your lips. They need a

Speaker 2 conservative Mexican-American sheriff

Speaker 2 to run.

Speaker 2 There's some that might.

Speaker 2 Well, hey, as we... I don't mean that on the basis of his race.
Just somebody who's in the practical world understands what a disaster California has become.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I would take

Speaker 2 the Hispanic angle there. I think it would be good for America if that happened at that particular time away.
All right, Victor,

Speaker 2 you're still recovering, so we're going to end this as we typically do.

Speaker 2 We thank our listeners, especially those who take the time to do a little extra. If you're on Apple, you can rate the show zero to five stars.

Speaker 2 And again, practically everyone's giving Victor five stars. It's a 4.9 plus average for 7,000, 8,000 people who've done such

Speaker 2 over the years. So we thank you for that.
And some people leave comments. And I'm going to read one.
Then there's a comment that somebody left on the Blade of Perseus, Victor's website.

Speaker 2 So this one is from Apple, and it's from Westmick71 titled, Love It. VGH's takes and opinions are a breath of fresh air.
Something sadly missing from the current events discourse.

Speaker 2 I, being a Gen Xer and a history nerd, I love his historical context to whatever the topic at hand is. Keep up the great work.
You've got to keep up the great work. That's very nice.

Speaker 2 Yep. And then we have one from your website from Michael McDonald.

Speaker 2 It's from The Blade of Purchase. He writes,

Speaker 2 this is a comment from the last time you and I

Speaker 2 recorded. As always, great commentary from Victor and Jack.
One historical trivia item. While brandishing his walking cane at Mr.
Trump during Trump's State of the Union, Mr.

Speaker 2 Green obviously didn't have much of a sense of irony or history.

Speaker 2 In 1856, the Democrat from South Carolina, Preston Brooks, also brandished his walking stick and used it to club and severely injure the

Speaker 2 abolitionist and later Republican senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner. Brooks did so in retaliation for Sumner's heated attacks on slavery that he made in Congress.
Mr.

Speaker 2 Greene should be aware of that.

Speaker 2 Yes, Charles Sumner

Speaker 2 allegedly never really

Speaker 2 recovered fully from that. And President Brooks became an iconic hero after that.
He didn't end up well himself, but

Speaker 2 he was considered

Speaker 2 the model defiant Confederate,

Speaker 2 proto-Confederate for that. I don't know after what that happened.
You still had another five years until the war broke out.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I don't know if we're quite getting that way or not.

Speaker 2 I could just add a footnote. They're angry at Representative

Speaker 2 Bobart.

Speaker 2 What's her name?

Speaker 2 You know, she's from Colorado, the margarita. Bobbert.
Bobbert. Excuse me.
She called it a pimp cane.

Speaker 2 She said he wielded his pimp cane, and that drew a response that that was a racist epithet.

Speaker 2 It wasn't a pimp cane. I've seen distinguished people of all different races with a type of

Speaker 2 knob or eagle or whatever was on it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I remember once Bob Wright,

Speaker 2 the speaker,

Speaker 2 he was adjusting the tie of Bob Dornan once on the House floor, battling Bob Dornan. Which reminds me, Victor, we'll close two things I want to say.

Speaker 2 One is, or three, I saw Dan Lundgren, the former Attorney General of California. I voted for him.

Speaker 2 Dan's a great guy, and he's a huge fan of you, and I just want to pass that to you. I saw him in D.C.

Speaker 2 And earlier today I went shopping and Joe my my friend who was former parishioner my because my parish is is closed and he's waving to me I got to talk to you I'm like Joe I got to get gas so I pull anyway as well as I was leaving I saw him so I parked the car and I said what's up he says I was watching I was watching

Speaker 2 YouTube although I think he meant Rumble and I saw Victor Davis Hanson I love him he's the best and I saw you you who hit them and he had no no idea But he's just a great, great, great fan of yours.

Speaker 2 Loves you.

Speaker 2 Maybe I have to go speak in Palm Beach in five days and

Speaker 2 I'll never make it. Maybe I can borrow a ride on his private jet.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I've got to get a miraculous recovery very quickly or I'm going to be in hot water because I've got a lot of people that have bought tickets for a couple of events.

Speaker 2 You've got to take care of yourself, Victor.

Speaker 2 I write Civil Thoughts, free weekly email newsletter for the Center for Civil Society. Comes out every Friday, 14 recommended readings.
I know you'll like it. Free, not charging.

Speaker 2 That's what free means. We're not selling your names.
Go to civilthoughts.com, sign up for that. Victor, go take some, whatever you would take.
Go lay down. Go rest.
Sammy Wink, wherever you are.

Speaker 2 God bless you. Hope you're getting better.
We will be back soon with another episode of of the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Bye-bye.
Thank you, everybody, for listening. Much appreciated.