Give 'Em A Chance: Trump Navigates the Complicated Middle East

I knew we all had two ages, our actual age and our internal biological age.

What I didn't know is, I've likely lowered my biological age without even knowing it.

Here's the thing, because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual age.

They're ticking time bombs.

A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb.

Participants slowed their aging by drinking Field of Greens.

That's all.

They didn't change their eating, drinking, or exercise, just field of greens.

When I started Field of Greens to replace my multivitamin, I was amazed.

After about two weeks, my energy improved.

I've been exercising more, and my overall wellness feels great.

Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits.

Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney metabolism, even healthy weight.

It's wonderful knowing Field of Greens can slow how quickly I'm aging.

And I encourage you to join me.

Swap your untested fruit, vegetable, or green drink for Field of Greens.

While there's time, check out the university study and get 20%

off when using promo code VICTOR at fieldofgreens.com.

That's fieldofgreens.com, promo code Victor.

And we'd like to thank Field of Greens for continuing to sponsor the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

Victor is the Martin Annalie Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskie Distinguished Fellow in History at

Hillsdale College.

This is our Friday news roundup, and we are going to talk.

Trump's been in the news all week as he's traveled to the Middle East.

So we're going to look at some of the deals he's made in the Middle East, and those will be the first topics that we look at when we come back from these messages.

When empires debase their currency, citizens who hold gold survive the transition.

That's not opinion.

It's documented fact.

Trump's economic warning isn't speculation, it's pattern recognition.

The same signals that preceded every major currency crisis are flashing now.

Unsustainable debt, foreign nations dumping our bonds, and central banks hoarding gold.

But Trump's also revealing the solution.

The IRS strategy he's used for decades is available to every American.

It's how the wealthy preserve their fortunes when paper currencies fail.

American Alternative Assets has documented this strategy in their free 2025 wealth protection guide.

It shows exactly how to position yourself before the turbulence Trump's warning about arrives.

Call 888-615-8047 for your free guide.

That's 888-615-8047 or visit victorlovesgold.com.

The patterns are clear.

Make sure you're on the right side of them.

If you're like me, you have a lot of product on your bathroom counter.

Well, I have found the secret serum and it's vibrant Super C Serum.

The ingredients in this one bottle can replace your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams, and even dark spot reducers.

Made in the USA with the highest quality ingredients including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, vitamin B5, and vitamin E, Super C Serum delivers noticeable results.

Simplify your skincare routine, get a healthier complexion, and minimize wrinkles and age spots with Vibriance.

I just began using Super C Serum last week and I love it.

My skin feels so much better, soft, moist, and fresh.

And by the way, it smells beautiful like the orange blossoms outside my kitchen door.

Give it a try and you'll love it too.

And if you don't find it better than your current skincare routine, you'll get a full refund.

Go to vibrance.com/slash Victor to save up to 37% off and free shipping.

That's Vibrance.

V-I-B-R-I-A-N-C-E.

Vibrance.com/slash Victor.

And we'd like to thank Vibrance for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

You can find Victor at his website, VictorHanson.com.

The name of the website is The Blade of Perseus.

So please come join us there for all Victor's writings, his video recordings, and also audio recordings.

So we'd love to have you.

We would love to have you as a subscriber as well for $6.50 a month or $65 a year.

So Victor Trump has been in the Middle East, and I'm anxious to hear your thoughts on all of the deals he's making, whether it is additional investment in the United States.

He's got a Boeing deal with Qatar, and he's got arms sales deals with the Saudis.

If we put it all together, all the other deals he's made with other countries, it's coming to $8 trillion in

production goods in the United States.

Yeah, that's got the left very angry, all that money coming in.

So for every billion dollars, there's 4,000 or 5,000 jobs.

1,000 billion is

a trillion.

So you've got

7,000

billion dollars.

And

so there's going to be a lot of jobs here.

And when you look at the deportation and closing the border, there's not going to be a lot of cheap labor.

So wages are going to go up.

There's There's going to be a demand for workers as there was during the first term.

And

remember, Joe Biden had said that

he had said when he came into office, he had attacked the Saudi royal family because of the Turkish embassy incident.

And he said he was a killer, I think, or something to that effect.

And then the Saudis just said fine, and they were estranged from Biden.

And then during during the 2022 midterms, they didn't pump oil as requested.

They went to Venezuela, they went to

the Middle East, and they begged people to pump oil.

Because the price of gas got very high under the Biden hyperinflation.

And then Biden drained a million barrels a day for 40 or 50 days.

out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Then he figured out you can't offend the Saudis.

So then he wanted them to be friends with him.

But they point out and recalling all this, they didn't like him.

And so they didn't respect him.

Sort of what the Chinese were reportedly had said during the negotiations, that they didn't respect Biden and they could do walk all over him.

So they really couldn't negotiate with him because they knew that he didn't represent

the strength of America, that he would be seen by Americans as too weak.

So the Saudis say they're going to buy $140 billion worth of U.S.

military equipment.

And in addition to that, they're going to invest $600 billion in the United States.

And then they go to Ghadar, an arrival of the Saudis.

They want to outdo them, even though they're much smaller.

They're going to spend somewhere

well over $100 billion, maybe $200 billion

on buying Boeing jets.

That's a slap in the face to Europe that is angry about all this.

Europe is watching all these deal-making and they are dear in the headlights.

They don't know what to do because they're ideologically joined with the American left and they have been talking about cutting their own deals with China.

They run up the same amount of trade deficits as we do, about a trillion dollars.

But they pay for it because they have about a $300 billion surplus with us.

that helps them.

But they're very angry because they're not going to be selling as many Airbuses and they don't know why Donald Trump is an American nationalist.

They've never met a president in the modern era like that.

So their attitude is

why is he doing these things for America?

He should be subsidizing our defense and running up a big trade deficit

with us and give us supremacy.

And the only missing element is he didn't stop at

he didn't stop in Israel.

I guess he didn't want to offend them.

Now he's dealing with an ex-Saudi, ex-ISIS, ex-terrorist head of Syria, whatever Syria is today.

It's been carved up.

The Israelis are helping the Druze on their side.

The Kurds have carved out a little bit.

So it's a rump state.

But

he's going to recognize this government, apparently.

And so the danger with all of this is that

Take Ghatr, for example.

They've given, along with Communist China, as I said, $60 billion for higher education, and they fund radical pro-Palestinian, anti-American Middle East programs.

And

so he's really let them off the hook.

The other thing is about the, I think what they're trying to do is they're doing their contribution to the trip was airplanes because they gave this $400 million refurbished, elegant, plush 747 to the U.S.

Air Force and then for Donald Trump's personal I mean, not personal, but use as President because

Air Force One was aged and old and the Boeing did not come through.

So you can see this subtext.

Boeing's going to build two hundred

seven eighty sevens and seven seventy sevens for gutter when they're way backordered and they couldn't even build two for their own government.

And the other thing about it is Donald Trump can say, Look, I didn't really want to get the $400

million plane, but they're giving us so much business with these 200 jets they've ordered.

This is just a token of our good friendship.

And to get out of all the criticism, all he has to do is say, look, they gave us a billion-dollar L

Uday

Air Force Base, and they remodeled it.

They spent another billion dollars plus.

We use it.

We haven't paid anything for it.

We don't pay rent.

It was a gift for the government.

All he has to do is saying, I'm going to use their jet until the Boeing comes on.

And if the Boeing doesn't come on, lying when I'm president, then the next president can use it.

And then not give it to his foundation.

At least running, maybe just as a Reagan artifact, you know, a

museum piece, park it outside the Trump Library, but don't use it as a personal plane and he'll have no ethical problems.

If he doesn't do that and a foreign government gives a delayed gift to Trump himself via his foundation, he's going to have ethical questions.

Already some conservatives are questioning what he can do.

I don't think anybody has a problem with if this regime wants to give us a free airfare air base so we use it

as we please and they want to give us a free airplane and they want to give us sixty billion billion.

I don't hear anybody saying Harvard shouldn't get money from gutter.

They shouldn't, but nobody says that.

They all get money from gutter: governments, military, universities.

But the problem is, Trump has to protect himself and not

eventually gain ownership through his foundation or the library.

I just want to add that with the Syrian new leader, I think his name is Ahmed Al-Sharar,

Sharar.

He's not only did he work for AQADA, et cetera, but also he, Trump has

relinquished or taken off the sanctions against Syria.

And he said he wants to do this because he wants to give the guy a chance to make something of his country.

I love the way Trump, yeah, that's, I mean, it's nice, actually.

Yeah, and he says things like, I like him, and it's important that you like somebody.

So they haven't seen, this doesn't go down well with our elite, his colloquial, folksy way of business and these big momentous decisions.

He's supposed to be a sober and judicious Republican Romney-esque type of president, or maybe, you know, a John Kerry president type, wannabe.

And so he would have a committee, and then he would have a task force, and they would make a position paper, and then they would weigh the pros and cons.

And then in two years, we'd see a recommendation that was full of all these professional diplomats'

verbiage, and he just does it.

Yeah,

Pete Hagseth apparently also signed a cooperation in defense with, I think, the Qataris.

Yeah,

well, they're right next to Saudi Arabia, but they're a friend of

Iran, and so they have a balancing act.

They don't want Shia populations to overthrow these

monarchies in the Gulf, so they try to cut deals with Iran to look the other way.

But they've gone a little bit too far.

They host Al Jazeera, which is a very anti-American, anti-Israeli hate

organ, and then they are the headquarters of the Hamas leadership in exile.

And as I said earlier with Jack, they think they're Switzerland, but they're not.

They're very anti-American, at least until Trump came in.

He's got to be very careful, though, because, well, he doesn't have to be careful, because if they do anything, he can flip on a dime, and he will flip on a dime.

All right, so let's turn then to Iran.

But first, I want to welcome back one of our favorite

sponsors, and that is Quince.

Quince has all the things you actually want to wear, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners the best part

everything from quince is priced 50 to 80 percent less than you'd find at similar brands working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middleman quince gives you luxury pieces without the crazy markups and quince only works with factories that use safe ethical and responsible manufacturing practices and premium fabrics and finishes.

Elevate your closet with Quince.

Go to quince.com/slash Victor for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's quince.com/slash victor.

To get free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com/slash victor.

And we'd like to thank Quince for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

And I've got lots of pieces from Quince and I do enjoy them as I in fact did last night so go to Quince they've got some very beautiful comfortable

nice looking clothes so everybody please join our sponsor so Victor Iran what I've been hearing this week is people are looking to or at the Trump administration has says that it's going to in no way tolerate the enrichment of uranium and the need for centrifuges since that is to get weapons grade and not for energy as they claim it is.

So I was wondering your reflections.

This is the...

We don't need any

nuclear facilities whatsoever.

They have, I don't know, 100 years of natural gas and oil to power whatever they want.

So they don't need it.

They can go, they have all the sun in the world if they want to go solar panel.

So they're trying to enrich up to 90%.

I think they've riched a lot of it, it, 60%.

So that's way over what they need for a nuclear generator.

So I don't know what Trump is up to, other than I think he's trying to tell the world we're going to go back to maximum pressure: that's embargo their oil,

list them, delist them from the world's banking organizations so they can't really use foreign banks, put travel bans on them, and then

see if that pressure brings fundamental changes.

And what does he want?

He wants three things.

Number one,

he does not want them to try to overthrow the Gulf monarchies.

Number two, he doesn't want them to fund the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

And number three, he doesn't want to get a nuclear weapon.

But that's all there is to the regime.

It can't govern.

And so it spent hundreds of billions of dollars on these terrorist organizations.

And if you could neutralize them, then you'd have a calm Middle East.

Most of the Arab countries have gone beyond or evolved beyond the Om Kippur War.

So they're not really engaged in a military conflict with Israel.

They have no desire to.

They would lose.

And they get along fairly well.

So it's just Iran.

And he's trying to

get most of the Gulf money

to recognize Israel Israel and to make deals with the United States and then to tell Iran you're going to be even poorer because you're going to be sanctioned, isolated, embargoed.

So why don't you do the three things that the region wants?

I don't think they're going to do that.

So he's going to have a rendezvous.

He's got to be very careful when he says things like I could solve the Ukraine war in a day or

we're going to

we'll probably get a cut a deal with Iran.

I don't think they can cut a deal because that regime has never cut a deal with anybody.

They don't tell the truth.

The Iran deal with the Obama administration was a joke.

So I think what's more likely, when he says you're going to have to let American inspectors go in there and certify that you don't have enriched uranium up to weapons-grade levels, they're going to say no, and the deal is going to be off, and then they're going to take it out.

Whether you like that or not, it's going to happen because I just don't think they're going to voluntarily surrender.

or they're going to obfuscate and delay, delay, delay.

Well, it seems to be a good week for Trump nonetheless in terms of he's just everywhere across the world making deals.

And it seems to be mostly let's just all get along type of deals.

So, you know, you got to admire him and get along and get rich.

Yeah, let's all get along.

Yeah.

Talk, talk, jaw-jaw as Churchill said beats war, war.

So

the left doesn't know quite what to do with all this.

They really don't.

They haven't got a strategy because on the one hand, he's got tariffs that they used to be for.

On the other hand,

most of the unionized American non-governmental employees voted for him.

On the other hand, the idea of taking tips off

the tax rolls or taking Social Security exempt it from taxes,

that was something the Democrats always talked about.

And then being a peacemaker abroad and trashing neoconservatives, which he did, he just said nation building, nation.

He was talking about the Afghan and the Iraq war, maybe even the first Gulf.

I don't know.

But

so how do you criticize him if you're a Democrat?

I don't know.

You say he's a racist or he's a fascist, but he stole the middle class from them.

And they are now the party of the very poor and the very wealthy.

And he's a party of the middle class.

And that's a bad thing if you're a Democrat because the middle class is where elections are won.

They seem to be the party of the absolutely insane and crazy if you follow all of their protests.

But we'll leave that for a little bit later.

The last topic before we go to our

ads are Afrikaner refugees, as probably many of our audience know, are being accepted into the United States, though though only the first are coming at about 47.

It's turning the head of the left.

They're going crazy.

But their president of South Africa came out and said those refugees that are leaving are cowards.

And this is the guy who actually signed the expropriation act in South Africa.

I think he signed it in November that said the government has the right to take away with no compensation lands that the state can show are just and for are for just and equitable reasons.

So everybody knows I was surprised.

Yeah, even the Western people are.

I was surprised the BBC and all they're all calling Trump a liar when he said, oh, they're taking their land away.

They are.

But he said, no, they can only, they have a new law.

Yes, they don't have to give compensation, but they won't take it unless it's for public purpose.

In South Africa, anything can be for public purposes anytime, anywhere, to anybody.

So that's bogus.

So they're stealing land, and there's only 7% of the population is white.

It's shrinking.

What he's worried about, Ramposa, is that his name?

Yes.

What he's worried about is he's looked at what Mugabe did in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, and he understands he hates white people, he hates Afrikaners especially, but he understands that they make

their expertise in agriculture and agribusiness make

South Africa the wealthiest of all south

of all countries south of the Mediterranean.

And everybody knows it.

And he's going to drive out that group of people.

He ran on, you know, they played a song, Kill the Boar, Kill the Boar.

And then, you know, when they talked about them, the people on the View said that this was racist, that we didn't want these white people coming in.

because they were from an apartheid regime.

The left has a very strange idea.

They have been racist for 50 years.

The only people really coming in to the United States are Asians and Hispanics and people from Africa, period.

There are no people from the former British Commonwealth or from the EU, basically.

So when you have a few people coming in that don't fit, then they go hysterical and say, this is terrible, which

begs the question, why do they want only people coming that are very poor and non-white?

And why do they go hysterical when a measly 60 or 70 people are coming in who are real refugees?

They've been threatened with physical violence.

They've had family members killed.

Unlike the 10,000 a day that were coming here were not refugees.

They just wanted

stuff.

So, and the answer is they're racist.

They are racist.

They have a vision of the United States of being a socialist, non-white.

And when you say that, they say you're just a racist yourself.

You believe in the great replacement theory.

That's the term they

accuse conservatives of conspiracies, but they're the ones that brag about demography as destiny and the new democratic majority.

So they hate South African refugees coming because they're afraid that there'll be too many white people coming.

And I'm talking, who am I talking about?

I'm talking about Presley.

I'm talking about Jasmine Crockett.

I'm talking about the insanity on the View.

I'm talking about the black caucus in the Congress.

It's just, it's

when you hear, as I said earlier, when you hear Jasmine Crockett talk about white boys and you hear about Ilyan Almar talk about

white men are terrorists and you

just hear that all the time, white, white, white, white.

It's it's a racism that people are sick of.

Well, since you mentioned that, we have,

as we often do, read comments at the end, and I have a few more, but there was one actually that addressed that.

She said, because you and Jack had talked about that,

Day Ketchum 1148 was the viewer on YouTube, and she said, or he said, you are 100% right.

I am an American Christian veteran and black, and I'm tired of all this racism.

I'm sick and tired of it.

It's ridiculous.

And And yes, I voted for Trump, and he's a great president.

So that's one of many.

He did, and according to Rasmussen, 39% of African Americans now support Trump's first 100 days.

So all of this elite that the Democratic Party thinks that they have to promote the new AOC, the new Jasmine Crockett, their own constituencies don't,

they don't have enough of their own constituencies.

Given that they've driven out the white working class, they have to win 90% of blacks, 65% of, and they're not doing it.

And I think it's gotten worse.

So,

and now we have that crazy Shree, is that his name?

Is he a Sri Lankan congressman that he's going to impeach Trump?

Victor, let's go to ads and then we'll talk about Sri when we come back.

Stay with us and we'll be right back.

If you're a homeowner, you need to listen to this.

In today's AI and cyber world, scammers are stealing your home titles, and your equity is the target.

Here's how it works: criminals forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee with your county, and just like that, your home title has been transferred out of your name.

Then they take out loans using your equity and even sell your property, and you won't even know what's happened until you get a collection or foreclosure notice.

So when was the last time you checked on your home title?

If your answer is never, you need to do something about it right now and that's why we've partnered with Home Title Lock so you can find out today if you're already a victim.

Go to home title lock.com/slash victor to get a free title history report and a free trial of their million dollar triple lock protection.

That's 24/7 monitoring of your title, urgent alerts to any changes, and if fraud does happen, they'll spend up to $1 million to fix it.

Please, please, don't be a victim.

Protect your equity today.

That's home, titlelock.com/slash victor.

So you just got back from summer vacation.

Maybe you might have even had to book two rooms because of your snoring.

Some vacation, huh?

Snoring can be an underlying cause of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and even memory loss.

Here is my advice.

If you want every night to be a true vacation, you need to get yourself Zipa.

That's happy Z spelled backwards.

Zipa is a doctor-designed mouthpiece that not only moves your jaw forward, but is also the only device with a patented tongue seat belt to keep your airways open and the snoring away.

The snoring can stop as soon as the first night.

Zipa was proven in a 600-patient clinical trial and sold over half a million units.

From now until the end of October, show your family you actually care by purchasing a limited edition pink Zipa.

Not only will you save $10,

but Zipa is on a mission to raise $50,000 for breast cancer research and they will donate another $10,000 to the Susan G.

Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Go to zyppah.com and use the code PINK or text Victor to 511-511.

Put your snoring on a permanent vacation and help a worthy cause with the snoring device we trust by visiting zyppah.com and use the code PINK or text Victor to 511-511.

Remember, Zipa is happy Z spelled backwards.

Text fees may apply and we'd like to thank Zipa for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Victor is on X, his handle is at V D Hansen, and on Facebook, he's Hansen's Morning Cup.

And there's also the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club on Facebook, which is not associated with us, but they do a great job researching, especially the new stuff they do put on, but they research and put on old works of Victor's, and they do a great job at that.

So please find Victor in any of those spots.

So back to Sri, and I think it's Tanadar.

And yes, he's proposing legislation that will impeach Trump on seven articles.

So I was wondering.

I think the Democrats are not on his side, so it does show a divide in the Democratic caucus.

I was wondering what you thought.

Well, they've done it twice.

Donald Trump's the only president to have been impeached twice.

He's the only president to have been tried as a private citizen.

He's the only ex-president that had his home raided.

He's the only president, ex-president to be the subject of state, local, and federal prosecutions and indictments.

He's the only major presidential candidate that there were evers in 25 states to take him off the ballot.

And so we've kind of forgotten all that.

It's been, I don't know, six months or eight months ago during the campaign.

And now he wants to revive that and just show you how crazy it is.

And then the question is:

did we ever hear of this man before this?

I never had.

I had never heard of Jasmine Crockett until about six weeks ago when she started screaming about white people.

I didn't even know who the, I still don't know who he is, the mayor of New Jersey, of

Newark, and he wants to be governor.

So what is this all about?

It's street theater.

It's about getting name recognition and taking over from the old guard of the Democratic Party, and they're going to go the full McGovern or full Tecaucus.

I hope they do, and they're going to run that party in the ground because nobody's going to vote for this agenda.

What Trump is doing also, it's really important to point out,

he's doing two things.

He's saying that things that can't go on won't go on.

You can't print

$37 trillion

and rack up that much debt.

You can't print one point

one trillion

you can't give to our competitors $1.2 trillion in trade surpluses.

every year and you cannot run up a budget deficit of of $2 trillion

after you've borrowed $7 trillion.

And you can't just keep fueling the Chinese military with trade surpluses and foreign exchange.

And you can't just keep letting in 10,000 people a year.

So everybody knows that.

But the second existential question is why did they do all that?

And how did they pull it off?

Because their positions on transgender

not very popular.

Open border, not very popular.

Afghanistan, not very popular.

Soros crime policy, not very popular.

Hyper economy, not very popular.

So how does the left exercise power?

And Trump has come up with a solution.

He says

the progressive project does not rely on popular support.

All of the issues do not pull 50%.

So what do they do?

Oh,

they...

they rely on the bureaucracies,

the Lois Lerners, the Anthony Fauci's, the James Comeys, right?

So he's going after that by cutting them.

And then he says, oh,

they're the big mega foundations,

Tides Foundation, Gates.

So we're going to start taxing their income,

their endowments.

I think that he should have an exemption up to

$10 billion, because if you look at the

mega

foundations, $100 billion and plus, they're all left-wing.

But our little Bradley Foundation is $1 billion.

But they need to exempt some of the smaller ones.

And then he's saying, where else did they get their power?

Oh, they train all of our future leaders in the university.

And

they rely on federal money.

And Mr.

Garber, the president of Harvard, I think he's saying to the Trump administration,

do we

use race?

Don't ask that question because we have racially segregated graduation ceremonies, dorms, and our admissions are race-weighted.

Do we report all the gifts from China?

No, we don't want to go there and get our, we haven't reported all that money.

Do we gouge the federal government 50 to 60 percent in surcharges?

No, we don't want to go there.

We do.

Do we protect speakers who come on campus as invited guests with the First Amendment?

No, we don't want to talk about that.

So he's going after the universities, and he's on the right side of that.

So foundations, universities, media, fake news, fake news.

He's always attacking the media.

Caroline Levitt has got the new media in there and kicked some of the old ones out.

She's a little bulldog, big bulldog.

I don't mean physically, but

her stature, her ability to take them on is pretty amazing.

So what I'm getting at is part of the Trump counter-revolution is actually having these issues and policies and agenda.

The other half is saying, how did we get these terrible things on the border and overseas?

Oh, I know what it was.

The foundations fund DEI.

Oh, the higher education lobby indoctrinates people.

Oh, the media warps the news.

Oh, pollsters do this.

Oh, and he's going after every one of these institutions at the root.

the root causes.

And that's why they're getting so angry.

It's a real counter-revolution.

Yes, and we're all hoping he's very successful in what he's doing.

So, let's, since we're on the Democrats, we might as well talk about some of the news about potential candidates for 2028.

Old Pete Buddigig is out giving campaign speeches to audiences and sporting a beard, apparently, as though it's going to make him more amiable to the average Joe crowd, I guess, if I can put it that way.

And then the other one is Gavin Newsom, who has

decided against allowing illegal aliens to get California Medi-Cal

and putting them on.

They're scrambling as fast as they can.

And Pete Buttigieg went,

ultimately, they're going to be judged on whom they support and what was their record when they had power.

Pete Buttigieg was Secretary of Transportation.

He was lecturing us on racist clover leaves, remember?

And on-ramps.

And

he drove up in an SUV, then pulled out a bike, and then got the cameras there, and he rode a bike to work.

So

he's a sanctimonious fraud.

He always was.

Self-righteous, sanctimonious, going nowhere.

Gavin Newsom's got a problem

because he knows

that he's got to move to the center.

So he's doing that rhetorically, but

he can't deal with a homeless problem.

He said, Come on, you cities, stop it.

And then he knows that 40% of the state's residents are on Medi-Cal, and he wants to grandstand and say, I'm going to pay for their Medi-Cal, and he doesn't have any money.

And he can't raise taxes because it's 13.3%.

He's losing 300,000 people a year.

And he's got the highest poverty rate in the United States at 20% of the population.

One quarter of Californians can't pay their power bill.

So, what he's trying to tell the legislature and Silicon Valley and all of his constituents is,

calm down because we've got about 20 million Appalachian Californians.

They're poorer than Appalachia and they can't afford $5 to $6 gas.

They can't afford 30 to 40 cents a kilowatt energy.

They can't afford a home.

We've driven all the insurance companies out.

We're driving out the oil refineries.

We drove out the timber companies.

So, how's he going to?

I was driving today from, I spoke for the Hoover Institution.

I'm kind of sleepy because

it was a 250-mile trip each way.

And my point is the 99 freeway, when you get to Delano, California, and you're cruising along it, six lanes, three each direction, and it goes down to two.

And it's exactly the same as when I was

16.

So almost 55 years ago, they haven't, he hasn't hasn't done a thing.

It's a Blood Alley.

It's the most dangerous freeway.

So, why doesn't he just cancel his podcast and just fix it?

Why doesn't he build a new reservoir and just cancel his podcast?

Why doesn't he just close the border and say to eyes, we're here to help you, and we're going to deport illegal aliens?

He can't do any of that.

You mean, why doesn't he just get to work, Victor?

Or why doesn't he just be a technocrat or, I don't know, an effective guy?

But he can't.

A, he's incompetent.

And B, his entire life he's faked his way through with his looks and his little shtick.

You know, he kind of goes like this

when he talks.

And he reminds me of Justin Trudeau a lot.

And so there's nothing there.

There's no there there with Gavin.

And so he can't do the issues that he wants to.

And so I don't think he's going to make it.

I really don't.

And I don't think Pete Buttigieg is going to make it.

I don't know about Josh Shapiro.

I don't think Governor Pritzer is going to make it.

He's a buffoonish type of character.

He comes across as a spoiled Nepo baby.

Just one thing, though, if you're thinking of them running against Donald Trump, I could see that, but they may, they may be, they will be running against somebody else, a J.D.

Vance or a Marco Rubio.

And you still think all of those guys, like Pritzer, couldn't

toe the line?

Maybe a Josh Shapiro,

an Andy Bashar,

the governor of Kentucky.

But they're going to go, they're looking for a Bill Clinton.

They're not looking for a Barack Obama leftist.

They've been there, done that.

And

they're looking for a Bill Clinton centrist.

And that's going to be hard because the MAGA agenda cut a lot of their constituencies out from under them.

And

the Republican never-Trumpers who got angry about tariffs or supporting unions

are,

you know,

not getting involved on the ground in various conflicts.

They're just irrelevant now.

They're marginalized.

The bulwark constituency is very small.

The dispatch constituency,

it's not a constituency.

There is no Never Trump constituency anymore.

They've been absorbed by either the left or they're irrelevant.

Well, Victor, maybe just a small topic.

Hannah Dugan, the judge that snuck an illegal alien out her back door to avoid ICE, has been

indicted by a federal grand jury this week.

And it looks like a very strong case against her.

What do you think her fate is?

She'll be convicted if they have a jury that's open-minded.

I mean, if you're a federal judge and there's federal officers, both uniformed and ununiformed, and they have a warrant for someone who broke the law, and he's an illegal alien, and she cancels her trial right in the middle of it.

She just delays it.

She leaves the victims who came there to see justice.

She and this crazy public defender kind of facilitate his secret exit out of a jury side door, which

I guess the non-uniformed ICE people saw.

But the point was, she didn't care if he went out there and somebody tossed him a gun or somebody was waiting for him.

They could have injured officers.

She was aiding and abetting a felon, and she should go to jail.

And especially if you're a Democrat and you lecture the country as no one's above the law,

including Letitia James.

I found out that that statue is not hers.

Jack told you that.

It looks like Letitia James.

It does look like her.

Well, that's one more topic that was good this week: the inflation rate, according to the Labor Department statistics, is at an all-time low at 2.3%.

So if nothing else, cheers to Donald Trump for his there is no inflation to speak of.

And corporate profits are up.

Jobs are up.

They're going to readjust the GDP, it looks like, so it will be more it might be over 2%.

There's no bad news except on the Wall Street Journal and the left-wing press that say the recession, recession, recession, stock market, stock markets back where Donald Trump was when he was inaugurated.

So now everybody is listening.

What was all that about?

The hysteria.

Donald Trump's ruined it.

He's ruined his money.

He's all over.

I would ask some of the Wall Street Journal writers and op-ed, would you please now come forward and say that you're apologized for telling the country that he destroyed his administration and that we had destroyed the stock market and we were headed toward a recession?

That was not true.

I said that on our podcast.

Why don't you just take a deep breath and not judge something right in the middle of

the effort?

And that's what they did because they hated him so much.

And

we don't know what the effect of this is.

We have never, ever seen in 100 days commitments for $7, $8 trillion of foreign.

We don't know if they're going to honor that.

We don't know if the money is going to be actualized.

We don't don't know any of it.

But if it is,

and it comes at a time when you have a president that's cutting taxes, deregulating, and yet

addressing debt,

and all of the indicators on jobs and economic growth

are good, and you put that into it,

you could have an explosively

robust,

something you've never seen before.

And that is what destroys the democratic.

I mean, they can't handle it, they can't process it, they can't imagine that.

So they have to be against foreign investment, they have to be against

deporting illegal alien felons.

So

I've never seen anything like it.

Hycum Jeffries commented on the judge, but he also commented

on the representatives that were assaulting ICE members.

He said, that's a red line

if Speaker Johnson takes them off committees.

And I'm thinking, well, you did.

When you had the January 6th committee, there were nominations.

The minority leader at the time, Kevin McCarthy, he has a prerogative to make his nominees.

And Nancy Pelosi said, nope, not him.

He's a real Republican.

And he's, nope, not him.

Nope, not her.

Liz Cheney, yes.

She voted for Trump's impeachment and she's not politically viable anymore and the Republicans hate her.

And

Adam Kissinger, ditto, ditto, ditto.

He's not going to be in office anymore.

The Republicans hate him and he voted for impeachment.

So there you got it.

And so Hichem Jeffries is very strange.

He says that's a red line.

What's he going to do?

If these representatives assaulted federal officers, I thought he said that no one was above the law on the lawfare matters.

So, is he now saying that if you're a member of the House of Representatives, you can go into a federal building and assault the security there and just walk in?

And you add the other consideration that he's doing all of this on behalf of felons and murderers and rapists?

And then he says, This is a red line.

What are you going to do?

What does he mean by that?

Red line, you're going to get Al Green to shake his cane again?

Are you going to cut another video of kickboxing female representatives?

Are you going to go p full potty mouth with more of the SHI

blank blank videos?

Are you going to have the F blank videos again?

Are you going to get Tim Waltz to say that he's delighted when the Tesla stock drops?

Or that

Elon Musk is a dip SHIT or an A A S

is that what is that what you mean by a red line?

What does he mean?

Does he mean what, Corey Booker, or we're all going to go out in the street?

Well, since you're there, Victor, I did want to ask you something, not so much about the case itself and Sean Diddy Combs, but the reflection it has on our culture.

And I think it kind of fits in with the rhetoric coming out of the left as well, or at least the crass rhetoric coming out.

But let's first go to some

messages, and then then we'll come right back to talk about that.

Yes, Mr.

Gecko, you're a huge inspiration to us all.

But who was your muse?

Oh, my dear old Nan.

She imparted many wise words to me.

She would say, never let the fame get to your head, always remember who you are, and let people get more than just savings with Geico's fast and friendly claim support.

I lived up to her advice, and now anyone can file a claim anywhere and anytime.

I miss her so much.

Did she go somewhere?

Extended quilting trip.

Ah.

Get more than just savings.

Get more with Geico.

Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

You can catch Victor on YouTube and on Rumble and Spotify.

And on Spotify, remember, it is the Victor Davis Hansen podcast on Spotify is the full name of it.

So, Victor, I don't want to ask you about the salacious and disgusting details of the Sean Diddy Combs case, but he was an

entertainment mogul as well and put out lots of music that was crass and of the same sort of culture that

sprung his own freak out parties.

And I thought, you know, that kind of goes along with the Democrats resorting to the rhetoric of cussing, I guess I would say.

It also is kind of concerning in the broader cultural picture of a young population that finds that stuff entertaining and that is increasingly because of AI, because of DEI, becoming less and less educated and less and less skilled.

Remember Obama had rappers at the White House and one of their ankle bracelets went off.

And then he said his favorite rapper was Lamar Kendrick, How to Pimp a Butterfly.

And then in one of those lyrics, I looked at the one that Obama was one of his favorite songs.

He said, Kill Popo, the police.

Kill the police.

So it's a very crass rapper culture, and no one wants to suggest that it's deleterious to women, to anybody, gay.

It's homophobic, it's

misogynistic, it's nihilistic.

And in

Diddy's life, that's what he did.

He was the

rapper version, the cruder version of Jeffrey Epstein.

And he's going to meet the same fate because what the prosecutors are doing,

fairly or not, they're just saying,

well, we're not even going to get into the question of whether these people were coerced.

They're all on drugs.

We're just going to show you tapes and get testimonies.

And it's going to be so primitive, so foul, so pre-civilization, you know, defecating, urinating in people's mouths, just horrible things that are beyond your imagination.

Pimping his own girlfriend out, and the poor woman is there pregnant.

And it's just one

colossal horror story.

And the jury is going to hear all that.

And they're going to say, you know what?

I don't really,

I'm not condoning this.

I don't really care whether they proved beyond a reasonable bout that everybody was coerced.

But this guy is sick, and what he's doing is sick.

And he's destroying people's lives that went to these parties.

And I think they're going to convict him.

And I think the the evidence, unfortunately,

Cassie Ventura should have never, she was 21 when she met this guy, but she tried to run out of that hotel and he beat the proverbial daylights out of her.

But I don't know why she ever went back with him.

She should never, I mean, it's sick, and all these people that show up at these parties, that's what's even sicker.

So you know that he is sick, you know that he coerces women, you know that he does the most foul,

horrific horrific things at these parties, and yet you go to them and they're famous.

And there were some celebrities that went there just to show up and be seen.

And

his brand was appealing to African-American youth, Hispanic youth, white youth, who thought it was cool to talk about

raping women, beating up people, the BITCH,

killing Ka, all of that stuff.

Thug stuff.

And

I think we're in a new era now where people are sick of it.

I hope so, because if you continue it and you see these people, these young kids not really getting education because AI is doing all their writing, it's doing all their reading for them, they don't have skills and they can't process, they just go with whatever they're told they're supposed to like.

And that could be anybody.

It doesn't have to be, obviously, it's not going to be Sean Diddy Combs anymore, but the next guy will come in with the same grass culture that will attract them.

So, isn't it scary, I think?

And what is Harvard and Yale doing about it?

They're training the teachers in their schools of education.

They're not doing anything.

They're aiding and they're pouring gasoline on the fire with DEI.

We should have a Marshall Plan K through 12 about reading, writing, math,

strict guidelines, strict homework assignments, strict discipline, strict attendance, so that when they go to college they at least can emulate their grandparents' preparation.

But

we just pass it on.

I mean, Harvard has remedial math at Harvard.

Stanford has remedial math.

And then they lie about

what they've been doing.

They threw out the SAT, they threw out comparative evaluations of GPAs, and then they went full DEI.

And still want us to think that they're turning out the smartest people.

And if you're not, I'm sorry.

They're not very well educated.

I met them, I deal with them at Stanford.

They're not very impressive.

This last four or five years, these students are not impressive, not like they were in the past.

Yes, and they shouldn't allow in this Marshall Plan for Education, they shouldn't allow phones or computers in school.

These students should have to come in and perform without those aids, those aids at all.

So speaking of criminal cases, I just thought, and I'm not sure, this is a surprise for you.

Do you have any thoughts on that Menendez brothers case?

It's been in the news all week.

They are trying to, after 35 years in jail, to get out.

And their argument was always that their father had molested them.

And I don't know how strongly they were.

Their original argument was they never shot him.

Somebody else came in and shot him.

Now they admit they shot him.

They lied about everything.

They shot their mother when

she was preparing their college applications.

If you believed your father was a molester, why'd you shoot your mother?

Why'd you shoot your father?

Why don't you just call the authorities?

There's no evidence.

So somebody dies and he can't speak from the grave and then you say that you try to tell the world that you shot him because he was having sex with his own children.

I never believed anything they said.

I think they were, there's lots of cases.

We had one not too long ago in Fresno, California, of a very privileged, wealthy kid who had affluent parents, and he went in and

shot his parents to get the, and then he claimed somebody else did it.

It's a very common phenomenon, actually,

as murders go.

And so I think they really wanted the inheritance because they were lazy, spoiled, rotten kids.

And I wouldn't let them out of jail, no way, no how.

Not for what they did.

They're lucky they didn't get the gas chamber.

Yeah, it seems like they did a lot of damage while they were shooting them.

So

also, there's been tales of spies found, Chinese spies found at Stanford again.

Is that true?

I can't believe that.

Stanford Review is running a long series.

very long article detailing from some sources that

there's three categories of Chinese national students.

There are the small percentage that are actively engaged in espionage.

They are the other ones that are not actual agents of the

People's Liberation Army, but they are subtly threatened their parents, their family, unless they cooperate, and they reluctantly pass on information.

And then there's the rest of everybody that

have to go through a routine debriefing when they leave campus.

And they are obligated by law to tell the Chinese government anything they want to know about American technology expertise.

So

Stanford had a Confucius

Center Institute, which was a front for espionage.

They had

a neurophysicist visiting lecturer who was actually, I think, a lieutenant colonel in the Communist Party's People's Liberation Army.

They were fined by Betty DeVos for not divulging all the money that they had been receiving from Communist China.

And

I think again we're all tired of it because we know what they did with COVID, the Chinese government, we know what they did

when these Confucius Institutes were exposed.

We know what they do when we expel.

They say, it's racist.

You're just like the yellow peril again.

You're racist.

And I don't think that works anymore.

No, we're not racist, but we want to ask ourselves, would the world fall apart if there were not 300,000 Chinese communist students here?

I don't mean that they're all communists, but the vast majority are the children of party elites

and provincial officials.

So I just don't see why we have to have 300,000 potential spies in the United States.

It doesn't make any sense other than they're price gouging them and they want the money.

The universities do.

It's a very bad investment.

And I think if you just sent them home.

China's scared.

I mean,

they talk a tough game, but if we just don't buy their products, they're in big trouble.

If we were just to say, you know what,

expel all of our students from China, we'll expel all of yours.

It would be,

I don't know, 10 to 1.

I don't think, no, it'd be more than that.

We only have 10 to 12,000 students left, you know?

So it would be 30 to 1.

And I don't know why we don't do it.

I know why we don't do it.

They want the money.

The universities do.

But why would we let 1 or 2% be active spies?

2,000 or 3,000, 4,000 students roaming around, sending all of our...

And then when you look at their new latest jet fighter or you look at their newest tank or their newest

military vessel, they all look like ours.

Their uniforms look like ours.

Their caps look like ours.

Everything is.

All right.

And then, since we're into the salacious, I don't know how much credence I put into this, but the business insider apparently has made an argument that Donald Trump Jr.

is the Hunter Biden of the Trump administration because he has an investment firm, 1789 Capital, it's called.

And the Business Insider claims he's doing business in China and Ukraine, and they never asked on this particular article for Donald Trump Jr.

to give a response to it.

They didn't even allow it.

They just slandered him.

So I'm surprised.

He's not Hunter Biden because he pays his taxes, number one.

Number two, he's not sending checks to his sisters or his father with a little fake note on the bottom of the check, loan repayment.

Number three,

he's not a cokehead.

Number four, he doesn't lose laptops.

He doesn't lose

the family, doesn't lose their diaries, they don't lose their firearms and dumpsters.

He's not peddling his art and

blowing paint through his nose and trying to get donors to give money so they can get access to his dad.

He's a business person and he knows that the Middle East is where the money and he and Jared Kushner are going over there to to make money.

And the degree to which Donald Trump is going to be a beneficiary of that,

that's not right.

And I don't think he is.

So it has to be separated.

But

my life, I can just tell you that there was a lot of Kennedy hangers on.

There was Donald Nixon, Richard Nixon's brother,

and

there were a lot of Billy Carter.

Billy Carter.

Trying to remember Bill Clinton's brother.

He was a cokehead, but not that anybody in the Trump family uses drugs.

Anyway, Clinton's brother, who was, I think he died finally, and he was pardoned by Clinton.

And John Kerry's son was a partner of Hunter's.

And

Obama had all sorts of problems with

anti-Somme.

What was the one woman that should have been deported, and she was in Boston or something on welfare, and she was given

a visa, and then there was supporters.

I mean,

he had his brother come over, and they just basically waived immigration laws for the Obama family.

And so

Hunter is in a Suey Guinness, he's a special case.

He was flagrant, and he probably raked in $30 million.

And it's all on the laptop.

All you have to do is look at those messages.

Mr.

Big, Mr.

10%.

I'm paying his power bills.

He doesn't appreciate me.

The only mystery with Hunter was

Hunter was kind of playing a sick blackmail with his dad.

When he was up on the IRS charges, his lawyer threatened to bring...

His dad, the President of the United States, to testify

on his behalf that he'd paid his taxes, which is meaning he was saying, look, Look,

Dad, unless you get me out of this, you're going to have to testify and you're going to perjure yourself.

You're going to have a choice of either lying to protect me or telling the truth and putting your own son in the can.

Now you want that?

So you get these crooked lawyers and judges, and then

you could see that, oh, I lost my crackpipe in a rental car.

Oh, I've lost a third laptop.

Oh, Ashley lost her diary talking about dad showering with her when it was too.

Oh, my handgun turned up in a dumpster.

Oh,

I am blowing

paint through my nose

and I'm selling them to lobby.

Oh, dad, is that a little bit too much conflict of interest for you?

In other words, he was saying, yes, I'm a cokehead.

And yes, I am erratic.

And yes, I may have had cocaine brought into the White House and they found it.

But you know what?

I made all of you people money.

$30 million.

And it was old.

And I'm just quoting him

verbally now, literally, on the laptop.

You know, when he said, I'm getting sick and tired of this family, that I pay for everything, and I've been paying for dad.

And they always said that he was, you know, the black sheep.

Well, the black sheep was the money man.

And now dad is not there, and Hunter has no money, and

all the Biden's lifestyles and expenses caught up to them.

It's all going downhill for Hunter.

Jill Biden.

They're saying, Jill, we're crooks, but we have no grift anymore because Joe's not in a position of power and Hunters can't leverage everybody.

So you've got to step up and pay all her bills.

And you can have to write a tell-all memoir on how we covered up Joe.

And that's what she's doing.

And they're all writing tell-all memoirs about their lives.

Not the Bidens, but all of the left left wing, which brings me to, yes.

How many times did you

Jake Tapper?

I think is on tape 11 times berating somebody who suggested that Joe Biden was non-composment.

Remember when Laura Trump did it?

About the stutter?

Oh, that's...

And now he's writing a book about people like himself, and he's going to make money on it.

They're all that way.

They all, at first they blame,

they couldn't hide it anymore after the debate.

Then it was a scramble to the exits.

Who's going to be the first truth teller?

So then, at first, they blamed the Bidens.

Oh, we didn't know.

They had a wall around him.

I don't think that was Joe Biden I talked to.

It must have been somebody else.

He was fit as a fiddle.

Remember Joe Scarlet?

This is the most coherent Biden I've ever met.

And then when that didn't work, then it was the media did it.

The media was for,

and now they don't know what to say.

say.

Ah, but

Chuck Todd does.

So he was out in the news this week claiming that it was Chuck Schumer's fault for allowing Joe.

And Chuck Schumer said, we're moving forward.

We don't even want to talk about this anymore.

He's probably the smartest of them all, I'd say.

All of what.

What does it all boil down to?

It was all boils down to, we don't really care about the United States.

We don't care that he has a nuclear codes.

We don't care he's going to let in thousands.

All we want is a waxen effigy.

And we want him there in that chair maybe two or three hours a day, three days a week, and then we're going to turn the whole thing over to the Obama people, their prior administration.

And they're going to make every judicial appointment.

They're going to make every key decision on the border, on Afghanistan, on the economy.

And they're just going to go

DEI crazy, ESG crazy, you name it,

New Green Deal,

Green New Deal, they're going to go crazy.

Yeah, the sad thing is that they haven't let out what unelected official was actually making all the calls.

And that's what I think we're all angry.

Yeah, I think it was all of the aides that are around that work for Obama.

They had all the Obama people.

Susan Rice was in the administration.

That's why she was so angry when she got fired from a board.

You know, she said that Pete Hexes was a white male, cisgender, da-da-da-da-da.

But she was there, and she's Michelle's best friend.

And they were just all, if you go look at them, they were all there.

Anita Dunn, the communicate, she was there.

Jin Saki, she was there.

It was all Obama retreads.

All of them.

Jake Sullivan, he was working for

Biden when he was working for Obama, when Biden was the vice president.

Anthony Blake, they were all retread Obama people.

And they just called Brock up for instructions.

And he said that.

He said he'd like to be a third-term president if he could phone it in

and didn't have to be seen.

And he got his wish.

Yeah, I was going to say, you think you got his wish there.

He did.

And he ruined the country almost.

Well, Victor, we're at the end of our show, and we're going to hear a few more.

I know I read you earlier a

comment from one of the YouTubes.

I was looking.

This one says, and it's from F-16 Weave,

and it says, Mr.

Fowler, you don't get enough credit.

You come prepared every day, and it doesn't go unnoticed.

Thank you for making VDH and yourself a must-watch on my daily watch YouTube video.

Everybody should know that I don't really know all of the topics that come up.

Some of them he's given me advanced, but he's always researching.

So my job is to react extemporaneously.

And sometimes he sends me that day and I try to research them.

But he's the one that does all of the background.

All right.

And then from still learning eight three sixty,

like Trump asks if we're tired if we're tired winning, I ask, are we tired learning so much every time we listen to V D H?

Thanks to Jack and Victor for each and every wonderful episode.

So two very nice and reflective of other comments as well.

Well, we drove 250 miles today from Newport, so I'm kind of not up to my game with my sinus infection.

I spoke last night to a group who were a very nice group of people, beautiful country club.

And at five in the morning,

Los Angeles, the 405 was a mess.

No, that must have been brutal coming at 5 in the morning.

I didn't sleep very much.

I got back at 9.30 and I thought, oh, I'm so tired.

And then like a clock at midnight,

that's that thumping in your sinus.

But you're here and you did it.

I'm here.

And we're at the end of the show.

You did a very good job.

I'm happy to sleep.

You did an excellent job.

So thank you for all your words of wisdom today.

Thanks to our audience for choosing to join us here at the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

Please come back for the next episode.

Jack and Victor do their

show on Tuesday and Thursday.

And Sammy Wink is who I am.

Victor and I talk on the Friday News Roundup and his special weekend episode.

So we'll have one.

We'll probably produce it tomorrow for the weekend.

So please join us.

Thank you, everybody, for listening and watching.

See you next time.

This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis-Hansen, and we're signing off.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

What a performance by Team California.

The power is ours.