Bakersfield, Isfahan, and Commencement at USC

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Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

I am Jack Fowler, the host.

You are here to listen to the star, the namesake Victor Davis-Hansen.

He is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

Victor's got a website, The Blade of Perseus.

VictorHanson.com is the address.

I'll tell you more about that.

later, why you should be subscribing to it.

But right now, I'm going to tell you that you can find on that website a link to his forthcoming book, The End of Everything.

And a little later in this podcast, we'll talk to Victor or I'll ask him about

the way he writes book, the processes, this particular book versus other books.

Get into the, how does Victor crank him out?

And he certainly has cranked out a lot of them over the years.

We have some other very worthwhile topics to talk about.

Iran's Nine Lives, a column Victor has recently written, a big story in Daily Mail about Bakersfield, California.

Oh, an armpit, because the beautiful people didn't live there, right?

But now they're moving there.

And all of a sudden,

it's a big deal.

And maybe Bill Maher, Bill Maher, who continues to impress conservatives by saying out loud the things that most liberals are afraid to say out loud.

We'll get to all these matters, all these topics, and Victor's wisdom on them right after these important messages.

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We are back with the Victor Davis-Hansen Show recording on Sunday, the 21st of April, and this episode should be up on Thursday, the 25th.

So, Victor, maybe

we should start with Bakersfield.

Bakersfield.

Here's the headline from the Daily Mail.

Wealthy residents are fleeing L.A., San Francisco, and Orange County to little-known city dubbed the Armpit of California.

But some locals are furious about the invasion.

Victor, I'm a little surprised in that headline that folks are leaving Orange County.

That may be that's an adjunct to the story, but

I've never been to Bakersfield, but you have.

There's a lot of places I haven't been to.

Tell me, what do you think about this, Victor?

And what do you think the people are furious about?

I can imagine.

Well, you know, when I was growing up, Fresno was in the San Joaquin Valley,

south of Sacramento.

It was the big city.

It had an appellate court.

It had

more,

it had a lot bigger GDP, much bigger

population.

It was the gateway to Yosemite, an hour and a half away.

It had a somewhat milder climate.

It was right next to Kings Canyon and Sequoia.

And Bakersfield was looked down upon as hot, dusty, country music, and it was the locus of the Oklahoma diaspora.

And there was a lot of snobbishness there.

Okay.

Everything is flipped, Jack.

Now, Bakersfield is catching up.

I think it's almost over 400,000 in the city proper, and maybe that much in the surrounding suburbs.

And Fresno is only about, the city proper is only about 100,000, and maybe another 400 or 500 in the sprawl.

But they're getting close to the same size.

And why is that?

What's going on?

What's going on is there were...

was a lot of natural advantages that people had underappreciated.

You can leave Bakersfield and you can get to downtown Los Angeles in an hour and 10 minutes, or you can go anywhere in the greater Los Angeles in less, some places less than an hour.

And the 99 freeway, which is a

death trap

on the way to Bakersfield going south,

from Bakersfield south onto LA and San Diego, it's pretty good.

It's being enlarged in Bakersfield.

And then the I-5, there's a nexus right outside.

So two major freeways.

And then there's, I guess it's the 58 that goes on east to the east part of the United States.

So it's a transportation hub.

But most importantly, it's got oil.

It's got location.

It's got a lot of cheap land.

And it's

the soils are and the the climate is ideal for agriculture if you have the water.

But there's less water there, but under the California Water Project, they've got a lot of water transfers from the Fiant Kern Canal, especially out of Millerton Lake.

So, what I'm getting at is all those natural advantages.

Now, it's a much more conservative-run city than Fresno.

It's a no-nonsense city.

So, they want people to come.

They want to encourage development.

They want cheap, affordable prices.

One of their biggest sources of GDP is what you just talked about:

exodus from LA and the Bay Area.

So people come there and they say to themselves,

I'm only an hour and a half from the ocean.

That area that the watershed of the Kern and Cahuilla Rivers, a beautiful part of the Sierra in itself.

You're right.

near the Tehachapi route, the pass that will get you into Arizona and New Mexico.

Remember, there's not very many Trans-Sierra highways to get east.

You either got to go up to, in the winter, you've got to go up to 80 out of Sacramento to Tahoe, or you got to go down to Bakersfield.

So there's a lot of things that are coming true now.

It was the, you know, the

Merle was made famous by Merle Haggart.

Okay.

Porter Wagner and I guess, is it Porter Wagner?

I don't know.

There were two or three major country Western stars.

I have a lot of friends that grew up there in Bakersfield.

And

when I visit Pepperdine I do a zoom class I do it two or three times a semester or four times in person I go right through there and anytime I go to LA I go through there and it's a lot safer than Fresno as well and the whole western it used to be what's unique about it on all of the 99 freeways the freeway communities

it was the western part where the bad areas were.

So West Fresno versus the idea was that the more affluent areas went eastward up into the foothills.

Right.

But with Bakersfield, they were able to create a whole affluent city on the west side as well.

So it's much more evenly distributed.

And the people,

I've spoken for the Chamber of Commerce, I've spoken for private groups, and they're very friendly people.

When I heard that this Miss Patel, as Sammy and I discussed, had threatened the city council, I thought, you're in big trouble because you're not on the Stanford campus.

You're not with Alvin Bragg's Manhattan.

You're in a place where there's sanity.

And every time I meet somebody from Bakersfield, it's always refreshing.

It's like, wow, there's still sane California.

Who, by the way, is your, I think you've mentioned this before on the podcast.

Who's your country music friend?

Clint Black.

He's Clint.

Oh, yeah.

I've known him for almost 20 years.

And,

you know, he comes to Fresno.

We were about a year and a half ago, he came and we went and saw him in Fresno

and at the exhibition hall.

He's a wonderful guy.

He's talented.

How did you get to know him 20 years ago?

We were.

I am in a club.

I can't mention anything about it.

And he visited and then he became a fellow of the club.

And we see each other every summer.

And

I don't want, we text a lot.

We try to keep off a lot of areas that are, you know, we're just friends.

Right.

But

he's married to that actress,

Lisa Hartman, you know, that was in TV.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And she's a wonderful person, too.

He's got a wonderful daughter.

He's just everything about Plenty.

He's smart.

He's kind to people.

He's a great songwriter.

He's got a wonderful voice that I used to play a lot and I'd listen.

That killing time is killing me.

That's killing me.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

That's a great song.

So, I try to, we

talk about once or twice a month.

Oh, cool, yo.

Well, I'd like to take a minute, Victor, to welcome back a friendly sponsor.

And we'll have some more conversation about them later in the podcast.

And that's Hillsdale, Hillsdale College.

And dear listeners, did you know that Victor is one of the professors in three of the over 40 free online courses at Hillsdale.

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Thank you, Hillsdale, for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

Victor, you will be out there again this September for a week or August.

Yes.

Yeah, I retired from teaching, but what I'm doing now is I go for 11 days and

I give public lectures, guest teaching.

I try to help the development a little bit.

And then

I should, I mean, I can't say I'm obligated to

go on the Hillsdale cruise and lecture because it's such a delight.

So

I'm actually busier than when I was teaching because

I try to do four or five interviews a day.

I meet with students.

I give lectures, speak at the Hillsdale Academy, the University Public Lecturer.

They have a wonderful military history program, kind of like the one that we have at the Hoo Institution.

They just started it, and they've got really good people there.

Mark, I think everybody knows Mark Moyer.

He's a great historian, Tom Conner, people like that.

And so I try to participate in events that they have while I'm there.

And

I've been there for 21 years.

This will be my 21st year.

So I always ride my bike.

Kept me sane.

And Hillsdale countryside is beautiful around there, outside of the town.

It's really pretty.

Yeah.

And it's very poor.

A lot of poor people.

It is.

Yeah.

But I like it.

I've been there twice.

I was there in the winter, so I didn't see the prettiness.

Take your word for it.

Yeah.

The climate, it's a little hard to adjust.

I live in a desert here where it's zero humidity, hot and dry.

When you go there, it's high humidity in the summer.

And you get on a bike and it's sunny, and then halfway through your bike, it's lightning everywhere.

And then you come back and it's sunny.

It's very unpredictable weather.

But I have a lot of good friends there.

I got over the years the dean of students, Mark Kalkoff, and my partner.

I met my

person that we do the tours with.

He and I have this little company, Al Phillip,

All Aboard Travel.

He's the Austrian travel genius that I've known for 20 years.

And I really am fond of Tom Conner.

I'm a good friend of Larry Arndt.

So when I go there, it's like I have a whole cadre of friends.

In fact, when I look back at my life at the places I've taught at,

Cal State Fresno, a year at the Naval Academy, you know, four or five years at Pepperdine,

the Hoover Institution, a visiting professor at Stanford.

All of them have been okay, but there's something about Hillsdale where I just, I don't know what it is.

I've just made a lot more friends there.

You know, well, at National Review, one time we had had

five graduates.

There's something about the Hillsdale

kids, well, adults,

and John Miller, a good good friend of mine, and just anyone I've dealt with there.

It has a culture and it has an intentional culture,

and it shows.

So, hey, we're going to speak a little later about the chairman of the board of Hillsdale.

But first, Victor, let's talk about an

important column you've written.

It's called Are Iran's Nine Lives Nearing an End.

Victor, would you tell us about the column and answer that question?

Are they nearing?

Well, everybody thinks that Iran is in the driver's seat because

the campuses are exploding.

Anytime people are saying death to America, death to Israel, when

Israel strikes

Iran or when Iran strikes Israel, they're all excited.

You think that Iran is doing very well.

In fact, the argument I made in last week's column and the one that will be out on Thursday is just the opposite.

Hamas, whether they have to take this hiatus or not, it's going to be destroyed.

And Iran's going to lose that lever.

All of the, when they sent those,

to get to Israel, they didn't quite comprehend fully the strategic and political complications of flying.

Either to get to northern or southern Israel, whatever your target is, you either got to go over,

you've got to go over Jordan, the West Bank or Gaza, maybe Syria, but are parts of Saudi Arabia.

And no country wants your airspace violated.

So the idea that France, the UK, the United States joined Israel along with Jordan and Saudi Arabia shooting down those missiles was something new.

But most importantly, they've established now, Israel did not attack them first.

And people are going to say, well, wait a minute, Victor,

Israel took out the Republican Guard, Quds general, and all Quds.

Yes, but that guy had been planning, he planned the Hamas attack.

So all they were doing is retaliating against those cadres that were planning to use the surrogates, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

But Iran broke a precedent.

It attacked the homeland of the Jewish state.

And everybody has to get this straight.

Jack, they sent 320 vehicles, delivery systems into Israel.

Sent over 100 ballistic missiles.

They sent over 100 drones.

They sent 100 cruise missiles.

And they were timed to arrive at the same time.

So they would overwhelm the Arrow, David Sling, an iron dome system.

So they could have easily killed 10 or 15,000 Jews.

But they didn't.

With all of that wherewithal, they didn't.

99% of it didn't.

I think only six missiles came through and one

Arab-Israeli woman was injured.

So, what's my point?

I don't know if you saw that, Jack, but it came out that a third-party Turkish interlocutor

was told

by Iran that the hit was coming and told Blinken and Biden.

And then he said

that Blinken and Biden signed off as long as Iran knew that the attack had to be, quote, within certain limits.

So think of that for a second.

What?

Yes.

Really?

Yes.

It was reported in Reuters.

So

we are telling the Iranians, yes, you can retaliate for the death of your terrorist kingpins in Syria, but they have to be within certain limits.

Now, what is that?

Two dead Jews, 20 dead Jews, 1,000 dead Jews, 1,500 dead Jews?

Think about it.

It's really sick.

And the fact that

they were so effective in stopping an attack that was designed to kill thousands of Jews

means nothing.

And then

when

Israel was set to attack, it was under pressure not to send 320 delivery systems, which, by the way, would all have gotten through, but to, remember what Biden said, take the hit, take the win,

take the win.

So it's kind of like affirmative action, war, war by affirmative action.

You take the Western attacked greater power, and you think, well, their SAT scores are too high, or they got too high a GPA.

So we're going to get somebody else to get into the university that is less qualified.

and we'll give them kind of, we'll say to the Iran, you can do 350 delivery systems, but Israel can only do three because yours don't work and you're not very good at it.

And Israel's always get through, so you only get three.

And same thing with Hamas.

They send 7,000 rockets into Israel.

They butcher 1,200 people.

And Israel then goes in to get rid of Hamas.

And they're so effective, they say, well, you're too effective.

You're too disproportionate.

And I guess what they mean is you've got to lose more Jews, get more killed, or don't kill as many.

But nobody ever says, wait a minute.

It was only their own incompetence and Israel's ability to knock that stopped those 7,000 rockets from killing 30,000 people.

It's kind of like that Islamic jihad rocket that hit the hospital.

And remember, Biden had to go over there and soothe the feathers because immediately our own media, of course, said, as long with the world of media, that Israel had bombed it, even though they had the telephonic record that Islamic Jihad basically said, oh, crap, we hit our own hospital.

And of course, it was a rocket and not.

But Joe Biden said something that I think you and I talked about on the plane back, remember he said it's just the old saying that you got to shoot straight.

And if you think about that and break it down or...

deconstruct it, as they say in the university, what he was really saying, well, if Islamic Jihad had just sent the the rocket where it was intended, that is to kill Jews in a big city in Israel, it would have been okay.

But they didn't shoot straight.

Now I got a problem because they're blaming Israel for it.

And then he said, well, I'm not saying that Hamas did it.

He was more worried about blaming Hamas than he was blaming Israel.

So

I guess

Iran thinks they've got there in the driver's seat, but actually they have committed an existential blunder.

If you just break it down, think about it.

They sent 320

missiles of every variety, their best.

They've never done that.

That was the largest single launching of cruise missiles in history.

And they couldn't kill anybody.

They couldn't do any damage.

Israel sent three,

what we know, rockets, and they were fired probably by planes, maybe in, I don't know, Syria or somewhere.

They were standoff rockets, and they took out the most sophisticated air defense system

next to that Natan

nuclear facility, and that was designed, given to them, or bought by the Russians, brought in by the Russians, and they destroyed it, or at least the radar component of it.

So think what they're telling the Iranians.

If you want to screw around with us, We have the ability to knock down hundreds of your rockets and cruise cruise missiles and even your ballistic missiles, your V-2 type of rockets.

But you don't have any ability to knock down even three,

even three.

In fact, we can send R3, 5, 20, 100 anywhere we want in your country.

And we can go right at, we can target them at your most sophisticated anti-aircraft batteries.

We're going to deliberately select them to humiliate you.

We're not, This is supposedly your best protected real estate in Iran, your nuclear facility, and you've got the most sophisticated anti-aircraft, and your anti-aircraft facility can't even stop our incoming three little rockets.

Of course, the three rockets we're told were very sophisticated and had radar-late technology, radar.

evasive abilities.

But what if you're in Iran now and you've been telling everybody that Israel is a one-bomb state and you're going to take out the Zionist entity and you're always threatening people as if you're North Korea.

And all of a sudden the world's looking at this and you're in Iran, you think, uh-oh,

we created a precedent that we can be hit.

And they by hitting Israel, we redefined our war with Israel now because we started the idea that you can send rockets at the homeland of the Jewish state.

And we've still got 317

receptions here of these missiles to even under Joe Biden's proportionality.

And they don't miss.

All of ours misses and not one of theirs misses.

And they can do whatever they want.

And they've got at least 36 to 40 land-based ballistic nuclear weapons.

And we, and they have, I think, six submarines.

They probably have 200 nuclear weapons, and they probably have 40 or 50 ballistic missiles.

The rest could be, as we saw

with the strike, they could be launched by an F-35 at a distance.

So what basically I'm saying is

they are very vulnerable in a war that they keep bragging they're going to start, and Israel's not.

I know you can't have any misses at all on nuclear warfare.

There's one other thing that I think people are forgetting.

Did you read the report, and it was in the Wall Street Journal Reuters and it's been confirmed about 20 different places.

Half of the 100 ballistic missiles were not taken out.

They either failed to launch or they failed in flight.

Think of that.

So that, and they were their most sophisticated ballistic missiles.

So

they're going to get three or four nuclear weapons.

And the only way they can really deliver them is on a ballistic missile.

They don't have the aircraft to do it.

All their aircraft is antiquated, F-14s, MiG-21s, 22s.

They'd be shot down the moment they took off.

But if you're an Iranian mullah, would you put one of your three or four nuclear weapons on a delivery system that in 50% of the time either doesn't launch or is lost where?

Not over the ocean, over Iran, over Saudi Arabia, or Jordan.

In other words, it blows up.

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

I mean,

it's more, their nuclear weapons have just as much chance of being suicidal as homicidal.

So my point is it's really redefined the whole Middle East.

Everybody said Israel is

it was lame, it was weak, they didn't do it.

No, it was very smart.

They sent the message that the whole Iranian-Israeli conflict has been redefined, and they have the ability anytime they want to do enormous damage to Iran and Iran has zero ability to do enormous damage to Israel and if there's going to be an intervention by third power sophisticated militaries they're going to be on Israel's side I didn't see China and Russia

or air forces in the area trying to shoot down the Israeli rockets coming in as did the French and the British and others so this is a big win for Israel I know everybody doesn't think so but it's underappreciated this was a blunder of the first magnitude on the part of the Iranian.

Well, Victor, if it's a big win for Israel and a big loss for Iran, it must also be a big loss for Barack Obama and John Kerry and Susan Rice and company.

They must have been very disappointed.

Oh, they are.

They are because they are very pro-Iranian.

They feel, as I keep saying, their Shia crescent would be balancing the Jewish state and the moderate Arabs.

And then they would step in and say, well, we're going to adjudicate.

Iran, you get to do this.

Israel, you get to not do this.

That's how they saw themselves as they vacated the Middle East.

But

they did a lot of damage.

I think everybody should realize, and I think

you don't have to be admonished to do so.

You know that intuitively, that when you look at the craziness, especially in foreign policy or military, where did it all come from?

I know there were 60s antecedents, antecedents, but it was really the Obamas.

That period of that eight years did enormous damage.

They were the ones that resurrected tribal racial hostilities, you know,

typical white person, hands up, don't shoot, Trayvon is the son that I never, looks like the son I never had, all of that stuff.

That all came from the Obama's anger and resentment and trying to get elected by stirring up racial animosity and attacks on the military.

And the whole DEI project came out of their brains.

They were the ones that really coined the idea of diversity and that suddenly it wasn't a black-white binary.

It was anybody who wasn't white, 60% of the population was a victim.

And anybody who was white was a victimizer.

That was their binary, that Marxist binary that they introduced.

And won them two elections.

Yeah, they did a lot of damage.

Well,

whites are like the Kulaks.

You're bad because that's what you are and not what you do and not what you say or think.

The Kulaks under Stalin were.

They keep doing it.

They keep pushing racial essentialism and distinction and tribalism.

And one of the components of what they call anti-racism is racism.

So you've got some raving lunatic like Jory Reed saying

the other night on television.

I was asked about it on Fox, where she said that because Alvin Bragg and Fannie Willis

and

Letita James are black, that this was the people of color

comeuppance to white America, i.e.

Donald Trump.

Forget the point that

Donald Trump

may have

a greater resonance among black males and Latinos than elite white educated professionals.

Right.

But

what would she,

I mean, according to her rationale of proportional representation, blacks make up 13% of the population.

There are always people like her that are these tribal insurrectionists always believe in proportional representation.

Well, there's four suits, and we have Jack Smith, so 75% of the suits are being filed by inner city black prosecutors.

Isn't, according to Jory Reid, that unfair?

Because they're not a wide-scale representation of

what America.

They always say we want to look like America.

Well, the prosecutors don't look like America.

They're overrepresented to the third degree, according to their logic, not mine.

I don't care what people's color are.

And the same thing holds true.

of

the jury pools.

One thing I noticed about the New York Post and other people's Wall Wall Street Journal analysis, I didn't really care about people's race, but did you notice that these jurors are really overrepresented as teachers and tech and lawyers?

And

there's no New York taxicab drivers there.

There's no New York cops there.

There's no bodega.

There's no independent small business people there.

They're either on salary for the government or they're tech people or they're lawyers or they're teachers.

Someone healthy.

And it's not going to be a fair trial for Trump at all.

No.

Well, Victor, let's.

It's almost graduation time, so we have a little commencement thought to get from you and talk about Bill Maher and talk about writing books.

And we'll get to all that right after these important messages.

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We are back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

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Victor,

backing into, oh, I guess we'll start with a slim little news.

USC, University of Southern California, canceled all speeches at its graduation.

It was going to be a valedictorian speech.

And the woman selected then

said she was going to give some essentially a pro-Palestinian speech.

So I guess commend the school.

I know pro-Israeli groups commended the school.

And CARE, the council for whatever the hell, I think CARE stands for,

but the Muslim Islamic Organization protested

this

shutdown of that speech.

But then the school decided to have no speeches at all, I guess, as a cover for that.

If there are any thoughts on that per se, Victor, please share.

But if you have any thoughts in general about commencement speeches, et cetera, I just, I never got them.

I don't see how they add to anything.

Yeah, I've given three and

I gave one at St.

John's.

I gave one at

a college

up in Napa.

and

I gave one at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.

And

I mean,

everybody says the same thing, and most of the students want to have a celebrity there anyway.

They don't care about, they don't want a historian or an academic.

They just want, you know, Tom Cruise type person.

And they're mostly all left-wing.

So

I don't see the purpose anymore.

They're not intellectually diverse.

As far as USC,

in this particular case,

it was rumored, there were some news accounts, that they had given some awards to a Jewish group.

And so the president thought

that,

I guess it's a she,

that she should have a Muslim counter-speaker for diversity

and a couple of other speakers that would be diverse.

And she didn't vet, they didn't vet or she didn't vet the Muslim speaker who was, I guess, a valedictorian caliber student because she had a whole history.

And I went and looked at some of the tweets she made.

They were basically

Israel should be destroyed.

So here you're in Los Angeles with a sizable Jewish population, with a sizable donor class, and you don't even vet your speaker, and then you just are afraid, you don't have the intellectual fortitude or the moral fortitude or I don't know what you'd call it to say,

no, the other speakers are going to speak, but we don't like, we don't let anti-Semites, it's not about our free speech, we just don't invite you to use our form if you hate somebody and call for the destruction of the Jewish state.

I'm sorry.

But she couldn't do that because we've seen what happens on campuses.

And so

what happened?

She decided to cancel the entire thing.

And

I don't know what to say about it, but all she had to do was discipline,

you know,

I don't mean discipline, just disinvite the speaker.

And if she wanted for purposes of

I don't know, diversity to have an Islamic student.

And,

you know,

I don't know she could have easily done that.

You know, I don't want to get into the politics.

Carolyn Fult, I think is her name.

They've had a terrible time.

Remember what they did.

What the backstory is, they had one of the best college presidents in the United States, Max Nikias.

He was a Cypriot native from

he was an immigrant.

He came here with nothing.

He worked himself up.

He got a bachelor's degree and a Ph.D.

He became a faculty member at USC.

He paid his dues and lo and behold, he was president.

He had a good president that preceded him, but he raised billions of dollars, Jack.

And

he was normal.

He wasn't one of these crazy DEI or he was an immigrant and he had grown up under adversity, but he brought,

I mean, he just redefined the medical school, the business school.

And then it was at the height of the Me Too.

They had, as you remember that gynecologist that was supposedly, allegedly

being kind of Joe Biden creepy-like with young women,

and they thought that he should have, I guess,

I don't want to comment because I don't know the, but

he appointed a committee to examine it.

And I'm not sure that the district attorney has ever charged him.

But that was the catalyst that the Los Angeles time came off.

And the subtext is they wanted to destroy him because he wasn't a hard leftist.

Not that he was a reactionary at all.

He's a very sensible, moderate guy.

And I couldn't believe it when I saw, I was out of the country when he was

he resigned, but I looked at that board and some of the people on the board of trustees I knew at USC.

I could not believe that they didn't rally to his support.

He was, and I think a lot of people considered that he was the best USC president in recent years.

And he was at that time the best president in the United States of any major university.

And if you look at, and I don't say that lightly, when you look at

SAT scores, GPA,

number of people who accept versus admit it, and you compare that with UCLA, which was always the big brother, and USC was supposedly the C school for cheerleaders and football players.

USC had actually surpassed UCLA, and it was right up near Stanford as far as selectivity of

people coming in.

And it was the whole campus, which was in

Watts, and it was systematically buying.

The other president was very good, too.

I'm not giving all the credit to Max Nikias, but it was a beautiful, it was,

it was starting to become a beautiful campus.

It was very hard to get into.

It was joining the ranks of Stanford type of universities as far as selectivity, but it was sanely run.

And you wouldn't have had any of this.

And they threw it all away.

The board panicked.

They gave in to people who wanted a left-wing DEI president.

And

they committed university campus suicide.

They really did.

Here you have the last president was just, was worse.

And

they don't understand that when you have

all of these students from the Middle East and they're very anti-Semitic and they are and they're loud and they scream and they set the tempo and then your normal leftist dunce student who doesn't really know much about if you ask all these

citizens, American citizens that are out there screaming from the river to the sea.

And I have done this at Stanford when I was accosted.

Would you please tell me which river, which sea, what does that mean?

Does that mean you want to get rid of the two million Arabs citizens?

They don't even know there's two million Arab citizens inside Israel.

They don't know anything.

But they feel with their finger in the wind that that's the momentum on campus.

So they join.

And then it's just like a landslide.

It gets a snowball.

It gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

And the next thing you know, they've dropped from

it's beyond from the river to the sea to death to America, death to America.

Burn the American, what's next?

It's not just

chasing Jews into the library, it's campus police and everybody telling Jewish students, we can't protect you.

And they can't.

Yeah,

well, we have to worry about white nationalists, though, Victor.

That's the important thing.

That's the real threat to America.

That's a good point.

They asked

Jean

Pierre, Carin, Jean-Pierre, and what she took her about a nanosecond to bring up Charlottesville.

And it's a very good point, though.

I don't see Klansmen out on campuses, but I do see people with masks.

And anytime people wear mask, I don't care whether it's the Antifa hoods or Klan people, it tells you something.

That they know that if they show their face, they would be repudiated and despised for what they're doing.

And they're cowardly.

And you look at all of these demonstrations, they either have

an N95 mask under the idea that COVID is around every corner, which it isn't, or they have the Palestinian scarf around them.

If they're so brave and they're so confident in yelling death to America and going after Jews, why don't they just show their face?

Right.

Yeah.

It'll land them a job on Wall Street.

Yeah, let me ask you a question, Jack.

The number of Jewish students under these new repertory admissions is getting very small.

But does anybody think that this crazy generation that's now on campus favors Israel?

No, they don't.

They favor Hamas.

And therefore, it's much braver for an Israeli supporter or even somebody who's against anti-Semitism or opposes Hamas.

They're very few in number.

And it's much more perilous, and they have to be braver to show their faces and appear on campus.

But the majority is all pro-Hamas, and yet they're the ones wearing the mask, and the Jewish students don't have masks on.

Why is that?

And they don't have an answer for it.

Right.

I know why they act, because they feel that once they hide their identity, they can be emboldened and get violent and evade arrest.

And they're just terrified that

when they get violent and they break rules, that somebody won't have them on a record and they won't have to

pay the price of their law breaking and illegal.

This is why, Victor, we talked about this before.

The FBI and others should have infiltrated and cracked down on Antifa, which I think a lot of its

psyche has blended into this.

Oh, these people are anti-Semites anyway.

They don't need an excuse.

But that whole thing of covering your face and operating without retribution,

hiding in plain sight in a way, and not being a target for the FBI to infiltrate and others.

I think had they done their job with Antifa 10, 15 years ago, it would have...

How did they break up the mafia and the Klan?

They broke up the Klan and the Mafia by racketeering.

They just said that they're coordinating interstate illegality and they started suing the kingpins and holding them financially responsible.

All the DOJ had to do was take all of the illegal acts that BLM had done and all the illegal acts that Antifa did in that horrific summer of 2020.

$2 billion in damage, 1,500 police officers, 35 killed,

arson.

All they had to do was say, okay, we're subpoenaing your Facebook, your email,

all that.

And if we find that you were coordinating these violent protests across, we're going to charge you and put them in jail for 10 years.

And they couldn't do that.

They did it for January 6th, and they didn't do half of it.

They did a fraction of the damage.

And you could stop it right away.

And, you know, there was a whole mini-industry, you remember with Antifa that year, and still to a degree today,

of

kind of TikTok type of Cameo videos where an Antifa guy comes up and hits somebody, or he drives into a town, and all of a sudden he looks around, and there's somebody that's going to oppose him.

And the guy that's opposing him is not scared of him.

And then you look at the little Antifa guy, and you look at the size of his biceps or his stature, and you think, oh my God, he's got to come up.

And then the guy chases him away.

They were very cowardly people, and

they don't represent the muscular classes.

They really don't.

Their universes spawn wimps and nerds and they're very dangerous when they have a mask on and they're in number and they outnumber somebody but on a one-to-one encounter mask off you versus that person they're they're not formidable at all and they know that

Well, Victor, we've got a little time left, and I think we should forego the discussion of how you go about writing your book for the next podcast.

But

let's get your thoughts on two talk show hosts.

And we'll do that right after these final important messages.

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We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show.

Hey, Victor,

one of these hosts, here I am lamenting commencement speakers, but the commencement speaker at Hillsdale College graduation in 2024.

Do you know who that is?

It's Pat Sajak.

It is.

He was chairman of the board for years.

Yeah.

I'm just curious.

Yeah, what do you know about Pat?

I've had a lot of meetings.

At one time, there was an issue that came up that we discussed, and he was smart, amicable, professional,

dedicated to Hillsdale College, and very...

He was chairman of the board, yes.

Yeah, he was.

He was

very philanthropic, very generous to Hillsdale.

He's been there for years, and he doesn't brag about it, works quietly to...

raise money for Hillsdale to support it publicly in some sense.

I always liked liked him i still do like

he came on a national review cruise once a long time ago uh he was a big fan of bill bill buckley and uh

i said he was a talk show host he did have that very it was short-lived or short-lived i forget uh for about a year on cbs yeah i remember that but uh good good dude the other the other host is bill maher and

I don't think we've addressed him yet.

And over the last year or so,

some of his, I don't know, I do not watch the show, but as soon as he does one of his shows, his eight, nine-minute monologues are spreading all over social media.

And

he's done some quite impressive ones.

I know Republicans and conservatives who looked askance at him

or askance, as you say, in the Bronx.

Cheer him on because he's said some truly truthful things

and attack in telling the truth.

He's also attacked those on the left for being afraid to tell the truth, especially about cultural matters, especially about drag queens and the like.

So

I think it's worth getting your thoughts on Victor.

I mean, he's just one guy with the show, but I think he has significant influence.

Yeah, I think he does.

I don't know how big his audience, but that's the right word, is influence.

That

seems that whatever the size of his audience is, that he has an ability to get a soundbite or a pithy statement that resonates in social media.

So he gets a lot of

attention.

You know,

he started out with this idea that he was politically.

Remember that thing called political

incorrect.

Yeah, it was late at night.

25, 30 years ago, even on ABC.

And then all of a sudden, right after 9-11, the year after or something,

he didn't mean to say it, but

he said something like,

they're very, bin Laden or those people were not cowardly, right?

Yeah.

And

he said something that was stupid.

He said, we lob cruise missiles and they go up with a plane.

I don't think he meant to say.

that he was admiring them.

I think he meant to say that we're up against something that

we haven't seen before.

They're fanatic and they're willing to die and be blown up and we're not.

We're fighting to live and they're fighting to die.

But they fired him under pressure from the right.

And at that point,

he

was at, I don't know what it was called, real-time.

He went hard left.

So it was the name.

uh politically incorrect or whatever this this

persona and i

i don't know what year it was.

I think it was somewhere like 2004.

They called me up and I had been commenting on the Iraq war.

And the producer was very nice and said, we'd like to go have you come on El Mar and we'll send a crew out to your farm.

I said, I don't want to do it.

And she said, why?

And I said, because I know what it is.

It's an ambush.

Because I watched the way he's not politically incorrect.

He's left-wing.

I said, no, no, no, no.

So

they introduced me, and they had Gandalf in there, Ian McClellan, is that his name?

The actor?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

So I go on there and Bill.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I had no idea you were on it.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

And Bill Maher said, the first thing he said is, oh, you're Cheney's war guru.

And I said, wow.

Oh, my gosh.

And he said, well, yeah,

you're the part of the neocon.

And he didn't even add, you know, it just went on a rant.

And then

McClellan said, ah,

he's not the kind of professor I like.

It was just a hit piece.

And

it was really,

it was, I think it was 2006.

I had just come back from Libya and I had a ruptured appendix, you know,

and I'd had it operated in Libya and I had perientonitis when they stopped the medication here.

And so I was really ill.

I didn't want to do it.

I said, I'll do it, but I want to make sure it's fair.

And it wasn't.

It was the most unfair, rude.

And I said to myself, I'm never going to watch that blank-blank show again.

I'm never going to go on.

And when the producer called me back, she said, well, that wasn't quite what went on, but we're glad.

I said, I'm done with you.

You lied to me.

You said you were going to let me speak.

And it wasn't necessarily going to be just on the Iraq war.

It was on culture.

And all it was was I was a foil, so Bill could show everybody that he's going to insult somebody and attack George W.

Bush.

And then you insult it.

And

she didn't say anything.

She said, I'm sorry.

It didn't turn out the way we planned.

So I said to myself, I'm done.

It doesn't matter.

So I would never go in there again.

And that's not saying I dislike him.

I'm just saying that

I feel that,

you know,

he says something, like he said something about abortion not too long ago, killing.

It's murder.

But we already have 8 billion people in the world.

I think that's what he essentially said.

So there's a crassness and a,

you know,

and I and I think what's happened to him now is I think

he's partly Jewish and he's sensitive to the anti-Semitism.

And he knows that the beating the Charlottes dead horse is a Charlottesville dead horse doesn't work anymore.

And that 99.9% of both rhetorical and actual attack on Jews come from his constituency, the left.

And that bothers him.

And although he hates Trump's guts,

he is starting to see that the same fanaticism that drives anti-Semitism drives this crazy idea to put Trump behind bars.

And he knows that if they did that symmetrically to the left,

we'd be in a revolution now.

They wouldn't stand for it.

And so that brings a little modicum of balance.

But

I didn't know you had gross.

That was the worst experience I ever had on it.

And I've been on a lot of different shows.

I've been on CNN.

I've been on MSNBC.

As a general rule,

however, now after that and a couple of other bad experiences, if I get a call for a comment from the New York Times or New York,

I just say no because you know what they're going to do.

They're going to put the three-dot ellipsis in, mischaracterize it, and then say conservative commentator,

even conservative commentator blank, blank says, and they use it.

You and I were abused in a New Yorker piece about

Sarah Palin.

That woman had that piece already written in her head, and she calls her.

Didn't she lie about your quote?

Didn't she misquote you?

Yeah, she did.

And then I did a New Yorker,

the New Yorker guy call up Isaac Chutner, and he said, we're going to do one of these really good interviews when your book, the Trump book, came out.

I said, I'm not interested.

He said, well, your publisher wants to do it, your editor.

I said, really?

I said, okay.

And he said, oh, I like your writing.

I like your writing.

I went to dinner with you at Christopher Hitchens' house once.

I'm from Cal.

I didn't trust the SOB because I'd read.

I said, well, I'll tell you what.

If we do this,

I want a transcript of it.

Will you give me a transcript?

And before you publish it, you'll show me the transcript.

And he said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem.

I should have taped it, but I thought that was against the law in California to tape something without that person's knowledge.

But I said to him, I want a transcript because I don't trust you people.

And so we talked for 30 minutes, and that transcript probably would have run six or seven thousand words.

But he,

the next thing I knew, it was published.

And it was completely a distortion.

You know what I mean?

It was just, it was, he just left out whole parts of it.

And then he twisted it and glued it to make me look like a nut, you know, about the Trump book.

So I called him.

I wrote him an email.

He didn't write back.

I called him and I said,

you promised to give me a transcript.

Oh, I forgot.

And it wouldn't matter anyway.

I talked to my editor, and that's against our policy.

I said, why didn't you tell me that from the beginning?

And I said, this is exactly why people don't like you.

And then I watched him.

I would look at him.

He did the same thing to Michael Oren,

who's a really good guy.

And that's what New Yorker has succumbed to.

It used to be a good magazine.

What the left has done, they destroyed the New Republic, they destroyed the Atlantic, they destroyed New Yorker, they destroyed the New York Times, Washington.

They destroyed everything they touch.

But as a general rule, anybody that is conservative or even moderate conservative who does an interview with any of those people,

first of all, they're not very bright and therefore they're not, they wouldn't know how to be fair if they wanted to, but they're out to get you.

And don't fall for the flattery or the exposure it's going to say.

Just don't do it.

Period.

Don't, I don't go on NPR anymore.

I did an NPR

during the first year of the Trump.

Oh, we've got to do the NPR.

You wrote a book on immigration.

So I did it.

And the NPR employee from, I mean, the interviewer, he says something to the effect that they're putting people in cages,

Auschwitz type stuff.

And I said, no, they're not.

These detention facilities were created by the Obama administration.

And that's the truth.

And people should not come in illegally anyway, but they're not put in cages.

And we started arguing.

And then as soon as I go off, and of course the NPR narrator said, we want you to come on.

I said, no, you guys are all, no, no, we're a public entity.

We are 50-50.

Come on.

And so then when I get off, they always do that Parthian shot stuff.

And he said, that was a very disturbing interview with a right-wing person.

So I call him back up and I said, is that what you do?

You bring in conservative people.

You lie to them that it's going to be fair.

Then you start the interview.

Before they can even be ask ask a question or make a statement, your NPR person starts claiming that they're for Auschwitz like cages.

And then when the interview is over,

no professional journalist editorializes about the guest and attacks them when they cannot respond.

And you do that.

She said, well, I guess it was a little unprofessional.

I don't know.

It's not that big of a deal.

Why are you so upset?

And I said, I'll never ever go back on NPR again.

And I have that, I said the same thing about the New Yorker.

Never interview with Norcer, never go on Bill Maher, never go.

And I've learned my lesson.

So the last five years, when I get

once in a while, some naive New York Times, L.A.

Times or New York Times, Washington Post, or

person will leave a message.

You have a comment for us?

No, I don't want to be misquoted by you.

Right.

Yeah.

But

the fact that he's he's a little bit disinterested, Bill Maher is a good sign.

I think the left is getting too much for him.

And he understands that they probably dislike him

as much, the left probably now dislikes him as much as they do you or me.

Probably.

Well, they don't know who I am.

The people that dislike me are our

us as conservatives.

I don't mean me personally, but the audience, you guys that are listening, Probably the left dislikes you as much as they dislike Bill Maher now.

Well,

let me, as we wrap up the show, let me continue on the tangent that we just began because people leave comments.

We read the comments.

We thank people for listening.

If you're on iTunes and Apple, you can rate the show zero to five stars, and practically everyone gives Victor five stars.

And on The Blade of Perseus, you can leave comments on the podcast or on Victor's articles.

And here's, I'm going to read two comments, Victor.

One is from The Blade of Perseus.

Somebody gave me a little grief recently.

Like, you never read comments?

Okay, all right.

I'm going to, I'm going to.

This is from Jim Dick.

He writes, Professor Hansen, I'm...

continually dismayed by the incessant yak from Jack Fowler.

This is the Victor Davis Hansen show.

After all, it is fine that you have hosts, but they need to limit their speaking so that we can hear your wisdom.

That's Jim Dick.

And then, but here's a nice

comment from

iTunes.

It's titled Five Stars,

Essential Listen for Serious Military People.

So here is, and this is from SV Vet 18F40, who writes, U.S.

Army Special Forces Vet here.

Victor's thorough understanding of military history, ancient and modern, coupled with his philosopher's mind and insight, are a force of nature.

Also appreciate the knowledgeable and well-timed interplay of co-host Sammy Wink brings a smart, witty, female perspective to highly masculine discussions.

This old green beret, thanks to the entire VDH team.

Update

April 18th.

The closer we get to November.

The more closely I listen to Team Victor last weekend's discussion with Sammy.

Kudos to her for her courage to bring up the monumental odds against Trump and to prompt Victor for his insights on what is really shaping up to be a fight for civilization.

So that's SV Vet 18F40, who loves Victor Davis Hanson.

I think he loves Sammy Wink also.

At least he didn't chastise me for being mean on poor Sammy.

Yeah.

Well, that is poor Sammy.

That's a nice letter.

I didn't mean it.

It was a very nice letter.

I try to spend an hour a day and I can't cover them, but

I get a lot of angry letters, of course, but more nice letters like that.

Yeah.

We have a

lot of wonderful people.

Look, Victor, I was, you know, wherever I go now,

because they see my name tag on something.

So people say, are you that one?

Oh, tell me about Victor.

Do you really know him?

I'm like, yeah.

They're adoring, adoring fans out there for you.

Hey, Victor, I want to thank all our listeners for listening and i i do want to thank those of folks who also have signed up for what i do civil thoughts uh comes a free weekly email newsletter every friday gives you 14 recommended readings of articles i've come across the previous week i write it for the center for civil society at anvil where we are trying to strengthen civil society.

If you go to civilthoughts.com, sign up, and you'll start getting it.

And we're not selling your name and it's free.

And remember, go to victorhanson.com.

Let me also say, if you're on Twitter, excuse me, X, go to

at V D Hansen.

That's Victor's handle.

And if you're on Facebook, VDH is Morning Cup.

And there's an unofficial but very lovely and

web Facebook group.

It's called the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club.

So

join it.

And I guess that's about it.

One last comment.

You know, I've noticed something.

You were talking about letters.

It's not about me, but it's about the political.

I have been stopped.

I was in Walmart two days ago in this rural Walmart and six people came up to me to talk about politics and then, you know, to watch Fox or something.

They were

all Mexican-American.

And they were all angry

at the left.

And they all said they were going to vote for Trump and were very friendly.

And then

I was at

a service station, not near me, but

about 20 miles.

Oh, it was actually on the way home.

They had a very famous rest stop.

And four people came up to me.

I was getting gas.

I said, hey, you're the guy in Fox.

I want to tell you something.

One of them was black, one was Asian, two were Mexican-American.

My point is: the last 10 people who have come over to introduce themselves to me and say they're worried about the country have all been non-white.

That had never happened before.

And I know that's non-scientific, but I think something's going on where when they see Trump, what they're doing to Trump, and they see this whole nasal, NPR-voiced transgender,

you know, banned natural gas,

partial birth abortions, okay.

All that, you know, we hate Israel, chase people on campus, they don't like it.

And destroying innocent people.

I don't mean they, and I don't mean, I don't mean they, I mean, everybody doesn't like it, right?

But minorities are starting to break out of the idea that they have some allegiance to the Democratic Party.

And again, they they're starting to view their elites the way that

we, the white middle class,

view our elites.

And I think this is new.

I don't think that any black person who's angry

in that Chicago city council meeting has anything in common, as I said, but with plotting gay?

No.

No.

Right.

No.

But if they went to Yale, you know, that's a different story.

But it is a class thing.

And yeah, it's a class thing, and they're starting to resonate.

And I think it's just a reminder for everybody

that there is a golden moment to be ecomenical if Donald Trump when he went to that bodega

that's that split screen with all Biden screaming about this and that and then him being cheered on in Harlem or he at that funeral of the at the wake in Long Island why they were trying to leverage 26 million dollars from

or at the Chick-fil-A in Atlanta

Chick-fil-A versus the White House dinner where they all had their Oscar performance split-leg dresses, you know, Jeff Bezos' girlfriend and

Robert De Niro's girlfriend.

And I think people are starting to see that.

And

I think that they have to see that

there's no difference between George Stephanopoulos and Jory Reed.

There is a big difference between Jory Reed and the people in Chicago that want to be treated as citizens and not put second place to illegal alien.

Right.

And just like the people that were completely neglected in East Palestine that have nothing in common with Pete Buttigieg, they have more in common with Mexican-American people of the middle class than they do pet Pete Buttigieg.

I do.

Did I?

When I leave the Stanford campus, And I'm not around hard left, elite white professors.

I'm not just saying white, but all professors, but a lot of them are white.

And I'm

in Walmart and Selma, and I'm the only white guy, I feel much more at home.

I really do.

And it's something to do with class, and it's starting to catch on.

And I think there's enormous opportunity for Republican candidates to rebrand them.

This is what's so ironic is that people like Mitt Romney and

all of the never-Trumpers, they hate this.

And you really get the impression that they feel that the bowtie crowd on the intellectual side and the Bain capital side or the Romney-McCain, all that, they're losing.

Nobody's listening to them.

And it makes them very angry about this populism.

And it's something to be welcomed.

That's really a...

It's something I never thought I'd see on the Republican Party, that it's the party of the middle class and the Democratic Party is the party of racial resentment and multi-billion dollar elitism.

Well, Victor, I think we should end it there because you're on a high and happy note.

I'm on a happy note.

Yes, I am.

Everybody should work to develop those ties.

They really should.

I hope Donald Trump, if you're listening, Donald Trump, campaign in Chicago, campaign in Baltimore, campaign in the inner city, campaign in the barrio.

And I think you'll get a good reception.

Amen.

Well, Victor, you've been terrific as ever.

Thanks for sharing all the wisdom.

Thank you, everybody.

Thanks for listening.

Yeah, we'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis-Anson Show.

Bye-bye.