Iran, Abortion and Trumping the Deep State

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.

Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, the star, and namesake is Victor Davis-Hansen.

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

He has a website, The Blade of Perseus.

The address is victorhanson.com.

I'll tell you more about why you should be subscribing to that later on in this podcast.

We are recording on Saturday, March 16th, and this episode will be up on Thursday, March 21st.

So when I get done with this, Victor, I might start celebrating St.

Patrick's Day a little earlier than planned for, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Hey, we've got a lot to get your wisdom on today, Victor.

I think we should start off by discussing the Biden administration unlocking billions of dollars for Iran.

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

Like you, when I bought my last pair of shoes, I looked for stylish comfort and beautiful engineering.

And that might make you think Italian, but if you're buying sheets, it should make you think bowl and branch.

The colors, the fabric, the design.

Bowl and branch sheets are made with long-lasting quality, offering extraordinary softness to start and getting softer and softer for years to come.

Bowl and branch sheets are made with the finest 100% organic cotton in a soft, breathable, durable weave.

Their products have a quality you can feel immediately and become even softer with every wash.

Plus, Bowl and Branch comes with a 30-night worry-free guarantee.

I've been sleeping like a baby in my bowl and branch sheets, which keep me cool on those hot summer nights.

And they're the perfect place for sunrise and morning coffee.

So join me.

Feel the difference an extraordinary night's sleep can make with Bowl and Branch.

Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at bowlandbranch.com slash Victor.

That's Bolin Branch.

B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-R-A-N-C-H dot com slash Victor.

to save 15% off and unlock free shipping.

Exclusions may apply.

And we'd we'd like to thank Bolin Branch for sponsoring the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

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 VICTOR2511-511.

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 511511.

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.

We are back with the Victor Davis-Hansen show.

Victor, here's a headline.

Biden administration renews Iran's sanctions waiver that unlocks upward of $10 billion for the regime.

And this is from the Washington Free Beacon.

The Biden administration on Wednesday, and I forgive my

dog here whining in the background, sorry, on Wednesday reapproved a sanctions waiver that unlocks upwards of ten billion dollars in frozen funds for the iranian government the sanctions waiver which has drawn fierce gop opposition on capitol hill allows iraq to transfer electricity payments to iran via third-party country the sanctions waiver was last approved by the biden administration and in november and set to expire this month, putting the White House in a tight position, et cetera, et cetera.

Politics, et cetera.

Victor,

the bodies of the people of the three soldiers Iran have recently killed are still not cold.

They have never been, I think, justly retaliated

against for the death of those three soldiers in Jordan recently.

Victor, this is like many things, I'm sorry to abuse this word, madness of the Biden administration.

Your thoughts.

Yeah,

you sound like Alec Guinness, you remember, or when he fell on

the explosive device at the end of the bridge of Liberkoi.

And I think Jack Hawkins yelled, and this is madness.

The doctor looking on.

Oh, yeah, that was the doctor that yelled.

Yeah, yeah, that.

And it's hard to make sense of it.

It really is.

I mean, we did pay $1.2 billion per hostage.

Remember that?

That was $6 billion.

I think the Koreans released under our pressure.

So the question is, what is this fascination with Iran?

And Obama was the one that really inaugurated it.

And Biden is carrying it through.

And why would they appoint Robert Maui, this pro-Iranian hack?

It's really hard to decipher.

And

why would they be so

eager to pay $1.2 billion for a hostage, an American held by the Iranians?

But we have a lot more of them that are held by Hamas, and they're not interested in getting them back.

So there is something that's

almost inexplicable.

And it gets back to this

Obama crackpot Ben-Rhodes idea that you're going to balance all of our friends, the Gulf monarchies, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, by creating this tension with promoting Iran and the Assads and Beirut

and Hamas.

And then we're going to step in every once in a while and adjudicate wars, I guess.

But it doesn't make any sense.

Iran is our enemy.

It's killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans during the Iraq War.

It attacks us all the time.

And yet they have some kind of inexplicable soft spot for this theocracy.

It just,

I can't even explain it.

It just makes no sense.

And

Trump

finally,

he tried to stop the Obama appeasement when he killed Soleimani and he went after some Iranian.

But even he,

because there were people in his State Department and his Defense Department that were restraining him all the time about Iran, he didn't retaliate or told things he could have because there's a deep,

deep state

infatuation with this theocracy.

I don't know what it is, but

it's really against our interest.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: When you have these powwows at Hoover

where these kind of matters are discussed, and I'm assuming this has been discussed, this Obama infatuation policy,

does anyone come and try to make the case for it?

I know you take in all kinds of voices when you do these kind of things.

Well, we have some people who come

and from the Democratic Party,

during the Obama people, who now, you know, I mean,

Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blinken were not quiet during the Trump administration and during the, they were Obamaites.

And remember, Jake Sullivan was involved in the Alpha Bank Ping hoax.

Remember that hoax?

He was the one that was trying with Sussman to promote it and get it out to the media, even though it was false.

And Blinken was the one that called up Mike Morale and tried to round up the 50.

So these people go, I'm just mentioning them because they happen to be our two top

Secretary of State and National Security Advisor.

They're the architects of our policy right now.

And they are hardcore Obama-era partisans.

And they make sure that the National Security Council and people around them in the State Department,

in the case of Blinken, are for this policy.

And as soon as they came in, as soon as they came in, they wanted to restart the Iran deal.

As soon as they came in, they wanted to make sure the Houthis were not designated terrorists.

As soon as they came in, they started to adjudicate

gas fields off the coast of Israel and

Beirut in a matter that was not favorable to Israel.

As soon as they came in, they tried to distance themselves from Israel.

So they have this fixation.

And yeah, it appears sometimes.

We had a debate the last day of the COVID, the first day of the COVID lockdown, or the night before we debated the Iran deal.

And we had one member of the Hoover

Fellows and a visiting

scholar.

And they've debated H.R.

McMaster and myself.

And he wasn't originally for the Iran deal.

pullout when he was National Security Advisor, but he quickly saw that Trump was and is a good,

you know, a loyal advisor, he got on board.

And he and I debated these two people who thought that the United States should stay in the Iran deal and promote it.

So, yeah, but I still don't understand the fixation with Iran.

There's a lot of Iranians in the United States.

And remember, there's two waves of Iranian immigrants.

There's the first group that came before, right on the eve of the Shah falling.

These were very conservative, very pro-American, many of them were Jewish.

They They tended to settle in Los Angeles, places in California.

When you meet them today, they're in their 70s and their 80s.

They're in business.

They're very successful.

And then there's a second wave.

And these people were the socialist.

the socialist secular Iranians who thought that Khomeini would be a useful tool in getting rid of the Shah dictatorship.

So when they got rid of the Shah and all the right-wing business people left, then they figured that because they played a prominent role, they would be

big players in the new Iranian EU socialist-like republic.

And what they didn't figure was they were useful idiots because Khomeini came in and he started executing, of course, all the Shah people, but them too.

And he went after them, and then they fled.

And that second wave came after the fall of the Shah, and they were not entrepreneurial, pro-American to the same degree.

They were journalists, academics, media, lawyers, professors.

And so when you meet somebody, they're a little bit younger, but when you meet Iranian Americans today, they fall into two categories.

Hyper-patriotic, pro-American.

pro-Israel, many of them Jewish, and then kind of very critical of America, very critical of Israel,

talk about Mossadegh every sentence.

So there's two different groups.

But I don't understand.

And the second group tends to vote strongly democratic and feel, and is what I'm getting at, and supports this outreach program.

the Iran deal, et cetera, with this crazy hope that the more we appease Iran, people like them that are still in Iran are going to rise up and vote out or get rid of the theocracy, then they're going to make a nice European socialist democracy.

Wow.

And I don't think that's going to happen without a lot of bloodshed.

Well, Victor, I'd like to take a moment for our sponsor today, one of them, Field of Greens.

Field of Greens is the healthiest thing you can do every day, folks.

Field of Greens is radically different.

Each organic fruit and vegetable was medically chosen to support heart and vital organ health.

I trust Field of Greens to keep me healthy.

And I promise you're going to love the product.

But if for any reason you don't, they'll give you a 100% money-back guarantee.

I got you 15% off the first order, plus free rush shipping.

Visit fieldofgreens.com and use the promo code Victor.

That's promo code Victor, V-I-C-T-O-R.

At fieldofgreens.com, fieldofgreens.com.

And we thank Field of Greens for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show.

Victor,

wow, one of your favorite people in the world, Sam Bankman-Freed.

You remember him?

His lawyers.

Yes, I remember the helicopters that flew over my apartment looking for him, the paparazzi.

Oh, they know where he is right now.

His lawyers are arguing for his

sentencing.

And

I don't know, but

again, we're recording on Saturday.

The show's

out on Thursday.

So

something something may be rendered in the intervening time.

But the interesting thing about his lawyer's argument, and there was a piece in the Wall Street Journal saying, this sounds like it might be quite counterproductive, arguing that his altruism

should lessen his sentence.

And you remember, Freed was one of these altruistic

philanthropy.

And I'm doing all this, all I'm

doing here is so I can, you know, make money or steal money and and then bankroll good things, which to you and me and many others are bad things.

Any thoughts you have, Victor, on this latest chapter in the life of one of America's great businessminds and criminals?

Well,

I have been, I was a student at Stanford and then I taught there as a visiting professor and now I've been there since 2003.

And

the Bankman-Freed parents were very prominent.

They were both professors at the law school.

One of them was in left-wing tax policy and how to make it more fair to the exploited.

And the other was an activist.

And she, as you remember, had it

moonlighted as a bundler for Silicon Valley people who wanted to support the more radical, like the squad type.

politicians, but didn't want to be known doing that.

So she had kind of a pack

and she ran that.

And then, of course, the son at one point was worth $30 to $40 billion with this cryptocurrency and then started to manipulate and tap into his people's accounts when he lived it up, spent a lot of money, but also was speculating when the market went bad on cryptocurrency.

And now they're all involved in criminal proceedings.

And the parents either

are testifying or they're directly charged, but they had property transfers.

And the whole thing is just,

it's just, anybody looks at Stanford Law School, they see things like that, that professors have been embarrassed, getting in politics.

We had the Judge Duncan incident.

We've had all of these embarrassments.

And they all have a common theme that very, very left-wing people like a lot of money.

They like a lot of money.

And they always say they're doing it for us.

He wanted to manipulate the markets.

He wanted to speculate.

He wanted to tap into people because he wanted to help us.

And that's what Mark Zuckerberg, he didn't want to give $419 million to basically corrupt the balloting, but he did because he wanted to help us.

Same thing with Michael Bloomberg.

So I don't listen to anything they say because everything they say is untruthful because it's always,

I did this for humanity.

At least Bernie Madoff was an upfront crook.

I'll take an upfront crook any day over, I did it for you.

I did it for humanity.

I was trying to create a progressive era, that kind of stuff.

I was working for the underprivileged.

I wanted to make sure that kind of thing.

Remember the father and said, oh, but he was getting $250,000?

And he said, well, by the way, Sam promised me a million dollars.

That kind of stuff.

Tax-free.

They were very inquisitive for people who were socialist.

Yeah, well, Stalin had his DACA also.

Yeah,

that's the way that

socialism, as everybody knows,

it's kind of a psychological squaring the circle of people who have obsessive material wants and they feel guilty about that because they just want stuff and they want money and they want privilege.

And so they get them through socialism or hard-left democratic politics or progressivism.

And then they say, you know what?

I don't feel guilt anymore.

I'm helping the poor in the abstract.

I'm supporting issues for the exploited.

And that's why it, you know,

when we were growing up, they used to call them limousine liberals.

But

we've got to be able to do it.

I'm living on this mansion on behalf of all of you.

That's why

the BLM founders, right?

Yeah, the three architects who stole the money and all ended up with beautiful homes.

We don't hear much of them except every once in a while they crawl out of their mansion and accuse people of being racist who mentioned that.

Or Professor Kendi, remember his Kendi Research Center and his $30,000 for a Zoom, 30 minutes to tap into his genius?

Then we find out.

Well, he didn't publish anything.

They didn't do anything.

He had to lay them off.

They went through $50 million.

But you're racist for saying that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nice work, if you can get it.

Hey, Victor, we're going to talk about another favorite person of yours, Kamala Harris.

She's been on an abortion clinic tour.

We'll get your thoughts on that right after these important messages.

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 aged 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 skin care 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 vibe r i a n c e vibrance.com slash victor and we'd like to thank vibrance for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Victor, I think

today, the day this is coming out, maybe the first day of spring.

I forget.

Maybe the equinox is the 21st or the 22nd.

Anyway, we're on the cusp of cooking outside, grilling.

I'm sure people are already doing that somewhere in these great United States.

So barbecue is a word that makes your mouth water.

And you may already have a low temperature, slow cooking smoker, egg or pellet barbecue, Victor Davis-Hanson show listener.

But in the middle of your busy week, who has that kind of time?

You need a hot, fast, solar infrared gas grill.

It heats up to 1,000 degrees in just three minutes.

Even on cold winter nights, that heat locks and juices and flavor and grills food faster in just a few minutes.

Your family will be sitting at the table enjoying delicious, better-than-restaurant-quality grilled food, juicy steaks, moist chicken, tender fish, and healthy grilled veggies.

Soler is a multi-generational veteran-owned business.

Their portables, carts, and built-ins are all made in the USA from commercial-grade stainless steel, so they are built to last.

Get your free guide: How to choose the right infrared grill at best hotgrill.com.

That's best hotgrill.com.

Solair, infrared

gas grills for fast, delicious grilled food every day.

That's best hotgrill.com, best hotgrill.com.

And we thank the good people from Solair for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show.

Victor, once upon a time,

Bill Clinton talked about abortion being safe.

Safe, legal, and there.

I remember that.

No, but now it's it's a it's full-blown sacrament.

Yeah, I remember.

So was it Kamala Harris?

Go ahead.

Wasn't it Governor Casey of Pennsylvania?

Was he senator that he was the father of the current Casey?

He was always fighting the Democratic radicals to make sure that

Bob Casey,

who I knew a little.

And actually his son was my classmate at Holy Cross.

Offline, I'll tell stories.

But

his dad,

you know, Pennsylvania was, let's say, I think the fourth large, fifth largest state population at the time.

He could not,

he was denied speaking to the Democratic Convention.

And he was,

well, with Nat Henthoff, who was a great

liberal in the classical liberal sense, a columnist

for the Village Voice.

He tried to

have a talk with him at Cooper Union.

This is one of the first big

precursors of the forthcoming cancellation and shout-im down

tours, or excuse me, it's not a tour, but trends.

And yeah, the New York City audience, that was, I think, 1984, 85, 86,

Bob Casey could not speak.

He was a voice for the unborn in a party of Catholic, ethnic Catholics.

The pro-life movement in America came from Catholic Democrats.

There is not a single Catholic Democrat pro-life in the legislature, in the Congress anymore.

There isn't.

And

it's a big lie that Roe versus Wade cut down on abortions.

I mean, in 2023, I think we're almost, you know, just, I think they got up over 900,000 of them, 95 or 98% of what it was four years ago.

60 million since Rowe.

Yeah.

And we have, they don't like to talk, they always say, so it's 2 or 8 percent, 5 percent of the abortions are past 16 weeks, late-term abortions, partial birth.

It's about 5 to 10,000 a year that are

viable babies that

pass through the birth canal that have to be killed in the process before they emerge into the real world.

And we don't talk about that.

So it was always considered kind of a tragic thing when a woman had an abortion for whatever reason whether you supported it or you oppose it but for to go to abortion clinic

it it's part of this um

rebranding of camilla harris her advisors obviously went to her and said you know what everybody's thinking you're a dunce and you're an embarrassment and you poll lower than any major

politician in America except Mitch McConnell.

And we've got to do something.

And they said, why don't you be the left-wing lightning rod?

So you'll talk about all the exploitation of poor little immigrants that came in here illegally, unlawfully.

You can be really strident on abortion.

You can carve out this position of the hardcore left as you prepare yourself, perhaps in 2024, to take up the mantle when...

Joe Biden is either

unable to run or drops out or something.

So I think this is is part of her remake, but it's kind of weird that you have the vice president of the United States celebrating an abortion clinic.

I just, the Democratic Party didn't used to do that.

And you would think that they're,

you know,

it used to be that this is a tragedy and that when people have an abortion,

if you happen to favor that, it's something that should be,

it's tragic.

But the idea that people on the left celebrate it and yeah

and you look at our fertility i mean we're not we're 1.7

we're it's part of a larger cult of and i don't want to say death but anti-fertility where we have this new ethos and aoc sort of said it we don't want to have our generation doesn't want to have children because of climate change or something but Younger people in this generation are not marrying in their 20s.

They're not having the 2.1 children average, and we're declining in population.

And abortion, you know, when you'd lose 900,000 per year,

and it's kind of, I don't like to talk personally, but I have a daughter who has a child that she knew would be severely disabled.

It's called Smith-McGinnis.

It's more severe in some ways than Down syndrome.

And of course, she had the,

she went to full term, and

my granddaughter's a beautiful little girl.

She's severely disabled, and she has to be in special needs, and she has meltdowns.

But the idea that she wouldn't be here is unthinkable.

And I'm not suggesting other people do that because it's changed my daughter's life.

She's not able to work outside the home.

She requires a lot of care, Lila does.

But

the pluses of having her around, she's such a wonderful little child.

Your daughter's the rarity.

The reason I'm kind of baffled is that I've always, I didn't, you know, I don't think, I think most Americans, when young people get into a situation or

they're pregnant and they understand the pressures, that it's an illegitimate, or it's, they were all of these things.

But so they want to find ways to accommodate this tragedy, but they don't want to look at it.

as an abortion on demand, late-term abortion, okay.

Let's just brag about it.

You know what I mean?

And that's what going to an abortion clinic really is.

And that's why it's so strange that there's almost no penalties for disrupting or bombing a pro-life center, but an adoption agency.

But there really is.

They go after people who protest at abortion centers and they send them to 20 years if they can.

It's really weird.

I asked Merrick Garland about that.

You remember that crazy lame excuse he did?

He basically said, well, we can't catch them because when you try to bomb

a pro-life, they do it at night.

And when they protest a pro-abortion, they do it in the day.

And what he was really saying was the really hardcore terrorists that bomb thing and try to destroy, they go after pro-life.

And the mom and pops who demonstrate against abortion, they do it during the day.

So we're going to go after them.

That was the lamest thing I ever heard him say.

Well, maybe the great

border czar,

Kamala Harris, maybe there should be an abortion clinic on the board.

Wait, I thought she was space czar.

Remember,

she hired that little group of actors to ask her questions to show her genius about outer space.

She's many czars.

Yeah.

She's abortion czar.

She's border czar.

She's space czar.

She's everything but

she's bizarre.

Sorry.

That was bad.

Hey, Victor,

a quick headline thought, and then I want to

get your broader thoughts on issues of

sports and college.

But there was a headline I saw yesterday preparing for these podcasts recording here on the 16th.

It's titled, House May Refer January 6th Committee Members for Prosecution.

And this has to do with the destruction.

of evidence by

the committee members.

I can't believe they would do such a thing.

Liz

Cheney and Adam Kinzenzer, they wouldn't do that.

The only reason they were on the committee, remember they had two requisites.

That was one of the, I think that was the first time

in memory or maybe in history where the Speaker refused the nominations for a committee from the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy.

Right.

And then she, Nancy Pelosi basically said, if you want to be in this committee, you got to do two things.

You got to be inert.

so you have no political future.

So you're either not going to run or you're going to lose the next election.

And you have to have voted to impeach Donald Trump.

And that's who was on it.

Both of them

had prior voted to impeach Trump.

Both of them had no political futures.

And

that wasn't even a committee.

It was just a witch hunt.

Well, we were talking on our last podcast.

You were talking about

the

double standard and the rule of laws and how people,

these people won't be prosecuted for the various obvious crimes they've committed.

But this plays right into that.

The destruction of evidence and knowingly that when the when the incoming, though it took him a while to become speaker, Kevin McCarthy said, don't touch any of this.

We want it.

And it all magically disappeared.

But they will not pay a price.

If the shoe is on the other foot, right?

You pay a price.

If If you walk by the Capitol on January 6th, you may be prosecuted by...

It's so weird.

And I don't know how

what I'm really curious about, should Trump win?

What does the FBI do?

Because the FBI in 2016

hired Christopher Steele as a contractor and paid him money.

And an FBI lawyer, Kevin Sussman, forged a FISA document.

And

the FBI head, James Comey, was knee-deep in it, the Russian collusion.

And remember, he lied and said that Donald Trump was not under investigation.

He told Trump that.

He had a private meeting with Donald Trump.

He went out in his car and recorded it on the FBI device and had a third party leak it to the New York Times.

And then his successor, Andrew McCabe, as I said earlier, lied four times.

So given that record, and then given they did that in the entire Robert Mueller, former FBI, that whole

farce of the Mueller investigation,

and then we had the performance art raid on Roger Stone, FBI raid on James O'Keefe, that thing, the FBI Mar-Lago raid,

and then we've...

And then in addition to that, we've had Christopher Wray with the FBI agents at parents' meetings.

What's going to happen to the FBI

if Donald Trump wins?

Could you trust the FBI if you were him when they have spent the last eight years trying to destroy him at the very top level?

It's really interesting to see that.

I don't know what they're going to do, but they're going to have to have an answer

because otherwise we'll be back to 2017.

I don't know if you remove Christopher Wray and you get someone who's apolitical, a former FBI, high-ranking official.

But even then, I mean, how many people in the FBI were involved with Twitter and Facebook and monitoring news to suppress any mention of the laptop?

Or remember, the FBI had the laptop in their possession at the very time 51 quote-unquote intelligence authorities were assuring the country right before a debate and right before the election that this laptop was a product of Russian disinformation.

Likely, it's the little weasel word they use.

And the FBI didn't say a word.

They had it.

They knew it was authentic.

So if I were Donald Trump and you,

I think you'd have to either take a chance and fire the top 20 people in the Washington office, the Peter Strokes type people,

or I would just take each division, you know, the counterfeit division,

the terrorist, anti-terrorist division.

the racketeering mafia divisions, and I would just outsource them.

This one goes to the Department of Justice, stays in the Department of Justice.

This one goes to Homeland Security.

This one goes to Treasury and break them up

because there's just too much power in Washington and that's too, and

they can't handle it.

They're not trustworthy.

Well, I know the Heritage Foundation is preparing all sorts of things for the, if we're in the case of an oncoming Trump administration, that it might be prepared from day one.

I don't think it was prepared from day one.

No, the last report.

20,000 names are supposedly.

I don't think the mooch is going to be on it.

I don't think

Omarosa is going to be on it.

I don't think Anonymous is going to be on it.

I knew Steve Bannon at one time.

I liked him, but I don't think Steve Bannon is going to be on it.

So

who's going to?

Well,

names aside, I would just hope there's some anticipation or some preparation for what to do with some of these agencies like the FBI that have really

are so far afield from their old standing public perception.

And Victor, you talk about Lopping off the top 20, but I kind of feeling there's a sense of...

like what we've talked about many times with the military, the golden

pot of gold that lies there in retirement and that this must be deep within the FBI.

I'm now, oh, I know how to make dough when I, after I do my 20, 25 years, whatever it takes.

Are you referring to James Baker, chief legal counsel of the FBI, who helped try to spread the steel dossier?

Remember, he was the one that met with, I think, BuzzFeed or some of those people on the eve.

And then, guess what?

He was the one that I guess was point man in having the FBI work with Twitter contractors to suppress unfavorable news to Biden.

And he went from a salary of 200 something to $7 million

as chief counsel of Twitter until the unbelievable happened to him.

Elon Musk took over the company.

And I think the first thing he did was fire him.

Well,

the perversion of the culture, I

think, must be deep and more deeply troubling than we even want to imagine.

So

speaking, though, very quickly of Elon Musk,

did you see this morning his encounter with Don Lamont?

Lamont.

Don Lemon, but Lamon, we'll call him that.

That's yes.

Yeah.

He hired him to do to have an interview show or something on X.

Right.

And the first one was with Elon Musk.

And he started attacking Elon Musk.

I couldn't believe it.

The questions, you know, are you going to stop disinformation?

You're going to do this, this, this.

And Elon Musk said, you know, I don't really have to do this interview.

And then he got all angry and he thought, and then I don't know if it's accurate.

Maybe it was.

They're back and forth with each other, but they published this morning what he wanted is he wanted a

Tesla truck, you know, electric truck.

He wanted $5 million in addition to $8 million salary.

He and his boyfriend or his fiancé wanted free massages and drinks at Las Vegas Hotel.

And you wanted, and I guess he really thought he had market value.

But after he had been fired, he had the lowest ratings on one of the lowest rated shows, networks, CNN.

He had no market value.

Right.

And yet he was jacking up Elon Musk, who's very sensitive to the realities of market value.

So he just basically said, Sia wouldn't want to be a.

And now he's all angry.

He's angry.

It's just bizarre.

Maybe he'll go to one of those

bars out in the Hamptons and encounter somebody.

He's famously puts his hand down someone's pant.

It almost tells me that Elon Musk knows that he's unstable and he wanted to hire him because he knew what he would do and then fire him and make a point.

I don't know.

Well,

I tweeted at or exed at Elon Musk this morning in response to that, that he should, if he's looking for shows,

he should have a Victor Davis-Hansen show instead of a Don Lamone show.

Hey, Victor.

We have a little time left, and

I'd like to raise the issue of get your thoughts on college sports and girls in sports.

And we'll get to that right after this final important message.

We're back with the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

Victor, before I raise some sporting issues with you, I want to

tell our listeners that our God-given freedoms are facing unrelenting attacks.

It's a battle for truth, and the only way we can win is if we stand together.

Thankfully, Alliance Defending Freedom, ADF, has been defending our rights for 30 years and winning.

Right now, they're involved in two critical cases before the Supreme Court.

The first, they're suing the FDA for endangering the health and safety of women and girls.

And in the second case, they're assisting the state of Idaho to defend its law protecting the lives of women and their unborn children against the Biden administration's attempt to override the law.

and force doctors to perform abortions.

Talk about twisted.

ADF needs your help with your best gift.

You courageously join ADF in fighting critical Supreme Court cases against government lawlessness and help defend our cherished freedoms.

Go to joinadf.com slash Victor.

That's joinadf.com slash Victor to

give now.

With your help, I've pledged to raise $5,000 by March 31st for ADF.

Visit joinadf.com forward slash Victor to make your your best gift right now.

I know with your help, we can beat that goal and help make a generational difference for freedom.

We thank the Alliance Defending Freedom for sponsoring the Victor Davis-Sanson Show.

Victor, I have two things, sports related.

And one is just college sports in general, which are, you know, the college sports of...

2024, whatever the hell you were in,

I was going to say 1924,

are quite different than they were from 10 years ago.

Never mind when your father was

playing college football back in the day.

I think college sports are important in some ways, but many ways.

But anyway,

you've been a teacher.

You've been at colleges your whole life.

Hoover's on the campus of Stanford, which is one of

some of the great sports programs, college sports programs.

What are your general thoughts about college sports and how they fit into the culture and institution of a college?

And are you troubled by any trends?

Well,

I used to, one of the,

when I was a

young teenager, one of my great

remembrances was that my father and my mom, who was a graduate of Stanford, and she got a BA and a

law degree, degree and her sister.

And we would go up there and watch the mighty Jim Plunkett.

Remember him?

And I just love that guy as quarterback.

He was wonderful.

He was really,

he, to me, idolized the perfect athlete.

He was like a rock.

He was about 6'4.

He was solid muscle.

He wasn't.

Didn't he lead

Oakland

in the Super Bowl?

He did.

And he was in San Francisco.

Then he was kind of washed up.

And he had, I think he was with the Patriots originally, but he had a bad line and he just was beat the hell up.

He wasn't really quick on his feet.

He wasn't a rollout, but he just took like six years of just hit after hit.

And then he went to San Francisco and he had some trouble.

And then he just shined under Al Davis at Oakland.

I think two Super Bowl.

But he was, you'd watch him at Stanford.

He had a, his arm was like a cannon.

He could just hit somebody 40, 50 yards.

And I just loved it.

I would always go up and say, can we see Jim Plunkett?

So we went up there four or five times his junior and senior year.

And that was before they'd remodeled the Stanford Stadium.

It was the old amphitheater type seats.

And they had the track there and everything.

It was really.

So I have a long attachment.

And my dad was a

community college and high school football coach at Reedy High School and Reedy College way back in the 50s.

So every time I would go to some place, you know, for a tire store in Fresno, some guy came.

Hey, coach.

He had hundreds of former, and he played for Alonzo Stagg, he and his first cousin, who they kind of adopted, Victor Hansen, at the University of Pacific.

Victor was.

What?

Your dad played for Amos Alonso?

He did.

He was a little farm boy from Kingsburg, and he was 6'3.

And his first cousin, whose father was blinded in a farm accident, whose mother died during his birth, grew up with him.

And he was about 6'4, about 210.

He was the one that was killed in the 6th Marine Division in Okinawa, the last day at Sugarloaf Hill.

But the two of them then got complete full scholarships to play

the two, in those days, two tight ends.

One was a tight end, one was a tight end.

Right.

For two years with Stagg.

University of Pacific used to be a football, a known football.

Powerhouse, yeah.

Not quite a powerhouse, but known.

And then i have various you know certificates on my wall where he was off

to try out for the new york giants but it was like we'll pay you for play for us for one year for 500

yeah

it was and i think when i was growing up we had his helmet you know his leather things that looked like stocking caps or something

and i think i he was in pain most of his life because he He destroyed both of his knees.

He had a separated shoulder.

He knocked out a lot of his teeth and playing football.

And he suggested that I did it for three years.

My brother was really good at it.

He did it for three,

much better than I was.

But I still have banged up stuff.

But anyway, yeah, my attitude is

it's become a big multi-million dollar.

In those days, the coaches made the equivalent in today of about $100,000.

They weren't getting $10,000, $20 million.

And

so something had to change.

But the idea that these guys are going to be unionized in professional sports,

I don't know where we're going, but it's kind of de facto like they're professional athletes right now because they're not, I mean, at that level of play and that level of time and devotion, how in the world could you actually go to school and do your do your studies?

I mean, it's impossible.

So I don't know whether they should have clubs like the Stanford Football Club where they just get semi-pros.

I don't know, but it's not working.

When I was at Cal State, I was there for 21 years and they had an informal list of professors you should not take.

Can you imagine that?

They had a great coach.

It was very colorful.

I think I remember Jim Sweeney.

And

he had been really

well-known.

I think he had backfield coach.

And anyway, he was very successful at Fresno State, but they had a list.

I saw him once walking across campus, and he came up to me and said, you know, I have nothing against you.

I just don't want my students taking your class.

You were on the list, right?

Yeah, I had a

humanities class and there was a guy who must have been 6'9 and 300 pounds.

He was their first string guard.

And I don't know why he wanted to take my humanities of the Western world.

So he came in the first week.

And I said, I don't think you're in the right class.

He said, I'm in the right class.

I just want to learn literature.

I said, but you've got like two practices in August.

And

he said,

I said, I want to take this.

So he tried to come to the classes, but

he flunked the first exam.

And then I got the academic coordinator for the football team would call.

Professor Hanson, I'm the academic coordinator for the football team.

And Mr.

Smith is in your class.

He should never have been in your class.

We told him not to be in your class.

He cannot get an F in your class.

We want to see.

And I said, I can't do that.

I'm sorry.

And they said, well, we want him to withdraw from your class.

And I said, it's past the withdrawal date.

But if you can go to the president and you can get an exemption, I'll sign it.

So that's what they did.

But he was a nice guy.

And I had a really good classics student who was a quarterback.

And he broke, he basically broke his back the first year at Fresno State.

And he had a scholarship.

They were very good about it.

They honored his scholarship.

And he went from a quarterback to being a classics major.

And

he actually was very brilliant.

His name was Nick Rockwell.

He's a really good guy.

And he got his bachelor's, and then he got his Ph.D.

at UCLA, and he became a professor for a while.

And so I had a lot of contact with

college sports, but something,

there's no good answers why I'm struggling because these are basically,

it's not like baseball.

It's not like semi-pro or the,

you know, farm leagues or

ABC league or something like that, triple A, double-A, A league.

That's a lot more honest, you know.

Yeah.

And so, but I don't know what you do.

But now the idea you're going to have a bunch of unionized, professional

student athletes who are making a lot of money.

Why not just go to the pros?

You know, I don't understand it.

It's going to kill.

I think it's going to kill college football.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it will because

there'll be no need to go to college.

If you're a good high school athlete, maybe they'll have a AAA football team or something like that.

And

maybe the alumni will have to find something else to go to because

it's not going to work.

Yeah,

that's the money issue.

And then if you throw in the cultural issue where, you know, can you not believe that within a year or or two, there'll be five guys who are saying we're the

we're the women's team for,

you know, pick a college.

Yeah, that, and that, or that, you know, I think Dartmouth's basketball team is unionizing now, right?

We're on strike.

We're not going to play unless we get this, this, this, this.

You know.

And the whole transgender thing, as you mentioned.

And I mean, I think that the last six months, there's been four or five cases cases where women, athletes, but more importantly, even women, grown women that are in community gyms that go to the, you know, go to the locker room to shower and they see quote unquote female with male genitalia and they get really freaked out.

And usually they're chastised or kicked out or punished for being freaked out.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, some lady, this isn't related to college, but yeah, the older lady was was was uh

uh fired from her gym i mean i mean she was she can't go there anymore because she complained she was at the the community gym and she was in the shower and there's a guy with his johnson dangling or whatever the hell and she bitched about it to the front desk and they're like you you're the one with the problem Yeah, I don't know.

You can't come there anymore.

There's certain things that have gone on in our society that are so transformative and they've come about so radical that they're not and they're not going to be sustainable.

And one of them is the DEI woke czar, and another one is the transgendered male and female sports.

It's not going to be sustainable.

I don't think it is.

I think people are going to rebel against it.

And I think it's going to be an issue in the upcoming election.

And I think a lot of people...

When they look at what woke has done to the university and if they were to win, they being the conservatives were going to win the House and the Senate and the White House.

I think there's going to be a big drive to tax endowments and to

start looking very carefully at student loans and starting to look very carefully at putting strings on federal research money.

These universities, if they're going to take federal monies, they're going to have to follow certain regulations that they don't now, like protection of free speech, et cetera.

What I'm trying to say, the era of we're going to give you tax-free every year on your $3 billion income from your endowment, and we're going to allow you to raise money tax-free because you're a non-profit, and we're going to give you tax-free, huge, multi-billion-dollar grants, and we're going to

subsidize all your students to the tune of $2 trillion.

And we're going to do all that while you shout down speakers you don't like, and you have segregated dorms by race, and you have segregated graduation ceremonies, and you have segregated safe spaces, and you disrupt people's, you hunt down Jews in the library and lock them in if you're students.

I don't think that's sustainable.

And I think they're going to take, they being the conservative, if they win, are going to take some pretty strong measures.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think Stanford and Harvard and Yale should just go the Hillsdale route.

You know, Hillsdale did not want to deal with an oppressive left-wing government.

And maybe Stanford and Harvard and Princeton should say, you know, I like what Hillsdale did, and I do not want to deal with an oppressive conservative government.

So

we

have our own endowment, and we don't want any federal funds, period.

None.

And

students that come here with a GI Bill,

they can't do it.

And that's what the federal government punished Hillsdale by doing.

And maybe that's a model they should all do

because you and i are you you and i are involved in non-profit matters uh but the the the the quid there's a quid pro quo here that non-profit which is not a right there's not a right to non-profit status but the the

the essence of it is you're doing a public good and therefore you're doing something that needs to be done and therefore you you are granted this status.

And if these colleges in the collective are not doing things that are good or implying they're doing good by educating, raising this money to educate, and then they don't spend the money on education, first of all, they're still charging freaking $80,000 a year while they're sitting on $30 billion endowments.

It's a very legit.

Well, I mean, if you're walking across the Stanford campus, as I am to my office,

And there's a permanent four or five month Gaza camp, and people are screaming at the top of their lungs in your face from the river to the sea and you kind of have to sidestep them and then on there's chalk messages on the cement and they cannot stop that.

That's the longest occupation of the Stanford campus.

And nobody could say, you know what,

no one else can do that.

If you're a vendor or you're a homeless person, we do not let you camp out.

on the middle of the quad and obstruct foot traffic and yell in people.

And we're not going to, they couldn't.

They they finally after four and a half months did

but

you know when you walk by and there's a sign that says shh be quiet do not wake protesters and they're in their pup tents you know it it's surreal and

the universities have lost all moral authority they really have and they allow what we saw in my campus with judge duncan when you had a federal judge that was basically hounded and run off campus for you not using the correct pronouns in a case.

And the DEI person hijacked his lecture and

pre-planned.

She had a written script to replace it with.

There has to be some reaction to all of that.

That's been clouding Gay's testimony.

You could see something is basically wrong.

And when you look at the cost, as you said, the money is, it's too expensive.

The return and a cost-benefit analysis is too little.

Half the young people in America do not go to these colleges, and yet as taxpayers, they subsidize them.

They don't get student loans, but they have to underwrite these defaults.

It's not sustainable.

We need a massive vocational program.

And the idea that you're going to turn 18 and you're going to go to one of these campuses and you're going to take, as half the students do, you're going to take six, nine units, eight units, and then maybe half the students don't graduate.

And the ones that do take six years on average in higher education.

But you're just going to,

I don't know, drain your, throw away your 20s while you sort of kind of are maybe not a psych major, environmental studies major, whatever.

It's not.

And you're not going to get married.

You're not going to be a taxpayer.

You're not going to buy a house.

You're not going to have children.

You're not going to develop skills.

You're just going to be on this campus world of kind of sort of a student while you get indoctrinated with these bankrupt leftist ideas and the word that we the taxpayer are going to subsidize it i don't think it's going to work anymore yeah

well victor

now the president of harvard university is a known plagiarist you know what i mean yeah and well we should wait till this ackman uh well i believe he has spent his money some some of his couch change to uh do a deep dive into all

these administrators and di people and just to vet them on the plagiarism front.

So I think there are a lot more

trees to fall in

these scandals.

Victor, there was one other thing.

We don't have time, but there's a great piece I want to recommend to our listeners.

It's on the Federalist by Zachary Mettler, and it's titled, Where are the Dads Protecting Their Daughters?

from dangerous male athletes.

It has nothing to do with college athletics.

But I think, Victor, when we maybe when we see,

we've all seen these videos of this game up in Massachusetts where this brute of a guy

at a basketball game, playing as a girl, knocked the crap out of three girls.

And

there are other examples of this

across the nation.

But maybe it's time for some

dads to come out of the stands and say,

not doing this to my daughter.

You're not putting my daughter at risk.

Yeah,

that would be a good that would be my lance the boils

well i mean it reminds me of that scene remember uh was it yey or whatever his name was morgan and how greenwood my rally roddie mcdowell

when when he got beaten by the teacher and the teacher was this little snotty nosed wannabe academic or something and he got yeah he got caned and then the other kids beat him up and then the whole family rallied and they got the the old blind boxer to teach him how to box

and and

it reminded me how

the family used to do that.

I won't mention any names because some of the people, but my mother, I felt was a very attractive woman.

And she,

after raising us on the farm, she had these degrees, so she went back.

She eventually became a judge.

But she was the only woman

as a legal researcher, as a judge.

And there was a very prominent person who kept sexually harassing her.

And in those days in the 70s, I don't think there were HRs, right?

Right.

So

she just told my dad.

And he was, you know, almost 6'4.

He weighed about 230.

So he just, you know, he was kind of

scary, scared me.

But he just went in one day and he walked into her chambers and the other judge was there and he just picked him up.

I mean, he grabbed him by the shoulders.

The guy was kind of

like a narrow physique, little spiny legs and a pot belly, and just picked him up like over his head and said, how long do you want to stay up here?

And

they became good friends after that.

But the point I'm making is there was something about the Me Too.

And

I didn't tweet.

I wrote an article.

And I said, part of the problem with Me Too is the breakdown of the family.

Because I can remember in the old days that just what you're talking about, dads, brothers,

children, sons, they protected women.

And I know that sounds awful, chauvinistic patron, but that's what they did.

There was a larger family network.

And if anybody made a pass, an ontoward pass, or even

since their safety was in danger,

the family rallied, as they did males as well that were young.

And I wrote that and one of my colleagues got so angry and said I was a sexist and attacked me on social media, but I didn't mean it to be provocative.

I thought it was just wise that

everybody, you know, did that.

And

we, you know, We had four of us and one, we had two first cousins that grew up as our, basically our brother and sister, because their

mother had died very early, my mom's sister.

And

we all rallied around our one female sibling.

And we all, you know, that old stereotype when a guy, I think every guy that came to ask her out was terrified, you know what I mean?

Of us four.

Right, right.

And that's handsome.

Yeah.

Yeah, because everybody, you know,

I don't know what, you know, we'd say something to, yeah, right.

We'd say to her, this guy's a wimp or this guy's okay or this guy.

And I know that that sounds bad today, but that was a protective apparatus.

And I had two daughters, and the same thing with my son, he was very, very protective.

It was two dollars.

He's kind of a big guy, and he was that way.

And there was a, I've had,

at one period, I had a lot of people come up out to this farm to date my daughters, and I didn't like some of them, and I would talk to them.

But that's all gone.

I think because of the breakdown of the family.

And so if you had a daughter who was a great volleyball player, and she had a guy, you know in practice a guy a man who was a female who was slamming the ball down her throat right

yeah

or a basketball player on another team that kept flattening her because of his muscular skeletal advantage she would want to do something and right and i think that's

I think that's

punch the administrators also yeah I think that's good I know that a sign of a pre-civilizational society is the monopoly of violence is not with the state, it's with the tribe.

But there was something to be said in the old days that the tribe protected their own vulnerable family members, and

you didn't want to.

I think it would be a great shame if you did not.

Well, anyway, Victor,

we are at the end here, except to say a few things.

One,

subscribe to The Blade of Perseus.

If you're a new listener to the show, but of course you're here because you're a fan of Victor.

Go there, VictorHanson.com.

You'll see a ton of stuff you can read and link to.

Victor's American Greatness Essays and Syndicated Column, other writings, archives of this podcast, his forthcoming book, link to that, The End of Everything, How Wars Descended to Annihilation.

That will be out March 7th.

You will see these other articles that have a little label on them.

It's called Ultra.

And you will click and you will not be able to read them unless you are subscribed.

And Victor writes two or three ultra pieces a week.

$5 gets you in the door.

Discounted full-year subscription is $50.

So that's the blade of Perseus, VictorHanson.com.

I am Jack Fowler and the author of a free weekly email newsletter called Civil Thoughts.

I write that for the Center for Civil Society at Anpil, where we are trying to strengthen civil society.

Civil Thoughts ends up in your inbox every Friday.

It's got 14 recommended readings of important, worthwhile, interesting pieces I've come across in the previous week.

Gives you the excerpt, gives you the link.

Sign up at civilthoughts.com and be assured.

We're not selling your name.

We're not using your name for any other purposes.

There's nothing transactional about

this.

If you're on Twitter, also known as X, Victor's Handle is at

VD Hansen.

There is a wonderful

friends group on

Facebook, the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club.

It's nothing formally to do with Victor.

It's just some great, great folks who follow his every, every jot and tittle, Victor.

My gosh.

They may even have...

a spy camera or drone over your house for all you know they the people will love you there so that's on facebook uh but victor also has VDH's Morning Cup on Facebook.

What else?

I think that's about all the linkage I need to raise.

And for those who rate the show on iTunes and Apple, thank you.

We follow it all the time.

And also read the comments that people leave on Victor's website.

You can rate the show zero to five stars and Victor gets a 4.9 plus plus average.

Thanks for those folks who do that.

For those who leave comments also, here's one.

It's titled The Building of a Gaza Harbor.

I see the building of a harbor as

only the first step.

The U.S.

will need to assure the delivery of the aid to the people, and that will be Biden's next step, military convoys protected by our military.

Before you know it, This endeavor becomes Somalia, with the U.S.

troops assuring aid deliveries, and eventually the Hamas fighters

will begin hit-and-run attacks on the U.S.

convoys and then it repeats the Battle of Mogadishu.

That becomes an entanglement that is difficult to leave and will lead to casualties.

That's from Stantastic Zero Zero.

We get all kinds of praise and sometimes criticism and then also some wise analyses on these comments.

So thank you.

Victor, you've been terrific as ever.

And folks, thanks for listening.

And we will be, if I can only, I sound like Porky Pig there, Victor.

Habity,

that's all, folks.

We'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

Thanks for listening.

Bye-bye.

Thank you, everybody, for listening.

See you next time.