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Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, the star, and the namesake, Victor Davis-Hanson, is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

and the Wayne and Wash and Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

We are recording on Saturday, February 17th, right in the aftermath of the major New York ruling against Donald Trump.

So there are a couple of Trump topics that I think, Victor, our listeners would like to get your thoughts on today.

Trump on NATO, a piece you've written on X Twitter about how Trump could lose, two ways Donald Trump could lose the re-election.

Then we have President Biden going to

East Palestine, Ohio, after a year after

the

toxic train derailment that has ruined a community.

And there's an interesting poll by the McLaughlin group and commentary on that about Joe Biden's genius, believe it or not.

We'll see if we have time for that.

And we will get to start

with your views on the New York verdict against Donald Trump right after these important messages.

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We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson show.

Should mention also, Victor has a website, The Blade of Perseus,

VictorHanson.com.

At the end of this show, I will tell you about that.

Victor,

yesterday in New York, Judge Arthur Erdogan

Engeron, excuse me, leveled a massive

fine against Donald Trump and various members of his family and members of the Trump organization that total about 355 million.

It could reach as high as 450 million and other

rulings that forbid Trump from practicing business in New York State and family members the same, a host of things.

This is

the outcome of the efforts of New York State Attorney General Letitia James,

her campaign promise to get Donald Trump.

Sounds like more lawfare.

Victor, your thoughts.

Yeah, I mean, you said that about her campaign promises.

I almost have it memorized.

Remember when she said that, she said something to the effect that

she would be a shining light in every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and then she'll demand truthfulness at every, that was what she campaigned on.

Just like Alvin Bragg said the same thing.

He said, you should vote for me.

When I was in the Attorney General's office of New York, I sued Trump's administration 100 times.

I'll hold him accountable.

So

they didn't say that they were going to look at, this is what my point is, Jack.

Letitas James didn't say, we have a problem in New York City.

Our real estate moguls are overvaluing real estate assets, and they do so to get loans which they should not get, and thereby they endanger the city if they should default on them, or they get interest loans that are not justified by their assets.

So I'm going to be looking at those.

He didn't say that, nor did Alvin Bragg said.

We have a list of, we have people in New York who run for office and when they report their campaign finance reports to the state, they're not always accurate.

So I am going to be looking at all of them.

They never do that.

I'm going to go after Trump.

I'm going to go after.

And we just shrug our shoulders and say,

whatever.

I guess that's what they want to do.

Go ahead and do it.

So she did it.

And she,

this Ingeron, he was the one, Jack, that posed mug for all the pictures.

He's a left-wing Democrat.

He got angry, put a gag order on Trump,

gave them $350, fined $350 million in

damages,

banned, I think, the Trump business for three years.

I think they fined Eric Trump and Don Jr.

$5 million each.

I don't know why.

And remember, at some point in that trial, they had a New York,

I don't know

what his actual position was, but

he was an accountant.

was either for the city of New York or New York University.

I only remember because his name was Bartoff, and that's a famous military historian, that name.

And

he just

testified that he looked through all of the records over a number of years, and

there was no grossly inflated asset at all.

And of course, one of the main lenders was the Deutsche Bank,

and it made millions of dollars in interest.

So what I'm getting at, nobody came forward and said,

I was an auditor for Deutsche Bank and I was fooled by Donald Trump.

Therefore, we gave him a loan and we didn't get paid back in full.

Or he was late.

Or we gave him an interest rate based on the security of the loan that we shouldn't have.

And then therefore we lost interest.

And these people like money, Jack.

So they would have, believe me.

And they understood if they sued Trump, it was going to be a winning suit in New York City.

And they didn't do it.

So there really was no, there was no victim.

And yet he's saying that somebody, the state, was victimized $350 million.

She was.

And the judge concurred.

And then

what did she do when she won?

She said, art of the deal, it's art of the steel.

She just started high-fiving the effort.

So when you add that all the time on that, and probably he spent $100 million trying to defend him.

And then you've got the $83 million Jean Jean Carol suit who then she crowed that she was going to buy new clothes and take people to France.

This is the woman, remember, who couldn't remember the date, the year, the clothes she wore.

She said she remembered the clothes.

They didn't exist at the time.

The whole narrative that she produced was almost identical to a law and order episode.

So it was a scam.

That judge, remember Kaplan, was very biased, and he was the one who said it was virtually rape, even though they didn't find rape.

So this is a pattern.

And now we've been watching Fannie Willis, etc.

And it's designed to tie Donald Trump up so he cannot campaign, and he hasn't been, to drain money from his campaign to his legal fees, to give an impression to his supporters.

that they should go into a fetal position, put their hands over their ears, tuck up their knees to their chest, and say, I can't take this anymore.

Why, as Nikki Haley says, why does all this follow Donald Trump?

And I would say to Nikki Haley is because he challenges certain things that you are afraid to challenge.

You're fine basically with a border deal that will enhance illegal immigration.

You're fine with foreign policy as it's been practiced the last 20 years.

You're fine, fine, fine with all of these things.

And he's not.

And so they go after him.

and so i don't know where it all ends but it's getting him a lot of sympathy and empathy in the primary jack but i don't know to what extent that will go to the

general election and it comes simultaneously with and we've talked about that with sammy but with a fanny willis and if i could just detour a moment

That testimony was the most incredible testimony I've ever seen in my life.

She lost her temper.

She screamed.

She said, and then she played the race card incessantly.

I'm not going to emasculate a black man when they were talking about her relationship with Mr.

Wade.

Her father, a former Black Panther, said, you know, I don't want to get enraged, but it's a black thing.

I don't think I've known a lot of black people in my life, and I don't think any of them have either pulled out a wad of cash or ever told me that they have stores of cash as a black thing.

And what was the,

it was a Fannie Willis thing that she hired somebody.

And I think it's irrelevant whether she had sex the day after or the day before she was hired.

He was hired because she liked him.

Right.

And she solicited him.

He didn't solicit her.

She solicited him.

That was what the partner testified.

And then he got $250 an hour.

And he's in big legal trouble if we had a legal system in the United States.

Because he said basically he spends 1% of his time on his clients.

And they don't.

I hope his billing reflects that.

But I have a suspicion it doesn't.

And then he says it's not uncommon for people to come in with big bags of cash to pay him and his legal firm.

I hope he reported all that.

And I hope he has books.

But basically, as a reward for that, they went on a series of expensive junkets.

He put those on his credit card.

She does not want us to look at her bank records.

She says that she has thousands of dollars in cash, and she even said it came from campaign finance tropes, which I think would be illegal to use.

But, you know, she's exempt.

And

she's basically saying to us, if you cut through all, I'm a black woman and you're racist, and I'm not going to take this from you, and I'm not on trial.

She's basically saying,

I like this guy.

He had no criminal or felony experience.

I know he wasn't qualified, but I wanted him and I'm going to pay him

$250

an hour.

And I think he's underpaid.

And he's going to make $650 million, $650,000 in a year.

And we're going to go to the Bahamas.

We're going to go to California.

We're going to go on planes.

We're going to go on cruises.

And I don't have to tell you anything about it.

And yes, he didn't pay.

Well, maybe all the expenses were on his credit card, but I paid him in cash.

And so

paid him back in cash.

So the question arises, why would you do that?

You're an officer of the court.

Wouldn't you be think that people might question that?

Wouldn't you want receipts to show you,

show him, show the world, show your credits that you actually did pay him back?

Or did you give him cash because he paid for it?

You didn't pay a dime, and you didn't give him any cash.

You have no records of it.

You have no records except the story you and he concocted.

So we have no idea whether you gave him a dime or not.

You're just trying to establish the fact that you have thousands of dollars and you had the wherewithal to pay him in cash.

But any, you're the attorney general.

Excuse me.

You're the

prosecutor of Fulton County, and it's incumbent upon you to follow the law.

Now you're lying flat out, contradicting the testimony of your closest friend who gave us dates when you were involved and this person you said you weren't.

And now you're

claiming that you paid him back, and therefore he didn't give you gift after gift after a gift because you had used your office to give him a huge amount of money for contractual work for which by any definition he was not qualified.

And now you're telling us that there was a financial transaction that puts you in the clear because you paid for all of these perks, but you have no receipts, you have no contractual written agreements, and you claim that you paid him back in cash.

And if anybody believes that,

Judge McCaffey let her get away with murder.

She interrupted.

She wouldn't answer questions.

She went off topic.

When Donald Trump did that,

they fined him, $15,000.

They went after him.

And they let her.

And I just, there's only two explanations for that.

He's scared of the Fulton County constituency, and he does not want to seem like he's interrupting a powerful black woman, or

he's going to let her go, go, go.

And then he secretly thinks it's so outrageous, he's going to remove her from the case, and then he's going to say, well, I indulged her, so don't don't get mad at me.

I don't know what it is, but I have auction one.

He was afraid.

I do too.

And he made a fool of himself.

The judge did.

And then the commentary, Jack, Jeffrey Toobin, whom I don't understand why this person is back on CNN.

He was caught masturbating

on Zoom.

I mean,

that should have destroyed any shred of integrity that he had left.

He was on there and he said flat out, I don't care if she lied.

So what?

It has nothing to do with Donald Trump's guilt or innocence.

Yes, it does.

No other prosecutor would ever have brought that case.

She brought it and she said and alleged certain things.

But if we find out she has no credibility and she's a serial liar and she has committed fraud, then why would we trust anything she says?

And can he get that as a lawyer?

This hatred of Trump is so elemental, so existential, that

with this James case and the Carroll settlement, we've got two down and Fannie Wills is coming up, and then we've got this crazy Alvin Bragg with the campaign Stormy Daniels thing, and then we've got Jack Smith.

And, you know,

Every legal scholar that has any reputation says that Jack Smith wasn't going after Donald Trump, he would have never filed

writ after writ after writ to speed up the trial before the election.

And that's what he's doing.

And so this is all coordinated to drain him of money, to damage

his reputation before the election, to take his time, to destroy him

physically, psychologically, financially, emotionally, everything.

You know, it is true.

You can't believe it's happening in the United States.

Victor, this one last thing on Willis.

I think Nathan Wade, her

legal lover,

comes off as a kept man.

And so for her to use the, I'm not going to emasculate a black man when she has emasculated him by essentially being a female gigolo to him, I think is kind of...

kind of ridiculous.

Also,

one other thing is the, you know, the philosophy of the Biden administration and liberalism now is that, remember, you know, this threshold of we're going to go after anybody who spends more than, we want to track all your spending, more than $600.

So

Fannie Willis should be into, very much into.

given her ideology.

They won't do a thing to her for all of that cash, if that's true.

It'd be very easy just to subpoena her bank records and see how many times times during this trip or right before it she made massive withdrawals on ATM so that she would have the cash to give him.

And I don't think she's going to allow those bank records to

be looked at because I don't think she gave him a dime.

And that was the whole point.

She hired him when he was unqualified.

He was grateful.

So he took her on an expensive series of junkets.

And then they got up in front of everybody and they lied.

And they played the race card at nausea.

He played the race card.

She played the race card.

Her father played the race card, the ex-Black Panther.

He played the race card in the same fashion that Lakita James has played the race card, the same fashion that Claudine Gay has played the race card.

It's just, you know, if Donald Trump had said,

well, I want to make a statement, this is a white thing.

You've got to understand that I did this because it's a white thing, and people who are not familiar with the white community don't understand how we do things.

People would have laughed at him or said he was a racist.

It's got to stop because it's warping every aspect of our society.

This, I need a special exemption, and I need to get immunity from this particular criticism or application of a law or a protocol because of my race.

And then, you know, the other thing is

when I look, when I heard her speak and I heard her, saw her temperament, how did that woman ever get through law school or to get series of very prestigious appointed jobs to put her in a position even to run

for the district attorney?

I could not believe it.

I mean, if that is the representation of Fulton County and she sits there and looks and interrupts and gets sassy and starts to

talk about race and won't answer questions and then attacks the questioner and all of this.

I mean, you can say Donald Trump is crude and disruptive, but he's not the district attorney with the responsibility to represent the state or the county.

She is.

And it's, it's.

It's just mind-boggling what's going on in this country with these lawsuits, get him off the ballot, do all of this.

And then at the same time they're doing this, they're sending out the narrative, oh my God, he might get elected.

So let's pass a law that protects federal employees in the administrative state from being laid off at high position.

My God, we're going to do this to him.

We're going to do this.

And we can talk for a second, Jack, about this missing binder.

Sammy and I just brought it up briefly, but today there's more information

that

Michael Schellenberg's not a nut, and they believe that the powers at B were terrified that Donald Trump deliberately took that out and had it in his possession to use at an opportune date.

And it showed that John Brennan, allegedly, had had people contact foreign entities to have a surveillance of which we knew took place of Trump people.

We know they did that to Papadopoulos, set him up in a bar.

We know they did that to Carter Page.

We know that there were people abroad in the CIA who were paid large sums of money to surveil the Trump people.

And when you have that type of roguery, and this is added on to using the FBI in the last election to work with Twitter to censor the laptop story or to recruit former CIA people to swear something that was impossible, that Moscow cooked up this laptop.

It really really begs the question, is this agency even viable?

Is the FBI viable?

When you're talking about making false statements, think about it for a minute.

Andrew McCabe lied four times under oath, admittedly, to federal investigators.

They didn't do anything to him.

A FBI attorney doctored a court document that was submitted in the Carter Page and lied.

They just put him on suspension.

He's practicing law again.

He wasn't even banned for three years like the Trump kids.

So something is really scary about this country.

And I guess the message is

it's kind of like the Soviet message.

Join the party or you're going to be on the outside and you're not going to like it.

If you're a business person in New York, I guess my advice to you would be

You either you better get out of that state as soon as possible or you better stop any donation to any Republican candidate, and you better start sending big campaign donations to Albin Bragg, Letita James, Governor Hochkel, Eric Adams, or you won't be able to do business in that state and that city.

But if you do, I think you'll be protected.

Right.

Well, Victor, we're going to get your thoughts.

More thoughts on Trump about

his comments about NATO and a piece you've written for ex-Twitter

about the two ways Donald Trump could lose

in November.

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

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We're back with the Victor Davis-Hansen show.

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So, Victor, let's lump these two

Trumpy topics into one.

So, Donald Trump made some very, very

rough, tough, and much-covered comments about

NATO and NATO nations that are not fulfilling their 2% defense obligation and

what Putin and Russia can do about that.

And then you also wrote before Twitter X about your thoughts on two ways that Donald Trump could lose in November.

Victor,

share your thoughts with us, please.

Well,

remember, Donald Trump last week said two things that disrupted

the

catastrophic Biden 24-hour news cycle, in which the special counsel had basically said that Joe Biden had criminal liability and exposure because he willfully removed classified documents over several decades as a senator, as a vice president, and as a private citizen before he became president.

And that he knew he had done that because there was a tape in 2017 that he remarked to his ghostwriter that he had in his possession classified documents which he did not contrary to what he alleged notify federal authorities and that ghostwriter in fear five years later i.e in the present when jack smith was appointed erased that audio and the only reason that we know it was through forensic so

The point I'm making is that was a bad news cycle.

And then the

about a week ago, the Joe Biden press conference to show that he was mentally alert and dynamic.

I remember the people like Corinne Jean-Pierre, Jack, and

Camilla Harris said he's the most dynamic guy in the room.

He just impresses everybody with his encyclopedic knowledge, his instant recall.

They're just blown out when he comes in.

And so to prove that was true and that the special prosecutor was false,

Joe Biden gave a press conference.

He lost his temper, and then he lied.

He said

the files were not classified.

They were.

He said they were stored in a safe and secure.

Anybody looked at the photograph, that garage is messier than, it's like a dump.

It's like hoarder's garage.

And then he lied and said he came forward to authorities.

So it was, and then he mixed up the president of Mexico with the president.

So it was a disaster.

So we were going into the weekend and this week, Jack, with

real questions that

Joe Biden was

not fit to be president because the left was in a dilemma.

The special prosecutor said, okay, yeah, he's guilty, but he's also demented.

So it's one or the other.

And I decided I could never convince the jury he's guilty because they would obviously see he's demented.

And then the left said, oh, how dare you?

He's not demented.

And then they stopped and paused and thought, okay,

he's not demented.

Maybe he's guilty.

Or then they said, no, I can't say that.

Okay,

he's innocent, but he's demented.

And they couldn't figure out that.

And they just, that lose lose

choice.

So, and then Donald Trump started saying things.

And the first thing he said that Nikki Haley's husband, as we said,

where is she?

And the implication was that they are separated and that he's not deployed, apparently, because of rumors of long ago adultist trists, big deal.

But that made him look small.

And then secondly, he said that

in the context of NATO not paying their fair share and how successful he, Donald Trump, had been in getting them to, when a NATO member said, would you defend us from Russia if we have not met our commitments?

And he said, no.

In fact, I don't give a hell whether Russia

attacks you.

And I guess that was the threats that he used that was successful.

That part, of course, didn't come across, that he got more NATO countries to beef up their contributions to meet the 2% of GDP requirement.

But that was lost in translation.

So my point was simply, Jack, that the only thing that can stop Donald Trump is Letita James.

And I think that is going to be reversed on appeal.

They've never used that law before.

There was no victim.

People are outraged.

Our Fanny Willis, and I think that, I do think

that she's either going to lose the case or they're going to give it to someone else who won't want anything to do with it in another county.

Alvin Bragg is,

I don't know what to say about that.

Campaign finance.

They fined Barack Obama in 2009 for hiding the names of his donors, $375,000, but they kept it quiet and didn't really announce it for five years, so it wouldn't hurt him.

They fined Hillary 119 for using campaign monies to pay off Christopher Steele infusing GPS through those paywalls.

They kept that.

They didn't do that for a couple of years.

So

it's not going to hurt him.

And then there's Jack Smith.

Jack Smith's problem is Jack Smith right now is essentially trying Donald Trump for the same crime that his counterpart, twin special counsel Robert Hurd, tried Joe Biden and found,

unlike Jack Smith, because he hasn't found that yet,

that

Joe Biden willfully broke the law in a felonious fashion and removed classified files out of unsecure locations without the ability to declassify them, given his office was not president, and he did so over three decades.

And yet he's not going to be prosecuted

because he's demented.

So I would tell Donald Trump, if Jack Smith tries to press those charges against him, he should just say that he's demented because he mixed up Haley and Pelosi's name, and no jury would convict him.

Something like that.

That's where we are in America now.

So I think he can survive that.

I don't know if he'll come out with any money.

I don't know if he'll come out with any time, but he'll be viable in a sense in the general election.

But

if he keeps batting away these softballs that are sent to him, he should just accept them.

My God,

these are gifts

about what's happening with Joe Biden.

And they are panicking.

Now they're going after an FBI.

When's the last time the FBI went after an FBI crooked informant?

Did you see that?

They say, I mean, who was the crookedest informant they've ever had?

It was Christopher Christopher Steele.

That guy made up everything.

Right.

And what did the FBI do?

Nothing.

So they are panicking because they see that the proverbial walls are closing in on Joe Biden.

But all Trump has to do, there's no margin of error.

They don't have the money of the left.

They don't have the media of the left.

They don't have the institutional clout of the left.

They don't have the mastery of non-election day voting the left does.

It's going to be the nastiest, meanest,

most contentious election in our history and the most expensive.

And Donald Trump is walking along an abyss with everybody trying to push him in, and he can't jump in.

And I know that's a lot to ask because I don't think any of us could take the abuse that he's suffered.

But

he has to because, as I said, the 2024 election is not 2020.

We've gone down the hard road of socialism to such a degree in the last four years

that we're not getting going to have much more opportunity to stop it.

The world's on fire.

Well, we've institutionalized, if anybody, did anybody think four years ago that we would institutionalize the idea that men participate in women's sports?

And if you object, you can be fired?

Did we institutionalize the idea the SAT score would be thrown out?

Did we institutionalize the idea that prosecutors at the local and state level would go after a presidential candidate or try to get him off the ballot?

Did we ever think there would be no border?

Not a porous border, no border, 8 million people?

Did we ever think that Hamas would go across and one day kill, rape, mutilate, dismember 12,000 Jewish civilian?

Did we ever think that

Vladimir Putin, who had been kept in a cage, would just go into Ukraine and try to take Kiev?

No.

Do we ever think we'd just say, yeah, we've been done that, we're gone, buy Afghanistan.

Oh, $50 billion,

take it.

We don't need it.

We've seen things that we've never imagined.

And if we had four more years of this, and we get up to $40 trillion in borrowed money, I don't know what we're going to do.

I really don't.

So this election has a lot of responsibility on Donald Trump because he represents the last hopes of millions of people who think the country is going to hell.

So it requires a level of discipline that he hasn't shown.

And he has to show it because he's the only resort right now that there is.

That was my column.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, Victor,

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Barbecue.

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Victor,

Joe Biden, a year after the toxic spill of a train that severely harmed a community of East Palestine, Ohio.

He finally went there.

Let me just read this.

I'm sorry.

I'm looking at today's New York Post.

Again, we're recording on the 17th.

President Biden was jeered by a large group of protesters Friday during a less than two-hour stop in East Palestine, Ohio, more than a year after the disastrous trained array.

There, dozens of area residents lined a commercial strip to greet Biden 81 with signs that said,

too little, too late.

Dementia, Joe, you got to go and go home, sleepy Joe.

Two hours.

Yeah.

He's been concerned about it for a full year.

Victor, your thoughts.

Well,

he didn't do anything.

He just went in there, said,

and he lost his temper, as he always did.

And he barked at the moon, at the rail companies.

But why didn't he just come in with a definite plan?

And just say, you know what?

You can't go in your house because they stink.

You have mortgages.

I have forgiven billions of dollars of student loans.

So, what I'm going to do is for people who can certify that their homes have been ruined by the court in lieu of a settlement, we can't wait for a settlement.

I'm going to have

federally subsidized zero-interest loans so that you can rebuild or you can buy another home.

And while your old home is either being repaired or fixed, why don't you do something like that instead of just mumble and scream and yell?

And of course, he didn't go there because

it's an election year.

And it didn't go there until it was an election year.

Now he's there.

And he thinks that, you know what?

They've told him, you have lost the white middle class, muscular class.

They're voting against you.

However,

you're a big union man.

And there are a lot of union people in the Midwest.

So maybe you can still pick up a point or two because you might need it.

So go out to that awful place that you consider dregs and chomps, the irredeemable, the deplorable, the clinger place, the place John McCain, the kind of people that John McCain said were hobbits and crazies, and go out there for two hours.

What do you have to lose?

And that was the thinking.

It's the same thing when they came to him and said, you know, We're going to lose people because they can't afford gas.

So drain the petroleum reserve and now start pumping gas and oil.

And then tell the people you're not doing it, that you're a big green guy.

And lo and behold, last month we pumped 13.6 million barrels of oil.

And then they told him, you know, you did a great job, Joe.

You got 8 million illegals into the country.

Those are great new constituents, and we want more.

And if you're going to get elected, and get us an eight to 10 more illegals, maybe we can get up to 100,000 dead.

Fentanyl doesn't matter.

You don't care.

You've got to say the border is secure.

So go get a bunch of naive Republicans and some Democrats and get some phony comprehensive immigration reform bill that allows us to build more courtrooms or more processing centers and get, you know, we don't need 12 million.

We'll just get four or five million, but we'll do it orderly.

Orderly.

And we'll pour money into the communities that take these illegal aliens, even though they're breaking the law.

And then we can say the border is secure in an election year.

And now we have to look at foreign policy.

We've got to kind of pressure Israel.

We don't want this thing to expand.

You've got to go jawbone yet.

You know, he's a right-winger.

He's this, he's that.

Demonize the guy and then play up to Hamas and we can win this quarter million vote.

sliver in Michigan and carry Michigan.

And so that's what he's doing.

And he has no compass.

He has no integrity.

It's just whatever you have to do.

I mean, all politicians do that, but no more than he.

And so that's what we're seeing.

And Palestine, in that calculus, it rates about two hours.

One day,

two hours.

Over a year after it happened, two hours.

If that had been any other community, as I said, he would have been there on day one.

Right.

Victor, you mentioned about the possibility of sending, government sending money to the cities where with the with the migrant surge, not migrant illegal, very illegal

aliens and some of them, many of them seems criminal, especially New York City.

Here's a headline.

I did not send this to you in advance, so you'll forgive me, but this is from today's New York Post.

Again, this is we're recording on February 17th.

Mayor gets called out, this Mayor Adams of New York, and he stops a shelter plan to move in migrants.

So there was a 35-story building, luxury condo building,

as yet unoccupied, in Harlem.

And

he was going to turn it over, and the city was going to turn it over to house these illegals that have come up from...

the border, maybe even now down from the border from Canada, too.

And the residents of Harlem were like, no

effing way.

There was near riot.

Like,

we don't want these people

in our neighborhood.

So I don't know where the,

I don't know where,

no matter how much money the Biden administration might or might not send to big cities to address this.

I don't see the locals wanting it.

And that's its own issue.

And then as applies to november i i can see the the uh the black vote being suppressed in part because of this i could be wrong but any thoughts about that yeah i i think you're i think you're correct and uh

i don't think i think the inner city black community is starting to see something that

And they should have seen it before, but human nature being what it is, they were lavish with praise at one time and entitlements, but the Democratic Party doesn't care about.

It really doesn't.

And

you can see that with Joe Biden.

I mean,

this is a guy, you know, who said Barack Obama is the first clean black.

You ain't black.

You're a junkie.

Hey, boy, hey, boy.

Hey, corn pop, all that stuff.

That was the true Joe Biden.

Put you all in chains, all that stuff.

But they only expect black people to be of value in election year, and they're supposed to go out and vote 95% or you ain't black.

That was the message that Joe Biden basically gave.

And they often and usually do so, maybe to a lesser extent when it's not Barack Obama.

But

that contempt is the same kind of contempt they have for the lower white middle class, because this party is run by bicosto elites.

And I don't just mean white elites.

I mean Asian elites, black elites, Hispanic elites.

And they have a globalist mindset.

They are upper, upper, upper middle class professionals and the millionaire and billionaire class.

And they are never subject to the consequences of their own ideology.

And so they're exempt.

They feel their position, their zip code, their money, their influence.

who they are, their college degrees, the letters after their name means that they have entitlements.

And they're not subject to high electricity prices or high gas prices or smash and grab or carjacking.

It just affects other people.

So they experiment with people's lives in utopian fashion.

And one of them is the globalist utopian dream is no borders.

And we need a lot of people to come in here, Jack, to clean in Atherton and in Cambridge and

in Woodside, in Palm Desert.

We need a lot of poor people to come in from Mexico and

they've got to do the lawns and they've got to do all this and they've got to do it for a price that's not $25 an hour, California minimum wage, or 50 as Barbara Lee wants.

And

then they go somewhere.

We don't know where they go.

It's like the homeless.

We love homeless people.

We understand.

I don't know where they go, but they're not going near my house.

They are not going near my house.

And the illegal alien maid is going to go home somewhere, but I don't know where.

And that's their attitude about everything.

And I don't know why black inner city people didn't think it includes them.

It's sort of like, well, we'll make, we'll virtue signal and we'll performance art all you need about George Floyd.

And we'll give upper, upper, upper middle class black people DEI and everything because they're one of us.

But do you think we care?

about all the black kids that are killed every year in Chicago or Washington, D.C.

or Memphis or Baltimore?

That's your problem.

I just don't want to get into it.

And that's who they

elect.

And so they should worry because there's a lot of people who are wising up to it.

And

I don't know the Republicans have a dilemma because Donald Trump was the first really to wise up to it.

And he was the first Republican candidate who tried to make an effort.

But I don't know whether the demonization of him will be to such a degree that he won't be able to get the necessary percentages.

My suspicion, and I'm a cynic and I'm kind of a pessimist, is that

in June and July and August, all of the conservative punditry were going to be gaga and gush that Donald Trump, according to this poll or that poll, is now pulling 50% of the Latino vote and 40% of the black male vote.

And this makes it impossible for Joe Biden to win.

And then in September and October, we'll see story after story that Donald Trump is a racist.

They said this, that a former aide has revealed

name not revealed to CNN, MSMEC, that Donald Trump said the N-word, something like that.

And they'll go after him.

And when it's all said and done, he will get about,

I don't know, 10%, 9% of the black vote, a little better than 8.

And everybody's like, well, that was pretty good.

And maybe 35% of the Latino vote.

But it won't be enough to

counteract the cheating unless things change.

I know that sounds depressing to listeners, but I've seen it happen now

for so long.

And I don't know how to stop.

Victor, you.

Yeah, well, maybe we'll get on our knees and pray.

We better.

Victor, you mentioned black children, and I'd like to raise something with you about

a very interesting video

that Peter Robinson

of Uncommon Knowledge at Hoover Institution just recorded about Birmingham 1963.

And let's get your thoughts on that when we come back from these important messages.

Back with the Victor Davis-Hanson show.

So, Victor, our friend, your friend, mine, Peter Robinson, who for years has been the host of this

really good, excellent series called Uncommon Knowledge, that is a part of the Hoover Institution.

And Peter went to Birmingham, Alabama, and he interviewed Condoleezza Rice, Mary Bush, and Freeman Frabowski, who were

all children of different ages, but close, you know, various 9 to 13, I think thereabouts,

who were residents of Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 when the great consequential and violent events happened there, Bull Connor and the explosion, the bombing of a church that killed four black children.

And they, it's

the wrong words to say reminisce, how do you reminisce about such stuff, but they were there.

And even

Freeman Robowski was arrested as a child,

marching in a protest.

But it was really, I think, a very powerful episode.

I think it's worth watching.

You know

Peter Robinson very well.

Of course, Condalisa Rice, you know very well.

She heads the Hoover Institution, which you're a senior fellow at.

Anyway, Victor, any thoughts about this particular episode?

I think it was wonderful.

I think...

the people involved,

Condoleezza Rice is about a year younger, a little, maybe a year, two or three months.

I'm 70.

And

she grew up in an age when

institutionalized racism was just de rigueur in the South, and insidious racism was pretty common in areas of the North.

And

they, being the black community, were in danger if they wanted to integrate, if they wanted to go to college.

And yet,

that whole infrastructure of Lester Maddox, I remember the names, you do too, Bull Connor, Lester Maddox, George Wallace,

James O.

Eastland, Herman Talmage, Strong Thurman, the whole infrastructure of the South who

had grown up institutionalized Jim Crow, it crumbled between 1961 and 1969.

There were riots, of course, but it crumbled.

And that generation who went through it,

and I'm talking about people at the Hoover Institution that are my two closest friends, Shelby Steele and Tom Sowell, they went through it.

They have a different perspective on what America was like and what it became

and from

subsequent generations, because they were the people who really suffered.

in the most existential sense from

racial prejudice and bias.

And I think the interview is very good.

I urge everybody to watch it.

And

that was also a very idealistic time.

I know it was a very dangerous time for blacks in the South, but it was also an idealistic time when Martin Luther King and people like that, Ralph Abernathy and

others were saying that their goal was integration and equality of result

and it was all going to work.

And

I think with the death of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the 60s, Vietnam movement, something, we took a fork in the road where rather than the content of our character, we went back to the color of our skin.

And

the great society did not work.

And I would refer people to look at Tom Seoul's complex,

finely researched, intimately detailed work that shows that the black family suffered more almost from the great society than had been otherwise predicted.

And it could have worked in a different way.

But again, going back to that time, it's important for younger generations to realize where we were at that time and how we got over it and where we are now.

It was interesting watching it.

And we're talking, of course, about Martin Luther King, who had, who was speaking in Birmingham, went to Birmingham because of the troubles there.

And

the three, I can't recall two of the three

interviewed by Peter.

Well, Condoleezza Rice's father was a minister, and I think Mary Bush's was also.

But

they talked about engaging with or seeing Martin Luther King.

And of course, I was thinking of you, Victor.

You've talked about it before on the podcast, your own experience meeting Dr.

King as a kid when he spoke in

San Francisco.

He walked right by me.

I was in the Grace Cathedral Church

when I was 10 years old.

I've talked about it before.

And I remember the sermon as if it was yesterday.

And it was a very strange sermon.

It was not that we're all going to be brain surgeons, but whatever you're going to be.

have dignity in it and then be the best.

It was almost best you can be, but he mentioned all of these gardener, everything up to sophisticated doctor.

It didn't matter.

It was your character, and you were going to be,

you would have a code or a profession, and that would be what you do.

And I guess the intent that I got from it was

in this world,

it doesn't really matter how much money you get or how much prestige you have, but how you conducted yourself in the particular profession you found yourself in, whether by volition or just accident or unfortunate, but you could still make something out of your life because in the next world, what was going to matter was your character and how you conducted yourself and not the amount of prestige or riches you accumulated.

So that was a very powerful message.

Well, Victor, I want to venture as we kind of get to the approach the end of this podcast,

get some foreign policy in.

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Thank you, good people.

So, Victor, final thoughts?

You know, we've heard Venezuela and Guiana.

People even know where the hell Guiana is.

Oh, I do.

Actually, my friend had been the most recent ambassador down there by coincidence, but Venezuela, a nasty-ass country, is threatening their neighbor, Guyana,

over oil deposits, energy that's been found

at the border.

Guiana, I think, is sitting on a bit of a gold mine.

Venezuela, which had been sitting on a gold mine, right?

I mean,

the massive oil deposits they had and nevertheless turned themselves into an impoverished nation through socialism.

Anyway, Venezuela is threatening Guyana.

Ric, do you think anything's going to actually happen down there?

Any other thoughts related to this?

If Joe Biden's re-elected, they are, and they might even happen this summer.

Because think about it for a minute.

That left-wing government knows that it's sending, it's emptying its jails, just like during the Cuban boatload.

And

they are sending people who end up in your areas in New York as absolute dangerous criminals.

And so what do they think of the United States?

Well, these Yankees, these gringos, will take any criminal we have, and they're so guilt-ridden.

We're going to make Venezuela a very safe place.

It would be as if the United States said, You know what?

We're going to get everybody with three felonies, and we're just going to tell them to go to Canada.

And we'll get rid of 10 million felons.

Well, that's kind of what they're doing.

And I'm not saying all of these immigrants are felon, but a lot of them are criminals.

And so when you have that attitude, and then they look at the growing number of left, we have Mr.

Lulu, so-called Lulu in Brazil.

You look at the governments that are left-wing, you look at our foreign policy, and Venezuela thinks, you know what?

There's three chances that the United States could react, three ways.

Number one,

given what they did with the balloon, given what they did with the Russian drone in international space, given what they do with Kim Jong-un's threats to South Korea, given what they told Putin before he invaded,

their reaction would depend on whether it's major or minor.

You should cut out that hacking, at least if he's going to do it.

Don't hack U.S.

hospitals, the Chinese balloon, giving money

to Hamas, all that with the Houthis, restoring their legitimate status, no more terrorists.

They look at all that and they think, you know,

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

That's number one.

Number two is I think they actually sympathize with us.

We're left-wing.

They like left-wing governments.

They like

Mexican Mr.

Obrador.

They didn't say anything about Obrador.

They love him.

He's a socialist.

They kind of like the Iranian revolutionary theocratic government much better than they do Israel or the Gulf monarchies.

So they kind of have a soft spot for the old idea of a Chinese communist government in China.

So they're not going to do anything because they like us.

They like the government in Venezuela.

Or three,

no, no, no, no, no.

They're not weak.

They're strong.

They're angry.

They're deterrent.

They're going to enforce the Monroe doctrine.

If anybody else tries to get involved, you don't cross international borders, the United States has the wherewithal, they'll use it, and they'll just tell us you can't invade a neighbor, just like they did to Russia and Ukraine.

And they told Hamas, you know, you went and crossed the border.

And I see that as very unlikely.

They don't believe that.

And I don't think they should believe that.

So I think they're going to do something because in a cost-benefit analysis, I don't see the downside for them.

You know, and maybe

somebody thinks that the squad will start attacking Maduro and saying, how dare you cross international border?

They'll probably say something like this.

All these borders were neocolonialist constructs.

Indigenous people were forced to live in artificial spaces as defined by white Spanish Europeans.

It was all based on exploitation, imperialism, and colonialism.

They're fluid borders.

And

Guana is a U.S.

puppet.

And the people of Venezuela have legitimate claims.

And sometimes if they're not addressed, they have to take matters in their own hand.

I think you'll get that reaction,

maybe not ostensibly or explicitly stated, but that will be the reaction of the Biden administration.

At least that's what will be perceived to be.

It doesn't matter what the reaction will be because

there is no deterrence because that is the impression that they will have.

By the way, you're right about

these hoodlums, murderers coming up here to the New York area.

I'm sure there are many other areas in the U.S.

where the Venezuelans are going.

And they're teaming up with these El Salvador,

El Salvadoran gangs.

I forget the name of them, something 13.

And they are frightening.

dudes and they're tat every every inch of their body is tattooed they they

they're murderers you know and and brought to you by

Uncle Joe Biden and Mr.

Majorkis.

Well, anyway, Victor, absolutely.

We have

come almost to the end other than a couple of pieces of business.

One is to,

especially to our new listeners, to let them know that you have a website, The Blade of Perseus, and its web address is victorhanson.com.

And it's a thing you can sign up at.

And you'll get a weekly newsletter and updates, but it's a thing you can also subscribe to because when you do, you'll be able to read the three or four, excuse me, two or three articles a week that Victor writes exclusively for the Blade of Perseus.

The web address is victorhanson.com.

The subscription costs is five bucks for a month or $50 discounted for the year.

So if you're a fan of Victor's writings or if you want to know his various appearances on other podcasts and shows, et cetera, there are links there, archives of this podcast.

Go to theblade of Perseus, Victorhanson.com.

As for me, Jack Fowler, I write Civil Thoughts, a free weekly email newsletter published by the Center for Civil Society at Amphil, which used to be American Philanthropic.

We're desperately intent on strengthening civil society.

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So go to civilthoughts.com and sign up.

And Victor, we always end the show by reading some of the comments that people have sent your way, our way,

particularly via iTunes and Apple.

That platform allows you to rate the show zero to five stars, and you have a 4.9 plus

average on the star front.

And then people can leave actual comments.

They can leave comments also on your website.

Here are two comments quickly.

One is titled Praise for My Alma Mata.

Professor Hansen, in my wildest imaginings, I never thought anyone would mention Mike Compass University, East Michigan, let alone the great VDH.

Thank you.

I can once again break out my old school sweatshirt.

This is signed Bruce from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

And then the second comment is titled Stolen Valor.

And it says, I just listened to your podcast analyzing Biden, I'm not demented, press conference.

Every time Corrupt Joe invokes his son Bo's death, he not only steals other veterans' valor, but also his son's valor as well.

There is a stolen valor law out there.

This man is despicable.

He went out to lunch on his poor wife and daughter's death for 50 years after.

Later,

he then took another man's wife while driving around in poor husband's Corvette, which I believe he wrecked.

That's the least of this creep's crimes.

Oh my gosh.

This is signed Race to Retire.

But thank you, Race to Retire, for those

interesting comments.

And thank you to Bruce from Grand Rapids and everyone else.

who has left comments.

We do read them all.

Thank you, Victor, for all the great wisdom and intelligence you shared today.

And folks, we will be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Thanks for listening and bye-bye.

Thank you, everybody.

Much appreciated.