Our Gordian Knot: How the Left's Agenda Hurts the Country

Flu season is here and COVID cases are still climbing across the country.

When people start getting sick, medications disappear fast.

And that's why we trust All Family Pharmacy.

They help you prepare before it's too late.

Right now, they've dropped prices on ivermectin and mabenzazole by 25%.

Plus, you can save an extra 10% with the code VICTR10.

You'll also get 10% off antibiotics, antivirals, hydroxychloroquine, and more of the medications you actually want on hand.

Whether you're fighting off a cold, protecting your family from flu season, or staying ready in case COVID makes its way into your home, having a few months' supply brings peace of mind and control.

They work with licensed doctors who review your order online, write the prescriptions, and ship your meds straight to your door.

Go to allfamilypharmacy.com/slash Victor and use the code Victor10 today.

Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

I am Jack Fowler.

I'm the host.

You are here to listen to the star and the namesake and all the wisdom that he shares.

That is Victor Davis-Hansen.

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

Hopefully, Victor, the end of the show, we'll have time to talk about Hillsdale.

But before that, and by the way, we're recording on the Friday, the 12th of January, and some news broke this afternoon about

Hunter Biden and the looming contempt charges against him and his desire to

nuke that.

And what else do we have?

Oh gosh, news coming out about a Senate, Republican senators trying to work out some immigration deal that is just like out of the

out of the textbook of whoever hates Republicans and their sellouts and rhinos.

Let me tell you,

this is made specially for you.

So let's talk.

We'll talk about Hunter.

We'll talk about immigration.

And if we have time, talk about Hillsdale.

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

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

So, Victor, a few things

about Hunter.

I know you were on with Megan Kelly the other day.

I don't know if you talked with her, but I just saw a headline about her from the Daily Mail.

It's a middle finger to Congress.

Megan Kelly slams Hunter Biden for sauntering into committee hearings as lawmakers discuss holding him in contempt for refusing to appear under a subpoena.

Then, Victor, there's another headline just out today, Friday again, Friday the 12th.

Hunter Biden lawyers say they will, quote, comply for a hearing or deposition, end quote, if House panels issue new subpoenas.

So, Victor, it looks like the House

is going to vote on

a

motion to hold Hunter Biden in contempt.

After his stunt the other day, he showed up at the hearing, as we all know.

Now he seems to be, I don't even know what he's doing.

He's a freaking, he's unto himself.

Victor, what are your thoughts about all this Hunter Biden-ness of these last couple of days and hours?

Well, I think he,

you know, he

He was subpoenaed, and we know that

as a basic rule, Democrats ignore subpoenas.

Eric Colder was subpoenaed and he was held in contempt.

They don't care.

And they always say it would be outrageous, da, da, da, da, if you ever prosecute him.

And we know that during the Trump era, they subpoenaed

the Trump boys, I think Ivanka too.

And they all went in, they all testified, they all did it under oath.

I think even Dawn on the Alpha Bank ping.

And Steve Bannon said no.

And they tried him.

They they convicted him, and they sentenced him to four years in prison.

And

four months in prison.

And I think he's appealing it.

So here comes Hunter, and there's a precedent that if you're,

I guess, a Democrat, you don't have to do this.

And then all of a sudden, the rules change that you're not going to face exposure.

So they were holding him in contempt.

And he wouldn't show up.

So then he comes up with this idea, Jack, that he, Hunter, can adjudicate when

the House committee that's subpoenaed him, when they can meet and what their agenda will be.

Hey, just like you're, you know, the doctor, it's like the doctor giving you appointments and you just blow him off.

And then one day, right in the middle of the day without warning, you just walk into his office and you see, you know, the waiting room's full or doing something.

You say, I'm here.

What is this about I didn't come to my appointment?

I'm here.

I want to be, I want to be meet.

I want to be viewed and interviewed and examined right now.

And that's what he did.

But he didn't do just that because he came with Abby Lau or whoever that guy is, Lowe,

the attorney.

And he came with his sugar bro or whatever they call him, the guy that's giving him all the money.

And he had a film crew.

It was an entourage.

And he swept in and he thought he was going to really show the world that I'm Hunter Biden and I am here here now.

And look, everybody, they don't want to interview me.

There's no context, of course, that, you know, and he wants to do it publicly so he can play the wounded fawn.

He doesn't want to go under oath in private.

And then Marjorie Terry Levine came up and he just split.

And then when he was walking at some point in this mess, Jack, he was, did you see the Fox reporter, the young woman that walked up to him?

and said, why did your father call you when you had these clients arranged?

When you

he said, you know, this isn't, and Hunter, have you ever had a father?

Has he ever called you?

And

I mean, he's,

I thought when I watched that, I thought, wow, you just admitted that your father called you during a meeting that was referenced before, which your father, the president of the United States, has flatly denied ever happened.

So you just confirmed what your dad said.

Wasn't he a, a, isn't he a father who denied his own child, by the way?

If he's going to go to the father defense, like

down in Alabama.

I mean, Biden has been telling everybody that he never called

to give Hunter filial fee days, I guess, to say, hey, look, this guy's not a fake.

I'm really the vice president and I'm calling right now.

And they put him on speaker, obviously.

And then, so then they asked Joe, no, I never did that, even though Devin Archer said, and now Hunter has confirmed that he did.

So

what is he doing?

And we've talked about this before.

I think it's Hunter.

I think we call it Jack Hunter and the doomsday bomb, or maybe Hunter and his doomsday bomb.

It's kind of just.

Yes, he thinks he's going to blow up the world if they screw with him.

I think he thinks he's Samson.

And he's got a pillar under each arm and he's going to pull down the Biden consortium if they don't treat him with respect.

Now, why would I say that?

And I said it about six months ago.

Go onto the laptop, see all the references to at least I don't charge half percent that he's writing to his sister and his niece.

And he says that Joe Biden gets his utilities paid by Hunter.

And he calls him the big guy who, at least I don't take 50%.

And then he mentions 10%.

But what I'm getting at is the flavor is anger.

And the anger is something like this.

I'm the dirty bagman.

I'm the cokehead.

I'm the guy who sleeps with my fallen brother's, dead brother's widow.

I am a creepy guy.

I'm the guy that takes a picture of his phallus.

And you all hate me.

And I bring disrepute to you.

But, but

you like the money.

And I bring in the money.

I'm the guy that puts his nose down in the muck and picks up a coin with his teeth.

And you are too good to to do that.

And so what I'm getting at is that now he's facing criminal exposure.

And

he's sending signals.

I mean, if you were Hunter Biden with his record of drug use,

wouldn't you make sure anybody with the name Biden wouldn't have an ounce of Coke anywhere near the West Wing?

Why wouldn't you just say to everybody, look, don't come into the West Wing because they're going to blame me if you bring drugs in.

They find Coke.

And if you think you were Hunter Biden and you were under all of the scrutiny, wouldn't you just

keep your genitalia in your pants and not have sexual intercourse unprotected with a stripper and get her pregnant?

And once you did get her pregnant, don't you think with all the money you've absconded from overseas sources, you wouldn't get into a nasty, terrible paternity suit, child support that makes you look bad, but more importantly, puts Joe Biden in the situation of basically ghosting his own granddaughter, which he did.

And if you were Honor Biden and there was all this scrutiny of all the ways you've used your father's name,

why would you start painting?

And then you would say,

I'm going to sell this to my friend in his gallery, but he's, we're going to make a...

a firewall, paywall.

I won't know anybody who buys these.

But just to tweak tweak you guys, you keep thinking I'm a cokehead and blow.

I'm going to blow air on the canvas.

How do you like that?

That's how I'm going to paint.

I'm going to get a straw, just like a person puts in his nose, and I'm going to blow.

You like that?

And oh, by the way.

My associate the other day said there was no paywall.

And I've known the names of the people who bought my crappy art for 20,000 times more than it's worth.

And they've had some entree to the White House.

Oh, and by the way,

I'm not going to go to jail.

So I've got the DOJ giving me a sweetheart deal.

And if they want to renege on it, and the judge is, I'm going to ask my father to testify.

Yes, I am.

I'm going to get the president of the United States.

And I'm going to put him on the stand where he'll either have to lie to support his own son.

or he'll tell the truth and I'll go to prison.

But that's what I'm going to do.

And so

when he's, you know, whether he's walking in and he confirms an embarrassing phone call or whether it's the drugs or whether it's the paternity suit or whether it's the art, he is deliberately, or he can't help it, creating more and more exposure.

And that sends a signal to Frank Biden, who gets a check from him, from Ashley Biden, from Jill Biden to Joe Biden.

Don't screw with me.

At any given time, I can go nuts.

I can go, you know, DEF CON 5 if I have to.

And that'll take everybody down.

So I want some exemptions.

I do not want to go to prison.

And dad, you know, he's basically telling his dad, you have more tax exposure than I do.

So I think it's a very volatile thing.

And the fact that he's going to be in court this summer, right during the campaign, you don't know what that guy's going to say.

You have no idea what he's going to say, but you do know that he's very angry at his family because he doesn't think that it's his fault that he loses his unlawfully registered gun or he leaves his crack pipe in a rental car or his

computer in a computer place with noob photographs of him or you name it.

And now he's supposed to be reformed and not on drugs, but he's just as wild and indiscreet as he ever was.

Yeah.

Gosh, walking right through, walking into the chambers with all these creepy people to make a performance art stunt, and then walking through a corridor and just telling a reporter like he's going to, he owns her.

You ever had a dad?

Well,

that's why.

Basically, yeah, basically the subtext of that little quip was, my dad's a blank, blank liar.

He called me, and I'm confirming it right now.

And so it's very strange what he's doing.

Yeah.

He's a composite of a few movie characters.

At some point, Victor, we got to talk about this offline.

Maybe a column.

There's definitely Fredo in there, but there's a couple of other aspects of

some notorious movie types.

But he really is a unique being.

And I have to think his old man, even if he was for the few minutes he's cognizant during the day, must have thought the stunt

on Capitol Hill the other day was not a good thing for Joe Biden.

No, they thought it was very funny how the media treated that.

They thought that it was great.

Remember, for a minute,

he owned the Republicans.

He owned them.

He came in there and he was just saying, here I am, ragged outcho, and they just backed down.

No, if you think about it, he brought disrepute to a congressional chamber.

And he knows, and they know, and this media psychophants know that.

A congressional committee does not bow to the whims of a witness who just drops in like, hi, guys, I'm ready to testify.

Try that with a January 6th committee and see what would have happened.

Honor.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, you're subpoenaed and you say F you and you're Steve Bannon and you're not going to appear.

And then one day you get a big, huge crowd and you just drop in and say, here I am.

I'm going to testify.

What do you think that Liz Cheney would have done?

Run for president.

Hey, Victor,

speaking of

saying things in court,

and I'm.

I'm wondering what you, well, let me read something.

Let's go to a break.

We have an important message, but then when we come back, maybe any reaction you might have to Donald Trump's outburst,

call it an outburst, in court the other day.

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

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

Victor, if you talked about this with Sammy, and I know our listeners don't necessarily know, but you've recorded a podcast that's up today on the 12th with Sammy.

Did you touch at all on Trump's court appearance in New York the other day?

No, we didn't.

We didn't.

Any thoughts about what Donald Trump said?

Or frankly,

because everything,

I think what matters is, does it help him?

or does it hurt him in the ultimate quest for re-election?

What Donald Trump said in court the other day, was it helpful or harmful?

I think at this point, it's so washed.

I think at first there were sober judicious lawyers who said, you know what, don't compound

your problems.

Go in there, be deferential.

And he did.

And now he's saying, you know what, they're going to do it anyway.

And I'm going to use this platform to tell people.

what they're really like because

what are they doing?

They have a multi-front strategy.

So we learned that Fannie Willis, who was supposed to be the most,

well, I guess the greatest exposure of the four prosecutors, that was the phone call, that was election denialism and interference.

Well, now she's the most exposed herself to legal

repercussions.

And we, you know, I went through it with Sammy that

You know, you don't just hire a guy who's an ambulance chaser, never tried a single criminal case, and then make him the highest-paid public jurist lawyer in Georgia that year.

And then one day

later, he files for divorce.

Suddenly, magically,

the divorce things are sealed.

And then he's on these junkets when they say, we got to press for time.

We need to go forward.

When they're just junketing the Caribbean, Napa, on the public dime.

And then we were told there are iron, there's firewalls between the political dimension of this and the disinterested prosecutors.

Now we learned that his,

that her boyfriend charged, he went to the White House and he charged the legal counsel money to be prepped.

And then some of his charges are 24 hours in a day.

Do you really believe he stayed up for 24 hours in a single day?

So he's really.

in trouble.

And I think she is.

And then

she's been consulting with Benny Thompson on the January 6th committee.

So

you get the idea that it's some kind of Pagartha,

you know, it's a Pagarthian triangle.

Right.

There's Fannie Willis in Georgia, and there's a White House council, and then there was a January 6th on each of these points,

these apexes, and they're all coordinating.

Right.

And

with some blue pills and lubricants,

whatever it is.

So I don't blame him.

And now he's just going to, and that judge,

I can't remember.

I want to say Gorgon, but it's not.

You know, the guy that's really poses.

I don't remember.

Sorry.

Yeah.

And he's,

I mean, he's, something is very wrong with that

judge, the way he looks and acts.

I don't know what it is, but he's a hardcore leftist.

They're all hardcore.

It's weird.

All the prosecutors, Letita James, Alvin Bragg,

Jack Smith, and Fannie Willis are all hardcore leftists.

And two of them have bragged about that they were going to run

their campaigns on the, you know, to get elected.

You know,

they were going to run their campaigns that they were going to get Trump.

And they're all, they're all going to have, so far, all the judges are liberal and the jury pools will be liberal.

But

so I don't, I think he has to attack the whole system.

I think he may be right.

I don't know.

You don't want to have, you know, obstruction of justice charges and all of that stuff by personal invective against people.

But these people have no shred of credibility.

They are corrupt.

We've got Jack Smith trying to get a gag order, trying to accelerate the case so he can synchronize it with the other indictments and get them all, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Trump is visibly driving into New York or Washington.

Everybody knows when he's going to come.

He's got to get out.

He can't campaign.

He's racking up millions of dollars or the stress.

And now Fannie Willis for a crime that, I mean, Letita James, for a crime that has never been charged against anybody, overvaluing the assets in a real estate deal for which the bank

took,

gave the loan to Trump,

Trump made the interest and the principal.

The bank was profited from the transaction.

The bank had no problem with it.

She butts her head in and says, this was wrong.

And now she's up to 300 million plus that they're going to try to get out of him.

And so

it's just beyond the pale.

It's just crazy.

And the more they do that,

it's...

You know what that reminds me of, Jack?

It's like a whirlpool.

And they know that they got to swim away from it, the Trump derangement fix, but they're addicts.

They're like moss to a fly, a flame.

They can't stop.

So they're getting in this whirlpool.

And they're going down because they're so transparently political and unfair.

All of them.

All of them.

And we've got, as I said, we've had Letita James and Bragg, bragging that they were going to be elected to get Trump.

So did Willis.

Willis has

improperly talked through the January 6th.

6th.

Her counsel, boyfriend, whatever we call him, lover, has been improperly prepped by the White House counsel, according to his billing records.

Right.

And she has profited from this exorbitant fee that she gave this married guy.

And then they probably used pressure to seal the divorce record because I'm sure that there was information by the ex-wife about Fannie Willis and this liaison.

And it just goes on.

And then we've got,

you know, Jack Smith, who is just lost at the Supreme Court trying to accelerate the pace of the investigation.

He's got the gag order.

And I guess the guy's name was Ngoron.

And Ngoron, I think that was his name.

It came to me.

That's the judge, the Letita James, and he's a partisan.

So

I think everybody looks at this and said, this isn't the country that I know.

It doesn't even resemble the United States.

It's something now the Soviet Union or Venezuela.

And then when you juxtapose this to taking them off the ballot in Colorado and Maine, and

it's the January, what's happening to the January 6th?

They're going to try people that were just out on the grounds now.

They ran out of sensationalized suspects.

So they're going to anybody who just happened to be walking around the Capitol, they're going to look at.

Yeah.

And that poor guy who tweeted something, some joke thing about Hillary Clinton, he's in prison.

Like, what the F's going on here?

I don't know.

I don't know.

It's not a country that I recognize.

Yes.

And they, and the left seems to be

the more that they,

the more that they do it, the more that they keep talking about democracies in danger.

You have, you know, you mentioned Chris Matthews, I think.

Chris Matthews is saying that, you know, if you don't, you, the rubes, these, these country folk, these rural people, they're going to vote.

And they're going to vote for Trump.

And this is not right.

You've got to get, stop it.

And

rural cults of craziness.

They're on hinge.

They really are.

They do not believe.

The left's never believed in constitutional government because it doesn't give the desired fair result.

But again, I think it's like a whirlpool.

But they're going to bring people down.

They're drawing in all sorts of issues to this.

They're bringing in DEI.

They're bringing in the migrants.

And the whole thing, they just double down.

So they can't look at the border and say, everybody does not want this.

So now they're kicking kids out of their schools in Brooklyn and other places to put illegal aliens in.

And now the Mexican President Obador is telling us that he wants $20 billion,

amnesty for 10 million of my people in your country,

normalized relationship with Venezuela and Cuba, my communist brothers.

This is what we're at.

And you want to say, is there one man in America who will say, screw you and your whole damn country?

We're not going to play that game.

You are destroying the United States by letting 8 million people come here and taking advantage of this veneer of a president.

It's like we treat Mexico like we do the Houthis.

We just say, okay, you want to get rid of all the people on your entitlement industry?

Send them in.

You want to get people

Central America, Latin America that come to Mexico, just wave them on in.

We want them.

That's fine.

We don't care.

The only time we ever look for vaccinations is our only military.

We don't care about foreign national.

You know, and the only time we ever put people in jail for years is people that are U.S.

citizens that were worried about the election and protested.

But people coming across the border with drugs or child smuggling, we don't care.

That's this weird.

We've never seen anything like this in this country.

Let's get a little more disappointing on that, Victor,

with a

talk about

Senate Republicans working out some immigration deal.

And we'll get to your thoughts

on that right after these important messages.

We're back with the Victor Davis-Hansen Show again.

We're recording on Friday the 12th.

And I believe this episode will be up on the

Tuesday the 16th.

And Victor, first, I want to ask our listeners if they've ditched, have they ditched their New Year's resolutions already?

Well, if so, it's okay

because resolving to eat healthier is easy, but actually doing it, it's not so easy.

And that's why I use Field of Greens.

It makes getting your recommended daily dose of vegetables and fruit easy.

Each super fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for a specific health benefit.

Some support your heart, lungs, and kidneys, and others support metabolism for healthy energy and weight loss.

I'm giving you 15% off your first order and free rush shipping.

Visit fieldofgreens.com and use the promo code VICTOR, V-I-C-T-O-R.

That's the promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.

Fieldofgreens.com.

Let me say that again.

And P.S.

While you're there, check out the other

products like Lean, which is a doctor-formulated weight loss supplement.

So don't just resolve to get healthy this year.

Do it.

Get 15% off your first order and free rush shipping when you visit fieldofgreens.com and use the promo code Victor, promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.

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

So, Victor, today, a headline.

from Breitbart.

This is an article by Neil Monroe.

Headline, Senate GOP border deal leaked.

Migrants to get work permits, lawyers, green cards.

And the first paragraph of the story, the Senate GOP leadership's draft border deal with the White House would reward illegal migration and encourage more foreign graduates to take jobs from American graduates, says the Immigration

Accountability Project.

Quote, there's nothing in there.

that restricts immigration.

In fact, it's just going to encourage more people to come, end quote, said Chris

Chimolinsky, president of Immigration Accountability Project.

You know, Victor,

are you surprised?

I mean, I got to admit, I'm a little surprised.

Could they be?

Could the Senate leadership, Mitch McCollum company, be this

much out of tune with how America is feeling about immigration?

I don't know what you call it immigration.

It's an invasion, as you mentioned before.

These schools in Brooklyn, New York, 2,000 kids had to be kicked out of their school to go to and do remote learning so the school building could be used to put illegals in.

I don't understand what they're trying to do.

I don't know whether they're afraid of getting tagged by stopping the

appropriations for Ukraine.

They don't want to hold that over to get some leverage on the border.

I don't know whether they have the corporate Wall Street Chamber of Commerce right that wants the labor.

I don't know why they can't just say to the left, we're not going to do anything on Ukraine until you shut the border.

But

where the tricky thing is, see,

the left, what they do is

they will say to the Congressional Republic, okay, okay, you can secure the border.

And then they'll go back into their little room and say,

we already got 8 million of them.

We've got enough that even our blue mayors and cities can't handle them.

This was an abundance of good luck.

So we've got 8 million people.

That'll take years to assimilate it.

We'll get them voting.

We'll give them entitlements.

We'll just take a little breather.

So then we'll go back and say, yeah, okay,

we can't have any more illegal aliens,

but

you've got to give them amnesty.

10 million.

We want amnesty so they can work.

And so what, and then, and then the Republicans go, okay.

And then, you know what's going to happen in two or three more years, they're going to open the border again.

They never keep their word.

They never are consistently serious about compromise.

Their words, comprehensive immigration reform, just means one thing.

We get more judges and more arbitrators and more open borders to bring more people in orderly.

So instead of having 8 million coming across and sleeping in Chicago and getting in schools, they want about 20 million, but they all want it legal and orderly.

That's reform, as they call it.

And the Republicans, I don't know if they get that.

Mitch McConnell,

the Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney wing of the Republican Party has always, Wall Street Journal

has always wanted open borders.

They always have.

I keep, Robert Bartlett had that.

He debated me on a cruise, Jack.

And

Bob, remember the late, he was a really good guy, the editor of the...

Oh, Bob Bartley?

Bob, yeah, Bartley, excuse me.

Yeah, from the Wall Street Journal.

Yeah, and he just said he wanted

open borders.

And I debated once the late Milton Friedman at a restaurant in San Francisco.

And he just said he wanted them.

And the wages would adjudicate.

He said, if there are too many come over,

if we get rid of the minimum wage, the labor will be a dollar an hour and it won't be so good, will it, Victor?

So it'll self-regulate.

and i said yeah but you won't be in the you won't be in the way of the of the throng

come on well that's what it is yeah and so these people

i

i i think they really do want to destroy the country as they saw as they see it they don't like it they think they wanted to go back and get the real spirit that nobody had ever that this was really a neo-socialist quality of resolve woke dei country we just didn't know it because of these crazy obstacles.

And now we can get rid of them and progress.

And that's what they want to do.

It's very racist, too.

This is another thing that I think people are starting to be a little bit more confident, calling this DEI stuff racist.

The whole subtext of the illegal immigration is: believe me, if you had right now

tankers

crashing into the California coast and letting out thousands of illegal Hungarians and Romanians and Czechs and South Africans.

They would say, oh my God, these people have to be sent back.

But

they don't want people.

They don't want people

that are prosperous.

They don't want people who are European.

All they want are people.

that they consider are DEI prospects.

And that's, and it's very racist what they're doing.

And And then when you object about that, they say, I mean, the great replacement theory.

No,

you're the one that writes Demography is Destiny books, not us.

You write the new Democratic Majority.

You brag about it all the time.

Well, Victor, you wrote a piece for

your website, which I should maybe make a little pitch for right now.

Victor has an official website, The Blade of Perseus, at Victorhanson.com, links to everything he writes for American Greatness, syndicated columns, his books, including his forthcoming book.

That's the end of everything.

That'll be out in May.

You write ultra articles that you can read, folks, if you subscribe.

It's five bucks per month, discounted for a full year for $50.

And one of the current ultra series you're writing, Victor, is titled The DEI Rus

is Imploding.

So you just raised DEI,

but it's imploding.

And I have a feeling it's more academic, but tell us about

this series and why you think it's imploding.

Well, I'm trying to look at all the things DEI has done and

what created it and how it spread.

It was always there.

It's a cultural Marxist paradigm, as everybody points out, that

dividing the country between oppressed and oppressors.

And then the oppressed are the large group of underprivileged and the white privileged people.

And you are the oppressors, whether you are or not.

And that means basically, Jack,

if you're Arab American, or you're Greek American, or you're

Eastern European, you're Egyptian, you're Armenian, and it doesn't matter.

If you check white, it doesn't matter how you look.

But if you're considered white, you're part of a monolithic solidarity that oppresses people.

So you can be a blonde.

I just was in the food market today.

I saw a lot of people speaking Spanish and they had dyed blonde hair and blue eyes.

And they were whiter than I am, but they are Latinos.

And then I've seen some of my Armenian friends who are considered white and they look

like darker than Mexican people.

So the whole thing is ridiculous.

But nonetheless, there's now the added

privilege slur.

So certain people have privilege and then the other people don't have it.

So then the government has to give things, admissions, hiring, tenure, promotions to the oppressed.

And notice it has nothing to do with class.

Claudine Gay, who came from one of the richest families in Haiti that had a cement monopoly, went to Phillips, Exeter.

Princeton,

she is oppressed.

And the guys in East Palestine that probably make $10,000 a year that Joe Biden never even visited, that were chemically bombed basically by an exploding rail tanker,

they are privileged.

And I don't think that works anymore.

I really don't.

So when you see Michelle Obama in that interview, say that

capitalism doesn't even trickle down.

No, it doesn't, Michelle, because you make $12,000 a minute when you speak overseas and you have four mansions and you don't invite people to come in, the homeless.

Why don't you take the Martha's Vineyard big estate and put some tents?

Like, he has some beautiful tents.

Remember

Barack Obama's party jack during the COVID, where everybody got COVID?

He insisted on having it and he had those beautiful big tents.

Why did he just leave them up?

And he could welcome in about 1,000 people that could use that.

But

it never works that way.

And so

what I'm getting at is that I don't think any more people believe that it's a viable thing because it ignores class.

It lumps people who are widely diverse with different religions,

ethnic backgrounds as so-called white.

You think I have anything in common with the Google founders or Lisa Jobs or Jeff Beza?

I don't.

Is it because I have white skin I'm supposed to identify with them?

I don't.

And I think most people feel that way.

So I think it doesn't work anymore.

And all these DEI people are being pulled in to a downward whirlpool.

It's partly the failure of the Biden administration that

they anchored their stars to, and that's bringing them down.

The whole Claudine Gay and those

Liz McGill and those college presidents, what's going on with the Palestinians, defacing cemeteries, shutting down bridges, disrupting the legislature here in California.

Yeah, you know, Victor, we've mentioned before you've been on, you were on the battlefield commission, American, and I, so I think you probably have a height, a heightened

love, interest to

our

final resting places, cemeteries for our, you know, veterans.

And the desecration of this is just, I mean, it's a, it's a really bad thing.

It happened out in L.A.

What's transpired?

any anything anything that you know of nothing nothing they they're exempt and we know they're exempt because i think it was president korbooth her name is at mit when she said

when she was asked about

jewish students being physically assaulted and scared to go places mit she goes well we'll just tell them that there are some safe places and then she said well you know if we

She was asked, why didn't she suspend the Palestinians?

Well, they might have visa problems.

That's the point.

They should have visa problems.

And so what I'm getting at is that

I'll put it in stark terms.

When you turn on your TV or you look at an internet video or you go to work, what people are tired of is having some upper, upper middle class person who claims that she or he are not white lecturing so-called white people as if they all have something in common, how bad they are, and how

noble this person is, and people who he thinks look like them are,

and that merit and promptness and hard work and all these things don't matter because of innate privilege.

Nobody believes it anymore.

And they're getting very, very angry because they're starting to see that that racialism is destroying the fabric of society.

The airline industry is drawn into question.

Did you see the army today, Jack?

I don't know if you saw that.

No, what happened?

Well, the military recruitment said, first of all, as you talk, and I mentioned it with Sammy, they had their investigation for two years, and they found there was no white cabal of white terrorists, as they had alleged.

Millie, Galad,

whatever his name, Admiral Gillad, Gilliday, excuse me, and Lloyd Austin two years ago.

So now they've got thousands of people in the four branches of the military that are not joining.

So we in this podcast have said, it's a no-brainer.

And I had said before, when I go to speak, people ask questions all the time.

And I've quoted them verbatim.

Grandfather fought in Vietnam.

My son's father fought in the first Gulf War.

I'm not sending him in the military, Mr.

Hansen.

You think I should?

I said, why aren't you?

Well, he has no choice.

He has no chance.

If he goes in there, he's not going to be promoted.

He's a white male.

And they're going to look for something he says or did to cite him.

And look what they did in Afghanistan.

They just left everything there.

And they're still Americans over there.

So it's a combination of poor leadership, DEI ads, and a sense that white people in the military, okay, fine.

And everybody said that.

And then when you look at the actual combat,

if you're going to go after that demographic, and they are the people who die twice their numbers in the population in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, then you've got to replace them.

So here we look at the demography today of why they're short, tens of thousands.

African Americans are no different.

They still are.

basically joining the military at their demographic.

Latinos have gone up a little bit.

Half the number of white males, white males are joining than did just three years ago.

Half.

So basically, two truths emerge.

The entire shortfall in the military is due to traditionally eager recruits that are white males saying no mas, no more.

And two,

there is not a dramatic increase in women, trans,

gay, black, Latino, to take up the slack and have a new America that looks like us, as they promised.

So now what is the military going to do?

Well, they have tried for the last year, Jack, saying it's because people are too fat.

It's because people take too much drugs.

Because people, this generation's video gamed out, they can't do a push-up.

It's because, it's because,

yeah, maybe,

but the big elephant is you people alienated the one demographic that you count on to die and to kill.

And now you won't admit it.

And then the second subtext that came out today, the military Jack is very angry.

They're very angry because they feel that right-wing people in the media are spreading false narratives.

And that's having a bad effect on morale of potential recruits.

If they just wouldn't attack DEI,

then people would understand there's no reverse discrimination.

There's still a merocratic system, but it's the right-wing media that's discouraging recruits.

If that's true, then I just saw an ad the other night.

You know what it was?

It was a bunch of white guys jumping out of a plane.

And there wasn't the pregnant woman in the flight suit.

There wasn't the two gay women.

looking at each other fondly.

There wasn't the

scene where everybody in it is black.

It was, I couldn't believe it.

And so they must say one thing to us

that it's not a problem.

And then now they're starting to change their publicity and their advertising to get back that group of people because they're starting to think, hey, the world is heating up.

We're fighting the Houthis now.

We may be involved in Hezbollah.

Iran's a problem.

Ukraine's a mess.

Where are we going to get somebody who's going to volunteer in the tradition of his father and grandfather and go to some God-forsaken place, Helman province, Basra,

Kirkuk,

Gaza,

Kiev,

I don't know where it is, and then get in a foxhole and get killed.

And they're saying, you know what?

Not going to do it anymore.

You got me mad.

I have had COVID and I don't believe that a vaccination is safe for a young, robust 19-year-old, and yet you made me get

the vaccinations, and you don't make 8 million people get it across the border.

So I'm out of here.

We've had 8,400 defections,

I should say, resignations of people who didn't want to get the vaccine, given the unequal application of that statute throughout society.

And so, and I get the reason I kind of hark on it is I'm around a lot of military brass,

and they either give you dirty looks or when they write you nasty notes or when you see them, they don't like to be criticized.

They're the most thin for people who are very brave and they've been in combat and they're and you know, I like them, but they're very thin skinned and they get so, this is a this is a taboo kryptonite question.

You cannot talk to them about it because they know what they've done.

And most of them know that it wasn't right what they've done, but they went along with it because they were either too scared to speak out or they thought they would be promoted.

But they know that the military should never judge promotions or battlefield efficacy or examination of performance on the basis of gender or sex or race.

And that's exactly what they're doing.

Well, and the anger must come too from the other practicalities of of being in the military for as a career.

You could be,

what, let's say mid to late 40s and be retired.

And the military career is part A of your life and part B is the

private enterprise world where you expect to really cash in.

But if you've said the things

you've just raised in the military, it's going to affect that pot of gold for you, whether you're a four-star general or member.

So

I don't understand.

we send these people over there.

What gets me about the whole thing is, and I've had very heated discussions with military officers, this Pentagon takes race,

not class, but race and gender and sexual orientation to the nth degree, Jack.

They have data on everything.

They know how many colonels are gay.

They know how many people in a carrier group are female.

That's all they do.

But you mentioned, do they do that with who dies and who gets wounded?

And they go, oh my God, that's morbid.

We don't do that.

We would never do that.

They do do that, but they don't release it.

So my point is,

how cynical is that to just to

get public like Austin did and Gillard did.

and Millie did and say you're going to go after white privilege and white rage and white supremacy publicly and then privately, hey man, we got to go down there to southern Arkansas.

We got to go up to northern Ohio.

We got to go to rural San Joaquin.

We got to get some white males because those guys are kind of crazy and they love to go in the military combat unit.

That's who we need.

And then it doesn't work.

You can't do that.

People are not stupid.

They're not saying, you want me to go to Fallujah, but you don't want to promote me?

Or you want to suggest that I'm a racist and I'm a beneficiary of privilege?

Is that what you want to do?

Well, then do it yourself.

And that's their attitude.

And we've all seen

it's hurting the country.

People come home in a coffin, and the president is there looking at his watch and then

using

these opportunities to

the media is utterly corrupt.

The media for three years said in a meeting of 25 people in Normandy that Donald Trump said he didn't want to go see the graves of suckers.

Remember that?

And somebody who hates Donald Trump viscerally, John Bolton, was in that meeting.

And John Bolton, if he had the slightest iota of proof that that was spoken by Trump, he would have gone to the media.

He said it was a lie.

And yet they promulgated and promulgated that and still do.

And then Joe Biden looks at his watch at a solemn moment when fallen hero comes home.

Nobody says a word.

and lies about his own son's death in the face of

combat death and a rapper, old star mothers and fathers.

He does it all the time.

He just, I don't know.

It's

just like listening to Jill Biden the other day.

I know, you know,

I have children, and I understand you want to defend them, but what she said about Hunter, it was just obscene about how he was a victim and how that people are

talking cruelly.

This guy owes $1.5 million.

If you're Jose Hernandez out here and you got a taco stand and you don't pay your income tax, maybe not in California, but somebody's going to go after you.

And I've known people who didn't pay $20,000 and they've gone to jail.

And so this idea that he deliberately welched out on his income taxes to the degree of 1.5,

and it wasn't like he was bankrupt.

He was putting things up his nose and he was with hookers at $5,000, $6,000 a shot.

And he can't pay his income taxes to the rest of us.

Why his father is saying we got to pay our fair share?

And there's something so dysfunctional about that family and what they have done the last three years.

And it's all superimposed on the idea that the Trumps are all crude and they're going to seek retribution and it's going to, we're going to lose.

Whoopi Goldwar is a good example, jack she's gone completely stark raving mad oh

did you hear what she said

yeah

about the dictatorship ship crapola i have notes here about her yeah she made a new word a verb out of a noun disappear disappear yeah he's going to disappear gays and women yeah what would give her that evidence he she saw him for four years did he do any of that did he i don't know did he sick sick the FBI on school, school board moms?

Did he sick it on Catholic masses?

Did SWAT teams go arrest people who were at abortion clinics peacefully protesting?

I don't remember any of that.

I don't remember them going after former political enemies and having performance art raids like James O'Keefe or,

you know,

Roger Stone or any of that.

I don't remember any of that.

I don't.

You know, remember, Victor, once upon a time, our nation nation would look at this.

We love to talk about movies.

So, a Kazan movie, A Face in the Crowd with Andy Griffith, and he was

when he was exposed for lying, as opposed to just being,

you know, naturally a lunatic,

it destroyed him.

And either Whoopi Goldberg's a liar or a lunatic, but she and many others, they don't, there's no ramifications today for that.

I wrote an article not too long ago called Deterrence.

Deterrence Makes the World Go Wrong.

If you think about it, just a little bit of deterrence would solve a lot of problems.

Let's apply that principle.

So you're in San Francisco

and

you park your car and some thug comes up and he hits a baseball bat and he jumps out of his car and he breaks the window and all of a sudden he's swarmed by five policemen.

They arrest him.

They take him in.

They have video evidence.

They convict him of grand theft

and assault, etc.

And they sentence him to five years in prison and he's in prison for five years.

And then they do that about for a week.

And then what do you think would happen?

I think there'd be a big difference.

I really do.

And so when Donald Trump is,

if he were to win, and we have the repeat of the Washington riots as we saw last time, I mean, the left thinks they believe in deterrence.

They think that nobody in their right mind will ever get to the Capitol anywhere near en masse because of what they did to the January 6th people, the vast majority of whom were just peacefully protesting.

But what if you'd done that in May and June and July of 2020 and you took those 14,000 arrested and they're still in jail?

I don't think you'd see a protest.

And I think if you said that you just decided tomorrow, you woke up and there's 50 cranes and there's 10,000 people building the wall, and then two weeks later, they are deporting anybody who came illegally and they're sending buses and planes non-stop to Mexico with their people back.

I think people would stop coming.

I really do.

But not if you destroy, and if you just went over and you told Iran, I think Trump probably did.

If you, we're going to consider Hezbollah and all of the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria and the Houthis as taking orders from you.

So if you attack, they attack planes.

They attack ships.

They attack soldiers.

They attack any type of asset of ours or of other countries that are not asking for trouble.

They're just trying to keep the sea lanes open and the the peacecon.

We're going to hold you responsible.

So for every attack on a ship, we're going to attack one of your ships.

For every rocket that is

fired at an American base, there's going to be two fired at yours.

It would stop.

It would stop in a minute.

And I guess I don't know why people, I guess they don't believe in that.

I guess,

you know, it's,

they think that Iran really likes us.

Is that why?

Because we've been so tolerant?

There's Blinken and Sullivan, and they all get together and say, wow, you know,

they've hit us 130 times now at our bases.

We've only replied maybe four or five.

We didn't really do much to the Houthis until just recently.

And, you know, we've been telling Israel, they must appreciate that, don't they?

You know, it's like saying,

well, D-Day was pretty successful, but we got stuck in the hedgerow.

It's kind of messy, and it's now disproportionate.

So we're just going to tell everybody to build a fortified line at Falaise and don't go any further east into France and into Germany.

And once Hitler sees that we have a ceasefire and we just wanted to help a little bit the French, but we don't want to really go into Germany and fight Germans, he will respond.

And we will have a nice little ceasefire settlement to World War II because he will appreciate our magnanimity.

And that's how he he works.

No, it's not, but that's how the thinking works.

Well, Victor,

we have time for one more

quick topic to get your thoughts on.

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

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

Victor, I lied.

I didn't lie.

I said we talk about hillsdale but we're going to record another podcast and we'll get your thoughts about a there was a new york times i'll call it massive uh hit piece on hillsdale college but why don't we close out because you mentioned before chris matthews who um remember he was he was canned from ms nbc for

being kind of creepy and uh he was on uh uh Morning Joe, the other, I think it was Morning Joe the other day.

And that's where you mentioned he was talking about the rural cult and the crazies and we got to stop these crazies but victor you've had experience with uh

mano amano with uh chris matthews you want to tell us about that to close out today's episode yeah he he was on television recently and he

i don't know why he he went after why do they go after rural people he went after he said these people are just crazy you've got to get out and the rural people are trump and all this and you know all of those epithets that they've used when Joe Biden called them chomps and dregs, Obama called the rural people of Pennsylvania the clingers.

Basically, when

Hillary Clinton, when she said she was going to put coal out of business when she went to West Virginia, that she's got the irredeemables and the deplorables, they have some,

they really don't like rural people.

And I think it's because if you're a rural person,

which is the minority of Americans,

you can't depend on anybody but yourself.

You pump your own water out of your own well.

You have your own septic you have to be responsible for.

You have your own security.

You're not near the police or the sheriff.

He's three hours away sometimes.

You're out and you have to provide for yourself.

And a lot of times you're commuting a long way.

And it creates an independence and self-initiative.

And you're very suspicious of people that come in and say, don't worry, the propane will be delivered.

Don't worry, we're going to make sure your sewage is okay.

Don't worry, because you don't trust those people.

And out of that hyper, you know, and there's certain occupations that emphasizes that.

Farming, a guy who owns a 7-Eleven, I'm not just talking about rural, but that's independent person.

Independent truck drivers, those guys have to be mechanics, they have to be mathematicians.

They have to be accountants.

And all of these people then expect that the world should treat them the way they treat the world.

They follow the rules.

They don't break the rules.

They're independent.

And yet they're always targeted.

And that's what Chris Matthews was doing.

He can't control them.

He just can't control them.

He thinks, you know, I am Chris Matthews.

Until I got fired for sexually inappropriate behavior, I was a grandee and I was on TV and I'm something.

And these people don't defer to people like us.

Didn't he once fall into the food processor of Victor Davis Hansen?

He did.

I've known him for a long time, somewhat.

And I can't remember, I won't mention the

the occasion or the event that I was at, but people said that he suggested that I should have a polite debate with him.

And

let me just say that at this particular place and this particular time, he made some astounding statements that Donald Trump was the only person in history that had denied an election.

And I said, you know, it was my turn to respond.

And I just said,

aside from the fact whether he had grounds to not,

You didn't say a word when Stacey Abrams lost by 50,000 votes and toured the country trying to be a vice presidential candidate on the premise that she was the real governor,

the real governor.

And he interrupted me.

I said, no, let me finish.

I didn't interrupt you.

2004, Barbara Boxers and 32 House members tried to stop the election that George Bush won by claiming that Ohio's electors were really belong, they really did belong.

to John Kerry.

I'll forget the 2000 Al Gore who went around the country saying that Bush is a brown shirt and all that stuff after the election.

But we do know that in 2016, and I pointed this out,

that Jill Stein sued on the initiative basically of Hillary supporters and tried to stop the Electoral College voting on the basis that three companies in Ohio had faulty voting machines.

And then we had, remember that, Jack?

Those, were they B-list or C-list or D-list list, Hollywood?

Charlie Sheen and the rest.

I don't know what you'd call,

whoever they were.

I never heard of them, but they got on TV every night for two or three weeks.

We're beating you.

You have the power to save us.

I know you're, they were asking for what we call counterfeit electors, falsified electors, false.

Faithless is the term, the technical term, a faithless elector who violates his constitutional duty as adjudicated by the Supreme Court, that if you're in a state, you have to reflect the popular vote of your state.

And they were trying to get them to sabotage

Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and not vote for Trump, even though he won the popular vote.

And I went on and I said, and he said, well, you know,

these are minor mainstream.

I said, no.

Hillary Clinton denied that Donald Trump was a legitimate president.

And she did that for three years.

And finally, she said he didn't get, he didn't get the vote in 2016.

Jimmy Carter said he was an illegitimate

president that was put into power by the Russians.

So I went through all that.

He just interrupted.

He got angry.

He didn't want to.

And that was these questions.

That was the whole debate each time.

He would make a statement.

And he's very rhetorical.

He has a flair about him.

And then I would just quietly try to point point out that there were inconsistencies in his statements.

There was not data to support it.

And that I didn't appreciate to be interrupted by him when he was refuted in the way that

I had never interrupted him and he shouldn't interrupt me.

And it didn't go well.

And he

I didn't ask to debate him.

Right.

But some people thought that maybe I should.

But that's the way the left operates.

He was successful for a while because he had this shtick that his brother was a Republican.

You remember that, Jack?

And I'm an old Irish poor family, Irish Catholic, and I'm solid of the earth.

And I worked for the Philippine Philippine

cop

for a while on

Capitol Hill.

He was a Capitol Hall.

I am just a solid earth.

And yeah, you know, I worked for Tip O'Neill, and he was the old-fashioned.

And then he thought, I remember after the Iraq war, when he got on there and he was just giddy, we're all neocons now.

He was just cheering on.

And then all of a sudden, Bush was Hitler almost.

And then you remember, he was the one that said he got a thrill up his leg.

Do you remember that when he did Barack Obama?

Right.

I mean, David Brooks at least said

he only got a thrill when he saw his pants leg crease.

And

I could see that pant crease.

And it was really, and I knew that he would be a very good, he's going to get elected on the basis of that pant Crease, and he's going to be a very good president on the basis of that Pant Crease.

And so,

you know,

all of the left,

the thing about Trump is

he really is

Rodney Dangerfield, right?

And is that meatballs or whatever it was called?

The one with the judge.

the judge and Bill Murray's in it.

And at the golf course, Roddy Dangerfield.

Caddyshack.

Caddyshack, excuse me.

Yes.

He really is that figure that comes in and disrupts everything.

And they just can't, and exposes the, you know, how

fake all of their protocols are in the golf course.

Right.

And that's what basically the Democratic Party has been capable of anything, but they have these little protocols that they're.

They have little letters after their name, Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, or, you know, Brookings Institute, all this stuff.

And everybody takes it very seriously.

And Trump comes in and said, what the hell is that?

I never heard of that.

What the hell is a Brookings Institute?

Who cares?

Yeah.

I think he said,

I think we had a colleague who was very critical of him, who had a very, I guess, substantial reputation in Trump's goal.

I never heard of the guy.

He didn't even know how to put his pants on.

Well, it was a little different than that, but he didn't know how to buy pants, which was just like, you know, preposterous, but weirdly funny, like in a way that Don rickles you know would come out and say things i'd be like what the but

whatever it was outer borough humor that that connects with people you know so hey victor we're we're um we're running out of time here we've or we have run out i want to recommend again to folks that they visit uh the blade of perseus and please do subscribe as for me jack fowler i write civil thoughts a free weekly email newsletter for the center for civil society at Anphil, where we are trying desperately to strengthen civil society.

And Civil Thoughts comes out every Friday and gives you 14 recommended readings.

Here's a link.

Here's an excerpt.

No charge.

We're not selling your name compiling lists.

So I think you will like it.

And

we do thank the people that

rate the show on Apple and iTunes.

Thanks.

No matter what platform you listen on, thank you.

But those who do take the time to rate it zero to five stars, Victor has a 4.9 plus plus rating.

So thanks for that.

And then there are those who take a little extra time and leave comments.

We read them all, even the ones that say Jack Fowler shut up.

But here's one.

It's titled One of a Kind.

I'm a German citizen and listen to the VDH show on a regular basis.

There is nothing like this

I wouldn't get these clear insights anywhere else.

So thank you, Dr.

Hansen, for your clarity, your wisdom, and your unique way of arguing and explaining complex things.

And this is signed by Ludwig.

And we thank you, Ludwig.

We thank everybody else who

has left comments here and on the website, Victor's website.

Victor, you've been terrific today.

Thank you, Jack, for hosting.

Again, thank everybody for listening.

I deeply appreciate it.

Really deeply.

Yep.

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

Bye-bye.

Wherever you go, I can be a quattro dog.

Whatever they get into, from chill time to everyday adventures, protect your dog from parasites with Credelio Quattro.

For full safety information, side effects, and warnings, visit CredelioQuatrolabel.com.

Consult your vet or call 1-888-545-5973.

Ask your vet for Cordelio Quattro and visit QuattroDog.com.