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Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host.

but you're here to listen to the star and the namesake.

That is Victor Davis-Hanson.

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

We are recording on

January 6th, 2024.

Victor, this used to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany or 12th Night, but now January 6th is a, you know, it's an insurrection

holy day for the Democrats.

And Joe Biden, yesterday, the 5th, I guess, not wanting to speak today for whatever reason.

I don't know why.

But anyway, he gave his

supposed kickoff speech of his campaign at Valley Forge based off of January 6th.

And his comments and not comments, his speech was mostly directed about the

events, the attack on the Capitol a few years back.

But Victor, we'll get your thoughts on Biden's speech, on some of the reaction to it,

on the

deification of January 6th by the left, and if that's working politically.

And we'll get to another topic or two.

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

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We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Victor, I have to make a snide little observation first.

No matter whether he was talking about January 6th or whenever he appears now, Joe Biden

always has this

squinting.

And he kind of reminds me of that kid from Deliverance,

you know, playing.

Behind the guitar on the bridge.

Yeah, yeah.

And he, there's just some blackness in his eyes all the time now that kind of makes his nastiness even nastier.

But that's just one man's observation.

You're exactly right.

He, he's a mean person.

He's very vindictive.

He's, I mean, it goes back to his character pre.

dementia, and that was a plagiarist.

And he lied about his Delaware educational experience.

He said he was in the top third of his class.

He was in the bottom.

He had been expelled for a semester for plagiarizing.

He plagiarized Neil Kinney.

He has a long history of racist outburst.

We've gone through them all.

I wrote a column on it.

You're absolutely right.

He's not a nice person, and he's going to beat this January 6th dead horse to death.

And I think everybody listening should just

prepare themselves, Jack, for

three things.

January 6th, abortion,

and Donald Trump is a dictator who's going to destroy democracy.

And

the subtext will be, he's going to destroy the whole process of balloting, and therefore we have to take him off the ballot.

So that's what you have.

And you know, just, I'll just comment briefly is.

Yeah,

what are your thoughts about this Biden's speech?

Well,

he went to Valley Forge, which I thought was really bad.

Those people at Valley Forge that were starving and freezing to death and didn't give up, the idea that he represents them,

if they could come back to life and you said to those people,

you're trying to form a new state.

Do you believe that all of you states, when you unite, can take off the leading candidate for your future president off the ballot?

They would say no.

That's what they were fighting against.

And the idea to go there when they're using lawfare and these four bogus trials against Trump, now Fanny

Letita James is trying to get up to $350 million to bankrupt the Trump family for overvaluing a real estate, which I think they undervalued in the case of Mar-Lago and other properties.

But no one was hurt.

Loan was paid back.

Bank was happy.

And if you're going to indict every American who has filled out a application for a loan upon audit that the house or the car that they listed as an asset didn't quite have the market value they claimed, then you're going to have to indict half of America, three quarters of America.

So it was, it's very unfair what they're doing.

And the idea that he's doing all of that, and I think he is, because he's commented, as you know, Jack, on some of these ongoing, is he guilty of insurrection?

Yes.

He has commented on all of these things in a way that's really on tour of a president.

And he did it before with the Phantom of the Opera 1.0, and now it's 2.0.

So he has this melodramatic landscape.

And then he goes into the MAGA, and he's Joe the Uniter.

That's why they voted for him.

That's why the naive never Trumpers and suburbans and independents voted for him to unite us.

But all he does

is go back to the clinger deplorable.

And he added to that vocabulary of irredeemables with his contributions of chumps and

dregs.

He said dregs as well.

And so he's a big divider, and that's what he has to do to divide the electorate.

I don't think it's going to work this way, because if you look at the polls,

the actual...

And he's, because he brought up January 6th, the actual opposite is occurring.

The more that the tapes, the 45,000 hours come out, the more that you look at the conduct of the January 6th committee and missing records and no cross-examinations.

And now judicial wash has sued in a civil suit about Officer Byrd who shot Ashley Babbitt.

And we find out it wasn't just that he lost his gun in a bathroom, but he had also been reprimanded for shooting at a car where he didn't know, know, supposedly it was stolen, but he didn't know exactly who was in it.

And he had a reputation of being a loose cannon.

And then the new videos from the angle that you see it, and I watch them,

there are armed people all around that are facing her.

She goes through there and he comes in from the side and shoots her.

And I thought it was, it blew apart her,

you know, her main artery and her neck.

It didn't.

It hit her shoulder.

So she was actually alive for several minutes.

And I don't think they got proper medical care.

So he's cobalt.

That's coming out.

And you and I have discussed Matthew Rosenberg, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times writer, who in an admittedly ambush interview with Operation Veritas,

confessed that when he went out there, it was no big deal.

And he said that He saw FBI informants everywhere.

That meant if he could recognize them, there was probably even more.

And then you look at Joe Biden and what Nancy Pelosi did.

You remember they had those memorial services for all the people who died on January 6th?

And then it turned out that they were including people who, for whatever reason, committed suicide with a year after in some cases.

And they said five people, and they had a memorial.

And then when you look at the

actual deaths, they lied about Officer Sicknick.

He did not die from violence.

He might have been stressed.

He died from natural causes the next day.

And then we had a protester, a woman that was died probably violently, protester, not capital.

And then we had a couple of people who had heart seizures.

And then we had Ashley Babbitt.

The point is, not one single death that day was attributed to the protesters.

That's a complete lie.

And then in the case of

supposedly an insurrection, no one, I don't think that anybody has charged Donald Trump with inciting an insurrection.

He quoted him in that speech, Jack.

Go over to the Capitol, but he conveniently left out because he is a demagogue.

He said he didn't include assembled patriotically and peacefully.

He didn't want that in.

And so he's trying to gin up anger because what else is he going to talk about?

Is he going to say,

well, you know, I don't want to talk about January 6th, it's over with.

And, you know,

I gave you guys, I got in 8 million illegal aliens.

I'm going to get 10.

I'm going to be the president who got the highest number of foreign nationals in the United States and that's history percentage-wise and in absolute number.

And then you know what I did?

I had a beautiful withdrawal from Afghanistan.

It was one of the most tactically impressive flights that you'll ever see.

And we had the pride flag on the embassy and we had the George Floro.

Floyd Murles.

And we had one of the best gender studies programs in the Middle East that we sponsored, 70, 80 million bucks.

We did that.

And then, you know what we did?

We didn't cause a war because we just said, you know, Chinese spy, let him go over the United States.

We don't care.

And I told Vladimir Putin, if he's going to go into Ukraine, it depends on whether it's a major or minor offensive.

And I offered Zelensky a write out to leave his country the first seven days.

And on top of that, I made sure everybody in the Middle East knew that I was distancing myself from Israel.

I told the Houthis, you're not terrorists.

That was a Trump fixation.

You're off the terrorist list.

And I told the Iranians, we're going to get back in that deal and I'm lifting that sanctions.

You're going to get $90 billion.

We're going to get that from us.

And then I said to Hamas, this is so unfair that Mr.

Trump cut you off and I'm going to give you money.

And I changed the whole dynamic and Hamas got confidence again and went into Israel.

Is that what he's going to run on?

Or is he going to say, you know, since the day I got office to right now as I'm speaking, if you go buy meat and you buy vegetables and you buy a car and you look at your mortgage cost and interest taxes principal, you're paying 30% more.

And I had to do that because I am only running up a $2 trillion annual debt.

1.7, it may go to 2 trillion.

And I want to tell you another thing.

Donald Trump had been scheduled to get up to 16 to 17 million barrels i cut that down i canceled the keystone i canceled anwar

i canceled new projects i canceled leases and then i had to run for midterm so i went around to russia i had my envoys talk to the iranians the venezuelans pump more oil and then i drained a million plus barrels a day from the strategic petroleum and now i have another election and i boosted uh output almost what it was or maybe what it was under trump i've done all that I don't think he's going to run on any of that.

I don't think he is.

I don't know what to say about that Corinne Jean-Pierre when she says what he's this great president.

You know, when you look at the more in three years than anyone else in eight years.

Yeah, he destroyed jurisprudence as we knew it.

There's no crime is just commonplace.

It's just, he really made the whole DIA thing into a racial divisive

mess.

I can't think of one good thing by any barometer.

I know that unemployment rate before COVID was low under Trump, and it is, but he had also 1.9 30-year mortgages, not 7.2.

And I just don't,

it's so frustrating to see what shape the country is.

And then this guy can't defend those things and make the argument.

And then it's almost Orwellian when Mayorkis goes to Congress or he says something or Pierre, they say, the border is secure.

The border is secure.

The border is secure.

How can they say that when they have 12, 15,000 people?

And they won't tell us why.

You know, it's almost like somebody comes in your house and slaps you five times in the face.

You say, why are you doing that?

And they won't tell you.

He's slapping us in the face by destroying the border.

He won't say.

Yeah, it seems like kind of parallels all this squatter stuff you've just made, the analogy of someone coming in your house.

But I think there are people that are, there's a, there's a, you know, the

disintegration

of

our home, whether our home is an actual home or home of the country.

And

these people complaining about squatters, and then they can't get rid of them.

You know, because there's a breakdown in

law and order in the country.

But thank you, Joe.

Hey, Victor,

I want to get a little more from you about the speech, but first,

and there's a headline here from the Daily Mail out today about

Jill Biden and the post speech.

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Victor, here's a headline from the Daily Mail this morning.

And we are talking on January 6th.

Nice save, Jill.

First lady rushed to embrace, zoned out by Nate One after he finished speech, then went into trance-like state

on stage.

Victor, this is no different man.

trance-like after a speech now in January than he was two months ago, two years ago, even.

And there was much thought that there's no way this guy is actually going to be the actual candidate.

But

I think he is.

I think Joe Biden is going to minus

some natural

event or permanently permanent event,

he's going to be the guy

actually in the saddle in November.

Do

believe that?

Well, first of all, remember the oft-quoted Cuba Ross's five stages of acceptance of death when you're shocked at the cancer diagnosis and then you think you can defeat it.

And then you

anyway, in this process, you finally come to resignation.

And what happens with Joe Biden is

we were shocked in 2015 and 16 when he would forget things.

And if you remember, Corey Booker at one point said, this guy is not capable.

And then he ran,

excuse me, in 2020.

And then in 2020 and 2019 and 20, he ran from the basement, claiming COVID.

And then he had these, it got geometric rather than arithmetic, the decline, and we've watched it.

But what we don't appreciate is at the same time, our standards of expectation have lowered commiserably.

So now when he gets on screen and he just completely slurs his words and you cannot understand him, and I don't think he's stuttering.

Donald Trump made fun of him.

I don't think he should have done that, stuttering.

And then the left said, well, Trump is making fun of a childhood stutter that poor Biden has struggled with.

He should have said he's not able to be coherent.

And that is important for a president.

But the point is, we have come to expect it now.

And we just

say, that's old Joe.

He's a president.

He's our first mentally challenged, cognitive challenger president.

I don't expect anything from him.

When he gives a speech, he'll go the wrong way.

That's Joe.

When he comes down the stairs, he may trip.

That's what we've done.

That's number one.

So,

yes, we're just acculturated to that,

what he's done.

And the second thing is

that when he talks and he says things,

I think what you've talked about so far today is that what you're getting at is that

his eyes get beady almost.

And I got kind of reprimanded on a Fox show.

I won't mention the host because I said he was reptilian.

I didn't mean that in a mean way, but he does look reptilian.

And there's something about him when he gets angry and he starts spouting and it's the inner Biden.

It really is.

And

it's crazy.

And all he can do

is

damn

this

nebulous,

not clearly defined group of Americans that he thinks are trying to wage a war against democracy.

Now, our listeners

You and I think when he says that, we think automatically, well, let's use data criteria to adjudicate that claim.

So there was Christopher Steele, a foreign national who illegally participated in a political campaign and was paid by both the FBI and Hillary Clinton, although disguised through three paywalls.

And it was completely a lie, and they ran with it.

And Russian collusion prompted a 22-month

effort by Robert Mueller to destroy the Trump administration.

It didn't work.

And then there was laptop misinformation.

And then there was the phone call, which we know now was perfectly legitimate because the whole Biden family was compromised.

And Victor Shokin really did want to investigate.

And he was fired and then bragged about by Joe Biden, that firing.

And then we get into the whole Biden crime stuff.

And then we get into January 6th that it wasn't bipartisan.

We can go through all of that.

And the result is that

by going on the offensive, and they were projecting what they're doing, and they feel all of them

on the left, hard left, maybe even all the left, whether it's packing the Supreme Court or trying to bring in two or more states they brought up or trying to get the filibuster

removed when they're in the majority.

or trying to destroy the Electoral College or having the National Voter Compact where you go around it by having states vote that

they're going to accept the the

popular vote of the nation rather than of their state.

Or what we saw in 2016 with Jill Stein suing to stop the voting machines in three states count.

Or the Hollywood stars that tried to

advocate that we have false electors or faithless electors to renounce their constitutional duty.

And all the law, we could look at all of that.

And it's a systematic way to destroy the electoral

practice and protocols as we've known it on one premise, one premise.

And the premise is that Donald Trump is so evil and so dangerous

that we can use any means necessary and we can lie.

We have to to get rid of him.

And the weird thing about it was

that convinced people in 2020.

I don't know why it did.

I think it was

process of George Floyd.

I think the COVID lockdown and the manipulation of laws and recalibration of them in key states where they went from 30% mail-in to 70% in some states.

But the point is, I don't think it's going to work because people listen to that now and they know that everything the main media and the Democrats said about Trump turned out to be false.

And they look at his four years.

They should have done that in 2020, 2020, but they didn't look at it because they bought this line that Joe Biden would come in and either match it or make it better.

And now they have a comparison.

Border, Trump, border, Biden.

Border interest rates, border, Trump.

Border

interest rates, Trump, Biden.

Foreign policy, Biden, Trump.

Israel, Afghanistan,

Balloon, China, compare.

Crime before, now,

energy before now, and you can see it.

Biden crime family versus supposed Donald Trump with a ping and his alpha bank connection to Trump Tower, bogus.

So

I just don't think it's going to work.

They can compare two four-year terms.

They've heard this horse be screamed being beaten to death, all of these January 6th stuff.

I just don't think it's going to work.

And I think the more that he does it, the more that it offends people.

And while I don't think he's going to get a majority of the Hispanic vote or get, you know, 33%

or 40% of the black, all this stuff that people say, it's possible he can get 40% pump can of the Hispanic vote and maybe 15% of the black vote.

And that means that Joe Biden would have to make a historic inroads with the white working class that he's totally lost.

And I think he's going to lose more, not less.

So that's just a backdrop of why he is so strident.

And when he's going to stop, start his campaign, why doesn't he say,

Here's what I did for America on the border.

I got rid of that damn wall.

Look what I did to America.

I got out of Afghanistan a very great, strategically successful logistical operation.

He doesn't say any of that.

Well, Victor,

that's it.

Yeah,

the January 6th focus and theme that seems to be, will be the theme of the Biden campaign,

to some people,

is going to be a failure.

And one of those people is our friend Julie Kelly, and she has something, a very interesting analysis.

And we will get your thoughts on that right after these important messages.

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We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

We're recording on January 6th, Saturday.

This particular episode should be up on,

geez, I forget now

counted my I should have counted my days well the first two is in a couple of days anyway

and I should have also mentioned the blade of Perseus that's Victor's official website at victorhanson.com at the end of the of this episode I will tell you all why you should be subscribing there but now Julie is a dear friend an old friend

she used to write for national review she wrote for american Greatness, and now she writes for her own sub stack.

But there's nobody, but nobody who's covered January 6th and the many, many trials and very troubling

jurisprudence, if you want to call it that, that's ensued

from federal judges and courts and prosecutors.

But she is a student of January 6th.

And here's what she wrote.

I think it was today, Victor.

Let's see.

Yes.

She wrote,

part of me is gratified by this maniacal speech.

She's talking about Biden's speech.

Why?

Because it proves we are prevailing over the J6 narrative.

Biden, Matthew Graves, Merrick Garland, celebs January 6th cops, their stunts over the past few days show they are losing control over January 6th.

They thought it would end the GOP and result in mass defections to the Democratic Party.

They thought it would end questions about the 2020 election.

They didn't think anyone would ever question what happened, how it happened, or expose the lies it was built upon.

They thought their dirty secrets would be hidden forever.

She goes on.

This is on Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it,

posted today by Julie.

So, yeah, Victor, her theme, you know, go ahead.

Go ahead and focus on January 6th.

It just is not going to work, not work well enough to bring Joe Biden a second term.

Your thoughts, Victor?

I don't think it is.

And, you know, I look at the fact checkers and they have been fact-checking, everybody knows where it's PolitiFact or Washington is just a left-wing monopoly.

And they try to contort the evidence with a veneer of authority, and it's completely unreliable.

It's biased.

But even the fact-checkers, if you look at them on January 6th, they'll tell you two people died of a heart attack.

One person,

if you look at the protesters, say that the crush of the crowd contributed to her death.

The medical examiner said she had amphetamines in

her blood.

That's disputable, but she was a Trump supporter, a third Trump supporter.

Then there was Alficer Sicknick, who died of a stroke the next day.

And then there was Ashley Babbitt.

We've talked about that.

So that whole narrative has been completely repudiated, that five, ten people died and five police officers.

That's what the Biden said.

And it would be like if

I was driving yesterday

back from visiting, I had a meeting and it was near the Kings River and there was a lot of traffic and I was on McCall Avenue and somebody pulled out right in front of me.

I mean, they just ran the stop sign and there had been a professor killed there.

It was weird.

So it was a very dangerous intersection.

And I was kind of shaken.

So I come home, Jack, and let's say I dropped dead and I have high blood pressure or had a problem.

And then do you say that he killed me, that person?

And say, I shouldn't say tomorrow, three days later, 10 days, months later that I died, then it was because I was stressed out at that intersection.

Well, that's what they're saying, that anybody who died in the Capitol Police from the the first day for months, it was culpable.

And nobody, and Julie has pointed out, nobody believes that.

And nobody believes that those people who were arrested for illegal parading and so-called disruption were planning a armed insurrection.

There was nobody arrested in the Capitol with a gun.

There was nobody, I think one person might have had a knife or something.

There was no effort to take over the government, seize a radio station, do anything.

It was a buffoonish mob that should not have been in a federal facility at that time that was not freely open to the public.

And that might get you a year in prison.

I don't know.

But compared to, as I keep saying, the 120 days of 2020, when 1,500 officers, why doesn't Joe Biden say, well, there are a lot of officers were stressed.

And there was some people that committed

suicide.

But, you know, in May Antifa at BLM, 1,500 people were injured and 35 were killed.

And we had 35, 40 deaths, as I said.

And we had $2 billion in damage.

And they burned a police precinct and they burned one of our federal courthouses and they attacked the St.

John's church in Washington.

And they tried to get in, break over the fence and get to Trump.

And he doesn't say any of that.

And those people, 14,000 of them at the time, were

brought into custody by the police police for their violence, and they didn't really prosecute any of them, few of them.

And then, you know, here in California, Jack, we just had the Palestinians, pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, violent demonstrators, break into the California legislature

while it was in session to disrupt it.

Nobody's saying that Congress, the full Congress was in session and they swarmed through and stopped the voting.

There may have been hearings and activities, but do you think the left is going to arrest those people and then bring them under state charges for maybe federal, racketeering, or crossing state lines?

They're not going to do that.

So what Julie's trying to say that if you digest this and you look in retrospect and you see the completely asymmetrical way that they treated one group versus all the other groups who trumped that group's activities and more violent,

they know that

it's a political process.

And then we also know it from this reason.

They're all saying now they, the Biden camp, that Donald Trump is going to be, remember dictator revenge when he comes in, we can't let him.

I think Robert Kagan wrote that Washington Post.

If he's there, he'll take because they're projecting.

They're projecting.

They know what they have done.

And they know how they would act if that had been done to them and they regained power.

And they just assume that Donald Trump thinks like they do.

He may or may not, but there's no evidence that when he was there the first time,

he took extra legal powers to pay back the people who were trying to destroy him with Russian collusion.

There's no evidence at all.

And that's not to say that I think people should go protest

the voting in the Capitol.

I think there's other ways to do it.

If you feel the election wasn't, you have a perfect constitutional right to do everything that's nonviolent.

But for me,

going to the Capitol, if you had been peaceful and not gone into the actual rotunda where it was forbidden, I think that day,

it was okay if it was peaceful.

But you've got to remember in 2016, the left,

they rounded up people that were trying to vote not to accept.

in the House the electors as they'd done in 2004.

And they had Hollywood celebrities they organized to get on TV.

Remember that?

Yeah, gosh.

Be faithless.

Do not honor your constitutional views.

So

the whole thing, everybody understands that now, and it's crystallizing.

And Julie Kelly has been the most effective reporter, and

she crosses every T and dots every I, and she's been very good, and she's interviewed prisoners, and

she's just brought to light, and along with Judicial Watch, and we've got more hours hours of the tapes now.

We see different angles.

We've had Capitol police, high officers, even the head say that there had been request for additional security and it was stopped by Nancy Pelosi and Democrats because they wanted this psychodrama.

And then we put it into context.

And we look at COVID and why did this country lock down and go into this deadly, complete quarantine?

It was mostly Anthony Fauci and Burks and the left, and you know, that hyped up masks and quarantines and social distancing and booster, booster, booster.

And it was all about, I think a lot of it was political.

We looked at George Floyd, and then after that, DEI just exploded.

We had thousands of diversity people were in this racial tension we had.

They ginned that a lot up.

More evidence is coming out about Officer Schauvin, the autopsy report, and a civil suit came out.

And

that's what they do.

And so it's January 6th.

It's George Floyd.

It's the COVID lockdown.

And sometimes they're candid about it, Jack.

During the COVID lockdown here in California, Gavin Newsom said it gives us an opportunity for more equitable capitalism.

Hillary Clinton said this is a chance to get single payer.

echoing Rahm Emmanuel never let a serious crisis go to waste in reference to 2008 meltdown.

So that's what the left does.

They wait for a period of

national tension or crisis, and then they use it to change voting laws or to run up new economic bromides in 2008 or to increase

government powers during the quarantine.

or to get a racially divisive agenda institutionalized after George Floyd.

And then the people wake up.

They said, oh, my God,

for Mr.

Ackman, he says, oh my God, I thought DEI was equitable.

I didn't realize it was racist.

Yeah, it is.

And then people wake up and say, wow,

Scott Atlas was right.

So was Jay Bacharia.

There were more people that died probably from the quarantine.

They missed school.

They had economic downturns.

They didn't go get their cancer screening.

They didn't get that operation.

There was spousal abuse, suicides.

The boosters were iffy.

They may have been more dangerous than the actual

next variant of COVID.

They were right.

Why did I attack them?

They were right.

And oh my God, if we had have just ridden out the 2000 sequela under Obama and rather than keep pumping money in like Obama did and like Biden did after COVID, we might not have had all this inflation and we might have had

you know, better growth.

So we wake up, but that's how they work.

The left has done that throughout history.

They wait for an occasion of crisis and then they move in and they make structural changes in society.

And in that chaos, they give you things like three genders or men and women sports or clotting gay.

And that's how they act.

And

they're mean people and they mean business.

And

you cross them and they'll go after you.

I can tell you that from my experience at Stanford University and other things.

And it never ceases.

They're a lidless eye.

They never blink.

They never sleep.

And so

Julie's done a really great job with exposing this whole construct of January 6th.

I didn't think Biden would still go back there,

but that's all he has against Trump.

Yeah.

And

I would say that if Trump Trump is the nominee, we'll talk about that later at the end of the broadcast, but if he's the nominee and he just restricts a little bit of his invective and ad hominem, he will win big.

By that, I mean, as I said earlier, if he's critiquing that January 6th demagogic speech by Joe Biden, And he says, if he says something like,

well, you know, most of it was untrue, but it was also incoherent.

I couldn't understand what he was trying to say.

He's confused.

Rather than making fun of him, stuttering, if that's what he did, I heard him saying, you know, if he said he'd slurred his words or this, that's one thing, or his grammar was a mess.

But when he gives that media, and I know a lot of people listening say, Victor, it doesn't matter what he says.

They hate him anyway.

No matter what he says, they're going to exaggerate.

I know that.

I know that.

But I don't give them any match to light their arson fire.

And that's what he needs to do.

I think, and I think he would win if that's true.

Right.

Because there are a lot of fungible votes out there still to be had.

And people, many people vote on,

I like that guy or I don't like that guy.

It's that simple.

So

you make yourself unlikable.

People will vote that way and pay the price by voting in the wrong person.

And, you know, I'm just watching the primaries, and

I think this is the first debate next Wednesday where DeSantis will face Haley, Haley will face DeSantis, and we haven't had that yet, you know, mono on mono head-to-head.

And that may be different because you really don't have a debate, as we learn when you have eight or nine candidates.

Because what happens is you give the attention and airtime to the person who screams the loudest or is the most out of control.

And that trend tended to be Christie and Ramaswamy.

They're not going going to be on the stage.

And

I think it will proceed this way.

It'll be like the Newsom DeSantis.

Haley is very, very articulate.

She is young.

She looks good.

She's ambitious.

She's energetic.

She has a lot of good canned one-liner.

She's like Newsome.

I have nothing against her, but I think she will come out

and for the first 10 to 15 minutes of the two-hour debate, if that's what it is, I think it is,

she will use her arsenal, her whole quiver, and she will have some smart things to say.

And then

it's kind of a hare and a tortoise, like DeSantis was with Newsom.

But when you look at his experience as governor and his knowledge and everything, I think after 30 minutes, he can draw in a repertoire of actual achievement and knowledge that starts to wear her down.

And I think that's what's going to happen.

And I think that will be good.

And what I'm getting at is, I don't, I think that his strategy is to win

second place in Iowa, then who knows what in New Hampshire.

And then

we will have a standoff in South Carolina.

At some point, one of two things are going to happen.

Either

one or two things are going to happen.

Either they're both going to continue in the race and Trump's going to win, or one person's going to coalesce with the other one, and then it's going to be a spirited, I don't know, I mean, there's still going to be an underdog, whoever that is, but it will be an open, vigorous debate.

It's not going to be like, I'm getting back, I'm clumsily trying to reply to your earlier question, which I ignored and I shouldn't have.

And that was, what's going to happen with Joe Biden?

You suggested he's going to get nominated.

I think he's going to be nominated with an asterisk.

And that means it's kind of too late to get all the candidates on the ballot, and they are going to go after this Phillips guy and Cornell West and Jillstein if she comes on and Robert Kennedy, because they know that all together they could get 10 or 12 percent.

And so I don't know they won't be able to stop Joe Biden.

He will be an August nominated.

But then I think from now until August, he's again, he's declining at a rate that they look at.

It's kind of like Roosevelt in late 1944 summer when they knew they had to nominate him because they thought he could win, but they knew he wouldn't be there.

I don't think they think Biden can win on like FDR.

Right.

So I would think it would be a brokered convention where they would get together and try to give those delegates to another candidate.

And that could be Josh Shapiro, Amy Kobuchar, Gavin Newsom, Michelle Obama.

And then as part of the package, they're going to have to do something with Camilla Harris because they do not want her to be the nominee and they do not want her to run for vice president again.

And maybe they would let her run for vice president with a different candidate, but that would be so humiliating for the vice president just to stay there and not to step up that that would be hard to pull off.

But I think that's their strategy.

And we'll see if it works or not.

But

they've got a real problem.

Because if they keep this ticket, he's not going to be able to campaign.

He's not going to be able to debate, even with his Adderall or whatever the medications he took and the rest.

And Donald Trump, I think, if he's a nominee, will not do what he did in the first debate.

He will debate like he did in the second debate, which he won, but which 50 million people had already voted.

So he would beat Joe Biden.

And they know that Camilla Harris, the more she goes around in campaigns, the more that hurts Biden.

So I just don't think that's going to be a viable thing for the Democrats, and they're going to have to come up with something.

So what I'm getting at in this windy manner is that the Republican primary, I think, will be more open, more transparent.

It'll give people the chance.

And I think it will basically be

that

most voters think that Donald Trump and DeSantis' agendas are pretty MAGA-like.

Maybe even DeSantis is more conservative on things like abortion and other things.

And then it will be a question is, do you want a competent technocrat, sober and judicious for the MAGA emissary?

Or do you want Donald Trump who's lively, charismatic, but also Donald Trump?

And that can be...

And so far, I think if you look at the polls, they would want the mega agenda with Donald Trump on the theory that he's charismatic and he will go to the jugler on the left.

But I think

DeSantis will.

I don't know about Haley.

Again, as I said, I think all of us, Jack, believe that of the two candidates that are running against Trump, and even Trump himself, they have a much better

chance, opportunity to expand the mega base, the base, get them out,

than she does.

And she

has a better chance to get independence, but the independence that she will bring on the ticket, I I don't think will make up for the people who will not vote or not come out or not give money if she's a nominee.

I don't know what it is.

I have nothing against her.

And I will vote, as I said, I got a lot of weird letters, Jack.

You remember when I said I would vote for her if she's a nominee?

Yes.

I got people that said, how dare you?

Well,

let me just interrupt you.

Why would I do that, though, Jack?

Why would we vote for Joe Biden over at Nikki Haley?

That's insane.

I know.

But I'll give you an opportunity here to clarify on some other point because you did an interview with Ann Coulter

a couple weeks back.

I think it was a month ago.

Okay, it's just come out, but it's out, except it's not out.

It's behind a paywall.

But she did

put out a tweet.

Sorry for those who don't call it tweet anymore.

She put out a tweet implying that you

said something to the effect, you know, like Trump's not electable.

You won't, don't, Republicans won't vote for Trump, et cetera.

Of course, you can't hear it.

You know, you can't go and listen to it.

It's behind a paywall.

Anyway, Victor, it's that little thing is out there.

Yeah, I got a lot of,

yeah.

I got some emails about it.

And all I can tell you was

I spoke at an event,

two events in Palm Beach.

And part of that,

what's the word, contract or obligation for me, I had agreed to speak at this event, and one of them was to give an interview with Ann Coulter.

And so I did.

And I did it from a person's house, and there were other people in the room.

And

first of all, I didn't know it was behind a paywall.

I don't, I would not have done it if it, you know, was behind a paywall.

That's number one.

Number two, I thought I was going to get a copy before I was told I would get a link.

I never got it.

Then I thought it was going to come out.

That was done somewhere like the 9th or 10th of December.

So it's almost a month.

It hasn't come out.

So all of a sudden, I get all this email that she has a 30-second trailer and you can't see it or you can't hear it unless you pay her to get the big interview.

And in it, kind of luridly, she says,

she doesn't play what I'm saying, but she says that I said that I agreed that they wouldn't win

the Hispanic vote, the Republicans.

And I do agree that.

If you define win the vote, 51%, there's no way, as I said, and she asked me that, and I agreed with her, that this kind of Karl Rove idea that family values would eventually tip the Hispanics over to the Republican side, if that means 51%, I don't see it.

Even now,

With what the Biden administration has done to Mexican Mexican-Americans in terms of the economy and flooding.

I still don't think they're going to get 51% of the Mexican vote.

I do think they might get 40 like W did.

And that'll be very, very hard for Biden to win with 40, but not there.

I don't see the Mexican-American vote, and especially with open borders and all that, going to Republicans yet.

So that was number one.

And she was absolutely right about that.

The other thing she said is that I wouldn't vote for Donald Trump and I didn't think he could win.

And I want to see the transcript because I talked to her before and during the interview.

I don't know which is actually in the interview, but I don't remember that.

And there were some Trump supporters in the house in which I did it on Zoom.

And I don't think they would say that I said that.

What I said was,

I'm not going to get involved in the primary.

And that's been what you and I have talked about this all these podcasts.

I say, if DeSantis DeSantis were to win, if Trump is going to win, because I like them both, and I'm not going to get in and start attacking one or the other.

I really don't.

And right now, it looks like Trump's going to win.

And I will be a big supporter of Trump.

If DeSantis pulls off and upset, I will be a big supporter of DeSantis.

And I will try to appeal to all Trump supporters to vote for DeSantis.

If it's Nikki Haley, that will be a hard sell, Jack, because I don't believe that she is a traditional conservative.

But

when I look at Joe Biden and I look at the Obamas who are running the Joe Biden agenda and I look what he's done to the country, and if I have a chance to vote for Nikki Haley over that, I will do it a nanosecond.

I don't care what anybody says.

And anybody listening should do that.

I will vote for anybody over Joe Biden.

Except,

I don't know about Michelle Obama, but to be close, because so that's number one.

Yeah.

So I said I wasn't going to get involved.

I guess she said he's not going to vote for Donald Trump.

I didn't say that.

I don't think I did.

At least I didn't.

The other thing is you said, I don't think he's going to win.

I said, she said, I don't think he's going to win.

I said, he's got a lot of legal problems.

And I still don't know how this is going to handle.

play out.

I don't think the people in the Trump campaign know either.

Every time we've said,

Letita James is crazy, no one in their right mind would ever go after somebody for overvaluing real estate in a loan application that had no deleterious effects for anyone and profited the bank.

And yet

you put her as the prosecutor and you look at the judge and you look at the jury poll and I have a feeling that she might be able to do a lot of damage to Donald Trump.

And then you look at Fannie Wilson.

Nobody in their right mind would think that a candidate who calls a registrar is angry to see his lead dissipate and then have all of these anecdotal reports.

And he says, he didn't say get me.

He said, find me the votes.

I know they're there.

I don't think anybody in their right mind would say that was insurrectionary.

And yet, you put an Atlanta jury and Fannie Willis is the prosecutor who ran like Letita James on her promise to get Donald Trump and you get a judge from that territory, region, area, and I think they can do a lot of damage to him.

I don't think anybody in their right mind would ever believe that this demagogic, fake

excuse for a prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, who bragged he was going to get Trump, could possibly say that a non-disclosure form constituted a campaign finance violation.

It's just absurd.

And when you look at Hillary Clinton hiring Christopher Steele, who is an it's illegal to hire a foreign national to work in a presidential campaign.

And he did.

She did.

You could put every candidate in jail for infractions that were greater than Donald Trump's Stormy Daniels stuff.

And yet you give a New York jury, you get him as the prosecutor, and you get a New York judge, and I think they can do a lot of damage to him.

I don't think that anybody believes that Jack Smith is fair.

His wife has had partisan promotion for Michelle Obama.

He went after a Democratic governor in Virginia, was reversed 9-0.

He has a reputation for being partisan, sloppy.

kind of vindictive.

We've seen he's tried to rush this thing so he could get it before the election.

He's tried to put

squash orders, you know, suppression of

gag orders, et cetera, on Trump.

He's expanded this thing into January 6th.

We all know that Joe Biden had no legal ability to declassify papers as vice president.

He had him in his garage for 10, 15 years.

We don't know how, what, why he did that.

We know that there was a lot greater corpus of illegally brought out papers than Donald Trump did.

And yet

you put him in certain areas of Florida, a big city like Miami, if that's where it is, and you give a left-wing judge and you get him in there and you put all four of those together.

I don't know what's going to happen.

I don't know if Donald Trump can get over.

And that's what I said.

I don't know if he can win.

And I don't know what the reaction of everybody listening to it is.

It's either one of three things, Jack.

It is

this makes me angrier.

They took him off the ballot illegally and they're going to do this.

And I don't give a damn whether they convict him.

I don't give a damn whether he's in jail.

There's nothing in the Constitution that says a president can't run from jail or be a felon if he's 35 and he's been here 15 years and he's a naturally born citizen.

I'm going to vote for him.

I don't care if he's in San Quentin.

That's one group.

The second is kind of like, did you ever see True Romance, Jack, that one Tarantino wrote, Tony Scott wrote it with,

it was a great movie.

I know Sammy wrote it.

Yeah, well, there's a thing, a guy called Elliot in there, and there's a shootout at the end.

Sean Penn's brothers in it.

It's a great story.

And Christian Slater is a great guy.

He's in there.

And

Rosanna Orquette, I guess that's her name.

But it's a great movie.

I think it is.

Christopher Walken is great in it.

And

he can't take it.

So he finally said, he kind of gets into a few, you know, a

Ted Turner fetal thing when Ted Turner said he used to curl up in a ball and put his hands over his ears.

And I can't take it anymore.

I don't know if that's going to be the reaction.

People will just say, okay, I like Trump.

I like it, but I just can't take his rallies and then the reaction to it and the psychodramas and the court cases.

I just want to get rid of it.

I just want to get normality.

I don't know if that's the reaction, or I don't know.

The third reaction as people say, Victor, I just tune it out.

I neither get angry and want to vote for him more for the injustice done him, nor do I get, I just expect it.

I just, I'm just going to vote on his agenda.

And I don't know what it is.

And that's, that was what was behind, I was trying to tell her.

But all of a sudden, this sensational thing, Victor Hansen says, you know,

listen to my 30-second trailer where I claim Victor Hansen says Trump can't win.

We won't vote for him.

Hispanics won't vote Republican.

Oh, by the way, pay this money and you can hear it.

If Anna's listening, would you please send me a link so I can listen to it?

Yes, the missing.

I could complain that, you know, it was really weird.

I got a really bad flu

the day before, so I had 101 temperature when I did it.

I'm not saying that it affected my speech, but if you see it,

I look like I have no color in my face face at all.

I'm completely white.

So I look terrible, but I look terrible anyway, but I was really ill.

And so that, if somebody says, well, you didn't look like yourself, I looked like a ghost, but I was really ill.

And I had to give a, I had to give a lecture or actually answer questions in a forum just 30 minutes after that was over.

But so

I guess what I'm saying is, If she had just told me,

Victor, we're going to do an interview.

This is my podcast.

There's a paywall.

People have to pay to listen.

And I'm going to run a trailer and I will send you a link, as she did say, or her producer did, then I would have felt, you know what I mean?

If she just said, this is a paywall, I'm going to run a trailer.

And

as I said, I'm going to send you a link.

And she'd sent me a link, I wouldn't have a problem.

I could just listen to it.

And maybe people can go on and see if I, but

I will definitely vote for for Donald Trump if he's the nominee and I will do all I can within the bounds of my job at Hoover which has certain limitations right on expression and as a syndicated columnist which you have certain guidelines you can't you know you can't be a rabid partisan right

and I think I have already by exposing each week I try to every other week I try to right the injustices that have been done him I just finished a column today about it for Monday on American greatness, but

I will also vote for anybody who's the candidate.

And

I guess what I'm trying to get at, Jack, is I don't like this idea that we're fighting.

I know that is the stuff

that everybody does, but I kind of like the Reagan idea, you know.

Right.

I just don't, I just wish that,

I know that Trump is that way and he says desanctimonious.

He's making fun of the way he desanted i just wish he wouldn't do that right i just wish why does supporting trump require the vilification of desantis when the i don't wish he is is biden slash hillary clinton slash etc this terrible leftist monster over there it's just it's so i don't understand the florida when i go to florida he got a lot of help from people coming in conservatives fleeing places like my state but he's done a wonderful job job.

And anybody listens to that debate with Newsom, he just went, it was just, you know, it wasn't a great

charismatic, you know, performance JFK or anything, but man, he just showed you what a mess California was compared to what he had done.

And I know that Donald Trump helped him, and Donald Trump probably got him elected.

And I understand that Donald Trump is angry.

So I understand the tension.

I think there's latitude for people to go back and forth.

But when you say things about his wife, maybe not really having cancer, or

maybe he did have,

you know, things in his shoe, I don't know.

But just to say that he walks like a duck, that personal stuff, I don't see that that helps.

And

that gets to the stut.

There's a lot of things you can say about.

Joe Biden, but

to make fun of his stutter as if it's not age-related, but it's innate, is just giving the less.

I wish you wouldn't do that.

And I disagree with a lot of stuff that Nikki Haley believes in.

I don't think that she has a record.

She said in the past, Jack, that you shouldn't use the word illegal alien.

I think people who come across the border from different countries are aliens.

And that's a Latin word.

um leon and a the alpha privative not of this place not of this country and if you break the law, then you do it illegally.

So illegal alien is not a term of disparagement.

And she, I think in 2015, got on that hobby horse.

I think she was very clumsy about the Civil War.

It did have at its central root with slavery and the manifestations of that.

We're all connected in different issues to slavery.

She made an error the other day about correcting the Iowa vote.

I get all that.

And so I'm not a big fan.

I'm not sure that she's a true conservative, but I do know that she's much more conservative and the people around her will be much more conservative than Joe Biden.

So if I say that, and I did say it,

maybe somebody would say, Victor Hansen says he's willing to vote for Nikki Haley.

And Trump,

I guess what I'm saying is I pretty much recapped what I said in the interview.

And I can see how somebody would say, Victor Hansen said Trump can't win and he's going to vote for Nikki Haley.

And that's what I think.

So maybe if she'll just send me the link and I will listen to it.

Yeah.

And I've asked somebody to.

And I like Ann Coulter.

You know, it's really funny, just as an excursus, Jack.

In a weird way, I don't know if you remember this.

You were the editor.

Oh, I do.

That was my chance to be a columnist.

I owe you and I owe

Rich Lowry.

I really, you know, everybody,

I left National Review because I thought it's ironic because we're talking about it.

Yeah, I I thought that

there were people that were attacking Donald Trump.

When you write that he's a monkey in a helicopter,

I don't like that.

I think it was an ape, not a monkey.

Yeah, I got tired of, you know, I'll be frank.

I got tired of David French just Trump, this, this, this.

Yeah, yeah.

I left.

But I've always liked Rich Lowe.

I was embedded with him in Iraq.

We were kind of shelled at the airport together.

I've always liked Rich.

I still like Rich.

I mean, he's a good person.

I really like him a lot.

And he called me on 9-11, and I was on my way in an airplane to Hillsdale College to give a lecture on George Patton.

And the pilot left Fresno, and he said, this is tragic.

He said, a small plane hit the World Trade Center, some private plane.

Can you believe they're going to shut down all of the airspace?

We're going back to Fresno.

we went to fresno and they said you're not allowed to leave the airport for two hours rich called me from the airport and said you know i've seen your i used to write for the wall street journal about every three or four months and i'll bet i you know i got along with max boot he was the editor david asman i loved he was a great editor right and they were gave me a chance and i would write and

Rich said, I've read some of I like your soul about it.

Would you like to write a week?

I said, well, each week, in fact, two times a week, we'll pay you $50 a column for me with three kids at that time, $100 a week, $400 a month to do eight columns.

I thought it was in heaven, Jack.

Buy a lot of diapers with that.

Milk.

And I said to Rich, okay.

And he said, but I said, how, what happened?

Why did you call?

And he said that.

And you're the editor-in-chief and you know, I mean, you were the publisher, so you know better.

But he said that, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't want to,

but he said that Anne had sent a column and she had written

suggesting that we should nuke Mecca and convert everybody.

Turn it to, yeah, turn it to glasses.

They couldn't publish survivors to Christians, and they couldn't publish that.

And she either quit, is that what happened?

She quit, and she

on the way out, uh,

we were girly men, girly men, yes.

So I decided they called me and I was happy.

So Anne gave me a chance,

maybe indirectly, to have a weekly column.

And that was 23 years ago.

And I appreciate that.

And I have never spoken ill of her.

The only disagreement I might have had was

I thought that I voted for Mitt Romney, but I didn't think he was,

you know, I mean, she loved Mitt Romney.

She thought he was perfect.

She said, Romney Romney.

I just, I preferred,

I don't know who it was.

It wasn't John McCain in 2008.

There was another, maybe it was Huckabee or something, but I was skeptical about that.

But then

I wrote columns supporting him easily over Barack Obama.

I think in our lifetimes, yeah, there are very few times where we come across somebody who we, oh my gosh, I love him and I want to do everything I can to get him elected versus acceptable,

okay, versus

anybody but that schmuck, you know, anybody but Biden in this case.

So, yeah, it's very

I don't think my diagnosis has changed of Donald Trump when I wrote the case for Trump.

I hadn't talked to him.

I never met him when I wrote it.

I read every book that he'd written or ghostwritten or co-written, whatever.

I went back and looked at videos and I came to the conclusion he was a tragic hero.

That was the theme of the book.

Yeah.

Meaning that he had a skill set

and he, given his experience in the business community and dealing with unions, environmental, and marginalized people, DI groups, and crooked politicians.

And yet,

he had an animal cunning and savvy.

And he would come in and correct the mess of the Obama administration.

But in the process, like Shane, as I said, or Gary Cooper in High Noon, or the Magnificent Seven, John Wayne, John Wayne, and the searchers,

that as he became more successful, people would then have the leisure to look at not what he had done, because they were the beneficiaries of it, but the methodologies that he used.

And they would finally say, I can't believe we invited Shane in here.

He killed the gunslingers.

We don't believe in that.

Or I can't believe John Wayne got back Natalie Wood because he's a racist.

Or I can't believe the Magnificent Seven saved the village because they're gunmen.

Or, you know what I mean?

I can't believe Will Cain, who was badged down on the ground, but he did get rid of the.

And so that was what I was saying.

I said it wasn't going to end up well for him because people would not appreciate a tragic hero.

And I was drawing on, I think, John, I don't know if John Ford, who had that theme in a lot of his.

Like the three godfathers,

part of that theme, bad guys who do a good thing.

Yes.

And it comes out of Sophocles.

When you look at the Oedipus Rex, a very flawed person who saves the city from a plague, but his

hamartia, his existential flaws will be exploited, and then people will turn on him because he does things that are just out of the unnatural, like Mary's mother, even inadvertently.

He's stained.

Same thing like Ajax, the old warrior.

a man from a different age that doesn't have the Odysseus-like skills to navigate the Paulus.

And you've got to get rid of him.

He killed him.

Live nobly or nobly die, he says in that great play, The Age, Arphilic Tedes.

So that's what I was trying to say.

And I haven't changed.

I think that's what Trump's tragedy is, is that

he may have had the best four years we've ever enjoyed as far as his agenda.

It wasn't always completed because of the oppositional forces against him, but

people

got angry about the way that he conducted himself, even though, and this is what's even more ironic, Jack,

in some ways, the tragic hero's methodology is essential to getting the agenda done.

And that means that if you're going to be John Wayne and the searchers, Ethan Edwards, and you're going to go out and go out and go out, and you're going to spend your whole life getting back Natalie Wood, then you might have to have an existential hatred, right, of Indians, which he does,

in order to power you to be that venomous.

Or

if you're Shane and

you want to renounce your past and you're going to, why would you then blow up your life and go kill the gunslingers and make sure you couldn't live there?

Because you had a deep, I think, love for Gene Arthur and the family.

And so the tragic hero makes a decision that he wants to do these things and he understands that he can't do them the way they want them to do it, but that he has techniques that will solve the problem, but it will alienate them in the same way.

And that's when Shane rides away and he says to

Brandon DeWilde,

tell your mom there's no more guns in the valley.

You don't have to worry about me anymore.

I'm not going to bring, show you how to shoot.

I'm not going to do any of that.

I'm done.

But I'm also, you're done with the people who want to kill you.

I got rid of them.

And Trump is basically,

you turn me loose, I will make fun of Joe Biden's stuff.

I'll do anything and I will match the left mono to mono and I will get an agenda done.

But I want to warn you that when I come back in and I get interest rates back down and I start addressing the border, we get the wall finished, we do that.

I'm going to have to say things and do stuff that is so outrageous, it's going to turn you off.

But it won't turn you off until you are a beneficiary of what I do.

And then I'm going to give you the leisure and the margin of error and the laxity to enjoy what I've done for you so that you can be repulsed by me.

And that's the whole, that's what tragedy is.

Yeah.

It really is.

That's what history is.

And so that's what I still think that is Trump's tragedy.

And he can't change.

If you sat down with Trump down and said, Don,

I can get you five more points in a landslide victory in 2024.

I can get rhinos.

I can get independent.

Here's what we're going to do.

You're not going to make fun of the way people look or their accent.

And you're going to have, I got this person here.

He's a hardcore MAGA person, but he's going to look over every tweet that you write

and make sure it's not in capital letters, it's not misspelled, there's no personal invective, and we're going to do this and we're going to win.

And we're not going to lose the base.

In fact, the base will appreciate that you can't do that.

And then he's going to say to you, hey, Victor,

who's successful?

You're living on a stupid little farm in Salmas and I'm the president of the United States.

So I must be doing something right that you're not.

That's an argument.

It's not a stupid little farm, Victor.

Well, I mean, he's been successful in his life doing what he's doing.

I'm just saying that

I think he could be even more successful.

Well,

hey,

we've got to conclude.

We've got to conclude.

I want to just no, no, no.

You can never go on too long, Victor.

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We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Alas, only to conclude by urging you, dear listeners, especially new listeners, to visit Victor's website, The Blade of Perseus, at VictorHanson.com.

When you go there, and you will go there, you will find

an archive for all these podcasts, links to Victor's articles at the aforementioned American Greatness or his weekly syndicated column,

links to his books, and then these ultra articles.

You'll see these little articles.

And a little black box says ultra.

You'll click on it.

You'll want to read it because, why?

You want to read what Victor writes, but you won't be able to unless you're a subscriber.

So do subscribe.

It's $5 a month or $50 discounted for the full year.

That's the Blade of Perseus, VictorHansen.com.

By the way, I wish we had time.

Maybe in the next podcast, we will.

One of the ultra articles, series Victor's writing right now is Why Rural Irks Urban.

And it's really, really,

really good stuff.

As for me, Jack Fowler, I write Civil Thoughts, the free weekly email newsletter for the Center for Civil Society.

at Anvil, where we are trying to strengthen civil society.

And what do you get in that newsletter?

14 recommended readings of great pieces, articles I've come across in the previous week.

I provide the link to the article and an excerpt.

There's nothing transactional about it.

It's just, you know, here's something I think you will enjoy.

And I do get a lot of

kind emails from folks who are enjoying Civil Thoughts.

Sign up for it at civilthoughts.com.

Victor, we do.

get a lot of comments from our listeners,

particularly at iTunes slash Apple, where you can rate this podcast and leave comments.

And here's, I'm going to read three comments, two of them are very short.

One is titled, A Man with a PhD

and Can Pound Nails Too.

Love it.

And your podcast.

Thank you, sir.

And this is signed by No Respect80.

Then there's one titled from Communist NJ, New Jersey.

Quote, Victor is the best.

I love listening weekly.

Victor, thank you for your insight and commentary.

End quote.

New York City Indy Carr fan.

That's who signed it.

And then the last one

is titled From South Carolina.

What a pleasure to listen to VDH podcast.

I learned something new every single day and love the calming tone of Victor's speech.

A genuinely kind, extremely intelligent man, sharing his own personal thoughts, not a rehash of others' opinions.

I adored and trusted Rush for so many years.

Until VDH, I had not felt that way about another social media personality, although I listened to many until now.

Thank you, Victor Davis Hansen.

You are so loved and appreciated.

May God bless you and yours in the coming new year of 2024.

Stay courageous.

And that's signed by Penny Lane56.

Gosh, Victor, that's something.

That's nice.

Hey, Jack, before I leave, I just saw a person who listened to it.

Yeah.

And that person just

texts me this okay dear victor i watched the tape

the video parts where you especially talked about trump you never capital said you would not vote for trump only that four lawsuits against him could be a real problem that desantis is running as the backup candidate you also said that you would vote for any republican against biden or harris i can tell call you and let you listen to the tape or i can get a tech person to send it all in all it was very good good.

She was over the top in Strident.

So I never said that, Jack.

Hey, I didn't think so.

I never said that.

And I never, I got very, I'm very angry that she would say that.

But I did say that I would vote for any candidate that was

on the Republican line.

I think you would too, wouldn't you, Jack?

I would.

I think everybody

except your version of very angry.

You sound so calm.

And as Penny Lane just wrote, you're so gentle in your,

but

it's your moral authority that should make

Ann Quake in her high heels here.

The reason I say that, I have a lot of respect for DeSantis' professionalism and competence.

I really do, and what he did.

And I think he could do a great job.

But I also have a lot of respect

for the sheer endurance of Donald Trump and empathy for what they put him through.

and the horrible things they're doing to him.

And

my only, again, my only thing is I'm worried about how he's going to get out of those lawsuits.

And I wish that they wouldn't fight.

And

I wish they would run together.

And that would be great.

But

I will do my best to see the Republican nominee win.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not for partisan purposes, but for the salvation of

this great experiment,

these United States, we are at a brink.

All right, my friend, you've been terrific as ever.

Thank our listeners for listening, our sponsors, especially AMAC today.

Go there again, you know, amac.us/slash Victor.

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

Bye-bye.

Bye, everybody.

I appreciate it.