Hamas, the Middle East and Inside the Beltway

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Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

I am Jack Fowler, the host, but the star, and the namesake, and the man you're here to hear.

That's Victor Davis-Hanson.

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

Victor has an official website, The Blade of Perseus.

Its web address is victorhanson.com.

We will talk more about that towards the end of the show.

We are recording on Saturday the 9th, at the end of a week where a ton of

things have gone on, political and international.

And Victor, there doesn't seem to be a week where there isn't a ton of stuff going on anymore that's of

weightiness in

this world.

But on this episode,

we will raise more than our previous recordings

relates to the Middle East, Israel, Hamas, what's going on there, what's happened on Capitol Hill related

to that.

And I think, Victor, we should start the program with some thoughts you have

about some things that have happened recently in Gaza with the Israeli forces

going after

the dirtbags

who raped and murdered Israeli citizens on October 7th.

We'll get to that, Victor, though, right after these important messages.

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

So, Victor,

you know, there's some Me Too related things to discuss.

There's a vote in Congress on anti-Semitism, but we should maybe get started with your thoughts about

the Israeli Defense Forces

fighting in the tunnels and

getting,

well,

flooding Hamas

out of their rat holes.

Victor, do you want to talk about that?

Well, as someone who's farmed a lot in my life and a lot with drip irrigation and pumps and stuff, I would not want to

deal with Israeli hydraulic engineers

because many of the drip hose and stuff component parts I would buy for irrigation comes from Israel.

And when they made the desert bloom, they made the desert bloom because they understood hydraulics.

So when they say they're going to flood the tunnels, it's not going to be a Honda gas pump at 70 gallons a minute, believe me.

They'll get pumps that will, you know, 1,500 gallons a minute, and they'll get a lot of them.

And they're starting to flood and they're starting to get,

it's kind of geometric.

The more they

surround a moss,

the more areas they don't have to watch.

So they got more people in less territory.

And that's a geometric

fact of life that's going to increase in their favor.

And now they've got Mr.

Sinoir, the architect of October 7th, surrounded.

They had some people that came out of the tunnels and they didn't want to fight anymore.

I think there was 200 of them.

And they stripped, I mean, who knows what they have on them.

So they stripped them down to their underwear, and they have pictures of them all in rows.

And there's a lot of people saying, This is humiliation.

You can't do this.

You're trying to, yeah, that's, I'd rather be in my boxer short sitting there than have watch my wife be raped and then beheaded.

So on the great scale of things, don't do that.

And you won't have to strip down to your boxer short.

But my point is, they're going to get a lot of people

that are going to surrender and they don't want to stay down.

They've been down in those tunnels, you know, since October 7th.

And so when you get down there 60 days, and now it's going to be damp and mold and cold and the weather is getting worse.

And all of the factors, natural and human, are aligned against Hamas.

I know people don't think that's the consensus, but it's the logical analysis.

And you're going to see more and more people trying to surrender to the IDF and you're going to see more and more people try to call them off.

Because if you don't call them off, they're going to win.

And they have to continue.

If they stop now, as we've said numerous times, Hezbollah will jump in, Iran will be emboldened, and Hamas will brag that they killed more Jews on any single day than the Holocaust, and they're still surviving.

You get rid of Hamas and destroy it, and the financiers, and hunt down the people who planned it, and you're going to get a lot of information from these people because they're going to talk and sing like canaries about all of their associates.

And then Hezbollah will say, I do not want to end up like Gaza City and Gutter.

And people will say, please keep the American base here.

Please.

We need protection from the Iranians and the Saudis.

We play both sides of the fence, but we need this big American base.

And if we say, nope,

I would say it's pretty clear, Jack, if there's a Republican president, they're going to go to the Ghaddaris and say, you get to get out of the Hamas terrorist business.

And or we're going to yank everybody out of this base and we're going to put them right on your neighbor's base.

and we don't care what happens to you.

If you're a monarchy and you're an authoritarian regime and you've got a lot of dissidents and they're going to overthrow your government or you've got Iranian insurrectionaries or you've got, that's your problem, but we're not going to put up with it anymore.

I think a lot of things are going to change.

But you have to destroy Hamas

because otherwise you don't send a message

that there's consequences.

And if you start something and you don't finish it, then you suffer the additional wage of humiliation so the israelis are not going to quit and they're going to see more and more scenes like this of people trying to call them off and we talked about the care people the islamic american relations fraud uh that head was caught on tape uh in reference to october 7th where he said this was a righteous glorious assault and the people are going to go back they went into their land and they took back their land so we now wait wait wait care is a civil rights

group they're they're for peace

council on american islamic relations yeah it's civil rights as defined by we kill and desecrate and mutilate and dismember you and if you say one thing in uh opposition then you're attacking the victimizer this whole thing is based on the whole it's a i think everybody who's listening understands the whole hamas mentality is passive aggressive it is, we are big macho men.

We're going in there and we're slaughtering women and children and elderly, and we burn infants, and we're capable of doing anything.

Oh, but the IDF is going to reply.

That's so unfair.

We're going to go down the tunnels.

We're going to put women and children to shield us.

We're going to burrow under a mosque.

Oh,

no, no,

you can't retaliate.

That's unfair.

Where's the UN?

Where's the Obamas?

Where's the squad?

Call them off.

We don't want to fight these crazy Jews.

So one day the Jews are nerd.

The Israelis are weak.

You mutilated their women.

That was the whole idea of that, is to say to we made, and they quoted, not me.

They said, we're going to make your women dirty and whores and all that boiler pray as if they're, we're so subhuman, we're so pre-civilized, we're so pre-modern, you've never dealt with anything like us.

You made us this way, you made us into monsters and now you've got a monster in your own country how do you like it and they go from that to please please please stop stop

you know i was giving a talk once at a university in california it was the same thing i gave a very reasoned i thought analysis of um

the 2006 war and a palestinian student

started shrieking and wouldn't in the Q ⁇ A, she would not let down the microphone.

And she was angry because she could not fly direct from

Tel Aviv to San Francisco or LA because she was a Palestinian and she had to go to Oman, Jordan and then take connections.

And she was hassled in Europe.

And I, and she was yelling and screaming.

And I said, well, why would you want to go?

You just told me how horrible my country is.

You're here at this university, full scholarship.

Why don't you just go back to Annapolis or Jericho or,

you know, Gaza City and have a wonderful life?

Why do you come over to the great Satan if you hate it so much?

And she said, what did you say?

What did you say?

And she started yelling.

I said, look, this is pointless.

I'll just make a promise.

I will never go into Gaza or the West Bank.

if you promise never to come back to this country.

That's an equal, you know what I mean?

And you know what?

She started crying.

And

reported the dean came in.

She went and found the dean as I was finishing the lecture.

She was so angry.

But if you had looked at the expletives and the invective that she started directed at me, and as soon as I said, I don't really care what you say, I promise, you know, she just turned to the most.

And you can really see that with these protests.

Have you noticed something, Jack?

If you listen, if you're driving and you listen to

Goldie, Goldie, you can't hide.

We charge you with genocide or from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

The majority of those calls are female, the voices.

Yeah, absolutely.

You can tell they're women and they're leading them.

And yet when you go back and you look at the chanting right after October 7th and the mass of humanity that came out in the streets at Sheeran, it was all men.

It was all men in Gaza City on the West Bank.

The people who were, they were the people who were vocal shouting.

So I said to myself, how can this be that in the actual place of conflict, it's all the men who are leading the chants and women are inside according to the Hamas charter.

That's their duty to produce Hamas fighters and take care of the home and raise children.

But here, they come over here.

and they have this wonderful free society and women take a prominent role and nobody ever makes the connection.

No one ever says, okay,

I'm cheering on Hamas,

which is a sexist, masculine

society that oppresses women

in the Western sense.

And I'm cheering it on, but when I'm over here for the first time in my life, I'm completely liberated.

And I'm not just liberated, but I using my natural talents to lead, what, chance?

and lead the war against Israel from American shores in a way that my own comrades would never allow me from Gaza.

And there's no hypocrisy or disconnect or paradox.

That's what I can't understand.

Well, Victor,

I want to ask you about Lloyd Austin in a little bit, but continuing on.

No, do we have to?

Okay, go ahead.

Let's continue on

the women and the women who, as you say, come over here.

Okay, what about the women that are born here?

Because I think a lot of that chanting is

almost all

Mary Catherine Jones, who's

grew up in Sheboygan and has become a lefty,

but who maybe three or four years ago was tweeting or on Instagram about me too.

And yet, when we

I haven't seen anything, thank God.

I don't know, I'd be able to handle it, but these reports of the

mutilation of women.

Cutting a breast off, nails, nails inside the sexual organ, yeah

having a woman beg to be killed if they were

broken pelvises where where is where is the where is the feminine of feminist america me too

me too

as they say me too except if you're a jew so that's the whole point that me too was not just me too

an ecominical group of women that in analytical fashion found that there were certain predatory males in positions of power who preyed on women for in quid pro quo fashion at the pinnacles of our society, whether Harvey Weinstein in movies or people in film,

you know, publishing, et cetera, et cetera.

It was all about the me too will be conditioned, couched, embedded within the BLM and TIF woe, DEI whole environment.

And in that case, there's an orthodoxy that has to be followed, and Jews don't fit into it.

And remember the women's march with all those palace, is their name?

Linda Sassoor, and all these people who were radical feminist?

I think Taliban.

Wearing their pussy hats.

Yeah, they Talib and all the squad.

No, that doesn't,

that doesn't work.

So Jewish women are not part of that.

That's the head of

the former head of Facebook.

She said that.

Where's the UN Council on Women?

No, I'm sorry.

You don't qualify because in their view, you're Jewish more than you're women.

And these people are anti-Semitic and racist.

And if you don't believe me, read the Hamas Charter or look what BLM says openly.

What do you think Farrakhan says?

What do you think Jesse Jackson said?

What do you think Al Sharpton said?

What do you think members of the squad said?

Just think about it.

And And you can see that deep within the radical left-wing black movement is a long history of

free, exempt, excused, utter anti-Semitism.

And the same thing with all these radical groups.

And I think it's going to,

I don't know, you know, another thing that they're doing is very clever.

A lot of the people on the left, some of them Jewish, but mostly non-Jewish, they hate Israel.

And

they don't want to say that now in this climate because they think it might be a little bit over the top because the people that they support, you know, they're openly harassing Jews.

So what they've done is

they have redefined Israel and Jewishness as a netanyahu.

And so James Carville was on TV not too long ago.

He said, I see that crooked face.

I blame him for everything.

And then when you read these essays by left of center center writers, it's all Thomas Friedman and all these people.

It's always Netanyahu, Netanyahu.

It's not the war cabinet.

It's not the bipartisan cabinet.

It's not Netanyahu calling both sides to come in.

It's Netanyahu who allowed this to happen.

It wasn't just his failure, remember.

They can't say it was also Mossad and IDF intelligence failure.

It was failure of the entire society to be you know, lax and think that their

magnanimity would be paid with like kind.

It's Netanyahu.

And therefore, they can shield themselves by damning Israel by saying it was Netanyahu.

Get rid of Netanyahu.

And it just doesn't make any sense.

It's just a way of, he's just a convenient vessel for hating Israel.

And

also, a lot of, there are some prominent Jewish intellectuals who are really using this occasion to attack Netanyahu.

And that way they can feel like I can still remain with the firmly embedded within the left-wing coalition, even though I know they're anti-Semitic, because I will tell them that you people don't know it, but why you really hate Israel is not because you hate Jews like me, but because you hate Netanyahu.

And therefore, I will criticize and damn Netanyahu and say, I hate Netanyahu more than you do.

And if you removed, I'm sorry to break the truth, you remove Netanyahu and you bring in the most liberal Israeli politician, and it's not going to make any difference.

The Hamas will be even more emboldened and it won't stop the anti-Semitism in the United States.

If you don't believe me, ask all the Jewish women that participated in the women's marches and what...

They were as left-wing as they could get, and they were excluded and considered white privileged women.

And so it doesn't work.

It does not work.

It's never worked in the history of MIHMIT.

Anytime you've said,

well, they don't really, they're directing at people in World War II, excuse me, in 1936, 37, 38, and 39, there were a lot of Jews in Germany who said that,

well, they're just after people who are really wealthy or too Jewish, but, you know, I'm completely assimilated.

And here's my Iron cross.

Right.

And I was a hero in World War I fighting for the Kaiser, so I'm going to be exempt.

No, you weren't.

There's a whole chest of iron crosses at Auschwitz they collected.

And they intentionally wanted to kill you.

And that's what anti-Semitism is.

There's no dealing with it.

There's no refining it.

There's no dissecting it.

It's just there.

And they, it's not directed at

Hamas's,

it's not yet Nahoo.

They've gone, you go back in the wars, I mean,

Golden My Ear

was not a conservative.

And you go back and look at the labor governments, they've attacked them just as much as they have conservative, if not more.

And so they hate Jews and they hate Jews in Israel, especially.

And that's just the way it is.

And if you think you're going to shield yourself from anti-Semitism or you think you're going to shield your own anti-Semitism by saying,

well, everybody in Hamas, they don't really hate Israel.

They just hate Netanyahu.

It doesn't work.

And

we'll see what happens.

But the thing about Netanyahu, who is in the same position as George Bush, as I said, it was after 9-11 when we were surprised.

And a lot of people said, oh, he knew about, he was warned or FDR.

And they said, well, he was warned.

conspiracy.

And maybe, maybe not.

But the point I'm making is there's there's a way to,

for a leader, any leader, Harry Truman was surprised by the June 25th invasion of South Korea in 1950 and the near destruction of all American forces at Pusan.

But then he greenlighted crazy and brilliant Doug MacArthur to do the Incheon landing, and he was on the way up to the Yellow River.

He got stopped.

He retreated back.

But Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and Matthew Ridgway especially saved South Korea.

So nobody day thought says Harry Truman lost South Korea.

It was his naivete that allowed them.

Dean Acheson didn't say that South Korea was in the nuclear umbrella area of safety and therefore the North invaded.

They don't say that very much.

They say that Harry Truman saved South Korea.

They say that George Bush, whatever you think about him, he took out the Taliban in six weeks.

And whatever you think about the the Iraqi, da-da-da-da-da, we have not, he took out Saddam and we have not been attacked in the same magnitude as 9-11.

And because we killed thousands of jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq, that's just a fact.

You can argue, it's illegitimate to argue whether, in a cost-benefit analysis, it was worth it.

The way Afghanistan turned out, we don't know how Iraq will turn out, but the Iraqi prime minister just yesterday condemned the attack on the American embassy.

They have elections of sorts.

So I don't know.

But my point, again, is that FDR declared war on Japan and Germany and Italy,

and he waged it without mercy.

And today, people don't talk about the insanity of moving the 7th Fleet from San Diego and putting it out at the point of the spear in Pearl Harbor when it was unable to protect itself from the Japanese Imperial Navy.

They don't talk about that.

They say FDR was a very good World War II commander because he reacted to Pearl Harbor George W.

Bush's finest hour when he was there on ground zero with that megaphone and said, the whole world's going to be hearing from me.

The same thing with Harry Truman.

That son of a bitch lied to me.

That's what he said about Stalin.

And so Netanyahu, the verdict's not out on him.

If he crushes Hamas

and he doesn't give in to any of these threats from the United States or from the left, and he takes responsibility, both good and bad, then

he will redeem himself.

If he stops,

if he stops

and

we get in a war with Iran or Hezbollah because he stops, then he's in big trouble.

So

he's got to go to the end.

The hand he's dealt can only be played to the very last card, and that's the destruction of Hamas.

And that will take a lot of guts and genius and resolute thinking.

And it'll have to bring in people that he does not like of the other party.

And he's got to have a war bipartisan cabinet or tripartisan cabinet.

And he's got to lead them.

And if he can destroy Hamas in a way that no other Israeli president has done, history will be kind to him.

Victor, let's talk about some of those thoughts of stopping or delaying.

And that's where I mentioned Lloyd Austin before, and we'll get your thoughts on that, Victor, right after these important messages.

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

Victor, this is a little long in the tooth now.

We didn't talk about it, though, when we recorded

last week

because it had just happened.

But Lloyd Austin,

gosh, it just came up hearing it.

They're like, what is this guy saying?

He wants Israel to essentially not fight.

He was talking about a strategic defeat.

There would be a strategic defeat in Gaza if Israel prosecuted the war in a way that

harmed too many

civilians and it just it seemed like such a wet blanket i think he echoed something blinken had said or maybe biden had said i i i don't know but anyway victor it was wow these are this is america the great ally of israel telling it essentially take your foot off the pedal that's how it came off to me um and my friends like that your thoughts on lloyd Austin's public comments and any other public comments by leading American officials in the last week or so related to Israel?

Well, he is sorely mistaken because if he thinks

that

calling off Israel will lead to peace or the lives of the hostages or increased security from the United States, he's got a sad,

he's got a sad comeup because reality is going to hit him hard.

These people hate us, and we we have to be very smart.

It doesn't mean we just go crazy and bomb people.

We have to be very smart.

But part of that being smart is to destroy Hamas.

And whether you like it or not, what Israel is doing is in the long-term interest of the United States.

Again,

if the Israeli and the IDF military wing of the Israeli government, if they destroy Hamas, Hezbollah will not enter the fray and Iran will not enter the fray.

And there will be an international coalition to get together and try to rebuild Gaza without Hamas.

That's the only chance for that area, God-forsaken place to survive, is to get rid of Hamas.

Okay,

so

he is now lecturing Israel about this.

But in the larger sense, he was the one, you know, it's not his fault alone, but he and the Pentagon people told us.

of March and April and May and June and July of August, that there was going to be a big counter offensive in Ukraine.

And we had equipped them with the wherewithal.

And it was going to be like, you know, Gwedarian or Rommel or George Patton.

They were just going to go through this maginal line of Russian defenses and on to Moscow, source.

And it was a complete, the spring offensive just was a wastage of human flesh.

And then it was a summer offensive.

And no one ever said to the Ukrainians, you got to get smart.

They have entrenched themselves and you better just hold firm until you get air supremacy, whether that is by drones or we get F-15s, but you cannot, without air power, try to blast through that hole.

And

it didn't work.

He was the one who came before Congress right.

and the moment after the George Floyd or in the midst of the thing and in a very demagogic way along with

the Reverend Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Princeton Ivy League graduate, who told us that there was white rage and white supremacy and white privilege.

And what did he earn from that?

He basically earned somewhere in the ensuing years, 20 to 40,000 fewer

recruits.

And if you look at the actual number of who did not re-enlist, it was people who were demonized and demagogued about vaccination, 8,500 of them, some of the best soldiers in the military.

But there was an overrepresentation of white males from the middle and lower classes who traditionally are what that, since we're now obsessed with gender and race, Jack,

the Pentagon is,

except for this, they're not obsessed about who dies.

But he basically told the rubric that dies at well over 72, 73% in Iraq and Afghanistan at double their numbers in the general population that you guys, you know what?

We're going to hold you in suspicion.

You've got to prove to me you're not white privilege and white rage, white supremacy.

And we're going to have a woke

protocol for promotions and retention.

Well, that was just insane.

And that has helped lead along with the humiliation, which he oversaw as Secretary of Defense, the humiliation in Afghanistan.

So you tell me, Jack, what he has done.

What he has done since he became Secretary of Defense.

Is the United States stronger now?

Are there more recruits?

Are they turning away people

so that, you know, he's such an inspirational leader?

Did he have a,

I don't know, I won't get into it, but I have followed him for years.

Did he have a stellar record of military achievement in Iraq?

Go look at the record and see if you think it was.

Did he conduct ourselves with, I don't know, professionalism as we skedaddled out of Afghanistan?

Were we expecting the invasion of Ukraine?

Did he give solid strategic and tactical advice to Ukraine that has allowed them not to suffer inordinately?

What did he do, Jack, about this Chinese balloon?

Did he say, wait a minute, there is a so-called weather balloon that's over Alaska and it's headed into the continental?

Shoot the SOB down right now.

Did he say that?

No.

No, we were humiliated.

It went basically scot-free across our most strategic areas until the public pressure mounted to stop the lies and just get rid of it.

And about Hamas, was he unequivocal?

He was for a day or two that we have to help the Israelis.

So I don't see any stellar record of his tenure as Secretary of Defense.

And I'm also, I know I'm beating a dead drum, but

I think when this is all over, we're going to have to look very hard.

I don't know why when we have such a generous pension system.

If you're a general, you put in 30 or 40 years of hard work, and I understand that.

You've slept on the ground, you've been sick, you've been overseas, you've devoted a lot of your country, but you get a pretty good pension of $150,000 to $250,000 and free medical care.

And you can serve on a lot of different health boards, as Austin does and consulting firms as Austin.

I think Austin and Blinken were in a consulting firm.

Okay, so there's a lot of avenues that you can make pretty good money and get a big fat pension for the sacrifices you made for our country.

But you don't really need to go to Raytheon or General Dynamics or Lockheed

or Northrop and use the expertise that you acquired in the Pentagon and the context you have acquired so that somebody can purchase that knowledge and expertise and influence to get an advantage over a rival contractor.

I don't see, I just think you have a conflict of interest.

And he was, he came right out of Raytheon and he made a lot of money at Raytheon, and he'll go right back to Raytheon, if not somewhere even more lucrative.

So

I'm not impressed, is what I'm saying.

I don't, and I'm not, I have no animus toward him.

I know he got COVID a couple of of times.

I think he's my age, 70 years old.

I admire that he's still going, flying all over the country and trying to do his best for the country.

But when he says things like that about the war, he's dead wrong.

And he's been dead wrong most of his tenure as Secretary of Defense.

Well, he has made sure that

abortions are available for

intelligent.

He knows that his career skyrocketed on DEI and the Washington culture and suburban Virginia to Maryland, D.C.

Beltway culture.

He knows it very well.

That's where his lobbying is.

That is where his board memberships are.

And if you're in that culture, then you better adhere to it.

So when you're in a position of decision-making, then you go for abortion, you go for DEI, you go for whatever race, sex,

gender agenda that the left-wing powers that be want.

And he did.

And so he was a very effective woke fish that swam in the conducive waters of wokeness and the beltway.

He's not going to buck that.

Well,

let's stay.

Let's stay inside the Beltway, Victor, on Capitol Hill.

But before we talk about a recent congressional vote on anti-Semitism, I'd like to remind

our fair, good, decent listeners about something.

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And we thank the good people at AMAC for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

And I, indeed, I am a member of AMAC and have been for, I don't know, six, seven, eight years.

I'm very fond of AMAC and I love their,

I forget it's bi-monthly, six times a year, every other month, their great magazine.

Victor, by the way, you did call Mark Milley, you called the Reverend Mark Milley, and I thought maybe that's appropriate since he's so preachy half the freaking time.

Oh, he's always giving people lectures.

Sometimes he lectures.

recruits that you're going to die and we're going to do this.

And then sometimes he's talking about his Ivy League pedigree.

Sometimes he's an expert on race.

Sometimes he's so brilliant and so innovative and so confident that he just has to diagnose Donald Trump as Dr.

Milley in that aspect, not Reverend, but Dr.

Milley has decided that Mr.

Trump is on hinge and therefore he has the right, indeed, the responsibility as chairman to call up his Chinese counterpart and say, you know, if Donald Trump gives me a crazy order involving nuclear or something, I'm going to call you first because I trust you, a communist

who has no blood on his hands as the head of the PLA, to be much more sober and judicious in a crisis than Donald Trump, my own commander-in-chief, who I've sworn an oath to support the United States as and the commander-in-chief.

So, and if everybody said, Victor, how dare you to do that?

Are you going to be some Trump crazy guy that's engaging and demagoguing our Reverend General Milley.

No, I just think it's a simple rule.

If you're chairman of the Joint Chiefs, you do not call,

you do not call your chief adversary on the sly

to create an artificial new and unprecedented protocol with you and him without the knowledge of your superior commander-in-chief, the President of the United States.

Is that too much to ask?

Do you think that, I don't know, before we had the Joint Chiefs, you think George Marshall said, you know what?

FTR is pretty shaky.

His blood pressure is 200 over 100.

He's got melanoma.

He's got all these infections.

He's carrying an affair with Lucy Mercer right in the halls of the White House.

He's threatening people.

He's smoking.

He's drinking.

The guys

can't get out of the wheelchair.

I've got to go.

This war is just not being run the way we had.

The bulge caught us by surprise.

Operation Market Garden, Monty just destroyed.

I've got to call General Halder up and maybe

General Jodo up and say, you know what?

I know you've got a kind of problem with Hitler, but we've got a problem with Roosevelt.

So if Roosevelt tells me we got a new

bomb coming along, you've heard about, if he tells me something stupid, Roosevelt, and he's kind of frail and he wants me to use it, I'm going to warn you first.

Do we do that?

Somebody will say, well, we were at war then.

We're at a Cold War right now with China,

believe me.

I know it's not a hot war.

I'm not going to go to World War II, but they are our chief existential enemy.

And they just sent a balloon right over our country.

And they've threatened the use of nuclear weapons if Japan gets involved or we have gotten involved to save Taiwan.

And the idea you'd call them without any notice to the president of the United States is just shocking.

That's General Milley.

That's our,

yeah.

I mean, whether he likes it or not.

And I'm trying to be fair.

There were things about him I admire.

Donald Trump appointed him.

And I think that,

as I understand it, the Secretary of Defense was not in favor of his appointment, which James Mattis was not in favor of his appointment as the chairman of the Joint Chief.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and I think Mattis was no friend of Trump.

So

he was a controversial appointment, and he got that position because of Donald Trump.

But the moment controversy started, it started in June and July of 2020.

And that's when Donald Trump said that they're burning a federal courthouse, they're burning a police precinct, they tried to storm the White House grounds, they burnt or they tried to burn down the historic St.

John's Episcopal Church.

We got to call out the National Guard because the mayors and

governors of these blue jurisdictions won't do it.

And he said said he had a photo op with Trump, and everybody said, oh, Mark Milley was with Trump.

As if every single joint chief always takes a picture with a president.

And then they said, this is unprecedented.

The president of the United States,

he was going to call troops.

Can you imagine?

And Mark Milley then distanced himself and trashed, you know, I was used.

I shouldn't have done this.

Yeah, you should have.

Do you know what happened during the Rodney King riots, General Milley?

Colin Powell wrote a letter to George H.W.

Bush and said, hey,

you need Marines.

I got 5,010, whatever you need.

I will use them.

Just give me the word, Mr.

President.

And he said, okay, Colin, go ahead.

So we sent 5,000 Marines into South Central.

Oh.

Colin Powell shouldn't have taken a picture with George H.W.

Bush?

Give me a break, man.

Who sent the

General Milley, who was still in office, did he say anything about the greatest militarization of Washington, D.C.

with 25 to 30,000 federalized troops in Washington with barbed wire?

Not since Jubal early invaded the Capitol in 1864.

It had been so many federal troops on the streets of Washington.

Did he say, oh, my God,

we're confusing this civilian-military relation line.

We've crossed it.

And for what?

An insurrection in which you had a bunch of buffoons went into the Capitol, and not one of them had an armed weapon inside the Capitol, and they had no plan.

They're just a bunch of buffoons.

And there were more FBI agents probably that day than in any day since in Washington undercover informants.

So

I don't understand it all.

I think we should, we'll lay off Millie for a while.

I have no animus toward him.

I'm just very happy.

No, no, but it's all look, I look at it this way, Victor.

Is the world a better, safer place now in between him and August?

Yeah, now and 2020.

Remember after Afghanistan when we blew up 13 innocent civilians?

Yeah.

No, was it six or nine?

I can't remember.

We lost 13 Marine.

And

he said that was a righteous kill.

righteous kill.

Somebody, someday when sanity returns to this country, we will have a bipartisan, bipartisan congressional inquiry and report on the Afghanistan humiliation.

The greatest

humiliation, I think it was worse in 1975 from the rooftop of the Saigon embassy, but it was at least as damaging because it led to the invasion of Ukraine and it led to the emboldening Hamas to go into Israel and it led to a whole series of threats by China to new ones to Taiwan and it probably explains why they won't say a word about COVID and they don't care about sending a balloon across our continental space because they saw us in Afghanistan.

They said, oh my God,

pride flag flying, George Murray prominent on the streets of

Kabul, big gender studies, and they laughed, they fled and they they left 50, 60 billion dollars for the international terrorist mark.

And these weapons can help Hezbollah and Ozamik Jihad and the Houthis and Hamas.

And they don't even care.

They just fled.

But they did tell us they have Mediterranean food for all the Afghans who arrive in the United States.

That's what they thought of.

It was sad.

Yeah, well,

they seem to be proud.

Somebody should have resigned.

Somebody should have said, you know what?

I have to resign.

I can't.

I'm sorry.

And Joe Biden cooked up the whole thing, remember, because he wanted to have a 20th anniversary

of

both 9-11 and the presence in America, in Afghanistan.

So Joe Biden said, get them out by 9-11.

Then we'll have a big parade.

And we'll all say that Joe Biden and his brilliance closed the chapter on Afghanistan to the year,

to almost the date after 9-11 or the initial entrance.

And,

you know,

no Bagnam Air Force Base, no deterrence, no air, a base to command the airspace over Afghanistan, nothing.

Nothing but an old mural and a pride flag and a billion-dollar brand new embassy and a $350 million retrofitted air base we handed over to terrorists.

Well, should have resigned in advance of anything to stop it as opposed to post post disaster anyway victor speaking of

i don't know if it's a disaster it's maybe a disaster for the party the democrat party over 100 democrats voted present or against

a resolution condemning the surge of anti-semitism the the resolution was voted on in the in the house of representatives it was

um

um

sponsored by two republican congressmen who are Jewish, but regardless, I mean, obviously, a number of Democrats did vote for this resolution, but that I think was 92, 92 voted present, and 13 actually voted against the resolution to condemn the surge of anti-Semitism and equating it with anti-Zionism.

One Republican,

I think it was just one Massey of Kentucky, who seems to vote against everything,

everything.

But dang, I mean,

it's this party has a serious problem with

one of its historic great supporting blocs, Jews.

Your thoughts?

Well, when you say this party, it's not the Democratic Party of

Bill Clinton.

It's not the Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton.

It's the logical manifestation of Barack Obama.

And remember what Barack Orlando said when they asked him,

would you ever miss being president?

He said, I would have loved to be a third-term president if I could just stay in my basement and not have to do all the ceremony and the drudgery and just phone it in.

Whatever I want, I'd phone it in.

That's what he's doing.

And so,

yeah, I mean,

this is a different, a radically different party, and it's got a strong group of anti-Semites, and they are DEI, so they feel that they are exempt, excused from any accountability.

In the 1950s, if you got a white guy from

Montana with a cowboy hat on and said, I don't like the Jews, the Rockefeller family,

they thought everybody was a Jew and they hated Jews, and it was very easy to say they're bigoted and ignorant.

And now it's sophisticated, it's DEI, it's black, it's Latino, it's women, it's gays, it's trans, it's Middle Eastern people, it's victims, it's oppressed, and you can't say anything about them.

They're not anti-Semitic, they're anti-Zionist, and that's how they operate.

And they're at the core of the new Democratic Party.

They're the future, they're the young people.

And they have a lot of advantages.

They've got the three blind mice on their side.

They've got the whole university elite.

They've got, you know, 4,000 universities and colleges turning out every single June thousands of new recruits for the new Democratic Party.

They've got 8 million people who just fled into the country who are going to be recruits, not for the old Democratic Party of JFK or Bill Clinton even.

These are the new Democratic Party, the Democratic Socialists.

And so, yeah, why would they ever vote anything that was fair to Israel?

They can't stand Israel.

They hate Israel and they hate Jews.

And again, if you think that that's unfair,

when you were walking across the campus at UCLA and you saw the pinetta and they were hitting a picture of the Jewish prime minister, they didn't say, beat the effing Israeli.

They said beat the effing Jew.

When that Stanford professor said, you people go on the other side of the room, you Jews, he didn't say, I want to ask you Jews something.

Are there any of you who support Israel and are there any of you who do not support?

Those who don't support Israel can come with us.

And your, no, he didn't say that.

He just assumed.

It's the kids in the Cooper Union Library that were trapped.

When the

editor of the Harvard Review, when he went out and pushed a Jewish kid, he didn't say, before I push you, I got to find out how you feel about Israel.

And when they, believe me, when they say from the river to the sea and they talk about the new superstate,

if you read their literature very carefully, they talk about liberating the 21% of Arabs.

They don't mean wiping them out.

They're Israelis, but they're not Jews.

So this is the biggest joke of all time

that they can't even say that there's anti-Semitism.

Alan Gershowitz has been on Fox a couple of times and he rants and raves and he's quite correct in doing so.

about the myth of Islamophobia.

There's always going to be some crazy people that are anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim, and they should be dealt with harshly.

But the very idea that there's, as Corinne Jean-Pierre did, remember when they asked her, what are you doing about this anti-Semitism?

She said,

we're not aware of it.

But you know what?

Islamophobia, and when you look at the

FBI statistics, just don't, I think they're number 11 and targeted groups.

And Jews are number one.

They're 2.5 million, 2.3 million, and they're 60%,

55 to 60% of all hate crime victims.

And yet Corinne Jean-Pierre is going to equate the two or even say Islamophobia is a bigger problem.

You mentioned before, Victor, we've mentioned the Council on American Islamic Relations.

They were, they're part of this whole Biden administration Islamophobia BS.

And weirdly, they were brought.

into some kind of brainstorming BS within the administration to target anti-Semitism.

I know it.

I think there's also going to be a big change.

When you have a lot of these liberal left-wing Jewish groups, like the Anti-Defamation League,

and you look what the pressure was put on them, they have been into the DEI and the coalition of the left

with CARE and all these people.

And there's been a lot of those groups.

I won't name them all, but I think after this, they've lost all their credibility because they have told the Jewish community, we are here to stop anti-Semitism and the way we're going to stop it is be so friendly and so acquainted and so absorbed by the democratic socialist and as part of a large you know rainbow coalition and therefore we can persuade them we can romance them we can massage them and they will will be far more effective than the right-wing Jewish groups who will just say don't trust them they hate Jews

the verdict's in the verdict is in and we know what who won and who lost on that argument.

Yeah.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, but sometimes the enemy of my enemy is also your enemy.

And I think that's the realization that

I don't know why it's finally come to be.

It should have been

there for decades,

given, as you mentioned before, some of the

leftists say just Jesse Jackson, those leaders,

they've hated Jews for decades.

This is a surprise to anybody?

There's a sea change.

And I've spoken at a number of

venues

in my last semester of public speaking.

And at the Epoch Times was a wonderful audience.

Dennis Krager has a wonderful group.

I spoke to Michael Finch's Horowitz group, wonderful group of people.

And they are center-right.

Okay.

But among them, there are many Jewish liberals, right,

who have

been, as you say, shocked, right, by what's transpired.

And after these talks, they are the ones who were more prominent in coming up to me and wanting to talk.

I won't mention which of the three venues, but one Jewish American guy came up to me and he

really liked him, but he looked so dumbfounded in the sense of this, that he couldn't believe this stuff was coming from the left, the squad, these resolutions.

They wouldn't even condemn it.

And it was very tragic.

He said to me,

and

the IDF hadn't responded yet, Mr.

Hansen.

And they were already cheering him on.

They were cheering on massacres.

And

these were people.

And then

one of the venues, the staffers, the staffers of the present United States are in rebellion.

Yes,

yes, yes.

The left, the whole woke DI coalition is based on, in part,

anti-Semitism.

They hate Jews because they, as I said, they think they're white oppressors and they have grown up with it in those cultures.

It's okay to hate Jews.

Just read the Hadith and all this about the Jew behind the bush.

They're taught to hate Jews in the Middle East from the day they're born.

And they don't surrender that when they come over here.

Read what Ayan Ali says, Hersey Ali.

She talks about growing up and being indoctrinated to hate Jews.

And that's just the way it is.

And the Democratic Party is not going to stop it.

If you go look at the Laraza of all groups, Laraza, it's got a very strong anti-Semitic foundation to it.

Really?

Yeah.

And you look at, you go look at, go look at the people

who are most adamant against Israel in the Democratic Party.

And if you make the argument that a DIE Latino, black, trans,

whatever component makes up about 24, 23% of the population, 25,

you will see that

the number of people who would not sign that resolution, who are members of the Latino or black caucus,

are much higher than their demographics.

And that's something that we just don't talk about.

DEI is one of the engines that drives anti-Semitism and the Democratic Party.

So you're asking me, well, how can you be in the Democratic Party and not condemn anti-Semitism?

Because you're thinking, hmm.

Well, if you're just an old-fashioned Democrat who's trying to keep, you know, wear bell bottoms and wirem glasses and wear your hair long like you're in the 60s to be cool with a new Democratic Party, you're going to be primaried where you like it or not if you're in a left-wing district.

And so you're afraid.

And you have to, you know, keep quiet about what the squad is up to.

They all have a record of anti-Semitism in the squad, all of them.

It's only the Benjamin's baby.

I have a map in my office that Israel's not on it.

Ian Olmar is an anti-Semite from the word go.

Everybody knows that.

And so

it's just the way it is.

And when I was talking to this person, he was very upset.

And he wanted to tell me that

Netanyahu had caused it all or Donald Trump had caused it all.

When you say, you know what, Donald Trump,

he didn't, he named the Houthis terrorists.

He got out of the Iran deal.

He put sanctions on Iran.

He moved the embassy.

reified Israeli control over Golden Heights.

I just named him off like Woody Woodpecker.

And

he didn't know what to say.

Yeah.

Because he knew it.

It's very hard.

I guess it would be as if

you have to change your whole political ideology or you discover.

I guess it's like somebody's been married 40 years and discovers that

your spouse has been cheating on you for, you know what I mean?

Right.

You're married to the Democratic Party and you didn't really, you were, just didn't, you were clueless at the whole time.

It was pro,

it was had a romance with Hamas.

Yeah, you were clueless, even though the evidence was there right in front of you.

Yes, it was there if you wanted to look at it, yeah.

Well, Victor, we have time for

a quick one last uh topic, and that's uh the new issue of Strategica, and we'll get to that right after this final important message.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

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That will be available in May of 2024.

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Thanks for those of you who have signed up.

Victor, Strategica is the online journal that you edit, oversee.

You are the publisher.

You're the overlord of this wonderful entity that comes out.

several times a year from Hoover.

There's a new issue just out.

It's on proxy wars, and there are a few pieces in there.

I think the lead piece is by Bing West.

I love Bing.

He's come on a few national review cruises.

He's such a great guy.

His piece is the peril of Ukrainian attacks against nuclear Russia.

Actually, there's a question mark on it.

The perils of.

And let me just read this quickly.

And Victor, then have your say about whatever.

Victor, excuse me, Bing ends his essay.

He says, Ukraine is fighting with all its might against a hulking brute openly challenging the resolve of the United States and its NATO-European partners.

Ukraine deserves the victory of driving Russia from its territory.

For its bravery and sacrifice, Ukraine merits fulsome aid, including tens of thousands of inexpensive long-range drones and missiles to strike targets inside Russia.

It is perilous.

not to provide Ukraine with the weapons to fight as hard as it can.

First target, putin' staca

uh well you know that's a position that's a position a lot of people hold and it's a position a lot of people don't hold anyway victor this is what bing has written there were other pieces in this issue your thoughts about what bing has written and anything else you want to say about the new issue of strategica yeah we're going to have a whole session on proxy wars uh

in about

three and a half months at who we're that we're i'm going to chair and it's going to talk it's going to start about the idea in the the historical context of the Peloponnesian War, the Sicilian expedition where Sparta and Athens used the war in Sicily to gain advantage.

Or we're going to look at modern proxies in the Middle East during the Cold War.

We're going to look at also Ukraine.

And so we, when I

envision this issue of Strategica, you know, I...

Hoover is center right, but we have people that I've asked to be in the group that are rabid Donald Trump haters, and that doesn't bother me.

And I have people in there that are pro rabid pro-Trump.

I have neocons, paleocons, national cons,

you name it.

So in this particular issue, I disagree with Bing West, but I have the utmost respect for him.

So he wrote On this issue, I disagree with him.

I don't mean, I usually do not disagree with him, but in this issue, he was trying to suggest that Russia was

trying to get out of the mess that it got into by now and then threatening the use of nuclear weapons.

And they do, Putin.

But he says, A,

a lot of people have done this in history.

China was threatened by the UK in 1961.

Israel's threatened to use them.

Iran is threatened even when they didn't have them.

The United States has threatened them in the Korean War.

Nobody ever uses them.

That's his argument.

And if they did, there's no practical you useful use of a tactical nuclear weapon what would be the point it would just pollute the area you wanted to occupy or it would it would be overkill etc so that was his argument and then uh

there's we have a very former military um

guy who specialists in the navy jerry hendricks and he wrote uh

basically that the same thing, but from a different point of view, that

Russia is losing.

And if we will fully fund Ukraine

and not back down, Ukraine has an avenue to stop it, and it won't lead to an existential war.

And then I had a third person, Chris Gibson.

He was a colonel and he was a Hoover fellow years ago.

And when I was embedded in Iraq, He actually flew all the way.

He was on assignment, so it wasn't a special trip, but he flew all the way to a town that I visited.

So I saw him in Iraq as well.

And he was a congressman, a three-term Congressman.

You know him, I think, in your area of the woods,

upstate New York congressman.

And he,

Republican, very good Republican.

He was a college president, too.

Was it Sienna College?

I can't remember.

He was president of the college.

But

I wanted to have a balance.

So his point was

don't push it.

In other words, support

Ukraine to protect itself.

But the idea that they're going to get back the Crimea and Donbass

would require a level of military superiority they don't have and would require strategically, classical strategic logic and analysis, they would have to go into Russia and they would have to hit supply depots, oil, more ships on the Black Sea, the Kremlin.

And Putin is not stupid.

He's a dictator, and he will not remain in power if that goes unanswered.

So when he says that he's capable of using a nuclear weapon, he's capable of anything.

And the same people who said he won't use it are also the people who said he will never go into Georgia.

He'll never go into Ukraine.

He'll never go into Donbass.

He'll never try to take Kiev.

And they've been wrong.

So there's a wide variety.

We have a sort of a middle SI by Jerry Hendricks, and we have

we can still win the war in Ukraine if we give what Ukraine needs and let them be unleashed and don't worry about nuclear threats from

empty threats from Vladimir Putin.

And then we have be very careful what you're doing because this is the first time on the European frontier you're engaging your two

nuclear powers, the two greatest nuclear powers in the world are going to face off against each other.

And since that came out, or like doing the

rollout of that issue, Jack, we've had, as you know,

we've had Lloyd Austin and some people in the Biden administration say, you better vote for the Ukraine on limited package.

If you don't, your kids are going to be over there.

I know Tucker picked that up and they attacked him for pointing, and he was right about that.

They said, well, there was a context.

Well, the only context was

if he wins in Ukraine, then he's going to attack Poland or another NATO, and then we're going to have to, we're obligated, and we'll have our kids over there.

And so

it's getting to the nitty-gritty in Ukraine is what I'm saying.

But I think the three essays cover the entire spectrum of whether there is a danger or not of escalating to a tactical nuclear weapon use by Russia.

And he had a good point.

Chris Gibson also points out that the Russian economy is not as damaged as everybody said it was going to be.

Right, right.

Yeah, Biden was going to crush it, right?

Yeah, it's only dropped 2%.

And I think by next year, it's supposed to have positive GDP growth.

It's selling oil like crazy at a discount.

Putin is over now where talking with the Saudis.

How did that happen?

That was when Joe Biden, remember when he...

He said that Saudi Arabia is corrupt and he wouldn't be meeting with him when he was a candidate.

He bragged about that.

That didn't last long.

And Russia is making the rounds.

They're talking to India and the Gulf golf people.

I thought everybody was ostracizing them.

And before we say, well, people are amoral, no, it's partly a little bit, a lot of it's that they're amoral, but partly it's us.

People do not want to be hectored and lectured by a woke, weak country.

They'll be lectured by a woke, strong country, and they'll be lectured by a strong, not woke country, but they will not be lectured about their cultural depravity or the fact they don't have a pride flag flying or they don't understand endemic racism or dei or esg

and be weak and that's what they've sized up this this administration it gives long windy moralistic lectures from top down talks down to different countries but they can't count on them and so they think you know what i'll do

absolutely

uh

enemies like Iran and smacks its allies like Israel and pulls out of Afghanistan.

I mean, just like

the Saudis.

What's the trustworthiness there?

The last three years, the Saudis have been on the phone.

I know they have.

That's how they think.

They've been on the phone with this administration and said, look,

we're scared of the Iranians more than you are.

And we think they're a lot more evil than you do, but we've got to oppose them.

But I'm not going to get out there and say anything or do anything unless I know you have my back.

Are you or are you not pro-moderate Arab Sunni?

Are you pro-theocratic radical Shia Iran?

Tell me, I want to know.

And so they got the answer, and they don't trust us.

So they're going to make the necessary negotiations and conditions and adjustments with Iran and China and Russia.

And one of the sad, tragic aspects of the Ukrainian war is that, and the pullout from Afghanistan, and the Chinese muscularity about the balloon and COVID and threats to Taiwan, is that we have a new coalition, and it's pretty big.

It's Russia and China

and Iran, of course, lunatic North Korea and the communist countries in Latin America.

And unfortunately,

the wolves and sheep clothing like gutter and turkey.

And they do not like us.

And they're working as hard as they can to, from the inside and the outside, to weaken us.

And they look at Joe Biden and they have nothing but contempt for this country.

And we've got to make them, we've got to say, if you're a friend, we're going to be no better friend.

If you're an enemy, we're going to be no worse enemy.

You understand?

There's no worse enemy than getting on the wrong side of us.

And there's no better thing to be.

And we should be telling the Taiwanese and the Australian, the South Korean, the Japan, the Japanese, the Philippines, we're here.

And don't screw, nobody's going to screw around with you as long as we're on the same page.

And we got to tell the Chinese, do not screw around with the Philippines or Taiwan unless you want us to do something.

We don't have to have 330,000 of your students in our country.

And we don't, yeah, they can all go home if you're going to keep doing this.

So we have a lot of stuff short of war we can do to China.

But if you don't think we're, you know, it's, it's kind of me, I grew up in a really rough high school and

it was for survival.

People had not gangs, but cliques, I think.

And there was one group of people that there was this huge guy.

And I won't mention names because he may be still alive.

I haven't seen him in 40 years, but he

acted really tough.

And then he said, don't screw around, but he never did anything, right?

Right.

And so

everybody would say, you better watch out or Johnny's going to get you.

Nobody said, screw Johnny.

I'm not scared of him.

And Johnny could have destroyed anybody, right?

But he just, he didn't want to do anything.

So he acted like he was going to help these kids and he didn't do anything.

And then there's another group, you know, we.

We actually had the word mad dog before Maddis got it.

And there was a guy named Mad Dog, and he was crazy, very skinny, one of those skinny guys you go to high school with and their arms are just bones and flesh, and somehow they're like steel, like Swiggle Gollum out of the Lord of the Ring.

He looks just like Swiggle Gollum.

But if he got on your back and he got his hands on your throat, he'd kill you.

And he's nuts.

And all his little group, everybody said, don't screw around with Matt Dog, man.

I know you think he's nutty, but he's crazy.

Keep away from him.

Yeah.

That's how I learned that very, that's how I learned about deterrence.

Nothing earns greater contempt for a very powerful country

not to protect its friends.

And nothing gives greater fear

or even respect than a not so powerful country that punches above its weight and is willing to help its friend to all of its ability and is unpredictable and crazy.

And the United States used to be,

you know, very dependable, and it hasn't been for a long time.

Yeah.

No environment being friendly to us.

There's no advantage being,

there's no advantage at all being an ally of the United States, but there's a lot of advantages being an enemy, apparently, because we're gaining and increasing them and growing them every year over the last three years.

Mexico used to be a friend.

You remember Donald Trump?

Obador, for all his commie socialist sloganeering and anti-Americanism when Trump said,

I think it's time to renegotiate NAFTA.

And I think you should have catch and release down there.

And maybe we should even look at taxing.

And then all of a sudden,

Obador thought we were pretty good.

We had no problem.

Remember, he had troops on the border at the end, the last year that Trump was in office.

He was trying to patrol the border.

And then we had Joe Biden came in and said, oh, you know.

I'm a leftist.

He's a leftist.

He'll like me a lot better than he did Trump.

I'll let in 8 million people.

And then when it got out of hand, you know, Mr.

Obador, please, please, please, would you mind just maybe sort of kind of toning it down a little bit?

No, screw you.

I'll help you off the stage.

You can't walk.

That's the way he

acted.

No, it's true.

I know.

Well, gosh almighty, this is going to be cleaning out the stables

for a decade if we

can win next year.

This nation cannot endure another four years of this.

Yeah, we can no longer endure it.

You've

been

wonderful.

As usual, at the end of these shows, we do thank our listeners.

Thank you, listeners, for listening.

Thanks to those who

through iTunes and Apple rate the show.

You can do that zero to five stars.

You have a Victor has a 4.9 plus

ranking from

I don't know 6,000, 7,000

folks so far.

Many people leave comments.

And here is one from Sally Rowan, who writes, Victor Hansen shares his incredible mind.

Never miss a podcast.

I look to Victor to help

dissect our world.

In these dark times, we need a non-political view.

And Victor, with his wit, breaks it all down for me.

Sally, you witty guy.

I never knew I had it.

You know what?

I don't,

I'm known as ER in my house.

And I've had people, my mother said, Victor, you may go far in life, but you could have gone farther if you smile.

Please smile.

I just got a note from a guy.

I did a picture at Prager, and he wrote me a little note and said, you have a why aren't you smiling?

And so I, I, the idea that I'm witty or cheerful, I mean, that's such a compliment.

I really oh, you know, sometimes when you, when you make fun of people and you, put on a voice, I think that's pretty, pretty damn funny.

And I must say,

I think I mentioned this before, my mother, my

God bless her, she's 90 plus.

And sometimes she stays up late, which on the East Coast means seven o'clock.

And if you're in the A block of Fox, which I guess is Laura Ingram's show, occasionally, and my mother will still be up watching.

And when she sees you, it puts a smile on her face because you remind, well,

you remind her of her father

and and in a way you do my grandfather but uh

look victor i've been with i've been with people i've been with you i've been in hotel lobbies and see these people starting to circle the huge smiles on their face to see you and you've been you're always so kind to i'm nice to i am nice to uh what was that was that out from a

was that a street card name is that i'm always nice i've always been nice to strangers oh uh the kindness of strangers.

Yes.

I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.

I've always depended on the, when I'm low at the airport, from another misconnection or something, and then somebody comes up and goes, could I just say a word to you?

I said, yes, please do.

Well, anyway, anyway.

All right, my friend.

Well, thanks for everything today, folks.

Thanks for listening.

Check out VictorHanson.com.

Go to civilthoughts.com, sign up for that.

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

Thanks and bye-bye.

Thank you again for listening, everyone.