Iran's Interests Doomed and Republican Primaries Loom

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Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, the star, and the namesake.

That is Victor Davis-Hansen, the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

Victor is a best-selling author, a syndicated columnist, a farmer, a military historian, a philologist.

I hope I said that right, Victor.

And he's got a website, The Blade of Perseus.

You'll find that at victorhanson.com.

I'll tell you a little more about that later in the podcast.

Speaking of syndicated columns, one of Victor's recent ones is, Does Iran Realize its own growing danger?

And that is the first topic we're going to talk about on today's episode.

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

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

Hello, my friend.

So yeah, you have, you've written a column.

Did you know that, Victor?

You wrote a column.

Does Iran realize its own growing danger?

I think it's a very important.

important column.

I heard you talk about it a little bit last week.

You were on Megan Kelly's podcast, but why don't you share

your,

you know,

your thoughts that Iran is maybe a little weaker than we make it out to be?

I may, that may be the wrong word, but you can set me straight.

Yeah, I want to say one thing, though.

I said on a podcast, and I always try to correct misapprehensions, that I was on a flight.

I didn't mention the date.

I didn't mention the flight number.

I didn't mention anything other than the city where we pulled up suddenly, and it really caused a lot of disruption.

And

everybody in my area said we were in the pathway or there was

a plane that was not going to be, that shouldn't have been there.

That's what we were told.

And a pilot wrote, apparently, Jack, as you sent to me, that it was turbulence, but I'm not sure that's the same flight as the one that I was on.

Okay.

Because there was no turbulence.

It was beautiful.

And on the approach into that city and the departure from that city, there was no turbulence.

So I don't think that pilot,

and I remember distinctly someone saying that in

the cockpit, there was a plane that shouldn't be there, or something to that effect.

Or people at least were told that by some of the staff.

So I don't think it's the same flight.

But if it was,

I'm,

and the pilot thinks it was, then maybe I'm sorry because he said that I was hypercritical of pilots.

I don't think I have been hypercritical pilots.

My problem is

the existing pilots are very good.

I'm just worried about

practices with the air traffic controllers and I think the new generation of pilots that are not merucratic in the fashion they have been in the past.

And I think that's clear.

And I don't mean that in a mean way.

I'm just saying that on media and news reports,

the FAA

is adopting practices for air traffic controllers that are diversity, equity, and inclusion

focused rather than past strict merocratic.

That's my take on them.

And the other thing is,

when United Airlines announces that it's going to have a diversity,

half its pilot training programs will be devoted to DEI considerations.

And I just assume that that's going to have an effect on the meritocracy because that would mean that they're going to use criteria other than either

prior pilot experience or pilot

performance or achievement on test.

And so I think

I'm not really criticizing the current, when I said that we

were ready to land and then suddenly yanked up and then we went kind of hard right,

I don't think the pilot was talking about the same flight because if he was, he should have looked at the faces and the expressions of people on that flight and they were terrified and things started to, you know.

it was really scary.

And it wasn't just turbulence, especially as we had no turbulence coming in and we had no turbulence going out.

I do.

Okay, Victor, two things.

One, I just want to say, I wasn't going to talk about that, but

the person that wrote that did also say that huge fans of yours, regardless, they gave you five stars.

But then the other thing, though, is you're dead right about the impact of DEI on these kind of

important,

let's call it a public service or public utilities.

And quite a while ago, we talked about Helen Andrews, who's the editor of American Conservative, and she did a piece about,

I think it was for Claremont Review of Books, about South Africa and

where, believe it or not, the DEI in practice

has been going on much longer than in America and how that has impacted the basic utility, electricity,

water.

I mean, everything,

your life is at risk for.

Well, I can tell you, Jack, the same thing is true.

PG ⁇ E has declared bankruptcy.

And

if you look at how PG ⁇ E functioned 40 years ago in California

and compare it to how it does now,

it's not the same organization.

And I don't think they're hiring specifically on the basis of prior experience with electrical utilities or natural gas or on standardized tests or whatever it is.

They are using criteria that they never would have dreamed of in the past.

Because when you deal with PGE representatives, it's a very different experience than you did 30 years ago.

And it's not anything to do with race, or it's just the quality of knowledge and the extent of knowledge of the person you're trying to deal with.

And for our listeners, PGE is Pacific Gas.

Pacific gas and electric.

And I have been dealing with them on a number of issues for the last 20 years.

And that can consist of of hooking up solar panels to the PGE grid

or getting a new service or you name it.

And it's not, or dealing with them when they come out to inspect things.

And it's not the same experience.

And it's not about the people out on the poles, believe me.

They're still as brave and courageous and knowledgeable in the past.

It's about the hierarchy.

And I think the same is true.

I think the reader,

again, I don't think it was the flight because mere turbulence didn't cause that type of disruption.

And people were really

scared about it.

And we were just about ready to land.

But nevertheless,

I think everybody who,

in the conversations as we went in a huge loop around for about 15 minutes, the conversation was

that the air traffic control is not as reliable as it had been.

And that's not the only time that, you know, because I'm going to retire in January from flying and speaking, but I've had a number of those incidents.

I had one in Los Angeles two years ago when

we hit the ground with our wheels and we went up.

And it was very foggy and it was very scary.

And we've had other ones.

I've had about two of those.

And I've been on a private airplane where the control instructions were not what the pilot was expecting.

So I just think there's an impression that there's too many planes in the air, there's too much, too close margins of errors, that the whole infrastructure from the baggage handling to the directing of planes on the tarmac to the instructions that come from the air traffic controllers to the FF.

FAA itself

have broken down.

And that the only thing that is saving us from mass air disasters are A, the quality of the pilots, especially those over 30 years of age,

and the automated systems in these planes now that are much more sophisticated and much more,

they travel much more safely than 40 or 50 years ago.

And that's all.

I mean, Pete Boudigej is not to get credit?

No, he gets no credit.

I'm sorry, Mayor Pete doesn't.

He's been very quiet lately.

He's not been lecturing us about racist clover leafs on our highway systems, or

he's not been scared to go to East Palestine or whatever his problem is.

Well,

okay, Victor, you wrote this, I think, very important column.

Does Iran Realize Its Own Growing Danger?

And part of what you write is it's got reasons to be giddy, but

there's something lurking or maybe almost here that

country needs to be honest about.

Tell us about this column.

Well, I think everybody realizes that Iran feels that it is in ascendance.

That's the common view.

And what would that be based on?

So let's go down the list, everybody.

One, it feels it has a special relationship with Russia because it's supplying them in its war with Ukraine with pretty sophisticated drones.

And by the way, I think some of that technology originated with our drones.

Remember, Jack, that crashed in Iran during the Obama administration, which he refused to bomb and destroy.

And yet

elements of that technology reportedly appeared in later drones manufactured by Iran.

They feel they have a special relationship with China because China

has two interests in the Middle East.

A, safe sea lanes and therefore easy access to a great deal that's imported oil and anything that hurts the United States.

Therefore,

they have got reportedly, and I can't find an exact figure depending on the volatile price of oil, but since the 2021 relief of sanctions by the Biden administration, they apparently have gotten anywhere from $30 to $60 to $80 billion in revenues they otherwise would not have had.

They had a lot of money transferred to the Obama administration.

Before

the expected $6 billion, there was, I think, a billion dollars in sanctions relief released.

So they're giddy about that.

They're giddy that their surrogate, Hamas, has been supplied with.

And when you saw those killers, you noticed what was unusual.

They had body armor, they had sophisticated cameras on their helmets.

They look Western almost, at least in their appurtenances.

That came from Iran.

And the old days of a homemade rocket that looked like a fireworks that you light, you know, and you had no idea.

Those have been replaced by sophisticated GPS guided, in many cases, not all, but many rockets.

And then, of course, the sheer magnitude of Hamas, of Hezbollah's arsenal, and then the

sympathy shown in the Middle East for Hamas and Hezbollah by extension, the the glee about the killing of the Jews, and then the devilish delight that Robert Malley, a pro-Iranian activist,

was the point man on our

bewildering beseeching of Iran to get back at the Iran deal, plus this latest news that we have somebody in the special operations division of the Pentagon who has supposedly had efforts to implant more pro-Iranians within the highest echelons of the U.S.

government.

And you put all that together, and that explains why they're boasting about they're going to do this and they're going to do that.

But what I was trying to be contrarian and unorthodox is saying, if you just look at not what people say,

but dispassionately, let's go back and re-examine those arguments for confidence on the part of Iran very quickly.

Do they really believe that Russia is going to intervene to help them?

Russia that leveled Muslim Chechnya, Russia that is being bled white in Ukraine, Russia that is ostracized, it's going to take on a whole nother theater of operations.

It's already got situations in Syria.

And remember, there was a reason why prior to the Ukraine in war, Russia had an agreement with Israel that if they were attacked by Hezbollah and they wanted to retaliate, Russian pilots based in Assad, Syria would not intervene.

So I don't think that's reason for optimism.

And as far as China goes, China's got a million Muslims in a camp, camps, the Uyghurs, and they don't care about anything other than avoiding a theater-wide war that would disrupt oil for them.

They don't want high oil prices.

Russia does, they don't.

And then when you look at the usual deterrence

on activity that would be anti-Iranian, I don't see it.

For the first time in my life, the United States will not be able, unless it really, really, really wants to do something it's never done quite before, although it got close in the Young Kipper War.

It's going to say to Israel, we're going to cut off all your aid if you do this.

I don't think that's going to happen.

Not after the brutal

murdering and savage butchery of 1,400 Israelis.

So there is no restraint on Israel.

What does that mean?

That means if Hezbollah

goes and starts, goes into Israel or starts to rocket it in great numbers, there's nobody going to say, don't do that.

They're going to say, you started it, and what happened in 2006 in Beirut may be small potatoes to what the response is going to be.

And by the way,

we may start to blame Iran.

And for the first time in my life, there are ships in the eastern Mediterranean if people in Yemen or people in Hezbollah decide.

And there's a lot of actors there that maybe can't even be controlled.

And we have a president that I don't think is

going to do much, but even he is going to be led by rather than leading events.

So if they were to attack Hezbollah, let's say puts a hole in the Eisenhower,

I think and that rocket came from Iran, I'm pretty sure that

we would say that's a violation of the old proxy war during the Cold War, that neither Russia nor us nor any other third party when in a proxy war attacks the supplier.

That's why I think it's very important that Ukraine does not go into Russia and attack Russia with our weapons.

And by the same token,

if we are attacked by Hezbollah

and it is supplied by Iran, then the logic of the Cuban missile crisis will apply.

That Russia is culpable for supplying missiles to Cuba that are pointed at us.

And that will be the same thing.

And there's no restraint is my point that I can see on anybody who wants to retaliate for aggression on the part of Iran.

And this comes especially after

Iran has been bragging about the deaths of the Jewish civilians and especially

after the outrage about the $6 billion that may go to Iran.

So I don't think there's anybody in Europe.

I don't think there's anybody in the United States.

And, you know, to be frank, as I wrote, I don't think there's anybody in the Middle East other than these terrorist groups that would call up

an Arab summit, call an Arab summit and say, we have to attack Europe and the United States because they hit Iran.

I think in that

we're starting to see

information come out that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, before he passed away, was telling us

that he wanted the United States to take out Iran.

And there are all these stories circulating when you talk to Israeli officials that on numerous occasions, the Saudis and the Kuwaitis said, if you want our airspace to facilitate a preemptive strike on the nuclear facilities in Iran, go ahead and please use them with a caveat, we, of course, publicly will have to denounce you.

But so I guess what the summation of all that is, I don't see any traditional goodwill that you usually see toward Iran.

The whole Obama-Biden, we're going to put Robert Malley, we're going to stock the State Department, the Pentagon with pro-Iran.

I think that's

the answer to that is to be found in the mass killing in Israel.

People are sick of Iran.

It's the most despised country in the world.

The Europeans don't like it.

We don't like them.

The Chinese and Russians, if it was attacked tomorrow, would say, ah, well,

most Iranians don't like it.

Most Iranians don't like it.

The only people people in the world that liked Iran was the Obama-Biden nexus.

Right.

A million Iranians went out there and protest, and

Obama was disappointed.

He thought, oh, my God, they're a bunch of neoconservative Iranians.

I don't want a democracy builder in Iran.

Not when I got a whole architecture planned out for me dealing, and only me being Barack Hussein Obama, only me with my unique lineage and gifts can create a good deal with the theocrats.

What a truly, truly awful president we have there.

Victor, you know, we have not talked or gotten your,

at least with me, and I don't think with Sammy lately, because you've been doing with Sammy a tremendous amount of great analysis of the Middle East.

But we need to talk a little bit about American presidential politics.

And let's get your thoughts on what's happening in the GOP

right after

these important messages.

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

Before, Victor,

I'll give you two or three topics we hope you can

address

on American politics.

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So, Victor,

here's a headline, and let's play off of this.

I'm curious if it's time for Mike Pence to bow out of the primary, the Daily Mail the other day, and we are recording on Sunday, the 22nd.

So this headline was either Friday or Saturday.

Mike Pence's 2024 campaign hits the rocks.

Former VP is attracting meager crowds of a few dozen in Iowa and has just...

1.2 million in cash reserves.

So Victor, your thoughts about that, should Mike Pence bow out?

And any other thoughts about the dynamics of

the Republican primary, which, you know, we are approaching.

we are approaching the primaries of caucuses.

I think they're just over the horizon now.

There'll be some harbingers of, I know we have the upcoming elections in Virginia and Kentucky, so they may be harbingers for things to come.

But,

and I'll shut up in a second, Victor, because I know I'll make many of our listeners happy by me shutting up.

But all this is happening while Donald Trump is

continuing to avoid participating in debates and while he's

on trial.

Your thoughts?

Well, Mike Pence, I've always liked Mike Pence.

I think that he had a problem, though, because

he was put in an impossible situation as vice president, and

he did very well.

He was very loyal to Donald Trump.

He was on the mega agenda.

And then on the January 6th,

he

did not follow Trump's order, advice, suggest, however, we don't know quite what it was to

suspend or delay the ratification of the Electoral College until you could sort out which particular delegation was more authentic.

That's putting a nice spin on it.

So

when he ran for president,

What is he going to run on, Jack?

Is he going to run on his four years of fervent and

enthusiastic support for the president and the agenda or his disagreement on that last

January 6th moment?

And he made the decision to distinguish himself from the other MAGA candidates and Donald Trump, that that decision that he said no

was of such

tantamount importance that it nullified all of the other stuff he'd done for four years.

And that was a really hard sell to make.

It really was.

So

he ran a campaign on: I'm the principled Republican conservative that stood up to Donald Trump.

But there was also another difficulty in that is the more we learn about the January 6th

buffoonish riot, the more we see the asymmetrical treatment accorded to those people in two cases.

A,

in the 120 days as we've kind of harangued ad nauseum in 2020, were those people who did far greater damage, $2 billion in property, 35 deaths, 1,500 police officers, et cetera, torching this, torching that, were almost let off with nothing.

And then more recently, Jack,

the Rashida Talib

megaphoning of that mob that went in to the rotunda, the same place,

and sat down and occupied it.

And then there were Palestinian disruptions of actual sessions of Congress in subcommittees.

So the question was,

a person probably thought, well, Mr.

Pence, are you going to talk about that?

Because January 6th may have been bad, but these people are doing the same thing.

And when Donald Trump said, please assemble over at the...

at the Capitol and demonstrate forcefully or peacefully, but peacefully, she didn't even do that.

She just egged on a mob that took over the Congress.

Are they all going to face felonious futures?

So he had a problem with that.

And then he was trying to run.

And I don't blame him.

He's trying to distinguish himself from the other candidates.

It was kind of, I'm the only person on this stage that supports unlimited help.

to Ukraine, and I'm an internationalist, and these are blinkered isolationists.

But that was a little hard, Jack, because they weren't blinkered isolationists.

They were, don't tread on me, no better friend, no worse enemy, Jacksonians.

And by that, I mean, I'm not going to put anybody in nation building on the ground in the Middle East, but you screw with me, then I will bomb the shit out of ISIS, excuse me, and I will kill Soleimani, and I'll tell North Korea, you point another missile at us and you're going to regret it.

And that's not disengagement.

Or I'm going to go over there and tell NATO, you're in a bad situation.

You freed load off us and you're doing this pipeline deal, Nordstrom 2, and you're right next.

You better spend $100 million, $100 billion

more on GDP and meet your promise.

That's not isolationism, what Trump did.

So that was a weak argument.

And then he didn't have the money.

And then

the other thing, very briefly, was he had a...

He had a persona of graciousness, you know what I mean?

And understated Mike Pence, a guy who was very effective, who didn't blow his own horn, polite.

And that was why he was successful as a counterpoint to Trump.

But he gets on the stage, and I think on the first debate, correct me if I'm wrong, he had the most minutes of any other candidate.

He interrupted, he blustered, he kept referring to himself as a guy who saved democracy on January 6th.

He kind of in a very intrusive manner mentioned his evangelical beliefs.

And it wasn't the Mike Pence that everybody knew.

So that

was going to lead nowhere, and nowhere is where it led.

And then, as far as the other candidates, I think we should all agree that

the presidential race is starting to, on the Republican side, is looking like the mess on the Speaker.

That is, with all this chaos and confusion, people don't know how outsiders, especially independents, look at this.

And just as in the Speaker, we have

the die-hard MA people stopped or got rid of McCarthy on this insane new idea that one person can bring up a vote.

And then the Rhinos got angry at the MAGA people, so stop

Jim Jordan because they stopped McCarthy and Scalise.

And now they don't know what to do.

And

Hakeem Jeffries is pontificating about, you know, this is typical of Republicans.

So we look at the Republican race for relief, and what we would expect is five or six really strong candidates and Donald Trump there doing as well as he did in the prior 2006.

And we don't see it.

What do we see instead?

We see every single day, just as you and I have talked on this broadcast, that these crazy people on the left mean business, that they will give unconstitutional gag orders, unconstitutional

revoke bail, they will confine him to Mar-Lago and they will go to people who work for him, whether it's the Georgia or the New York or the Miami courtroom.

They will say to them, Well,

you're going to face life imprisonment essentially unless you flip.

And they're going to overcharge everybody.

And then they're going to get people to cut a deal for no prison time.

That's already happened.

And

I don't see from the Trump

industry party consortium that they have a strategy yet.

So then that leaves,

do you have a backup strategy, Republicans, if Donald Trump is tied down?

And when you look at that field, I don't think they do because there's so many candidates that we're not getting the one debate everybody wants to hear.

And that is, we want to get the Trump agenda for

another person that's not Trump in case Trump is tied down.

And we want to get the old Republican agenda.

And I think you could get that debate in a very effective fashion between DeSantis and Haley, but not when you've got Tim Scott, and not when you've got the human torpedo, Chris Christie, and not when you've got Bergham, and not when you've got Ramaswamy, and all this chaos.

So, and no Trump on the stage.

No Trump on the stage.

So I'm just worried that there has never been a more opportune chance for conservatives to regain power over this country and to stop this mindless, destructive, nihilist, socialist revolution in its tracks.

You can do it by taking the Senate and the White House, and you're in a perfect position to do it, but not when when you commit collective suicide in the House over a speaker, and not when your leading candidate is facing enormous legal jeopardy and will not debate.

And then you have a whole group of candidates that have zero chance based on polls and the last year of campaigning and fundraising to be the nominee.

And the two people on the stage, I think the only two people that represent different views is DeSantis and Haley.

And they've already clashed on whether you should let people in from Gaza or not.

And they will clash on other issues like abortion.

And they will clash perhaps a little bit on the border, even though I think most people will support the nominee whomever he or she is.

And I think that's the most important thing that every one of these candidates says, I will support the nominee when I lose.

And that's what I, it's really depressing because

I would like Donald Trump to go out and it would be in his interest.

He says, well, nobody ever debates unless they're close.

And I've got such a huge lead.

Think about that, Jack, for a minute.

He is saying that I don't want to go on the debate stage because I might say or do something that would hurt my huge lead, but he's tweeting stuff extraneously about, and I understand why he's doing it, because he has the most unconstitutional assault we've ever seen against a candidate.

But he's tweeting things that are getting him negative publicity, such as

fighting or feuding with

Benjamin Netanyahu in the middle of an existential wealth.

Yeah.

Yes.

Really?

Or like what?

Praising, he doesn't mean to praise, but he's saying that Hezbollah's real smart.

Well, you don't don't say that.

You can say it's devilishly, it's

amorally, effectively in its agenda, but you don't say it's real smart, period, because it's too easily interpreted what he really meant.

I know what he really meant, but he didn't say that.

And so why make blunders gratuitously when you're in the middle of a legal moral ass, but you're afraid to get on the stage and you might say something that will blow your lead?

Getting on the stage is going to give him publicity.

And if he's like he was in 2016, he'll increase his lead.

But he won't do that.

So that is kind of the mess that we see with the speaker.

And then

if

Haley and DeSantis would just be given the opportunity as the second and third candidate.

And the rest are not, you know, maybe Ramaswamy's a little bit closer, but the rest have no chance, no chance.

And it's kind of like 2000

i don't know it's kind of like what 2016 with spartacus and elizabeth warren and bernie and julian castro and buttigig

that crazy what was she a novelist or whatever she was

running on that stage of clowns it was

the difference there victor is that when it came time for everyone to fold like cheap suits, they did.

They did, right after the South Carolina.

Yeah, absolutely.

With the Matt Gates

brigade,

not to bring on more opprobrium to this podcast, but your critique of his actions, I was surprised by

the breadth of

people who

glorify him.

I got a lot of email to my personal account, to my website account.

We had comments on the podcast, and my point was your point, which is all sane people.

If you have

seven people

margin,

and

you are right in the middle of a hugely

important agenda to reveal to the world that the current president is corrupt, utterly so,

and we are in all sorts of trouble.

And 95 or 96 percent

of your constituency supports the speaker, and the only people who don't support the speaker are six or seven disaffected Republicans led by somebody who may or may not have a personal agenda against the speaker, and

every single Democrat without exception.

And your position is that you think

Kevin McCarthy is a rhino.

And one of the reasons it confirms that is he talks to the Democrats and you're going to remove him by talking to the Democrats.

It's incoherent.

And then when you do all this, you expect the rhino Republicans that are part, he's not a rhino, he's a conservative Republican, but the rhino Republicans are going to say, well,

we're just going to forget what Matt Gates did,

but we wouldn't want to have seven or eight or nine of us stop

Jim Jordan.

That would be destructive.

Well, no, that's exactly what they did.

They said, see, as children, they said, see, he did it.

So we're going to do it.

And that's where we are.

And it's a mess.

And everybody's looking like this,

looking at this, and they're saying,

why are we committing collective suicide?

Yeah.

And

Mr.

Jeffries on the Democratic side can't open his mouth without a speech about, look at them.

They can't even get a speaker.

We're disciplined.

Yeah, you're disciplined like Trotskyites.

But the Republicans have to get their act together at this primary level.

And I would like to see Donald Trump on the stage.

I'd like to see all the people who are below 4%,

3% off the stage.

And then I would like to see a series of debates between Trump, DeSantis, and Haley.

And if Trump will not debate between Haley and DeSantis, so that both parts, areas, issues, fissures, whatever of the Republican Party can be aired and adjudicated on the stage.

And then I would like somebody in the Republican Party to come out with a brief that says, if Donald Trump is found guilty in Georgia, Washington, New York, Miami, then we're going to do ABCD.

We have researched it, and it's okay for a candidate to be convicted of a felony to run.

It's okay for him to be whatever, just to be...

just to get ready for it.

But this idea, they won't dare do that.

They'll do anything.

They're trying to destroy the leading Republican candidate, as I said, financially, psychologically, physically, materially.

They hate him.

You can have a conversation with any Democrat, and they will be reasonable, at least their tone of voice with, and their disagreement.

You mentioned Donald Trump, and they go hysterical.

And you don't know what those people are capable of.

And to say that you have no plan, and I mean that, Jack, I talk to everybody.

So what's the plan?

And they say, the plan is that

we fight it in court and don't debate.

And I said, and we keep raising money at five and $10 a clip with bombarding your email account with appeals for money.

And

we tweet.

And I said, oh, that's a campaign, huh?

Okay.

Strange New World.

Campaign from a basement, the current occupant of the White House.

Hey, Victor, why do you briefly, and then we're going to move on to some other topics, just back on Trump and Netanyahu.

Is there anything not, but why did he, why did he go after him?

I was kind of.

He went after him because

of a long-term and short-term.

If you're the president

of Israel,

you have no choice to say one word or another about the president of the United States.

Whether you're left-wing Israeli, if you're a left-wing Israeli and Donald Trump is president, you better support Donald Trump to the chagrin of the left in America.

If you're the

president and you're a rightist like Netanyahu and you get stuck with Biden as president, you do not attack Biden.

You praise him because the United States gives you $34 billion of life support.

So you know as President of Israel, that when they send 100,000 rockets at you and your iron dome protective bubble is out,

the only country that has the wherewithal that will and can save you with replacement missiles is in the United States.

And the United States is not the United States of 1980.

It is a country that has suffered massive illegal immigration, huge immigration, the destruction of its universities, and it has a constituency in the Democratic Party that will ensure for the rest of our lives, it will never,

never sound like the party of John Kennedy or even of Bill Clinton, or maybe even of Barack Obama.

It's so far gone.

And you have to deal with that.

So Netanyahu just thanked Biden, and that set Trump off.

Because in Trump's world, he accurately said,

Well, you wouldn't have the Golan Heights unless I took a risk,

and you wouldn't have the embassy in Jerusalem unless I took a risk,

and you wouldn't have the 700 million cut off to the Palestinians unless I took a risk.

That's all true, but you can't say that, Mr.

Trump, and not if you're Netanyahu in a wartime situation and Biden's a president.

And the second thing is that when he took another really daring

move

to take out Suleimani,

then he thought the Israelis would publicly glee in it or engage in it or be a participant in it.

Maybe even with, and they can't do that.

They can give you all, no doubt, they gave you all the surveillance they had.

They gave you everything they can, but they can't go out and say it was Israel because when if and when a rocket barrage comes out of Iran, it won't come to the United States because of what Trump did.

It will come to Israel because of the participation overtly of Israel in the Soleimani assassination.

So, what I'm saying is, Trump should know that.

He knows that.

But in a fit of emotion, he said things like that, and it didn't help him.

A very high-placed Trump

associate wrote me me

about, I think, as a very kind and pleasant reminder of all the things Trump did for Israel vis-a-vis Biden.

And he's absolutely right.

Trump was the best friend Israel ever had.

But all I did was write back

a very carefully worded response to the effect.

And I worry about Trump because there are a lot of disaffected Biden voters who are now looking at Trump.

And maybe if he didn't tweet praise,

I shouldn't say praise.

If he hadn't had an awkward description of Hezbollah or he hadn't criticized Netanyahu, they would be more eagerly in favor of Trump.

I haven't heard back from him.

So

anyway, to

close this segment,

Republicans, pick a speaker immediately.

It should be done by no later than Wednesday of this coming week.

Republicans, get everybody who's serious, and that's three of you, to debate openly.

And let's put pressure on the people who have had a whole year to raise money, to generate enthusiasm, to climb up in the polls out of the race.

And they can endorse either Haley or DeSantis or Trump.

But there's no purpose in crowding that field with six, seven, eight people so that in an hour and a half or two hours, you only get eight or nine minutes from the two people who are likely to be the alternative to Trump.

And Trump needs to get in there himself to refresh everybody's memory about his view on the issues and his debating skill and let them go at it.

And we're not doing that.

And that would divert from his legal trouble.

But

I know the left.

I've known it my entire life.

I've worked with it on campus.

And

boy,

they don't care about the Constitution.

They want to destroy Donald Trump.

And I don't think the people around him have strategies to prevent that, at least vis-a-vis the 2024 election.

Well, Victor,

we should talk about another president, the current one, and all the cash he had to buy the home that has the infamous basement and probably the infamous garage where classified documents are left.

We'll get your quick thoughts about that right after these final important messages.

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

Before we get to that, Victor, your thoughts about, yeah, Joe Biden, I do want to remind our listeners, especially our new ones, and there are a lot of new listeners, I think in part, Victor, because you're writing a lot.

Well,

your fan base is just naturally growing, but you're also become much more active in writing on

Twitter or X, and that has seen a boon

in people coming to the website.

By the way,

if you're on X or on Twitter, go to at V D Hanson.

And Victor, now once, twice a week, is writing some significant, thoughtful posts there.

So anyway,

at victorhanson.com, The Blade of Perseus,

folks will find archives to this podcast, links to your syndicated column, links to your weekly American Greatness essay, to your books, including the forthcoming book, The End of Everything, which comes out in May.

I recommend folks click on the link and pre-order it at Amazon.

And two or three times a week, there's also the Ultra article.

What's Ultra?

Ultra is an exclusive piece that Victor writes for The Blade of Perseus.

To read them, you must subscribe, and that's $5,

gets you in the door or discounted for a full year at $50.

VictorHanson.com, go there, folks.

So, Victor,

here's a headline from the Daily Mail.

Joe Biden paid nearly $2.75 million in cash for his Rehoboth Beach, that's Delaware, hideaway weeks after Hunter sent the threatening text to Chinese business partner demanding to close the $10 million deal.

Victor, it was two years after

he was vice president.

I just wonder how much revenue must you get legally to have nearly $3 million in cash available post-tax.

That's about $6 million.

Yeah, for every dollar that you have in gross revenue,

given a blue state

average tax rate plus

income tax, it's about 50% or 55% if you add in Medicare or payroll or Obamacare, penalty, all that stuff, maybe 55% of your total income.

So, and then of course, if you're going to

If you're going to distribute income,

and that's what Joe Biden's brother Jim did, just because you write on the bottom of a check loan repayment doesn't mean it's a loan repayment.

The IRS has found that if you want

to hide income from and distribute it,

If you say loan repayment, then you have to have the supporting documentation that says that at one point Joe Biden gave his brother $200,000 and he made a contract or a note or an IOU.

You can't just have Jim Biden receiving money from an outside entity and then distributing it as income to relatives and then claiming that those are gifts

or that they are repayments.

And if here's the tricky part, if he claims that that $200,000 was a gift to Joe Biden, and he's saying that I am allowed either to give $17,000 per year according to the new statutes, I think it is, or $12.3 or something million over a lifetime.

I think when you give that type of money, you have to file with the IRS that you're giving money so that they have a record it can be deducted against your estate.

which only has a $12.3 million

exemption.

What I'm saying is that if Jim Biden gave $200,000 and it wasn't

a

distributed amount

as it really was, and he's saying that A, I'm giving a gift to Joe Biden, then he has to file with the IRS that he's taken $200,000 off his $12 million exemption.

that he's allowed to free when he's dead his estate from estate tax.

or if he claims, as he did on the check, that it's a loan repayment, he has to have a documentation that there was actually a loan to repay, which I doubt.

Otherwise, it's what it was.

It was taxable income as income to Joe.

And I doubt if you go, if they subpoena his records, they're going to find either that Joe Biden reported that as income from his brother, who was just a front man for the family consortium, or that he will produce documentation that there was a loan.

And we'll see.

But this is all juxtaposed

Jack with his campaigning in 2022 during the midterms about pay your fair share and the rich are going to pay and the rich are going to do this and pay, pay, pay.

And if it turns out that this

politician who, except for four years

of his adult life, basically,

he's been a senator or a vice president for the whole duration of his life, but for four years he was a private citizen.

I know he maximized that as much as any grifter could.

But if he's going to show us all these houses in this lavish lifestyle, then he's got to show us the income, the gross income, and the taxes that were paid on it that would allow such expenditures.

And And I don't think he can do it.

And that's why in big letters, his brother writes loan repayment.

And

I think they're going to find James Comer's no fool.

And I think that once the attention away from Ukraine and Israel starts to return to the domestic scene, Joe Biden's going to be in big trouble.

And I say that because of this.

Some of you are going to say, well, Victor, that's very naive of you.

Come on.

You know, why do you keep thinking the left follows jurisprudence?

No, I agree with you.

They don't.

And the DOJ is in the tank for Biden.

But after what we've seen of Biden, I think, unless he gets a huge boost because of the war, that the people in the Democratic Party don't want him to be the nominee.

And if they don't want him to be the nominee, and Jack's already remarked, everybody, on the discipline showed in that Democratic Party where they have not one defection on the speaker vote, and they do exactly what Pelosi wanted in the past and what Jeffries does in the present.

They will get rid of him.

And if they want to get rid of him, it's no better way to say, look,

we really like Joe, and he's got so many personal conflicts and financial irregularities, he may well be indicted.

We just can't back him.

And we'll see.

And I think he may know that.

And that's one reason that he feels that if he runs for president, he's going to get continued exemption from his otherwise corrupt career.

Well, Victor, we have time.

We're a little crunched

today, but we have maybe time for a quick thing that's offbeat.

And I was watching, I was watching a bunch of World War II movies lately while I was doing some work on my own campaign.

As you know, I'm running for city clerk in Milford, Connecticut.

And there's a lot of envelope stuffing that goes on.

So I watched

Went the Day Well,

which is just a terrific British

movie.

I don't know if you've ever seen it, Victor, of a town

that's been taken over by Nazis.

I have not.

Oh, it's on City of the Link.

Oh, it's a one, just wonderful, wonderful movie.

One of our aircraft is missing.

um another great british uh early war movie but then i also saw the train you know the great burt lancaster um

movie with,

oh my gosh, what's it?

I can't remember his name, Paul Schofield.

So,

but it got me thinking, that movie got me thinking about war, France and World War II.

And for some reason, it tugged on a string in my head.

It had to do with America and Vichy.

And

I don't think we've ever discussed it before.

You may have with Sammy, and I may have missed it, but it has puzzled me, like Iran, like, why do we have such a stupid, freaking disastrous policy in Iran?

Why did America have

a, I think it's a stupid policy in World War II with France with supporting the Vichy government well after the shelf life on that expired?

Do you have any thoughts on that you'd like to share?

Yes.

And I didn't prepare for this, but I did write a book on World War II.

And everybody remember what Vichy was after the invasion of France on May 10th, that also saw the assumption of the prime ministership by Winston Churchill in Britain.

The French resistance collapsed in roughly six to seven weeks.

And the Germans had an agenda to invade Britain at the time.

And even that early in 1940 and summer, they were thinking that their ally, and that's what it was, in the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

That would not last.

So they did not want to tie down a million men in France.

So large sections of France were given semi-autonomy in domestic affairs.

And the Vichy government at a town called Vichy, I think it's been, it was famous for its mineral water and baths.

Right.

Very small provincial town compared to, say, to Lyon or Paris or Marseille.

And they put this iconic hero, they shall not pass the great icon of World War I, Pétan.

And he was in his 80s, kind of a little bit demented.

And he was going to return France to a strong Catholic, conservative, anti-communist

culture.

In reality, he got a lot of thugs, mafioso types.

And anyway, they ran a large chunk of France, and it's debatable to what degree some areas were autonomous or semi-autonomous.

And then that ended essentially with the invasion of North Africa by the Americans

about

10 to 11 months after Pearl Harbor.

We invaded, remember, I think it was 13 months, excuse me, 11 months.

We invaded North Africa, especially Vichy, French, Algeria, Morocco.

And the idea was that maybe, just maybe,

these French were not so pro-German as thought.

And it turned out that although there were several hundred deaths in that invasion, the Vichy forces

collapsed.

And all of a sudden, French forces and their empire abroad became pro-American.

And then the Germans reacted in fur and severely restricted that semi-autonomous zone zone and got tougher on people.

Okay, that's the history.

Jack's question is, and other people have wondered, well, why, when we were pro-British and were anti-Nazi, even though we weren't at war with either Japan, Germany, or Italy,

why in our popular culture, why was the Roosevelt administration recognizing this puppet state?

And especially to the degree we sent one of our most illustrious

people, Admiral Leahy, over as the ambassador.

And Leahy, remember, is going to come back and be the nominal head of all of the new joint chiefs and with a direct conduit to Roosevelt.

So no military leader is more influential than Leahy, even more than George Marshall.

But why did we do that?

And there was a lot of reasons.

There were some

we went to even to the extent there were a couple of islands, as I remember, up near Nova Scotia, and

they were French, and the Free French in Canada decided to take them for the Free French, and we got angry at that because we recognized only Vichy.

And one of the reasons was Churchill and Roosevelt especially despised Charles de Gaulle.

So when he fled with the Free French forces,

and he was trying to galvanize people to say there is only one France, and and right now it resides in London, and it will take back.

They thought he was just out of control.

They didn't like it.

I mean, that was a big mistake.

The fact that de Gaulle was a narcissist and an egocentric,

difficult persona didn't mean that he was A, talented, very courageous, and he had the charisma and skills to unite the French people.

We should have backed him, even with his difficult personality.

That was one reason.

One reason was we didn't think we were going to go to war with Germany because we were avoiding it.

We were going to be the arsenal of democracy, at least until we were fully armed.

Remember, in 1939, Portugal had a larger army.

We had about Jack, I think,

total 250,000, 280,000 people in the military.

We hadn't grown to 12 million as we were in 1944.

So there was a sense that if you try to encourage the French, the free French, then you're going to offend a neutral,

as far as we were concerned, a Germany that's not at war with us.

Then there was a larger

anti-Semitic view that

I think you could say that fairly, that

this government in Vichy, as far as its propaganda was concerned, was not

anti-American or necessarily pro-Nazi, although it was.

It was a puppet government of the Nazis.

But at least publicly, when you saw their Vichy megaphones, it was,

we had to

stand up to socialism.

the Jews who are causing all this problem.

And we just want to be left alone and have an enclave.

And we don't,

we're patriots.

And it was kind of an idea that

it was very, very anti-Jewish.

And at that time in America, the Charles Lindbergh, Father Coughlin, American First Forces were looking at areas where they could be neutral.

And they said, well, look at Vichy, the French, they just gave up because you can't stop the Germans.

They're just supermen.

But they did create an enclave.

of Frenchness, and it's the right type of Frenchness.

And it doesn't want to get in the war dragged in by the Jews, and doesn't want to get in the war dragged in by the communists.

And by the way,

there is no ally now.

There's just Britain, and you name who else is there.

There's not Norway, there's not Sweden, there's not Denmark, there's not Belgium, there's not Holland, there's not Luxembourg, there's not Greece, there's not Yugoslavia, there's nothing.

There's not Spain, there's not Portugal, there's not Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland.

They're either all conquered or they're pro-Nazi in a formal alliance or they're pro-Nazi and they're neutral.

And there's not even a Soviet Union.

It's in league with the Nazis.

And there's nothing in Asia.

Japan is in league with them.

And the only thing there is is Britain.

And it's going to fall because they're bombing it.

And it's isolated.

And the U-boats are increasingly destroying half of all the imports that get to Britain.

So in the Roosevelt administration, it was sort of,

well,

there's people in this country that are voters that kind of sympathize with

the values that this Vichy propaganda espouses.

But more importantly, as far as we, the United States government, go, we're in no position to fight Germany, especially when we might have to fight Japan at the same time.

So we're not going to offend anybody when we're going to actually give it full diplomatic rights and then

send an ambassador over.

And that changed, of course,

after Pearl Harbor when Hitler, Hitler,

we didn't declare war on Germany.

I don't think we would have.

Hitler declared war on us first, and then we declared war the next day.

And then suddenly we looked at the map and said, oh my gosh, we're now in a war with Germany, Italy, and Japan, and there's nobody there.

The only people are there are the Soviet Union who can't be trusted because they were a a German ally.

And now it's December 11th, and the Nazi army is 17 miles from the Kremlin, which will fall any day now.

And the Japanese have half of China.

They have the Dutch East Indies.

And they're going to have the Philippines.

They're going to have Singapore.

They have the whole Pacific.

And so there's just Britain.

So how do we strike back?

Oh, the Vichys.

They're not going to fight fully for the the Germans, no matter what they say.

So I know we recognize them.

I know we were going to be their friends, but the first thing we will do against

in the European theater is invade Vichy French North Africa because they'll fold.

And when they're folding, the Americans will be in North Africa and they can meet

General Montgomery and the British right after El Alamein and they can drive out the Rommel forces.

And that's what happened.

Okay.

That's it.

That's another long, windy explanation of why we got in the weird position of either not criticizing or actually being somewhat pro-Vichy.

As a sidebar,

this myth that Franklin Roosevelt was this big liberal pro-Jewish,

they called him Rosenstein in Germany, that was a complete myth.

He was on record.

He said, we've got to be very careful about displaced Jews from Europe because we want to send them all over the world.

We do not want to concentrate them and we do not want them in the United States.

He said that

a number of occasions.

They denied desperate Jewish refugees entry into the United States.

And you could make the argument that he had people in the

Roosevelt State Department that were abject anti-Semites.

And another thing we should keep in mind is that I get get so sick and tired of the lies about the Japanese internment, as if it's some right-wing idea.

That was

thought

up

and it was carried out because of three people, three entities.

The McClatchy liberal newspaper in the San Joaquin Valley, where most Japanese Americans lived, talking to Fresno, Modesto, and Sacramento Bee that were demanding it.

Number two,

the Attorney General at the time, Earl Warren, yes, Earl Warren, he's a great man in many respects, although I would disagree with his judicial,

but he gave in to the popular pressure.

And Franklin Roosevelt, who signed the order.

And that's another thing that people, that was a left-wing idea to put Japanese Americans in camps.

And they put both Americans and people on green cards that were Japanese citizens, that were resident agents.

And guess what, Jack?

They never found one person in California or Arizona or any other Western state that was actively or even passively an agent of the Japanese government.

They did on Hawaii, but that was different.

Not one.

So it was a complete violation of the Constitution.

Strangely, the Japanese community tended to be strongly democratic, right?

Despite

they did.

They did.

And for a while,

they reacted against that and by the 1960s they were more republican as most asians were and then barack obama came in and there was a new immigration and the japanese community had pretty much by the third generation been completely assimilated

integrated and often intermarried and the new asian wave came from southeast asia uh taiwan korea and they tended to be not Korea so much, but they tended to be much more left-wing.

And we got to this, when you got to Obama, and he was talking about,

you know, diversity is a new idea of basically anybody who's non-white,

he resurrected the old

Jesse Jackson Rainbow Coalition, Operation Push Nonsense.

And he said, basically,

all of you people are diverse, and you've been exploited by this evil white majority, and therefore it was no longer, you know, 11% black, 89% white binary.

And that was the civil rights crux to deal with that legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and systemic discrimination.

It suddenly was, hey, I'm Asian and I'm non-white there and therefore I qualify.

I'm part of the diversity community.

I mean, there were problems because they were systematically restricting Asians that that applied to colleges, but that had an effect on youth.

So if you saw a young Japanese American in 1970, there was a 50-50 chance he was conservative.

If you saw a young Asian

today, there's a 75%, at least until Joe Biden,

that he's left-wing.

And that's because this effort.

to define us by the color of our skin, not the content of our character, and to make a huge new minority of

30% percent who are have

according to obama legitimate claims to victim status why i don't know but as i said earlier uh just as a phillip

i think i probably had um

well i had a hundred

students minimum a semester for 20 years so 200 and i had over i probably had

oh 300 students a year for, you know, for 20 years.

So 6,000 students.

So I got to know, I had a lot of students.

And out of that 6,000, I would say 10 to 15% I got to know really well.

And they were classics majors, histories majors.

They went to graduate school.

So I advised them.

I gave an average of 10 independent studies per year, minimum.

Dang.

Yeah.

So I probably did 200 of them with individual students, but probably more than that.

There was one semester I can remember, I had nine independent studies.

It was all day, Tuesday, and Thursdays.

Anyway, and out of that group, there's been a marked shift.

I don't think it's just growing older.

When people grow older, they grow more conservative.

But when I knew them pre-George Floyd or pre-woke, they were pretty conservative in the sense that I didn't bring Washington.

I didn't try to bring politics in the classroom, but they were pretty conservative.

Maybe it was the discipline of classics.

Maybe it was the 1980s, Reagan era.

Maybe it was the idea that at last we're not really emphasizing race.

And I can tell you that 90% of them that I have come in contact since have radically changed their political views.

They're woke.

And I just think it's just been an enormous temptation for a young person in education or the media or law

professional that when you're offered the DEI fast track, you take it.

And that requires you to

mouth those platitudes.

On social media, you have to have the right avatar.

Yeah,

silence is violence.

So you have to.

I get asked for a lot of recommendations, fewer and fewer as I get older and I'm distanced from my full-time teaching, but more and more as far as people from Hillsdale or Pepperdine that I've taught recently.

But

it's amazing that people will still occasionally write me, they want a recommendation, and I look at what they're applying for,

and it's blatantly racially obsessed.

I mean, it's, I want to be this, DEI, this, or this, this.

And it's contrary to what I remember trying to teach people that race is incidental to who we are.

And it's very hard for me to continue that relationship when I see that.

A lot of these people in their 30s to fast track or accelerate their careers are emphasizing their racial essentialism in a way that I never remembered when they were younger, poorer, and much more vulnerable if there was systemic racism.

And yet when there would be even less of it now and they're wealthier and more successful, they're emphasizing their race in a way they never did when they were vulnerable and young.

Victor, you have to maintain your relationships with your listeners here.

So,

you know,

there's a lot of them and they love you and some of them who love you.

I I love them too.

I see them every day.

If I'm traveling, somebody comes up and they're the nicest and most informed group

that I know of.

Yeah, it's a wonderful thing to be a voyeur.

I've been with you and see folks approach or kind of like circle around you like

they're Pluto and

the sun.

They come on and it's a great thrill for them to engage with you and you're you've just been wonderful whenever i've seen this but but some people leave comments right on and on the platforms they listen to uh

which could be you can listen to the podcast on your on your website pictorhanson.com um people who do listen through iTunes and apple can rate the show zero to five stars you have a 4.9 plus average on the rating thanks for those who do

do the rating.

And some people leave comments.

And here's one.

It's titled National Treasure Exclamation Point.

Dr.

Hansen has stunning insight and the intellectual firepower to back it up.

More than anything, he gives testimony to the ethical, civil, and moral decay of a once great, not perfect society that is being herded into decline by the ruling elite.

He is a voice of clarity in the dark.

If only more would listen, then our nation might veer away from the precipice.

That is from

Hessianar.

Hessionar.

Anyway, thank you for that, Hessionar.

If I mispronounced that, I apologize.

I would like to thank folks who have signed up for Civil Thoughts, the free weekly email newsletter that I write for the Center for Civil Society at Amphil, where we are damned intent on strengthening civil society.

You can go to civil thoughts.com, sign up free weekly.

Again, I send out a dozen plus recommended readings of worthwhile articles I've come across in the previous week.

Victor, on another podcast, because we don't have any time left, we can hear the thing that you mentioned at the beginning of this podcast: that come January, your days of travel and speaking are over.

I was kind of surprised.

Yeah, I think I think that well, a man has to know his limitations.

Yeah, well, all right.

Well, that's wow, wow.

I think part of it is mentioning the air pilot's comment:

I traveled when I had no money at all, a lot on the Greyhound bus, sometimes to Santa Cruz, which took about eight hours to get back here.

And I think air travel is much more stressful than being on the Greyhound bus in the 80s or 70s.

Excuse me.

I just, it's not, it's erratic.

It's crazy people on the flights, disruptions.

Right.

And there was a person just to finish, because we have to finish very quickly, but there was a person on flight, as I mentioned, that refused to turn his computer off.

And then they basically had to beseech him.

And then when he did, he refused even then

to put his seat back.

And I thought, as soon as we get to our destination, he will be arrested.

And he wasn't.

And he caused a lot of disruption.

And then, you know, it's like a menagerie.

There's dogs that pass wind.

There's animals.

It's just, it's weird.

And people's dresses,

they either look like they've just come out of the gym for six hours or they're at a drag show.

I don't know what it is, or they're in a pirate contest, or it's Halloween.

But I mean, it's just crazy.

And then

you and I have talked about the great wheelchair.

What's your record?

18, Halley?

Well, there's something at 30,000 feet that's a miraculous elixir because as soon as people get to 30,000 feet and they land, suddenly they sprint to their connection, whereas before they were wheeled to their overhead when they embarked.

It's the angel Gabriel up there.

It is something, yeah.

And then it's the

system, they have to lie.

You know, you're, we have a little glitch here, and there's a door that won't open, but we'll be on our way in 10 minutes.

Scrimmage.

There's a little check, the air traffic controller problem.

There's a little weather delay on our destination.

And then it's 15, 20, an hour, two hours, three hours.

Oh, we've been told, unfortunately, we have to cancel the flight.

And so you just get so much of that.

And you say, is it worth it to travel?

And I say, no.

And at 70, I think I can just stay out in the middle of nowhere, enjoy the middle of nowhere, rather than traveling somewhere and never getting there.

Well, I'll have to come visit you then.

Okay, my friend.

Thanks.

We're at the end of this.

so you've been terrific as ever.

Thanks, folks, for listening.

Thank you, Victor.

And we, we will, I wish I could speak English, Victor.

We will be back soon again with another episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Bye-bye.

Thank you, everybody, for listening.