The Republican Debate and Elections

I knew we all had two ages, our actual age and our internal biological age.

What I didn't know is, I've likely lowered my biological age without even knowing it.

Here's the thing, because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual age.

They're ticking time bombs.

A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb.

Participants slowed their aging by drinking Field of Greens.

That's all.

They didn't change their eating, drinking, or exercise, just field of greens.

When I started Field of Greens to replace my multivitamin, I was amazed.

After about two weeks, my energy improved.

I've been exercising more, and my overall wellness feels great.

Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits.

Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney metabolism, even healthy weight.

It's wonderful knowing Field of Greens can slow how quickly I'm aging.

And I encourage you to join me.

Swap your untested fruit, vegetable, or green drink for Field of Greens.

While there's time, check out the university study and get 20%

off when using promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.

That's fieldofgreens.com, promo code Victor.

And we'd like to thank Field of Greens for continuing to sponsor the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

Hello, you've joined the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow in Military History and Classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne O.

Marshabuski Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

This is his podcast, and it's brought to you by John Solomon's Just the News.

We highly recommend consulting John Solomon's Just the News because he is an excellent investigative reporter and has been doing some excellent work, particularly recently on the Hunter Joe corruption, if I can say it that way.

Yeah, that's the right word.

Hunter Joe corruption.

And so we highly recommend that.

This is the Friday News Roundup, and it will start right after these messages.

Like you, when I bought my last pair of shoes, I looked for stylish comfort and beautiful engineering.

And that might make you think Italian, but if you're buying sheets, it should make you think bowl and branch.

The colors, the fabric, the design.

Bowl and branch sheets are made with long-lasting quality, offering extraordinary softness to start and getting softer and softer for years to come.

Bowl and branch sheets are made with the finest 100% organic cotton in a soft, breathable, durable weave.

Their products have a quality you can feel immediately and become even softer with every wash.

Plus, bowl and branch comes with a 30-night worry-free guarantee.

I've been sleeping like a baby in my bowl and branch sheets, which keep me cool on those hot summer nights.

And they're the perfect place for sunrise sunrise and morning coffee.

So join me.

Feel the difference an extraordinary night's sleep can make with Bowl and Branch.

Get 15% off plus free shipping on your first set of sheets at bowl and branch.com/slash Victor.

That's Bull and Branch.

B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-R-A-N-C-H dot com slash Victor to save 15% off and unlock free shipping.

Exclusions may apply and we'd like to thank Bolin Branch for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

At a time when Americans are more divided than ever, Connecting America is a place where everyone can gather and express their opinions with no disrespect.

And what better place than a Jersey diner to host this show?

Because where else but a diner can you find a buffet of opinions, ideas, and real connections?

Connecting America, a brand new national program that aims to truly connect everyday people and is dedicated to showcasing ideas and embracing civil conversation.

We'll also include amazing ways to improve your fitness, health, and nutrition, revive your spiritual self, and give your home a makeover.

Connecting America streams live every weekday from 7 a.m.

to 9 a.m.

Eastern Time.

Our program is led by a group of award-winning journalists, including me, Jim Rosenfeld, Rosenfield, plus Allison Camerata and Dave Briggs.

We'll also hear from America's psychologist Dr.

Jeff Gardier and former Fox News senior foreign affairs correspondent Amy Kellogg.

Join us wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back.

So, Victor, we got a lot of

information

stories

to talk about.

And the first thing I think, since today Trump might is

presenting,

surrendering himself at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia.

I thought maybe first we could talk a little bit about that.

And just along with that, I would like to note that Jim Jordan in the House is also launching an investigation into the Georgia DA Fannie Willis for politically motivated charges.

So those two things are going on at once.

And then we'll talk about the debate.

But what are your thoughts on Trump?

Well, she's trying to get a speedy trial.

And if you were to ask her under oath, have you talked to Mr.

Gregg or Ms.

James or Mr.

Smith?

I think she wouldn't answer that because all of these

indictments are coordinated.

But remember, this is a state.

This is not a federal Smith, which

has its own problems.

But these are local prosecutors who are alleging that the President of the United States on a national scale deprived people of their rights in the case of her.

And the case of Bragg, he's suggesting finance, campaign finance irregularities of a sort that we've never seen before.

I mean, Hillary Clinton had to pay $100,000 for not telling us that she hired Christopher Steele, which is illegal.

He's a foreign national.

And she hid that expense through three firewalls.

And then we have Letita James with this crazy idea that Trump overvalued his assets to get a loan, which she paid back anyway.

But the point I'm making is that

they don't seem to know what they're doing because they're setting a precedent.

If you had this precedent, say, in 2000 or 1998, then you could have gone after Al Gore.

A Florida prosecutor could have said, you know what?

The Florida Registrar has certified

that election.

And Al Gore is now trying to use the levers of government by suing to overturn an election.

And he's coordinating a whole legal team who's giving him false advice.

And he's getting protesters to go there.

And that's racketeering.

And of course, when it was all said and done, the New York Times ran an investigation and said, well, George Bush won the popular vote.

We could have had a local prosecutor, Republican in Ohio, who said, I'm going to file a suit against 32 House members and Senator Barbara Boxer because they delayed and they tried to overturn our submission of the electoral vote based on a fraudulent conspiracy theory that the

voting machines were inaccurate.

Or we could have gone into Wisconsin where there were demonstrations to stop the electors from tallying their votes.

Or we could have gone to what,

2016, when

Jill Stein, why didn't anybody indict her?

She tried to stop the election.

She not only tried to stop the election, she made a complete lie that these voting machines were all fraudulent.

And then in addition to that, somebody organized a whole bunch of Grade B Hollywood actors to cut videos suggesting that the electors renounce their constitutional duties and not reflect the popular vote in their electoral balloting.

That's racketeering.

And you're in Georgia, Sammy.

So

who do we think of with an election denialist

as an election denialist in Georgia?

Who is the poster woman?

Stacey Abrams.

Stacey Abrams.

She toured the country.

She tried to get people in the legislature to disrupt the actual voting and tally.

So this is entirely political.

And then I think it's rumored that the bail would be $200,000.

If you're in Atlanta right now and you walk down the street with a hammer and you hit somebody over the head and then you detour into a Gucci store and loot it, and then you go jump in a car and you drive a little bit and break a window and jump it, you're not going to get $2,000,000.

You're not going to get any bail.

But they're basically saying that the president of the United States, by their standards, is a much more dangerous threat to public safety than the street criminal.

And

they keep pushing this and pushing it and pushing it.

And this is simultaneous with what we've seen with the exemptions giving Hunter, the exemptions giving Joe, as that case gets really scary because that case, as we alluded to before,

the Biden Family Syndicate, touches on what the founders explicitly defined impeachment as, treason and bribery.

And it's getting pretty clear that the Biden family got money from foreign entities in China, Romania, and Ukraine, and may well have altered U.S.

foreign policy.

In the case of Joe Biden, we know he did because he overturned a State Department memorandum that Viktor Shokin was trying his best.

And then he stopped State Department policy for his own lucre.

So they want to keep pushing it.

They're going to have a lot of ramifications.

And if this is a, and

they want to take that mugshot today, when they get the mugshot out, it'll be over everywhere.

And it will be a campaign poster.

Trust me.

For the next year, there will be a picture of Donald Trump's mugshot with a never Trump or left-wing sloganeering underneath it.

That's what this is all about.

Do you think that will work against him or for him?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I support Donald Trump.

I supported him in 2016.

I think he did a wonderful job.

And if he's the nominee, I will surely not only vote for him, I will work on his behalf because I think he will be so much better.

But I don't know the effect.

I ask people, I listen to people, I read, I watch television.

I try to get all the sources of information I can from never Trumpers, from Medium Trumpers, from everybody across the spectrum.

And I just did a long

interview with Laura Ingram on her podcast with Ben Dominic and Byron York.

And they, I mean, they're kind of, nobody really knows the reaction to this of what we've never been here before.

We've never had a president and presidential leading candidate that's going to be jailed and maybe imprisoned.

If you look at those 90 to 100 indictments, and we're not done with them yet.

And so we don't know the effect.

Will the Republicans get so angry that they will continue to be empathetic and fuel the Trump candidacy?

Or at some point, will they get tired?

Will they say Trump is not viable?

I don't think so, but I don't know.

And I was moving to the debate, I was a little disappointed that the candidates didn't do two things.

They didn't blast Biden.

And they didn't really discuss Trump other than, you know, are you going to, are you, would you vote for him if he's,

would you endorse him, vote, da, da, da, if he's convicted?

What some of the candidates should have said, and I think DeSantis came the closest, is that I guarantee you, I mean, they can't

align themselves with Trump because they're running against him, but they can use the anger directed at the unfairness, the sheer audacity against Trump.

and help Trump in a way that will help their candidacy without criticizing Trump.

So, in other words, if they had said,

and I think DeSantis came pretty close to it, I'm in a better position to help Trump than Trump himself because they're not going after me.

They will go after me if I were to get the nomination, make no statement about it.

They would try to indict me in a second.

But I'm not there yet.

And if I am elected,

I am going to dismantle this corrupt FBI and DOJ, and we're never ever going to have the government do to others what they did to Donald Trump.

That is a travesty of justice.

And he no more belongs in a courtroom than any other candidate.

And Joe Biden should be there instead of him.

And he said that it would be, that's a way of squaring that circle.

But none of the candidates did, except if we move to the debate very quickly,

boy, I was really surprised by Mike Pence, because Mike Pence is really, I guess you'd call him what,

soft-spoken, underspoken, sober, judicious.

But it was like he was running for county preacher.

You know what I mean?

It was, or

if there is such an office,

he was evangelical to the point of just referencing his own belief in a way that suggested that I'm trying to show everybody in America that I am

more of a true believer.

as a Christian than you are.

It didn't come across that well.

And then he kept,

I agree that he couldn't have, he was in a terrible position and he couldn't have overturned the election.

He did the right thing, but that's not

the whole definition of a man's life or the whole campaign.

So you mentioned it, but then he wanted to make a referendum.

Are you there for me?

You know, forget, you know, and the narrators did too,

the moderators, I should say.

So

I don't know.

I was kind of taken and he talked a lot and he got in a lot of anger and he sounded very haughty in a way that I hadn't seen him.

Nikki Haley was really smooth.

She was glib.

She made some good, she had some rehearsed lines about Margaret Thatcher.

But essentially, she's telling us what Mike Tense is, only in a more mellephilous fashion, that we're going to go back to

the

Romney-Bush foreign policy.

And that's okay if it's following 9-11 and we're in a state of shock and we've been attacked.

But after Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya

and the inconclusive, or in the case of Afghanistan, the disastrous results, I'm not sure the American people want to invest another $100 billion in Stalingrad, which is what it is now on the border.

And so when she keeps pushing that, I don't think that resonates anymore.

And I think she used hyperbole.

You know, it's, well, this is the defining thing of our time.

And if you're not for Ukraine, they're going to be all over.

I don't, no, they're not going to be all in NATO.

Putin is, his nation's exhausted.

And you wanted to say to her, well, how many, you've lost 500,000 dead and wounded and probably a lot more.

So at what point do we lose another 500, another 500 to show what?

That the 600-mile line of entrenchments and artillery and drone traps and minefields is penetrable.

You were the same people who told us

that the spring offensive would be, you know, off to the races to Moscow, and it didn't happen.

Some of us warned you it wouldn't happen.

And you were the same people who said, well, we're not going to give F-16.

Well, we won't give Abrams.

Well, we won't give short of ship missiles.

Well, and we did in every situation.

We did exactly what you warned us that would be too dangerous.

So when you get on that interventionist, and then you have Pence

and Christie saying, well, we can do both at the same time.

Look at World War II.

You know, yeah, exactly.

But you don't do both.

They say, oh, we have the resources, but you don't have the resources, apparently, or you'd close the border.

So when Ramaswamy or...

DeSantis says, we'll close the border here before we do the border over there.

And they say, we can can do both.

But why don't you do both?

Is it because you don't have enough money or your attention's elsewhere?

So, yeah, if they closed the border first

and they didn't have 7 million illegal people crossing and 100,000 Americans weren't being killed by illegally imported fentanyl, then maybe and we weren't, you know.

$32 trillion in debt, then maybe we would have the option wherewithal, whatever term you want to go over and help Ukraine by sending them a, giving giving them a blank check.

I really resent that when they said, well, we can do both, but you don't do both.

And that's what's really aggravating and gets Americans really angry.

And so Christie and Pence

and Haley, I think, are trapped in the 2000s and, you know, from 2000 to 2012 or 16.

The other thing was Christie was sort of a human torpedo, but we've seen him be launched before.

He did a good job.

I don't mean a nice job.

I like Marco Rubio a lot more than Chris Christie,

but he kind of destroyed Marco Rubio's aspirations in 2016, and he thinks he's going to do it.

I suppose it's to Ramaswamy now, isn't it?

That he thinks he's going to take him out.

He said something I thought was borderline racist when he was talking about.

his name, you know, a funny name, a skinny guy with a funny name.

Is that what he said?

Yes, I thought so too.

I thought that was out of hand.

And then

he doesn't really tell us the whole story.

He just keeps telling us that he was a two-term

Republican governor in a blue state, but he doesn't tell us that he left

under a cloud of scandal with the closing of the bridge incident, but more importantly, with almost no approval rating.

And what has he been doing since then?

He's been, what, a Trump accolade.

He's been heavily involved in the Trump

campaign.

And at one point, he was one of Trump's biggest supporters.

And then he went into one of his biggest critics.

I think he thinks he can get a lot of mileage out of being a pretty glib and successful rhetorician.

The problem with all these people, again, is just go through the candidates.

What is Asa Hutchinson doing now?

I mean, he's been governor.

He's just wandering around.

I mean, does he really think we're going to vote for him because he's the only candidate that hates Trump's guts?

Is that his calling card?

So what is he there for?

And then what is, what's he, what's Chris Christie doing right now?

What is his job right now?

He hasn't been governor in years.

And

Nikki Haley has not been UN ambassador in years.

And Ramaswamy's never been any elected official.

And so, and Tim Scott is in the Senate.

But

where is the, you know, what's Mike Pence doing right now?

So we have all these people who have these resumes, but right now,

you know,

they're not running a state like DeSantis or in the Senate like Scott.

You see what I'm saying?

And so it's easy just to sign a pontificate.

They have time to run a campaign.

And they're not in the arena.

Yeah.

And so that's so it makes it easy.

And Scott is trying to transition from an inspirational personal story, and it is inspirational, to being specific on the issues.

And he had the issues down pretty well, but he doesn't have fire in the belly.

And he keeps relapsing into how unique it is that I discovered a love for America.

Very inspirational, but it's not the stuff of presidencies that are made of.

And so,

I don't know.

Ramaswamy is the glibbist and, you know, the hippist.

But he also is kind of a loose cannon when he said, do you remember when he said that, I guess it was to Haley that

she's going to be on Raytheon now for her advocacy?

And he said, I don't think there's one person on the stage that's not bought and sold.

That's a pretty

funny indictment to make from a guy who's worth a half a billion dollars and was pretty attuned to the esoteric and edgy world of high finance.

So I don't know.

I think I was trying to think if you were an independent voter who,

if you were a young voter, I think Vivaik was the person that you'd want to vote for, right?

That was impressive, kind of like the Robert F.

Kennedy phenomenon on the Republican.

Yeah, he articulated the anti-woke position

better than I see almost anybody articulating.

No, he understands.

DeSantis know, but DeSantis does too, because he went after it.

If you were an independent,

I suppose that you would probably, and I looked at all the leftist papers or

well, who does see an NBC and who does MSNBC and who's the New York Times like?

Well, they like Asa Hutchinson and they like Nikki Haley, obviously, as the least conservative or least MAGA of the term.

If you were a big donor and you were alienated from Trump and you wanted to know who to invest your money in, as the only viable realist, I think you would probably say after tonight, DeSantis, because he proved that he's stable and they went, they didn't really go after him like I thought they would, but

he was viable when the evening was over.

He did a pretty good job.

And so they would say

he is

a real candidate in a way that Ramaswamy is not, in a way that Christie is not, in the way that Haley cannot be, in the way that Scott is not, in the way that Hutchinson is not.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, it seemed like they went after Ramaswamy.

So DeSantis was kind of lucky Ramaswamy was there because he took most of the blows.

He took them well.

He did.

The other thing I thought they should have done, two things real quickly, I thought they should have gone after Biden a lot harder.

They didn't really do that.

This guy is the most, DeSantis at the beginning, you know, Hunter Biden's pictures, remember he made fun of his art, but this guy is the most corrupt president that we've ever had.

The founders defined impeachment as high crimes and misdemeanors, but specifically bribery and treason.

We have never

had

a president threatened with impeachment, i.e.

Nixon, or impeached, i.e.

Johnson,

Andrew Johnson, and Bill Clinton and

Donald Trump, that was accused of treason or bribery.

And that is exactly what Biden may have done by taking money and altering U.S.

foreign policy toward Ukraine and perhaps even China.

And nobody wanted to talk about the magnitude of that.

So I thought...

they could have done that.

And then they're, as I said, they're in a difficult position with Trump.

Trump is in a difficult position besides the law fair.

He's got to decide what to do.

So there's going to be, I don't know how many debates, 15, 16?

What's he going to do each debate if he doesn't jump back into the fray?

Is he going to just say to Tucker, you and I are going to be the alternate debate every night?

And what's Tucker's already asked him the question.

And, you know, Tucker's had an ambiguous relationship with Trump, but he's not going to try to grill Trump, right, and embarrass him, or Trump wouldn't go on his show.

So

while all the other candidates are mixing it up and getting attacked by the moderators, what is Trump going to do if he doesn't go back in?

Is he going to have big rallies?

Is he going to have another Tucker-like interview each week, a different journalist?

He's got to figure that out if he doesn't want to debate.

And I don't know at what point it'll be wise or wise not.

So I think right now in the short term, it shows wisdom probably on his part.

He has a a big league.

You don't endanger that, but I don't think that's

a sustainable proposition, especially as these indictments mount.

He seems to get stronger and stronger in the polls every indictment that they

put on him.

Even the recent ones are up even more than they used to be.

There's two reasons.

The base is always there, no matter what.

So 35% of Republicans will vote for him no matter what but the other

maybe 20

so you're up to 45 50 of all republicans the other people say this is so outrageous of how

willis and james and bragg and smith are treating this guy that i don't really care what he does i want to support him

because without him there's nobody in the way of what this criminal doj is going to to do to all of us.

So they see that

he has to be supported.

Now, the question will be whether that support will be inclusive of unlimited political support and

fealty at the polls as he starts to be mugshotted in four different jurisdictions.

And

it's the one he's got to worry about, I think, the most.

Well, put it this way, I'm perfectly capable of believing that the Atlanta jury and the Washington, D.C.

jury and the New York jury will not listen to the evidence.

And they will just convict him, as a matter of fact.

But the Miami jury and the federal indictment will be the one that's serious.

And I'm not sure that they're going to be able to

convict him on a jury because

I think if you get a good lawyer and he just plays clips of all the stuff that prior candidates have done to question

the

veracity of the or the authenticity of the balloting, it would be pretty damning.

And then if they bring in all of the accustomed treatment of residential papers, if they can get somebody to go in there on the stand and say,

you're in the archivist, how long have you known that Joe Biden took out sensitive classified papers.

Well, we just learned.

Now, how did you learn that?

Well, they, well, they

told us, and they told us, can you give us a date on that?

So in other words, for the last 10 to 12 years, Joe Biden and his son, I guess by extension, knowingly had in the Biden family possession in unsecured places, maybe an office.

in the University of Delaware, in a ramshackle garage, had classified papers, and everybody knew it.

And yet yet you never told us.

You only told us because you had gone after Donald Trump for the same offense.

That's a pretty damning comparison.

And then when you add into that mixture, if

you get good attorneys, that's a big if.

If they say, you know, we know we leaked.

We've leaked.

We've heard about what Donald Trump was going to do with these papers.

We were told that he was going to boast to people.

Here, look at this.

You were told he was going to sell them.

But they were all false.

He probably was trying to use them off the record.

He was probably trying to use them because he thought that some of them would substantiate the maltreatment that was accorded him.

And he didn't want them to, you know, filed away into obscurity.

I'm not, you know, justifying that, but that was probably his motivation.

But what was Joe Biden's motivation?

Nobody's ever told us.

Why did he take these out of the Senate?

out of the Senate.

And why as vice president did he take them out?

They were classified, some of them.

Was it because he wanted to have information and intelligence assessments of Ukraine, of Romania, of China, so he could bone up, so he would have expertise and sound what, authentic and knowledgeable and informed, he and his sons.

So when he met these creepy people overseas, who knows?

But so I don't think that case is

ironclad against Trump.

And more importantly, the January 6th is a joke that they're going to charge him with insurrection or racketeering.

Who knows?

But if you were to do that, then you better go after Kamala Harris because she said these riots are not going to end, nor should they end.

And then a good attorney, a prosecutor, would say, was that just verbage?

Or did you actually go out and send money to bail out these criminals?

And that you were arguing that the violence is going to continue.

And I think you said, Ms.

Harris, Vice President, that they were going to continue all the way to the election.

Was there a connection?

Because Molly Ball and Time magazine said that the DNC and people on the left were able to coordinate

the ebb and flow of the demonstrations according to the balloting and the election cycle and the eventual result.

They were prepared to send people out in the streets if Trump should lose.

And who was the one that coordinated the attack on the White House grounds that sent the president into a bunker?

So you could do all sorts of stuff that shows you that what Trump said or didn't say on January 6th is not unique at all.

So just before we go to a break, can I just take us back to the debate for just a short question?

Who do you think came out on top?

Who do I think?

If you were somebody who came from Mars and came down and said, who won this debate?

Who do you think it was?

Won the debate or helped his candidacy?

Helped his candidacy.

There were two.

I think there were two people.

Three.

I think Haley helped herself a little bit.

I don't know if it'll show up in the polls.

I think Ramaswamy helped himself somewhat.

And I think DeSantis did what he had to do and helped himself.

So that was three.

I don't think Christie helped himself.

I don't think Hutchinson helped himself.

I don't think Mike Pence helped himself.

I like, is it Bergen?

Bergoom?

Bergen.

Bergoom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I liked him a lot, but he seemed kind of, I think he was in pain, kind of a deer in the headlights, tentative.

But he's very sincere.

He's a very nice guy.

He's very knowledgeable, obviously, about energy.

He'd make a great Department of Energy Secretary.

When you compare his knowledge to Pete Buttigig, it's a joke, or any of these cabinet people that are, you know, not that he'd be Secretary of Transportation, but

is it Jennifer

Grissom or Grillholm or whatever her name is?

She's our energy department.

Can you compare her to him, to him?

So he's a valuable resource.

I hope whoever wins the nomination would use him, but he's not going to, he's not going to get the nomination.

So,

and I don't think Tim Scott helped himself.

I like Tim Scott.

I've met him.

He's a wonderful person, but I don't think he helped himself.

But we don't know.

There were three candidates that helped themselves.

Haley was, she did two things.

She showed herself knowledgeable about the issues.

She showed herself empirical about blaming Republicans and Democrats for the wasteful spending.

And

she can take a blow and dish it out.

Yeah.

She's spicy.

Yes, that's right.

And

Ramaswamy or

Vidaik.

Vivek.

Vivek, excuse me.

All right.

Sorry.

I'm all confused today.

But he showed us that he can smile and be outrageous at the same time.

And he had that kind of, what do you call those hipsters when people, their pants go over their feet and their sleeves are four inches above their wrist or whatever.

You know, I think we call them hipsters.

Yes.

Yeah.

He had a way of dressing.

He was really

smiley and he had a lot of good lines.

And I think he's going to be considered, but I don't think that's going to translate into a serious.

So the person who is a serious rival to Trump was DeSantis.

And people said he either had to be

spectacular or he'd be done.

He wasn't spectacular because nobody was, but

he was good enough that he said, I'm a viable candidate.

I've got a good record and I will

be the person.

that can challenge Trump and I won't be in jail.

And I can, you know, that was a, that was his message.

And he was pretty good at it.

If saying that, though, the other candidates must have known that.

So it's still kind of interesting.

It is interesting.

The person that took all the fire was Vivek.

Yeah, I think

they should have been firing at DeSantis.

If I were to interpret.

They're allied with DeSantis is my concern.

In a way, yes.

I think their interpretation was

whether we like it or not, Mr.

Hutchinson.

or Mr.

Christie or Mr.

Scott or Miss Haley or Mr.

Pence,

whether we like it or not, we're not going to get the nomination.

And there's only one person that's going to get the nomination and that's Ron DeSantis.

And we all of the people I just named, maybe with the exception of Scott, I'm not sure, would rather have DeSantis than Trump.

So at some

unknown date in the future, we're going to have to unite around a candidate.

And that candidate, if we put all of our support together in the polls, it's not too far from Donald Trump's support, which is something they never did in 2016.

And so they're thinking, I don't want to burn my bridges, right?

And so I won't be vicious and I won't do anything that hurts DeSantis, but I'm kind of carving out a sort of kind of maybe.

alternative to him.

And especially I'm here to serve him and his cabinet if he should win.

I think the assumption on the stage is that

any Republican candidate can beat Biden given his dementia, except maybe Donald Trump.

That's what they think.

I'm not going to weigh in whether that's accurate or not, but that's what they were thinking.

So yeah, I thought

they didn't go after him in a way that

the pundits.

I read Rich Lowry.

I know him, he's a nice guy.

He said that

DeSantis would just be

a target all night long.

That wasn't true.

They weren't doing it.

And it might have been because he handles himself well when attacked.

But

we'll see the next debate.

The $64,000 question is

in the next debate: what will be the legal status of Donald Trump?

Will he debate or will he not debate?

Will the polls have changed or not changed?

And if he doesn't debate, what will be the alternative venue that he chooses?

And that will be very important.

And we'll see how these polls work out.

But I think when he, there's going to be an upshore, there's going to be a continuance of support for Trump as this ridiculous indictment in Georgia works its way out.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk about a few people that were not in the debate.

Stay with us and we'll be right back.

So you just got back from summer vacation.

Maybe you might have even had to book two rooms because of your snoring.

Some vacation, huh?

Snoring can be an underlying cause of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and even memory loss.

Here is my advice.

If you want every night to be a true vacation, you need to get yourself Zipa.

That's happy Z, spelled backwards.

Zipa is a doctor-designed mouthpiece that not only moves your jaw forward, but is also the only device with a patented tongue seat belt to keep your airways open and the snoring away.

The snoring can stop as soon as the first night.

Zipa was proven in a 600 patient clinical trial and sold over half a million units.

From now until the end of October, show your family you actually care by purchasing a limited edition Pink Zipa.

Not only will you save $10,

but Zipa is on a mission to raise $50,000 for breast cancer research and they will donate another $10,000 to the Susan G.

Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Go to zyppah.com and use the code PINK or text VICTR2511-511.

Put your snoring on a permanent vacation and help a worthy cause with the snoring device we trust by visiting zyppah.com and use the code pink or text Victor to 511-511.

Remember, Zipa is happy Z spelled backwards.

Text fees may apply and we'd like to thank Zipa for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen show.

If you're a homeowner, you need to listen to this.

In today's AI and cyber world, scammers are stealing your home titles and your equity is the target.

Here's how it works.

Criminals forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee with your county, and just like that, your home title has been transferred out of your name.

Then they take out loans using your equity and even sell your property and you won't even know what's happened until you get a collection or foreclosure notice.

So when was the last time you checked on your home title?

If your answer is never, you need to do something about it right now.

And that's why we've partnered with Home Title Lock so you can find out today if you're already a victim.

Go to home titlelock.com slash Victor to get a free title history report and a free trial of their million-dollar triple lock protection.

That's 24/7 monitoring of your title, urgent alerts to any changes.

And if fraud does happen, they'll spend up to $1 million to fix it.

Please, please don't be a victim.

Protect your equity today.

That's home titlelock.com/slash victor.

Welcome back.

So, Victor, I noticed people that were not there.

I understand Larry Elder wanted to be there and he was unable to fulfill the qualifications or the criteria.

And what about this governor Yunken?

Everybody keeps saying this and that about him.

Maybe he would make a good president, but he was nowhere to be found either.

What are your thoughts on either of those?

those?

Well, Larry Elder came into prominence because of his late candidacy and the recall election here in California.

I think if Larry Elder had known

earlier or if there had been a greater time to prepare that window between

Newsom being recalled

and the actual election, he would have done even better.

But

I don't think he's going to have the wherewithal to be a national candidate.

I just don't.

I mean, he's had no political experience.

If you ask people about Larry Elder, they know him from the talk show in the Los Angeles area.

I've been on this talk show.

He's a very good host.

And I've been on Fox within a couple of times when he's been the other guest.

He's very knowledgeable.

He's really got almost a photographic memory.

People forget that about him.

And he's fearless and he's got a quick wit.

So he'd be very effective.

And he's much better debater than Tim Scott.

If you're looking at a black candidate who might dominate the stage, he has the ability like

Ramaswamy to dominate because of his years of experience as a radio host and his natural talent.

But as a viable candidate, no, I don't think so.

And

I don't know.

Who was your other question that wasn't on the stage?

Governor Yunkin.

Governor.

Yunkin's very different, though, because

Yunkin has just an upbeat personality.

He smiles.

You want to typecast him as a Goldman Sachs,

Wall Street, Jeb Bush type wing of the Republican Party.

But just when you start to do that, you look at his record in Virginia and how he got elected.

And it was what?

It was taking on transgenderism, wokeism, the FBI, standing up for parents.

And he's an evangelical as well.

So he's a very complex candidate if he were to be a candidate.

But what is the strategy?

Well, his strategy is to wink and nod that he's available if there's a deadlock.

So if in the next three or four debates, Ron DeSantis does very, very well and starts to move up in the polls, then he's not going to run.

If Ron DeSantis is blasé

and Ramaswamy starts to edge ahead of sentence, then Yunkin will tell the donor class that he's available.

The big question about him is

that

he will outrage anybody because the Murdoch, that type of Republican money likes him, the corporate big billionaires.

And the question is, do they like, why do they like him?

Do they like him because they think he can win?

Do they like him because he has an upbeat, sunny personality, that he's really a smart guy?

Or do they like him because he'll bring the party back to the Jeb Bush center?

If that's the reason, then I don't think it's going to work.

But if he can remain a true mega conservative and yet have a disposition that doesn't alienate people, then I think he's sort of a candidate in waiting.

That's happened a lot in American history.

It's kind of like you go to the airport and you go into the cell phones, you know what I mean, Zone.

You just sit there and you wait and then you make your move when the flight lands.

And that's what he'll do.

Yeah.

So if we could turn then to the Democratic side, it looks like Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.

is drawing large crowds.

Lots of remarks on that from the Iowa State Fair.

And I was wondering if he had thoughts on his progress in the Democratic Party or with independence, I have a feeling he might be very popular there too.

I mean, he shouldn't be where he is because he's a hardcore leftist and his own family fights with him.

He's got this dysphonia, this problem with his voice and autoimmune condition, I think, where he sounds like he's...

been a chain smoker, which he isn't.

But he's in great shape and he's carved out a really weird position in this 2.0 manifestation of himself.

He's pretty good on the border, but he's good on the border in the sense that I want to protect Americans and American jobs and kind of a weird, the old left-wing support of the blue-collar crowd.

And he's...

translated, I mean, they would have laughed him off as a nut because of his anti-vax

theories.

And I'm not so eager to demiss them outright, but medical professionals do, that the preservatives and vaccinations are responsible for autism, et cetera.

They may or may not be true, but after Anthony Fauci

and after the side effects from the Pfizer at Moderna and the lack of transparency and the lack of testing, then his

credibility has gone way up.

And

he looks when he took off his shirt and you see that he's, is he 64 or something?

And when he took off his shirt, he looks like he's 40.

And when you look at Joe Biden on the beach, he can't move a lightweight little aluminum beach chair.

So he is out there and it's very volatile.

I continue to believe the following, that he's out there to prepare himself.

He's kind of like Howard Dean, if you know what I mean.

Nobody really knew who was going to be the 2004 candidate.

They thought maybe Kerry, but Kerry was playing Hamlet and his his polls weren't that good.

And Howard Dean was all alone.

And until he said, yeah,

he was kind of the guy the left wing really loved.

He was pre-Bernie.

And so he's kind of

got that little niche.

And we'll see what happens.

Because

I think I'm in the minority, but I've written a lot that I don't think Joe Biden's going to run.

I really don't.

I think he has until March or April to bow out as LBJ did.

And I don't think he can run.

I think he's declining the geometry.

I've said that, a geometric rate every day.

What I mean by that is that it's not a half a percent worse each week.

It's a half a percent and then 1% and then 2% and then 3% each week.

It's getting egregious.

I mean, if we were in a sane country and you put that guy out and said he's our president and he can't read off a teleprompted script or he has this creepy habit of turkey gobbling young girls' necks or blowing in their hair when he knows he shouldn't, or he's got this felonious son that apparently is in a weird relationship.

Joe knows he's not the smartest man he's ever talked to.

Joe knows he doesn't have complete confidence in Hunter, but Joe also knows that he's a crackhead or former crackhead, and he can say or do anything.

And that was evident on the laptop.

That was evident when his lawyers were threatening, as we talked in the last broadcast, of bringing Joe in to testify under oath.

So they're terrified of him.

They're terrified he might become another artist.

Maybe he'll go from

artistry to novels or something or to music.

Who knows?

But it will be designed for two reasons.

One, to irritate his dad for that kind of sense of being put upon, as we saw in the laptop.

Oh, I have to give half my income to Joe.

And you don't know what I do for this family.

Yeah, you're the bag man for the family.

Okay.

But without your dad,

there would be no bag to carry.

And so,

I don't know.

He's he's

Joe Biden, is what I'm trying to say, is deteriorating.

And Kennedy knows that.

And Kennedy feels that when that magic announcement comes that he's not going to run, he'll be in a good position by coming out early and being youthful, even though he's in the 60s.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's kind of bad with Joe Biden.

The other thing, just quickly, I mean, Kennedy has a point.

They don't even give him Secret Service protection.

That's what's so weird about the Biden family.

They're really a cruel, mean-spirited, awful family.

I just want to say it.

They are.

This is a guy that will go to Maui and he can't talk about.

the human ashes and all of that horrific fire, what it did to people.

They don't even exist.

Their bodies have been vaporized.

They have nothing.

And what does he do?

He talks about a little kitchen fire and then turns it into, you know,

a disaster because it might have torched his cat and his vet.

And they have to listen to that.

And when he sees somebody coming back from, when he sees a Gold Star mother whose son was killed because of Joe Biden's policy, his immediate instinct is, I'm going to one-up her.

Okay, you lost your son due to my policy, but my son came home in a coffin.

And so I know how it is.

No, your son did not come home in a coffin.

You've been saying that for six years now.

He didn't come home in a coffin.

He died of a glioblastoma.

But that's the kind of creepy person he is.

And it really gets frustrating to see him.

And so I think he's deteriorating at a rate, and he's not going to be capable of functioning.

I don't think he's capable now.

I think the Obamas and the Elizabeth Warren, as I said earlier, and Bernie, they like him because he's a construct.

He's a prop.

Just like he is no different than Joe Biden in a cardboard cutout you see in the supermarket, life-size local football coach hawking beer or something.

He's just a cardboard cutout, and they move him around.

They put him over here and they say, here is the stage.

And they try to tell him, you know, they put a little tape to show where he's supposed to walk and he can't do that.

And they put little notes on his speeches that he reads out that he's not supposed to.

Well, I'm going to be 70, and I can feel the difference between 65 and 60 and 55.

And if you said, Victor, you're going to run for president and you've got to go

endure that schedule.

And that's why it's so unique about Trump.

Whatever his critics say about him, he's...

He's got some kind of,

what's the word for it?

Supernatural energy

on human human energy.

I mean,

by any classical definition, he looks out of shape.

And then you see him on the golf course and he's powerful and he doesn't sleep and he's nervous and he's stressed and yet he continues.

And you don't know whether he's going to be like Ariel.

The only person I can think about him is Ariel Sharon.

He was just like that.

He had a huge gut, even heavier, and he was a maniac.

And

he just kept going.

And then one day, just, boom, he had a stroke.

And I don't know if that's, but comparatively.

Let's hope that's not it.

I hope not.

Parallel for our.

Yeah, but my point is that Biden is not a candidate.

He's not a president.

He's nothing.

He's just

an old grifter who made a lot of money and was talked into running probably by his wife and the old guard of the Democratic Party that knew that any of those candidates on the 2020 stage would have lost to Trump.

And they thought, you know what, Joe, you don't have to run.

Just stay in the basement.

We're going to outsource your campaign to ABC, NBC, CBS, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Chicago, Tribune, Los Angeles Times, NPR, PBS.

We'll handle it.

All you got to do is read the lines off the script, and you've got to turn over all your appointments.

judicial appointments, federal high-ranking official appointments, military appointments.

You turn it over to the Obamas

their people, and you'll be fine.

And that's what he did.

All right, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break and then come back and talk a little bit about lockdowns, vaccinations, and masking, and then maybe a little bit on new ideas about elections in our culture.

So stay with us and we'll be right back.

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

When people start getting sick, medications disappear fast.

And that's why we trust All Family Pharmacy.

They help you prepare before it's too late.

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

Plus, you can save an extra 10% with the code Victor10.

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

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

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

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

If you're like me, you have a lot of product on your bathroom counter.

Well, I have found the secret serum.

And it's vibrant Super C serum.

The ingredients in this one bottle can replace your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams, and even dark spot reducers.

Made in the USA with the highest quality ingredients including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, vitamin B5, and vitamin E, Super C Serum delivers noticeable results.

Simplify your skincare routine, get a healthier complexion, and minimize wrinkles and aged spots with Vibriance.

I just began using Super C serum last week and I love it.

My skin feels so much better, soft, moist, and fresh.

And by the way, it smells beautiful like the orange blossoms outside my kitchen door.

Give it a try and you'll love it too.

And if you don't find it better than your current skincare routine, you'll get a full refund.

Go to vibrance.com/slash Victor to save up to 37% off and free shipping.

That's Vibrance.

V-I-B-R-I-A-N-C-E,

vibrance.com slash Victor.

And we'd like to thank Vibrance for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

We're back.

And Victor, I

was just noticing all sorts of articles, etc.

They seem to be threatening new lockdowns, vaccination requirements, and perhaps masking again.

Do you think that this has anything to do with the upcoming election?

And I hope that's not a t-ball question.

Is that a t-ball question?

Well, it's proverbially they've

learned nothing and forgotten nothing, right?

After the last one, all the evidence is in now that if you look at excess death rates,

there was more people killed because of the lockdowns.

and

than the actual virus.

And by that, I mean, as we say, again, ad nauseum.

You miss a cancer appointment, you miss an optional surgery, you're home alone, looking at four walls, you drink, you take drugs, spousal abuse, family abuse, crime, the devastation of the economy, the destruction of small businesses, this whole Zoom culture that took over and hasn't left us in this kind of a contributory fashion.

I don't think we'd have had the George Floyd riots at all had we not had the lockdown.

And so it was very destructive.

And the idea that you would go back and you would do that again when the evidence is not in your favor, it's really scary.

Same thing with these, I know a lot of people where I work where they're on their fourth or fifth booster.

And these new boosters are, they're not just the new Omicron variant.

They're flu shots and respiratory virus vaccination.

and

COVID booster vaccination, excuse me, flu shot.

And you put, that's a a lot to put on your immune system, basically, since we've seen some reactions to the COVID injection.

So I don't know why the masking.

Scott Atlas, you know, he aggregated all of the studies when he was the advisor to Trump, and he had these memos and memorandums.

And before that, he wrote articles.

And he was very fair.

He just said the evidence on masking is that it doesn't seem to have much utility unless you've got an active respiratory

projectile, you know, coughing and sneezing in a crowded room.

And it might for a while stop that.

That's why surgeons wear them during surgeries.

But the idea you're going to wear them all day, it's going to have a lot of social psychological effects on children.

It's going to be an incubator of viruses.

It's kind of like a filter on your

the intake filter on your air conditioning heating system.

You're going to be breathing in this stuff.

It's going to stick to the mask.

I don't understand that at all.

I think yet I know they're going to do it again.

They're going to do it again.

I have a really weird relationship with a lot of people I really like, but on this particular issue,

there, and I'm speaking to someone who got COVID three times.

And the first time it was the Delta.

The second time I still have traces of the long COVID, 16 months later.

And then I got a case when I had long COVID.

And I had two Moderna shots, or maybe that's why I got, I don't know, but I'm not just dismissing the dangers of both COVID and long COVID for some susceptible people.

But the idea we'd go back to that is just frightening.

Yeah, I know.

I just, my sense is, is that they're amping it up for us for the coming election.

So they've got lots of reasons to

alter the loading.

I think that's quite right.

You take away the COVID virus and you take away the reaction to it, and Donald Trump would be president right now.

There's no doubt in anybody's mind.

The economy, you look at what the economic data was right before COVID, say in January of 2020, despite the impeachment of Donald Trump, it didn't matter.

He was on his way.

He was ahead in the polls.

The economy was...

less than 2% inflation.

It was growing at 2%.

It had very low unemployment.

The only problem he had was too much spending, but that really ballooned under the COVID policies.

And so the Chinese virus that mysteriously escaped from that lab, coupled with Dr.

Fauci and Francis Collins' reaction to it, really destroyed Donald Trump's candidacy.

And more importantly, it destroyed American balloting as we've known it.

Because prior to COVID, 70% of Americans in most states voted on Election Day.

And then a lot of them had to have

some sort of ID to make sure they were registered.

And now it's only about 30%

and lower in some states.

And there's no way to authenticate the ballot.

So that's what these policies did.

Yeah, they sure did.

Anthony Fauci,

he's one of these things that just very quickly, there's certain truths in America that they're too gargantuan to even embrace the reality.

In other words, we just can't imagine it.

So we can't really imagine that Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate,

is going to be indicted by four prosecutors on overtly political charges.

We can't really even grasp that the president of the United States is a crook and his son is a crook and his brother is a crook and his wife knew all about this and they shook down foreign governments and on a

state employee, federal employee, vice president's salary, they became fabulously rich and they could not have done that in just four years of being a private citizen for the first time in his life.

And that's too big to grasp.

It really is.

The other thing that's too big to grasp is the Chinese engineered a virus to enhance its gain of in a gain of function fashion.

And Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins with Peter Dasik helped them have the wherewithal both in actual money but in expertise and machinery or whatever the lab tools were necessary that were transferred freely to the Wuhan lab and they that lab was under control of the Chinese People Liberation Army and no one has apologized and we know Anthony Fauci tried to cover that fact up both by saying he didn't really know anything about it and two

that it was not a gain and gain of function virus.

So that's just too enormous because if you think of the ramifications, you walk through that trajectory.

Where do you go?

You go to Anthony Fauci.

Anthony Fauci had a hand in promoting a type of research that was so dangerous, it was outlawed in the United States.

And he promoted it through the back door in one of our worst enemies in history, communist China.

And that lab leaked

accidentally or somehow leaked a virus that killed 1 million Americans.

And yet he continued to mislead us.

And then when you look at all of these ramifications, which ensued to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump, and one of the things that nobody talks about was at least three, we were told in late fall that Pfizer was going to have an announcement in late October about the vaccine.

In other words, they knew they were going to release it and that it was viable, at least for a while.

And then they said they had to delay it.

And they deliberately delayed the announcement of the Pfizer vaccination, Operation Warp Speed, until, what, a week after the election, mysteriously.

Oh, Donald Trump is up for a real

re-election.

Yeah, we got a problem.

We were saying it was going to work.

And that would show that his Operation Warp Speed brought us relief from this horrifying.

But you know what?

There's the little things we have to work out.

So in the next two weeks, we're working it out.

Oh, he lost.

Okay.

Let's announce that it's viable and it's going to save us all.

Just before Joe Biden, that's how they did it.

So sad.

It is.

Very sad.

It is what they get away with.

So these are enormous truths

that you just can't, you can't even comprehend that's going on.

It's like the FBI hiring Twitter and paying them $3 million to suppress the news.

Or these people you see on television every day.

You look in their eyes and you think.

You point your finger at the screen and you said, you were the person who told us that you were sure that laptop was inauthentic.

So you were telling us that a bunch of little people in the Kremlin, as I said, gremlins with Jack, you were tinkering and you were, what, printing out a 3D replica?

And then you just were such good counterfeiters or forgers that you got everything right.

And you want us to believe that you won't even apologize for that lie?

It's incredible.

Yeah.

Well, Victor, last question here is on a article out of the New York Times.

I actually got got this through Powerline, and Powerline's point was that the Democrats or the left always lets out their views on democracy.

And the title of the article is Elections Are Bad for Democracy.

But I want to ask you, because they do make an argument beyond we're left and we don't like democracy because we want ourselves in power.

But they argued that democracy brings to the fore

narcissists, Machiavelli, and psychopaths, and that they were proposing a lottery system where people who enter themselves into this lottery to become representatives would take a civics test.

And so that was their solution for this problematic democracy.

Yes, go ahead.

It's called a klerocracy.

And that comes from the Greek word kleros, which is a pebble, a voting token.

So under Athenian democracy,

there were offices, all of them,

except the Strategos.

Think of that.

So, you could be elected by lot to keep the sewers running.

You could be elected by lot to do almost anything, except the chief archon and

on the board of the strategia, the board of ten generals.

That should tell you something, right?

Yes, we're going to just have anonymous lottery because every citizen is the same as everybody else, and therefore we're not going to have corruption, but we're not going to dare do that with our national security, which tells you something that they think they can survive.

And, you know, it's not an old idea.

Remember what William F.

Buckley said?

He would rather

take the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than turn the country over to the Harvard faculty.

And so there's this,

well, I have, I mean, I have trust in the American people a lot more than I do academics.

But when you said that they were going to have a specific group of citizens, is that it?

A specific group of citizens?

Yes, ones that would want to become representatives.

Yes, and they were going to give them a test.

Yes, a civics test would be the only thing to get into this lottery.

Yes, and the test would say, what's the 10th amendment of the Constitution?

Or do you believe that we must protect transgendered people from homophobic and transphobic responses?

Which is question is going to likely be on that civics test.

Exactly.

So who's going to, as Juvenile said, who's going to police the police?

So we have an election, but the thing remember about the left is they don't like elections.

They never do.

Democracy dies in darkness.

That was the motto of the Washington Post.

It did more than any other media organization to promulgate the Russian collusion and the laptop disinformation hoaxes.

And so my point is this, if you look at Marx, if you look at the Soviet Union, if you look at Cuba, if you look at Venezuela, what do you find?

When you look at Communist China or Mao's Revolution, you always find one thing, that these liberationists say that voting is a bourgeoisie

project.

And who is Che Guevara or Fidel Castro?

Or who was these people?

They're all well connected.

They all have their little cadre that takes over and they hate elections.

They always hate elections

because they feel that they're more moral and they're more knowledgeable and they're better people and therefore they know what's good for all of us.

So they hate people voting.

And you can really see it.

So the Democratic Party doesn't like elections anymore.

And that's why they call this, they always, they're very bright people though.

They're very clever.

They always say

election denialism or voting restrictions or you're trying to restrict the franchise.

And by that, they mean we want elections like they are in Philadelphia in 2012, where 30,000 people in the precincts vote for Barack Obama and not one, not one voted for Mitt Romney.

That's statistically impossible, but that's the kind of elections they like.

So they keep calling people names.

You want to have driver's license.

You know, I was thinking about the other day when I went to

a Home Depot and you never really see people with checks anymore.

You know what I mean?

They don't write checks.

But there was a person, old style guy, maybe 70 years old, and he was writing a check.

And guess what they asked him for?

His driver's license.

And I thought, wow, that's...

prejudicial.

I mean, you can't write a check without a driver's license.

And then we don't ask that for voting in California.

But it's really weird how they want to destroy all criterion for voter integrity because they don't really like elections.

They don't trust the people because of their crackpot agendas.

And then they want to call people in a projectionist fashion.

Oh, you're trying to suppress the vote by having a driver's license to ensure the integrity of the vote.

And then when you look at what Stacey Abrams said, or what all of these left-wing activists said, they're suppressing the vote.

And you look at actual minority turnout in places like Georgia, it's at record highs.

And so

places that have

driver's license requirement, they don't have a record, a statistically consistent record that minority voters don't vote as much as they otherwise would.

It's an insult, too, to tell a person you go into a store and you show your driver's license and then you, when they ask you to do that to vote in the most important aspect of your civil existence, then you think that's racist?

Isn't it making sense?

No, it sure is crazy.

Well, Victor, we're at the end of the show, and I do have a comment from a reader that is a little bit of a, I guess, elbow, I would call it.

And it's

no, it's not an eye gouge.

That's too hard.

She's just having a little fun here.

Okay, I haven't heard it.

And I'll

give us five stars.

You don't show me these, so I won't.

It's always going to be spontaneous.

She does give you five stars, so she's not saying anything bad.

She says, I love listening to Victor's historical and military wisdom with Jack and Sammy.

But today's episode with Victor and Sammy discussing the intricacies of Women's World Cup football or soccer, as you call it in the U.S., made me smile.

Sammy describing Rapino's penalty miss or thing, as she initially called it, and Victor realizing it wasn't a good kick because he had seen players at a Mexican school playing soccer was funny.

At least they didn't say the U.S.

team went out in the 16th round rather than

at the last 16th stage, as I saw in one U.S.

newspaper.

Keep up the good work.

Mary from the U.K.

So there you go.

So her complaint is the wrong nomenclature.

No, that you probably don't know quite as much about soccer as you as as you know about other things and so she was i plead absolutely

i play absolutely guilty

way way before soccer became the suburb suburban thing to do in the 1980s you know so you were going to get away from the concussions of football oh there's a lot in soccer i went to as i said eric white school and it was mostly mexican-american Guess what the favorite sport was?

Soccer, soccer.

Two miles from my home, there's a soccer match, a soccer field.

And it's mostly from people from Mexico, mostly here,

not as first or second generation.

And so when I drive by and I get gas, I watch it.

And I can tell you, I don't plead, I plead ignorance about the rules of soccer.

And I think my total experience and mandatory physical education classes to have to play soccer could not be more than five hours.

I find the game utterly boring, really boring.

I do.

I admire the people's skill, but I just don't understand the game.

It's like cricket to me.

And, you know, it's kind of like, why watch cricket when you can watch baseball?

Or why watch soccer when you can watch football?

But nevertheless, I'm not trying to deprecate true blue fans, but I will plead not guilty to a kick.

And I have seen young kids get penalty kicks when I drive by or I stop for a second that were much better than what I saw Megan Rapinoe do.

It's just a fact.

She's in a full defensive mode now

and trying to say that you don't.

She knows what she did.

She politicized the entire team.

She created factions.

She organized this thing about

the anti-American, pro-gay, pro-trans

stature of the team, she got a lot of play for herself.

She got a lot of endorsements for herself.

She got a lot of attention for herself as her career started to be in the eclipse due to age.

And she ruined the brand.

So if you say today, women's soccer team, and an ignoramus like me who doesn't know anything about soccer, what's the first thing you hear?

If you and I, Sammy, we go out and we go to the Fresno Mall and we say, women's soccer, what are we going to hear?

We're going to hear, I'm not me.

People are not going to associate it with a positive.

And she did that.

She did that.

It's just like if you say, San Francisco quarterback, Colin Kaepernick.

I mean, nobody, he destroyed

the whole idea.

He hurt, he cost the NFL billions of dollars and decreased attendance.

And she's going to do the same thing.

These people are all narcissists, and they all all end up wealthy, but

they have the unmitas touch.

They destroy everything they touch because they're narcissists.

And it's like Joe Biden.

He's going to destroy the country, and he's going to go.

He made a lot of money doing it.

And

all he can talk about is himself.

You know, everybody says that Trump is a complete narcissist, but I guarantee you.

And everybody said Bill Clinton was a complete narcissist.

And I said that Barack Obama was a complete narcissist.

But I don't think any of those three,

had they been in Maui, would have got off topic when they saw the faces of those people and start talking about a little kitchen fire and their lost cat.

I just don't think they do it.

None of them.

No.

And I don't think they would lie and say their son died in Iraq.

I just don't think they do it.

So what I'm saying is this guy is Sue Ginnerous.

He's different.

Joe Biden.

And it's not just that he's senile.

He was a mean SOB through his whole career, whether it's defined as Tara Reed or the Inquisition of Clarence Thomas or his encomia to Southern segregationist.

You name it.

He's not a nice person.

He's a blowhard and a mean SOB.

Well, Victor, thank you.

And I'd like to apologize to your listeners.

We are recording at the ranch today, and there's lots of

almond machinery out here trying to sweep the almonds.

So I apologize for any noise in the background.

And I had to do, I've had earlier interviews today, and I've had to apologize.

We had an unseasonable rain and the almonds had just been shaken and they were all on the ground.

And the forecast was a 20% chance of slight rain because we were so far north of the Los Angeles.

unseasonable hurricane.

And guess what?

For a day and a half, it rained an inch and the next day it rained a half an inch.

And then we had cool weather.

And so when you go out in that orchard, it's littered with almonds on the ground and they're all, they've got black mold on the husk.

And we're just hoping that when they pick them up today, they're sweeping them into rows and they'll come back and pick them up.

But that mold is confined to the husk and it won't get inside the shell.

So we'll see.

Yeah, we'll see.

That explains this loud noise.

Yeah, and we also like to thank our listeners.

We love you all, and we appreciate that you come to listen to our podcast.

And thank you, everybody.

And we'll continue on our Saturday edition with more of World War II.

And then we're going to go to the Korean War and then Vietnam and then the Gulf War, the Afghan War, and then closing war in general.

And then I hope we can start with classics of Western literature, starting with Homer, going all the way to the American novelist.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thanks to everybody else and this is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis-Hansen and we're signing off.

I knew we all had two ages, our actual age and our internal biological age.

What I didn't know is I've likely lowered my biological age without even knowing it.

Here's the thing.

Because Americans eat so many processed foods and not enough fruits and veggies, many, perhaps most, are 10 plus years older on the inside than their actual age.

They're ticking time bombs.

A major university study suggests how to slow aging and diffuse that biological time bomb.

Participants slowed their aging by drinking field of greens.

That's all.

They didn't change their eating, drinking, or exercise, just field of greens.

When I started field of greens to replace my multivitamin, I was amazed.

After about two weeks, my energy improved, I've been exercising more, and my overall wellness feels great.

Each fruit and vegetable in Field of Greens was doctor selected for specific health benefits.

Cell health, heart, lungs, kidney, metabolism, even healthy weight.

It's wonderful knowing Field of Greens can slow how quickly I'm aging.

And I encourage you to join me.

Swap your untested fruit, vegetable, or green drink for Field of Greens.

While there's time, check out the university study and get 20%

off when using promo code Victor at fieldofgreens.com.

That's fieldofgreens.com, promo code Victor.

And we'd like to thank Field of Greens for continuing to sponsor the Victor Davis Hanson Show.