Making Sense of Geopolitical Discord and Domestic Chaos

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

When people start getting sick, medications disappear fast.

And that's why we trust All Family Pharmacy.

They help you prepare before it's too late.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello, ladies.

Hello, gentlemen.

This is the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, starring the namesake as Victor Davis Hansen, and he is the Martin and Eli Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne Marsha-Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

He has an official website.

It's called The Blade of Perseus, and its web address is victorhanson.com.

You should be subscribing, and I'll tell you more about that later.

We are on the cusp of Mother's Day as we record, and this will come out after Mother's Day.

But we have time at the end of this show.

We'll maybe have a Mother's Day-related thought or two.

But to begin with, I think it'd be very interesting to get Victor's thoughts on some international South America activities going on that show maybe that the Monroe Doctrine is dead.

It's probably been dead for a while, Victor.

And I don't know.

Maybe the stake's already been put through its heart.

But I think it's...

Well, I just, Barack Obama, I remember, kind of killed it and they kind of announced that they didn't want it around anymore.

It was a vestige of imperialism.

It's been dead.

And the old idea that the South American and Latin American countries were going to sort of follow the chilean model although chile has just elected a conservative government to the surprise of everybody that hasn't panned out i think part of it is because the united states

under obama for eight years and then uh the two and a half years they they were intervening remember hillary got involved in uh recognizing or not recognizing governments depend on their ideology.

And so they were promoting, when she was Secretary of State, they were promoting ideologically left-centered governments.

And those governments repaid that magnanimity with contempt because they thought, you know what, we'll just cut

Silk Road and Belt and Road deals with the Chinese.

So the Chinese could control the,

you know, the Panama Canal, and they're building infrastructure in Brazil.

They're negotiating with

Argentina.

So we've lost a lot of our influence.

And then

we've got this.

It looks to be a bit of a

mess on the southern border.

Yeah, before you go on, we have to talk about this at length, but you know what?

We have to pay for this.

So we're going to have to get your thoughts, your extended thoughts, right after these important messages.

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 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.

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 Bull 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 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 bowlandbranch.com/slash victor.

That's bowl 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-Hansen Show.

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

Yeah, Victor,

I'm just going to read a headline here and let's continue on what you're saying, but there's some significant activity

between China and Brazil.

Brazil is not just a tiny country, it's a big freaking country.

And then following your thoughts on

South America, we have also then some

gutlessness, maybe of the Biden administration dealing again with China.

So Tony Blinken can go over there and have a visit.

But first, Victor, I'd like to just, here's a headline from

Gatestone Institute, and that's a great website.

I would like to recommend it to folks.

A piece by Lawrence Franklin.

Chinese embrace Brazil as global strategic partner as Brazilian president visits China.

By the way,

it's his fifth visit to China, the Brazilian president.

Brazil's warming, here's a little snippet from this piece.

Brazil's warming ties to China also have an economic purpose.

China is Brazil's largest trading partner, and Brazil exports a great deal of agricultural produce to China.

Brazil appears hopeful for increased Chinese investment to modernize its industrial plant as well as technology transfer for its semiconductor production.

Victor, a massive country to our south,

you know, playing FTSE with China, throw in Venezuela, Ecuador, Mexico on our border.

I mean,

could we have worse

enemies than our alleged allies?

Victor,

keep going.

Yeah, well, I mean,

I think I was just saying to Sammy in one of our prior podcasts, if you take away the idea of Mexico as our partner and by extension, other people in Central America, and you just look at the record, and then you compare that record with Iran or North Korea,

they've done a lot more damage than North Korea or Iran has to us.

There's 100,000 people who are dying from fentanyl.

And before you blame the people for taking fentanyl, some know what they're doing.

There's a lot of them that think it's, you know, Xanax or something

or a mild drug.

And so the cartels with their billion-dollar profits are deliberately taking Chinese raw product and in these stealth, not too stealthy actually, because they're pretty ostensibly drug cartel factories are exporting it and killing 100,000 people.

And then they're sending 6.5 million people so far in the last two and a half years in deliberate violation of U.S.

law.

And Mr.

Obador, the president of Mexico, knows it's in violation.

And the people coming across who we

romanticize as the poor downtrodden, they know exactly what they're doing, that they do not want to come legally, which we took a million immigrants in 2019.

So there's a process that's the most generous in the world, but that's not enough.

They've got to break the law and come into our country at a huge cost.

Mr.

Obador is also interfering with U.S.

politics when he urges people to vote Democratic.

He brags that he sent 40 million of his citizens here, that he and prior administrations.

And then we have Venezuela that's a de facto enemy of the United States, of which Joe Biden was begging them to give him more oil production right before the midterms.

And Brazil, I mean, Mr.

Lulu, whatever his name is, is, you know.

I guess the only thing you say about that, a prison sentence didn't hurt his chances.

I think Neil Ferguson wrote a recent column where he argued that Donald Trump shouldn't worry if he has to go to prison because there's a precedent that it empowers your presidential rematch chances, as it did in Brazil.

So I,

you know, you just look at Latin America and Latin America and South America and Mexico are

working with the United States when the United States is powerful, strong, self-confident, has a border that people respect and know that it's an honor and a privilege to get into the United States.

And when you have a left government that sort of challenges or deprecates the traditions and history of the United States, has no confidence in its values, opens the border, appeases the Brazilians or the Mexicans or the Hun, whoever they are, then they have contempt.

And they would rather, you know, their idea is the Chinese come to them and they say, look, the United States, they don't even know how many genders there are.

Have you ever been in Detroit or Portland or Seattle or San Francisco?

Look at them.

They don't even know what to do with homeless.

They're on the dissent.

You should come over to our side.

We'll cut a deal with you.

And they're making, as I say, the necessary adjustments.

It's kind of pathetic.

It really is.

I mean, it reminds me of Germany

in

1940 going all through Eastern Europe and the Middle East and telling these countries, you know,

we just overran France.

Britain's isolated.

The Americans can't do anything about it.

You should join us.

And they kind of fostered Nazi movements all over.

And that's what China's doing.

Well, here's another example, Victor,

of,

I guess, America projecting

fear and gutlessness.

So there's an editorial from my old Stomping Grounds

National Review.

Biden capitulates to China is the

title.

Let me just read the first sentence or two.

Bizarrely, the flight of the Chinese military spy balloon over the U.S.

may be the occasion for U.S.

concessions to Beijing rather than the other way around.

According to a new report from Reuters, The State Department's China House team was ordered to stand down on some long-planned measures targeting the Chinese Communist Party's malfeasance so that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken can secure the trip to China that he had to cancel after the balloon incident, etc.

Victor,

yeah, I mean, the move is just

I think

I think at the core of this, isn't it Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman?

Yes.

She just stepped down.

She was the one that was the architect or the she was John Kerry's sidekick that really pushed the Iran deal.

And when she came back in, she did everything in her power to appease Iran to get back into that deal.

And they humiliated her.

And now she's retired.

But she is the one pushing China.

And

there's no pushback against that push because, you know, there was just some recent stories about Diane Feinstein and her inside stock tips.

her recent late husband, his involvement with China, Michael Bloomberg's $10 billion investment in China, Bill Gates' relations with China.

You get into Anthony Fauci dealing with the Wuhan.

There's just too many profitable

revenue streams in every sector of American civilization, from the government to politicians to media to lawyers to corporate people.

And so when you look at all of these people, I mean, I was just looking at some of these people,

and what do they do when they when they go, like think of Michelle Flournoy.

She was the Undersecretary of Defense under Obama.

So, what did she do when she went out of office?

She went over to the Boston Consulting Group.

And what was that?

That was a defense contractor.

And all of a sudden, she leaves defense where all her buddies are still entrenched.

And

its revenues go up by about four or five times.

It's contractual agreements with the Pentagon and Arms Supply.

And then she goes to another contractor.

Then she goes to another contractor.

And it's really depressing how many people who are very, very wealthy and they serve in these high positions in the Pentagon or the State Department, and then they start these consulting groups or lobbyists or corporate defense contractor boards or contractors with the State Department.

And then you end up with someone like Hillary Clinton when she's negotiating the sale or the okay

of uranium to Vladimir Putin when Bill Clinton's getting a half a million dollars for a 20-minute talk in Moscow.

So, you know,

it's just, I know they're naive.

I know that they don't know anything about China, but they're also all of these people in some way or another are compromised.

You know, Victor, if I may.

Starting with Hunter Biden and his buddies in China.

Well,

how do you, if I may, how do you think the

so far the

House investigation related to Team Biden, the rollout, which has been accused by in some places of, oh, you have no evidence.

Well, you know, yeah, they don't have any evidence.

Neither did

Adam Schiff, but still he got news coverage for his, you know, forthcoming blockbusters that never seemed to, you know, that never seemed to happen.

Anyway, Victor, how do you think the rollout on the well?

When I heard Comer and everybody say, hold on, hold off on the prosecutions, just wait till Wednesday.

And I thought he was going to, as his critic said, give, you know, criminal referrals and, you know, letter

on every detail possible, letters, affidavits, everything.

But it didn't seem that way.

So I would have done it the other way.

I would have

released the documents first and not said much.

And I would just say, we're going to have a release today and then release it.

Then when I was done, I'd say, okay, you see what I've done?

This is what it means.

But when you broadcast and you almost promise that the releases of the documents are going to result in almost

instant

indictments, and then that doesn't happen,

and you only control one half of Congress and you have a very tenuous majority in the House,

I wouldn't have done it that way.

But

I'm not overly critical.

I just think that

I think that the Republicans, they always do this and they underestimate the left.

They do it on China.

They do it on corruption.

They do it on the border.

They say things like, Joe Biden was not prepared.

He was prepared.

That's what he wants.

He wants six and a half million people to cross illegally.

He likes 10,000 being arrested each day and another 30 or 40 making it across.

That's the point.

He wants to be close to China so his family and other people can have good relations with very lucrative Chinese concerns.

That's the point.

And

so

when you say, well,

Now, the family is compromised.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

But you should ask yourself, why, if they're so compromised, they're not in jail.

And the reason is that they have these incestuous relationships with the DOJ.

Merrick Garland's a partisan.

FBI is a retrieval service for lost diaries, lost guns, lost laptops.

And until you understand what you're up against and whether you're, remember that.

line that David Mamet, you know, that wrote for the untouchables, unless you're willing to do everything, take a gun to a knife fight, which Barack Obama, of course, used when he was egging on his, I guess, his supporters to get violent.

But unless you're willing to fight fire with fire, then you don't know what you're up against.

The left will do and say

anything.

And they're going to have a lot of money next time.

And they're going to try to warp the electoral process in the sense of changing voting laws.

And they're going to call everybody a racist.

And so, but I think the Republicans, they get, they always, in the pinch, they revert back to Romneyism.

You know what I mean?

I'd rather win, lose

nobly than win ugly.

Yeah.

Also, a,

I don't know, disconnect.

We're just tired of the

kraken are going to be released, and there's no kraken to be released.

And, you know,

it's dispiriting.

Also, Victor, the left never seems to pay.

And I don't mean here in America, but anywhere.

I mean, after

the Iron Curtain fell, okay, Cherchescu got shot.

Well, what happened to the rest of these

oppressive sons of

the guys who ran the police states?

They were the left.

They're the first cousins of the left here in America.

They never paid a price.

And do we really think,

really think the

leftists here in America commit crimes that they're going to pay?

I don't think so.

No, I mean,

Joseph Stalin never incurred the amount of hatred that he should have incurred.

Hitler was more diabolical in his industrialization of death, but Stalin killed more people by intent, a lot more.

And Mao was the greatest killer of all.

And

no,

you know why?

Because

the left here and abroad always falls back on we're for the people, we're for equity, we're for egalitarianism.

And the right is for

so-called meritocracy and letting the strong, you know, pursue their pursuits.

And the left doesn't believe that.

So they have this veneer of,

well, we're fuzzy and kind and empathetic, but they're not.

They create the greatest murders of all time because that's a psychological mechanism to cover for some pretty dastardly deeds.

And so, but

that's at the heart of our political crisis right now, Jack, is this asymmetry in the application of the law and jurisprudence.

So we get 120 days, $2 billion worth of damage, 30 to 40 dead,

originally 14,000 arrests, looting, arson, riot, and nothing.

Almost nobody was convicted.

Two people threw a firebomb, law students.

They got, what, one year for police.

And then you compare that to January 6th, where some of these people are looking at 10 and 15 years for kind of a violent pushback against the police.

Or you look at the Biden presidential documents taken out in three locations, a garage, and there's no raid.

There's no special counsel that is leaking that he's going to indict Biden.

And

it's just, Tara Reed seems to me just as credible as this Carol woman that was accusing Trump.

She didn't even, at least Tara Reid knew the date and the month.

This person didn't even know the year.

And so, but Tara Reed was, you know, women must, remember Senator Hirono?

Women must be believed.

No, they don't.

Some women should be believed, but not the ones that embarrass you.

So that's the big, I think that's the frustrating thing.

And

we can talk about Neely and the death and

the Marine veteran,

Mr.

Penny, but think about that for a second.

We had a guy with an axe that went in and tried to scare people and destroy things, and he's out.

And the man that was killed tragically, 42 arrests, three assaults, lewd activity.

What was his forte?

His forte was going up to innocent people over the age of 65, taking his fist like a coward and smashing their skull.

That's what his forte was.

And then he tried it one too many times and thought he was going to go as a wolf onto the subway with all the sheep and do his little shtick, which I guess the media transmogrified into, oh, he was a talented impersonator.

He was Michael Jackson.

No, he was a thug.

So he went in there and he tried to, I'm going to, yeah, I'm capable.

I'm willing to die.

And then

his luck ran out.

he encountered somebody who A, was a veteran, B, didn't give a blank blank and had the physical capacity to take him down.

Shouldn't have died.

I regret that.

And then the media kicked in, just kicked in like automatic pilot.

Suddenly, you only saw the video portion of him being choked.

Where were the videos that everybody took, we were told, Jack, of all of his shouting and yelling and threatening?

I haven't seen very many of those in comparison to the one when he's on the ground.

And then all of a sudden, the media tells, well, he was traumatized because his mother died violently.

He was a very gifted person.

We didn't hear anything about the background of Mr.

Penney,

what he was like.

So they just took this guy who had terrorized the innocent.

And the guy had just violated his parole.

He was violent.

And they made him into a folk hero.

It's just like they did with Trayvon.

And, you know, that was a Hispanic.

young man fighting an African-American teenager.

We don't know what Trevon was doing, but he was walking in a suspicious fashion.

He went into the Skittles thing.

Okay, George Zimmerman's mother was a Peruvian.

He could have just as easily been called, instead of George Zimmerman, Jorge Mesa.

And what did they do?

They did not want that.

So they reinvented a new adjective, a white Hispanic.

They photoshopped his police file with all the cuts on him.

They doctored the 911 tape.

And presto, you had a white Germanic sounding name person

preying on an innocent, poor little minute.

Because they took pictures when Trevon was 11.

That's what they ran with in a football uniform.

Oh, he's only 11.

He's a little kid.

And you had this big white brute with a German ancestry trying to kill him.

And then Barack Obama ran with it.

Oh, he's the son I never had.

Looks like the son I never have.

So there you have it.

It's just, it just drives people crazy at this asymmetry of the media and the law.

Penny arrested for manslaughter,

$100,000 bail.

I believe he's out.

And of course,

Al Sharpton has risen to the occasion.

That's so funny.

Al Sharpton is directly responsible for at least one person getting killed with Freddie's market.

And remember that?

Hey, dim Jews, put your yarmark and come over and get me.

Ha ha.

Yeah.

Hey, when we, when them Greeks, those queers, you know, were doing that stuff, our people were, you know, homophobic, racist, anti-Asian, anti-Jewish, thug.

And all of a sudden, the Obama administration comes in and he's reinvented as a the Reverend Al Sharp doing a very serious civil rights activist.

And no, I know that it was very depressing.

The only good thing about it is I guess he had a GoFund page that immediately shot up over $400,000.

Mr.

penny did yeah yeah well he's uh he's gonna need it he's gonna need it right somebody's gonna need to give him a job uh after this is over although in one sense it it'll it'll never be over for him of course you know the family's lawyer was out i don't know the guy's name but i saw some some short clip and actually it was in the new york post some article Did did he stop to ask him, did he need help?

Something to that effect.

You have this guy intimidating everyone.

and if you're you've not been on a subway train in new york city folks you know it's uh it's confined space typically it's going through a dark tunnel you know so it's not it's not the greatest sense of i can get out of here and it's so it's it's just intimidating you know it's not funny i i i saw something like this i used to when i was a graduate student

on Saturday or Sunday night, a couple of graduate students, we would go down University Avenue in Palo Alto, and there was a bar with kind of indoor, outdoor, and it kind of got frat students there, you know,

Stanford and other students.

And I had a colleague who was an absolute genius in classical languages.

I've never seen anybody could read Greek like he could.

But he was also a severely wounded Vietnam vet in special forces.

And it was right after he got back from Vietnam that he went into graduate school.

And he was a little touchy.

And we sat there and these frat guys were yelling and screaming and bothering the

waitress and started throwing food.

And one of them hit me in the head.

And I said, what are you doing to about eight of them?

And they said, you're not going to do anything because there was eight of them.

And without any notice at all, this guy walked up.

And he went over there and he grabbed him by the back of the neck and some special forces hold.

And And I thought he was going to kill him.

And everybody just, he just threw him on the ground.

And then the waiter, and what did the waiter do?

He did the same thing.

He kicked us out.

But that guy was just terrified.

And the moral of the story is that if you go places and you bully people and you threaten them with damage and you assault them, you can get away with it one, two, three.

But someday at some point, you have a rendezvous with somebody that doesn't care.

They have that 100-foot, 100-yard stare.

And he did.

This person, I won't mention his name, he didn't care.

He, I said afterwards, were you going to kill him?

He said, yeah.

And I said, why?

He said, well, have you ever been in the Montignard village when you call an airstrike on yourself because everybody you knew in the special forces is dead?

So I did.

So this is nothing compared to that.

And, you know, he used to be at a bar and he would like splinters.

His arm was full of shrapnel.

He just kind of grossed me out by pushing splinters out, you know, that would work their way off.

And so when I saw that, I thought, well, they're going to romanticize this guy into a Michael Jackson wannabe great impressionist.

And they don't care about any of the 67-year-old woman that was almost knocked out.

the 66-year-old, 65-year-old Hispanic man that almost got a concussion, or the lewd act he was arrested for, or all the times he clogged up the criminal justice system, and we have to make him into some kind of martyred saint.

And we all know that if he had been white doing that, and there was a clean-cut black veteran Marine, and there's a lot of them, and that Marine had a stepped forward and done exactly that, that most people would have praised him, including most of the black community.

Hey, look what happened at January 6th.

One person was shot.

If the races had been different between the cop who did the shooting and the woman who got killed.

That's another thing with Joe Biden.

When you bring that up, Joe Biden has been so bad.

He and Hakeem Jeffries, they keep saying five people.

Have you noticed it?

Five people were killed at the hands of MAGA or were responsible.

MAGA was no, they weren't.

Maybe in the next six months, four more committed suicide, but you don't know whether that was a result of that incident and you don't know why they did it.

And to claim that the demonstrators did that, you know, it's very funny about Biden.

He keeps mentioning all of this violence on January 6th,

but

he doesn't say anything that they a lethally shot a 14-year-old, 14-year military veteran for the crime of going through a window.

And nobody said a word.

They just, and they, and then not content with that, they had lurid reports about her sex life and her supposedly white, trashy existence.

They really tried to demonize and destroy her memory.

That's what that's what they do.

And Joe Biden is the

she had it coming, you know.

That's yeah.

And any man, I mean,

I don't want to get off topic, but when you look at, I don't like George Santos, he's a pathological liar, he's a cheat, he's a thief.

Okay,

so we had a big

virtue signaling indictment of George Santos.

Okay, I have no problem with that.

So the president is sent.

We're going after liars, liars that

their lies are of such a magnitude they win an obscure congressional race.

Fine.

That means, okay, so he did, his lies broke the law, unlike

Richard Brumenthal, the guy who said he was a Vietnam veteran on his way to a Senate seat, or Elizabeth Warren, who parlayed a fake story about high cheekbones into being the first quote unquote Native American Harvard law professor and senate.

So we'll just forget that for a minute because we'll say, well, they didn't break a law.

But how about James Clapper, who went under oath and swore.

swore under oath to Congress that the National Security Agency did not spy on people.

And then when he was caught, he said, I gave the least untruthful.

And he was rewarded with a CNN consultant.

How about Andrew McCabe?

Four times the inspector general said he lied, three of which were under oath about leaking, leaking about the Clinton Foundation.

How about James Comey?

245 times he said he couldn't remember while under oath.

How about John Brennan?

Two times, once under oath, said,

We do not spy on Senate staff or computers.

He lied right to the face of Diane Feinstein.

She was the head of that committee at the time.

Just an out-and-out lie.

He got a MSNBC consultantship.

How about Robert Mueller, the catalyst for his entire investigation?

Two things.

Steel dossier, fusion GPS.

Mr.

Mueller, you're under oath.

Would you please tell us what you know about the fusion, the steel dossier?

Oh, that's not my purview.

Well, then you can tell us about.

the fusion GPS.

Oh, I don't know about it.

That was a complete lie.

And then we get into Anthony Fauci, route 600,000 through Echo Health to continue gain of function research at the Wuhan lab that's illegal in the United States.

He's asked point blank, did you fund, we do not fund gain of function.

I can assure you of that.

And so my point is, these are whale liars.

Santos is a meno liar.

And some of these lies have national and international consequences, such as

the laptop, 51 authorities, think of that, can swear that this laptop has all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.

So Anthony Blinken gets the idea that Joe Biden is so non-compost mentes, he's going to get torn apart on the laptop.

So he dreams up the idea, according to Mike Morrell, the interim director of the CIA.

So he calls Morrell up and says, you know what, we need something for the debate coming up.

Can you round up the old gang and have them basically lie and say the laptop is Russian disinformation?

I don't know what Morrell did, but he must have known that the repairman had a receipt from Hunter Biden.

He must have known that Hunter Biden has lost his crackpipe and another, two other laptops.

He must know that he's very capable of dumping off a laptop, signing the receipt, and never picking it up.

He must have known as well that when he on national TV won't even deny it, that it's authentic, but it didn't matter.

He even got active CIA people to help coordinate that letter, apparently, from the latest disclosures.

And so, did he, either Blinken was lying or Morell was lying or both of them are lying.

And in some sense, all 51 people sign their name to a lie, and there's no consequences.

But that laptop may have changed the election.

And so, Yes, go after Santos liar, the minnow liar, but why do we let these whale liars swim about and circle about without any consequences?

It's kind of like the Bloomberg effect.

Every time the snow snowed and, you know, your streets in New York were clogged.

He couldn't get the snow removed.

So he talked about supersized drinks he was going to outlaw.

You can't deal with a felony.

You go after the misdemeanor.

Interesting about Blinken, by the way, Victor, and back to the point made earlier about him kowtowing to China.

Here's the guy that helped engineer the Russian influence or focus on the laptop as Russian influence.

And here he is today supersizing China's influence with America.

I mean, there's no comparison, right?

Between the potential of Chinese influence and the potential of Russian influence.

And who's the sidekick that was similarly humiliated at the Anchorage Summit with the Chinese in March of 2021?

Jake Sullivan.

What do we know about him?

He was involved with Sussman as an emissary from the Clinton campaign through the paywalls of the DNC, Perkins Co., Fusion GPS, pursuing that lie about pings and the Alpha Bank.

Remember that?

That Trump's computer was supposedly sending code or receiving code from Putin.

They're both compromised.

There's no consequences.

I think that's, again, that's what gets people so angry when they look at the way that this, that Merrick Garland, I mean, mean, they got, they went through that Pentagon and they expelled 10,000 people that didn't get a vaccination.

Now we learn, if you read Scott Atlas's latest in the Newsweek and other people, that the efficacy of those

vaccines was not 96% as they claimed.

It was very feeble.

They knew that they faded very quickly.

We knew there were some side effects.

And yet, if you didn't get that in the military, they kicked you out where we let in six and a half million foreign nationals who A, entered illegally, B, resided illegally, three, found illegal means to continue that.

And we didn't ask them for a test and we didn't insist on a vaccine.

Well, Victor,

we're going to take a break, but I think maybe we'll talk a little more about things chaotic and

we'll talk about the Ukraine.

And hopefully we'll have a little time at the end to get in a thought or two related to Mother's Day.

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

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 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 Rosenfield, plus Allison Camerada 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.

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, 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 with the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

If you like what Victor says and you like what he writes, I hope you're reading what Victor's writing, you need to visit The Blade of Perseus.

That's his website, VictorHanson.com.

And there's a repository for Victor's appearances,

some clips from Fox, but other

videos, other podcasts, when you're on Megan Kelly's show, for example, which I recommend everyone listen to.

Links to his books, links to Victor's pieces for American Greatness in a syndicated column.

You'll also find...

ultra articles.

You will click on it.

You will not be able to read them.

You'll be frustrated.

And there's a solution to that.

Subscribe.

$5 gets you in the door.

And for a a full year, it's $50.

And for that $50, you get two or three times a week the original articles Victor writes exclusively for the Blade of Perseus.

So heart, heartily, heartily recommend

that you do that.

Victor,

one last thing about chaos, and then we should get your thoughts about you know, how you see things that are happening, how the war is

carrying on there in the Ukraine.

You know, Joe Biden loves chaos.

You talked before about

him being upset about

January 5th, but look at the chaos that he's created with the Afghanistan withdrawal on the border.

Could there be anything more chaotic than that?

And when you go back and look at his record as a United States senator, way, way back, look, he was a senator in 1970, 72.

He supported the withdrawal from Vietnam, which you all have seen the videos was chaos.

And then on the cultural front, his oversight of these Supreme Court hearings with Bob Bork and Clarence Thomas

were

were pivotal moments for

de-escalating our, not de-escalate, escalating our madness of our culture.

Joe Biden loves chaos.

He's a far worse president than Barack Obama.

Think about every, Biden is the worst president in the last hundred years, if you think about it.

Think about all the things.

If a man will lie about how his wife died to defame an innocent truck driver, what else would he not do?

If he'll lie about how his son died and claim he died in Iraq, what else will he do?

If he'll lie about his college records, what else will he do?

If he'll steal a speech from a British politician and take it as his own on a national campaign, What else will he do?

He lies about everything, everything, everything.

He said that he took the amnesty program for student loans to Congress and we only had two votes.

No, you didn't even try to do that.

Don't lie about it.

You said gasoline was $5.

He just lies and lies and lies.

It's a little bit more egregious now, or maybe not because he's senile, but he uses that cover or his supporters use that cover to say, well, he's not lying.

He's just confused.

Well, what was he for his multiple?

He's a racist.

He was the one that started to talk about, you know, the jungle in the 70s.

He was the one who said that Barack Obama was the first clean, articulate black.

He was the one who said, put you all in change to a gifted group of black professionals.

He was the one that said, junkie.

He was the one who said, you ain't black.

He's the one that

you called two black subordinates boy.

He's also a sexist

and a sexual assaulter.

Aside from Tara Reed's pretty graphic descriptions, he can't keep his hands off young girls.

And we've had a lot of, he's had to have a video.

Remember in the 2020 campaign after Elizabeth Warren and

Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, said they believed.

Remember, they believed Terra Reed.

They believe, and he had a problem.

And so he had that little video.

I'm from a different generation.

No, you're not.

You just blow on girls' hair.

You hug too hard.

You get too close because that's what you do.

And you get away with it because you're Joe Biden.

This is a guy who swam naked in front of female Secret Service people.

He gets a pass on everything.

And then, so if it's racism or sexism, or lying about people and destroying people's lives, he gets a pass.

And then we get into the corruption.

You take his houses, his lifestyle, and you take that tiny little period between his exit from vice president, that four years until his ascension as president.

That's not enough time doing legal, honest work to justify post facto all of those houses and all of that lifestyle.

And then he lies and says he's never met anybody from Hunter's world, doesn't know anything.

You have pictures of him with it.

So that's all the character, so-called issue, but it's not what he did to us.

He destroyed the border.

He destroyed energy of autonomy.

He destroyed the idea we had a low inflationary economy.

He caused high interest rates.

He destroyed the whole idea of Afghanistan as maybe a small, stable American presence at Bagram with this huge, efficient Air Force base.

He gave $50 billion to terrorists from those weapons.

Everything he touches turns to dross.

He has the on-mitas touch.

And the idea that these never-Trumpers worship him and say he's a great guy and he's going to stop us from getting Trump, or that the left say, oh, well, he is a total veneer, a construct, an artifact for the hard-left Jacobins who've taken over this country and are pushing everything from reparations to destruction of the border to these Soros-funded

activist DAs.

And he oversees that whole thing.

I think he's going to have a rendezvous with Nemesis.

I really do.

His hubris is so much that bad things are going to happen and they're going to lose in 2024 or he's not going to be able to make it.

He's going to have to come up with a very creative excuse why he's in the basement because he's not able to campaign.

He can't say it's COVID this time.

And this time he can't say he's good old Joe Biden from Scranton.

If you just give him a chance, he's going to unite the American people and give you a good old Clinton centrist policies.

No, we've seen what he did.

So I think if he continues and the Republicans can get their act together, I think by that I mean right now, every single person, Tim Scott, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley should stand up and say, whoever is the nominee,

I am going to support.

Right.

Not like 2016, I'm going to support whoever wins.

And then when Trump wins, they said, F you, I'm not going to do it.

But they should do that and unite because

they could take the House by a big margin again.

They could take the Senate.

They can take the presidency.

And then they know the face of the left now and they could really make some changes to save the country.

Yeah.

Victor,

let's talk about Ukraine and the counteroffensive.

You know, it seems to be proceeding and proceeding well.

I don't know.

Will maybe overstating it.

Well, what are your thoughts on what's happening in the war between Ukraine and Russia?

Well, as I understand, the counter-offensive, it is to go into the border town the border areas

that Russia controlled before the invasion of 2022 and then expanded that front.

by 30 to 50 miles.

So when they say offensive, they think, I don't know quite how they define that is what I'm getting at.

Do they mean they're going to take all the Russian land back and push them back to the 2014 borders?

Do they think they have the wherewithal to push the Russians all the way back to the pre-2014 or the original borders of Ukraine and then turn their attention to Crimea?

So I don't think that's going to happen, but I do think they can stop the offensive of the Russians and get them back to where we all started, you know, a year and a half ago.

And it's another sign of this pathetic administration that people are starting, including Zelensky, to look to the Chinese for a peace plan.

And we have to believe.

Yeah,

China didn't give one penny to Ukraine.

We gave them $140 billion.

And we risk all of this negative geostrategic consequences, this new alliance of China and Russia and Iran with sort of

not every once in a while India and Turkey, you know, joining in, and nobody's following their sanctions, including Japan.

And what did China do?

They just capitalized on the whole thing, and now they're going to walk in and be the peacemakers.

Yeah.

It's.

Hey,

I'm springing this on you.

You just mentioned Turkey, but

I've only seen a fleeting headline, but elections are coming, and it looks like Erdogan may be replaced by someone less crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean,

this coalition, this anti-Erdogan coalition is far right, far left.

It's everybody.

He's running on the idea that he took 76% inflation.

He got it down to 45%.

Think of that.

And this

Islamization of Turkey, this completely unfounded lunatic attacks on Greece and going into Greek airspace and promising to send missiles into Athens one morning and trying to say that the Dodecanese islands don't belong to Greece and that someday all these islands off the coast of Turkey are going to be,

you know, this is kind of like the Turkish view of the 1920s Greek idea, the idea that we're going to go really change it and bring back the Byzantine Empire.

But he's got the idea we're going to bring back the Ottoman Empire and take over the Eastern Mediterranean.

And the idea that he can tell, this guy can tell us whether Finland or Sweden can be in NATO or not.

And this guy can cut a deal with Russia to have Russian anti-aircraft systems.

As the same time, he's fabricating parts for the F-35 and wants the F-35.

So he's an enemy of the United States.

He's got the largest military of any member except us, and we have appeased him.

So let's hope that they get some,

you know,

normal person in Turkey that Turkey's is split 50-50 between the Anatolian

fundamentalist and the Ionian and Constantinople, to use the old word, that whole group of Europeanized Turks who are more pro-American.

But

Turkey, remember Issal Air Force Base down near Anatalia, near the Syrian border, he basically told us that the nuclear weapons, these huge ones, these dirty, big old bombs from the Cold War, were his.

And during that coup attempt, it was pretty iffy.

They don't really release it, but from what I've talked to and from some news reports, it wasn't sure that we had control of those nuclear weapons, that he was trying to

secure them himself and not allow Americans their usual contractual rights at that base.

So, and he said before that even though Turkey's not

a nuclear power, it is because it has some powerful weapons on its soil.

So he he's a dangerous, dangerous person.

Yeah.

And if he can lose, but I don't think he's going to lose.

I don't think people like that ever allow elections to be transparent or they would lose them.

Yeah.

Victor, you spend a lot of time in

Greece.

I know sometime in Turkey.

I'm just curious, you know, but you know, in popular culture, we think, well, these are of the two, what two nations that,

you know, buttress each other, hate each other.

and people think you know the greeks hate the turks and the turks hate the greeks but i wonder is that how true is that do you think your man in the street greek really gives a rat's patute about the turks or or do they well

it goes back you know

more than 500 years ago right the turks can't get this idea that all of anatolia was greek and the ionian coast was the birthplace of this is where homer came from this is where the pre-Socratic philosophers and the lyric poets came from.

Constantinople is a Greek word, the polis of Constantine.

And it was a Greek-speaking empire of 20 million people.

And by the 13th century, these Seljuk Turks came in and gobbled up.

And by 1453,

they took over Constantinople.

They expelled most.

There was about a million Byzantines that were orphaned there.

And then in the 1920s, after World War I, the Greeks came up with this, what they call the Megali Idea, the great idea.

And it was to reform the Byzantine Empire because they had been on the winning side of World War II.

And as part of the spoils, as a united Greek nation, they had got back Crete,

1913.

They got back Thessaly and Macedonia after the failed Bulgarian

wars, they got back from Bulgaria, Western Thrace, and they had a deal, Venezuela did, with the winning powers that they wanted eastern Thrace, Smyrna, which is modern Izmir,

and a coastal corridor up to take back Istanbul.

Remember, after World War I, the Allies occupied Istanbul, and they agreed to it.

That was what was so strange.

The Allies agreed to it.

So they had reverse immigration, where at one point by 1918, 1919, 1920, there was a million Greek speakers in Smyrna.

They were about 50% of the population.

And all of the Greeks in Asia Minor were probably 2 million.

And they invaded and went all the way almost to Ankara.

And then the British and the

French said, oh my God, this is a mess.

This is a mess.

We've got the young Turks.

We've got the new

Ataturk government.

We've got

all the aftermath of World War II.

We've got the Russian Revolution.

Let's just put a lid on this.

And they cut the Greek supplies off.

They pushed the Greek army back to the coast.

They burned down Smyrna.

They killed 100,000 Greeks.

And then they ethnically cleansed every Greek out.

And then they had

population exchanges during the 20s.

And we got to the modern world where there's essentially 6,000 Greeks in all of Turkey and maybe 5,000 or 6,000 Turks in all of Greece with all that hatred.

And then you add Cyprus, 1973, or 74, where some nutty

writers said he was going to unite Cyprus, which was 70% Greek-speaking.

And the whole island had been Greek since antiquity until the Turks and the Ottomans invaded it in the 15th century.

Even then, it was only 30%.

And then the Turkish army invaded.

And they slaughtered about 20,000 people.

They took the best land and they began pouring Turkish colonists in there.

So they've got a long history of mutual antagonism.

But I think anybody in the United States who looks at it dispassionately would see that the Greeks

are part of the Western world and they're only 12 million people and they're outnumbered.

And they're not the ones that are flying into Turkish space.

What I mean by that is if a plane takes off Samos, Lesbos, Rhodes, he doesn't go all the way into Turkish homeland.

But when a Turk takes off from Ionia, he goes in over Greek islands and claims they're his own.

And so

it's kind of an anomaly.

There's certain people in the world, Jack, if you know, that we just take for granted.

But there's what,

11 million Jews in Israel surrounded by 100 million Arabs.

many of whom hate them and not to mention 60, 70 million Persians who want to kill them.

And And then we've got Armenians, that tiny little country that's surrounded by Turkish-speaking peoples that hates them, a little Christian outpost.

First country really that was Christian.

And then you've got Greece, little 12 million person Greece with this huge 50,000 square miles of this very valuable, beautiful territory that's underpopulated, and it's in a very bad neighborhood.

And so traditionally, every president that came in, because we have large diasporas of Jews and Greeks and Armenians, was very

understanding of that.

And we were very pro-Greek.

We were very pro-Israel.

We were very pro-Armenian, even though it was part of the Soviet Union for a while.

And I don't think we were that way anymore.

And I think our enemies know that.

And so all of those places are under the gum.

Well, Victor, we have time for a little thing or two.

Maybe

we'll take a nod to moms and we'll do that right after this final important message.

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 hometitalock.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.

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 Victor to 511-511.

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.

Back with the Victor Davis-Hansen Show.

Yes, Mother's Day was probably two or three days ago from the

time when this podcast is released or published, however one might say it, which, by the way, happens happens officially through John Solomon's justthenews.com.

Victor, I had posed you an idea of discussing a favorite movie moms.

I know people love when you talk about movies and music.

And I just want to posit a thing or two here about movie moms.

You know, my Turner Classic movies,

Freak, and you know, also know I'm half Italian.

And one of my favorite movies is Marty, Ernie Ernst Borgny won the Oscar, and the mom, the actress,

who plays him in the movie, she's just so terrific.

And she's at one point in the movie, she's trying to get her son, Marty, who's chubby, butcher, unmarried, trying to get him to go out on a date at the Stardust Ballroom in New York City because she's heard the phrase, it's a, it's a loaded away with the tomatoes chick.

So I, I, I really like her.

Of course, I love Irene Dunn Dunn

from I Remember Mama.

That's a great, that Norwegian story.

Oh, God.

That was it.

She's a wonderful, that was a very sad movie.

You know, George Stevens, I think, along with William Wyler, were the two best directors in Hollywood.

Why was George Stevens?

What was his great movie,

Victor?

Well, Shane, of course.

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah, but he did that.

I think he did I Remember Mama too.

He was a really great director.

And God, Irene Dunn was so good about that family.

It was, she kept the whole family together.

You know, another one, my favorite mom was Millie in best years of our lives, thinking about it.

That was a memorable.

Oh, yeah.

Remember, what was so good about her was

when Frederick Morris gets back and he drinks too much

and he gets in embarrassing situations.

He's out of hand.

They stay out too late.

Right.

She never nags.

No.

She just smiles at him and she's, you know, she's so supportive and she runs that whole family.

The daughter's having that affair with Dana Andrews and she understands it.

And she's the, she really,

yeah.

Yes, Myrna Loy, she's a wonderful actress.

Speaking of Myrna Loy, I know that she had a kid late.

Is it three, there were three thin man, more thin man, Thin Man returds, right?

With William Powell and Myrna Loy?

Yeah, I think more than three.

Three.

And the last one or two, they had a little child, right?

Nikki.

Yeah,

yeah.

And, but she was wonderful in that.

She did the same thing with William Powell that she did with Frederick March.

You know, he was kind of crazy and everything, but she supported him.

They had that little shtick, remember, where she was very beautiful.

And he was kind of nonchalant about his.

marriage.

He just knew that she liked him and he liked her.

But she would dance with people

and she, all the people would swarm her table and he would just kind of chuckle about it.

And she would, too.

She didn't, she never really flirted, but it was just she knew she had a natural attraction for people, but she only really liked William Powell.

Yeah.

And she was really, she's a really great actress.

Yeah, she's oddly beautiful, I think it would be fair to say.

There's something very, very catching about her.

Yeah, you're right about the best years, by the way.

That scene, that.

about five minutes of film when they're out on the town drinking.

And I think Frederick March plays the best drunk in movie history the most believable drunk and she's so good with the victory yeah you're you're you're you're dead on with that yeah he you know no she plays that one of the second he he was a great drunk but so was uh

jose farrear and the cane mutiny at the end remember him oh yeah he throws he throws the drink on fred mcmurring and said i'll be outside if you have the courage to do something about it yeah just to finish of all those moms that were good like fathers knows best remember barbara billingsley June Pleaver?

Yeah.

She was good too.

She was really good.

She was the you didn't know her, did you?

I mean, no, sometimes you surprise us that you, you know, this.

No, she's a multitasker.

I know.

She lived to be her.

I just remember seeing her in her 90s.

She lived to be like 94 or something.

But

she was,

and all it's so funny because we all consider

that the sec, that's the sexist period of American American

film.

And yet you look at

three of the most popular series, the Donna Reed show, Fathers Knows Best, and Leave It to Beaver, and the star really that keeps the whole family going are the wives and the mothers.

And every one of those.

It's kind of like we all say, well, Holly, we're all racist and we never gave any

due to Native Americans.

And then you go back and you look at all of these Western,

I mean, ombre, or, and they're all, you know, little big man or man-called horse.

If anything, they romanticize Native Americans.

And they make sort of

this idea that cowboys just shoot stupid Indians not true.

It's not.

And

it's, it's

John Ford's,

you know, sensitivity,

if you can use that word,

to

Indians at the time.

I think it still comes to...

Oh, absolutely.

People don't understand John Ford was a liberal.

Everybody said he was a cranky anti-communist with Duke Wayne, but he made grapes of wrath.

And that movie was all about the oppressive system and what it does to poor oakes.

And when you look at even the searchers and...

The whole point of the characterization of Ethan Edwards when he shoots the eyes out of the Indian corpse is that he's got a pathological hatred for Native Americans, and he overcomes that.

And

that's, and it's wrong, and that's portrayed that way.

And then remember Sergeant Rutledge, where he's, well, that movie was sort of in the Kill a Mockingbird era, but

it was all based on racism and ill-treatment of blacks.

And so.

You know, I was thinking of that the other day when I was watching, my wife and I were watching again, Kill a Mockingbird, which has now somehow been transmogrified into a, what, a racist or it's, it's taboo.

It was the iconic liberal movie that is like Martin Luther King, Victor.

These things, these things and people are, would not be permitted today if they came on the scene, right?

Yeah, I guess because they had a black housekeeper who, when you look at the housekeeper, how she's portrayed, she keeps Gregory Peck's family together and she's a disciplinarian and she's responsible for making the kids behave in a proper way.

So it's a positive portrayal.

But, you know,

this whole revisionism that they go back and they take these periods and they think until they were born, these activists like Sharpton or these reparations people in San Francisco, until I came on the scene, the whole country was horrible.

No, it wasn't.

It wasn't.

We didn't need you.

We were making pretty good progress in racial relations till you came along.

And there was a lot of opportunity.

I listened the other day to, I'm just going to finish this rant with Oprah's graduation.

Did you see that speech?

She did not know that.

I did not.

Where?

I don't know where it was, but it was just a rant about how awful the United States was and how unfair it was.

And I'm saying to myself, you became a billionaire because you had a monopoly on a black woman's knowledge and technique, how to talk to suburban women who were white mostly at about 11 or 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock in the morning, right?

That was your forte.

And you parlayed that to riches and you were not subject to a lot of racism.

But wow, this, how things have changed.

It's just,

and we're in this age of reparation.

We just got announced.

We're up to $45 billion, perhaps.

25 went to 40 billion or it's 15 went to 25.

Now they're talking about $40 billion

of deficits.

And Gavin Ness, who took a surplus and he ran it into the ground, multi-billion dollar deficit.

And these African-American activists won $800 billion.

Also, Victor, I see this headline from the Daily Mail: California Reparations Task Force now wants to legalize racial discrimination.

I mean, above and beyond the money.

I don't understand that because everybody in California knows that nobody follows the law, that the voters twice have passed 209 and then it's replacement.

Everybody knows it's a law and everybody knows that every university admissions officer administrator breaks the law.

Stanford just put out on its website that in a country that has 67% white people, that it only takes 22%.

And how can that be unless you're deliberately using race as a criterion and you, when you throw out SAT scores and don't make them required.

So why would they want to say, well, we want to institutionalize preference?

Everybody knows that if you're an African-American, educated, and you're in a competition for a government or university or media job with an educated person who is white, maybe not Hispanic, maybe not Asian as much, that you have an edge.

Everybody knows that.

Everybody knows that.

So, why would you want to institutionalize what's true?

It doesn't make any sense.

And, you know,

I think at some point I'm really worried about all this.

I'm worried because

I think that the left is in an it's in an echo chamber and it doesn't understand the effect it's having on people.

I'm not saying that it's creating white backlash or as as, you know, white lash, but it's.

it's they don't know how ridiculous they sound because they're talking to themselves.

So when you have a Don Lamon whining and whining about all the bad things that's happening, he's an utter mediocrity.

Or you have that NPR reporter the other day at the press conference trying to insist from a left-wing Interior Secretary, Mayorkis, who ran a left-wing investigation and still found that the Border Patrol did not whip patients.

And here she is, still insisting that she saw that, therefore, it had to happen.

And

the racial obsessions is too much.

It just, it's alienating everybody.

Everybody wants to say, just, why don't we just treat people as individuals?

And you don't want to go into collectives.

If you start talking about collectives and you lump everybody by their superficial appearance, it's not going to work out well.

I said that in an interview the other day, just to end.

I did an interview with a radio guy in Los Angeles, and they were talking about reparations and everything.

and white privilege and everything.

And I just said, you know,

there are two criteria you could use.

they're not the only two, to adjudicate whether whites are exercising their privilege or not.

One, are they committing more hate crimes than other groups?

And B, are they committing more interracial groups because

interracial crime more than other groups?

Because if that were to be true, then the allegations of Lloyd Austin or Mark Milley that they're prone to white rage.

and supremacy and privilege might be, might be, might be an indicator of that.

And yet when I go on the latest FBI statistics, and by the way, most local law enforcement are not turning their data over to a centralized statistical collection program at the FBI.

But nevertheless,

I don't see it.

I see that of the hate crimes, the 67% of the population is committing about half of them.

And the 12% of the population is committing about 25% of them.

And when I look at the 12%, it's committing interracial crimes against the 67% at about six times what it should be doing.

And the 67% is underrepresented and committing crimes against the 12%.

And so I think, what's going on?

I don't see a white group of people who are terrorizing people.

either in the context of a hate crime or an interracial crime.

But I do see groups that are supposedly the victims and marginalized that are committing both hate crimes and interracial crimes at numbers greater than their demographics.

And so, when you have that truth and you have this

lie, it's not sustainable.

And so, when you see it, it's not sustainable.

When people talk about the subway or people getting knocked at the knockout game or the attacks on Asians in San Francisco or New York, or the attacks on Hasidic Jews, or when you hear about some egregious thing and there's a TikTok video, or there's a smash and grab in Compton, or there's a riot and looting in a San Francisco store, or the Million Dollar Mile.

It's inordinately African-American males.

I mean, inordinately defined as

greater than 5 or 6% of these videos or these news reports, which is about the demographic of African-American males.

And so when you have that reality, and then you say the people who are experiencing that reality, you're racist and you have privilege, it's not going to work.

It's just not going to work.

It's not going to be persuasive.

It's getting, I'm starting to hear things from people who are very left-wing.

And when you hear Richard Dreyfus say, this is crazy, and what we're doing in Hollywood, or Bill Maher, or Matt Taibbi, or even Eli Musk, you can see these are left-wing people.

And anyway, that's my mother day rant.

That's a good, okay.

Well, first of all, all those Catholics, excuse me, all those white supremacists are Latin Mass.

So that's what they're too busy praying to go out there and to engage in racist acts.

At least the FBI might think that.

And one other, I just wanted to mention one other Mother's Day film, Victor.

It's Mildred Pierce.

Now, it's

the greatest love story between a mother and a daughter by Joan Crawford.

Oh, she's terrific.

It's a great movie.

Did you see the PBS

like six-hour version of that?

No, I did not.

It was really good because the no-good guy,

Jack Carson guy.

Yeah.

Or Zachary Scott.

Yeah, Zachary.

He's played by,

what's his name?

Pierce, you know, the guy that was in County Monte Cristo.

He's a really good, that Australian actor,

Guy Pierce.

Okay.

Yep.

He did a really great job in that.

I kind of like the

six-hour document.

I mean, the PBS special.

All

It was in a lot of detail, but that Mildred Pierce really, that was kind of Joan Crawford's big comeback movie.

And it really captured the idea of how you can work very hard and be talented and make a fortune, and then the wages of affluence and how it corrupts the entire everybody.

And she gets corrupted too by giving into that awful daughter.

The daughter whose ann Blythe, who is still alive, I believe, She did for an Oscar.

She was a good actress.

She was a good actress.

And what was the guy?

Jack Carson.

The evil guy that...

Oh, Zachary Scott.

Yeah, Zachary Scott.

He died young, didn't he?

He died very young.

Yeah, he was the kind of a bankrupt wastrel, and he just rips Joan Crawford off, rips her off, Mildred Pierce rips her off.

And then finally, she finally wakes up.

But it's all about this idea you need to get status because your money is

dirty if you made it honestly.

Right.

The daughter taxer is nothing but

a frump who

took it.

His mother took in laundry,

smells of oil.

His dad lived above the garage, and his mother took in laundry.

Yeah, it's funny.

Well, Victor, thanks for all the wisdom you've shared and your Mother's Day movie thoughts.

That's great.

Two things as we close today's

I would like to thank our listeners, whatever platform they listen on.

Thanks for coming here.

Appreciate it.

Those who come on iTunes or Apple can leave ratings, zero to five stars.

Practically everyone leaves five stars.

Thank you very much.

Some leave comments.

And as you know, we read all the comments.

And some of them, you know, some of them are hurt, but most of them are very generous and, of course, very generous towards Victor.

And here's one.

it's titled, uh, Thank You.

Very simple.

Mr.

Hansen, I'm a 22-year-old who works in welding.

I listen to you through my earplugs all day, and I love every minute of each show.

You are spot on, and hearing an intelligent man like you speak the truth helps me think maybe there is some sanity left in the world.

Keep it up, and a thank you to Jack and Sammy, too.

Signed, decent.

Thanks, Decent.

Those are very kind thoughts.

And I would just like to conclude reminding folks that I do, Jack Fowler.

I have a job.

I write, I work

for the Center for Civil Society at American Philanthropic, now Amphil.

And I write a free weekly email newsletter called Civil Thoughts.

Go to Civil Thoughts, sign up.

As I said, it's free.

We don't sell the list.

None of that business.

It's non-transactional.

And when you get Civil Thoughts, you'll see.

that I

put forward a dozen or so recommended readings, things I've come across the previous week that I think intelligent people will find worthwhile and interesting.

So that's simplethoughts.com.

Thank you, those who have signed up for that.

Thanks to those who listened today.

Thanks to all moms.

Thank you, Victor, for all the wisdom you shared.

And we'll be back soon with another episode of the Victor Davis Hanson Show.

Bye-bye.

Thank you, everybody, for listening.

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 VICTR

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.