Crumbling Bastions of Left-Wing Power

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 Hansen Show.

I'm Jack Fowler.

The host, the star, and the namesake is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Wayna Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

He's best-selling author of The Dying Citizen, farmer, classicist, military historian.

You can find just about everything Victor writes and everything he does, links to his video appearances and other podcasts at victorhanson.com.

We'll talk more about that in a minute.

Today, we are recording on Palm Sunday, April 10th.

The show will be aired on the World Wide Web on Holy Thursday to some of us.

Today, France is voting for president.

And I think it's the first round of voting.

But, you know, we've never really talked all that much in detail about Emmanuel Macron or Marie Le Pen, who seemed to be locked in a neck and neck race over there in France.

So when we come back from these important messages, we'll get Victor's opinion on them and the election and the consequences of it.

So here we go.

These are some 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 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 percent 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 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 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 Bolin 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-Hanson Show.

So, Victor, by the time this is broadcast, the election results will be known.

But as of today, polling and political reporting has put this race neck and neck.

Marie Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron.

I think there's someone else in the race.

And again, I think this is the first round.

There always seems to be a second round.

I don't know, maybe somebody gets a full majority in the first round.

There is no second round.

But I think this is an excellent opportunity to discuss a few things.

Your thoughts about the rise of the right, we'll call it the right.

Maybe it's the rise of the anti-left.

Maybe that's more accurate in France.

The performance of Emmanuel Macron as president over these last few years.

And maybe even if you have an opinion of France's role in the

dynamics of geopolitics in 2022, is it significant and if it is who should we be rooting for you don't have to answer that no talk about whatever you want victor

well uh

macron is a technocrat in the european mold i mean they all come out of approved technocratic or diplomatic schools in france and they're on a trajectory from if they have the right family name or they have the right contacts or their parents were in government, much more so than the United States.

And they go to the approved cursus enormum and then they emerge.

That's how all of them do, with the exception of de Gaulle.

And so he's pretty much a predictable center-left Frenchman.

Well, being French, everything's about France.

And, you know, I once went into Versailles and I walked through the Hall of Mirrors and you go look at all the great military victories of France and they kind of stop at Austerlitz, basically.

And it's kind of sad because it's a wonderful country that seems to be obsessed on a power commiserate with their argument that their culture is superior, their language is superior, their architecture, their literature, their history, their food.

And therefore, that in itself, rather than Abrams tanks, F-35s, or, you know, the American fighting man, just gives them global preeminence.

And it doesn't happen that way.

So then you're always dealing with sort of

some part of an inferiority complex.

That said, when you start looking at French conservatives like Raymond Aran or any of these people, they tend, or even Camus, they tend, who was not a conservative, but when they're reasonable, they tend to be more reasonable than we are.

So they produce some of the greatest intellectuals in the country, in the world, I should say, that are center-right.

That's impressive.

But they're technocrats.

And by that means they feel that if you have the proper grooming, aristocratic education, you know, they're our version of what David Halbertson called the best and the brightest, sort of a Robert McNamara type of person, whiz kid.

They're not really committed to anything emotionally other than the glory of France.

Do you remember Villepon?

He was a good example of an aristocratic technocrat.

And so their argument is that we're going to be predictable and we're going to know how to balance ourselves within, and what's their main, a French aristocrat diplomat, what's their main task for the last 200 years?

It's how to make sure that France has a voice, the predominant voice in Europe when Germany does because of the size of the German economy.

What's given France a lot of advantage recently was the disastrous regnum of Angela or Angela Merkel because she systematically destroyed the German energy sector, and she systematically cozied up to Russia, and she systematically undermined NATO by not just not meeting the 2%

target for percentage of the budget for military investments, but she urged and jawboned others not to make it as well.

And she made

acceptable a new really anti-Americanism in Germany that's now institutionalized.

And that fact gave Macrone,

who followed Sarkozy, kind of in the same vein, that gave them an opening to be more pro-American, to be more reasonable.

And France has, you know, all this nuclear power, and that's really helped France and the fact, the elephant in the room that France is nuclear and Germany's not.

But he's sort of a Trudeau figure with brains, you know what I mean?

He's a young, charismatic guy, but he has a brain, unlike Trudeau, who's just a fop.

And so there's where he is.

And then he's Le Pen family, they got smart.

So the problem with French conservatism, the same as German conservatism, the same as British conservatism, it's a very funny conservatism in the continent that we don't have.

Our conservatism is issue-driven, and it's kind of, they think, quirky.

Issues that are important to conservatives in the United States, they don't exist in Europe, or if they do exist, they're on the side of the left.

I'll just give examples of two or three.

One is abortion, except for some French Catholics and British Church of England, there's not very many people in Britain,

France, or even in the entire continent have any problem with abortion, unlike us in the United States who feel that it's, you know, it's

a sinful death of a human being.

And they don't believe that.

They don't have anything comparable to the Second Amendment.

They don't believe that we all have an inherent right to bear arms.

And without the Second Amendment, you have no amendments because a docile population will surrender all their rights unless the government knows when push comes to sub, there's 150, 200 million armed Americans that are going to stand up for the Constitution.

And so that concept doesn't exist.

They don't have...

on race especially, they don't have an idea, or they don't quite Britain more than the continent, but they don't quite understand the American idea of the melting pot, that the way you deal with a disparate, multi-ethnic, multiracial society is intermarriage, assimilation, integration, at least until recently.

And so their conservatism is different than ours, and ours is different than that.

They have a kind of a

Mitt Romney aristocratic silk-stocking view of the Republican Party.

And they don't have a populist, except for the Le Pens, they don't have a populist idea.

And so when you go to France and you look at those homes on the southern Mediterranean, my God, they're all inherited over generations, over generations, over generations.

And you go to Europe, you go to Germany, you go to Belgium, you go to

Netherlands, you go to Northern, wherever you go, they ask you, what do your parents do?

Do you have land?

Where'd you go to college?

Where'd your parents go to college?

That's different than America.

And so, in some ways,

their conservative party is sort of like Bill Clinton's.

It's pretty much where Bill Clinton's Democratic Party was.

But I can make the argument that Bill Clinton's Democratic Party was a little bit more conservative than continental conservative.

And when they are conservative, they have a weird kind of, let's be honest about it.

I don't want to use the word xenophobia, but they're not on the same page as we are on race.

I don't see an African-American from Haiti or from any of the singal or any immigrant ever being a president of France.

I don't see anybody in Germany, a Kurd or Turk, Turkish-German person being chancellor of Germany.

It's just not going to happen.

The same thing is true in Italy and Spain.

So it's a little different than our conservative movement.

But it would be good what the Le Pen family has done.

the youngest daughter of this sire and then i think it is it her niece her niece i think the youngest one is a mainstream that what was a exclusionary hard right racist with a great deal of anti-semitism originally and they're bringing it into the mainstream of populist right thought in france without the baggage that the father had victor i knew you were excited when i said we were going to talk about the French and you thought we were going to talk about David French, but I didn't say we talked talked about the real French.

All right, anyway, thanks for that.

Let's move to the other side.

Well, almost the other side of the world.

That would be California, where you live.

And Victor, Los Angeles has banned official travel to Florida over the quote unquote anti-grooming law.

It's this is crazy rhetoric.

We've seen this kind of stuff before.

blue states prohibiting travel to red states.

Of course, there's no trouble with blue state travel to red China, where the Uyghurs are being oppressed and any number of other nations that are doing any number of other hellacious things to people.

Any thought before we go to the border and talk about that?

Any thought about what Los Angeles County and its woke bureaucrats have done recently?

Well, you know, it's...

It's in a larger context of Los Angeles County and then the environs.

That was, remember, we're talking about what was when I grew up the conservative part of California.

That was where the Los Angeles Times was the conservative paper, and Mayor Yordi was the conservative Democrat.

And that was the ground zero of the Oklahoma diaspora between Bakersfield, let's say, and San Bernardino, where poor whites came in droves in the 1930s and 40s.

So it was always the conservative.

And now it's just, it's indistinguishable ideologically.

Part of its immigration, it's the second largest city of Spanish speakers in the world, I think.

Mexican Americans, it's half the population.

And this Gascon, this district attorney,

he's basically assumed the powers of the legislature and the executive and the judiciary in the sense that he decides what laws exist and what they don't.

He decides, he throws out sentencing guidelines.

He decides as judge what they're going to ask a judge for an acquaintance and he decides who will be.

I mean, in theory, all prosecutors do that, but never in the way that he's done it.

And he was run out of San Francisco, and I think he'll be run out of Los Angeles.

And then you have not too far away in Palm Springs, you have this, they floated this trial balloon of giving everybody who was transgendered a check from the government.

And so you go into Los Angeles now, and it makes you want to weep.

I've been there three or four times in the last year and I've got to go, I think, three times in the next month.

It's like going to San Francisco.

I get anxious.

I get over the grapevine.

I come down there.

I used to know the city pretty well.

Downtown was clean.

It was kind of billed, you know, in the 60s and 70s as a city that worked as opposed to the hippie kingdom in San Francisco.

But now it's

go downtown Los Angeles.

It's crazy.

And the drivers are crazy and the road construction is crazy.

And

it's not a functional society now especially if you go into lax or out of lax it's just everything about it is the way it's governed garceti has been a complete disaster it's kind of like india or brazil it's a multiracial multi-ethnic democracy in the sense it doesn't really have constitutional guidelines people just vote whatever they want for and if there's a law in the way they just ignore it it's a lawless place and when you add certain things to it culturally that's you put all of those hollywood actors there you put the television people there you put the los angeles lakers there

and you put these universities there caltech ucla usc uc irvine a number of other private schools it's just a very volatile left-wing place now better avoid it well victor a lot of people are not avoiding the southern border and we've talked about that before, but there's a couple of new developments.

So let's talk about what's happening with Title 42 and the response of Texas Governor Abbott.

Yes, it's kind of cool and funny, right?

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

Cooler temperatures are rolling in.

And as always, Quince is where I turn for false staples that actually last.

From cashmere to denim to boots.

The quality holds up and the price still blows me away.

Quince has the kind of false staples you'll wear non-stop, like super soft 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at just $60.

Their denim is durable and fits right and their real leather jackets bring that clean classic edge without the elevated price tag.

What makes Quince different?

They partner directly with ethical factories and skip the middlemen.

So you get top-tier fabrics and craftsmanship at half the price of similar brands.

When the weather cools down, my Quint sweaters are a go-to.

My cashmere short sleeve that works under any jacket, formal or casual or my thick long-sleeve go-everywhere do everything sweater that pairs with any pant or jogger.

Quince products are my favorites, which is why I went to Quince to buy my recent very beautiful purse that leaves the house every time I do.

Keep it classic and cool this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince.

Go to quince.com slash Victor for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's q-u-i-n-ce-e.com slash victor for free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com/slash victor.

And we'd like to thank Quince 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 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.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

A couple of notes first.

I would encourage anyone who's interested in strengthening civil society.

And that's my job.

That's what I do when I'm not podcasting with Victor.

I run the Center for Civil Society.

We have a website, centerforcivilsociety.com.

Check it out.

I also write a weekly email newsletter called Civil Thoughts.

It's free, 12 or so recommended readings of worthwhile things you find about conservatism, philosophy, thought, etc.

Inspirational stuff for the gray matter.

You can sign up for that at civilthoughts.com.

Victorhanson.com, though, that's the place you really need to go.

Everything Victor writes, practically every appearance he makes, a podcast appearance, he appears on other radio shows, other podcasts.

You'll find links to them there.

And Victor writes original material exclusive to that website.

To read it, you need to subscribe.

$5 a month, $50 for the full year.

Do that.

VictorHanson.com.

Might as well at this point give a little hack tip to some of our friends out there.

The Victor Davis Hanson Fan Club is on Facebook.

Check it out.

And you'll find Victor on Facebook, VictorHanson.com.

VDH's Morning Cup.

What else is there?

Well, if you're on Twitter, at vdhanson.com.

So, Victor, a couple of things about the.

We talked on one of the recent episodes of the Victor Davis Hanson Show about Joe Biden planning or the Biden administration, the end of May to kibosh quote-unquote Title 42.

This is a Trump administration regulation that was to return illegal aliens, send them back home.

Biden is planning to kibosh that.

Now, a number of Democrat members of Congress, a couple of senators, even a couple of members of the House are saying this is nuts or hold off or let's

rethink this.

And Governor Abbott of Texas has said, well, you know what he's going to do?

He's going to put these people on a bus and he's going to send the buses to Washington, D.C.

And I think some buses have actually been sent.

So Victor, you know, we've talked a lot about what this means,

the immigration problem we have, how removing Title 42 is just going to be a green light for even more massive illegal immigration.

So, any other thoughts you have on that?

But also,

if you will, the political thoughts, because this has got to be anyone with eyes has to see this is going to be incredibly politically damaging for the Democrats.

But I get just a sense that Joe Biden's view on things is too bad, full speed ahead.

He did that in Afghanistan, a colossal, disgraceful withdrawal.

And he didn't give a rat's patoot about too bad this is the way we're doing it.

So there's a recklessness there.

Well, there's recklessness on everything.

He printed money when the likes of Larry Summers even said, you're facing a natural pent-up demand.

As the lockdowns wane, people have hoarded cash from the government, funny money, and you're running big deficits and you have a huge debt and you have de facto zero interest rates, and you've got supply disruptions, and you've got a classic case of so much potential money chasing so few goods, you don't have to borrow another two or three trillion dollars.

And he did it.

And now we're looking at 8% annualized inflation, and that's going to be, that's going to climb it.

It doesn't reflect, as I said earlier, the stuff of life.

The same thing with energy.

He did not have to cut 2 million barrels of oil.

He did not have to take anware he did not have to cut keystone he didn't have to tell the israelis and the greeks and cypriots we don't want your east mediterranean helping out europe so i guess what you're saying is there has to be three choices that explains this a

is joe biden cruel when he gets diesel up to seven dollars he just shrugs i don't give a damn about truckers i don't care if they pull in with their 100 gallon tank and they pay up 700 if they have a 200 gallon tank I could care less.

That's their problem, not mine.

I got to go back and swim in my Delaware mansion thanks to Hunter.

Is that what he thinks?

Or is he,

as we said, demented, senile?

And somebody says, you know, hey, Joe, you can have a 20th anniversary of 9-11 by pulling out of Afghanistan.

We'll get the last troop out on September 11th.

Oh, okay, whatever you want to do.

And I don't know where Afghanistan is.

Is that that what it is?

He's just senile.

Or there's a third choice, and that is

what Robert Gates said.

He's just a total incompetent.

He doesn't know how to stop it.

And Mayorkas calls him out.

He talks with Buttajig, the transportation.

They get together and they say the squad wants an open border.

They want to get in two or three million people before the midterms.

You know, there's 750,000 in a congressional district, roughly.

That's the equivalent of seven or eight congressional districts.

That's what we want.

So just open the borders and okay.

And then no one says, but wait a minute, but wait a minute.

What happens

when these people come in the millions?

And do you have beds?

It's COVID.

Are you going to test them?

Are you going to turn them back if they test Bauls?

Are you going to vaccinate him in Mecca?

What are you going to do with them?

Nobody asks us.

It's kind of like going in and taking out Saddam.

And nobody said, well, what happens 60 days later when you don't have a government?

And so it's either that he's senile, he's a cruel person and he wants to hurt people, or he's a total incompetent.

And I don't have the answer for that, but it's pretty disturbing on the border.

And this idea of busing people, they're russing them to the wrong places.

People in Washington don't care.

The people who would care, because people leave for the weekend, it's not their city that people are making these policies.

They just are there at work.

They should send them to Malibu.

Just have a big shelter in Malibu right next to Barbara Streison and just send them there.

They should send them to Greenwich, Connecticut, Jack, not too far from you.

Just send them in there.

And then they should send them to Presidio Heights, Woodside, California.

But the best place they should send them is they should get all of these university presidents that are so vocal on so many issues.

And they're such megaphones for social change and the undocumented among their students.

So here's what they should do.

They should get a big conference and get 50 college presidents.

And here's what Biden and Maorca say.

You've got 50, 60, 80,000, maybe 100,000, maybe 2 million.

I don't know how many empty dorms they have this summer, but you've got a lot of empty dorms.

You've got law schools on your campus for legal aid.

You've got medical schools that could offer medical help.

You've got educational facilities that could teach people English and tutor them.

And best of all, you've got still thousands of people around in the summer.

These are highly progressive, highly idealistic young 18, 19-year-olds that want purpose in their life and they want to help.

So we suggest that as we let in a million and a half, they will be staying at Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale for the summer.

How's that?

And see what happened.

The other thing is, there is no immigration law.

It just disappeared.

And that's important.

I think everybody listened.

That would be as if Donald Trump said the following: I'm president.

There is no such thing as the Endangered Species Act.

It does not exist.

And I'm telling everybody: if you're building anywhere, you want to build a road, you want to build a bridge, you want to build a high-rise, you want to open a mine, you want to, and there's an endangered species, go right ahead.

We're not enforcing that law.

Just go right ahead.

Or it would be as if you said, there are no more more climate change green federal epa mandates we just got rid of them just do what you want that's what biden is doing he just destroyed federal immigration can you imagine the outrage that would happen he would be impeached for that a third time so since the democrats bequeathed this this new remember jack they gave us a whole new group of protocols that they passed down to us And they basically said, when we are in control, we change the system because we're always going to be in control.

But they're not going to be in control after the midterms, at least not in the House and probably not the Senate.

So the Republicans can say thank you.

So the new rule is that when your guy is president and he loses, any guy's president, woman, loses the first midterms, the opposing party takes over, they impeach him.

So they should file.

writs of impeachment against Joe Biden for deliberately, consciously, without hesitation, destroying federal immigration law, did not keep his oath of faithfully executing the law immediately.

And who knows, they may get a big group in the Senate.

Then they could just say, you know what, you guys,

we tried to say it's a bad idea to eliminate the filibuster.

You tried and tried and tried.

I think you were right.

We're going to eliminate it.

And you know what, Nancy, you gave us a good idea.

You always tear up.

the State of the Union address when you don't like the president.

And that was really good.

So next time Joe Biden gets in his first State of the Union address, that'll be next year, Kevin McCarthy is sitting right behind him, and he starts lying as he will.

Then he hands, ritually hands the address.

Kevin just tears it up, just like Nancy did.

I can go on, Jack, but you get the drift.

They created an asymmetrical set of protocols that are destructive to the Constitution.

And they had a caveat that we're so morally superior, they only apply to us, but we would never want the opposition to do this.

But we don't have to worry, they'll do it because they're never going to come back to power.

That's how they think.

So, yeah, Joe Biden should be impeached for not patrolling, securing, following immigration law at the border.

It's a wide open mess.

Everybody, if you look at one issue,

it consistently polls about 60 to 65 percent of people are opposed to what he's doing.

And the only irony of this is that when you poll Mexican Americans, and I'm not even talking about Cuban Americans or Venezuelan Americans, but the majority of Spanish speakers are Mexican from Mexico, they poll about 60, 40, they want a secure border, which raises the question.

If in the midterm,

exit polls or post-election polls suggest that 55% of the Hispanic population voted against Democratic candidates, candidates, what then?

Are they going to have a secret White House summit?

And they're all going to go in there and say, oh my God, we're importing Reaganites.

We got to stop this.

And somebody will say, well, we stopped the Cubans when they wanted to come in a couple of months ago.

We stopped that.

We don't want any more Venezuelans because we're trying to bring in poor, non-English speakers that grew up in socialist countries that are inured to communism and don't have a problem with it.

And they're going to be in enclaves that we control.

And they're going to be good, loyal constituents that will pay with votes for all the stuff we give them for free.

But if they're ingrates and within a generation or two, they're right wing, let's control that border.

We don't want them.

We'll have to find somebody else to import.

That's going to be very interesting to watch.

Yeah.

Well, Victor, sometime.

And on this episode, we should speculate about further.

We've talked in the past about Hispanic vote, but geez, I wonder if there was a Hispanic Republican on the ticket in 2024, how that might break the back of the Democratic Party.

Let's marshal some info before we do that.

Another episode.

We've got a couple more subjects to talk about.

Victor, one of them is Elon Musk, the world's richest man, buying a significant hunk of Twitter and changing the dynamics of that social media platform.

But before we do, I'm throwing a fastball here.

I just realize that one of the other things you do at Hoover Institution is you are essentially the editor-in-chief of Strategica, an important online journal.

So the new issue came out the other day.

It's issue 78.

It's titled Ripples of Ukraine, and it has pieces by Peter Mansour.

our friend Bing West, I love Bing, and Barry Strauss.

So I just wanted to alert people to that, our listeners to that.

You should visit Hoover and Strategica is s-t-r-a-t-e-g-i-k-a strategica and check out those articles victor if you have anything quick you want to say about that new issue go ahead and and then we'll go move on to musk well we're we're trying to deal we had a meeting on friday our annual meeting of the military history working group which i chair and we're trying to get people to craft a deterrent strategy and that would be a strategy how to deter a china going into Taiwan, an Iran getting the bomb and attacking Israel or Saudi Arabia, a Russia gobbling up Ukraine or threatening Lithuania without igniting a larger war.

And one of the things that came up in the meeting is that we didn't talk about nuclear weapons, Jack.

Only in rare occasions this country had.

We talked about them during the Persian missile crisis of the early Reagan administration, where suddenly Hollywood said that Reagan was going to doom us.

And we had a little bit earlier during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I can remember the local Boy Scout master coming out and walking around our farm and telling us, you've got these 24-inch concrete pipes under the ground from the irrigation district.

You got a 30, this is where your family, you need to take one of those pipes out in your vineyard and dig it onto your home.

And then when the big one comes, you got all you Hanskins could get your trapdoor and crawl into this

mucky,

filthy irrigation pipe, and you can live there with your rations that he was going to sell us.

So that stuff happens.

But now, all because of what Putin has said and the fact that Russia is a nuclear power, it's nuke talk 24-7.

Nuke, nuke, nuke, nuke, nuke.

So we discuss all that.

What is the strategy of the use of nuclear weapons?

And everybody, yet on Friday, I can't disclose the names or what was said because it's a group of about 50 people.

But I can tell you that a lot of people were very pessimistic about proliferation.

And

if you think about what happens when you give up your nukes, Ukraine gave up their nukes, had about 2,000 of them.

Look where they are now.

Libya gave up its nukes.

Look what it is now.

What if Saddam had invaded Kuwait when it had a nuke, if it just waited?

What would have been the reaction of the West?

And Iran knows that.

So countries that give up their nuclear weapons programs, they don't fare well.

And so everybody thinks that these rogue actors are going to get nukes or North Korea might use, but what they're really pushing and they don't understand it.

If the United States cannot guarantee to our non-NATO allies in Asia, and I'm speaking specifically of Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, maybe or maybe not the Philippines, that they are not being protected by the United States in an ambiguous fashion, admittedly, but some type of umbrella, then those countries, if what they're watching Russia do, they will go nuclear, and especially anticipation of an invasion of Taiwan.

So I think this issue is not going to go away, this idea of nuclear weapons.

And we have gone over a threshold where before

we didn't get near the topic because we thought it was synonymous with Armageddon.

And now when I look at the nuke talk, you start to see this very scary conversation.

Well, maybe they could have three nukes or maybe they would take out Kiev or, but they talk about nukes as if you have a limited nuclear war or people have argued that he might use a tactical nuclear weapon.

But when you lower that threshold and you talk about taking out a city, I mean, it's pretty scary.

So

the latest issue discusses deterrence and nuclear weapons and how the conversation has shifted.

Well, that's Strategica at Hoover's website.

So, folks.

Hoover.org.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Check it out.

And many of the past issues are well worth your reading.

So, Victor or not, it's important, obviously, is the news that Elon Musk has purchased, I think, 9%

of Twitter and huge kerfuffle.

Plans on, well, who knows what his plans?

It came as heartening news, I think, to people on the right, people who are upset with the cherry-picking of disinformation the suppressing of certain voices look donald trump is not allowed to tweet right would that have happened if elon musk was the majority not the majority but the major shareholder in twitter so two things victor one personal note i'm just curious if you know musk or have ever crossed i don't paths no no i i know a lot of the people i've met them in silicon valley that tend to be more conservative.

And there are some there, but I haven't missed this.

I guess he's famous at stanford for dropping out i think was it two days he enrolled when he was a student

he came in there for two days and quit everybody who quits harvard or stanford does pretty well yeah it seems that any thoughts about what he's done yeah he has a very brilliant his modus operandi or his strategic thinking and it carries over to his businesses is he goes into things that are left-wing bastions

and he excels at them, but he gives the aura that he's not a hardcore leftist.

And then he kind of leaves that ambiguity up to the left.

So he goes into the automobile industry when everybody was saying we need batteries and nobody did.

I mean, all the big car makers cannot do what he did at Tesla.

And so all of a sudden, the left gets, wow, this guy's got, they all drive Teslas.

I was in Menlo Park the last couple of times.

Every time you drive down,

it's a Tesla, Tesla, Tesla.

and it's all driven by very very very very wealthy mostly progressives and yet they're driving teslas from elon musk's genius and he got out of california because it was so highly regulated he's in texas so they don't know what to make of him hmm we love his car he did what no other leftist could do he gave us a non-polluting car, so to speak.

That's another story.

And the same thing about space travel, and now the same thing about social media.

Yes,

he's a techie, but he's kind of a Peter Till, but he's got more money.

And so they don't know how to deal with him.

And they know that he's very talented.

He's very adventurous.

And he does things that in the abstract they like.

They like what he's doing in Ukraine with his Space Link internet that's futuristic and allowing the Ukrainians to be immune from Russian cutoffs.

But they don't like him for some reason because he's a maverick and you never know what he's going to say or do.

He does believe in free speech.

And of course,

that's the hallmark of the new left.

If you ask, what is the new left about?

What is AOC about?

What is Bernie about?

What is Elizabeth Warren about?

What are the Obamas about?

What are the university leftists about?

What's Planned Parenthood about?

What's the Teachers Union about?

What are the movie Starlets about?

There's one thing they're all about.

They do not believe in free expression and free speech.

They call free speech hate speech, and they want masters of the universe, i.e., spiritually and intellectually and educationally as talented as they think they are, to be platonic guardians to adjudicate who gets to weigh in.

Okay,

so this guy doesn't believe that.

So they hate his guts.

You know, it's going to be very interesting what he's doing, Jack, because think about it for a second.

Twitter colluded with Google and Apple, probably, I mean, this is allegedly, and destroyed Parliament, which didn't have an app and couldn't take advantage of all of the goodwill people who wanted to gravitate there right after Trump was deplatformed.

So when people who are sympathetic to Musk or his enemies, either one, float the idea either in happiness or terror that Trump would be allowed to go back on Twitter, that would probably really raise the profits at Twitter.

But it would also,

it's antithetical to what Trump's doing with the Devon Nunes Truth Project.

Why would Trump go back on Twitter when he's making an alternate universe to Twitter?

So,

and he does things like that.

He sets up these paradoxes, and no one knows quite what he's doing, but they all fear that on the back end of it, he's going to be more successful than a Jeff Bezos.

And so they hate him.

They kind of go, the left go, what is this guy doing?

Batteries, good, but

he says things that are bad, but now he's in Twitter and he wants free speech.

That will embarrass us when we have to say there'd be no free speech.

And

space, good, maybe, but space link internet, he's with us.

So I think he enjoys being a disruptor and a contrarian

and an enigmatic mystic type of guy.

Right.

Well, we'll take that, given the alternatives.

Victor, we have one other major topic to discuss on today's episode.

Again, we're recording on Palm Sunday, April 10th, and we expect that this episode is being aired on Holy Thursday, April 14th.

Well, that issue will be an acquittal in one of the first January 6th cases, and we will get to that right after these important messages.

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 age spots with Vibrance.

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.

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.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

So Victor, little notes I've scribbled down here.

My former colleague and good friend Andy McCarthy had a great rundown of this in National Review the other day.

A gentleman from Tucson, I believe, Matthew Martin, also I believe has worked for a government contractor, upset about the elections, went to Washington on January 6th, was at the Capitol, and was waved in by Capitol police into the Capitol building through some series of, I think, even like essentially snitches.

He was found out.

He turned himself in, but he was not going to take a plea deal.

And he had a trial.

It was heard before a federal judge, not for a jury, and he was acquitted.

And the government's case was, according to Andy's assessment, but many others' assessment, was absurd, as are many things about what is happening here.

It's a year.

How many?

15 months, 16 months since this happened, preposterous charges, lack of sharing, probably exonerating evidence of what happened that day, involvement of the FBI and others.

Anyway, Victor, this acquittal is one man, one case, but it may be symbolic of other things.

What are your thoughts about this?

Well, I think everybody's looking at January 6th in a completely different fashion.

And the latest two acquittals and two hung juries in the so-called Michigan governor kidnapping case adds impetus to that.

And that was those acquittals and those hung juries were because of government, not just government's use of FBI informants to promote that crazy harebrain scheme, but the government's denial of it and hiding it.

So let's just discuss it this way, Jack.

If January 6th,

was a coup,

was a conspiracy, was a plot, an insurrection rather than a buffoonish, spontaneous riot.

Why wouldn't we do the following to find out?

If it was the most serious moment in our history, as Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and the left are trying to use it.

And believe me, it's not dead, everybody.

They don't have anything going into this midterm.

So

when this midterm heats up in August, September, and October, you're going to hear coup, insurrection, January 6th, January 6th, January 6th, racist, racist, racist, ad nauseum.

Trump, Trump, Trump.

That's what they have, nothing else.

But if they're right that January 6th was a planned conspiracy, why don't they do the following?

Why don't they say there's reportedly 14,000 hours of video from hundreds of cameras?

Here it is.

It'll prove that there is a conspiracy.

And there are rumors there were dozens of FBI agents everywhere egging people on or giving.

And here are the names of the FBI informants or agents that were there.

You check them out, and you'll see that there was almost none there.

Or they'll say, there's all this conspiracy stuff about Officer Sicknick.

Here's Officer Sicknick's tragic death, and here's what we said at the beginning.

And you can see at the very beginning, we never said he was killed by a Trump supporter.

And then they could say, Here's Ashley Babbitt.

And yes, she was lethally shot by a law enforcement officer for the

misdemeanor of going through a broken window.

But because this was a conspiracy, and we know it was, and we want all the information out, here is the officer who did it.

Here is his name, just like with George Floyd or any other officer who lethally shoots an unarmed suspect.

And here is the investigation when we brought him into a room and we asked him the question.

And here's the transcript.

And then they could say, okay, and to show you that it is a conspiracy and a coup we had a january 6th committee and we had our guys

as a majority and kevin mccarthy they had their guys and they found and they adjudicated and they found this out but they didn't do that any of that They suppressed the name of the officer.

They issued lies and lies and lies that Officer Sichnick was killed violently by a Trump supporter.

They won't release the videos.

They will not release the email communications between the Capitol Police and the Nancy Pelosi leadership about methods to prevent a riot.

They still don't tell us why it was a mortal sin for Trump to suggest that they use federal troops during the rioting, which they burned down a historic church in Washington.

I shouldn't say down, but they ignited it.

They torched a precinct and attacked a federal courthouse with fire in Portland, I think in Minneapolis.

And guess what?

There was no investigation of any of that.

And so they don't tell us any of this.

And you think if it was a coup, they would be happy to, and they would be delighted.

And they would not tell Kevin McCarthy, we're not putting those Republicans that you selected.

I know that's a House rule that each ranking majority, minority member of the parties pick the people that go on these committees, but we're not going to to do it.

They wouldn't have done that.

They would have said, bring your best guys in.

You do your best.

We'll do our worst.

We'll find out what's the truth.

So, from get-go, they have suppressed knowledge.

We don't know why they militarized the Capitol after this incident.

We do not know to this day how many FBI agents were there.

We don't know what they said.

We don't know why these people sat in solitary confinement and were not charged.

We do not know why we didn't get any information about the officer who shot Ashley Babbitt or why he was not apparently directly interrogated by a higher up, maybe an FBI agent or a Capitol policeman.

And then we don't know these other things.

If all of what they say is true,

why do they not believe it, Jack?

And I'm speaking in reference to Matthew Rosenberg, I think he was a Pulitzer Prize New York Times reporter.

And on the anniversary of

January 6th, a few months ago, he wrote a big piece co-authored, I think it was, with Jim Rutenberg.

Remember Jim Rutenberg?

He was the one that said, you don't have to be a disinterested reporter anymore.

Trump is such an evil person.

Your reporting can be directed at Trump rather than keep an open mind.

That's basically what he argued, Horgy Ramos argument.

So anyway,

He had written a big essay and said on the anniversary of January 6th, don't believe the right wing, that it was just spontaneous, that there was no conspiracy.

And it it was just okay, fine.

And then, what does he do?

He meets a younger woman, an Operation Veritas plant, and he pours out his egomaniac, narcissistic guts to her.

And what does he say?

Oh, my little

colleagues at the New York Times, they're so sheltered.

They made this into a big psychodrama.

I walked all around the capital.

It was a celebrity, celebratory occasion.

It was fun.

There was nobody in danger.

All these

little snowflakes were holding their pearls, but there was nothing there.

And he said, I knew all the FBI informants.

They were everywhere.

It was a joke.

And so he was basically saying off guard, everything I've written is a lie, a lie.

And so.

After these verdicts in these two cases, I just don't think it's going to work for the Democrats in November to keep saying that these insurrectionary, white, alt-right, racist coup plotters tried to kidnap the governor of Michigan, and they tried to take over the Capitol and have a coup.

It's not going to work.

And I think what we're looking at is a Republican takeover of the House and Senate.

And mark my words, we talked about this a little bit earlier today.

There will be a real January 6th committee, and it will investigate all of the correspondence between the Pelosi government and the Capitol Police.

It will release all the videos it can.

It will get Christopher Wray up there under oath and ask him how many, maybe in closed session, how many FBI operatives were there.

We want a list of them.

And I think it's going to be devastating.

If they really wanted to be mean, Jack, Speaker McCarthy would say to the Democrats, The following Democrats can serve on this committee, and they would get to Trump quasi-Trump.

Nobody else can serve on it because you're too biased.

And by the way, because we've also started a precedent that you can remove somebody, I think it was,

was it Marjorie Taylor Greene they took off a committee?

Yes.

We're going to start taking people off a committee too.

I know that we've never done that in the House, and it's against our illustrious Twitter and I don't know, 32-year history, but Adam Schippt is not going to be on that House intelligence committee.

He leaks leaks too much.

And that would really shake them up to be treated the way they treated other people.

This is kind of special to me because after this all was over, you know, I was a big critic of going into the Capitol and desecrating it.

And they did desecrate it, some people, a handful, putting their feet up there, taking things that didn't belong to them.

And I know the police were sort of lackadaisical.

And I didn't like this buffoonish riot, but this group of misfits, somehow these were, I mean, they didn't come the way Antifa comes to a demonstration with helmets on, knee pads, dressed in black with clubs and shields.

Right, right, they did,

right?

Brick stored around the corner.

They did not, it was a spontaneous bunch of sort of

guys like me that are over-the-hill white guys, you know what I mean?

Most of them, not all of them, but most of them that were not, you know, young zealots.

Okay.

And for them to fabricate this entire thing into a coup construct, it was a big, big mistake.

And they're going to pay for that because I think when the truth comes out, they're going to be sorely embarrassed

to the degree that they suppressed information about law enforcement, about intelligence.

When you have a reporter from the New York Times who was assigned to this case, and that was his domain for the last year, he wrote us several articles about it, and he gets caught in an off-moment bragging to a young woman that it was nothing but kind of a holiday gone bad.

Then, again, there's no there there.

And I'm very sensitive about this because when this all happened, I kind of said that.

I never said that it was okay, but there were a number of things that I had to answer for to the Stanford Faculty Senate, as did Scott Atlas for no reason, as did Neil Ferguson for no reason, as for me for no reason.

And one of them was: if you said what I just said, that there are inconsistencies in the official narrative about January 6th, and that it was not a coup attempt, nor was it a conspiracy, nor was it an insurrection, but it was a buffoonish, regrettable, deplorable riot we should all condemn.

But by the same token, the FBI, the Capitol Police, the Biden administration, and the Pelosi Congress have not been transparent and open to get the facts out.

All we want are the facts.

And if there's a second round of this and you put everybody there and they find out it was a conspiracy, I'll be the first to say it.

If they get taped back,

thousands of hours of video that show all of these guys sitting out there with maps and arrows and they have secret little signals to each other or patches or they find a grand plan that after they took the Capitol, they were going to set up a radio station, any of that nutty stuff.

I'll be happy to say it if they show me a long transcript where a series of fbi investigators or doj people came in and talked to the officer in question that shot ashley babbitt and he answered question in a direct testimony i'll be the first to admit it but i don't think that's going to happen something weird about this why would they put these people in solitary confinement why would they put them in indeterminate detention without being charged for months and why would federal judges allow that to happen too?

How is

it?

Yeah, it exposes some of the real troubles in our judiciary.

Victor, we just have a few minutes left.

So I just want to let folks know, because they know this already, again, we're recording on Sunday and the results of the French election, which we discussed at the beginning of this podcast, are in.

There will be a runoff.

There were 12 candidates.

And right now, some of the exit polling shows Macron with 28.5% and the pen with 23.6%.

So there'll be, looks like, you know, the two of them will be facing off against each other in a few weeks.

So that's that.

We can talk about that more on another podcast.

At this point, we typically share some of the messages our listeners leave on iTunes.

We encourage those who do.

listen to the show through iTunes to please consider rating the podcast.

You can give up to five stars.

Victor deserves 10.

Five's the limit.

So please go ahead and give that many.

If you'd like to leave a message, comment, do it.

We read them.

And those comments can include questions if you want that we will bring up on some of the shows we're going to be recording in the next couple of weeks for when Victor goes away for a couple of weeks.

But we want to have some programs nevertheless.

So those programs will be your questions that you would like.

Victor answered.

So all that said, here are two comments that were left last week.

One is from the sign MT 109.

Excellence in providing knowledge is the headline.

Here's what MT109 says.

I always enjoy listening to Victor telling me his view or providing facts on the matter.

I would like to hear him speak on if or why the GOP has abandoned California.

It's been a one-party state since Pete Wilson.

I do not see any serious effort by the GOP to try and win state or federal elections, but they sure put their hand out for money every election cycle.

End quote.

Well, thanks for the kind words at the beginning.

And Victor,

we can talk about that another time, the GOP's attitude towards California.

The other comment is signed by MPSRT.

It's titled, My Only Complaint.

And no, Victor, it's not about you.

Quote, I absolutely look forward to hearing this podcast all week long.

I really believe that Professor Hansen is one of the greatest conservative minds of our time.

His ability to link and compare today's events to historical events is both informative and entertaining my sole complaint is that both hosts have a bad habit of trying to limit his discussions yes i i've been telling you and sammy exactly that

i'm a voice in the wilderness you know well

it's a

okay let me finish this due to time frankly if this podcast was twice as long it would still be far too short in my book if you're a conservative, this podcast is definitely one you will enjoy.

So, MPSRT, you know, yeah, I agree.

Actually, the folks that oversee this podcast, it's home is at justthenews.com.

When we first started talking about that, they were like, this should be 35 to 40 minutes.

And we clearly pushed the envelope.

I'm pretty sure that this podcast we recorded right now, Victor, is over an hour already.

I don't think people want to hear me anymore, Jack.

You found that out when you pushed my button unexpectedly and mentioned the word CNN.

And I went out on a 10-minute rant of everything my enfeebled, demented brain could recall about CNN and all of the scandals and personalities.

Well,

I would do that all the time.

I'd get into these frenzies unless I you and Sammy put a bridal in my mouth.

I think people like your frenzies, Victor.

Frenzio ergo sum, I think.

So anyway, MPSRT, hey, we've got our actual limits, but thanks for listening.

Thanks for your kind words about the podcast.

Again, we're in the top 10.

Thanks to our people that have been with us for now approaching two years on various platforms.

To the new listeners, we appreciate it.

Come stay, listen, and let your friends know about this.

Visit VictorHanson.com, sign up.

You will not regret it.

You will regret not having done so already.

Victor, thanks very much for this to our listeners who are of the Old Testament.

If I may personally wish them Passover greetings and to my brothers and sisters of the Christian tradition, I don't think Orthodox celebrate Easter the same week this year as Roman Catholics and most Protestants, but it will be Easter in a few days after this podcast is recorded.

So happy Easter to all.

Thanks, Victor, and we'll be talking to you again on the next episode of the Victor Davis Hansen Show.

Bye-bye.

Thank everybody for listening and happy Easter for everybody.

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.