Zelensky Leaves Washington

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Hello ladies, gentlemen. This is the Victor Davis Hanson Show.
I'm Jack Fowler, the host. You're here to get wisdom from the man with a lot of it.
That's Victor Davis Hanson, who is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the Wayne and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. He's It's got a website, The Blade of Perseus.
The web address there is victorhanson.com. I'll tell you later why you should be subscribing.
Victor, there's never a day where we can't say, my gosh, what just happened the last couple of days? There's this onslaught of dynamic things happening in America in 2025.

And this particular episode will be up on Tuesday.

So the Zelensky, Trump, et al. fracas in the White House will have happened a few days.

But this is the first time we'll get Victor's full take on it for the listeners of this podcast. So that's how we're going to start off today's episode, getting Victor's take.
And more information has come out in the last 24 hours about what happened behind the scenes and prior, why Zelensky was playing games. J.D.
Vance played a big part in the dynamics at that White House meeting. We'll get Victor just take on that and his overall view on J.D.
Vance and this pretty ton of other stuff. Byron Donalds is going to run for governor.
And Florida has been endorsed by Donald Trump. What is Mrs.
DeSantis' potential candidate for governor to think about that? Terrible poll, terrible, terrible poll, Gallup poll about Democrat views of Israel, and it is now underwater. Gosh, what's happening to that party? That and more of Victor's wisdom on all these things when we come back from these important messages.
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We are back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show. This is a baseball cap wearing Victor today, fedora.
Fedora, it's off to the haberdasher, I guess. When I have to wear these, it doesn't work.
Oh, okay. Well, it's all cool, Victor.
Again, we're recording on Saturday, March 1st. This episode is out on March 4th.
Victor, so again, the listeners of the Victor Davis Hanson show have not had your take yet on what happened at the White House.

So how about your overall take? And then we can maybe get into some of the skullduggery that, you know, this just didn't happen.

This was in a way orchestrated and blew up in the face of Ukrainian president. Your thoughts, Victor?

Well, you know, I just wrote down about just a minute ago, I jotted down 10 things, and I'd like to go over them very quickly. I don't think Zelensky understands that the people that he feels the most affinity with are the Europeans, the globalists, and here in the United States, the Obama, Clinton, Biden people, the bicolstal elite.
And I hope to God he's not being advised, as some rumors this morning, Jack, that people like Victoria Nuland, Vindman, Blinken, Susan Rice were advising him to toughen it out with Trump. Because here's the problem.
He's supposed to be a very sophisticated person, but the people that he feels comfortable cannot help him. Europe cannot save Ukraine and the left and the Democrats are out of power.
The people who can save him and get him a good deal are the people whom he does not like. And that's MAGA, Trump, Rubio, Vance.
So he's got to keep that in mind. Number two, I wrote down, he thinks that our agendas are the same as his.
And when Trump said, well, we have a two ocean, he said, well, they'll come out.

He started lecturing Trump on geo strategy.

They'll come after you. But we have some interest with him.
We don't want an aggressive, restless Russia. And we'd like your alcohol.
I get that. But Donald Trump was trying to tell him about World War III.
He was trying to say, and I'm going to translate Trumpese because this is what he was implying, that you don't have a proxy war under the rules of the Cold War, and maybe that's what we're in with Russia. You don't use a proxy war on the homeland border of your nuclear adversary to get advantage.
The last time that was tried was Nikita Khrushchev tried to use Cuba 90 miles away from the U.S. as a proxy to harm us with missiles, etc.
And we went to DEFCON 2. That is, we put the bombs were loaded and ready to go.
So we didn't tolerate that. So we're playing with fire and he doesn't understand that.
And Trump is also, he wants to, like Henry Kissinger, triangulate. Russia is no friendlier to China than it is to us, vice versa.
China is no friendlier to Russia than it is us. And he wants to break up that China-Russia alliance.
And he is a humanitarian.

He keeps saying he does not like to see 1.5 million people dead and wounded. Before you get to number three, if I could just add, I don't know if he said it, but others have used the word partner.
And I don't think we're partners with Ukraine. No.

And he kept saying that we don't have any allegiances except to the United States. And that's when he started criticizing Trump as if he doesn't know that.
Basically, he wanted Trump to do what Biden did. Biden called Putin a murder.
And Trump said to Zelensky, I'm not going to go call him names and then call him up and try to negotiate. That's what a negotiator does.
And if any never-Trumpers are listening and say, ah, you're pro-Putin, ask what Barack Obama did. He had Hillary push a reset button and said, we're going to get along with Putin in a way that Bush didn't.
And of course, they made it worse. The other thing, Europe now today, and I'm speaking on Saturday, March 2nd, is they think they're independent now.
And they're talking, I mean, that crazy Canadian former foreign minister who said that she wanted nuclear weapon deterrence from France and Britain to protect Canada from the U.S. They really are starting to drop the veneer of their anti-Americanism.
But here's the thing. They keep taking, we're going to go in there.
We're going to be PCs here, we don't need the United States. Well, they do need the United States, unless they're counting on the 50 or 60 planes that Germany has, or the 10 or 15 tanks that Spain has.
But they run up 180 to 200 billion dollars with us. They claim we only pay 16% of the NATO budget, that we're one member, there's 32 nations.
That's inordinate itself. But more importantly, we spend billions to keep the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the South China Sea, the Black Sea.
All of these were open to, and they're vital to European commerce. And they're de facto under our nuclear shield.

I don't think that their nuclear deterrence deters anyone.

So they better be very careful about alienating the United States.

If they want to play the United States, they're welcome to try.

Promises, promises.

But they're going to have to do two or three things.

They're going to have to cut their social welfare budget. They're going to have to get rid of their green deal fixation, and they're going to have to rearm at three to 5% or more to catch up.
And I don't see them doing that. Another thing, what's kind of ironic is they were very close to a deal.
All the issues have been resolved. Everybody knows their arm better than any other NATO continental army now.
More experience. But they're not going to be in NATO.
Nobody's going to give them the wherewithal to take back the Crimea and Donbass. So you only have two issues left.
How far will Vladimir Putin go back to his 2022 borders? And how will you deter him? And Trump came up with a solution. He said, right along the Donbass, where all the rare earth minerals are found, and things like uranium, we're going to make a commercial corridor and give us a concession 50-50.
You supply the the investment and we'll get even we'll get other people involved and you'll have a dubai-like corridor and putin will not invade because it'll be a de facto tripwire and mr zelinski if you don't believe me ask yourself when he did not invade he didn't invade when i was president so uh i think that sort of is ironic because when Zelensky kept interrupting, he didn't quite see that there was hardly anything left to discuss. And he kind of, he didn't give us an alternative either, Jack.
What is the alternative? So he goes out, he interrupts and he gets angry and he's aghast. He kind of insults the host.
He's a client. He insults the patron.
So now where is he right now? Well, if Vladimir Putin wants to have a spring offensive, and believe me, he will. They are, as J.D.
Vance, everybody, I suggest everybody look at The Spectator today. There's an article by a Ukrainian legislator with a pseudonym.
And he says that it's true what Trump said, that there's only about 10% support for Zelensky. He's jailing his enemies.
There's no habeas corpus, that they are Shanghai people, like Vance said. So my point is, if he wants to not take any more of the 300 billion or whatever it is, nobody really knows the exact number, then what is his example? If he thinks the Europeans are going to save him, he is sorely disappointed.
And I don't think they'll last another month. A couple of other things.
If there is a deal, Jack, there'd be what? Elections after that? Peace? And he would restore political parties, he would restore opposition media, he would restore habeas corpus. He says he can't have elections because unlike us in the Civil War or World War II, his country is under air assault and would be dangerous to go out there.
Well, Washington was almost taken by Jubal early in 1864. So, I mean, that doesn't end.
If you look at Civil War battlefields, which you and I know pretty well, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, they're not that far from the Capitol. But nevertheless, if they were to have elections, if a ceasefire, what would they find out? Would he win? I don't think he would win.
And with the opposition who came in, would they start to be transparent and show us the bookkeeping? So does he have an incentive for that not to happen? I'm just throwing that out. He could look at Netanyahu.
Netanyahu was treated much more harshly than Biden than Trump treats Zelensky. Trump has not cut off bombs or munitions like Biden did to Israel.
Trump has not insisted they have a wartime bipartisan cabinet like Netanyahu's. Trump has not demanded an unfavorable ceasefire in the way that they impose that on Netanyahu.
Trump does not lecture Zelensky on be more selective in your targeting because civilians are getting killed in the way that we tell Israel. And yet Netanyahu came over here in the four years and he spoke with deference to his patron Biden and his host.
Can you imagine? And I take Netanyahu, he's the president. Everybody in the right, left demonizes.
But if he was, can you imagine him doing that, Jack, what Zelensky does? To interrupt Biden again and again and start lecture him? I don't think so. He's treated very hostile ways.
He speaks to Congress and Democrats don't show up. I mean, and he kept his temperament the whole time.
He did. Remember when Obama called him a chicken SHIT and he didn't? I don't know what his strategy is to stop Russia if we were not there.
Is it to give him more territory, strategic space, retreat, a Napoleon, you know, like a 1812 strategy to withdraw into the interior of Ukraine. I don't know what it is.
I went back, Jack, and looked at the, have you looked at the whole 55-minute tape? I didn't. So all of the left-wing media is showing that four-minute clip.
But if you look at the entire 50 minutes, it was all done. It was very deferential.
Everybody was polite, and then they started asking questions, and the person who started lecturing was not J.D. Vance.
He turned over to J.D. Vance and says, you don't know what it's like here, and you've not been to Ukraine.
He.D. And that's when J.D.
Vance said, I don't think you know what you're talking about because you're over here and you're Shanghai people. And that started it all.
And then he kept digging down. I was watching Kimberly Strassel.
She made a point that maybe there was a linguistic difference. I don't know where that's true or not, but I know that he doesn't seem to understand gestures, space, the tempo of the room.
Because anybody who looked at Trump's face and that scowl, they could see that was a warning to him, just tone it down. You're a beggar and he has the money.
It's kind of like you loan your brother-in-law $5,000. He can't pay, but he needs to buy a car with it.
He comes over to your house and you ask him, here's going to be, we're going to have to get this straightened out. And he starts interrupting you while you're feeding him at your house.

Yeah.

And you say, finally, wait a minute.

You borrowed the money from me.

You're at my house and you're telling me what I have to spend on.

And that doesn't that never works.

I think what makes it even worse is that this did not have to happen in Washington.

This could have been signed in Ukraine.

And he he wanted to come. They wanted to come.
You know why they wanted to come? It was either one of two reasons. They wanted to get a world audience, which they wouldn't have got, or they wanted to embarrass him.
All the left saying this was planned ambush. I don't think that Vance and Trump had any idea of ambush.
I think Zelensky did. I think they told him, and there have been rumors, everybody, I don't know if they're true.
But if you look at social media, there are people who say that either on a video flight conference or when he was here, he did speak to never-Trumpers and Obama-ites and Biden-ites, like, as I said, Vindman or Susan Rice or Blinken or those types of people. And they would have told him, apparently, don't sign anything unless you get in writing that the United States will be there.
And that was the hang up. He started demanding.
He was lecturing us. The other, and this is the last one, he thinks it's March 2022, when he has saved Kiev.
He has that t-shirt. His wife is on Vogue magazine.
They're flying all over. He's Mr.
democracy. He's going over to the Black Sea and the Russians in those two different peace conferences, we are told.
He walked out on the prompt of Boris Johnson and other Europeans when he was in a good position because the world had seen him demolish that Thunder Road column of the Russians, Just blew it up. And the Russians were, everybody thought the war was over.
I didn't. But a lot of people thought, oh, wow.
Now that he blew up that column, Putin is, and he didn't make a deal. But now it's three years later, but it's not three years later.
It's a 1.5 million dead and wounded on both sides later. And he's no longer the rock star.
He's the guy that suspended habeas corpus political parties, the media, and he might not have 50% support. So he should adjust to that.
I just hope that all of this sad, these 10 things I just said, I felt bad for him, Jack. I mean, I think he's arrogant and he's clueless.
But when I saw him there in his T-shirt, he's diminutive. And he had these two big, tall American guys with all the power.
And I thought, all you have to do is be polite. But he was in a, it was almost like he, I don't want to make fun of autism, but it was like he had some kind of syndrome where he couldn't filter the body language.
And he was just, I was watching that. I felt like, oh, my God, don't say that.
Don't do that. Don't do this.
But he tried to egg them on. And I didn't understand what the, you know, when you have people like Brett Hume and Mark Thiessen, who are very sympathetic to Ukraine aid, and they're kind of shocked.
I think the Wall Street Journal people are kind of, I was watching them yesterday, some of them. I don't think all of them have got it right.
They think it was a disaster for Trump. And here's what is very interesting.
The initial optics of the five minutes make Trump, you know, you don't do that if you're a diplomat screaming yell. But once you look at the tape and once you filter in retrospect, the relative positions, and once you start to see other clips where Trump said, I'm not for anybody except I'm for peace and the United States.
And I want to stop the killing. He said that over and over again.
He starts to look really good. And Zelensky doesn't.
So as this thing wears on and is digested, people are going to. And Europe is now on their hind legs crowing.
But I think when I saw the head of NATO today said to Zelensky, you need to go make peace with the United States.

Because all the Europeans are saying, hey, this is the European message.

They're calling up Zelensky.

Hey, we want to tell you something.

All that braggadocio, we're going to put troops there and you've got to be tough to these awful Americans.

That was braggadocio. That was all dependent on the fact that you were going to put troops there and you've got to be tough to these awful Americans.
That was braggadocio.

That was all dependent on the fact that you were going to be compliant. But now you, you know, you told off the United States and we can't help you.
We're here for show, not reality. It reminds me when I was at a faculty meeting once and there was a faculty member who had been treated poorly and he was going to all the people.
It was kind of like the Cain Mutant. You remember the Fred McMurray character in the Cain Mutant? Yeah, he was a – And he's saying, you know, you got to be tough and you've got to stand up and all that.

He egged them on and then chickened them.

Exactly.

And so that's who the Europeans are.

And the faculty, I mean, all these faculty told this young on tenure, yeah, stand up to the dean and we're here to help you.

And then he stood up and he got squashed like a bug and they said, not me, I'm not next. And that's what the Europeans are.
And so, Lindsay's got to understand that.

Victor, go ahead.

Sorry.

Well, I mean, tomorrow he says, I need a C-17 and I need Kiev is being besieged. And I need a half a million artillery shells and 10,000 javelins and NATO, I need a million NATO rounds.
I got to get them here tomorrow morning. They can't do that.
Yeah. The only one that can do it is the United States.
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Thank you, Solaire. So Victor, you know, I wonder how this plays out with America, American public.
And I do think the American public, still many of us, 80, 75 years after the conclusion of World War II would still say when PO'd about the French for something or else we'd say, if it wasn't for us, you guys would be speaking German now. And I think that applies here to the sense of ingratitude we feel from naturally and rightfully should feel from people who we bail out and then want to kick us in the guild.
Well, there's two Americas. It reminds me of my mom, my dear mother.
We were all on this farm and we'd never really been out of it. And I went to UC Sanford.
It was the hotbed of 60s insanity. It was a very good school when it first opened.
And I came home at Thanksgiving for the first time, right? And I started spouting all the stuff I'd heard, you know, about Vietnam, everything. And my mother said to me, she looked at me and she said, you know, your grandfather needs some help with the walnuts.
They're just starting this early Wilson Wonders, I think, and I need you to go down. I said, but mom, I've got all this.
And I was talking about the dorm lot. And she said, Victor, this farm is here to save you from where you are, to save you.
And I didn't understand, but I quickly did. And what I'm getting at is you ask what the reactions are.
So I kind of been schizophrenic for the last, oh, 50 years because as I drove over every weekend to Santa Cruz, then I drove over as a graduate student at Stanford, then I was a visiting professor for two years on the coast. And then since 2003, I've been over there driving over every week.
So, I have kind of a split. So, I see the coastal elite attitude, right? And here it is.
Wow, you know, I was so embarrassed because that crude outburst of Trump. Here we have Europeans and we have the international media.
And there are so many nuances to this. And the role of the United States is to be the protector of protocols and world order.
And it was so embarrassing to me. I'm almost quoting verbatim Christiane Amanpour.
Oh my gosh, she almost had it. Never in my life have I been all, and then this Vance, this hot lady person, And he just burst in.
And poor Zelensky. They have no empathy.
And then this Vance, this hot lady person, he just burst in. And poor Zelensky, they have no empathy.
And then I come back, right? And I see the average person. And they're saying, and they don't have any money like these people do.
So if they have to pay 12% state tax, they don't care. Well, we gave them the money, didn't we? They took it, didn't we?

It's what Coolidge says when, you know, during World War, after World War I,

and the Europeans said they were broke and they couldn't pay back the U.S. money.

You said they rented the money, didn't they?

So the average American is trying to pay for all this stuff, and he gets lectured. Whoa, don't they need us? And didn't they borrow our money? And we don't do that in the real world.
When a guy comes into my shop and he wants a loan, and then he starts telling me the conditions of the loan, I kick his rear end out. I'm quoting someone.
Heine, yes. Yes.
So that's how they act to it. So the red America and half the country is proud of Donald Trump when he said, I have, he said, well, your allegiance, he said, I don't have an allegiance.
My allegiance is to the United States and to peace and to the world. And he's the protector of American interest.
And he said, you're flirting with World War III. Because what he was trying to say, everybody, was if the Europeans don't come through and this guy alienates the last barrier between him and the Russians, which is us, then they're going to be overrun.
And the only way to stop Putin is to threaten him with nuclear weapons. If you do that, that's it.
And Trump doesn't want to go there. So, the average pragmatic view, and it was just typical that you go on all those NPR, PBS, MSNBC, and they bring out the same cast of characters.
This is Professor X at the Center for Strategic Studies, former ambassador. And this is a former New York Times international reporter who's been to Ukraine 98.5 times.
And then they start telling you the same old stuff. Isn't that the extreme, the left elite pinnacle is to be a member of the Council of Foreign Relations? Yes.
Certainly not the Knights of Columbus membership for that. To them, they all want to be international geopolitical brainiacs.
Did I ever tell you my Council of Foreign Relations story? No, I think we're about to hear it. Max Boo was a good friend.
I mean, I got along with him. And he once asked me to speak about a book I wrote, Carnage and Culture, I think it was, at the Council of Foreign Relations.
You know, the office kind of near Central Park. And so, I fly to New York.
I was flying to New York and I have my little map to see where it was. I don't know what this is, I don't know.
And then he emailed me that he couldn't make it, my host. So, I walked to this door and I knock on the door and they let me in.
I think it was a black door. It looks kind of nondescript building.
And I say to the secretary, and she says, who are you? And I said, I'm supposed to give an address to the – an address? We don't have addresses here. Oh, yeah.
Mr. Boots said that he couldn't make it.
And he organized this. Let me see if it's canceled.
And then he said no. So I go into a room thinking and there's like six people.
Yeah, six or seven. And you know what? They were very nice.
I can't even remember who they were, but that was my experience with the doyans of American diplomacy.

Well, I assume you see some of them when you go away for a week in the summer, but we'll talk about that another time.

Victor, we've got more to get your wisdom on.

Maybe a final thing about Zelensky and your take on J.D. Vance's performance, and we'll get to all that when we come back from these important messages.
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We are back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show,

recording on Saturday, March 1st. This episode will be up on Tuesday, March 4th,

which, by the way, will be Mardi Gras.

And then after that, for those of us

who pay attention to the doctrines

of Holy Roman Catholic Church, we'll have to start our fasting and all that jazz for 40 days. So, by the way, Victor's website, TheBladeOfPerseus, VictorHanson.com.
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The Blade of Perseus, VictorHanson.com. Victor, just one last thing on Zelensky and then get your take on J.D.
Vance. Marco Rubio in the Daily Mail today quoted, he says, you start to perceive that maybe Zelensky doesn't want a peace deal.
He says he does, but maybe he doesn't. And that active open undermining of efforts to bring about peace is deeply frustrating for everyone that's been involved in communications with them leading to today.
I mean, what is the alternative? There is no, that's what I meant. There is no alternative.
But that was my point when I said, if there is a deal, and if you have a commercial corridor and concessions for rare earth investment, and you get the European companies, the Americans in there, and they get half of, you know, they could get five or you could get a billion dollars a year and start rebuilding. And then they would have, according to Zelensky, there would be no more aerial attack.

So people could go out in the public square and vote.

Would they vote for him?

He says he's over.

I mean, his people here say he's got overwhelming support.

Trump said 8%.

And then I read today that one of the persons there who is anonymous is writing that he

doesn't have very much support, that he punishes the media, that if you criticize him, you're off to the front lines. And so, is he afraid that a piece would then have an open election? And then when they had an open election, we would kind of open the books and then see who got what? I don't know.
I mean, if you look at what happened to Britain after, maybe he's afraid, if he's a little student of history, maybe he's afraid, you know, Churchill got dumped, right? I mean, once there was an election. Absolutely.
They might say, you know what, he had one great moment and that was saving Kiev. He didn't panic and he did a great job and now is not the time for him anymore.
But I don't know what his motivation is. I don't see an alternate plan.
If he, they say, and again, this was on social media. Two or three people were tweeting it and some people sent it to me.
I didn't find it myself, I confess. But they said that he was on a video conference with those people, Susan Rice and Vindman and Blinken and some others.

And he should be very careful whom he listens to. They have a different agenda than his.
Their agenda is to make Trump look embarrassed and sell out Ukraine and then have Russia invade. And then they can do the Russian collusion, Russian disinformation, 3.0, get the House, impeach Trump and emasculate his last two years.
That's not his agenda. His agenda is a sovereign, autonomous Ukraine.
And I've written a couple of articles about the Finnish War of 1939- 40. It was the same thing, Jack.
Everybody said Mannerheim is the hero. Stalin came into his country.
He wanted 10%. He was all alone.
The Americans were isolationists. The Germans and the Russians had a non-aggression pact.
They just gobbled up Poland. He was all alone.
And then they fought heroically

and killed 400,000. They always quote the winter war.
That's November to January. They never quote

March of 1940. And Mannerheim then sees Stalin is angry.
He sends a million Russians to the front.

They grind down the poor Finns who only have about 3 million people. And Mannerheim said, uh-oh, I am going to negotiate.
And he says to Stalin, you wanted that 10%? Take it. But we're going to fight you to the death if you try to take the whole country.
And I think he even gave him an extra percent, 11%. And then they made a deal.
And he said, we're going to be independent. And no matter what happens, we will not invade Russia.
And what he was saying to Stalin is this non-aggression pact may fail. You may be in a war with Germany.
Germany is close to us. But we will not, when the war, if it were to happen, we were not going to join in attacking your home soil.

And they didn't.

And they saved their country.

And they were like Austria.

They were non-aligned and they survived.

And that's what Ukraine can do.

But if Ukraine thinks they're going to turn in to the Victoria Nuland Anthony Blinken bi-costal project of a vast EU country, the former breadbasket of the Soviet Union and the Tsars and the Russian Federation, if they think they're going to turn this 40 million person, huge country into a EU, NATO, cosmopolitan, LGBTQ, the whole progressive agenda Right next to this Orthodox traditional Russia That's not going to happen It's not going to happen Not that you Whether you want it to happen or not It's not going to happen They're not going allow them. What's your take on how J.D.
Vance performed yesterday? By the way, I happen to have seen him in the morning. I was in D.C.
and he spoke at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, which is an annual event. There were like about 1,500 people there.
Catholics, probably not, I mean, faithful Catholics, prayer for the Pope, probably not fans of the Pope. So we had a good audience.
I've always liked him. But he was, he knocked it out of the park.
And then a few hours later, he's in the midst of this. Your thoughts on how he.
Well, I had a talk with a couple of people and I got, I don't know if you remember when he was appointed vice president nominee. And then almost immediately they went after him and called him cat lady and they found out everything he'd ever said.
Do you remember that? And the media thought that they were going to have a frenzy fight. And I think they misquoted Trump, but somebody had, there was a rumor that Trump was wondering whether he did the right thing.
Remember that? And appointing him the vice president nominee. There was a lot of controversy.
And I wrote a column and I said, he didn't appoint him to balance the ticket. He's a white male.
He's from a red state now, Ohio. He appointed him because he's the quickest person on his feet and he's fearless and he will out-argue and articulate the MAGA message better than anybody.
And they unleashed him on the media and by the time the campaign was over, the media was afraid of him. So, he is very gifted and he He covers all of the bases that the left seeks to find.
They'll say, well, he's a tough guy, but he's a sunshine patriot. Well, no, he joined the Marines and then they said, well, he was a reporter.
Well, I had been twice to Iraq during the surge, 2006 and 2007. I can guarantee you there was no place in Iraq that was not dangerous.
So whether he was a reporter or not, he was in a combat. I'll give that to Pete Buttigieg even when he went to Afghanistan.
There are no such places in those types of wars. So he had the military service.
Then they said, well, he's a white racist. No, he's married to someone of Indian background.
His kids are multiracial. Then they said, well, he's just an elite Goldman Sachs guy.
No, he grew up in poor Appalachia in a dysfunctional family. Well, he doesn't, not very smart.
No, he just, the first novel, the first memoir, whatever you want to call it, Hillbilly Elegy was a bestseller for two years. So there's no area that they can criticize him on.
The only, as I said once, I'll call it, it wasn't a debate. I had a polite conversation with him 10 years ago about Trump when he was, he had just written something in the Wall Street Journal.
It was very critical of Trump. And he, we disagreed about Trump, but he was the most polite person in the world among this group of people.
And then he had called me once or twice. And I really like him.
I mean that sincerely. He's very gifted.
My only cautionary, and I'm not going to give him advice, is that he is so articulate and he's so fearless that when he demolishes somebody, you might not want to put your boot on the neck for the coup de grace. In other words, when he said to Zelensky, here's what I'm getting out, everyone.
So he says, what am I getting out, Mr. President, with all due respect? I'm getting at this.
You came over here and you're asking for this money. Have you said thank you to the president? And by the way, you've been political.
Don't lecture us on political. You went during the election to Pennsylvania and you campaigned against the person who's the only person who's going to save you.
and Gizinski was like I stepped on a landmine

and so then I would have said this

he could have just added that little escape hatch. And he could have said, and Mr.
Zelensky, I'm not here to out debate you. I'm not even here to lecture you or enlighten you.
You're a head of state. I'm just trying to explain what the American position is and how apparently you're not completely sensitive to it.
That's all I'm trying to do. I'm not raising my voice.
And if he had done that, I think it might have been more effective. But what I'm saying is not that he is not compassionate.
He is. But he has such formidable rhetorical skills that he demolishes people.
I'm not even sure he knows how effective he is. But there's a Greek trope like totes, and it's a word that when you're going to make a point and you can make a point, you use a deliberate understatement for rhetorical effect.
If you want to say, I am really smart, or Leitotis says, I'm not without talent. Were you an athlete? I was a masterful athlete.
I had some good days. And that's what I'm suggesting that he might add once in a while as a qualifier.
But that's a larger issue.

I said that on a video. I had an interview with you, you at the other day, whom I greatly… Yeah, I want to talk to you about that later.
Yeah, I think I started with you 20 years ago when he was here and I could do it in the morning at 6, you know, before he went back east. Right.
And I really admire him and like him. But we were talking and I said, I think the Trump team has to have a little bit of the tragic flair.
And by that, I mean, a Sophoclean idea that when you're laying off all these people and you're making much needed changes with people who got away with murder, and you've got 30 million illegal aliens, 12 million, then you've got to get a little bit of the tragic style. Here's what I mean.
You've got to say a lot of these jobs were created by elites for their own selfish purposes. But the problem that we're having is that average Americans are working, and're not all partisan.
Some of them are very hardworking and we can't afford it. We're 36 trillion.
So, we're going to try to do this. We're going to try to get the private sector going.
We're going to get energy and we're going to have programs to get these federal employees into private sector jobs as quickly as we can because we really feel for them. Or we want to get rid of the half a million criminals and the million and a half who have already had their deportation orders.
And we want to get rid of people who are not working and they're milking the system and they're on public sport. But then it gets tricky Because we have some people who came illegally and they're working and they're paying taxes.
But we're going to discuss that and we're going to find a way if they have to go home to do it with compassion and humane, just to say that, and be sincere about it. And I think that would help them a lot because they're making such radical changes that you don't want to play into the left stereotype that they're heartless or what's the word? High five, high fiving triumphalist.
I got another scalp today. I closed down the Department of Education or I took those NPR SOBs and I hung them up, you know, that kind of stuff.
You don't want to do that. Well, that is, it's the triumphalism.
That's, that's. Yeah.
You got to be very careful because you've got half the country on your side, maybe 55% according to polls and to keep them, they want to feel that this was much needed and they're going to have neighbors that work, you know, you got to be a guy in Virginia and there's going to be a guy who was an independent voter or something. He went into the Department of Commerce.
He commuted. He had a long commute.
And maybe he was drafting papers about ways to support LGBTQ in Rwanda or something. But that's not his choice to do that.
And what he was doing was not necessarily worth borrowing money at 7% to pay him. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't need a job.
You want to help him. You don't want to be like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election when she went in and told those West Virginia people, you're going to be out of a job. Or when Joe Biden went in and said, we're going to shut down fracking.
You should learn how to code. That's not right.
You've got to show some compassion and some sense that what you're doing has to be done. But it has to be done with the idea that you didn't start it.
Or when you're deporting people, you've got Steve Miller needs to say, I didn't start this problem. They did.
They were the ones that dreamed up the idea that let 12 million people come here that's costing the taxpayer who doesn't have the money billions. You let them explain why your mother cannot get her dialysis treatment because it's being overrun by people who are not from this country.
And we're going to try to find a compassion solution. And we feel terrible about the tasks that we have to do, but we have to do it.
Your anger should be directed at the people at the cancer, not the chemotherapy. Right, right.
It's, you know, the difference between chemotherapy and scalping. Victor, somebody wrote me about this.
They listened to it about the triumphalism, your discussion with you. And I want to ask you a little more about, I'm going to read his comment, but first, before we continue, I want to just tell our listeners about what's really happening to your money, what economists politely call inflation, but what we've come to understand as government-approved counterfeiting, just what we've just been talking about.
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Victor, to continue the torture of our listeners who cannot stand the sound of my voice, I just need to read this quick little note

from Brian commenting about you with your UUIT discussion. He says, of course, that's an important point about the triumphalism.
And I think the point ranges well beyond the government layoffs. There's a tremendous risk that when the demos gain ascendancy, and it will happen at some point, who knows when, they'll engage in a slash and burn comeback of an even more extreme kind.
That may sound paranoic, but it isn't. The weaponization of the executive branch under Biden was very creepy.
Who's to say it won't recur? The Trump administration would do well to create in-house, consistently used set of protocols or guidelines about its public messaging. Victor, your thoughts on that? I mean, they're going to do it no matter what.
If the Republicans are beyond even a suggestion that they're being political, it doesn't matter. When the left comes in, they're going to do it.
Donald Trump, his first term, had people in his cabinet like the Anonymous X, like Rex Tillerson, like John Kelly, like Jim Mattis, like John Bolton. He had a lot of people who did not agree with his agenda.
And he tried to be kind of bipartisan. And he did not weaponize, they weaponized everything against him from collusion to disinformation to the Axios, ping, ping, all of that stuff.
So, they're going to do it anyway. But I think the reader is right that you want to set up protocols that prevent the politicalization.

And I'll give you what I mean.

And this is very, did you see, Jack, there was a letter written by five former secretaries of defense that was just published.

And they were Lloyd Austin, James Mattis, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, must be 85 or something, and Perry. And they all said that what Donald Trump is doing by firing generals was derelict and politicizing and weaponizing the Pentagon.
And it has to stop. And they want Congress to intervene.
And here was what I thought when I read that. History will adjudicate whether they weaponize.
In other words, when they got rid of General Brown, who was political as chairman of the Joint Chief, did they get a better person in there? Did they get recruitment up? And why was recruitment down? Did they get a better array of munitions, drones, and more for the buck? Did they have a new geo strategy? So, history will record whether the changes that they made are simply revenge or they actually improved the Pentagon. Will they pass for the first time an audit? They started having outside audits in 2017.
They flunked three of them onto the last two defense secretaries. Will they pass the next one? So what I'm getting at is, yes, they're getting generals that they feel reflect battlefield efficacy rather than cultural and social issues.
And whether you call that political or not will depend on whether they're good and whether the policies work. But here's what I also think.
I am so sick of the public letter. We're having 51 former intelligence authorities and it has, and then you think that Clapper and Morale and Blinken and Panetta and Brennan, they're all thinking, now, how do we sabotage Trump at the debate because he's going to bring up the laptop? We know from the FBI who had it a year that it's authentic.
So we got to come up with

the right word. We got to get it right during the last debate, right before the election.
And we've got to cement the idea that this authentic laptop that talks about Mr. The Big Guy and 10% and all this sex deviancy in the fam, all of that stuff, we've got to turn it on its head and say it's proof of more Russian collusion.
And then, of course, when they published that letter, the wording was so clever, and Brennan keeps using it. You can't take away my security clearance.
I said it has all the hallmarks. And I didn't say Russian disinformation.
I had all the hallmarks of Russian information campaign.

So, in other words, we tried to have every little obsequious, crappy little out, but we knew what we were doing. And so, what I'm getting at is, who weaponized the Pentagon? Who weaponized these agents? They did.
Who fired generals? Obama fired McChrystal. And General McKiernan hadn't done anything.
He just came in and they fired him. They fired McChrystal.
He fired him. That was kind of ironic because Jim Mattis signed the letter, but he was fired.
Remember, he was CENTCOM commander and Obama fired him. And he was a good CENTCOM commander.
He really was. He had a very realistic idea about Iran and Obama fired him.
And when they fired McChrystal, you know, he said, Joe, bite me or somebody. He heard it.
He didn't correct him. And they fired McKearnon and McChrystal and Mattis.
Did the replacement do any better? No, they did worse. He was politically – Joe Biden came in and he fired all 18 of the defense advisory board members.

And I was on the American Battle Monuments Commission.

I got this letter, you're all fired when Obama came in.

So they weaponized it.

When you look at the Secretary of Defense, I mean, whether you like it or not, Jim Mattis was fired. Chuck Hagel was fired.
He was fired. Leon, the five people who signed the letter, Leon Panetta, Jack never apologized.
Remember they asked him to apologize? He likes to sign letters. Yes, he's signing a letter about the ethics of the Pentagon when they caught him lying to warp an election and they gave him an out and said, would you like to apologize? He said no.
He left. And then there was Lloyd Austin signs a letter and then he's AWOL for what? Six days while he has a medical procedure? It'd be sort of like, I'm supposed to go to work.
I'm supposed to fly out tomorrow morning. I'm going to get up at three o'clock.
I'm going to fly to Hillsdale. It'd be like I have a medical procedure.
I'm just not going to tell anybody. And so I have an audience waiting at Hillsdale.
I have a panel. And I'm just not going to show up.
And then I'm supposed to go back to Hoover and lead 100 people in a military history. I get off the plane.
I go, I have to do that. I hope everything works like clockwork.
It's snowy. But what if I just stay home and I have a kidney stone? I've had 33 kidney stones, three operations.
I just have a medical procedure. I'm not going to tell anybody.
What would the military do for a private who did that? They'd fire him. They would put him up court-martial.
That's what Lloyd Austin did. He just hid the fact that he had complications from a prostate op.
And I feel bad for his health, but for him to sign a letter and talk about politicalization and weakening the Pentagon. And so, finally, I thought, what is the greatest example that these five former secretaries, when they signed this letter saying that the Congress should investigate Trump and Hexeth for firing the chairman of the Joint Chief, why would he want a Joint Chief person who is not political? General Brown, right after the George Floyd rights, remember he got on, made a video as a black American.
We don't really, I know you're wondering what my views are as a head commandant. No, General Brown, we don't care what your vote, we don't care what the political views of you or the 300 or 400 other generals and admirals.
All we care about is, can you defend us and create deterrent? But he started talking about all this. And then who was at the congressional hearings and they recommended? Remember in 2022, it was Milley and Austin.
They recommended that we read what? Professor Kendi, the grifter whose whole anti-race project at Boston University, $50 million later, just disappeared in Stacey Abrams fashion. And so I was thinking, why would Donald Trump not want General Brown to be chairman of the joint? Oh, I know, because he came out and politicized the Pentagon and talked about your superficial appearance would be integral to recruitment, promotion, and retention.

And second, I had an experience with a chairman of the Joint Chief not long.

What was his name?

Oh, Mark Milley.

Yes.

I walked over and after they tried to storm and burn the St. John's Church and storm, I just had a photo op, just like all, and he just started trashing me and said he was used.
But that wasn't all he did. Then I learned that he called his Chinese communist counterpart and said, if I get an order from this unhinged president, I'm going to warn you first.
So he tipped off the enemy. And then, well, I've read the statute, Donald Trump thought.

And the chairman of the Joint Chief has no statutory power of command. He cannot interfere in this chain of command.
Theater commander, CENTCOM, AfricanCOM, whatever they are, they report directly to the secretary of defense. Four-star generals.
And I advise. But what did Mark Milley do? He broke the law.
He said, I want to tell all you theater commanders, when you get annoyed, it comes from me. We're in scary time.
And if you think that's an aberration, he goes out of office, and what does he say? Now it's ex-president Donald Trump, and he's a candidate this last year.

So there's no Article 88 provision.

Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice says that a retired or serving officer cannot disparage the commander-in-chief.

Donald Trump was not the commander-in-chief.

So what does he say?

He is fascist to the core, and he is the most dangerous man in America. And to his credit, when Donald Trump shortly thereafter was elected, where's Mark Milley now? He's completely mute.
Because he knows something, doesn't he? Have you noticed another thing, Jack? We're not hearing Mussolini, Auschwitz, he's an architect. Hayden tweeted that about Auschwitz-Bergenthal death camps.
We're not hearing McCaffrey say he's a liar. We're not hearing McChrystal say all this stuff.
Why? Because I have a feeling they feel that the new non-political military will say these are rules. We didn't make them, but they're not rules unless they're enforced.
So if you're a general, active or retired, subject to recall, and you call the commander in chief, publicly humiliate him, disparage him. We're going to subject you to Article 88 and you're subject to court martial.
And guess what? The experts on deterrence are deterred. And they weren't deterred before because they thought the left had so demonized Trump, he wouldn't dare enforce what they were saying about him.
Or they thought they were saving the republic. But my point about all this is when you weaponize the government and then you're out of power and then you start lecturing somebody about weaponizing the government, first of all, you don't have a leg to stand on because you're not consistent.
Number two, you created the counter-revolution because you were revolutionaries, and you destroyed the norms. I'm not saying the five secretaries of defense, but I say you, the left-wing movement.

Isn't there also an aggrandizing of this whole class of generals and admirals? I thought I saw something recently. The number of generals and admirals there were in World War II when the military was so much faster versus today.
Maybe that makes sense. I don't know.
But it seems like there's a… See, the thing about World War II and what won us, every time we're in a jam, take the Civil War. You start the Civil War out and you got McClellan.
He looked perfectly. He knew how to drill soldiers.
He helped train them. And then in Antietam, he just couldn't do it.
I mean, they almost won. He couldn't do it anymore.
He never could do it. He was the president of a railroad.
He was very Natalie dress. He was perfect in his comportment dress, but he didn't have it.
Neither did Bernstein. Neither did Hooker.
Neither did Pope. None of them did.
Neither did Halle. So who do you want in a time of war? You want an ex-drunk like U.S.
Grant, who was in a grocery store in Galena, Illinois, and you want a madman like William DeCumpte Sherman that they declared mentally insane. And you turn Sherman loose, and he starts saying things, well, there are 300,000 cavaliers who started this war, and they've got to be eliminated.
Or U.S. Grant Sherman says, well, at the Battle of Shiloh, we're in pretty bad straits.
They almost overran us today. And he said, yep, lick them tomorrow.
That's who U.S. Grant was.
That's who Sherman. Same thing with Korea.
MacArthur, I like the guy, but after the Yalu River and Choisin, we were going to lose that war. And then all of a sudden they get a three-time divorce.
Matthew Ridgway, who they called old, and I'm not being foul, everybody, I'm quoting, whom they called old iron tits, because he had a mess-kept kit on one breast and a grenade on the other. And he said, we're going to have mail.
We're going to have hot food. We're going to have ammo.
And we're going to, we may have to withdraw from Seoul. Then we'll take Seoul.
Then we'll have Operation Killer. Then we'll have Operation Ripper.
And then we'll get across to DMZ. And we're going to restore all of South Korea.
And he did. And it's the same thing every time we get in a mess.
Look at World War II. God, if we didn't have nuts like George S.
Patton, Omar Bradley wouldn't have won the war. Hodges wouldn't have won the war.
You needed a crazy man like Patton, who was an authentic genius, by the way. I don't mean crazy in the negative.
You needed a guy like Curtis LeMay, who, you know, bomb him back to the Stone Age, what he said. Those are the people we bring.
We open the closet door and we look around and say, where was that general that we demoted, never promoted? Let's bring him out. And we'll say, look, we're the townspeople.
You're Shane. You got to kill the cattle barons and you got to use that six gun.
But after you're cleaned it all up, we're going to relieve you of command. So, George, take us to the Rhine, take us to Berlin, and afterwards, we're going to relieve you of command and you'll die a death and we'll put you back.
And then they're going to Tell Curtis LeMay, Kurt, you flew 25 missions on a B-17. You revolutionized.
General Hansel cannot get the B-29 program. It's not working.
And what are you going to do, Kurt? And he gets that cigar. I'm going to take the bombers down to 7,000 feet.
And we're going to get rid of the high explosives, and we're going to ride the jet stream, and we're going to have napalm, napalm, and we're going to get rid of the high explosives and we're going to ride the jet stream and we're going to have napalm and we're going to burn out the industrial core. Okay, Kurt, go ahead and do it.
And then after he does it and we win the war, they think, okay, Kurt, you are crazy. And we're going to make a movie called Dr.
Strangelove. We're going to have two characters who, General Ripper and we'll get George.
Scott, and they'll both have an element of your nuttiness and we'll make fun of you. And then we're going to, you know, you're going to run with George Wallace as an environmental, and we're just going to demonize you.
Because we don't need you anymore. You saved us all.
That's what we do. And we need people like that.
And where your point is absolutely right, In peacetime, these people are not up to it. And there are people right now, I think General Carrillo, isn't he on the – he was the one that was going back and forth advising the Israelis.
He was sort of a guy during the surge. Eric Carrillo, four-star now.
I think – was he on the Joint Chiefs? My gosh, I used to read about him in Iraq. He was just, no, he had a swagger about him.
He just went out and fought as a lieutenant colonel. He wasn't wounded at everybody.
That's the kind of guy you need. And so, they're there.
You just don't need them. You don't find them until you have to find them because you want somebody sober and judicious and follows the rules and protocols.
And yet, if you have those people during a war, you're in big trouble. And we did it in World War I.
I mean, World War II, we had those people. That was what the Kaiserine past was all about.
We had poor leadership. And anyway.
All right. Well, Victor, we're going to come into the final chapter of today's episode.
We'll get your thoughts on these surveys about Democrats and their stand on Israel. And your take on Byron Donald as a candidate for governor of Florida, where he might face Mrs.
DeSantis, the current First Lady.

We'll do all this when we come back from these final important messages.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hanson Show, recording on Saturday, March 1st,

in like a lamb today here in Milford, Connecticut. Kind of nice.
And this episode is up on Mardi Gras, March 4th. Victor, I titled this Dem Jews.
Gallup survey finds 60% of Democrats are anti-Israel. More than half Democrats are anti-Israel, according to a shocking new poll.
Only 33% of Dems surveyed by Gallup said they had a favorable view of Israel, while a whopping 60% said they viewed the Jewish state unfavorably, and 4% had no opinion. It's the first time ever that a Gallup survey showed a majority of members of the main U.S.
political party had a negative opinion of the Jewish state with the question being asked since 1989. I don't think you're surprised by this, Victor.
No, because, see, you've had 20 years of two or three, four, no, maybe 10 million people going into universities every year. And that's all they hear is how awful Israel is.
And then you've had massive immigration. And in a very brilliant fashion, the left took the Palestinian issue and grafted or fused it upon the civil rights issue.
So, suddenly somebody who was pretty upscale from the Middle East and educated coming over here, then they were a non-white victim and they were victimized by white settler Jews. They grafted the whole Middle East problem onto the victimizer or victimized Marxist binary.
So, that's what that's about. And by the way, did you say dim Jews? Are you quoting the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? I was.
Yes. When they ask him, have you talked to your former parishioner, Barack Obama? No, I didn't because dim Jews have him locked up somewhere.
They won't let me speak to him. Remember, he was the one that told us that the Israelis made missiles with guided missile system whose nose cones could detect Jews from Arabs.
DNA bombs. Yeah, we were supposed to.
Remember they asked Obama, I think the Chicago Sun-Times in 2008 said, you were married by Reverend Wright and, you know, do you really go to church? And at that time he was trying to win over the – because the black community was suspicious of him. He had lost to Bobby Rush as a congressional district.

And he wasn't, quote, unquote, authentically black, they felt.

So he wanted to brag that he was at this holy roller black inner city church.

He said, yes, I go.

You go?

I never miss a service. And then, unfortunately for Obama, about a couple months later, that God bless America.
No, God, blank, blank, America. Chickens, chickens coming home to roost.
Remember that? And all of a sudden they went back to Obama. I wasn't there.
Now, yes, I did get married there. Yes, my children are baptized.
Yes, I did say I never miss a service. But that particular one, I wasn't there.
So funny. The thing about that Reverend Wright rant was not what he said, which was horrible.
But the reaction of everybody in the audience, remember when they were all clearing and standing up and wildly cheering him right after 9-11, he was bragging that the chickens came home to roost. And it was our fault that we deserve to lose 3,000 people.
Crazed. Despicable.
He's a despicable person. Yeah.
And he was getting rich off it, too. He had a really nice home and everything.
So, yeah. So, the Democratic Party is lost.
It's a lost soul party. It really is.
They can't distinguish. I guess when they looked, so that poll you quoted, Jack, I guess they looked at the latest hostage release.
So they had these coffins of a mother and her two children that were brutalized, tortured and killed and then beaten up their corpses so they could say the Israelis, a bombing attack, killed them. And then it was surrounded by all these brave young men who came out underneath the hospitals and the mosques and the schools where they were hiding in tunnels, put on the regular garb, the camouflage, the Kativa, whatever it is, and the Hamas brand, and then had their little AK-47s and their RPGs and they were screaming at how

brave they were because the Israelis were not going to do anything to them during a

ceasefire.

And they side with that.

That's who the Democratic Party sides with.

It doesn't side with the only democracy and open, transparent society, liberal society

in the Middle East.

And they can't tell that moral distinction than they're not really a party anymore. Yeah.
Well, maybe then when we record our next episode, which I hope our good friends here will listen to. What was the Republican again, Jack? Was that 80% or 75%? I think 85%.
85%. 85%.
How dare you, left, try to keep mentioning Charlottesville and right-wing anti-Semitism? That right-wing anti-Semitism is a vestigial artifact of a bygone century. Everything in the last half century came that was anti-Semitic in this country, almost everything came from the left.

Not that there's a ossified little right-wing cabal of crazy people, but 85% of mainstream Republicans or any Republicans support Israel and you don't even have 40%. And that's because of anti-Semitism.
It's also because we haven't, again, you've got 16% of your population was not born in the United States. And California is 27%.
So, we haven't assimilated integrated immigrants. They don't feel they have any obligation to understand the American traditions.
And they come, they're chauvinistic about.

When I was about 10,

my Swedish grandfather,

I remember we went down to downtown Kingsburg,

which was a Swedish.

Everybody spoke Swedish.

And they had all these Swedish flags.

And my father even bought a 1959 Volvo U's

because it was Swedish.

Anyway, we're talking about all the flag. And I said to my grandfather, wow, Sweden's so good.
And he, yeah, it's so good. Everybody left.
It's so good. Everybody left.
And then I said, well, why did they leave? Well, your grandfather, my dad left. He took us all.
He left because there's no stones in the ground here. The sun shines.
All he had there was cold weather and stones in the ground. You know, when you're there in July, and I have been.
I know you've never been to. I want to be there.
I want to go there. Yeah, I was in Stockholm at, I think, at Rhode Island on a national review cruise way back but uh it was beautiful but yeah it's a it's a narrow slice of time and layer on to that now i thought that cruise was hey can i say one last incident that you'll like it but i think i'll lose some listeners if i do you do whatever you want so when i was uh 33 the dean at Cal State Fresno said he wanted to take a 30-day trip to Greece with 20 of his donors.
I had mono at the time. I was really ill.
But he said, I want you to lead it. And I didn't have tenure.
And so I went on it. And 30 days is a lot.
And he didn't have – I mean, it wasn't like a tour that I led where he had nice hotels. We just had an old bus and everybody stayed at kind of low-rent hotels.
And you know what the price was for 30 days with airfare? $3,000. $3,000 for 30 days.
And I had to get the budget for $100 a day. So, anyway, we're doing it, get the bus.
And there was this old Swedish guy. And he was a wonderful guy.
And two things had happened to him. He had dropped a gun and it shot him.
And he had just recovered from a bullet wound. And his wife had died.
And he was a farmer living all by himself. So, he called me up.
He said, Mr. Hansen, are you Swedish? I'm a first-generation second.
I said, yes. Can I come on your tour? I said, yes.
Does my age matter? And I said, no. And he said, I'm 84.
I said, and he was like, his head was as square as mine is. And he was about 6'2".
He looked like he was about 50. Anyway, he was very depressed and solemn the whole time.
But he was very learned. He was really interested in Mycenaeans.
And I talked about the boar's head tusk in Homer. And we saw the actual boar's tusk helmet in Argos or near the the in the Argolet anyway.
So, he was saying, you know, I miss my wife and I don't go out. And I thought, we're in Rhodes now and I was giving a tour of the hospitality, the St.
Mark and all of the Crusaders castles and their hospital. And then I remember there was this famous nude beach.
And I remember this particular time of the year, Swedish girls went. So, I said, I think his name was something like Harold.
I said, Harold, you know, you're pretty in good shape. Why don't you just take a walk with me? Everybody's had their lunch and they're shopping.
Yeah. I said, let's go to the beach and just, it's just, you know, we'll go to the beach and you'll just relax.
So, we go down and I'm not kidding you, Jack. There was 50 beautiful Swedish girls and they were stark naked, swimmy.
It was a nude beach. I looked over to him.
He goes, oh, my God. You think they speak Swedish, speak dirt? And I said, well, let's try it.
So, I sat there and he walked up. He didn't stare.
He was not gross at all. But they walked by him and he spoke fluent Swedish.
He learned, you know, he was a Swede. And then I said after, he goes, I think we better go back up the cliff.
He had his five minutes and he took his shoes off and he walked in the water. He walked along with a Swedish young woman, could not believe that an American was there at that age that spoke Swedish.
And he was telling me about all the dialects. And then we got back and my parents were on the tour.
And they said, how did you do it? He goes, your son is an angel. And for the rest of the trip, all he talked about was talking Swedish to these beautiful young women.
But he didn't mention to anyone that they were sunbathing. And I thought about that later when he died, that he had a very good time.
I really liked him. He used to write me a letter every week.
Wow. All the trips I've been on, you know I've been on a ton of them.
I never had any experience like that. People almost choking to death, those kind of stories.
Well, I didn't know if it was still, I mean, when I went there in 1980, I hadn't been there since 79.

And I never went to a nude beach.

But I remember being in Rhodes and there's nude beaches, right?

Everybody talked about them.

And you could, they weren't shy, topless completely.

So I didn't know what to expect. But I did think there would be topless beach there.

And I thought that maybe after his widowhood, he might want to talk to some Swedes.

Because I knew Swedes hung out in Rhodes.

And I hit the jackpot.

So just talking alone. All right, Victor, let's let's go over the finish.
I'm going to be censored by the Stanford Faculty Senate. I'll come up again because I was derogatory.
I was sexist. Dr.
Hansen, your medical doctor. Okay, Donald Trump endorses uh congressman byron donalds uh who a couple days ago did then announce uh that he was going to run for governor and i don't think she had announced but certainly it's been talked that uh casey de santis the first lady of Florida, is interested possibly in running.

You met her.

We talked about her.

Nine days ago.

Yeah, nine days ago.

I sat next to her and I heard her.

She gave a speech.

They were giving me an award at Scott Atlas's Liberty Center.

And she was a speaker before me.

And she gave a very, very rousy, informative speech about what was happening in Florida.

She's very beautiful.

She's very vibrant.

She's very well-spoken.

She's a cancer survivor, but you would never know it.

She's so vigorous and healthy.

And she's done it all.

I mean, she's first lady of Florida.

She's got children, everything.

But I've also, but Byron Donald, see, the problem that Trump was in, I don't think it's because he, of his former rivalry would, his,

Thank you. everything.
But I've also, but Byron Donald, see, the problem that Trump was in, I don't think it's because he, of his former rivalry, would, his, Byron Donald was not just a Trump supporter. He was a fanatic campaigner for Donald Trump.
You couldn't see a rally in 2024 that Byron Donald was not at. He went out of his way to campaign, campaign.
Some people say, well, Victor, he did it to get, I don't care why he did it. He was a loyal trooper.
Trump had no choice. It's too bad because they're both excellent.
The thing about them is they're very similar in the sense they're both very well-spoken. They're analytical.
They're very calm. And they're very admirable people.
And if they have a knockdown, drag out primary flight, I don't know what's going to happen. There were rumors that because Ron DeSantis will, you know, he'll finish his term.
And I didn't people I thought maybe he had to point his wife to take Marco Rubio's place. But he didn't do that because that's been done before.
But what's he going to do in the future? And people have argued that in the fashion of Earl Warren or Oliver Wendell Holmes or Charles Evans Hughes, that you could get somebody with a political background and put him on the court, right? And he'd be a good Supreme Court justice. He'd be excellent, actually.
He knows the law. Ron DeSantis would.
But I don't know what's going to happen about that. Okay.
Well, let me end this with a quick total curveball. I didn't tell you ahead of time we're going to talk about this.
Since we're thinking of Florida, Pam Biondi, the Attorney General, the Kraken never seemed to get released.

I know.

I felt so bad about that. It was kind of like Geraldo's Al Capone vault.
I watched that when it actually happened. It was worth it in hindsight to say you did.
But, yeah, anyway. Okay, Victor.
So she, yeah, I mean, I think that she thought that because Cash was there at the FBI and she knew that these incriminating things were there and they had some folder. I don't know if she'd had a chance to look at it, but she just assumed that automatically the FBI deep state was over with.
So when you would call up Cash, hey, can I get the FBI files? Yeah. But she didn't realize that it's a vast organization with all sorts of cells and eddies and ripples.
And it's very hard for Cash to know who's got what yet, right? So I think she's got to wait another month. And then he will find it if it exists.
but it's going to take a lot of digging.

I think a rule should just be release what you got when you got it and don't create the buildup. Exactly.
That's what we were always taught. I don't know what the word was.
Our coach said, no showboating, boys, no showboating. Well, you've been your usual terrific, a mix of great political analysis and walks on nude beaches.
Yeah, I was forced to endure that for the greater good of a person who was a wonderful sweet man. You offered it up with the souls in purgatory, I think so.
I told my father about it because my mom got really angry at me. There was nudity there.

And, you know, that was not fair to subject him to that. And my dad goes, Pauline, he's 84 and now he's going to live to 90.

He's going to die happy.

Well, Victor, we have so many listeners now and they comment in so many ways on your website. People can comment on the podcast and on Victor's articles on Apple.
People can do that, do that, in fact. They rate the show zero to five stars.
Again, practically everyone gives Victor five stars. I have a comment that somebody left and it's from

it's from Valentina HR. It's titled, Thank you for enlightening us.
It's an absolute delight listening to VDH. His analytical capability is fascinating.
I love his humor, his way to narrate personal anecdotes, history facts, and geopolitics, connecting them all in a masterful way with current events. A great scholar to listen to and not be afraid of indoctrination into communism.
His experience in working the land speaks of the integrity and honesty and wisdom he learned there and applies it in his life and academia. It also transmits the legacy of the backbone of this beautiful, exceptional, and blessed country.
It reminds me so much of my dad. I'm so glad I found your show.
That's very nice to hear that. Yeah, it's wonderful.
Thank you, Valentina. Thanks everybody else who does.
Likewise, we do read the comments. And for those of you who encouraged the firing of Fowler, it hasn't happened yet, but you never know.
Wait, who said that? Oh, Victor, please. Who hasn't? No, I've never heard it once, actually.
No, I'm serious. Who would fire you? Me? Who's me? I don't even own it, do I? I don't even know who.
John Solomon? Maybe I have to ask Sammy permission. I don't even own it, do I? I don't even know who.
John Solomon owns it. Or maybe I have to ask Sammy permission.
I don't know. Let me give a few last things.
Victor's on X, and his handle is advdhansen. On Facebook, he's got VDH's Morning Cup.
So if you're on Facebook, follow that. And also maybe check out the friendly Victor Davis Hanson fan club.
It's not official, not related, but they're good people there. So you might like that.
Again, VictorHansons.com. That's the Blade of Perseus.
As for me, Jack Fowler, among the many things I do in life, I write Civil Thoughts, the free weekly email newsletter

for the Center for Civil Society at Amphill,

where we are trying to strengthen civil society.

Every Friday it comes out, 14 recommended readings.

I know you're going to like it.

It's free.

We don't do anything with your name,

not selling them,

not, you know, no monkey business here.

Go to civiltoughts.com, sign up,

and you'll begin to get it. So thanks for those who do.
Victor, you've been terrific, folks. Thanks very much.
And we will be back soon with another episode in Lent of the Victor Davis Hanson Show. Bye-bye.
Thank you, everybody, for listening. Much appreciated.
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