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The COVID Truth The ‘Experts’ Didn’t Want to Hear, Academia’s DEI Fraud, and Open Borders | VDH

79m 54s

The COVID Truth The ‘Experts’ Didn’t Want to Hear, Academia’s DEI Fraud, and Open Borders | VDH

The podcast, hosted by Victor Davis Hanson, covers a range of political and cultural issues from a conservative perspective. Hanson begins by discussing the scandal of Jason R. Day, a Cambridge professor who fabricated a narrative of racial victimhood, including false claims of comas, cancer, and suicide attempts, to secure a lucrative book deal. Hanson uses this to criticize the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) system in academia, which he argues rewards mediocrity and fraud over merit, citing similar cases like Claudine Gay at Harvard. He contrasts this with the hypocrisy of left-wing academics who profess progressive values but exhibit cruelty and elitism toward working-class people. The conversation shifts to the UK migrant crisis, where Hanson criticizes open-border policies as self-destructive, and then to Israel, defending its military response to Hamas’s October 7th attacks by arguing that Hamas deliberately used human shields and that Israel had no viable alternatives. Hanson also revisits the COVID-19 pandemic, defending Jay Bhattacharya and other scientists who opposed lockdowns, and condemns Stanford University for censoring them. He critiques left-wing politicians like AOC for disowning their radical pasts and discusses issues like abortion and transgender treatments as examples of inconsistent, harmful policies. The episode concludes with personal anecdotes about Hanson’s cancer recovery and near-death experience, reflecting on how such experiences change one’s outlook on life, and he reads supportive comments from listeners.

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And they say, "Well, what happened? He had some involvement with Gain and Function Research, and he was wedded to the idea that he would say and do anything to get people vaccinated." And Michael LeBette, I think that's his first name, and he was a Nobel Prize biologist. And he looked at the data, and he said, "Very early on, this has to be a lab-oriented." This could not be naturally created, and they censored him. And then when they found the evidence, they were so embarrassed when there was a motion to resend the censor, they wouldn't do it, the faculty. They hated that. They hated him so much. And Jay, they ostracized. [Music] Well, hello, ladies, and hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Victor is the Martin and Ilyanderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, and he's a Senior Fellow, or Contributor, I should say, at the Daily Signal, which is the Happy Home, not only of this podcast, but of another show, Victor Davis Hanson, in a few words. We're going to get to coffee, to smoke some coffee branches, to smoke this podcast, Victor. Yeah. Yeah, yes. I know I got to be careful. I'm a writer, and Sammy reminded me, but also an email, said Victor. Yeah, that's her name is Sophie Cunningham, not Stephanie, and it's Joe Kent, not Joe King, and I was going to plead, I'm a cancer survivor victim, but I can't do that. Then I thought I was going to say, well, I was nine under, nine hours under anesthesia, and my brain was affected, but it's just, let's just-- Look, you have, you just this day alone, you have had an excruciatingly long day, and we're recording on Tuesday, August 11th. It's the evening, early evening, and the Milford Connecticut, but yeah, to do in the Lord's work. Well, this show will be up on Thursday, August 13th, and Victor's website, The Blade of Perseus, [email protected]. Please, folks, check it out. If you haven't yet, what's the matter with you? And when you go there, you'll be, oh my gosh, there's so much, gosh, excuse me, so much Victor here. I love it. Lots of free stuff, but also if you subscribe for $6.50 a month or $65 for the full year that's discounted, you can read all the exclusive articles, Victor writes, with The Blade of Perseus, two articles a week, one video a week. Go ahead, Victor. Oh, I want-- yeah, I was going to make a note. We discussed this, and Sammy discussed it. We used to have 50 or 60 comments that were on there, and it's not because people are not reading the material on the website. It's because we have a new website, and there was a lot of filters in there about bots and things. So people are commenting. We're just trying to find a way to both filter out the, you know, the scant, the robotic entries are automatic or spam, or whatever, and then get the other ones. Yeah, it's a two-step process in a lot of places. Are you a human, check the box, and then it's like, how many-- which squares is there a bicycle, or a motorcycle? Yeah. Well, I hate that. Victor, while you're catching-- while you're on it, I just do want to say, again, on Victor's website, you can find the link right there, a front page for the counter-revolution, Victor's forthcoming book. These are the galley's, you know, I get a galley copy, and I'm writing an article. That's why they publish a send it to me, but get yours. It's out September 8th. Okay. What are we going to talk about today, Victor? The J-Bot of Char-- Just-- You're the boss driver with an illegal CDL license. No one. Everybody should know that Jack's-- Jack sets the top right, and he designs the show. He just performed. And sometimes I have no idea what is going to bring this episode. But we're going to talk about the J-Bot of Chari, hit job on CBS, his interview on Sunday. Israel is maybe has taken its revenge on all the murderers from October 7th. Donald Trump's revoking visas. Folks, have you seen this story about this insane pontoon or inflatable boat that bringing illegals to the UK? And it's just its madness. Ben-- I do think it had as many passengers on a 727. But who's going to see like an inflatable raft with 200. That's one of 30, 240 people on it. Especially when you hear all these debates in the British parliament about whether they can afford one more frigate or not. And they have like two ships, and then somebody stands up from the left and says, "Oh, we're cutting this, and we don't have enough money for this, and all these entitlement programs. And every day there's hundreds of people who come and say, "Give me, give me, give me." And then they have nothing but contempt for the people. Yeah, hate you. I wouldn't give to myself, but the fact that you do and your magnanimous makes me hate you. And why is your daughter I want to rape her? That's the attitude. And the same thing here when-- yeah, and then Social Security here in the United States has now set it to 2035. It'll be bankrupt along with Medicaid. And we're told by the left that it didn't matter at all that there are 30 million illegal aliens in 12 to 12 probably that came in under Biden with absolutely no ability for self support. Many of them 500,000 of them criminals. Nobody ever-- it's just this constant-- I'm going to feel good about myself, and I don't know how much it's going to cost, but the oligarch will pay for it. Shelby Steele and Eli Steele's theme. It's all about white guilt. Well, it's also about desire to torment people. There's lots of the left on the left side of that gene too. And maybe we should-- we're going to take a break here in a second. That's really good point about white guilt. Okay, you can expound on. If you want, or we'll do it in a little bit, but when we come back from these-- Oh, I just meant about when you-- yeah, we'll do it when you get back. And how about the perfect white guilt segue? We'll talk about this Professor Jason R. Day of Cambridge or Oxford or wherever the hell he's just been bounced from. And we'll do that when we come back from these important messages. I'm Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI. We're working every day to make sure that AI is safe, secure, and aligned with American values. Okay, folks, we are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words on the daily signal network. On Tuesday, August 11th, 2026, this episode's up on the 13th Victor. Ricky Schlott, who writes-- I hope I pronounce your name, correct? Ricky, I get the New York Post, the radio all the time. And she's written a column about Jason R. Day. And he has a new book. I think it's coming out this week. And it's called Great and Unfortunate Things. And he got the deal from Simon and Schuster was $1.4 million. So here's-- let me just read from our column here quickly. The book's coming out just three years after the London-born academic became Cambridge's youngest ever Black Professor at 37. Proof that. Not long after being hired, he sniffed the payday that came with the DEI crews. According to the publisher, his book tells the story of all his unbelievable triumphs without quote, without romanticizing the struggle. Except romanticizing the struggle is key to our days of success. There's just one thing I want to read. It's crazy stories that were actually in the initial book proposal, but somehow didn't get into the book, include where he claims to have been in a several months long coma after being hit by a car and experiencing locked-in syndrome. He apparently also survived testicular cancer in addition to his previously claimed brain tumor, and he changed details about a thwarted suicide attempt. And yet he got the full professorship at Cambridge. Victor, your thoughts. And this comes after Juicy Smallet and the Duke lacrosse and hands up. Don't shoot Rachel Dozo. I mean, this guy is almost destroyed an 800-year reputation of Cambridge University. When you heard the provost arc, the equivalent of the provost, just laud him. And he's so brilliant. And then when you look at the book proposal, 45 pages of just mush. And anybody who knew anything about physics would see that running that many marathons and that few days is physically impossible. And the brain tumor in the proposal becomes a testicular tumor of the gonads in the book. And he's in coma he can't speak. It's all it's all made up and it has one common theme that he is a victim and he is a victim of racial oppression his entire life and that he should therefore not have to fit or meet white norms. So if he wants to write a an angry letter it'll be an AI who will compose it as they discovered or if he's going I looked at about two pages of what was his thesis it was written in a language other than English it was about it was bet it was worse than Michelle Obama's undergraduate thesis which was incomprehensible and so everybody knows if he hadn't been black he wouldn't have had the job everybody knows of Claudine Gay who did almost as much damage to Harvard it still hasn't recovered from her that they hired a known plagiarist who couldn't define even what a hate crime was or anti-Semitism is and it's gone to the point of not just anger but fantasy or character or you know it's just based comedy now it's just so silly and it's ridiculous that Cambridge University would destroy themselves over this faker that comes in and takes them for a cleaner takes them for the cleaners and then Simon and Schuster how many authors do you think submit manuscripts to Simon and Schuster probably ten twenty thirty forty a hundred thousand a year and how many of those that are accepted get an advance of more than fifteen or twenty thousand hardly any to get to sell enough books that's five hundred thousand six hundred thousand copies so when they went ahead with publishing today the memoir you got the impression that they thought well yeah he's a liar but he's our liar yes he's in blank blank blank but he's our blank blank bank and we're going to get that million and a half dollars back cook or cook mostly by crook because all of this publicity that says he's a pathological liar of fraud a trickster it's going to help sales they're going to want to read this thing not as a serious memoir but as a kind of fiction fiction fantasy postmodern joke and we'll sell copies that's their attitude and they went ahead with publishing it but I there's this act of commission we always talk about with DI then there's the old mission thousands of people have applied to Cambridge universities with legitimate defils PhDs publications good teaching record and didn't even get a toe in the door a toe in the door and there's that essay I just read it's very long and Atlantic by a African American professor at Bates College in Maine and basically his lament is this that he is a legitimate academic in the bio sciences who was a serious scholar and he was surrounded by guilt-ridden wealthy whites who are utterly hypocritical as faculty that virtue signaled in a very condescending way as if he was some kind of pet and you know Martin Luther King comes up they want a committee to explore how to celebrate his birthday you hey you're black you must know even though he's a scientist and there are white people that knew as much or more and then what's really funny though is when he's going through everything in the Atlantic they're undergoing a strike jack from underpaid culinary workers janitors groundsmen and all of these left-wing white people who are so obsessed with having equity and diversity and hate Trump they turn out to be like the most mean spirited anti-union hateful people about working class white people they despise them and anybody who's working class so that but it's a pretty good article and then he just says I give up I quit I'm gonna be a writer and you know I guess he works it in the Atlantic but he should have I was surprised he should have known all his successes due to these white leftist professors that's what they think right dandy that's whatever however if you're achieved your achievement is only there because of me that was the only flaw yeah yeah that's the only flaw the only flaw was he thinks he's an observer watching the machinations of this bankrupt bait you know shameful class but he took advantage of it right and he can convince himself that he alone was hired on merit-cratic grounds because he is very gifted he's a good writer and he's he was a legitimate researcher but he'll never know that and whenever we'll never know because of this vial system of tribalism that the left is inaugurated and it's very critical of ac- yeah it's very critical of academics too that how how how hateful they are and how tribal they are and how much they despise the world outside of academia and how arrogant they are and how mediocre they are it's just that just confirmed everything I've seen for you swam you swam in that pool and know it well yeah I know it all too well I've seen I've seen people talk about national politics from a very hard left-wing point of view and how liberal they are and then call in I can remember a very left-wing arrogant professor of my friend colleague not friend who there was a Hispanic guy who had a truck and he was a contractor doing yard work and he parked in the R section for like five seconds so he could get all the stuff out then go park remotely even though he wasn't an employee but he was doing work for the university and she ratted him out in two seconds and then gave a little spiel about we can't have these people taking our parking places and you know it's it's it's that they're the most petty cruel arrogant mediocre mediocre and it's always get it's always funny how these academics on the left they get on news shows or talk shows or they write essay about Elon Musk I'm not a fan of Mark Zuckerberg but Jeff Bezos all of those guys have more talent and they're a little finger than the professor it and they hate the there was a guy the other night saying what is Elon Musk ever done how's on Parker and all those people what's he ever done it's all subsidies I think the socialist woman the co-chair of the socials of America democratic social and she said oh he just inherited stuff no he didn't he created the whole don't they know that he single-handedly revived or created the electric car movement that without Tesla it would have been morbid doesn't don't they understand that NASA was in the doldrums that he rescued a whole crew trapped during the Biden administration don't they know that SpaceX has almost single-handedly in the Chinese to have another rocket the blew up yesterday the other competitors have single-handedly it's put America at the forefront of both satellite placement and space exploration don't they know that there is a place now called X where you can say things that are not politically correct that's all of this stuff don't they know that I'm talking right now out on a farm in the middle of nowhere with high-speed internet which I could never get no matter how many I had used I had this this brand and then I get starlinked and it's just flawless he did that and we owe him gratitude but this country is getting into this envy jealousy hatred all from these mediocre people the only good thing today I'll just shut up is that I was watching a Fox show with Wilkane who's pretty good and he was pointing out fine finally finally we have people saying finally that Hassan Piker is a complete fraud that he makes millions of dollars on his podcast corporation that he lives in a 2.7 or 2.8 million dollar Hollywood home that he drives a hundred thousand dollar plus heart Porsche sports car that he has expensive glasses even and wardrobes and he's an elite dandy and he grew up in Turkey he was kind of an anchor baby and his parents brought him back to Turkey and he was a frustrated and he bragged about how he was going to go to America for one reason to blank blank girls and that to be sexually liberated so he had a very condescending sexist idea of femininity in America that they were all of dubious morality and this is the guy that that you know everybody every I I was in a meeting today and I kind of pointed out a zoom meeting that people were talking about anti-Semitism and everything on the left and the right and they were as if Tucker Carlson, if so facto, proved that the right had more exposure as much as the left did and I just said one thing, do you really believe that a mainstream Republican candidate today would be on the stage campaign with Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor, Greene, Candace Owens or Tucker Carlson? Do you really believe that a lot of candidates welcome Hassan Piker like in Michigan, the Senate candidate or Mondomy? Yes. So there is no censor or ostracism for an absolute anti-Semite who said that we had 9/11 coming but the Republicans are conservatives have and I know people will disagree with whether it's right or not, but they have ostracized people who are on record saying crazy things like Mossad, it was responsible for Charlie Kirk's death or 9/11 was the Jews knew in advance of 9/11, Tucker ran a whole thing about Israel knew in advance about 9/11, etcetera, etcetera. The thing gets me most about some on the right is the preoccupation with a circular firing squad, and it's not like we shouldn't be critical of our side of the ledger here, but the vastness and the scope and scale and the mission of our true enemies is enormous and to compare us to them is perverse almost. Yeah. The purpose of the left wing take over the Democratic party is not to defeat the Democratic party, it is to absorb it and to absorb the United States and turn it into a socialist dystopia. The purpose of if Tucker's 10 point new party and that picture with him with Joe Kent and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, all whose political careers are absolutely inert. Massie was humiliated and Marjorie Taylor Greene was humiliated. She didn't even run, he couldn't even win the nomination of his own party, Kent was going nowhere until Trump welcomed him in as a security adviser and now he's going to go nowhere after two failed congressional bids and Tucker was fired from Fox from the most probably powerful megaphone and the conservative movement, but my point is they have one purpose and that is to be a spoiler to see if they can draw off enough votes from Donald Trump's candidates or Donald Trump, not, I don't mean and he's not going to be running again, but from his initiatives that they can out of spite show everybody that they were right along or Trump is bad now that he treated them meanly or whatever, but it's a spoiler never, it's very similar to the never Trump movement and they were the fiercest critics of Bill Crystal and David From and Max Boot and George Will and all those guys. Well, Bill Crystal is a democratic sponsor's support's mandami, so that's where they stick the landing. Victor, I got another thing to raise about Jason R. Day, but first to our viewers and our listeners, if you've studied enough history, you stalked to see a pattern nations, don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime, we've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations and policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion, but here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price. The wise never waited for collapse they prepared for the correction and that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history, physical gold, not a speculation but as insulation. Reputation matters and Victor Davis-Hanson and his own words, which is why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability, and an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau for years that guided Americans through transparent education and longstanding relationships built. Trust on right now they're extending a special liberty offer to our listeners and viewers to help you get started with real gold. Whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in the bank if you believe as we do, that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious, call 844-790-9191844-790-9191 or visit, protect with Victor. History rewards those who take the long view and we thank the very good people from Allegiance Gold for once again sponsoring Victor Davis-Hanson in his own words. Victor, I wasn't being rude before. I saw a headline earlier and I couldn't find it but it was about, you're talking about essentially these punks, that lefty chick, New York City, she's something to do with the Montgomery administration, I forget her name. And she's the heir of this house. I think her father was a very famous movie producer. For entertainment. At four years she has not paid her rent on her apartment and the owner of the apartment is a small building. It's a black man who's gone into bankruptcy because of her. And she cooked up some minor infraction. I know that as my daughter lived in Santa Cruz and I had a house there that I we modeled years ago when she lived there. She has it and I gave it to her but she and she had to move but she's you know she's she had a friend lived there but it's it's open season now. The very fact that it's open so she has to have cameras and turn on the water and have the neighbors park in the driveway so that nobody sees that even for a second that it's open. Because so many people in Santa Cruz have just appropriated other people's property or they have begged and said they're in need and they want to rent and they pose as ideal winners and then they go in and they say oh, oh. That's circuit blue. It's dangerous. I'm not paying rent and there's the city. You can't get them to pay rent for a year. And you go broke on the main one. Yeah, they hate people with property. It's like the Marxist in Russia, the Bolsheviks and the Kulaks. They went after the property owning classes. Their whole purpose of Marxism is to hold anybody that has property as culpable that to quote Elizabeth Warren you didn't build that we did. You know, you had to drive on a road public. You had to call on a phone public. We did it. So you owe us it. You may have said them. They would rather everyone be poor and equal than being well off but but not at parity with Elon Musk. That's a lexist. He said that but he was talking about how America had a chance in the larger discussion to avoid that peasant mentality of Europe. To class mentality poor and rich by having independent Jeffersonian land owning middle classes. And so we have done that pretty well until this latest bunch. And remember, it's a top down phenomenon. It's not coming from the working poor. It's coming. There's a racial component the DI people are course there and the first and second generation immigration people from the former third world are there and the affluent but it's mostly 75% or 85% I think I read of the democratic socialist or white urban creatures. There are people who feel that their education entitled them to a salary commiserate with their desires and needs and they haven't gotten it yet because they're and you know who's ultimately responsible is the university again if they would sit down every 18 year old and say look here's what you are in here's your economic package you're going to end up going 200,000 here is the so called subsidized rate of 7%. You're going to owe five or six thousand dollars a month at some point and if you don't pay it down here are our 40 majors this major here pays this and on the top of the scale and this major pays for art history or environmental studies or gender studies or social this. And here's the unemployment employment rates for each of these majors and we want to tell you we don't want to influence you but we want to warn you if you pick one of these majors. It will not, you can determine which ones will not give you enough disposable income to pay off the debt that you incurred from us. And then make them, and then they should say, "And we're going to watch this because we are liable, and we're going to get the federal government out, our endowment is pledged to secure your loan with the bank." And you'd have a whole different ad. I totally agree with you, but I would say start sooner because mommy and daddy have been telling a little Buffy and Buster that they've been God's creations from participation trophies on, and if they got an A-minus, yeah. If they got an A-minus in a test, mommy and daddy would come with a lawyer. My neighbor was a teacher in Westport, and did not give a kid an A, gave him a B-plus, and they came with a lawyer. This is going to ruin Buffy's chance to go to Harvard, you know. I've had so many parents call me up. You know, never at Hillsdale, not once. When I gave a grade that the student did not like, did the student or the parent call me. At Cal State Fresno, I got so many calls from parents. Over a 20-year period, I bet I got 40 calls, and calls from football coaches. Did you see the University of Michigan has decided that the first semester grades will not be reported because it could be too traumatizing? Yeah, it could be too traumatizing. You know, I always treat with respect the wisdom of my late father, but I had an older brother who went to UC Santa Cruz and a cousin, and they came home kind of left to the left and looking a little bit differently than when they left. So when I got there, he drove me, I had a twin brother who also went there, so I offered my twin brother, my mom took him to one college to drop him off, but I was at a different college, Cal college. So my dad, and I mentioned some of the misadventures he had in the dorm, the first house, nudity and drugs and all that, and my roommate. By the way, I really liked my roommate, even though he had problems, but he's very successful now, and I don't need to mention his name. But anyway, one of the strange things was that, as he left, he said to me, "Now, when I see you, the next time I see you is on Thanksgiving, and I want you to look like the same person and talk like the same person and act like the same person you were right today." Because I don't think these people do. He said, "I think these people are completely changed, and they're unrecognizable to the parents who are paying the tab." And I said, "I promised that." So you already did that year. It rained very hard, and we had a lot of trouble in the farm, and he called me right. Like, three days before Thanksgiving break, and he said, "You've got to come home. We've got about 20 big, huge tarps that we use to cover the wet raisins and bins, and they're all out there, and your mother and I are working in Fresno, and you come home and fold them all up." And they were all -- so I just took off the last two days and drove in with my 250,000-mile, putt-putt-vovo home. But you didn't have any earrings or ponytails? No, I didn't say, "Hey, Dan, wow." No, no. And he didn't say anything like, "Well, how's it going up there?" He said, "Well, you know, I called him, he was at work, and he said, "They're out in the barnyard. I'll be home to help you." And he came home early. He had his little polyester suit, and he came out there, and he got -- he was completely filthy within 15 minutes with raisin stems and moldy raisins and wet -- he was a great guy. Well, let me just -- before we move on to another topic, I said something one more thing about Jason Arde and his fabulism, and it did remind me a little bit of Barack Obama, who in his early memoirs as a 30-something-year-old or 40-year-old had composite girlfriends, and just made up -- he changed a name, remember? He said, "Well, it wasn't a memoir, it was an impressionistic story, after they found all the lies. There was a passage in there where he's sitting, I think, on the banks of the Hudson or somewhere in New York, and he sees a picture, and it's almost word for word for billiards, autobiography. Who I think goes through it a little bit. He was in the news the other day, he had his brown suit again. Did you see that? No, tell us. Well, I think -- I'd seen him in a before -- Billiards? No, Barack Obama. I think he's on the -- yeah, the story was that he's preparing to go full L. Said -- I don't understand that. He had eight years, and he came in with a Senate and the House. He could have gone full socialists then, but apparently he has regrets that he missed the Socialist bus, so he wants to sort of -- maybe he saw -- I don't know -- maybe he saw Hasan Piker's mouse suit, and he got envious. Remember -- I mean, if he was smart, he'd say, "Listen, Hassan, I was there before you, because my communications director Anita Dunn said that her favorite person in history was the mass murdering Mao who killed 70 million people." He could have said that in Bragg, but anyway, he's going to come back on the scene, and Gavin is like -- he's sort of -- I mentioned the Eurypides Tyracias in "Cabinus." He thinks he wants to be cool, too, so he said capitalism doesn't work, and now he said that he is an establishment insurrectionist. And he's -- he's -- they've exposed this -- the guy never works. They've exposed this calendar. He's got like three weeks of nothing, and now he's in Michigan. And you want to say to him, you just kicked out, too, we finally -- I just went in Salma today. This is Salma, in the middle of one of the poorest areas in the United States. And gas was 620 a gallon at the kind of shakedowns gas station near the freeway, and he hasn't done it -- the palisides, they're even talking about not building it now. We're building it, and then, you know, we went over to Stanford last week for the meds stuff, and we went over high-speed rail. People hasn't -- they're getting close to -- it's 15 years and not one foot of rail track, not one. And why doesn't he just say, "I'm going to make sure that we have refined leasing California. I'm going to make sure that this high-speed rail is either abandoned, or it's going to be a modified version is going to be finished in three years. I'm going to make sure that that palisides disaster is completely rebuilt in two years. I'm going -- he can't do any of that. He's got a country to screw up. Yeah, he does. They can only destroy, they can never build or create. Let's touch one other issue, then we're going to take a little break, but this -- the aforementioned boat, so it's a 49-foot, it's a mega dinghy. I'll carry 230 migrants. So this is from the Daily Mail. Labor's attempts to tackle the channel crisis were branded a complete laughing stock on Monday after a record 230 migrants arrived on one dinghy. The huge number more than the capacity of a 737 cross from France today prompting the conservatives to taunt home secretary Mahmoud for presiding over a complete nut of floss, et cetera, et cetera. They're measuring 49 feet from bow to stern. It was 7 feet larger than vessels, which set previous records last month and more than 10 feet longer than a standard double deck of bus, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The picture itself was kind of shocking, but the ongoing invasion of Europe, parts of Europe, especially the UK, are ongoing, your thoughts. I don't know if it was revenge for Brexit, or maybe it's a seven-year war of, you know, 1755 to '62, or maybe Napoleonic Wars, but why would France allow -- it looked like a maritime version of a 757. It was huge. A jumbo raft. And why would it leave French shores, obviously, with the knowledge of France? It's kind of like camp of the saints in reverse that all these people are leaving France immigrants to go to see if they can destroy Britain. And maybe they can. I don't know. A lot of people in Britain want to be destroyed, but they never ask themselves, what happens the first, second -- every time I saw a job, Alejandro, in New York, say the border secure when he was at the border. And you could see thousands coming in, 10,000 a day. My first thing was, does that guy right there have a COVID vaccination? Like, I had to have it stand for -- does that guy have one that everybody in the military? Has that guy ever committed a felony? Does that -- where is that guy going to go to the bathroom, defecate in the next hour? Where is he going to urinate? Where is he going to get food? What is his history? Does he have tuberculosis? Does he have access to -- and the answer was, I don't know, their potential voters let him in. And we'll pay for it somehow by borrowing more money and then saying the oligarchs and the middle class have to pay for it, but they never think like that. It's always -- it's kind of a nihilistic, angry, destructive urge that left him. If I could use that vernacular to screw things up to just, you know what I mean? They really do like to see people anguishing upset and angry. I think our leaders, I mean our listeners can relate to that. When they watch what they do, and they look at this in LA, they went to an auto zone. Did you see that store where they swarmed, the same thing. They swarmed is mostly an African-American mob. They go in there. The weird thing about it was, it had already been swarmed and destroyed earlier in the day and boarded up. So then the word got out and like 40, 50 people went in and then they had this, and you could see the pictures of the individuals and then they had the classic LA phrase. There were no identifications and no arrests. And when people read that, it's just, whether it's a subway or whether it's the swarming of stores, the homeless, Karen Bassers, you know, she spent billions of dollars and there's more homeless people than when she came into office after the election in 2022. And it is a society, civilization and decline, at least in the blue states. I'm speaking, we're speaking to a lot of people, you and I live in blue states, but there are people who live in a sane and workable America. But it's getting to the point now where I don't know what the logic, I don't think the left believes that DEI works anymore, I don't think they believe that the green new deal works anymore, I don't think they believe that the COVID policies work anymore. And I don't think we hear that Bill was just passed and signed by near you, Jack, the, is her name Murphy, the governor of Massachusetts. What was funny about signing a bill that said that abortion could take place on the last day of a bird, ready for birth, I thought of two things when I saw that, though people in the audience were ecstatic and clapping. Remind me of something out of every mind, remind me of Dante's inferno of the lost souls that in there's, you know, they clap in there, they don't know that they're burning. And the funny thing about it was I thought to myself, so you want to legalize somebody who comes into your state, she has an abortion at nine months. The baby is completely, let's say, is nine pounds and he's making his way through the birth canal canal and you decide that you have labor pains and you decide you don't want the baby. So you go through a clinic in Massachusetts and they siphon or kill the baby, I don't want to get into the details. But what happens if there are a second too late and you get on the table and you're ready to execute the baby and it emerges from the birth canal, then can they kill the baby or is that murder? Well, I don't know, but there is a ban on partial birth abortion and how applicable it is to that situation, but, you know, who's to tell? Oh, the baby wasn't out yet. This was a party who sold us abortion on legal and rare, and it's not safe and it's not safe and it's quasi-legal and it's not rare as over a million abortions still a year. So it reminds me, Will Rogers never met a man he didn't like and Murphy and many of these Democrats never met an abortion, they did not like it. It's very, it's like every single problem that Europe has low fertility and we have low fertility and absence of affordable food, an inadequate military defensive shield, open borders, illegal immigration. The left not only created the problem, but they want to continue it. They want to make sure that our fertility rate through more and more abortion goes down lower and lower and lower. They want hostility to energies on that list, you know, absolutely, and to the degree that they're honest, because usually, I don't know, I was on Lori Ingram's last night and she had me and she was talking about AOC and AOC now is said, when they started to quote the things that she has said that were very embarrassing, she said, well, that was the era of woke one during the lockdown and everybody was saying things. So what she was basically saying is, we just said things to get attention and we didn't really mean them and I would say to her, you didn't really mean them because there were people like this audience that stopped you and wouldn't let you have your way. But you did get some of your way. So AOC, I said this on the air, you destroyed a whole Amazon headquarters, one billion dollars in revenue and 25,000 jobs. You and Bernie Sanders, first thing you did when you elected a Congresswoman, you passed a bill, ban it, you introduced a bill, had you been successful, it was to ban fracking. You did that. You were the one, one of the first people who championed the idea of trans people, biological males having the ability to go into girls showers and to compete in males. You were the one that welcomed the destruction of the border. So don't tell us that was all rhetoric because you want to run for president and you know that nobody wants to vote for that bankrupt basket of ideas that you have. So that's what we're going to see now and you saw Taylor Rico, did you see him with his blowtorch? No. Commercial. He rented a ram truck, kind of like my truck actually, but he rented it and then he parked up to, and then he, they're showing with a cowboy hat and he's got a blowtorch and he's working like he's an industrial worker. There's a lot of parodies, they're pretty good on the internet. And then all of his prior stuff, he's disowned. He eats meat now and he moved, he's not, he doesn't have his mom's credit card. He moved out and he's really masculine now. He's tough. It's like the same thing with, yeah, Tim Walls just cut a commercial where he was golfing. And El Sayid, did you see him, he was, that was it, I don't know what the purpose of that was. It was a make it look like he was a John Travolta type urban cowboy because he had a cowboy hat on and he loves to put on really tight t-shirts you know and so it shows muscularity and he was kind of dancing almost in gay fashion country and he was doing all and then he was kind of on a children's set and it was all to say well I may have said that my constituents regret that you know the death of the supreme leader who was a terrorist who killed, who ordered a lot of Americans to be executed but and I may have said after Jews were attacked in Michigan that hurt people, hurt people but I am just a good old boy and I don't believe that. He gets in, we'll hear nothing but the Jews did this, the Jews did that, Israel, Israel, Islam, Islam, Islam, socialism, socialism, socialism, socialism, smooth the, you know, move the embassy back or something like that, they'll support. Hey Victor, before I want to get your thoughts on this J-Pod of Cherry appearance on CBS but first again to our listeners and our viewers, American homeowners, particularly American homeowners ones that don't have yet people sabotaging your home. The FBI has been warning about a type of real estate fraud called title theft and your equity is the target. With just a forged signature your ownership can be transferred out of your name and without protection in place, you're left with an emotional and financial nightmare. That's why you should visit home title locks so you can find out today if you're already a victim and to protect yourself. So use the promo code [email protected] to get a free title history report plus a free trial of their million dollar triple lock protection. This 24/7 monitoring urgent alerts and if you're a victim of fraud they'll spend up to 1 million dollars to fix it. That's hometitallock.com the promo code is Victor or use the link in the show notes. So folks don't be a victim protect your equity today with home title lock and we thank the good people from home title lock for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Victor, let's go to Jay thing after the break. We'll take a little break but more shortly I think it's worth noting. I've seen various Instagram posts. We got this one. We got that one. We got this one. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence services, et cetera through facial recognition and all other kinds of high tech means. They have found, they claim every SOB that was involved in the terrorist attacks, brutal murderers, et cetera, rapists of the women, et cetera. And they've found them and they've authored them. And I think they found all of the primaries, but there were 5,000, remember? Maybe they've seen they got all the leadership. Yeah, the leader, well, I mean, it was an enormous number. I think people forget that. They think there was just a few hundred. They took a bulldozer and knocked down, but I had seen that thing firsthand. It wasn't very impressive, but they knocked down the wire fencing. And then they sent out the word, basically, we're raping, we're killing, we're mutilating. And they had hundreds of not thousands of gossens, civilians that tagged along, self-armed. Then they had even little translator cards to they would say to spread your legs in Hebrew. And they would read it out. And this is the type of people that there are students and are foreign exchange students or foreign visitors are cheering on Hamas. It's not that they're anti-- they started out after October 7th, anti-Israel. Then they went to anti-Israel and anti-Jews, and they started chasing Jews at universities or locking them in a library. And now they're openly pro-Hesbalah and pro-Humas. They're not even apologetic about it. And maybe on the verge of being elected to the United States Senate in some places. So well, actually, one more Israeli-related item, quickly Benjamin Netanyahu, who had rejected Donald Trump for the Trump administration's 15-point plan for peace deal with Iran. Any thoughts on-- >> Well, I mean, they couldn't sign it. I admire Trump for trying, but when you say you're going to disarm the gossens and you're asking them to put their arms in a repository, and then it's going to be monitored by whom, the Turks and the Pakistanis who hate the West and love Hamas. It's a death-- Israel's not going to agree to a death pact. They're just not going to do it, and they're going to have to come up with a better plan than that. Well, the tragedy is nobody ever talks about three things. Number one, they never say what would you do or what was Israel supposed to do after October 7th. Go to the criminal court, international criminal court, go to the UN. How about wait three weeks and say to Hamas, please give back the 241 hostages and please turn over the ring leaders who planned this, or we're going to go-- they waited three weeks and they wouldn't do it. Number two, nobody says, well, what would you do then? Do you really believe as we're talking that Turkey when it went after the Kurds text apartment buildings and say, dear, so-and-so, your building is occupied by Turkish terrorists. We have to hit them, get out of the building. We're giving you 10 minutes warning. No, they never did that. You think they'd drop-- they never did that. So, they never say what Israel's supposed to do when you have 50 or 60,000 Hamas killers embedded deliberately in a labyrinth. And they never say, why did Hamas put their entries and exits of this subterranean labyrinth under mosque, schools, and hospital? What does that tell you? It tells you this, that we feel that these human lives are expendable, but the Israelis don't. So, if we put them as shields in these places, the Israelis who are humanitarian won't hit these hospitals, mosques, and schools, even though they know we're using them as shields. In other words, we don't value our own people, but we expect the Israelis to value them more than we do, and that's why they're used as shields. They wouldn't be shields if they-- you really believe that the Ukrainians would take their own people and put them in front of a hospital with the Russians. Do you think that would stop the Russians? If the Ukrainians did that, and they wouldn't do it, but let's say they circled all of their schools and orthodox churches with Ukrainian men and women. And the Russians would probably say, thank you, they're easy targets, and they would kill them. It's only Israel they expected would refrain from doing that, and so nobody ever talks about-- the third thing they never talk about is, there hasn't been a Jew in Gaza since 2006. They had 20 years. I've been there on the coast. It's beautiful. It's historic. There's medieval-- there's medieval-- it is nicer than the UAE or the Saudi coast. They have been-- they have been given $20 billion, billion in foreign aid and EU aid and American aid. All they had to do was elect a modicum of a democratic government, a little bit of free speech, a bill of rights, and then invited huge amounts of golf money for an investment, and they could have built a UAE, a Dubai-- right there, and it was all in their power, but they just couldn't do it. They just couldn't do it. There were no Jews in Gaza. They had their own government, and guess what? They-- who was supplying their water, their power, their gas, their diesel, and their telecommunications, Internet phone services? Was it the Egyptian Arab Muslims next door? No. Was it the Jordanian? No. It was the Israelis. They were offering them the utilities at a discounted rate. And yet they couldn't take advantage of that ideal situation, and they just had to say that we're going to push all the Jews into the ocean and kill them all. And so what do you expect? And what would America have done is I pointed out three or four times. If you-- if we are 10 times larger-- excuse me-- 34 times, 35 times larger than the Israeli policy. Just imagine a bunch of cartel members, not 5,000, but 40,000 coming across our borders and taking not 240, but 7,000, 6,000 hostages, and then going back and embedding them in, Sinanola, or one of those-- or Mishokhan, or Wahaka. What would we do after we ask for three weeks? Give us back the 7,000 Americans, and turn over the cartel members that did this, and they said, "No, we're not going to do that. We have our-- your people, and our people are at hospitals, and schools, and churches, and those are the entries and exit of our-- we're safe in our tunnel. I can tell you what we're going to do. Any American president would give them a deadline, and then they would send in the B-52s, and they would drop leaflets, they would tax, but that's what they would do. Any European country would do that. Any Arab country would be ready to-- the Russians level Chechnya and the Third Chechnya in war. So, I mean, not advocating that, but this-- it's always a selectivity with Israel. We're going to apply a standard that we don't apply to anybody else, just them. - Standard, just-- - You have a suicide, yeah, that's true. Well, Victor, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll talk about your colleague friend from Stanford, Jay, about a cherry, what he has gone through, and then maybe a little something about that Massachusetts murder case of the Lindsay Clancy. We'll do that when we come back from these final, important messages. Every state is home to significant historic sites that tell the American story, but not every site is telling that story honestly and fairly. That's why the Heritage Foundation created the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites. This interactive guide equips American citizens with the tools they need to enjoy the sites that depict some of the greatest moments in our nation's history, analyzing them for historical accuracy, and provides resources for families or educators planning a visit, for Mount Vernon, to Independence Hall, to Gettysburg, and more. Americans deserve transparency and sites that steward our history, faithfully, deserve our gratitude. The Heritage Guide to Historic Sites invites every American to rediscover the places and stories that define our nation, whether it's across the country or in your backyard, visit historic sites.heritage.org to start your adventure today. Folks, we're back, Victor Davis Hanson, in his own words at the Daily Signal. Again, we're talking on August 11th. This episode will be up on Thursday, August 13th. I think we should leave Fauci, the news stories that have come out the last few days of some of his text messages and phone records. I think only 11 messages have been released by Rand Paul and Ron Johnson. They're very troubling about the Moderna, or the vaccine for pregnant women. This seems like a big stinking lie there, but I'm sure more information will come out in the next day or two, and I would hope that you, Victor and the Great Sammy Wink, would take that on as more information comes out. Jay, Bob Cherry is just one of the greatest guys, as you know, and he is running Centers for Disease. Excuse me, he's National Institute of Health, and he went on the CBS Face the Nation on Sunday in that Margaret Brennan, who is the host of the show, tried to essentially, make him and as a stand up for the right wing responsible for a murder that happened a year ago. And he's such a good man. His studies early on about what COVID was really happening, of course, were rejected. And he was vilified by Fauci, as you know, and many people at Stamford, actually. But anyway, what's your thoughts, Victor, of that performance, more so on Margaret Brennan in the media? And she's not very bright. I think JD Vance, that was another one of his victims that he eviscerated and that, you know, and even when she was a moderator, it was either him or Trump. She's pathetic. And the idea that of all the people who work in the Trump administration, there's not a more magnanimous, kinder person than Jay. He's soft-spoken, he's polite, he's very principled. And his crime was very early on, along with Colondorf and Dr. Gupta from Oxford, they just said, as Scott Atlas was doing from the inside, they were doing from the outside, the great barrington and decoration. And all he was trying to say, and Margaret Brennan did not want to bring that up or defend the opposite Fauci view, three or four things. The vaccinations may have initial value for people who are immune compromised or elderly, but they do not stop being infectious or being infected. And we should keep that in mind in a cost-benefit analysis. And keeping all of these children out of school for two years will ruin the education system and have lasting damage to it and to the students. Three, we're going to destroy a lot of small businesses entrepreneurial families. We're going to increase child abuse, cooped up in apartments, spousal abuse, alcohol abuse, drug abuse. There's going to be, we have told the American people, they need to get a breast exam every four years, APSA, every year, a colonoscopy. These are not going to take place and people are going to die at a higher rate from cancer and heart problems because of this. And they laid it all out. And Fauci called them the three stooges. And that was what he said. These were three stooges. And then he tried to vilify them. And he tried to vilify them because he knew in his dark heart that he had transferred money to break U.S. law that said no gain of function. Research was allowed in the United States. I should say to skirt it by surreptitiously funding it in China on the stupid idea that they would share the results with Fauci. And then a whole league of co-conspirator scientists were either going and visiting there or giving them instrumentation or expertise remotely. And so he had helped birth this monster. And yet a lot of his efforts were to suppress it. Redfield, the head of the CDC is on TV now almost every day. And he's basically, and he's no left-winger. I mean, he's basically saying no one was closer to Anthony Fauci and they say, well, what happened? And he said, well, he was, he had some involvement with gain and function research. And he was wedded to the idea that he would say and do anything to get people vaccinated. And that caused calamity and death. He said that essentially. So, you know, Jay was treated terribly by Stanford University and it was kind of strange that at the time this thing broke out, you could argue that the three most prominent scientists, doctors, medical, public health experts in the entire United States were right in Stanford University. There was Jay Bacharya who's publication record was sterling. All enlarge that. I'll say four. And he was issuing warnings not to shut down the economy. Then there was Scott Atlas who was writing the same thing but in greater scientific death in some cases and talking about it from a public policy point of view. And they were both talking about natural immunity. And they never said don't take the vaccinations. They said, you make that choice, not a mandated government choice based on the information that you must have that we have in a cost of benefit analysis. And then there was John Yanities. And he was the one that broke wide open the Toronto scam that you could get a drop of blood and suddenly test for like 17, 20, 50 maladies that whole $8 billion fiasco, which a lot of my colleagues were on the board of unfortunately. And he did that. And he wrote from the very beginning that this is more like the flu than Ebola, basically. And then there was Michael a bit, I think that's his first name. And he was a Nobel Prize biologist. And he looked at the data and he said very early on this has to be a lab orientated. And then there was the Stanford former professor. Now I think you'll probably I think if it's announced, but Redfield said it the other day. So I don't feel reluctant to say it that he's going to be Fauci's replacement. We've had him on the show. And he said from the very beginning based on the scientific examination of the genomes and everything that this could not be naturally created in the wilderness. So to speak, it had to be concocted. Those four people, especially Stephen Quay, but you mentioned his name. So Stephen Quay, Stephen Quay, a former Stanford professor, and he had created, I mean, he was attacked. He created Goddinium, the die in the MRI, why he was a professor and researcher. But the thing I'm getting out, you had right on the campus, Bacharia, Atlas, Yanides, right there, three of them. And they were at the forefront of the opposite, the opposition to Fauci and they were very, they were different. Sometimes Scott was a lot more outspoken. J was more soft spoken. They were very complimentary. They get along wonderfully. But what was the reaction of the university to all of them? They went after Scott because he was courageous and was actually joined the Trump administration as their COVIDs are and fought relentlessly with Berks and Fauci. And they censored him. They hated that, hated him so much. I was at a meeting once when he was discussed and I won't discuss what happened, but it was the most pathetic thing I've ever seen. And Yanides, he had been Stanford's prize catch came from Greece. He was one of the best immunologist and public policy people. Epidemiologists, there was and all of a sudden they were saying he was second rate and they've never apologized to them. And I don't know why they should have, they should give all three a medal. Yeah, I remember having dinner with Jay's and I'm saying, you know, not only people who might be ideologically opposed him, but friends. I mean, good friends. He thought they were friends. And then when he did some study of students in the area that he related to COVID and the facts where it did not fit the script of the left and his friends just cut him dead. So we at the Bradley Foundation, he was a Bradley prize winner. And we had some people objected to that, which made it even better. And the people who, the Fauci supporters have never apologized. Oh my gosh. They doubled down, doubled down big time. They're still looking for a pangolin somewhere, Victor. So hey, I just want to mention as we close the show, you know, a few months ago, a father of a trans kid who we've talked about before I've read his very important letter to us this about a year ago. He wrote again about the importance of us understanding how powerful these medically psych psychological psychiatric pharmaceuticals are. And what, looking at this case in Massachusetts of Lindsay Clancy, the mother who killed, she just doesn't deny she killed her three children, but she was in a postpartum. She, her argument is insanity. And as this case has gone on, there's so much about how she was just like being pumped with these various drugs with, without even the doctors seeing her. So it's a kind of a heartbreaking case and situation. But I went tight. I didn't with what the father who wrote again, he said, we had talked about some trans stuff recently. He says, you have to understand how part of the trans effort is are these powerful drugs and they changed these kids forever. They're so powerful. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they give them powerful antidepressants. They can give them steroids. They give them hormones. And they disrupt their entire physiology. It's funny, funny about the left. They always talk about big pharma and the American Medical Association. I need to be completely regulated and audited, and they're pushing drugs. And then when they want them, they say that you can get very, very dangerous. We know that the abortion pill has a lot of effects if it's not under a doctor's supervision. In other words, you take it and then you report into a doctor that you don't have any serious bleeding or side effects such as that. And yet they are pushing this laws that say that you can just go in and get it through the mail. And the same thing with the trans drugs. Oh, we're just going to wave any of the side effect worries because it's a political issue and it involves power and their political ambitions. And-- It's like it's heading the ever-concistence, right? Yeah, it does. It's never consistent. No, it's true. They're never consistent. And then we ask ourselves, where's BLM now? AOC says, well, that was woke one when we kind of were all crazy, is what she implied. Well, it wasn't crazy then when BLM burned down a lot of cities along with Antifa. And 35 people got killed. And 1,500 police officers were injured. And they burned down a police precinct and a federal courthouse and tried to burn down the St. John's historical church in Washington. They tried to get to Trump in the presidential bunker. That wasn't-- and we had Kamala Harris saying, what? This isn't going to stop. This shouldn't stop. This is going to go on to Election Day. We had that crazy mayor. Was it Portland or Seattle? He said, this is the summer of love. And-- Drograph to the Republican Convention, what it was in Rand Paul getting-- Yeah, he was in the streets. They wanted it. They wanted to physically assault him and his wife. Yeah. Yeah. Well, horrific memories. Well, Victor, we're about at the end here. I just want to read a few comments that we come across on YouTube. We thank so many people, leave comments there and Victor's site, Rumble, others. And here's two. One's a little long, but one is from-- Reza, R-E-Z-A-O-M writes, "Dear beloved Victor, you have no idea how much joy and gratitude. The great news about your health brought to my heart this morning. We love you. We pray for you. And we're with you. Take care of yourself, dear brother." That's sweet. That's very nice. Yeah, I did buy-- I dodged a bullet for another 90 days. Yeah. Then one other, it's kind of health-related. Monica, OK, 4734 wrote. Dr. Hanson, I survived metastic ovarian cancer in my early 20s and had a similar floating experience during my second big surgery that you described today. I was in medical school during that time, graduated with my class and practiced for 38 years. I met my husband 10 years after my original diagnosis through my Mayo Clinic oncologist. I'm now a grandmother, faithful Christian and our local church, and I've served my community advocating for civic responsibility and part of the Christian coalition to the California GOP. I want to encourage you that there is a beautiful point in existence after cancer that prompts our souls to cherish every relationship and the divine gift of choice and how we honor truth and everything we observe past and present. I cognitively anticipate your podcast each day that enrich my life experience of embracing humanity's story. I pray for you often and your family. God bless you for your providential voice. Wow. It's very nice. I appreciate it. I think it made a big difference. I think I saw the first four-hour surgery of the cancer tumor and the entire right Lord. I have no memory of it. I woke up happy. And then 30 minutes later, when my blood pressure rose, the bleeding started. And I have-- I don't know what I'd call it, but that was 4 1/2 hours. Second one. And I can remember some very strange thing floating in the nether world and then talking to people and seeing relatives that passed away and then trying to land and get back. And then all of a sudden, the clouds opened up and I flew right through it. But I woke up and I said, wow. I said, I must have dosed off. And they said, no. I said, well, is it noon yet? I woke up because I had woken up at 11.45. And they said, Mr. Hanson, it's 5.30 p.m. And I said, well, where have I been for 4 1/2 hours? And they said, this is all just really good guys. You're going to have to tell me. I have no idea. But I can see what she says. Once that you feel something that you're close to the edge, or it really changes you. And I kind of worried about it because we all want to have a drive and kind of an edginess. Not that we want to be cruel or mean, but it kind of fades. You kind of see the whole thing differently. Not that you're giving up or resigned. It's just the opposite. You have an intense desire to get well and to get back to normal. But I've had so many people that I didn't get along with. Not a lot of them, but have come by or talked to me. I thought that was really good. And you ask about people more than you should have asked before that. But you say, how are you? And I hear you this and that. So I've always-- you know, it's a very different experience. Well, our dreams-- and I don't know if you were dreaming, but much has happened in our dreams. The wise men went in a certain direction because of dreams. Joseph and Mary went in a certain direction because of dreams. So dreams matter greatly. And you matter greatly, Victor, all the great wishes. And so there's a great book. The ancients had believed that they actually wrote in books on the interpretation of dreams. So they would have, if you dream about a rose or a corpse, this is what it means. And I had a good friend. I do have a good friend, Stephen Oberholman. He's a classist from Texas A&M. And I went to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens with him. And he translated three. I think it was three from Byzantine Greek. And he published it. And he was the world's expert on the ancient view of the interpretation of dreams. So I'm going to call him, because I really-- I haven't talked him a long time. I like him dearly in his wife. And I'm going to ask him to interpret my second experience from a classical point of view. My little Italian grandmother from Foggia, or Castellucci Valmagiori, near Lucera in Foggia, took two-- they stand out. So she dreamt of a bullwhip, and met somebody who was pregnant, most of which is just my mother or my aunt. And if you dreamt of snow, it was money. So these were either old Italian lore, or maybe she did have many dreams of bullwhips for her daughters. So anyway, Victor, you've been terrific. Thanks for all the wisdom you shared today. And I need to want every podcast. And folks, thank you every day I hear from people who read Simple Thoughts, the free weekly email newsletter. I write for the Center for Simple Society. If you want to get it, comes out every Friday, 14 recommended readings, totally free. Go to simplethoughts.com, sign up, easy peasy. Victor's website, the blade of Perseus Victor Hanson.com. Thanks very much, folks. We'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Bye-bye. Thank you, everybody, for viewing and listening. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhanson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. The podcast discusses Jason R. Day, a Cambridge professor exposed as a fraud who fabricated victimhood stories (coma, cancer, suicide attempts) for a $1.4 million book deal, highlighting DEI corruption in academia.
  2. Victor Davis Hanson criticizes left-wing academics for hypocrisy, mediocrity, and tribalism, contrasting them with productive figures like Elon Musk and SpaceX.
  3. The episode covers the UK migrant crisis, with a 49-foot dinghy carrying 230 migrants, and critiques left-wing open-border policies as destructive and nihilistic.
  4. Hanson defends Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford scientist vilified for opposing lockdowns and vaccine mandates, noting Stanford’s mistreatment of him and others who challenged Fauci.
  5. The conversation touches on Israel’s response to October 7th, arguing Israel’s actions were justified given Hamas’s use of human shields and the lack of alternatives.
  6. It critiques left-wing figures like AOC and Gavin Newsom for flip-flopping on radical policies, and discusses abortion laws in Massachusetts and transgender drug use.
  7. The episode ends with personal reflections on cancer survival and near-death experiences, emphasizing gratitude and changed perspectives.

Summary:

The podcast, hosted by Victor Davis Hanson, covers a range of political and cultural issues from a conservative perspective. Hanson begins by discussing the scandal of Jason R. Day, a Cambridge professor who fabricated a narrative of racial victimhood, including false claims of comas, cancer, and suicide attempts, to secure a lucrative book deal.

Hanson uses this to criticize the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) system in academia, which he argues rewards mediocrity and fraud over merit, citing similar cases like Claudine Gay at Harvard. He contrasts this with the hypocrisy of left-wing academics who profess progressive values but exhibit cruelty and elitism toward working-class people. The conversation shifts to the UK migrant crisis, where Hanson criticizes open-border policies as self-destructive, and then to Israel, defending its military response to Hamas’s October 7th attacks by arguing that Hamas deliberately used human shields and that Israel had no viable alternatives.

Hanson also revisits the COVID-19 pandemic, defending Jay Bhattacharya and other scientists who opposed lockdowns, and condemns Stanford University for censoring them. He critiques left-wing politicians like AOC for disowning their radical pasts and discusses issues like abortion and transgender treatments as examples of inconsistent, harmful policies. The episode concludes with personal anecdotes about Hanson’s cancer recovery and near-death experience, reflecting on how such experiences change one’s outlook on life, and he reads supportive comments from listeners.

FAQs

Jason R. Day is a former Cambridge University professor who fabricated numerous personal achievements and struggles in his memoir and book proposal, including false claims of a coma, cancer, and other victimhood narratives. He received a $1.4 million book deal from Simon & Schuster despite the fabrications.

Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford professor, was vilified by Anthony Fauci and others for his early opposition to lockdowns and his cost-benefit analysis of COVID-19 policies. He was censored and ostracized by his university despite his principled and soft-spoken approach.

Critics argued that lockdowns would ruin education, destroy small businesses, increase child and spousal abuse, and lead to higher death rates from untreated medical conditions. They also noted that vaccines did not stop infection or transmission, so the cost-benefit analysis favored reopening.

A 49-foot inflatable boat carrying 230 migrants crossed from France to the UK, highlighting the ongoing border crisis. Critics argue that France allows these crossings, and the UK's inability to manage immigration is a sign of national decline.

Critics, including Robert Redfield, claim Fauci funded gain-of-function research in China, violating U.S. law, and then suppressed efforts to reveal the lab origin of COVID-19. Fauci reportedly called early critics 'the three stooges' for their warnings.

The podcast criticizes the left for supporting late-term abortion and for pushing transgender drugs without adequate oversight, arguing that these policies are inconsistent with their usual concerns about pharmaceutical safety and are driven by political ideology.

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