The MAGA Divide Over Iran, Charlie Kirk's Legacy, and California's Socialist Shift

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Products not available in every state. If you go onto X or some of these social media, there's a civil war now. It's not even breaking down Vance people versus Rubio people. There are people who are saying that the fact you went into Iran means you're a neocon and you're horrible. And they keep saying, well, everybody was always against the war. I looked at the Republican polls the other day. They weren't against the idea of going into Iraq quickly as before and getting out. I'll be the first person to say, do not. I have. Don't put ground troops in that hellhole. Do not do it. Do not try to nation-build. I think it would be good to have a Democratic council in exile and talk to them. But let them make it up. It's their country. Well, hello, ladies and hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. I'm Jack Fowler. Lucky man. I get to ask Victor the questions I'm confident that you would ask him if you were in my shoes. We are recording on Sunday, November 8th, 2026. This particular episode will be up on Thursday, November 12th. A busy week for Victor. He's doing a little going back to the Stanford Hoover, I should say. Never ending. Yeah. We should note that the day this appears is the day after Veterans Day. So a little late from when it's appearing, but we wish our veterans well. Victor 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 and a senior contributor of the Daily Signal. He's also a contributing editor for City Journal, and that's going to come up later. And his website is The Blade of Perseus. I'll tell you more about that later. Why you should be subscribing. Plenty of topics to get Victor's wisdom on today. And one of them will be about Charlie Kirk. Then we have a new governor of California and a new mayor of Los Angeles. And the outgoing governor has issued some dramatic clemency for murderers, threats to the Electoral College, the standing of the presumed new Democrat leadership. Well, it's the old leadership, but they may be the new. They may be the new leadership, maybe a new Speaker of the House, a new majority leader, but they've already thrown down some gauntlets. So anyway, tons of stuff to get Victor's take on. And we'll do that. We'll start that when we come back from these initial important messages. If you're like me, you have problems sleeping. Your head's at the wrong angle. You get too hot. Your mattress feels like it's made of concrete or you're sinking into it like it's made of quicksand. That's why I'm excited to try out my brand new GhostBed. GhostBed is engineered to help. Produce the reasons your sleep gets interrupted. It's designed to relieve pressure, help regulate temperature with cooling technology built into every mattress and support your body. 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Charlie Kirk was a political operator and never shy about using provocation, spectacle, and controversy as part of his method. But he was always tethered to political reality and oriented toward political success. He was sensitive to public opinion and kept in touch with an unbelievable number of people in the world. At his best, he tried to discipline elements of the right, steer them away from delusion and conspiracy theories, and focus them on winning. Chris has said much more on this. Now, also, and I'll shut up in a second. But coincidentally, last night, Dave Chappelle, the very, very popular comedian, was giving a performance at Madison Square Garden in New York City. And he said, ever since that Charlie Kirk got murdered, and I shouldn't say this publicly, but I feel better. And this is Dave Chappelle, who was himself rushed on a stage and threatened. So anyway, there's a lot of Charlie Kirk talk. I wonder what your take is on that. The consequence of his death. Your thoughts on what Chris Ruffo said and any commentary you want to make about Dave Chappelle. I think everybody's sick of it. I really do. One thing about Charlie Kirk, he would go on these campuses, and his whole mission in life, and he didn't, he was an autodidact. He tried to learn and speak, and he did two things that people keep forgetting. He said, I'm going, I don't believe. I don't believe that higher education is worth the money as it's presently constructed. And I'm going to listen to Hillsdale videos, or I'm going to go on the, I'm going to take online courses. I'm going to educate myself. He called me a couple of times and asked, what should I be reading? And he was very sincere. And then he said, I will go into places like the Oxford Debate Society, where we supposedly have the smartest people in the world. And I'll go head to head with the president. He was the president of the Oxford Debating Society. If you watch that debate, he wiped them off the floor. And he would debate anybody. He didn't care about the degree. He was trying to tell people that education is education. It doesn't have to be synonymous with an ideologically tainted universe. And if it is, that ideologically tainted universe needs to be reformed. So he tried to reform it. And number two, he told young people, your anger. Your anger at college and the way you're being indoctrinated. Your anger at the way of the New Green Deal and all of the open border that stifle economic prosperity. That is okay. You are, the conservatives are not old fuddy-duddies. They are the counter-revolution party. Just like your grandparents in the 60s thought it was hip and cool to question the establishment. So now it is hip and cool. For you to question the establishment. Because the establishment is Hollywood, entertainment, professional sports, the media, the administrative state, K-12, academia. That is the establishment. So you are completely right to be a youthful critic of that. And that was a new message. And it had enormous effect. And he just wasn't an abstract, you know. He wasn't a podcaster like I am or a philosopher like some people think they are. He was a pragmatic person. I think if you take him away from the swing states and the voter registration and get out the vote, then you get something like the midterms. He was, I think his loss was not completely, but it had an effect in this election. And he was talking about affordability before the left was. About housing and debt and things like that, the young people. So they thought that. He was an existential threat. And we talked last time that, I guess it's that podcasting duo of Jennifer Welts and Ann Sullivan, who said that they wanted to dig up the remains of Charlie Kirk and shoot him again. Or that they praised somebody who said that. And then Dave Chappelle said, you know, what you just said, he felt better when he was dead. That's who, that. When you look at the midterms, that's what. is in control of this country. And the worst thing about it is those two podcasters then say they're socialists and they're radicals, but they're capitalists and they make a lot of money from their advertisers. So their advertisers who are left-wing said to them, we're going to get a hit from this. So we want you to retract it. So then they wrote this pathetic, I'm sorry, just like that Brazilian, remember her, Isis something, she came here with her parents, very wealthy. She goes to a turning point, I guess it was a post-Charlie Kirk's life event. And she reads a poem where she says, this is the Kirkiversary and we're all celebrating his death. And then she makes reference to the wound in his neck. Then she tells the host, you're very brave to be here without a neck, protection brace, meaning you're worthy of being killed too. And then just like these two reprehensible podcasters, she's worried that she has violated the terms of her visa that says you shall not, visa holders are not supposed to publicly advocate violence. And she did. And so when word came that the state department might question her visa, what did she do? She wasn't, she wasn't all made up and tan looking and confident and arrogant and brash. She was weepy, shaken. And then she gave this pseudo apology that her lawyer wrote, obviously. But these people are insincere and that's who the left is dealing with. And if you don't think that that we're dealing with these people, El-Sayed is now the Senator from Michigan. He said yesterday that Dearborn is the capital of Arab America. What is Arab America? I don't know what that, I've never heard that term. I don't know any of my Hispanic friends that say Fresno is the capital of Mexico America or Mexican America. What do you mean? What do you mean by that? I've heard terms like Irish town and Chinatown for neighborhoods, but what is Arab America? And his uncle was the creator of that ad, that said that the Jews who make up 1% of foreign aid and 1/20th of 1% of the budget were responsible, Israel, Zionists, da, da, da, our aid to Israel and the people who support it for the price of eggs and bananas. And when you do that, you then, you lead to what was happening now as I speak on the 8th of November, a Kristallnacht celebration. The worst episode in the history of the West and the Western trajectory up to World War II in Germany. What I mean by that is, you read Mein Kampf or what Hitler said he was going to do, the Jews were more abstract. But on November 10th and 11th of 1938, as we said last time, they became concrete and they killed hundreds of Jews. They imprisoned thousands. They destroyed their property. And it's always seen as the first big step of war in the history of the United States. And you know, I don't know about you, but I'm sure you know, but I don't know about you, but I don't know about you, but I don't know about you, but I don't know about you, but I don't know about you, but I don't know about you, but I don't know about you. Kristallnacht to the doors of Auschwitz was not that long. It was about five years, six years. And then the camps were. So now we have people who look at that date, and they're celebrating it by going into Philadelphia. They have no idea whether the Jewish restaurants and stores that they're going to target for something, protest or to, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, ostracize or stop their bike ride and insult them. They have no idea whether they support Israel or not. They're just picked out for one reason. They're Jewish, Jewish, and we don't hear anybody. Where's Haichem Jeffries? He always talks about morality. He's a new Speaker of the House elect. What did he say the other day? He used a very unfortunate metaphor because he's ignorant and he doesn't know any history. I take that back, Jack. His uncle was Lionel Jeffries. And when young Haichem was in college, he wrote letters endorsing Haichem Jeffries views, which were that white people are genetically inferior and they're ice people. And some people have melanin in their skin and they're morally superior. And I don't blame anybody for their youthful indiscretions, but he should be very careful about his language given his uncle's pernicious role in race relations. And so, you know, I think it's important that we think about these things. I think it's important that we think about race relations in this country. And what did he say? That Stephen Miller, before he's even opened his mouth as the new Chief of Staff, and the Chief of Staff, remember, is the president's prerogative. So he says, and the Chief of Staff will be working with Congress. He says that he's a tumor, what, to be excised or to be removed? A tumor. Where do we get the idea that a particular group of people were a cancer that had to be removed from the Bible? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. The body politic, which movement gave along with rats and insects and things, but who said they were cancer and tumors? Couldn't be the Third Reich, did you? So here you have Kristallnacht reenaction basically coming up. And here you have all of this anti-Semitism and an ad, which nobody is really in the party is really opposed that meant anything that had any authority. And what is the new Speaker of the House? What is the new Speaker of the House? What is the new Speaker of the Democratic House? He uses a Third Reich image of cancer that has to be removed. About an individual hasn't even done one thing yet as Chief of Staff. So hold on, everybody, get your seatbelts, because this is what we voted for, not we, us, but these people voted for. They didn't just vote for affordability. They voted for this stuff. And it's going to get pretty strange. Yeah. Back on Charlie Kirk, Victor, along the. Along the same lines, you see this various social media photographs and videos, the t-shirts now with the blood running down and groups of teachers feeling so confident that as teachers, as school ex, they can have a group photo glorifying his murder. It's a very, very. I saw white women, 65 years old, Jack, teachers that were protesting with that t-shirt. Yeah. It's not some crazy young person. And you know. Can you imagine, Victor, if you were wearing a t-shirt of glorifying the death of Michael Brown or George Floyd, what would happen? You'd be killed. Yeah. Tried to. You'd be killed. And this is growing everyone, because we saw it with Luigi Mangione. They made a little mini symphony or opera or something San Francisco glorifying. We had that terrible interview with the ex-Washington Post reporter that said he was good-looking and handsome. And he became a star because he murdered a middle-class kid that worked himself up to be the CEO of UnitedHealth. And he's now a folk hero. And so there is something deeply wrong in this socialist, leftist movement. It reminds me of the. It reminds me of the Robespierre brothers who hijacked the anti-monarchist parties in France in 1792, and then from their rhetoric to the guillotine was about five months. And so when you see people like Senator Slotkin say you're going to go after people who are going to work for Trump, they're going to work in Congress or work in the administration, or you see Susan Rice saying we're going to go after CEOs, or you see today. I think it was the Wall Street Journal was reported that there are people who are going to go after the Trump, or maybe it was another venue I just read this morning, they're going to go after the Trump family, which if they've done anything wrong, they need to be held accountable, but as a way of going after CEOs. And you can see what already happened. The governor of Texas was warning Elon that she's going to take measures. It's going to make it very hard for him to do business. And then the Europeans said today that they're going to be taxing him huge fines. And he said, fine, then I'm canceling all of the rocketry data that's needed that you use from my satellites. And basically, and then they said, we're going to do this and this to you. And then he said, try sending a five-ton package into Europe. Into the space from Europe with your capability. And of course, what he was saying was, MySpaceX launched more satellites last year than the entire world put together. And it was about 10 to 1. And so we're headed for some very strange things. When they say we're going to go after these people, they mean it. They really do. And when they say they're going to pack the quote. These people become you eventually. And me. I mean, us, all of us will be online. At some point. 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Our reputation matters, and Victor Davis Hanson in his own words, which is why we are partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability, and an A-plus rating. For years, they've guided Americans through transparent education and long-standing relationships built on trust. And 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 844-790-9191-844-7901. Or visit protectwithvictor.com. That's 844-790-9191-844-790-9191. 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, what next? How about Gavin? I'm Hannah. I've lost 75 pounds in 20 months with GLP-1s, plus diet and exercise. On Rho, I've gone from struggling to run a mile to running farther every day. You can access FDA-approved GLP-1s online. Get the support you need to reach your weight loss goals. Go to rho.co slash weight to see if you qualify. I'm a paid Rho partner. 20% average weight loss in one year and non-diabetics with obesity or overweight with a weight-related medical condition versus 3.1% in placebo arm. Rx only. To stay informed about serious side effects, go to rho.co slash. Gavin Newsom. Always Gavin Newsom, isn't he? He's always there at the center of the storm. Yeah. Clemency amok. Gavin Newsom's mass commutation of death row inmates. This is from Breitbart. He commuted 548 death row inmates. It sparked blowback from some district attorneys across the state of California. I'm surprised there were some Republican ones. And the massive clemency order by the outgoing governor may be easier said than done. Prosecutors are going to have to deal with that. I'm going to have to deal with that. We're, quote, furious over the decision and began highlighting murder victims, end quote, the California Post reported, citing criminals ranging from child murderers to a notorious serial killer. But this is how Gavin wants to exit stage left. Any thoughts about this? Why do you think he's doing it now, Jack? You're going to tell us why, Victor. Yes. He's doing it now because he thinks he has a new audience. Gone are the days of the Gavin. Reach out, find the middle ground, have his new Gavin. Have you seen a lately Gavin podcast? Remember he had Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk on there? I guess that was one of his trial balloons that exploded very quickly with the new Islamist socialist surge. But apparently he thinks that when four of the largest cities, the two largest, especially Los Angeles and New York are run by socialists. And you saw this huge socialist wave. He thinks he's been late to the party and he's on the caboose and he wants to crawl through to the locomotive. And one way he does that, he gets his little advisors together and said, I know I live in a $9 million home. I know that I shut down the state and went to this Tony restaurant and bought $400 meals at the French Laundry with lobbyists. I know all that. I know that I'm a creation of a hyper-capitalist Gordon Getty in San Francisco. So, and I know I had no real job other than 35 years in city, state and county government. However, I've got to be a socialist. I've got to be left wing. I've got to go reach out for that wing. And somebody said, well, you're doing pretty good. You have a big deficit. You gave a lot of money to illegal immigration. Your chief of staff and Javier Becerra's chief of staff. Javier Becerra's chief of staff. Javier basically absconded with a lot of money that was not allowable to be spent in the way that it was. And there will be no consequences. You're doing pretty good. You have a bigger welfare fraud by far than Somalia. But you know, you haven't really defunded the police yet. And San Francisco is kind of embarrassing because the new mayor and the new police chief and the new DA have radically reduced crime. Javier Becerra's chief of and homelessness. And it looks a little better, not great, but a little better than what's going down in Los Angeles, which used to be the more conservative city. So Gavin, we have to come up with something. And then somebody said, well, why not just pardon, commute, get rid of all the people on death row? And somebody said, yeah, but some of these people killed 10 children. They hijacked a bus and could have killed a whole busload of kids. They mutilated people. Well, that would be sensational, wouldn't it, if we did that? So that's what they did. And it was to prepare Gavin as the new left-wing person, at least in the primaries. And if he runs, and he will, in the primaries, you're going to see him go hard left, hard, hard left. At least, at least, until left-wing people drop out. And then if it's between him and another leftist, and he survives, I don't think Kamala Harris is going to make it, unless she gets her vocabulary up from 500 words to 1,000. But if he, if he survived, then he will be Gavin, and he'll go to the middle a little bit. And so he opposed the billionaire's tax because he realized that they work for the state, basically. And they are one reason why 1% of the state pays 50% of the income tax. They're kind of like two, I guess they're kind of like workhorses that roam around in a pasture, but when you want to hook them up, they'll pull a wagon. And so they make all their money. They do what they want. But then when tax come, tax times come, they do pay a lot of tax. And therefore, they help you fund all of these giveaway program. Yeah. What did, Victor, did that, I know that they still count ballots in California for weeks. We're not done yet, Jack. Come on, why be hasty? Don't be hasty. Okay. I was wondering, it seemed, an article I read that it was, it was going to lose the billionaire tax referendum, but who knows where votes will. Yeah, it's going to lose. He was against it. Yeah, it'll lose. Okay. The ID one, no on the ID one overwhelmingly, because they're not crazy. If you look at the pattern of those two propositions, people in California should have to present an ID to register to vote or a mail-in ballot, et cetera. I can't get into the particulars of it real quickly, but, and then tax on billionaires, the fact that they voted for the tax, voted for no ID and they voted for no billionaires. Might seem contradictory. Leftist socialists hate billionaires, so why didn't they tax them? But if you take a pause, they make perfect sense. One of them allows voter fraud and that's, and we have a lot of people, you know, we have 27% of the population have just come here. They weren't born in the United States. And we have 45% of the population who are either first or second, either they didn't, weren't born here or their parents weren't. So the idea is you don't want to quote unquote, harass that community by asking for an ID because they're going to vote left wing. And so that makes sense. And it makes sense if the billionaires are paying, you can tax them even higher and you can go after them. They're going to leave. And if they leave, you don't get anything out of it because you at 13.3 plus the federal income tax and they, and California has a capital gains tax in addition to the federal capital gains. If you do it very much more, they're going to all leave and they have the ability to leave very quickly. Well, the threat of it has already been in that was predicted to be a significant net revenue loss. The left is going to say to them though, where are you going to go? You're going to go to Nevada. It's a blue, you're going to go to Arizona. It's blue. You're going to go to Colorado. It's blue. You're going to go to Texas. It's blue. You're going to go to Georgia. It's blue. You're going to go to Mississippi. It's blue. You only got a couple of choices. You can go up there in Idaho or Montana, or maybe I don't know about Utah even, but you can go to Florida and Tennessee maybe. Yeah. So there's actually some strategizing in that sense, Victor. I saw this I didn't bring up with you in advance, but I saw someone writing about Wyoming. You know, we'd only have to move 30,000 of us into this state to get two senators. Yeah. Yeah. That's what they're talking about. And that's already happening in Montana. Tester was a left wing Democrat and he he was there for what, two terms. And they talk about that all the time. You mentioned, you know, about Charlie Kirk, the Rufo article. It's he's right that that made a difference because of Charlie's actual pragmatic, concrete ability to get people registered and vote who otherwise are notoriously underrepresented of young people and his ability to take the conservative message to places like Oxford or the inner city. Yes. But there were other losses, too. I don't think I like Buck Sexton a lot and their show. But. I don't think anybody has ever replaced Rush Limbaugh. That was a terrible blow. He was getting 20 to 30, 40 million a week. People listening to him religiously. And he was he was a masterful entertainer and new podcaster and radio host. So. That hasn't. Tucker at certain times of the year, election cycles, breaking news was getting five million people every night for five. You know, not every night, but I mean, every night that there were those news spikes and that is a force multiplier. You lost Rush and you lost Charlie Kirk. But the loss of Tucker. Who I think you could argue was the most prominent MAGA conservative on television at one time. He this was a double whammy because he didn't just cease to to to exist like tragically Charlie Kirk and Rush. I don't mean I'm glad that he didn't. I'm glad that he's healthy and alive. But what I'm saying is that he didn't just exit the scene or retire. He became an antithetical force. So he was telling people I basically his message now is I have been brainwashed. I got on. I got into it. I went to Mar-a-Lago. I was on Air Force One. I hung out the White House. I had Trump's cell phone. I was intimate. I had power. But I was completely wrong. I was wrong on Israel. I was wrong on Soleimani, Baghdadi. All that stuff that I didn't say anything about. I was wrong on all of it. And that that was a loss as well. And I will go I could go on for five or six other podcasters who have kind of said, you know, I'm surprised now, Jack, I don't want to mention names because I don't because I I want to unite people because of the common threat. But if you go on to X or some of these social media, there's a civil war now and the people it's not even breaking the law. I'm not even breaking down Vance people versus Rubio people. I want to remind everybody neocon means new conservative. And it came in in the 1990s, 1990s and 1980s. And it was identifiable with a number of forms. Former prominent leftist or Democrats who joined other Republicans in wanting a muscular foreign policy. So I'll give you some examples. There was something called the Project for a New American Century. Remember that, Jack? And they were formed to be more aggressive. So they said we didn't do well in the Gulf War and the extent that Saddam Hussein is still there. And the no-fly zones of almost a decade are not working. The French and British peeled off. So we're going to make a new century. They were kind of arrogant. So there was Robert Kagan and Fareed Zakaria, David Frum, Richard Perle, a lot of the people in the think tanks. And Bill Kristol was one of them. I was going to say, don't forget little Bill. Yeah, little Bill Kristol. I don't mean that by his stature. But his. I do. His intellectual stature. Yes. Somebody who said he was the intellect of the Republican Party. And I can't think of one book he wrote by himself. Can you? He's never written a book. No. I've written as many books as he's written. Yes. More. So anyway, my point is that they then advocated to remake the new, to remake. Everybody loved them after the statue fell. Ninety percent of the. The American people said this was great that we got rid of Saddam Hussein. Finally, he was hosting 9-11 terrorists. He was the source of all the disruption. And then Afghanistan had gone well. We got rid of it in six weeks. Karzai was supposed to be the new mandala. Remember that? And then it went downhill with insurrection. So that was discredited. But that was who those people are, were. They wanted to put boots on the ground and nation build. And they were. Let me say this very carefully because I was trashed by many of them when I wrote a book in 2003 called Mexifornia calling for legal only immigration and closing the border because we were creating a massive tribal movement, salad bowl and rejecting the melting pot. And who said that I was basically a James Q. Wilson, one of the great. Oh, really? Yes. Yes. And where did he write that? In Commentary Magazine. Yeah. And I was shocked by it because I had been writing for Commentary and it wasn't even a fair thing. He basically said I was a nativist. And so what I'm getting at, the neoconservative people were leftists who on foreign policies were anti-communist. That was their big thing. But they had not really changed on their other issues. They were not really against affirmative action. Some were. Some weren't. They were for open borders. They really were. And I was asked to write an article for City Journal in 2002, and I called it Mexifornia. That was the basis for the book that followed. And some of the editors questioned why I was saying this because they thought that the open borders. This was at City Journal. And then Myron Magnet, who was a wonderful person, called me and said, you know, nobody had really questioned this idea that we need labor and it's the melting pot and give us your tired and poor. But you're writing from firsthand experience, and I think that this is really valuable. So he was a supporter of something that there were members of the editorial staff that were worried. So what I'm getting at is when. The J.D. Vance people say there's a bunch of neocons. The people who said. They they said two things. Donald Trump was never an isolationist. You guys are probably isolationists, but you didn't say anything. I can't remember when he went in and killed Soleimani. I don't remember that anybody said that he was a neocon, Trump or the supporters, when he got rid of Baghdadi. Had he bombed before for several weeks? Yes, he bombed Iraq and Syria to get rid of ISIS. Did he confront Russia? Yes, he bombed and killed. He allowed our forces to kill about 300 to 400 Wagner group people who attacked them. Did he go into Maduro? Yes, but they all had one thing in common. They were Jacksonian. They were quick and they were decisive. And no one had a problem. Even the isolationists who might have objected didn't have much residence. So when he went in last year and he bombed the nuclear facilities for 25 hours, there was some anti. There was a lot of opposition, but not a lot of opposition in the sense that it hurt his polls. He was very popular still because it was just off. The reason why. People were against the war was and they keep saying, well, everybody was always against the war. They weren't against the idea of going into Iraq quickly as before and getting out as one offs the Jacksonian. The reason that people are fighting now is after 38 days, it was pretty much decimated and we could have done a little bit better plan, a lot better planning to keep. Hormuz open, but it's open now and we can keep it. open. And we could have ignored Turkey and said, don't tell us that we can't arm the Kurds. This is an elemental threat. We're going to do what we want and arm the Kurds and other people if they wanted to be armed. And then we could have sanctioned a lot. So could have, should have, would have, yes. But the point was what really, when you want to look at where the opposition grew, it started in April and March, and it started to get really widespread. And what was the complaint? The complaint was, it'll take a couple more weeks. These sanctions are so bad, it's crippling, they'll be broke. We're going to have a modus, you know, of understanding, a memorandum of understanding. We're almost close to a deal. Witkoff came in. It's almost going to be done. And that was what it was. And people said, either do it or get out. And that was an understandable response. But my point is that there wasn't a civil war when he did all of these other things and intervened because they were Jacksonian, don't tread on me, no better friend, no worse enemy. And they were all successful. This one, the verdict's out. It is in the same spirit in the sense that when I, as I have been, I've had people get, and I, as I said last time, I don't, I think I'm going to kind of retire from these podcasts or TV discussions when you're interrupted and you can't finish such, the passions are so high. But when people say invoke Vietnam, 58,000 dead, 10 years to seven months where there's 23 dead and $54 billion is less than the aggregate amount of stuff we left in Afghanistan by, uh, Joe Biden. If you count the infrastructure embassy and everything, 120, 180 billion, probably over the whole occupation history, but it's nothing like that. And we haven't had any ground troops. I will be the first person to say, do not, I have don't put ground troops in that hell hole. Do not do it. Do not put any ground troops, even though there's military utility, do not do it. Do not try to nation bill. Do not get some, um, dictator or don't get the Shah's son and then coach him and then parachute him in. Don't do that. Just if you want to have a, I think it'd be good to have a democratic council, um, in exile and talk to them, but let them make it up. It's their country. Right. So this idea that neocons, uh, I've taken over the, the Trump movement. And that is a euphemism, I think from Jews. It's for, yeah, exactly. These people who said that we should take out Iran were the people that were Jacksonians. They want a closed border. They want deportations if it's done in a way that's politically, uh, non-injurious to the mega movement. And, you know, and I, you and I talked about it, Jack, when Kristi Noem was dressed up like she was, and we had Corey around and strutting and we're going to do this and this and this, it was counterproductive. It wasn't done in a way. If you, if you, if you sum up what the American people wanted, they wanted a closed border with zero, uh, illegal immigration. And then they wanted to go to sleep at 11 at night and wake up at six in the morning and say, we deported 5,000 people who were criminals and another 3,000 who were here illegally for the, that's what they wanted. They didn't want to see it. Yeah. Can I, I have another thought or two along these lines, Victor, but we conduct a little happily, conduct a little business, uh, here. 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Start right now at hillsdale.edu slash VDH. We thank the very good people from Hillsdale for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. You know, Victor, um, about the prosecution of the war is one issue, but the fact that we, that why we went to war, I, I cannot, I cannot see the, any opposition to that. Does, do people not believe Iran was on the cusp of getting nuclear, uh, uh, weaponry and that it would apply that to us. So we might wake up one morning and New York city would not be there and LA would not be there. What did they say today? I'm speaking on a Sunday morning and the Iranians reported that they had long and will now and will in the future, uh, increase the range of their missiles. And we already knew one could have reached Diego Garcia and a little compass across the European continent would show that would hit most of the major cities. I haven't, John Kennedy was not a big, he disagrees all the time with Trump, the Louisiana Senator. He did an interview that's kind of went viral where he said that he looked at the intelligence and he said, as a member of the intelligence committee, select community, he can't really disclose the specifics, but he said there was clear and compelling intelligence. Now this is not, uh, WMD in Iraq with the CIA talking to the administration. This is an independent group of senators and house members. And he said that he felt it was pretty clear that they were on their way to a bomb and a missile to deliver it. And they were further ahead imagined. And that there was probably some residual, uh, enriched uranium that had escaped last year's attacks, which the Trump administration got very, very angry about because they said they had completely destroyed it. And then they dropped that criticism sometime. I think it was in January this year because the intelligence said, no, there's something under pickaxe mountain going on. And we have intelligence reports on the ground that you did not get them, get at all. And so, I mean, there was a, there was evidence that they were going to, they were wounded and angry and they still had the ability. And that's why people, uh, wanted to do that. And, um, yeah, as far as the neocons, what I'm trying to say is, yes, there are people who supported the war, but on every other side of the MAGA agenda, they were one with Donald Trump on strong police, strong military, uh, anti abortion, anti DEI, anti trans chauvinism, you go, uh, anti new green deal, pro fossil fuel, pro secure borders. And they just said, and we wanted him to address what was going on in Panama and they were even with them on the tariffs. That was another thing they kept saying. We got a jobs report that said there's 160,000 new jobs. We just heard that Audi is going to put $1.2 billion plant in the Midwest. So you can be against crazy tariffs. You can be against us issuing asymmetrical. And then you have to say, well, did they increase? I, all I hear from the wall street journal is they increased inflation. Inflation right now is scheduled to be 3.7. That's almost entirely due to oil prices. And I don't understand Jack, why the price of oil was $101 on election day. And now it's 80, 88, suddenly 24 hours later, it just crashed. I don't know how that could happen. Uh, I do know that the price of gasoline, as I've said, nationwide is about $4 and 6 cents. When Joe Biden had his bill, it was $3 and 88 cents. So it wasn't a big deal, but how can you say that the tariffs caused hyperinflation that turned off the administration? I mean, the public, when it had two, it had two points, one to keep, to create more jobs, which it has helped to do. And two, not to infect, uh, to make reciprocal trade. So we didn't have asymmetries and that's true. Uh, and number three, would not spark inflation. We did have a higher inflation rate than last year. One point, 2.7 to 3.7 this year. It is much lower than the non-tariff policies of Joe Biden, which averaged 5%. 5.1 over four years. So I think there's a little bit of mistaken idea. I'm not saying that my criticism of the tariff is just simply if one of our allies like India or Britain have a surplus with us, then we shouldn't increase the tariffs because we already have it. They're already asymmetrical in our favor. And if we have long allies in Europe or in Asia, we shouldn't go after them. And if you have Canada that's running a $50 billion surplus every year and won't defend itself and is issuing edicts about our companies have to spend 5% on whatever it is, then we have a right for symmetry. But the tariffs did not cause hyperinflation. They did not cause hyperinflation. Yeah. Well, Victor, I have another. And that was just a point just to finish. That was a point to show it. I want to show everybody that when I went on X today and I saw all these people that I really like and admire that are conservatives, and they toss around this. The neocons. The neocons got us into this. No. The neocons are with you 95% on every social issue. That was not true of Bill Kristol ever, or Robert Kagan, or David Frum, or Fareed Zakaria, or Francis Fukuyama. Those were the people who were prominent in creating the neocons. And I think that's a point to make. neoconservative movement, which is primarily a foreign policy movement. They were still basically socially liberal. Yeah. Jean Kirkpatrick too, Norman Bedard's Mitch Dexter. Yeah. Yes. The people who said Soleimani was necessary and Baghdadi and ISIS and even supported the Maduro. And we can end this threat that every single president said existed since Jimmy Carter, but they were scared to do. They are conservative, period, not neoconservative in the sense of that group in the 1990s. They don't exist in the Republican Party. Nobody wants to nation build. Nobody wants to put ground troops in the Middle East. Nobody is looking for fights with people that don't pose a threat to us or think they can reform Afghanistan. That's not an accurate term. The word just means neoconservative. Neoconservative, new conservatives, but it was applied to foreign policy. If you ask Bill Kristol in 1991 or 92, do you support closing the border? No. Before he even flipped, he gave an interview where he said, I don't know why people are against immigration. It's kind of like we get tired and lazy and white America's kind of, you know, had it. And so we got to bring in fresh people. Remember he said that? Yeah. Who's going to mow my lawn type of stuff. So that was before he said he was a leftist. That and by providing you with coverage on a page and easy to understand language. In full transparency, we do have to put a disclaimer at the end of this ad, though. Just being honest. That's what you get when you have Farmers. We'll keep on this. But first, whether to our listeners, our viewers, whether you're making tuition payments, donating to an alma mater, hiring graduates or paying taxes to fund state schools, you, you have a stake in what's happening on America's campuses. But the information you need is hard to find. The City Journal, published by Manhattan Institute, which we just were referencing before, just released its annual college rankings measuring what actually matters. Is a school's curriculum rigorous? Will graduates earn back their tuition? Do faculty prioritize education or activism? Does the administration protect free speech? How entrenched is the DEI bureaucracy? These are just a few of the 95 factors that City Journal's rankings assess. The results may be surprising. You won't find Harvard, Princeton or Yale at the top, but rather the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Florida and Notre Dame. See how your school measures up at collegerankings.city-journal.org. That's collegerankings.city-journal.org. And we thank the good people at City Journal and Manhattan Institute for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Victor, you just you've explained this at late, but I do just think the use of neocon right now is just it's not even a code word. It's just like that's a Jew. That is really the ones that got us into all this mess. It's all part of that dirty little package. So, yeah, it is. And I I'm just the reason I don't sound very articulate is I'm just baffled by it. I can't even. It's not that the Democratic. Party now that it's an Islamist socialist momentum driving it. Is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. I get that because they gave so much money to the universities, they being the Middle East Gulf states. And we have we had a huge immigration. Five million people came in from the Middle East. I understand that. But I didn't think they would be successful in tying. Anger at Israel with they wouldn't dare go after Jewish people in general. And they are. As I said, Hassan Piker said that he was going to target Jews as a collective unless they stopped supporting Israel. And I think the exit polls, Jack, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the ones that I saw are the references that I saw. A majority of Jewish voters still voted and most. states for the Democrats. It went up about to 30 or 40 and some. So if you're going to go terrorize Jews because you feel they're supporting Israel, the majority of them are supporting you. And I don't understand that myself, but that's a fact. So you should refine your arguments unless you just hate Jews, which I think many people in the Democratic Party do, and some people on the right is. Most of the criticism that I get on comments on our website or to particular articles where they are, or to personal emails, or to phone people, where I get my cell phone and leave messages, unfortunately, is like I got one about two weeks ago. Hey, Jew-loving Zionists, you're blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, and you're going to blank, blank, blank. And it's about supporting Israel. And complaining about the treatment of Jews. Well, Victor, we're going to take a little break, and then I hope we'll have time for two more topics. One I put off from the last show even was the Electoral College. And then we'll get your assessment on California's forthcoming new governor. We'll do that after these important messages. Many Americans are going to have a big wake-up call. We have never seen net migration as high as it has ever been. This year, there have been more people coming to the UK in small boats than ever before. You did an extreme thing to the country. Britain is facing a migrant crime epidemic. We don't actually know where they're coming from, who they are, how old they are. Why would you let in millions of people who are unvetted if not to change the country from within? There is no other word for it. Demographic replacement. England's a blueprint for America. It's coming. It's coming. It's just a blueprint. Thousands of daily migrant crossings. A political earthquake threatens to reshape America. We are showing there is a new path for politics in our country. Not all cultures are the same. You cannot ban Shadia. America is a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants. We're a nation of immigrants. The Immigration Crisis. Watch now on the Heritage Foundation's YouTube channel. Hey, folks, we're back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words, recording on Sunday, November, 8th. This episode is up on Thursday, November 12th. Busy week for Victor, busy week for me, too. Wish we could have cut it a little closer to the publication date, but we got things that have to be done this week, both of us. So, Victor's website, by the way, The Blade of Perseus, please check it out. There's lots of free stuff there, but if you would like to read the exclusive articles Victor writes for The Blade and the exclusive video, he does two articles a week, one video a week. Well, you have to subscribe, and you'll want to subscribe at $6.50 a month or subscribe for the whole year at $65, so you're getting discounts like two months free. You'll also find a link there for Victor's bestselling new book, The Counter Revolution, and you can buy a signed copy. I think it's 50 bucks, but it's signed and shipped to you that way. I've been doing that a lot. I think we've sent out, we're going to end up this week probably near 500 to 600 copies. Yeah. Well, I'm muscle tough, so. And Victor's. Well, I'm giving your. On X, we talked about it in the last episode, at VD Hanson, that's Victor's handle there, VDH's Morning Cup on Facebook. And if you're on Facebook, check out the Victor Davis Hanson fan club. Good, good people. So, Victor, we'll end the show with Becerra, but let's just talk about some of the troubling things with the elections. And that's the Democrats gaining complete control, trifectas, governorship, House, Senate, picking up Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada. Well, I don't know if I'm reading Axios, but it says here, those victories could give Democrats enough political power to push the national popular vote interstate compact past the thresholds. The threshold needed to take effect. And that compact is, well, whoever president wins the national vote, our state will cast its electors for the winning candidate, not necessarily if the president won our state. So, troubling, Victor, because the electoral college is important to our republic. To discuss this, everybody, you've got to remember, the Democratic Party, as it's now composed, its center, this Islamist does not believe in the Constitution. Or I should say, they only believe in the Constitution when it's useful for them. So, there are certain key issues that they want to be changed because they feel now that it favors them. But remember, they're guided by two points. What is useful for us now, and the Constitution is either good or bad, depending on whether it helps us. Now, so let's take four of those issues. Jack just mentioned the electoral college. They have no intrinsic anger philosophically with the electoral college, except, except in the modern period, something that rarely ever happened in the 19th and 18th century, George W. Bush won without the popular vote. Then Donald Trump. Then Donald Trump won in 2016 without the popular vote. That was two times, 2000 and 2016. And at that point, they said the electoral college is bad. But we have the amendments of the Constitution are predicated on following a protocol. That's in the Constitution, the electoral college. So, and why is it in there? Because of a bunch of people that hated Democrats? No. Because they. They felt that the rural essence of the United States was important, and they didn't want candidates campaigning to the extent they did. But they didn't want populations in Boston, New York, Philadelphia at that time having inordinate control over the frontiersmen and people farming in the Iowa and Tennessee Valley, etc. That was one. They were also afraid that you would have voter fraud. In a national election. But if you disperse the voting into what would become 50 states at the time, 13, then it would be harder for a cabal to control the vote. I could go on, but there. You read the Federalist Papers. A lot of these people like El-Said have never read them. So he comes to this country, his parents do, and then he starts lecturing us on the electoral college. So they don't want to go through the Constitution because it requires. It requires. It requires a vote, two-thirds in the Congress, and to have three-quarters of the states to amend it. Okay. They're not going to get that. So then they dreamed up this idea that if you capture the Assembly and the State Senate, State Assembly, State Senate, and a blue state or a purple state, and they vote and say, Our law says we shall respect the national vote. Not. The state vote. We're not even going to try to amend the Constitution. So now that we have, I think, Jack, of the. We're up to 34 or 33 governors and state. So now the left is giddy because they have enough votes in state legislators to get over 270 electoral. 270 electoral. Votes to nullify it. What I'm getting at is they're going to say now that our states are going to vote not to reflect what Indiana's vote or California is. We're going to go to the national vote, which we think will be always democratic. It wasn't in 2024. And therefore, the states that retain the electoral college will not have enough votes to do it. That is unconstitutional. And I think the Supreme Court will. Will. Will rule against it, except, number two, we. The Supreme Court is not mentioned in the Constitution other than there shall be a Supreme Court and a Chief Justice. Okay. So from 1789 to 1869, basically 100 years, more or less when an administration changed from a. Whig to a Democratic Party, then they packed the court. They added their people. And people got sick of it. So they had a reform movement after Lincoln's death and during Andrew. So let's just codify it at nine justices. So that's where it is. And when it was the Warren court, I grew up with a bunch of farmers that were conservative. And every time I saw them, they said, oh my gosh, Earl Warren banned school prayer. Earl, can you imagine this, Victor? You pull over a guy and he's speeding and he's a criminal and you have to give him his Miranda rights. Can you believe that? So they were angry at this left-wing court, which was basically there from about 1960 to all the way into the Nixon administration for 20 years. And finally, it became balanced back and forth. And now it is more conservative. So they want to pack it. And they think they can pack it when they get a veto-proof Congress. And they think, given history, that when you get a Bill Clinton defeat, when you get a red wave, I should frame it that way, in 1994, or you get a red wave in 2010, it takes four or five or six years. I should go by elections. Six years to reverse it. So they feel that these margins are so big that even if they lose seats in the House and Senate, but win the presidency, the next democratic socialist Islamists, and that's who it will be in president in 2028, will have a democratic Congress. And the first thing they will do is pass a legislation saying they were going to add 10 or 15 new justices, and they will all be left-wing. And there will be nothing you can do about it, because when they get the presidency, they will end the filibuster. Filibuster is the third thing they want. It's not in the Constitution. It's by tradition and practice in the Senate. It goes back 200 years. Nobody wanted to end it because they thought, if you end it, it will boomerang on us. Now, remember, some of you are going to say, well, they have a majority now, Victor. So in January, the senators will vote. They will vote to get rid of the filibuster. No, they won't, because they don't have the presidency. Why would they end the filibuster so that they could pass legislation over a minority that banned the filibuster to ban the Republicans delaying it when the president will veto it anyway? And they can't override the veto because they don't have 60 votes. However, when they get the presidency, which they think they are going to do in 2028, they will go to their third element, of this four package. Get rid of the electoral college by unconstitutional means, pack the court, as I said, and end the filibuster when they get the presidency. Then they can ram it through, and the Republicans can't stop it. Fourth, let in two new states. Washington, D.C. is 80% Democratic. It's in the Constitution that it is going to be a federal conglomeration. It is not a state. That's so that they didn't. The founders were very clear. They did not want a particular state controlling the federal government. They didn't want a governor telling the president of the United States, hey, I'm a Whig, and you're a Democrat, and I'm going to make it bad for you. The police won't do this or this. We're going to. So they made a federal. That is in the Constitution. They're going to try to override that by packing the court. If they pack the court, they can do whatever they want because justices, as we have seen with immigration law, they will just vote what the left tells them to do. And then if they bring Puerto Rico in, they will have four senators. And then they're thinking they're going to have a. veto-proof Senate forever, and they're going to have a Supreme Court for the next 50 years that's left-wing, and everybody should get that in mind. And because now the right is blaming this and that and you and he, but you all have more in common than you do with these people, and they are staging a counter-counter-revolution. They're trying to undo everything that has happened under Trump's six years in office, and they don't care for the Constitution. If the Constitution tomorrow said that we will have the popular vote, and they were winning by the Electoral College twice, then they would try to go over that. If the Republicans had won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College, they would be now for the Electoral College. And I don't think the Republicans would, because they believe in the Constitution. And I don't think that's why they did not get the filibuster when they had the chance. Get rid of it. Because they had a Republican Senate, and they had a Republican president, and yet they still kept the filibuster. And I know that the Democrats don't have a legitimate, consistent policy, because Barack Obama said that it was a racist relic, and yet when he was a senator, he did not get the filibuster. Alito. Alito, yeah. Alito. He tried to stop the nomination by talking. Yeah. Well, Victor, we have one more. Thank you for that. That was terrific. One more topic. I know this could be a show unto itself, but our friend Will Swaim, who is the president of the California Policy Center, he wrote a long and, I think, excellent piece for National Review Online. It came out this weekend. It's titled, The Man in the Empty Gray Suit. And it is a profile of the record history of Xavier Becerra, who's the forthcoming governor of California. And I'll just read one little passage. And it's really excellent, folks. The governor of California is not unimportant to how you live your life far, far away from those who don't live in California. Will wrote, he, Becerra, has built no institution, advanced no distinctive governing philosophy, and left a little bearing his signature. His talent is to occupy institutions built by others, adapt and move on. That proved enough to make him governor in a state where Democrats enjoy an overwhelming electoral advantage. Becerra won the highest office without ever having inspired much enthusiasm or even name ID within his own party. There's somewhere else here. I lost it, but Will recounted. He was in Congress for quite a while, Becerra. And I think he got a post office renamed. That is his legislative record. So anyway, Victor, your thoughts about you're a new governor. Barton Swaim and Will Swaim, Jack, I'm asking before I start. No, no relation. I know they do. Yeah, they spelled it the same way. They do. Yeah, I want to make sure. And I both think they're great writers. So that was, yeah. Barton Swaim. Will Swaim is one of the reasons I still read the Wall Street Journal. I mean, there are other good columnists as well, but I really think he's a brilliant guy. And I like Will Swaim a lot too. It is one of the most devastating, well-researched, articulate articles I've read. And I think if you follow it, he reminds us of something. The Democrats, of course, were kind of worried about the California gubernatorial election. And I think that's one of the reasons I still read the because California had almost hit rock bottom. And right now, Gavin Newsom is polling below 50%. And they had seen what Karen Bass had done at the mayoral race. And so they were worried that there might be, and Gavin Newsom had been recalled. Remember that? There had been a recall election. So they, even though he easily beat it. And they had seen Spencer prepare for the election. Remember that? And they were afraid that Steve Hilton would be Spencer Pratt, and there might just might. I knew it was never going to happen because the Reagan, Duke Mason, Pete Wilson voters, Schwarzenegger are gone. They left, 10 million of them. But the point I'm making is the Democrats then, who always remember that whether it was Joe Biden in 2020, or get rid of Buttigieg, get rid of Elizabeth Warren, get rid of Bernie, or Bernie in 2007. They have a way of, what's the word, rigging their primary so they get one candidate that the donors want. So they looked at this, and they said, Kathleen Porter, we're going to support her. And then they started releasing videos that she was a monster to her staff. Remember that, Jack, where she's screaming and using horrible language and was just an unsympathetic person. So then, non-photogenic, non-charismatic, bitter, angry, foul-mouthed, and a bully. So then they said, who is young and dynamic and kind of revs people up? Who was it, Jack? Oh, Fifi's, or whatever her name, lover. What was I care of? The Congressman. You mean the, yes. Fang Fang's, Fang Fang's lover. Fang Fang's boyfriend. I forgot his name too, I'm so. Anyway, Swalwell, yes. Thank you. Eric Swalwell, I remember. And he was going to be appointed anointed. And then we found out that he had not once had sexual relations with a communist spy while he was on the House of Intelligence and lied about it under oath. But he was a serial lecher, harasser, and sexual harassment. So then they yanked him. But what I'm getting at, Javier Becerra was Hispanic. Now, he did lie that he said he was an immigrant when his father was actually a U.S. citizen. And he was born in the United States as a U.S. citizen. That was a minor little must-up up everybody's hair a little bit. But he was a U.S. citizen. citizen. Because he was a liar about that. But the point is, he was there all the time and said he wanted to run. And so liberal Democrats, elite Hispanics, blacks, whites, could have picked him anywhere. And it would have been obvious because California is 47% Hispanic. And it's 65% Democrat. And they didn't want him. They picked him. One of the most unattractive candidates you could have, Swalwell and Porter. And they were completely repudiated in their decision because they were. And then this guy comes along and they said, this guy is not very smart. And this guy, when he was HHS secretary, lost hundreds of thousands of children. And he's got a terrible record. And his chief of staff has misused funds. He's got scandals. He has no legislative record. People in the Biden administration wanted to fire him. He was so incompetent. But he was the last man standing. And he had a Democrat. And all of you outside California have to realize how it works. The California Teachers Association and the SEIU Service Employees Union run the state. And so when you look at the lieutenant governor, the attorney general's race, the governors, the state controller, they all go in. If you look at the final returns, they're all 65 to 34, within a point or two. In other words, either one of two things are happening. Either it's a straight ballot, everybody just sees a D and they don't care about the name and they just vote, or something else goes on. I don't know what else. But it's uncanny that there's no wide variance. And that's how we. And that's how we got him. And that article about him, how incompetent he was, what the disaster he did at HHS, and Robert Kennedy Jr. is hammering him all the time for the things that he did. He was a undistinguished, mediocre congressional representative. Everything about him, he touched, turned to dross. And now he's the governor. He did have a new. Did you see that? That he wants to give us one hour or two of free. Two hours. Hey, Victor, it's 1.30 and your new $10,000 meter has a new capability that all of a sudden you pick the hour and you're going to get to spend a lot of free stuff. And the subtext of Becerra said, hey, remember all those solar panel farms we created? And we took all that farmland and all that stuff out and we shut down a nuclear plant here. and natural gas there. And now we've got too much solar energy during the day, and we can't even store it because our battery plant blows up every time we do it. And we don't have any money because of high-speed rail, but we got all this free power. Or not free, it's just going to waste. So why don't we do this? We have to import it at night, and so we'll pick two hours during the day, and then when the solar panel, you'll get the money. And how do we figure it? And somebody, well, you got to read to set all the meters, and you got to do this, or you got to cut out this. And you can't just designate in a power grid and a meter that two hours are going to be exempt. That's quite a thing to do, would be governor. So everything, he's got the on-mitas touch, and he's now our governor. And it's going to be, he wants to raise taxes, and he probably will. 13.3 is pretty low, isn't it? On top of 38%, basically. And I drove by last week, or local, I mean, we have all these swap meets all over California now, Jack. They're everywhere. And I used to go to them when I was writing about immigration and stuff, because you go in there, and it's not your used clothing or a used shovel. It's a cargo truck van, opens up the back, and suddenly you see brand new mattresses in plastic, or you see brand new lawnmowers or stuff, and you get the impression that it comes from somewhere. I'm not making any accusations, but there is a Wall Street Journal article today about the new train robbing in California. I don't know if you saw it. I did not. Yes, it's run. It's run by the cartels in Sonola. And they find, you know, when you have cars sitting at a sidetrack in the country, or jammed up down at the port of LA, or wherever they are, they just swarm them, open, jack them up, and then they get Adidas, and they get Hoka shoes, and they throw them, and then it says, and they then merchandise them at unconventional outlets. So this is, yeah, we used to say things that fell off the back of a truck, but now it's actually the truck. Yes. And what do they have in common, everybody? The people who sell them do not report their profits as income, and they do not charge sales tax. No sales tax. As I said before, I live in an area, very rural, but if I were to take a five-mile circumference, north, south, east, and west, and I said to myself, let me think today. It's Sunday afternoon. I would like kind of a fruit drink. Okay. And I would like a tostada and an enchilada. Okay. And I would like a bouquet of flowers. And by the way, my bicycle, I haven't ridden in a long time. I'd like to get a new bike, and I would like some jeans, and I would like a shovel, a hoe, and a lawnmower. I could do that in five minutes without paying any sales tax. Who needs something tough? Yes. There's all these things that go on in our country that we don't talk about, and that's one of them. It's a taboo subject because the majority of people who are doing this would classify themselves. I'm not classifying. If you ask them what community or tribe they would say, they would say they're in the diversity, equity, and inclusion. They wouldn't say it that way, but that's what it would mean. Or they were in the immigrant community. Remember, if you're in the immigrant community or the DIU, you are exempt from the full, application of the law. And so what I'm getting at is when we have multi-billion dollar deficits in California, the first thing the legislature does, 65% Democrat, is raise taxes. But they never say, wow, we're sitting on this huge bonanza of multi-billion dollars every single day in canteens and roadside crossroads and Sunday and Saturdays. Quote, unquote. They're not swapping anything, by the way. It's cash only for new merchandise for the most part. And we could tax that on, we could go after all those people's income and we could go after all the sales taxes. They'll never do it. They will never do it. They have a target on a certain type of person's back. And that is the Californian that gets up in the morning and he works all day long, all different ethnicities. All different races. He works for the government. He doesn't work for the government. He does his taxes. He pays 105% of his income taxes. And he makes between 80 and 250,000. And he plays by the rules. And he doesn't have six EBT cards. He doesn't have nine WIC cards. He doesn't drive in with a BMW and then in Section 8 housing. He doesn't get any of that. And he plays by the rules and he's leaving. He's leaving. So they need to start taxing that, I suppose. But we don't want to do that because there's two laws. There's one for the victimizers and there's one for the victim. When you spend enough time around great companies, you notice that the best ones treat trust as a growth strategy, not a box to check. Vanta helps companies build and prove trust from day one. Its agentic trust platform connects compliance, risk, and trust. At enterprise scale, Vanta delivers a 526% return on investment over three years and pays for itself in just three months. Learn why over 16,000 of the fastest growing companies use Vanta at Vanta.com. Well, that was a terrific explanation of the golden state, Victor, where bowers of flowers bloom in the spring. So we've come to. Oh, I have to ask one last. Last thing. The prices are negotiable depending on who you are. My wife laughed at me when she said once, would you go down and get. We had people coming over, would you get a bouquet of flowers? And then also I wanted to get some Valentine's Day's candy. So I went to one place and then another, two different places, not the same place. And I said, how much are they? And this woman said, how much can you pay? And then when I bought the candy, there was a price tag on it. Not a price, but it just said boxes of candy has obviously came from the store somewhere. $5. And then she said, that'll be $7. And I said, you don't like me because of my race or my language or why are you racially discriminating against me? She goes, I'm not. And I said, yes, you are. It's negotiable, huh? Except for me. And that was funny. To her credit, she started laughing about that. Maybe she knew you were the great Victor Davis Hanson. Basically, she had a Cheshire smile and said, you caught me on this. All right. We're going to wrap this up, Victor. You've been terrific as ever with all the wisdom and analysis you shared. I'm going to read one comment from YouTube, and this is from The Baron0530 who wrote, I think we were talking about Oakland and California and Jerry Brown a couple of weeks ago. The Democrat Party may have moved beyond Jerry Brown liberalism, but is not the point where the Democrat Party is today the natural next point on that same spectrum? That is, Jerry Brown and others like him paved the next part of the road that led to where the party is. Or to use the image you used, Victor, the previous generation of Democrats, the Schumers, Pelosi's, and Browns, and their contemporaries, are like Frankenstein. They cultivated the powers that are now preeminent in their movement, thinking they could control those powers to retain their own political power. But they created the monster that will eventually destroy them. They did not foresee this, but it looks like it may well happen. Indeed. I want to thank the folks who write me. Everyone out there has my email, but a lot of people have subscribed to Civil Thoughts. It's the free weekly email newsletter I write for the Center for Civil Society. It comes out every Friday. It has 14 recommended readings. It's totally free. You're going to love it. Go to civilthoughts.com. Sign up. Thanks very much for those who do. Yes, Victor. I was going to say one last word. Veterans Day is coming up. From when we're speaking, but it'll be a day before this appears, but go ahead. Yes. And remember, all the people who. Who fought. And remember, Veterans Day is different than Memorial Day. We talk about the people who died in Veterans Day, all people who served, whatever their situation was ultimately, and they all deserve our respect. And these people who died did not die for what we're going to see in Philadelphia today. They fought against that. And they fought and they suffered. And the people on Memorial Day, we commend. They died, but the things that are going on in this country are not necessarily what they died for. And remember that, that we all owe them. to keep our promise to them that their idea of the Constitution and what America was is a singular exception or place. They understood it would improve and it would be self-critical, but they did not die for a bunch of people to harass Jewish businesses, or they did not die for some person like Hassan Piker to say we deserve 9-11. So if we let that go and do not oppose that, then they died in vain. And so the reason that we're here right now talking, the reason that you're listening is we're not going to do that. I'm not going to turn over the country in the year 2026 to people who hate it. I'm sorry. I'm not going to do it. You're not going to do it. Go damn fighting if this happens. Anyway, we're going to go up fighting. Up fighting, yeah. Okay. Thank you, everyone, for watching. Thanks for listening. We'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Bye-bye. Thank you, everybody, for listening and watching. 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 victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition. Your car is here, Mr. Shaq. Thank you, Mr. Carvana guy. Can't wait to take it for a spin. Only the best for you, Mr. Shaq. Hey, have you always been so big, tall, and handsome? Not always. I was 6'10 once. Seven days delivered or returned, Mr. Shaq. Not that I would. You never do. No, I never do. So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at carvana.com. This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song like All I Want. Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what? 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