Victor Davis Hanson: Carney Picked a Trade War With Trump—But Why?
89m 38s
Canada’s economy lags far behind that of California, despite similar populations, due to a socialist model marked by inefficiency, low growth (1.1% average), and heavy reliance on state support. A key driver of this stagnation is its rapidly changing demographics—27% of Canadians were not born in the country, leading to cultural fragmentation, integration challenges, and weakening of national identity. The U.S.-Canada trade dispute, initiated by Donald Trump, highlighted structural issues: Canada’s trade surplus, protectionist policies, and state-controlled industries, especially in agriculture, make it vulnerable to tariffs. Mark Carney’s aggressive response was politically timed to counter nationalist sentiments in Alberta and Quebec ahead of elections, rather than addressing economic realities. The dispute also reflects deeper cultural anxieties, such as Canada’s reluctance to label 9/11 attacks as terrorist acts, signaling a shift away from historical accuracy and national sovereignty. Across North America, growing public frustration with DEI policies, fraud, and erosion of privacy points to a broader crisis in trust in institutions. Victor Davis Hanson argues that Canada’s decline is emblematic of a wider failure among Western democracies to maintain cultural cohesion, economic vitality, and national strength in the face of globalization and ideological shifts. He warns that without reform, such trends will spread, leading to further political instability and a loss of traditional values.
Canada has half the GDP of California that has the same population because it has a socialist economy that's very inefficient. It's like the EU. Canada has wide open borders. It has, right now, 27% of its population was not born in Canada. They're wonderful people but they voted in a socialist paradigm and now the idea that a Stephen Harper or Brian Maloney will be Prime Minister. I don't see it. They let the left change the demography. Well hello ladies and hello gentlemen and welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. We are back from vacation and we are recording on Sunday, August 30th, 2026. This particular episode will be up on Tuesday, September 1. Victor is the Martin & Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You see behind Victor the book that's coming out in a just a few days. The counter revolution, the fall and rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. I'm going to talk a little bit a little bit about that in a bit. Victor's website The Blade of Perseus Victor Hanson.com to subscribe $65 a year, $650 a month. You can access the exclusive articles and videos Victor does every week. If you're Victor fan of Victor's writing and you're not subscribing, remedy that. So we've been away. Thanks to our listeners who provided questions that Sammy, the great Sammy Wink and I were able to do the four shows last week with Victor. But we're back to headlines. Victor, lots of Canadian headlines. The Canadian trade, like America, the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, saying don't use the word terrorist. So let's start off the show getting your take on these matters and then I think we need to talk also about the military judge who has rendered I think very troubling, ruling in the forthcoming case against the 9/11 terrorist. So we'll do all that and more when we come back from these initial important messages. Female athletes are being forced to compete against biological males, sometimes without their consent or even their knowledge. In Washington, high school software, Cali Kula was sexually assaulted on the wrestling mat during a tournament. Only afterward did she learn her opponent was a boy who identifies as a girl. With the help of Alliance defending freedom, Cali is bravely suing the state over a policy that not only allows males to compete in girls high school sports but doesn't require schools to disclose that information to female athletes or their parents. Don't let schools put gender ideology over the safety of girls in sports. Your support today can help fight for Cali and other athletes like her and for a limited time, your first gift to ADF will be doubled by a special matching grant. Well-funds last. Text Hanson to 83848 or go to join ADF.com/hanson to have your gift doubled. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. I apologize. I'm a little groggy, but you know the week away just debauchery. Now I was actually done in Orlando for a few days at the state policy network, which is the amalgam of state think tanks and relentlessly stopped by people who are fans of Victor and Aswede to convey this. In a weird tune. Well that's very nice. I had a lot of my birthday September 5th. I had a lot of cards, so I really appreciate it. And it was August 27th when I was diagnosed with an unknown mass in my lung one year ago. And nobody knew what it was. I knew I had problems, but nobody had ever taken the trouble to take a scan. And then when they did the scan, they found this large mass, but it took another three months to tell me what it was. Almost four months to tell me what it was. Anyway, by the way, I have I have different. I love Florida because but I have I don't know what I'm conflicted views because when I go there, everything works, the freeways, everything. And then I get I always come back thinking, "Why can't California do that?" You know? Yeah. It just everything seems to work. Nothing works where I am. Not a comparable population, but on a per capita basis also a much less lower costs and no income tax. Yes, no income tax. And it just it just works and Gavin Newsom single-handedly and not that he didn't have help from prior leaptist, but he pretty much destroyed the state. Canada, everybody likes Canada. Come on. I mean, we all have I have a brother-in-law that's Canadian and very nice person. But there's there's three things to remember about Canada, this dispute. Number one, it are the issues and they're real. Number two is the timing. Why now? And number three, why does Mark Carney seem so angry? I mean, he's not a Stephen Harper, that wonderful prime minister that I think all of us on the conservative side, but all Americans in general really admired. And he's not Brian Mulroney, whom I admired, who just passed away not too long ago. So there's three issues. There's Carney, there's the timing, and there's the problem. The problem is that Canada pretty much got into a habit the last few years of running up a 50 to 70 billion dollars surplus with the United States, not as bad as Mexico, but under Donald Trump's vision of symmetry, he wanted to address it. And what made it egregious is we had a North American free trade association, which was supposed to eliminate the need for tariffs and taxes on imported and exported goods, because there would be fair dealing and there would not be differences very much, what Ross Perot remember, said that that huge sucking sound of jobs and money. Yeah, right. That wasn't going to happen. We were told by Clinton and Gore. And it did. And Mexico had a 200 billion dollars. And the weird thing is we told Mexico you're not going to get Chinese cheap dump parts and assemble them and be the gateway for China to evade tariffs to get undercut our jobs. And they said, okay, we won't do it. Then we said, we're going to tax. We're going to start your remittances at 1%. 65 billion dollars. And we said that because we had 30 million illegal immigrants, mostly from Latin American and Mexico, who were largely recipients in some fashion of American largest housing, education, food, healthcare subsidies. We're not going to do pay that and free them pre cash to become the largest source of foreign exchange in Mexico, which we all money, money that probably had not been taxed in the US. No, no, it never had. It was probably cash. Then we tried to tell them about the cartels. And the point is we were making progress, but not so much with Canada. They kept running this surplus. And then we said there were other peripheral issues. You promised to have to meet your NATO goals and you never did. Last year, they may have done it, but they may have done it by bookkeeping that counted salaries and infrastructure rather than just military strict budgeting. And if they did, it was like 1.982.01% of GDP. So they were reliant on America's nuclear shield and protection. And nobody in their right mind in America ever thought that if the Russians or the Chinese or the North Koreans threatened Canada, they would not be protected by us, either through anti-ballistic missile systems or forward. And they have no military. I think they have 79 jets that are functional. I mean, Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Kuwait have 300. Israel has 400. Right. And their land mass just begs to have. So the issue was Trump said, let's have a reopen negotiation. They were all set. They agreed on everything. And by the way, it only affected 5% of all of the total amount. And he said through his agents, Howard Looknick and the others, if you do what Mexico was doing and you import cheap aluminum steel from China that does not have a market economy, then you're breaking the understanding because you are assembling things in cars and autos and sending them here that are not solely canadian made and you're doing it at the bequest of
China. And number two, you are telling all of our social media companies, meta and sales companies that are online, Amazon, Google, Twitter, the old Twitter, I mean, X, excuse me, you're telling them they have to pay 5% so that they don't smother Canadian culture. Just off the top of all their revenues, I don't know what it was, hundreds and millions of dollars. Why are you picking on these companies? And this is in addition to any other import fees or anything. We don't do that with yours. We don't, when I read the national post, the government doesn't say to the national post, you are influencing American public opinion and you're stifling our culture. So we need to tax you 5%. So that was the issue. And the other issue was that after a certain percent tariffs went up 250% on dairy and farm products to Canada. And Canada said they were supporting independent on entrepreneurial family farms. But like everything Karnie says, it's not accurate. If you're a Canadian farmer or you're a Canadian egg producer, whatever, you get an allotment from the government. You can't just go out and start something just like you can't set up an X-ray or a CT center. Everything is controlled. So the idea that the United States was going to drive you out, maybe it could hurt you if we ever got up to the 250. They said, well, it's 250%. But we never really charge you and we said you never really charge you because all of our companies when they they meet your little quota, they can't send anymore because it'll be up to 250. So they self restricted. So that was the situation. Karnie then blew up and said, we're not going to let the United States destroy our sovereignty and tell us who we have to trade with subtext. If we want to help communist China dump product in the United States by assembling it into our automobiles, trucks, et cetera, at cheap stuff, which even our steel and aluminum people don't want and our companies and unions want to agree with the Americans and we strict it, we're going to walk out. And more importantly, if you don't want to pay, then you're stifling the French language. So it was all misdirection number one. And it didn't really make that much difference because as I said, it was only a tarot. So why did he blow up? Number two, he blew up because of the timing there is an election in the province of Alberta and one in Quebec. And although they're very different places, the most conservative and the most liberal of all the provinces, they had one thing in common. They all were talking about more autonomy in the case of Quebec independence and the popular government in undercarny as all is very unpopular. I mean, maybe not vis-a-vis us, very popular in that regard. But the people who were nationalist in the sense of oh Canada pan-Canadianism were in the minority view in some of the polls. So he wanted to come out and get really tough, say that Donald Trump is this and that. And he had just come out of Europe not too long ago and told the Europeans we have to have a new paradigm. We have no I have no relation with Trump. And he was going to be the non-aligned kind of 1960s type third world, I guess he thought. By the way, that's not he Canada has 41 million people. California has 41 million people. California has a $4.3 trillion GDP even under Newsom, which is like Canada and Socialism. And they have 2.2. So every Californian produces in a reduction in sense twice the goods and services is Canada. So he can't stand there as the world banker with three passports and tell us that he's got a winning formula. So in any case, he thought taking on the United States, storming out of a trade agreement, damning the United States. Excuse me for that language. I don't mean it in the pejorative or obscene fashion. That would win him popularity and with it a no vote on greater provincial autonomy and these two potential breakaway provinces. So he timed it to do that. There was another part to his timing. We are nine weeks from the election. Anybody who listens to a democratic politician, Hikem Jeffries, especially Gavin Newsom, about this trade dispute, they are on apologetic, anti-American and pro-Canadian. Hillary Clinton's former top official in her campaign is working for him for Mark Carney as a media advisor of public relations or some enemy of my enemy is my friends. Exactly. And there are key Senate races and where, Maine, right on the border, Michigan, right on the border, and Wisconsin, we have a gut. And so what Carney was trying to do was to get people in the United States sympathetic to Canada. And here's Donald Trump again. And Donald Trump helped fuel that when he said he was going to rename Lake Ontario Lake America. Well Lake Ontario is 55% as its its mass is in Canada. So I think most Americans don't care that it's called Lake Ontario. This was the way he was trolling them. But the left went crazy as if they never renamed things, which they rename everything. So my point is he took two issues that were not really issues. He blew them up. He stormed out. And he did this to tell the Canadian electorate don't try to break away or flirt with America or flirt with yourself as an independence problem. Whatever it is, because I am standing out for pan-Canadianism against the Americans. And then he was telling the Americans in Michigan in Maine and in Wisconsin. Your prices are higher? Well, it's because your stupid president has tariffs and went after us. What he didn't really tell him is that when Alberta's, I guess it was Mr. Ford said we might cut off oil exports. American struck their shoulders and said go ahead. We're the largest producer of oil and gas in the world. The Persian Gulf is settling down. Prices oil is going down. But more importantly, you have a heavy crude sulfurous product. Your own provinces will not let you send it easily on pipelines to transport centers where you can send it to China. You send it right across the border to the United States. We refine it and guess what? Natural gas in the case of natural gas. You can't even send it to Montreal through your own territory because you have these provincial restrictions, environmental netiness. So we take your natural gas and we pass it along and plug it into our pipelines and then it goes back up to Montreal. They didn't even know that when they walked out. And then they said we're not going to let the Maine lobsters in and then they said oh, we are going to them in because we have, we didn't realize that the Americans process all over our lobsters right across the border. So it wasn't thought out. And the third thing is remember, there were the issues and the issues could have been resolved very easily. He didn't want to do that. And then there was the timing because of these elections on both sides of the border. And then there is the elephant in the room. As I said, Canada has half the GDP of California that has the same population. Number two, Canada was not paying its two percent until just maybe a few months ago. So why wasn't it because it has a socialist economy? It's very inefficient. It's like the EU. It over the last 10 years of all the Western industrial states. Let me repeat that of all the Western industrial nations and states. Worldwide, Canada has the lowest rate of growth, 1.1 percent on average. That's pathetic. Number two, Canada, we have 16 percent of our population, 53 million people. Canada that are either illegal or legal residents or citizens in the case of the legal residents, but they're not born in the United States. Canada and that comprises 16 percent. That's kind of the tipping point. When you get over 16, 17 percent, you can't assimilate, acculturate, integrate, and we're making remedies. It has right now 27 percent of its population was not born in Canada. Mostly immigrants from very impoverished countries in Africa and Latin America, but also India and China. More importantly, it has another seven or eight million people whose parents were not born in
Canada. More importantly, it has about two million resident visa holders who were not born in Canada. Added all up, it's worse than, it's about like California, but with no tradition of assimilation and acculturation and intermarriage to the same degree that we do, and we're not working in California, whether it's crazy truck drivers who are illegal that are endangering or 50% of all bursts on medical, etc. But my point is 45% of Canadians, 45% were either not born in Canada or their parents were not born. And that is a huge social cause because they were not coming with English fluency and with capital and skills, but totally dependent on a social welfare system that was unsustainable, given the economy was only growing at 1.1%, juxtaposed to the idea that in terms of timber and minerals and tungsten and rare earth minerals and gas and oil, it is one of the wealthiest countries in the world that could easily have a 5% GDP if they would just open the economy. And then we've talked about it before, 5% to 6% to 7%, depending on the particular year, they are politely advised to kill themselves, called euthanasia from the Greek word you, meaning good, you, eugenics, the good genetics, but you and then thonatoes, on a death, the good death, you can have a good death in Canada. And in 18,17 to 18,000 people say yes, I have terminal cancer or even in some cases, they don't have terminal cancer, but they're convinced that life is not worth living. And the priest, the priest hurts his back, the first thing they say to him is father, would you like to kill yourself? Yes, that is a saying. And they have an abortion culture like California and or like Boston. So they have social morays that are so different than American and they're getting more different. They are becoming full EU like and they want to and he's emblematic of that. He had three passports. I think he was British, Irish and Canadian. And so that's what it's all about. There were issues that all of them could be resolved. He chose not to resolve them and mischaracterize the China and the language issue for his own political purposes. He timed it because of the elections on both sides of the border and his sense of inferiority and anger at the big brother America come out of. It's not the confident World War II country that stood alone with Britain who risk going across the Atlantic with convoys to keep the British Isles alive before we got into it. Who had the fifth largest navy in the world, their own beach. I don't know. It's not that Canada anymore. It's a multi cultural 55% of people born in Canada, hard left country. And the result of that is it doesn't have a military. It doesn't have a world class economy and people are getting poor. And out of that anger, he blames the United States and sometimes it's, well, we would be okay if you just wouldn't have your Facebook and your and your iPhone and all this information. So we're going to tax it. We'd be okay if you would just let us run up a 50 to 100. That's not the problem. We're not your problem. The problem is looking in the mirror in the mirror. And it's not the Canadian people. There's some of the hardest working people in the world. And they're a wonderful people, but they voted in a socialist paradigm and now the idea that Stephen Harper or Brian Maloney will be prime minister. I don't see it given the changes in demography. Well, it's coming. It'll head south if we don't keep up stopping it. Hey, Victor, I have to talk about co pure here. But when we come, we'll come back and finish up on, on Canada. So to our listeners and our viewers, and I have to move a little bit because I moved my co pure machine behind me. So but in Flint, Michigan, if if Flint, Michigan has taught this country anything, it's that the government's word on the safety of your drinking water is often worth absolutely nothing. And Flint wasn't a one off. The problem is everywhere. 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And the setup couldn't be simpler. No plumbers or drilling. You just put it on your counter, you fill it up and plug it in. And you get whatever temperature you want as soon as you want it. It's been a hot summer. I love that I'm always just one press of a button away from cold, pure, delicious water, refreshing water that actually tastes like water and not a public pool or worse. And I do that whenever I want it. Maybe your city has tested your drinking water and said it was fine. So did flints. Cove pure is what you put between that track record and your family's water. So go to coldpure.com/vdh now. And because you're a listener of the show, you can get $250 off for a limited time. That's Cove pure, C-O-V-E-P-U-R-E.com/V-D-H. And we drink a toast to our good friends of Cove pure. Ah, for sponsoring. I didn't get it on your picture. This hits and it is own words. And I got a very cool email this week, Victor. I'm just a John D. I'm not going to say his last name, but he's involved with the Suns of the American Revolution. And he worked with your mom as a very young lawyer. He was a clerk. What was it? I bet I knew him. You know him. Yeah. Lovely, lovely guy. And he sent me a picture of the Cove pure. He just got. He wanted me. He wanted me to know that people out there are getting it. So, hey, Victor, continuing on, it's interesting. By the way, we talked about the social media effort kind of is the tax it's putting on. And to protect Canadian culture, but it's kind of like, what is Canadian culture anymore? You know, it's I remember was a stew, like, what the hell is it? Well, I lived in Greece two years on different occasions, one year and one and one. And I had a lot of Canadian students that were in the program. And all I remember is they had backpacks, remember with a big maple leaf on it. So during the, during the Vietnam and following years, people wouldn't think they were American. Yeah. What I meant was when Greeks saw them and they heard them and looked at them and they looked at their dress and their language and their comportment, they thought they were American. And they didn't like that because we were very on popular with the Greek people because of the dictatorship and then the Papandreo anti-American government. And everybody who was Canadian almost basically pasted a maple leaf on their forehead. Because otherwise, nobody could tell them apart as my point. Right. Except they say a boot or something like that is what it's given away. And one other thing about Canada, I think this tracks with what you were getting at with the, just the, the, the great in, not influence, I can't think of the invasion of people from Muslim countries there. This gets into the story about the Canadian broadcasting corporation CBC that who was it? The memo, they should a memo, but by Basem Bolshra, the CBC new senior director of journalistic standards and public trust, it's a mouthful of a title where he said, regarding the upcoming 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the world trade center of the Pentagon and flight 93, do not refer to the September 11th attacks as terrorist attacks. So then there's backtracking on that. I mean, in the backtracking, like, yeah, we really, well, we kind of, we, well, why do you think he gets backtracking? I don't know, they have a constituency to appeal. Yes, exactly. He's got a lot of people who have come from Pakistan and the Middle East who are Muslims and he wants to ingratiate themselves.
and he's scared of them. And there were a lot of Canadians that were killed on 9/11, that were working in the World Trade Center, by the way. So he was virtue signaling because he's coward, because he's not empirical. He says he's a journalist, but if you were a journalist, you'd say to yourself, were these people terrorists by it, were they trying to use violence in a way to advance a political position and aim it at innocent civilians? Yes. Exactly, they fit every classical definition of a terrorist, but he, in his cowardice and on professionalism, deliberately tries to lie to us that it was not a terrorist incident. This was the one great last great day, I think of some affection of America for Canada, because I figured it was Newfoundland or St. John's Island, whatever, but so many planes, international flights that couldn't come to American airspace, landed in Canada on this relatively small airport, Nile and Ganstor, something like that. But there was a great, the people rose to the occasion, the locals, and they took care of the house. I don't think there's enough of them left that that would happen now. I think the Canadian, there's two candidates, what I'm trying to say. There's the Canadians that have been there for generations, or the Canadians that either came from a different country, often an anti-Canadian, anti-Western country, or their parents did. And they, because of DEI and racial tribalism and cultural tribalism, they feel they haven't been fully integrated. And they feel, and we're seeing the same thing in this election with the Democratic Socialist, Dash, Islamist Alliance. But it doesn't, I mean, you would expect half of the Canadians at least to feel that they had a glorious tradition and not fall for this cheap anti-Americanism. I understand that Donald Trump is controversial. I understand he trolls people. I understand that he wanted to change this one name of Canada. But it's not going to hurt them. They can keep calling it Lake Ontario. And by the way, when Trump, there will be an end to the Trump administration and it's a 50/50 chance that Vance or Rubio will win. And if they don't win, they'll change it back. Obama will, the Obama crowd will change it back. Yeah. Well, they started it. They started it. They always do. They go about McKinley, right? It's like, why do they do that? I just did a video for Daily Signal, a short one on name changing. And people should remember that. That they were the name changers. It wasn't the right that started all this. It wasn't just Mount McKinley that they changed. They changed everything. They changed the Woodrow Wilson school at Princeton. They changed the Earl Warren Law Institute at Berkeley. They changed my address. I came to work one day and I said, where am I? Where's Nipio Sarah Plaza? And they said, no, no, no, Victor, you were golf speaking for a week. It's now the Stanford Plaza. I said, well, why? Well, he whipped Indians in the 18th century. I said, he was a wonderful Catholic priest. He was a man of his times. He had some sins of his times, but he thought his intention wasn't to hurt people. It was to introduce them to Catholicism and Westernism. I mean, if you're going to look at people who killed people, then take the name off the San Diego State Ass text. They sacrifice probably 50,000 people a year or get rid of any reference to monosumma. But they change the names. And there's a lot more Obama schools in the world today than there are Trump schools. And so Victor, no, that's not the same because they did it through proper channel. Yeah, they had a National Geographical Board, but it was all stocked with left-wing people. There were ideologues like themselves, and whether it was military bases or whether it was university schools, they comprehensively went through during the Obama and the Biden administration and said, well, get all of our affiliates, get all of our local state regional people. And we're going to change all these names. And they did. And so, as far as the Great Lakes, 55% is Canada. If you count the acreage of the lakes, 45% of all five. If you look at the Gulf of America, if you look at the coastline of Mexico that borders it on the south and the coastline of America that borders on the north, I would say that I think we have 50 more, 1700 miles roughly, but I think we have 50 miles more of coastline depending how you. And Mexico is free to call it the Gulf of Mexico. We say, real Grande River, I've heard Mexican people say they crossed the real Bravo River. So both movies were good. Okay, let's take up one more topic here on Iran, if you don't mind, so it's been a way for not a long week in real time, and here's a headline from the New York Post, "Cripling U.S. sanctions are suffocating to Iran and battle Duranian President admits we are in a war situation." I think that's, I won't read the rest of this, but they are, they are hurting mightily, nine weeks or eight weeks out from the election. I think a lot of people are going to be embarrassed. I heard John Mishimer, I guess he was talking to Tucker or somebody and said, "Everybody in the world is rooting for Iran, where they don't, no, they're not. They may not want to say what they're doing because they're afraid of terrorism, but they want that regime gone and they were afraid to do it, and when it's gone, they will be delighted." But when does the United States ever get praised for anything? And then we hear from, we mentioned that before, are the esteemed Robert Kagan. I knew him. He's a responsible historian and analyst. He said, "We lost the war." You're looking at the situation right now and they don't have a military. The strait of our moves has not had any oil go into Iran. The price of oil is gradually going down. The pipelines to bypass the strait of our moves are already, already in some cases under construction. In a year from now or two years, the strait of our moves will be irrelevant. You may use it if it's open, it might be convenient, but they will have pipelines to the Gulf of Oman out in front of the strait. They'll have more capacity to the Red Sea and they'll have pipelines via Turkey or Israel to the Mediterranean. When you look at what Bess Scott Bessout is doing, he's not winning the war. The war is just irrelevant because they're losing. It's not hurting us. The price of oil is high and gas, but it's going to go down because a lot of oil is coming on the market. When Venezuela comes on the market and 65 billion barrels, and by the way, before anybody says, "Somebody wrote me and said, "Shame on you." I'm just shocked. We go into a third world country and we overthrow the government. We steal all the oil. It's just despicable, and now we have a hundred-year contract. No, it doesn't quite work like that. We have a communist country that was exporting and overthrowing and undermining all of our allies, which doesn't exist and exporting drugs and illegal aliens and criminals into the United States. Now we don't. We get, they get $19 a barrel on every single new barrel of oil. They're a $65 average paradigm. However, do a little research. This is not Saudi Arabia or Texas, where you have ideal geographical and weather conditions. This is going into very inhospitable places. Number one, and you're dealing not with sweet light crude. You're dealing with the most heavy, sulfurous, difficult to refine oil in the world. It's going to cost those oil companies somewhere between $20 and $50, not $10 to $20 to drill for it, pump it. They've got to create the whole infrastructure, the electricity, the power, the roads, the support. All of these social outreach are going to have to do for indigenous people, all of that, and then they're going to have to transport it, and they're going to have to refine it. If that price of oil goes below $65, they're going to go broke, because it's going to cost them a lot of money. They may make $5 or $10 a barrel after all their expenses, but it's no sweetheart deal. That's why the Venezuelan government snapped it up. The point is, they're going to have about a million to two million barrels more in the next three or four years on the market, and we're going to have more oil. Iran is the big loser, and there's a vice grip around it.
communicate, it can't trade, and already you'd have to be blind. If you think I would ask the people I just mentioned, you think the Houthis now are stronger, are Hamas is stronger, or has the law stronger than they were before. And you believe that Lebanon is, forget Israel. I don't mean forget it in the negatives. And just put it out of the discussion because it incites so much disinformation. Look at Lebanon. Is Lebanon getting more autonomous or less now? And without Iranian subsidies going to Hezbollah? And the types of damage that Hezbollah has suffered from Israel. So for the first time in a long time there is a specter that Iran is irrelevant. It won't know how a military that threatens people, it does not have a nuclear threat that threatens people, and economically is a weakling. It's real, or whatever you want to call it, is about 2 million to one. Sort of like Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union after the fall of the wall. Conditions are now in progress that are going to doom that regime. And there's going to be a popular uprising maybe in a month, 10 months, two years, I don't know. But there was a report today that people are even walking along the street now and they see an e-mom they tap as a turbine. And there's other reports that women are going to the beach to the extent they can under work conditions wearing bikinis, and that people are not, and nothing's happening to them. Because that regime has scared stiff that if they go and start hanging, if they start hanging women again or throwing homosexuals off cranes or hanging people from cranes, I should say, or throwing them off buildings, there's going to be a popular revolt. So the world is a very different place than it was five years ago when Biden entered office. All of Latin America and South America and Central America is about 85 percent nationwide. There's only about five anti-American countries. The Panama Canal is not an issue now. It's back under our auspices and we have a good much better relationship with the Panamanium government. And if you look at the Middle East, it has a chance for the first time in my lifetime to change and to be a normal place. And if you look at Europe, ask yourself, oh, is the left on the rise? Are they going to have more open borders? Miracleism? Yes, we can. We've got to get more windmills and solar panels and less atomic energy and less coal and less natural gas. Yes, and we've got to get that, we've got to keep cutting that military, get it way down. And we've got to, you know, we have 1.3 fertility. Let's get it down to 1 percent and have a greater life. Ask the Spanish in North Africa those enclaves how they feel about it. You know, so that whole paradigm is in shambles. And Canada we just talk to is not doing well. And Mexico is scrambling to change its ways. And Latin America is changing. And China, I heard somebody wrote me another email, I should say, you don't know what you're talking about. China, you said imports 9 million barrels a day. They did, but they're smarter than we did. They have a strategic petroleum reserve that has 600 million barrels. They don't need, yeah, that's 600. They spend about 30 million barrels a day, figure it out. You know what I mean? It's not a lot. It's about six months. And in fact, it's good because they're not buying as much oil. They're using their strategic review. We had a lot in there, but Joe Biden drained half of it before the midterm. And Trump doesn't want to buy it at prices over, you know, 70 bucks. So the point I mean is they don't have oil. They're using a reserve that is a finite product. And then when that is exhausted, they will go back on the market and have to pay for it. Because they are completely 70 percent of their oil, they do not produce that they consume. We consume about 100 percent of what we produce. We export. So the world is very pro-American. Not necessarily pro-American. I mean, nobody likes to be second fiddle. So I'm not saying Donald Trump is not the easiest person in the world to say, I love Donald Trump. If you're a Frenchman or a German, I understand that. But you ask them privately, if Russia goes into Ukraine again, or tries to go into the Baltic state, would you either have Joe Biden president or Trump? Or if North Korea starts sending missiles into Japan's Arab space, who do you want? Well, we should talk a little more about Europe, Victor. We have a couple of muslims in Europe. I mean, we could talk for hours here with some of these overlie topics. But first, I have to let our listeners and readers know that if they've studied history long enough, they start to see a problem. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division into one day 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 our leader generations and policymakers now to be 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. But why is, though, they never waited for collapse. They prepared for the correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, including you, folks, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement or reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history, physical gold, not a speculation, but as insulation. Our reputation matters had Victor Davis Hanson in his own words, which is why we've partnered with Allegiance Gold, a company distinguished by integrity, reliability, and an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau. 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 our 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 844-790-9191-844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com. That's 844-790-9191-844-790-9191-9191-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com. 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. You're Victor, I wonder if those, by the way, I saw Paul one in six Germans within the next five years would love to move out of Germany. Maybe here's a reason. I saw this posted on X, I titled a suicide of the West as the case of how Islamic welfare criminal a mooch state exists in Europe. This outrage in Germany after became public that a Syrian migrant with three wives, 32 children, 25 grandchildren with 70% of the entire family having a criminal record receives $100,000 a year in welfare. So they're not assimilating, they're rating what's dwindling money left in the German coffers. They're terribly criminal and this is what is becoming of Germany. So I wonder if Victor, people love Trump or not. If I was a, well, these old fashioned Christian Democrats in Germany, I'd be wishing could Donald Trump please come over here and start doing stuff. Whether they like it or not, if they had a free and open election and they did not have restrictions on membership in the parliament or the media, the alternative alternative for Deutschland would win. And the rep in lapin is going to be, I mean, she's going to be the next prime minister, dash president, I should say of France. And we're not going to see a left wing. As soon as they have to hold an election, I think the right's going to win in the UK because it's getting to the point where Europe is not functional. It's just simply not functional. In other words, Europe is basically Minnesota, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York. That type of ethos is Europe, but everywhere. Except, you know, out in the rural areas, people are normal, but they tried it. They wanted heaven on earth. They wanted their socialist utopia. They got it. And they're completely paralyzed because according to this victim victimizer binary, you say that you're a victimizer and you're guilty about your tradition, culture, and history, and anybody who you feel can claim he's a victim, then you owe them something and you owe them and, you know, an open border. You owe them status that they won't be deported. You owe them a hundred-year-old, a hundred thousand-year-olds a year. 70% of that family had criminal records. You don't. And they all hate, they hate
the place they've come to come here and they hate it. And so what is, as I said before, what is Ilya and Omar have? What is in common? What is Rashida to leave? Have in common? What is this Shivalyeh new candidate in Colorado? Have in common? What is Mondami? Have in common? What is Hassan Piker? Have in common? What is El Said? I could go into them, lost my voice. They all have one thing in common. Either they or their parents were not born in the United States, and they came because they were dirt poor or they were under threat. And I think we're going to learn a lot more recently. We're going to learn a lot more about Ilya and Omar's family and their connection to the genocidal Barry regime. Or they were in danger and they came over here and they can't say a good word about American history or their traditions and values that drew them here. And they want to change the system and that's what the irony. They want to change the system to replicate where they came from as if they were to say, "I hated the Middle East. I hated India. I hated Africa so much that I came to the United States and now that I'm here and I have everything I need, I want to change it to the place I hated." You figure out that one. And why am I doing that? Because I feel that I am a victim and I deserve things from this country and they've got a lot of stuff they can give away because we saw in Minnesota and I want some of that stuff. That Nick Shirley was interviewing somebody and he released a video. I don't know if you saw it Jack in Minneapolis. I've seen a couple of his like, "What was this one?" He goes up to a Somali and he says, "You want me to go home?" And he says, "No." He says, "You don't like Somali. You want me to go home?" You don't like Muslims. He said, "No, I don't like people who come and steal from us under fraud." No. And they were getting kind of, but the person was basically saying, "You don't understand. I'm a victim. You can't do this to me. I'm Muslim. I'm Somali. What are you doing?" And he's basically saying, "I'm trying to find out people who break the laws of our shared country, but you seem not to want to help." And we have an attorney general and a governor candidate in California that if they're elected, believe me, you're not going to find out anything about a fraud that makes Minnesota as much look like child's play. You know, the Tisha James, you're one of your favorite people in New York. She's been attacked by the Democrat state, as she's a treasurer or auditor, Danapli, who says, because the Medicaid fraud in New York is catastrophic as it is in most places. And before she was attorney general, there was about $100 million a year in fines and settlements against these fraudsters. And with her as attorney general, that's only $10 million a year. And you know, the pool of fraud is even much bigger than when she took over. So I think what's really the subtext of all this, and I don't know how it's going to play out in the election, the midterms, given historical trends, but there is a growing anger at all of this. The fraud, when you hear they want universal healthcare, and they've got it almost now. And the level of fraud that's inherent, and when you see that many of the people involved in the fraud are first and second generation immigrants. And I just think that 55%, 65% of the country is really, really getting angry at the whole DEI thing, the whole, you deserve this, we deserve this, you have to do this for us. I think they're just had it with it. I really do. Victor, I don't want to beat necessarily a local drum, but we talked about flock cameras a few weeks ago, and the day does not go by when you see any paper talking about how the towns are now under assault by their constituent, by citizens, my town, Milford, Connecticut, huge meetings. And there is such a rage. And now this rage direct in, it cuts across all party lines at this grand disment of the state, you know, taking your picture, taking your data, selling your data, company selling data, you know, the lack of privacy, layer that on top of or underneath the anger, all the fraud that's going on. And I do think something's going to burst, the dam is going to burst. Yeah, I think that there's all these peripheral issues that are people. Another one is truck drivers. Yes. When you look at California's trucking laws, if you want a professional license in California, you've got to be 21, not 18. You have to have English fluency. You have to take a 50 question. It's very intricate. I went up and looked at some of the samples. It's very difficult. 50 questions. And you have to get an 80% on it. And then in addition, you have a one and a half to two hour actual in person driving tests where they assess their skills. Then you have to take a drug test and you have to take a physical. All of that for some reason was waived. And they just issued under Gavin News and thousands of ice, 20,000 licenses, not just to drive in California, but special licenses that you could go between the states, interest state. And then when you look at when you're driving in California, in this decrepit freeway system, and you're in the 99 or the 101, and you've got three or four lanes. And it's going 50 miles an hour at say off peak 10, 10 in the morning or 11 in the morning. And you look away, bend your head and you look up and you see these huge 80,000 pound semis. And they're barreling along in the middle of three lanes. It's 65, 75 miles an hour. And then you drive by them and they have a screen. So you can't look in to see who's driving them. It's it's scary. And it's not racist. It's not nativist. It's not shalvanistic. It just says, why don't we apply the law to illegal? And I'm talking about illegal immigrants who are among this the majority of this 20,000. Why don't we apply the same standards as we do to say a military veteran that wants to apply for truck lives? Right. But but also back to the flock thing. And one way, why are they so obsessed with capturing me? I can tell you. I might be a speedy little bit locally, but they're five with a guy driving 10,000. You can't get New York moving after a freak snowstorm. Then you start talking about double size Coca-Cola has too much sugar in it. Big go. Yeah. And I had this question once when I was driving to work and a guy pulled me over. And I was going the speed limit was 55 on the west side of California. And I did not see one car for 30 minutes as I went down Manning Avenue, maybe two cars after San Joaquin to the and he pulled the over and I was going 62, 63 miles an hour. And I said, there's cars trucks are going on that they're going and he knew it and he said I was going on a 68. But the point I'm making is they go after the citizen because the citizen pays and the citizen falls the rules and the other people don't and they leave them alone. And I had that come up as I mentioned to people with solar. I wanted 44 solar panel. It took me a year. And I put them on a beautiful shed that was built in 1980 by myself and my cousin and two brothers. And we followed the code to the T even though it was egg exempt, even though it was egg exempt. And they came out and said, we need a map of that. I said, well, it's here. And they said, well, did you draw a map? And I said, no, we didn't need a permit. Well, then when you draw one now, so I sketched out one. And they said, oh, the wiring is going to that other building. And where's that one? I said, that was built in 1875 and we model it and meets all code. Go look at it. Well, it meets code. We need a pick. We need the map of when it was created. I said, it doesn't it doesn't exist because you your office your agency didn't exist. Well, and then they they held it up for six months. So then I said to them, go down the road. I won't say where. And there are one five acre residents. And there must be 30 people living there given. I see six winabegos and lean twos. And there are horses. There's cattle. There's animals. And on a day when it's 105, I can tell you, some of them don't look very good. And he already said to me, Mr. Hanson, you think I'm stupid? If I go over there, it's not safe. There's gang activity in that area. And if I walk in there and I start red tagging things, I wouldn't have enough red tags. So I said, so you come to my house because you think that I'll follow the law and pay the fine or make you feel important. You said, yeah, big
basically that's it. Then I had a sibling that he put in a new well and they drilled it and the driller had the permit, but the second regular came out and said it's a few feet too close to your septic tank. So you can either re-drill the well or re-drill the septic tank. I think it was two feet. So he had to do that. A septic tank is like a $50,000 proposition. Yeah, and you go over there and I went by the other day, I counted five porta-parties. Well, I counted about a hundred of them because they were stored there, but there seemed to be four or five in use. So my point is nationwide when you have so many poor people that you've imported and they didn't have English fluency, they didn't have skills and you don't believe in the melting pot anymore. Then why would they not bring their customs from their home country? And then what do you do? Because if you start to enforce the law, then you're racist or you're oppressor. So you just give them a day-facto slide. And so same thing with the ice. You know, we went after Milo Yanopoulos the other day. The flag went, oh yeah, flamboyant, I should say. I don't know what his politics are anymore. He used to be close with people like Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, alt-right, Nick Fuentes, and then he got, I don't know where he is now. I think he renounced his homosexuality and he became an orthodox Christian. I can't tell, but he was overstate his visa, right? I can tell you, if you went after everybody who overstate their visa and where I live, half the town would be gone. Because there is no visa. But the point I'm making is that we do that because what else is the alternative? In other words, when you have a, we never go after the felony, we go after the misdemeanor to subsidize the group that's supposed to go after the felony because there's no revenue there. I wonder if the senator from Maryland will visit Yanopoulos when he used to return wherever they're sending him back to. The sending him to the UK. I don't know if I'll let him in. We have to take a quick break. We have to let our sponsors say something, but when we come back, we'll get your take on. It's insane that it's still 25 years and 9/11 the perpetrators have still not been adjudicated, but we'll get your take when we return from these 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 from 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. Hey folks, we're back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. And one of the happiest men in America is Rob Bluey. I have to, Rob asks that we could just make note and I do that. Even though Rob hasn't sent me a new Daily Signal hat. That Daily Signal has sent me some. You've got all the booty, but you deserve it Victor. The Daily Signal has seeks donations because so can expand its investigative journalism and analysis. They have a status signal elite support and that's if somebody gives $28 a month. So go to the Daily Signal website and check that out. And when you, if you do that, if you take the $28 a month offer, you will get a free copy of the counter-revolution. The fall and rise of Donald Trump and the mega-revolution, the mega movement that comes out. Yeah, I would just say I think everybody's going to like the book. It's not a raw raw book for the Trump second term. It is a, it begins on January 6th, but it's a careful, I have hundreds of footnotes, but I think it'll be very readable and it's, it tries to make the argument, I think it does, that never in the history of this country, whatever you think of Donald Trump, has the government been so weaponized to get him off the ballot, to raid his private home, to use Latina James and Fannie Willis and Jack Smith and Alvin Bragg and E. Jean Carroll to destroy a person and to pass laws that are bills of a tangerine in New York. And I go through all of it and then I try to show that any other person would have been physically and mentally destroyed and it made him stronger. All of that made him stronger. And then he ran, and then I have a long start on the campaign of 2024. And if anybody thinks that Kamala Harris, after you read this, is going to be a viable candidate, I think they will be disabused of that notion. That was the worst run, worst candidate that we've seen on either side, probably since George McGovern, who was a fine person. It's like this, and then finally I talk about why people hate him looking at the first year of his administration and up till May of this year. And I come to the conclusion, given the title, that they hate him because he's not addressing symptoms. He's not saying, "Oh, I'm going to go talk to all these accreditors." And they're letting all these left-wing lawyers and law schools get accredited without being, "No, he's going to the American Bar Association." Says, "Who gave you the right to adjudicate whether a law school is following its mission or not?" He's not just saying, "Okay, got a little out of hand. We must up our hair. We had an open border. We'll try to close it." You know, he said, "I'm going to find the 12 million people who came in under Joe Biden, whether you like it or not. And I'm not going to let it ever happen again. I'm not going to just say, "Oh, the university's, if you get, if you accuse somebody of sexual harassment, make sure you have the right to cross-examine his accuser. If you're going to, you know, you have a theme house and it's kind of racially segregated or racially segregated gratt-kindness tone it down. He said, "No, that's against the Supreme Court ruling. You're not going to be allowed to do it. You're not going to be able to do any of this stuff. And if you do it, you're going to get fined, et cetera, et cetera." So he went to the causes, not the symptoms of the progressive project. I try to point that out. And that made him very unpopular because he basically said, "If you look at all the anti-Americanism abroad and all of these left-wing governments, part of it is we're spending 50, 60 billion in USAID and it's affiliate to fund all these crazy left-wing people that hate the United States. And we're going to end it." Yeah, I mean, end it. So he's done a lot of things that no one ever thought he could do. You got to give him credit. And yeah, and as I said earlier, I just had another letter, Jack, and it said, "Well, you don't talk about the, you don't talk about, I'm trying to voice, how do I know how they sounded, Victor?" I think that I've heard those people speak since you're exactly on. Yes. Well, you don't talk about all the executive order. He has an all-time record because he can't get, it's all just signing. I said, "Okay, let me think about this. Let me go to the White House project or a disinterested third party and not count on how many executive orders they've issued, of course, Franklin Roosevelt issued by far the most, but how many per year, per year, and when we hold, Donald Trump issued a lot. Not the first term. He was way low. He was like 20 presidents or ahead of him, but including Biden and Obama, if you look at what they did later in the case of Biden, but you look at per year. I think it's 170 per year. Who had more executive orders than Donald Trump on average per year and office? Well, good old Woodrow Wilson did. William Howard tafted. Calvin Coolidge did. Warren G. Harding did. Herbert Hoover did. Then the person who had almost more than everybody combined in his first term, especially but on average, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of course. What I'm getting at is, again, just look at the evidence and he hasn't done, you know, he didn't destroy democracy. He doesn't done any of that compared to what the standards are in our democracy, past, present. And that's what the book is about. Trying to bring reality and saying, just take a deep breath, put aside your hatred and look at the actual record and what they did to him.
and what he's done, and ask yourself, if he's done anything more gregious to hurt democracy than any other president, and then don't tell me what aboutism. No, just look at what the standard is. And then finally, I have one final chapter about the future of the Mago. Who's going to be Rubio, who's going to be Bans, why? And finally, I also, I think it's really important. Who created the Democratic Socialists, and the crazy Democrat? I think Donald Trump did. I think that they, he made them so crazy by trolling them and his mims and the garbage truck and the McDonald's and all of the stuff he puts on two social and the radical agenda that he had to go back to the norm. It's not radical. They're going back to the normal center, but they got so crazy that they lost the Supreme Court, they lost the Senate, they lost the House, they lost the White House, and it made them absolutely insane. And that's why these socialists are the ultimate expression of Trump derasions. Right. How come this fat ol guy that eats McDonald's? How come he has outflanked us on social media repeatedly? You know, they just must be stewing in their envious, envy juices. I guess. I don't know. They don't understand that when he dreamed up the Lake America, I mean, that, that was just to tell the Canadians, I thought to myself, as soon as I heard that, we were driving and I heard it. And I said, when I get back to the House, I know what they're going to say. He's immature. The Canadians are going to say, he's been immature. This is silly. He's just a small man, yes, and you're talking about what? Trump's, Donald Trump, Donald Trump. Right. Well, Victor, let's just take one last topic here, and it's a serious topic. Headline is judge site's extraordinary abuse in suppressing alleged 9/11 masterminds confession. I'm reading off a site law dragon that summarizes what happened the other day. Long awaited, potentially critical ruling trial judge in the September 11th Military Commission has suppressed confessions made by the accused mastermind of the plot. Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, KSM, as he is referred to, made the statements to the FBI, to FBI agents. Andwan Tanamobay four months after he arrived from CIA black sites where he was subjected to widely documented physical and psychological abuse. The judge is an Air Force lieutenant colonel Michael Schramma. He ruled that the prosecution failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that Muhammad's statements to the FBI were voluntary, and then he went on to site. How many times he was water-borted, not by the FBI, but by the CIA, et cetera. Victor, why does this one of the guys have been shot when they found out? Yeah, I mean, he killed, he murdered 3,000 people. He was the architect of the plan. So, you know, 25 years later in the calm of peace and prosperity, a military judge can say, oh my gosh, they water-borted him. It still really didn't ascertain whether that water-bording was the sole prompt for him to confess. He was bragging about it on social media. Everybody was bragging that he wasn't apologetic about it. I don't think even denied it. Before they got it, they were looking for him. They didn't just, I mean, how did they find him? They knew that people had attributed this to him. And he had another problem. They were going to blow up, what, starting the Philippines, 11 of them, 11 planes, I think they were going to blow up. He had a grand plans until he was stopped. And it's easy to say, well, Bush and those guys over did it, da, da, da, da, but one thing you have to say, for all your criticism of Afghanistan, we haven't had a monumental terrorist mass attack sense. And at the time, if you go back and you read the New York Times and Washington Post, they didn't say if they said when, it was inevitable that we're going to lose another plane. We're going to lose the Pentagon. We're going to lose the congressional dome, which was one of the targets, apparently. So he was proud of it. He was very proud of it. I don't know how this judge can sleep at night. Well, because people have forgotten, they've forgotten what it was like, or they weren't alive when it was there. They've forgotten that side of those poor people in a split second saying, do I want to be burned to a crisp in 10 seconds, or do I want to be smashed into a pancake? If I jump 900 feet in, you know, some people jumped head first. I think, you know, this still, it grates to, because culturally, Victor, and you may be the same as me, we think of the FBI and we still think of, you know, these guys that came out of Ford and Hollywood, whatever, and they were chasing communists and they were good guys. And the guys in the military or, you know, how many died in Vietnam, et cetera, were proud of them. And they were good guys. But there's so much ideology in these institutions. Well, that's what the left did. The left said to themselves, we don't have power that we like to destroy the United States and we make it like China or something or Cuba. And that's because we're too honest about what we want. So we have 70, 30 issues and we're in the 30s. So there's only two solutions. You either have to institutionally change the bureaucracy, whether that's powerling laws or the FBI or CIA, or, or you have to open the border and let in 50 million people and grow the government, grow social programs, welfare programs, grow the bureaucracy. And they did both. So when you look at the FBI, CIA, military, you're right. You come up, not with Democrats, Republicans, I'm talking about that. That's fine. I'm talking about John Brennan, who lied twice under oath to Congress. I'm talking about Andrew McCabe, who lied four times to federal investigators, talking to James Clapper, who lied under oath, you know, and he said that I gave the least untruthful answer that the NSA was not spying on people. I'm talking about James Comey, who lied 245 times when he said he didn't know. He couldn't remember under oath to the House Oversight Committee. I'm talking about Kevin's plan Smith, the FBI lawyer who forged a document to go after Carter Page and got a little tap on the wrist by a left-wing judge, although he did get and convicted of a felony. I'm talking about Mark Milley, who went before us and told us we had to read or we should read Professor Kendi's pop crazy work on racism, and then said Donald Trump was a fascist, and then admitted to calling his Communist Chinese counterpart to warn him. He said, "When if I ever determine, I diagnosed as Dr. Milley, the neuropsychologist that Donald Trump is unstable, I'll call you first before he gives me an order." He doesn't even give you an order. He broke the chain of command. Those are the people that brought politics into it, and the left had a really good idea. They said, "You know what? We'll never win in an open debate and a free and traditional in-person election, and even with a biased media, we'll never win because nobody wants what we have. So therefore, we got to take control of the institutions, and they did. The FBI, the CIA, director of national intelligence, the US top echelon of the military. And they did. Corporate boardroom. Everybody thinks all these things people would be conservative, but they weren't. They're not. I don't know. The PDF of the FBI's investigation into the Catholic Church, it's been, it's coming out on. The very school board. The traditional Catholics, they said, "Well, we're just going after people that have blotten masses, and school board, parents, anti-obortion protesters, they were all on their target. They were." How do you hire some of the things like that, and then how do you have a leadership official set sign off on that? Like, "Go get them. Yeah, I can't get them." They do it because they think they're going to be promoted, and they think the media is going to like them, and then they're going to go to a way left-wing think tank, or they're going to go to, you know, a left-wing publisher, or the institutions are all left-wing. They're going to be interviewed by, "We're going to be interviewed by N.P.R. General Milley, I saw that you said that Donald Trump was a frashes. Can you elaborate on that?" And yes, I can. And so that's what they do, and, you know, I don't know how Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, they all offer them busing billets, and then you can be a consultant for Lockheed. We want you at Google. You can be the EPA director of Facebook or something. Yeah. That's what they do. And you're tired to your house on Martha's Vineyard down the block from the Obama's House.
Yes, you can go to Martha's Vineyard and then when 25 illegal aliens that you champion show up on a bus at your community center, you can say, "Hey, everybody, how many puff jackets do we have in the closet that junior nowadays at Yale doesn't need?" "Oh, everybody bring your puff jackets and you have any consummate soup can, we'll bring those two and how about buds or buffies little adidas that she grew out of, we'll bring them all make little care packages and here they come, here have some coffee and here's your care package. Now, get back on the bus and get the blank out of here, get on the ferry so that I can protest on your behalf next week without having to see you. I want to protest, I protest for you in the abstract, I do not want you living next to me and that's how, that's what they, they were pretty honest about that. I love, I love you Victor, that's perfect. Alright, we've got a wrap up. Actually, there's a reason that I live in Selma, California, not Palo Alto. For all my bluster and bragadaccio, I have to be a little, I like it here better because I like Mexican American middle class people more than I do. I can't use the word Karen anymore, but yeah, but there's no one in Selma who you could imitate like this. I don't, I like the people, they're not there, they're not, they don't live there. I like to, I like the can do attitude. I said the other day just to finish this conversation. I said to a friend who's a family immigrant from India that has a lot of companies. I said, I'll just call him Bill. I said Bill, I got a problem, it's a Sunday and the capacitor went out on the pump and everything. When did this happen Victor? Tell me right now. I said, well, I don't want to bother, you didn't bother me. When did it happen? I said four hours ago. Why didn't you call me? I'm sorry. And he was not Mexican American, but he had a Mexican, he said, one will be, I'm just using it. One will be there in 30 minutes, 25 minutes better. One was there. And I, so one fixed it in an hour. And he had parts on a Sunday night. And I gave him a very generous chip and he said, no, I'm not allowed to take a tip. I said, you're going to take it whether you like it or not. And you know what I mean? That's, yeah. I like that about, I mean, there's a lot, I, I like legal immigration. And I think it enriches us. If it's done, you know, a diverse, merit-cratic legal fashion. And it does. But I like the middle classes I always have. I've been part of the middle classes. I grew up as the middle classes. And that's the savior of America, all those, but you should see all the letters I got from people, a thousand of them when I was ill in the hospital and afterwards. And I, I got four yesterday. They all have the same thing. They're all middle class people for the, and they all say, my brother had cancer. I lost my job. I listened to you. No one speaks for us. Not that I'm the, I mean, the love for you is very real for me. I don't think it's, I don't think it's for me. It's for, well, I'm sorry. It is for you. It just, all we want to hear is that they're not crazy. They don't, they're not, no, you're not crazy. You guys are the same people and you're the people who make the country work. I'm not talking about just white people. I'm talking about middle class of all, you are the reason the United States works every single day, not the elites necessarily. I'm not going to make fun of them. They're valuable, but Elon Musk is valuable. He's one of the most valuable people in the world, but the middle class is what makes the country work. Let me, along these lines, just we have to close. Let me just read a couple of comments. There's this come off of YouTube. One is from at Booger McVee, 2847. What a name. Victor is the only voice I take dead, dead seriously. I watch lots of podcasts, but mostly for entertainment and to find out what people are talking about. I come here to listen to Victor. Tell me why everyone is talking about something. Then Jay Nelson, 932 writes, there are geniuses and then there's Victor. Anyone who watches every show has now heard and recalled not just tens of thousands, but he's now, did I read that right? Not, but he's now into the hundreds of thousands of names, events, dates, conversations, specifications, weapons tactics, motivations, et cetera, et cetera, regaling us for hours on end several times a week. There was no one on earth in Victor's universe. He is a unique treasure of the 21st century. Thank you, Victor, for everything. It's actually somebody. This man is John Neymar, who's from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. One last thing because people love you and care about you. Victor, this is from Jesse Conn, 8214, Victor, please go to your daughter's house for the season. We love you when we need you. No more dust, please. That's dusty out here. My wife, she was driving. I said, why are the lights on at daytime? She said, we had zero visibility because she went into an almond harvesting dust cloud. Yeah, we were up at 7,200 feet. I thought, for the first four days, I had really, I was kind of shaky and my wife said, well, why don't we go up to 90, I said that. And then she said, yeah, we'll go up to 9,500 feet. So almost 9,300. We went up the Kaiser Pass road and I got up there and I thought I was going to. I felt like a dog panning. So we came back to mouth. We came back down and then you know what? By day five, I had adjusted to 7,200 feet and I was fine. And the air was really beautifully clean up in the seara's. Okay. I was going to ask you a question, but let it go. The only last thing I want to say is I know you're very sad because Peter Cullen died and Peter was the voice of EOR. I didn't know that about Disney. Yes. So and we haven't seen an EOR column in a long time on your web on the blade of Perseus, Victor Hansel. But it also sounds like we have a potential for an angry reader column. Yes. From that list. Yes. So I have a, I get a lot of angry readers that are directly, I said to my author, I got a, she read me and she says, you're not going to reply to that. It's it was the most profanity hate field. And then somebody sent me an article. It came out by a scholar and it said that basically it was the damage Victor Hansen did to classical studies of military history as a concern as a conservative. I didn't look to see that. Yeah. I'll ask Mrs. Hansen for that. So yeah. All right. Well, Victor, thanks. You've been terrific. More than terrific today. And I just want to quickly focus if you're interested in civil thoughts. That's the free weekly emailed newsletter. Comes out every Friday that I write for the Center for Civil Society. That includes 14 recommended readings. Great pieces. I've come across the previous week that I think you might like go to civilthoughts.com. Sign up. Not charge in every Friday in your inbox. I know you're going to like it. Thanks, Victor, for all the wisdom and analysis you shared. And we'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Bye bye. Bye everybody. Thank you for watching 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 victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Canada has a significantly lower GDP per capita than California, despite similar populations, due to a socialist economy that is inefficient and struggles with slow growth (1.1% average).
Canada’s economy is underperforming compared to its resource wealth, and its GDP is half that of California’s.
A major factor in Canada’s economic stagnation is its large demographic shift
The Canadian government has run large trade surpluses with the U.S., which Donald Trump challenged by proposing targeted tariffs, especially on steel, aluminum, and dairy, citing unfair trade practices and protectionist policies.
Mark Carney, Canada’s central bank governor, reacted strongly to Trump’s trade proposals, but the response was widely seen as politically motivated—timing the confrontation around provincial elections in Alberta and Quebec to suppress nationalist or independence movements.
The U.S. trade dispute with Canada was misrepresented; Canada’s social welfare system and state-controlled industries limit entrepreneurial freedom, and its economy is not self-sustaining.
Canadian media, such as CBC, has been criticized for downplaying the term "terrorist" in relation to 9/11, reflecting a broader trend of political correctness and fear of alienating immigrant or Muslim communities.
A growing political and cultural backlash is evident across North America, with increasing public frustration over DEI policies, fraud, lack of privacy, and perceived cultural erosion.
Victor Davis Hanson argues that Canada’s decline reflects a broader failure of Western liberal democracies to maintain strong identities, economies, and national sovereignty in the face of globalism and ideological shifts.
Summary:
1% average), and heavy reliance on state support. A key driver of this stagnation is its rapidly changing demographics—27% of Canadians were not born in the country, leading to cultural fragmentation, integration challenges, and weakening of national identity. -Canada trade dispute, initiated by Donald Trump, highlighted structural issues: Canada’s trade surplus, protectionist policies, and state-controlled industries, especially in agriculture, make it vulnerable to tariffs.
Mark Carney’s aggressive response was politically timed to counter nationalist sentiments in Alberta and Quebec ahead of elections, rather than addressing economic realities. The dispute also reflects deeper cultural anxieties, such as Canada’s reluctance to label 9/11 attacks as terrorist acts, signaling a shift away from historical accuracy and national sovereignty. Across North America, growing public frustration with DEI policies, fraud, and erosion of privacy points to a broader crisis in trust in institutions.
Victor Davis Hanson argues that Canada’s decline is emblematic of a wider failure among Western democracies to maintain cultural cohesion, economic vitality, and national strength in the face of globalization and ideological shifts. He warns that without reform, such trends will spread, leading to further political instability and a loss of traditional values.
FAQs
Canada has a significantly lower GDP per capita than California due to a socialist economic model that is less efficient, with slow growth averaging only 1.1% over the past decade, compared to California's much higher productivity.
Canada has a high proportion of residents not born in the country—27% of its population—leading to challenges in cultural assimilation, language proficiency, and economic contribution, which strains social welfare systems and hinders economic growth.
Hanson criticizes Canada's trade practices as being unbalanced, including tariffs on dairy and farm products, and the failure to enforce fair competition, which he argues undermines Canadian sovereignty and economic competitiveness.
Carney's strong reaction was partly political, timed around provincial elections in Alberta and Quebec, where he aimed to appeal to nationalist sentiments and counter anti-American sentiment, rather than being driven by genuine economic concerns.
He criticizes the CBC's decision as politically motivated, reflecting a trend of avoiding factual language to appease immigrant and Muslim communities, which he sees as a form of ideological evasion from the true nature of terrorist acts.
Hanson argues that Canada has a negligible military, with only 79 operational jets, making it highly dependent on U.S. protection, and economically weak, which undermines its national security and global influence.
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