Victor Davis Hanson: New York's Socialist Agenda, Iran's Threats, and Spain's Border Crisis,

FanDuel is now available everywhere in the U.S. So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are. Including these places. Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Age and location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. See FanDuel.com for eligibility. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. He sent out this enemy of the people list. He said that you're all guilty of owning two homes unless you can prove you're innocent. Remember, he was only going after $5 million properties. Now he's going after $1 million. They always say they're going after billionaires, but there's not enough money. So they go after the middle class. And then with a wink and a nod say, hey, all you envious people out there. All you career criminals that want to break in. Here's the addresses. He wanted to put the fear of God into property owners. And that's what FanDuel.com is all about. Well, hello, ladies and hello, gentlemen. And welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. We are recording on Saturday, August 1st, 2026. This episode will be up on Tuesday, August 4th. I'm Jack Fowler, the lucky man who gets to ask my friend Victor Davis Hanson the kind of questions I think you would ask him. If you were. Here, Victor is the Martin and Ilya Anderson senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Wayne and Marsha Buskey distinguished fellow at Hillsdale College. And he's a senior contributor at The Daily Signal, which is the happy home of this podcast and also the home of Victor's other very popular show, Four Times a Week. Victor Davis Hanson in a few words. And if you're a fan of Victor, and I'm sure you are, and you can't get enough of him. The place to get a ton. Of him is at his website, The Blade of Perseus. VictorHansen.com is the address. Tons of free stuff, but twice a week. Also, Victor writes an exclusive column for The Blade of Perseus. And to read them and to watch the exclusive weekly video he does, you need to subscribe. It's $6.50 a month. And you get to if you get the whole year, it's $65. So that's like getting two free months. Victor, still a ton of Anthony. Fauci, thoughts to address. We have Mamdami with his persistent threats to Benjamin Netanyahu, property confiscation in New York City. I've also got a few other things just to pile on with him. We would like to get an Iran update from you. And a COVID reckoning. And, of course, there's nothing less than calling it. An invasion of Spain from Moroccans in a piece of territory that Spain has in northern Africa. So tons of stuff here of great import. And we'll get your thoughts on them when we come back from these important messages. Female athletes are being forced to compete against biological males, sometimes without their consent or even their knowledge. In Washington, high school sophomore Callie Keeler 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, Callie 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 Callie 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 joinadf.com/hanson to have your gift doubled. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Here I am, Victor, back in Milford, Connecticut. It was a great thrill. I had pleasure to be with you, uh, last week when, uh, when I recorded and, uh, to be with you directly, people say, oh, you got a haircut. I know I just, I, you know, I didn't need headphones when I was in the studio with you. So I don't, I don't need a head haircut. Um, I, where I'm speaking from the biggest, uh, I had to go over to the coast for a medical issue and then one at where I work at Hoover and I got home and. We literally could not see our house. It was like a fog because they were shaking almonds and then they're going to be, um, sweeping them in the middle and then picking them up. And we're going to have about a week and a half. And the only reason I mentioned that I never, I mean, I never had a problem, but when you've had all that irritation from removing a lobe and then, um, burst pulmonary artery, um, it hit me for the first time. It was hard for me to breathe. All. Uh, yesterday and today. Yeah, I, I had the, I guess it was a pleasure. It's quite different than what you experienced in Connecticut. I was out there a few years ago with you. I remember in Coalinga, John Harris's Harris ranch, but it was that time of year was almond shaking a season. And wow, was it, uh, everybody's trying to think, think of ways to do it. I mean, they've tried to put, you know, vacuums and maybe you could, uh, the worst thing. Is when you shake, you shake all the pollen and dust off the tree and then it goes on the ground. And it's, I never had allergies until I had some, uh, you know, mastocytosis, but after that operation, everything intensified. So I got so upset. I was actually looking in the, um, homes for sale place in Northern California. Well, if I, but you know, I've had that, my family has been here 150 years. Well, Victor, if you can be around, um, much longer, uh, that would be, I would like to think to your benefit and to the benefit of the people. I had two of my friends that are electricians and they came out to fix an old wire that are when it, when we get noise out here, people shooting spike, the dog, uh, jumps in. And he tries to claw his way into the crawl space and he breaks, he actually gnaws through the doors. The little trap doors. So I had them all rebuilt so he can't get in. But then I, uh, he had apparently run so panicky that he knocked, um, uh, you know, a main wire to the upstairs and no, no power. So I had, so these two guys came to fix it and I outfitted one of them with a helmet, jumpsuit, gloves, uh, miners light that I used to use when I go went on. And I just said, keep it, you can keep it. But, um. It was very funny because they got here at five 30 in the morning and I, I spent a lot of my life under there and then they came back and said, oh my gosh, there's black widows and there's abandoned everything under there. So I've decided maybe my listeners who've had this experience can guide me. I think I'm going to, in my last great home revisionist project, have somebody come out and sleep, sweep and level the entire thing and then put plastic coating on it. So that I, you know, when I lived in Virginia, yeah, it's a, it's an experience to be under a house and, and do that. But I think it was plastic. I have some plumbing problems too that I'd like to, but I don't want to subject anybody to what I used to hate doing. And until I got sick, I used to go on there, there at least two or three days a year and fix things. But these guys were really freaked out by the number of black widows and what they saw under there. The first show we ever recorded way back six, seven years ago, National Review, you were earlier that day working on the pipes under your kitchen. So I know I, go ahead, go ahead. No, I had kind of a, I had kind of got trapped in a space and I couldn't get out and I got heart palpitation. Less of them is better. Victor, before we get on, I think we should start with Iran. Yes. And then go to Mamdami and Netanyahu. But before we do that, would you just briefly tell us, now that you're, you know, getting back in the saddle at, at Hoover, and you do, you do a lot of things at Hoover. You're very active there. I'm not knocking any of your colleagues, but not everybody is, I'll say, as event intensive as you might be. So what, what were you doing there last week? Well, I had been going over, I don't know. I went over and addressed some diplomats, but I was. I was able to sit down at kind of a big room where they were sitting. I did that about a month ago. I had a little problem at the, anytime I stand up, I guess it, the pulmonologist I saw yesterday said all the damage to the lung and that it, it affects the vagus nerve and it make, when you're out of blood and all of that stuff, it makes your heart very sensitive. So when you stand up quickly or you're standing too long, you start to get pulsations and you can tell something's going on. And then I did the retreat. has a retreat of their donors. And I did a conversation with our director, Condoleezza Rice. And then this time, the archives, we were primarily an archival institution until about 1960 when Herbert Hoover hired our first director. Glenn Campbell? Yeah, Glenn Campbell. And he came from Harvard. He was 34. He was a brilliant economist. And part of our strength and weakness was that he and John Race and his aide and successor were the only directors we had for 60 years. And we grew into a think tank as well as an archival repository. But anyway, the archivist and a really wonderful person, Eric Waken, who's one of our assistant directors, they found nitrite films and they restored them. And some of them were. Rarely seen, if ever seen, propaganda films for Hitler, propaganda for Mussolini, propaganda for the Allies, propaganda for the Russians. There were travel things. There was a 1933 Joe Sharkey Primo Carnara fight. And so they asked me to talk for 30 minutes on World War II, and then they showed the hour clips. And then I did Q&A on World War II. We had a really big turnout, about three quarters of that huge auditorium on a 4.30 afternoon. Full. But I went earlier to meet with various people. That was the first time I'd really been on campus. And even though I was only there seven hours, I was completely wiped out for yesterday and today. So that's really frustrating that it's been six months. I did see the pulmonologist who's a wonderful doctor. And he was basically saying, if you get a four-hour lobectomy and you have to. Take the whole lobe out, and it's the largest lobe. And then you have a problem in the ICU with bleeds when your blood pressure increases. And then you go back in and have to take all the staples out, and you have to put the cameras back in. And then you have another four-hour to find the bleeds and put three titanium clips, cauterize them. And then you've lost three liters and six transfusions. It's not going. And you're 70. I won't mention a doctor. I mentioned this too. And he said that he had followed cases where people as a thoracic surgeon, and many people over 70, when they hit the. Well, I don't know what happened, actually. I shouldn't say that. But when you get a massive bleed of three liters and six transfusions, you're over 70. You don't make it. He was telling me, that pulmonologist. Yeah. So instead of being frustrated that it's seven months, you're not back, you should be very lucky you're alive. And that was good for me. So, well, if we had heat seeking, we could see the angel on your. Or get heat goggles, whatever. We could see the angel on your shoulder here. So, Victor, let's start off with Iran in an update. I think all our listeners and viewers have heard. I'm sorry, it just seems it's deja vu-ish. Donald Trump making tremendous threats of massive retaliation, or whether it's retaliation or not, attacking. And today, the State Department put out an advisory to Americans in 10 or so Middle Eastern countries to get out of Dodge because hellfire is coming. I don't know if it is or not, but it's getting kind of. Yeah. I think there's a consensus. You can feel the consensus that saying you're going to bomb the black out of them, or they're going to do this, and they're going to do that. He does do it. He does follow it up. I'm not trying to be a warmonger and suggestive, but it's not working because you cannot trust a theocratic government, a radical Islamist government. They've lied continuously. They don't view it as lying. They view it as in service to their religion or their ideology. So, when they say. And we've lost now five months of negotiations, and that was by intent. And we had destroyed 90% of their military. So, I think what. He's getting criticism from his base now to either finish it or get out. And so, I think what they're going to do is they're going to go for another 10 days. But I think when they release targets, when you have these $100 million planes, and they're sending a heat-seeking missile into a missile launcher, a truck, that's fine and good, but that's the size of Texas and Oklahoma. What you need to do is find where they're making those and where they're storing them underground and get at the head of the snake, not its tail. So, I think people feel the time has come to hit the dual-use targeting, the bridges, the power plants, if you have to, and inflict a level of damage that disgraces them, humiliates them. And then, as I've said so many times, there is a lot of military capability. Permanently in that region, the Gulf Arab states have 600 combat aircraft. Israel has over 300. We probably have 300 or 400 on our rotating carrier and in bases in Qatar and now in Israel, Jordan, et cetera. So, there's probably over easily 1,200 or 1,300, 1,400 aircraft. And there are Europeans and Asian nations that need that straight open, as are the Gulf, and all of their collective wherewithal very easily could keep that straight open. And combat aircraft could finish off any vestigial missiles that are hitting the Gulf or Israel. And we should take the bulk of our forces back home and then replenish our stocks and watch it carefully, keep the sanctions or even tighten the sanctions, keep the embargo, freeze their bank accounts. They're really hurting. And let it would be just sort of turning the burner up to seven out of 10 and let it simmer. And don't worry, time. In other words, what I'm suggesting is you turn time in from a weapon of theirs to a weapon of ours. He can do it. If he gets out by August 15th in two weeks, he's got, you know, he's got all September 15th, October 15th. He's got, you know, he's got two and a half months and he can do it. He can get back, talk about the economy, raise money, et cetera. And the Middle East will be out of the news and the price of oil will fall. But you have to inflict a level of hurt and you have to make time their problem that they're squeezed. And I think they know that and they're desperate now, but they've been desperate. But I would expect they're going to try to use more terrorism, assassinations and stuff like that. But again, we can do that very easily. I just wish that instead of chasing. We did this in the first Gulf War. Remember, Jack, we would chase. They were sending missiles, scud missiles at Israel. So we were spending all those resources chasing all over the desert for a mobile scud launcher with multimillion dollar fighter aircraft because of Israel, where we should have been hitting Saddam and telling him what we were going to do. So I think we need to stop chasing the individual platforms and orphan them by sealing whatever underground areas they are. Maybe CNN can help us. They supposedly or reportedly were given a tour, weren't they, of an underground storage center? Kind of like the New York Times or the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune going to the Third Reich and looking at V2 factories right in the middle of World War II. And then if we ask them, where are they? What are you doing? Oh, we can't tell you. We're journalists. Yeah. Well, it seems like many people pledge allegiance to things not of America. I think that's a good thing. We'll get to that in a second when we get your thoughts of various things about New York City mayor and America's leading socialist communist, Zoran Mondami. But first, to our listeners and viewers, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their weight overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've never seen a war. 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And that's why we're partnering with Allegiance Gold, a company our listeners and our viewers, to help you get started with real gold, whether your funds are interest-free or not. retirement account or sitting in the bank and if you believe as we do that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious please call 844-790-9191 844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com that's 844-790-9191 844-790-9191 or visit protectwithvictor.com dot com history rewards those who take the long view and we thank the very good people from allegiance gold for sponsoring victor davis hansen uh in his own words so victor i know you want to talk about mom dami and benjamin netanyahu and also mom dami's uh uh property confiscation plan which comes out of you know commie textbook 101 but i just like to pile on with three other things just to mention uh also in the news this week uh jews probably about 12 percent maybe a little more are the population of new york city and frankly you know the significant number of attorneys in new york much higher than their population are jews and yet when the mayor created a judicial review committee for you know citizens to make help him come up with decisions for judicial appointments not a single jewish new yorker was invited to be on that we also have news that uh the dsa the democrat socialist of america which he's the the pin-up boy of news that they uh now take vows to of loyalty uh to communist china and the final thing just throwing it in here and it is that mom dami was given he's the headline of you know the new york post today the silent treatment he went to the funeral of uh angel of death and he was given the headline of you know the new york post today the silent treatment he went to the funeral of angel uh rampersad who was a soldier who was killed uh recently in the middle east and he expected to give remarks and the family that was they did not let him uh give remarks one last say that also the i hate to use again anniversary that puts 25 years this september 11th since the murder uh terrorist attacks of new york city and elsewhere and many of the families don't want him near have anything to do with this so anyway among dami blah blah the victor have at it well he he fits the pattern remember what how socialists work we saw that with old joe biden from scranton that he was now a moderate and everybody behind them were socialists and then they got in power and they were active like communists and that's what socialists do when they're running for office they play down all of their radical agendas when they get in office they think socialism is passe and they become communist or they reveal that they were communists and they become communists and they become communists all the time so he's not talking about socialism when he talks about in his considered opinion he will confiscate property from private individuals when he sees that they don't fit his standards of proper landlordship he says that he is going to arrest net yahoo and arrest uh ice officers but he doesn't tell us the constitutional crisis that will ensue when donald trump sends in the national guard to enforce a federal statute he doesn't understand the constitution obviously the other thing is when he he sent out this peoples of the enemy of the people list so there's what one million properties in the boroughs of new york and almost 90 percent of them uh he has names on them of people purportedly who have to prove within three weeks that that is their own property and that's what he's doing and that's what he's doing and that's what he's so he has flipped upside down the american tradition of innocent until guilty he said that you're all guilty of owing owning two homes unless you can prove you're innocent in three weeks so you know what happened everybody panicked they the surcharges could run anywhere from five to a hundred and fifty thousand and in some of them uh he said remember he was only going to go going after five million dollar properties now he's going after one million that's what socialists do they always say they're going after billionaires but there's not enough money because there's not enough billionaires or a million so they always then go after the upper middle class and then the middle class but the funny thing is he said uh he was going to give you three weeks so what was behind that well what was behind that was number one he wanted to put the fear of god into property owners number two uh that they had to prove they were innocent because they were already in his view and socialists feel guilty of being parasites on society because they had two homes so even though thousands of them or the majority didn't have that that was the allegation you kind of like a mccarthy you are a two home owner one is vacant you're under suspicion prove us prove to us that you're not guilty in three weeks the second thing he was trying to do was to publicize the address and the names and therefore suggest that many of these might be a second home and vacant and then with a wink and a nod say hey all you envious people out there you can go do what i did to ken griffith's second big man you can go and take pictures and embarrass them hey all you squatters out there there's the address you might find an empty home you know go go to it and all you career criminals that want to break in and sack it here's the addresses and we don't really care because these are insects anyway parasitical insects on our society and that was the second purpose that he had and of course the third is to instill fear into people that at any given moment at any time anywhere against anybody he can do things like this and the other thing is all of these things that he's called Netanyahu and Israel. It's very specific and it's unselective. So he says he's a settler colonialist. Jews have been in Israel speaking Jewish, the Jewish language, practicing the Jewish faith, ethnically Jewish, since around 35 to 4000 BC. Ugandans have not been in, Indians have not been in Uganda since about 1900. And that was a British imperial project to take other members of the empire that were merchants and middle-class people and implant them as a guard or a stabilizing imperial force into a foreign country. And his family was, as I said, had 65, his family's community owned 65%. Of the GDP of Uganda. He is a settler colonialist. Erdogan is a settler colonialist by his definition. There were no Turks until the 11th century in Asia Minor. There were no Turks in Constantinople till the 15th century. There were no minarets on Hagia Sophia, the millennium, thousand-year-old greatest cathedral in Christendom until he conquered it, slaughtered people, the sultan. The second and came in and occupied. So according to Mondami's figures, I guess you would say that all of Turkey is occupied land. I guess you would say, because the Jews were in Israel a lot earlier than the Turks were in Asia Minor. And all of the Arab nations just conquered what? They conquered 700 years of Roman settlement in North Africa. And they basically made the Berbers into second-class citizens. And forcibly converted everybody that was not Islamic into becoming Muslims by force. That's called settler colonialism. And you could say that Spain is a settler colonialism. How did Spain end up since the 15th century with Spanish enclaves on the North African coast? Denmark is a settler colonialism. Little old Denmark, Copenhagen, 2,000 miles away from Greenland, they occupy this entire. So everybody should apply his standards. And then he's ethnic cleansing. Oh, the Armenians were ethnic cleansing from Nagorno. Oh, the Cypriots were ethnically cleansed. A lot of Tibetans were ethnically cleansed from Tibet. The Uyghurs are in a prison-labor camp. Genocidal. Genocidal. So the Uyghurs are in a prison-labor camp. He says Israel is a genocidal. Going to our next topic, he's going to arrest Netanyahu. In 1950, the population of Israel that was Arab that chose to stay when the country was formed in 1947-48 was about 170,000 people. And they constituted about 11% to 12% of the population. Today, the Uyghurs are in a prison-labor camp. They're in a prison-labor camp. The Arab Muslim community inside Israel is about 2 million people. And it has increased from to 12% to 20%. So how can you be a genocidal country over the life, basically the life of the entire country, and Arabs within your borders have increased their relative percent of the population twofold? How can you do that if you're genocidal? Jews got out of Gaza in 2006, Mr. Mondami. They didn't want to be there anymore. Ethnically, maybe you could say Ariel Sharon ethnically cleansed all the Jews out of Gaza. He told them to leave. They had that country. And so for nearly 18 years, 17 years, they were gone. There was a flimsy little fence. I've seen it. It's pathetic. And 20,000 Gazans were working in Israel for wages double or triple. And so the Gaza was self-governing. It was autonomous. And if you think that it, that was unfair that Israel exercised due influence, Israel said Egypt could resume its custodianship anytime it wanted. And what did that happen? That wasn't good. So they invaded with 5,000 people. They invaded a sovereign country. We still have bases in Japan. We still have bases in Germany. And Israel doesn't have a base after they conquered Hamas. And then remember, they went in three weeks after October 7th massacres. They begged Hamas to turn over the killers and give back the hostages, and they wouldn't. And Mr. Mondami, you never give an alternate examination of what they should do. What should you do when somebody, where the United States were 32 times larger, 34 times larger, we lose 40,000 dead from the cartels in Mexico. They kidnapped the equivalent of 7,000 Americans from the border, take them to Mexico, put them in tunnels, and then spread out in a major Mexican city. We asked them for three weeks, please, please, please give us back our 7,000. Please, please give us the names and extradite the people who killed 40,000 Americans. And they won't do it. Well, you know what America would do. We'd do what we did in World War II. We'd do what we did in Korea. We would do what we did in Vietnam. We would do what we always do. Bomb, bomb, bomb. And it wouldn't be, I don't think America, since Curtis LeMay dropped leaflets over Japan during the fire raids that started on March 11th, 1945, he dropped over 10 million leaflets and said, get out of the cities because you're going to meet Armageddon now because you're producing things in dispersed household factories. And we can't get out the factories anymore if they're going to be, and we're going to destroy your cities. He destroyed it. 85% of the urban core. I'm not justifying. I'm just saying that in history's toll of reactions to mass murder or mass surprise attack, what the Israelis did, texting people, telling them to get out, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, was not only not unusual, but not nearly as harsh as what other countries did. We were ready to, minus the atom bomb, the Air Force, I saw some video, but it looked like the relentless bombings would have taken five, six, seven, eight million Japanese lives. Oh, it was even worse than that. We were bombing with 2,000 B-29s from 1,600 miles away at the Mariana. So they were flying eight hours in one direction and eight hours in the other over empty ocean. And Curtis LeMay pushed for the conquest of Okinawa, which was declared a war. And he was able to do that. Secure, depending on who you read, whether it was June 15th or July 2nd. And we were already building airways. And we were going to do the following. We were going to leave the 2,000 B-29s that were going to be attacking three to four times a week what was left of Japan. And then we were going to bring over about 1,000 Lancasters that had the same bomb capacity, almost as a B-29, and about 7,000. And we were going to bring over about 1,000 Lancasters that had the same bomb capacity, almost as a B-29. And we were going to bring over about 7,000 B-24s and B-17s, all of which were idle because the war had been over since May 12th, just sitting in European bases. We were going to bring them all over there. And they were going to have a 700 or 800 mile, 700 or 800 mile, not 3,200 mile round trip. And they were going to bomb four or five times a day with the Mariana planes and all these planes on Okinawa. And Curtis LeMay said, we didn't need the atomic bombs. We could have done all of that in another month with fire raids, but the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives, not from the invasion that was forecast in October, November, and then February of the next year, but from saving the Japanese of the fire raids, which had destroyed 85% of their cities. And they were going to destroy everything because that fanatical government would not surrender. And that fanatical government, before you say anything, everybody, and say, well, Victor, that was a war crime, poor Japanese people. Let me remind you, not only did they start the war, but if you look at the total number of dead in Germany, five or 6 million, and they were responsible for killing about 27 million Russians and maybe three to four or 5 million Poles. But if you look at Japan, two and a half million, 3 million, they killed over 22 or 23 million, probably 16 to 18 million in China, the vast majority of civilians, another 4 million Asians, and probably almost a half a million allied troops. So of all the belligerence of World War II in terms of which country lost, had the best, and that's a horrible word to use, but most effective killing rate, that is how many Japanese died versus how many they slaughtered. Japan was the slaughterhouse of war. World War II, the slaughtering engine. And they were killing 20,000 people a day, and no one knew how to stop them except the U.S. Army Air Force. And they did stop them. And nobody talks about it. Nobody, if Israel, I would ask Mondami, let's say that Israel says, well, we want you to give the ringleaders back, and you didn't do it. And we wanted you to give our hostage back, and you didn't do it. And it's been three years. Three weeks. So we're going to go to the International Criminal Court and file a writ against you. And then we're going to go to the U.N., and we're going to want you to do it. What would they have done? Oh, don't do that. You might extradite. No, they would have laughed in your face. They had no mechanism whatsoever to punish the people who killed all these Jews and would do it again if they were not punished. And they had no mechanism whatsoever. Everybody criticized them, but they never offer an alternate plan. And then they look around the Middle East, both historically and the present, and all they see is the slaughter of people. And then they said, they call it an apartheid state. And that is really funny. And it's an ethno state. There's nothing in the Israeli constitution that says you have to be a Jewish observant. I mean, you know, you have to follow the Jewish faith. There is an agreement, a Greek constitution. And there is in 22, I think it's 22 of the 30 Muslim nations, you have to be a Muslim. And in 23 of them, Arab and non-Arab, it is a crime to be an apostate. You cannot get out of being a Muslim without repercussions. That is called an ethno state, as it seems. China is an ethno state. Mexico used to have in its constitution that immigration shall not change. The ethnic essence of Mexico. Israel doesn't have that. There's a lot of ethnic states and religiously intolerant countries. Israel is not one of them. But he keeps talking about an ethno state, a genocidal state, a settler colonial state, and war crimes, et cetera. And he has the history all wrong. The Jews have been there so much longer than the Arabs in the Middle East. And not that you go back and see count, who has a better claim, but a little humility. And all of these people that are half educated get on podcasts and they just repeat this problem. All those people that were at Columbia that poured out in the streets and were hitting people and violent, both Arab and Muslim Middle East students on visas and crazy socialist students that did that. Had they did that in any country, any country of the world, the civilians of that country and protested and libeled their government, if they had done it in Gaza, if you had a bunch of dissident Gazans and they stormed the university, or if they were in the West Bank and they stormed the university and they said, yay, yay, praise the United States, USA, USA, what would happen to them? They'd be shot. After they were tortured. If you were in Iran, and then they talk about freedom and ethnic, if you were in Iran and say, I'm going to start a gay parade celebration in Tehran. Or the trans community that is now allied with the Islamists says, is there a chapter in Saudi Arabia of trans? Why aren't there trans surgery or adjacent surgery sexually at university hospitals in Saudi Arabia? That's not fair. Or if you said, I'm sick of the sexism in Qatar and I'm sick of the and I'm going to have a woman's liberation. We're going to take off our top and go brawl us like we do in Europe. What would happen to them? They would be stoned. And it's so sickening to see all of these two types of people, these affluent socialists who are upset because they got their, you know, sociology, psychology studies degree and nobody appreciated their genius and they can't afford a loft apartment in Brooklyn and they're mad at the world. And then all of these immigrants, the Ilyan Omars, the Rashida Tlaibs, the. The Zoran Madamis, the Millet Quiros, the Chevaliers that come over. She's now a Muslim and they come over from these either their parents or they are AOC from Puerto Rico, her parents, either first or second. And they come from failed states, largely as a result of socialism. And then the first thing they do, they talk grandly that they want to change our country. We're going to change the Constitution. We're going to get rid of this. We're going to get rid of the Senate. We're going to get rid of the electoral. How are you going to do that? You can't get a pass an amendment. You have to pass an amendment to alter the concept. Do you think three quarters of the states of the United States are crazy like you? Maybe 25 percent. You think that two thirds of the Senate is going to vote for you? Well, we're going to abolish the Senate. So you get the impression that they want to make these changes, but they want to use violence to do it. And I don't think people are going to let them. And the other thing is, everybody, don't believe, as Victor has sometimes misled you in saying, I've always said, don't worry, these people have only won local election. That's true. And the rubber hits the road in Maine, Michigan, and Texas, because you have a blue Maine state, you have a purple Michigan state, and you have a red Texas state. And we'll see if Tallarico and. Is his name Jackson that took over from Platner? Oh, yeah. Who's married to his second cousin. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's, you know, it's minor little infraction, Jack. Come on. Sorry about that. And then we have Mr. El-Sayed who's running. But the point I'm making is, even when they take over an urban enclave, they affect everybody. They've. They've now hijacked and captured, it's under occupation, New York City. And if they keep, if he gets reelected and he has eight years, he will destroy the financial capital of the world. And that will affect all of us. When they took over border states like New Mexico and California and Arizona, and they helped the federal, the Biden and Obama open those borders, that affected everybody all over the United States. So. Yeah. Their policies in these areas of the United States can affect everyone. Everyone. And that's why they're dangerous. Yeah. Even if the propensity of the population moves elsewhere, still, if you have these hellholes of major cities that are just hellacious, it is not in our interest. It's not in the interest, of course, of the people who are stuck there, can't get out of Dodge. So. But Victor, before we get more, your thoughts on this? On this. And by the way, we're talking about invasions. We have to get your thoughts on the invasion of Spain. I do want to share with our viewers and our listeners this, that we tend to forget that civilizations are remembered less by their politics than by what they are made. The tools, the objects, the things built well enough to outlast the people who built them. For most of the last century, America made things. Then, like much of the old productive economy, watchmaking. We've all looked up and moved overseas. Well, today's sponsor is trying to bring a piece of it back. VAR. That's V-A-E-R. VAR is a Los Angeles watch company whose goal is pretty straightforward. Bring American watchmaking back. They now assemble watches in California, as well as Arizona, Rhode Island, and Alabama with leather straps made in Illinois and Florida. And these aren't fashion accessories. They're proper tool watches, sapphire crystals, premium materials. And full waterproof warranties, meaning you can actually swim or dive with them on. I'm going to show mine right now. So, VDH, why don't you show yours, Victor? Yeah. He has VAR's C5 Korean field solar, and I have a C5 tactical field solar. They're both great. VAR has already earned over 10,000 five-star reviews, and it's become one of the largest independent watch assemblers in the United States. So, listeners, viewers, if you value things. that are rugged, made to last, and built here at home, take a look. Go to varwatches.com slash VDH. That's V-A-E-R, varwatches.com slash VDH. And we thank the very good people from VAR for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Victor, headline of this from the New York Post the other day, thousands of illegal African immigrants overrun spasms. The Spanish enclave turned streets into open toilets, bathed in fountains. 60,000 illegals from Africa flooded the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. I'm not sure if I said that properly, but prompting Spain to deploy its military as terrified locals liken the invasion to an apocalypse. Ceuta is located on the North African coast. And I just want to say some of the reaction. I'm looking at headlines from the Brussels Signal, which is an English language center right. Here's the reaction from the rest of Europe. Vondelayen, the head of the EU, demands immediate halt to the crossings and swift returns. Sweden tells Spain to regain control of Ceuta and warns it is ready to act. France deploys rapid border force and tightens checks at Spanish border over Ceuta crossings. Netherlands tells Spain to protect EU external border after the crossings, etc., etc. Oh, my gosh. They're boring. Borderhawks. How illiberal. Yeah, I know. Right. So your thoughts on this massive overnight invasion. In 1973, the member of the French Academy, Jean Raspel, wrote Camp of the Saints. Everybody said he was a racist because it was a fictional fantasy novel about an announcement that France was going to allow anybody to come in that wanted this whole army from impoverished Indian subcontinent lands. And then. And then they take over and then they start demanding of Frenchmen religious political concessions. And everybody said he was a racist. He may or may not have been. He wasn't a racist. I should say that he was a Renaissance man, but an explorer, athlete, everything. He was a novelist, essayist. But it's like realities imitating fiction. Sixty thousand people swarm this little enclave, this little, what can I say it, this little colonial enclave. And it was all preordained. And as soon as you saw it, the first thing that I saw when you saw thousands of people pouring into a city, I think it's only about 70 or 80 thousand. Where are they going to relieve themselves? Who's going to feed them? Where are they going to sleep tonight? Who's going to clothe them? Because some of them were just in cutoffs bare with no shoes on. Oh, those who say go back are cruel. And then you start to see what the socialist enterprise is. Why did Alejandro Mayorkas want 12,000 people coming from the poorest areas of the world here every day? The answer is they wanted to grow the progressive project. So they come in and then they say, you're heartless. You're heartless. All our ERs are overcrowded. And you can't get good legal services. You've got a big line at the food stamp office. Yes, you caused that. And at the expense of U.S. citizens who were in need. So then they say, we need this. We need this. We need billions of dollars in Minneapolis. And L.A. needs billions of dollars to help. And, of course, we know where that money goes. Most of it never goes to the people, but is siphoned off, as we see with these crooked communities, many of them immigrant communities. But then you get. So the second part of the paradigm is under the guise of COVID, we did one single day registration in many states. We said most states, I think there's only 20 of them that require an I.D. And they're all red. No I.D. Register the same day and vote. Ballot harvesting. Ballot curing. Early voting. And you can have voting. Boats come in up to a week, 10 days in some states with a postmark if it's on election day. And even some, I think, they don't have to be postmarked on election day. Just within 10 days, they have to arrive, or within a week. So all that was geared to let people who are not legally qualified to vote, to vote. And that, coupled with demography, was the answer to the left-wing dilemma. The left-wing dilemma is socialism never works. It impoverishes everything it touches. Nobody wants open borders. Nobody wants the trans men in your teenage girl's locker room. Nobody wants to defund the police, the Pentagon. Nobody wants to get rid of the Senate. Nobody wants to pack the court. We all know that, so we import voters. And that's what we do, and that's what they've done. So 53 million immigrants in the United States is a whole-time high. So is 16%. So Donald Trump, this has been another gift to him. If he can use it, he can just say, I kept telling you that when Joe Biden destroyed our borders, and we got 12 million people here, of which we're still paying for, and they affected everything from available housing to health care, you laughed at me. And it spread, didn't it? And so this is what people saw in America. They said, why not Spain? Why not Britain? Why not France? And if they don't get it under control, and then the only difference is that when Donald Trump starts arresting people and deporting them, they're going to call him a fascist. In Europe, a few may, but they are very proprietary, and finally they've had it. And so they're not going to say a word when they round a lot of these people up and start deporting them. And before you say that Donald Trump is so cruel, he's deporting people on visas. Well, they're going to deport people in Sweden who are citizens, if they commit major crime and send them back to their country of origin. I don't know what the oath of allegiance is in Sweden, but if you come somewhere and raise your hand or whatever you do to say, I'm abiding by the rules here, I just feel that's contractual. If you break the contract, we'll send you back to whatever blank hole you came from. Yeah, I think what we're watching is a counter-revolution. I wrote that in the book that's coming out in September 8th. It's a counter-revolution, and its essence is we're going to be traditional and normal and follow the law. And what we've seen the last 40 years is the law is just a joke. It's fluid. It's all about compassion and empathy, fake empathy. And we let people go because of their color or their sexual orientation or their gender or their race. And everybody's going to say, you know, that is racist. That is Neanderthal. We're going to go back to equality under the law. Right. And truth. You know, justice doesn't matter. Truth doesn't matter to these, to the leftists. What matters is power, right? Two plus two is five. If the party says so, then it's five, right? Yeah. I mean, when you see Hasan Piker, whose parents are Turkish multimillionaire immigrants and who took him, he was born in the United States, so he'd be a citizen. Then he was taken back to Turkey in his paradise. But apparently he didn't like paradise in Muslim Turkey, so he came over here. And now he's spouting off about Mao, and he has a picture, a celebratory picture of 9/11. And he just said the other day, I guess two days ago, "I can guarantee you a Jew won't be nominated as our candidate." What if he said this, "I can guarantee you that a Turk won't be nominated ever as the nomination of the Republican party." Would that be racist? I think it would. How would he like that? He's really a demonic figure. He really is. Yeah. Well, Victor, we're going to take a little break, and when we come back, we're going to- Although he has good taste in cars. I mean, if you have a $130,000 sports, Porsche sports car and a $2.8 million home in West Hollywood, I guess you're doing pretty well as a capitalist. Or as the son of a capitalist, maybe. So when we come back, we are going to, yet again, get your thoughts on Anthony Fauci and the reaction to Anthony Fauci. We'll do all that when we come back from these final important messages. Hello. This is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I have a new book out on September 8th of this year, and I think you're going to enjoy it. It's called Counter- The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement. It starts right after January 6th, and it details the lack of popularity of Donald Trump, the invective that he endured, the five civil and criminal trials, the effort to get him, to get him off the ballot, the raid on Mar-a-Lago, the two impeachments earlier, one in which he was tried as a private citizen, and yet he came back. How did he come back and why did he come back? I explain in the book how he defeated his primary opponents, how he was outspent. He had a hostile media and he defeated the Democratic machine and Kamala Harris. It starts on January 6th. It ends pretty much now in May of 2026. What's the title about? Donald Trump is not a revolutionary. He's not a revisionist. He's a counter-revolutionary. This time around, he is not addressing just the symptoms of the progressive project of the last 50 years. He's talking about the causes, not just an open border, but how to stop illegal immigration entirely, not just crime, but sending the National Guard in to make sure cities are safe, not just an Iranian nuclear threat, but ending that threat. This is a threat that seven other presidents had identified but did not act on, not just addressing the transgender issue or the Green New Deal and all of those issues that were so dear to the Democratic Party, but ending them, defunding NPR and PBS. So it is a counter-revolution to unwind and to roll back the entire progressive project of the last 50 years. I think you're going to like it. It's pretty interesting. It chronicles the greatest political comeback in our recent political history. Thank you very much. I'm Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Sign. We're recording on Saturday, August 1st. So Victor, first, an interesting thing where I live in Connecticut. There was a bit of serendipity once. I found the Brownstone Institute website and it's a great place, folks. I want to encourage you to go there. They're not clients of mine where I work on my day job. They've been terrific from the get-go about COVID and about all kinds of big government tyranny, et cetera. But they happen to have events, so I clicked on the event button and once a month they have a dinner. And it's in West Hartford, Connecticut and it's run by Jeffrey Tucker. So some of you folks may follow him on X. He's the founder of Brownstone. He writes daily for Epoch Times. So I was at a dinner last night there and he was just sensational. He was talking about he read the diaries in total and it is a massive job. Anthony Fauci's diaries, which are your diaries, people. You paid for them. They're not his. So I just want to give his observation and then, Victor, you might opine and then we can talk about some of the lefty reactions to him. So this is what Jeffrey Tucker wrote on X yesterday, "The first spin on this book is partially correct. It's an exercise in vanity, true, but there is so much more here. It's the story of the descent of a soul at every stage of decline, social climbing, egomania, megalomania, duplicity, self-deception, intensifying levels. Malice, exhaustion, using courtiers as solve, and ending in total defeat, realized only inchoately. Reading it is a remarkable experience. It's obviously not well-written, but that is a strength, a bit like how the Blair Witch Project is scarier due to its low budget. It's raw and painful, alarming and shocking, and ultimately speaks to much more than the life of the author. It's really a window into systemic corruption of neurosis. I don't know what to say. But it's all there is to it. In the end, it's a good book. proved by any president because the Senate would never confirm him. And Donald Trump did him a big favor. And then he immediately thought, I'm John Bolton, the world's most knowledgeable man and Trump hater. And he started emailing classified information to his kids so he could include them in a book, which I think Fauci was planning, and released it at election time and helped defeat Donald Trump, which I think it did. And now he's a convicted felon. We could go into James Comey, we could go into James Clapper, we can go into John Brennan, we can go into Mark Milley, a lot. But these people go into these bureaucratic fiefdoms, and they have absolute judge, jury, and executioner power, and it goes to their head. And after a while, they think they're godlike, and everybody has to listen to them. And as they become godlike, they lose expertise. So Mark Milley, the more powerful he got, kept assuring us that the Afghan army and his estimate, his. wise opinion was absolutely solid and would never crumble. And it crumbled shortly after he assured us of that. Anthony Fauci hadn't really been doing very much research at all, which is okay. He was a bureaucrat. But he acted as if he did, that he had expertise. So he was hubristic, and then he caused an aute or destruction, and then nemesis caught up with him. So he would say, lick his finger, which way? Oh, no mask, no mask. You don't need a mask. Well, one mask will do. Oh, wow. Somebody told me that there's an article out somewhere about two masks. Let's see. Moderna, Pfizer. Okay. What's the party line? You will not be, I can assure you, you will not be infectious. You will not be infected. Six months later. This is for the larger community. It helps. It may have helped people who were elderly. The initial although I can tell you that six months after I got the exam, the shots, I got COVID. After he was assuring us, you didn't. As far as the pangolin bat, oh, he had no idea other than he had given money to fund in a variety of manifestations to fund gain-of-function research. And it was outlawed. Rand Paul believes he was doing it elsewhere in the world and wants to get to the bottom of it. But of course, that wouldn't look good. So he tried to suppress, didn't try to just suppress the information. He tried to describe people, destroy people's reputations and their livelihoods. And he did. I can't, I always, when I get on this topic, I think of the 8,500 career U.S. enlisted men and officers who just innately felt they were in the prime of their life and they did not need this vaccination. They had all sorts of other vaccinations, but they just didn't like the idea of an MR. M-N-R-A, genetic engineering. That's what it was, to create spike. They didn't want it. And they were all bounced out of the military and they were reviled and humiliated. And their children is one reason why these traditional generation after generation families did not join. DEI was another, but they didn't join the military because their parents had been despised and defamed by the military. And they didn't want to join the military. And they didn't want to join the military under Lloyd Austin. And so there were all this collateral. And then I started reading these things. I couldn't even read it because he had four villains, the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, doctors, Bhattacharya, Kullendorf, and Gupta. He said, he called them the three stooges. Can you imagine that? The three stooges. They were all sophisticated public health experts. And then he had a special hatred for Scott Atlas because Scott Atlas was brought in as a counter to him. And Scott, unlike Dr. Fauci, was very photogenic and very articulate. And he actually was a practicing health expert and read every, I know, I've known him for 20 years. He reads scientific papers and he talks to sciences and he conducts research himself. And he was saying things that were contrary to Fauci. There are no, there's no evidence that mask will protect you from being infected or getting infected unless you're in a confined space or you're a healthcare provider or you're immunologically compromised. There's no reason to wear it outside. There's no reason to go into the office necessarily and wear one unless you're, you know, breathing on somebody right next to you and you happen to have COVID. He said, he recommended taking the inoculations. He just said, this is an experimental. And be careful. And I'm not sure that anybody under the age of 18 needs it or even older. It's the people, you know, 60 and older or people who are ill. The main thing he said that got Fauci furious was he said, if you shut down the schools and you do the first general lockdown, quarantine American history, you're going to have a lot of people dead and the death rate soared. You're going to miss prostate exams, mammograms, key surgeries. You're going to have a lot of people dead. You're going to have spousal abuse, alcohol, drug abuse. You're going to have people go completely insane, locked up in urban apartments. It's going to, you're going to have students that are missing, missing two years, the most vital period of their K through 12 education. You're going to get millions of teachers just sitting around getting money. And that's going to be a precedent. You're going to get a whole new inured culture where people characteristic think they have a God-given right to stay home. You're going to have a whole new culture where people think they have a God-given right to stay home all day and zoom in once a week. You're going to ruin the American character if you do this. And they did it. And then when you read what Fauci said about Atlas, he said, talk to Atlas. I think he's right about schools. I talked to Atlas. I think he's right about the quarantine. And then you see what he was communicating with the woman on The View, Alicia Farah. Don't worry, doctor, we'll fire him. Get him off TV. Get him off TV. We'll fire him. And so once he did that, and he got to Trump, and he bragged that he basically had mesmerized Trump. Then the next thing you knew, Scott Atlas was public enemy number one. You walked with him on campus, people would walk the other way. So he went from being the most prestigious healthcare expert on the West Coast and the premier neuroradiologist who was the world's best doctor. He was the world's best doctor. He was the world's best expert in interpreting MRI scans in the brain, critical for brain tumor surgery, everything. He wrote the textbook on it, to some kind of public enemy number one. Yeah, well- Fauci did that. So when I saw him up there, there was my little angel side said, well, here's a broken 85-year-old man, and everybody's barnstorming and trashing him, and I wouldn't want to be 85-year-old. Then I thought, my little devil, I should say reverse him, the angel side, whispered, Victor, he killed, his policies, trace them back. He greenlighted gain-of-function research. That killed a million Americans. You had COVID, long COVID for four months and six months. His virus that he helped create, which the Chinese could not have created that virus without a French company building that lab. Americans giving them expertise and advice via, and some money via Anthony Fauci. And then I saw what you did to Martin Kullendorf and Bhattacharya and what you did to anybody who opposed you. And you were this sniveling little ambusher that in your private correspondence, every day you were doing two things. Barbara Streisand says she has a little wart on her rear end. Oh, Julia Roberts says I'm a folks. Oh, I walked out of the White House and people thought I was a saint. And then I got to get this guy. We got to do this and we got to do this to this person. And then they have this happy face. I came away with the impression he doesn't know anything. You would be better to go in downtown Fresno and tap somebody in the shoulder and say, what do you think about the shot you get? Do you think it's going to protect you? What do you think about the mask? Do you want to wear one, two? I don't know. Just try it. What do you think about shutting down the school? I think they would have a better answer than, he would. But he had this pseudo-sophisticated medical knowledge. So he ended up a tragic character. He's kind of like Oedipus at Colonus or Oedipus Rex or Ajax. I mean, they committed suicide. He committed career suicide. He didn't know he was doing it, but he did. He's going to be a laughingstock. And you know what? The only thing he has going for him is so many people on cable. News, NPR, PBS, et cetera. So many people lied and said he was a saint and they're invested in that now. They're lying about it now. And they still say he's great. He's wonderful because they don't want to be read back what they wrote or replayed what they said. And I can tell you, I've mentioned that before in this, I had a letter from the head of the Stanford Alumni Association. I had a letter from the head of the Stanford Alumni Association. Association accusing me of offering anti Fauci advice about the origins of COVID, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of people were damned and lost their credentials for suggesting, like Tom Cotton had said, that if you have a Wuhan stage four virology lab and the PLA is running it and you know it's sloppy and there's never been a pangolin or bat that spread a type of virus from Wuhan and the virus at ground zero was right there in the city and the Chinese communist government is barring all flights from Wuhan and green lighting flights to Europe, the United States, and there's something going on. 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 History. 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 historicsites.heritage.org to start your adventure today. Well, Victor, about that, you know, the cheering section that remains and we've mentioned on this show before, Dr. Fauci and I share alumni status for high school and college, so I'm involved, and I go into the Facebook page of my high school and the adulation he has from so many people. I don't know. Look, Regis High School, it is tough to get in, tough to get out. A third of my class went to Ivy League schools just back in the 70s. A lot of smart guys. I'm probably the dumbest of the lot, but to see so many, you know, genuinely smart humans still kiss his hiney, still say they don't know what they're talking about. It's just, you know, it's just so much fun. And, you know, Scott Atlas, he's just a radiologist. I will take the, I will take the position of the great Fauci, who's the, whatever, you know, the investigative scientist, my hiney. But they still make the case for this, this had to have come from a wet market. There's, no one's ever found this diseased pangolin walking around anywhere in China. No, they've never had one transmission. Yeah. But they have so bought into the lies, because to, you know, to admit, wow, he is wrong, admits you were wrong. Yeah. Well, the thing is that Jay Bhattacharya, in a very soft-spoken manner, was saying that Fauci was completely wrong and had injured or had policies that injured or killed thousands of people. And Scott Atlas, in very explicit, tough terms and blunt, didn't pull any punches. And that was what they were. Afraid of. Basically, it was the bi-coastal elite that led the attack against any critics of Fauci. And it was on the idea that I'm going to stay in my. Howard Stern never went out. He never went out once. I think he lived there. And there were a lot of movie stars. I'm going to stay in my enclave. And I'm going to call up Amazon. And I'll call Home Depot. And I'll get those working class people, you know, to get out there and work. And when my dryer goes off or my plumbing's out or my. I'll call one of those guys and they'll come in here. Now, I won't get near them, but they'll wear their mask in my home and they'll do my stuff and they'll go out and work. But I'm not going to work. I'm going to Zoom and I'm going to. That was their attitude. And then all of a sudden, they thought, oh, my gosh, Scott Atlas is going to break up and Jay Bhattacharya is going to break up my little world. I can't have that happen. And they're defaming my Godhead. I have his little bobby head thing on my mantle. Bobblehead. Bobblehead, yeah. We have to get a Victor Bobblehead. What would you think, Jack? I said, Jack, I got to make a statement. Hey, everybody, I was at Stanford the other day and a guy came up to me and he had a Victor Bobblehead. And I was so pleased. But I'm not done. I'm not done. By the way, I had a call from a movie star and you won't believe who it was. I'll tell you. And by the way, I did a selfie. I'm making this up. But what would you think about somebody? They'd say, you're insane. That said, I bet somebody will come up to you someday with a Victor Bobblehead. Oh, I know. So I might go out and have one made. Victor, can we conclude this? We've talked about before and you and the great Sammy Wink have talked about this Fauci stuff also. Stuff. Um, my old colleague at National Review, Judd Berger, who picked up what I used to do there, the weekend jolt, he wrote something today, Saturday. And he said, I agree with him. He said, I don't think there's ever really going to be a COVID reckoning. Just like he didn't say this, but I think there's never been a reckoning for communism in Eastern Europe, right? These significant global tyrannical events. That was one. But yeah, I don't think COVID reckoning is going to happen. I can tell you. Well, I know. I won't tell you where or who or when, but I was with a group of scholars and that topic came up. And like the buffoon from Selma, I assumed everybody knew the truth. This was a year ago, more than a year ago. And I said, well, the topic came up. I said, well, the evidence is in pretty clearly now. And I had been reading voraciously about it, that the virus, it originated as a humanly constructed virus that was just impossible to occur in nature in that state. And whether it was accidentally or deliberately released or whether it was originally part of a bio, I don't know. But I do know that once it was released, the national quarantine and the lockdown and the suppression of the schools and putting older people, COVID next to older people, and not letting people say goodbye to their loved ones as they watched through a window as they died in their last breath, kicking some of our bravest, most competent soldiers out of the mill. I know all of that was wrong. And in retrospect, if we had concentrated all our resources on those who were ill and over 60 years old and tried to be careful about, you know, intimate, I think that would have been the worst thing we could have done in our lives. And so, you know, I'm not saying that, you know, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. And I said, we destroyed the Trump economy in the fourth quarter. And you wouldn't believe the reception. Two people got up and just thought I was the Antichrist. Oh, you don't know anything. You shouldn't talk about what you don't know. And the only other thing I want to add is, this was an election year. So the people who pushed Fauci and pushed, they pushed a lot of stuff. And I always go back to the Molly Ball February 2020 time essay. Well, she lays it all out. We changed the voting laws. We got the quarantine. We went to the state legislatures. And the result of it was we had no ID voting and 70% mail. And what I'm getting at is that was partly aimed at Donald Trump. Because if you look at the November, December, January economic stats, the economy was just about ready to boom. And you look at his polls, they were going back up. And a lot of the people on the left, especially in Congress, bought into the idea of a complete shutdown, an economic shutdown, a quarantine, a disruption. And then when they got what they wanted, you know, high unemployment, big deficit. I see Donald Trump. Look at him. He's ruined the economy. It was a lot. And Fauci was an agent of the left. He really was. He had contempt for the Trump administration. He can say that we have a weird relationship or develop. But his basic idea was he would go talk to Trump and then he would make fun of him or talk to other people about him. And he was a very duplicitous person. Yeah. By the way, one last thing of back on the wet market to this occurring nature, was it man-made? If I put up Stephen Quay, and I've shared Stephen Quay's versus Anthony Fauci's talented ability to look at this virus and say with a complete authority, this is from nature versus this is, oh my God, all the evidence is here that this was manufactured in a lab somewhere. Yeah. I mean, he wrote a book on it. I would believe Stephen Quay. I did not know what Anthony Fauci's true abilities are relative to Stephen Quay's. Yeah. I'm the chairman of the Bradley Oversight Committee of Encounter Books, Roger Kimball. is a good friend. He's the editor. So we published. two of his books. And I can tell you, I don't know what his politics are. I know him. But when you read that book, and he talks in scientific terms about the odds of at each decision about a cleavage site or a type of mutation, it always breaks against nature's probability. In other words, if it's 10 in a million chances, it will break 10. And those breaks are predictable, those adaptations for infectiousness, transmissibility, et cetera, et cetera, severity. And so. Which exposes the intentionality of it all, too. Yes, it does. Makes it all the more satanic. Well, the only defense you can have is. And there were people in the U.S. state tournament. Chinese experts that suggested that there had been literature published in China that they were working on a vaccination for it. In other words, you got the impression that the People's Liberation Army was preparing a deadly virus. I don't mean deadly in the sense it's going to kill everybody. I mean even worse, that it would kill off older people, and it would make people panic, and it would give them morbidity and slow down their economy or their military. And then they were going to have a vaccination for it. They came very quickly out with a vaccination. The Chinese did. Well, Victor, thanks for, you know, you've shared great wisdom here today, as you always do. I want to. I forgot to print out any viewer comments. I'll get to them in our next episode. I'm going to read some. Some I did see were very, very. Some commentary on me being out there with you. I looked younger than I am, so be it. I can't. I'm being Fauci here. I'm being self-absorbed. My haircut, all that jazz, whatever. But it was. I must say again, it was very enjoyable. Somebody sent me a picture. A friend of mine sent me a picture of you juxtaposed with George Clooney. Yes. And I. There's a resemblance there. I don't know if you're politics or. As similar as you're appearing. I don't think so. That's. Your friend is a great comic mind. I do want to remind our listeners and viewers again to visit your website, Victor, The Blade of Perseus, victorhansen.com. If you're on X, Victor just said he wrote two long X posts about things Fauci. So, at V.D. Hansen is his handle. The good people at the Victor Davis Hansen Fan Club are on Facebook. They take those things and they replay them. So, check that out and maybe join. I think there's about 65,000, 70,000 members of that. Over Victor's shoulder, over my shoulder is a copy of The Counter-Revolution, Victor's forthcoming book. So, you can go to Victor's website and click on the link and order it. It's coming out in five weeks. September 8th. And one thing, I had a lot of people call me that on our new website, there's not very many comments on the articles, both. Behind and in front of the paywall. We're working on that. There was a paradigm to stop robotic, you know, robots, bots. But one of the results of that is that there's no comments hardly. And that doesn't mean that people are not reading it. We're going to get that back so we have 40 or 50 comments as we did prior to that on many articles. The website looks great, Victor. One last thing, if you are interested in one of the things I do, I work for a company Amphil. We help nonprofits with their fundraising and development. But we also have a related nonprofit, the Center for Civil Society, and that publishes Civil Thoughts. And that's the free weekly email newsletter I write. And it has 14 recommended readings, comes out every Friday. There's usually hardly, rarely anything political about it. It's much more about cultural matters, but great articles I've seen. And I think you would like. So, go to CivilThoughts.com and sign up for it. We want to assure you, we don't sell your name. So, there's no after effect to that. So, thanks again for watching, folks. Thanks for listening. Victor, again, thank you for all the great wisdom you shared. And we will be back again 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. 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