Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Managed to Expose the Left’s Neo-Confederate Policies

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Download the app today and use code SPOTIFY to get $150 instantly in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix. Run your game. Somehow, we have now over 600 entities, counties, cities, entire states. If you're in California, and I've had this happen four or five times, where an illegal alien on a Sunday afternoon or Saturday night went airborne drunk and plowed in and took out 10 almond trees or 20 vines, and the car was littered with drugs and alcohol bottles, and the driver took off. I called the police. When they took him in and bailed him out, I said, are you going to deport him if he's ill? No, we're not going to deport him. We can't. We've had this now for, I guess, 15 years. We're not going to deport him. We don't recognize federal immigration law here. Well, hello. Ladies and hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. Victor is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College, and he's a senior contributor at the aforementioned Daily Signal, whose hat Victor is wearing. Victor also has another show there, which is called Victor Davis Hanson in a few words. We are recording. We are recording a special Victor's on Vacation episode of this podcast, and the good people, many good people from the Victor Davis Hanson fan club at Facebook submitted questions. Thank you very much for doing that. I'm going to ask a few of these to Victor. We are recording. Well, it doesn't matter when we're recording, but this episode will be up on Thursday, August 27th, 2026. Victor's website is The Blade of Perseus, victorhansen.com, the address. Do subscribe. It's only 65 bucks for the year, and when you do that twice a week, you'll be able to read Victor's exclusive articles, and he does a weekly free, excuse me, exclusive video. I see something's going on. Yeah, folks, what we love about this podcast, amongst the many things, is the kind of garage band, the garage band aspect. Garage band aspect, yes. Yeah, yeah, it's very cool. We don't have a big budget. How's that? We don't, but it's still beloved. All right, Victor, I'm going to start off this show by asking you a simple question about sanctuary cities, and I'm going to do that when we return from these initial 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-Revolution, 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 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? How 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, you know, 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 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 Signal. We are back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. So, Victor, I asked two questions from Barry McDonald in the last episode. We're doing two vacation episodes, you and I, or I know you're doing two with the great Sammy Wink. And he asked simply about sanctuary cities. Victor, tell us, what are their dangers, their legal loopholes? I don't know if you need to get into that. How did they come to be? Victor, you've talked about sanctuary cities before. They're not just a simple happenstance in America. I think they're dangerous things. But what do you think, my friend? Well, they're unconstitutional, that's for sure. And I will just preface my answer with, if Donald Trump, the MAGA movement, conservatives, Republicans, adopted the idea of sanctuary cities, a neo-Confederate, states' rights idea, right out of the mouth of John C. Calhoun, they would do something like this. They would say, the state of Utah, or a city of Casper, Wyoming, or Mobile, Alabama, we declare that we don't honor the Federal Endangered Species Act. We just don't honor it. So, if. If we have a developer and he's carving out a golf course and there is a three-eared toad that's an endangered, he's just going to smash him because we don't honor federal law here. We're not going to cooperate with the EPA. Or if somebody in a county. I'm not picking on states. I'm just doing it randomly on a count of conservative books. Let's say a county in Arkansas said, you know what, I can read the. The Second Amendment says I have a right to bear armed. And I find in our county, we've decided that it is unconstitutional to make you register a handgun with the federal government. So, we are a sanctuary city. And no one in this county in Arkansas is going to register any federal guns. And we're not going to cooperate at all with the ATF if they come in. Alcohol, tobacco, firearm. If they try to come in here, we're going to protest. We're going to combine. We're going to do everything we can. Well, you can imagine what would happen. A Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton would say you're an insurrectionist. And they would call out federal troops. Because in the Constitution, it's clear that in matters of federal law, they trump state law. And that is a federal matter, immigration. And somehow. Well, we have now over 600 entities, counties, cities, entire states like California. And that means that when law enforcement arrest. If you're in California, and I've had this happen four or five times in the last 40 years where an illegal alien on a Sunday afternoon or Saturday night went airborne drunk and plowed in and took out 10 almond trees or 20 vines, and we heard a big crash, and we went out there, and the car was littered with drugs and alcohol bottles, and the driver took off. Or sometimes on two occasions, he was there. I call the police, and first of all, I couldn't possess the car. They wouldn't let me tow it away or keep it to pay for the thousands of dollars of damage. But they didn't. They took him in and bailed him out. I said, are you going to deport him? If he said, no, we're not going to deport him. We can't. I mean, we've had this now for, I guess, 15 years. We don't recognize federal immigration law here in California. And then you say, well, does federal, maybe you shouldn't go to Yosemite. Maybe the federal government should say, we own Yosemite and we don't want you to go into our national park until you honor our national law. You're an American first and a Californian second. But they get away with it. They get lower court judges to rewrite the law. And Donald Trump is the first president, and people should remember that, who are so critical of him. He's the first person to challenge it. And he said, he has tried to cut off transportation funds and some federal funds to these cities and entities and counties and states that break federal law. And of course, the lower courts have opposed him. They've just, it's a neoconfederate idea. I thought we settled the issue, Jack, with Fort Sumner, which was a federal fort. Lincoln fortified it, and South Carolina fired on it. And they said, oh, it's in our proximity. And Lincoln said, no, no, no, no, it's a federal fort. It's federal land. And by the way, post offices and armories in your confederacy don't belong to you. They're federal property. And that was really the pretext of the whole Civil War. The issues were slavery, of course, and states' rights. But the trigger was they were not going to let federal troops occupy federal property, which was illegal. So all of a sudden, I guess the left has turned into right-wing states' right people. And it won't stop until the federal government gets a simple, it goes the same way. It goes the same way. Supreme Court and says that you have the right to deny federal funds to entities that break federal law. And believe me, they don't allow any state, any red state, purple state, county to defy federal law. You know what I mean? Yeah. You can't do it. I was struck by that, Victor, the cut, the accessibility to federal funds from our youth, mine anyway, at 50. Implementation of the 55 mile an hour was somehow tied to, if you didn't do it, you weren't getting federal funds. Exactly. I remember that. I think it was Montana or Ohio, I mean, Wyoming or Montana that said, we're not going to do it. And they said, if you don't do it, you're not going to get federal funds. I don't know why we can't do that again. But what it means is you arrest somebody for drunk driving. Right. Or for murder or for assault. And if he posts bond or there is no cash bail and you let them out, we used to say that you check their immigration status and you called ICE. And then ICE showed up and they got him and they looked at him and they deported him. If it was a crime that was, you know, a minor felony or a misdemeanor, they deported him immediately. But now, as we saw with that judge, if ICE shows up at a hearing on immigration status of a felon or even not on immigration status, just a felony, and they know that in a little alien, the judge, as we saw in that one case, she helped him escape from ICE. The Wisconsin judge. Yes. Who got a rap on the hands. Yeah. They didn't really do much to her. And they don't, they, so law enforcement is ordered by these sanctuary, mayors and governors and supervisors not to cooperate. It's against the law. Mondami will fire you if you are a policeman and you arrest a legal alien. And when he gets out of jail, you call ICE. Yeah. We talked on a recent episode about these 21 blue states in the District of Columbia suing the federal government over, you talked about illegal licenses. It just struck me while you were speaking, I guess, to have, to be here illegally and to have a CDL license. But what about the people who are handing out the CDL licenses who are government workers? There is some criminality going on there. There is. You remember it was, was it a candidate for governor in Maryland or somewhere that had an illegal alien living in their loft, in their barn or garage? And people, and they cited a statute that said, knowingly harboring an illegal alien and abetting him was a crime. It is, but no one, the left just says, there's your law. And then there's our sense of more, our law. And we're, we're better, we're smarter than you are. We're more morally superior. So we, we like the law when it's convenient and we can be, it can be used. to advance our agenda or to hurt your agenda. But otherwise we don't really follow it. We don't really care. We, if we don't have the court, we want to pack it. If we won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college, we want to get rid of the electoral college. If we don't, we can't win enough senators. We want to bring in two states and get four senators. If we're in the minority, then the filibuster is great. When we're in the majority, it's a racist holdover. They're like adolescents. They really are, you know. Anybody that's raised teenagers knows that they always look at the entire world through their self-interest for a year or two until they grow up. But they never grew up. They're arrested development. Victor, you're talking about those cars flying into your almond trees. What's, I'm just curious, what's happening right now in, on the Victor, Victor Hansen's farm? Have all the almonds been collected? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But the point I'm making is what mine have been shaken on the ground, swept up and hauled away within two days. And we had, we couldn't even see. Right. But we're not over with it because we're in, what's happened in the last 30 years, what was a great growing, raisin producing, monocropped area has now completely flipped with the collapse of. The raisin industry and the mechanization of almonds where you don't need any labor. It's all mechanized. So everybody pulled out their vineyards, including myself, planted almonds. And now you go from variety to variety to variety. So essentially from about July 25th to the mid-September, we're going to, it's going to be just because you don't irrigate because you don't want the almonds to fall on the ground, obviously, and get wet and mildew. So you deliberately have drip only on the berms and you cut back on the water and you stress the trees. So it helps the almonds fall off. You shake them, you get all that pollen, all that dust from the whole summer on the, from the leaves. It just makes, it looks like a nuclear winter. And then when it falls, another machine comes in and with big fans and brushes and pushes all the almonds into the middle. And then another machine comes up in the middle like a scooper and throws them up in the air and the, and blows out the dirt. And then it goes into a bin or a carrier to a bin. And the result is that the, I never really, it never really bothered me. But when you have 40% of your lung capacity removed and you've had lung cancer and you're still healing there, it's amazing. I go out, like I went out today. And I thought, well, it looks like I don't have to wear a mask, but within 15 minutes I could hardly breathe. It was like I had asthma or something. Yeah. And so it's, it's hard to breathe. And, and unfortunately, you know, we have pets and we don't have relatives close by. So it's hard to get somebody to watch the house and the grounds. Yeah. Or I could go up in the Sierra. When I go up to the Sierra, I thought it would be bad because it's 7,200 feet where we go. But the air is so clean, it, it outweighed the, you know, the lack of oxygen up there. Thinness. Yeah. So it's bad. It's, it's bad. Well, I have another question from Barry McDonald about Charlie Kirk. 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Perhaps, my youthful bias being in Charlie's generation, but I'd love VDH's perspective on his legacy and the unfortunate vacuum it's created for people like Tucker and Nick Fuentes. Charlie Kirk was a fan of yours, by the way. Yeah. And I talked to him 10 days before he was killed. And I went out on two occasions, I think, to speak to his group. And Phoenix. And he had two things that were unique about him. Number one is he did not go to college. So he was written off by the left as uneducated, but he was an absolute, highly disciplined autodidact, teaching himself. And he did it through online courses. He would write me an email now and then said, which is, is this Hillsdale Professor? And I said, no, it's not. Professor Good, or should I take this class from Prager? He watched all the Prager, all. And he was very well educated as a result of that. And people underestimate him. If you think that I exaggerate, go on to YouTube or TikTok or X and look at some of these debates he did at Oxford or Ivy League schools against very skilled people. I mean, he debated Hassan Piker and defeated him, I thought. He went to Oxford and did. beautifully, the Oxford debate society. So he was a natural talent. He didn't go to school. And that meant that he wasn't burdened with a lot of the baggage of academia, both good and bad. And so that was a liberating experience. The second thing he had, he had a unique idea. It seems simplistic and obvious to everybody, but no one quite developed it or exploited or tapped it the way he did. And it was something like this. Young people between the ages of 18 and 25 are the future of any movement. And you have to replace the old guard with a new guard. So you have to focus on that group, if you're young, as he was at the time. And all youth are rebellious. That's their nature as they transition from adolescence to adulthood. And they resist the authority, they. And I, you know, when I saw protests as a college student, most of it was just mindless, just, you know, you're not going to tell us what to do. I'm going to shock you with my nose ring or my personal habits, et cetera. But he knew that. And what he did was he told millions of American youth, hey, the authorities, the establishment is the left. It's not the right. They run entertainment. They run sports. They run the corporate boardroom. They run the media. They run K-12. They run academia for sure. They run foundations. They have all the bureaucratic and institutional power. So go to it. Develop your skepticism, your rebelliousness. But let me help you direct it about who is oppressing you. It's not some state legislator from Arkansas or Oklahoma or a red state. It's people in Washington and New York, the part of the bi-coastal elite who have nothing but contempt for you. And you have a righteous urge to rebel against it. And so he started all of those chapters all over the United States of young people that he encouraged to be outspoken and rebellious, but he channeled it from a conservative perspective. And that was one reason that the left hated him. They hated him. They hated him. And so he started all of those chapters all over the They hated him because he was successful. And I mean successful in going into purple states in 2024 and registering voters in Pennsylvania, especially in Michigan, and may have helped swing those votes. And two, they hated him because they hated the idea of being tagged as the fuddy duddy old establishment. They always thought they were reliving their Vietnam, the baby generation in the 1980s and decrepit with a cane. And they viewed themselves as not wearing a bra and smoking dope at Woodstock. But he said, no, no, no. These people are materialists. They're about as establishment as you can get. And they deserve a counter-revolution against them. He was a counter-revolutionary like Trump. He really was. I admired him. A lot of people who come out of academia didn't. They thought he was a good guy. He was a good guy. He was a good guy. He was a good guy. I thought he was an autodidact in the negatives. I liked him. I liked him a lot. I thought he was very, he's something, he reminded me of Rush Limbaugh, who also didn't really go to college much. And he had had some setbacks like Charlie. And Rush was 10 times as Charlie was. I would say if I go and meet 10 academics a day, seven of them don't have the natural intelligence, much less the rhetorical skills. Or the common sense of a Rush Limbaugh or Charlie Kerr. Just the way it is. Plus, I knew Charlie a little, but I knew Rush a little more. And I know you talked with him, text him all the time, talk to him a lot. But I was with him a few times and he was such a nice guy. I mean, really, really a nice guy. That was one of the tragedies of the people didn't understand. He wasn't just a nice guy. He was completely. devoid of ethnic or racial prejudice. I joked when I went to his studio, when I would speak in Palm Beach, I'd go to his kind of camouflage studio. And snurdly and all the people who. And always a guy would pick me up in a beautiful, as I said, a beautiful Mercedes. And it was Rush's Mercedes that he bought the year before. I mean, not a regular Mercedes. I mean, a huge $150,000 Mercedes or something. And then he would give it to one of these guys. Right. And the first time I went in there, I had talked to him on the phone, but I had never really been with him. And so I said to Rush, I guess you don't like white people, do you? And he's just burst out laughing. He said, well, Victor, you see any here? I said, no. And then he went through all these great guys. That guy started doing my landscaping. That guy started looking at my cars. I started a business and I helped him. And then, so it was. I think I've also told the audience that he wants. I don't know if he was playing a trick on me or what, but he said, one time I was at the Breakers giving a talk in Palm Beach and he said, there's going to be a guy out. And this guy, I sat out, you know, you sit outside the door waiting for Uber, that kind of place in front of a hotel. And this guy drives up in this enormous black Mercedes. I thought he was. I really did think he was in a cartel. He was a Hispanic guy, Cuban, and he had all black on, and he had a Fu Manchu mustache, and he had a ponytail back down his hair. And he looked like Machete, you know, that great actor that played. Oh, sure. Yeah. I really liked him. He's still alive, by the way. Yeah. In any case, he started staring at me like he was staring me down, but it put on, and he said, "You!" get in. And I said, why should I get in? He goes, because I'm here from Rush Limbaugh. So I liked him a lot. We text a lot. Kind of, you know, weird things happen in the world we can't explain until the next world, I suppose. But he said to me, one of the last things he did when he text or called me, he said, I hope you never get lung cancer. I just hope you never get it. And he had a type of lung cancer that was pressing on a major artery, so he couldn't be removed. But he went through hell with immunotherapy, as his lovely wife can attest. Yeah. Well, he certainly outlasted the initial predictions. I just have to tell you one thing quickly. Rich Lowry and I and Jay Nordlinger, this was a long time ago, we went to visit him at that same office. And when it was over, it was just a lovely time. And he said to Rich, Rich had an iPad. He said, let me see that. And this is very heavy. I'll be right back. And he came back. All three of us, he gave us an iPad, each one. Yeah, he did. Every time I went there, I went there once, and it was one of those Florida downpours, you know, in March. It must have rained five inches. And I had to get back because I was supposed to go to, part of my job was to give a lecture. And then I got two hours off and go to a dinner. So I said, I'm going to go to a dinner. And he said, I'm going to go to a dinner. And I got to call Uber. And it was pouring rain. And he said, why would you do that? And I said, I got to get back to the hotel, Rush. And your guy went home at five. He said, he went home at five because I'm taking you back. So we got, he opened up and we both, he got completely drenched and drove me all the way back to the hotel. And then every time I went there, he opened up this closet and here were iPads and iPhones. And he had a smaller one of computers. And he said, now, what do you want? And I would say, I don't need any. No, no, you're taking, I'll give you this. And these were beautiful iPhones. And then he said to me, you have children. I remember that. Do you have a son? I said, yes. My daughter is married. Oh, take this for your son. He did that all the time. He was very generous. I still use mine. I cherish it. It's very good. You know, I have a theory that part of our problem right now, when people say we're not articulating the accomplishments of the, of the Trump presidency, and we're not, we're just saying, we're just harping on, uh, socialism without giving an alternative view, or we're not harping on socialism in a way that's more effective is the loss of these irreplaceable people. If you had Rush Limbaugh, I'm not making, I'm not detracting from, is replacements. My wife listens to Clay Travis all the time in those guys. But my point is, if you had Rush back in the saddle right now, and you had Charlie Kirk, and I'll even go so far as I was watching a TikTok the other day of Tucker four years ago, he gave one of the most brilliant exegesis and explanations of the dangers of Sharia law, radical Islam, and assimilated, uh, Islamic communities in the United States. Could you believe that? He did. It was 2026. I can't, but yes. No, I couldn't. I, I thought it was AI, but my point is there was a time when Tucker was in that category. He, and so the loss of him for, you know, his, uh, a pot, he's an apostate now, but it's, you can't really replace, we've never replaced Charlie. We won't replace Rush Limbaugh. I don't know. And then you add Dennis Prager who had that horrific accident and he was a big, he was a larger than nature for bigger than nature force with his radio and his running that enormous program. It just that you lost a lot of key voices on the conservative side. Yeah. Well, Victor, uh, we're going to ask a few more questions from our listeners, but first, uh, to our listeners and our viewers, we tend to forget that civilizations are remembered less by their politics than by what they made the tools, the objects, the things built well enough to outlast the people who built them. 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I would love a discussion about the foundation of the current Iranian regime, beginning with the 1953 coup against Mossadegh. However, you tell me how to pronounce that, Victor. Mosadegh. Mosadegh. And a little background. Mohammed Mosadegh, I think. Okay. And a little background as to who he was, along with who Khomeini was, and his actions before the Islamic revolution, up to the Iran-Iraq war. Considering that we've probably be hearing about Iran a lot more in our future, any information Victor, VDH could provide on the regime would be greatly appreciated. Well, I haven't prepared, but I can tell you, there's. Here's the official narrative from the left, and from the Iranians, and from the academics. And it goes like this. British Petroleum, the Iranian oil company in its earlier iteration, depended on Iranian oil for much, and Saudi, for much of its oil, the British Empire after World War II. And they had a sweetheart deal. So far, I'm telling. Everything is uncontested. But the sweetheart deal was because Iran was sitting on a huge deposit of oil, and had no ability to extract it. So British. What became British Petroleum came in and created all of the infrastructure you see today. And they had a revenue sharing that would first pay back all of their investment. Hundreds of millions of dollars. But they were taking oil out of Iran, and the Iranians were saying, what do we get out of it? And they were trying. And the government, and this was the Shah's father, and they did have a parliament, were saying, well, we have to pay this back. And then Mosaddegh was a popular legislator. He was from a very, very aristocratic, wealthy family. And his family was. Knew the Pavlovys. He was very well established. And he led. He wasn't a communist, but he had close affinities with the Tudor party, the communist party. And this was right in the heart. Right at the height of the Cold War. And the Soviet Union was paying the Iranian communist party and its affiliates to overthrow it. So British Petroleum wanted. They were in the midst of renegotiating, and Mosaddegh and the parliament passed legislation, and I'm doing this by memory, which emasculated this Shah. And they brought through legislation to confiscate our nationalized British Petroleum, which they did, without fully paying all the investment back. And then they said, we'll negotiate a deal if you want. Otherwise, it's ours. So British Petroleum called in M6 or whatever. M60, whatever the appropriate intelligence agency of Britain, and they didn't have the resources. So they called the United States, and John Foster Dulles and this narrative called his—he was Secretary of State under Eisenhower. Ike didn't like the idea of getting—he wouldn't get involved later with Suez. He did not want to get involved. But Dulles did, and he called up his brother, the head of the CIA, Alan Dulles, and then he called up a CIA guy, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt. And he knew the area pretty well, and he organized a resistance movement to Mossadegh to help protect the British investment and what was the American interest to stop the Tudor party from getting involved. And he called up a CIA guy, Kermit Roosevelt, and he called up a CIA guy, Kermit Roosevelt, and he called up a CIA guy, Kermit Roosevelt, to help protect the British investment and what was the American interest to stop the Tudor party seven or eight percent Hispanic, about nine to ten percent black, and the rest were white. And the disproportion was, although the first lieutenant and up were a lot of the times from suburbs, they weren't wealthy. They were middle class kids from the suburbs. But you start looking at the socioeconomic profile. That was the travesty. It was so disproportionate to America. These were poor white kids south of the Mason-Dixon line from upstate New York, rural Michigan, San Joaquin Valley of California. And they died in numbers that were not proportionate to the college students, is what I'm trying to say. There was a class element of who died, and it transcended racial lines. It was Hispanic. According to their numbers in the populate, blacks, according, and whites, according to their numbers, but all of them were from the lower middle classes or poor. Not all of them, but the great majority. The officers were not necessarily true. They were more suburbanites, but that's what, and it was very ironic because the wealthier kids in college or the upper middle class that was protesting and damning, I don't mean that in a profane way, but really libeling people coming, going into Vietnam, they were safe because they had 2S deferments and they were calling monsters the lower classes that were, didn't have that opportunity to go to college. So, and I saw it at UC Santa Cruz and it was, so in my high school, the people, I think there were three people ahead of me who got killed in Vietnam that I knew. And one of them was, wow, he was a all-star straight A, Eddie Zamora. I can remember that. He was like the hero of the town. He was a fantastic athlete, a fantastic student, and he was killed in Vietnam. And then I knew a couple more as well. And no, that's a good question. And I think that was one of the reasons why they had the volunteer army, because the army came to the conclusion, that they wanted people in for more than two years in the draft so they could train them. And they were becoming more and more mechanized and sophisticated weaponry. They needed people four, five, six years. They didn't want the protest from the campus. Nixon wanted to get rid of that problem. And they knew that it was disproportionate. But if you say that they volunteered, then that, they weren't coerced. Then that sort of, stopped the anti-war. And you know, it was so funny when that volunteer army passed, just to let, I can, there was never a protest at Santa Cruz or Stanford again that I can remember. They didn't care about, you know, the pilots. From 73, 74, and 75, it was an air war. We were bombing, but they never were protesting too much. They were against it, but they didn't really go out in the streets because they weren't, they weren't liable to be, called out. All right, Victor, we have one more question that's about military history. And we'll, I'll offer you that when we come back from these final important messages. Every state is home to significant historic sites that tell the American story. But not every site is telling that story honestly and fairly. That's why the Heritage Foundation created the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites. This interactive guide equips American citizens with the tools they need, to enjoy the sites that depict some of the greatest moments in our nation's history, analyzing them for historical accuracy, and provides resources for families or educators planning a visit, 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. Hey, folks, we're back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. This particular episode, I believe, is up on Thursday, August 27. And this is a vacation, Victor's vacation episode. So, Victor, here's a question from Anonymous. It says, essentially, from the Revolutionary War through today, what were the top two battles, American battles that were strategized and well-executed where America proved victorious? This could include the Civil War. I guess it could include Midway or sea battles also. But what's your take on the most impressive, designed, executed American military action in our history? I'd say, first of all, the campaign from August of the Army of the West under William Tecumseh Sherman in 1864, the Army of the West left Tennessee and cut all their rail support, all their supply support, and went into the heart. Of the Confederacy. And its mission was to save the Union because it was pretty clear, given the summer of death with the Army of the Potomac underground. I mean, they lost 100,000 casualties. And the Copperheads, those were the people who were in the North but wanted a settlement with the South were in ascendance. And in that primary, John C. Fremont was running sort of as Lincoln didn't know what he was doing. He should be much more muscular in prosecuting the war. And then McClellan was saying that he was incompetent and it was a waste of time and they wanted to have a settlement. And it looked like they were going to win. And they were going to win. So Sherman came up with the idea that he had a strategy. And he said, I'm going to cut all support, which was completely antithetical to all military doctrine, that you have an army. And it was a huge army, 65,000 of them. And they were all from about five states. They were Ohio, from Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Minnesota. And they were farmers. For the most part. And they were used to living outdoors. And he said, it's going to be late summer and fall. We're going to live off the land. We're going to wage war against not the people who are fighting the war necessarily, but the people who caused the war, the plantation class. And we're going to make, as he said, we're going to make Georgia howl. So we're going to head into Atlanta and we've got to get there before November. And we're going to take that city, which was the main transportation hub, basically, of the Confederacy. And then we're going to take off. And we're not going to tell anybody where we're going, but he wanted to go to Savannah, the march to the sea. And so in a series of draws, he was able to outmaneuver John Bell Hood, and they could not stop him. If you look at all the Confederate forces under John Bell Hood or Hardy, if they had Wheeler's Cavalry, if they had of united, they might, and they were a little bit more adroit. But William Tecumseh Sherman was an authentic military genius. So he got to Atlanta on September 2nd. It's very controversial. He shelled the city after he said, stop everything. And Hood, and earlier had taken over from Joe Johnson, fired back. And they had an exchange of letters. It's very famous. But the city caught fire. And then he took it, and he sent the famous telegram to Lincoln. Atlanta is ours and fairly won. And that was the end of the anti-war movement. It just collapsed. And Lincoln would go on with a landslide victory, partly because of mail-in ballots, by the way, in the first mail-in ballots from the military. 75% of the Union Army, voted for Lincoln. But he was a winner after that. And more importantly, Sherman said, I'm going to not only destroy the plantations and the armories, I'm going to spare the middle classes to show you that we don't have a problem with them and create dissension. And I'm going to free slaves. And then I'm going to go to Savannah. Well, he didn't tell him Savannah yet, but he had a mind to go to Savannah. And I'll get there by Christmas. And then I'm going to take, and that was, that whole thing from Tennessee to Atlanta, that was about 300 or 400 miles with no rail support, no supplies. And then I'm going to march up, get get resupplied in Savannah by sea, and then I'm going to go through the Carolinas in midwinter, even if I have to corduroy the roads and do the same thing. And I'm going to pull up behind Bobby Lee at Richmond, who we never, the Army of the Potomac never got, Lee was a, he wasn't a great general on the offensive, as we learned from Gettysburg and others. I mean, he was a good tactician, but not a grand strategist. But boy, if he had a fortified position, he was brilliant. And Grant could not take it, take Richmond. The reason the Civil War ended when it did, this huge army of veterans pulled up right behind Lee, and they couldn't stop him. Joe Johnson couldn't stop him, nobody could. And the irony of it is, of that huge army, they ended up weighing more in better health, tan, and they only lost about 1% to disease and the enemy, and they just terrified the South. And the whole purpose of it was to break, to sow dissension between the architects of the war and the middle classes, to free slaves, to help Lincoln's abolitionist message, and to show that as far as military prowess, and bravery and courage and daring, the North, the Northern Yeoman farmer was as good or superior to the Calvarymen or the Wade Hampton mystique of the South. And because they had said that everybody's getting off the boat from Ireland and Germany, and they just joined the Union Army because they're short men now, and they don't really want to fight. And we can beat them at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg. And he shattered that sense of invincibility of the Confederate Army. And he got people, he got up to Hal Cobb's plantation, as I remember. And Hal Cobb, who was governor of Georgia, 200 slaves, fled to Savannah, but left his wife and daughter there to plead to protect it. And so Sherman came up to them and said, all your papers say I'm a terrorist. I haven't killed anybody. And I haven't touched one house of poor people. But I do want to destroy Confederate railroads and armories and plantations. And they said, you're a terrorist. He said, if I'm such a terrorist, why did he leave his wife and child in my care? Because he knew that I wouldn't hurt you. And so it was kind of ironic. And he went to the Carolinas, and that was it. And then the final anecdote to that is after that great campaign, they had a victory parade. And the Secretary of War and the Chief of Staff Halleck didn't like him, Sherman. Sherman looked rough. I mean, he looked crazy. He had a mental breakdown. He smoked cigars. He dressed, his uniform was torn up. They called him Uncle Billy. They loved him. Uncle Billy. There's Uncle Billy. You know, he was like 38 years old. Uncle Billy. And, he was like Grant, a misfit. And, you know, he didn't drink like Grant. But the Army of Potomac, they put them all in new uniforms. They marched through the parade section. They looked great. Sherman deliberately kept all the rag uniforms they'd had for six months. And then he had all these black pioneers, he called them, that they had freed. He trained them. They had pickaxes, saws, and they went ahead of the Army and made the road through the wilderness. So they marched, and they couldn't. I can't even believe how great these black people looked. And strong, powerful. And then they had the Army of the West. And these guys were all big husky farmers, I must say. Many of them were Scandinavians. I was going to say, I smell something Swedish coming. Yes. And the German attache who was there watching it said, this Army could plow anywhere. There's not a European Army that could stop that Army. And they were so scared because when he went up on the dais to shake hands, he didn't like Halleck, and he didn't shake Stanton, I guess, was, well, I remember his name, the Secretary of War. Edwin Stanton. Yeah. He didn't shake his hand. And everybody, and you know how the papers were in those days, Sherman to take Washington. Who can stop him? Army of Potomac can't touch these people. So then he marched them right through the town. They thought he was going to have a coup. And he went out to a big meadow, and he dismissed the Army. He said, go home. So that was a most brilliant campaign. Then very quickly, I think actually the most incredible victory, there's a book called Incredible. It was the Battle of Midway on June 4th to 6th, 1942. And remember, that was only six, that was only six months after Pearl Harbor. And it was only a month after Coral Sea where we lost our big carrier, the Lexington, and the Yorktown was almost destroyed. And the Japanese had at that time nine carriers. And the whole idea was they were going to, after the bombing of 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, the campaign of the B-26s that- I believe. Billy Mitchell. Billy Mitchell. Well, I'd say Jimmy Doolittle, excuse me. Jimmy, you're right. Sorry. Yeah. Jimmy Doolittle orchestrated from the WASP and Hornet. They were so paranoid. They said, we've got to take Midway Island. And we cracked the code. And then we sent, all we had left was the Enterprise and the Hornet. And then the most amazing fact, they brought the Yorktown in. It was almost destroyed at Coral Sea. And they only had 72, hours by the time it limped back to get back out to Midway, because they knew the Japanese were coming. And they shut down the power grid and they rebuilt or repaired the Yorktown. So they had three carriers. And the genius Yamamoto, who wasn't such a genius, instead of having six carriers against two, so you're talking maybe 400 planes against 120, and the zeros were better than our Wildcats at that time. They only had, we had, they had two disabled carriers at Coral Sea, and they went into the Aleutians with another two. So they only had four carriers. And then they thought we would only have two, but we had three. So it was four against three. And we lost the Yorktown, was finally destroyed. But in a brilliant move, Bill Halsey got a skin disease from nerves. For some reason, it wasn't quite shingles. And they put this untried Admiral Spruance in, and he bet, he went, they didn't really know where the Japanese are. They knew they were going to attack because they broke their code. But some of these brilliant lifer pilots from the pre-war army, Lim Massey and others, they all had names like Wade and Lim. And they were kind of a pawn sacrifice. They sent in the Japanese. They sent in the torpedo bombers, devastators. They only went like 100 miles an hour. They were like 1937 planes. What were they called, like buffaloes, something? No, those were rooster buffaloes. They had those on the island of Midway. They were obsolete, but they were called devastators, TBDs. And they would go very low about, when the time, when they went against the wind and they had that huge torpedo, many of them torpedoes were defective. They only went 100 miles an hour. They had a crew, a crew of two or three, and they had to have fighter cover. And they went in, they got separated from the fighters, were way above. And they went in and they didn't, they did not flinch. They went right out the carrier and the 40 planes that went in, one survived. They butchered them. And then another 40, and I think 15 survived. They wiped out the entire torpedo plane arsenal of those three carriers. But, and this is the irony of it, why the Zeros and the carrier protective air fleet were too greedy to kill these vulnerable, they didn't look up. And up was the dive bombers. And that was the SBTDs. They were a good plane. And they usually would be shot down though. They weren't nearly as fast as Zeros, but they weren't flying level. They were diving from about 15,000 miles an hour. And they were not flying level. 15,000 feet straight down. And what did they see? They had a protective fighter cover. They came straight down. And the Japanese Nagumo had been bombing the island of Midway in preparation to invade it with high explosive bombs. Then he was told, uh-oh, the carriers are here. We've got to change all of the bomb armament to anti-armor. Uh, penetrating bombs so they can go through the fleet, you know, and blow it up. So they said, well, just if he and his subordinates say, don't worry about it. Just get everybody off these carriers because we've got gas out here. We've got people because if you cite a carrier, they may be coming. No, no, no, no. That's not protocol. Take all the planes on the deck, take all the bombs off and replace them with anti-armor penetrating bombs, and then we'll launch it properly. Well, that took about two hours. And right when they were ready to launch, out of the nowhere came the dive bombers, and there was gasoline hoses on all four of the carriers. There were bombs that hadn't been taken below, and they blew up four of them. They wiped all four out. Three the first day and one the next morning. And so they had a tough time for the rest of 1942 in the naval battles around Guam. And then, of course, we had the water canal because we got down to one carrier, the Enterprise. And the Japanese had such a lead on us, they still had five or six. But, of course, we had 27 Essex, each one of them better than any carrier in the world that were being built. And so by early 1943, basically the war was predetermined in the Pacific, the naval war. We were going to have this huge fleet coming. But that Battle of Midway and Sherman's March to the Sea are, I think, the most incredible feats of American arms. Well, folks, we're at three credits, so it's like a seminar course. That was brilliant, Victor. I didn't get into the worst ones, but we could talk sometimes about them. We'll do that in another episode because we've gone way over. So no comments. We're not reading any comments at the end of these shows. We'll just say, Victor, you were terrific as ever. Thanks for all the wisdom you shared. I want to thank the people from the Victor Davis Hanson Fan Club on Facebook for sending in the questions. Victor, I want you to have a very restful, dust-free vacation. I will. And to Mrs. Hanson, too. Thanks very much, Victor. Thanks, folks, for watching and listening. And we'll be back soon. I'm going to show my watch again. We'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Bye-bye. Thank you, everybody, for watching and listening. See you soon. 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.