Why Trump's Midterm Defeat Isn't the End | Victor Davis Hanson

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New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. A president in his last two terms under our system is set free. He has no elections to worry about. He signs executive orders. He does what he wants. As long as he keeps his minority of this case, perhaps 45 seats, these Republicans together, they don't have 60 votes to override. But you have to have solidarity because you only have a four or five seat safety valve. That's what I was saying. Not don't panic. And he can do a lot of good stuff. Well, hello, ladies and hello, gentlemen, and welcome to Victor Davis Hanson in his own words on the Daily Signal Network. I'm Jack Fowler, luckiest man in America. I get to ask Victor Davis Hanson questions twice a week. Victor does two of these shows with me, two with the great Sammy Wink. I'm a big fan of the show. Speaking of the Daily Signal, he does four weekly shows there. Victor Davis Hanson in a few words. Victor's Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The Wayne and Marsha Buskey Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Senior Contributor to the Daily Signal. Author of the bestselling book, The Counter-Revolution, The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement. We are talking on Saturday, November 7th. This particular episode will be up on Tuesday, November 10th, 2026. We've got a lot to talk about. Victor did initial post-election thoughts. He offered them with Sammy earlier this week. But Victor's just written a very interesting and long post on X that he will discuss further here. We have some insane, Victor, anti-Semitic efforts in Philadelphia. Today is the eve of Kristallnacht. Nazi Germany in 1933. Susie Wiles is out as Chief of Staff. Get Victor's take on that. Chuck Schumer is some of the candidates. Not candidates, elected officials. We don't want him as our majority leader in the Senate. Stress on the Electoral College, given some of the outcomes, state legislative outcomes. Anyway, it's a ton of stuff to get Victor's take on. And we'll do that when we come back from these initial important messages. Did you know the Constitution protects your right to raise your children according to your faith? The Supreme Court has repeatedly made this clear. But when a Christian father in Washington tried to exercise that right, his nine-year-old son was taught LGBTQ plus material in school anyway. Konstantin Averkiev met with his son's fourth grade teacher at the beginning of the school year and asked for advance notice. And a religious opt-out for any LGBTQ plus instruction. The teacher agreed. But months later, Konstantin's son came home describing a Pride Month lesson he'd sat through that included a discussion on so-called gender change surgery. Konstantin only found out after the fact. When he later asked the school district to honor his request for notice and religious opt-out from all LGBTQ plus instruction and requirements going forward, the school denied most of them as not feasible and practically impossible. With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, Konstantin filed a lawsuit against the Lake Washington School District for violating his religious freedom and his parental rights. Thanks to the support of friends like you, ADF is providing free legal representation for parents like him around the country. When you give today, your generosity will be matched dollar for dollar while funds last to help preserve parents' fundamental rights. Go to joinadf.com slash Hanson or text Hanson to 83848 to make your tax-deductible gift today. That's joinadf.com slash Hanson or text Hanson to 83848. We are back, folks, with Victor Davis Hanson. In his own words. Victor, let's get to your ex-post in a few minutes. But first, I'd like to just raise this anti-Semitic Philadelphia bike gang. And I'm just going to read here a paragraph from a Wall Street Journal article today. This city, Philadelphia, has been wracked by a vile campaign to target Zionist businesses. A group of lefty cyclists called Philly Bike On Your Life, is urging locals to tour the city this weekend and intimidate owners, employees, and patrons of prominent Jewish-owned restaurants. Ride around the Ritter House with us as we show these Zio business owners that we see them for the disgusting humans they are. That's a quote. The Instagram announcement says, other radical groups such as Philly Riders Against the War on Gaza have promoted it. I believe also, Victor, the Democrat Socialists of America, one of their branches, is involved with this. Victor, what's your take on this? Well, I'm going to see what Bernie Sanders says, because he always tells us that the Democratic Socialists and the Islamicists in his party that he welcomed in are not anti-Semitic. They're just anti-Israel. Do they know? They said they're going to go to Zionist businesses. So, Kristallnacht was the night of, I think, November 9th, 10th, 1938. And just to refresh everybody's memory, there had been a diplomat killed in, I think it was Paris, by a teenage Polish, not German, Jewish kid. But they had been waiting. The SA and the SSS and Der Stormer and all these Nazis had been waiting and had planned an event if they had a catalyst. So, they used that. And then they said the Jews were in rebellion. They weren't. And they went after, it was in Berlin, it was in Hamburg, it was Vienna. I think it was even in the Czechoslovakia, the German part, the Sudetenland. And they killed 100 Jews, but they destroyed, they called it the Kristallnacht because they destroyed, I think it was 10 or 20,000 windows, shattered the glass, picked out Jewish stores, roughed them up, shut them down. And then when they filed insurance claims, they stole the money. And that was the end of them, the businesses. So, they are picking everybody. Just remember, today is November 7th, and this weekend will be the 8th and 9th, 8th tomorrow, Sunday, and then it'll be 9th and 10th. So, they're timing this. Think about it. Think about that. They're timing this demonstration to go after Jewish stores to commemorate one of the worst chapters in modern Western civilization. And that is often seen in the history of the rise of the Nazi party in Germany as the point of no return. That was the first time they openly went after and murdered Jews with no compunction. And they wanted to see what the reaction would be of the general public. And there was none. Nobody said a word. So, after that, they had a green light to do whatever they wanted. And what these people are doing is the same thing. How do they know if a Jewish jewelry store or a shoe shop or clothing store is pro-Israel or not? They're American citizens. But they somehow, and this is scary, maybe there are restaurants that have Mediterranean food, but they have them. They have a mechanism of knowing. They think that a Jewish person owns it. They didn't say Israeli. They said Jewish. And so, therefore, they're just going to blanket go in there and intimidate people. And let's see if they go, they jump the shark and try to replicate Kristallnacht by breaking windows and things. And where is. Heichem Jeffries said yesterday I don't know if he meant it or not, but when he heard that Stephen Miller was the new chief of staff, he said that Stephen Miller was a tumor that had to be excised, as if he was a malignancy. He's been very close to Nazi vocabulary because that was one of the ways that Hitler, they talked about them as being rodents, as insects and tumors, cancers on the German body politic. So here's your speaker of the house who now thinks he's the nominal head of the new socialist democratic Islamist party, and he won't say a word about this planned neo-Nazi type of commemoration of one of the worst chapters in the modern West. And then at the same time, he says that a presidential chief of staff is a tumor that has to be cut out before he's even said a word in the new position. So it's getting very scary. And then I was just curious. So then I went through some podcasts. And of course, the same old stuff is going on. Tucker's, I think 70% of his shows are on the Jews. He has another person. He had two more guests on the Jews. And so I think I'm going to have a little policy of my own. Maybe it's because of my health. Sometimes I get pretty worn out. I'm just not going to go on any podcasts where the person, openly demagogues Israel or Jews. I'm not going to do it. I have no problem when the person says I don't support Israel's foreign policy. But when they start getting into the Jewish people or the Israelis are evil, I don't want to go. I don't want to have anything to do with them. So I'm done. I'm not going to go on one podcast if that person has done that. And that'll be about six or seven, I may think. Yeah. And- Yeah. It's getting kind of scary. When you're a senator and your uncle ran an ad saying that tiny little Israel with 120 at the 1% of the budget, and I guess it's what, 0.2 of 1% of the population of the United States, when that community is governing our policy and is responsible for why you can't buy eggs and bananas, then you're pretty sick. And if you said that about Muslims, I think you'd be in big trouble. Hell yeah. And then now we're also seeing Jack El-Sayed is really, I guess, kind of a Napoleonic complex of being short, I guess. I don't know what it is, but he's always like a banty rooster taking on people. He allegedly touched a journalist. The other day. And he's always combative and he's fighting. And then as a general rule, everybody, as I said with Sammy, anytime a candidate on the eve of the election has a press conference or a rally, and he says certain things, and then after he wins on the next day, he contravenes those things, you know who he is. So he was saying that he was more interested in the press problems and he was fully assimilated and these people were racist. And then right after he tried to heavily accentuate his Muslim name, and then people in the audience were what? Yelling, free Palestine, free Palestine, which is a synonym or euphemism for destroy Israel. You're listening to a quick ad. You know what else is quick? Selling your car on Carvana. Just put in your vehicle information and we'll give you an offer. Done. No hassle, no negotiation, no guy from an online listing low-balling you, which means by the time I'm done explaining this, you could have basically done it. Still haven't started? Hey, better late than never. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Victor, I wanted a little note here. I didn't send this to you beforehand, but I just saw it before the show. We started recording at Northwestern University. They've canceled a food festival because a pro-Israel group wanted to participate. This is Northwestern's Spoon University. It canceled its cultural food festival. And our goal for cultural food fest has always been to bring our campus community together by celebrating different cultures through the culinary tradition. Spoon University stands against discrimination in all forms. We condemn the ongoing genocide in Gaza, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Victor, I would bet there are a hundred of such these things happening across America today, like with Philadelphia and this dumbass little Northwestern thing. But the Pandora's box has been opened. It is. I was thinking you were going to say, and we condone, we condone. The Chinese government has one million Uyghurs in a virtual concentration camp. And we condone the ritual systematic butchery of Christians by the Nigerian elements in the Nigerian government. And we condone the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Azerbaijan. And of course, we condemn October 7th when 6,000 Armenians were killed by the Chinese government. And we condone the ethnic cleansing of people came, butchered, raped, mutilated, beheaded innocent civilians, 1,200 of them. We condone that. But no, no, no, no, no. And they're cowardly. And why are they doing this? They're doing this because over the last 30 years, insidiously, billions of dollars poured into universities, and they created for the first time what they called Middle East studies, but they were mostly Islamicist outposts of Palestine propaganda and radical Islamicism. And they were endowed, and they're all the big universities, and those are the nexus points, the lounge, so to speak, for a whole stream of Middle East students, which would have been fine if they had had the attitude, I'm leaving a dysfunctional Middle East, Syria, Egypt, Iraq. Um, I don't like the, the lack of freedom in the Gulf States. I don't, I'm afraid to be in Algeria. Libya is dangerous, but they don't do that. And so I'm so happy to be in the United States. Instead, they congregate in these enclaves, and then they replicate the same type of chanting and intolerance that, when it's replicated in, as a collective, makes their own countries. Almost impossible to live in. At least they think they are, because they made the choice to come here. And then when they come here, they, it's kind of like a Californian that says, I can't live here anymore. It's the taxes. And he goes to Texas, and then he looks around and says, wow, these evil conservatives made a really great place. The freeways are not like California. My gosh, the buildings are cleaner. They have less homelessness. The budget's balanced. People are a lot friendlier. There's not all these ethnic tribes competing with each other. So there must be a big margin of error so I can bring back my old California values and try to implement. So let's spend a lot of money on green, green energy, and let's ban, you know, fossil fuels. And we're going to go vegging as Tallarico is. And let's open the border, just like we did, because I think it'll be another 20 years until we can, you know, destroy that place. And then when we destroy it, maybe we'll go to Tennessee. And that's the attitude. Well, they take their moral superiority with them. Hey, Victor, message for our listeners and our viewers. Most people know there's chlorine in their tap water. How could you not when your glass of water smells like it was filled at the local pool? But they drink it anyway because they've been told it's what keeps the water safe. What they haven't been told is what chlorine becomes after it is added to your water. That's what I found. And that's why I filter all my water through my Cove Pure, which is behind me. If you're watching, always keep it handy. Chlorine isn't even the biggest problem. Chlorine levels in your water are regulated. But what's not regulated are chemicals that form when chlorine reacts with naturally occurring organic matter in your water. Particles from rivers, soil, plant matter that make it through the treatment process. It creates chemical byproducts that are called T. H. M. S. The government calls T. H. M. S. probable human carcinogens. And the T. H. M. 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And because Victor Davis Hanson, in his own words, has partnered with Cove Pure, they're giving our listeners and our viewers $250 off if you use this special link. Go to covepure.com slash vdh right now. That's Cove Pure, C-O-V-E-P-U-R-E dot com slash vdh. Don't wait. And we thank the good people from Cove Pure for sponsoring Victor Davis Hanson, in his own words, and I say a salute. Victor, if you can slurp, I can too. So anyway, bear with me, folks, for the sound of my luscious voice. Very briefly here, let me just say that Victor has written a significant post on X. You'll find it there. His handle is at VD Hanson. It may also now be up on the Blade of Perseus, Victor's website. By the way, that's victorhansen.com. Check that out. Go there. Do subscribe. Here's what Victor wrote. Just a little bit. The term is not the end term. It is too soon to calibrate the direction of the post-midterm Democratic and Republican parties. But if the first 72 hours are any indication, and despite the soon-to-be speaker's denials, the left is already bragging about subpoenas, and it is intoxicated by the notion of investigations and impeachments. And Victor says a lot, lot more. And he's going to tell us what more he said and why he wrote this piece. Victor. Well, I was a little upset. My point is, if you had criticisms of the administration and you supported it and you were constructive, why didn't you voice it? And then after the election, all these people, you know, it's what John Kennedy, F. Kennedy said after the Bay of Pigs. He said, success has a thousand mothers or parents. And he said, success has a thousand mothers or parents. And failure is an orphan. So what I'm getting at is all these people are coming out now, and especially in the Wall Street Journal, but everywhere saying that they should, not that they should have done this, but these people, it's over, it's done, it's nothing. And what I wanted to do in this tweet, and I have a longer version of it that's coming out Monday at American Greatness or Tuesday, is a lot of it was the messaging. And I had been saying that for a long time. So what I did in this, first, I want to tell everybody, just take a deep breath because the Trump movement is not over. And the Trump presidency is not over. It's got two and a half years almost. You know, we've got two more months in this year, and then we've got a month in 2028. So it's three months. And 27 months total. 27 months, exactly. And so what I'm getting at is, if you just look at Barack Obama and look at Clinton, who came in with bigger majorities than Donald Trump and got wiped out over their two midterms, not so much Clinton the second time, but they lost what happened to them, nothing. They started to do executive orders. Could they get new legislation through? No. Could they appoint more liberal judges? No. Could they replace a cabinet member? No. And I want to qualify that, that the Democrats are much more unyielding about confirmations than the Republicans were. Some of them, they confirmed even though they were Democrats. And then foreign policy? No, nothing. The Republicans yelled to high heaven that Bill Clinton should have congressional authority to join the coalition of Democrats. And they did. And they did. And they did. And they did. And they of NATO partners in Serbia. And we bombed for 77 days without congressional authority on his initiative. And it turned out to be, if you believe it was necessary to save the Kosovo people from slaughter by Milosevic, it led to Milosevic's downfall. He cut a deal with Gingrich and he then claimed credit for it. He wouldn't have been able to do it without Gingrich, but he said he balanced the budget for four years. And he did, but he didn't do it by himself. He did it with Newt Gingrich, but he worked across the aisle. He had a lot of executive orders. He and Joe Biden were the partners par excellence. They set the example of pardoning people. Remember that when these questions of pardons come up. And then Barack Obama, he was more ambitious, my gosh. He recognized Cuba by himself. He didn't even go to Congress. He went into the disastrous Paris Climate Accord without Congress. People said, well, aren't you a constitutional lawyer? Don't you realize the Senate has to have a two-third ratification vote? No, I don't think so. I'm a constitutional lawyer and we're going to do the Iran deal. They need $400 million at night on a pallet. So he did that and he remade the Middle East. He created in his last two years a Shia alternative to the Gulf states. And Israel and the moderate Jordan and Egypt states. And it was basically the Syrians under the crazy Hassads and Iran, no need to talk about that. And then Hezbollah who had taken over Lebanon and then Hamas. And then the Houthis had taken most of a lot of Yemen. And that's what he gave us in his last term. And you know what? When the campaign started, that's what I was writing about. The president, he was the president of the United States. He was the president of the United States. And the president just gets above it all. Al Gore disastrously said he wouldn't support, he didn't want Clinton campaigning. Clinton said, that's even better. You'll fight it out with George W. Bush and I'll be presidential. Obama said, I'm going to interfere in this election, but I'm going to do it quietly. I'm going to get Comey and Brennan, Clapper into my office and I'll have Susan Rice take phony notes. And then they'll go after Russian collusion, but I won't do it. I'll just go out in the golf place and say, you know, I'd like to be president if I just called in from the basement, third term. And he did have a third term with Biden. But the point I'm making is that he went out with 60% approval and Clinton went out with about 68%. And they had been lower than Trump at 37, 38. So the president under our system is not a parliamentary prime minister when he loses the majority in the Senate. He's not going to resign, nor does his party have to resign. And then we know what happens with wave elections. Remember 2010 and the Tea Party really didn't have a particular leader, but they swept 63 seats. And then they thought we were going to win the Senate in 2010 and 12, and they nominated, was it Christine Engel or whatever her name was? And in Delaware, they nominated that poor woman. She said, she's not a witch. I'm not a witch. Oh my God. I met her as she came to National Review, Christy something, right? I'll figure it out. It was really cruel. When you have to make a campaign ad saying you're not a witch, you can't win. So they were doing, they were picking and they got extreme and they thought they were going to do this and that, but they had no leader. And the same thing happened in the Clinton. Once in a while, it was exposed and Ken Scar started publishing some of them and they, I can't repeat it on this show, but some of the details of the sexual Congress between Monica and Bill came out in the public. They were very gross. It was taking place in the little bathroom off the, the Oval Office. And people said, this is disgusting. And then when he lied about it under oath and said that he had not had sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Galsky, Monica Lomonowsky, he, he lied and he was disbarred. So then what do you do with him? Well, what do you do with him when the, the economy is about 4% GDP, the inflation is about two and a half percent and he's paid back two years of the debt. There's no, there's budget surpluses. And then he's got economists saying, if you let Bill, and Gingrich Goh will get four years. And if you let the winner Al Gore or Bush continue this, the entire debt will be paid off within six years. Well, why would you impeach a president like that? And we did, we on the right, and it just backfired terribly. And he picked up seats. And then even though he didn't have the Congress, he picked up, I think five seats in the house and he didn't lose any Senate. So I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking, you know, the, the overreaction will be even worse with the socialist and coupled with the presidential running, Donald Trump declared his November 15th of 2022. That, Jack, is eight days from now in the same term. Eight days from now, is somebody going to declare their present? It's going to be soon. And once that starts, nobody's going to want to know what Steve Miller's wife did on Tuesday afternoon or how big his house is. They're not going to want to know any of that. They're going to want to go. It's going to be Rubio, DeSantis, J.D. Vance, AOC, Newsom, El-Said. Don't forget Chris Christie. Chris Christie's already said he's going to run. He wants to get 1%. So I guess. Or skim milk. He wants to have that 1%. But my point is, a president in his last two terms under our system is set free. He has no election. So worry about. Yes, he doesn't have nominations, judges and cabinet. And that's bad. But as long as he keeps his minority of this case, perhaps 45 seats, these Republicans together, they don't have 60 votes to override. So if they want to say, pass a law and say, we're going to repeal the estate tax exemption. So no more 19 million. It'll go down to 1 million. And they go in and they vote. And it's 58 to 42. And they get some Republicans to join them. And then he vetoes it. And that's it. They don't get 60. They can stop them. But you have to have solidarity because you only have a four or five seat safety vow. You can't have Murkowski and others joining the left. So basically, that's what I was saying. Don't panic. And then I also said, I tried to go through systematically what were the symptoms of what everybody said. J.D. said four things. MAGA, there was not enough America First, economics, the war, and Israel. I think he got two of them. There was anger over the war, and I'll address that in a second very quickly, and the economy. But I don't know what America First is. He took a beating from the tariffs. That was all designed to tell foreign entities, if you come to the United States and give jobs to the forgotten, you don't have any tariffs. If you don't, you're going to be tariffed off the charts. And all he did was give tips, no tax for tips, refunds for Social Security for certain people, no more taxes. It was all a America First. Okay. So then there's two things that I tried to address very quickly. The economy. Yes. But I keep asking this question. In 2022, Joe Biden was running. He was president. Excuse me. He had his first midterm. And everybody, including I, thought there would be a red wave. Why? Because he was pulling 40%. Wars were breaking out. There was a huge war in Ukraine that he had precipitated by cutting off offensive weapons to Ukraine and saying he wouldn't react unless it was a major invasion. And he had pulled out of Afghanistan just months earlier, August of 2021, his first year. And he had never been over 40% since because he left $140 billion we put into Afghanistan. I don't know how much of that we want to count. Renewed buildings, warehouses, roads, bridges, a billion-dollar embassy, $350,000, a million for Bagram refitting, 100,000 vehicles, everybody. We're all worried about car prices. 100,000 we bought, brand new vehicles turned over. But when you put the weapons and the infrastructure and the time, it was over $50 billion easily, more than the Iraq war, the Iran war, excuse me. And he was unpopular. And how did he survive? He picked up a Senate seat. He only lost nine House. Yes, he lost the House, but the Republicans only had seven advantages. So, was the economy then good? Well, Victor, 80% that year said it's the economy. So, obviously, the economy. No, it was much worse than the 2026. Interest rates were higher. GDP was lower. Inflation was almost. It was three times higher than it is now during our midterms. The poverty rate was a point and a half lower. The median family income was, depending how you adjudicate it, either 14,000 or 8,000 lower. The stock market, if we go on the day of the. Right before our midterms, it was 20,000 points lower under Biden. At his midterms, or now, maybe 17,000 or 18,000. I could go on, but the economy was terrible. And yet, we didn't have a red wave. And now, we're told the economy is terrible when it wasn't nearly as terrible as Biden's. And we did have a blue wave. So, I was trying to explain in this article, there were three reasons. The media just said that there wasn't. You know, this was COVID. Donald Trump did it. Well, no, Donald Trump didn't do it. He left. The office. And Joe Biden inherited a 1.9 annual inflation rate. And he enjoyed a 7.4 aggregate rise over four years. Okay. So, then they said, well, what was it then? What was it? I said this to Megyn Kelly. Well, it was the media. Janet Yellen said, well, this is temporary. And we know what Trump. Every day, you have to use the word unexpectedly. 165,000 jobs just created unexpectedly. Unexpectedly. But the media, number two, if you're going. It's very different inheriting 7% inflation versus 21, three times higher. So, when Donald Trump had 2.7 in his first year, you added. 21% to it, because that's what prices are. So, now you have 28% coming into this year. 28%. But it wasn't Donald Trump. Excuse me, not 28. You have 21 plus 2.7, 23.7. Joe Biden, three times higher, 9.1, but he's coming in with seven. So, he has 16. So, you got eight points, eight percentage points higher, because of the inheritance. Nobody said this then. We are going to lower the rate of inflation. We inherited 21% in four years. It averages to 5.1. My promise in the first year is to have that. He did that almost, 2.7. We'll see what it is this year. It might be 3.5. We'll see, because of the order. And then he should have said, and I can't lower the 21%. That's why you can't afford things. Lower the rate of inflation, so we don't increase it too much. But more importantly, I can raise wages, and I can raise per family income, median. And he did. And it was negative wage growth in 2022. Negative. And it was positive in 2020, about 2.5%. So, you give people more money as compensation, and you lower the rate of inflation. And you lower the rate of inflation that prices grow. And finally, that rat and the snake, that big lump starts to disappear. That's all he had to say. Instead, he said, I'm going to lower prices. Yes, but it was impossible for him to do that without a recession. We call it deflation. Look at Japan. They can lower prices from the year, from 10 years, but they had a recession. It's a deflationary spiral. So, that wasn't articulated. And then very quickly, I said, the other two, everybody wanted the border closed. It was closed. So, everybody said, well, it's not an issue. Why would I vote on that? It's done. It was done. And then all the polls said, would you like to deport aliens? Yes, 80%. Would you like to deport people who are criminals? Yes, 90%. Would you like to, when it was phased this phrase, would you like to deport. Illegal aliens, even when they haven't committed crimes? Yes, 55%. But here's the kicker. What nobody could have anticipated was, we want the border closed and we want all 10 million that Biden let in, especially those 500,000 criminals deported. But we go to bed at 10 o'clock at night and we wake up at six and we want them all gone that during the evening. So, then when we walk out on the streets of Minnesota or Phoenix, We don't see any ICE officers that are participating pulling aside her Linda that works for my cousin or Jose who cuts the palm trees for my grandfather's place. I don't want to see that. I like the idea and the abstract because I pull that way, but I don't want to see ICE officers. And when the left discovered that and Kristi Noem and Corey Linandowski didn't understand that and thought, I'm going to wear, you know, kind of like SWAT team stuff and I'm going to do all these photo ops, make all these about arresting people, you played right in the hands of Tim Walz and the Minnesota Lunatics. They have 600 sanctuary cities, everybody, and jurisdictions. How do you get 10 million people out of there who spread all over the United States that Biden let in at 10,000 to 12,000 a day? So what I'm getting, did Kristi Noem say this? Yes. We've got a big problem. We inherited 12 million people to 10 million who came in illegally. We think there's 20 to 30 million people that have been here for years that are illegal. There's 55 million that weren't born in the United States. There's 70 million people who were not born or their parents were not born. There's 17 percent of the population. But we're going to address first the 10 million that Biden did. But when we do that, we're back to square one before Biden because both Republicans and Democrats destroyed the border. Therefore, we are going to get the 500,000 first and they started. But when we're doing that, if we go to Home Depot and we hear a drug dealer is there and there's eight guys standing out, we're not going to just take the drug dealer. We're going to ask for IDs for everybody. And if we find that they have had detainers or they're here illegally, we have no choice but to enforce the law. So that's what they did. And then everybody took their photos and it was sometimes violent. And the next thing we knew, mostly Hispanic, Mexican-American, all ICE officers were rendered SS. And Christy Noem and Tom Holman, who's a great guy, they were gout lighters, right? Working for the Nazis. And the 500,000 criminals were misunderstood. And the 500,000 criminals were and the people who came in here illegally were, they were patriotic. And that's not a crime. So what could they have done? They could have been very careful to be not seen and not heard and don't brag about deport and just talk quietly and carry a big stick. Do not talk loudly, carry a twig. The second thing they could have done is they could have said, we have 20 million other people plus. Let's just say if you have been here five years and you were not part of the Biden stampede, and let's say you've never committed a serious crime. And let's say if you're able-bodied and you're not on welfare, you can get a green card if you're going to work. But you have to pay a $5,000 fine. And you have to pay a $5,000 fine. And you're not going to be voting. You're not going to be given citizenship. Now, if you have a green card, and you're a permanent resident, and you're not a felon, and you're not on welfare, and you're fully employed, then maybe you should hire a lawyer after you pay your fine, and you could apply for citizenship. Reagan did that, and only 30% of the people under Simpson and Lazzoli applied for citizenship. I talked about that in The Dying Citizen. The reason they did it, because we had so devalued citizenship, there was no difference. There was no difference between residents. But did we do that? No. We didn't do any of that. I know we have to take a break, but Jack, when I come back, I just wanted to talk about the war, and we'll be finished. Well, let me read a spot here, and then you can do that. So to our viewers and our listeners, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. 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The war did contribute to gas prices, but as I said earlier, 2026, on a midterm day four days ago, the price of gas was $4.03. It's now a little lower. On the same day four years ago, it had come down from a $5.03. Everybody got that? June, July, $5, and it started to go down. But on election day, it was about $3.83. So you're trying to tell me that the price of gas that had gone up about 20 cents higher, and let's remember, there's inflation for four years. So $3.83 in 2022 is about the same as $4.03 or $4.05 now. So the price of gas was almost the same. And the price of gas in 2026 was in a cycle between 2.7 and 3.5 percent inflation, 24 and 25. The price of gas at the same price in 2022 was a part of a 9.1 inflation. And I have to hear from everybody that, oh, it was inflation, it was gas. Yes, that was the perception. And the media contributed to that, and it wasn't explained why. So was gas higher? It was down to $1.83 in some states before the war, yes. But we hear this testimony from John Kennedy. I know you heard it. Right, Jack, where he said, I had seen the intelligence. They had the ability very quickly to have missiles to reach, and we know they could reach Diego Garcia. You do a little compass and you get your little compass and you sweep it around, you'll see they can hit most of the capitals of Europe. And I was on a broadcast that I won't mention. They said, well, I'm not going to listen to this, Victor, and I'm not going to refight the We War. There was no, they didn't pose any threat. Okay. You mean they don't pose any threat with possible nine nuclear weapons, which Kennedy said they hadn't, and Wolkoff said, and it's probably there, the ability to make that. And we had the Iranian Speaker of the House and others say that their plan was to create 200,000 missiles and drones, and then tell the Europeans and the United States, which they had told us, we're going to try to take out our nuclear project. We are going to use this to destroy the Middle East as you know it by taking out all the oil fields, desalinization plants in the Gulf States and the oil exporters. So that was why we went in. And when we went in, it was absolutely a brilliant military operation. They did not, yes, we lost 23 men. We did not lose 7,500 when I was told on a podcast, this is just like Afghanistan. And this is just like Iraq. And this, and I had another podcaster say, well, you're defending Vietnam. It's always the light at the end of the tunnel. No, we lost 57,000 dead over a decade. Are you trying to tell me that's the same thing? We lost 23 people. That was tragic. The cost of the war so far is less than what Joe Biden abandoned in Afghanistan. And it's going to be a lot less than Javier Becerra's with and he knows a lot of people who who were directly involved, so I don't think you'll deal much with it, and fraud in California. Okay, so we stopped, and then we decided, well, this regime killed 40,000 of its own people. We're trying to denuclearize them, but we're also trying to make it easy on the people that are victims. So let's not do what Bill Clinton did and hit the bridges. Let's not do what Bill Clinton did and hit the electrical grid. Let's not do what Barack Obama did in Libya and hit the port facilities. Let's not do what Barack Obama did in Libya and knock people off TV and radio. And let's not arm the Kurds or the other ethnic minorities because the Israelis want to do it, but we're worried about Turkey. Turkey says no, so we can't do it. And all I'm saying is, let's not do it. Let's not do it. Let's not do it. Let's not do it. After 38 days, the job was just about done. There was some nuclear material allegedly put into Pickaxe Mountain. Had we done a couple more weeks, maybe a week more, and hit dual-use targets and armed the Kurds and taken the sanctions that came in June and July and August, and if we had done that earlier with secondary crushing embargoes and boycott, we could have done that earlier. But that's water under the bridge. We essentially then talked. And I know in this program, Jack and I said nonstop, why are we talking? Why don't we just hit them hard, eliminate the threat, leave a carrier group to keep the straight open, cripple them with sanctions, and go home? And then we can always come back and mow the lawn if we have to. But no, it was talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Talk, talk, talk. And what's ironic about this, everyone, is the people who advocated talk, talk, talk are now the people who were saying the war was never needed, there was no threat, and these people got us, Marco Rubio and others, and Hexeth got us into this jam. No, it was the people who said, we've got to talk, talk with people who have never spoken the truth one day in their life. The idea that you can talk to an apocalyptic, theocratic, Shia, unhinged fanatic and expect him to respect a treaty is just crazy. So that's what happened. And what can we do now? We can do just what we said. We can take out, I think we'll have to get intelligence if the Israelis and us say we think they're stuffing pick out Mountain. He's not going to use a nuclear weapon. We're never going to do that. I don't know what Tucker's. He has 100 million views, Jack, saying that we're going to bomb with a nuclear weapon, pickaxe Mountain. What they'll try to do is take B-2 bombers and go over it and drop bunker buster, bunker buster, bunker buster, and see what happens and do it a couple of days and see if it works. I think it'll probably do a lot of damage. And then they can hit any of the air defenses, they can hit some key bridges, and then they can tell Scott Besant, keep those sanctions on. And then they can tell the Kurdish people who were marvelous in Iraq, they can say, you're going to get all the arms you want. And then we can tell the Israelis, you monitor the situation and we're not going to get aid to you anymore. So some fanatic on Columbia University is not going to be able to say that, well, I'm selective in my criticism, Israel, because you're giving them two and a half billion dollars. No, we're not going to give them any. So, you can do what you want. You're liberated. And I think that's where we are now. And if we were to do that. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like, All I Want. Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what? New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. That war would be over in two weeks. Oil prices are. Right now, there's more oil on the getting out of the Gulf than before the war. The refineries can't keep up. It's kind of ironic that the party and the socialists who told us that you should vote for them to lower their price were the same people who put Stephen Chu in, who said he wanted gas in 2009 to go to $8 a gallon, European levels, so you don't use it, who canceled. The first thing Biden did was cancel the Keystone pipeline that would have brought 800,000 barrels into the United States from Canada. And they put off every federal new lease they could. They shut down Anwar. And you voted for these people to lower your gas prices? Are you insane? They aren't going to lower your gas prices. The only thing that's going to lower your gas prices is we are the biggest producer of natural gas and oil in the history of civilization. And now the oil is pouring out of the Gulf, and the countries are pumping, pumping, pumping, and the party that put a hold on refineries and wouldn't build them or cancel them is the only impediment. So we're going to build refineries. But the price of gas this year will go down. And we will have eliminated, at least in our time, according to our station, a nuclear threat that was on the verge of being reified. And we have destroyed most of their arsenal. And if they don't have money, and we don't send pallets in the middle of the night with cash, and Highcomb Jeffries and Schumer and AOC and El-Said don't come into power and renew the Iran deal or give them money or unfreeze their assets, our supply chain will go down. And if they don't have money or say they're not terrorist people like they did with the Houthis, then they won't get a bomb. Final thing, there was one other issue. So it was the war. I explained that. It was the economy and gas. I explained that. And it was immigration and the bad optics and how that was ironic as well. There was one other, Jack, and that's what you and I've talked about, corruption. Can we get to that in a second? Yes. Okay. You're a very kind man. No, no. I talk too much. No, no. It is called Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. I mean, the point of the show is that you talk. People want that, as do I. Hey, folks, whether you're making tuition payments, donating to an alma mater, hiring graduates, or paying taxes to fund state schools, you have a stake in what's happening on America's campuses. But the information you need is hard to find. Well, City Journal, published by Manhattan Institute, of which, by the way, Victor Davis Hanson is a just released its annual college rankings measuring what actually matters. Is a school's curriculum rigorous? Will graduates earn back their tuition? Do faculty prioritize education or activism? Does the administration protect free speech? 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Victor Davis Hanson We've been talking about that a lot, and I was asked that on two, I was asked that by Peter Robinson at a Hoover event. I was asked that by the Epoch Times. I was asked that on others. And I wrote about it. And if you read by the counter-revolution and at the rise and the fall and rise, I said, are there problems to be careful about? And I outlined that there are people in the administration. I don't mean in the administration itself. I should say in the service. And I said, are there problems to be careful about? And I outlined that there are of the administration that have been conduits in a two-way fashion. If you're Middle Eastern countries and you want to buy an F-35 or a new Patriot battery or more Tomahawks, and you have all of those petrodollars and there's a big line at the Pentagon saying, we don't have enough Patriots or the Israelis want to buy our Tomahawks or something. You go to a particular people that have influence with the administration and they are related or they're friends of. people who are related to Trump. And then I'm not saying it's illegal, then you have a finder's fee. So in its benign form, somebody would say, hey, Victor, I need to talk to this big land baron you know, and convince him that he should buy my product. And I say to him, well, I'll bring it up with him the next time and say how good you are. And then he says, I want to pay you 15% of whatever happens. I don't think that's ethical. I don't know if it's illegal, but I can tell you that I don't know how to put this, but there was a talk at one point that a certain campus would be placed in California, and it was a very prestigious, good campus. And there was another competing interest, and I was in Washington. And the people who wanted to donate the money were good friends of mine for 30 years, and they had asked me to be their representative in discussions. A third party came up to me in Washington, D.C. and said to me, ah, I really admire what you're doing, but I don't think you've been compensated. If you would be compensated for this job, then you might have other alternatives you might look at. And I just said, I get that all the time, because anybody who writes columns, you get people who write you and want you to endorse a product. But you don't do that. I said, that is unethical. You can't take anything. I said, when I went to the Chicago Tribune years ago, and I had to write columns for one day a week and be examined, one of the editors of the Chicago Tribune Syndicate said to me, what do you think the ethical position of a columnist should be? And I said, it should be that they make no money. More by writing a column from outside income than they did before they were a columnist. And that's all I think. I think they should follow that. They should ask themselves two questions. I am making a lot of money around the Trump administration. Would I be making this amount of money if I didn't have contacts? Number two, and is it ethical? If somebody from, let's say, a sheik from Saudi Arabia says, I want to buy tomahawks, and you say, he calls you up and says, hey, Bob, we're great friends. Do you know anybody in the Pentagon? That's perfectly legal to say, yes, he's the appropriation officer. But if you say, hey, Bob, you say, sheik, it's going to take me an hour phone call. I need some money. Then I think that's not only unethical, but probably illegal. And on the other side, it works both ways, Jack. So then you tell people in the military-industrial complex, hey, you know, I was talking to some people in Kuwait or the UAE, and they really need an upgrade on their defense system. And they are sending stuff to Yemen, and they need some short-term harpoon missiles, et cetera. We don't have to give them top-of-the-line stuff, but can I connect you with those guys? Because they got a lot of money, and they want to buy stuff from our defense contract. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do need some money. And I tell you what, you give me some money for matching you up with them, and then they give you money. Then you go over to the sheiks and say, would you give me some money? And when I say give you money, I don't mean you take cash out of your pocket. I mean you say, I have a hedge fund. I have an investment fund. I have a type of. You know, business fund. Would you give money into that fund? Or into one of my companies? But not to me directly. And that's what's going on. And no sooner do we talk about this that today there's an allegation. I'm really a big fan of Susan Wiles, but in connection with her dismissal, or I shouldn't say that, her transfer to the political side of the Trump equation, there are allegations that her daughter was a lobbyist. And when somebody wanted a particular cabinet to adopt a particular policy or a would-be candidate for a high-ranking position, they were directed out of her office to go to a lobbying company run by her daughter or employing her daughter. And if that's true, that's unethical, and it's probably illegal. Don't you remember, Jack, when we had Judge Marchand, and he was going after Trump, and he was very biased. He kept fining him and fining him. And then all of a sudden, his daughter was advertising to everybody that her dad was on the front lines against Trump, and she got $100 million or something of business to her firm. You can't rail against that and not rail against. I'm saying these are allegations. We don't know if they're true. You and I have been very good friends for a long time, and I know your position. And if you want Victor to write a book, you pay him to write a book. You want Victor to come give a speech, you pay him. Sometimes you pay him. Sometimes Victor doesn't ask. But these other side hustles just are not part of how you're wired, but it's how part of Washington's wired. You mentioned the military. That's the whole point. It's the end of the rainbow. They're looking for that pot of gold, right, for many years. They're looking for that pot of gold. And the next week, I'm going to write an article. So I said very quickly about the war, I said what I'd do, arm the opposition, let the Israelis have a free hand, patrol the Strait to keep it open. And the Strait will be irrelevant in three years with these new pipelines going to the Gulf of Oman, then more in the Red Sea, probably to Haifa or somewhere, and then clamp down on the sanctions, really tighten them even tighter. We do that. We talked about the economy. It's going great. My only worry is that the Democrats might wise up. And so instead of impeaching and the money investigations and screaming about socializing health care, canceling student debt, destroying the electoral college, one guy will have a bright idea and say, hey, inflation is going to be down and gas prices are going to go way down and GDP is roaring and the stock market is at an all-time high. And median income is going up. And we're coming into office on January 3rd. So what we do is say that just as you rejected Trump in the midterms, we can take the Trump economy and put our brand on it because it's going to boom with AI. And we'll rail as loud as we can about AI, AI, but then we're not stupid. We'll let enough AI there. So it's going to really help the economy. And we're going to take it. The economy will be theirs. But they're smart. But they're not that smart, I hope. And finally, then what do you do? We talked about immigration. We said, you got to be clever that the people are trying to find everything they can so that Jose Gomez has a bloody nose and knocked down in daytime. And there's 20 people in Minnesota or a blue city taking pictures of that. So try to find a way to fulfill what the people want. They do want people deported, but don't do it publicly and don't do it in a very rough manner, if it's possible. But I'm not going to tell. So Mark Krikorian says, go after the employers. Yes. Go after the employers. That would be good to do it. But I'm not telling Juan Lopez, who gets up every morning, he puts his ice on uniform, and he's got people trying to kill him. And then he goes out there and there's a bunch of Karens, excuse me, I use that term again, that are throwing feces. And water bottles at him while somebody who here is illegally has been selling drugs. And he's just. So I'm very sympathetic to ICE officers. And then give a pathway for the pre-Biden mob who have been here five years, haven't committed a felony, not on welfare, able-bodied, pay a fine, get a green card. But on corruption, I just think it's really hurting Donald Trump. You know what? I looked at those with a four. There was one that was number three was corruption. Corruption because a lot of people said they were hurting, and yet there were people making money off their hurt. That's how they framed it. So I would just say that anybody in the administration cannot engage in any fees, or no one in the Trump family can engage in business. He did that in the first term. And then I think people ask him why he lifted the ban. He said, because it didn't do any good. You didn't give me any credit when I was squeaky clean compared to Biden. So I'm going to let people do and make some money. But there's people connected to Wellcoff that are making money. There's people, I saw the ambassador to Turkey. He's going to be engaging in business. And you just have to make a. Jefferies and say, I'll tell you what you do. Nancy Pelosi started with $3 million, and now she's worth $200 million, and her stock returns are 15,000% since she came in. So you had a little Pelosi bill that wasn't enough. Just ban all stock buying and selling while a person's in Congress and put a two-year moratorium after they leave. And if you do that, then I will do my part in the executive branch. I'll ban everybody working in a political position that I brought in from buying or selling stock or making deals without registering as a foreign lobbyist. And I will not let any foreign lobbyist in my administration, and I will make people register if they're doing that. And I think if he does that and… And they have… I think Stephen Miller will really tighten the ship on people talking. I know that he has a mad dog image with the left, but I… You know, you don't… Trump wrote a very… He doesn't like people who come to the White House and flatter him and then go back and trash him like Bill Maher's doing. So we get that running… That long rant and too social or he… Right on the… Even the midterm, he's talking about the reflecting pool. There's no margin of error right now, so you can't do that. You've got to just stick to immigration, the economy, finish the war quickly, get rid of the corruption, and you'll be fine. When I come back, Victor… Well, we're going to take a break and we'll return from these important messages. Many Americans are going to have a big wake-up call. We have never seen net migration as high as it has been in the last few years. This year, there have been more people coming to the UK in small boats than ever before. You did an extreme thing to the country. Britain is facing a migrant crime epidemic. We don't actually know where they're coming from, who they are, how old they are. Why would you let in millions of people who are unvetted if not to change the country from within? There is no other word for it. Demographic replacement. England's a blueprint for America. It's coming. It's just a blueprint. Thousands of daily migrant crossings. A political earthquake threatens to reshape America. We are showing there is a new path for politics in our country. Not all cultures are the same. You cannot ban Sharia. America is a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants. The immigration crisis. of Perseus, victorhansen.com. Do subscribe. $65 a year, $6.50 a month. So it's discounted for the full year, and you'll be able to read the articles Victor writes exclusively for The Blade of Perseus and the weekly video he does there. And you can also order a signed copy of his new book, the best-selling book, The Counter-Revolution. Victor, back on J.D. Vance and his signings. I'm quoting here from Jewish News Service. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. Vance wrote, if you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least. And I have, Victor, I think someone's very supportive of the war, Ari Fleischer, who was commenting, responding to the vice president, I think respectfully. And he says the problem was not the Iran war, it was the ceasefire. If you start a war, you need to win it and finish it, otherwise don't start it. I'm going to go through the whole thing. It's on exit. People want to see it. But it said, instead of. But instead of ending it, we had a ceasefire, which was followed by months of will we or won't we finish the job? Every day was a different message. There still is. Is the war over? Is it about to begin? No one knows. There is confusion and inconsistency, et cetera. What do you think of the critique? Yeah, I think J.D. needs to read a little bit about the Korean War when Matthew Ridgway, who had nothing to do with the decision of Harry Truman to draw the line and, communism in South Korea. And MacArthur had been almost annihilated up by the Yalu River. It was the longest retreat in U.S. history, 20,000 casualties. And we were down to Pusan. And they called in Ridgway and they said, Matt, you're going to have to take over. General Walker was killed. And he remarked to someone, the only thing worse than a bad war is losing it. So what I'm getting by that, if J.D. feels that it was a bad war, we need to hear what he means by that. It was a bad war from the initiation, the choice, because I was on podcasts where they said, oh, no, it was a stupid idea. Then say to us, there was no nuclear threat to us or our allies or our national interest. And it would be okay. for them to get a nuclear weapon. I think that's Tucker's point of view, that Israel has them, so why doesn't Iran? I want to remind everybody that nuclear weapons are not necessarily the problem. It's who has them. We don't worry about the French government, as long as it's consensual and democratic. We do worry if the minorities take over the French government, because that would be the first Islamic bomb. We don't worry about Britain. We worry less about India than we do Pakistan. India is more consensual. We worry about Russia and China, because they're dictatorial. We really worry about North Korea, because it's dictatorial. We don't worry as much about the United States and Israel and Britain and France. So these people are not consensual. We worry about them. Or he could say, I can understand why we went, but we shouldn't have stopped. He didn't say any of that. He just said the war. What does that mean? The war, the start of the war, the way it was conducted, it's not over yet, JD. And then again, he said that after the election. Why didn't he say before the election? I'm very worried because my sources, which he quotes after the election, tell me there's four issues on people's mind. One of the issues is the war, the gas prices. He says Israel and MAGA first. Therefore, I have two weeks ahead, and I'm telling you this so we can all address those issues. What I'm getting at is this. There's a lot of people I have a great deal of respect for in the op-ed at the Wall Street Journal, and they are giving savage post-mortems. And I think they probably voted for Trump, maybe reluctantly, but did so anyway. Why didn't they just take those post-mortems? Because if they thought the polls were correct, why not just tell us two weeks in advance? So what I'm getting at, everybody's coming out of the woodwork and saying, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. The only reason I'm saying that we should have stopped the war, because I was saying that all the time. I mean, we should not stop the war. We should not stop the war until we get rid of all the nuclear weapons. I mean, we should not stop the war until we get rid of all the nuclear material and then go home. We said that again. You're talking about we need to talk about the economy and what it's doing, not to talk about the pool or the Trump Kennedy Center or all that kind of stuff. Before the midterms, I gave so many lectures on pods. Look at 2022. It's worse, but we're not getting that message that if the economy is worse and there's no red wave in 2022, then if there's going to be a blue wave, it's got to have something with media and communication. And we can do that. Just tell people before the midterms, don't just start yelling and screaming and fighting afterwards. Everybody's a genius afterwards. Nobody wants to take a risk and say so, because I think they thought we were going to win. Yeah. So it's not very intellectually honest to just hinge your. critique or your praise, depending on whether it's post-factually they win. And so that's. Well, okay. It's frustrating. Well, Victor, there's one other little topic I want to. Obviously, you and I are going to record another show. We have the California elections. We have what might happen to the Electoral College. There's a new strategica out. So there's a ton of other things. If this was a three-hour show, it would be great. But I do want to mention something because your own. You've talked so many times about your father and his history of flying and risking his life. But there's a movie. And I mentioned this a few weeks ago. Jimmy came out this weekend. I'd seen, I was given access and watched it. So Jimmy is about Jimmy Stewart and his almost singular role as a, you know, great actor. And then fighting, he was a pilot in World War II. B-17. Yeah, I think he flew 20 missions. He almost had his plane blown up under his feet. His, you know, men died under his leadership shot up in flak by planes, et cetera. There's an actor, K.J. Apa, I think he's a New Zealander, but he plays Jimmy Stewart tremendously well. And I like it, Victor, because it, I can only, from watching 12 O'Clock High and these various shows we've talked about in the past, the trauma. That the men in the Army Air Force went through is just, I can't even imagine it. So giving them, through this movie, some attention. Yeah, I want to watch it. Those people were, I think I told the audience, when I was about eight, I was really underweight. I was kind of a sickly kid. And I always looked up to my dad because he was like this big Swedish guy, 6'4", 220, solid muscle. He was gigantic. And we'd always hide behind his legs when we went out on the farm. And he had, he would always just, I'm watching Fauda, this movie, you know, about the Israeli, Shin Bet. And there's a guy called Doron, and he always just jumps right in the middle of something. And if there was something, and my grandfather said, there's a farmer that threatened me about the water, my dad was just like, Doron. He would just go over there and confront the guy. So I was out in the. Car and this big junk truck came up. It had furniture and everything. And this kind of heavyset guy in a jumpsuit, remember those jumpsuits, garage suits? Yeah. And he says, I want to see Bill Hanson. And so I said, dad, there's a big fat man. He's got a garbage truck and he's, he's, he's asking for you. So then my dad came out and he took one look at the guy and he said, Victor, take a deep breath and sit down. That man saved my life. That man saved 11 people's lives, 40 times. That man is one of the greatest Americans that was ever born. And I said, then he said, Captain, he said, Captain Allenby, how great to see you. And he was a captain of their B-29. And he flew 40 missions and he developed the way to take off on Tinian because it was a, it was a straight cliff and a lot of people didn't have the lift on this experimental plane with Allison's engines with heat up and they'd crash. And he revved up the RPMs to over the limit and then he would keep the brakes on and then he would kind of like, you know, take off. And they never crashed. And they had two emergencies and, and he put my father in the central bubble, central fire control. And so anyway, I was eight years old, seven or eight. And then he flew 50 missions in Korea. Can you imagine that? He came back to Oregon and yeah. And against MIGs were trying to shoot him down. And so anyway, they were talking, they talked a long time. So then I went and talked to my mom and I said, wow, what did he do? And she said something I've always remembered. It was kind of a theme. And she said, she said, people who don't look so good in peacetime are not the same people, meaning he had sloppy clothes on. He didn't, he was, I guess you would call him a merchandiser or something, you know, and, but there's something about them in war. And he said, this, people like that save us. And I was really shocked. And then, and then I'll tell one other story was, I think I mentioned it. I was in, my dad had fallen off. He tried to wire our houses. He did everything himself. He fell 20 feet onto the concrete and he broke his elbow completely. They had to remove it. And he was in the hospital right afterwards. And there was a Japanese gardener and he was spraying with a hose, all the windows right behind my dad's head. So it went da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And he was coming out of anesthesia. So he got up like this. And he said, smoky, smoky, smoky, nine o'clock, nine o'clock, nine o'clock, 12, 12, 12, take over cliff. You take over now. Hey, Bob, it's your turn. Come on, come on. I need all, go ahead. I can see his mustache. I'm shooting him. And the guy had a mustache and he was right near the window. And so my mom being the classic democratic liberal, but classic liberal. She ran. Ran out and apologized to him and said that, you know, this is my father. And then there was a guy named Doc Nielsen from Fowler. And he was an old time. He'd gone to the Mayo Clinic. He was brilliant. But he had, he talked out like this. He's about 70. He delivered my twin brother and I for, we went to Fowler rather than Selma because he said he'd do two for one for 50 bucks. So we were delivered for $50. Anyway, he said. He says to me, well, young man, you know, I've talked to your dad and I know a little bit about the war. I picture dad's elbow. I took it out. And he was in a bubble and he has a planes coming down three or 400 miles an hour right on top of him. This way he takes all, he gets control of all those guns and he shoots him. And now this guy's, he's back in, he's back in 1945. What do you expect? I gave him a big shot of morphine. So it was, it was so weird, but he, he would do that. And I thought about Dana Andrews when I saw best years of our lives. Sure. He would have those blackout type things. And Kowalski. Yeah. Yeah, he did. I thought they were kind of, you know, overdone. But when I look back at my childhood and then he would get very emotional. And then I met people in her crew over the years. And there was one who very successful businessman and I liked him a lot, but he was very young and he had. Initially had that job. And so he came up to me when I was about 12, we went and visited him. And he said, uh, my dad said, this is Mr. So-and-so I won't name his name. And he said he was a great, um, blister, um, tail gunner or blister or tail gunner. And he said to me, you know, I want to tell you boys, I had the central fire control job and I had to be on top of the plane. And the Japanese knew that. And they would target you. And dive at you and try to kill you because if they did, you couldn't coordinate all of the machine gun, the 11 machine guns and that. So you were a dead man, but I couldn't do it. I froze. So I had your, your, they picked your dad and he did the rest of the missions and he had five, three probables or three, five kills. So he said he had more than anybody in the unit. And, um, I just want you to know that about your dad. Did he ever tell you? I said, no, he never. He never told you. He just told me what a great guy you were. Right. And so. Wow. Great Americans. Yeah. When you see all that, I get, I don't know. And you get old and you're getting to the last roundup, so to speak. And you look at all of those guys did, and it was all based on the assumption that everything was going to get better. And then you hear people say things about the United States, like Hassan Piker, who comes from the United States. Or you have all these, this new type of immigrant that sets foot in the United States and begins saying that these people are racist and terrible and horrible and the country's horrible. And yet it's so spectacularly successful that they came here and they got free education at Harvard, Yale, and they got racial or ethnic or religious preferences, which I don't, I don't mind, but they're, they're flourishing and they can't say a good word about the United States. And then you think of all those people. And B-29s or Jimmy Stewart and B-17s are all the people in the Marine divisions on Okinawa are the people that were killed, snuffed, that's it. And they all died for this. And so we have a big responsibility to carry, make sure that what they did was worth it. Not just then in 1946 or seven or eight, but now, because we don't want the United States to end up as something that they wouldn't recognize. And we're getting close sometimes. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want. Right. You know what? See terms. Yeah, well, again, this great movie, Jimmy, I liked it very much, but it reminds me of Barack Obama's minister, right? Goddamn America. You mean when he said, with his famous intonations, chickens coming home to roost. Yes. And he also said that the Arab, he was the person that said when he was, everybody remember, go to the Chicago Sun-Times when they nailed Barack Obama. And he had been bragging about Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Right, Reverend Wright. Yeah, Reverend Wright, how wonderful he is. Yeah, I was there. I married Arturo. And then they asked, do you really go to church? Because his left-wing people were surprised. I don't, I've been there every Sunday. I never missed one. So then a bright person about a week later when we got the tape said, Barack Obama, they played, they quoted Barack Obama. He was there every Sunday, according to him. And then he heard, and remember, Jack, about that blank, blank America and chickens, and we deserve 9-11. It wasn't so much. It wasn't so much the singular idiocy and insanity of the preacher. It was the reaction of the crowd. If you look at the crowd, when he said, God bless America, God bless, no, no, no, God, blah, blah, blah, you know, they got up and gave him a standing ovation. So the obvious question was, well, you heard that, Barack, and you were there because you said you were there every, and I don't recall, I missed that one. So he was part of that whole. And remember one final thing about anti-Semitism. Obama's personal preacher said, well, if you, when asked, do you get to see Barack very much? That was when he was present. No, dem Jews don't let me. Dem Jews don't let me. And then he said in a pamphlet for his church that the Israelis had made a missile that could. Racially define Arabs and kill Arabs and not anybody else. So that lunatic was the personal advisor of the president of the United States. And we're worried about Donald Trump's sanity. Pigmentation bombs. Victor, we have, we're, we've had a nice long show with you. So much wisdom here. No, no, it's not. I'm going to read one comment from, and I'll read the rest of the next show, but this is a little tongue in cheek. Michigan Moose writes, I take it. We're not getting the $5,000. I think that's pretty funny. I don't think we are Michigan. I want to, I had a comment this morning. I was at the shop right in Milford, Connecticut, and my pal Angelo Solzillo, who's retired, but he used to take the train in with me every day. And I hadn't seen him in a long time. And he came up big hug and he says, I was watching you the other day with Victor. He's a genius. I love him. I love him. So I get that frequently, but I. It happened outside. It happened when I was getting donuts this morning. So anyway, one last thing I just need to make a, someone gave me a little grief. We were talking a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about what's happening in France and the, and the, how the French, the Jesuit missionaries back in the 1600s were, you know, truly brave people. And this, so there's a, a, a Jesuit school in Indianapolis, Prebeuf. Which is named after one of the Jesuit martyrs who were just so cruelly tortured by the Iroquois, Jean de Brebeuf. And he says, you talked about those martyrs, but you didn't mention Brebeuf himself. So I'm, I'm rectifying my sin of omission there, but Brebeuf was truly one of the more, most brave priests in, in the history of Catholicism. So anyway, that's done. Victor, you've been terrific. I'm, I thank you. I thank folks who subscribe to Civil Thoughts, the free weekly email I do for the Center for Civil Society. It comes out every Friday, 14 recommended readings. Go to civilthoughts.com, sign up, totally free. Get, go to the blade of Perseus, victorhansen.com. Do subscribe there also. Thanks for all the wisdom you shared today, Victor. Thanks folks for watching. Thanks for listening. We will be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis. Hanson in his own words. Bye-bye. Thank you everybody for listening and watching. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition. When you spend enough time around great companies, you notice that the best ones treat you. Trust as a growth strategy, not a box to check. Vanta helps companies build and prove trust from day one. Its agentic trust platform connects compliance, risk, and trust at enterprise scale. Vanta delivers a 526% return on investment over three years and pays for itself in just three months. 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