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Hello and welcome to the Victor Davis Hanson show. This is the Friday news roundup and we've got lots on our schedule. We've got a terrorist attack in New Orleans and then also the Trump towers in Las Vegas had a bomb explode right in front of it. So stay with us and we'll be right back with those stories.
Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson show. Victor is the Martin and Ili Anderson senior fellow in military history and classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marcia Buskey distinguished fellow in history at Hillsdale College. Please come join us at his website, victorhandson.com. We'd love to have you. A subscription is $5 a month or $50 a year still. So come join us.
Victor, so we've had a explosion outside of the Trump Tower in Las Vegas. And then in New Orleans, a terrorist has killed 15 people in New Year's Eve celebrations. And I was wondering your thoughts on those things.
There's two or three or four commonalities to these incidents, both in Las Vegas and in New Orleans and what happened recently in Germany. And even the demonstrations that were happening incredibly right after these horrific attacks, people went to the streets in New York to basically protest in support of Hamas, a terrorist organization from the Middle East.
But the first is this administration is not up to it, just like the Obama administration is not up to it. What do I mean by it? Policing our borders, deterring terrorists. Why do I say that? Joe Biden has been in the Caribbean.
Then he goes back to Washington. Then he goes right to Camp David. He's 40% of the time he's not in the White House. He's on vacation. He comes forward with a statement. You think he's going to be able to finish the statement because we know that he can be semi-coherent when he's angry. Usually that's when he's angry at Trump people. Semi-maggah.
of fashion, that kind of stuff. But he lost his way, was a tangled mess. He couldn't follow the teleprompter and we got nothing out of him, nothing. And so other than as you know, don't kind of little bit he-man threats and all that. So this administration has open borders and we know that it has institutionalized DEI. Now what do I mean number two?
The FBI is just not up to it either. One of the first reactions from the Federal Bureau of Investigation was this. By the way, Christopher Ray didn't say anything at first, nor did his assistant in Washington, which is another argument, by the way, why we should take that headquarters out of Washington and put it somewhere in the middle of the country. But the assistant special agent in Georgia,
excuse me in Louisiana. I guess that's where she was. Alithia Duncan. The first thing she says without any evidence, this doesn't seem to be a terrorist example. It's a matter of IEDs. So in other words, she's confusing causation with methodology. We don't really care what terrorists do. Whether they use DEI or bullets or guillotines, they're terrorists. And she can't even say,
can't even say, we don't know yet whether it is a terrorist. She says it is not a terrorist. Now, why did she say that? And who told her to? And what kind of indoctrination has she been gone? Has she been subject to that would make
that her first response. I think I can answer my own question, rhetorical, though it is. Do we remember the major Hassan Fort Hood attacks? Killed 13 people, very similar. He was a U.S. citizen. He had been in the military. And as he started to murder these people, what did he say? Allah Akbar.
And what did the Obama administration, military and officials say? It's workplace violence. Workplace violence. Then we go back to the Sarnair brothers. Remember that? They were tipped off by Russian intelligence that these
immigrants who were U.S. citizens, I think at least in one case, were very dangerous people. They ignored that. In fact, the public thought he was handsome and put him on the cover of Rolling Stone after he butchered people. I don't even need to get into the San Bernardino, but they were the same type of people. A culture-rated, either legal residents or American citizens. So what am I getting at is that
There is a process where people come from the Middle East, immigrants, first or second generation, and they start to absorb popular culture, and two things happen. Number one, they get a sense in the DEI mentality that is
prevalent throughout the country that they are exempt. In other words, if 50% of all hate crime victims are Jews and that Muslims are overrepresented by two to one as the perpetrators, it doesn't matter that the official response will be, we deplore
anti-Semitism on what we say in Greek is men on the one hand and dad on the other and Islamophobia even though there's very few cases in comparison with anti-Semitism so you by trying to have it both ways or equivocate you dilute the message that's number one they understand that they have plugged into the DEI
industry and they are victims, so you cannot criticize them on the basis of what they do. Number two, when people from the Middle East come over here, there is a subgroup that doesn't do well. I'm not saying that most don't do well, but whether the Sarnab brothers are Major Hassan, or this Jabar fellow, or the people in Santa Barbara,
And as they start to absorb American culture and Western culture in general, they start making excuses for the unhappiness in their own lives. We saw this trailer where he lived. He had goats and sheep and chickens. It was a mess. And yet he had cut a video not long before about his real estate company. And yet we learned that he
something that does not happen in the Middle East. He had divorced twice and he had to make alimony and child support payments. So then he's getting very, very angry about that. So his attitude is, I came over here. I joined the military. I'm not doing well. Join the club. Everybody has that thing.
I'm speaking to somebody who made $1.80 an hour for five years farming. I figured out. And one year I paid $10 an hour for the pleasure of driving an all over tractor for 12 hours a day. And yet I didn't become a fanatical. We legit sell it. But my point is that a lot of these immigrants, a lot, not the majority, but a lot when they feel frustrated or angry, then they start blame gaming this system of America.
Oh, it's pornographic. Just like Mohammed Octa, we remember, and they were all saying how decadent we are, and some of them were what? It strips those in Vegas before they murdered 3,000 people. So they start to chronicle all the things wrong with America, and then they become what?
converts to what had been a latent Islam. In other words, they had been born Muslims, they are Muslims, they were Muslims in the extent that a lot of Christians are Christians, but they're not practicing. But once they start to see all these wrong things going on in their lives, then what do they do? They rediscover Islam as a crutch, as a refuge, as an escape, and then they start to channel.
jihad against the system that welcomed them in. And no one, no one in the mosque, no one in the Islamic movement, none care. Nobody says to them, we are so fortunate to be in the United States, whatever claims or unhappiness or frustrations you have, it pales in consideration to where we came from. So just suck it up, buttercup. Don't go blame the system and don't go kill people.
Well, I hope I wish they would listen and all immigrants would listen to that, to be honest. All right. So, Victor, let's take a moment. I would like to welcome our sponsor back, Lumen. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach. It's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath.
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Well, Victor, we've had in addition to that terrible terrorist attack in New Orleans, a woman that was burnt in the subway by an illegal alien. And we learned just recently this week that a cop was walking by without any sort of concern about what was going on in the subway. So that was very shocking to me. I was wondering your thoughts on that.
Well, we're in the air, the aftermath, or the exhaust of defund the police. We haven't gotten over the whole COVID, defund the police, George Floyd, DEI woke. So these police forces have suffered two or three things. Number one, they've been vastly cut back.
number two, under the Biden administration and the Woke Movement in particular, I'm talking about the Soros selected district attorneys, Alvin Bragg in this case, and the mayor, Eric Adams, and the governor, the governor Hokel, there is a sense that the policeman, if there is a
two things. If there's a question whether they were slightly culpable, then they're going to be held responsible. Number one, there's no margin of error is what I'm saying. So if those policemen had jumped in there and grabbed him and pushed him away, he might have filed a claim, just like the family of the victim of Daniel Penny.
and they might have been prosecuted, just like Daniel Penny was. So that's number one, there is a hesitation, a reluctance, and then in police and law enforcement, that split second means everything. And it's not there anymore, that split second ready instinctual reaction because of the possible consequences to your career and your person. That's number one. Number two is there's a sense that
We don't know who's here. There are no borders in the United States anymore. We have no idea who these people are. We have a very vague sense that we don't talk about illegal immigration because in this case he was a Venezuelan, I think, or was he a Guatemalan. There's a sense that we have all of these people coming from Latin America, South America, all over the world here. They have all broken the law by
Entering illegally they are residing illegally and they are being rewarded by a guilt guilty Host that has no self confidence in its values or tradition They are being rewarded with free health care free food free shelter and they formulate a
conclusion. And the conclusion is, hey, I just broke their law. I just came across the border. I've got a felony record. They didn't ask me. They must feel guilty. If they feel guilty, they must feel they've done something wrong. If they feel they've done something wrong, give me, give me, give me. And I can do something and nothing's going to happen to me. This is a society without consequences. I'm living proof.
So if I want to let some, if I want to go drink and use drugs on the public dole, the taxpayers, and I happen to get a little out of control and burns, nothing's going to happen to me. Joe Biden just, I hear their president just pardoned what? 1,500 people and he commuted death sentence. This is a society without consequences. This is a society who suggests that people of color, and I think it doesn't really matter whether you're
person of color, just if you fit into that category. And when you have a Hispanic name, you do. So he feels that I'm part of the victimized binary. And the victimizer other half owes me something. So there's not going to be any consequences to my drug use, my illegality. And that's where we are right now. And so that makes it very hard because the people who created this problem
and are creating these situations about terrorism and random violence, whether it's the person who Daniel Penny apprehended and accidentally killed or it's this fellow, whatever the particular circumstances is, it's permeating society that
We Americans have given the message that we don't feel our country is unique. We don't think our borders should be there. We don't think that we have the moral authority, much less the legal authority to say, you can come, you cannot come, you can't. We're all under the accusation that we're a racist, sexist, transphobic, all of these isms and ologies. And that
That's the message to people who want to take advantage, sometimes violently so of our situation. Donald Trump's going to come in and I guarantee you he's going to start to try to close the border, deport people like this latest murder, and you know what's going to happen from the left?
They are going to cherry pick justices. They're going to go to court. They're going to have the New York Times dig up people within the deep state that are Obama and Biden holdovers. They're going to print anonymous op-eds about how racist Donald Trump is and how courageous they are.
you're going to get all of the Democratic Congress people are going to go back and said, we offered them comprehensive reform and they didn't take it. That bogus deal where they would have allowed 4,000 people to come in every year before they didn't eat every day before they didn't anything. So my point is that
It's going to be wild because we are so enured to this lawless society and this DEI doctrine that somebody's going to have to break it. And that's going to be Donald Trump and they're going to go crazy. They don't care that this poor woman was torched. They don't not care because they allow the system to torture. They really did. And we're going to have more
more stories, more publicity, more worry about the status of the murder than we are about the victim. Just watch. Yeah, I have no doubt about that. Well, Victor, let's take a break and come back after these messages. Welcome back. So we were just talking about some of the
terrorist events in the United States and also the poor woman that was in the New York Metro. We got another case, and that is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was entering in on a plea deal with the United States that he wouldn't have the death penalty.
the Biden administration commuted that and agreed to that plea deal. And of course, just recently ruled that that can't be taken back. So, Victoria, I was wondering if what your thoughts were. Well, he was the architect. It wasn't Ben Ladner's group or the people who carried it out, but the people who dreamed it up, he wanted to blow up a series of airliners in the Philippines. A lot of them. A lot more people would have died. Had he been able to do that.
So here you have a mass murderer that is responsible along with the al-Qaeda people of killing 3,000 people. And he's been sentenced to death. He's had a fair trial and it's been
24 years and we can't carry out the sentence. And then the Biden administration and the Pentagon that's run by the Biden administration decides that maybe they might plead ill, commuted, and there's public outrage.
that they have done this and they've gone to court. And so then the administration panics. And now the judge says, well, you wanted to make the deal. The deal is done. We can't tell us. You can't renege. So it's again.
Good riddance to these people. I don't understand the psychology of it. Why would you try to contextualize a mass murder who incinerated 3,000 Americans and worry, worry, worry whether you're moral or not by putting this monstrosity to death after he's done all of this, and he would do it again if he'd ever got out?
and you're not talking to the same amount of time or labor about the people who were incinerated. I just don't get the left. I really don't. Does that make them feel good? What is it about them?
It's the same thing about why would you go after Daniel Penny when he saved people? This monster would have gone and attacked people, probably hurt them or kill them. Or why we were even talking about this arsonist, this human arsonist that does these things. And we don't, this homeless person, you know, you saw her school yearbook, she had something happen to it was very tragic. And she's just asleep minding her own business. She should maybe be homeless.
And they torture, and yet now we have all of these convoluted stories about the arsonist while he was under drugs or he was drinking or people said that he was angry. I don't care. He should have never been here. He should be brought to trial. And if there's the evidence that he is a pre-planned first degree murderer, he should be sentenced. And if the penalty in New York is life imprisonment without parole, he should be sentenced, done.
And yet it's not done. And that's why people voted for Donald Trump because they're tired of this. They're just tired of this society without consequences, society without rules, society without responsibility. Yeah, I, um,
I'm with you on the just so sad. I don't see how anybody can be on the left with those types of ideas and entertain that kind of thing. But maybe we can turn to Israel. The IDF has renewed operations in Gaza and they are going to finish off in northern Gaza, the Hamas control there.
And it's very strange. I think another thing that's problematic in our world is that the World Health Organization has weighed in on behalf of Hamas and said, oh, Israel or the IDF has attacked hospitals. And so they're siding with Hamas.
They always do this, and I was wondering your commentary on it, that they always come in. Everybody knows Hamas puts themselves behind these hospitals and public areas. And yet we have to hear again and again from the World Health Organization, and I was wondering your thoughts. Well, in this case,
How much terrorists went into a hospital and there were people in the hierarchy of course who welcomed them maybe they did it under duress maybe not. But they didn't kill people they empty the hospital and they had everybody go out.
in supposedly single file, some of the terrorists scattered and were dispatched by drones. And then they went to another hospital and they transferred all the equipment and then they examined the hospital and rooted out the terrorists. No one else would have done that. They would have just bombed the hospital, but they're now being blamed by the World Health Organization for attacking a medical facility. Again,
We wouldn't have this conversation if it hadn't been for October 7th. And what's strange about all this is there is a momentum in the Middle East that is not as radical or not as left wing or not as pro-terrorist as our international organizations are the people in the United States protesting on the part of Hamas.
I'll give you an example, the Palestinian Authority, of whom I'm not a big fan, I don't trust. They kicked Al Jazeera because they felt that Al Jazeera was brainwashing their own people, i.e. pro Hamas. And so when you have
the Palestinian Authority saying to the world, we don't want radical Islam among our own people. Now that we've been defeated, we want to have some kind of reconciliation. Maybe who knows? Maybe they think that I don't believe it, but maybe they think they can be Dubai. And they don't want Hamas there. So what I'm getting at is the subtext of a lot of Palestinians. They'll never admit, but those on the West Bank are thinking,
Oh my god, I don't want to tell anybody, but I am so glad that those Hamas murderers are gone. I'm so glad that those Shia nuts in Iran are gone. I'm so glad that Assad and Hezbollah and all and the who I don't
need those people. And I would rather be one of the two million people living as Arab Muslims under the protection of Israel as citizens, if they would extend, not citizenship, the same type of protection and security and leave me alone in the West Bank.
And that's new. And it's not a part of the camp David Accords or the peace talks. It's because Benjamin Netanyahu flattened Hamas. He's going to flatten the Houthis. He flattened Hezbollah and Iran has a rendezvous with a comeuppance. And so the whole thing is changing. So the World Health Organization and the Europeans and the EU who will arrest Netanyahu if he goes to Poland.
or if he goes to Canada or he goes to any major Spain. And by the way, just as a parentheses, I think we should tell the Polish foreign minister that if you arrest an Israeli president or our defense secretary, then we're not going to give you any military, sorry, and send a sharp message to them.
And I think one of the first things Donald Trump will do is he'll say to the World Health Organization, you know what? You go do it what you want. If you want to side with Hamas or you want to go after the Jewish state, you go ahead. But we're sick of you.
We gave you a chance under the Biden administration when they restored the funding. And what did you do? You went right back to form. Anti-Western, anti-American were sick of you. And we understood that during the COVID, it's not that you're independent and you're brave and you're speaking truth to power. No, you're obsequious and you're corrupt. Why do I say that? Because you knew.
that the Chinese had let out, maybe accidentally, who knows, a lethal virus out of a virology lab at Wuhan. You knew it, you knew it was gained in function, and you lied. You lied, lied, lied, lied, and you carried water for the communist Chinese, and then you posed to your westerners who fund you more than the Chinese. Oh, you people are this.
You always attack the hand that feeds you because you're terrified of the other hand that communist Chinese and they know that. Their basic argument to these international organizations is this. We're not going to give you what they do. They're going to subsidize you, but we expect you in the International Criminal Court.
in the World Health Organization, in the UN refugee relief, we expect you to be politically on the same page as us. And that means you don't criticize the fact that we have a million wagers and camps, you don't criticize, we have forced sterilization,
but you go after the people in the West because they're guilt-ridden and they will take it seriously and you're a valuable utility, a valuable asset for the Chinese Communist Party. So go ahead and that's where we are. So the only solution to it is for Donald Trump just to say he doesn't have to be combative. He doesn't have to seek confrontation.
All he has to say is we love the World Health Organization. You do a lot of good things, but we're just going to have to pass. So sorry. We're just going to have to pass. We're very sorry, and we would like to help you, but we're just not in a position now. We have a deficit. We have other internal problems. Maybe we'll have a parallel course, but we wish you well. Just go ahead and help us out, but we're not going to fund you. And that's what he needs to do.
He needs to have that attitude about all of these things he's doing. He should tell the Mexican, but we love the Mexican government. We love Mexico. We just can't, I'm sorry, we just can't have you killing 100,000 people a day with fentanyl that's import, a year imported. Can't do it anymore, sorry. We can't send back $63 billion in remittances. We can't have you, your press, your media trashing us the whole time. Why you?
violate our border. And you allow people from Latin America to violate our border. And you think it's cute. So we're not going to do it anymore. We don't have any hostility. We're just not going to do it anymore. And that needs to be the attitude. Trade with China, NATO, defense, you name it. Don't seek confrontation. Just say,
tragically get the tragic, maybe even the therapeutic a little bit. We're sorry, NATO. We're going to be in the alliance. We're not going to quit, but we're not going to up our expenditures or come to the aid of what all of your various causes, unless you pay your 2%. We don't want to be like this, but you forced us to. So please, please pay your 2%.
And that's what his attitude should be. I think it will be that way by Trump. Trump doesn't have to say, well, Mexico, you better straighten out on World Health, where you're corrupt. No, just, you know, say, oh, we didn't find you. I forgot to find you this year. I'll talk to the OMB. You didn't write him a check? Oh, we're sorry. We just we did. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. I hope that the Trump administration does listen to your advice.
And then, further more though, the Trump administration, they have the FBI director coming in, Cash Patel and apparently there are staffers out protesting Cash Patel's appointment, and I was wondering your thoughts on that.
That is very funny because these incidents, and we're talking on the second day of January, and in the last week, given the things that have happened in Germany, the mass murdering terrorists, given the terrorist incident New Orleans, I shouldn't say incident murdering, given the Cybertruck that blew out in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas,
given all these demonstrations. That is an argument that the people, and where is Christopher Ray? What is it with these people? Their tenure is not officially over yet. You know what I'm saying? It's like a professor, if I was when I retired in 2004,
I had a final to give, but I had to give them notice in January the first week of the semester. Could I have just said, I'm sorry, I have four classes and 200 students, but I'm going to go up to them out in the Sierra and take off because I'm a lame duck.
No, well, where was Christopher Ray? He should be talking, talking about all of this. He should be telling us and reassuring us. Biden had, as I said, a two-minute garbled, get off my grass, ran. So my point is that this in a very ironic, not deliberately, but in an ironic way has paved the way for the confirmations, I think.
Cash Patel at FBI Tulsi Gabbard is Director of National Intelligence.
John Radcliffe was going to get confirmed anyway at CIA and Pete Hecks at the defense because people are going to say, get rid of these people. They're incompetent. They're dangerous. They're going to get us in a nuclear war in Europe. They're restricting Israel. They won't let Israel win. And they can't protect us. We don't have an open border. Just get rid of them and bring in their antithesis. And we mean their antithesis.
What's the antithesis? The worst nightmare of Christopher Ray, it's Cash Patel. What's the worst nightmare of the Milly Austin type of defense? It's a Pete Hexa. What's the worst nightmare of Anthony Fauci or Francis Collin? It's Jay Bhattarya.
That's what we need. And that's why I, it wasn't intent. I don't want to suggest that it was a fortuitous event. I'm just suggesting that all of these tragedies have brought home to the American people, especially those in Congress who were going to vote against them, that they need an anecdote and the anecdote is there before them. And I doubt that any of them now are going to be rejected. Yeah. For people who have been powerful.
Well, Victor, we need to take a break and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about your California and Gavin Newsom's work there. Stay with us. We'll be back.
Welcome back. This is the Victor Davis Hanson show and you can find Victor at X and on Facebook. His X handle is at VD Hanson and Facebook has Hanson's morning cup. So come join him there.
Victor, so your governor Newsom is planning on running again as for governorship, and he still has a homeless problem that says bad, if not worse than it was before, and yet he spent $27 billion on that, and he is having some trouble politically because of that.
In other words, California could have built two fleet carriers, 205,000 ton Gerald Ford carriers, or could have built, I don't know.
10 nuclear submarines. And what do we do with it? We spend it on homeless people, but we didn't spend it on homeless people. We spend it on my organization will come forward. We're a nonprofit and we will take care of the homeless problem and offer them more meals or my company makes small little dwellings and that's what we spend it on. And there were all cronies. If you want to know where the 27 billion went,
Just go back in time and space and do a little time traveling to 2020 when we had the shutdown and Gavin Newsom was on TV every day in the state, mask everybody, mask everybody. Meanwhile, Nancy, social distancing, shutdown. Nancy was sneaking into her hairdressers in San Francisco. Gavin was down the Super Bowl without a mask, but my favorite scene was at the French laundry words about
$500 a meal, and who was he with? He was with health care lobbyists, violating, masking, social distancing, and quarantine. Those are the people. He just bought a $9 million home. Is he in touch with the people who pay $0.40 almost to kill a lot? No.
So if you do the math and there's various estimates about how many homeless people, it's about 100 to $150,000 per homeless. So if Gavin had just said, I don't have a clue how to stop the homeless, but I'm going to take $27 billion into these 200,000 or 300,000. I'm just going to
I'm just going to hand them, I don't know, $150,000 in cash. You'll be nowhere soft.
Everybody is sick of him, and they all knew that he was trying to run for president, and he was sabotaged. Thank God, because he would have been even worse in Kamala Harris by this little coup that they staged to put her in and get rid of Biden. But I think he's politically inert. Everything he's touched has destroyed the state.
I was driving on the 99 as I mentioned, the day after Christmas, one hour stuck there with the same two lanes that I remember driving when I was a 18 year old and I drove over from the farm to UC Santa Cruz, the same route. It has not changed.
in 55 years. And he's got this Stonehenge $13 billion, $15 billion high-speed rail fiasco. We have the highest gas tax as the highest gas prices. He's raised it.
the Air Resources Board without a vote is going to raise it 60 cents. He shut down a nuclear power plant, Rancho said he was going to do another one at Diablo Canyon. So finally they warned him, highest income tax, highest sales tax among the highest, highest gas taxes, income taxes, 13.3% highest in the United States. And yet we're running a $70 billion deficit.
And our schools are rated in the bottom five of the 50 states. Our infrastructure is rated about 48. It's almost as if the more money they get and the more money that Newsom demands, the worse everything is. So if we paid no taxes, these services would be better. So why is it? What's going on?
Why did we spend $27 billion? I think the answer is, who are the culprits for this? They're in a very small radius, everybody. Just go over some names.
most prominent San Francisco in the federal government, San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi. She and her husband made a fortune with insider knowledge. Second most powerful person in the Senate for years, third head of the judiciary into Dianne Feinstein. Her husband was a billionaire.
Governor, very wealthy. Gavin Newsom, his wife is very wealthy. He comes from the Gordon Getty Circle in San Francisco. Jerry Brown, governor for eight years, Oakland mayor. He's up at his estate in Grass Valley. He was from an old, very wealthy political family. Barbara Boxer, she's down somewhere, I don't know where it is. Palm Desert, I don't know, but she's on a golf course somewhere, another Bay Area politician.
So when you and then we have Kamala Harris. So this area has overshadowed the valley of course, but it also took over from Los Angeles. And why? Because it's right next to $9 trillion in market capitalization. And that has been permeated from La Jolla all the way to Berkeley along this coastal strip. And we create these politicians.
They're very, very wealthy. They're very privileged. They're aristocratic. They're plutocratic. They never have to worry about their power bills, their gasoline bills, getting stuck in traffic, going to one of their horrible airports. They've destroyed the state. They have no borders in the state, and they're never subject to the idealism or the utopianism of their
or their proposals. So what do I mean by that? I mean Gavin Newsom is not going to have homeless people outside his $9 million home.
He's not going to drive down the 99 every week like some poor Joe who has to go from Fresno, you know, to Stockton every day. He's not going to have to do that. He's not going to be broken in and robbed as people are in Mendota. Not going to happen to him. He's not going to be some farmer trying to make a living and provide food for us and have a state bureaucrat say there's no water for you. We have to
feed the fish. None of that. And that's why they do it. If they were just subject to the consequences of their ideology, they'd stop. So what is the anecdote? Because we're culpable. We the state voted for these people. I didn't. But I'm a member of the state that did. You can't vote for these people. As a general will, anybody who is left wing wealthy in the Bay Area do not vote for because they will use you as a lab rat.
and they will experiment on green initiative, energy initiatives, DEI initiatives. He's now spending $25 million for a legal fund to stop Donald Trump. He gave away half a billion dollars to illegal aliens during COVID. For him, it's not his money. The only thing that counts is that he's got somebody else's money to live in a $9 million home. He didn't make that money.
I don't think even inherited that money. It either came through some corporation that the Getty's fueled or joint venture he had or his wife's family. But the point I'm making is that you can't vote for these people and expect that they're going to worry about people in Dinuba, California or needles. They're not going to do it. They're never going to do it.
They don't care about your transportation. They don't care about your rising home insurance. They don't care that your insurance was canceled. They don't care about half of accidents in Fresno County or hit and run. They don't care about that because they never have to deal with it. Victor, I'm almost afraid to ask you this. What do you think his chances are of winning? I think they're very good.
I think they're very good. It's very important. We call the only thing I can ever remember is they of a person who was recalled. And I'm sure that historians will because I'm not prepared to go through the whole history of California. But in my lifetime, the only time I recall it happening was when they recalled Gray Davis and they successfully did. And then in the special election, they elected
a celebrity, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was his antithesis, and who was good for a couple of years. And then he ran into his wife's agenda and the unions, and he was terrible. But the point I'm making is it's very hard to recall a governor. And then we saw that when the first time they recall Gavin, and then Larry Elderran, of course, the LA Times said that he was a white person, and even though he was black, he reflected white supremacy.
So that that's a level of the preparation you earn, but the only thing that would Work to be honest if Silicon Valley Got behind Someone other than Gavin Newsom. He's very close to them and I don't mean Silicon Valley in its totality But I mean the Peter Tyrrell's a David Sacks
The Ben Horowitz is all of those people said you know what Elon Musk I can't we can't the states Destroyed we can't and then they got someone who was a working person Someone from Fresno some from one from Bakersfield someone from Chico who's
an immigrant, second-generation Mexican-American person that was running a labor crew, running a plumbing business, running a painting company, somebody who dealt with the real world that they couldn't, they being the hard left, say you're a racist, racist, racist, racist.
Not that they wouldn't, they did that with Larry Elder, but I'm not optimistic because the state is almost just completely dysfunctional. I just had somebody that wrote me and said they went to San Francisco and they thought it was a dystopian moonscape. They could not, all the places they frequented and they had happy memories, they were non-existent. And my only comment is, I don't think you should drive in there because where are you going to park your car?
because if it's broken into, they're not going to do anything. Maybe the new mayor or the mayor. The only time things change is when the people who created the problem suffer from the problem, like the Martha's Vineyard, ultra liberal, philanthropic, goodwill, left wing, humanitarian, and then Rhonda Santas sends them some illegal aliens.
and they get their puff jackets for them and their charity boxes and then they say, see you wouldn't want to be you, get on that bus and get to New York or Chicago. And then they secretly will not vote for that if it happened because they're afraid it's going to happen to them again.
And I don't know. Maybe it is happening to the wealthier classes. There is a whole gang that seems to be invading athletes and media stars, houses now. And so maybe they will get more serious, especially about the illegal immigration. Nobody's immune from what they created.
It's a Frankensteinian monster that's destroying its creator. You can be in Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades.
uh, anywhere, palace birdies estates and they will find you. In fact, if you're very, very wealthy and it's known, they'll follow your work schedule and go to your home. And it's everywhere. That's the manifestation. As I said to Jack the other day, I walked out here three days ago and I saw the most atrocious thing I'd ever seen. It was an ancestral poem that first drew my great, great grandmother, Luciana Davis in 1870 to settle here.
because there was an artesian pond, a beautiful pond. One of my siblings sold it. That's his business. But I still walk there every morning. The neighbor forms the almond orchard around the pond. And we know what it's become. It's going to become a receptacle for the local town's illegal aliens to come and dispense their crap. And so there's a washer now on the inside the pond bank. There is a dryer.
There is wet garbage, there's car seats, there's paint, there's toxic chemicals. It's all thrown there. And when you try to wade out like I did this morning and say, I just want all I want is one one bill with your name on it. You can see Mexican literature about, you know, soccer matches. You can see Spanish language. You can't see one bill. So the attitude is
I'm here from Latin America. I'm here illegally. I don't want I'm out in the country. I'm not going that there's a law that says every single person, whether you like it or not, at a residence has to have a trash receptacle. There are public landfills. They cost about 30 or $40 to dump all this stuff.
But there's also these stupid people that live around there and they have all this money and they're wealthy and they own land. And if you go out and throw all of your trash, nothing happens to you. So you call up the state environmental, they'll say, was it on the side of the road? Do you have a witness? No. Well, we're not going to go on your property and remove it. That's not our fault. You have to find the perpetrator and you say, well, the perpetrator
is not stupid. He goes through all of his garbage and he comes in at two in the morning and then I'll say, well, you better get it out. And I've had this conversation before. Oh, by the way, do you have toxic substances there? Yes. Well, you better be very careful because you're not going to be able to dispose of them. You're going to have to drive 100 miles to the toxic waste dump outside of Colinga, California.
That's what you get. And so you get punished for being a fool. Isn't that weird in California?
Yeah, it sure is. And you know, you actually, that is a nightmare. And you actually just wrote a tweet, Twitter, Twitter, an ex post called the National Nightmare. It's ending. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. That was for New Year's. So the optimistic. It was on New Year's Eve. And I was just
It was about nine at night and I was thinking, I was just listening of some poetry. I was thinking of inwictus, that famous poem, Bloodied but on Bowd. I thought about Trump and then I remember that great line. I was thinking, I used to really like to read Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at that point when they said that
He's come back after his victories, and the Civil War is basically over now. They haven't assassinated him yet, but he strides like a colossus, and we are just pitiful between his legs. And we have these unhappy graves. It's a great quote. And then I kind of combine two as a title, a primu.
La deluge, after me the deluge, I didn't put the delusion there, but after me things changed, I put after him more, and then I put la dals, la dals, uncor la dals, tu jour la dals, la dals, excuse that horrible pronunciation, audacity, audacity, courage, courage, resolve, however we translate audas. And that was the theme that we don't have to take it anymore. All of a sudden,
No one cares that, you know, no one cares that you can't say this or you can't say that. I think DI is dead now. People are running away for it. And you can say,
Yes, the COVID came from the laboratory. So what? I just said it. And there are only two sexes. And it's wrong to put a person with testicles and a phallus in with young preteen girls or any girls in a locker room. I just said it.
And you know what? I'm not going to ever listen to Mark Millie again, or Anthony Fauci again, or Andrew McCabe, or James Comey, or John Brennan, any of them they're done with. And we're not going to allow
We're not going to allow to be intimidated anymore. It's a liberating feeling. We don't have to watch what we say, or we don't have to apologize, or we don't have to lie. Nobody's going to say, Joe Biden is fit as a fiddle. What? Or Joe Scarborough? I just saw him. This is the most various Joe Biden ever. No, he's not. He's not. He's not. He's demented. We can say it. You lied.
There's no more ruse anymore. It's all like some kind of south, southerly wind came in and blew it all away. I know you're going to say, well, Victor, wait, wait, you don't understand these people. They're diehards. They're dead enders. I understand them. I'm talking about the psychology of it, not the actual necessarily the material action.
So it was a poem of relief and gratitude for the New Year and the idea that everybody seems to be upbeat. And even people on the left that I talked to, it's sort of like, okay, you caught us lying. He was always demented. Yeah, Camille Harris, there was no momentum, believe me. And she was not joyful. We're kind of secretly happy that we don't have her there.
Yes, Donald Trump is conducting foreign policy and his team has taken over and they're not yet inaugurated, but we're not going to mention the Logan Act. We did that with Michael Flynn, you know, when he called, talked to a Russian, we tried to do that. We just can't do it anymore.
There was a comedian today who apologized for being having Trump derangement syndrome. And we have a lot of that lately, just like taking Donald Trump, please get into office right now, get into office. So that's new.
So that was, I thought that was a really great tweet and I think everybody should join X and Elon Musk and also come to Victor's at VD Hanson. So Victor, this is the end of the show and I have a comment from what's so different this time about Trump's election on your website.
A very nice comment. The commenter said, Dr. Hansen, you are the most erudite observer of every political ism of the 20th century. And then he says this, in your recent interview with the gentleman from the UK, I think it was the John Anderson interview, you expressed a reversal of opinion on the possibility of civil war in the United States since the re-election of President Donald Trump.
You now think not only, not likely, or even possible to occur. Alas, we do not concur on this subject. These coalesced extremist groups are going to reemerge as they did in the summer of 2020. Unfortunately, this time there will be millions of Kyle Rittenhouses to engage them. And I was wondering, Victor, are you optimistic on that?
I never thought there'd be a violent civil war. I still don't. I'm not naive or Pollyanna. Just these people are in hiding. They're exhausted. They've been defeated at the left. They're not over with. They're licking their wounds. They've gone back to their caves, their ideological caves, their strategizing. They're going to move. They'll be back in, I don't know, early February. So what? The point I'm making is that the moment is not theirs anymore.
that people rose up. And when I hear, well, he only won by about 1.6 million votes. I know he got more electoral votes and borrocted when we said it was a landslide. But now we don't think it's quite a landslide. Doesn't matter. You had 95% of the media coverage on television and 95% of it was negative, negative. You spent $2.5 billion.
You tried to take him off the ballot. You tried to put him in jail under five different civil and criminal courtrooms and indictments. You died at him 91 times. Two people tried to kill him possibly, probably, likely because of the rhetoric that suggested it would be OK if you did that.
You impeached him twice. You tried him as a private citizen. You took him off the ballot in 16 states, and it didn't work. What more could you do to him? You couldn't do any more. You tried everything. You had all the money. You had all the media. You had all the lawfare mechanisms, and you still failed.
You're not only failed, but you disgraced all the methods that you used. So the DOJ is disgraced. The FBI is disgraced. The CIA is disgraced. They're all disgraced. The Pentagon is disgraced. You did that. Now they're going to have to be rebuilt under different auspices. The media is disgraced. Silicon Valley people are disgraced. They know it. They're joining their antithesis.
Yeah, we're not going to have a civil war. They're going to come back, but I think they're in retreat.
And they have a message that know what he wants. And there's going to be someone like a Bill Clinton, and it's not going to be sincere. Bill Clinton wasn't, but he wants to win and gain power. And he's going to start talking maybe with a southern accent, who knows, but he's going to talk about solutions. And we're not going to worry about ideology. We're just going to do stuff from their middle class and balance the budget and have a strong defense, that kind of stuff.
just like Bill did. And Bill kind of kept his word. He balanced the budget two years. Haven't seen that since with Newt Gingrich. So if they want to win, they're going to have to get someone like that with Josh Shapiro. I think I don't. I'm not a big fan of Josh Shapiro. I think he's a leftist, but he's very smart. And he plays as if he's a moderate because he sees his state, Pennsylvania flipping, flipping, flipping red. Just like John Federman. Now everybody's Oh, John Federman.
He came to a census, and he didn't come to a census. He looked at that vote, and he looked at those county-by-county returns, and he said, I will not be returned to the Senate if I go back to my earlier John Federman. So I've got to recreate the Bill Clinton Democratic Party in the state, because the state is not conservative anymore. Pennsylvania is more conservative now than Wisconsin or Michigan.
So they had an enormous Republican effort to turn out the vote and register votes and Federman understands he's he's cooked and let's see, he does it. So there's there'll be somebody who tries to reconstruct the the old Democratic Party just to get power.
I don't think the squad and bring you Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are going to be there, the stalwarts. Nancy Pelosi's, she's thinking about Nancy Pelosi when she leaves, the people in her own party are going to say, God, thank God.
And then you're going to learn just about Nancy Pelosi, just the way you did Joe Biden. You're going to hear, just as Joe Biden is now politically inert, and everybody said, that Matthew Ecclesia said, I should have known, I trusted the people when they said that he wasn't mentally challenged. I.E., I went after all you people and called you names if you dared suggest that. But he was demanded. Well, they're going to say the same thing about Nancy Pelosi when she's out of office. And they're going to say,
Oh, we love Nancy, but yes, she made a lot of money. And using that position and her husband, federal contracts, stock deals, and we're going to have to pass legislation to stop people like her again, because she was something else. She became a multimillionaire on a house representative salary and a husband that was in a appendage of her inside knowledge. Yeah.
Well, Victor, thank you for all of your wisdom this afternoon. I know we're once again on a heartbreak. So we're all happy to have our audience as well where you guys make us. So thanks to you and thank you everybody for listening. This is Sammy Wink and Victor Davis Hanson and we're signing off.
