Future of NATO and German Rearmament

This episode is brought to you by Fox One . Watch all one hundred and four matches of the FIFA World Cup live in four K for just nineteen ninety nine cents a month with three days free. Build your own mult iew,i ch voose up to three streams, and follow players spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays. The FIFA World Cup, streaming live on Fox One, offers a subject to change CF.OX com for complete terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by Street Easy. You got to ask yourself, Want to talk about the time you lived in the greatest city on Earth or still live in it? In the city where a mat inee leads to two AM tacos. Your New York era can last a lifetime. With twenty years of MYC know how, Straight Easy can help you become a forever New Yorker. Visit straighteasy. com to buy or rent in NYC. Street Easy is an assumed name of Zillow Inc, which has licenses in all fifty states . Iran is not a protector of the United States. It's ninety three million people , it's one and a half times the size of Texas . And we don't have a good record going in on the ground and managing a country. We saw that in Afghanistan. We saw that in Iraq . You take out two big power plants in Tehran and you're in trouble . And you take out the power , where's all these missile factories and everything? Where are they getting their power? It's on the grid , you hit them and they're in trouble . So we can do that They're saying to present, we can win . We have a chance of doing the incredible. We can win, but but you can't stay in there too long. Hello and welcome. This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. And we're on our Saturday special edition for the weekend. So thank everyone for joining us. We have more news . The memorandum of Understanding is out. So we'll talk about that first. I know we talked a lot about the Iran war in the beginning, but we'll start with that . And also the World Cup celebrations and the Iranian team , so stay with us for those stories and we'll be right back . Since the founding of America two hundred and fifty years ago , many things have changed , but some things never do , the commitment of husband and wife , the importance of passing along our values to our children , the faithfulness of God . Some wonder how we can ensure America will continue to thrive. As long as we keep first things first , we've only just begun . America, the beautiful . Welcome back. This is Victor Davis Hansen. In his own words, we're subsidiary of the Daily Signal. We highly suggest everybody go to the Daily Signal to check out their content there, both articles and podcasts and some short form videos that Victor does for the daily signals. So please join him there. He is the Martin and Nillie Anderson senior fellow in military history and classics at the Hoover Institution and the Wayne and Marsha Busky Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. You can join him at his website Victorhansen. com. The name of the website is the blade of Perseus. So Victor, let's go ahead and get to the memorandum of understanding. It was a very short, two page document , easy to read through, dealt with largely the peace agreement. And they know what I thought was really interesting. They emphasized Lebanon, Lebanon, Lebanon. It must have been written in there three times that the you know, they got they're making a peace deal, but also for Lebanon . And the Straits of the Hormuz will be open and the Iranians will give up their nuclear material and not build any more nukes. And then the sanctions. And I thought that it seemed kind of light on the sanctions was the only thing that I noticed. Although there's lots of criticism out there, I was wondering your thoughts. Well you gotta start with a I think a lot of people are missing a couple of premises . Number one, we don't know the extent of damage in Iran . No ground troops, no embedded reporters, no news, no internet there. Trump said a trillion dollars or two trillion , maybe even if it's a half trillion, it's a fifty year investment in military nuclear industrial complex and a lot of it's ruined . And they have been embargoed and they've been sanctioned, their assets are frozen. They're losing four hundred million dollars a day in revenue. So they're in bad shape. We don't know how bad they are. That's number one . Number two , we're not a protect Iran is not a protector of the United States. It's ninety three million people. It's one and a half times the size of Texas . And we don't have a good record of going in on the ground and managing a country. We saw that in Afghanistan. We saw that in Iraq . seven thousand five hundred dead , two trillion dollars . And look at the Taliban is still in control. So we're not going to go in there and manage it. If you're not going to go in there and manage it your control over that regime is limited, especially when it has patrons that are nuclear like Russia and China , and they want to get back in. So my point is simply this , can you stop them from enriching? Yes . You can say we're going to bomb the moment we see you tamper with Pickaxe Mountain or any of those areas. And can we stop them from closing the straits? Yes, you have to open the straits or we're not going to lift the blockade . The key to all this memorandum of understanding is will he use force when they inevitably cheat . So a week from now if they think well , we got a lot of concessions. We're going to send three missiles into the hated UAE and we're going to send a couple more in Kuwait and have a big Shia rested population. And if Trump says, Oh, that was just a love to, it won't work. He's got to say, okay, you sent three, you're going to lose ten bridges . You sent three against Kuwait, you're going to lose a power grid. He hasn't done that yet. People forget there's a whole list of targets that Obama went after in Libya and a whole typology that Clinton went after. We were in the same place in Serbia in nineteen ninety n ine. It was not working after sixty days We limited, and then all of a sudden Clinton went wild. All the bridges gone in the danube, the grid, he, I wouldn't do it. He hits museums, he had hospitals, he had everything . Any time he heard they were using something that he thought he wouldn't hit, they hit and that stopped him after seventy eight days. My point is they have a whole list of targets that we haven't even touched , but you can shut down that entire economy in two days if you hit them . You take out two big power plants in Tehran and you're in trouble . And you take out the power , where's all these missile factories and everywhere they getting their power? It's on the grid . You hit them and they're in trouble . So we can do that. And if he's going to do it, it doesn't really matter. All he has to say is we can't control what you do, but if we decide you're funding terrorists that attack us, if we find that you're building missiles that are shoot launching, he doesn't have to have them in the memorandum of agreement. If you dare, he can, he should have the nuclear enrichment and he should have the Straits . Meanwhile , he's telling the UAE and the Israelis and the Turks, hey you guys , you all have avenues for pipelines , get to it . So double your capacity Saudi to ship out the Red Sea. Double your triple your capacity you're on the right side of the Strait of Ramuz, go straight into the Persian Gulf and double that. And then Turkey , get a long pipeline into the oil fields. You can do it. And Israel cut a deal and go right out of Hyfa and do it. now So the next time they do it, we 're not over a barrel. And I think they're doing that. Final thing is we don't care what the left says because when one day H'itsler and the next day's Neville Chamberlain. Hycom Jeffrey's can't figure that out. Oh, he's he's a chicken. He tacoed out. Trump always chickens out the next day. He's Neville Chamberlain. Oh, this is not we didn't get anything . This was a useless preemptive war that was too we're striking a school, you know, all this stuff. It's just whatever Trump's for that. You don't pay any attention to it. But on the right , what they're doing is they're getting attack in two places. So there's Steve Bannon, Tucker, Candice , Meghan Kelly podcasters , and some politicians are angry that they did anything at all. So now it's like , we didn't want you to do anything , but now you haven't done anything . They've done a lot . They keep thinking that this is like the Obama deal when Iran was ascendant convinced that Obama wouldn't lift a finger militarily and they had all this infrastructure . They're devastated. They're not in twenty sixteen and Trump isn't Obama. He's got a lot more assets at his disposal . He doesn't have some crazy idea that he's going to champion a Shia alternate crescent to rival the moderate Arab regimes in Israel and empower Damascus, Tehran, Gaza, Beirut . That was Obama, Valerie Jerrett's Ben Rhodes idea . So there's a lot of assets , but people have to realize that he's under a lot of pressure. If he loses the house and history says thirty eight out of the last forty one midterms , the end party lost seats . If he loses the house, number one, they're going to impeach him on day one. I don't mean that literally, but it's going to start . Number two, they're going to call in the entire Trump family and they have the power of subpoena, and they're going to tie him. So he's getting house members and they're saying to him, believe it or not , believe it or not, Mr. President , given our redistricting that we're going to beat these guys, the blue, the red is going to win. And given the racial gerrymandering, it's going to stop some of that. And given that no one likes this socialist agenda that they're radical , that their radical candidates are promoting , and given that the price of oil is going down seventy five dollars a barrel, sixty five is break even . They're down to four dollars a gap, below four dollars . It was only I think three thir hundred andty , they're saying to present, we can win . We have a chance of doing the incredible. We can win, but but you can't stay in there too long . If you stay in there too long and you have to and the price of oil goes up, we're dead . So cut a deal and then if you have to do something, just do it a day or two at a time and keep the straight open. So he's under that pressure . And given the idea that we don't do well fighting their type of war on the ground , we're not going to do that. And you have to try to do that if you want to say, we're going to inspect every missile silo, every launcher, we're not going to let you do this, you're not going to do that . You're going to have to say, you're not going to do the big things, get a bomb and shut down world commerce out of the strait . But we know you're going to do other stuff . But if we find that that other stuff is killing Americans or our allies , all bets are off. You're going to really regret it. But we're not going to tell you don't do that when we can't stop you from doing it without ground troops. So we can stop you, but it'll be our way in our time and our Well, Victor given what we say here often or we've talked about often that a foe has to know they're beaten or else they are going to come back at you. It seems to me that they don't this memorandum of understanding and I know that maybe a treaty will come later, etc . But it doesn't leave a clear message with Iran that they are a beaten foe . They know internally they're beaten , but they want to tell the world they're not. Yes. We know they're beaten . But we can't tell the world that they're beaten until we get reporters in there and show the damage . Number one , and we find out what the status of the rest of population is. They have no internet . So problems don't end with the end of bombing for now with a memorandum of understanding. They begin because as people come out of their apartments and they can't afford gas, they can't afford food, and they look at all this wreckage around them. And eighty percent of the population says like the Warsaw packed after the fall of the Berlin Wall or two years later the Soviet Union fell . They're going to say this was fifty years taking money out of my pocket and food off my table and executing people. And this is what you got, that big trash pile over there and that trash pile over there . And you were completely humiliated . And you can say you won, but the United States controls our skies . Their ships are in there cop, they can do anything they want to us. So you're trying to tell me that unlike the Germans after World War One who didn't have any fighting on their soil, the Iranians are going to come out of their various places and see that their country has been devastated by this. So that's all that matters is that they feel beaten. The people feel beaten. There's another difference. The people in Germany told that they weren't beaten like these people , but they felt they were stabbed in the back. That was the argument they made . They didn't rebel against the Kaiser . I mean they didn't they rebelled, you know, Ludendorff, Hindenburg and Ludendorff were heroes, even though they lost the war . So my point is they didn't have an antithetical . They bought into the idea that Jews betrayed them and socialists. If this government has hated and started this whole stuff by their nuclear dreams, they're not going to be able to tell the Iranian people the Jews did it and a bunch of communists did it. Nobody's going to believe that. They're going to get angrier angrier at them and they're going to remove them. And remember, they removed the Kaiser. And so the other thing is today very quickly , there's people in the Caneset and Israel that and it's a parliamentary system. So you have coalitions of minority fanatical parties in that system unlike our two party system . So they were blaming Trump . And BB's been very careful not to do that , but they've been very vocal . So they sent JD Vance out . I'm not sure some of it you can understand, but I'm not sure that it was called for. He basically started dispassionately at his press conference saying, Now, wait a minute . Two thirds of your missile defense that saved your lives came from us . Our technology, our assembly, the patriots and all this, and we paid for it and gave it to you. You don't have any friends in the world except us . We protect you basically from nuclear superpowers, the Europeans, the Arabs . He's saying that to Israel. Yes. He's saying that to him. So you better be careful Donal.d Trump's best the friend you ever had . Okay . And then they have to realize something . Iran has no ability to project power anywhere , but there is Hezbollah. They have hijacked that country. The government that's legitimate is afraid of them because they're killers . Every time they try to stand up to Hezbollah, Iran, Soleimania used to come over and say, kill that guy, kill that guy. And they did. So they're terrified . So that Hezbollah runs a lot of the country and they hit Israel. They have one hundred sixty thousand missiles for a reason. They did . And Israel has decimated about ninety percent of their hierarchy , but they have a remnant that are hiding inside Beirut . Does JD really believe that if right now you said as we're going to say, cease fire , that the Israelis would break it? I don't. I think that Hezbollah's going to break it. And they're going to break it. They're going to kill a couple of people with drones. And then Israel is going to say, it doesn't do any good to go hit two or three . The drones came from this apartment address in the basement. We have people who told us we're going to take out that apartment building. So when Trump says , well, you can't take out a whole building when a guy from Hezbollah walks in the door . Well, he didn't walk in the door. He walked down to the basement and it's full of drones and they're unloading them at night . So what else are they supposed to do ? And that's what he didn't talk about . JD, all I would like him to do is say , Okay , I'm Israel and I'm surrounded by these people, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah . And after october seventh, you tell me how I'm supposed to deal with Hezbollah. Now we've done everything. We've taken out their leadership, we've hit them, we've bombed them, and they're still they've got one hundred sixty thousand missiles and we can get ninety percent and that's still sixteen twenty thousand missiles rockets and they've got drones and they're killing us and they're making uninhabitable northern Israel near the border. So just tell me what we're supposed to do . I think we should have said to Iran , you can do if you want to go support terrorism with your money , you go ahead, you kill one American , one American, and we're going to take out, as I said, ten bridges for every one American. We're sick of you. We're sick of you for fifty years. And as far as the Israelis are concerned, they're not part of the deal . They're not part of the deal . So you want to send rockets . We're not going to tell you what to do. We're not going to tell the Israelis what to do, but I guarantee you they're going to hit you hard and we're not going to lift a finger to stop them. That would have been a much better . Yes. So do you think the memorandum of understanding as far as Hezbollah, the what it refers to in Hezbollah actually they keep saying Lebanon, Lebanon, Lebanon. But anyways , the references to Lebanon , Donald Trump's administration believes that that's just for the United States and that if Hezbollah is going to bother . I think he thinks that Iran he can get a deal by restraining Netanyahu . And then what's happening, Iran and Hezbollah are going all over the Muslim world and broadcasting . We flipped the United States, they're mad at the Jews. We broke up the alliance. It's Israel's fault. Even J anz agrees. I don't think in that part of the world you want to publicly criticize your closest ally that has been with you and took out the air defenses publicly , privately maybe , but more importantly , there is no Lebanon. That's what I'm getting at. Lebanon has been hijacked by terrorists that kill people. They have a veneer of elected people, but Hezbollah says we're going to create an arsenal and attack the Jewish state , and they're going to hide among you guys. So when they retaliate, they're going to kill you as much as us . And they can't stop them . And we should say , we can't stop you either, but we're not going to listen to the Lebanese that come to us and say, Oh, we poor us had they hijacked our country. We'll then take it back . And we're not going to listen to you and Iran that are funding this and say, o,h well you can't hit Hezbollah. Oh, no, no, no, you go ahead and do your worst and let the Israelis do their best and may the best person win. That would be a lot better . And as far as the Strait, we're negotiating on two areas . The strait gets opened and I'm still confused about that because we took out ninety percent of their navy. We have warthogs and Apaches all over . can They stop blow up anything that tries the mine . So apparently we allowed that strait to be closed because we didn't want to hit them because the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the UA came to us and said, They're going to take out our desalinization plants. They're going and we should have said , well, we're in a war and you've got six hundred combat aircraft . So if they send three missiles to you, go take out their grids. That's your business. We never did that. So they didn't. They flew some missions , but I think people are getting a little tired of them because they're schizophrenic. You've got to stop Iran. They're dominating. They're taking over all these countries. They're stirring up Shia. Okay . Well, if you're going to do it , you might be careful. Don't do too much because the Muslim community might get mad and we don't want to be working with Israel, okay, okay . But we'll sin we can't really do it ourselves, but you got to do it for us. And finally it gets old It sure does. And so that's why Trump has to be very careful because there's a lot of people who say, you know what ? That's a mess and that whole country of Iran is not worth the bones of one marine to quote Bismarck . You know, the Balkans are not worth the bones of one Russian German grenadier, you know, so what you have that strong just make sure they cannot get a bomb on Trump's term term and hurt them enough, they can't do it if there's another Democratic president for four years or maybe eight , and make sure the stra it is open long enough so it's irrelevant. So we can make it irrelevant by having our allies do pipelines, make it irrelevant and then tell them all the other things that we wanted regime change , no more subsidies, no missiles. They're welcome. We can't control all that, but we can react to it . And if you kill Americans with your terrorists . If you start sending rockets to all these people , if you start killing thirty or forty thousand people , that wasn't in the memorandum of Organ Staning, but maybe we have our own memorandum of organs and we will put you into the dark ages and see what happens . Well Victor Let's welcome back a sponsor pure health research. If you want to drop extra pounds, boost energy levels or redu ce swelling in your legs and feet. This message is for you. Pure health research is on a mission to make America healthy again . And two of their best selling health supplements are leading the way. First is liver health formula. Over one hundred million Americans have a liver riddled with fatty deposits. This can kill your metabolism, pile up on the pounds, and make you feel tired. Liver health formula takes care of all that . It supports thriving liver health with special nutrients like artichoke extract and milk thistle. This is one of the easiest ways to slim down and revitalize your energy levels. Next is limp system support. If you're struggling with fluid buildup or swelling in your legs, ankles or feet, this one's for you. The natural ingredients in limp system support gently flush extra fluids and toxins out of the body and right now for a limited time you can get thirty five percent off liver health formula and live system support along with all fifty plus health supplements pure health research has to offer. Head over to purehealth research . com that's pure healthresearch dot com and use the coupon code Victor at checkout . That's pure health research dot com with coupon code Victor to save thirty five percent on your order today . Again, purehealth research dot com for thirty five percent off on your order. And we'd like to thank Pure Health Research for sponsoring the Victor Davis Hansen Show. Well, Victor, what I have to say, given everything that you just said about what's going on with Iran and what could be and what might not be is that Iran must count its lucky stars that it was the United States that went up against it rather than something like Russia or China, if we can recall Grozny or even the Ukraine war now that the United States came in very targeted, even Israel very targeted and the Iranian people haven't suffered from that. I know that the economy is not doing well, so they are suffering, but given what the suffering could have been from being bombed out completely , are you suggesting that the Russian media such as it is and the Russian people when they're said , We're blowing up apartment buildings in churches and hospitals in Kyiv. They just shrug and say, So what? Are you saying the Chinese people say Oh my gosh , we have a million Muslims and camps . So what? You're right. They don't care. American people are different than those people. So they demand a level a modicum of civ ility and civilization when you civil so called civilized war. But here's the other point and I think that's important that We Donald Trump has pressures on him . They don't have their governments don't have any pressures at all. The other thing is , I mean he has midterms and he's got the press and the Russians and Chinese can do whatever they want as long as they're successful. Putin may not dictators once they get on the back of a tiger, they have to stay there. If the tiger starts bucking, they're dead. It'll devour them. That's what the people can do . But the other thing is when Iran has a certain , I don't know what the attitude is they look at magnimity and restraint as weakness. I keep saying this to be exploited not to be returned in kind. So when they see us, and that's what Trump said when he used that vulgarity yesterday . People got very angry. He said, You know what? The Iranians said to our negotiators that Obama was a dumb son of a bleep . And what he was saying was that Obama thought they liked him, but he gave away so much, and they knew he'd never bombed them and never hurt them , and he wanted them to be a rival to the Arabs that they had contempt for him. And that's the problem with dealing with regimes like that. The more that you're careful about them and the more that you have to adhere to your own standards of behavior and civilization , the more they think you're weak and the more they try to take advantage. So what you have to do , that's why I keep iterating this . For this to work, you have to be at times disproportionate . So they think you're crazy. You don't have to go slaughtering civilians, but believe me , as I said earlier, tomorrow they send in, say, seven rockets into Kuwait, then you say , Here's twenty bridges . And you know what? They have dual use. Your rocket launchers use them sometimes or you transport materials to rebuild. So you're not going to be able to do it. So you have a nine hour detour around that gorge. We just took out the bridge . And you know what? You've got a lot of oil, just get some generators because we're going to take out your grid and you're not going to have a central power for a while . And we can keep doing it , but we're civilized. We're not going to hit your hospitals. We're not going to hit your mosque . Unless you put your military under those hospitals at once , right? All right . Well, there I was wondering your reflections today on a Saturday on a weekend on the World Cup and all the attendees coming to the United States and celebrating its culture , but there's one other thing along with this. Apparently the team from Iran played in Los Angeles and they were told to get out of the country immediately and their coach immediately went to our woke narrative saying we're being oppressed because they're telling us to leave immediately and this is an oppression of the Iranian team. Where they were just so everybody knows, where they were being told to fly to was Tijuana, so to stay outside the country in Tijuana, rather than where they were going to be based before this war went on , which was in Arizona. So it's not really that much further than where they were afraid they were all going to defect all the Iranian soccer players . Yeah. Really? I think so. Their coach seems to think that he's just accusing the Americans of oppression . I think he doesn't want them in the country too long . He wasn't they were told to leave. They were going to stay overnight in LA after the night. I know it. But I think I think I know they had they were totally but I think they were worried that I think we were worried that we were going to have an incident. I think they were all going to say we want sanctuary and people said just go back . We don't want to get it be there. Sheenbonn took it up as , you know, oh yes, well we're so welcoming in Mexico. Yeah, we have the same type of government as you do. We have a lot of affinity. We're an autocracy masquerading as a consensual society . But we have the cartels. You can stay with them. They're very hospitable But you know they said also they said you couldn't have the lion flag the old Iranian monarchy and I think they were telling us World Cup officials said they couldn't use those. You know, what do we can do anything? If ten thousand Iranians want to show up and march around with a lion flag more power to them . It's kind of like the San Francisco Giants . They are supposed to wear this pride insignia on their cap and then some Christians who feel that over Overt homosexual activity or homosexual marriage or transgender is at odds with their Christian faith. So they put little verses, you know ? Yeah, four their pictures put biblical vers ions say they they're defacing their uniform and you're politicized No, we don't believe you anymore . You politicized it. The only reason that you're angry you feel as the official major league representatives that you can have a monopoly on political weaponization of uniforms . You're just like Colin Kaepernick . You can wear little pig socks when you're playing , you can take the knee, you can put little arm, you can do anything you want, but nobody else can because we're so scared that our audience we feel is left of sinner . And so don't dare do that. And I think they've misread the American people. We're sick of that. Why is it wrong for somebody to put a Christian verse on their uniform ? And it's not wrong to put a pride advertis ement . When you can make the argument if they were smart, a majority of Americans still, even at this late in US history , are more favorable to Christianity than to overt displays of homosexuality . For good or worse, I'm not trying to comment on them. I'm just saying if you're going to look at the act. But they're afraid of the institutions that exercise power, their ad , the corporation boardroom, the ad people, the lawyers, the media, academia, that's all left . But the people , they were probably on the side of the pitchers . I know that the attendees have come and I know this is probably Fox and right wing news outlets are showing all of the celebration of US fast food and just friendliness , but they said they got a few people who said something interesting. They go, well, our presses in Europe tell us how horrible you are and how shameful you are and everything we get here. And it's not like that . So So they 're very happy to be in the U. S. The thing is when people come to the United States , they fly into San Francisco, L. A. Washington, DC, New York, maybe Miami , but they never go in the middle of it . But they don't understand that half of us dislike those places just as much as they do. They're full of crime, they're dirty, there's homeless people and they're obnoxious people . But outside of that, most Americans are very friendly and they like people . I had a very weird incident not too long ago , well twenty years ago, but I'm seventy two. That's not long ago. So I was out in my yard . I just put in a swimming pool and had a big wall, I built a wall, a concrete five hundred and fifty foot wall with Javier or my friend . And three people rode in on bikes Netherlands, and they had ridden all the way. They were going fifteen miles an hour for ten hours , one hundred fifty miles, and they had left the coast , right where San Simeon is . And they came in and they had been in Montecito and LA and Santa Barbara , and they were kind of ambiguous. So all of a sudden there were two guys and a girl, a guy, his sister and the sister's boyfriend . And we didn't have a lot of money, but once a month we went into the Salma Meat Market and bought ribeye steaks and we had the I had three small children and they kept yelling and they were terrified that when they were driving across there were gangbangers that were yelling at the girl. You know what I mean? They came into Fresno County because they was getting late at night. It was dusk and they saw a wall and they thought, well, maybe this will be a refuge. So they so we came in. So the next thing we knew we had my kids were small, so I took their port ions of ribeyes and I had these big thick ribeyes and mashed potatoes, corn and macab and French bread. And they were like wow, where did you get all this money? This is can we eat? And we said , Yes, you can eat. And then they said, There's vines everywhere. Do you have raisins? Yes, do you want raisins? Sunmate, I have some sun mate. Oh my gosh, and we gave them like fifty of those little raisin pdacks so they' have energy thing . And then they stayed overnight and they said, We're so hot, can we go swimming ? And so the brother stayed here eating , and he said, I can't swim . But actually it was because his sister and her boyfriend were swimming nude in our pool as good Dutchman. And so my son crawled out there and said, Dad, this woman was naked . So I said, fine, don't go near there. And we're talking. And then they came back and they said, We didn't have swimming suits. It wasn't . And then the brother went out and swam and they came back. So then they said, Could we stay overnight ? And it was summer, right? And we said, well , yeah, but it's kind of hard. So then we went and got all of our lounge chairs and made really nice mattresses . And then we said, breakfast at six o'clock, bacon eggs, toast, coffee . So they ate. And then they said , Well, we'd like to we'd like to go to the sunmade plant. And I said, Okay, and get them put all our bikes in the back of the pickup. I drove them over to sunmade raisin. They bought more raisins, even though they have like fifty of them , they fill their backpacks and they had it was then blue diamond and they had almond . And then they said , But could you tell us how to get we want to go we're going to go over the mountains because they were going across the count ry . And I said, You're going to go over the country? Well, you got to go down to Bakerfield and go around or you got to go up near Tahoe . You can go over two routes. One was Tyog Pass . And that's really scenic, but it's like eleven, ten thousand feet or they said, Yeah, we that's where we want to go . And I said, Well, you got to go through all that. So they said, Well, where do we start? And I said, I will drive you all the way up to forty one. So I drove them for forty miles. And then they said, Thank you. Then it was like the end of Blackstone Avenue. So then I said, Well, I'll go a little further. Next thing I knew I was going all the way up to Course Cold and dropped them off. And they were so happy because they were, you know, but the point was they kept saying to me the whole time , we didn't know you guys were so nice. This is so nice . Everybody we all thought Americans were gangbangers and they were in Montecito, they were all rich people, but I said, everybody's like this out here. Everybody's like this . And then about once every three years, some Swedish journalists would come they were Swedish Americans . So they would call me up and said, Can we interview you about your swedish roots? And I'd call my dad because he could still speak a little Swedish and they would come and they were all social communists, you know . But the point was my dad would then say, No, we're going to cook . And he would get steaks and just he always had like double the portions and he would just lavish them. And then we had milkshakes for the kids. And they were just astounded that people would be that nice that would give food away . And the point I'm making about Illis, this is the first time they dispersed all these events outside those cities . So they're in the south, they're in the midwest, and they're starting to see who Americans are and the left the left is always grouchy and angry and unhappy and twenty six percent said they were patriotic in the latest poll , you know, because Trump's president, when Obama was president that was still sixty five, Republicans were very patriotic. sixty . They don't care who's president. Yeah, and fifty five percent say they would rather live in a different country. I have Democrats right now. So yeah, they all say rem,ember Rosie O'Donnell, I'm going to go to Ireland. And then she goes to Ireland and she goes, Where's my air conditioning? It's humid here. Where's this? Where's this? Where's this? Or are they all saying I'm going to go to the Middle East and go to the West Bank? Yeah, I've seen you people. You're all in Israel where you stay overnight . They don't want to go to a non Western they want to criticize a non Western country in the abstract. Yeah. Well, Victor, let's go ahead and take a break. And then we're going to come back in the middle segment , Victor is going to talk about John Adams and Barack Obama's administrations. Stay with us and we'll be right back. Hey, I'm Bradley Devlin. And just like you, I'm a huge fan of Victor Davis Hansen. Whether it's his long form podcast, Victor Davis Hansen in his own words, or his short form content for the Daily Signal, Victor Davis Hansen in a few words, I always leave an episode learning something new. I think they forgot the nineteen eighty two Falklands War. And in the age of clickbait and rage bait, that's a really good feeling, right? The media, thank you. You can leave now. And if you agree, you might like my show, the Daily Signal's long form interview podcast called The Signal Sit Downs. Every week we take you behind the scenes of the biggest battles in Washington, DC as they happen with some of the biggest names in politics. We explore big ideas and we analyze the policy making process from an un abashedly and unapologetically conservative perspective. And that's important now more than ever, especially with the Trump administration back in office because in twenty twenty four, you sent Washington a message it couldn't ignore. It's your government and, together we're taking it back . So check us out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you enjoy Victor Davis Hansen, we're there too. And drop me a follow on X at Bradley Devlin to stay updated with what's happening on the Signal Sit Hem. Welcome back . This is Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. You can find Victor on X. His handle is at VD Hansen and on Facebook at Hansen's Morning Cup. So come join him there if social media is your place to get news . Well, Victor, I'm anxious to hear about the cantankorous John Adams and it was can korous . He's the one founder that no one really talks about. You know what I mean? He was vice president for two terms under Washington and then he was the first president that really had to face a real election against Jefferson . And he won close . But he was kind of the kind of guy in which if you said something , he would agree but he'd say, that's really good, but I want to correct you on this point . Or you didn't you weren't aware of this. So he got on the wrong side of Hamilton. He was more federalist than Jeffersonian , Hamiltonian, but he couldn't get along with Hamilton . He couldn't get Washington kind of got sick of him. He was as vice president . And he went to France as an envoy and the ambassador Franklin couldn't get along with him . And Jefferson , early Jefferson, couldn't get along with him. And the reason was he was very intelligent . He was very well educated. He came from an ancient, not in a really wealthy aristocratic , but a upper class landowning, Massachusetts, New England, Puritan, self righteous . He had a brilliant, beautiful wife. He married when she was fifteen, Abigail Adams . And he had enormous natural talent . And so and he was a very diminutive rotun person . He wasn't physically imposing like Washington, or handsome and dynamic like Jefferson, or young and dashing like Hamilton. They made fun of the way he looked . Kind of had a little pot belly and stuff . So he wasn't an impressive character. And that famous anecdote when they were going to write the declaration, he was the head of the committee of for five people to dra ft it. And he essentially said Jefferson should do it, not me. He writes better than I do. He writes more quickly than I do and people like him and nobody likes me. And he was always upset that he was so brilliant and he did so many good things. He helped draft Madison and people that were writing the Constitution. He used the Massachusetts experience with the state constitutions . He had a hand in the Declaration of Independence . He supported Jefferson, who was really critical. That was excised by this three Southern members, but he wanted to keep in the attack on slavery, prohibition of slavery . He was the first I think he was the first , I want to be careful of the first ten , maybe twelve presidents or first he was the only one that didn't have slaves . He never had a slave. He was an absolute strong abolitionist. Of course, Massachusetts had outlawed it very early in the I think in the late eight eenth century, but maybe it was the early nineteenth century. They had outlawed slavery in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where he lived . When he was president, he didn't really go to Washington. It was a southern city. He didn't like it. He just stayed up in Massachusetts and did it kind of like Zoom, but their version of Zoom. So and he was cantankerous. Nobody could get along with him. So after he came out, he wrote a three volume history of the Constitution, how it was formed, what the purpose was. He was writing an autobiography of himself. He kind of quit. He wrote an enormous amount of work, but the thematic he wrote a day book I used I had read once. I had a student that did a thesis on it. Brilliant student, Megan Bushman, and she worked on it . And I really learned a lot advising that thesis because it's full of classical illusion. He read Jefferson and he read Thucydides like Jefferson did in Greek. He read Cicero in Latin. He was superbly educated . He had six kids that was very tragic. Two, I think, died in infancy . His beloved daughter died at thirty of breast cancer . His two boys , he had three boys. One, of course, was John Quincy Adams, who became present and did him proud, but the other two became alcoholic and died from drinking, which was very hard for him because he was an upright puritanical guy and his life he lived to be ninety years old . And he and Jefferson then Abigail told him you're the two most brilliant men of the founders. You've got to get along with each other. Hamilton's dead W,ashington 's dead , get ride him. So he kept riding Jefferson, and Jefferson didn't like him because they had been good friends. But when Jefferson ran against him the second time and beat him , he knew of it, but he had agents that brought up Sally Hemains and he had had sexual relations and had illegitimate kids with a slave and all this stuff about his life and Jefferson couldn't forgive him. Not that Jefferson didn't do the same thing to him , but the point is that he kept writing two, three, four letters. And finally, Jefferson repl willied, but when you look at that corpus, it's like three to one, he writes three letters and he's begging him to why don't we write for posterity that you give your version of states rights and Republicanism and I'll give mine of a powerful federal government . Now, let's talk about farming, let's talk about life, philosophy. I don't want to get into that. Jefferson thought if we get into that, we're going to argue again because they were antithet . And then he was an incrementalist, you know , when Boston Tea Party started and then Lexington and Concord , they were ready for revolution. And he was too. He'd hated the British absurping local control. They took over Massachusetts' autonomy . But it was always like , well, I'm a lawyer. I'll defend these British soldiers that were accusing of murdering people . Or yes, we need a revolution, but let's not be hasty. And it took him a longer than the other founders to be a fool and he was and that was good in some ways because he forced people to think it through . But because of his I don't want to say he was homely but because he was not an impressive physical person , because he was not a great writer , because he was not a great speaker , and because he was so brilliant , and he was a polymicist and he was kind of having a mean streak. And he always feltt that he didn' get enough credit . And then that famous exchange eighteen twenty six. He's ninety years old and I guess Jefferson is eighty two , and they're writing back and forth and Jefferson dies . And it takes, I guess, a week for the letters to reach each other . But so they're died within hours of each other. They did. They did. They didn't know that at the time the country didn't find that out for a week . So he writes and says he's dying and says Jeff erson lives. So he died thinking that Jefferson, the younger man, at least outlived him, and he thought that was probably a good thing . But Jefferson had already died. And you know, there's no instant communication. And that was only found out later that they actually died within an hour or two of each other, which is kind of eerie, isn't it? The two the second and third president of the United States that represented two diametr ical views, federalism , moderate federalism. He wasn't a Hamiltonian. He hated Hamilton didn't hate him, but he didn't get along. None of those guys got along. And then Jefferson States rights , southerner, New Englander . It's funny that they died on the same day and that day was july fourth I don't know how that's possible. The odds against that are Yeah, that's pretty true. The founders that represent the polls of the two warring ideas about what the Constitution and the country should be like, finally, reconciling and then dying on the national birthday or the young country almost simultaneously. Well, Victor, may I suggest something? I know that you were going to talk about the millipulous Barack Obama in contrast to Adams, but maybe we can save that for next week because we're kind of under a deadline. So we have more news to deal with. The European Parliament has voted a deportation bill through, so we'll talk about that. And then I wanted to talk a little bit about the Ukraine and maybe some more things, but at least those two things when we come back from these messages . Welcome back. It's Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So Victor, the European Parliament voted four hundred and eighteen to two hundred and eighteen for a return regulation bill that would deport both asylum see kers and illegal immigrants. And that's a huge margin. I mean, there's double votes. I know the European Parliament is not a very strong . It's a beautiful building. I've been there before. I remember we came up to it in Friday morning and we were that was our tour company that I had. And my partner, Al , it's going to be dicey because everybody's the roads. I said',s It seven in the morning on a Friday. He said, Well, actually they quit work at Thursday night , but there's still people that linger on Friday morning and they get paid per diam ond. And it's a joke because they had no power. Were there very many people in the building at all once you showed up? No, we went in there on a Friday. There was nobody . So it's not the EU Council and it's not the unelected head of it. She's never been elected by anybody other than her peers or feel like you're, but it's important because it shows you where the country the continent's going is when they were even passing the idea that you had the right to deport people that were citizens of particular European countries . If they had committed crimes or they had stolen money or they weren't working or they had no means of support, you could deport them, not just not let them in. Yeah, but you mean people that were citizens of Europe that had ethnic roots or national roots back in another country ? Yes, they had been naturalized citizens naturalized. And they had not fulfilled the duties of citizenship, or they'd been antithetical, or they'd lied about how they came in. Whatever the particular transgression was, they recommended you deport them. And Trump did that and almost caused a scandal here because he's going to deport some people that have been involved in fraud fraud. But it's kind of weird. We always think the Europe's to the left of us. Actually, we're to the left of them because what they were discussing is so far beyond are they going to have ice riots? I don't think so I think because they were so much more liberal than we were on the immigration question for so much longer, they have people who are very, very angry. And they reflect the majority of opinion in these Germany, the Scandinavian countries, France , Britain , they're sitting on a volcano because public opinion of the indigenous people is on their side , there being the anti illegal immigration, closed borders. And it's not on the elected officials. They don't and it's surely not in the EU unelected bureaucrats. And so the longer they tried to suppress it, the more it's going to grow. Yeah, apparently, because I understand there were shouts in the chamber as they were voting get them out. Get them out. depart ment. Even Camela Harris, remember they have that when she ran in twenty twenty four , some had that video where she's out with a no deep, no deportation, no return, no, remember that ? And then they ask her about it. Oh no, I'm for close secure borders. She knew that her positions were all antithetical to the majority of people. She got close to Trump because they spent a billion dollars more to hide who she was. She had the most liberal voting record, I think, even more so than Bernie Sanders and her abbreviated Senate career. Yeah. Well, another thing in Europe is, of course, the Ukraine war. And this week the Ukrainians have hit one of the largest oil refineries for Russia and seem to be taking the war with drones to Russia. And as I read down further in the article, it said that they have sent hundreds of drones even to all the way to Moscow and the of course the Russians are taking out the bulk of these drones before they hit anywhere, but they're not a million years they're making a million a year out of what who's making a million Ukraine million that's we're going to if Pete Hexeth has his way and these new brilliant people in the Defense Department and they can buck, you know, lockheed, Northrop Northrop, General Dynamics, Raytheon, all those big industrial contractors . We're talking about a third of a million next year drones , maybe for five thousand bucks each, not fifty . But they're talking about a million they make . And they're the world's experts at it now . And so if they're knocking down eighty percent, that means two hundred thousand are going to get in. So they're changing the course of the world. And you know, when two years ago when excuse me , I said about two year, about a year and a half ago , right early in the administration when Vance and Trump dressed down Zelensky , don't come here and tell us what you're going to do. You know, you need us. What they were basically saying is we help those who help themselves . And so Zelensky went back and thought, you know what? I just can't expect the United States to turn over six million dollars patriot missiles and deplete . We've got to do something. So they to their credit, they develop they've got brilliant people and they develop the mosted sophisticated drone and they built them en masse and they exchanged technology. And all of a sudden the United States, you see Trump, he talked to Zelenskyy, and his basic idea is, well, maybe you guys are going to win. Maybe you'll take Vladimir down a notch and I can negotiate with him. You're giving me something to negotiate with because now I don't have to , you know , tell Putin, you get this territory, you get this territory because the longer it drags out , the more you're winning . So I think that it's just a reminder that the more robust a country is, the more it's willing to defend itself, the more help it gets. Israel is the perfect example. When Israel is strong and axe , when it took out all of those Hezbollah people with a pagers , people said, That's the kind of ally we want. When you have an ally, kind of, please help us then you don't want to do that . That was the one thing that the evil bin Laden said that was unfortunately true about human nature. People are attracted to the stronger horse . He thought it was him , it wasn't . But you've got to show that you're willing to fight and you're capable. And then if you're willing to fight and you're capable, you will get allies to help you, but not the other way around. I would just like to make a re correction. I said take out they took out the oil refinery. They hit the oil refinery and the Russians are saying that the damage has been minimized , but the fire and the fire to say that they're twenty to thirty percent reduced capacity already and that there's rationing gasoline . I was surprised. It just seems like the Ukrainians are on the offensive now against Russia . They are because what they do is they didn't do they don't do some they don't do dumb things . The stupidest thing they did was the year after the war started in twenty two. Everybody said they saved Kiev . Now they're going to go on the move. And we thought in traditional conventional terms. We're going to give them leopard tanks from Germany. We're going to give them British challenge or whatever they're centurions, and we're going to give them Abrams and we're going to have a traditional Western counteroffensive with armor. And of course the Russians knew that and they had a kill zone and they had a whole mine trap six hundred a mile and it was a complete failure. A small little country going on a fence . Now they've changed tactics and said, You know what ? We're going to dig in and we're going to cover the entire battlefield with little drones, anti personnel. And we're going to see three or four. Sad to watch. It really feels bad when I get when I look at these videos because you'll see three or four Russian soldiers and you 'll see a little drone you're in the drone and then you see one a drone comes out of nowhere and blows up one person or two. And then you see this guy running and he looks around and you know that he's going to be killed. It's like an assassination and they're they're picking off three, four, five, six every hour, every minute . And so they're not trying to go with a clumsy offensive that gives a big target for Russian missiles and stuff . And they're using the drones now offensive. This is another irony of the whole thing . Get so tired of the left saying that you know, just casually nonchalantly on spec, Donald Trump, you know, the way he was for Putin and he didn't do anything for Zelenskyy. He approved for the first time offensive weapons for Ukraine in twenty seventeen when he came in , and they had Javelin missiles to use offensively which saved Kiev . And he was the one that said not just to the Germans don't do the Nordstrom pipeline, but he also when he came in again, he lifted the ban on weapons in twenty twenty five . And then he also said they could do whatever they wanted. Biden was said, be careful where you hit the Russians. I mean, that was sober. You have to be careful. They're a nuclear power, but they're they're they're they're going on to every target now because there's nobody in Washington that says you know , please please be sober and judicious while you lose Trump's attitude is Lucee liberty. Just go to it . But it seems like Trump has success successfully handed it over to the Europeans in a way because talks are supposed to be going on just today, it's Thursday in Brussels between Ukraine and Russia . And the NATO and the EU, I know we are part of NATO, but NATO , with all the European allies and EU leaders are there guiding these talks, et cetera. So I kind of wanted to hand it to Trump . Americans want that war handed off. And he seems like he's handy . Well, they spent the first term they spent one hundred million dollars more in defense. Now it's up to five percent is the target. They're spending billions of dollars more in defense. And we're selling them , I don't know, billions of dollars of patriots and all sorts of airplanes and F thirty five s . So they're arming themselves to the teeth because they don't think any longer they can go to the UN or EU and do their little performance art. We don't like the United St ates or it's liberal or you know, Trump is gone cut . Oh, you know, there's no LGBTQ and they have Ice and then oh by the way, we're afraid that they might Russia might go into the low country. They might go into Lithuanian, please get over here. It's not going to work. So tough love worked and they're arming themselves. The only scary thing is they should remember NATO's charter, keep Russia out , America in and Germany . And Germany now has promised to have the biggest army in Europe and to be the bulwark of the European defense industry . And they're going to have a huge draft . And Mark I won't be alive , but in people listening to this, in your lifetime, there's going to be a nuclear Germany . Believe me . And that's scary. Do you think it's scary on the level of a nuclear Iran No not yet , but I just look at the pupils and we did all that for Germany, the Marshall Plan, we were very close. And then as soon as we elected Trump, Merkel said he was the old Nazi thing, and they attacked him , and they brought out that German animosity , then you look at the European countries like the United States. It's always number one Italy . France is actually high as high or higher than the UK, I think UK's third . All of the Eastern European, I should say, are way up there. They're the highest . And what's the lowest Germany ? And is that because we did anything to them? Yes. And what was that we did to them? We beat them in two wars, and they'll never get over it That sounds like such a Neanderthal, stupid thing to say, but the more I've been I've been in Germany ten times and the more I talk to Germ , they respond to me in two ways. I'm very polite . You're World War two historian, you know , what was wrong with your mustings? Why didn't you ever develop a jet like the two hundred and sixty two Mr. Schmidt? Or you know , my uncle, my great uncle was in a fuck with one hundred ninety. He had no problem getting through thunderbolts and lightnings , maybe even musting. They're always trying to tell me that the German army was so superior . And you know, one guy wrote me not too long ago from Germany and he said , Thank you for telling the truth that even though you invaded and you had a million men and we were down to three quarters of a million, then you got a million and a half after Day finally after and yet we killed one point eight Americans for every one we lost . So they have that tendency to well, it's natural, I suppose, but they have resent and they want to remind us what a good army they had and how well they fought . And they always say the second thing we weren't for Hitler. We were for Germany . No, you were for Hitler. The only problem with Hitler is he lost. If he'd won today, you'd be lording over the world. So forty years from now, your prediction is they'll be top of Europe and they'll be still hating us. It depends. It depends on, you know, to what're degree they salvageable. They have sixteen percent of the population that hates them from Islamic countries . But being Germans, I have a feeling that they'll do what they always do. They'll say , well, you know, the French , they should not do this. They should not do this deportation. The British are very illiberal and then they'll turn around and top them by three magnitude and they'll deport anybody that they want.. Yeah I don't want to sound anti German. I like Germany . Victor, we're at the end of our podcast. And I just have one thing not any comments from our viewers, sorry this time, but we have a Roger Kim bell wrote a great article for American Greatness called The Face of British of Modern Britain. Jihad triumphs, and he goes over the conflict between Islam , or not even conflict between Islam, the assault of Islam on Christians and Christianity in European states . And I just have one criticism of it. He listed a whole all the incidents where Islamic individuals instigated terrorism . That list omitted all of the ones that were in Russia as well. So his forty would have probably been expanded to a representative example because he could have listed another fifty here . Yes, that's true. That's what I think Tucker and Cand ace and Bannon don't quite when they get on Israel , I would just say to them, why don't you get a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle and say, Here's all the Jews and the Israelis that have committed terrorist attacks . And here's all the Arab Americans and foreign Arabs and Muslims who attack. And just see what it's about one hundred to zero . And I don't understand. They can't make that simple . And then say to how many you know, they're desperate because they always talk about the USS Liberty in the sixty seven war, which was an accident, but they say that C Israelis killed , I don't know what, how many America, twenty eighth, there's something, maybe it was more by inadvertently mistaking a U. S. ship for either a Russian ship or an Egyptian ship. The point I'm making is that's the only thing they can come up with on the other side of the ledger . It's thousands of Americans have died in Beirut in nine eleven to Islamic terrorists. Anyway, anyway, the article does have some great quotes from people on Islam from the past, even for example, Winston Churchill. And so it's well worth the read in American greatness. And it's an article by Roger Kimbell. And we'd like to thank our audience for joining us this weekend and thank you, Victor for all of your wisdom. Thank you everybody for listening and watching. This is Sam Wmyink and Victor Davis Hansen, and we're signing off . 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 . Bet MGM is adding a new friend to the group. Check out Friends, the one with the bursting b onus only at Bet MGM Casino. Casino thrills are bursting, only available at Bet MGM Casino. Download the app today. Bet MGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. If you or someone you know has a gambling