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Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words

Victor Davis Hanson | The Daily Signal

American Renaissance and Defense Innovation

From VDH: Britain's Decline, Open Borders, and the West's CrisisJun 25, 2026

Excerpt from Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words

VDH: Britain's Decline, Open Borders, and the West's CrisisJun 25, 2026 — starts at 0:00

We want to partner with you. We don't want a weak sister ally and we know what you're going through because we created it. This virus we infected you, but you have to look at the anecdote close your border to have only meritocratic, legal, diverse and measured immigration, to use your fossil fuel, natural gas, nuclear power, explore fusion. Don't look at just what we did to infect you with the woke virus, but look what we did to have ane ancdote. Well, hello ladies and hello a gentleman, welcome to Victor Davis Hansen. In his own words, I'm Drac Fowler, the host. You are here to get some wisdom and analysis from the great Victor Davis Hanson, who is the Martin and E llersie Andon senior fellow with the Hoover Institution and the Wayne Marsha Busky distinguished fellow in history at Hillsdale College and a senior contributor at the Daily Signal which is the hat Victor's wearing today. And as that is the happy home of not only this podcast, but Victor's other show, Victor Davis Hanson. In a few words four times a week at the Daily Signal. His website, he's Victor, sorry, he used the pronoun is the Blade of Perseus. You'll find that at Victorhansen dot com We are recording on Monday june twenty second , twenty twenty six. This episode will be up on Thursday , june twenty fifth. I think Victor, , we should start this show by getting your take on Starmer's departure as the Prime Minister of Britain, the likely likelihood that Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Manchester, a new member of Parliament that he will become the next prime minister. We have Tulsa Gabbard's report on Anthony Fauci , we have South American elections are turning conservative post the end of the USA AID money and all of a sudden elections seem to be going our way. And we have a few other topics to get your take on, maybe even that reflecting pool madness going on in D. C., all that and more when we come back from these initial important messages . America is going through a higher education transformation where students are realizing that what they want and need is a place that doesn't stifle their intellectual freedom. Standing out among the few graduate programs that value viewpoint diversity is Pepperdine's University School of Public Policy , where I've taught the last two years. Their master's of public policy is both applied and practical preparing the next generation of leaders to participate in government agencies, the business sector and think tanks. Pursue your MPP at Pepper dine. Daily Signal Listeners qualify for an automatic fifty to seventy five percent tuition scholarship and can learn more at go dot pepper dine dot edu slash daily signal 's go. It dot pepper dynam. U slash daily signal. We are back with Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Victor Kirstarmer was one of the most unpopular members of excuse me prime ministers in British history . His departure, which he announced today was a long time coming after a series of dis astrous elections. And of course the horrific reports that have come out about two hundred fifty thousand British young white girls gang ra over decades by these Muslim gangs . There was a by election recently that Andy Burnham, who was the mayor of Greater Manchester ran so he could be the replacement for Sarmer because it seemed like nobody else amongst Labor's vast majority could pull this off . So it's this is it seems like Bernam will be taking over. Victory , do you have any thoughts on this? And does it really matter for America that Starmer is out? Yeah, I did an interview today with a spectator Freddy Gray, whom I like a great deal . And we discuss that a little bit . He 's a civil he's a civil libertarian or a human rights lawyer, Stirmer was . And yet he brought in the most oppressive censorship , not just in English history, but throughout all of it. It was more restrictive in Europe than in England than anywhere in Europe . Then Russia . Yes , and China . And then he said that he had been a prosecutor and he oversaw and hid this mass rape of young can I use the word indigenous girls because he was politically correct . And he said he was going to be united, nobody divided the country more. I do kind of object, Jack, you said he was very unpopular. He did get seven percent approval rating . So we better give him his due . And the other thing to remember about our system that everybody seems to caricature our Constitution . We don't have a parliamentary system. We have elections midterms every two years , every two years the Congress, a third of it comes up, and we have a presidential election every four . Not so in Britain. You win and you get, I think it's five to six years to have a government, but you can call an election any time basically you want. And then if you don't like your president , you do a Joe Biden, but it's not considered a Joe Biden removal, coup. It's just normal. So did anybody vote for the new replacement? No . So he just is a bunch of people in the back room, so to speak, then replace the Prime Minister when he's either incompetent or sick or unpopular and they put a new person , but the people have no say and then you calibrate when to call an election based on your perceived advantage. So it's not a very transparent system. The other thing very quickly when we criticize Europe, especially from the conservative side, we're not doing it because we don't like Europe, we're doing it because we like Europe and we feel a certain responsibility because the DE Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Virus started here . Algor really birthed the fanatical green neolistic agenda here. The Transf er started here . The open borders and all that basically started here . We are dealing with it now under Trump's counter revolution, but about ten to fifteen years ago , we exported it or they absorbed it from us. So when we're critiquing them, the subtext of our criticism is cry the beloved Europe and especially the beloved UK , we like Europe. We like the UK . We remember the glory days of Europe . We want to partner with you. We don't want a weak sister ally and we know what you're going through because we created it and then we're de aling with it. This virus, we infected you. We assume that , but you have to look at the anecdote to it. And you can see it right now. The anecdote is to close your border , not to have marriage to have only meritratic, legal, diverse and measured immigration , to use your fossil fuel, natural gas , oil and oil and by association gasoline, nuclear power , explore fusion , and don't subsidize money losing wind and solar on some idea that we're going to heat the planet up in Europe or the United States when a third of the world's emissions come from China . And so that's the basis of why we look at stormer and all these stormer. And we just say, you know , gosh, we dealt with these people. He's the squad . We've seen this is the socialist with a thousand faces. And we know all about you. We know that your modern incarnation , your modern appearance because we're dealing with you, but we put you down . I don't mean that in the existential sense, but we stop that for now . So please look at what we did . Don't look at just what we did to infect you with the white virus, but look what we did to have an anecdote. And maybe you can learn from us and we want you to be well, but you're not well now. Yeah . Well, we can rant and should rant, I think, about the leftist in Europe and in England, Victor, but the antidote to them the precursor to Starmer was the Conservative Party, the Tory Party that was not really conservative by any stretch. So there was a lot of self inflicted wounds by those people we would say were closest to us conservatives here, but really weren't conservative at all. We had that version too. I mean , if you look at the border, George W. Bush and John McCain were not , you know, they were not border essentialists. They felt that corporate America needed cheap labor and they believed that you didn't really need a background check, dad dah dah dah . They were part of the problem . Yeah . One last thing on this victory, oh two, one is that initial reports about Andy Burnham , who seemed to be popular as the mayor of Manchester or Greater Manchester , it seems I've seen some things on next that he will not only double down but what Starmer is doing economically, but maybe increase taxes even more. And one of the one of the problems with the increase of the taxes to pay for the social programs was coming at the expense of defense and which is why the defense minister or whatever they might call left the Starmer administration two weeks ago, but you see these anecdotal things, Victor, it looks like Britain is incapable of fielding only but a very small force if it was needed. Their navy was they don't have a frigate or a submarine that can float. Yeah . And the Russians know that and the Russians try to humiliate them. They used to have a very sophisticated submarine fleet, frigate fleet , they hadn't two new carriers, but they seem to be in port most of the time. They have trouble with recruitment . They can't if you're not going to develop your natural resources and you're going to be socialist and you're going to go green and DEI , then you're not going to have a defense budget . So it's very sad because this was in World War two, the British out per capita, they outproduced Nazi Germany and they were very effective. So yeah this whole it's very strange for all of us our age. I'm seventy two when you look at the decline of Europe and the West in general, when you think that in your lifetime, you remember when this was not true. I remember in my lifetime as a little kid four or five, my parents telling me that the Queen England was on this I think, it was one of the prince of it was either the King George V . It was a World War two battleship and they were sailing to the Commonwealth countries of Africa where they, you know, they were all honored and Prince Charles a little kid and all of that . That's all gone . That's all gone. It's really sad and they were they were the bastion of a rules ordered society that was that was very lawful, peaceful very little crime. We always used to say, Why can't we be like the English bobbies? They don't even carry your guns. The left used to say that . So it was all self inflicted just like today. And there's something at the very beginning of Western civilization some very brilliant people were aware that Western self critique, rationalism and looking inward in the utopian impulse and you combine market capitalism with consensual government and absolutely free speech and you can create leisured privileged citizens who feel they're going to create secretly a heaven on earth and they're going to trash the very system that created them . And that's what happens in the West. Well, it happened in Athens. It happened in Athens. Well, it's happening here. And there's another thing I'd like to get your take on. City Journal has an essay, an article about the Mandami Party and let's call the Mundam Dami party. They are taking over big cities, they're running candidates in various elections who are who are winning and here's an Here's something from this article. Earlier this month, the Democratic Socialists of America's top leadership met for an in person meeting of their national political committee, the DSA's governing authority. The result of the meeting was workers deserve more , a rebooted platform for the organization featuring a host of radical proposals. The document commits DSA to scrapping the U. S. Senate , abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state , I think that means no prison, defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and replacing the president and supreme court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress . So this is what the democratic socialist of America is but this is really the Democrat party of America now it is . And in a recent book I wrote three years ago, The Dying Citizen, I pointed out basically what they were going to be doing because because in researching that book I read liberal law journals and I found out that I'd always thought packing the court, which, of course, they want , or the National Voter Compact and get rid of the electoral college, which they want and letting in Puerto Rico and making a state out of Washington, D. C. to get four senators which they always want and getting rid of Senate filibuster, which they don't always want when they're in the majority, but when they're in the minority, they do. I thought that was pretty radical. Then I started to discover that in these legal articles, the real thing that drives the left angry is the US Senate , because whereas four hundred and thirty five representatives represent in today's population from the last census at least, about seven hundred fifty thousand people per district and it's popularly based. The Senate is determined the size of the Senate is determined by the number of states . So what you would see again and again, oh, we're in California . We have forty one million people and at the time it was Camela Harris. Camela Harris, she represents twenty million people, but all those white rednecks up in Wyoming, they only have four hundred fifty thousand people . They got two senators. They get every two hundred twenty thousand people. They get a representative . Yes, and you should read the Federalist papers, why that is because they wanted the Senate to represent state interests, not individual people, not population , the state of Wyoming because they felt that rural states would be a check on mass hysteria that pops up in cities and that the people would have representation in the House based on their numbers and they would have representation in the Senate based on their residence in a particular state. It's a brilliant system, and they want to get rid of that. The whole point of the Jacobin New Socialists is to sort of have an Athenian democracy where in any given day you can execute Socrates or you can wipe out the Middle Aeneans. You can do anything you want if you have fifty one percent of the boat . No rail guard, no checks, no balances . Instant referendum . Now in LA, you know, Los Angeles , the city council is just about to vote that it's legal for illegal and illegal aliens to vote in a municipal election. I don't know how that can be constitutional , but they'll say it's the state . The left love states rights issues now. Maybe they'll say it's a state or local right . It's interesting that the name of our country is the United States of America. The key word there is states. It's United States and we just have to be of America, which give us a little nod to Marigo Vispucci there. But yeah, the whole concept of federalism is federalism is anathem a to the land. It's a brilliant system. It really is. It allows venting and migration choice with fifty different examples and you can taste them all and taste none of them, but it's your choice . And people can vote with their feet . And that's why they don't like. They want to trap you in a blue paradigm so they can run they can turn the whole country blue. They do not want anybody to be happy other than that sour face, I'm serious Michelle Obama look . Yeah . I can't smile. I'm trying to transform the United States. How would I be able to smoke? Well, we're going to get your thoughts on her husband in a second, but who were the dazzling brilliant one? she said. My husband's dazzling brilliant. He won the Nobel Priest Prize. He gave you Obamacare . He helped introduce racial healing all lies , except the Nobel Prize, I guess. Yeah. Well, look at your take on him as a historian , but first to our listeners and our viewers, if you've studied enough history, you start to see a pattern. Nations don't lose their way overnight. They drift through debt and division until one day you realize the foundations you thought were permanent were never permanent at all. Today, America is spending at levels once reserved for wartime. We've normalized deficits that would have stunned earlier generations, and policymakers now debate whether the only path forward is more intervention, more printing, more distortion. But here's the historical truth. Every society that pushed its currency beyond discipline eventually paid a price . wise The never waited for collapse, they prepared for correction. And that's why so many thoughtful Americans, especially those nearing retirement or in retirement, are reallocating part of their wealth into something that has outlasted every paper experiment in human history, physical gold not as speculation, but as insulation. Our reputation matters here at Victor Davis Hansen in his own words , which is why we're partnering with allegiance Gold a company distinguished by integrity, reliability , and an A plus rating from the Better Business Bureau. For years they've guided Americans through transparent education and longstanding relationships built on trust and right now they're extending a special liberty offer to our listeners and viewers to help you get started with real gold. Whether your funds are in a retirement account or sitting in a bank and if you believe as we do , that the best time to reinforce your position is before the storm becomes obvious , call eight four seven nine zero nine one nine one eight four four seven nine zero nine one nine one or visit protect with victor com that's eight four seven nine zero nine one nine one eight four seven nine zero nine one nine one or visit protect with victor dot com . History rewards those who take the long view and we thank the good people from Allegiance Gold for sponsoring Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. So Victor headline here from Fox News , Obama knocks founders at Presidential Center debut before America's two hundred fiftieth . Former President Barack Obama said during the dedication of his presidential center. It's not a library by the way, folks, it's just a big ego thing. A library separate if it's ever going to be at hall . In Chicago last week that America's founders fell, quote, terribly short of the Declaration of Independence's promise while casting the nation's story as one of generations coming together to make the Union more perfect. Victor goes on, I don't read the whole quote , but I thought they did a damn good job establishing and creating the one greatest nation on earth and one that strove to be more perfect over . Maybe he could contrast the Kenyan Constitution where his family originated and how brilliant that was and why everybody wants to go to Kenya or maybe the Mexican constitution that at one point, not too long ago , said that immigration shall not alter the demography of the Mexican race , or maybe they can talk about, I don't know, all the constitutions in France they've had five, six . No , he doesn't know anything. He's completely with all deference to our former presidents, historically illiterate. There were thirteen colonies in five, I think, five for southern, the two Carolinas, Maryland , and Georgia and Virginia . And the other states were pushing to, first of all, outlaw the Atlantic slave trade, and they did in eighteen oh eight, very quickly after the Constitution within twenty years . And while they were agitating to outlaw slavery throughout the new nation , and de facto there were not very many slaves. De facto slavery was not approved in the Northern States. There had them , but there were very few and they wanted they were in the process of prohibiting slavery, and they would shortly do so, but not in the five states. So when Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he said, All men are created equal. He had other corollaries in the original draft that he wanted to abolish the abomination of slavery . And that was Censor. Adams wanted it too, who was the Chairman of the writing committee , but the five other states were going to bolt . So that was exactly what the British wanted to do was to divide and conquer. And they felt that if this former colony could be sliced in dice into European like states, thirty or forty states in the size of Europe , rather than one whole nation , then it would be much easier to weaken this new United States by cutting deals with individual states or clusters of states . And the founders knew that . And so they made they were completely when the South said we want to have congressional districts based on the census, but for the Congressional District Census, we want African American slaves counted as regular citizens so we can get more House of Representatives representatives and the North said, No , we're not going to do that. And they fought over it. So they said we're going to break away. So that's where the three fifth compromise came. We'll count each slave three fifths, not because the North was trying to diminish a person, just because they did not want to give the South full representation and a reward for enslaving people. And yet they had to make a compromise. So President Obama, what they wanted and what they envisioned and what actually happened were not the same thing. They knew there was a civil war on the horizon because these two positions could not be reconciled peacefully . But they did not want to fight a war from seventeen seventy five to seventeen eighty three basically . And then seventeen eighty two dash three, and then all of a sudden turn around and have a civil war . They weren't able to do that. And they postponed the civil war for nearly eighty years But the point was it was always going to be abolished. It was just how can we do it without losing seven hundred thousand lives and they couldn't do it without losing seven hundred thousand lives So rather than saying something that could have been reasonable , there was great disagreement at the founding and the idea of unity among the colonies and make them immune from further British attacks or efforts to divide the new nation . They made a temporary compromise to allow states into the Union who held slaves. And those states held a lot of slaves would have a pernicious influence, but that was resolved tragically by losing seven hundred thousand people. But by the time that happened, the Union was strong enough to recover and unite and spread the United States all the way to the Pacific coast. He can't have any of that nuance. This funny thing is that no one gets any nuance , no one gets any background, nobody gets any the atmosphere of the times, but he demands it all the time for himself . That's what's so weird. He demands perfection and everybody else , but not himself . So you read his memoir and he says things like when I went on campus, I deliberately avoided white people or I was dating a white girl and I knew that I had to get stopper. When I got on campus, I veered over to the Black Nationalist groups and he's very and then he calls his own grandmother who supported him a typical white person. And we didn't he never explained to us what was typical or when he was caught as bragging to the Chicago Sun Times that he never missed a service. He was there every Sunday with Jeremiah Wright and then a few months later, Jeremiah Wright says, No, no, no, not God bless America, God DAM chickens coming home and roost. Then he's President Obama, present would be President Obama . Why would you be in a congregation that you were bragging, you were married there, your children were baptized there. You were there for years, fifteen years . And you said you went every Sunday, why didn't you stand up and say, Don't speak of my country that way . Well, you know, I wasn't there that day and I didn't go regularly. That's how he is. But for every other issue it's, you know, it's if you're not perfect, you're not good like I am. I'm perfect , but he's not perfect. He always makes excuses. And he, you know, when his wife said , I'm treating basically I'm treating you to quote the dazzling brilliance of Barack Obama . And he gave us the Nobel Prize winner. Well, he himself admitted the joke. He had done nothing to earn that . And then he said, and he was the architect. He gave us Obamacare. Well, as I said earlier, we're down to seventeen percent. It's a disaster. You can keep your plan no. You're going to save money. No, it was a disaster . And yeah, you know, racial relationship, no, he exacerbated them. He made them worse. So when you go into that museum, I guarantee you , it's going to be inspirational voices , recordings, text of speeches , all glorifying him , kind of like the Mayday disc in Daios in Moscow or Beijing, but it won't there will not be there will not be documents showing him signing some historical bill or there's not going to be a special case . Barack Obama keeps us safe . He killed five hundred people in non congressionally authorized predator strik es, including three citizens . And it won't be Barack Obama was forced to spy on the associated press reporters and gather their phone data. And it won't be Barack Obama ordered his attorney general to ignore a congressional subpoena and he was the first attorney general to be held in contempt . And it won't be Barack Obama never sought congressional authority, but he bombed the living daylights out of Libya for seven months, and he couldn't tell us what the purpose was, and who was going to win and who was losing and why he did it . So So I think everybody gets I know he's popular and I know he's got that little razled dazzle, but there's nothing there. There's no there to quote Gertrude Strein . But on the slavery question , Victor, and it's not a question, but as you pointed out many times the word slave itself means slav. And I personally feel I just realized I been more've engross ed over the years in trying to understand what the enormity of slavery as a thing in the world and in history . And that yes, there was slavery here , but our fight to eradicate it is something that may be exceptional in history. I don't think Barack Obama realizes that the Anglo Saxon, if I could use that oscified term, was the first culture to ban it. So it was banned by the British first . And then the Americans followed suit and banned the slave trade . And then very quickly after the sign ing, the abolitionists ensured that the eight other states there of the original thirteen were not going to be slave owning Maybe . And then they had a tremendous fight about the slave owning status for new statehood . And they came up with a variety of compromises . But the point is they always wanted the majority wanted to oppose it , and they would have not had a United States if they had a fought early on in their infancy over this issue. And it's tragic they couldn't get rid of it , but they couldn't. They thought about it, they tried about it, they did everything . And finally, Jefferson, who was a young zealot in the thirties , who again and again called for abolition even though he he owned at one point I think two hundred and fifty slaves and he had five thousand acres . As in his letters to Adams, as he aged, he was a realist. He said there's a terrible war on the horizon and we don't know how to avoid it, but it's going to require compromise to save the Union . And the vast majority of northerners there were, very heroic black troops. There's no doubt about it, but the vast majority were people who did not it wasn't that they didn't have slaves, none of them did, but they'd never seen a slave. And if you don't if you doubt me, you should read Sherman's memoirs, but especially his officers , Henry Hitchcock . They are people from Minnesota, from Ohio, from Michigan , from Iowa, they're all northern farmers . They're hardy stock. They go down through Georgia and through the Carolinas and they are astounded at poverty of black slaves and they help them. They hire them as pioneers. They have a prominent role in the victory march . But the idea that this whole nation was a slave nation is not true That was a fight. And then your other point is really well taken. The word slave, you can see it linguistically, as I kind of said, I had doctrinar professors mostly from Europe , and any time you were in a class on classical languages or history and you made a statement , they would correct you. No, no, no, Victor, you said something that I want I want to press you on . You said the word slave in your economic analysis of agriculture. What is the word for slave ? Doulos. Is that the only word? Huicate . Is that the only word? Are there other calibrations of slavery? Helates . Penesti. So you had you had to ground every idea, but the point I'm making is slavery predated the Americ an experience. It was not just Africans. There was about two to four million Europeans who were enslaved by North African Islamic regimes and the Ottoman Empire . You can make the argument that of the Ottoman sultans from about thirteen fifty AD on a child with a child ren of enslaved women from southern Russia, the Balkans and Greece in the Haram . So think about that. The word slave, what is the etymology? Slav, slav, slav SLA . Why? Because that's where most of the slaves for the Ottoman Muslims came from. As far as the Atlantic slave trade, it's debatable, but it's more likely that twelve to fourteen million slaves were imported from Africa with the acquiescence of African tribal leaders to the Islamic world , and maybe ten to eleven were shipped to the North American world. So there you have it . And slavery was never equated with race really. There's talk about it. And Aristotle was very I don't want to word very critical of the idea of slavery for one reason . He said it's not right that slaves are indistinguishable from free people. They should be people who are by nature inferior . And he meant they thought and the Thracians or the Thracians may have been or the Cappadocians or people on the wild frontier like the Gauls or the Germans. One million Frenchmen will call them Gauls . One million between ' fifty one and ' fifty nine BC were enslaved by Julius Caesar and shipped into Rome. They were all they really stood out when they came to a Mediterranean people because they had white skins, blue eyes, blonde hair, and they were slaves . And the same thing was true of the slaves taken from Britain and occasionally from Germany . So it was not a monopoly based on race and you would not have a slave trade if people who were tribal chieftains did not routinely take the defeated as slaves that were alive and sell them to Arab merchants or later to Europeans . And that's just the way it is. But we never hear that. You hear that it's a white American phenomenon. It wasn't . It's still happening today in Africa. And I wonder Victor, after it's still happening today. Absolutely. And after Appomattox, how many how many millions were still enslaved because of African and Muslim nations . There's still there are rumors there are still people who are endangered servants in Arab countries of the Gulf. Well, Victor, we're going to get your take on another person you'd love to give takes on Mr. Fauci, but before that, here's a question to our viewers and our listeners as we approach our two hundred fiftieth, is it possible for us to turn around our education, to restore civic leadership, and to enjoy summer vacation with our family all at the same time? Well, Mount Titano Media says yes and this is the book and here it is if you're if you're watching this , this is the book for our two fiftieth and for all ages finding our words words that made America this, collection of the greatest speeches delivered in American history, many almost entirely forgotten displays those very words that defined and can still drive the American mission. And now you can take them anywhere this summer with an audible edition. These words that move the world are read by Michael Knowles, Andrew Clavin, Spencer Claivan, Bill Whittle, U. S. Army Generals , and leaders in classical education. Every speech includes a powerful introductory essay written by our claim by acclaimed scholar, Tracey Lee Simmons. I'll call him our because he's a friend and he's a former National Mew colleague, Bill Buckley love Tracey Lee Simmons. And his essays are preludes that set the stage for a deeper understanding of each of the works in the book. Mountitano Media publishes single works and compilations of the greatest works of Western civilization, for education at all levels, and for independent lovers of learning and culture. Finding our words words that made America the book for our two fiftieth and for always is available now in paperback, hardcover Kindle, audible and in Spanish. Get your copies at Amazon and on the Mount Titano Media website that's Mount Titano T IT ANO Mount TitanoMedia. com Visit W W W dot mountitanomedia dot com and we thank the good people for Mount Tano Media for sponsoring Victor, Davis. These are wonderful soundworks. Wonderful publications . Yeah, yeah, wonderful. They have a publication. I got another one back there on a camera . Tracy was a faculty member for years at Hillsdale College and he ran the journalism department. He had a prominent role in the formation of that very wonderful Hillsdale academy, which is just booming . Everything about Hillsdale 's kind of like in a tall an island of sanity , in an obscure place in southern Michigan. It's actually a beautiful place in Southern Michigan, but we are so lucky to have it as a national institution . I'm not afraid that Hillsdale , because they're smart , brilliant people there will come up with a good successor to Larry Arn, but he's irreplaceable. He really is what he did when he came there , it reminds me of Augustus. Augustus said I came to a city of mud brick and I left porous stone and I left it in marble. And he came to a place that didn't have a lot of money. George Roche was in some way unsuccessful scandal , but he raised so much money at such a beautiful campus the infrastructure . And it was the idea was if you could give students a classical education , but more importantly, you could give them a beautiful campus with state of the art buildings and wonderful dorms. That was important too for students to be happy, especially in an isolated small town. So when I went there, people said, If you go to Hillsdale, you're just isolated, there's no opera, there's no symphony. But I grew up in a small town like Hillsdale. So for me it was a wonderful twenty twenty, one years . And I hope I can get over this and fly again and maybe go back now and then. I hope each fall. They have a great little program also in Washington, DC for graduate students and then they have a wonderful center up here in Connecticut. Someone , the guy who founded the Friendly's restaurant chain, which is, I don't know that it's out in California out west, but he then created a replica of Monticello. And when he died he left it to Hillsdale and they use it. It's called the Blake Center. And it's at a central point for a lot of people in New England to come and hear some of the great speakers . They have so many when I first went there, they were developing a gun range for students to be able to be, you know, use their second amendment rights and not fear guns and be safe around them . But over the ten or fifteen years, if you've been to the Hillsdale gun range, that's even that's not the right word for it. It's the Hillsdale Armament complex. I mean, they have sophisticated buildings, they have a restaurant they have the state of the art. It's where the U. S. shooting team for the Olympics train. It's just I've never seen anything like it . It just sprouted out of a field out of nowhere and it was funded very liberally by Hillsdale supporters. I won't mention names though. I was just communicating the other day with a very good friend of mine who is in his nineties and he is in the process of bequeathing, we were talking about bequeathing. And he's going to help fund a major program in Hillsdale . And his remarks were, is there any better way for my money . And of course, I said no there's no better way than that . Yeah . Well, folks, if you're ever up in southern Michigan, give it a check it out. Hey, Victor we're going to have to take a break soon, but maybe along soon because Tulsa Gabbard, when she left departed , her position at she sent out this tw eet and did a report. And here's the tweet, excuse me, exp ost . Today, on my final day as Director of National Intelligence, I'm releasing never before seen communications and documents exposing how Dr. Fauci provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab , worked with politicized elements within the intelligence community to suppress the truth about his actions and hide the virus's lab leak origins and lied to Congress while under oath in twenty twenty four. It's time you know the truth. Victor, I guess we can go on a bit about Fauci and you do whatever you want. But I just wonder in the end is it going to okay, that's my question. Do you think this I think he's been testifying. I think from the time that which he was pardoned , he's either been asked questions or he will be asked quest ions that he can't tell the truth through without incriminating himself. And I don't think he'll take the I don't know if he'll take the fifth or what, but if they bring him in , and I think they will and they ask him point blank because they have , I think they've asked him , did you or did you not channel funds for gain gain of function research at the Wuhan lab . Did you or did you not try to suppress arguments, theories , evidence that the origins of the virus occurred at the Wuhan lab . You could ask him all those. And if he didn't tell the truth, these would be perjury charges after his pardon was granted by Joe Biden . The other 's making fun of people said that he was I don't think he's a criminal and a war criminal. But if you start looking at the COVID thing analytically the way Scott Atlas does or Jay Bacharia or Steven Cuay we've had on the show . And you just ask yourself not in a biased fashion, just say, The vivus , was it man made? Yes . Where was it man made? It was man made in the Wuhan Virus biology lab . Was the Communist Party involved? Yes, the People's Liberation Army at some point took control of the lab. Did Europeans or Americans have anything to do with it . Yes, the French helped them build it, and there was instrumentation and expertise that was accorded from the United States. Not a lot of money, but some six hundred something through Peter Dassex's Dassex non profit . Next question. Are you mean to tell me that this virus that killed over a million Americans and sickened twenty million with long COVID in some ways was subsidized either through expertise or travel to the lab or actual cas infusions from the United States at a time when that had been legally barred from occurring ? Yes . Does that mean that Dr. Fauci and Francis Collins , in some ways tried to hide that fact from the American people and at our expense advance a theory that it came from a natural source like a pangolin or a bat? Yes . Then when you come to that conclusion , what else can you think that Fauci was more worried about conducting gain of function review. And the best take on it would be something like this . Well, it's illegal here , but we have to learn about these viruses so we can make vaccinations and they're doing it so may,be they can they can stealthily serve as our surrogate or you could say, well maybe they're going to use it for biological warfare means so maybe we should keep tabs on it, something like that . But the point is they didn't want to talk about it . And ultimately, they're responsible in some ways for that lab's leak by helping with the research that was banned in the United States and should never take place. Stephen Quay remember he had testified against gain of function and his basic argument was not that it was not valuable but a c inost of benefit analysis , it was too dangerous given the limited benefits . And now with AI and we have other means of ascertaining what viruses will do without creating dangerous ones in the lab with inadequate safety precaution. Yeah. Well, there is morality about experimentation. We certainly made him war crimes in World War two against the Nazis and the Japanese . Well, I mean he was a doctor Frankenstein. He created a human, I mean, not a human, but he created a living organism that killed people . And he didn't do it alone, but he was a participant in the creation of that SARS two virus . And that virus is we just had Steven Cuay on this show explaining how it would be very hard to make a virus in nature that was so infectious as the first round of that virus and how it was able to dumbfound it was it was if you looked at the human immune system and said it's brilliant if I was a virus rather than natural selection and Darwinism, how would I fast forward way ahead of that natural process and make a virus that could outsmart your immune system. And that's what they did . And then their excuse was well someday in the future there's going to be something like this and we'll have a vaccination for it. But what a gamble they took. And that's kind of a charitable version, you know, very charitable. Well, Victor, we have we're going to take a little break and then we come back to topics. We're going to talk about these string of elections in South America and why they've happened. And also the reflecting pool madness. And we'll do all that when we come back from these messages . We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal , that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. But among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . But to secure these rights , governments are instituted among men , deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as shall to them seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness . For the support of this declaration, for the firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives , our fortunes , and our sacred honor . Sacred Honor, the Declaration that defines a nation , presented by the Daily Signal, premiering on YouTube july second , twenty twenty six. We're back with Victor Davis Hanson in his own words on the Daily Signal Network Victor's website The Blade of Percius . You'll find it at Victorhansen. com . I strongly suggest you visit it and subscribe if you're a fan of Victor's writing and the wisdom he shares on these podcasts excuse me , you will discover that twice a week Victor writes an exclusive article, there are ultra articles for the blade of Perseus . And you can read all the archives of all the ultra articles. There, I think they're evergreen pieces . So check it out. six hundred fifty a month if you want to just test it that way or it's discounted for the full year at sixty five dollars. There's tons of free stuff there also. Victorhansen . com the blade of Percius. And while I'm babbling about these things if you're on X VD Hansen is Victor's handle VDH's morning cup is on Facebook. There's a wonderful friendly group there, Vict theor Davis Hansen fan club also on Facebook. So check those things social media. Victor's also on truth social and Instagram . He's everywhere . Victor, seven Latin here, I'm looking at an expost, seven Latin American elections since USAID was defunded. Guess how they all gone? Chile. Bull CAC. Are you confusing cause and effect . I'm always a confused man, but Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras, Colombia, Costa Rica, they have all gone , let's say right, of course they, are portrayed always as far right or Nazis or fascists, these candidates who win . But Victor are tax dollars internationally . And as we see domestically, with all social welfare programs , they are bankrolling badness and madness domestically and foreign. But anyway , a number there's a great trend going on South America. Your thoughts on it. It's so funny about the left because they're all talking always talking about autonomy and let's not subvert the natural process of sovereign nations. Let's not interfere in their internal affairs and you hear that hundreds of millions of dollars was funneled through USA that was usually run by retrograde revolving door cronies that came in and out of government on the left and got these plus jobs . And then they were funding all of these cultural and social trans, gay, green , DI , all these open borders, all of these agendas and then direct ly hoping to have left wing candidates who then would turn around and hate the United States . And yet the people finally got sick of it there as well. Part of it nobody gives credit to Trump, but actually , if he had not been elected, you wouldn't see this. It's a phenomenon that people are looking at the United States, and they see, you know, all the discord and everything . But you got a glimpse of that when the working classes came over to the United States , not just the elites in San Francisco or visiting Washington or New York . And they saw how prosperous , that's a nice view from the well fed we are and how free we are . And then you look at the data and I don't think that message has got out, but we are racing ahead of Europe in per capita income in per capita GDP , in energy production and cost of living as far as power and food food production , thirty one trillion dollars GDP , and China is lagging behind. It's ten trillion behind us . Everything we're kind of in a renaissance and when you look at if we and I had this conversation, Jack maybe, I don't know, five or six years ago and said, What's the future of AI? What's the future of robotics? What's the future of sp ace travel, rocketry, satellite launching , cryptocurrency , bioengineering ? We would have been dooming gloom, China spending more R and D than we are . And now we're racing and surging ahead. Somebody gives Trump credit, but he went out to those grandees Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos , David Sachs , Mark Andrees en, people like that . And basically he said to them , I don't know what your politics are, but I'm not like Biden. I don't pick and choose winners . And this is a wide open frontier . This is a Luci Libre . And I have only one and I don't want to have antitrust and shut you down. I do and if you get caught up in Europe where those crazy censors are going to sue you, I will protect you. But you have to do one thing for me. You have to be nationalistic and try to outbeat the competition and be American, American first. And if you can do that, you're my Henry Kyives or my Henry Ford, my William Newtson, my DuPont, all of World War two . That's how we beat the enemy and that's how we're going to beat him again. That's what he did . And now we're seeing that we're going to build a third of a hexas, a third of a million dr ones . That's maybe somewhat as cheap as five thousand dollars . We're going to build hypersonic missiles for a fraction of the cost in great numbers because we're turning loose these startup companies that are usually from people on the left side of the political spectrum , and they've been I don't know, enchanted by the idea that they have absolute freedom to become wealthy and to be protected from foreign government co'sercion . And it's going to be a dramatic revolution in American production. Then when you add the element that Pete and others are saying to them , we want quantity, quantity, quantity. We want quality, but we want to outp roduce people like we did in World War two. When we made more airplanes, one hundred thousand airplanes , United States , you know, fighter aircraft, bombers, one hundred thousand and fifty thousand tanks and more ships and all the other navies of the world combined by nineteen forty five. We can do that again . And that the fact that they're young and they're idealistic, many of these entrepreneurs is very exciting. And now you have Elon launching more satellites than the whole continent of Europe . In Bing Wes' interview , he was astounded . He's not necessarily a big fan of Trump, but he said that what is happening in the Defense Department with this radical shift from ossified large contractors like Raytheon General Dynamics, Northrop, Lockheed, Boeing, to these smaller , more fluid, more adaptable companies that are in stiff competition. So the days of, well, let's dream up one hundred seventy million dollars fighter and then we'll sell it to the military or gone. Now it's the military. What do you need? Oh, you need three hundred thousand robots . Okay, you need four hundred thousand drones and you want a certain product. We'll do it. We'll figure a way out of doing it. It's a really exciting time as far as the United States. I think we're in a renaissance, but it's very hard for people to see that when the media is so angry . It's going to bust up the culture of the of the brass also , right? I mean, what's your aspiration as to sit on the board of Raytheon? I have maybe those days are over. I think it's going to really hurt the curses and norm of our four star class because I think you're a four star general, you may have had a long, long career courageous in battle in all of these wars we've had . But you're going to get about a two hundred twenty five and up thousand dollars pension . But the idea that you can go right out of the revolving door and join the board or the lobbying team of these big seven or eight contractors , and then they expect you to call your former subordinates who are now in positions of authority and procurement. Hey, remember me? I was your commander at Fort Blanc Blank . We've got the best jet fighter there is and it's better. We want to, you know, we want you to be on our team . And that's incestuous . And I think people who revolve out should not be on corporate defense boards for ten years or at least. But it doesn't really matter now. I think it's the natural process of competition is making them more and more obsolete. I think they're good companies. We need them, but the idea that you're going to shoot down a twenty thousand dollars or five thousand dollars drone with a three million dollars patriot is insane. Yeah. And they're coming up with Binghead in that interview. Where were where was the interview ? Right here, it's coming out. Oh, okay. Yeah. Bing West with his new book. Category it's cat five, category five , disaster and the two thousand thirty three war. He believes that we're going to be in war in about a decade if we don't get our budget under control and beef up the defense budget against China . Okay Thursday, I think it is . Yeah, oh, excuse me, I think it's this Wednesday. It'll be this Wednesday. Forty eight hours from one moment speaking . Yeah . So I think you'll like it because he's being as eighty six, he looks much younger and he's very active, but he's very excited at this point. And it was of course his son Owen is at the eye of the storm. He is one of the chief proponents of mass production of affordable drones, robotics, et cetera. The idea that you could take an oil tanker and just put a flat deck on it and then store underneath it thousands of drones, you know what I mean? And then sail it off somewhere in the South China Sea and then just launch if you saw that the Chinese fleet was on its way to Taiwan, launch ten thousand drones . You know they must have underwater drones also . Underwater Yeah. Underwater surface drones . The Ukrainians the other day say we're happy to help you in the Gulf in the Strait, I mean , and we're making all of these surface drones and we have no use for them because we've destroyed so many Russian capital ships they won't go out of port . So we control the seas the Black Sea essentially with our drone fleet and maybe you need them to stop these Iranian incursions into the strait with their mosquito fleet remnants . Well, I will I will see this with Bing Bing has come on came on very number of national review cruises week we became friendly. He's just he's a great American warrior , a brave man, and I think he has the dedication is thirty three people that he served with in the Marines at Vietnam, and then he was embedded for years in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they died . And then he's a member of our military history group at and contemporary conflict group at the Hoover Institution . And I saw him, he didn't look well one year and he was embedded with at I think he was about eighty. He went all the way to Afghanistan and he got cholera and he almost died . And then he was right back. So it's just he's led an incredible life and he has a lot of expertise And he's very excited in his eighth decade that finally, finally we're trying to say we're going to be concentrating on having more weapons than the enemy. And they're going to be good weapons, but the day that we don't want to use a particular bomber because it cost a billion dollars are over with, we're going to try to find , you know, we're going to go back to the one B twenty four built every hour at Will Run and World War two that kind, of concept . Well, let's close out today, Victor with this reflecting pool madness. And Donald Trump on Truth Social wrote this past week and many additional people have been arrested having to do with the disgraceful vandalism of our beautiful reflecting pool it hasn't looked or worked like this since nineteen twenty two when it was originally built and even then it didn't leaked our s work perfectly, including the mirror like finish perfectly reflecting the two great monuments, which it never had before. What these terrible vandals have done is a true affirm to both Presidents Washington , Lincoln should be dealt with accordingly , et cetera . Victor, he's there's been a lot of effort to beautify, restore, clean up these various monuments in Washington, but I hate to act like it's just a reflecting pool, but the thought that the left has to destroy these things and maim these things and wouldn't do it while Biden was president Obama, but this is their way to give the middle finger to Donald Trump while destroying these great national I was thinking that, you know , during the iconoclastic movement , which is a fancy word for destroying statues or banning them . They were destroying the left was destroying statues of Cervantes in Boldengate Park or Teddy Roosevel t. Remember it was removed? So I thought to myself and I saw them, you know, I don't have any problem with him destroying the statue of Nathan Bedford Forest who was reformed later in life. He kind of, you know, he saw the liver when he had liver cancer. But the point I'm making is you can argue about Robert E. Lee and he had slaves and all that, but there were good aspects of him , the way he conducted war. He wasn't brutal in the sense of the modern wars. He didn't kill prisoners or any of that stuff . And James Longstreet was a tragic figure because he did not believe in slavery , he did not believe in succession, and yet he felt he had to fight as a loyal southerner. But my point is it didn't matter to these people. They destroyed all these beautiful monuments. Richmond, you remember you would go into Richmond and you'd have those beautiful statues that would blind both sides and they're mostly gone. And then you look and say, well, we know you and the left can create statuary, but can you create I mean you, can destroy them but can, you create them? I was looking at and I don't want to pick on the Obamas, but I looked at the statue of Michelle and Barack at the new library . That had half of the artistic beauty of the statues that we've been tearing down. I don't think they can do that anymore. I don't think they have the classical techniques to create the type of statuary that they are destroying . They can throw paint on the Mona Lisa or something , but they cannot create the Mona Lisa . And they can light up a church in Washington, but they can't rebuild it very well . So they're a Neolistic party now we don't know the full story . I'm told that they use water from the Potamic River so they don't have to pump it out of the ground. I don't know why they don't filter it and it has innately allerg ae and then they have to use chemicals or they can't use chemicals . And the paint , but there are reports . We know that somebody vandalized the adjacent lawn with that eighty six forty seven, which can be either get rid of Trump or kill a Trump . But they arrested that former Olympian because he found him, I mean, I didn't quite understand why would he be riding along the reflecting pool and then put his hand in the water and rip up a piece of, you know, plastic lining . And then maybe he was just bewildered by it , but Trump has made the allegations that there are people who are vandalized either by throwing chemicals in it that are corrosive or algae or something . But it was beautiful for a short time. I'm sure it'll be fixed , but yeah, well I used to go to the times I would go to Washington when I would go to Union Station and I looked at that fountain I thought, man, this is disgusting. It was filthy, dirty, it had graffiti over it. Now it's beautiful. And then when I would when I first got there as a visiting professor at Annapolis, I'd come into the station and it was like a dream. All those it was spotless, you know, and they had all of those galler ia of restaurants and stores . And then for a period when I went there, there were homeless people in it. It was filthy, dirty, it was ruined. And now I'm told it's back to its original hayday again or it's getting there. It's getting there. I haven't been there lately, but Trump is he really does believe like I was talking about Larry Arn at Hillsdale . We think it's mundane the infrastructure, but I think he's guided. I think the people around him are that if you inherit something from an ancestor and it's something of value then you're obligated to preserve it and then more importantly is that people react to their surroundings. That goes back to the broken windows theory that even small incremental anti civilizational acts mount, they increase geometrically, not arithmetically . So if you see a nice building and somebody has got graffiti on it and they don't erase it the next day it'll be more. I can speak very expertly on one matter . I didn't get a PhD in junk, but I feel I should deserve one because out here in the farm it's just a truism. If I walk around at night or when I drive my pickup, if I would see a car seat in a strategic place and I didn't pick it out. The next day I would see a garbage bag on top of it. If I didn't get the garbage bag, the next day I'd see a sofa. The next day, next day, next day. And finally that we would call them, you know, little mount trash moors. They were everywhere . And so the point was you had to preempt and why was that? Because there were people who were going around poor communities here, mostly undocumented and saying, We'll pick up all your trash. You don't have to pay for the city . And then they would go out to the most accessible farm, look both ways on a Sunday morning or a late Saturday night and dump it all. And they would get oh, you have a you want to dump that pickup load. Hey, go out to that Hansen place I dumped my stuff there. Nobody picked it up yet, so go ahead and add to it. So it was constant vigilance and that was what human nature is. So if you let an institution building or reflecting people start to go downhill , it'll be multiplied. It'll be not just incremental, it'll be insidious . The next thing, the next thing, the next thing will be graffiti and then trash . And so you have to stop it very early in preemptive fashion . And you owe it to it. Every time I go to this pond that my great grandmother purchased and when we had it , I had five siblings and they all sold their portions and I'm the only one left . But I go by that pond and when we owned it, it. was It beautiful. It had fish in it, we had a boat . We landscaped the shore. It was about an acre and a half. We actually dug it deeper. We hit an Artesian level of water . And I go by the nailack j and I want to vomit. It's not my property, but I feel obligated to walk around it sometimes. There's trash floating . If there is water, most of the time it's dry . There's thousands of shells where people go down there and shoot and don't pick up the casing . It's just filthy, dirty , and it's destroyed and that's because it's got the reputation. And then when you go down there and you see somebody driving in, I think I rel'atedve that an toecd Iot saide,. What are you doing? Why do you have trash bags tied to the top of your car and your back seat? What are you doing? Are you coming on some property that's not yours? And they said, You own it? And I said, I used to. You don't own it now. I'm looking for a bicycle. I said, No, you're not. There's nobody out here but you and me . And then okay, and then I walk away and they drive off, and then the next day I come back and they made a complete U turn and went and dumped it . And that's really and that's the type people should remember and I think they know better than I that civilization is very fragile. It has a very thin veneer. When you start to rip off that veneer , everything , when you go there's certain supermarkets that I go to in this area and when you see the carts all scattered around the parking lot and trash in them or when you go in the store and you have to pick and choose your cart because there's napkins or kleenex or ads in the shopping cart , then you know that when you get into the store that same, laxity is going to be with meat that's too old or it's not going to be clean. When you go to a store and you see a guy running around and getting all the cards or all the people when you unload their groceries, they go they trek back a hundred yards and put their shopping cart back in the stall or when you go to pick out a shopping cart, they're all immaculate. There's no track. Then you go into the store and you can see it's civilized . And so the maintenance and repair and that's what Trump is really good at . It's very, very important. Also goes hand in hand, I think with beauty. I mean, we do have monuments are supposed to be beautiful things. They're supposed to tell stories also. So we right, we have to be vigil ant because human nature is, as you say, you put trash here, it's going to breed more trash. But we have a right as a society to have these beautiful buildings that was what was so terrible about that national madness around the first six months after George Floyd, when you'd see those people just go out without even if they were a southern general who supported slavery, you do it by law. You go to the city council, you make an argument and then you get a vote of the city council in a majority, then they get a city crew to go out and carefully remove it. You just don't go out there a bunch of hooligans and purppero and topple it and then try to break it apart with sludgehammers. I mean, it's kind of like out of the end of Rome people did that. Well, Victor, you've been terrific as ever ? I've got a few comments to read that folks have put on YouTube and this podcast is on YouTube and you can find an ATRUTH Social Also Rumble and you can listen to it on Apple, Spotify, wherever , everywhere. Hellen Rand seven thousand five hundred and eighty writes, I worry that the VP is not really interested in Israel, may even dislike Netanyahu. Israel should be able to defend itself . Israel has worked side by side with us. I agree with Mr. Hansen . Ted Carms writes that story of feeding lodging the Swedes is the best VDH story I've heard yet. America really is a great place to live, visit if you pick the right places. More of this please. David Cole, fourteen seventy five, writes, Thank you for relating information about John Adams. He and his son, Quincy are direct ancestors of mine on my mother's side. Wow. I believe strong faith comes from deep family Christian roots, and it appears I have strong Christian background on both sides of my family tree. My parents were missionaries in Japan from nineteen thirty seven until my mother died in twenty seventeen. I also have been a missionary in Japan for over fifty years. I'm thankful for my Christian background. Cool anecdote. We've very interesting people that listen and watch the show. And finally, this is regarding your interview of Stephen Dr. Steven Cuay, Mark Anthony Gibbon writes , they wouldn't let me in a nursing home to see my relative while I was standing there. They let in a vendor to fill the vending machines. Thank you, Anthony Fauci for Yeah, I mean I don't want to, you know , I don't have, you know, personal clout or preferences, but if you had somebody like Steven Cuay instead of Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious, we wouldn't have had that problem. He would have stopped that in two seconds . He would have soon as that virus came out, if he had been director, he would have said , first thing we got to do is get a panel and there's no rules, there's no limit ations. You find out where this thing came from. And I want an answer in two weeks. And then whatever the answer was, he would have released that information. And then he would have consulted . But Fauci took that fifty billion dollar budget and rewarded friends and punished enemies, and academics are not known to be brave people, so if you were doing a research project about COVID, then you would put in your footnotes or in the text that this was a natural jump from an animal to a human, and then Dr. Fauci would fund it. And if you said anything otherwise, your lab would be probably shut down. He's a very pernicious person and we didn't have to have that . And because he had been there for forty years, he turned what was otherwise a rather obscure agency, the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease that could have been a great indent, but he turned it into a fiendom that was really in some ways more powerful than the National Institutes of Health or the CDC or the FDA . I think he knows it too. You see certain people who understand when they leave office or they're out they're tenured out. They know what they did and they kind of I think another person like Falciau isci John Bolt on. When you see him now, he knows what he did was wrong. He knows that it was a result of Uubris. He knows that he was an expert Washingtonian and he knows that you don't go out of a classified meeting and then relate the contents of conversations through an on secure email to your family for the purposes of profiting financially in a memoir and also hurting the president for whom you were working for. That's about as unethical as you can get . And he when he speaks now, you can see that his face, his eyes. And by the way, our former colleagues are ha ving them at this new security conference . I saw that too . That might have to be conducted by Zoom . I just saw that a little while ago and I'm shaking my head Vict ory at the you know, the Hubristic never seemed to get it except at the end of the bridge on the river Kui where he no before the Madness where the colonel says, What have I done ? But Colonel Nicholson. Yeah, very few people ever admit that. They will, you know, they will Anthony Fauci is never going to say the closest was there was a few top officials at later gave hints that they knew what they had done was wrong, but not Fauci . I don't think Francis Collins ever. Redfield was kind of a tragic figure , but not very many Dasick wasn't. He went down with a ship. He loaded all of the investigations from Lancet Magazine were warped by intent. That was a really sad chapter in American life and historians are going to write a lot about the damage of the economy, the damage to it destroyed the just a final thought when we were in January of twenty twenty , we had just come off a number of foreign policy coups . ISIS had been eliminated So theleimani , I guess we had dealt, I think we'd already dealt with a Wagner group We had already jaw bone NATO about spending . And the economy was really set to boom. Inflation was about one point three . GDP was rising, unemployment was low. Minority unemployment was low. Affordability was not an issue. And that thing came out of nowhere, quote unquote, nowhere . Every once in a while, the conspiratorial side of my brain says , do you think the Chinese were terrified of Donald Trump and they released this during his administration. I don't know, but there was everything about it is cloaked in mystery and enigma. Yeah . Wow . And how the science community reacted the intellect science and those magazines, Jama and other medical journals , low moments our elite. Well, Victor, you've been terrific . Always are . I want to thank you for all the wisdom you've shared today. And I want to thank people who've written me signs of appreciation of civil thoughts, the free weekly email I write every week. That's why it's weekly for the Center for Civil Society comes out every Friday and has fourteen recommended readings, great articles I've come across in the previous few days. So check it out. Not for sale, totally free. We're not stealing your names, selling your names. Go to civil thoughts. com and sign up for it. Thanks, Victor. We'll be back soon with another episode of Victor Davis Hansen in his own words. Bye bye. Thank you everybody for listening and watching . Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. 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