Ep 576 | The Secret Deal that Made Biden President & Wrecked America | Guest: Victor Davis Hanson
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Summary
Victor Davis Hanson is a historian and political commentator. He has been on this podcast several times, giving us his incredible political insight. In this episode, we talk about the State of the Union, masking in public schools, and Ukraine and Russia.
Transcript
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Hey guys, happy Thursday. Welcome to Relatable. This episode, as all episodes, is brought to you
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by Good Ranchers. Better than organic chicken, craft beef, sit right to your front door. That's
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Okay, guys, today we are talking to one of my favorite people on the planet and definitely
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one of my favorite guests, and that is Victor Davis Hanson. He is a historian. He has been on
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this podcast several times giving us his incredible political insight. Today, we're going to talk about
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a few things. We are going to talk a little bit more about the State of the Union. We're going to
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spend some time talking about Kamala Harris, like what the heck is she even saying or doing? And we
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are also going to talk about Ukraine and Russia. He's just got a lot of interesting things to say.
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I think he provides insight like no one else. I don't think that you can get the kind of wisdom
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that you get from Victor Davis Hanson, from any other political commentator. And so I'm super
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excited for what you are going to gain from this conversation because it's a lot.
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But I'm going to talk about at least one thing, maybe a couple things before we actually get into
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that conversation. It's a fairly quick conversation, about 30 minutes. Then I'll have some things to say
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after it as well. But I saw this clip circulating that I wanted to show you guys from Ron DeSantis,
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Republican governor of Florida. I know a lot of you guys really love him, as do I. He has really
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been leading the way against the anti-scientific COVID hysteria. He, his attorney, or not his
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attorney general, but his surgeon general in Florida have really been trying to push the actual
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science when it comes to vaccination and when it comes to masks and mask mandates. They have really
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been pushing against mandatory masking in schools because they know the data just doesn't support that
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nonsense. And so he was at an event yesterday and there were kids behind him for this event where
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he was giving a speech and they were wearing masks and he says, just stop it. So let me play you that
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clip. You do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take it off. Honestly, it's not doing
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anything and we got to stop with this COVID theater. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is
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this is ridiculous. All right. Well, it's good to be at USF. So he was obviously genuinely frustrated
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there. And I actually love that. I love that the frustration with the COVID theater is genuine. That
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means he feels like you and I do. Like we feel the same frustration about that. When we see kids
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wearing masks, we want to say the same thing. A lot of times we don't. I actually know some people who do
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say something. I think one of you guys messaged me that you said something to someone in a grocery
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store who's like three year old child was wearing a mask. And then when you saw them again, they
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weren't wearing a mask. And so I'm not saying that we need to like pry into people's lives. I believe in
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the people having the option to do what they want to do. I completely disagree with you masking your
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child. And I don't think the mask over your mouth and nose is doing anything either. But I liked that he
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was this frustrated. I saw some people saying, you know, this is the kind of nagging tone that
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conservatives don't like from the left when it comes from the other direction, you know, nagging
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people, finger wagging, saying you need to wear masks. And Ron DeSantis is kind of doing that too,
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except for on the other side. And I just I don't see it that way. I think that he is on the correct
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side, obviously. And he's on the scientific side. And he's tired of seeing these meaningless virtue
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signals when it comes to kids. And it also just to be fair, it's not necessarily a great look
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because he has fought against the the masking of children. And then he's at this event and children
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are being masked behind him or teenagers rather. Some of these kids, when he says this, they take
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off the masks and they kind of smile at the camera. And I'm like, I love it. And then you have other kids
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who I think are like dutifully standing there and they have their masks on and they're not going to
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take their mask off. And what's sad is I've heard from several of you that your child, not your child,
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but kids in maybe your child's class, even after masks have become optional, that they are continuing
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to wear them. Yes, because there has been psychological damage that has been inflicted on kids for the
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past couple of years where they're paranoid, they're scared, even though their little flimsy cloth
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Spider-Man mask isn't doing anything. Their parent has told them this is how you protect yourself from
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dying. This is how you protect mommy and daddy and grandma and grandpa from dying. This is how you be
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a good person. The people who don't wear a mask are bad people. And this is a virus out there that could
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kill you if you don't wear this mask. And so, of course, that's just going to go away. Kids can't even
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process how all of a sudden the science changed to where they don't have to wear this apparently
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life-saving device that is indicative of their love for people. And so, you're going to see kids,
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teenagers, unfortunately, wear these masks for a long time. We've talked about many times the
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consequences of covering your mouth when you're trying to communicate and understand people's
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emotions. I don't even think we can quantify the negative ramifications that this will have on kids
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for years to come. I say good for Ron DeSantis. I like this attitude about masking kids from him.
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This, to me, was a point in his favor. I don't care what people say that they didn't like the tone.
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You know what? This has been going on for too long. It's about time someone took it seriously and,
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again, reflected the frustrations that we have. So, you know what? Good for Ron DeSantis. I like Ron
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DeSantis. We were just talking before the camera turned on whether or not we think that Ron DeSantis
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is going to run for president. Look, I think Trump has made it pretty clear that he is going to run.
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I think he made it clear on this show. He basically said, you know, I can't announce anything because
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of different rules, but I think you're going to be very happy. That's what he told us when I
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interviewed him. If you haven't listened to that, you definitely should. It's a very intriguing,
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very Trump interview, if you know what I mean. So, I think that he is going to run.
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If I am Ron DeSantis, I probably don't want to run against Donald Trump. Look,
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Donald Trump is going to play dirty. It doesn't matter how much he may have liked you before.
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If you are his opponent, he is going to get down into the mud. And that could possibly hurt a person's
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political career forever. Maybe not, but it possibly could. And Ron DeSantis probably doesn't
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want to pit supporters of him against supporters of Donald Trump or himself against supporters of
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Donald Trump. And he's doing really well as the governor of Florida. I'm thinking that he might
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be thinking, I have no idea. I don't have any special insight into this, but he might be thinking,
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you know what? I'm going to give Florida four more years. I'm going to get overwhelmingly reelected,
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which I think he absolutely will. So, why don't I just stay here and we'll see what happens? I mean,
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he's young. He's in his early 40s. That is several lifetimes younger than Joe Biden,
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who was alive during the Civil War. So, I think that, you know, he might have some cushion.
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On the other hand, maybe he should take advantage of the momentum that he has right now. And maybe
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he should just go for it. I don't know. Thank goodness I'm not a political advisor. I just know
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that I like the guy. He seems like a fighter to me. He has been on the right side of every issue that
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I've seen so far as Florida governor. I don't think we ever put too much hope and too much stock in
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any politician. But I like what I see so far. I do hope that one day we see him as president of
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the United States. I think that would be a huge blessing. As of right now, that's my vantage point.
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That's what I see. And I just liked, I liked this clip. I liked his frustration because I feel the
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same way, Ron DeSantis. Thank you so much for joining us again. I am curious about your reaction,
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your response to what seemed to me as an appeal to the center or center right during Biden's
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State of the Union when he talked about funding the police, securing the border, buying American,
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opening the schools, all these things that I think you and I agree with, but he doesn't actually seem
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to agree with when you look at his policies. Why do you think that he decided on that approach when
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it came to the State of the Union? Well, I mean, he just threw out, it would be as if as conservatives
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and we were up for, we were politicians and we were up for reelection in the sense of our party was in
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the midterms. And we knew the conservatives are going to be wiped out because then nobody liked our
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agenda. And yet we wouldn't change it. We would say we want to raise taxes. I agree with that. Or we
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would say things like, we've got to embrace the new Green Deal. But we wouldn't give any details and
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we wouldn't mean it. They were just fill up, just throw out lines. And that's what he was doing.
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Because if he really meant that, he would have given a systemic analysis. He could have said,
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like the German chancellor, we've got to produce more nuclear power. We've got to open up ANWR. We've
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got to open new leases on federal lands for gas and oil fracking. He could have said, we need the
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Keystone pipeline to be completed. We need more liquid natural gas terminals to help Europe out.
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We can OK the East Med pipeline with Israel Cyprus. In Greece, it'll bring billions of cubic feet of
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natural gas to Italy. He didn't do any of that because he doesn't believe it. He doesn't want to.
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And he knows even if he wanted to, he couldn't because he made a devil's bargain in 2020 with
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a hard left. And the deal was that Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Cory Booker or Kamala Harris
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could not be elected. And he had a veneer of moderation that they didn't. And then they went
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to him and said, you can't win without us. And so you carry us over the finish line. You get to be
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president. We get the agenda. And I think that's where we are. Yeah. You know, that actually leads
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perfectly to my next question, because I've heard you talk about this before, this kind of Faustian
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bargain that got Biden elected. And just from the outside, I looked at the primary and I said,
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I'm not sure how it's possible how you come in fourth in the Iowa caucus and then somehow you become
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the nominee. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I know you said that, OK, it was kind of the
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hard left saying we know that we can't get elected. You can. So basically, they said you
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have to kind of represent the issues that we represent. We just kind of need your face and
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good old trustworthy Joe to win the election. And then you can kind of govern from the left in
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in your estimation. That's kind of why he has governed the way that he has. Right.
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Yeah, I think when he went into South Carolina and was going to lose the nomination,
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probably. And then Nevada after then, James Clyburn pretty much told him, we're going to get
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a monolithic African-American vote, 30 or 40 percent of the electorate.
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And they were not going to vote for Pete Buttigieg. They were not going to vote for
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Beto had dropped out. So they told Joe Biden, you're going to be the minority back candidate,
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but we expect certain things of you. And you're not going to go back to the old Joe Biden from
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Scranton that used to talk about tough on crime or your mother was endangered by criminal predators
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or drug addict. None of that anymore. And so that's what I you know, when we're talking about
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Joe Biden, it's kind of cruel to say, but that's kind of a construct. Joe Biden is 79. He's a very
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old 79. Some people, 79 or 59 and some are 99. And Joe happens to be one that's 99.
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Right. And so to the degree that he knows exactly what predicament he's in, I think it's overseen or
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arranged by Jill, Jill Biden, his wife, and Ron Klain, his chief of staff. I think the Obamas play a
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prominent role as well. Yeah. I'm curious kind of what Kamala thinks of all of this, because if you
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watch her, even during the State of the Union, there was one point, I don't know if everyone who's
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listening to this caught this when he said something about the spirit of the Iranian people.
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Yes. And he meant to say Ukraine and she was behind him. And she just kind of mouthed Ukrainian.
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And it seems to me, at least behind the mask that she's typically wearing, that she is really biting
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her tongue when Joe Biden says stuff like this. There was after his Supreme Court nominee, she gave
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a speech the other day. And Joe Biden got up and he said, Oh, I forgot to introduce the second
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gentleman. And it feels really strange saying that. I mean, he said that publicly, which is just kind
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of awkward. And you could just see Kamala Harris kind of gritting her teeth, trying not to say
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anything. I don't know if you have any special insight. But what do you think that she's thinking
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as she sees this person who is basically a puppet trying to lead the free world?
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Well, I think she's saying that she feels that she is playing a very important role. Because remember,
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he did with her what he did with our latest chief Supreme Court justice nomination, he said it was
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going to have a black woman. And when you survey the landscape of prominent senators or governors that
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usually are nominated for vice presidents, that she was the only person available, really. And she feels
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that she's done him a great favor. And she feels also that he's an embarrassment. But he also she's angry
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at him because she's kind of playing the role. Remember Susan Rice? And during the Benghazi, just to take
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one example, whenever there was a mess, Hillary didn't go out there. And Obama himself didn't go out
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there. And they would get Susan Rice, and she would go out and lie about Benghazi five times in one day,
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she would, you know, she would tell everybody that, oh, this was a, you know, it was not Al Qaeda. It
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was not it was just a spontaneous riot, etc, etc. Mad about a video rather than a hit. And she lied and
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downplayed. And then when it was about Syria, she said, you know, all the WMD are out, they weren't,
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she knew that, and etc, etc. So the in Kamala Harris's frame of mind, she's a black woman, and they use
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her to do the dirty work to damage her. And that means they send her to the border, or they know that
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she knows nothing about foreign affairs. So they send her over to bulk up NATO, or they have her
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explained to children almost, you know, kind of like a infantile fashion. This is a Ukraine, it's a
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country in Europe. And it's not as big. And then there's Russia. And it makes her look foolish. And
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so I think they get back, I have, they have a very sick relationship. I think she is, her staff hints
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that Joe is not capable cognitively, and his staff says that she is, but she doesn't know anything.
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Hmm. And it's, and she's done him a great favor in a way that's kind of perverse in the sense that
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she's playing the role of, when I was younger, Spiro Agnew, and that everybody thought Nixon should
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resign. But until Spiro Agnew suddenly was indicted for all this fraud, when he was involved in Baltimore
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politics, nobody wanted to have Nixon resign that year, because they thought Agnew just couldn't and
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shouldn't, and would never conceivably be president. And they kind of thought that Nixon was smirking
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and had appointed him for that reason, in case he ever got in trouble, they would, you don't want a
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good, strong vice president. And of course, when Nixon had to go, then all of a sudden, there were
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federal attorneys that came out of nowhere and said, Oh, by the way, I remember that way, way back when,
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uh, Spiro Agnew was a cook. And I, we just found out new information. So we're going to try him.
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And then he had to resign. As soon as he resigned, they could impeach Nixon. Uh, and they got a new
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vice president that was suitable, Jerry Ford. But, uh, I think that's, she does him a great favor. If,
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if you had a mainstream democratic mainstream, I don't know who that would be. I'm not fond of very
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many of them, but say somebody like Chuck Schumer was vice president right now, there would be a lot
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of calls for Biden within the party to step down. Right. But they, but they know that Kamala Harris
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is an electoral disaster. She didn't get one vote, not one vote in the primaries, not one delegate,
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not one delegate. And they know that. And there's a reason why she's off putting, she's socially inept.
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She, she has no frame of knowledge or reference to, to, to seem experienced or, or detailed or
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knowledgeable. It's sad, but here in California, anybody who watched her career knew that she never
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really had to go out into the arena, so to speak, and debate people and, and show, and be judged on
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her marriage. She was either a consort of Willie Brown and got appointed to all these, uh, state boards.
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And then she got the San Francisco elite to get her financer to be city or then county attorney and
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then attorney general. So it was always handed to her. Yeah. Right. I've heard a lot of people that
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know a lot about California politics, just express their shock. Even Democrats say that they were
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shocked when she was appointed to this position. Um, not that they were surprised that Joe Biden would
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make this pick, but just looking at her career, how she got to where she is, it's just kind of crazy,
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but unfortunately to be expected. Uh, she recently was giving a speech and we don't have the clip
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right now, um, where she amazingly said, I'm sure Republicans are going to use this in their campaign
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ads who said, you know, uh, when you vote, you order for something. And right now the American people
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are getting what they ordered in voting for Joe Biden. Now, of course that means, okay, they ordered
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inflation, uh, inflation, they ordered unrest. They ordered to pay more, uh, at the gas pump and
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having a harder time feeding their family. And so I guess they ordered all of those things and they
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got it. Um, what do you, what do you think of that? Is this just another example of her just kind
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of being politically incompetent? I mean, what was going through her mind? Do you think when she
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actually said that out loud? Well, I think she, I think you're, you're right that she's politically
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incompetent, but there's a side of all of us who think, well, she's not that politically incompetent.
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In other words, when Joe Biden gives these addresses, how great everything is going and she knows
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that they're not, then she says, well, you got everything you wanted and he's, he's not going to
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go say to her, what do you mean? And she's going to say to him, well, you just went through all the
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things you've done. You're great inflation, you're great energy spikes, you're great Afghanistan
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flight, you're, you're great open border. So I'm just doing what you do, supporting you. And she knows
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that when she says it, it's an indirect criticism, sarcastic of him, but yeah, there's some part of
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that. I think, I think it's going to get, if the midterms come out as they are and that, and if Joe Biden,
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he seems to be, I don't want to be too cruel, but he seems to be declining geometrically rather than
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arithmetically. And by that, I mean every two week period, he seems more flustered than he was the two
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week period before and before. And if that coincides in November and they lose 60 seats, say, or five or
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six sentence, there's going to be a big call in that democratic party to do something because they
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have a, they have a, they're going to look at something that could be like 1932, where they,
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they don't just lose the house and Senate in 2022, but they lose them in 2024 with super majorities
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in the Senate and huge margins in the house and a Republican president that could do almost anything
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they wanted. There'd be no way to stop them. And they know that. And so they're going to have to
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take measures. And I don't know, they're not to that point yet. They don't turn on the squad that
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got them in this trouble. They won't question Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or those people. But
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I think in the midterm, it's going to be pretty clear what these people have done to them.
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Yeah. I think that's probably part of the reason, at least in my opinion, why
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a lot of these democratic states are rolling back on the mask mandates and the restrictions. They say
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we're rooted in science. I guess the science has changed in a matter of a week or so. The science on
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masks changed the day before the State of the Union and Congress, of course. It seems to be
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all kind of playing into that, that they know a lot of the things that they have done are deeply
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unpopular. They want to be able to win the midterms. The State of the Union, to me, he was,
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it was a fake appeal to the center right, just like his campaign. He wanted them to believe that
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he's moderate. It also showed me that he understands that the majority of Americans are still
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pretty conservative. I mean, you don't give a State of the Union where you talk about funding the
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police and securing the border and buying American, unless you think a large portion of your audience
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is going to get on board with that and be excited about that. My fear is that we have a lot of
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Americans who are going to be duped yet again into thinking Democrats are moderate, that this is the
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only way to save democracy, and that they are going to forget the heck that we've been through over the
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past few years, largely because of democratic policies. I mean, what are the chances,
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do you think, are of people kind of forgetting the blunder that is Joe Biden in the Democratic Party
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and come midterm say, you know what, life is pretty good now. Things are back to normal. I think I am
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going to continue to vote Democrat and support Joe Biden. Well, you know, I can only, as a historian,
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I just look at what Bill Clinton did. He got wiped out in the 92 midterms. Terrible.
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Almost as bad as Barack Obama. And it was largely because of Hillary care. And then he triangulated.
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He had Dick Morris sneak in the back of the White House every day. And he came out in his State of
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the Union after that election and said that, you know, the era of big government is over. We're going
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to have 1000, 100,000 police officers on the street. We're going to pay for school uniforms. These
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were all, you know, just fluff stuff. But he did. He did ban the hard left for a while. And then he
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got over. He overwhelmingly reelected. Same thing happened to Barack Obama. He got wiped out even more
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so in the midterms over the way he rammed in Obamacare. And while he didn't quite triangulate, he did do
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it. He didn't open the border like Biden did. And he railed and railed about, you know, fossil fuels,
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but he didn't cut back on leases to the same degree. And so what I'm getting at is that
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two things. One, Biden is not going to do what they did in any material way. He's going to steal. He's a
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cat. They weren't a captive. They ran. At that time, there was something called a centrist base
00:23:51.040
in the Democratic Party. Obama was afraid of it. Clinton counted on it. And that doesn't exist anymore.
00:23:58.240
And so I think Biden, there's no there's no reason for him to actually go through with all of these
00:24:04.640
little talking points that he thinks appeals to independence. He won't do it. They won't let him
00:24:08.960
do it in the way that Clinton did. The other thing is, the media is very different today.
00:24:14.880
During 1994 and five, there was no internet like we know it. Even in 2010, there wasn't,
00:24:23.280
I mean, there wasn't a Joe Rogan or there wasn't all of these what we're doing now. And so I think
00:24:29.360
there's so many outlets now that are not network news or PBS or New York Times or NPR that they can't
00:24:36.960
control. And so the word gets out just how phony Joe Biden is. And before you couldn't really,
00:24:44.640
you know, there wasn't a way the general public didn't have access to the same amount of conservative
00:24:49.920
thought that they do now. And so I think I don't think anybody's going to be there's a third thing
00:24:56.000
to whatever we think of the politics of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama when they're every one of their
00:25:04.400
issues was underwater. And they were and for the first two years, they had a youthful, charismatic
00:25:10.880
presence. And they were mellifilous on this on the teleprompter. And so they could nullify
00:25:19.280
the downside by their, you know, they always if you look at the polls, they always personally
00:25:24.080
pulled higher than their issues. And the exact opposite is true of Joe Biden. He is a
00:25:30.400
force multiplier of his unpopular issues, people see him. And he has, I'm 68. So I want to be very
00:25:38.960
careful. But he has this old man angry look, where it's sort of like, you know, when I was a little
00:25:44.400
boy, that's kind of a stereotype, we go into town, and we'd all ride bikes and cut across the lawn,
00:25:49.680
we shouldn't have done it of a retired couple. And this guy would come out. And he would just get off
00:25:54.560
my ground. You know, just yell. Yes. And he would grimace. And I felt bad for him. But that's what
00:26:00.960
Joe Biden does. He, he squints, he yells, and he gets angry, and he has the wrong intonations.
00:26:07.600
And then he tries to, he just makes everybody think, well, I don't like the issues. But I really
00:26:13.600
don't like him. Right. And before it was, well, I don't like the issues. But Barack Obama's our first
00:26:19.040
African American president, he's young, and he cuts a good figure on the national stage. Or
00:26:24.480
Clinton's a good old boy from Arkansas, kind of a nasty, naughty little guy, but he's ours. And
00:26:29.280
you know, that kind of stuff. But you don't get any of that with Joe Biden. It's entirely negative.
00:26:34.640
And that's not just because of his age and cognitive challenges. He was never that way. I think a lot of
00:26:40.640
people think, well, I remember the good old Joe. I don't. I remember the plagiarist in the 1988
00:26:47.360
campaign. I remember the guy who said to Obama, you're the first clean, articulate black that
00:26:52.400
ran for office. I remember, put you all in change. I remember the corn pop stories. I remember him
00:26:59.360
defaming the person in that tragic accident where his first wife was killed. I remember him blaming
00:27:04.240
the truck driver and telling the nation the guy was drunk when he wasn't, and it wasn't his fault.
00:27:09.200
He did a lot of nasty, bad things. And that's aside from the whole Hunter Biden,
00:27:13.760
Tara Reid, all the personal problems. So I just don't think that he's going to, by force of his
00:27:20.480
person, be able to nullify the unpopularity of his policies.
00:27:24.960
And even Barack Obama said, never underestimate Joe Biden's ability to F things up. And I think
00:27:31.920
we've seen that. And strangely enough, Jen Psaki seems to be kind of admitting that. I want to play
00:27:37.760
you this clip and get your reaction to it. I was at the State Department. The president was the
00:27:43.280
vice president the last time Russia invaded Ukraine. This is a pattern of horror from this
00:27:48.560
president from President Putin and from the cronies around him. Okay, so we've got a pattern here.
00:27:54.720
Apparently, Putin only invades when Joe Biden is in office. And she thought that that was a good point
00:27:59.680
to make. Yeah, I think the Democrats, I mean, they've been the conservatives have been relentless,
00:28:05.600
even that they even include 2008, because they're not fond of George W. Bush. But they say, look,
00:28:12.080
2008, oil prices were high, we were bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, Putin goes into Georgia.
00:28:19.920
And then 2014, oil prices are high. Obama has the hot mic, he appeases, but brings the Russians into
00:28:30.880
the Middle East for the first time to 40 years, promises to dismantle missile defense. And he goes
00:28:37.120
into Ukraine and Crimea. And then he does it in 2022. And the oil prices are high. And we did,
00:28:45.440
we talk loud with a little twig. So we say, please don't hack 16 companies or something.
00:28:50.800
That's what Biden did in January. Or please, please, please, Vladimir, pump more oil. And then
00:28:56.880
they look at that four year period with Trump. And they've told the nation that he colluded. I think
00:29:02.880
John Brennan called him treasonous. James Clapper said he was a Russian asset. And then lo and behold,
00:29:07.760
they look at it and they think, wow, how do we spend this? He didn't go in for four years anywhere.
00:29:13.680
And was it possible that it was because Trump killed a bunch of mercenaries in Syria or got
00:29:19.760
out of an asymmetrical missile deal? Or he pumped a lot of oil and he crashed the price or he upped
00:29:26.240
the defense budget or jawboned NATO into spending $100 million or kept the sanctions on the oligarchs
00:29:34.240
or sold offensive javelin missiles to Ukraine? And it just drives them crazy. So now they've come up
00:29:41.360
with a really bizarre if you've seen it. Well, yeah, he didn't invade during the four years of
00:29:46.000
Trump, but we know why. It was because he got everything he wanted from Trump. So there was
00:29:50.960
no reason to invade. Whereas he didn't get anything. And I'm thinking, what did he get? He was so happy
00:29:56.800
that we got a bigger defense budget. He was delighted that NATO spent 100 extra million
00:30:03.200
dollars. He was tickled to death that we got out of a missile treaty that favored Putin.
00:30:08.960
He really wanted more javelins in Ukraine. I mean, it's absurd.
00:30:12.160
Can you, I know this is a big question and you could probably spend hours explaining all of this
00:30:23.280
to us, but just in the next few minutes, can you kind of summarize your thoughts about what
00:30:29.680
is going on in Ukraine and Joe Biden's response to it? There are so many mixed messages, competing
00:30:36.320
narratives, a lot of skepticism, I think, from the right about the messages that we are hearing about
00:30:41.920
Ukraine and kind of how involved in this we need to be, how focused on this as an American people
00:30:48.640
we need to be, how significant is what's going on between Ukraine and Russia? And what do you
00:30:54.720
think about America's response to it so far? See, I think conservatives have to be really careful
00:31:01.200
because the left is watching what they say and the left wants to get out of their jam. And their jam
00:31:07.200
is that they appeased Putin and they gave him everything that he wanted. And as we just said,
00:31:13.600
he moved. Okay. So if you say, well, that's not our business in Ukraine or Putin has historical ties
00:31:25.440
with Ukraine in a way that we don't quite understand, or the Ukrainians are corrupt. That's all true.
00:31:32.560
And they've interfered with our politics. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman was offered the Ministry of Defense
00:31:37.440
and the phone call impeachment. And at least Putin is strong. If you do that, what you're doing is
00:31:45.280
you're building up a sympathetic case for someone who's a thug and a killer. And so I think the better
00:31:51.760
way of if you're a conservative is to say, we didn't create this mess. We wanted to pump oil.
00:32:00.640
We believe in deterrence. We wouldn't have got into the mess in Afghanistan as you did.
00:32:05.840
We would not have ever had a hot mic exchange and try to make a deal about our reelection the way
00:32:12.640
Obama did. We would have never allowed him to continue to hack the way he did. And Obama,
00:32:18.400
we wouldn't beg anybody to pump oil because we would pump oil. And we are the quiet ones that
00:32:23.280
carry a big stick. We're not the loud ones that don't have deterrence. And then I think we should
00:32:28.800
say Putin is the irredentist. That's a fancy words you remember for what Mussolini was doing in the
00:32:35.120
thirties or Hitler. And the idea that you have lost territories that no matter how they've evolved,
00:32:41.920
they're all going to come back into the center. And it never works. It didn't work with Milosevic in
00:32:48.000
Serbia. It didn't work with Mussolini. It won't work with Putin. But that's what he wants to do. And
00:32:53.680
he's an opportunist. And every time he sees oil prices high, where he gets money and people need
00:32:59.360
energy, or the president is weak, and he talks tough in lieu of having real power or metal, or NATO is
00:33:07.600
squabbling, they're not meeting their 2%, or Germany's cutting an energy. He moves 2008,
00:33:13.760
2014, and now. And it was predictable what he's going to do. And so I think that's what we have to
00:33:19.920
say. And we were very interested in this, because he's got nuclear weapons. And he's trying to feign,
00:33:27.920
I think he's feigning that he's crazy, and he could use them if anybody supplies Ukraine,
00:33:33.680
the NATO countries, etc. So we have to be very careful to deter him. And there's people who are
00:33:40.720
watching this arena. And they are the Iranians that are wondering, hmm, we're about a year away
00:33:46.720
from a bomb. And we once we get that bomb, we're probably thinking about using it against Israel.
00:33:52.320
But what's the reaction to the world to Ukraine? And then there's the Chinese, and they're thinking,
00:33:57.840
well, this was supposed to be a five day invasion. He was supposed to go in like he did with
00:34:02.560
Crimea or Eastern Ukraine or Georgia, decapitate Zelensky's government, take over the country,
00:34:12.480
present the world with a fait accompli, get a lot of pride and patriotism in Russia,
00:34:19.920
scare the hell out of NATO, tell Germany, do you want me to cut off your oil? Because I can do it. And
00:34:26.880
now I'm right next to NATO. I got Ukraine. That's what was supposed to happen.
00:34:31.520
And it may happen. And if it happens in a year from now, he won't care how many people he kills or
00:34:36.800
is killed. He will just tell the world, Ukraine is mine. I'm the first Russian to get it back since
00:34:42.160
the Cold War. And I can do this again and again and again, and maybe messy. But you better be very
00:34:48.240
careful, NATO. And that that's what he's thinking. And he's right about that. That will have a that all
00:34:54.480
these great speeches we see today in Europe. If he gets away with this a year from now and he owns
00:35:01.760
that whole 44 million person country, people in Europe are going to be saying, OK, OK, we'll buy
00:35:07.280
oil from you. OK, we'll be careful. Well, we won't do this with NATO. And so that's what he's counting
00:35:14.160
on. And the Chinese are looking at this and they're saying, hmm, we were going to go into Taiwan. But if
00:35:20.320
what if the Taiwanese fought with like the Ukrainians and what if the Americans or the
00:35:25.440
Australians or the South Koreans or the Japanese flooded that country with javelins and stingers
00:35:31.040
like they're trying to in Ukraine? And what do we got? We got bogged down for five or six days.
00:35:36.880
And what if the world sanctioned us like they're sanctioning Russia? And what if they went out of
00:35:42.880
expatriate Chinese billionaires all over the world like they're going after the oligarchs? And what if they
00:35:48.720
deported all of our students? So maybe we better just sit back a little bit and watch what happens
00:35:54.240
because we expected like the Russians that the West would continue to appease us and Putin. So
00:36:00.880
there's a lot at stake. And I think in the next week or so, we'll find out what's going on. It's
00:36:06.400
a very strange war because usually every journalist in the world, whether it's in the Middle East or
00:36:11.360
whether it's in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya or the Balkan Wars, they flocked there and we would get
00:36:17.280
these, you know, correspondents on the front lines, but we're not getting any news.
00:36:21.680
And then we just get this picture of this long corridor and we're told that, you know,
00:36:26.640
it's going to encircle Kiev, but it hasn't yet. And we're told that this is the product,
00:36:31.840
this would be an ideal target for these javelins with a two and a half mile range. And what I'm
00:36:37.040
getting at is on the one hand, we're told that 15,000 javelins are pouring in, but obviously they're
00:36:42.480
not there or they be used. So something's going on. And I think what's going on is it's very
00:36:48.960
difficult for that country who that was surprised. It did not have stockpiles of weapons. We didn't
00:36:54.560
send them very much at all after Trump left office. And just now they're, they're scrambling to get
00:37:01.280
anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry to stop this. But I don't, and the question will be,
00:37:06.400
do they, will they have enough in the next three days and will they have enough skilled people to
00:37:11.920
use them to make a difference? If they don't, Putin's going to win and let's hope he doesn't.
00:37:17.760
But I think it's very important for conservatives to see that for all the left's contortions,
00:37:25.520
they are scrambling to turn it back on conservatives. They were the ones that created
00:37:31.120
the landscape and the environment that allowed Putin to go in there. They were the ones that both
00:37:36.880
cooked up the Russian collusion hopes, the Alpha Banka, the Steele dossier that enraged him,
00:37:41.760
and then they were the ones that appeased him and gave him the oil revenue that made him powerful.
00:37:48.480
So they created an angry, powerful dictator. And because that dictator
00:37:55.120
criticizes the excess of the West sometimes, or seems like the left really hates him, that should
00:38:07.040
not allow conservatives to get fooled and go in in some way, say something that can be interpreted that
00:38:13.760
they're pro-Putin. That is disastrous for the conservatives' cause if they do that.
00:38:17.840
Yes. And unfortunately, I've seen a little bit of that, but I do think-
00:38:22.480
Yes. I do think the majority of conservatives, though, see
00:38:27.200
exactly what you're saying, or at least they, their instincts are in the direction of what
00:38:32.480
you're articulating. So I appreciate your insight so much today, as always. Thank you very much for
00:38:38.640
taking the time to come on. Thank you for having me.
00:38:46.080
All right. So there was so much more that I wanted to talk to him about. He's got a really
00:38:50.560
interesting podcast, The Victor Davis Hanson Show, that I recommend to you. And I was listening to it,
00:38:55.280
and he was saying a lot of really interesting things. And one thing that I didn't get to ask him about,
00:39:00.880
that I've heard him say before, is that President Putin actually has donated, has funneled money into
00:39:08.960
environmental causes in the United States. And this ties back to kind of what we were talking about in there,
00:39:14.800
about the Faustian bargain that Joe Biden made with the far left so that he could become the nominee,
00:39:21.680
and he could then represent their policies so that he could look like he was going to be a moderate guy
00:39:26.960
during the election, get elected, you know, win the nomination, then win the general election. But then
00:39:32.480
he was going to actually govern to the left, which is exactly what he has done. And one of the issues that
00:39:38.160
is important to the progressive left in the Democratic Party is climate change and also the various
00:39:44.160
corporations and organizations that are funding the Democratic Party. This is one of their main priorities,
00:39:50.240
countries, which is why I believe on the first day, if not the first week of Joe Biden's presidency,
00:39:55.520
he shut down the Keystone XL pipeline, which of course helped us and was going to help us remain
00:40:02.160
energy independent. We were energy independent under Donald Trump. We were relying on ourselves for oil,
00:40:07.700
and Joe Biden ensured that we would become energy dependent. So we would be relying on Russia for oil,
00:40:14.860
and more on the Middle East for our oil that is ethically problematic for a variety of reasons.
00:40:21.220
But also it puts us in this situation right now where we are trying to deter Russia, but we are
00:40:27.140
unwilling to sanction their oil industry, which is actually lining their pockets in funding the
00:40:31.980
invasion of Ukraine, because we are afraid of how that will affect our allies in Europe and also how
00:40:38.700
that will affect the United States. Well, if we were energy independent, and we were the ones not
00:40:44.060
just relying on our own oil, but also exporting the oil to these European countries, we wouldn't be
00:40:48.220
in the mess that we're in. So he, because of environmentalism, and I would say the facade of
00:40:55.240
environmentalism, Joe Biden has made the choice that he has made in shutting down the gas pipelines
00:41:00.960
in the United States, much of the gas pipelines in the United States, and ending the federal sales of
00:41:06.540
oil and gas, as we talked about a few days ago with Josh Hammer. So a lot of you have been asking,
00:41:14.020
though, why do this? If you say that you care about climate change, and you say that fracking
00:41:20.220
and these pipelines are bad for the climate, how does it make any sense to then just rely even more
00:41:26.460
on these foreign regimes and these foreign powers for our oil? Isn't that even worse for the climate
00:41:33.340
because they're having to ship the oil a longer way to the United States in order to get it here?
00:41:39.220
Because the demand for gas remains the same. It's not like there's now less oil. It's just that we
00:41:45.320
are depending on these other countries for our oil. And doesn't that increase like our carbon footprint
00:41:49.460
even more that we're relying on this foreign oil? And of course, the answer is yes. And if you're
00:41:55.060
wondering why, why is that? If you say you care about the climate, then why are you doing that?
00:41:59.100
That's because climate policy in the United States is largely fake. It's all it's a facade. It's not
00:42:04.440
real. They say that they care about the climate. John Kerry cares about the climate. They're always
00:42:08.780
flying private. They don't care about their own carbon footprint in the same way that all of the
00:42:14.320
rich people who say that they care about, you know, the penguins in Antarctica. They have a huge
00:42:18.700
carbon footprint because they live in these mansions. They all fly private. They all do these things
00:42:23.380
that, you know, take up a lot of space and use a lot of resources and energy. But they want you to
00:42:30.120
believe that you, the, you know, stay at home mom that lives on the farm because you have too many
00:42:35.840
kids, that you're the one that's actually damaging the climate. And they want to try to control your
00:42:41.620
life and they want to make your life harder saying that it is in the name of trying to, you know,
00:42:47.900
deter climate change, but they're not willing to make any changes in their life. It's all fake.
00:42:52.500
We rely on foreign oil, not because that actually helps the climate in any way, but so we can look
00:42:59.300
like we are helping the climate by shutting down our own pipelines. But as we've seen, that leads to
00:43:04.780
all kinds of problems, not just domestically, but also in our foreign affairs. And so it's just,
00:43:13.740
I don't know how else to explain it. Climate policy in the United States is a fraud. It's a fake.
00:43:19.360
And it actually ends up hurting you. It is actually hurting your bank account right now. And that is
00:43:24.700
why Putin, at least in the Obama administration, actually said that he supported America's
00:43:31.420
commitment to environmentalism. Of course, of course he does, because that means that we rely
00:43:35.800
and the world relies on Russia for oil. And that makes sure that he has more money. Again, that is
00:43:41.040
funding the invasion that he is conducting right now. So it all comes back to if America really
00:43:48.840
wants to be strong. One, I think a strong America is better for the world. Then we need to be self
00:43:53.720
reliant. And Joe Biden has actively worked against that self reliance. And this also ties into our
00:43:59.700
reliance on China. There's a lot there. But just realize that when Joe Biden says that he has committed
00:44:06.940
to all of these things that he thinks is going to make America stronger, he and his party and even
00:44:12.800
some people in the Republican Party, we can tie this all into the World Economic Forum and the Great
00:44:16.900
Reset as well, are actually committed to a weak America. A weak America is actually necessary,
00:44:23.520
I believe, for the new world order that the World Economic Forum is set on. And I will link some past
00:44:29.140
episodes on that. I wish that was just some giant conspiracy theory and that I had no idea what I was
00:44:33.720
talking about. Unfortunately, it's not. I think this president is certainly committed to that.
00:44:41.120
And then there was even more that I wanted to talk about with him. But I just wanted to mention that
00:44:44.520
at the end, because a lot of you guys have been asking me how it makes sense the decisions that Joe
00:44:49.520
Biden has been making when it comes to not sanctioning Russia's oil industry and also not relying on our own
00:44:55.180
oil. That's the answer that I have for you. All right. If you could please leave the show a five star
00:45:00.800
review wherever you listen, that would mean so much to us. Thank you guys for listening and for
00:45:06.580
watching on YouTube. I hope you have a great, wonderful weekend and we will be back here on Monday.