TRIGGERnometry - ＂This Will Be The Nastiest, Dirtiest, Scariest Election In Our History＂ - Victor Davis Hanson

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00:00:15.540 The whole idea of democracy is that it's meant to be fair.

00:00:19.540 Everybody gets one vote, and then the person who wins, wins.

00:00:23.600 And if you don't like it, tough. That's democracy.

00:00:27.460 I understand the left. I grew up with it.

00:00:29.880 I see it. I'm in academia for 50 years.

00:00:32.700 I know what they're capable of.

00:00:34.440 And so it's going to be the nastiest, most expensive, dirtiest, and scariest election in our history.

00:00:43.260 Compliance moves fast, and Moody's can help organizations move even faster.

00:00:47.280 Leveraging AI to help you gain quicker insights and reduce bottlenecks.

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00:00:58.320 Victor, such a pleasure to have you back on the show.

00:01:01.020 Since we last spoke, I think many of the things we talked about are starting to materialize,

00:01:05.840 which is very sad, I think, for all three of us.

00:01:08.320 One of the things we really wanted to get your expertise on and your take on is

00:01:12.040 the invasion of Ukraine, the Iranian-backed attacks on Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East.

00:01:20.060 It sort of feels like the world order in which the West was strong and dominant is coming apart.

00:01:26.780 Is that fair to say?

00:01:27.700 Yes and no.

00:01:30.260 I mean, if we had this conversation, oh, in December 2020, you could argue that Iran, 0.79

00:01:40.800 after the death of Soleimani and the fact that the United States had got out of the so-called Iran deal

00:01:49.140 and it had suffered $90 billion in oil sanctions, was not supplying its surrogates in the way it is now.

00:01:59.460 We had talked to Hezbollah here in America.

00:02:03.660 The Houthis were on an international world terrorist list.

00:02:07.700 We had cut off all aid to Hamas via the United Nations World Relief Organization.

00:02:14.920 We'd cut off it, actually, to the Palestinian Authority for siphoning money for non-humanitarian purposes.

00:02:24.720 And the Middle East, to quote Jake Sullivan, the current national security advisor, was, as he said,

00:02:31.380 just, I think he said that in September, was one of his quietest portfolios.

00:02:36.460 And as far as Ukraine went, they had invaded in 2008 at a time the United States was bogged down in Iraq

00:02:47.140 and George Bush was a lame duck president facing, you know, 35% approval rating.

00:02:53.440 And they went into Georgia and annexed parts of Osatia.

00:02:58.980 And then they did it again in 2014 into Donbass in Crimea.

00:03:05.020 I think that was partly a result of the Obama hot mic when he said,

00:03:10.640 tell Vladimir if he'll just behave during my last election, I will be flexible in missile defense.

00:03:16.960 They both kept their bargain.

00:03:18.740 And then Obama was elected, and he invaded a year and a half later.

00:03:22.380 And then he went in during the administration, as we know, on February 24th of 2022.

00:03:28.060 So he did not go in during this intervailing four years under the Trump administration.

00:03:35.900 So I guess what I'm saying, if we'd had this conversation December 2020,

00:03:40.440 we would say Russia is pretty much still within its borders.

00:03:45.600 Iran is suffering terribly from an oil embargo and world ostracism.

00:03:50.940 And Hamas is desperately trying to get money back from us.

00:03:55.080 And the Houthis are not attacking anybody.

00:03:58.380 And it was pretty quiet.

00:04:00.280 That's not to say that there weren't existential reasons.

00:04:02.720 We had this, at that time, $31 trillion in debt.

00:04:06.400 And we were just finishing a four-year effort to fight the courts and the Congress

00:04:11.460 to finally close the southern border, which by December 2020, it was essentially closed.

00:04:17.220 So there were long-term problems in the West, in general, in the United States in particular,

00:04:22.220 but not to the degree we're watching right now.

00:04:25.340 It's a short-term manifestation of this present administration.

00:04:29.380 And this is what I'm hearing out of everything you're saying,

00:04:31.880 is the situation we're now in is not accidental.

00:04:35.560 It's a consequence of behavior.

00:04:37.400 It's a consequence of signaling.

00:04:39.200 What is it that you think has happened that has allowed all of these things to happen?

00:04:44.420 Is it that the West has been signaling weakness?

00:04:46.300 Is it division?

00:04:48.220 Is it that, you know, the president of Russia and the people in Iran just think this is

00:04:53.260 a good time because they've got all their own problems and the president doesn't seem

00:04:57.200 like he knows what's going on?

00:04:58.280 Like, what do you think it is that is provoking all of this to happen?

00:05:02.860 Well, the long term is that in the case of Mr. Putin, Europe, of the 30-some NATO nations,

00:05:11.000 only about five or six had met their 2%, which is a very modest investment in defense of

00:05:18.000 their GNP.

00:05:19.400 Donald Trump and his Art of the Deal, Wild Antics, had ponied up maybe four more were going

00:05:25.100 to do that.

00:05:26.340 But they were underarm.

00:05:27.920 They had immigration problems.

00:05:29.920 They had socialist welfare states.

00:05:34.660 And when somebody like Vladimir Putin looked at them and he thought, you know, they either

00:05:40.840 can't or won't respond unless the United States is muscular and takes an active role.

00:05:46.820 But when they looked at what had happened to the United States in Afghanistan in August

00:05:52.960 of 2021, when we had a pride flag flying at our embassy, we had George Floyd murals, we

00:05:59.880 had a gender studies program at the University of Kabul, but we didn't have a deterrent and

00:06:05.360 we fled in the most ignominious retreat in our history, really, and left behind 50 billion

00:06:11.540 in munitions.

00:06:12.520 He looked at that and I think he thought the United States is not going to be able to galvanize

00:06:20.440 the Europeans to a degree that's going to save Ukraine.

00:06:23.040 That may be a flawed assessment, but that's what he thought.

00:06:26.580 And the same thing I think was true of the Middle East. 0.87

00:06:31.500 In the Middle East case, the Biden administration is a bastard product of a Faustian deal where Joe

00:06:39.360 Biden in 2020 said to the party who was terrified of Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders, Libeth Warren,

00:06:49.680 Pete Buttigieg, all of these hard left candidates that were winning or at least ahead of Joe Biden.

00:06:56.920 And they thought good old Joe Biden from Scranton is the moderate veneer we need.

00:07:00.900 So we'll put him in there in South Carolina.

00:07:04.400 Jim Clyburn got the African-American vote, Nevada, South Carolina.

00:07:08.680 He got the nomination and then basically the squad, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and

00:07:17.020 the Obamas said, we're going to have a hard left agenda and you're going to present it under

00:07:21.660 the auspices of your moderate veneer.

00:07:25.160 And that's what happened.

00:07:26.760 And part of that bargain was we moved away from Israel very markedly.

00:07:33.440 And there was a perception among Hamas, at least, that the United States wouldn't really

00:07:40.240 object all that much if they resumed some of their activity.

00:07:45.600 And there was also a part of the naivete on the part of the Israelis.

00:07:48.720 I had been to Israel those prior two years, and it was kind of like la-la land. 0.98

00:07:53.740 They were so affluent and successful.

00:07:57.540 They were bragging.

00:08:00.360 People on the street were telling you that Hamas needed 20,000 workers every day in Israel.

00:08:07.480 And they were getting along with everybody.

00:08:10.060 And it was just end of history complacency, I think.

00:08:15.240 Victor, how disastrous has the Biden presidency been, not only for America's internal politics,

00:08:25.280 but also for America's standing in the world?

00:08:28.020 Well, to answer your second question first, I think there's a general perception that if

00:08:37.920 you're a neutral and you want to ally with the West or the United States or both, you have

00:08:45.160 to be very careful.

00:08:46.100 Because this new bloc of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and then apostates, maybe like

00:08:54.340 Turkey or Qatar, all these people are saying these people are more likely to cause us trouble

00:09:00.480 than the United States is to protect us.

00:09:03.300 And then allies look to the United States and they think, you know, the game is up.

00:09:12.180 We in Europe, they think, for 50 years played this kind of game where we always ankle bit

00:09:17.920 the United States and said, you know, you get into Iraq, you're imperialistic, you're

00:09:23.060 neo-colonialist, you're all over the world.

00:09:26.120 And we are, you know, we're Greek philosophers and you're Roman legionnaires and we have to

00:09:32.140 tell you how to behave, especially with the French.

00:09:34.760 And so finally, they got their wish with the Biden administration.

00:09:40.400 I mean, they can criticize Trump all they want, but he killed 200 of the Wagner group

00:09:46.740 in Syria.

00:09:47.480 He killed Soleimani. 1.00

00:09:48.740 He bombed the proverbial SHIT out of ISIS. 0.99

00:09:53.020 And he was very unpredictable and dangerous, at least as far as North Korea saw him. 0.98

00:09:58.800 But with Biden, I think the Europeans are kind of shocked because if they want to defend

00:10:04.660 themselves, they're going to have to defend themselves because this administration, it

00:10:12.180 talks a big game, but it's not going to do anything.

00:10:14.740 It let a Chinese balloon just traverse the United States.

00:10:17.560 The Russians shot down an American drone in international waters.

00:10:21.040 China serially threatens Taiwan and this administration doesn't really, the Iranians are just out 1.00

00:10:28.780 of control, harassing people, doing anything they want.

00:10:32.240 170 Iranian surrogate attacks on American insulation.

00:10:36.780 If we had another president that would be over in one day, he would just tell Iran, the next 0.99

00:10:42.180 time you do it, we're taking out your grid.

00:10:43.860 The next time you do it after that, we're taking out your ports.

00:10:46.340 Next time you do it after that, we're taking out your oil.

00:10:48.800 And that would stop.

00:10:50.540 And he did.

00:10:52.540 Yeah, absolutely.

00:10:53.760 Because the thing I find quite encouraging, because you've quite, you've been very perceptive

00:10:59.360 in, you know, analyzing the weaknesses within the American leadership and Biden in particular.

00:11:03.720 But you're looking at our enemies, for want of a better word.

00:11:07.120 I mean, China isn't doing great.

00:11:09.240 Neither is Russia. 0.75

00:11:10.540 And neither is Iran. 0.96

00:11:11.500 So they're not like these incredible, powerful enemies who are going to sweep all before them.

00:11:17.740 No, that's a very good point.

00:11:19.440 Again, what I'm trying to convey is it's a recent phenomenon.

00:11:24.660 It's not necessarily indictment of Western capability.

00:11:27.740 If you look at every weapon system, Putin talks a great game about hypersonic missiles.

00:11:34.980 That was a Western idea.

00:11:36.360 He talks about AI and drones.

00:11:39.940 All of that came out of the West. 0.98

00:11:42.500 China's desperately, I work in Silicon Valley.

00:11:45.420 There's estimations that there's three or 4% of the Chinese resident population is actively

00:11:50.780 engaged in espionage.

00:11:52.700 So all of these autocratic totalitarian systems don't have the ability to create new ideas,

00:12:00.140 new weapons, new munitions.

00:12:01.760 And even this, you know, we're all short manpower, but the United States military, if it's decoupled

00:12:11.260 from commissar, leftist intrusions, DI and white this, white supremacy, white privilege,

00:12:18.100 all of that boilerplate, it's still a very lethal force, even after Afghanistan. 0.96

00:12:22.920 So it's a matter of willpower.

00:12:26.700 And the Europeans, they have a larger in aggregate, all of the countries of NATO and the EU, if

00:12:33.960 you put them all together, GDP and population than we do.

00:12:38.280 And they're the birthplace of Western ideas.

00:12:40.540 So if they wanted to, they could rearm, fix their immigration problem very quickly and 0.98

00:12:47.540 cut back on some of the socialist entitlements.

00:12:52.080 And they could be a juggernaut.

00:12:55.880 And I don't know if that will ever happen, but it's possible.

00:12:58.600 But there's two people who do live in Europe.

00:13:01.040 That sounds implausible at this point.

00:13:03.860 Victor, one of the things I wanted to ask you, though, maybe to counter a little bit what

00:13:07.480 you and Francis have just been talking about, is my concern has been is, you know, the West's

00:13:12.540 and America's dominance relies on the fact that we do not continually provoke challenges

00:13:17.400 to our authority in the world.

00:13:20.120 And the truth is that we cannot simultaneously be funding a war in Ukraine, supporting Israel,

00:13:27.000 keeping Taiwan safe, et cetera.

00:13:28.600 And the world order that we've been talking about that existed until now relied upon the

00:13:33.820 fact that people did not mess with us.

00:13:35.600 Are we going to be able to put that toothpaste back in the tube when the political situation

00:13:41.340 changes in the United States, if it if it does?

00:13:45.300 Yeah, I think it's a little bit there's a problem beyond the the political and that is

00:13:51.580 the economic.

00:13:52.880 We had a 30 percent rise in staple goods, maybe 40 percent in the last three years.

00:13:59.560 Our entitlements are completely out of control.

00:14:02.140 Even Donald Trump said that he wouldn't touch them.

00:14:05.880 I don't know how you're going to when you're getting up to one hundred and fifteen percent

00:14:09.600 of GDP and debt.

00:14:11.740 That's an existential problem.

00:14:13.600 We have a big problem with civil discourse, civil discord, I should say.

00:14:22.180 I mean, we're going into red state, blue state.

00:14:24.780 We have massive immigration.

00:14:27.100 It's unsustainable from blue states where I live.

00:14:29.840 We're losing two hundred and fifty thousand Californians.

00:14:33.340 And they're not just Californians or the upper middle class entrepreneurial class.

00:14:37.700 And they do not want to pay thirteen percent state tax on top of thirty nine percent federal

00:14:42.940 tax and get, you know, the eighth worst schools of the 50 states, the forty ninth ranked infrastructure,

00:14:52.180 the highest property crime per capita city in San Francisco, smash and grab carjackings,

00:15:00.680 terrible infrastructure.

00:15:01.820 They just don't want to do it.

00:15:04.020 So these these blue states, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, California and these cities, Washington,

00:15:11.760 Baltimore, they're in a doom loop where the more people leave, the more they tax because

00:15:17.600 they're broke and they don't.

00:15:20.540 They're all democratically run.

00:15:24.900 And to be frank, 70 percent of them are African-American city councils and mayors that are very unpopular

00:15:34.360 in the African-American community now because of immigration, massive immigration that finally

00:15:41.220 the red state board of governors got wise instead of absorbing eight million people in their

00:15:46.100 own environs, they bust or flew to all these blue states. 0.96

00:15:50.140 At first, they virtue signaled their their their delight with it.

00:15:54.960 And shortly that ended when they got up to about a million people in these cities.

00:15:58.700 So I don't see this blue state model working.

00:16:02.800 And because we have a federal system, I don't know what's going to happen, but we're getting

00:16:07.980 a geographical force multiplier of discord.

00:16:11.200 So if I go to I speak a lot or used to speak more, but when I go to a Tennessee or Florida

00:16:20.760 or Utah or Wyoming and then I go to Illinois, New York or California, they look like different

00:16:27.640 nations, countries.

00:16:30.220 They look different.

00:16:31.920 If I go to downtown Portland or downtown Seattle or down, it's all familiar with.

00:16:37.360 But it's not so so much in cities, say, in Florida or Tennessee to the same degree, maybe

00:16:45.080 Memphis.

00:16:48.640 But otherwise, the red state model seems to be working a lot better.

00:16:52.600 I don't just say that.

00:16:54.340 I just look at the number of people, the outflows and the inflows and people voting with their

00:16:59.360 feet.

00:17:00.160 So that's a that's a big problem.

00:17:01.960 We're having the racial. 0.92

00:17:03.700 The DEI has been a disaster.

00:17:05.500 If you look at our major universities, Times Educational Supplement about 10 years ago,

00:17:12.000 rated research, major research universities out of the top 20, I think 17 were American.

00:17:19.540 And when you look at those admission policies, say where I am working at Stanford, last year

00:17:27.980 they let in 20 percent white students, nine percent of the are white males, even though

00:17:34.080 they consist of about 67 percent of the population.

00:17:37.820 So they are they threw out the SAT.

00:17:40.580 They threw out comparative rankings of GPA.

00:17:44.500 So they don't really know which high school is better than which high school.

00:17:47.840 And it's a completely commissar race, gender. 0.76

00:17:52.200 And I admit class.

00:17:54.300 And then the result is, if you look at the nine or 10 percent white males who were admitted,

00:17:58.500 they're all the children of academics that teach at Stanford or deans or wealthy people,

00:18:05.300 donors, athletes.

00:18:06.840 So we have completely erased the idea of a middle class, meritocratic, brilliant white kid having

00:18:13.760 a chance to go to these universities and we're going to lose a lot of talent.

00:18:18.040 And so DI is affecting everything.

00:18:20.280 It's United Airlines training.

00:18:22.700 It's movies.

00:18:23.980 It's commercials.

00:18:25.800 And whatever good it brings by making people inclusive is outweighed by the divisiveness

00:18:32.040 that it's incurring in a multiracial society.

00:18:37.040 You know, I've just talked.

00:18:37.860 I live in a community that's 95 percent Hispanic.

00:18:40.500 And a guy asked me yesterday, why didn't we have a Mexican national anthem at the Super

00:18:45.980 Bowl?

00:18:46.940 Why do the blacks get their national anthem? 0.95

00:18:49.680 And we're all Americans. 0.97

00:18:50.700 If we're going to add something to the Star Spangled Banner, we have more Latinos than they 1.00

00:18:55.420 do blacks. 0.87

00:18:56.940 And I said, well, why not Asians?

00:18:58.900 They have almost as much as you guys.

00:19:01.040 But when you start talking about you guys and those guys that get into a Yugoslavian types

00:19:05.920 and tribal syndrome, that's where we are.

00:19:08.020 You guys are doing it, too, in Europe, but maybe.

00:19:11.380 Yes.

00:19:11.920 And we are trying to push back as hard as possible against it.

00:19:14.900 But come back to my question with me, which was about geopolitics and whether the toothpaste

00:19:20.280 of continually inviting challenges to our authority can be put back in the tube if there

00:19:26.300 is a change of presidency or a change of party in charge.

00:19:28.800 Well, I gave too long a windy answer, but I was trying to suggest that it's going to

00:19:33.080 be very hard to address some of the long term.

00:19:38.560 So I don't know what we're going to be like in 20 or 30 years, but short term, yes.

00:19:42.840 So what do I mean by yes?

00:19:44.560 Let's say that you had elected Donald Trump.

00:19:47.020 They widened the House majority and they were able to take back the Senate by two or three

00:19:53.320 seats.

00:19:53.940 And it's 50-50 almost now, 51-49.

00:19:57.460 So what would they do to answer your question specifically?

00:20:00.740 Well, the first thing they do, and you talk to people, they would slap a huge oil embargo

00:20:07.140 on Iran.

00:20:07.600 They would declare the Houthis a world terrorist organization, shut them out of all banking.

00:20:13.480 They would cut off all money to Hamas and Hezbollah.

00:20:18.480 They would probably tell China, if you go into Taiwan, we're going to stop you.

00:20:25.300 We may not be able to get in the South China Sea with a carrier.

00:20:28.420 We're not going to put any ground troops, but we have air power that can make a cross-sea

00:20:33.720 invasion very costly for you.

00:20:35.980 We wish you would not do that.

00:20:37.600 I think they would go to Putin and they would tell him, from the people I talked to, they

00:20:43.880 would tell Putin, okay, you've been in Donbass and Crimea, they're disputed territories, majority

00:20:51.200 Russian speakers, and you can tell your people after 600,000 dead and wounded that you institutionalized

00:20:58.780 it and we will probably concede that they're now part Russian, but you're not going to get

00:21:04.600 any more territory after February 24th.

00:21:07.600 So get back to where you were, where you started, and we will not put Ukraine and NATO, but we

00:21:12.900 will arm it to the teeth.

00:21:14.720 And that's, I think that was something that Putin would go for.

00:21:18.780 And then I think this administration would, this putative administration would probably do all

00:21:26.040 it could to break up this axis of Iran, China, Russia, try to do what Kissinger said, China

00:21:35.020 should never be closer to Russia than it is to us.

00:21:37.680 Russia should never be closer to China than it is to us. 0.84

00:21:40.760 The only thing that gives me some optimism is when I talk to some of the Trump people, they

00:21:55.640 convey an idea they didn't know what they were doing in 2016 because they didn't think they

00:22:01.080 were going to win and everybody demonized them.

00:22:04.280 They had no talent.

00:22:05.280 2020, they were very naive.

00:22:07.640 They didn't understand the effect of non-election day and early balloting where 70% of the people

00:22:12.600 in these swing states under the pretense of COVID did not show up for election day, but nevertheless

00:22:17.900 voted with far less guarantees that the ballots were authentic.

00:22:23.040 And now, now they say, we've got four or 5,000 names of people.

00:22:28.860 And when we hit the ground, we have an agenda.

00:22:31.440 And I think they could do it if they take the House and Senate. 0.89

00:22:33.700 And I think there's a 50-50 chance they can do it.

00:22:36.680 I think, Victor, the issue is you look at the Democrats, you look at Biden.

00:22:44.620 I don't know how you could vote for that person in all good conscience.

00:22:50.220 I just don't know how it's possible.

00:22:51.720 It's come to the point now where it's not even a joke because there's no way you can

00:22:57.520 make light of that situation.

00:22:59.860 I find it terrifying, quite honestly, that he's in power.

00:23:03.920 You should.

00:23:05.120 We're all terrified.

00:23:06.260 We all predicted this.

00:23:07.520 I think I wrote a column in 2020, a month before the election.

00:23:13.140 And as I said earlier, he's a result of a Faustian bargain.

00:23:16.320 He's just an empty suit who's going to be a veneer for a hard left cabal of people who

00:23:21.700 would never be elected.

00:23:23.840 And after he was elected, you look at every single issue, interest rates, inflation, foreign

00:23:28.820 policy, crime, energy, the border.

00:23:31.520 They don't even poll 50% support for these initiatives.

00:23:35.500 So he's now, he just polled 33% approval in the ABC poll.

00:23:39.760 So he's a disaster.

00:23:42.260 And unfortunately, as I think you infer, he's the world's disaster for the next year.

00:23:48.380 And that's very dangerous because if you read Robert Herr's report, it wasn't that he was

00:23:54.940 trying to be gratuitous, as Kamala Harris said, but he just said he doesn't know when his son

00:23:59.720 died.

00:23:59.960 He doesn't know when he was vice president.

00:24:01.420 He doesn't, he's an elderly, nice old man.

00:24:04.220 I don't believe he's nice.

00:24:05.240 He was always a mean, I thought, SOB as a senator, but he's very dangerous.

00:24:10.540 And I say there's a, I think a lot of people think there's a 75% chance that this decline

00:24:17.620 is so geometric, not arithmetic, that he would, he'll have trouble finishing his term.

00:24:22.560 But you see what's happening in America.

00:24:25.560 You got to remember that, that everybody wanted Nixon, I think kind of unfairly, but they

00:24:30.060 wanted him out.

00:24:31.340 Even the Republicans did because they felt he was an albatross in 73, but they didn't 0.70

00:24:37.160 know what to do because of Spiro Agnew, who had been kind of known as a crook.

00:24:42.480 And he wasn't a bad guy, but he was in, nobody wanted him as president.

00:24:46.240 And that's what Nixon used.

00:24:48.340 You want Agnew?

00:24:49.660 Well, then the Democrats got smart and they dug up an old bribery charge and they went

00:24:55.160 to Agnew and said, we're going to resurrect this charge.

00:24:58.960 And otherwise you don't have to do anything.

00:25:01.140 You just say, no, little contender, eh?

00:25:02.620 And there'll be no ramifications.

00:25:04.640 You'll have a great life next 20 or 30 years, but get the hell out.

00:25:08.540 And once they did that, you appointed Jerry Ford, good old Jerry Ford, and they could, they

00:25:13.820 can threaten it.

00:25:14.480 They were going to impeach him and he resigned, but there's no mechanism for the Democrats

00:25:19.620 to do that now because they have a black woman who was selected in the words of Joe Biden

00:25:25.020 because of her race and gender. 1.00

00:25:27.400 So people are as terrified of Kamala Harris, given what she says and acts, as they are Joe

00:25:33.760 Biden.

00:25:34.660 So nobody knows what they're going to do.

00:25:37.920 If they, if he fought, he's one fall away from oblivion.

00:25:42.420 If he trips or something, what happens?

00:25:45.680 Are you going to get Kamala Harris? 0.99

00:25:46.980 I guess you would, she would step in and then she would be an incumbent. 1.00

00:25:51.200 Would you try to replace Biden at the convention and say, Joe, you're going to have to give

00:25:57.080 your delegates to whom?

00:25:59.120 Are you going to get rid of a black woman and give it to Gavin Newsom? 0.97

00:26:02.380 Who's been in charge of the worst state's record of all the 50 states. 0.97

00:26:06.860 Are you going to have Michelle Obama come out of retirement? 0.83

00:26:09.520 So I've never seen in my entire life, and I'm 70, this level of confusion on the part

00:26:16.100 of the left about what they're going to do, because believe me, when you talk to some of

00:26:21.100 them, they have more concerns than you do because they have more intimate knowledge of his daily

00:26:27.580 decrepitude than you or I do.

00:26:30.160 Victor, don't you think it says something incredibly damning about the American political system that

00:26:38.120 you can have a man like Joe Biden at the helm of a country?

00:26:43.500 I mean, what does that say about, about the America as a place?

00:26:47.780 Well, if you take an autopsy of how this happened, the United States is run, not to be conspiratorial,

00:26:59.720 but it's run by a bi-coastal elite.

00:27:02.200 These are people in tech, finance, entertainment, professional sports, the foundations, the corporate

00:27:09.540 boardroom, K-12 that run it, especially academics and especially the traditional and new

00:27:17.700 media, Silicon Valley.

00:27:19.520 If you look at the Fortune 500 or 400 of the world, you get up to the top 100, about 90%

00:27:25.980 of them are American billionaires.

00:27:27.480 And unlike the old 400, they're not in agriculture, mining, construction.

00:27:32.960 They're in tech, tech, finance, finance, media, media globally.

00:27:37.640 So, and then you have this bipartisan Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, John McCain, Mitt Romney,

00:27:45.460 the Bushes, Clintons, you have this group of people and they kind of control things.

00:27:54.860 And then when you had Donald Trump come in, who was completely not a part of that paradigm,

00:28:00.460 and more importantly, he scared them because he wasn't just a Ross Perot, but he was making

00:28:07.240 this appeal in a nationalist, popular sense to people across racial lines.

00:28:12.600 You know, he started saying, we, we're our farmers, we, our workers.

00:28:18.480 He started, you know, he got, he got almost 35% of the Latino vote.

00:28:22.080 He may get 45.

00:28:23.140 He got 9% of the black vote.

00:28:25.500 He may get 20 next time.

00:28:26.880 So they didn't know what to do with him.

00:28:28.360 And of course, because his art of the deal style was to be crude and vulgar and make fun

00:28:34.820 of people that fed this image that he was a revolutionary.

00:28:40.980 And so, you know what they did?

00:28:41.960 They weaponized the FBI.

00:28:43.320 They tried to spy on him with the Russian collusion.

00:28:45.580 They got a foreign national, which is illegal, Christopher Steele, to be secretly hired by

00:28:49.980 the Clinton campaign.

00:28:51.260 They went into laptop disinformation.

00:28:53.680 They impeached him over a phone call.

00:28:55.280 It was accurate, accurate that the Bidens had been compromised by Burisma. 1.00

00:29:00.780 They, the first time anybody has ever been, uh, tried as an, on an impeachment trial as

00:29:06.600 a private citizen, nobody's ever been impeached twice.

00:29:09.600 They tried to take him off the ballot.

00:29:11.980 Uh, they've got four indictments, none of which are meritorious.

00:29:15.780 They're all political.

00:29:17.240 Two of them are imploding as we speak.

00:29:19.520 They got some crazy woman to sue him for $83 million. 1.00

00:29:23.160 Her suit was backed by a Silicon Valley billionaire.

00:29:28.160 So they, that fear brought out the worst of us.

00:29:33.380 And that is one of the reasons that Joe Biden stepped up.

00:29:36.300 They said, we got to stop this guy because Hillary, that doesn't work. 1.00

00:29:41.520 So what we're going to do is we're going to say, we're all in fear of COVID.

00:29:47.160 We're going to change the voting laws in nine or 10 States where it counts.

00:29:52.280 We're going to get 70% to mail in their ballot or vote three months in advance.

00:29:59.080 And we're all going to say it's for COVID.

00:30:01.460 And we're going to spend $4 billion to Trump's billion and a half.

00:30:05.880 And we're going to, and so there wasn't a conspiracy in the sense of changing the voting

00:30:10.700 machines or anything.

00:30:11.540 They just did it quasi legally.

00:30:14.360 And I don't think that Trump himself has any idea who these people, I work at Stanford

00:30:21.340 university and I'm, you know, 10 miles from the Apple or Google headquarters.

00:30:26.560 So the people, when I go up from my farm and during the week and I walk around and have

00:30:31.000 dinner or have coffee somewhere, or I'm on campus and I talk, I don't think anybody has

00:30:36.560 any idea who these people are.

00:30:38.040 They're entitled, they're wealthy, they're confident, and they have no moral compass.

00:30:43.100 And they feel that they have been entitled on terms of DI and ESG and green this and green

00:30:52.320 that, that they, they are the masters of the universe and they, any means necessary or

00:30:57.540 justified for the utopian end.

00:30:59.540 So they hate Donald Trump with an existential venom I've never seen in my life.

00:31:04.620 Never.

00:31:04.840 It's very interesting, Victor, because we travel to the U.S. frequently and I don't

00:31:10.680 think Francis, either Francis or I were massive fans of Donald Trump.

00:31:13.920 The style that you referred to was off-putting, I think, to a lot of people, certainly around

00:31:18.380 the world, but in America as well.

00:31:20.440 But at the same time, I think when you look at the hard facts of it and the geopolitics the

00:31:26.700 way it is now and the situation in the U.S., it certainly feels like, given a binary choice,

00:31:33.080 that is a situation that just, as Francis said, you've got a guy who's president who's

00:31:37.540 barely there.

00:31:38.920 However, I put it to you that all the things that they did to Donald Trump, and this is

00:31:42.580 one of the things that you have to, if you're a fair commentator, you have to acknowledge.

00:31:46.280 The media lied about him nonstop and misrepresented him, claimed that he said there were fine people

00:31:52.100 on both sides when there wasn't, and there was hundreds of these situations over and over.

00:31:56.880 But I put it to you, they're going to be even more desperate this time, surely.

00:32:00.800 They must be.

00:32:02.280 So, I mean, what the hell are they going to do now?

00:32:05.360 I don't know.

00:32:06.040 That question is on everybody's mind.

00:32:08.280 When you talk to a passerby or you go to any group, local political caucus, anything,

00:32:17.720 that comes up immediately.

00:32:19.600 And the answer is, everybody is sick of Biden, but it won't matter because they're going to,

00:32:25.520 they don't really say rig, but they have so many resources, this minority of the population,

00:32:30.500 that they're going to find a way to get Trump of some way.

00:32:34.960 And sometimes the fear is, well, yeah, they let off Biden so egregiously when he admitted he took

00:32:42.000 all these things out for 20 years and he put them in non-secure locations and he didn't tell

00:32:46.480 the federal authorities, even though he's on record that he had them, but it doesn't matter.

00:32:51.560 Smith will still get chumped for the same thing, or they'll say, yeah, Fannie Willis lied under oath

00:32:56.900 and yeah, she hired her boyfriend and yeah, she sent lawyers to the White House to get Donald Trump 1.00

00:33:03.820 and there's nothing to it.

00:33:04.960 But they'll get him.

00:33:05.960 Or yeah, Alvin Bragg, nobody's ever used a non-disclosure form as a campaign finance violation,

00:33:12.100 but he'll do it.

00:33:13.140 Or Latina James, nobody in the history of real estate has ever been indicted for overvaluing 0.95

00:33:19.420 assets that were used for a loan that the bank eagerly, with its army of auditors allowed,

00:33:27.020 made millions of profits and interest.

00:33:29.060 The loan was paid off, interest in principle, timely.

00:33:31.880 Everybody was happy and he's under indictment for it.

00:33:35.320 So there's just a sense of incredulity about all this and we share it with you and we say,

00:33:42.520 who are these people?

00:33:44.280 Well, they're the 3 million people that we created in the administrative, the James Comeys,

00:33:49.660 the Robert Mueller's, the Andrew McCabe's, the Christopher Ray's, the Anthony Fauci, all of these people,

00:33:56.160 they're judge, jury, and executioner.

00:33:57.900 They got enormous.

00:33:58.740 Anthony Fauci alone had control of $50 billion of research money.

00:34:04.460 So people would say to me, well, he said, wear a mask, don't wear a mask, wear two months.

00:34:09.960 Get the, it was a pangolin closet.

00:34:13.100 It was a bat closet. 0.99

00:34:13.900 But now we have emails where he said, we've got to squash that story.

00:34:16.740 Well, how did he get this power?

00:34:19.040 And then you talk to a scientist or a researcher in America and says, I am done if I criticize Anthony Fauci

00:34:26.300 because he either has direct or indirect control over billions of research monies.

00:34:31.020 And if you're an anti-abortion protester or you don't want transgendered stuff in your explicit frontal sexual cartoons

00:34:44.820 in a book in your sixth grade library and you go to a board meeting, the FBI will be there.

00:34:50.360 So a lot of it is fear that, and I think it was deliberate, to deter people.

00:34:55.980 And you can see Mark Stein owes a million dollars for speaking the truth that Michael Mann's hockey stiff

00:35:03.040 had been criticized by an array of scholars.

00:35:05.600 So it's not even confined, as you know, to the United States.

00:35:09.480 It's the Western elite, leisured and affluent and feels that they are at the end of history

00:35:15.520 and they no longer have to worry about what made the West unique, you know.

00:35:20.280 Well, this is the troubling thing, Victor, because we've got ourselves just,

00:35:25.900 the situation we had, we interviewed a bunch of young people and the Zuma generation, 1.00

00:35:30.780 I don't think they particularly care about democracy anymore because they're going,

00:35:35.740 there is no way to vote ourselves out of the nightmare that is currently our present.

00:35:41.620 And when that situation occurs, then the question for a lot of people is,

00:35:45.720 well, we elected Donald Trump in 2016 because he promised to address many of the problems we were concerned about.

00:35:51.100 Now, then this elite class that you've just been talking about essentially prevented him from governing and got him out.

00:35:59.560 Let's say we elect him again.

00:36:01.620 The elite do effectively the same thing.

00:36:04.760 Where do we go from there?

00:36:06.160 And another question, I'll put two questions to you because I think there's a colliery to this,

00:36:10.180 which is on the left, the thing that bothers us is, one of the things that bothers us is there's this cultivation of the victimhood,

00:36:18.760 teaching everybody to be a victim.

00:36:20.340 But it seems to me like even in the conversation we are having, there's a lot of kind of, well, they are doing this thing to us.

00:36:26.540 And I guess, you know, if you're Donald Trump, you have to accept that they will try to do all these things.

00:36:31.760 So how is he going to overcome that?

00:36:34.880 That's what I want to know.

00:36:36.180 If I were an American like you and I wanted to vote for Donald Trump, the question for me would be,

00:36:41.520 why am I electing you if you're going to spend the next four years whining about how the elite won't let you do anything?

00:36:46.840 Yeah.

00:36:47.840 Well, again, as I mentioned earlier, I'm a little confident just for little things that people don't report.

00:36:54.880 The Heritage Foundation was a mainstream Romney, McCain, Bush research fund, a biggest conservative one, much bigger than we are.

00:37:07.500 But in a different, it was more applicable to more activists rather than research.

00:37:12.460 So now they're working on an agenda for the first hundred days.

00:37:15.900 They've never done that.

00:37:16.760 Kevin Roberts, the director, is just open.

00:37:18.560 We're going to get a list of four or five thousand you can trust.

00:37:21.380 And we're not going. 1.00

00:37:23.920 And then you talk to the Trump people and they say, how stupid were we? 0.99

00:37:28.240 We were told that we couldn't fire all these low level DOJ people. 0.99

00:37:31.800 And we found out that Obama fired everybody.

00:37:34.680 And they were from day one trying to go after Michael Flynn and they were going after Donald Trump Jr.

00:37:40.860 Yes, they know that now.

00:37:42.320 And you say to them, well, what are you going to do about it?

00:37:45.320 And they say, we're not going to care what anybody says.

00:37:48.480 They're going to be fired.

00:37:49.600 And we're going to do exactly what the Obamas did on only on steroids.

00:37:54.560 And that is what that talk is manifested in the global media in the following way. 0.96

00:38:01.800 Trump is a dictator. 0.89

00:38:03.720 Trump promises revenge. 0.98

00:38:05.360 Trump promises retribution.

00:38:07.760 Nightmare coming.

00:38:08.620 And that that's how they and that shows you that they know.

00:38:13.580 I guess what I if to sum up, they know what they would do if they had suffered what they did to Trump and it happened to them and they were on the verge of regaining power.

00:38:24.620 They know what they would do and they project that onto Trump.

00:38:28.460 The irony is that he never did anything what they did.

00:38:32.420 He never weaponized the DOJ, the FBI, the CIA, the IRS like they have.

00:38:37.420 But they expect him to because that's exactly what they would do if they took power.

00:38:42.560 But he's not going to do that.

00:38:44.580 He's going to try to change the administrative state and get people in there that are loyal to the mission statement.

00:38:54.380 So you don't have a homeland security guy like Mayorkas who's on homeland insecurity.

00:39:00.300 His whole purpose is to destroy federal immigration law.

00:39:03.420 And that's what he's done with every Department of Energy.

00:39:06.360 The person is there to stop energy production.

00:39:10.740 Department of Interior is to make sure that we don't promote our resources or develop them.

00:39:16.860 Department of Education is to make sure that education is not meritocratic, but therapeutic.

00:39:21.300 And the real revolutionaries are these people, the hard left, because they want to destroy America and then start over under new auspices.

00:39:30.780 They're very much like Soviet commissars.

00:39:33.380 They're a big drag on the economy because they're always looking over your shoulder.

00:39:39.560 Do you want to sign the DEI statement?

00:39:41.740 Oh, do you want this grant?

00:39:44.080 What is your idea about race or diversity?

00:39:46.960 All of that stuff.

00:39:48.780 And I think we can beat them.

00:39:50.960 I really do, because they don't have right on their side.

00:39:53.840 They don't have morality on their side.

00:39:55.220 And they surely do not have the people on their side.

00:39:58.560 And they are terrified.

00:40:00.400 There's a lot of so-called non-white people in America that have had it with them. 0.78

00:40:06.120 And it depends on how well the Trump administration can stay on message.

00:40:11.160 So some days Donald Trump, like after the Iowa primary, he gives a Lincoln-esque speech.

00:40:16.520 And then two days ago, I know what he meant about NATO, that I do anything I can.

00:40:23.400 I say crazy things.

00:40:24.740 And then the result of it is I get more countries to arm themselves.

00:40:28.620 But when he says, I told Russia, go do what you want if they don't want to protect themselves, that comes across in the United States as headlines.

00:40:35.700 Trump wants to destroy NATO.

00:40:38.360 And then you get some person calls you up and says, well, Victor, I was going to vote for Trump, but he wants to destroy NATO.

00:40:45.760 And then he said, Nikki Haley's, and you try to explain it, but then you say, why does he do that?

00:40:52.440 And he does it because he wants to shock and troll people, but this is not 2016, it's not 2020.

00:40:59.840 This is kind of our last chance to stop this.

00:41:02.740 And everybody's got to be disciplined and come together, whether they like Trump or not.

00:41:08.220 And Trump has to allow them, Trump has to give a reason for the ex-Biden, the old Reagan Democrat, the Independent, the Moderate, the Swing Voter, the Suburban Soccer Mom, a reason to vote for him.

00:41:20.140 And they're 90% there because they see what Biden is doing in the left, but they need to be reassured that Trump, that what the media says about the Trump people is not true.

00:41:32.940 Victor, you sound hopeful, are you?

00:41:36.040 Yeah, I do.

00:41:37.000 Yeah, I am hopeful.

00:41:38.160 I am.

00:41:39.160 But, you know, I've been wrong before.

00:41:41.420 I was hopeful before the midterms, and then never in my right mind did I think that they were going to leak the Roe versus Wade thing against the law, or they were going to drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to drop gas by a dollar a gallon, or they were going to just illegally issue a fiat that said student loan payments don't have to be repaid.

00:42:07.120 And he did all of that right before the midterm, and they squeaked, they lost, but they should have been wiped out.

00:42:14.640 So, yeah, I'm hopeful, but I understand the left.

00:42:18.700 I grew up with it.

00:42:19.460 I see it.

00:42:20.100 I'm in academia for 50 years.

00:42:22.140 I know what they're capable of.

00:42:23.960 And so it's going to be the nastiest, most expensive, dirtiest, and scariest election in our history.

00:42:31.980 Believe me.

00:42:32.460 I mean, those are, I want to disagree with you, Victor, but I can't, because, again, I'm no fan of Trump.

00:42:43.940 I think he's divisive.

00:42:45.120 I think his rhetoric is needlessly antagonistic.

00:42:48.280 I think his very presence is inflammatory.

00:42:50.260 But you see the way that he's been treated, and you go, this isn't fair.

00:42:59.280 This isn't fair.

00:43:00.860 And the whole idea of democracy is that it's meant to be fair.

00:43:06.440 Everybody gets one vote.

00:43:08.200 And then the person who wins, wins.

00:43:11.300 And if you don't like it, tough.

00:43:14.000 That's democracy.

00:43:14.780 Exactly.

00:43:17.900 But they don't, they don't, they're, this isn't the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, even.

00:43:23.460 It's not Hubert Humphrey.

00:43:25.060 It's not John Kennedy.

00:43:26.220 These are hardcore, neo-socialist, so-called progressives.

00:43:30.860 And they believe that they have an entitlement to certain issues and to run this country.

00:43:37.020 And they will do anything.

00:43:38.200 And everything you say, everything they've said about Trump was something that we knew

00:43:45.340 about the left all the time.

00:43:47.700 I mean, take about, oh, the election was rigged.

00:43:52.440 2004, Barbara Boxer and 34 representatives tried to stop the election by not certifying 0.97

00:43:58.480 in Congress the Ohio electors to give John Kerry the election.

00:44:02.480 2016, leftists rounded up celebrities, politicos.

00:44:07.080 They saturated the airwaves in December.

00:44:10.620 Do not vote your constitutional duty to reflect the majority-popular vote in your state, but

00:44:17.020 swing your electors to Hillary Clinton. 0.99

00:44:19.920 That was insurrection.

00:44:20.900 Nobody said a word.

00:44:22.120 Nobody said.

00:44:22.860 If you look at the violence in terms of billions of dollars of damage, 35 dead, historic iconic

00:44:30.140 buildings, police precinct, federal courthouse, St. John's Episcopal Church torch, trying to

00:44:36.480 get on to federal property, storm the White House grounds if you can, and get Donald Trump.

00:44:42.320 1,500 police officers.

00:44:44.300 And you compare it to January 6th.

00:44:46.280 January 6th was a lark in compared to that.

00:44:48.900 And yet, there were no indictments to speak of.

00:44:53.020 All the arrests.

00:44:53.700 The police officers did their job in those four months, arrested 14,000 people.

00:44:58.620 Ninety percent of them were let off.

00:45:00.120 And yet, the people who were on the White House grounds illegally, but did not go into

00:45:05.580 the Capitol, they're facing LinkedIn presence in.

00:45:09.620 And so, it's very hard to fight the left.

00:45:13.620 They have the money.

00:45:14.540 They have the media.

00:45:15.960 They have the academic and corporate caches.

00:45:18.920 And they, it's very hard.

00:45:24.160 People, it's like everybody knows the Aesop fable or the quasi-Aesop fable.

00:45:29.060 You have to bell the cat to warn the mice.

00:45:31.180 But nobody wants to go out and face the cat to put a bell around his neck.

00:45:35.340 Because when you do, they try to destroy you.

00:45:37.600 So, you see all of these people, and the only way that you, that it's going to work if they

00:45:42.380 all come out on election day, they all go to the polls, they look at drop boxes, they

00:45:50.120 self-police the election just by the sheer numbers.

00:45:54.020 But they're going to need three to five percent of the popular vote edge just to counteract 0.52

00:45:58.580 the type of, you know, motor voter, automatic ballot mailed to your house, vote harvesting,

00:46:06.660 drop box, all of that stuff that, you know, Mark Zuckerberg gave $419 million to absorb

00:46:13.920 the work, basically, of registrars in key precincts.

00:46:16.840 So that, these people have unlimited imaginations and money.

00:46:21.820 Well, Victor, one of the things that hopefully will be different is, I think Elon's purchase

00:46:27.200 of Twitter has changed the media landscape very, very significantly.

00:46:30.860 It has.

00:46:31.160 Uh, and so there is perhaps, certainly the scenes we saw in 2020 and the early days of

00:46:38.160 2021, I just don't think they're going to be replicated in the same way where, you know,

00:46:43.340 the sitting president of the United States is getting banned from social media, stories

00:46:47.880 are suppressed on social media, et cetera.

00:46:50.320 I just don't, they're not going to have the same chokehold and information that they did.

00:46:53.880 Um, I think that's a good point.

00:46:55.960 And so I think they've also played a lot of their hand in the past.

00:46:58.980 So you know what I mean by that?

00:47:01.060 When it's Russian collusion, Russian collusion, Russian disinformation, Russian disinformation,

00:47:05.220 impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, uh, get Grofman off the ballot, get off there, pack

00:47:09.300 the court, pack the court, get rid of the electoral college.

00:47:12.100 Everybody, oh yeah, not that again.

00:47:14.500 Everybody's heard it.

00:47:15.320 And I was one of the people who believed Russia collusion, for example.

00:47:18.560 So fool me once, shame on, on you, but I'm not going to be fooled again because I don't

00:47:24.840 want the shame on me.

00:47:25.500 So I think that that's kind of the, the deal for a lot of people.

00:47:29.040 We've got to move to locals because we've got some absolutely incredible questions from

00:47:32.920 our supporters.

00:47:34.160 But before we do, last question, as you know, we always ask is what's the one thing we're

00:47:38.320 not talking about as a society that you think we should be?

00:47:41.120 Well, it's kind of a nebulous thing.

00:47:46.760 And that is we have, uh, in the West, as you know, in Europe, and it's now here, a lost

00:47:54.380 generation of young people between the ages of say 18 and 30.

00:47:59.920 And they bought this idea that plumbing, electric, electricians work, carpentry is beneath them.

00:48:07.480 They're going to get a degree at a university.

00:48:09.300 They're going to take three units, one semester, six units, this semester, they're going to

00:48:14.060 hook up here, hook up there.

00:48:16.320 And all of a sudden, you know, they're not doing what made the West.

00:48:20.460 They're not getting married.

00:48:21.560 They're not having children.

00:48:22.640 They're not buying a home.

00:48:23.740 They're not plugged in.

00:48:24.940 They're not the muscular classes that make this country go.

00:48:29.440 And they're, you know, you talk to everybody and they'll say, I have 10 nephews and nieces.

00:48:34.920 Only two are married.

00:48:36.120 Only one has children.

00:48:37.220 Only three bought a house.

00:48:39.300 What are they doing?

00:48:40.160 Oh, they're in the basement.

00:48:41.100 They're going, they're drifting around from jobs.

00:48:43.060 So we've got a, a huge number of on tap talent and people who are not reproducing.

00:48:51.620 Our fertility rates crashed from 2.1 in 2000 at the millennium down to about 1.8, 1.7.

00:48:59.700 And I don't know what, it's, it's a Western disease. 1.00

00:49:05.140 You see it in South Korea, Japan, Europe, but unless the West, there's something about 0.95

00:49:11.120 the West, the creation of capital and leisure and affluence that creates an energy or lethargy.

00:49:19.360 And it's not new.

00:49:20.580 I mean, people will be marked about it since antiquity, but it's, this is very dangerous

00:49:25.180 to the West.

00:49:26.280 It may, it's one of the, all the things we've talked about, military readiness, preparedness,

00:49:31.880 deterrence.

00:49:32.640 It has something to do with this phenomenon.

00:49:35.280 Absolutely.

00:49:35.640 Well, Victor, follow us over to Locals where we're going to ask questions from our supporters.

00:49:40.760 See you there.

00:49:42.760 What period of history most closely resembles the cultural and political landscape we see

00:49:48.460 in the world today?

TRIGGERnometry - February 21, 2024

＂This Will Be The Nastiest, Dirtiest, Scariest Election In Our History＂ - Victor Davis Hanson

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