Victor Davis Hanson: The Final Case for Donald J. Trump

let me tell you something Victor I'm going to vote for kamla Harris she was vice president for three and a half years and according to Joe Biden not me she agreed with everything and was in on all the major decision she has said she was the last person in the room foreign policy Wise It's been a complete disaster domestically it was not true that crime has gone down as alleged by the Biden Harris it's gone rad Ally up especially in 2122 and she's on uh record that defunding the police is a good idea she's on

record that crossing the border illegally is not a criminal statute she's on record that the wall was a terrible [Music] idea I was just in New York for 3 Days yeah I said filmed nine interviews I didn't sleep more than 2 hours I was hiding out in the studio at night where there were security cameras I wasn't supposed to be there but then I stopped in Cincinnati to visit my grandma on the way back and then yesterday I came to fly here I had a flight to Minneapolis when I landed at Minneapolis I got a

text from the Airline saying here's a free voucher for a hotel cuz your flight to SF got cancelled I called up some friends I found the only flight from the airport to the West Coast to La I flew to La I landed at 11: one of my friends who lives in La picked me up he drove me halfway to SF I think close to a place called Gilroy I go there every day on the way home okay I commute to my home Farm through Gilroy it's 1 hour from here more than halfway actually it was

a little bit before Gilroy yeah and then one of my best friends a philosopher here his name is Jared Warren he might be he's one of the best philosophers in the world he drove he left his place at like midnight maybe drove to pick me up then we drove back to SF to SFO I picked up my car at 6: a.m. drove back here slept for 30 minutes showered and then came right here and I did all this because you are one of my favorite people to talk to we've had three conversations now I think

this is the fourth and I know how important your time is and I know how valuable these conversations are to our listeners so I just wasn't going to miss it for anything you that reminds me of some of my more heroing efforts to get in and out of Fresno and I I think my record getting to the east coast is 27 hours okay very impressive yeah and home but I've had some of the similar experiences but it's the state of air travel today yeah it is well one of the reasons that this conversation is so

important is that we have an election coming up that everybody wants to talk about I have had a couple of conversations with people who are more on the kamla Harris side of things but one problem I have is finding speakers with the tremendous intellectual pedigree on the right to talk about these issues that I know that I can trust and you're one of them okay and so I wanted to ask before we get into the details just what it is about this election if anything that makes it particularly important for the United States going forward

there's four or five things one is it's a very close election this may be and it follows very close elections so we have not had a clear mandate since Barack Obama's impressive 2008 and 2012 victories so we we 2016 was very close 2020 was very close this may be even closer that's one number two Donald Trump is a very con controversial candidate and he's the first president in the modern era that had no political experience and there is an effort to stop him in ways that we I think the left would acknowledge have never been

seen before and and that effort excites passions on both sides I I don't want to be generic or general I want to be specific so what I'm trying to suggest we've never had a president impeached twice he was impeached twice we've never had a president who was tried as a private citizen he was we've never had a major presidential candidate where the opposing party tried to remove him from State ballots so that the voters would not have a chance he was removed there was an effort I should say to remove him from 16 State ballots

and that was overturned by the Supreme Court I should say aborted by the Supreme Court we've never had a presidential candidate much less an ex-president maybe an ex-president got near it but we've never had an ex-president presidential candidate who has been the subject of five criminal and civil suits designed I think you could say to bankrupt him put and there were gag orders put on him and the intention was to in incarcerate him now I know it's very controversial to say that all of these were independently arising and there was no coordination but it's a

fact that the Biden White House's doj third ranking attorney resigned that prestigious position to go to what's otherwise a local matter Alvin Bragg's Municipal indictment and took over that indictment it's a fact that the special prosecutor that found Willis appointed in a state prosecution of Donald Trump met on two occasions with the Biden White House it's a fact that Jack Smith had been meeting and counseled by the doj and there's really not a special councel statute anymore it's expired so he works directly for Mery Garland so there was a level of coordination that we hadn't

seen and then in addition to these irregular things we've never had a presidential candidate who was targeted for assassination on two occasions I think both sides would agree they've never seen such a collapse in Secret Service performance or security and that's happened on two occasions so I could go on it's getting a little monotonous but you can see that these are unusual events and that when you factor that in with the closeness of the election and the the spirit there's a couple couple of other things very quickly that we've never seen in the modern area

we've never seen a presidential candidate uh who won all of the primaries in this case Joe Biden 14 A5 million votes removed from the ticket coercively I mean he he was asked to resign and from what we can tell Nancy Pelosi Chuck Schumer and other operatives suggested that if he didn't there would be consequences and he their argument was he was not doing very well in the polls and might uh cause a lot of damage down ticket as well as lose the election but I think there was General consensus that cognitively he was not up

to um the level expected of a president which was ironic because the argument then whether inadvertent or not was that he was not cognitively fit to be the standard Bearer for the Democratic party but he was cognitively fit to serve out the less the next 5 months on his term and in a way we've nullified the vote of 14 million candidates and then we didn't have an open convention we haven't had that we've never had a nominee of either party in the modern era who either did not win the delegates at the convention or has

never entered a primary it wasn't that Cala Harris hasn't won a primary she's never entered one in so that the machinations necessary to remove one elected candidate in the primaries with a preponderance of the delegates and then put another candidate in his place that was unusual all of these things are um a perfect storm they're for Force multipliers of themselves and it's got the country divided right in half I'm a philosopher so I can't help but get meta sometimes but after this comment about our conversation I will stop the conversation commentary yeah one of the

criticisms I get from a lot of people friends of mine on the left who watch the podcast and our discussions is that they say I don't push back against you now my purpose in having this conversation is not to try to fight with my guests it's to try to select the best people and let them get out their views and if I need clarification I will ask for that if I think our audience does I will ask for that but in this instance I will push back slightly because I'd like to hear what you you

know I I do a lot of podcast and not always with sympathetic audiences and I get constant push back and I I don't mind it at all you said that Trump has been impeached twice yes there have been five criminal and civil suits yes you said that he has been tried as a private citizen which is unprecedented yes and all of these people that I mentioned on the left would point to things the Insurrection least among them as far more than warranting the sort of treatment he's had with the legal system now I understand that

there are arguments to the effect that Trump is not responsible for the Insurrection and that might be something you cite but I'll leave it up to you this is I mean I think these are the biggest events that people are citing for why he should not be president let's when I made that statement let's go through them one by one we can start with eene Carol suit she was a person that she allegedly three decades earlier said she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump she couldn't remember the year was inexact she couldn't remember uh what

she wore in fact she said she wore a particular dress that wasn't even in production at the time that the event supposedly took place stranger still the scenario that she gave was almost exactly the same as a a uh plot of a TV show almost exactly the same of a person who goes into the same department store goes to a dressing room and supposedly is sexually assaulted by a celebrity she couldn't answer any questions about the actual details the the suit that she filed in front of a favorable judge was funded entirely by Reed Hoffman

a mega billionaire and Biden donor so it was highly irregular the second one latita James she filed a suit and said that Donald Trump had overvalued his marago residence which he said was worth about $17 million and therefore got a loan from the Deutsch bank that he otherwise wouldn't have and therefore that was a he had committed fraud that was the main of that was the main topic of most of I can get in the other ones but that was the main one the bank in question said they had no problem they knew exactly better

than she did the exact value of mar logo most people think today Mar logo may be worth anywhere from 100 to 200 million anybody who drives by it can see that 20 acres with waterfront on both sides so the bank in question that issued the loan said Not only did they have no problem with the assets that were used as collateral the loan was paid back promptly and with profitable interest on their part and they would issue another loan again so that has never been used against a public figure in New York or any figure

the third one with Fanny Willis the argument was he called with people on the line and said find me the votes now you can argue that might have been to a regist he didn't say invent the vote he said they're basically there and you've got to go find them I've talked to a lot of politicians since that cuz I was curious myself how many times in close races have you called the registar or the all the time I don't think there's this been counting how many votes are left there must be more votes that was

criminalized by Fanny Willis and of course it's now in suspension because the special prosecutor that she hired was her Paramore and there was accusations that she has not been able to refute that she was giving money to the special uh counsil that she hired and then going on junket with him with the monies he had taken from her public purse and he had again he had met twice with the Biden White House if you go to the third one Alvin Bragg he alleged that Donald Trump had given money to Stormy Daniels in a non disclosure

there's no controversy that he did uh I don't even think there's controversy that Donald Trump had a sexual Union he's denied it but it looks very incriminating so he had a common non-disclosure an embarrassing situation 10 years before the argument was that that was a campaign donation that he did not report and therefore it wasn't personal he wasn't trying to protect his family well I think most people disagreed but the point doesn't matter whether most people disagreed or not the federal prosecutor who prosecutes Federal statutes because that's what campaign Finance uh statutes apply to in

presidential Camp chose not to prosecute and said there was nothing there Alvin Bragg then took a federal violation he thought and jump started it into a state and of course the judge Mara was a donor small donor but a donor n nonetheless to the Biden campaign aign and his wife was a major advisor to democratic uh candidates and he was urged by a number of justices retired lawyers legal to recuse himself he did not so if we go to the latita James the Alvin Bragg the egene Caroll then we go to Jack Smith excuse me

I got to go to uh we did ltia James go to Jack Smith he there is no special counsel uh statute it's expired Congress never renewed it he's not a special counsel he is a special prosecutor Who was appointed by Meritt Garland and he is an employee of the doj the doj's own handbook on judicial ethics and principles for all their employees says that no Federal indictment shall be issued and a major political figure or concerning a major political uh event 90 days before a camp that's exactly what he is doing now more importantly is

this he was the subject of Donald Trump of two of a parallel situation in which special prosecutor Smith was investigating his supposed unlawful removal of classified documents from his personal Residence at the same time that was happening special prosecutor Robert Herr was investigating incumbent and current President Joe Biden special prosecutor her if you read the entire report has testified that Joe Biden illegally for in a in a period of over three decades removed documents that were classified he put them in unsecure locations perhaps four of them more importantly he had his ghost riter give access

to those documents the ghost riter destroyed the tapes said he was worried that they may be hacked even though they were under prosecutor her said he that could have been indicted but he chose not to because he felt that the um ghost riter did not mean it with evil intent he said that Joe Biden was culpable but he didn't think that he could win a conviction and I don't I've not heard of this about a federal prosecutor before because of Joe Biden's cognitive problems and age would Rend him as a sympathetic character before a judge

therefore he chose not to prosecute so you have this parallel prosecution on the documents what I'm getting at is in all prior cases when there is a dispute about a classified document it's usually handled administratively or bureaucratically you don't take an FBI type SWAT team and go into somebody's private Rank and anybody who drives by Mor logo it can see it's much more secure than is Joe Biden's garage as we know it from photograph then we get to the Insurrection the final point so on January 6 Donald Trump addressed a group of people I think

that was unwise because there were people massing at the White House and they had announced that they should go over to the capital to save him in whether you think that it was self-serving or it was genuine it doesn't matter he did say to the group I expect you to assemble peacefully and patriotic at the capital and make quote your voices heard so they went over there and they entered unlawfully the capital in the Rotunda they went through offices there was violence outside the capital the leftists called this an Insurrection but if you're the head

of an Insurrection you don't tell people to assemble peaceful and patriotically if you go into the capital and you're there for insurrectionary purposes you're armed they didn't find a firearm people had said they found a taser or a knife but they have not found a firearm Matthew Rosenberg a p surprise winner of the New York Times in a unfair but genuine Ambush interview admitted to the interviewer that he thought the whole thing was a joke in the sense that he recognized FBI informant throughout the assemblage out in the grounds should that have happened no was

that Reckless yes was that an Insurrection no did that stop the certification of the um election no I'll just finish with some parallel whatabout ISM because it is important is election denialism unique no in 2004 Barbara Boxer and some 30 House Representatives tried to stop the certification of Ohio which George W bush clearly won I don't I don't know if that was symbolic because that had no chance of succeeding but had they succeeded and had a majority vote in the house she was a Senator that was helping them the election would have been suspended in

2016 after the election in which Donald Trump won the electoral college but lost the popular vote Jill Stein a Third Party candidate said the election was invalid and that was because she alleged that computers in Ohio and I think Pennsylvania were fraudulent and she sued people have reported I don't know if it's confirmed with the encouragement of the losing candidate Hill that was thrown out but that was an attempt to stop the election but more importantly in that interum between the election and the December certification of the House of the vote almost nightly Hollywood actors

went on television and they appealed to the electors who were constitutionally bound to reflect the majority vote in their state not the national vote they made a direct appeal to be what we call falsified or false uh electors in other words there were direct appeals do not in these key swing States vote to reflect the popular vote after they failed to do so and Donald Trump was declared the winner we had major figures on the Democratic side say that he is not a he was not legitimately elected he was fraudulently elected due to uh Russian

collusion who were those people here I'll just give you three names the House minority leader hkim Jeffrey said he was illegitimate Hillary Clinton said he was illegitimate former President Jimmy Carter said Not only was he illegitimate but he was elected through Russian agency which was demonst L proved false by special prosecutor Robert Mueller and I could even end on Stacy Abrams who became an iconic figure in the Democratic party after she lost the Georgia gubernatorial race by 50,000 votes and she was introduced at Major Democratic events as the real governor of Georgia and she alleged

voting fraud so was January 6 uh an unfortunate event I think it was I think it was a buffoonish riot in terms of magnitude and deaths contrary to what the left said Joe Biden said five police officers were killed that that was not true five police officers uh died after the event sometimes over a year through suicide in one case officer sickick had a stroke there was only one violently killed person that was Ashley babbit a 14-year military veteran who committed a misdemeanor by going through a previously broken window into the capital in which she

was lethally shot by officers bird whose identification was suppressed for almost 3 months in addition to that if you juxtapose the 2021 Riot with the prior summer Riot I'm talking about May June July August September of 2020 when the BLM and antifa riots following the death of George Floyd overwhelmed law enforcement if you look at the final toll there were 35 people killed 14,000 people arrested $2 billion in property damage and uh in addition to that there was an effort to storm the White House grounds that sent the president of United States into a bunker

there was the burning of a federal courthouse there was a burning of a police Pro Precinct and there was a burning of a historic church the St John's Episcopal Church of that Pro protest CA Harris said at the height of the Washington violence she said of these protests I know fact Checker said that she was referring to protests not the violence but it was indistinguishable to people on television they had been synonymous these will not stop they should not stop this is a movement this is going to go on to election day this is going

to go on after in addition to that earlier she had posted a tweet giving references how people with urging on her part could bail out violent offenders that were arrested in the Minnesota riots arson demonstration so in the context of all of that uh was what Donald Trump did uh unfortunate yes was it a full-fledged Insurrection as no in terms of violence that it rank with leftwing prompted no demonstrations and uh was it an effort to use extra legal means to interrupt an election it may have been but it failed were these five suits that

I just talked about had they had historical presidents no was the aim of them to interfere with an election as we see now yes there was all I can say to that is that it was an exhaustive and spontaneous defense of I you were going to ask the question yeah of a of a reasonable challenge yeah and if anybody is unhappy with it I welcome them to take the transcript Google it and see where you were wrong address your arguments but let's move on from that yeah I didn't look at notes and I didn't prepare

that so I'm I I'm pretty confident my memory is pretty accurate yeah I'm confident in that too y okay now I'd like to put some pressure on the other side I am here to be neutral that does not mean there aren't glaring problems with both sides that I can point out for instance I think that it is a serious problem with Donald Trump's agenda that he wants to according to what's on his website Deport or prevent from entering anti-zionists or marxists or socialists or Communists whatever he wrote that's not the point here one major problem

that I see with the left is a denial of certain obvious truths one that I have in mind mind right now is that there are in fact conspiracies in other countries we deplore corruption we deplore assassinations we deplore spies and MSNBC acts as if CNN they act as if this does not happen in the United States I don't believe that you're a military historian I think it is plausible depending on who's the actor to classify assassination as military operations there have been two assassination attempts on the Republican nominee for president there was also a denial

of Secret Service this is my understanding to RFK Jr another Challenger to Biden I have a simple question it is what do you make of this well in answer the first part of your question we know that the Iranian government has made efforts to kill Donald Trump we know that because a Pakistani National was arrested and was under surveillance for doing so we know that prominent members in the Congress have called on the Biden Administration to sanction Iran over its transparent efforts to try to kill Donald Trump we know that the butler assassination no one

can make sense out of why because a 20-some yearold amateur was able to go into a vent was stopped with a range F finder by security walked around for about an hour went on top of a building that had the clearest shot at the podium where he knew Donald Trump was going to be speaking there were local law enforcement officers in the building one of them actually climbed up up on the top and saw him with the gun people in the crowd remarked up to 6 or seven minutes prior that he had a gun people

in the Secret Service were notified within about 2 or 3 minutes that there was somebody and yet they allowed him to go out to the podium I could go on uh there was no drone usage there were insufficient people uh on the part of the Secret Service there was no coordination or even communication that was rapid between local law enforcement and the Secret Service many of the people who were responsible for security at that Butler event have been put on suspension the head of the secret service has resigned in disgrace the interterm successor is under

enormous pressure do I think that that was a conspiracy of a government agency to get Donald Trump killed no what I do think is that there was a laxity at the highest levels of the Secret Service that the Donald Trump security detail should be given no extra consideration other than as a that accorded to other presidential candidates even though there had been serial threats at his life in a way we've never seen before in other words they did not do something that might have been unusual for a presidential candidate that is give him the same

level protection of a president or vice president and there had been calls for that so there was a sense of inoy or relaxation that turned almost fatal same thing was true of RFK I thought he was a third- Party candidate with not more than 8 or % his family history had warranted it and the threats that were lodged against him had warranted additional security and none was was given and all I can say is there was a sense that Donald Trump did not warrant that I would say this if you repeatedly lower the bar of

assassination by threats and I want to be very specific here David Flo the current uh he's Obama former Obama adviser now advising the Biden campaign said a number of years ago that Donald Trump had to be destroyed the current Secretary of Commerce Miss rundo said that he should be extinguished the or eliminated to that effect Dan Goldman a representative from New York said he should be eliminated one of them said extinguish the other said eliminate so you had three prominent people saying that it would be better that Donald Trump was basically dead in addition to

that you've had a sort of an assassination porn for about eight years what do I mean by that I mean if you collate what Madonna said what Snoop do said what Johnny Depp said what uh Kathy Griffith said I could go on these are celebrities that get a lot of of attention they have variously said that Donald Trump should be blown up decapitated incinerated shot stabbed even Shakespeare in the park in New York did a Julius Caesar scene where he was being stabbed in addition to that Joe Biden after the first assassination and a private

call to donor said it's time to put Trump in the bullseye said that according to the left's own values because remember when Sarah Palin said she had a map of congressional districts with Bullseye and they said that that was leading to the types of violence that ended up with a US Representative shot then what was the what was the net result of this it gave a certain impression that if you were to shoot Donald Trump there were major people in American society that would approve of it even the celebrity chef b u Anthony berdan who

was lately decease joked about poisoning Donald Trump new new Republic this summer ran a cover store if you look at it very carefully it's Donald Trump with a mustache and he he's outfitted as if he's Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler major magazine so if you give the impression to popular culture and that's what we're talking about Madonna Kathy griet Johnny Deb New Republic and politicians as diverse as Dan Goldman or the current Secret of Commerce that he's Hitler and he should be killed destroyed eliminated extinguished and you have a a secret service that lets a 20-year-old

in and then lets a month later on a golf course where everybody knows a particular hole is very dangerous because there is no uh protection from the street a person can get out of a car walk across the grass rest a gun right on and have a clear shot at who's ever playing the next hole over and if that happens after that what is the message that's being sent to the deranged of America the message is this if a 20-year-old can get away with it and a crazy guy who has a whole history of dumb

stuff if he can get almost in sight of a president and if you shoot this President there's a lot of people in the country that will be think that you're going to be an iconic then maybe I can try it because I'm a much better shooter than are these amateurs and I will be heralded and then local recent poll asked democ people who identify as a democratic did you think Donald Trump should be would be better off if they had been shot 25% said yes I think 25 roughly 25% said they weren't sure so there's

a level of recuperation whatever you think about Donald Trump whatever you think about Donald I don't see people on the right joking about killing Joe Biden I see them doing of tasteful jokes about his sonality his cognitive abilities I see all that but I do not see people talking about him being assassinated or blown up I don't see it I don't see it with Cala Harris I do see it all the time with Donald Trump I'm going to ask you to do something that might be difficult for you but I doubt it okay I'm going

to ask if you can tell me the best reasons if Biden were running again based on his presidency of the last four years to vote for him to vote for Joe Biden yeah I was brought up in a democratic family Jerry Brown on two occasions appointed my mother uh Superior Court Judge of Fresno County and she was one of the first women to be a state Appel at court judge I have two first cousins that whose mothers died and we adopted essentially adopted and I have two brothers including a twin brother who were strong Democrats

to the the extent they two of them don't speak to me so it's not as if I don't have experience with the Democratic arguments I grew up that way I don't know why I was a little different than my siblings but they would argue that I was wrong and they were right so what would be the argument for Joe Biden well the argument would be that he still has remnants of old go Joe Biden from Scranton in other words he represented an earlier tradition of the democratic party what do I mean by that in the

1992 and 1996 Democratic conventions if you go back and look at the speeches of Nancy Pelosi Bill Clinton Hillary Clinton they called out for strong borders they wanted to protect immigration by making it legal only they called for uh during that crime wave 100 police 100,000 police officers etc etc and Bill Clinton whom I did not vote for but nonetheless in 1997 and 98 I think 99 partnered with nuk gri and that was the only Administration that we got a balanced budget in over a 100 years and we were actually reducing the Surplus and that

was partly because n gri the house Speaker enforced a spending uh freeze and Bill Clinton enforced on new G reach a moderate tax increase and so he came from that generation there were bad things about that generation Joe Biden for some reason often prais James old East strong Thurman who were segregation nevertheless so when he came in he was selected after losing the first two primaries on the part of the democratic establishment by urging Pete butterig Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders to depart even though he had not won a single Pro primary until Nevada uh till

South Carolina so there was an in to get the thing out and a to elect somebody so the country and I was seeing the Democratic party's realization that their current Dei left-wing hardcore trajectory would not win not me not me deciding that the Democratic party deciding that so they turned to somebody that they knew was cognitively impaired but they thought that cognitively impairment was a minor distraction given he was the most electable and why was he the most electable because he was running as a uniter and Old Joe Biden from Granton a Centrist Democrat in

comparison to all the other candidates when he came into office did he did he do that no but the point was he was an oldtime politician so he could adjust and what do I mean by adjust when the price of gasoline almost doubled he did some things that were bad he drained the Strategic petroleum Reserve he had called the Saudi Arabians uh Paras and then he went and begged them to pump more oil before 2022 midterm but he did some good things and what was that he suddenly increased Federal leasing of energy and the fact

is for a moment of a year or two that's a moment in the history of petroleum right now as we speak there are more there is more gas and oil production than even during the Trump administra Joe Biden did that he may have done to get elect it doesn't matter that's been very good for the United States both in terms of Revenue and in terms of um self-sufficiency Joe Biden and the old Democratic party the Ted Kennedy all of those people were strong supporters of Israel Joe Biden is in a party that is not nevertheless

although he has talked he said yesterday that uh he has done more for Israel than any other pres that's not that's demonstrably untrue he said NE m s uh Mr Miss Harris Mrs Harris said that she couldn't answer whether uh Netanyahu the elected government the the Netanyahu government was an ally of the United States and Waltz would not uh suggest that Israel had the right to respond to 500 missiles over two barges to take out oil or nuclear so there were problems there but nonetheless even though Joe Biden has suspended 2,000 PB bomb shipments to

Israel if you look at the totality he has with stod the pressures within his party and how does that manifest itself when the first barrage of 320 projectiles was um launched against in Israel and when the Second Barrage of 182 ballistic missiles some of them Hypersonic United States forces helped Israel knock those down and so while I would disagree with him there's no doubt about there's no doubt in my mind that if he were not president the leftwing would have left Israel without supplies or ability so I I commend him for that I commend him

for changing on energy um I uh I understand it's an election year and 12 to 15 million people have illegal have illegally entered the country but he seems to have understood OD that about 65% of the American people do not want that so suddenly in the last 90 days we are seeing border security enacted and that was a reaction to political realities but it's I don't really care what the motive was at least it stopped the illegality and tries to restore the balance toward legal immigration I could also say in they all spend money so

the reason that we saw annual uh hyperin Peak at one point at 9% and that has caused a aggregate 25 to 30% 4-year Over a four-year period increase in Staples whether like you you define that as rent uh car insurance house insurance uh gasoline milk food especially beef and it's exactly what democratic former uh treasury secretary Larry Summers warned about uh that hyperin inflation um is was deliberately caused by by spending um decisions that didn't have to be made why am I bringing this up because we were coming out of the covid period in which

Donald Trump had borrowed $4 trillion as stimulus there was a suppli chain Interruption still there was pinup consumer and demand he shouldn't have done that but my point is that they all do do it George W bush doubled almost doubl 80% the national debt over 8 years Barack Obama did double it Donald Trump came in he you can't double it in four years but he was on a trajectory to nearly double it and Joe Biden is on a trajectory to do the same so all of them are reckless in spending and now we have 37

almost 37 trillion uh in aggregate debt and I will give credit as I said to the only one of them who for a brief moment understood that and uh balanced the budget he didn't even balance the budget uh Bill Clinton he actually started to reduce the deficit the the the national debt and if we had kept on that trajectory it was very similar to what Simpson BS had advocated maybe not in the tax tables but had we kept on that uh 1998 99 trajectory we would almost have paid down the debt right now so something

I might chuckle about if it were funny is that none of our listeners who would have criticized me for not pushing back against your claims about Trump aren't going to be complaining that I'm not pushing back against your comments and favor of Biden but I don't want to waste any more time proving that you as a conservative are perfectly capable of giving credit where credit is due so you can just answer me with a nod if you think that that kamla Harris despite not having entered a primary will essentially continue the status quote of what

Joe Biden did uh no okay she will be much more to the left and so what do I mean by that she's on record saying things that Joe Biden had not said for example like she has said repeatedly prior to being Vice that she was against fracking and she said it I think also when she was vice president she's on record that crossing the border illegally is not a criminal statute she's on record that the wall is a terrible idea she's on record that and some cases in the case of what she calls assault weapons

which I think she means semi-automatic weapons that the government has a right to forcibly purchase them from private citizens and even inspect that purchase to make sure that they've given the up she's on uh record that defunding the police is a good idea she's on record that we should not and apparently don't have the right to deport people who have entered illegally she's on record that we should spend public funds to give Comprehensive Health Care even to the extent of transsexual surgeries to people who enter the country and reside here illegally I could go on

but no presidential candidate has ever articulated those positions far to the left that is the equivalent of a right-wing candidate saying things that the left alleges they say if right now a right-wing candidate said my position is to ban all abortions I know they alleged that JD B and Donald Trump want to do that maybe jdance had said he wished that could happen in the past but I'm talking right now both of them have said they are not going to do that but what if they said they were or what if they said um they

were going to deport all 35 million people who were here if people have been here 20 years never had a criminal offense and could not g be given a chance to get a pathway to a green card not citizenship and they haven't said that so we're seeing a candidate who's so far off the spectrum that she's unelectable and that explains why in a mysterious chameleon likee transformation she has renounced everything that I just said and said that's no longer operational and there's only one reason and so I suggest that after November 6th no on November

6th after November 5th if she is elected president she will go back to the positions that she's held for the vast majority of her life if she loses the election and she has three months left on her vice presidential tenure she will go back to the positions that she's held this is a temporary transformation to get elected with the acknowledgement from the Democratic party or the people who control the Democratic party that their main issue on the economy defunding the police foreign policy whether Afghanistan or Ukraine or the Middle East or China are not do

not win 51% approval the American people so Victor before we switch back to Trump yeah let me ask you this what are the best reasons not to vote for KLA Harris not to vote she was vice president for three and a half years and according to Joe Biden not me she was uh a she agreed with everything and was in on all the major decisions she has said she was the last person in the room the first thing is foreign policy Vladimir Putin did not invade during the Trump Administration he invaded during the George W

bush administra a republican he went into Georgia in OSAA he went in during the Obama Administration in donbass and Crimea he went to try to take Kiev and further his his uh Borderland Acquisitions in 20122 he did not during the Trump Administration we didn't have a middle east War during the Trump Administration in other words Jake Sullivan the National Security adviser said at one point prior to not I shouldn't say prior I think it was 8 days before October 7th that the Middle East is the most peaceful it's been in 20 years that's his acknowledgement

we didn't have China serly threatening TW Taiwan we didn't have North Korea again launching missiles into other people's airspace we have all of that now and that is predicated on the idea that this Administration lost deterrence how did they lose deterrence they lost deterrence by humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan uh that turned over a billion doll Embassy a $300 million retrofitted um bogam Air Base that was defensible and Secretary of State Pompeo has said that the his withdrawal plan had had agreements to keep that base and then we surrendered $50 billion and Munitions to the Taliban

I think the Middle East would have been quiet if Biden Harris had not removed the terrorist designation of the houis had not restored money that is fungible to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas had not beseeched the Iranians to go back into the Iran deal and most importantly had not removed the oil sanctions that led to a hundred billion doll windfall to Iran so foreign policy Wise It's been a complete disaster we had a Chinese balloon that came across the United States with impunity no one stopped it and of course in Anchorage Alaska on our first

introduction to Jake Sullivan and Anthony blinkin the Chinese delegation on American soil dressed them down and yelled and screamed at them without much of a reply so that set the tone and U so we have a world that we're looking at three possible theaterwide Wars one in Ukraine where one of the comat one of the belligerant has nuclear weapons one in the Middle East where one of the belligerant has nuclear weapons and the Iranians may have nuclear weapons or will do so shortly and one of them between Taiwan and chian with where they have nuclear

weapons so it is the most dangerous time in my lifetime if you look at domestically I think most people realize that it was not true that crime has gone down as alleged by the Biden Harris it's gone radically up especially in 2122 now it's leveled off it's slightly still increased I think most people realize that are middle class that the things that are most important to them rent staple foods Insurance gas have gone up 20 to 30% and stayed there so when people say inflation's down what they mean is it's down to about 2 or

3% but it has not gone down to where the prices were when they took office in 21 most importantly though I would not vote for her because there is weaponization of the FBI the doj the CIA in a way we've never seen before in the 2020 election the FBI partnered with social media concerns to suppress news accounts that Hunter laptop by uh laptop Hunter Biden's laptop was authentic it had been authenticated by the FBI so their own agency knew it was athin yet they were going to Facebook and the old Twitter to try to suppress

accounts that it was in athentic 51 so-called intelligence authorities so-called retired many of them were still Contracting with the CIA deliberately lied to the American people right before the first debate just a few days before the election that this laptop had all the Hallmarks of Russian disinformation it didn't it was it was authentic so and then when you look at the CIA and people like John Brennan who's lied twice under oath to Congress uh and [Music] their involvement along with the FBI going back to the steel dossier there is a level of corruption among our

agencies that we haven't seen and this Administration does not seem to be worried about it not at all I think if you look at the original doj deal that was accorded Hunter Biden for tax fraud until a judge stepped in and said this is outrageous you can see that we do not have an independent doj and I think in all the cases I mentioned one of the advantages Trump has is that 99% of the mainstream media I know that's a cliche but I'm talking about the network news CB s ABC NBC NPR PBS Washington Post

New York Times LA Times social media Apple Google all of them despise him and they monitor almost everything he does and so even if he was wanting to do what has been done in during the Biden years he couldn't because it would be all over the papers in contrast all of what I just talked about you can't even find a mainstream media disinterested account of it and um so I I couldn't vote for her okay you wrote a best-selling book called the case for Trump I understand a new and revised version just recently came out

I read the first one I haven't read the revised version I'm full disclosure what are the best reasons for voting for Donald Trump yeah I wrote that book it was called why Trump won and the Publishers felt that that was not edgy enough they were right it sold a lot more because of it was the case for Trump well I would look at foreign policy first was there a war during the for Trump no we had Isis under the Obama Administration that had absorbed half of Iraq did he destroy Isa yes he did he bombed

the proverbial but he called sh I won't repeat the word did he Corell Iran was Iran as able as it is now to arm Hamas and Hezbollah and encourage them to circle with a ring of fire as they called it uh no in other words he got rid of General Soloman he got out of the Iran deal he sanctioned them was were the major areas navigable could you go into the Persian Gulf without fear of Iranian harassment could you go into the Black Sea without fear of Russian harassment could you go into the Red Sea

yes Eastern Mediterranean yes South even South China Sea I don't think American Fleet wants to go between Taiwan very often and China right now was there a problem in recruitment were we 45 to 50,000 soldiers short of the military no no that happened under the Biden haris why because we demonized the one demographic who died at twice their numbers in Afghanistan and Iraq and we said essentially they were part of a cabal a racist white rage White Privilege pentagon's investigation found nothing even though Mark Millie and Lloyd Dawson had suggested that this was a endemic

problem so the military was in much better shape there wasn't a theaterwide war there was no War uh he left office Trump did and the annual inflation rate was 1.23 interest rates for a 30-year mortgage were between somewhere between if there was discounted depending on the years 15 or 30 between 2.7 and 3.5 they got up I can tell you I took out a mortgage it was almost 7% so there was no inflation interest rates were low he spent too much and that's a legitimate criticism there were no Wars abroad and for all of the

left's accusations did the FBI under Trump and did the CIA and did the doj go after their particular enemies no the doj during the Trump years basically went after Donald Trump through the through the 22mon $40 million budget of Robert Mueller and the so-call Dream Team or hunter killer team as the left called it of lawyers so I don't see any politicalization I'm not saying that Trump might have not wanted that it just didn't happen they were all adversarial and uh there was a level of resistance to the administration that we've never seen before so

as far as weapon and conclusion weaponizing the government no foreign policy calm abroad economy wrong and this was right after the worst and the only lock National lockdown we've had in our history with the co Joe Biden said no one was vaccinated until he came in actually 17 million people had been vaccinated with operation warp speed so I think most people this is not Victor's opinion if you ask Gallop Harvard Harris were you better off under the Trump Administration or under the Biden Administration it's overwhelmingly 10 to 12 point plurality or majority feel it was

better under Trump I told you at the beginning of this conversation about my Herod journey to get back for this interview I'm glad that I made that Journey because I think that this has been a phenomenal interview on the flight from Cincinnati to Minneapolis I was sitting next to a woman this woman had a Bible out on her folding tray table she was reading it she was taking notes on something having to do with reasons she loved God it was really sweet I'm not a religious person uh but I think it was really sweet she

leaned over she started talking to me she asked me what I did I said I'm an academic she told me oh her son goes to Hillsdale College or went to Hillsdale College we talked a little bit longer sh she her family they're they're Farmers they Farm peonies and based on this and the fact that she was reading the Bible and that her son goes to Hillsdale or went there I asked her hey do you know Victor Davis Hansen she said yes I love Victor Davis Hansen and my whole family does and it's good to know

I need all the help I can give okay good and I said hey check this out and I took my clipboard out of my uh backpack because I had maybe I'll say this right now you know this I haven't looked at this once for anything other than to jot down a few words you said you haven't read off anything either but I'll I'll leave that for now I said look I am talking to Victor tomorrow and I'm going to mention this and maybe we'll talk about it a little bit but I wanted to ask you

just what Hillsdale College is what you did there what you're still doing there because obviously it makes a big difference in some people's lives well I was invited to speak at Hillsdale College on 911 I was on the air when the disaster the attack occurred so I turned back so I my relationship goes a quarter century and I've known the president uh I spoke at the Claremont Institute years ago Larry AR who's really revolutionized the campus he's spent over raised and spent a billion dollars to make it a beautiful campus but it's Unique because it

does not take government money so it feels it has a freedom from government mandates and how does that Express when you go into the when into the Hillsdale bookstore and you look at offerings in English History political science just to take three example they have wonderful Science Program I'm just taking what I know about you see see CS Lewis Shakespeare Conrad novels uh you see some Modern things but you don't see leisure studies race studies gender studies gay studies uh environmental St all the studies courses those topics come up in these Shakespeare classes Homer classes

FUSD classes history of American politics classes so their idea is they're trying to teach people the classics of Western civilization in general and American history and culture in particular and then these issues come up so they're inductive they're not trying to uh tell somebody we're going to want we want you to come to this conclusion and there's actually a wide disparity on campus of political views so when you go to this place and it's very isolated it's in Hillsdale it's only about 11,000 people and a one of the least populous counties I think these least

populist in Michigan and uh so what I'm getting at it doesn't draw people there because it's in Malibu like Pepperdine or somewhere it's not a it's the the climate is very harsh in the summer and humid and cold in the winter but it's an oasis of inductive thinking that's not my view alone I give you an example after after the rise of the diversity equity inclusion and after uh the weaponization and anger and acrimony of higher education especially the violence on campus and the anti-Semitism here at Stanford according to a recent report at Columbia Harvard

there was a renewed interest in Hillsdale I've been there 20 years as a visiting professor and I don't think I've ever seen any violence I was introduced to it when I wrod my bike I ride it in the Michigan Countryside I left it once at my office and forgetting that I walked home to a house and I forgot that where my bike I came back the next day and it was exactly where it was and then I noticed something I'd never seen before none of the bikes had locks on them none so they were able

to to create a camaraderie a sens of community and what's strange about it now is when I first got got there it was struggling because it was so small maybe 1,200 students 3 or 400 LED in per class they were very rigorous but they accepted one out of two students maybe they had one of the highest acceptance rates of those accepted that actually enrolled enrollment rates I should say maybe 85% now it's in the many thousands of people and people from Harvard Yale Prince all of all political Persuasions everything are applying to that campus and

why are they doing that even though they're on the left they go out and look at the campus it's beautiful there's it's there's no graffiti there's no violence and whatever their political opinions are they will not be challenged in class no one and there are faculty members I've met them in Hillsdale are not all conservative but when they go into a class and they disagree with a professor the discussion will be on the issues there will be no ad homenum no one will do what they did at Stanford where a lecture said you Jewish students

go to that side of the room you go to there there will be nothing I've experienced things like that yes that aren't reported on yes there will be no uh no one will go into the president's office and deface it and trash it as happened at Stanford no one will go into this iconic colonade at Stanford that is poor as sandstone and right really regret horrific graffiti and try to damage this hundred-year architecture that doesn't happen there and yet it's a very vibrant uh vital student body I think their biggest challenge to tell you the

truth is do they want to evolve from a small Lial Arts uh campus to a major research uh University and they have the wherewithal now people are giving it a lot of money because they they see it as an oasis and that that'll be interesting but right now if you look at the competitiveness of the students based on their test scores and the SE selectivity it ranks um in the same category as say Williams or Amherst that's great and and it's it's it's it's raising money and it's raising interest and applications are are evolving at

a geometric rate there really is let me tell you something Victor yeah I'm going to vote for Comm La Harris are you going to talk to me again is that's not even a question you don't even need to dignify it with an answer so let me just say something about that in my family and in my circle of friends I don't see the symmetrical Anger from the conservative from the left when I see people in families and groups of friends that say they're going to vote for Trump they don't get angry and say I'm not

going to speak to you if you don't vote for Trump but I do see it asymmetrically I love my father he told me in the last election if I vote for Trump he's never speaking to me again and I I love him but he said that and that was really is all on the left because of this they believe that their ends are morally Superior and therefore the end the means necessary to to achieve them are Justified if that means being acrimonious rude cutting people off never talking to them they will do if that means

on campus you don't see conservative students doing what we're seeing and when I was growing up there was anti-Semitism and it was to the degree that I even knew about it was on the rural right and it was something along the lines of we can't make I grew up in a farming family still live there well we can't make any money cuz the Jews in New York can and I didn't even know who the Jews were that doesn't exist anymore the great majority of anti-Semitism is on the left the acrimony is on the left so

in my family when somebody wants to talk politics um and they find there's a disagreement the parties that say I don't want to talk to him anymore come from the left I have no problem talk I have a lot of friends I would say at the Hoover Institution that is considered siner right if you read its mission statement I would say 45% of the fellows are either Democrats are going to vote against Trump and I think that's conservative I think those of us who are conservative and will vote for Trump are less than a majority

and I will guarantee you that even though we are atise as a center right institution and Stanford University is supposedly disinterested in interested only in education that the Stanford faculty is about 90% 95% going to vote for Harris and that we are far more politically diverse and tolerant at Hoover than Stanford University is if you were a professor at Stanford and you were openly conservative and you said you were going to vote for Trump you would incur a level of personal hostility and far greater magnitude than if you were at the Hoover institution and said

you despise Trump and you were voting for Harris we have fellows here who say that openly on social media and when I read that a fellow Hoover Uh colleague has said that Trump is a criminal he's horrible uh we he should be in jail we should all I it doesn't bother me that's what we're supposed to do I've never once in my entire life ever confronted anybody at Hoover and said I'm not going to be friendly with you or you shouldn't say that I've never done that that's happened to me number of times what I'm

going to say is you know why you're going to talk to me it's because you're a good man and you're honest most of the guest most of the people I email to come on this show they don't respond because the show is not big enough for them you came on when this show was Tiny when I had almost no listeners and you helped put it on the map with that first interview and after that first interview you had to go but you stayed an extra 10 minutes and talked to to me about how I could

be a better interviewer and that really helped me too and I would just say there I grew up in a very rural area and I although I got came here to get a PhD in Classical Languages I had to go back and farmed because my grandparents were elderly and then I started as a part-time teacher at Fresno State so for me to get a voice there were people in my life the the military historian John Keegan people like that that helped me Donald Kagan the classes so I have told my assistant Megan when you get

inquiries about people who are starting out or have not been known do background checks and everything but let's at least spend six to 7 hours a month trying to help people get established so I get I would say that I get each month 30 manuscripts people send me unsolicited or I get five calls a day and I try to if I feel that they're sincere and capable and they're they don't have access to publication or attention i' try to do that I really do well let me tell you this I'm going through a very tough

time right now in my life my girlfriend or quasi girlfriend as she preferred to call it we broke up I loved her I'm heartbroken that's hard I haven't slept for four days I slept two hours in four days I was up with my friends last night driving from LA to have this conversation so that's part of why I'm angry maybe people can can see some other emotion here but another reason is I'm voting for KLA Harris it's nobody's business whether I vote for her or not unless I decide to make it that way you have

made some phenomenal points in this interview you've also made some that I don't agree with I'm not going to fight you over it I hope our listeners vote for KLA Harris but I hope that they listen to what you said and they make up their own damn Minds about it yeah and I'm going to end the interview on that note thanks Victor this has been phenomenal thank you appreciate [Music]