After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Talarico FLIPS, Clancy Holdout Shocker, VDH’s WILD “Fang Fang” Story, & Hunter Biden BETRAYS Ally

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Emily Jashinsky is joined by Victor Davis Hanson, author of “The Counterrevolution,” to assess President Trump’s second term, from his escalating trade fight with Canada and immigration crackdown to the growing threat posed by AI. Victor also recounts his remarkable personal encounter with Christine Fang, better known as “Fang Fang,” and weighs in on newly declassified intelligence about warnings before 9/11. Emily and Victor respond to James Talarico walking back his previous positions on transgender issues, Gayle King’s surprising reaction to the lone Lindsay Clancy holdout juror, and growing skepticism about elite universities. Emily rounds out the show with a look at Hunter Biden’s “Laptop” meme coin controversy and his dispute with Channel 5’s Andrew Callaghan. (3:42) The Counterrevolution(1:11:44) The Counterrevolution PreBorn: Dial #250 and say “BABY” or visit https://Preborn.com/EMILY  SelectQuote: Compare top‑rated life insurance options. Visit https://SelectQuote.com/emily to get the right coverage at the right price. GhostBed: Discover how GhostBed’s cooling, pressure-relieving design can help you sleep more comfortably and wake up feeling refreshed, plus get an extra 10% off their lowest prices of the season at https://GhostBed.com/EMILY with code EMILY. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to After Party, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us on this Monday evening. Our guest is the great Victor Davis Hansen. He's out with a new book called The Counter Revolution, the Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. It's a fascinating 30,000-foot view of history that really does remind you or recalls some of the big moments leading up to 2024 and actually up to the moment that we are right now. Victor has as close to, I think, maybe like an opposite conservative view on the Trump administration that I do. And I, you know, I'm kind of a black pillar. He's kind of a white pillar. So I'm really glad to have him counterbalancing my own black pilling on the show tonight. It's going to be a great conversation.

We're going to talk about some new immigration numbers and a new policy in northern Virginia where they're going to be paying migrant families. We're going to talk about Tala Rico's flip-flop on sex and gender. I think it's kind of a well-executed flip-flop. And, you know, I don't have a lot of kind words for Tala RICO. But honestly, it's like the best that he's. could do given what he's working with. I'm curious to get Victor's thoughts on this. Wild new reporting from Anthropic itself about how Iran and other hostile foreign countries have used

Anthropic via VPNs in some cases to execute policies against the United States, foreign policies against the United States to undermine security in the homeland and abroad. We're going to talk about some stunning new racialization of the Lindsay Clancy case from Gail King and some women on an Oprah special about Lindsay Clancy. And we will do because Friday was September 11th. The CIA released newly declassified documents about the security situation in the years, going back to the Clinton administration, leading up to 9-11 itself a little bit of after 9-11.

And I'm very curious to get Victor Davis Hansen's reaction to that. I will finish the show with a roundup of what's going on with the Hunter Biden crypto situation. between Hunter Biden, his friend, Andrew Callahan. I think it looks like Hunter Biden betrayed Andrew Callahan, so we're going to break all of that down for you this evening. Thanks so much for tuning in. Subscribe. If you haven't yet, it helps a ton to subscribe on YouTube. So do your comments, your likes and your subscriptions, wherever you get your podcast for three days a week on podcast Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So please do go ahead, subscribe there. Without further ado, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with the great Victor Davis Hanson.

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Dial pound 250 and say baby. That's pound 250, baby, or visit preborn.com. slash Emily. That's preborn.com slash Emily. We're joined once again by one of my very favorites, Victor Davis Hansen. He's author of the new book, The Counter Revolution, the Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement released on September 8th and is already a bestseller for good reason. Victor is, of course, also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Welcome back, Victor Davis Hanson. Thank you for having me, Emily. Of course, such a pleasure. And our audience knows I'm kind of what the kids call a black pillar. And it might just be because I work in journalism

job as to sort of poke holes in things. But I really found this book to be a helpful counterweight to the doom and gloom that I surround myself with. And I actually keep a post-it note on my desk. I even have it right here with my handwritten list of good Trump policies. Because when your job is to cover the bad ones, it's just so easy to be swamped in the bad. But you do so much work in this book setting the table for what Trump inherited over decades and over the administration before him. So I did want to run the black pill doom and gloom scenario by you to get your response to it. Okay. Because I hear it from some right-wing populists who are even more doomy and gloomier than I am. And so if I just go through the list on trade, you know,

this has not just been a correction with Canada, but maybe an over-correction that needlessly cost Americans. It's been confusing for other countries. Some of them have sided with China or other places on immigration. Maybe there's been too few deportations to matter much, which we'll get into later in the show. Fiscal issues, we have a bond crisis. We're debt. Foreign policy, the war in Ukraine continues to be even worse, actually, of a meat grinder. It hasn't been ended. Looks like we have a stalemate as of right now in Iran, but that's kind of in flux. Tech is the supercharged left-wing AI industry now that's threatening us spiritually and physically. On ethics, there's been a loss of faith in Republicans, conflicts of interest with Jared Kushner's

businesses, the Trump organization, Howard Lutnik, and the Whitkoffs that go beyond even what we saw from Hunter Biden. The FBI and the CIA haven't been fundamentally reformed, but kind of focused on some of the Trump retribution. And I know that's kind of a lot, Victor, but you cover so much of this ground in your book that I thought it would be a good place actually to give you a starting point to make the positive case. Yes. Okay, we'll do it light. So we're going to start in the order you gave them. And that would be Canada, right? Trade, yep. Yeah, the problem with Canada is we all promised 15 years ago to meet a meager 2% investment. They were the only. NATO country that didn't do it. They claim last year for the first time they did it, but it's

mostly because of retirement and stuff. So they have 79 jets. They're 45 years old. And they expect us, and we do it, to protect the North American continent. That means their Arctic, their Northwest passage, their airspace. And out of that, they've been running a chronic $50 billion surplus. And they say they don't tariff our agricultural goods because they put a limit on it. They say, You can have 2 billion or so, and then it's 250%. So we don't get up to that. We restrict ours. So all we said was we would like in a North American free trade agreement to have pretty much symmetrical trade.

Can you do that? And the problem is they can't do that. And the reason they can't is, number one, they have a command economy now. They have the lowest per capita GDP growth in the industrial world. They're the last at 1.1. 45%. They have the highest percentage of immigrants and people whose parents were born abroad. 45% of the population in Canada.

People don't talk about that. That's enormous social welfare costs for them, that that economy will not support. It's easier for Canadians to build a pipeline in the United States than into another province. So my point is they don't have the money to pay for that project, that welfare, and they have something called the Centennial Initiative, where they really want to get 100 million people within 20 years by open borders. So out of that, and it was once one of the strongest Western economies, and it used to have the fifth largest Navy in the world.

So they have one of the wealthiest countries in the world. They have their number five in oil reserves. They have number one in potash, you name it, timber. So they are failing. And out of that failure, they have pretty much presented with this fact. We are not going to lessen that $50 billion. That's just there. It's always been there.

It's going to be there. And we're not going to pay more than 2%. We're not going to make the 5%. We barely made the 2. And that's just the way it is. And so we had this agreement. They agreed to it. And by the way, of all the trade agreements, theirs is the best.

And they're the only country, with the exception of China, that put counter tariffs on. China, they did. Nobody else did. And by the way, they're the only country in the world that you get a six-month visa into the United States without any, you can stay six-month. No other country is given them. I'm not even Mexico. And by the way, when you go to Canada, it's very hard to get a work permit. If you're in that six-month window, it's easy.

We don't even ask you. You can start work immediately for six months. So they have all of these. And by the way, they have a million people here, and we have 250,000 there. So it's an ACE. And so Carney knew all this. And he didn't want to deal because he has two elections, one in Alberta and one in Quebec, on autonomy. And they were dead even.

And in addition to that, we had the midterm. So he thought, I'm going to gin up this. walk out at the 11th hour, right three hours before the thing was ready to be signed. And then I'm going to play my EU card and I'm going to reach out to China. So now we have this situation where he's letting in EVs 48,000 at 6% tariff. And he's announced yesterday that he has military, cultural visa trade agreements with China. He says, we're a bully. So now he's dealing with the most flagrant cheater.

on trade in the world, dumping, patent, copyright, and he's got military arrangements with him. And we had said to him, we object because you are bringing in cheap below the cost, aluminum, and steel, and you've waived your old tariff so that you can reassemble them as autos and trucks and appliances and send them in here at cost lower than our own production. And what you're doing is being a useful idiot for the

Chinese because they are using you and you're using us. So just stop it. And we don't want you to do that. And we've asked them and ask them. And they said, you're infringing on our sovereignty. And then they're the only country in the world that does this. They want to have us, in addition to the digital media, taxes that they pay to Canada for income earned there, they want to search charge. And they say, well, you have to pay us 5% because your digital media drowned out indigenous. in French culture. And we said, we don't, you can put the national post anywhere you want along on the border. You can have the seat, the Canadian, but we don't care.

75% of their trade is with us. 10% of our trade is with them. And so Americans were oblivious to this. And then Carney gended up, and now he's in a spot. So he got China elbows up, and they booed with Sars Spangled, and he's got the whole country behind him. and they probably will save Alberta and Quebec. And then he's got Gavin Newsom cutting commercials for him.

He's got targeted tariffs on all our border states, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington, you name them, Maine, all of them. And he's talked himself in, and he's a, until he ran, he had three passports. He's a globalist. He was an Irish citizen, a British citizen, and a Canadian citizen. 95% of his portfolio, his private wealth is in the United States. Two of his daughters live in the United States and went to school here. He went to school here.

So this is all fabricated on his part. All he had to do was say, let's keep negotiating and he would have got a deal. So that's him. Next question. That's fine. Well, yeah, let's do immigration because I pulled these numbers from CNN, which actually for conservatives are like if people support a. deportation regime. These numbers look good for the Trump administration and for Mark Wayne Mullen.

Arrests are soaring. Immigrant detention has skyrocketed nearly 70% since early 2025. The pace of deportations is intensifying. And the death rate in detention, CNN reports, this, reached its highest point since the pandemic. DHS says the Trump administration has deported 985,000 people, but hasn't provided a detailed breakdown of that number by federal agency. By July 2026, there were nearly 66,000 detainees in ICE custody, an increase of nearly 70% from the total detained when Trump took office the year before. Now, those custody deaths aside, I haven't dug into that very closely myself, but DHS does have two record months now of deportations over 50,000 a month. I know some people who are hardcore immigration restrictionists who say, okay, but that still doesn't make

a drop in the bucket based on whatever number of people think of people should be deported. They say you can extrapolate that every month into the future. And by the end of the Trump administration, you'll still have a whole lot of people who are non-citizens or illegal immigrants that shouldn't be here. What do you make of these new numbers? Well, first of all, we were told for four years by the Biden administration who led in 10,000 people a day, 10 million over four years, that you needed comprehensive immigration. Trump said, you don't need that. You just need to enforce existing laws. So we have really zero new entrance.

Nobody thought that was possible. Zero. And the wall will be finished if it's on the same pace within about a year and a half. There'll be some sections, about 200 miles. It'll be in rough terrain that you can't, but they'll have censors. and stuff, but more or less, it'll all be finished. The things that I have read said one million people have self-deported and another two million in the last year and a half of them.

So it's about three million. I don't know how you find 10 million people when you have 600 sanctuaries jurisdictions and you have ice demonized and attack, but I think they're doing excellently, given what they're up against. And speaking of what they're up against, I wanted to get your tape, by the way, on this Arlington County policy, they set aside $50,000 for grants to support families who primary wage earner has been detained by immigration enforcement. So grants distributed by Arlington Thrive will provide up to $2,000 per affected family

over the coming 10 months. Funds will support basic needs, such as housing, food, and utilities. That is directly trying to counter, offers the Trump administration has to give people $2,000 to self-deport. If you were here illegally, you are now getting, this is a Tony, a very wealthy county right outside of Washington, D.C. You are now getting taxpayer money to split your family. And here in California, Gavin, which we have a huge deficit, he spent $500 million. He diverted for illegal aliens, health care.

And in addition to that, Karen Bass just took half of the $10 million for $10 million for relocation of the Palisades, people so the hotel money and temporary shelter help and gave it to illegal aliens. So it's that way everywhere here in California. All I can tell you is I live in a community that's 95% Hispanic. And four years ago, I would say most of the labor force that you saw was illegal. And this is what the left so angry. They said, people are so scared. They are scared. And most of the wages have gone up. And most of the people, I just had some people working on the foundation. And I said, are you legal? I got to know if you're legal.

They were all legal. They had papers and everything. I've seen the same thing in D.C. Yeah. And when I walk around my farm, which I did this morning, there's a lot less trash. In other words, I don't see people driving in with a pickup at 6 in the morning. Because they live in trailers, lean tubes. Somebody rents a house from Mexico out here.

and then seven or eight families inhabit the one acre plot in wrecked Winnebago's. And then they have no garbage service. So they take all their garbage and they find the first farm and they dump it. I mean, wet garbage. I found pet animals in it. I found feces in it. I found drugs. And it's not nearly as bad.

And the Mexican-American community, maybe not their children that are in college, but most of them are very happy because there's less. gangs and their kids are not confronted at school and say, if you don't speak Spanish, you're a gringo and all that stuff. So I think he's done a one, that's his strength. I don't know why they're not talking about that more because 85% of the people support that. Yeah. And if we talk about foreign policy and AI, there's actually an interesting story that combines both of these right now that popped late last week, also getting shockingly little attention. Iran apparently used Claude.

We can put up this post from Comfortably Smug, who wrote, holy shit, anthropic caught Iran using Claude to target Navy bases, automate dossiers on Americans, and run influence campaigns on U.S. social media. The details are insane. The morons uploaded everything, including the organization plans that the Ayatoll is funded. From the Wall Street Journal, they reported Iran used American-developed artificial intelligence models to try to target U.S. Navy ships in the Middle East, according to this anthropic report. And then an Iranian link group compiled information from ship and aircraft

transponders, military photographs, and commercial satellite photos to track American warships, look for vulnerabilities in their shipborne communications according to that report. Now, this is just what Anthropic found and was able to deal with. But I also wanted to play the sot of the guy who quit Anthropic. He'd worked there for a couple months on alignment. He'd worked at OpenAI right before that. But alignment is obviously human safety at Anthropic. he, Jacob Coxon, has gone mega viral.

He was on with Megan. Megan did a great interview with him last week. He was on with Anderson Cooper. And here's a shocking moment from his Anderson Cooper interview. We mentioned a former colleague of yours that currently works at Anthropic, basically endorsing the assessment that AI could potentially kill everyone within a decade. In a follow-up post, he said, to be clear, as we say in our latest risk report, I think the risk from present models is low.

What I'm worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement. we've said is happening faster than we thought. I assume that's what the recursive self-improvement is what you've just spoken about. Do you agree with him that the current models, the risk is low, but it's just the speed with which this is now improving? Exactly. I completely agree. Right now there's no risk of extinction.

The current models, the worst they can do is maybe hack into something potentially cause a lot of damages in infrastructure, but they're not intelligent and not. to outsmart us at the level that would lead to extinction. I think what's just crazy is to look at the rate of progress. And there is a very real possibility that in the immediate future, these are years that, like, next year, the year after, recursive self-improvement will happen and will enter the phase of Evans Post where he argues that there's a chance we could all die.

Like that is coming soon. Uplifting, Victor Davis-Hanson. Yeah. Well, the question then is, who do you want to be foremost, in the AI so-called race, because historically for every weapon, there's a counter weapon. This discussion was very similar to the post-Hirochima Nagasaki. We had a monopoly. We had spies, the Rosenbergs, and others in New Mexico.

So we, four years to the, almost to the date, the Soviets let off an atomic bomb. Four years after Hiroshima in August of 1949. And then the question is, well, should we outlaw them? Should we do this? Should we get the UN? And that is the same thing as the League of Nations in the 1930s. We're going to outlaw war. Let's make limitations on the use of battleships, especially submarines and care.

And guess what? It didn't work because the Japanese, the Germans cheated on it. Same thing with the Soviet Union. So same thing with a Paris Climate Accord. You can't make international, same thing with the International Criminal Court, 50% of its rits have been Israel, the United States. The WHO was bought by the Chinese and covered up the COVID. So my point is, whether we like it or not, that technology is going to be out there.

And the only way that we can deal with it is to be better than anybody else, because that will give us a counterability. There are people, I know this for a fact, and I work in Silicon Valley at Stanford, I know there are people right now at these companies that are working on anti-AI programs. In other words, they can go in and find what an AI program is doing and nullify. They can program into it instead of you shall not be destroyed by any means. You shall destroy any other AI that tries to attack this type of people. And that's our hope.

And when you look at the top 10 companies in the world in marketing, capitalization or downloads or whatever calibration in each field they use, but mostly market capitalization. And AI, nine out of the ten companies are American. Nobody saw that company. In software, it's nine out of ten. In space launches, it's not even close. It's SpaceX, Elon Musk launched ten times more satellites than the whole world put together

last year. That's the EU and China put together. We're way ahead in space exploration. We're way ahead in bioengineering. Nobody thought that was possible. That's all happened largely in the last two or three years, but partly because the Trump administration said to all of them, if you stay out of politics in the sense that are joining us, whatever interpretation, but you don't have Mark Zuckerberg putting 435 million in to defeat Trump or you don't have them patently trying to censor the news like they did over the Hunter laptop when they worked with the FBI. I will be like the War Production Board. I will protect you from European censorship. I will tell the Canadians if they try to put surcharges on you, we're going to retaliate. And I won't regulate you as far as who wins and who loses.

I think Mark Andreessen said when he went and talked to the Biden people, they said, this company, this company, this company is okay, these aren't. We're going to regulate these, but none of that. And that really changed things. So it's a very dangerous technology. It's like nuclear weapons, but even more insidious or gain of function research. But the only answer to it is to ensure that a society that has an open, a free press, transparency, a consensual government,

be the leader in this, and that's what we're doing. And the Trump administration has really been pushing this. But the way, if you say I'm going to outlaw this, or I'm going to get the government in to regulate it, I can guarantee you it'll end up like the Iran deal. And they will cheat. And I think on, oh, go ahead. Oh, one legitimate criticism that I have of the Trump administration

in this regard of this, I don't know why we have 300, thousand Chinese students here. We only have 10,000 in China. And I think we should tell the Chinese we're going to be, we want reciprocity. So we have 10,000 of our students in your country. You can have 10,000 no more. We can monitor 10,000. But a lot of the people you talk to say that there's three to five percent of the 300 are actively engaged in espionage. And you can see it in California, almost every week, there's somebody who's arrested for acquiring technology or sending things back to China. And, you know, Fang Fang was a Chinese. She wasn't at the consul's office in San Francisco. I wrote a critical article about Japan. The next thing I know, she called me up. I didn't

know who she was. Are you serious? Yes, about eight, 10 years. She showed up at my office. Something warned me about her and my assistant was there. I said, you better stay here. So he and I were there. She came in with tight Levi's boots to her knees, low-cut blouse with a very thick Chinese fake accent. I think she went to Cal State Headward and was screaming at me about what I wrote about Japan and then wanted to know if I want a gift from her T-set and would I go out to a very expensive restaurant with her that night and I said no and then she's changed to her about a valley girl accent hey man you guys are weak man you let us walk oh Obama doesn't even know man that kind so they're everywhere and we had a we had a colonel in the PLA who was a neural psychologist on the Stanford faculty on

a faculty exchange so we had a confrecious institute on campus so I don't know why. We have to be very careful. When Trump said he wanted 600,000, that is, I agree with you. That's terrible. We should go down to 10,000 Chinese students, tops. And I think the case that the book makes is taking all of these things, like all of the possible complaints, anti-Trump people or Trump skeptical people or formerly pro-Trump people might have, the case the book makes is that there is a revolution going on for decades that created such an entrenched power that hit critical mass, basically, in the Biden. an administration to the point where people thought, or maybe even before that, you know,

Flight 93 election coming out of Claremont from Michael Anton in 2016 kind of makes a case about the counter of the revolution that had marched through our institutions for a long time. And so I suppose your point, Victor, is that these are all outweighed by the gravity of the Trump policies that is trying to kind of disentangle or cut the tentacles of that revolution through. Yeah, I try to make the argument that unlike the first administration, where you had people, he didn't know much about Washington. So he got there and all of the bipartisan swamp said, you've got to get Rex Tillerson in there, its secretary, Jim Madison

to Finch, Steve Mnuchin. Well, they didn't believe in the MAGA thing. And at best, they used their skills maybe, but most of them used their skills of the bureaucratic skills before what he was trying to do. So there was leaks every day, what an idiot he was, da-da-da-da. Now, at least the people working for them are mega loyalist and they're waging a counter-revolution. So I didn't, I never thought, I asked myself this. I watched all these things going on. I said, would George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, or Mitt Romney try to roll back this revolution that the left is waged. And all of a sudden this guy comes in. They all hate him, but he's starting to tax endowments because he says, you know, you're not nonpartisan.

And now he's actually started taxing remittances to Mexico. $65 billion by people who are 90% of them are subsidized by us on welfare or they're working for cash. And they're subsidized. That's the greatest source of foreign exchange for Mexico. I never thought he'd do that. At Stanford, you talk to these people and I thought, wow, this is so quick that they're getting 40% charging the government on federal grants. and he comes along and says 15. And that's just an education.

He's doing that with architecture, everything. I used to love when I was small listening to NPR 50 years ago or PBS, you know. And now it's just completely propaganda. You know that better than I do. And I never, everybody talked about defunding it. He did. So he's trying to wage a counter-revolution. and the left is very afraid of that because they feel that for the first time a Republican president is not doing one of two things,

either slowing down the decline of the country or managing decline, that is managing the socialist takeover but not really fighting it, or two, dealing with the symptoms of it. He's not. He's dealing with the causes of it. He's going right to the causes. is where, why do we have all these illegal aliens? 30 million.

We have an open border. We have catch and release. We have sanctuary cities. We have refugee status you can declare once you get here. We're going to get rid of all that. Even when after, I thought, God, I don't know the law well enough to adjudicate, but birthright citizenship. That was a sacred cow. So that, it is, we're in the middle of a counter-revolution, and the left is going absolutely berserk.

and I don't think people understand that. If you look at foreign policy, when he came in in 2017, I remember there was a word called the pink tide that Obama had favored everybody in Latin America that was left wing. And all of a sudden Trump tried to in the first term with mixed success. But he comes in this time, and the first thing they do is say, you're not going to take over the Panama Canal, China.

And then they get rid of Maduro. And then all these elections start happening. And they start to emulate. And you look at, nobody even talks about it. You look at South America, Central America, Caribbean, 32 nations. There's five that are left wing. Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador. I don't think El Salvador is.

Oh, not El Salvador. I'm sorry, Nicaragua. Nicaragua, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and maybe one. one other, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, they've all flipped. And China's out now. Can't even buy it sanctioned oil from Venezuela. Russia's out. And the same thing could happen in the Middle East. I get so tired of people on the right and the left. This is a forever war. A forever where or was Afghanistan and Iraq. It's tragic. We lost 18 people, but 18 compared to 7,500 in those two wars, 20 years, $5 trillion. We spent about $70 billion. And the stakes are so much higher. If you can

squeeze this regime until it pops and it loses power, if you think of why we are in the Middle East at all right now, it's because of Iran. We're not afraid anymore of, of, Lebanon or Egypt or any of these countries. And the Gulf would flip very quickly. It would change the entire complexion of the Middle East. It's the biggest gamble. It's like Reagan saying that our new policy is we win and they lose, not contain it. And it's very controversial.

But I went back and looked at what all seven presidents said, starting with Jimmy Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton. Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. They all said that it would be intolerable if Iran had a nuclear weapon. And yet they were very close to getting one and they had an intercontinental ballistic missile that would reach every single city in Europe because it almost hit Diego Garcia. They had lied about that completely. So he did a bit, I think he was a little bit overconfident after the Maduro raid. But finally, I think they hit upon a strategy that they, from what we know, and it's very hard to know what's going on around because there's no embedded

troops or international media. But the people are really hungry. And there's a lot of people riding. Oh, when the left starts riding, we've got to really worry, we're starving the people. They have no gas. They have no food. They have no medicine. Then you get the impression that we're really starting to make that regime. I don't know what will happen, but they're counting on the midterms to save them. They had this stupid idea that a president can't conduct a war if he loses the Congress because they'll cut off funds. But that very, he still could if he wants.

And I think the people will know that. And I think there's going to be an incentive on the part of the Iranian people in the next 60 days when they hear that their own regime is trying to hold out until the midterms. I think maybe they will be out protesting a lot. more likely than they ever have been. So that Iran thing is completely a known unknown. We don't have any idea. So when I hear all these people, I've been doing some interviews.

This was the biggest mistake. This was terrible. It was terrible for the Republican chances in the midterm at this point right now. But when you look at the larger oil situation with Venezuela oil, and at some point, Russian oil will not be sanctioned. and we're the biggest producer of oil and gas in history now and the biggest exporter. So the future is if we can get over this one little bump, and I think we will, gas will be down. Otherwise, the economy, other than inflation, is doing pretty well.

Job growth was 160,000. Carney lost 41,000 jobs in August before the effect of the tariffs. and foreign investment's good, the stock market's good, job creation is good, government jobs are 400,000 down. That's pretty good. So he did cut government. I don't think anybody ever thought you could cut 400,000 jobs from the federal government. That's a good point.

And with the power that a lot of those bureaucrats had at places, you know, objectionable, places I should say the CFPB or PBS and PR places that were supporting that media outreach, those sorts of things. But actually staying in the Middle East, on Friday, there was a classified document dump from the CIA of all kinds of memos and declassified government records from the Clinton administration through the Bush administration leading up to 9-11 and shortly after 9-11. And there was a memo. Sean Davis at the Federalist found this one and pointed it out from May 22nd of 2001, wherein the president was being told that bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization and the two Egyptian groups previously have considered taking hostages, possibly including hijackings. And Al-Qaeda has trained personnel in kidnapping techniques. Catherine Harage found another one from 1998. So that's the Clinton administration, a declassified president's daily briefing.

the system was already blinking red. Catherine wrote under President Clinton intelligence indicated bin Laden was preparing to hijack U.S. aircraft. Some members of the bin Laden network have received hijack training. Bin Laden organization or its allies are moving closer to implementing U.S. attacks. Those were quotes from the daily briefing. And the New York Times reported that the documents demonstrate the CIA repeatedly brought to both Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton the threat posed by bin Laden to directly attack the United States. And it reminded me when I was going documents of a clip that was going viral at the same time last week of President George, former President George W. Bush talking to Condoleezza Rice, who of course you know Victor Davis Hanson and you worked with the Bush administration

talking about... She's the director of... She's my boss at the... She's your boss. Talking about their response to Islam after the 9-11 attacks. And I wonder if perhaps there's a connection between not taking the warnings about Bin Laden seriously enough and how they approached or how they discussed approaching it afterwards. Let's listen to this commemoration of the 25th anniversary of 9-11, George W. Bush and Condi Rice. I want you to talk about a couple of those events. You talked

about going to the Islamic Center and trying to make sure that our Muslim American citizens knew that we didn't blame them for what had happened. I also made it clear that Islam was a religion of peace, not a religion of war, and that these people subverted their religion. Victor Dio Tanssen, did they perhaps not realize how serious bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were as religious fanatics and zealots leading up to 9-11? I think there was a difference in those two exchanges. I think she is fundamentally right that most, at that time she, we didn't have Dearborn what it is now, for example. Exactly. So when she said at the time most American Muslims were paid, I think that's.

true at the time. But when George Bush answered and amplified that by saying that Islam is a religion of peace, we've had over 50,000 terrorist incidents in Europe, the United States since then, and the vast majority have been by Islamists. So if you read, and I've read the Quran, it's not the sermon on the mountain, and you know that as well as I do. Yes. It's not turn the other cheek, blessed are they me can inherit the earth. So that was an incorrect statement. It brings up a large, and this was, I was kind of surprised how everybody was shocked by those memos that were released because, as you remember, Sandy Berger, the National Security Advisor

Bill Clinton, went into the National Archives and took out a document that's right. That's right. That said that Ben Laden, they were offered bin Laden to be extradited. It was either by Pakistanis. And they said, we have him, and we will send him to you. And on the memo, they did not want him. And Sandy Berger was very worried because there was a documentary about it, and he thought they would use that because it was in the archives.

And so he went in there and stole it, stuck it in his trousers, walked out, and they caught him. And they charged him with a felony. And, of course, they let him off with a slap on the wrist. But he was completely disgraced, and he died not long after that. So, and during that documentary, the Clinton administration got really, really angry about it, and they fought the documentary makers. So why did that occur?

And I'll be frank, I think when you have multi-trillion dollar economy among the six Gulf states and you have American investment and I'm very worried, I'll be frank with you, and I'll be critical of this aspect, I think. there are people connected to the Trump administration right now as we speak, private citizens, maybe some family members, I don't know about, but they are making fantastic amounts of money. And they don't, if you were to ask them, would you be making this money if you didn't have access to the Trump administration or you weren't using their name? And I think they're really endangered the Trump administration.

And they have no business making that. I have no problem with going to the Middle East and making a lot of money. But after you've said that, and what's even scarier is when you look what Hunter Biden was doing, both in the amount of money he was making, which was considerable, but the crude technique and the obvious transparent crookedness of him, these people are not like that. They are smooth. They're making a lot more money. And they're really in danger to the Trump administration.

And I think that if they lose the midterms, I don't think they have any idea, but they're all going to be brought up. And we're going to see two years of hearings. And they're going to be asked a question, how much money, what was your net worth, what was your income before? Trump was elected. What is it now? What did you do to get this big jump in this? I don't, and I have no idea what they did was legal or illegal. But I do believe that it could be unethical and it's going to hurt the Trump administration.

And I wish they'd stop. I agree with that totally. And I follow your former student, your brilliant former student, Raymond Abraham, really closely. And I think his work is something that the secular left needs to grapple with. And actually, like, the secular center needs to grapple with really strongly. But I also, I understand why the Bush administration and why former president and Condoleezza Rice were talking about their tactic here. Because I understand the tactic. I and here, C. Ali, another one of your Hoover colleagues, has talked.

about the importance of outreach to kind of progressive Muslims, many of whom do live in the United States, do live in the West and are, you know, Ilhan Omar will march in a pride parade. Zoramamani will march in a pride parade. And sort of distinguishing between that and some of the radical clerics and their congregations in Dearborn and in Houston. And Mamdani himself has talked to radical clerics, has campaigned with a radical cleric, one in particular that I'm thinking of, but he himself is not going to that congregation. And so I do still think about that now, about how there does need to be outrage to more progressive Muslims, secular Muslims to deal with that in the homeland. But there are two types of American Muslims that are critical. They're the ones who

are genuinely critical all the time, and they have no political benefit one way or the other. And I'm talking about my colleague, let's say, Ayan Herssey Ali. She has been risked her life, and she goes through the entire ideology of Islam and points out how it can be easily radicalized and what damage it's done. But when I look at Mondami, and I see that 50% of all the hate crimes in New York are directed at Jews, or I see that he's at a commemorative of 9-11, where he's signing a commemorative document, and he has a lawyer, his own counsel, one person over for him,

and he wants to honor this person who defended a brother-in-law of the suicide bombers on 9-11, and he hands the pin to the only Jewish person who's in his cabinet, police commissioner NYPD Tish and says, oh, hand this to him. Well, I don't think that's an accidental act. I think he's basically telling people, this is your 9-11, and I smile and I'm all for it, but my subtext is I'm going to give the pin to a person who has defended a brother-in-law of one of the suicide bombers and a terrorist, a terrorist. And I'm going to have the Jewish NYPD commissioner. We always associate NYPD with a

heroic work they did on 9-11. And then when I see Hassan Piker, who seems to be the poster boy for the new Democratic Socialist Party, say that we kind of deserve 9-11. He tried to walk back back, but he doesn't really walk it back. I see Ily and Omar say, oh, something has. happened on 9-11. That was her famous quote. And then you see El-Said saying that there's no different. Sharia law that he has professed he follows is not incompatible with American jurisprudence. That's a complete lie. If you look at what Sharia law really is, if you really were to follow that, it's anti-enlightenment and it's anti-American jurisprudence. So I don't see, I see with a lot of Muslim, and I'm talking about Hassan Piker, Ilyan Omar, Zoran Mondami, Milit Kyrrhus.

There's a lot of people who have come over here, and they do not feel that, and they came from wretched places, most of them, Ethiopia, Somalia, Egypt, Uganda, and you would think they would show gratitude and at least say I'm here, either I or my parents or first or second immigration. We want to learn about this culture. We want to enhance it. But we don't want to tear it down. We don't want to say they have to pay reparations. We don't want to destroy the, and they do.

They do. And when you look at them very carefully, it's very disturbing because they focus on Israel. And they use this term. it's a colonial settler, settler colonial state. It has a 3,500-year pedigree in the Middle East, but more importantly, they attack that, and then they're off limits. So you say to themselves,

well, if you want to use that term, let's supply it. Mr. Zoran Mondami, you came, you were born into a wealthy Indian immigrant family in Uganda that comprises 1% and according to your definition, what you apply to Israel, you're non-indigenous, and you were a product of the British Imperial Project to bring people from India to control the Ugandan population. And even today, they own 65% of the GDP, which is not demographically egalitarian, and your family has an estate in colonial fashion on Lake Victoria. Or I could say to Ilyan Omar, Saeed, you talk to. about genocide. And Saeed Barrier killed 200,000 people he butchered when Somali land tried to

break off from Somalia. And then he was overthrown. And most of the 85,000 people who came to the United States worked for him, including Ilyan Omar's father, who was a colonel in that genocidal army. And yet no one says a word. So I think the problem is not so much that we demonize Muslims, but they have it in their head too many of their officials, their prominent spokespeople. I see A.on, Hersey Ali,

over here, and then over here I see Zoran Mahasan Pai, all of these other people. And they detest her and all she's saying is that if you're Muslim, you have to adopt, acculturate, integrate, and accept the norms of the country you chose to come to. And

These people are saying this is a bad country. It's, I think I'llian Omar said it's a trashy country. Millet Kiro said we immediately have to pay reparations. It's always been unfair. Hassan Piker said we have to basically get rid of the existing system. And so I think that's, there's something behind that. Somebody has told them on the left that you can be very useful coming over here. and attacking the essence of the United States.

And it doesn't work very well because they left places. And they came over here, and you don't do that to your host country. You don't just say, oh, I don't like it in Turkey. I don't like it in Somalia. I don't like it in Uganda. I don't like it in Ethiopia. I don't like it in Haiti. I don't like it in Puerto Rico.

But I'm coming over the United States, and because it has wealth, prosperity, security, and freedom, and once here, I'm going to do my best to change the system into something that the founders never envisioned. And that's what's happening. And I think that's a lot of the problems the Democratic Party has. We have 53 million people who are now immigrants, 17% of the population. That's much greater than most European countries.

So that was a demand for acculturation, integration, assimilation. It's some of the best people in the world. Silicon Valley, Titans, yes. But if you don't do that and you allow a separatism or you encourage them to be political allies by attacking traditional America, then it doesn't work. And that's what a lot of people are angry about. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more of Victor Davis-Hanson. Life insurance. We all know we need it, but we keep putting it off because it feels complicated, maybe seems expensive, or just like something that can wait. But stop waiting. Take care of it today with select quote in just 15 minutes high-quality coverage can be secured to fit any life and budget. Here's what makes select quote different. The licensed insurance agents work for the consumer and not for the insurance companies. So they compare options across multiple trusted carriers to find the right coverage

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maybe a little Hispanic because he's in Texas. That would be James Tala Rico. The counter revolution has come for James Talarico because he is in the middle of executing a stunning flip-flop on trans issues. We have a compilation here of what he said recently on transports and trans surgeries. Let's take a listen. During the 2021 hearing, you said there are six biological sexes. Do you still believe that standing here in me right now? No. I've missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it. What I meant is that there are two sexes and then there's a small percentage of people with genetic

abnormalities. I obviously didn't say it correctly. There are not six sexes. There are two. You can confidently say there are two sexes, a man and a woman. Absolutely. Speaking of gender. Would you vote in favor of a national ban for transgender surgeries when it comes to minors? Absolutely. And in fact, in the legislature, I voted for an amendment that would have restricted the bill in question to a ban on surgeries for minors. In 2023, you voted against SB 14. That was the Texas law banning transgender surgeries for minors and puberty blockers. How come you voted against that? Because the bill was overly broad.

And in fact, if you go back in check, I voted for a major amendment to limit the bill to banning surgeries for minors. So I've been consistent on this issue. And biological men competing in women's sports. That's a big deal here in Texas. That's right. And I oppose trans athletes playing in girls' sports, if it endangers safety or fairness. Every sport has to be safe and fair. As a former public school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes.

I care a lot about our students. and so I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls sports if it risks safety or fairness. It's remarkably inconsistent despite his point there, but I think it's a very clever use of the English language as far as politics go. It's working for him. He's up more than two points in the real clear politics average over Paxton, which Beto O'Rourke never did over Ted Cruz in that super expensive race. So Victor Davis Hanson, what do you make of this from Tala Rico? Well, I don't know whether he was lying when he said those things or when he's lying now. It has to be now because he was so passionate too.

I mean, he was such a passionate defender. Because he was eyeing the Democratic nomination for Senate years in advance. So basically he's saying to us, I embrace what I really feel and I emphasize them. And we could have added some. We could have said that he made fun of people eat meat and Texans should not eat any meat, except. God is nine winery. Yes, yes.

We could have had a lot of them. And he was basically saying, I wanted to be the Democratic nominee. Nobody knows who I am. So I was going to gain intention by getting the hardcore base, the Democratic Socialists, all those crazy people with the issues that are hot button trans, men in biological men in this, these, you know, carnivores in Texas, all these crazy issues that they believe in. And I'm going to drum them home and I'll get an order right. He did.

I remember, I didn't even know who he was. And the only reason that I knew who he was or what he was were those quotes that he used to give. And the media picked up on it. Now he's in a general election and he's not 10 points behind, but he's two to four points ahead. so the polls will see. So now he's disowning them. And he's been given a great benefit because Paxton is not a strong candidate. He's got a lot of his own problems.

He doesn't seem to be an active hyper-canity. He's not out. You don't see him everywhere. I don't know what. Maybe he's waiting to do that. And as many, as problematic as Cornyn was, if you look at his record, he did vote maybe 85% of the time with Trump on key issues he was. an apostate, but he would have won easily. There's no doubt about it. So I think Paxton is actually

50-50 because when I look at the polls, Said was 10 points ahead. He won by one point. Hong in Wisconsin was ahead by 6. She lost. Susan Collins, the last 12 years in two elections, she's been down 4 and 6 and she won by 7. The Democratic pollsters have a bad habit. And they did this in 24. We saw that with the Des Moines Register poll in Iowa. We saw that with the Harvard Harris when they had Kamala Harris four points ahead. She lost by one and a half. To gin up momentum and good press and money, they put these people ahead.

And then as we get down to the final week, they all of a sudden are dead even because they're afraid that they will be completely disgraced. So they've done their work for the left and then to save their own reputation as disinterested pollsters, then they say the race is too close to call. But by that time, and then when it's over, they said, well, we told you it was close, but they don't tell you what they did for most of their polling to Jen up. So I think that actually Susan Collins is probably dead even. Saeed is dead even.

even the Minnesota race is close and there's a lot to go on in 60 days and it depends a lot on the price of gas it depends a lot on what happens at Iran and it depends a lot on if don't you know one thing I don't understand Donald Trump says he's going to give 10 million here

or 40 he's got 400 million and Elon Musk says he's going to have 400 million so if they were to put 800 million and they would vastly outspend both the Democratic candidates themselves and their PACs. But we'll see. And so, and they will pick up three or four seats from Red State legislatures, redistricting and maybe one from Jeromandy. And then we'll see what happens.

The more you expose the Democratic Socialists to the electorate, the more that they recoil from them. That seems to be true in the generic congressional ballot. Yeah, it is. Not in the primary, but in the generic, yes. So all of this is, I'm guardedly optimistic. I mean, historically 39 out of the last 41 midterms, that the end party lost seats. And when it was less than 10 seats, they lost the House.

I think at less than five, they lost the Senate. So the odds are in the favor, but there have been exceptions. And Trump is suey generous. You don't know what people are going to react to or what he's going to say. or what he's going to do. And when he says, you know, when he said, they said, he said, I don't know if Harris isn't black or not. Everybody said he destroyed his campaign.

Next thing, you knew all these black men were saying, he's right. We don't know what she is. And then the garbage stunt, the McDonald's stunt, they all were brilliant. And he has that ability. So we'll see what happens. We've got a long way to go.

And lastly, Victor, if it's okay, I wanted to squeeze in a Lindsey Klee, Clancy clip because on Friday, Gail King was told that the holdout juror, this mysterious holdout juror that's been getting slammed one-sided from all of the other jurors who've been talking to media this week, just getting hounded. We're getting one side of the story about how awful this person is. Gail King learns an interesting bit of information about this juror. Let's take a watch. I'm curious about the jurors themselves because we know it was nine women, three men. What was the age range? What was the racial makeup? I haven't heard any.

of that? What was it? 70-ish to 22. And one person of color and then everybody else was white. A lot of the jurors had children. One person of color was a person of color

a woman or a man? A man. A man. Is a holdout juror a person of a black man? Yes. A black man is a holdout juror? Yes. Yes. She couldn't believe her. Sit with that for just a second.

Yeah. And they've known that. All right. I'm very fascinated by the holdout juror, learning that he's a black man today. Can you just tell me his age? I'm very curious. I would guess in his 30s. Oh, younger.

All right. Paula Devlin, thank you. So Victor Vigieg Davis, he said, this is why you don't, you don't center people's racial identities as the most important thing about them because it doesn't actually have anything to do with anything. No, but the left does. And then when the left, the liberal left in very condescending fashion feels that minority communities take their directions from them. And I've always believe this. I've watched this. I think it's a psychological mechanism for very, for left-wing white liberals who are really always talking about race, they don't live next to people.

They don't, of the middle class in general, poor whites, and especially minorities. And that, they make a psychological, they square that circle by being abstract, fanatic. But concretely, they're not. And most of the white people that I knew in my community here, even some in the family, but they're gone. When this thing trip, when my little town three miles went from 30% Mexican American to 90, they are gone.

And the people who, and I don't see any difference between Mexican American people and white working class people. To me, they're the same. But, yes. And so the media didn't report that. They had leaked. There are reports that they knew that that person was black.

They didn't report it. They suppressed it because it didn't fit their intersectionality narrative that all these people are on the 30% binary of the press victimized by so-called white people. And so now the white liberal press has been demonizing this anonymous person, which I think many of them knew was black and they didn't think it would get out. And it shows you that the black community is diverse and on matters of trans and stuff. There's a lot of influence of the black church and tradition. And they do view the trans issue as an elite issue that we create upper mental class victims out of people who are trans. That's what they feel. And they feel about that on the other intersectional groups as well.

So it wasn't surprising. And I don't know what to say. On the larger issue, we have a problem in this country. I think we all know family members and friends that have children. I do, and they're white males and they're going through prolonged adolescence. By that I mean they're in their late 20s, early 30s, mid-30s, they have not married, they do not have children, they do not own a home. They have no plans. They don't have steady girlfriends or office.

opposite sex. And it's a result, I think, of the last 40 years of affirmative action, which did not include just race, but it include gender. So at most of our universities, 55% of the student body are women. And white males have the, and Stanford University the last four years, white males comprised 8% of the admittances, even though they made up about 35%, 33%, percent of the demographic. So we have we've called them toxic masculinity. We've said they're dangerous.

And they are not, they've dropped out. They play video games. I don't know what they do, but they don't do what our grandparents or even my generation did. We were drummed in. I got married at 23,

and I had three kids by the time I was 27. And I was called, when I was, so all my high school friends, they thought I was a when I was 23 and I wasn't married, everybody in high, when I came back in college, they said, wow, you're a confirmed bachelor. Yes.

I said, wait a minute, I'm only 23. Well, we got married at 18 and 19. We own a house. We're working another family. So what I'm getting at is this is another battlefield of the war between the sexes. Because if you're, we need to bring the genders together. But when you see all these women and they're protesting. on the behalf of a woman who killed her three children and murdered them.

And you're told that she had postpartum depression, which a lot of women have, but they don't kill children. We had this American sniper who was killed by a friend that he tried to help at the shooting range. Nobody's, I didn't see at that trial for Kyle, whatever his name was. Oh, Chris Kyle. Yeah, he was sentenced. He was convicted of murder. and he's in the federal, he's in the state penitentiary in Texas right now.

I didn't see a lot of men out there saying, well, men get all of us soldiers have, you know, post-traumatic. So where he's not responsible. No, then most of them said, execute him. They were so angry. But if you're a male and you're already at odds with the female half of you, I mean the female half of the race, and you're getting this narrative nationwide that a, a woman has a hundred percent decision making on children and you and the husband either doesn't have any say on the children or there's conspiracy theories that he killed them or he caused it

and it's only going to it's only going to make things worse because I think a lot of men would say when they date a young woman they're going to say what would you happen if you had postpartum depression we had three kids what would you do or if our best friend killed her kids. What would you say about that? And the moment they say, it depends or I don't know, he'd say, I'm out of here. I really believe that. I would. I would if I was young in dating and I was, there was a young woman and I would, and this came up, I would say, what would you think if we had three kids and you had postpartum depression? And you strangled each one in succession and had them watch the person die, and you did the execution.

And what would you think of somebody? She said, I would be very sympathetic to the murder. I said, I'm not, that's too scary. I don't want to have children with you. Yeah. That seems reasonable. Don't you agree? Yes.

Entirely fair. And it's why actually putting the fear of God into the university system and defunding some of it is probably a good thing. And boosting trade school, by the way, at the same time. best thing in the world. I mean, yeah. The problem with the universities is they didn't fulfill. Stanford, Yale, 80% A's where I work now after George Floyd, and we have a remedial math class. It's a high school math class. And even the students that are admitted can't finish it very well. I gave a talk in Silicon Valley, I'll finish with this. I gave a talk and I thought it was so neat.

It was going to say something shocking. So I said, you know, if Stanford keeps doing this, and they're letting in people without an SAT, and they're only having 8%. You guys are not going to want to hire them because they're going to come out and they don't have any analytical skills. They would know nothing about literature and history. Even their coach, and this guy dryly says,

where in the blank have you been this year? This is the third and fourth year this has happened. We don't want them. We would rather have Georgia Tech or Texas A&M or Vanderbilt because they go there, they learn, they're not pampered. We hire these guys from Stanford and they go right to HR and complain about everything. And then when I heard that, I saw that andresen had said that in an interview. I don't if you saw that where he said, we got to be very careful because we hire these people and they

try to subvert the mission of what we're doing because we're considered white male oppressors. And they're not very, they're not very skilled. They're not very learned. So I don't think the average Yale, Harvard, Stanford student, when they graduate, knows as much as in literature, history, than a Fresno State student 50 years ago. I would be confident about that. I would know that for a fact. And so why do we have to pay, why would anybody go $250,000 in debt, collectively $1.7 trillion? to subsidize that.

So we should get out, the federal government should get out of the loan business. And they should be like car salesmen. When a person comes in, they have a contract and says, you're going to borrow this much money from us. We're going to use our endowment to back your loan.

And here are 50 majors, and here's the average salary on each major. Now, you can choose, but we want to inform you carefully before you take out this huge loan. But we're going to guarantee it, not the government.

and you would see people graduating in four years and you wouldn't see any D.I. Any of that because they'd have to be on the hook financially. So I think that would be very good. Yeah. And the Trump administration, to the point of the counter-revolution is taking steps. It is. So you're now, I think from what I, you've always, I think, been a, maybe you're playing devil's advocate, but it seems to me you're a counter-revolutionary yourself.

I fully support the counter-revolution. Yes, I know you do. Whether it's whoever is doing it, it needs to happen. But yeah, it's I guess always a question about the balance of good and bad. And this book will certainly make the case for the sweep and the scope of the revolution that the counter revolution is. I think you share this thoughts on my daughter, who's 45, and she supports exactly. He just almost said exactly what you just did. She supports almost everything he does, and then she calls me.

Did you hear what Trump said, or she called me the other day, he said, he wants to give $5,000. That is a bribe, dad. How can you, that is a bribe. And then Arsha'll say something like she has a disabled child. So when he did that, accused that thing during the campaign. You know, I don't know what that was about. There's different views. She called me about that.

But there are things about him. He's a tragic hero and he has a methodology that tragic heroes have, whether it's the John Ford Western, John Wayne and the Searchers, or Alan Ladd and Shane or Sophically in play where society is paralyzed. It needs a shock, but it can't condone that type of outsider coming in both with ideas and methods that they didn't have. So the cowboy comes in, he gets rid of the cattle barons or the banditos, but he uses a methodology and a dress and a compartment

that begins to, especially when they feel the thread is easing and he's succeeding, then they say, basically, I can't believe we ever invited Clint Eastwood into this town. And then, you know, he rides off in the sunset and he goes into oblivion. And that's going to happen to Trump. Because I said that in the book, the next, when he's out of office, there will be a picture of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, maybe even Joe Biden, and he will not be. invited. And he will have done more for the country, I think, than all of them. Victor Davis-Hanson, you've been so generous with your time. The book is The Counter-Revolution.

Go buy it now. It's already a bestseller. Thank you again, Victor, for joining the show. Thank you. So you may think you sleep all night, but if your body is fighting to get comfortable, you're going to feel it the next day. That's why sleeping on a ghost bed makes such a huge difference. Making the switch means experiencing cooler sleep, incredible support, and waking up with less soreness. It's about finally resting instead of just closing your eyes. This is what makes GhostBed different. It's engineered to help reduce the actual reasons, the real reasons that sleep gets interrupted. Every mattress is designed to relieve pressure, help regulate temperature,

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Andrew Callahan of Channel 5. Andrew Callahan. addressed the situation, which it's not as big of a deal as it first maybe seemed to some folks on the internet who were looking at what happened. We're going to break it all down because it is somewhat complicating. Callahan himself broke it all down. But from what Callahan himself describes in this clip you're about to see, you can actually take away a lot about Hunter Biden's character, I think. And, you know, we've been covering here relentlessly because nobody else seems to want to. The misleading statements Hunter Biden is giving to people as he has post-Californ. been reintroduced into the podcast circuit with some really sympathetic conversations,

not entirely unduly sympathetic conversations. I think there's good reason to talk to Hunter Biden and have these conversations, but we've covered here that he's getting away with a whole lot of falsehoods about his past, misleading statements about his past and not receiving a lot of pressing on some of that kind of rebranding himself as a sympathetic character who's just taking on the deep state. And it's honestly always been bullshit. But now we can see he's still, you know, the leopard not changing its spots. No surprise, I think to many people.

But basically what happened is he launched a crypto coin. But he tried to get Andrew Callahan's email list in order to blast out information about the crypto coin. So people started coming for Callahan and Channel 5 saying you're anti-crypto, and yet you gave away our private information subscribers emails to Hunter Biden so that he could shield another shill a shit coin like a celebrity shit coin basically isn't that hypocritical isn't that immoral isn't that a really bad thing to do so Callahan gets caught up in all of this and finally he responds the coin was released on September 9th so midweek last week and Callahan responded with this clip eight days ago hunter who has

I've come a friend over the past year. He called me and said, hey, Andrew, I have something really cool I want to tell you about. It's basically a free giveaway. Your fans have given me a lot of support and I want to give back to them. He's like, I want to be the anti-Trump. He says Trump scams his fans. I want to give back to Channel 5 fans because they've given back to me. So I said, sure. I mean, what is it exactly? The specific verbiage he used is all they have to do is click a link and claim the money to pay the rent, to pay their bills, to buy their groceries, whatever. So he asked me, hey, do you mind sending over an email list of some of your supporters so that I can tell them about this free promotion? I'd never been asked for an email list before. Didn't know that I had an email list, but then I realized that on my merch website, if you go and check out, like if you buy a hoodie or like a mystery box and you go to checkout, there's a small box that you can click, which indicates that you want to sign up to receive information about, you know, news, promotions, offers, potential sponsors, et cetera. And this sounded like something that was great.

I mean, free money, who doesn't like that? So I said, okay, Hunter, sounds good. The list that I sent to him had less than 5,000 emails on it. I think it comprised about less than half of a percent of our entire fan base. I woke up two days ago to a bunch of calls from journalists and publicists asking what my connection was to something called the laptop coin. Apparently, Hunter's team, I don't even think it was him, told the Wall Street Journal that I had personally curated a customer list,

essentially of prospective customers for his meme coin. That's not true. I never co-signed any selling of cryptocurrency. By far, the most important part of that clip is when Callahan says this specific verbiage is this. And it's Hunter literally saying all they will have to do is click a link and get free money. What a disgusting thing to do to the person in the world that you owe the most as you are. And I think we have this parachute from Fox News talking about how your family is flat broke. He told Tucker that he's into crypto because he just wants to make money when he talks. to Tucker Carlson, I think it was just several weeks ago.

They are broke, according to Hunter Biden under oath. He testified under oath that his family was broke. It's clearly, as we've covered here, why he launched a substack, why he's been on this podcast tour. And it's clearly now also why he's watching a crypto coin, which is what he told Tucker. But being Hunter Biden, he exploits Andrew Callahan coming up with the story that it's just free money. All everyone anyone has to do is click a link. And honestly, I've talked to Callahan before. We had my breaking points once. He has a heart of gold from what I can tell. And just like he said there in the video, you can call it naive, but he's also just wanting to

believe the best in people. And I think that's actually what makes his channel unique is that he's going to Trump rallies. He's going to all of these different places and trying to believe the best in people, whatever their politics are, whatever their cultural background is. And it's like free money. It sounds good. Now, if Hunter Biden tells you that he has free money to give to your fans to return a favor. That is like getting an email from a Nigerian prince offering you access to a special business opportunity. Hunter Biden's like free money. Why I think it's a little bit smaller of a scandal than some people thought at first is to Callahan's point, this was a few thousand email lists from his online merch shop. So it's it's not like everyone

who watches Channel 5 just got scammed by Hunter Biden. But I think the real scandal is Hunter Biden himself. It's bad enough that he's shilling a celebrity shit coin, which is what this is, despite his protestations to the contrary, but that he tried to exploit the fans of the one guy by putting this guy in a situation that's going to make him look like a jerk that he tried to do that. I think speaks volumes about his character, and it speaks to, first of all, how I think talented he is as a performer on the podcast circuit over the last month. He has really gotten great media training and coaching. Like his ex-feed has been very awkward of the moment.

That gets Gen Z culture shockingly well, understands American political culture and the sort of cratering of institutional trust shockingly well. But it's cynical. As we've been saying all along, it's cynical. And I think this is a really good example of why it was always cynical all along, or it's proof that it was cynical all along. Hunter responded on Friday with this post on his ex-feed. take a look. I want to make one thing clear is that this is my fucking token. I've been working on

this thing for six months straight. He's been in the minds. I was intimately involved in every single discussion, every single step of the way in creating the tokenomics and creating the way in which the coin would be presented. And you know what? At the end of the day, it's my responsibility. And there was a fuck up. The fuck up occurred in the first 30 seconds. Uh, uh, of launching the coin in which the market maker, for some unknown goddamn reason, only put in $5,000 of liquidity. And the demand was through the roof.

And what happened was, is that the coin went up to $2.39 and then it went to $316 a token, $316 billion market cap, larger than the market cap of fucking goddamn BlackRock. And they got it under control, but not before the damage was done. But I just want everybody to know. This isn't some bullshit fucking celebrity token where I get on Twitter and say, oh, I didn't know about this. And, you know, I'm really sorry. This is, I'm, it's my responsibility, but I promise you, we are going to make it right.

It's my responsibility. But here's where the fuck up was that I had nothing to do with. It was on the market makers, of course. He posted on Substack during the launch of the coin. For years, I was a story other people told. They turned a laptop into a weapon, but I decided to turn it into something else. Today I'm launching laptop, a meme coin built around resilience, redemption, and recovery. And I'm giving back to all my loyal supporters. Every subscriber to my substack before September 6 is eligible to receive free tokens. Learn more below.

Cynical, exploitive, the New York Post reported four out of five people who bought into Hunter Biden's new meme coin saw their investments go up in smoke during the cryptocurrencies, see spectacular launch day collapse on Wednesday, even as one mystery trader turned a roughly $250,000 bet into $1.18 million within minutes, the post has learned. An individual trading under a pseudonym spent about $250,000 to acquire 9,100 of Biden's laptop tokens before unloading 840 of them minutes later for about $1.18 million, according to a blockchain analysis by Data Vault AI, that amounted to a gain of roughly 930. thousand dollars before transaction costs. So somebody put 250k into this and then unloaded minutes later

before the collapse. Obviously, obviously, this is another person, this is another part from the New York post article. One buyer who plowed roughly $200,000 into the token near its fleeting peak saw the position dwindled to around 2K as laptop came crashing back down to earth according to data vault's analysis. That's the tragedy in these coins. The data vault CEO told the post the token briefly shot above $300 during Wednesday's chaotic debut before plunging to just a few dollars, wiping out more than 99% of its peak price within hours to come out and say that a laptop coin is worth $300 is, in my opinion, fraudulent, Bradley said. And then he also characterized this as a classic rugpole. That is what these tokens are. We've seen it with Trump. We've

seen it with other celebrity tokens just like it. Why anybody thought Hunter Biden's was going to be different is, I guess, a mystery to me. But you'll notice once again, He did not tell Andrew Callahan, who has been anti-cryptical of crypto, that this was going to be a cryptocurrency. He said it was a link where people could just claim free money. Hunter Biden is the Nigerian prince that we've all familiarized ourselves with over the last 20, 30 years. He said it so vaguely that in retrospect, it's obvious. It was a scam. But if you're somebody who's been a friend to this person and has been kind to this person and has given, I mean, Andrew Callahan is responsible.

without Hunter Biden comeback. Period. To do this, the Callahan is really telling about who Hunter Biden is, whether he's sober or not, as we saw many times, on the actual laptop, we're in the documents that have been released by the government. Apparently, it doesn't matter. He might be somebody who wants to be good, right? There are bad people who want to be good desperately, and there are bad people who couldn't care less, whether they're good people. I think Hunter Biden might be one of the people who can't help himself and is just incorrigible, but wants to be good deep in his heart. His dad might be like that, too.

I don't know. I don't know either of them. But it's really cynical to look at his rhetoric over the last month and see how he was pitching himself as a man of decency and honor. Again, it sounds naive that anybody bought it over the last couple of months or the last six months. since she did Callahan almost a year ago now, if my memory is correct. But there are some people who want to see the best of other people. And I think Callahan's one of those guys.

And his work has proved it, even when it's inconvenient, even when it's about Trump supporters. Whether it's Trump supporters or Hunter Biden, he's always looking for the best in people. And for Hunter to take advantage of that in any way is really despicable behavior, not surprising behavior, but just case in point as to why this entire redemption arc was bullshit and the different inconsistencies he was telling about what was in the laptop, the inconsistencies he's been telling about the laptop itself about what he's believed over the course of his political life. It's really well-delivered bullshit, but it's bullshit. And this is case and point, proof positive of why that is, unfortunately, unfortunately. So to bring Callahan into it,

man, that is cold. That is cold. And Callahan should ask him, uh, actually who that person is. If Hunter knows who the person is who put 250K into laptop and then pulled it in minutes before the fallout. I bet Hunter Biden knows who that is. It might not be Hunter Biden himself. He might be careful enough that it's not him himself. I have no idea how Hunter Biden thinks he's going to make this right for laptop. No idea how he ever thinks. thought it was going to go well for him. But maybe he didn't care. Maybe he just knew that he was going to score a cool mill and could come out and say it was a fuck up. And that helps his family start digging out of the debt. He's testified that it's in. Awful. All right, that's going to do

it for us tonight on After Party. Thanks so much for joining. Appreciate it. Please subscribe. If you have it yet, it helps us so much. Subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Help us keep doing this independent journalism. We will be back with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday. Thanks, Thank you.