The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson Challenges Tucker Carlson: Show Me Where I Called Hiroshima ‘Glorious’

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Victor Davis Hanson challenges Tucker Carlson to produce evidence that Hanson ever called the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “glorious,” arguing instead that the weapons were a horrific but necessary means of ending the war and avoiding even greater American, Japanese, and Allied casualties. PragerU- Please support PragerU with a tax-deductible donation today. Go to http://PragerU.com/VDH and give generously today. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸The Counterrevolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA MovementThe Daily Signal, the proud producers of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words,” has a special limited time offer:  With a monthly donation $14, you’ll become BOTH a Signal Elite Supporter AND receive a copy of “The Counterrevolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement”Click here to order: https://secured.dailysignal.com/support-daily-signal-today/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=signalelite&utm_content=260824-vdh-book-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take. Tucker says that I was glorifying, or I use the word that the use of these horrible weapons was glorious, rather than necessary to save lives. I challenge him to produce that quote. And if he can't produce that quote, I suggest he apologize. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. About a month ago, I talked about the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I made the argument why the United States did that, use those devastating weapons. not that I was happy about it, of course, but we all were commemorating the date. In reaction to that and to a column I wrote to the same effect, Tucker Carlson recently said that I had called the dropping of the atomic bombs Glorious. I just take a little parentheses here and say, if he can produce the quote where I said,

glorious, I will pay him $1,000. Or better yet, maybe he can have a wager. I will say I never use the word glorious. He says I did. If he wants to back that up with a $1,000 bet, I'll be happy to do it. And I'm not a wealthy person by any means. What I said was that we dropped the bomb for three reasons. And the reasons were not those that the paleo right is alleging or the left.

We did not do it because we wanted to impress the Soviet. They got the bomb four years almost to the week, and they were in the process of assembling the information from espionage when we used the bomb. We knew they were going to get the bomb. Nor did we do it to justify the expense of the Manhattan Project, nor did we do it because we don't like so-called Asian people. We did it because we had just suffered 50,000 casualties on Okinawa, and we did not want to repeat that. on the Japanese mainland where there were up to 20 million militia, impressed civilians, an army, and 7 or 8,000 kamikazis. And if you do the math of the defenders on Okinawa versus the losses of 50,000 dead wounded and missing,

and apply that to Japan, we may have lost, as planners had feared, 1 million. One million. That was why we tried to use the ball. In addition, other people pointed out that the Japanese were killing somewhere between 15,000 and thousand and above Chinese, Asians in general, and Pacific Islanders per day. Of all the armies, militaries in World War II, as far as those who killed the most of the enemies and suffered the less doing it, the fewest, it was Japan. So we did that to save American lives, to save allied Asian lives, and to save Japanese lives.

There would have been two or three million Japanese killed. Another thing to remember is the atomic bombs, contrary to what Tucker Carlson said, were not the most devastating weapons in World War II, nor are they necessarily even today. They have the potential to be, but so does AI, so does enhance. gain of function viruses. There's a lot of ways, unfortunately, that people die through the use of dangerous weapons. The point I'm making is in World War II, the incendiary napalm attacks on the Japanese cities killed far more than the two bombs. And more importantly, with the acquisition of Okinawa and the end of World War II in Europe, Curtis LeMay was trying to shorten the war by

increasing his bomber fleet with new bombers from the American factories, B-29s, and assembling a massive armada of, say, six or seven thousand bombers, both in the Marianas and the much shorter distance from Okinawa, with B-17s and British Lancaster's, as I said. The point is it would have been an inferno, had those two bombs not been used to preclude further death and to shorten the war. I don't know why Tucker Carlson does this. He also said Donald Trump wants his considering using nuclear weapons.

Donald Trump has said one thing continuously. He does not want to, he does not only not want to use nuclear weapons. He wants to have the major powers who own them and possess them agree to downgrade their arsenals. But he's very worried about the Chinese. He's very worried about North Korea. He's very worried about Iran. He's very worried about Russia. He's very worried, as I said earlier, about China.

So it's not so much the possession of a nuclear weapon. We're not worried about Britain and we're not worried about France because these are democratic countries. We're worried about those countries under dictatorships. And Donald Trump is trying to both detour them with a preeminent American arsenal, but also once that preeminence is established to downgrade the use of them by limiting the size of our arsenals. Build up to build down.

If that sounds ironic, it is. Finally, Tucker Carlson has done a lot of strange things since he left Fox News that are out of the ordinary. One of them is this emphasis on World War II. He brought on the podcast or blogger Darrell Cooper, said he was one of the most. renowned writers on World War II. Of course, he's never written a single published article or book. Not that that's necessarily a requisite, but he has said things that were demonstrably untrue that gained the approval of Tucker Carlson. He said that Winston Churchill was the greatest terrorist of World War II. That's not true. Winston Churchill was alone of all the allied powers,

alone from the fall of France in May 1940 to June 22nd when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. There was no other allies. And his country was the only country who went to war on the principle of the integrity of another country. It wasn't attacked. It was in response to the German attack on Poland. It was the only country that fought the first day of the war to the last. And as I said, had Churchill not been able to... withstand all of Nazi Europe and Italy and Japan, there wouldn't have been a chance to save the democracies in World War II.

The idea that you would even say that, that you would defend, as Mr. Cooper does, the Axis powers who all started the war were all fascist autocracies, and you would favor them or try to rationalize them over the conduct. of Great Britain or the United States, the only two consensual systems and the entire war of the major is absolutely insane. In conclusion, I'll just finish. I don't know what has come over, Tucker Carlson. I was on his show a great deal of the time from years, and he made eloquent arguments I didn't always agree with, but they were rational. He was worried about radical Islam. He recently all but has endured endorsed Abu El Saeed over Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate in the Michigan Senate race. He did not remark in an anti-Somatic fashion about Israel. Recently, he had a guest on, and I mentioned that, who essentially said to Tucker, with his nodding approval,

that there was no real purpose or value of algebra. an ancient mathematical contribution that involved Arabs, Persians, Greeks, Jews, Egyptians. And without alphabets, alphabetic use in a mathematical equation, that is denoting variables or uncertainties. And having such formulas, you can't conduct higher math or higher physics, even though the guests said he didn't need it, and Tucker said it, was kind of superfluous, and the guest also said that it was sort of a trick of the Jews on the goyum. All of this is absurd, and it's shocking, but I want to just finish by clearing the record. If Tucker says that I was glorifying, or I use the word that the use of these horrible weapons

was glorious rather than necessary to save lives, I challenge him to produce that quote. And if he can't produce that quote, I suggest he apologize. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. Victor is a close friend of Dennis Prager and has had the privilege of working with his remarkable team at Prager You. Victor has appeared in several five-minute videos reaching millions worldwide. Remarkably, more than 60% of Prager U's audience is under 35, the very generation who most needs our enduring American principles.

At a time when education and media too often erode confidence, In our country, Prager You stands firm in defending truth, reason, and the ideas of Western civilization. We are proud to be part of the Prager You family. Please support Prager You with a tax-deductible donation today. Go to prageru.com slash VDH and give generously today. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like, this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.