The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Joe Biden is no Dwight D. Eisenhower

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

On today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” a Daily Signal original, Hanson critically analyzes Joe Biden's farewell address, pointing out the hypocrisy in Biden's warnings about a new oligarchy. Hanson compares Biden's speech to Dwight D. Eisenhower's historic warning about the military-industrial complex and argues Biden lacks credibility. “But remember Joe Biden is no Dwight Eisenhower. He had credibility. He was a two-term president. He was the hero of what he called the American crusade in Europe, from the beaches of Normandy in June 1944, all the way into the interior of Germany. So, people believed him. Unfortunately, Joe Biden has no such credibility.”  ”I'm not a big fan of Mark Zuckerberg, and he was a hostile opponent of Donald Trump, but whether you like him or not, he revolutionized Facebook. So, these so-called oligarchs, David Sachs, or Peter Thiel, or Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos, they are ‘can-do’ people. And Trump has them around him now. They're making kind of a hajj to Mar-a-Lago, not because he wants to have some consortium and rig the market or punish his enemies, but because they make things. They're very similar to the captains of industry, the ‘dollar-a-day’ men, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt enlisted to win World War II.” The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: https://www.dailysignal.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk. Business. I think all of you may have heard or tuned in to Joe Biden's farewell address, where he warned about a new oligarchy or multi-billionaires that have undue influence. So he's obviously alluding to Donald Trump. It's hypocritical. Joe Biden gave the Medal of Honor to George Soros. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

The word oligarchs is in the news lately. I think all of you may have heard or tuned in to Joe Biden's farewell address where he warned about a new oligarchy or multi-billionaires that have undue influence in the United States. It's kind of strange because it's at the end of his four-year tenure, so he's obviously alluding to Donald Trump. A couple of things to think about when he brings up this topic of oligarchy. He's trying to resonate in his farewell address. Ike, Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech some 64 years earlier, warning about a military industrial complex

that we're going to perpetuate huge government bureaucracies, build platforms of bureaucracy, munitions that we might not need, and he was worried about the stifling of the citizen. But remember, Joe Biden is no Dwight Eisenhower. He had credibility. He was a two-term president. He was the hero of what he called the American Crusade in Europe from the beaches of Normandy in June 1944 all the way into the interior of Germany. So people believed him. Unfortunately, Joe Biden has no such credibility. The second thing is it's hypocritical. Joe Biden gave the Medal of Honor to George Soros.

He's a billionaire, yes, he's an oligarch, but he broke the Bank of England at one point. He was convicted of a felony in France. He was the one that bankrolled all of these destructive, neiless prosecutors here in California, the Giscons, the Budens, Kim Fox, Alvin Bragg. He put people in that believed in critical legal and critical race theory and kind of destroyed the sanctity of jurisprudence. Joe Biden was a beneficiary of $419 million from Mark Zuckerberg in the 2020 election, who absorbed the work of the registrars in key states.

Remember that. He was hand and glove working with Facebook to suppress the news of the authenticity of the Hunter laptop right before the last debate, and just weeks before the 2020 election. So he should not talk about oligarchs. What he's really angry about is that very wealthy, powerful people have flipped from the Democratic Party in some cases to the Trump cause. The third thing to remember is that these are not just oligarchs, I mean, in the sense of very wealthy people,

people who made their fortunes in insurance, investment, hedge funds, those people are very important to the economy. But there's also a different type of billionaire, multi-billionaire, and those are the people who make things. And Elon Musk broke into the Big Three automobile. He saved the whole idea of a... electric vehicles. You can see his SpaceX with that mysterious arm that catches the booster upon recovery. He created Starlink. What I'm doing right now on my farm is using Starlink to get to

you via Elon Musk. He reinvented social media. Whatever people think about Jeff Bezos, one of the people who I think Joe Biden is angry at, he reinvented the way we merchandise. He bought. He back the idea you could stay at home and people could deliver to you. That was discredited in the 1960s and 70s, but he revolutionized the idea that the world market was at your fingertips. I'm not a big fan of Mark Zuckerberg, and he was a hostile opponent of Donald Trump, but whether you like him or not, he revolutionized Facebook. So these so-called oligarchs, David Sachs, or Peter Till, or Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos, They are can-do people.

And Trump has them around him now. They're making kind of a haj to Merlago, not because he wants to have some consortium and rig the market or punish his enemies, but because they make things. They're very similar to the captains of industry, the dollar a day men that Franklin Delano Roosevelt enlisted to win World War II. He didn't like Robert Nukes, William Nudson. William Newtonson was the head of GM and he was a capitalist conservative. He could not stand Henry Ford of Ford Mortar, and he didn't like Henry Kaiser, the shipbuilder.

But he brought all three of them together and he said, we've got to win the war. You people have the ability, I'm going to partner with you to help America survive. And the result was Henry Ford was producing a B-24 bomber per hour at the Willow Run plant in Michigan. Henry Kaiser created the entire fleet in just two years of liberty and freedom ships. And William Newtonson marshaled the automobile industry to make jeeps and trucks. And we exported 400,000 of the Soviet Union. Those were so-called oligarchs. They were also the people that saved us in World War II.

Donald Trump is trying to enlist that talent to save us again. Thank you very much. This has been Victor Davis-Hanson for the day. Daily Signal. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Please subscribe to the Daily Signal for our next episode.