The Eric Metaxas Show - #105 - Victor Davis Hanson
Episode Date: April 27, 2026Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with Victor Davis Hanson about the latest attempt on President Trump’s life, the left’s increasingly dangerous rhetoric, the Iran strike, and why Trump k...eeps surviving and winning in ways his enemies cannot explain. Hanson also breaks down the collapse of elite institutions, the panic inside the old political order, the meltdown of anti Trump voices on the right, and why this moment may mark a major turning point in American history. Subscribe for clips from The Eric Metaxas Show to hear politics and culture from a Christian perspective.⭐ PRE-ORDER TODAY:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:📢 Don’t Let the Financial Storm Destroy Your Wealth and Future!https://www.metaxasgoldira.com/⚖️ Legal Help Center - Get Free Legal Help Today: https://www.legalhelpcenter.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/💧 Sentry H2O: https://sentryh2o.com/
Transcript
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Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Eric Metaxe show Monday, April 27, 2006. I'm going to talk very briefly. I'm going to weave a story of talking to Fonzie, the Greek parade on Fifth Avenue yesterday, presidential assassination attempt number 76. There's a lot to talk about. In a moment, here's the big news. In a moment, we get to process everything that's happening.
happening in the country with the great Victor Davis Hanson. I am so honored to have him as my guest
for this hour. So stick around in just a moment. We'll have a conversation with him. I really
always look forward to hearing what he has to say, whether he's on this show or not. But I'm thrilled
that he's on the show. But just to go over what's been happening lately, I'm doing so many
things that I am getting confused, actually. Sometimes I have to look at a piece of paper to remember
my last name is Metaxus, first name Eric, who are my parents, where do I live? What do I do
next? It's been a crazy time. Just last week, I was in Dallas. We did the show from Dallas.
I was there for TPSA event. I just missed Erica Kirk and met so many first. I met so many
friends so that was amazing but i have been dying with allergies just not able to think with all the
chaos the the good chaos in my life really being foggy and extremely tired um and so i get off the
plane the other day and who's sitting there this is laguardia and it's just a guy sitting there eating
food just eating food there some guy gray hair but you know here's a
the problem. It's Henry Winkler. It's the Fonz. There's not a chance that I'm just walking past
the Fonz. It's just not going to happen. It's never going to happen. It was not destined to happen
that I would walk past the Fonz. So Chris Himes, are you, you, can I, can I, can I,
Hi, hello. I told you this. This is very cool. I mean, there are a lot of, there are a lot of cool
things that can happen in life and there aren't many of them cooler than meeting the Fonz.
listen, I've had so many celebrity encounters in my life.
I should write a book, actually, because there are so many.
And many of them have just weird.
They were just weird stories, usually embarrassing to me, but I don't care anymore.
But I often see celebrities and nobody else sees them.
Like, I just have a six cents.
It's like a bad stuff.
It's like a gay dar, but for straight men.
and I just, you know, from the back of a head, 40 yards away, you know, it's, look, ladies and gentlemen, it's keen and when.
And everybody's like, who's keen and win? Or something like that. It happens over and over to me.
But I get off the plane, and again, I'm fogged up with my allergies. I'm tired. And I, and Fonzie is just sitting there just like, you know, a normal guy just eating some food at the airport.
So, you know, I wheel up to him and I said, excuse me, I said, you know, you're not, I hope you
understand, you know, you can't just be sitting here and not expect idiots like me to come up
to you and say hello. That's just not going to happen. That's not going to happen. So we just
exchanged a few words. But what I really want to say is how this is the second time. This is the second
time that I have met him or seen him. And he is wonderfully friendly. And I just think as somebody
who sometimes meets people who think of me as a celebrity because they read a book of mine
or something like that, it really is an amazing thing when you meet somebody who is genuinely
happy to see you. And so that kind of informs when people come up to me to me to
book line or something like that and they're saying how much my book meant to them, I can't help but
think of the times that I have met celebrities and have been rebuffed or treated sort of not well
and how that makes you feel. So to meet the Fonz and to have him be so kind, he's just a sweet
dear soul. And you know, that's pretty hard to fake. He's a dear soul. But I didn't get a selfie
with him. I was so fogged up and I thought, oh, I just can't do it. But I should have. I should have gotten a
selfie with the Fons. And there's so many stories I could talk about. But I was thinking, Chris,
that I have interviewed Ron Howard. I've interviewed Richie Cunningham. And I've interviewed
Marion Ross, Mrs. C, Mrs. Cunningham. I've interviewed her, but I've never interviewed
the Fons. So maybe we need to put that on our bucket list. We've got to interview the Fons.
Not to tube my own horn, but I was in an educational video. As a college student with Donnie Most.
Donnie Most, who played potsy.
Poxy. No, no, no, that's Anson Williams.
Ralph.
Ralph. Mouth. Ralph Mouth.
Yeah.
How could we forget? Because we just did.
We did.
Ralph Malf and Potsi.
Well, anyway, it's just the whole thing is so funny.
But, you know, I just want to say the way that he handled it, he didn't, there was just not a hint of, I'm annoyed, leave me alone.
Just really sweet human being.
Anyway, I just had to say that.
I don't know what it means.
It doesn't mean anything or does it.
You know what else is cool?
Yeah.
Not getting shot dead when you're the president.
You know, that's pretty cool.
I was going to say this, there's, when something like this happens, there's no other news.
And so everybody wants to talk about this.
But, yeah, so, you know, Suzanne picked me up at LaGuardia.
We drove up to Connecticut.
You know, I'm up there with my mom.
Any chance we get.
And on Saturday night, I want to say this on the air.
Usually when I'm up in Connecticut, we try to go to Greca,
which is a Greek restaurant in New Milford run by my old friend, Dino Colizas.
If you're ever in the New Milford area, go to Greca.
Dino is there 90% of the time.
I've known him since I was nine years old.
He's just one of my dearest, oldest friends.
We grew up in the Greek community together.
We were all the boys together.
I love him.
And so going up to Connecticut and seeing my mom,
I'm able to sort of stay in touch with, you know, the old friends.
And Saturday night, Suzanne and I went to see
Chris and Stacey Neufatidis.
They had us over.
And it's just a joy to see old friends.
And I think it's also a way, and some of you will understand this,
of remembering my dad.
It's like my dad is there because these people knew my dad.
And it means so much to me.
I, you know, I've never been through anything like this before.
losing somebody like my dad.
And it just,
it's such a meaningful thing to have friends who loved him and remembered him or whatever.
So we were with Kristen Stacey, Nefertides, in their house.
And we kind of thought, you know what, we just, after this,
we're just going to go, you know, to be with my mom and to turn on the TV to see
the White House Correspondents Association to see the dinner.
Because it's going to be crazy because Trump's going to be there.
And we turn on the TV just in time.
to see, you know, the Chiron saying strange noises were reported.
This is before they knew it was gunshots, like right at that moment.
And then, of course, we sat there and we took it all in.
And we will be talking about this with Victor Davis Hansen, the details of it,
of what is going on in the country.
So I don't want to give you my take, because you'll,
get my take along with Victor. But I guess I want to say a couple things real quick. This coming
weekend, we're going to Palm Beach for a birthday party. It's kind of a big deal. And I think it's in
Marilago. But the real reason I'm going down, actually, no, that's the real reason I'm going down.
But the other thing, I realized if I'm down there, I'm going to be visiting with our friend Dennis
Prager. And so I'll be reporting on that next week. What a privilege I haven't seen.
him since the accident. So I'm looking forward to seeing Dennis very much. I love that man so much.
And I'm just looking forward to that. I also want to say two other things before we go to
Victor Davis Hanson and talk about the president's, the scene, the situation. Yesterday, I'm here in
New York, and every year in New York City, they have the Greek parade, the Greek-American
Independence Parade, usually in April. March 25th marks Greek independence. It's a big day,
and so sometime they have the parades down Fifth Avenue. And I was in that parade in 1969
at age, how old was I?
I guess I was five.
And I was wearing the Greek solias uniform,
the Evzone, it's the traditional uniform
from the 1820s.
You can see pictures of that.
But at age five, and I was sitting like some astronaut
in the back of a convertible, like sitting there,
and I'll, you know, I just never forget at age five,
being in this parade.
But yesterday, I went for running Central Park and coming back from the run,
I'm in the middle of this parade, and they're all the Greeks and all over the game.
And I tell you, I got so choked up.
There's something really beautiful, I will say it, about the Greek community.
And I feel all my life to have been privileged to be part of that community.
And just obviously thinking about my dad and thinking of all that stuff.
But it was just so beautiful.
it meant so much to me.
I'll talk about that another time.
Before we go, huge news.
The two-hour marathon record was broken
for the first time in history.
That's like the four-minute mile.
Insane.
I think we're going to get Malachi O'Brien,
my dear friend, to talk about that.
In any case, that's big news.
When we come back, Victor Davis-Hanson.
Hey, the folks, before we go,
if Medicare has you confused,
Our friends at Chapter have the answers.
We recommend that you contact them.
We trust them.
You can go to askchapter.org slash metaxus.
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Hey there, folks. A long, long time ago, I think I was probably wearing a different jacket and tie or something like that. I told you that we would have as our guest today, Victor Davis Hansen. Well, it's still today. And here he is, Victor Davis Hansen. Welcome back. Great to see you. Thank you for having me, Rick.
Well, it's been a slow news week, hasn't it? What do we even talk about? The president has only been, had his life threatened once. Maybe we should talk about that.
Yeah. Well, I mean, this is the third assassination attempt where shots were fired in less than two years. So I would expect he's got two years plus on his tenure. We're going to see three more of these. And I give that pessimistic assessment, Eric, because I think the propensity of these people to come out of the woodwork is directly proportional to the rhetoric from the left. And I'd say that without prejudice, just simply I read the math.
manifesto, and I read what Ruth had said. I read what, or the description of cooks. And they're
influenced by this elite opinion. And the manifesto really was a petri dish of all the left-wing
talking points. Donald Trump was a pedophile false. Donald Trump was a rapist. Donald Trump was a
traitor, et cetera. And when you have the kind of the Nick Fuentes of the left,
with this Hassan Piker in the days before this assassination,
not just saying to the gushing New York Times and gushing New Yorker
interviewers that it was okay to steal, especially from the Louvre or etc.
This is a multimillionaire talking, by the way.
And then he said that Luigi Mangione had engaged in social murder.
That was Engel's description of enemies of the people who were arbitrarily tariff.
and then shot for their crimes against the proletariat.
And then he said something, I had went back and I noticed that in an interview with Taylor Lorenz,
he said, I'll just say it.
And everybody knows what I mean.
And that was a reference to killing.
Everybody wants it, but nobody wants to say it.
And that was a reference to shooting Trump.
Then you had Jimmy Kimmel right before the shooting, making a joke about Melania being.
a widow. And I could go on and I wrote an article today about all the different ways that people
in Hollywood, the popular culture, Politico have talked about killing Trump, beating him up,
hitting him in the face, Nancy Pelosi, Newsom, De Niro, stabbing him, blowing, putting him on a fire,
torturing him, et cetera, and it's just incredible. James Carville is perhaps, and this is a, it's a tight race,
he's perhaps the most unhinged.
He didn't want Trump simply to die.
He wants to see him suffer.
And I thought we used to live in an America where those thoughts, if anyone had them,
must be unspoken.
Nobody would dare to say such things.
So the climate has changed dramatically.
And I think Trump in his beautiful press conference immediately following the
attempt the other night, he said it. It is because he's getting stuff done. If you have a GOP leader like
George W. Bush or anyone who's pretty much playing patty cake with evil, they're not going to take it on
directly. It's much less likely that the left would target you in this way. But when you're actually
getting things done, when you actually have the temerity to go to war with the Marxist, leftist
lunatics, they can't bear that. They don't know what to do, and so they have to go after you. And of course,
let's face it, they have run out of talking points. They have run out of argument. They are
very frustrated to see him winning, to see him succeeding to the extent that he is. They don't
know where to turn. They're not interested in the truth or in logic. They just want to win.
The latter point's very important you made. It's not that he just took them on, but he's winning.
I got a book coming out in September called The Counter Revolution,
the Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.
I was just, it's just amazing what the world was like before Trump came
and what it's like just less than two years later.
I mean, we were told there were certain immutable, untouchable topics that had already been resolved.
One was the transgender as a third sex.
Biological men were institutionalized in women.
sports. Iran, you might go into Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria, but no one, no one would ever get near
Iran. That was the 93 million person, terrible, unhinged, dangerous place, and they would destroy you.
You just don't, you don't tangle with Iran, we were told, through seven presidencies. And then,
of course, we were told that we had reached peak oil, drill baby drill was, yeah. Forgive me, Victor
for cutting you off. This is a very short segment. We'll be right back to continue this in other sentences
with Victor Davis Hansen. Folks, just a reminder, when you support our sponsors, you help support
this show. We appreciate it. We are very proud to have, as our sponsors, the folks at Genesis Gold,
if you want to contact them, please go to metaxisgoldira.com. Any questions? They're there. We trust them.
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Welcome back. I'm talking to Victor Davis-Hansson.
Victor, you were just laying out all of these,
I guess, the accepted beliefs of the left or whatever that, you know,
and please keep going.
Well, one was also diversity, equity, inclusion.
We were told that that was a done deal.
And he kind of blow that up with help from the Supreme Court.
So what I'm getting at is what your point was that not only did people not think that he would be so ambitious and in stage of full-fledged military, political, social, economic, cultural evolution, but that in the space of two months, two years with hostile media coverage and being outspent in the 24 campaign and not having the resources of the left financially,
he's winning and that has brought out this rhetoric that we thought was over with during the first
administration when Madonna and Moby and people like that said they wanted to blow him up
but it's now back again in a more frenzied fashion we see it expressed with the ice
cacking ice officers burning the Tesla dealerships the violence and the no king's marches
So they really do believe that they can't stop this agenda.
And the first time they tried to stop it was during the Biden administration, the counter-revolution.
So they thought they were going to get a new constituency by letting in 12 million illegals.
Now we have 53 million people that were not born in the United States, an all-time high.
And then he kept at it.
They thought they could put him in jail.
They could raid his house.
They could deballot him.
Then he came back and he went right at it.
He wasn't even phased and he's winning.
And now they feel that maybe the Iran war, if they can convince us that we're losing
and that Iran is all powerful and indomitable.
That's not going to work, but that's their narrative.
It's crazy it is.
And now with the assassination, they're already saying, as they did before,
that it was staged, it was rigged.
I think Mia Farrell said that today.
It wasn't a real assassination.
It was just a distraction from the Epstein files or something.
So it's pretty amazing that at his age, 78, he's indestructible.
He's a Nietzschean figure that they feel the more they try to destroy him, the stronger they get.
Or he's like the cartoon character Roadrunner, and they're Wiley-Ey Coyote.
They think they're very clever, but they can't catch him.
And that's because he's authentic.
He doesn't change his accent before audiences.
He's not afraid to say things that offend people.
He's just predictably Trump for good or evil.
And that gets even more frustrating.
They think, well, you know, he doesn't have the credentials.
He doesn't have the education.
He doesn't have the consorts that the right people in Washington and New York.
The Europeans hate him.
He's an embarrassment to us when we go to Europe.
And he uses that to his advantage.
And it's hilarious. It's just absolutely hilarious to watch. I've never been so entertained. I never thought I could be so entertained. And he has really changed forever what we expect in political leaders. I mean, I remember being alive at a time when I was mildly excited about the idea of Jeb Bush. And I think to myself, what has happened? Trump has just exploded our expectations.
of what it is possible to do in politics in America.
He has achieved things that I think most of us,
I think most of us who are conservative,
who love America, had ceased even hoping,
you know, that we could do something crazy like,
oh, rename the Department of Defense Department of War,
all those ships have sailed and we're in a new day.
Trump really is, he's a utterly revolutionary figure in many ways.
Yes, he is.
And when you look at those press conferences,
we were, I'm a little older than you or a lot older,
but we were brought up that the front row was going to be CBS, ABC, NBC,
and these were sober and judicious people.
Now you see bloggers, you see podcast,
you see a whole diversity of America in there,
and they're much more intelligent.
And when the network news or the legacy media or NPR or PBS
asked their predictably stupid questions,
he says that's a stupid question.
He's not impressed by their credentials at all.
If you went to this Columbia School of Journalism and you act like a fool, everybody knows it.
And what's happened is because he's waging this counter-revolution and he's winning that the unearned prestige of places like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Columbia School of Journal.
They've all been diminished.
And I don't think they're going to come back.
I really don't.
Well, listen, I sincerely hope that they've been diminished unto death.
We're just at a point where I think most Americans see that Harvard and Yale and the New York Times and all of these institutions, they've been operating on fumes.
They've got nothing left.
We'll be right back.
Longer segment with Victor Davis Hanson.
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you deserve. Welcome back, folks. We're talking to Victor Davis Hansen. And the political landscape,
Victor, it really is just, it's an astonishing thing. I think that, you know, you have to look at least
back to 1968. The violence, the left is angry, very angry, and they don't know what to do. And so
they are hoping many of them that people like this, uh, people, um, like this, uh,
Cole, Alan, whatever his name was, that there are going to be people out there willing to
throw their lives away. And I have to say, just on a personal note, it is astonishing to me that
people are willing to throw their lives away. We have to wonder what this 31-year-old,
who's obviously brilliant, what do he hope to accomplish? What did he think the best outcome
could have been? I think he was nursed on the left-wing internet rhetoric and what he saw on
television and he he wagered, I think correctly, by the way, Eric, that he would be enshrined in the
pantheon of leftist heroes and he would rise out of obscurity. He was kind of a prolonged
adolescent who started out very impressively at Caltech and he ended up kind of a part-time teacher
for an SAT coaching company. So he was going nowhere. He was living at home. And then he thought,
you know, he looked at Luigi Mangione who murdered Brian Tauchin.
Thompson cowardly shooting him in the back, a child of the middle class who had risen up on talent, shot him, and then he became a folk hero.
And this crazy Hassan Piker was just praising him to the skies for murdering someone.
And so I think Cole Thomas Allen said to himself, well, nobody knows my talent.
They don't know how impressive I am.
But if I go through the security barrier with my Caltech expertise and shoot the president and take out the cabinet, my name is going to be enshrined.
And it's not going to be negative.
It's going to be positive.
I put an end to Donald Trump's curse.
And you can see that in the manifesto when he started to, he finishes this harangue, this incoherent, a screed.
And at the end, he has to tweak the Secret Service.
He said, ah, you know, I came in there.
I just walked through.
It was just pathetic.
I didn't get any opposition.
And I got all the way, you know, I never thought it would be so easy.
And this was 10 minutes before he was going to kill Trump.
So I think he thought rightly so that he would be famous.
And sure enough, I went on social media and there were people already posting that they thought this was great or that Donald Trump had staged it or.
He came close.
And when you have Jimmy Kimmel right before the evening doing his own version of the White House correspondent's dinner where he's playing Trump and he says, Malania looks like she's a widow, you can see that a mind like that of this coal, Alan, he would say, well, look, these people are already talking about and making fun and joking about what I take very seriously.
So when I pull it off, I may be on late night TV in 10 years.
And I think he's correct.
They feel that what they're doing with the violence in the street and these assassination
attempts and the fascist, fascist, fascist, that it has an effect.
It unites the party.
It pulls down Trump's polls.
You look at Tim Walts.
She goes over to a socialist, communist, international Congress at a time of war speaks
to this anti-Trump.
audience, and for the sixth, six times I counted it, five times before you there, but on a sixth
time he said that Donald Trump and our effort in Iran at a time when soldiers are risking their
life is fascism, fascism. Well, if Donald Trump, and you know, I remember the New Republic
cover with Donald Trump with Hitler with a Hitler mustache. If he's Hitler and he's fascist and you
kill the fascists, then you save another 70 million people from World War II like destruction.
so you're a hero.
And that's how they think.
And it's not just them.
It's Hiking Jeffries came out.
I don't know if you saw him right after.
And he said, we've got to lower the temple.
And I said to myself,
Hikam, if that's true,
why did you pose with a baseball bat
when you were trying to oppose the big,
beautiful bill?
You came on with a bat over your shoulder.
Or you guys put out fighting,
fighting congressional Democrats,
a video of various representatives,
It's kickboxing and punching the screen as if they were hitting Trump.
And then you could have at least said to Hillary Clinton, Tim Waltz, Joe Biden, Jasmine Crockett, Kamala Harris.
Please don't call with Trump the president of the United States a fascist anymore because you all have done it.
But they know what they're doing.
Obama came out and said, we don't know what the motive was.
And the motive was, if you couldn't be clearer, it had already been published.
Can you imagine?
I mean, I think we have to pause for a moment of Schadenfreude to think what does Obama think of what has happened to his legacy.
I mean, it really is astonishing how he was worshipped, practically, lionized.
And the whole thing is in tatters.
I mean, it must be humiliating for him to see what is happening.
I like that term you use the whole thing.
I mean, that captures the spectrum from that horribly germanying.
German-like flack tower a monument he made to himself in his library in Chicago.
It comes from the fact that every three or four months, he either takes his private jet from Martha's Vineyard or the Hawaii Beach Mansion or the Coloradoama Mansion.
And he flies into some group, sometimes young black men and sometimes Democrats.
And he lectures them how they have to be more committed and they don't know what they're good for and don't be full.
by the right, then he flies out back to his mansion.
And yeah, he's really diminished.
I mean, every aspect of him as a popular folk hero is nobody listens to him anymore.
Even on the left, they don't.
And he's always wrong and he says things that are disingenuous.
Well, he's almost too moderate for the new left.
I mean, the left that he's created basically has, you know, turned him into a figure like a
Clinton or somebody.
It's like, no, we want something more radical.
we want somebody slavering and febrile, you know, just to, and so that's where you get.
Yeah.
I've never seen the left literally sputtering.
Nancy Pelosi, James Carville, and others, they are sputtering with rage at their inability
to gain any kind of purchase.
You can just see how they, they're, they're smart enough to know that they're losing.
and that they don't, you know, apart from something catastrophic like the murder of the president, they don't see a way out of this.
I mean, it's got to be grim.
Yeah, I talked to some on the left.
And their biggest fear, they don't say that explicitly, but the biggest fear is that deep down inside, they do agree that Iran is completely demolished militarily and soon economically.
and that there will either be, we'll either walk away after doing such damage and let the people in the months ahead, you know, adjudicate their own future in Iran, or we will just issue demands and they won't meet them and then we'll take out what needs to be taken out.
But either way, it will be seen not now, not in two months, but in six months, it'll be seen effective.
And the oil will flow. It'll probably be lower than when the war started.
and they're starting to think we had him.
We really had him.
We got Tucker and all the people on the right to defact the big influencers.
And now he's in a Vietnam like Maras, even though there's only been 13 killed.
It's like 50,000 killed in Vietnam.
And then they're starting to think, well, wait a minute.
Iran is it isn't like the Obama deal.
Obama was dealing with a very strong Iran and made him stronger by sending them money
and get him sanctuously.
These people are completely wiped out.
Their apparatus demolished,
and they're starting to worry that this roadrunner is going to.
Once again, he's going to find a way to end the war,
maybe in a month, and then another month,
the economy, the oil,
and then he's got another four months to the midterm.
And who knows what will happen in Cuba might be some kind of deal.
And people in Europe and in the United States,
will say, wow, the whole map has changed.
Russia and China are diminished.
They have no toehold in the Western Hemisphere.
Panama Canal will be free of Chinese.
And Iran is now not so formidable.
It might be flipped and be an asset rather than a liability to the world.
And nobody would do this.
So that's what they're terrified, that that can happen.
And I think there's a good chance it can.
Well, it's an upending of just about everything.
I mean, I don't, you know, I cannot say that in my happiest prognostications, I was thinking of Cuba flipping or Venezuela, Maduro being thrown out, or NATO being properly humiliated and diminished, on and on and on, it goes.
And it's hard in some ways, we're going to go to a break, but I just want to say it's hard in some ways to make sense of this apart from what George,
Washington would have called Providence because this level of winning, this level of success,
even though it's all the right stuff, even though, you know, the good stuff should win,
it often doesn't. And so I think that's part of what the frustration is on the left.
They just cannot believe, as you say, that over and over and over again, he escapes and he escapes
and he keeps winning. We'll be right back talking to Victor Davis-Hanson.
Hey there, folks. If you want to support this show and you want to support an American patriot named Mike Lindell, I strongly recommend you go to Mypillow.com. Just buy some sheets or some towels. The towels are amazing. Everything's amazing. Mypillow.com, MyStore.com, MyStore.com. Discount code, Eric.
Welcome back talking to Victor Davis Hansen about the news of the day.
And the news of the day, Victor, you know, the main thing is another attempt was made on Trump's life.
The fact that the only sad thing for me is that he didn't get to give his speech.
I can only imagine what that speech was.
He said it was rough.
I'm sure it would have been brilliant.
His comic timing is brilliant.
And it would have been fun.
know if within the month he's got he may get a chance i mean given the way you know nora o'donnell
treated him uh yesterday he may get a chance to give that speech i'm hopeful yeah it's it's
when you mention providence and you mentioned in connection with it all of his accomplishments
i believe in providence but i believe that he had to earn all of these things so he had to
defeat five civil and criminal court fiascos. He had to survive being deballeted. He had to
survive the Mar-Lago raid. He had to survive two impeachments. He had to survive Russian collusion,
laptop disinformation, two, three assassination attempts. And so it's not like, you know, he was
just a normal politician. He went through an ordeal that was almost surreal or superhuman.
that no president has been that tormented.
He reminded me a job of, you know, the Old Testament of Job.
You reminded you of Job in the Old Testament?
I've never heard him compared to Job before.
That's better be careful.
We're going to get attacked for comparing him to a biblical prophet.
Well, when I say Providence, part of providential dispensation in a sense is the creation of this figure,
this indefatigable genius figure named Donald Trump.
He didn't create himself, but he has been faithful, and he goes on and on and on.
He has the ability, the personality.
It is an astonishing, glorious thing to watch.
And I do think that the left simply has never reckoned on anyone who has the fighting spirit
and the smarts, the two of them.
It's just beautiful just to watch.
Everybody who wants to take him on and destroy.
him gets destroyed by them, you know, when they go on one-on-one, even people in our party who felt
that they were the genuine voice or the mega movement thought that they were going to, you know,
like, they were good friends of all of us. I knew them very well and liked them, but when Candice
Owens thought she could take on Trump or Tucker thought that she could take on Trump, even Megan
Kelly, who I like him, but that doesn't work unless you can be dispassive.
and logical, but there's something about him that creates such passions, especially when people think, well, I call him up all the time, or I'm intimate with him, or I go to Marlago, I have a special line to him, but no one has a special line to him. He's just, he, he's every man. He's everywhere, but I think a lot of the problem on our right where people thought, well, if I call a president up, given my statue with him, and I say, don't go to Iran. He won't go to Iran.
But he doesn't work that way.
And it was misjudging him that he was always a Jacksonian, a deterrent guy.
He wasn't a neo-isolationist ever.
He said that about Iran 50 years ago.
He took out Soleimani, Baghdadi, he bombed ISIS into oblivion, he took out Maduro.
He took out the Wagner group.
It was never, well, I'm going to retreat the fortress America and let the threats, you know, come to us.
He was always...
Well, they wanted to define him.
They wanted to define MAGA.
and obviously they failed, but also the way they have self-immolated, they have just disgraced themselves.
I mean, the anti-Semitism and the Israel and all that was just, I didn't believe. I could not believe it.
Well, it's strangely telling that they would go there. I mean, I have to say it's bizarre. And it's heartbreaking to watch.
It is. They've marginalized themselves in a way that's, it's breathtaking. And to see them in their desperation viciously go after Trump.
Yes, I know.
Tucker, Candice Owens, join Marjorie Taylor Green, Alex Jones, invisiously going after Trump, whom they had previously been for.
It's bizarre.
It is.
It is.
And Marjorie Taylor Green said that the first assassination attempt and Butler was staged.
You know, she said it didn't, it wasn't real.
And, you know, I can't believe the Tucker that I knew.
I mean, 70% of his podcast.
are devoted to Jews and Israel, 70%.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot of, if you want to talk about occupation,
you could talk about Turkish occupation of Cyprus,
or if you want to talk about violence of a people,
you could talk about Russia wiping out Grozny in the Third Chechnya and War
or things like that or what's happening to Christians in Africa.
But it's the selectivity and the focus on just one little tiny country
that supersedes all of the other similar.
allegations. That's the tell, I think. I think it is. We're going to go to another break,
a short segment coming up, but I was very honored that Tucker on his podcast, somebody referred to me
and he said, Eric is deeply troubled. I was very gratified that he thought me deeply troubled. We'll be
right back. Hi, everyone. If you were injured in an accident, listen up. We have legal professionals
standing by to answer your questions. You can find out if you have a case and how much it's potentially
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tell everyone watching who should call right now. Well, Gina, if you or someone you know were injured
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We're talking to Victor Davis Hansen.
We're talking about many things.
Victor, thanks for coming on.
It is, it's been astonishing to watch the meltdown of
you know, these people we thought were MAGA or who thought that they would determine what MAGA was and then dare to accuse President Trump of not being MAGA, of betraying MAGA. And it really is fascinating to see how they're losing whatever it was that they had. They are just, they're going down the drain in the same way that the left is, that they're. I don't understand the right in the sense of this. I understand them, but I don't understand this aspect.
that their whole lives or the recent lives,
they have been conservative advocates.
So they look at the spectrum of what Trump has done.
Do you like the border?
Check.
Do you like the deportations?
Check.
Do you like the falling in the crime rate?
Check.
You like his attitude on DEI?
Check.
Do you like what he's done on the transgender issue?
Check.
Do you like what he does with NATO?
Check.
Do you like what he did to ISIS?
Check.
And then do you like this two-month war where it's tragic we lost 13, but in the annals of military history, it's astonishing.
And they say no.
So then you say, you've got 10 checks and one no, but the one-no invalidates everything else for you.
Because for you, it's all or nothing.
It has to be, he has to agree with your particular position on every single issue, even though he agrees with it 90% of the time.
You know, it's like Liz Cheney, she had a voting record of 92% for Donald Trump.
And then she had this idea that January 6 was a full-fledged Civil War insurrection.
And that canceled everything out.
And then she dug down on that one issue and she absolutely destroyed her future.
She was a third-ranking Republican.
And they are doing the same thing over this one particular issue, which begs the question.
Was it the one particular issue per se?
or it was a test of their feedays with Trump.
In other words, I have become so powerful
and I've become so influential
and I'm on Air Force One
that when I say something to him,
I expect him to follow what I say.
Yeah.
And then when he doesn't one time,
well, then that, that, he betrayed me.
This is, and I think that's a lot of it.
I think that's a lot of it.
We just got a couple of minutes left.
I want to ask you, do you,
Do you have hope that the truth will come out about the 2020 election that the figures Comey,
Clapper, Brennan, and on and on, that they will be brought to justice, that most Americans
will get to know what it was that we've been facing these years? Do you have a sense that that is
that these things are being moved along? Yeah. When I was doing research for this book,
I looked at a lot of polls. The image of January 6th,
has radically changed. Most Americans do not call it an insurrection. They call it a demonstration
that got violent like a lot of demonstrations. But the disclosures that Christopher Ray didn't tell us that
there were 245 FBI people who were deployed there, maybe post facto, that there were a lot of
26 informants there. All of that, and Nancy Pelosi on tape saying that she should have called the
Capitol Guard, didn't. So that Russian collusion laptop disinformation, those are all settled issues now,
trying to deballad him. Everybody knows the Supreme Court threw that out. But your second part of
the question, will John Brennan pay for lying twice under oath to Congress and being an engineer
of collusion? Will James Clapper, who lied under oath and said, I gave the least untruthal answer to
the court will he pay or will James Comey 245 times saying he can't remember under? No, I don't
think any of them are going to come to justice. You don't? I don't. I think partly because the DOJ
at the second level and third levels are pretty much left-wing prosecutors and more importantly,
these crimes took place in the Acela Corridor, the Washington to New York Nexus, and those juries
are all 80, 85% left wing.
And I just don't, unless they can find a way.
But there is that case in southern Florida, is there not?
Yes, there is.
That I have hope for.
I do.
And I think in some of the district courts around the country,
about a third of the time they hit a conservative,
or not, doesn't even have to be conservative,
just a disinterested judge.
And sometimes these cases go Trump's way,
but generally that institutional administrative state takes care of its own, especially between Washington and New York.
Yeah.
It's a herculean task.
If Trump wanted to get rid of the administrative state, he would have to drop everything and have mass firings.
And he's already done a lot of it.
The federal government's the smallest that's ever been in, what, 30 years, 40 years?
Yeah.
So.
I'm very sorry.
we're out of time. It's always wonderful to get time with you. Victor Davis-Hanson, thanks so much.
Thank you, Eric.
