The Eric Metaxas Show - Victor Davis Hanson

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Victor Davis Hanson shares his latest book "The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation" and gives Trump a scorecard on his recent acheivements.

Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. Did you ever see the movie The Blobs starring Steve McQueen? The blood-curdling threat of The Blob. Well, way back when, Eric had a small part in that film, but they had to cut his scene because The Blob was supposed to eat him. But he kept spitting him out. Oh, the whole thing was just a disaster. Anyway, here's the guy who's not always that easy to digest.

Eric the Texas! Hey there, folks. Welcome to Thursday, July 10th. Chris Heim's welcome to Thursday, July 10th. Hello. Thank you. It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. I think of it as my day, and I'm welcoming you to my day, which I like to call July 10th, Thursday. All right. We have, it's hard not to get excited, folks, because in a couple of minutes, I'm talking to Victor Davis Hanson. If you don't know who he is, shame on you. No. If you don't know who he is, shame on you. No. If you. You don't know who he is. You're in for a real treat. He is just one of the premier voices of our generation, and it's a big deal every time we get him on this program. We don't do it often, maybe twice a year.

He's kind of a busy guy. He's on Fox News a lot. He's in demand, but he's brilliant. So coming up in a few moments, Victor Davis Hanson, or VDH, as people sometimes describe him, not to be confused with SVDB. That's a numismatic reference. If you've collected pennies, Lincoln pennies, the SVDB is worth a lot of money. So I don't want you to get confused.

We're not talking about SVDB. We're talking about VDH today. So Victor Davis-Hansson coming up in a couple of minutes. In hour two, I'm talking to Ryan Scoog. He's been on the program before. He is really also a very special guest. He has an organization called Lead with Prayer.com. We're going to be talking about prayer, about miracles.

It's always humbling for me when I speak with him. So that's in hour two. But before we get to him an hour two, at the beginning of hour two, we're launching a new segment. Some of you know that yesterday we launched. to segment a supercentennial segment. We're going to be doing that once a week on the program. I do that every day on Instagram, but a longer segment, once a week, supercentennial segment, facts from 250 years ago in American history. Today, we're launching another segment in hour two.

It's based on my book, Everything You Always Want to Know About God, but We're Afraid to Ask. I wrote that book in 2005, and I wrote a sequel called Everything Else, he always wanted to know about God, I'm afraid to ask. And then a third one called Everything You Wanted to Know about God, we're afraid to ask, Jesus edition. It's just fun Q&A on faith questions. And so in hour two, before we get to my guest, we're going to be premiering one of those segments.

Everything I always wanted to know about God, we're afraid to ask. Stay tuned for that in hour two. Victor Davis Hanson in hour one. And then after that, everything about God. I'm talking to Ryan Scoog about prayer and miracles. I want to mention also Socrates in the city, we're doing something new. And actually it launches today. If you go to our YouTube channel, Socrates and City YouTube channel, every Thursday this month,

we are launching something called the question of. So the first one is today. The second one is next Thursday. The third one is the following Thursday. The fourth one is the Thursday after that. Today, if you go there, the question of segment features the question of belief. And our guest is Ross Douthit. You know that he is a columnist for the New York Times.

I like him anyway. And you should know about him. He's brilliant. I've known him since he was very young. He's absolutely brilliant. And in fact, we had, I interviewed him for Socrates in the studio. So if you haven't watched that, I recommend it to you. But today, if you want to see that question of belief, it launches today, again, every Thursday this month.

So go to YouTube, Socrates in the city. Question of Belief launches today with Ross Douthit. next week we have the question of evil with Andrew Claven. The week after that, we have the question of bioethics with William Hurlbutt, a brilliant Stanford bioethicist. And then the final one this month, the final Thursday of this month, is the question of scientism with John West, who is with the Discovery Institute.

So all that stuff is very important. So now before we go to Victor Davis Hansen, the great VDH, I want to remind you of our friends at the Herzog Foundation, are you rethinking your child's educational path? Are you wondering if their current school truly supports your family's values? Well, you should be. And if you are, you're not alone. and the Herzog Foundation is here to help.

We trust the Herzog Foundation. They are the go-to resource. If you're interested in homeschooling, if you're thinking about it, is that possible for us as a family? What does that look like? What could it look like? If you're interested in quality,

quite genuinely Christ-centered K-12 education, if you're interested in a combination, the Herzog Foundation is the place to go, Herzog Foundation.com. They really are there to help you, to help you answer questions, to help you figure this out. And to stay updated on the latest developments in education, you can turn to the Lion. That's their award-winning publication that offers real-time news and insights to keep you informed and empowered.

You can visit readlion.com. That's readlion.com. And there's all kinds of stuff there. So we recommend that highly to you. Okay. So actually, before we get to Victor Davis Hansen, I also want to remind you, if you're not signed up for a newsletter,

there are really two newsletters. One comes out from ericmetaxis.com. And that's, we send it out twice a week, and that's just updates a lot of these interviews that I do, my interview with Victor Davis Hansen. For example, as a video, so you can share it with your friends. That's at our website.

Ericantaxis.com, signed it for the newsletter. There are no ads there. It's free. We just wanted to exist for you as a resource. And also, if you're not signed up for the Socrates and the city email, I recommend that to you. Go to Socrates and city.com. There's just more stuff that we're doing constantly and we can't possibly keep up with it. Okay.

So I think I mentioned that, I did mention that an hour two, we're launching. are Everything About God segment. Stay tuned for that. We'll be doing that every week, 10-minute segment. And I don't know if I mentioned, we also have a new segment. We've done this in the past. I've done this with Albin, but I thought we need to keep going. It's called English as a second language.

No, sorry, English as a first language. That's the joke. If English is your only language, if English is your first language, there's certain things that you're responsible for. so we're going to be launching that. If not this week, we'll be launching it next week when we've got some time. A lot of people out there who use English, you know, they don't use it well. And sometimes it's like, is that your first language?

Is that what you learned? When you said they don't use it well, didn't you mean they don't use it good? I mean, I could have said it that way. They could use it more better, would probably. would be a worse way. I think the correct. It's more betterer. Yes.

Yeah. No, actually, it's funny because I know now I, I almost always hear people. I mean, the reason I wanted to do English as a first language on the program is because I've noticed more and more and more that really wonderful people, educated people, smart people misspeak when they're speaking English, that we've really forgotten as a culture, the importance of communication. And so people, for example, routinely say I, when they should say me.

You know, they say, you know, between you and I, and it's like, no, no, it's between you and me. And so this is not really to be burdensome. This is to help. So it should be fun. It will be fun. I demand that it be fun. Learning should be fun.

But we're going to be launching that. Okay, we're out of time in this segment. So in a couple of moments, folks, stay tuned. The great Victor Davis Hanson. After that, we have a segment, which is everything I always want to know about God, we're afraid to ask. After that, we're talking to our friend Ryan Scoog about prayer and miracles. We'll be right back. Mike Lindell and my pillow employees want to thank you, my listeners, for all your continued support. Mike has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. He didn't stop by creating the best pillow. He created the best bed sheets ever. Yes,

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800-978-3057-80- 800-978-3057 and use promo code Eric. Go to MyPillow.com. Use promo code Eric or call 800-978 3057. Ingredients when I flip a container around and I can't pronounce or recognize the ingredients, I put

it back. That's why you'll find balance of nature's fruits and veggie supplements on a shelf in my home because every single ingredient is a fruit or veggie pluck from the soil, no binders, no additives or artificial colors, no fillers, just whole fruits and veggies, gluten-free and vegan-friendly. These harvested ingredients are freeze-dried into a fine powder using an advanced vacuum-cold process to better preserve nutritional value. I can say with absolute confidence that I'm getting 31 ingredients from fruits and veggies every single day with balance of nature.

Imagine a platter with 31 different fruits and veggies on it every day. Join me in taking Balance of Nature and use my discount code Eric to get 40% off plus free shipping this week only. You've got to use my discount code Eric. Call them at 800 24668-751. Use discount code Eric. I order online at Balance of Nature.com. Use discount code Eric to get 40% off this week only. Folks, welcome back as promised Victor Davis Hanson is my guest.

VDH as we sometimes call. you, welcome back. Thank you for having me, Eric. There's so much to talk about, it's a little bit staggering. I want to talk to you about the paperback release of your book, The End of Everything, really fascinating thesis to which you're more than equal. But we're living in such extraordinary times right now on so many levels. And I think anybody who has any sense of history or anybody who's old enough to have a sense of, you know, what the last five or so decades have been like in America and the world, we know that we're living through something unprecedented. It's exciting, mainly.

I have great hope amidst the great battles. But so much has been happening just in the last days. And I think I have myself been troubled, not shocked, but annoyed by some of the voices that are out there. And I'm often mystified at how quick some people are to turn. against people who've earned their trust, whether it's Donald Trump or Dan Bongino. I'm just astonished that there are people so cynical that they would immediately say, oh, nothing will ever get done. You know, Trump is in the pocket of the blah, blah, blah, or Bongino has.

It's so childish to me. It doesn't mean that we ought not to be skeptical, but it seems that if you have any sense of who these people are, you give them a little grace in the midst of the lunacy, because they're obviously dealing with stuff that has not been dealt with for many decades. And so it's a steep climb. Anyway, just your thoughts on the events of recent days. I think that they were with red flags trying to stop the train and it left the station, and they're not on it, and they're angry about that.

Because if you look at the totality as you implied of what he's done the last month, whether it's the Iranian nuclear problem, are Congo, Rwanda, Pakistan, India, Abrams of Cords, New Chapter, and then the beautiful bill, it's got stuff in it that no one ever imagined. Taxing endowments on universities, taxing remittances, finishing the wall. Actually, it's a little bit hard to hear you. Oh, how's that? That's a little better.

And what you just said, because we've not touched on these things on the program, what you just said, what is in the big beautiful bill? I know that there are many things in it that I hate. I also know that Donald Trump is wise enough to understand this is politics and we have to do what we can do. Elon Musk doesn't seem to understand that. You just mentioned a few things. Taxing endowments, university endowments, I had not heard about that. That sounds like tremendously good news.

It is. And remember that the Senate lowered it to 8 percent and the House wanted 21, but 8 is a lot. And I don't think people understand endowments very well. but 85% of these so-called huge endowments are targeted. They can't be touched. Therefore, a donor says, I want an African Studies program only. And that's 10 million. And so the general fund has to rely on two things,

the income from those endowments that are not already used for other things, and then annual giving. And the annual giving's off about 10 or 15%. The third source of revenue is federal money. and Donald Trump has said, you're not going to gouge us with 50% surcharges on federal grants, energy grants, HHS. So what I'm getting at is they've lost, just take Stanford University's $30 billion endowment, they've lost about $180 million annually from going down to 15% on grants. They're going to lose another $150 or $160 million paying 8% on the endowment income. they're down about 10% on annual giving.

And then the other thing is I don't think people realize these endowments, because they're prestige items, they compete with each other, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and they always go at the top of the market. Oh, we're worth $55 million. But that's not the liquidity price. Kind of like Tesla. When people have to liquidate and get some operating capital for the year,

and that's what they're doing. They're either borrowing money against the endowment, or they are talking about it's not as high as they say it is. So they are in a panic about this big, beautiful bill. And so is Mexico. There's a 2% remittances on the $63 billion. They're panic about the wall. They never thought it would go all the way to the Gulf.

It's going to be finished. So there's things in there that everybody, item by item, had always wanted, but they thought it would be impossible. And what Trump did is he just put it all in there. And a lot of us don't like the idea that it's not deficit reduction. But their theory, and I'm willing to give them an honest grace period because every time a Republican has said he's going to supply cider, we're going to get more revenue, that worked, but they couldn't control spending. So even Reagan had bigger deficits.

George W. Bush had bigger deficit. This time around, he says there's alternate sources of revenue that we have not talked about, and one of them is tariffs. We'll get $300 billion right there. If he can reduce the interest on the national debt, what we're paying for T bills and federal bonds, we're paying $3 billion a day. He wants to go down, you know, get the Fed to get down a point or two eventually, and you'd pay $2 billion. and that would save another $300 billion a year. He's got other things in there like the taxes, the taxes I said on remittances.

He's got things in there about selling, I'm not sure I agree with it, but selling citizenship fast-track to millionaire. So there's all of these speculative ideas for greater revenue. Let's see what happens if they will reduce the $3 trillion over 10 years of the deficit. Well, we've never seen anything. like Donald Trump. To my mind, he is just a gift from God to this country. In many ways, we do not deserve him. His willingness to put everything he has in the service of the nation, he seems to,

you know, and this is the good thing, right, because of his healthy ego, he feels it's in his best interest to kick butt for the United States of America. So it's, there's something joyful about watching him do all of these things. Because you know, know that he really does want to succeed. He does the nation succeed. And he's thought of stuff. It's in some ways amazing that others haven't thought of this before Trump. Why did it take Trump to think of all these kinds of things? You've just mentioned a few of them. Yeah. Because I think whether it was the Abrams Accord or moving the embassy to Jerusalem or taxing and people said you can't do that. Right. You have no idea what those people are like. Right.

You want to get the New York Times, NPR, and you're back. He said, I don't care. Right. I don't. And the thing about it is, I think you could say that he's almost destroyed the sanity of the left. And he did it in three different ways very quickly. They have no power. This is the first time of my lifetime.

They're on 20%, 30% of the issues. They don't control the House. They don't control the Congress. They don't control the Senate. they don't control the White House, they don't control the Supreme Court. All they had were the lower district 400 or so liberal judges, and they're going to be nullified by the Supreme Court. So they have no political power, and they're frustrated.

Now they do smutty videos, they do these crazy filibusters. They pose with baseball bats. They get the shock troops to assassinate, try to assassinate people, bomb Teslas. But they have no power. And then the second thing they're mad about very quickly is, He's not addressing symptoms like he did in the first terms. He said, what caused the border? What caused the green madness?

What caused the trans thing? I don't want to just address those issues. I want to go to the people and the ideas that created them. And I know where they came from. They came from the university. They came through K through 12. They came through the foundations. They came through PBS, NPR, the media.

So he's going after the root causes, and that is setting the left. And then finally, it's working. I mean, my gosh, you can see it. You can see that everybody is coming to their senses and saying, you know, men should not be competing in girls' sports. Oh, my God, we had 12,000 people some days coming across the border. Wow. Wow, Afghanistan was a disaster. So everything he's doing is working.

And everybody who said it wouldn't work left and right. I mean, he had a 25-minute war, and he took out 10 years of nuclear development, and we were told that he was either a warmonger by the left or by the hard right that he was going to cause World War III and 30,000 deaths. It didn't happen. Well, that's the kind of hand-wringing to which I was referring earlier. I'm astonished because you see people's character in how they react to certain things, and people losing their minds. not seeming to understand because they don't seem to be paying any attention to the track record of what Trump has said and done, not understanding that he's just about the last person who's going to drag us into a forever war. Amazing to me that people freak out almost instantly and people that I respect.

It's one thing to say, let's be careful, you know, let's not go backwards. I mean, I understand that, but it does amaze me at how quickly people are able to say, you know, he has no principles and he's, you know, jumping on the neocon bandwagon. It's strikes me as childish. We had the first term, and he said, basically, I'm a Jacksonian. I don't want to get him forever wars, but I'm not going to lose deterrence and have people. There you go. Folks, we'll be right back talking to Victor Davis Hanson. Welcome back talking to Victor Davis Hansen.

And we were just talking about Trump's first term and how he has established himself, at least to my mind, he's established himself as someone who understands all this kind of stuff. But what you just said as we went to the break, he is not going to tell our enemies that, oh, we will never put boots on the ground. He understands that he has to preserve his option to do anything, to go crazy, to double back on everything he said. That has to be there for the sake of threatening our enemies so that they don't say, well, we know Trump will never get into one of those words so we can do anything we like. He has to do that. But people don't seem on our side to give him that. At least there's some people who don't get that.

They don't. And yet in the first term, he says, I'm going to buy. the S.H. out of ISIS. He did. The Wagner group attacked us in Syria. He depliterated him. He got rid of Soleimani. He got rid of Baghdadi. And the result was that for the first time and four, three, two prior administrations and one subsequent, Vladimir Putin did not go into Georgia, Assatia, Donbass, Crimea, or attacked Kiev, like he did later under Biden and earlier under Obama and George Bush. So he had reestablished. There were the Houthis were not a problem at the end of the first term.

Because people thought, as you said, he was unpredictable. He was sort of no better friend, no worse enemy, don't tread on me, Jackson. And that's what he always said he was. But there was a difference about him and prior Republican interventionist before he did anything,

as a businessman, he said this in a cost-to-benefit analyses, what's the downside to American interests, what's the upside? Not world peace, NATO, EU, our interest. And he came to the conclusion on certain occasion. It's in our interest to take out, setback the nuclear facilities,

if we can avoid a forever war. And that's what he did. No sooner had he done that, any other Republican president, when they did that ceremonial performance art attack on our L. Uday base and gutter, everybody would say, oh, my God, we've got to hit them. He just said they had to get out of their system. Nobody was killed. nobody would have ever done that.

Nobody would have said, we want to make Iran great again. That really confused the theocracy. That's the genius. That is the mad genius of Donald Trump to say things like that. When he spoke immediately after the bombing at that 10 p.m. Eastern Time address,

and he said, he said, God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel. I thought, what president would say, God bless the Middle East? He is saying it. I mean, it's brilliant because it is confusing them. It's confusing practically everyone, except people who really seem to understand him. Yeah, it confuses.

And you could see it at the NATO summit. These people are like, wait a minute. There's 23 of the 32 nations that have made 2% already GDP, and we've got 400 billion more of arms. And now the guy is saying 5%, and we're calling him Daddy. We don't like it the way he looks or acts or talks, but no other president has done more for NATO and to rearm it. And he's a businessman, so he thinks that Putin's going to cut a deal. But when Putin didn't cut a deal, he understands he has to have leverage against Putin.

So he's now talking about defensive. He's all over the map, but one thing is clear. He helps those who help themselves. So people in NATO say, we don't like him. We loved Obama. We loved Biden, but they didn't do anything to us. They let us just be slothful. We'll disarm.

And now we've got really strong, muscular members like Finland and Sweden. We're going to be up to 5%. We've got contingency plans if we're attacked. It's all due to this disruptor. So he's kind of the traditional Shane or Magnificent Seven or Cowboy, everybody hates. He rides down out of the hills. He gets rid of the cattle barons.

Everybody is angry at his methods. They can't do it. He solves a problem. And then he rides off and they hate him. And that's pretty much what he is a tragic hero. Kind of a tragic hero. Yeah. Now, listen, we've never seen anything like Donald Trump.

I think it's fair to say we've just never seen anything like him. And we don't deserve him. And he's a great gift to us. And he's not, as we have to say, I guess, he's not without flaws. But my goodness, his ability to do all of these things at once, that is alone astonishing. His being able to focus on, I don't know how many things, I've lost track. I mean, he's everywhere. I mean, his willingness to threaten Harvard and others in their endowment and say,

oh, you want money from us? Oh, you're getting money from us. Are you? Oh, okay. well, here's what we expect you to do. And if you don't do that, you don't get the money. No one has ever had the guts to do that. And I'm astonished, really, that we've had such milk toasts in the White House over the decades,

but that he is willing to go to them and say, if you don't do this, you don't get the money and let them freak out. He's also got people around him are very competent. So when he took on the Ivy League, people advised him. And they've said, it's a nice, shiny piece of granite on a hillside, but you turn it over and underneath it, it's ugly. And if the public finds out what's underneath those universities, they are gouging you at 55% on federal grants. They have segregationist graduations, theme houses, safe spaces, contrary to 2003 Supreme Court. They don't give First Amendment rights at all. They don't honor the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment if a student is accused of even the mention.

of sexual harassment. They are rampantly anti-Semitic. They have 300,000 students from illiberal regimes like China and the Middle East that they price gouge at 10% over tuition premium. And all of that will come out

if you take them on. And they will get angry, but they will cut a deal because they do not want the public to know what they're up to. And that's what's happening right now. We'll be right back talking to Victor Davis Hansen.

Folks, we're talking to Victor Davis Hansen. His new book, The end of everything, an extraordinary thesis, is just out in paperback. I want to have you on our Socrates and the city platform to go in depth on that because you're a great historian. We're talking right now about current events, which seem historic. I'm writing a book, kind of a big book on the American Revolution, and I have to say that we are now living through something that looks like, second American Revolution or even a second civil war. And it is, I keep saying, the third existential crisis of our history, that if we do not win this, we lose everything. This is not some

crisis. This is existential. And it seems to me, you know, even if you're not a believer in such things that God raises up or history raises up people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald Trump for such a time as this because I simply cannot imagine anyone

you know, I think of Churchill, a human being who is so significant, who is the indispensable man. Trump seems to me to be that indispensable man for this existential crisis in our history. Yeah, I think he is. Because, you know, when he picked this cabinet, he basically said, I'm going to wage a social, cultural, economic, military, diplomatic, political revolution, counterrevolution. We're counterrevolutionists. And I want people who are committed on this, where there's not going to be any Rex Tillerson, there's not going to be in John Bolton's. There's not going to be Benmans in this administration. And we're going to wage a counter revolution. Each of you are free to go ahead and do what you have to dismantle the progressive project.

So you got people in energy. All of a sudden, we're told we have a trillion dollars of natural gas and oil. We're going to do all this. And then all of a sudden, people say, we're not going to, in environmental, we're going to cut off $2 billion for Stacey Abrams. We're going to go, we're going to build pipelines again. And we're going to have classical architecture. We're going to take over the Kennedys. We're going to.

I mean, that we're going to take over the Kennedy Center. I just fell out of my chair almost literally that he would do that. that he was going to take over the, pardon me. Yeah. He's on the board. But it is so absolutely extraordinary that when he said, we're going to take over the Kennedy Center, I thought, you've got to be kidding me.

This is the most wonderful news. It's unimaginably wonderful to talk about actually defunding a PBS and NPR and saying we've had enough. I think he knows that, you know, as you said a few minutes ago, you know, the Ivy League, these places are, they are, you know, seminaries of Marxist lunacy, and they have been for many, many decades. I mean, when William F. Buckley wrote his book, God and Man at Yale, that was talking about the Yale of the 40s, that this stuff has been working its way through these institutions,

and now we see it in full bloom. He understands that. And I would hope that institutions like the New York Times, like Harvard and Yale, that they go under, that finally somehow. Yeah. They're losing their cashier. I was talking to some Silicon Valley people near Stamford where I work. And I was naively saying to them just what you did. And they said, where in the blank have you been?

Victor, it's been four years. They have not required the SAT in four years. They do not calibrate comparative GPAs. They admit people on the basis of race. They let in 9% white males for four years. Now they're trying to catch up. So when they come out, we know that these students either had to be given Bs or A's, and I think 70% of all Stanford's and Yale students, to take another example, are A's.

Or they had to have watered down curricula, or they had to have. have new curricula that are, and we know them because we see them and they have no computing skills. They cannot write, but they do go to HR immediately and complain. So if we have a choice, we would prefer Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, Southern Med, this is Vanderbilt to these people. And I think that's happening throughout, you know, Hillsdale used to get about four applicants for one position. And I think they're up to, it's, it's, it's, It's over, it's about 5% now. It's about 20 to 1 to get into Hillsdale is as hard to get into now as brown or

over and are harder. And that's because all of these parents, a lot of them Jewish, to be frank, will send their kids to a place out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the, because they know they're going to be safe. They're know they're going to get a holistic education. They're going to learn a moral code. and they're not going to come home at Thanksgiving with pink hair and say that you're a fascist, as you pay $100,000 a year.

So I think they're in panic. And I think some of the college presidents know what they've been up to and they're going to cut a deal. I think most of them will cut a deal. Well, I mean, listen, it's taken, I'm just fascinated that, you know, it took October 7th for Bill Ackman to wake up. I mean, these people have foolishly been funding. their enemies, the enemies of the nation for many, many decades, and that more and more of them have finally woken up. I mean, the scandal, the Claudine Gay scandal at Harvard, that at the very top of the top, you have a plagiarist. You know, many people won't say anything about it

the way you would or I would, but they're making their notes. And they think, do I want to send my son or daughter into a place where everybody knows that there is no truth? and that there's nothing wrong with lying if you can get away with it. I mean, that's really what the Ivy League has become. So I am hoping that these elite institutions do go under, just as Hollywood, by God's grace, seems to be tanking. Yeah, I think it is. And I think there are people within the university,

a few of them, old-fashioned Democrats that are, they're timid and they're cowardly, but they're watching this and they're hoping Trump win. Because they've been bullied and they understand. I mean, when you look, I had a young student say, I'd like to go to the English PhD program. And I said, you know who is one of the most prominent professors on campus? He helped co-sponsor Antifa on campus. He's been there for about 12 years.

He's never really written a book on his own. He's tweeted about 500,000 times. He's a faculty senate, you know, Gadfly. It's not what you think. I tried to tell this student. It's not 1970. It's not 1980. This is a new university, and these are ideologues, but the thing about it is they're incompetent.

Which university are you talking about specifically? I was talking about Stanford. About Stanford. All right. We're going to go to a break. English department. We've got a short segment left with Victor Davis Hanson. You're not going anywhere.

We're going anywhere. I tell you, chum, it's time to come blow your horn on the sea. We're talking to Victor Davis Hanson about everything. You were just talking about, you know, universities and you said, oh, it's not 1970 anymore. It's not 1980. I mean, I have to say it wasn't even 1970 in 1970. These dark forces have been marching through many, many decades through these institutions. And, you know, when you think about the students who took over Columbia in 1968, you know, took over the president's office, it's only because the president's and the administration had already bought the lie. Imagine how many years ago we're talking about.

This is 55 years ago, they didn't have the courage of their convictions to say to the students, excuse me, get out of here or we're sending you home. This has been going on forever, basically. When I was at Yale in the early 80s, it was there. And I think a lot of people still think, oh, you know, it's like it's 1920 or it's 19. but this stuff has been there and it's just it's taken its time, but it's radicalized several generations of people. And I think it's what finally got us to the moment where enough people at least said,

okay, we get it, we've had enough, we need a revolution. And we're living through a cultural revolution. It's not just political, of course, it's cultural. Yeah, if you talk to employers, they would say, I would tell them they're not learning anything, that if you ask a English major from Harvard or Yale to name, name five plays of Sophocles or maybe five plays of Shakespeare, they don't know them. If you ask a historian to give you a little exegesis on the Civil War, they can't do it.

And then the employer would say, yeah, but I don't really care if they didn't get trained because they have that symbol of Harvard BA or something. But more importantly, they did my work for me. They had the SAT, they had the comparative GPA, so I know the guys were bright. even if they lounged around, I can work with those people and return. Now they say to you, no, they're not that bright. And Stanford, to give one example, a few years ago, the San Jose Mercury ran a story bragging that Stanford had turned down 70% of those who had a perfect,

that's hard to do, a perfect SAT score. And they were, this was when they had the SAT before they interrupted it for four or five years. Imagine a university saying, hey, hey, hey, media, guess what? We turned down 70% of our students who were in the 0.01% of aptitude. Because, yes, because

high intelligence, as we all know, is a patriarchal construct and we're against it. Just less than a minute, but you seem to be sanguine about where we stand in the culture and in the nation right now.

Do you see us in the next year or two being able to do what Trump has set out to do. I do. I think the key will hinge on the economy. And if he's got the $10 trillion at that really is reaffied of foreign investment, if these tax cuts go through, if they can get greater revenue and be hawkish on fiscal discipline, then I think they won't do too badly in the midter. If he loses the midterms, they will impeach him in 24 hours and we'll go through the first impeachment. They'll impeach him again and again. And so he will get derailed or they'll have a, they'll have subpoena power and we'll have Mueller 2.0.

That's what they're about. So we've got to get the economy roaring, and it's doing well now, but it's got to, because historically you're going to lose seats, but they don't have any margin to speak of, five or six seats in the house. So they've got to win the midterms. And they've got to rain in everybody and get them on the same page. And I agree with you. I get tired of people on the right that because Trump's not perfect, he's not good,

compared to the alternative that this is a rare chance in American history, but they've got to be disciplined and united because they're going to come up against some really hardcore leftists in the midterm. And that Democratic Party is vicious and it's mean and it has a base that's crazy as we saw with the reaction to the flash flooding or Tesla ships or ice. These people are crazy and they're dangerous. Yeah, it's a clarifying moment in American history. Victor Davis-Hanson, just wonderful to have your voice today.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Eric.