The Eric Metaxas Show - Victor Davis Hanson: The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation

Episode Date: July 21, 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.

Folks, floodwaters in Texas have devastated entire communities, but we can help. I'm Eric Metaxus. Please join us and our partner at Food for the Poor to send relief kits to families who have lost everything. You can call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 or click on the banner at metaxis talk.com. Mattaxist talk.com. Thank you. Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. It's a nutritious smoothie of creamy, fresh yogurt, vanilla, and a mushy banana for your mind?

Drink it all down. It's numby. I wub, vanilla. Here comes Eric Metaxus. Hey there, folks. This is that time of the week where we do an Ask Mataxis segment. It's a weekly recurring segment to submit questions for Ask Metaxus. Please email info at Eric Metaxus, info at Eric Metaxus, or you can simply reply to one of my newsletters, which you should be getting twice a week.

Okay, so here are the questions. Question number one. Eric, what books about Greek history would you recommend, please? I think I've been asked this question before, and I have the same answer now as I had then. I'm embarrassed to say that I am so myself ignorant of Greek history that I can't think of a book to recommend. If anybody listening would like to recommend a book or two, email us at info at Ericmetaxis.com because I'd probably like to read that book myself. Speaking of Greek history, second question. Eric, I came upon an article about St. Paul's shipwreck not happening in Malta, but on another Greek island.

Okay, I think whoever sent this question and came upon the article that I posted, it's at Ericmetaxis.com. I translated an article which was written, I think, in 1987 on the subject, and I met the author. So the person asking this question says, can we ever really know whether Paul was shipwrecked on Malta or on another Greek island. What I know is that the Malta is not an Italian island, but it was under Roman rule at the time. The snakes on modern-day Malta are not poisonous. That's correct. That's why I'm pretty sure Paul was not shipwrecked on the island today called Malta, even though everybody in Malta claims that he was. I'm almost certain that he was not. And if you want to read it, read the article. It's go to Eric Mattaxas.com. Under my writings, you'll find it there.

but it's pretty clear that he did not, he was not shipwrecked on Malta. Even though a lot of Bibles say Malta, the Greek word is Maliti, and they kind of think, oh, there must be Malta, so they put in Malta. Okay, so I'm still reading this question. It says that the person writing questions says, I'm pretty sure the author of the article was never unlucky enough to be on Malta in one of its winter storms. It has fine weather, but the Siraco wind loves Malta, and I've lived. through a February Saraco storm where you'll think all the windows in the house are going to be

blown away and where temperatures at night dipped even to seven degrees Celsius. I'm not sure how that follows. But anyway, I do not think Paul was shipwrecked on Malta. I think if you had to guess, you'd say, no way. But it's hard, it's hard to say. But I think he was shipwrecked on the Greek island of Keppelonia, which happens to be the island where my father grew up, where my family are from, And that's how I kind of learned about this. So we'll leave it there. All right. Question number three.

Eric, what's your opinion on the Epstein files? What? Really? Haven't I talked about this enough? Okay. Let me sum it up. I think I don't like the job that Pam Bondi has done with this. And I think that President Trump,

he's probably, I think he gets embarrassed when people on his team make him look bad. And so I think he actually, I rarely criticize this president because I love him and respect him so much. But I think it was an unforced error, as I was discussing with Ned Ryan earlier this week, in what the president said at his cabinet meeting. Like, you know, who really cares about the Epstein files? Let's move on. I don't think he realized that he would enrage much of his base by putting it that way. And so we're in a spiritual war. So I think people need to pray for this president because there is so much going on that I consider more important than the Epstein files.

But, you know, to say that nobody cares about this. And I do think Pam Bondi has simply mishandled this. And I think that as President Trump's attorney general, she has. has done him and the American people a disservice. So I'm upset about that. And I hope we get clarity on this because I don't think, I don't think people are content to say, oh, okay, let's move on. It's too confusing at this point to simply say, okay, we're going to move on. But at the same time, I understand the president's desire to focus on all these other huge important things, these big wins. I mean, the fact that the FBI has just opened a criminal case against James Comey

and Brennan, John Brennan, I mean, these are wicked individuals. And the fact that the FBI has opened up a criminal case against them, you can understand how the president would be like, let's focus on that. Let's focus on these other things that are important. But I don't think it's that simple. So I think there was an unforced error. And we'll see what happens. Okay. All right. All right.

So before we get to our guest, I have to tell you, we heard from our friends at Food for the Poor. You know about them. We've had them on the program many, many times. They are doing an emergency relief campaign because of the flooding in central Texas. I don't need to tell you that, I don't know if it was it July 4th or was that weekend that the horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible flooding happened where I don't know, I can't even talk about it. I don't want to talk about it, but so many children were killed horrible. Really, really, really. Just one of those things that just is so challenging for anybody, including people of faith, to understand.

how something like this could happen, but because of the horror of these deaths, we are forgetting that there's collateral damage on top of that. So entire communities have been wiped out, flooded homes, closed businesses, many, many, many people have been displaced. They all need our help. So food for the poor comes to us and says, can you help us? We're on the ground there, working with a partner. Okay. So that's what I'm doing right now. I'm here to tell you my radio listeners that there is a help Texas banner at our website, metaxis talk.com. If you can help, we need your help. Food for the poor doesn't come to us unless this is emergency relief. And they say, please, Eric, go to your office.

audience and help us if you can. So you go to metaxistococococon.com. There's a phone number, but the easiest way is go to metaxistococot.com. You can make a donation to help food for the poor rush emergency relief kits to these folks. These kits contain hygiene items, tarps, women's care kits, liquid IV, diapers, children's activity materials and other essentials needed to ease the crisis facing these flooded out residents. Food for the Poor is working in coordination with a trusted partner in San Antonio. And again, this is in response to the central Texas flooding. They're delivering shipments of the emergency relief supplies to support these folks in these vulnerable communities.

So the crisis is real. The need is urgent. And we're coming to you, my radio listeners, to ask you to help. the website is metaxis talk.com. I think a lot of folks have felt, gosh, I wish I could do something. This is so terrible. Well, that's one of the reasons I agreed to do this, because I know many of you are just looking for what can I do.

This is something you can do, right? So metaxis talk.com at the top of the page, you see Help Texas. That's the banner. You click on there and it'll show you everything. You can also pick up your phone and dial 844-8663-4-6-7-3, 8-4-863-8-6-7-3, 8-4-8-6-3, 8-6-7-3. Or you can text my name Metaxus to 51555-5-5. Again, you can text metaxus to 51555. Metaxus is M-E-T-A-X-A-S, M-E-T-A-X-A-S, to 5-1-5-55-5-5.

Folks, just try to imagine losing everything overnight, your home, your car, your loved ones. That's what's been happening in Floodravage, Texas. As you know, we on this program are partnering with Food for the Portisend Emergency kits to those who need them desperately. Go to metaxis talk.com. Click on the banner. Metaxistalkys talk.com or call 844-8663-4673, 844-8663, or text Metaxus to 51555. Thank you. 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, Mike is offering the best deal on his

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You've got to use my discount code Eric. Call them at 800 2468-751. Use discount code Eric or 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 or 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, and 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%

and the House wanted 21, but eight is a lot. And I don't think people understand endowments very well. 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%, it depends, remittances on the $63 billion. They're in 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 spin. 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 money. the Fed to get down a point or two eventually and you'd pay two billion that would save another 33 300 billion a year he's got other things in there like the taxes that 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 three 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 that he really does want to succeed. He does the, want to see 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 down,

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. You 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 Tesla's, 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. There you go. Folks, we'll be right back talking to Victor Davis Hansen. Hey there, folks. Food for the Poor is Boots on the Ground in Texas right now, getting emergency.

emergency supplies into the hands of families who have been devastated by the deadly flooding. Join me, Eric Metaxus and our partner in supporting this urgent effort. Please call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 or click on the banner at metaxistococot.com. Metaxistococococon.com. Please help. Thank you. 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 SH 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 during the 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 who said this in a cost of 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. To say things like that, when he spoke immediately after the bombing at that 10 p.m.

Eastern Time addressed, 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 are 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 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.

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 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 if 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 a 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. You know, when he picked this cabinet,

He basically said, I'm going to wage a social, cultural, economic, military, diplomatic, political revolution, counter revolutionists. We're counter-revolutionists. 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've 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 build

pipe 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 two billion for stacey abrams we're going to go uh we're going to build pipelines again and we're going to have classical architecture we're going to take over the kennedy's 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. He was on the board. Pardon me? 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 Stamper 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 require 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 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 Medits is Vanderbilt to these people and I think that's happening throughout throughout you know Hillsdale used to get about four applicants for one position and I think they're up to 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 get, 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 their cowardice. but they're watching this and they're hoping Trump win. It's not what you think. I tried to tell this student. It's not 1970. It's not 1980 even. This is a new university, and these are ideologues,

but the thing about it is they're incompetent. 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. You chum, it's time to come blow your home. Folks, just try to imagine losing everything overnight, your home, your car, your loved ones. That's what's been happening in flood ravage, Texas. As you know, we on this program are partnering with Food for the Portisand emergency kits to those who need them desperately. Go to metaxis talk.com. Click on the banner.

Metaxistalk.com or call 844-863-4673. 844-8663-4-6-7-3 or text metaxus to 5-1-55-5-5. Thank you. 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 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 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 of the, they have that symbol of Harvard VA 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 in 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, 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 a 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 reified 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 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, 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 dealerships or ice. These people are crazy and they're dangerous. Yeah, it's a clarifying moment in American history. Victor Davis Hansen, just wonderful to have your voice today. Thank you so much. Thank you, Eric.