24 posts from Sunday, May 31, 2026

Welcome back America. It's always a pleasure to have America's wise man on the program Victor Davis Hanson It's a good friend Hoover Institution senior fellow has got a great podcast as well Thanks for coming Victor. So let me ask you this question Thank you. If you can put your self in the shoes of the Iranian regime How do you think they're looking at this right now? Well, we don't know because this is a very unusual war. We have no ground troops no embedded reporters We don't know the extent of damage, but it seems to me that they have been economically devastated 90% of their military is inert, but they have enough Missiles they think and the Gulf states are so vulnerable they think that and the Straits of Hormuz are so frat that that traffic is a fragile entity that they can cause havoc and then delay the process maybe hope for a global recession and drag it out until the midterms They also are playing a very strange game. They're giving signals that the people talking to us the quote-unquote elected leaders That they are at odds with the Revolutionary Guard and we don't know because we've eliminated so many people if that's true but you get the sneaking suspicion that they are the good cops and The Revolutionary Guard and the theocrats that every once in a while try to take out a carrier or hit the Kuwaitis or somebody they're the bad cops, but they actually work in unison and Then the negotiators say to us well, we can't control these people. We're sorry We don't know what they're doing in the Gulf laying mines and everything But don't don't ruin the negotiations and then that gives each of them credibility I guess against their competition for power, but at some point we have to to stop it and There's a lot of ways to stop it Mark because militarily it's not a problem It's a political problem and it involves the world economy and the midterms and everything but we could I think that the president can find a way to kind of square that circle if he he tells him informally there's going to be a deadline to this nonsense and You're not you're going to regret it and we're going to do enough damage to your economy and your military that It's going to take you a quarter century to recover and we're going to leave a residual force That's going to keep that straight open along with the Allies And then I think he can say that to them because we can't continue to do this because they interpret survival with victory I know that sounds Orwellian, but they do Every day that they're still there. They say see we took on the superpower of Civilizational history and we're still here and they couldn't stop us and they give no context that all of our restraint is itself imposed on us It's humanitarian. It's political, but it's not military and We don't have to use you know great weapons. We can defeat them from the air as we were doing But we've lost about almost two months time in these negotiations And they they interpret that as and they look at magnanimity on our part as weakness to be exploited Mark Not as magnanimity or kindness to be reciprocated That's just the way they do and you can't believe anything they say because they don't believe it's a lie They think it's a strategic advantage not to tell the truth, so it's difficult to negotiate with them Let me ask you this question Victor In some ways every war is different. We understand that But in World War two we required victory We required that the Japanese surrender we acquired victory wanted it over once and for all it was the same thing with Germany Italy was destroyed and so forth and so on Obviously tremendous amounts of damage to the civilian population to industry To communities just a massive throughout Europe and so forth and so on in this case there's a lot of pressure and a lot of people I hear saying that we can't have a Victory per se we've got to figure out how to contain them. We've got to come up with an agreement. That's enforceable and So from your perspective as a historian, I'm curious what you think It's possible in the short term. I'm sure but it is a possible in the midterm and the long term to contain them We have to take a break as soon as we come back. That's my question to you. We'll be right back Welcome back America Victor Davis Hanson. So does a victory against Iran look different than victory say Against Germany, Japan, Italy and so forth. Yeah, it does a little bit because in the post-war era We're in the era of nuclear weapons so there's always a restraint that you can't escalate with enough damage to humiliate the enemy and Ensure that he'll never never again make war against you and change the government as we did to a certain extent in Korea But certainly in World War two and then we're a therapeutic culture So, you know in an age of global communications you miss a target and there's a CNN reporter right there saying you're a war criminal Or you're you with the International Criminal Court might indict you if you miss it artillery strike target So there's all sorts of self-imposed restraints, but that said human nature doesn't change mark And you you you turn military victory into strategic resolution By making it impossible for the enemy to continue the war you can do that by changing the government You can do that by destroying their economy and making them but it's all it's more periodic rather than final in the sense Everything is periodic. You never really ever defeat some you try to win them over to our cause I think that's what the president is doing He's he's saying that we're going to hurt their economy to a certain extent that they won't be able to make war even if we don't have to be there with this full force and we're going to try to destroy their military capability for 10 years and then we're going to set in motion enough chaos That they won't be able to fund Hezbollah Hamas the Houthis are rebuild this Maybe a half a trillion dollar loss of 50 years in their military industrial nuclear complex We're going to make that very difficult Politically for them so if they start using all of their new money if the blockade ever and they start investing in the the same old same old the people are going to rise up and you know, it's not a Crazy thought the Berlin Wall fell and it was two years before the Soviet Union collapse in weeks But often months for the rest of the Warsaw Pact to collapse so I think the president thinks he's setting in motion the humiliation of this regime and making them have a lose-lose choice to either rebuild and use when it's over rebuild and Then a or if they do they're going to alienate the people even further. So there's ways to get around these self-imposed restraints Yeah, my only problem with some of that is never when they don't have a nuclear weapon So we don't have to fear that from them. Thanks to what the president has done and number two They're already pushing the Hezbollah to continue doing what Hezbollah is doing and number three The Houthis have been completely untouched and number four communist China and other bad actors out there I suspect they're gonna want to help Iran especially when President Trump leaves and if they see a weak Democrat as president Perhaps like an Obama or Biden. I think they're gonna make their run for for the finish line or to do more in terms of very negative activity to us and to the Middle East and plus their ideology is They think from Allah your last word Yeah, well, that's a problem And we've had four general four administrations and they invaded the Russians invaded Ukraine and three of them are their neighbors and they'll say sure With Bush Obama and Biden but not during Trump So if he can reestablish deterrence at least for two years I think he can quiet the Chinese are not in a good position vis-a-vis where they were two years ago Russia is not they've lost their toll or their clients and Venezuela and Syria and now Iran China's hurting we're ascendant, but we just have to manage that a little better I think and Wrap this up if we wrap this up then the further problems will won't escalate and we saw that with the bombing last June And we saw it with Venezuela. We saw it with Panama that creates momentum, but if we get stalled in negotiations and The the people come out of the woodwork and try to take advantage but not a strong a strong show in Iran That will be really determined beautifully said my friend Victor Davis Hanson. Thank you, and I can speak for the country God bless you and stay well stay well. Thank you mark much appreciated and goodbye

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

You know, President Trump takes a lot of heat. They claim he's doing these horrendous things. Horrendous things to government, to the culture, horrendous things to the Constitution. All lies. I tell you this from a historical and legal perspective. In fact, it is they, his opposition, the abuse of power, the Department of Justice, the prosecutors, the indictments, the different jurisdictions, the abuse of the 14th Amendment to keep them off the ballot and over and over and on and on. Two unconstitutional impeachments, already plotting another impeachment, already plotting to destroy the independence of the Supreme Court and the judiciary, to stack the Senate, to stack the House of Representatives, and God knows what else they have in store for us. How dare they point a finger at him or any of us, what it is they who are tyrannical and have a totalitarian mindset. And look what they're doing in New York City, destroying it, absolutely destroying it. And in fact, the blue states are depopulating. People are trying to get out of there if they can get new jobs. Many people, they feel they can't leave. They have a generational attachment. But the only states that are actually growing, and I don't mean with illegal aliens, I mean with American citizens and naturalized citizens, are red states. Are red states. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason why the Democrats want to take over the whole country. So there's no escape. No matter what state you go to, the iron fist of centralized big government will be thrown at you. President Trump has a very small, small majority in the House and the Senate, and he's trying to get things done as fast as he can because he knows that there's a midterm election. We pray that we win, but we don't know. And he knows he has less than three years left in his presidency, and he's a doer, and he wants to get things done, and he's reaching into the culture, not just politics, to try and reform and protect and defend this nation. And people say, "Look at this. He knocked off a senator from Louisiana. He knocked off a senator from Texas. He knocked off this crazy congressman from Kentucky. Who does that?" A little bit of history. FDR tried to do that. The great FDR, according to the Democrats, greater than George Washington, greater than Abraham Lincoln combined. Nobody liked FDR. Why? Because he was a big socialist. That's why. But that for another day. Our friends at TeachingAmericanHistory.org, frustrated by the setbacks that his administration encountered in its second term, President Franklin Roosevelt took the bold step of intervening in the 1938 Democratic primaries. His targets were conservative Democrats, mostly Southerners, who had joined Republicans in opposing New Deal measures. In races across the country, he stumped from liberal candidates and denounced conservative incumbents as traitors to the cause of his reform. He explained his efforts in a speech, a fireside speech, that he gave on June 24, 1938. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but let me give you a taste of it. He said, "After the election of 1936, I was told, and Congress was told by an increasing number of politically and worldly-wise people, that I should coast along and join easy presidency for four years and not take the Democratic platform too seriously. They told me that the people were getting weary of reform through political effort and would no longer oppose that small minority which, in spite of its own disastrous leadership in 1929, is always eager to resume its control over the government of the United States. Never in our lifetime has such a concerted campaign of defeatism been thrown at the heads of the President and the Senators and Congressmen as in the case of this 75th Congress." He had gotten a lot of his new deal through, once he threatened the Supreme Court and many of the senior members started retiring, replaced with his appointees, but he was now being blocked by several of the more moderate Senators, Democrats in Congress, who said, "We understand why you're trying to address the Depression, but we're not all in for this socialist stuff." He says, "Never before have so many copperheads." That's a copperhead. During the Civil War, these were Northern Democrats who sided with, not the South, but with bringing the Civil War to a quick conclusion. They opposed war. They were anti-war. They opposed the warmongers who were trying to win the Civil War, and they turned on Lincoln, and they wanted to negotiate peace with the confederacy. See, we've been through a lot of these things before, whether it's World War II, the Civil War, and now the war with Iran. We've had the so-called anti-war types who don't want victory, and so you don't get victory. He complains about them. He says, "This Congress has ended on the side of the people. My faith in the American people and their faith in themselves have been justified, and I congratulate the Congress and the leadership thereof, and I congratulate the American people on their own staying power." So he slaps them around and then pats them on the head. He does this in a lot of his speeches. He goes on, "Following out this line of thought, I want to say a few words about the coming political primaries." Here we get to the gist of it. "Fifty years ago, party nominations were generally made in conventions, a system typified in the public imagination by a little group in smoke-filled room who made out the party states. The direct primary was invented to make the nominating process a more democratic one, to give the party voters themselves a chance to pick their party candidates." He goes on, "An election cannot give the country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and names as peas in the same pod." In other words, the UNI party. The radicals always talk about the UNI party, whether they're the Woke Right, REICH, the Islamists or the Marxists, or Jess Kooks. "In the coming primaries, all parties, there will be many clashes between two schools of thought, generally classified as liberal and conservative. Roughly speaking, the liberal school of thought recognizes the new conditions throughout the world and they call for new remedies." And of course, the conservatives, Jess, the old school, you know, big business, big government, all the Bernie Sanders claptrap. But he says later, "With the head of the Democrat party charged with the responsibility of carrying out the definitely liberal declaration of principles set forth in the 1936 Democratic platform, I feel that I have every right to speak in those few instances where there may be a clear-cut issue between candidates for a democratic nomination involving these principles or involving a clear misuse of my own name." So he goes out and he campaigns to actually help pick candidates to take on these more conservative candidates. He's wildly popular, FDR won a landslide, but in every case where he tried to knock off a more conservative or moderate Democrat, his candidate lost except one in New York. Every other case, FDR's candidate lost. And it set back his administration. The party was angry. If he had won, they wouldn't be so angry, but he lost. Every one but won. He lost Walter George, a senator in Georgia, George won. Miller Tidings in Maryland won. FDR lost. Ellison Smith in South Carolina won. FDR lost. But he won this chairman of the House Rules Committee in New York, John O'Connor. He defeated him, but that's it. He didn't defeat anybody else. I want you to compare that to Donald Trump. Again, you got a couple vote majority in the House and you got guys like Massey who represent one small congressional district who are trying to undermine the president's landslide victory. One congressman, maybe two or three, because the majority is so tight. So they're trying to take his mandate and destroy it. And the president knows, President Trump, I got to get my agenda through. And I have a few of these senators who do the same thing. I got one senator who actually voted a removal from office in the second impeachment when I already was a private citizen. And he expects me to be supporting him in a Republican primary. What Donald Trump has done is what FDR tried to do, but failed. Not only that in Donald Trump's case, it's not only Louisiana, it's not only state senators in Indiana. It's not only Massey in Kentucky. It's not only the Senate race in Georgia with this Raffensperger. It's not only Cornyn in Texas, but before that, the president got involved in all these primaries in his first term. I don't think he's lost one. Maybe it's one or two, but whatever it is, it's inconsequential. So for those people who say, you know, Donald Trump's lost a step. You know, MAGA's divided. You know, MAGA's tiny, tiny thing that just represents Mark Levin. These are fools and buffoons. MAGA is as strong as ever. In fact, the Republican Party is MAGA. And MAGA is Donald Trump's movement. And we've got the general election. Everything will be put to the test come November. But those are the facts.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.