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Speaker 1: This is Armstrong and Getty extra large. It's always a
Speaker 1: pleasure to welcome Victor Davis Hanson to the Armstrong and
Speaker 1: Getty Show. Mr Hanson is a Senior Fellow in Residence
Speaker 1: in Classics and Military History the Hoover Institution at Stanford,
Speaker 1: among many other credentials. He has a new book out
Speaker 1: called The Case for Trump, and he joins us now,
Speaker 1: Mr Hanson, how are you, sir? Very good? Thank you
Speaker 1: for or do you insist on being called doctor? I
Speaker 1: don't recall no. Victor is actually also part of five
Speaker 1: generations of farmers in Central Valley of California. Ins um
Speaker 1: so listen question number one Immigration obviously a hot, hot
Speaker 1: topic right now you have to vote in the Senate. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you followed it, you followed it. If you don't,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like explaining it to the good folks.
Speaker 1: But given how demogogued this issue is all the time,
Speaker 1: does it make a guy like you crazy? Because there
Speaker 1: are really interesting and worthy of discussion angles to this
Speaker 1: and they never seem to get discussed. Yeah. But um,
Speaker 1: I'm looking out my window right now here on my
Speaker 1: farm int and my complaint is that when I go
Speaker 1: to work at Stanford and when I'm here in the
Speaker 1: Central Valley, it kind of reflects the problem with the
Speaker 1: whole issue, and that is people who set the policy
Speaker 1: and virtue signal are out their outrage that separation at
Speaker 1: the border or border enforcement. They never really experienced the
Speaker 1: consequences of their own ideology. And by that I mean
Speaker 1: twenty miles to the south of me in December, Mr
Speaker 1: Garcia killed three people, injured, seventh, even deported twice seven
Speaker 1: seven families up towards the northern part of the valley,
Speaker 1: and Martin officers Sing was killed by Mr Ariag or
Speaker 1: whatever his name was, twice supported We just had this
Speaker 1: Brandy Larson in San Jose, same thing. And I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm getting at is that this never registers to
Speaker 1: Jerry Brown and kind of comfortable retirement and Grass Valley
Speaker 1: or Nancy Pelosi up Panama. I'm not trying to demagogue it.
Speaker 1: I just think that the people who don't directly experience
Speaker 1: illegal immigration, or they feel that they have experienced only
Speaker 1: the benefits chief labor, they don't really understand what it's like.
Speaker 1: But we had to shootout the two gay most of
Speaker 1: whom were here illegally from Mexican Central America about six
Speaker 1: weeks ago on our road. And when you hear that,
Speaker 1: and you get a text in the Preside County jailer
Speaker 1: that they've let these guys out just after three hours,
Speaker 1: even though they arrested two of them and then let
Speaker 1: them out, it's it's a real thing. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what that's what the issue breaks down to. Those
Speaker 1: people who have been hit, hit and the drivers run
Speaker 1: are people whose children have been encountered a gang member
Speaker 1: versus the rest of people have no direct experience with it,
Speaker 1: and then they have the luxury to sort of pontificate
Speaker 1: their outrage. And everybody who's worried about it. As a historian,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on countries that get where we've
Speaker 1: gotten where we're just growing to accept a multi lingual society.
Speaker 1: I mean, presidential candidates didn't used to put out ads
Speaker 1: in two different languages, and now it's just, you know,
Speaker 1: commonly accepted that sort of thing. Have we just decided, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be multicultural. Well, two different cultures, do different wages, etcetera. Well,
Speaker 1: we've had bouts with this, the German the asp for
Speaker 1: in eighteen forties or the Irish need in the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: but they've always been one time, and they haven't been
Speaker 1: across a physical border of the United States that came
Speaker 1: by sea. So my worrior, I'm glad you asked that question,
Speaker 1: because whether it's the Ottoman Empire, or whether it's Late
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, or whether it's Austria Hungary, or whether it's Rwanda. Today,
Speaker 1: there's no experience at any success in a multi racial,
Speaker 1: multi lingual society unless there's a massive assimilation, integration, inter marriage,
Speaker 1: single culture efforts. And when there's not, you can understand
Speaker 1: what happens. Everything balkanizes people go identify with their tribal identities,
Speaker 1: and you get something where we're going to and then
Speaker 1: it's manipulated by politicians who always pose as the protector
Speaker 1: of this protective victimized group or marginalized group. But called
Speaker 1: the United States is we have too many victims and
Speaker 1: not enough victimizers. So we end up with Jesse Small,
Speaker 1: Josie Smollett and the Covington kids and all that. We're
Speaker 1: desperate to find victims status for each group, and now
Speaker 1: they're in competition with each other, so it's hard to
Speaker 1: adjudicate when we're gonna have all these candidates are going
Speaker 1: to be for reparations. But as soon as we go
Speaker 1: down that road Asian Americans versus Latino Americans, versus Native
Speaker 1: American versus cads versus females, there's not enough white male
Speaker 1: oppressors to make the necessary compensations for all of these groups.
Speaker 1: And then people can say, well, I just came you know,
Speaker 1: I came from Finland ten years going to even great,
Speaker 1: what do I have to do with the history of America?
Speaker 1: And then you have the other question, if it's so bad,
Speaker 1: why is half of Mexico and Central America. When I
Speaker 1: get into this supposedly racist Anglo Saxon Protestant tradition um
Speaker 1: chess pool. And we have more refugees. We have more refugees,
Speaker 1: but we also have more legal and illegal evants coming
Speaker 1: in every year than any other country. And almost all
Speaker 1: the countries combined, take India out of the picture, and
Speaker 1: it's all the countries combined in the world don't accept
Speaker 1: as many immigrants as we do. And yet we're told
Speaker 1: that that's not enough. It's never enough. Victor Davis Hansen
Speaker 1: is on theline. What is the cure for the Balkanization
Speaker 1: that you fear is coming. Is it a message of unity,
Speaker 1: a rededication of the idea of assimilation? What do you
Speaker 1: suggest that I think you have to close the border,
Speaker 1: secure it. Let in about five hundred, four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: legal immigrants. Make sure they're diverse from Africa, Asia and Europe.
Speaker 1: Make sure they have amacratic basis, they have some skills,
Speaker 1: make sure that they come only legally, and make sure
Speaker 1: they come in measured numbers so they can be assimilated.
Speaker 1: The host has to have confidence in its own traditions.
Speaker 1: We're in a schizophrenic situation right now in this society
Speaker 1: where we tear down statues of Columbo US or Father Sarah,
Speaker 1: and we do all these things, and we judge all
Speaker 1: these supposed horrible people that came to North America on
Speaker 1: the standards of the President. We never asked ourselves, well,
Speaker 1: if they were so bad, how did this country become
Speaker 1: so good that you and your parents at you're Acasio
Speaker 1: Cortez or elan Olmark, Why did you want to come here?
Speaker 1: Because they the traditions of the founders are uh, the
Speaker 1: industrialists or the scientists, or what we did in World
Speaker 1: War One on World War Two, all of that is
Speaker 1: baked in or bound up or embedded with what the
Speaker 1: United States is today. And yet you you say it's
Speaker 1: a garbage country or it's almost worse than nothing, And
Speaker 1: yet you want to be here, and you don't want
Speaker 1: to be with your traditions that your championed in the
Speaker 1: abstract tourist where that's Puerto Rico or Somalia or parts
Speaker 1: of Asia. What if that, if that alternate tradition is
Speaker 1: so much better than the western salivation, why aren't people
Speaker 1: flocking to join it? And the answer is they know
Speaker 1: it's not They want to be here, but they feel
Speaker 1: that there's careers advantages in this time and space for
Speaker 1: trashy the very hosts that accepted their parents. Victor Davis
Speaker 1: Hansen has a book out called The Case for Trump.
Speaker 1: You know what you laid out there in terms of
Speaker 1: an immigration policy polls really well, like really well, with
Speaker 1: everybody that it's too bad we don't have the politics too,
Speaker 1: you know, reflect that you could get that past. The
Speaker 1: idea of that number based on meritocracy spread to a
Speaker 1: bunch of different places. I mean that that's all popular stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't think you could get it though, because for
Speaker 1: all the talk about Republican obstructionism, they would go for it.
Speaker 1: Republicans were, but the Democrats in the last twenty years
Speaker 1: have flipped California with illegal immigrants, sometimes becoming naturalized to
Speaker 1: the amnesty, sometimes with their children. They flipped. They flipped
Speaker 1: California and Nevada, probably Colorado and New Mexico, maybe yours
Speaker 1: on next. And they feel that it's a very successful
Speaker 1: electoral formula in some sing swing states when you get
Speaker 1: sev sev the Latino vote, and then you cater to that.
Speaker 1: And when you when you mentioned that maybe Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: was pretty reactionary, she was reactionary at the time when
Speaker 1: the Latino population was not a factor in electoral politics.
Speaker 1: Now it is. They've made the necessary adjustment, so they'll
Speaker 1: never let it happen. It has to be done despite
Speaker 1: them all over their objection, because they do want a
Speaker 1: new constituency to vote for an agenda that they were
Speaker 1: afraid maybe the people had rejected. Americans do not want
Speaker 1: this two thousand and twenty trajectory of reparations, New Green
Speaker 1: Deal permissible and fantaside uh SEV, wealth tax, uh income tax,
Speaker 1: a wealth tax, Medicare for all, cancelation student We could
Speaker 1: go on. But it's more than just socialism. It's a
Speaker 1: holistic effort of quality mandated a quality result. And I
Speaker 1: don't think most people would vote for it, and so
Speaker 1: they know that, and so they're trying to get braining
Speaker 1: as many people in the next twenty years so that
Speaker 1: type of agenda will be palatable. And they can't change
Speaker 1: people's minds. They want to change the electorate. You know.
Speaker 1: I in a couple of minutes, we have left with
Speaker 1: Victor Davis Hansen, your book is the case for Trump.
Speaker 1: We know you're you're thinking man, You're a scholar, you're
Speaker 1: a history in the Peloponnesian War book. I haven't read
Speaker 1: this one. Well, good Braggart anyway, Um, you're a thinking man.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is a rather colorful character. He The two
Speaker 1: of you don't occupy the same space in my head.
Speaker 1: And yet you've written a book called The Case for Trump. Briefly,
Speaker 1: what's the book about. Well, it's trying to be it's
Speaker 1: not a raw ro. Trump is a saint. It's not,
Speaker 1: of course that he's the center. I just tried to
Speaker 1: be analytical. I said, how did somebody with no experience
Speaker 1: political military defeat six seen pretty good candidates in the primaries.
Speaker 1: He had this weird add on to the traditional message.
Speaker 1: Not just tax cuts, judge constructions, judges, not just smaller government.
Speaker 1: But China is not fated to take over the world,
Speaker 1: and we can stop it. The interior of America is
Speaker 1: not written off as a the industrialized, opiate place. You
Speaker 1: can save it with smart trade policy. The border doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be open. We don't have to always go
Speaker 1: on optional interventions abroad where we don't translate tactical battle
Speaker 1: success into strategic advantage. And that when it was geared
Speaker 1: toward these eleven or twelve swing states got him elected,
Speaker 1: and then it wasn't just Trump and the general election.
Speaker 1: It was never illry for a lot of people as well.
Speaker 1: Once he got in, people said he'll either be a
Speaker 1: liberal or he will be incompetent. He was neither, and
Speaker 1: there was an I talked in the book about the
Speaker 1: unprecedented effort of the deep state opposition to sue under
Speaker 1: the moments clause the twenty fifth Amendment impeachment Muller try
Speaker 1: to warp the electoral College voting, this constant effort to
Speaker 1: aboard his presidency, and why they hate him so much,
Speaker 1: both his message and his background, his demeanor and crafts
Speaker 1: and callous a lot, and then finding what's the prognosis
Speaker 1: for both Trump and two thousand and twenty and Trump
Speaker 1: is him after he's gone. So I tried to be analytical,
Speaker 1: and I know that the publisher wanted an edgy title.
Speaker 1: My title was a Case for Trump or Trump Examined,
Speaker 1: but they thought, well, you know what, that's not going
Speaker 1: to get people motivated to buy it. And they were
Speaker 1: very they were very progressive. My editors at Basic Books,
Speaker 1: and their attitude was, write something that's dispassionate and analytical.
Speaker 1: Let me see if I would ever consider voting for him.
Speaker 1: That was a hard challenge. But then they prostituted themselves
Speaker 1: by insisting on the definite articles. Yeah, exactly. Come up
Speaker 1: to me and they'll say, I read the book. It
Speaker 1: was really fair. It wasn't uh, you know some of
Speaker 1: these books that are out that he's the greatest things
Speaker 1: in slidespread Why did you call it the Case for Trump?
Speaker 1: And I said, I didn't make the title, but I'm happy.
Speaker 1: I was on a plane yesterday and a guy looked
Speaker 1: over at me and he said, did you write this book?
Speaker 1: And I said, what book? And he opened up this
Speaker 1: computer and you brought it out and he said, this
Speaker 1: is like a maga hat. I wouldn't there be seen
Speaker 1: on this plane meeting that with a cover? Wow, that
Speaker 1: was pretty strange, beautiful Victor Davis Hansen. The new book
Speaker 1: is The Case for Trump? Sounds really really interesting. It's
Speaker 1: always a pleasure when we get to talk. Thanks million,
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. It's our pleasure. Thanks extra large.
Speaker 1: When you're ready to ride Metro, we want you to
Speaker 1: know we're ready for you. Here are just a few
Speaker 1: of the people at Metro to tell you how we're
Speaker 1: doing our part to keep writers safe. We're cleaning like
Speaker 1: never before. Half build greatly. You have found hair stand
Speaker 1: of Tis of stations all over the Metro. No mask,
Speaker 1: no mad stron One. We have a few extras at Metro.
Speaker 1: We're doing our part to keep the DC area moving.
Speaker 1: Find out more at will mata dot com, slash doing
Speaker 1: our part.