A Reagan Forum with Victor Davis Hanson

ladies and gentlemen please welcome mr. Victor Davis Hanson [Applause] you only have about an hour or so good evening everyone you might know me as John hi Bush I have the honor of being the executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute thank you for coming this evening in honor of our men and women who defend our freedom around the world if you'd please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag thank you please be seated well as we get started there's a couple that I'd like to recognize in the audience today you will recognize them one of the best governors of California has ever had Pete Wilson and his wife before we get started with our event this evening some of you like me might have looked around the auditorium and asked yourself the same question I did how is it that of all people a classics professor can fill an auditorium like this this was not an easy ticket to get if you waited more than a few days hundreds of people had to be turned away unfortunately but when one considers that this scholar this honoured fellow this syndicated columnist this award-winning academic this political commentator this presidential appointee and this author of 24 previous books is Victor Davis Hanson well then the question answers itself I don't know if there are any former fortunate students of Professor Hanson here tonight if so all of us envy you most of us gathered here have only gotten to know Victor Davis Hanson not through semesters of academic study and personal interaction rather we have had to settle for the all too brief appearances from afar on Fox News for example or perhaps read his scholarly papers articles editorials book reviews and of course his own books they cover a dramatic range of subjects from the classics to military history to Foreign Affairs domestic politics in contemporary culture now I don't know about you but when I see him on TV I actually lean in I leaned forward it's because I want to really carefully listen to him I know I'm going to see and hear a demonstration of highly refined but practically spoken intellectual horsepower his sweep of knowledge in history distilled as it is into logical arguments that every one of us only wish we could so eloquently make ourselves is the equivalent somewhat of a two-by-four but rather than hitting your liberal neighbor across the fence over the head with it because they insist that our nation can afford the green new deal or a free education for all or a thousand other such ridiculous ideas you need only simply quote professor Hanson to prove they're wrong many personal injury lawsuits have been avoided this way today professor Hanson comes to us what with what I think is his 25th book called the case for Trump I don't often quote from book jackets but here I cannot resist it sums up the book so well you have to get this book that I believe that professor Hanson probably wrote it himself let me quote quote to trump alone had the instincts and energy to pursue an opening to victory dismantle a corrupt old order and bring long overdue policy changes at home and abroad after decades of drift Hansen argues that America needed an outsider like Trump to do what normal politicians would and could not do a fact that explains the furor directed to Trump by the political in media status quo close quote it is a marvelous book written by an extraordinary talent before I introduce our guest this evening I want you to know I did some math on your behalf imagine for a moment we were all students at Stanford or the u.s. Naval Academy or Berkeley or peper 9 where he has taught before now consider that we had the rare opportunity after we all paid our tuition to elbow our way into one of his courses on any given semester at about 12 to 15 weeks per semester two classes per week in tuition bidding what it is a stays divided by to subtract the for the next hour of instruction you receive will cost you somewhere between three to five hundred dollars considering the fact that all of us here tonight are here for free we are getting a real bargain my fellow students class is in session please join me in welcoming our professor Victor Davis [Music] [Music] thank you very much I'm a little worried about the money because you might want to refund as I said to John I I feel like a rescue dog that's been battered the last 10 days and I found a nice home think I'll stay with you but I think in the last 10 days [Music] I think I've been called in print racist sexist nativist and worse things yet but I kind of wonder I feel like that that's not going to happen tonight so it's so strange yeah anyway no I'm sure you're amongst friends professor so thank you so much for coming I had I you know I read a lot of books and this one I so enjoyed because I just have to say if you picked this book up every page reads like one of the best op eds you've you've ever read it is so well put together so thank you and I do think you'll enjoy your time here in the next many minutes professor I I wanted to start by reading three lines from an early page in your book that I hope you recognize I bet you will and ask to see if you might expand on it because it's a perhaps of potentially really frightening concept you say quote without their overwhelming fealty or barring another transformative Reagan candidate neither Trump nor any other contemporary Republican candidate will likely again find a pathway to the presidency yeah explain well at a time that stick the Obama administration the Republican Party at the state and local level picked up about almost 1,100 offices and yet in five out of the six last national elections it lost the popular vote it hasn't won 51 percent of the popular vote since Lee Atwater you remember the Boston Harbor ad the tank add all of that again at least some of us do controlled enough against Mike Dukakis so there was something missing there in the Republican message at the presidential level and I think part of it was that two things very quickly one there became a mindset that we didn't want to be called certain names racist sexist homophobic esporte whatever it was and so we thought by playing by the marcus of Queensbury rules that that magnum entity would be reciprocated in kind when in fact it was considered weakness to be exploited or condemned or pitied and so we didn't really and I'm thinking here of george w bush who was just treated terribly between 2007 and 8 nazi brown shirt and didn't respond and so i think people felt there were two things one way they wanted somebody who would respond they felt that even if Trump was chemotherapy at least he'd kill the cancer before you with the host and the second thing was that the message they felt that you just don't you just don't write off the interior of the United States and say it's de-industrialized or their deplorable so they're cleaners are their wacko Birds or their crazies that these are noble people and that and that and you don't say that China's predetermined to run the world when one American we have one-third that the population of China still have we have roughly three times the GDP and blunt terms one American produces goods and services of the equivalent of three Chinese counterparts and yet we're told all the time China China China you can't do this you can't do this so there were a lot of things that had to be talked about in a way that Trump did and yet that message was a very focused on the key states where the election was going to be decided Wisconsin Michigan Pennsylvania and I don't know if anybody everybody said Trump was the only candidate that could lose to Hillary I think he was probably the only Republican candidate that could have won and he'll he might have been the only two that they could have lost but [Applause] make America great again I don't know how many had a chance to look at these slides as they rotated before the event began but there were several that were campaign posters and buttons and things from Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1980 you know in which Ronald Reagan said and strongly advertised let's make America great again now knowing that my sense is the what the media is doing is they're viewing whether it's the Hat of a statement or whatever that this is president Trump's way of wanting to take America back to the 1950s pre Civil Rights premi to free women's rights pre all those things and that that's essentially what one ought to read into those four letters or four words is that your view is that the way you think this is playing itself out and is that your view where you think Donald Trump wants to take the country I don't think he wants to take it back to the pre-civil other you're you're confirmed with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez at just that that Ronald Reagan was a racist not very long ago as well as FDR no I think that what he's trying to say let's make America great is in the narrowest sense there's no reason why the United States had should have not achieve annualized GDP of 3% since 2006 and why why can't we have a record low minority unemployment and record P stood near three point seven three point eight we're almost record peacetime unemployment and who says that we that there is such a thing as peak oil and perhaps maybe we can add three million barrels of oil production since he's so there was no artificially imposed politically clear limits and then he looked at a time where he fell that this country when Reagan was governor was about so I don't like to use those term because we're all mixed up in many families they don't really mean it very much unless you're Elizabeth Ward and you have a DNA test but we were about 90 percent so-called white and then maybe twelve ten percent so-called african-american and Latino but in every culture that has a dominant population there's problems there is an Iraq there's a one what was unique about the United States that was baked into our founding that all men are created equal so you had a constant process of self correction and self-criticism and we were evolving into what had happened with the Italian experience where Italians came they were mostly democratic and today if her name is Giuliani or Pelosi you don't know what your why your ethnic cachet you can't tell that was the goal and I think we were working toward that and so when what Trump says that I think he thinks that race or ethnicity should be incidental not essential to your persona but what's happened that almost everything is politicized and ethnic or identity politics term that the immigration has now become a demographic Club to beat the opposition with and that we're supposed to self-identify as as I'm a I'm a Latino I'm gay I'm this I'm that and I understand what it's the everybody has pride in some kind of identification but it should be I'm an American citizen and what's unique about what's really unique about this country is that none of us can go to China and be fully accepted as Chinese you can't go to Mexico and be fully accepted as a Mexican citizen unless you look like the majority population I can tell you as someone who's lived overseas for three years I could never be fully accepted as Greek because I don't look Greek and yet this is a country where we've come so far and that's your appearance your superficial appearance is not as important as your embrace of constitutional shared values and yet the very thing that that we're so good at is what people most criticize us for so I think Trump was trying to say I'm gonna stop all that and I'm gonna try to get back to the melting pot and in a being Trump he wasn't subtle about that yeah so on that very topic of subtlety you know politics is often in the art of language and you know if everyone in this audience when you think Ronald Reagan many many think of this the Great Communicator he boy could he use words right in your book you talk about when President Trump uses words often times you think he's quote clumsily exaggerates you know Trump's being Trump like Reagan was Reagan you know if you could wave a magic wand and all of a sudden Trump could be remarkable communicator and sensitive with his tweets and things like that you know would Trump be Trump I'm trying to determine if this is someone you know yeah sure we'll fix him but I don't know that Trump would be Trump I tend to agree with that and you know everybody who has bet on the opposite point of view saying if he would just stop tweeting if he would just expand his vocabulary beyond a thousand words or people just say there are more adjectives in the English language than awesome tremendous our adverbs like Bigley but I don't think I think you're right I think what Trump is and all of his tweet Twitter wars he's reactive he rarely starts a fight he didn't start with : Kaepernick he didn't even start with his probably most notorious one with John McCain well I thought was a mistake for him to to besmirch John McCain but but McCain had called his supporters crazies and Trump was reacting to that when he was asked about it so he's reactive and he tries to bring more mega tonnage in the reply than the if the attacker and then you're very unwise because most people have a self-image and Trump's actually been in a wrestling match physically so if you want to get into a wrestling match with him you're gonna lose because he doesn't care he's been in it and he doesn't have a sense of I mean everybody has a positive sense of self but it reminds me I said to somebody in New York if you were to rate a B and C D party-list where would the Trump's be and he said F and I thought that was one of the reasons I liked it and there was something have you noticed when that I mentioned this but when Trump went places he had this tight tie and the hair and everything so if he was in Alabama or Bakersfield or Flint Michigan he had the same act Queens accent he was authentically Trump when he'll we went to the south or New England it was you all and Boilermakers and bowling when Obama went in the inner city he sounded like he could drop his G's when John Kerry was running he had camouflage and ducks by the neck and I asked he came to Tulare California and I thought even Trump's gonna have to work cowboy hat no he just stood out he had his suit the long tie and the Queen's accent so people did what no would thought would be possible how could people identify as a populist a Manhattan billionaire with a Queens accent that very little cut he pulled off appearing more authentically pot populist than a real populist like John Casey CH who grew up as he always reminded us as a son of a postman though there are so many paradoxes that we haven't really figured them all out yet with Tom you know I'm not sure I think Trump invented that he certainly is quite used the term fake news and you know I've watched from the very start as he used that expression it was you know well since news he either doesn't like or he thinks just plain not written fairly that's what you know to Trump is fake news but I got the sense that as he started getting more and more successful in convincing people that these news stories are just plain unfair and called it fake news the media took the bait and it feels to me like as much as they dislike Trump there now have squit have pressed editorial into news reporting and they really he's positioned them as the enemy and they've positioned him as the entity the second part of what's surprising to me that almost don't mask the American media yeah would step across the line and show a visceral hatred in news reporting have you seen a precedent for that is no and we can we can say things but there are is data that liberal Shorenstein Center at Harvard said that the first six months of what's been worse was 85% negative coverage Obama was only 40 five and then got much better and Trump's down to 90% these six months bla we've never seen movie stars that compete whether it's Johnny Depp or Robert De Niro or Madonna or Kathy Griffin they have a competition whether they can decapitate him burn him blow him up stab him and then we've never seen the administrative state or the progressive media Nexus the moment he's elected let's sue for the let's sue to abort his presidency in three states by the the voting machines no let's try to persuade the electors not to follow their constitution remember those ads don't vote for him and then almost immediately 60s plus house representatives introduced articles impeachment for each set awarded and then we had the Logan act that's calcified we don't use it you then it was the 25th amendment that he was crazy they had a psychiatrist justify and then we had the Muller the hysteria about collusion with the steel fabricated stuff and then we had the Muller the look September 5th of last year we had anonymous and the New York Times remember said he's actively along with loyal Americans trying to thwart the president I don't know what the McCabe Rosenstein do you guys know it was kind of in palace coup where they were going to you know sort of take a straw poll the cabinet before declaring him crazy and removing an elected president so the answer is no we've never seen that and I think the medium is two really important things about Trump the first is that they just thought he was crude or blunt but he did he could at times display a level of self-deprecation and even humor and empathy that because it was such a contrast with his public image that it was quite effective he went all through the Middle Midwest and I noticed he started saying things that no Republican had ever said he said he'd go to esa' I'm worried about our vets I'm worried about not the farmers our farmers I'm worried about our machinists I'm worried that our our our he got to West Virginia and Hillary Clinton had come in said well I'm sorry but we're gonna have to bankrupt the coal industry you're gonna have five new jobs and he said I love big beautiful coal nobody in his right mind would say big beautiful coal he didn't care for his Polly wanted to display an empathy and he carried that state by almost 70 percent and then finally very quickly they don't understand the Nietzschean concept of survival with Nietzsche said anything doesn't kill me makes me stronger so even independents are looking at him now and I have members of my family that didn't vote for him but they will concede that the age of 72 to get up after four or five hours of sleep and hear your wife defamed your young son your adult children defamed hear that you're a crook a tax cheat the stormy debt all of that and yet get up every morning as if it's a new day and keep fighting there's a begrudging respect my wife reminded me of that I came home two days ago and I said God this guy called me a Nazi and this other guy said I was a racist and I said a guy on the plane wanted me to sign a book he saw me and I sign it then he put it back and hid it under the seat and he said it's like a red mega hat I can't show this and and I I said god I don't know if I can take it and she said oh shut up he or you're writing about a guy you're writing about a guy who takes more in one day than you and your whole life so get with it so in history as you know the country's off sometimes been divided north south its way we've often looked at politics things like that but in your book you go to some lengths to talk about what you call I don't even know if it's your words but they've forgotten interior and it's a true it's a real expose on the coast versus the interior of this nation and that's where the new divide seems to be here's my question on it I get the sense from reading your book that that you feel it's the Trump saw this and from a strategic perspective took advantage of it and followed a plan along those lines in order to win yeah and when I read that I thought you know I don't know I you know just like it's tough for him to put together a sentence yet still run a country I was surprised that at least maybe between the lines it felt like you're implying that Trump was a strategist that he had this in mind and executed against it and I wonder if it was just really his raw instincts or did he really actually pursue a strategy to go here go there and take it I think it was a mixture of both I think that first of all he's considered himself an outsider an outer outer Burrell Queens accent person that was Garry Shandling ever be accepted in the Manhattan elite and he wanted to be and he thought that was unfair that he felt by the basis of merit what his buildings that he deserved more recognition so there was a constant sort of anger at the elite of New York and that made him a little bit more empathetic he was a builder he was not a high tech guy of financier a media mogul in other words he dealt with concrete physical things I'm thereby by extension people who laid cement and tyler's and unions so he he understood he couldn't build a building whistles guys were good and happy and I think that gave him a level of insight about the other America but he also had 16 very gifted rivals far more gifted than two thousand eight or twelve field and he had to distinguish himself and then I think he did notice with an innate cunning that they were sort of emulating the Democratic PlayBook that America had changed then they were going to give an identity politics or I think when JEB said illegal immigration is basically a Zab you know it's an act of love and they were sort of progressive light and he saw an opening that he could Double Down especially when his advisors told him that there was about five to eight million people and I don't know what we would call him John maybe the the Reagan voter the the silent majority the Perot voter the Tea Party they didn't want to come out and vote for Mitt Romney and probably didn't come out if you do the math that didn't mean that he was gonna win these states by a lot but if he were to get them to come out and they would vote 80% then he could flip these states that nobody thought could be flipped by 60 80,000 votes less than a percent in some cases Michigan was call most flip Minnesota Ohio in sure Iowa and Indiana North Carolina Pennsylvania and the message was I guess if I would boil it down is that under globalization anybody's labor physical labor muscularity that could be xeroxed abroad was on the principle you know you're irreplaceable that was sort of crass but then the left or even some people the Republican Party reversed cause and effect they thought because your labor could be Xerox cheaper for machinery or manufacturing therefore you were somehow culpable I think somebody in the National Review Kevin Williams said you got to get in a pickup and just be your own fault it's toxic culture and and they reversed the cause and in fact and is it almost as if losers who took opiates drove away factories when it was just the opposite and so he understood that there was that that area had not been at loss I mean Detroit in 1945 was the fastest growing major city United States by some calibrations at Symphony museums were the finest the United States it had some of the highest per capita wealth Hiroshima was in ruins in by September 1st 1945 if you go to Hiroshima today it looks like Detroit should have been and Detroit looks like it was new and that wasn't because of a war it was because of globalization and changes in policy and government big liberal big government but what I'm getting at is that he understood that the message of the forgotten man had electoral ramifications he also had a lot of people who were in the shadows that that we felt had been kind of losers themselves or eccentrics I mean especially Steve Bannon who might not have been a steady sober and judicious adviser but when they brought him on he really honed that idea of the forgotten man and a nationalist populist tweak we shouldn't be too exaggerated eighty percent of the Trump message deregulation judges pipeline construction GDP tax reform try to appeal moment was purely Republican conservatism it was that tweaking of Bannon and others and then Peter like people Peter people like Peter Thiel I was at a dinner once and he happened to be there and there was a very prominent in America name I won't mention but tore into me for voting I was going to about to vote for Trump and he said would the he's a loser he has no analytics Hillary has the smartest the best and the brightest these are wonky SH these are Millennials and mr. teal turned to me and said no actually Trump has the best analytics in the world said he does he said yes he's concentrating on the only states that mattered we know everybody said how would you know and he said I designed them and so there were people who helped that campaign in various ways that didn't get a lot of credit but deserve a lot of credit Mike Reagan was a transitional transformative president there's no doubt about it just he also noted that Trump picked up on 80% of what's been the Reagan Republican playbook for many years do you think that what's Trump is succeeding in doing is will he be viewed in the future as a transformational president that it's very hard to tell because let's take wrong Reagan at the beginning of 1983 we were still in recession he was trying to break inflation we had been so desperate to break it we we had whip you know whip inflation now buttons and I was farming I remember an 83 I went to the production credit we had a family farm and I thought I was so lucky to get a 13% loan and I bought a used pickup for nineteen and a half percent I thought that was high and then I had sulfur bags that I'd ordered sulfur and I noticed that it said $4.99 $5.99 $6.99 they crossed out the price the inflation was so high that they were marking them up in their inventory so and that was when Reagan was president and then I noticed every time he turned on the TV in 83 - if you remember there was a Hollywood movie about the end of days wagon was gonna cause a nuclear or winner I think they even Carl Sagan was always her hectoring us about Reagan so Trump is that that that position you know and Reagan took a lot of heat and broke the back of inflation restored fiscal sobriety but it took really if you look at November of 1983 and you go back and look at polls the unnamed Democratic candidate was running sort of neck-and-neck and then between Nate November of 1983 in November of 1984 the economy grew at 7% GDP it's absolutely stunning and then it was it wasn't even close so we'll see what one of the problems in writing a book is that the news changes so you have to trust historical instinct and analytics and not get caught up in the 24 hour hour but so I tried to suggest that what the the measures that he's taken I think we're gonna make him a very successful president and he has that Reagan has tendency one of the things I liked about Reagan is that people told him all the time he couldn't do something you can't say tear down that wall you can't call it an evil empire and his attitude well it's evil as an empire why not its people and that's what Trump is you know they Trump you you can't get out of you ran to you you cannot move the embassy to Jerusalem the Council on Foreign Relations will have a fit if you get out of the Paris climate Accord that kind of stuff and he doesn't care and that empowers ya you talk in the book at at some length about this concept via the electronic lynch mob yeah the social media that permeates our society today as relates to that particular phenomenon in this specific case involving this young fellow Nixon and the Covington Catholic school I see that he's maybe there's some real serious attorneys that are going after in the media and a lot of the media you know to redress this knowing what you know in our society do you think that they might possibly succeed or you know it's it's gonna be dismissed and we move on well I was fortunate to grow up with my mother was a second Superior Court judge a woman in California and then I think the second appellate court so I always got lectures about the law and she always would say I wish it were true that cases are decided by the leg of the law but so often the political atmospherics they affect judges they affect everything and there was something about that young kid standing there being hectored by this person who had fabricated almost everything about his life beating this drum and then that electronic lynch mob that made him an especially sympathetic character and so he was overwhelmingly he won the the sympathy of the country but I think what we lacked there is that when we used to watch westerns and when the mob went to the jail to break in and Lynch the the suspect there was always a sheriff with a double-barrel shotgun we didn't have anybody like this in fact I really liked the editor and the publisher of National Review but I almost came pretty close to resigning because we had a big fight not that they were on my side but some people as you know in National Review were part of the lynch mob and I thought that that was just intolerable that without any evidence and I I remarked on it David I did watch six or seven hours of the video on anybody with any cognition could see that what the story was and then when he said that he gave the dates of Vietnam you knew that anybody knew the history the Vietnam War knew that was impossible for him to be a combat veteran you saw the the other things he said and yet there was a deep there's a deep illness in this country and it's mostly from wealthy white liberal people who want a virtue signal their own moral superiority and as they damned white privilege and they did that with Sagna and they always do it the expense of the working-class white person it doesn't have white privilege it's almost like somebody in Malibu can say I'm so sick of the white privilege of that welder and Tulare and therefore by saying that then he gets he gets to have that big fence around his estate and have Hispanic help and he's exempt because he said that and there was all this virtue signaling everybody was damming this sandy man and I was in a board meeting of a philanthropic organization and somebody happened to say this was atrocious and we didn't even know that one of the members had actually tweeted to condemn this kid so it was widespread and conservatives many of the conservative establishment were just as guilty as progressive and I really got upset about that as I did with a juicy Smollett case that was another example that's sort of I mean that was the it wasn't that kind of the ultimate trajectory of identity politics because what you were saying what he was saying to America was I'm going to create the most unlikely impossible illogical scenario in the world and I'm gonna make America believe it because they're so deranged that I can get away with it and so it wasn't just I'm african-american but I'm gonna be African American and gay I'm not just gonna be African American gay I'm gonna be African American and I'm gonna hate Trump I'm not gonna be just African American hate Trump I'm gonna be young and hip Empire I'm not just gonna do all that but I'm gonna be walking at 2 a.m. and I'm not just gonna be walking 2 minute I'm gonna see two white guys who happen to be prowling around liberal Chicago not just two white guys are doing it they're gonna have a maggot hat on they're not just gonna have a mag a hat on two white guys with a mega hat and liberal Chicago are gonna say we're gonna will prowl around because maybe Jesse's small at whom we immediately recognize and yell out as the enemy of empire cuz we always watch Empire and you know bob says to fred let's go out and look for Jesse small at type people tonight and by the way let's take some lynched rope with us and then Jesse's and if that's not enough let's get bleached that that freezes that five degrees and we'll throw it and defy the laws of chemistry it won't freeze in our case and then not only will will do all that will beat him up and we're very big but Jesse's juicy is very small but he's a better fighter and he's going to fight us off why he's got his sandwich in one hand and his cell phone in the other recording the whole thing that's what we were asked to believe and the nation did and so I think that was a really I think historians will look at that point and say that is about the limitations of the identity politics and after that point it becomes a caricature because that wasn't factually impossible to believe in yet we wanted to believe because we wanted to say that Magga Trump supporters did this and there was no possible theoretical abstract way it was possible and yet we wanted to believe because we were full of such hatred and then when it was and then what was really strange about it was the therapeutic response what made him do it who drove him to this he's obviously disturbed I'm thinking no he just libeled half the country and people were walking around and that was that he contributed to a hatred of a particular person based on their race and yet there's no contrition he's still peddling this fantasy yeah so to that exact point what I wanted to ask you extraordinary description of the of events that took place was that so singularly ridiculous that you think it's the incident could somehow play like a an outsize or just a giant be a giant influence in some respects on the 2020 election yeah I I do I think they're cumulative as well I mean there was the Virginia for to false rape accusation there was a Duke Lacrosse incident there was the Cavanaugh hearing when finally Lindsey Graham had his have you no decency moment as Robert Welch good in the Karthi and then we had the Covington and the juicy smaller I think now people are so vaccinated or to that that they don't believe it anymore whether that's good or bad I don't know but I think that they feel that there's a large number of people in the United States not a majority but a very influential minority that exercises influence and power far beyond their numbers and they control the universities they control entertainment Hollywood professional sports the Foundation's the media and they're not empirical and they feel that they don't just want to marginalize conservatives they want to destroy them and want to destroy what they represent and I I don't think that's exaggeration when Nicasio Cortez said that the country was a little we don't have to be ten percent better than garbage and that FDR was a racist I thought to myself well I understand that United States had racist tendencies as all majority populations do but it was already self-correcting and that was that's the story of the United States trying to become better and I thought to myself so all these people that Ocasio Cortez never even heard of rotted on the beaches of taro or they were blown up in a b-17 or they froze to death of choice and Rosa var and they did it for what for this little person to come here and say to them you have a garbage country I don't think people have to put up with and I don't think that I don't think they have to put up with it and I think the reason that her parents came to this country is they understood something that she didn't that's a really interesting question why would you leave Puerto Rico or why would you leave Somalia and come here if it would if immediately upon arrival you and your children or your ass immediately have grievances against your your new country it doesn't make any sense I know I was named after Victor Hansen it was killed at Okinawa in the 6th Marine Division and I read his letters all the time and I can't believe that he died for a country in which major people call it garbage I just don't think that's what he died for and each of us according to our own station has to speak out and say these people didn't die for that they didn't die in the Civil War they didn't they died for a better America not for some person that knows nothing about and I say that because of her empirically from what she's been saying to subtly level an accusation against an entire dead generation I really I'm getting very angry at this idea we attacked the dead and we apply the standards of the present when most of us in the physical sense alone couldn't couldn't last a day in a covered wagon or we wouldn't have last but one moment at Shiloh and yet all of a sudden these people that's not why they're unhappy it's because of our path that's something deeper and to blame other people or their parents or past generation for their own inability to cope it's just it's cowardly and yet the longer that we let it go on and we don't challenge it then we become culpable ourselves so anyway it's off topic I've one last question and then we'd love to turn it to you in the audience to ask a few questions as well professor I'm not asking you to prognosticate and you know make a specific prediction but do you think that the odds that Trump will win again in 2020 are there are they in his favor would worry how do you see that I think it's about fifty five forty five for a couple of reasons three or four reasons very quickly he's about at 42 to 45 depending on his Twitter week he's about where Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were at the beginning of the third year both of them had worse midterms Clinton lost 52 seats Obama lost 63 seats Obama lost six Senate seats Clinton lost eight Trump lost 39 House seats maybe 40 and he picked up two seats and then Clinton demolished Bob Dole and and Obama won handily over Mitt Romney so history suggests that it's Trump's race to lose that he has that power of incumbency he's getting better I think his speeches are better they're longer but they're still better I think he's sinking better he had so many problems with this revolving door cabinet sees but there's something about this new triage of Pompeo a Secretary of State and Bolton and especially bar at when bar the other day was asked that ambush question about the emergency declaration I think Jeff Sessions a good man but he would have probably equivocate it and who knows what rod Rosenstein would have said but Barr just stood up for him and so you get the impression that they do genuinely believe in the Trump message and that helps him and then he's not running in a vacuum everybody thinks that president's run in a vacuum it's not a it's a mannequin choice between something sometimes good or something better or somebody bad and somebody worse that's what Americans do their practical pragmatist since 2016 probably a quarter of the people who voted for Trump just could not abide by the idea of President Clinton Hillary Clinton this time it depends on do they really want to go the Mondale 84 as I said are 72 but when you put reparations and infanticide is permissible abortion the new Green Deal bowring the a bar in the internal combustion engine Medicare for all I can't even remember all 16 year old voting and felons can vote in Florida wealth tax we've never had an already tax capital 90% rate you put all that basket together and they're gonna try to tar every nominee in that brutal primary to endorse that and so Trump will be we don't know how well they're gonna tar those people but Trump as it looks now will be able to say you may not like me but I'm the only thing standing between you and socialism or worse you know so the idea that Joe Biden who said that George Bush should get on TV the way that FDR did on 1929 when there was neither TV nor FDR was president and you know he said everything from gonna put you back and change so I'm gonna take Trump out buying the the gym and that's the sober and judicious candidate so we'll see but I think he has about a fifty five percent chance barber will depend on usually what ruins and incumbency is a economic downturn or an unpopular war or some sort of scandal I I don't see him doing an optional military large intervention I don't I think the economy will survive a recession and I think the Mueller investigation I could go on all night but I don't think they're gonna find collusion that was its mandate so I think he'll be it'll be up to how well the campaign is run and how well he can tag the opposition is something we've never seen since 1932 question is if you have a question we've have several people in the audience our staff with microphones if we can just wait to ask your question but the microphone in your hand we'll start right here Thank You professor really appreciate it I'm really enjoying also your online world war two course thank you with Hillsdale which is awesome one fun question than one one I've been thinking about lately who would you think from your military history and study kind of tactically Fitz Trump that you might think of as far as instinctual covering ground winning before the wars even fought and then kind of a question I've been thinking about the Bolshevik Revolution where it wasn't too high a percentage of people that were Bolsheviks were actually in control of the message that was out there I kind of relate that with the media today so I was wondering your thoughts on that yeah well just a fun there are people in American history that are very trumpian William Tecumseh Sherman said to the media on the march through Georgia I'm gonna hang all of you if you don't if you write another thing and then he he he would have and he was considered crazy in fact he was relieved to command in 1862 and considered certifiably they called it melancholy in those days Patton if you look at Patton's personal life and because we're in a polite audience I won't mention things that Patton did but they make Trump's look pretty normal and if you did if you had a sober and judicious and very wonderful man like Omar Bradley Patton's immediate superior he was a wonderful man but if he had been commanding Third Army and Patton was not there we would have lost another 40,000 dead Curtis LeMay oh my gosh he said if we lose the war I'll be tried as a war criminal but what he meant was he took a a billion dollar Manhattan Project bigger than the Manhattan Project excuse me the b-29 and he took it from 30,000 feet down to 7,000 feet and turned it into a veritable dive bomber because the bombs given the jet stream in the altitude and then we're in the engine it was not working it was a big disaster and he took out 120 days 75 percent of the industrial capacity of Japan and he was on the cover of Time magazine and considered a hero and by the early 60s he was dr. strange madman that we all hated that's sort of what Trump is I think he's I said that in the book he's a tragic hero as long as we realize what that term means it means somebody who's got particular skill sets that we bring in whether it's Shane or Gary Cooper in high noon or John Wayne and The Searchers or the Magnificent Seven and they start to solve the problem but as they start to solve the problem they give us the luxury of being hyper critical and critical of the methods they do that we consider our saviors uncouth so I think that as the economy gets better we can we have the luxury now of criticizing Trump I don't think Trump is going to be invited to funerals after as presidents or after he's out I don't think he'll be considered a I think he'll do more for the United States and most of our ex presidents have that are alive and yet he will not be accepted with the same respect that they are and that's just the tragedy of somebody right out of Sophocles or maybe Dirty Harry testin thank you very much I'm really concerned about the lay of the land the federal level state level for voter fraud and I am hoping you can perhaps share some insight on steps maybe that are in the work excuse me in the works or can be planned for to handle voter fraud you all know what happened in Orange County but my congressional representative was a wonderful man David Bal Dail from Portuguese immigrant family and he won the midterm I think about 18% is his internal polls were showing him 12 up on the election week he won I think by five points six points on Election Day he lost by 500 votes so what happened is was same-day registration in the new 19 2017 wall that said a non family member could go to a home register and have the vote and deliver to the register hundreds of thousands of people took data from the DMV and they said these people fit a particular pattern the DMV had said we had mixed people who were here illegally with here non legally with their licenses and he said it was only a few thousand we don't know if that's accurate but nevertheless they were able to be very clever they didn't do it in the midterm so all these Republicans had won the midterms or at least did better than their general election opponent and they let down their guard and then they were overwhelmed with this brilliant but Machiavellian strategy and the short term there's nothing you can do unless you change start changing the laws or revert back what they were or you sue or you both harvest and by that I mean you get your own computer analytics and you say there's this many Republicans are conservative leaning people who didn't register or they're registered and didn't vote and I'm gonna have a guy go to their home I'm gonna sit there until they hand me the ballot that's a poor support remedy for a democracy but I don't know how you're gonna do in the short I'm very worried and I think their theoretical e the California congressional district that so Representatives only seven now out of 52 or 53 I think we could get down to one or two with this vote harvesting and of course if you object to it they've already prepped the battlefield so you're insensitive you're exclusionary you're racist etc etc but it's a that's a very good question there's no answer yet to it over here we're very proud that you're a California resident and as someone who's looking to leave the state because I believe strongly in a two-party system and we don't have that here what do you what recommendations do you have for those of us in California who are living here living in a one-party state what what do you see what hope is there well my only hope is I guess herb Stein said Nixon's economic by anything that can't go on won't go so you have a state now where this was a paradise in the 70s and 80 we had good governance governor here but we have the highest basket I think we're second or maybe we're first with a 13-point to top rate of income tax we're about number three in sales tax our gas tax will be number one most expensive and yet when you look for commiserate advantages many of the ratings of our infrastructure were 47 I think 48 or high school and eighth grade test scores about 45 we have some of the highest skill a second highest kilowatt rates in the United States its third highest overall gasoline's I think we have 21% of the state lives below the poverty line we have one third of all welfare recipients so whatever happened if we had the worst of both worlds it's very expensive for the middle class to live here and you get very little in return and so that can't go on for much longer when I go to Palo Alto and I see that very wealthy people who virtue signaled their liberality and they live these expansive homes in Woodside and beautiful homes an old pal Walter and Atherton then I go back where I live in salmo rural Fresno County and on an August day when it's 109 outside Hispanic families are in Walmart they're not there to buy things they're taking their whole family because they cannot afford to turn on the air-condition and that's even with lifeline rates so it seems to me that there is a potential of a lot of emerging people of a non-traditional middle class and they're starting to ask questions why do I have to pay the highest gasoline why do I have the highest electricity why is the 99 freeway a deathtrap who in the world created this debacle Stonehenge Matt high-speed rail monstrosity over the Fresno why didn't we build the three reservoirs these are not right when people asking those questions and when they get when they start I think they'll start to resemble at some point the rebellions we had with the Reagan Revolution in the 60s and 70s but we're not there yet as to get a little worse I'm afraid before they get angry because but I know a lot of people I have Mexican American people within my family and a lot of people are asking questions that are very embarrassing wires dianne feinstein attacking catholicism why is kamala harris attacking the Knights of Columbus who dreamed up the idea you could kill a baby and call it abortion who who who told us that transgendered restrooms were the most important thing in California so we'll see what happens but I think that that constituency I am not sure won't gradually become a little bit more conservative we have time for two more questions I'm going to go here given your knowledge and and the parallels you've given us today and written in about in your book let's imagine for a minute that Ronald Reagan was alive in here and could actually give President Trump some advice what do you imagine that would be well they hated but we forget now the degree to which they hated Reagan and we forget I was so shocked that when George W Bush came to Hoover and gave a nice speech but I don't think he realized how much they hated him just in 2007 and 8 they called him a Nazi they vote articles about killing him but Reagan they really hated but Reagan had that and I I don't know as much nearly as the people here at the Reagan Library but he had a unique ability to smile and laugh at all and he was when he had a winning character a personality so Trump has elements of that when during the Cavanaugh hearing you remember that moment it's the best moment he's had mr. presidency someone said will cavern you think Cavanaugh drunk drank too much no but I know that if I did I'd be a total disaster can you imagine me with alcohol that's why I never that was kind of off the cuff Reagan and if Trump I think Reagan would tell him I know that I had the establishment finally behind me but you know I was a renegade in 68 and 76 when I tried to get the nomination and they said I was crazy so I I've gone through what you have but you got a role you've got to be a little bit you've got to have some moment your life or you can disarm your critics through calmness or laughter jocular language rather than just go for the jugular every single time and then I think Trump would say yeah it's easy for you to say but now Lee I'll leave it at that yeah last question I'm sorry that will go up here a friend in the balcony professor Hanson a piece of strategic advice if the election was being held right now what would you suggest a president Trump should be his major slogan or message his main slogan other than I saved you all I'd say yourself I would say it's something like America's great again something like that but what he really needs to do is that I think I get frustrated because everybody who doesn't have any responsibilities has all these ideas whose consequences we never suffer they go bad but what I would suggest to him is that the Democratic Party is so front-loaded into identity politics and tribalism that they've lost the white working classes whether they like it or not the percentages are astounding and the number of people who don't have college degrees we know now is larger than the people who do and college is getting a hit even more with this admittance scandal but what I'm getting at is that Trump has done more for minority voters than Democrat then Obama ever did we have record low a black unemployment we have record low Hispanic unemployment abortion has devastated the african-american Jesse Jackson of all people called it genocide no person has been more adamantly against the present abortion practices than Donald Trump Issa and that's been very good for minorities that message he's he's not anti religious he's not anti-semitic he's not anti-catholic and those strains are deeply now embedded within the Democratic Party closing the border and having legal mara Craddock measured and diverse immigration helps entry-level workers it doesn't cut their wages through cash off the books undercutting labor so he's got a lot of winning arguments for the minority and what I'm getting at is that he doesn't need to win 40 percent of the African American vote or 50 percent Latino vote for those people who identify themselves as Latinos or Alfred he just needs 20 percent 15 percent the african-american vote 40 percent and the Democrats their whole calculus is shattered because they've lost such this old working-class Hubert Humphrey worker so that's what I really really like to see in do is go out with spokespeople and go into the inner city he'd be booed but if he just keeps his cool I think that would be it would pay enormous dividends and he's already starting to do that a little bit I hope he can continues that's that's what most fight was a Democratic Party you really want you to stick around if you can to visit with Professor Hansen and get this book it's going to be one of the best books you've read in years [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Reagan Foundation

Views: 623,780

Rating: 4.7797327 out of 5

Keywords: Ronald Reagan, President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, First Lady, POTUS, FLOTUS

Id: Couo-cxNipI

Length: 66min 53sec (4013 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2019