Victor Davis Hanson on “The Case For Trump”

[Music] welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson a fellow at the Hoover Institution Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and military historian who has published more than two dozen books including a war like no other his acclaimed account of the Peloponnesian wars dr. Hanson's most recent work the case for Trump Victor welcome thank you you write right here of Donald Trump that he is and I am quoting you Victor vulgar uncouth and divisive you also write that you voted for him casting that ballot how much regret how much cognitive dissonance how hard was that photo I have no regret it was very easy because the alternative was Hillary Clinton and I did take him at his word that his promises would be largely kept or attempted be kept and then when I used those words in the larger context I think I was comparing them to what to what to JFK's frolicking in the pool to LBJ's exhibitionism to build I don't want to mention Bill Clinton but I think we have historical amnesia about what presidents are I would have liked him to be a sterling moral exemplar like Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter but I don't not sure there's any equation there between that type of character and dynamic leadership can all be wrong with Reagan after all a sterling character and an effective leader all right how Trump won so the case for Trump you spend there really a couple of cases in this book one of them is the case for Trump yeah but the other is the case for the Americans who voted for Trump yes all right I'm quoting you here the case for Trump voters in 2016 63 million of them preferred on a an authentic bad boy to a disingenuous good girl explain that well Trump was what he was and he had no pretensions that he wasn't so when he went to Fresno he went to Tulare California he went to Maine he went to Alabama he had on the same jacket the same weird tie the hair of everything when Hillary did it it was you all down in Alabama and then she had a Harvard accent when Obama does campaign he had an inner city patois as I mentioned John Kerry put on duck gear when he went duck-hunting Mike Dukakis put on the helmet remember yes yes but he didn't and that squeeze always the businessman from Queens Queens accent wherever he was and the other thing about him was he had a strange way that nobody detected except that people will reform up conveying empathy so he's you said our our country our vets our workers our farmers I can't imagine Mitt Romney or John McCain who were supposed to be far more empathetic and he went to the remember he went to West Virginia I love big beautiful coal contrast that when Hillary Clinton said I'm gonna put you out of work and shut down the industry Obama had said the same thing so there was a way that he connected with the deplorable zs-- the clingers irredeemable what john mccain called the crazies in a way that we didn't really expect that he would give in his background and then so there's the the personal authenticity but you also draw out his agenda again I'm going to they also you again I'm quoting the case for Trump they the 63 million people who voted for him also preferred his agenda which represented quote the antithesis to the Democratic Party of Barack Obama which was increasingly candid in voicing socialist broma yes so it's it's their moments when I think that all politics comes down to that old Henny Youngman gag how's your wife yeah that's answer compared to what yeah so Trump comes across as authentic somehow or other this guy from Queens this billionaire from Queens seems to be what he is there's an authenticity that appeals to people in the middle of the country and at the same time the alternative is getting just unacceptable - yes right that's the argument the argument and what we're seeing now with permissible infanticide or reparations or Greendale or wealth tax or seventy percent income tax or Medicare for everybody or cancellation of everything let's cancel electoral college let's cancel ice let's cancel all student debt all of that stuff is a logical trajectory from the Obama administration he was the one that took the party remember when he was elected he had the most partisan record in the US Senate so that that's the antithesis to Trump it was with Hillary it's even gonna be more so in 2020 and then he did something that nobody quite has analyzed his his agenda wasn't some crazy alright it was an 80% traditional Republican yes yes deregulation lower taxes repeal Obamacare good judges strict constructions what was new he looked at that electoral college and he tweaked four or five issues that the other 16 may have been for but they didn't they didn't do it and that was you can't have a sovereign nation with an open border right you can't have immigration unless it's legal measured Mara Craddock and diverse now that was a winning issue for those states then he said if you're gonna go overseas translate tactical success into strategic advantage didn't help you if you bomb Libya or Qaddafi out of power or you you're bombing people in Afghanistan if it's not resolved in our interest and then he said China's not fated to take over the world they're not the Superman they have a smaller economy they've got all sorts of problems they are only strong because they're asymmetrical and their trade and we'll fix it and finally he said you don't need a magic wand to restore the interior it's not these number Obama said these jobs are never coming back I said they're not only gonna come back they're gonna come back right away and in large part that was true so that was a new message but he wasn't the Antichrist Republican he was a traditional Republican that took some issues incorporated them within republicanism and then looked at Michigan Wisconsin Pennsylvania Iowa Ohio North Carolina and said you didn't come out for John McCain or Mitt Romney because there was something missing in this menu and I'm gonna be the person who puts it back in and then finally one time sure sure sure it was a messenger too because he was basically saying I'm crude and crass getting back to your quote at the beginning of our conversation but he said I'm not playing by the Marquess of Queensbury rules candy crawl I'm you know ad libbing here but if candy crawling in the second debate tries to hide the second debate with Mitt Romney yes when she said no no no Governor Romney Brock Obama's correct here he would have grabbed a mic like Reagan did and he's not gonna say as john mccain did I rule I just don't want to mention Reverend right so Trump was saying I'm gonna fight I'm gonna fight there's gonna be a war room I'm gonna go after the the left as they go after you us and they nobody had seen that since Lee Atwater in 1988 with the tank commercial the Willie Horton commercials George Bush's running for reelection yeah or running for election and so that was part I'm not condoning it or I'm not excusing it or not praising it I'm just saying that at this point a lot of people would come out of the woodwork conservative Reagan Democrats Perot voters I don't know what we call them Tea Party if they thought somebody really wanted to win and that they wouldn't get out ahead of the candidate there was a lot of people said all support if I support a Republican candidate they'll know no sooner do I do it then they say you shouldn't say that oh you're too uncouth let's work across the aisle then the supporter has got the limb sawed off you came did that a lot to a people Jeb Bush contrast Trump with Jeb Bush well Jeb Bush said basically that I'm a sober and judicious leader I have all the right requisites I was governor I meant from this dynasties a great nice person he had some good ideas but he said things by the way he'd been a terrific governor I think his I think he was and he was misrepresented okay all right but I think he said illegal immigration was an act of love I don't think at the time that he ran people wanted to go to Afghanistan Iraq again I don't think that they were into that adventurism anymore after Libya I don't think that they associated with his brother George yes and okay I don't think I think the bushes the Clintons everybody thought globalization which is a good thing it's a westernization it allows people in the Amazon to have glasses or penicillin gets too dark dark islands I mean dark innocents have no electricity or no civilization so it's good it brings people up but it hollowed out the United States it said anybody who has muscular or physical labor that can be xeroxed overseas will be xerox overseas and that's a natural Darwinian process it's good for you because it makes us all more efficient we get cheaper stuff that comes in and then you'll have to find learn how to code or go to the fracking fields and Trump said no we got cheap energy our electricity is cheaper than theirs we've got cheaper national gas we've got great workers this these these were the muscles of America they will be again one more contrast with a Republican whom he defeated in the primary and that's Ted Cruz I sort of I can understand the argument as it applies to Jeb Bush Marco Rubio that in a way they're they're well-behaved they're genteel and there was an what people recognized in Trump was a fighter but Ted Cruz it was also a fighter how did Trump defeat Cruz what what did he have on Cruz well Cruz is the last man standing in the fight for the nomination to who's the last man the trophy and that that's not an accident the two people of that seventeen person field the right as you as you're suggesting that were the most combative and wanted to take the argument to the enemy so theoretically I don't mean actual enemy but so the adversaries were cruising and the right difference was Trump was a professional reality TV star he made his money in repart t you're the first I'll give you an example the first debate Rand Paul was it I there's certain things I like about Rand Paul but he said you're the Nexus basically I'm paraphrasing your the nexus between money and influence he said that to Trump yes right Trump looked around how do I get out of this one right and he said yes I am and you came up to my office and I brought you out a check for $10,000 and we got along perfectly after that Ted Cruz would have not said that but that's what Trump because you don't really say that about somebody and he's basically saying to Rand Paul you did something as unethically as I did when you're supposed to say neither one of us would ever do anything on ethically right from Trump was this is guy who actually wrestled in a wrestling mat you know yes and so his idea was there's nothing I can do that is going to embarrass me and are my and that was baked into his support with his voters all right according to Victor Davis Hanson Donald Trump's most enduring significance is that he understood those in between the case for Trump elite on this is on the state of the country when Trump was elected elitists not subject to the ramifications of their own policies ruled from on top the subsidized poor answered them from far below both those on top and the subsidized poor both barely disguised a shared disdain for the struggles of those in between explain them well what I was trying to say is that almost every issue there was a virtue signaling component by which the Advocate assumed that because of his influence or power or superior wisdom or ally he should be as I said exempt from the ramifications own ideology take walls border walls everybody's against border walls but yet if you and I were to drive two miles out in a flow we know what we'd find would sign the old community after another yes we go up to Nancy Pelosi as a state we go to Mark Zuckerberg the state and we can't get in ya know if we were going to talk about cutting off water so that the fish could rehab it have it habituate the Sacramento San Joaquin River we wouldn't do it with Hetch Hetchy watch at water that comes to this area that's that you just don't do that we all believe in the public schools the bedrock over but not for my children they're gonna go over and I just went back up so the Hetch Hetchy the the water that's being used that were in the Delta that we're drinking right now that comes from Hetch Hetchy yes and no but no good liberal here in Northern California would suggest putting feeding and putting fish in it only water to revive the fish population comes from the farmers yes those are people those are four little people and Fresno got it and the same thing about private schools the whole Avenue so he comes in and he says the Trump comes into this great swath in between and says people are lecturing and virtue signaling and using you not just you know economically politically or socially but psychologically by that I think he meant although he wasn't explicit he was saying that and we saw this with the College Admission scandal recently that the people who are most likely to say you have white privilege you have white privilege you have white have it themselves and they point out other people that don't so some person of the Oklahoma diaspora you know in the Central Valley yeah in Bakersfield who's the grandson of a welder or a son of a carpet he didn't have any white privilege and yet he's told all the time he has white privilege he'd be much better for his admissions to be one-quarter Hispanic or half african-american or any type of a minority classification or of a larger white class white class I mean if he was wealthy he could go to sack camp he could call people up he could do what these people did that was the photographer's Gandil yeah or they if he had more money you didn't have to do the tawdry Avenue he could go straight through the front door and say here's ten million dollars for that builder you're right so that's what he was trying to say he was saying to these people you're the Forgotten people you don't have any privilege you're the losers of globalization but you don't have the romance of the poor and you don't have the connect with a culture of the wealthy and they dumped on you and they dumped on you and they dumped on you and they talked about swapping you out bringing immigrants in I'm speaking literally yes yes and so that was a resonant that's raised the guy was raised now he was raised in Queens but he was raised in a pretty wealthy enclave in Queens yes and so there are a couple of mysteries here with Donald Trump is his parents were wealthy yeah as he was with from the moment he was born here's but it's not as if they made the no no no he was born into a rich family he went to an Ivy League school he had one chance after another to turn himself into a pinstripe wearing yeah wingtip shoe wearing very urbane polished rich man in Manhattan and he did turn himself into a rich man in Manhattan he took his father's you know real estate empire and and continued it and put up buildings before he went into the casinos and then before he went into television he was a builder but he was always the guy from Queens and somehow or other how does the guy for a rich guy how does a rich kid from Queens which is what he is a rich kid from New York identify because the grandson of a welder in Bakersfield was always an outsider and he wanted it to be successful he all he found out very quickly and he could build the skate skating rink in Central Park or he could redo a hotel but he was never gonna be fully accepted given the way that his father was kind of shady they thought a Manhattan I would say he wasn't a premier builder he was he had a lot of tenants apartment buildings of poor people that accent outer borough and then the second thing is that he was a builder he wasn't he didn't make his money if you look if we look at the top 20 fortunes in America I would imagine 75% of them are high finance media and high tech he actually built things well that would meant that he needed to work with unions he needed to know who the cement workers were the Tyler's the carpenters the electricians and people would say that he would as he walked around he actually liked those people because he understood that he couldn't do what he does without them and that so it I think there was an empathy for those people in a way at least he could talk to them whether he was sent sincere or not I don't know but I do know that he developed him and ease of being able to communicate with people from all different classes and that they did like him I talked to a New Yorker pretty important person I guess I asked him if you had a a to F list in New York and they'd probably do where would the trumps be and it would be F F right D not an 8 not an A List and I don't think he would he may have been hurt by that I don't think ultimately he care so he was an outsider and he felt that the East Coast West Coast globalised close to elite we're talking to themselves they had a certain Marcus of Queensbury rules Republican of acting and campaigning and people in the middle said you can be amoral and be sober injudicious it's not very moral to have no 3% GDP for over a decade right it's not very moral to go overseas and take us and not translate that optional intervention into a strategic victory it's not very moral to have high minority unemployment and he hit on something I don't think there's I mean it doesn't mean you're gonna be crass you're a good leader but he was just saying the two greatest people that we know as far as her sterling characters are probably Jimmy Carter and Jerry Ford back to back and they were they were fine men and ineffective president yes it doesn't mean there's a connection but it does show you don't have to be a saint to be a effective leader okay I wanted to part for a moment from Donald Trump and talk about you yes you are a professional academic yes you got a doctorate as a young man by writing a brilliant book on ancient Greece you've produced book after book after book your book on the Peloponnesian wars is a is was acclaimed everywhere it was reviewed even by people who was Paul takes differ from yours and yet modern American academia is almost monolithic and its revulsion for Trump and one professional academic Victor Davis Hanson writes the case for Trump okay let me quote you I grew up and still live outside a small town in California's Central Valley in 1970 we didn't lock our doors in 2018 I have six guard dogs what did it mean to you living continuing to live in Selma that small town south of Fresno and what was it that happened in Selma between 1970 and 2018 that made you know how about what week so this okay this week the last four days there were three miles from me somebody was driving he made a u-turn in the middle of the road and killed somebody who happen to be mexican-american and then he got out of the car and left four miles north of town somebody ran a stop sign and hit a trucker almost killed him and got out of the car and left last night two miles from me a man and the bicycle was shot and killed I ride a bicycle I used to around my area so what I'm getting at is when you bring in a lot of people from southern Mexico the poorest part and most of the people coming in our area are from Oaxaca and they're not legal and they do not speak English and they don't have skills and they don't have capital and they don't have a high school diploma then and you do it in mass so they're there not with Punjabis and African Americans and whites so they can integrate we know what makes the melting pot work measured Mara Craddock diverse immigration then you're going to have a social economic problem and you're going to need a lot of state help education law enforcement legal help to give the semblance of parity and it's not going to work very well so what happened and you combine that with globalization and what I would call a lotta foo Nia were corporate agriculture economies of scale and vertical integration so what I'm saying so when you grew up I just want to judge when you were growing up you were which generation at that ranch you were I was number five fifth generation Swedes at that ranch in Selma and you you're your mom and dad ran what a couple hundred acres and 128 128 we've all worked on it but here's the point and that would have been a fairly standard size it looked like a a checkers board every family ranches and family of caseta we're on one side the owners were on the other the Israeli ins the hazel hoppers the artists it was real diversity by the way mexican-american Armenian American Japanese American Punjabi America okay and since that time to nobody they're gone two things have happened one is globalization yes has made it impossible to run a family operation economically is that correct yeah I rent my 40 acres out to a wonderful man who has 12,000 acres of almonds he's a wonderful guy but he has 12,000 acres of almonds and so the family operation is so what happened with all these houses where all these houses are still there but they're rented by people from Mexico so one of across the street from me the North Angels gang just had his shootout and it was wild and I mean I'm and I won't mention it because I don't want to be shot but I have three neighbors that are in gangs so that's what happened I say the second thing is that you get this huge influx largely yes substantially illegal yeah and nobody voted for that nobody that takes place it to the contrary that takes place in defiance of them remember there was no principle to it so when you go back and see Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and Chuck Schumer railing against illegal immigration it was still a hundred thousand people a year and they were worried about undercutting wages right and when Cesar Chavez was trying to organize agriculture he went as here in California yes he went down to the border with clubs and tried to stop people from coming because he felt that illegal immigration would drive down wages and he was right so all of this influx came and wages went down for workers and as part of globalization employers liked it and the fruit off trailer went the upright harvester went anything the del Monte can we went they were all shut down or went overseas the middle class moved out the Corp the people bought all the land on top very medieval in California and then very cheap labor came in from Mexico and our South America I have no problem with that but I really get angry about what changed Schumer and Pelosi and Bill Clinton was the idea there was now so many people 20 million perhaps are Ivy League studies that and the second generation 20 million in California or no country Nate nationwide that would came here illegally another second generation some case third generation right and they're going to vote Democratic so they flipped California they flipped Nevada they flip New Mexico in from a red to blue or purple to blue state so it was a political decision it wasn't based on the merits sanctuary cities became the gospel when they felt that that was a winning political issue okay but it wasn't based on a principle that people coming in should be illegal the name of the town again is Selma your town where five generations of Henson six now have lived Selma's remaining native poorer White's ethnics and second and third generation Mexican Americans who would not or could not leave live in a town that has been transformed those changes were mostly a result of the laxity of immigration enforcement and import of expensive labor as you've just described and globalized trade policy as you as a witch you've also spoken about their once prosperous and stable community did not deserve to erode something bad happened to decent people through no fault of their own and because you live there you saw it with your own eyes I did and another thing I saw is that and this is a heresy to say that some of the people who got hurt the most for Mexican America second and third generation because in their neighborhoods this influx went into their schools and suddenly they didn't have very good Advanced Placement because a third of the student body couldn't speak English or suddenly in Norte no source Irenaeus or m13 gang member would make fun of a second generation mexican-american because he could not speak Spanish or he'd call him a term and Spanish for sellout or Uncle Tom or something of that nature and so when Trump came along for all of the sensational racialized tension that we were supposed to think that he that he harbored for Mexico and Mexican Americans 30% he did as well as Mitt Romney or John McCain and I have a feeling in the next election he could get thirty five to forty five percent of the Hispanic well now that just seems crazy but when you talk to people in the ground they'll say things like I got very ill of I got very tired of this family of gang members from Oaxaca so I called I so they deported them and now they're calling me on a cell phone from Oaxaca and threatening me what am I gonna do I hear that or a personal just said to me did you I was in Walmart they said did you read about this guy who just ran a stop sign and he hit a truck and then he took off I said yes it's the same thing happened to me these are not Atherton residents Atherton residents or Malibu residents want that system to continue I mean the I shouldn't say that that's unfair they want the the the factors or the ideas or the principles that can lead to that to continue with the people who really sell they will pay no price yet oh they have walls they put their kids in prep schools they have guaranteed jobs yeah but the people who suffer the consequences of those ideologies are often mexican-american and so I have a feeling that Trump is I guess what we're saying is that he's trying to do something that nobody really thought you could do in America in the age of identity politics he's trying to redefine it as class differences and this is from a multi-million billion dollar guy in New York he's trying to say to african-americans I got your wages up for the first time three percent increase in working wages for the middle class I got minority unemployment down to record lows illegal immigration is not in your interest it drives down your wages abortion is not in your interest abortion is much more common among Mexican American and black unwed mothers and it's not in its wiping out that community and we don't want that we want you we need you that's a pretty strong message that we haven't heard any politician or much less a Republican voice and so I think that even though he can be quote coarse and crude there's a certain populism that cuts across identity politics lines because it's the old class argument that you're the Forgotten people so you you spend some time here of course you published you're writing this book is he's coming up on two years two and a half years so there's still time in the first term let alone any question about whether he'll be reelected so any reckoning has to be partial and so forth but you think he did a pretty good job yeah domestically at home I'm quoting you the case for Trump at home the economy at Trump's first 600 days was better than any time in the last decade massive deregulation stepped up energy production tax cuts and talking up the American brand produced an economic upswing as evidenced by gross domestic product growth as a roaring stock market and record low unemployment so two things to be observed about that one is that's a very compelling domestic record yeah and the second is that's completely conventional Republican or conservative politics I think it is a welcome except for the we don't know that we effects because he hasn't lower the trade deficit but he's put allies rivals and I should say enemies right on notice that they're going to have to reduce their trade surpluses and trade reciprocally okay so and now foreign policy again the case for Trump abroad monthly incidents of Iranian hazing of US forces which were going on in the previous administration have remained non-existent nonexistent in the straits of hormuz they're not trying to shoot missiles at a carrier or they're not trying to cut in front of a destroyer or they're not trying to hijack a boat so the question is why because they're scared of this guy because he's wanna seeee because he's unpredictable and they have no idea what he's gonna do if Donald Trump if tomorrow secretary John Bolton calls up Donald Trump and says the Iranians just put shot a missile right across the bow of the of you know the George Bush the carrier carrier I don't know what he would do you don't know what he would do and neither do they and they don't know so all the things he's criticized in foreign policy of being unpredictable unpredictability as an advantage in diplomacy North Korea well I mean he I was taken back when he said little rocket man but then Arta if you read those serial ghostwritten are the deal books it is to act unconventional to scream and yell but always they have in the back of your mind that you're gonna ask for 70 80 90 % of a deal then take 55 and then praise your your interlock would torso no sooner did he do little locket man than he was saying he wrote a love letter to me and he's a great guy and the left went nuts they hated him when he said he was when he used a little Rocket Man they hated him when he said kim jeong-hoon was a good guy but what they didn't get is that's how he Trump tries to deal to be unpredictable to go back and forth but the real question is have they curtail their testing and missiles and nuclear devices I think they have Israel he moved the American excuse me I have to we have to state this correctly it has been a matter of American law it has that the embassy should be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and Donald Trump is the one who simply did it he fulfilled yes a a statutory requirement that Congress enacted well over a decade ago so he moved the embassy to Jerusalem but he did it in conformance with Allah duly passed by the United States Congress what he has done off his own though is issue a statement recognizing Israel Israeli sovereignty over the Golan high shaking up the middle-east a little too much here well he got out of the Iran deal and he said that the Palestinians would not be getting money channeled to the UN from the United States and basically in 1947 46 48 there were 30 or 40 million refugees there was Jews that were refugees that were kicked out of the Middle East and sent back to Israel there were 13 million Germans that walked back into Germany none of those persecuted whether they're volga germans and russia none of those persecuted groups today are called refugees right so Trump came in and said I don't understand what's the difference and so he he did all of the things that everybody who said they were pro-israel we're gonna do and then this is what I think there's a tragic nature to this as soon as he had done them the people said well he has his fingerprints on those issues and I don't want them now so a lot of the people who had supported these and I had read I mean a lot of the nevertrump right and said we got to move that embassy we got to get out of that Iran deal gotta get on that Paris climate Accord we got to just recognize reality the Palestinians idea of a refugee is all of a sudden Trump is too mercurial accomplished too brash Trump a sabre-rattling Trump is unprofessional and I guess it's style over substance I don't know what creates the schizophrenia but we're in a very strange time where people the 10% of Republicans who didn't vote for him or they never Trump elite they've basically said all of the issues or most of the issues that I embraced for most of my life I can't do it anymore because Trump's for them but so we see the argument of your book is a that Trump understood millions of Americans who'd been effectively forgotten or overlooked even by Republicans and be that as it turns out that is not all that he did that whereas many Republicans thought finally granted maybe he's seen something maybe he's established a connection with the voters that the rest of us couldn't but he doesn't know what he's doing it'll be a mess and you're saying that's not the so he has put together a very impressive substantive record he has that is your argument I don't think somebody I mean I can't think of a better Secretary of State and Mike Pompeo he's had two great national security advisors with a mr. I won't get into the Flynn I have feelings on that but HR McMaster and John Bolton he's got good appointments but most of that is the defense matters our former colleague at defense when he was basically saying as the post-war order was pretty good but when we created it there was no German miracle there was no Japan Japanese miracle Europe was destroyed there was no Russia was destroyed China didn't really exist as an economic power there was no Jap Japan Inc there was no tiger economies there was us and we could afford to take the hit we could run up deficits we could supply the world and we did that for 70 we intervened here we intervened there we kept the World Order we kept patents we kept copyright law we made it possible to travel to communicate to ship to trade all within the aegis of American diplomatic and military budget and taking a hit with asymmetrical trade because we were so rich and the world was flat was a wonderful thing we did all Trump said was I'm not going to get rid of NATO I just don't quite understand why this EU economy which is about the size of ours they can't figure yeah they can't spend a measly 2 percent of their GDP on defense and I can't understand why Japan and in and Taiwan and South Korea might want not one or help and I don't really don't think that you know 75 years after World War two I got a subsidized a 71 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico a 65 billion won with Germany they don't seem to be particularly fond of us that was just heresy I mean people just said he's destroying NATO he's destroying the post-world War II just say I'm updating it Victor here's an argument that you'll hear from the left but also from the nevertrump right and I think I'm doing this is the nasty thing to raise but I but you deal with it in the book and you know you've been getting hit with this on this book circuit so it's the racism sure all right and here we have Gabriel Schoenfeld who's a former Romney advisor he's writing in the bulwark quote racism is America's original sin by the way he he cites Trump's remarks during the Charlottesville incident and then he cites Trump this was during the campaign when he questioned whether a certain federal judge would be able to render a favorable opinion because he was a Mexican I think Trump said he was a Mexican he met Mexican America but still he questioned his ability to his impartiality because of his ethnic background okay and then Gabriel Schoenfeld writes racism as America's original sin yet with a drumbeat of racially charged remarks emanating from the White House Trump has been setting the nation back to a darker time Hanson's treatment of trump's odious lifelong record in matters of race his sophist tree in the service of a genuine evil no he should be ashamed about remark Gabriel Schoenfeld said because for two reasons one he didn't read the entire text of what he said in Charlotte's will I know what upset yes you may have been sloppy he should have understood the climate the landscape the geography of racial discourse but he did say there's this group and there's an Tifa and then there's a good group it has a right to protest and there's this group when he didn't break down the percentages and there were white awful nationalists and he said I don't like those people you read what he said and then there were other people that were good they were good and these are the people who objected to the toppling of statues in the case of judge Korea all I said in the book that I thought you shouldn't my mother was a judge you shouldn't impair or you shouldn't attack the efficacy of a judge number one number two I live in an area that's 90% mexican-american when I talk to people I said you know Joe and now they will say to me yeah he's a Mexican guy they don't say he's a Mexican America they don't call me a Swedish American they don't call another guy an Oklahoma in America and they say he's an oak that's just the way it is and Trump should have known that you don't supposed to say publicly but that's what everybody does number two just Korea was a member of the Lavazza lawyer so in Chuck Trump clumsily said he's in a Mexican group he is and I don't think any judge would want to be a participant in the National Council of the race and if I'm wrong then the National Council of La Raza had no reason to change their name two years ago why did they change it I didn't I didn't force them to you didn't they said you know what we don't want to be in something called the National Council of the race so they change it to Unidos United you know and remember and I mentioned this the book and schönefeld knows out that word came from Franco Spain it was reintroduced in the United States after it got would we address it Raza I'm the Latin professor it's come from Roddick's it doesn't just mean the people or the tribe as they say it does it means a racial component yes Franco and Mussolini twosies in Italian drop that word in to say if you're a Spaniard and you speak Spanish and you live in the Iberian Peninsula you're still not Spanish unless you've got racial purity and that's where the Chicano Movement picked it up in the 60s and finally finally mr. Schoenfeld should remember where we are in the political discourse joe biden said and i will collate what joe biden and harry reid said about barack obama he said he's the first candidate that can speak without a negro dialect joe biden said he's biden said that of rock obama obama he said he's clean what does that mean we've had a candidate that ran for president I remember Barbara Jordan there was no more articulate brilliant speaker but to say that Barack Obama was the first time and that both Reed and Joe Biden said that Joe Biden went in and said they're gonna put you all back and change you think that a crowd of African American community would even allow that to happen who they're not their freedom was dependent on their own initiative and US law but to say that in pander racially ister Bill Clinton said you know it was quoted he said Barack Obama would have been serving us coffee so what I'm getting at is that I got a when Trump went into these racially charged arenas he shouldn't have said anything but if he's going to say something what he says should be looked at the transcript of what he actually said and then what is the allowances for slang for adhoc we party I don't know what it is but he didn't say as Barack Obama did they Clint of a white community they cling to their giant guns or he didn't say it was own grandma she's a typical typical white person or his personal pastor personal pastor Barack Obama president nighted States I'd like mr. Schoenfeld to explain this to me why did he say the Reverend Jeremiah Wright I can't talk to Obama anymore because them Jews won't let me speak to him and he had a long history of anti-semitism why did it rock Obama allow himself to be photographed with Louis Farrakhan an absent racist and anti-semite so if we're going to get down and adjudicate everybody's pedigree of everything they've said and everything they've done let's just do it I'll be happy to do it I think it would be great and I'll criticize Trump but I will also criticize Joe Biden and I will criticize what you criticized so your argument is that at a time when racial pandering does take place Trump is guilty of making mistakes of speaking loosely but he is not a racist I don't think he is I think that when he went down I'll give you an example when he went into Palm Beach all of the powers-that-be did not want him to build that more Lago Country Club one of the reasons he did is Trump didn't really care who came into it as long as they were wealthy if you were Cuban American if you were Jewish American Trump loved you in fact the more money the better and I don't think his critics realized that Trump Trump is a plutocrat money is the standard by which he judges success and failure not race you can criticize that but it's it's it's he's not a racist Victor trumpism is there a legacy is there something of permanence building here the state I've got to read a couple of long ish Co tations but they set something up that's important you do not surprisingly you being you you deal with important matters here the state of the Republican Party before Trump as you write in the case for Trump the idea of protecting customs traditions and the continuity of a broad land owning and small business middle class had been essential to classical republicanism from the Romans who built the Republic to England's working-class citizens who resisted European revolutions in such a conservative tradition the hallowed and vibrant middle class was more grounded than the often self-indulgent rich and more careful and common sensical than the poor you know talking about Republicans yet you're talking about the conservative tradition that reaches all the way back to the Roman Republic now among Republicans this is at the as Trump comes along there was no longer a viable social and cultural conservatism of the sort outlined by Edmund Burke or embodied by Ronald Reagan himself a self-made man from the Midwest okay in Republican dogma nothing was static nothing sacred the quaint idea of a sixth generation family farm like yours as something of intrinsic value to grounding regional society depended only on how wise each generation was in adapting to market reality summed up brutally the Republican position meant that for the market to enrich society there would have to be winners and losers okay so it's settled I all of that is is actually quite movingly puddin of you being you you're the historical illusions this is all very very powerful but here's what it comes down to maybe what it comes down to is Trump saying the Hansen family farm has value and I grant you that so I will now deploy the coercive powers of the state in behalf of the middle class of small business owner and of rural Americans and once Trump says that and if that becomes the Republican position then the difference in principle between the progressives and the Democrats who have their interest groups the teachers unions the urban poor and so forth there's no difference in principle they have their interest groups and Republicans and conservatives have their favorite groups and it's just slugging it out every four years to see who's going to be able to grasp the apparatus of the state and deploy it on behalf of their interest groups where is the national interest in this okay you see I do you're describing the EU and France it's a control economy and it's got an emic growth and it it impoverishes everybody in its effort to create to preserve these provincial towns but but it does though does and culture here was the idea in the United States that we get 3% GDP by not doing that yep and Trump comes along and says we're gonna get three percent GDP and I'm gonna deregulate and I'm gonna push tax cuts and I don't care how many wealthy people that's what he did right but along with that I'm not going to control turn us into France but I'm going to say I'm going to force our jawbone or persuade companies that shut down for a to go outsource or to offshore or foreign companies that don't play symmetrically I'm going to - and I'll give you an example from personal so I was farming it was $1,400 a ton 1982 a ton for raisin yes I was in 1982 and I was farming a hundred and twenty acre farm and all of a sudden the EU was on the horizon and the Greeks got subsidies so they were telling German bakers and Dutch bakers if you buy our raisins we're gonna be part of your community let's start these and they got about a four or five hundred dollar subsidy or more cutting you by 30% oh yes so nobody bought raisins and the domestic market was not a big enough for thing so the price went from fourteen hundred to four hundred and that meant that everybody within the early all in the early eighties yes a couple 83 to 86 and this was during the Reagan shakeout Paul Volcker get rid of the stagflation okay so everybody was destroyed I mean it I saw people kill themselves I saw alcoholics I saw em my family would eventually go broke okay I talked to some people from the Republican Party and they said this to me and a person from the raisin board from Washington this is good for you Victor so why is it good for me you're gonna be more competitive so the persons who survive will learn how to make $400 raisins and and then they won't be able to sustain that that subsidy is one day Greece will go broke they were kind of right 30 years later with the EU and then you'll be more you the consumer will have cheaper raisins and I said actually the consumer I doubt because the the middleman will take up the profit we'll all be dead when you know and the only person that can can make it on 400 is vertically-integrated that has packing and trucking and can subsidize the actual farming law this is just what happens that's exactly what happened but what I'm getting at is you could have had a balance a little bit about it destroyed the entire community it wiped out families people left I I saw things that I they're still not I wrote a book about it fields of our dreams and I don't think that that creative destruction at all cost needs to be the mantra the Republican Party they can say we only we know free-market economics is the only thing that works market capitalist we're going to do that but we understand the dislocations that are involved and when they are involved we're going to pay psychological attention cultural attention political attentions to the losers and make sure that they're not losing we're not gonna write off the middle of these so you accept so so so so you accept the markets you accept there will be winners and then losers but you're going to help the losers yeah I think the Republican Party it's basically said the Democrats a monopoly on helping people who are victims and will just make the economy better for everybody and all boats will rise and will win but they hadn't won its in five or the last six elections they hadn't won the popular vote they hadn't won 51% since 1988 this is why they were winning at local and state and 1000 offices during Obama but they couldn't win at the national level because they nominated people like Bob Dole and I I love George W Bush but they nominated the bushes and they nominated I mean he did win we didn't win the popular vote once and they nominate John McCain and Mitt Romney and the message that was transmitted to Michigan and Ohio and Wisconsin rural Minnesota rural Illinois was that you guys are losers and you know what I think colleague of mine nationally you said the answer is getting a pickup and go frack just pull up stakes that's the good American we're going go east or go south young man I understand the logic behind it but it didn't have to it didn't have to come off that way and they didn't they didn't get it they thought themselves he Trump is so crass he's so crude he's so uncouth there's no way in the world that he will appeal to these in a way that that's John Kasich voters that Scott Walker's voters and I had written a column I said this is ironic he's gonna out pop your be about populist those two guys who are really populace who came from the middle classes and he did because they were not voicing somehow Donald Trump's message is in some way it's the same message as Ronald Reagan vote for me I'm one of you yeah I think it is and I think that's what I wrote the book to do two things to tell the deplorable Zanu irredeemable that there was a logical case historically and analytically for their vote and to to tell people on the left and right just put away your prejudices and your stereotypes and ask yourself how a person for the first time in american history without political or military experience one without calling up the Council on Foreign Relations without consulting the Hoover Institution they're broken and what does that say about persons empathy and credentials it says a lot it's means that people that were coming out of Yale Law School or Harvard Business School or Harvard Law School and were praised for their dishes and their erudite speech and their sober and judicious comport man and their resumes they couldn't get 3% GDP he couldn't win in Afghanistan they just couldn't restore the middle I'm not saying Trump will do all that but that was what the message that I was trying to get out it's a paradox on irony I still don't have the answers completely after writing the book last question Victor Trump is tragic hero yeah well I've been criticized for that Clint Eastwood's inspector Dirty Harry Dirty Harry Callahan cannot serve as the official face of the San Francisco Police Department you're talking about the movie here any more than Donald Trump could appear presidential in the fashion of Barack Obama but Dirty Harry has the skills and ruthlessness to ensure that the mass murderer Scorpio will never harm the innocent again close quote so you are arguing from draw from Dirty Harry and from high noon and from Greece Spain and offically Zajac Sophocles they're not all the same obviously I try to get as many different archetypes as I could from history and literature and George S Patton George Patton and he criticism a and what I'm saying is that in Western societies consensual societies they reach periods of crises where the established norms now I'm not talking about doing something illegally or unethically but the established protocols cannot really marshal itself against an existential threat so then within their ranks there are people who they would never consult in times of leisure and peace and affluence that come to the fore if we didn't have George Patton on the Third Army we would have not got to the Rhine almost in September if Curtis LeMay had not run the b-29 program it would have failed if Shane had not written in there wouldn't have been thus I saw Buster community Jack Palance would have taken the little whole thing but the very solutions that they offer and that can be successful come with a baggage of an outsider and uncivilized and uncouthness that as they become more successful the community for the first time has the luxury to say you know what GDP is pretty good on employment is pretty good I wish Trump wouldn't tweet so much I just don't I don't feel comfortable with that I said that was the last question but I told the lie this is the last question the case for Trump he's going to pay and you say he's going to pay Trump will end in one of two fashions neither particularly good either spectacular but unacknowledged accomplishments followed by ostracism what he's out of office and no longer useful or less likely a single term doing to do to the eventual embarrassment of his beneficiaries as if his utility is no longer worth the wages of his perceived crudité he wins a second term but at the end of that he's gone and ostracized or he might not even win a second term he may be driven from office in 18 months I said that it was less likely that he would not win I think he will win he's had his polling where Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were at this time he did better in the Senate in the house and both of them did his polls are about as I said about the same he's running against a weaker agenda than Hillary Clinton's the Democratic Party yes and they're - yeah they're farther to the left and he has a record and the Mueller investigation think for all practical purposes is over with but that being said even if he is elected I think he will be he's not gonna be invited to a post presidential funeral cadre he's not going the next presidents not going to say you know I called up George W Bush in his 80s I called up Barack Obama and I called up Donald Trump for advice it's just not gonna happen and that's partly because of the way he is and partly that he did things that you were not supposed to do was almost we'd rather not be successful and fail or be static in a particular way of comportment accent behavior and I think that paradox also explains one final thing of the tragic hero it's Sophocles Ajax's wins all the time why didn't people understand I was a best guy after Achilles Shayne kind of looks around so it's time I got to get out of this place Trump wants it he's obsessed all the time with why doesn't he get credit you know he'll tweet and say great GDP media doesn't say anything he'll even say things like if if I was a Democrat millennia would be the new Jackie Kennedy and the tragic hero can't quite fathom why his record of success is never is never given the proper recognition because to recognize that they would have to look at themselves and say I'm not part of the community that I tried to help and one of the reasons that and I'll finished with this so he's an outsider even now yeah one of the reasons that we do this is Trump success whether we like it or not is a referendum on the status quo credentials of a president and the class that produces presidents and the class that produces wise men and experts and what Trump is really doing whether he knows it or not is saying all you guys that get up and get on a tractor every morning all you guys that work in a shop all you long-distance truck drivers I had think I think you have a lot more expertise and common sense than a guy with a bunch of letters after their name PhD MBA and that's a very scary idea Victor Davis Hanson fellow at the Hoover Institution your classicist military historian and the author of the case for Trump Victor thank you thank you for uncommon knowledge the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation I'm Peter Robinson [Music] you

Channel: HooverInstitution

Views: 735,047

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Keywords: Trump, The Case for Trump, Victor Davis Hanson, Politics, 2016 Presidential Election, Midwest, blue collar, voters, Central Valley, Conservatives

Id: FEXL5USuDGI

Length: 60min 1sec (3601 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2019