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Iran’s next move, a Senate impeachment trial, and the beginning of the Democratic primaries. Despite January and February’s uncertainties, Victor Davis Hanson, the Hoover Institution’s Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow, believes in this certainty: President Trump is on a path to reelection this fall.
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What a glorious podcast. A national treasure, that VDH @victordavishanson, astutely and insightfully interviewed by @billwhalen.
@8:48:
Pure gold.
Previously I have mentioned in other threads that I would like to see Jonah interview/debate VDH on his podcast. I’m guessing that is entirely out of the question after this nuclear blast!
@11:45:
Someone please get VDH @victordavishanson together with the brilliant Salena Zito, and let us listen to their brand of psychological/sociological research. Those two combined know more about America and Americans than the entire collective consciousness of their 535 elected representatives in Washington.
Have you mentioned in any other threads that you would like to see e.g., David Frum, Bill Kristol, George Will, the Bulwark, the Dispatch, some people at National Review admit that everything they predicted about Trump was wrong?
VDH opposed Trump during the Republican primaries. So did I. I admit that my opposition was a mistake.
I can only guess from the tone of your response that you think that I am on the side of Frum, Kristol, Will, Bulwark, and The Dispatch. This is incorrect. I always wanted to see the debate because I would like to see how it would play out. I am firmly on the VDH side regarding Trump. Personally I did not vote for Trump in 2016 but I will in 2020!
And yet Trumpers can’t seem to stop talking about them.
I was unimpressed with the podcast. It was telling Trumpers what they wanted to hear. I want to be able to vote for Trump. I’m still waiting for him to stop saying stupid things.
Every time Trump does something good as he did with Soleimani, he can’t help himself and steps all over himself by saying something like attacking the cultural targets. If he is such a wily, cunning fellow why does he do that? I can only surmise it is because he knows that his base like it and also because he has very little understanding on how to do things outside of a real estate deal or a silly TV show.
The speech after the removal of Soleimani was good … but just wait a bit. Trump will say something stupid. He hasn’t won my vote yet. It is baked in for me that you can count on him saying stupid things … and they are costly both to him and to the country.
Afternoon Julia,
If you haven’t read it already, Win Bigly, by Scott Adams might give you a different lens through which to examine Trump. Take Trump public rebuke of the NATO countries not paying their fair share, I would say it was good in several ways, the govt folks probably hated it as more than “tear down this wall”.
“He can’t help himself and steps all over himself by saying something like attacking the cultural targets.”
This is the irrationality of the anti-Trumper.
If Trump had actually attacked some kind of “cultural target”, then we might — or might not — criticize him: depending on exactly what it was (and what Iranian act had provoked it).
But to attack Trump for psyching out the Iranians, for keeping them guessing, is irrational. Why on Earth would it be smart to give the Iranian regime reassurances about what form our retaliation will take?
So?
Does that mean Soleimani is no longer dead? Does that mean that Soleimani’s particular skill at exporting terrorism and killing Americans – and, to be fair, killing even more Muslims – is somehow reanimated? If so, in whom?
Okay, I get it now:
* Move embassy to Jerusalem;
* Recognize Golan Heights;
* Green light KeystoneXL pipeline;
* Confront China to trade fairly;
Real estate deals.
* Cut corporate income tax drastically;
* Amnesty for repatriated capital;
* Aggressive de-regulation;
* Clean out corruption at DoJ and Intelligence Community;
* Repeal Obamacare penalty;
Silly TV show.
What took us so long to elect a president who knows how to do real estate deals and silly TV shows?
I didn’t mean to imply that you are a NeverTrumper. I might have been a bit misdirected by your use of the term “nuclear blast” to characterize VDH’s typically thoughtful, measured, documented criticism of that crowd. I’ve never heard a NeverTrumper on the right explain his complete failure, so I was wondering if anyone else – you, say – had ever asked any of them to do so.
I did once ask Charles CW Cooke to define what he meant by his oft-repeated charge of “wholly unfit for office,” and he couldn’t. He did at least admit that Hillary Clinton is also in his opinion wholly unfit for office.
VDH would destroy Jonah
not true, VDH supported Trump during the GOP primary.
Bill Kristol, the night before the election, predicted Hillary would win popular vote and Trump would win Electoral College.
You, me and others… there are more silent Trump voters today than in 2016.
I live in California and I think Trump will get more votes than people expect. He won’t win California but he will get more than 40 percent
I agree with this. I live in California also and spent the first dozen years of my life just down the road from VDH over in Tulare County. Aside from being brilliant and measured in his analysis of the current political climate, VDH is also rooted and understands things from a flyover country perspective (let’s face it Tulare and Fresno County are essentially flyover to the rest of the state). It will be interesting to see the turnout for Trump in California later this year.
In his review of VDH’s “The Case for Trump” for The Imaginative Conservative, History instructor Chuck Chalberg of Normandale Community College puts it the way I’ve always understood it:
@libertydefender — “I did once ask Charles CW Cooke to define what he meant by his oft-repeated charge of “wholly unfit for office,” and he couldn’t. He did at least admit that Hillary Clinton is also in his opinion wholly unfit for office.”
Speaking of “wholly unfit”, in the last 2019 issue of National Review, Cooke pretty thoroughly blots his copy book.
In his cover article on what CNN has become, even setting aside his singling out the New York Times for lavish praise, you pretty soon realize that the bottom line of his critique of CNN is that it is guilty of merely approaching the awfulness of Fox News.
Um, like what?
No, no, no, you misunderstand. He gives no examples or proof of the awfulness of Fox News; it’s just understood.
I speculate that the article was originally written for a liberal publication, where the awfulness of Fox News is axiomatic, but rejected (for criticizing CNN) and then not rewritten for a conservative audience.
Then again, elsewhere in the same issue, one of the editors supports the Trump impeachment.
My subscription to NR has been on and off for decades; maybe it’s time to go off again!
If I had a nickel for every time in the past three years that I thought “sheesh, to think I used to subscribe to National Review,” I’d surely have reimbursed the cost of my 10+ years of subscription.
I wonder for how long the Continental Army talked about Benedict Arnold after he joined the enemy.
“I can’t believe that Nixon won,” goes the famous but variously attributed exclamation. “I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
I suppose that I meet all or nearly all of the criteria for membership in the upper-middle-class, and that I might truthfully have said back in November, 2016: “I can’t believe that Trump won. I don’t know any Americans who voted for him.” (On that surprising and I must say delightful day, in a land across the seas, I met a younger European friend and professional colleague, who was feeling utterly glum about it all. When I ever so gently attempted to offer a different perspective, she sharply warned me that any heretical remarks on the subject would be most unwelcome.)
Though I have long since rejected the (pseudo-)Marxism of my youth, I find myself returning to the notion of class interests and class identity, including class delusions. VDH is particularly adept (as he is so well qualified to do so) at contrasting the lofty pretensions of well-heeled Bay- Area Californians with the grim realities of the Central Valley…The former, ardent members of the Sierra Club, are ferociously opposed to fracking–and, I strongly suspect, not simply because they think it a mortal sin against Gaia. They are also appalled at the thought of cheap gasoline allowing members of the lower orders to discover Yosemite. And they see nothing the least odd about the kind of “socialism” that calls for taxing those lower orders in order to pay off the law-school expenses of their social betters.
a LOT of democrats in LA and SF are fed up defecation on the streets, homeless camps and sanctuary cities
VDH has been critical of US illegal immigration policy since 2003 (at least).
Trump was the first candidate to run on building a wall.
Trump made illegal immigration a central theme in his campaign appealing to voters like VDH.