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With a little over three weeks to go before the election, we thought it would a good time to have a heart to heart discussion with our good friend Victor Davis Hanson. the Classics professor, the military historian, the farmer, the cultural observer, and the author of The Case For Trump, his best selling book that came out in 2017 and was re-issued earlier this year. It’s the most cogent case we’ve seen for the re-election of the President. In this one on one conversation, Peter Robinson takes Victor through all the reasons to cast a vote for Donald Trump and challenges Victor with a few reasons not to pull the lever for him. It’s an enlightening and informative hour and should be required listening (if we do say so ourselves) for all voters, especially those who are still undecided. Have at it.
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Who are these undecided people?
I have a friend who says he is ‘undecided’. He likes Trump’s policies but hates Trump the person.
Former naval intelligence officer
One might first remind your friend that if he doesn’t think Creepy Joe is even more loathsome than anyone could think about Trump, he hasn’t been paying attention.
Then maybe move on to, if you’re having surgery, do you want a friendly quack, or a loathsome genius?
And so on.
(The arguments need not be extreme either. Maybe the loathsome guy isn’t a total genius, but at least he went to a good medical school. While the friendly guy graduated from… I dunno, Fidel Castro U?)
If people think that “the badness will stop” if they vote for Biden, we may be truly doomed.
I’m a little surprised, but pleased, that Peter apparently never felt the need to re-introduce himself to Victor during the course of this. He seems to do it at least once during every other Ricochet Podcast, despite how distinctive his voice is, sometimes using both his first and last name.
Ditto for three female friends of mine. One is further right-leaning than the others and we chat about Douglas Murray and can talk about everything together, but none can really take the idea of voting for Trump. I can’t get into it with them- it’s a dead end and not worth it for the friendship. The first friend I mentioned is warmer but is thinking of voting for the 3rd party candidate- she would actually listen to this podcast if I sent it to her.
@MrBitcoin I was a former USAF Intel Officer. I was saying ‘NEVER Trump” before I ever saw the #NeverTrumper meme on Twitter. I also came to grips with the fact that I was NOT voting for BFF or Parish Priest. I was voting for (and therefor against) policies that,applying enlightened self-interest and the Milton Friedman command: Always ask yourself :’COMPARED to what?’ resulted in a Trump vote. Once I got past my disgust with the term ‘binary choice’ I faced…a binary choice and hoped, after I voted for The Donald that he would move at least in the direction he promised. He did all that and more—I look at 300 Federal Judges and Gorsuch,Kavanaugh and now ACB and deregulation and his reflexive putting the sovereignty of the citizen ahead of the State and Jerusalem and daring to lead by confronting Little Kim face to face AND TELLING THE WORLD AND CHINA that the ‘infant industry protections’ China had enjoyed for FAR too long were over…and then, after the ‘what cudda been with HRC!’ I have no problem being disgusted with much of his persona but remain deeply attracted to his polices (on balance)…so a Trump vote is easier now than in 2016.
(Compared to___________)
Yes it sure is hard for me to imagine anyone who voted for Trump in 2016 when he was unknown/risky, not doing so again now. On the other hand, people who didn’t vote at all in 2016, or maybe even voted for Hillary, no longer have the unknown/risky “excuse.” So the “logic” that could lead to Trump NOT having a HIGHER number than in 2016, is… well, not logical at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru9e2rTHeuk
Milton Friedman also said it’s not about voting for the ‘right’ person. We need the ‘wrong’ to do the ‘right’ things
I always love hearing from Hanson. His Trump book was excellent. And as far as voting options go, you have to play the game with the pieces that are on the board.
“Trump envisioned decline as a Nietzschean matter of choice.”
Yeah, right.
Trump is the candidate of people who want to fight back against evil.
But fighting back against evil is not natural to women. (Or women would have been murdering ISIS and Taliban leaders for decades now!) Women tend to work around evil, or endure evil, or appease evil; but avoid open conflict at almost any cost. There are obvious Darwinian reasons for this difference.
The result in 2016 was that, among white men, Trump led Hillary by 30 points; while among white women Trump’s lead was only 2 points.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/
40% of new gun owners are women
https://www.whas11.com/article/news/local/gun-owners-spike-women-african-americans-kentucky-nationwide/417-c6b92a7e-08bc-4499-a81e-6a9a195078cb
Not sure what these numbers mean. In any case, I think they shifted drastically after the riots began in late May:
The National Shooting Sports Federation report found that a majority of those buying firearms are African American and 40 percent of Americans making purchases are women. The NSSF data was taken in a survey of firearms retailers from January through April of this year.
5 million new gun owners… how many new gun owners will vote for Biden/Harris?
https://www.guns.com/news/september-gun-sale-numbers-continue-to-skyrocket
The month of September 2020 continued the seven-month trend of dramatic double-digit increases in terms of federal background checks for gun transfers.
The unadjusted figures of 2,857,951 checks conducted through the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System last month by itself is a 30 percent hike from the unadjusted FBI NICS figure of 2,189,628 in September 2019.
However, when the data is adjusted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation by removing figures for gun permit checks and rechecks by states which use NICS for that purpose, the number of checks stands at around 1.6 million which is an increase of 61 percent compared to the September 2019 NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of just over a million. For the record, this puts the running total for 2020 at about 15.4 million checks, of which an estimated 40 percent are to first-time gun owners.
At this pace, says the NSSF, America could see over 20 million background checks for the sale of a firearm in 2020– blowing past the previous record of 15.7 million checks in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was favored to win her bid for the White House.
“This indicates that there is a continued desire for Americans to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” said Mark Oliva, NSSF’s public affairs director, going on to say that the number could have actually been much higher but inventory is low across country’s gun stores after months of increased demand.
This is three minutes:
That was a very good explanation about what Chris Wallace did.
(The American strain of the human species is going to die out with the gender gap widening every year, although it only seems to exist regarding college-educated women versus everyone else…)
Great show.
When you are talking about persuading Republicans to vote for Trump why isn’t this enough?
What is Donald Trump’s legacy?
He made Americans feel great again by fighting for the ‘deplorables and irredeemables’
If only Trump could make the case for Trump half as well as Hanson does, he would be in far better shape politically right now. Out on the campaign trail, Trump often seems bored talking about most of the accomplishments that Hanson lays out and instead rants about any slights, real or perceived. What a shame.
Victor Davis Hanson has become a ubiquitous presence on the internet and especially on youtube. In witnessing this, I wonder “why now?” It appears, and his manner in this podcast seems to reinforce this impression, that he genuinely feels the patriotic necessity of doing all within his power to re-elect Donald Trump. I am very grateful for that. He is able to use his knowledge of the world of the middle class, lower middle class and immigrant to make arguments for Trump policies that most elite class pundits are unable to conceive, formulate, or exposit. He has a unique contribution to the national discussion.
Morning,
Love VDH. This is from “Fields Without Dreams” , “I had never understood agricultural depression and yearly farm losses in quite those bleak terms until Olin Carlson, who owned the local brake shop in Alma and also farmed a small ranch, asked me; ‘Did you like farming for nothing this year, paying the bank to work your own place?’. In 1983 there was a farm depression in raisin farming ( which is why VDH looks out over almonds), VDH and his brother spent 10 years trying to save the farm. It did not work. If one wonders why VDH is so understanding of the guy whose job has just been sent to China, I suggest reading “Fields Without Dreams”, it is my favorite of his books.
If only the voters were smart enough to figure this out for themselves rather than having others explain it to them.
Wow!
This might be the best podcast ever recorded.
I was thrilled by 45 seconds in, and it just kept getting better.
At about 6 minutes in, I paused so that I could send a link to the podcast to as many friends as I could contact.
Several times during the podcast the truth that Victor Davis Hanson speaks is so powerful, it brought tears to my eyes.
And an even better explanation of what Chris Wallace didn’t do.
Have him listen to this podcast.
Send it.
After listening to this podcast and the latest Q&A with Jay Nordlinger back to back, I have a strong desire for a no-holds-barred debate between VDH and Jay Nordlinger. Surely the Ricochet big wigs can make it happen.