Join Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Jack Fowler for discussion of President Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress, turning around universities, Democratic leaders like Hakeem Jeffries, Gavin Newsom, and Tim Walz, the censure vote on Al Green, race and gender essentialism is logically flawed, and the Ukraine war.
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Finally, Victor, instead of preaching to Ukrainians about holding elections, you should speak out about what is taking place in Ukraine: it is the third such genocide Russians have perpetrated on Ukrainians in the last century. You must make Trump realize that if he capitulates to Putin’s new conditions, he will be labeled as an enabler of genocide.
You say: “The war could have been stopped without casualties.” Lie. It didn’t start in 2022. It started when Russia seized Crimea, when the world was silent. When the first bodies with tied hands disappeared in Donbas. Do you think that if we surrender now, it will end? No. Putin will come later. And then you will justify him again: “Oh, he’s just restoring the empire, he’s a genius!”.
And what will you say to the families of the 15-year-old girl who was shot by the Russians on her bicycle? That her death is a “small loss of land”? Will you tell her mother that she “doesn’t deserve a seat at the table”? That her daughter died because Ukraine “didn’t agree”?
We are not asking you to fight for us. We asked for weapons – you gave them too late. We asked for sanctions – you relaxed them. But now you want to become an accomplice in genocide. Because when you lift sanctions, when you recognize the occupation – you give Russia a license to kill. Every dollar that Putin receives will become a bullet in the body of my patient. Every compromise you make is a new corpse.
I am a doctor. I swear to save lives. And you, Mr. Trump, swear to take them away. Don’t you want to hear our voice? Then listen to our sirens. Our cries. Our curses. Do you want to be friends with Russia? Then be friends. But know this: history will not forgive you for this. Every child killed by Russian weapons, every raped woman, every burned doctor is your joint responsibility with Putin. [End of letter to Trump]
Have you ever heard a person scream when their leg is amputated without anesthesia? Is this your “small loss of land”? Is this what you are kicking us out of the negotiating table for?!
You call Putin a “genius”? Then genius is the ability to burn people in their homes. This is a scorched earth tactic, when only corpses and mines remain after the occupiers.
Do you admire his “smartness”? He is smart as a plague rat: he knows how to escape responsibility, hide behind civilians, shoot with nuclear threats. And you, like a child playing with fire, want to make him a world leader.
Your plan is not peace. It is euthanasia for Ukraine. You propose to lift sanctions? That is, give Russia money for new tanks. Western technology for their kamikaze drones. Do you want to return them to the G7? As if they don’t bomb gas stations so that we freeze in winter. They don’t steal Ukrainian children. They don’t destroy our museums, churches, theaters – everything that makes us a people.
You ask why we don’t make concessions? Because every one of your “deals” stinks of corpses. Do you want us to give up even more territories? So that millions of Ukrainians live under Russian machine guns? So that my fellow doctors hide in bomb shelters again when Putin breaks this “deal” too? [still more to come]
Your “negotiations” are a spit in the face of thousands of my colleagues who died under shelling of hospitals. Do you know what it’s like to work in a basement without light, without antibiotics, without morphine, when a child dies in your arms from pain? Have you ever heard a person scream when their leg is amputated without anesthesia? Is this your “small loss of land”? Is this what you are kicking us out of the negotiating table for?!
You call Putin a “genius”? Then genius is the ability to burn people in their homes. This is a scorched earth tactic, when only corpses and mines remain after the occupiers.
Do you admire his “smartness”? He is smart as a plague rat: he knows how to escape responsibility, hide behind civilians, shoot with nuclear threats. And you, like a child playing with fire, want to make him a world leader.
Your plan is not peace. It is euthanasia for Ukraine. You propose to lift sanctions? That is, give Russia money for new tanks. Western technology for their kamikaze drones. Do you want to return them to the G7? As if they don’t bomb gas stations so that we freeze in winter. They don’t steal Ukrainian children. They don’t destroy our museums, churches, theaters – everything that makes us a people.
Your “negotiations” are a spit in the face of thousands of my colleagues who died under shelling of hospitals. Do you know what it’s like to work in a basement without light, without antibiotics, without morphine, when a child dies in your arms from pain?
Victor, in case you need material for your podcast, below is an open letter to Trump, written by a Ukrainian doctor.
You want to talk about “peace agreements,” Mr. Trump? Then listen to me, a doctor who puts the torn bodies of children on the operating table every day! Who cuts off fragments from their brains with a scalpel, who wipes blood from the eyes of mothers who have lost everything! Are you talking about “giving up territories”? I will show you the territories: these are pieces of muscle on the asphalt near Mariupol. These are baby strollers crushed by tanks in Bucha. These are burned-out school classrooms in Chernihiv, where children managed to write “HELP” in chalk on the blackboards before they were killed.
Do you dare to accuse us?
Are we to blame for the fact that Russian executioners rape women in basements? For killing prisoners by shooting them in the back of the head? For spreading cluster bombs along civilian evacuation corridors? Your logic is the logic of a rapist: “It’s your own fault that you didn’t submit.” Do you want us to “not lose land”? So why don’t you say this to Putin, who slaughtered entire villages in the Kherson region? Why don’t you threaten him, and not us, those who defend themselves with old machine guns against his army? [completion in next posting]
I listen to the VDH podcasts regularly. What strikes me is how VDH takes about everything under the sky except the elephant in the room: Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine.
For once, albeit accidentally, Putin has told the truth: long-term peace in Ukraine is only possible by “eliminating the root causes of this crisis.” The main “root cause” is an old deranged KGB officer in the Kremlin who views the collapse of the Soviet empire as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, calls his opponents “national traitors” and Ukraine “an artificial state”, and idolizes Stalin and Andropov.
Without “eliminating” this “root cause” there will not be peace not only in Ukraine, but in Europe as a whole. [more to come]
Has anyone else been seeing how Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are falling for someone’s rewriting of history? It’s as crazy as the left’s 1619 project or whatever they call their rewrite of U.S. history. They’re talking a lot of antisemitic and conspiracy theory ideas and I think it’s all connected. These two have a large following of gullible people and I don’t know if anyone is challenging them. I did see VDH along with two other real historians do a podcast countering one so-called honest historian Tucker interviewed, but I don’t know if Tucker ever listens to anyone but his staff.
As always, great commentary from Victor and Jack. One historical trivia item: While brandishing his walking cane at Mr Trump during Trump’s State of the Union, Mr Green obviously didn’t have much of a sense of irony or history. In 1856, the Democrat from South Carolina, Preston Brooks, also brandished his walking stick and used it to club and severely injure the abolitionist and later Republican senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner. Brooks did so in retaliation for Sumner’s heated attacks on slavery that he had made in Congress.
Mr Green should be aware of that.
Black Democrats are all in on white and other slavery.
Victor, Victor, you are my favorite Podcaster, and you are beginning to worry me. Apart from your writings, teaching of classes, and numerous appearances, all of which I always enjoy, you are looking run down. Your color is bad and you look exhausted. I typically don’t comment on other men’s appearances, but other men don’t provide me with the insight and historical perspective that you always bring. I am requesting of you that, if at all possible, you pare down your overwrought schedule in order that you remain on this earth with us for a much longer time.
Victor, I second Tim’s opinion.
Y’know, I’m not as fond of Sami as the host as I am of Jack, but I still miss having the VDH Show episodes from this weekend. What happened?
Ah! Illness. So that ‘splains that. Get well soon, Vic!
I am of the opposite opinion, Jack rants way to much and injects too many ads into the podcast. Sami on the other hand sticks to what appears to be a script she and VDH have set up. I never hear Sami promoting herself as Jack does often.