Victor Davis Hanson 01.24.26: Tucker Carlson, Something Strange Happened To Him…

So, Victor Davis Hanson is someone that was, from what I understand, a pretty frequent guest on Tucker Carlson's show, and now he feels a moral duty to call out the lies and conspiracy theories and nonsense that Tucker Carlson is pushing. And he's following the Ben Shapiro principle that, as public figures, you're higher priority than being buzzy buddy with your fellow podcasters who, to be honest, often you say you're friends but you're not actually that friendly. Your higher priority, moral priority, is to the massive responsibility you have to all your viewers, to a massive audience you have. If one friend of yours says something, they have a very small platform, okay, maybe you could ignore it. But if you've got a colleague of yours in the podcasting world who has a massive following, and you all claim to be part of a similar political movement, and they are saying things that are evil, or they are giving space and legitimacy to ideas and people that are pushing evil ideas, you have a responsibility and a duty to call that out. It doesn't mean that you de-platform them. I don't even know how Ben Shapiro could de-platform someone. It doesn't mean that you end your friendship with them. It just means you say, That's not cancellation. That is providing moral leadership and clarity. Otherwise, you just say, well, it's a free-for-all. Everyone can say whatever they want and however they want to say it because they are supposedly on my side. That is a pathway to hell. And Victor Davis Hanson is one of those people. He says in this clip here, The Tucker that is talking is not the one I had a seven to eight-year relationship with every Monday after the monologue. But to be frank, everything he just said is demonstrably untrue. I want to show you what he has to say because it's important that we get moral and factual clarity, particularly about Israel and the Jews. Have a watch. Victor, I'm looking at an ex-post today, and it's posted by someone, and there's a link in here to a video of Tucker Carlson giving an interview, which I watched. It's a few minutes long, but here's the synopsis of it. He's in gutter. I'm going to call it gutter. Question why the United States prioritize Israel over Gulf states, such as gutter, arguing that the strategic value is one side. He, Tucker, said Israel is a completely insignificant country with no resources and nine million people, adding that the only reason it has any significance is because we provide a security guarantee. Carlson added, do we have to defend Israel and claim there is no overriding strategic interests in Israel for the United States saying, what are we getting out of this? Nothing. It's only costs. I'm almost done here, Victor. By contrast, he argued the Gulf states matter far more saying, quote, the six GCC nations, there are very obvious benefits to the United States, and he described those ties as, quote, much more important than the relationship with Israel, infinitely more important. He concluded that gutter's relationship with the US is so much more important than with Israel. Man, oh, man. Victor, your thoughts? Victor Davis I would like to say it pains me to say this, but the Tucker that is talking is not the one that I had a seven to eight-year relationship every Monday after the monologue. To be frank, everything he just said is demonstrably untrue. It's not an insignificant country. Let me not just say platitudes, but let me be precise and offer examples and data. First of all, Israel is the home of the Judeo-Christian, half of the Judeo-Christian, and you can argue the whole home of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's the protector of Jerusalem. Does Tucker really believe that Jerusalem in the hands of Jordanians was better than under the Israelis? Does he really believe that prior to the existence of Israel, the Middle East was a better place? So, it's got historical and cultural value. Number two, when he says it doesn't have resources, it's completely self-sufficient in fossil fuels. It is a net exporter of natural gas. It will be working with the Cypriots and the Greeks to tap offshore Mediterranean natural gas, which will be sent to Europe if Turkey doesn't interfere. He's talking about gutter, which is an autocracy. And I have always said that there was no strategic point in demonizing Saudi Arabia in the way that Joe Biden did. Said it was a rogue nation, then he turned around and begged it to pump oil. Tucker, there's not one constitutional government there. When you say they have 3 million people in gutter, there's only about 20% are citizens. The rest are helots. That is, they are laborers with no civil rights. They don't have the civil rights that Arabs do inside Israel, which are full citizens. They don't vote on any legislation in gutter. Nobody votes on it. But in Israel, Arabs vote on their own government, and they have Arab representatives throughout the Israeli bureaucracy and throughout the Knesset. That was wrong. When he said it's insignificant, we don't get anything out of it, it has probably the highest per... It has 12 Nobel Prize winners. And if you look at 11 million people, it's pretty much the highest per capita Nobel Prize winners. And they have given us everything from flash drives to drip irrigation. I'll give you an example, Tucker. I came home in 1980 from graduate school, and we had 20 acres of sandy vineyard that was uphill almost. You could not irrigate it furrow. My grandfather almost had a heart attack. And then I came home, and one day my brother was there, my twin brother, and he had this curious little black tubing. And he was with a Israeli-Dutch engineer was unraveling it. And I said, what in the world is that? And he said, it's called drip irrigation. I said, what? And he said, yeah, we're gonna put this a high... We're gonna have a high-pressure blades on the pump. We'll change them, and we'll put some filters on it. And we're gonna send all this water uphill under enormous 60 pounds of pressure. And we're gonna have one gallon per hour emitters at every vine. I said, you don't have to do furrows? You don't have to... No. I said, well, who thought this up? He said, the Israelis did. And then the engineer explained it to me, who was an Israeli. It was called Netafim. It had just been invented. And that story could be replicated all through American life. When we send over F-35s, it's the only country in the world that makes adaptations to it to improve its efficacy. And it usually shares those completely with us. When he said, what do we get out of it? Just forget Israel for a minute and ask yourself, what was the position of the United States government toward a nuclear Iran? I can tell you what it was. George Bush had an initiative that Barack Obama canceled to build a missile defense system on the request of Europe in the Czech Republic, and perhaps in Poland, to protect the European continent from a missile, which they now have to reach Europe. And they probably would have had a nuclear weapon with, and probably within a year, a miniaturized one that would fit on an intercontinental ballistic missile, and Europe would be at the mercy of the Iranian theocracy. Because they would, you know what they would do? Every five minutes, they would say, we want the 72 virgins, you love life, we love death, you're a one-bomb continent, we can live with half our... That whole stuff that they do with Israel. And so when we decided, we, we, the United States decided to take that out, who did we ask permission to get into Iranian airspace? The Israelis. There were no air defenses. We flew all the way from the United States, we were there for 28 minutes, we took them out, and we returned in complete safety. That would have been impossible without the Israelis. And does Tucker really believe that Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis are not enemies of the United States? We don't have any soldiers fighting Hezbollah. They blew up our marines, they blew up our embassy, the Houthis attacked our ships, Hamas people have committed terrorists. Who has deterred them? The Israelis. So I guess the big question that many have to ask is, why has this happened? Why has Tucker Carlson made this seeming shift? Some will say, well, it's just his political evolution. Others will say maybe he sees this is the way the tide is heading and he wants to, you know, capture a wider audience this way because he sees a low-hanging fruit there. Others say that it's Qatar's influence and all that. I'm not so sure. To be honest, I kind of feel like, from what I understand, he came from quite a comfortable background anyway, and I'm sure would have done very well out of being a Fox News presenter. So yes, I'm sure he's But to be honest, I actually suspect he kind of believes a lot of the nonsense that he's saying. That often is the case. You can have people who are otherwise pretty intelligent, that when it comes to Israel and the Jews, their logic can be thrown out the window because they already have an emotional destination in mind, which is resentment towards the Jews. And often that can be theological. I think he has a resentment to the Jews being God's chosen people. He just cannot, he can't come to terms with that. He can't come to terms with the idea that God would choose a nation to be a vessel for his light and a blessing to the world, a priestly nation. It's not meant to be something that people should be upset about. It's something that people should love and embrace. You know, we have a chosen people within the chosen people, the Kohanim, the high priests. I've never felt jealous or resentful that they get that particular role. In fact, there was someone in the Bible, in the Torah, who was resentful and said, hey, we should all be priests. We're all equally holy. That person's name was Korach. That happens in the book of Numbers, Bar Midbar, that story. Do you know what happened to him? He met his end pretty soon after saying that. Because the path of egalitarianism is actually not godly. Because it may sound nice, we're all the same. But actually, if we all have the same job in this world, then actually we're all dispensable. It is, as Rabbi Jonathan, the late, of blessed memory, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put it, it is in our difference that we each have dignity, because it means we will have something unique to contribute. If you are here on earth, that means you have a unique role to play in God's plan. Just because one nation has a particular role, it doesn't mean that you don't have a particular role to play as well. The nations of the world also have a unique role in this unfolding divine plan. So people need to replace, people like Tucker need to start replacing jealousy with pride. Pride for their role, pride for the Jewish people's role to be living in such a world in which we can all play that destiny. That's the only solution to all of this. Now before you go, a quick message for you. We're trying to get out these positive messages, busting the myths about Israel and shining the light of Jewish ideas and Jewish values to a world that desperately needs it. I think so much of hostility towards Israel and Jews just comes from ignorance. And if we can demystify, we can actually, I think, transform antisemitism into pro-Semitism. And we are churning out videos every single day doing this for free on YouTube. But we need your support. 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