Victor Davis Hanson: Impeach Hegseth? You Should Be Thanking Hegseth

On this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc dissect the effort to impeach Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and the Biden administration’s effort to drum white conservative males out of the service.

Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., announced Wednesday his intention to file articles of impeachment against Hegseth, for “Murder and Conspiracy to Murder and Recklessness and Unlawful Mishandling of Classified Information.” The first charge is in connection with a Sept. 2 military strike on a boat believed to be carrying drugs to the U.S.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and, of course, President Donald Trump have also faced impeachment calls this week from House Democrats.  

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. 

Sami Winc: What do you think about these impeachments? They’re obviously not going to go through. So, what’s the point?

Victor Davis Hanson: Why are they doing it? They don’t control the House. It’s just a way. Now you mentioned these guys’ names, and now I know them. That’s what it’s for. Our listeners heard their names. That’s it. 

They’re not going to get an impeachment majority vote. And there’s no way in the world they’re going to get 60 senators to vote. No way for a conviction.

So, I would ask them, “What would be an impeachable offense if you’re Pete Hegseth?” He took out 30 boats. Let’s say there were seven people on them, right? He didn’t kill anybody, but 20 people were killed in this kinetic operation. 

Barack Obama killed over 550. I haven’t heard Pete Hegseth joke about it. Let me just ask the two congressmen this question: I’m Pete Hegseth. You know, I didn’t think I was good at killing, but I found out I’m well suited for it.

And then he’s going tell to a big audience, all the media in Washington, all the marquee media in America, he’s going to say, I just want to make a joke. Anybody want to date my daughters? It’s called  P-R-E-D-A-T-O-R, Predator drone strike. Be careful. 

So, what are [Hegseth]’s crimes? Well, he came in, and they were 45,000 recruits short in the military, and they had drummed out between 8,000 and 8,500 people for not getting the mRNA vaccination.

Aside from the question of whether that was a wise move, most of those people had had COVID by that time. So, they had a natural immunity. And we know now that the natural immunity is as good or better than the boosters or whatever. Speaking to someone who had both Moderna and I’ve had four cases of COVID, two serious and two not as bad.

And then, they were letting in 10,000 people a day across the border without any audit. So, they were telling the U.S. military, you’ve got to get an experimental, unproven Moderna or Pfizer vaccination, but the people coming from Latin America or all over the world, they don’t have to. They’re more entitled than you are. 

So, he solved that problem. There’s no recruitment crisis. Why are you raising your hand? 

Winc: Because I want to say something about that. They undoubtedly felt in the military under [President Joe] Biden that they could get rid of people that were politically right-wing if they said people who did not get vaccinations, because the majority of the people that were against either vaccinations or the lockdown tended to be the right wing.

So that was probably more the goal than anything else. 

Hanson: This is what they did. This is what they did intentionally. [Former Secretary of Defense] Lloyd Austin and Joe Biden. And to an extent, Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken. They said to the military, how do we get rid of these conservative people in the ranks? Well, they are more likely, as you said, not to get vaccinated. Let’s get rid of 8,500. These were some really good veterans, great people. 

Then they said, well, let’s really push the trans, gay, DEI agenda. Let’s run commercials of women pregnant in air suits. Let’s have trans shows on military bases. Let us have, we won’t call them quotas, that’s illegal, but we will have racial quotas and gender quotas. And let’s have women in combat units regardless. We’ll lower the standards.

What was all the purpose of that? They said it was for inclusivity and diversity. No, it was to target a particular type of soldier. And that soldier fits a profile. Let’s just take today’s potential recruit, 18. His father fought in the Gulf War. His father fought in Vietnam. His father fought in Korea. His father, or grandfather, fought in World War II. His great-grandfather fought in World War I.

That was the type of demographic that volunteers to go into the military, especially the Army. And I say this until I turn blue in the face, but if you go in and try to decipher Pentagon websites or Pentagon-related—and they do not want to talk about this—but if you look at it, they have every DEI stat you can imagine. How many colonels are black? How many women are in combat units?

The dead? That’s hard. How many people died by race? But if you can find that, and I have found it, it’s about 72 to 74% in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So let me just summarize. They came in and said we do not like these recruits. And we’re going to keep in your face DEI, in your face vaccination, and we’re gonna insult them on radical abortion, and we’re gonna get rid of them.

And then they said, well, these people constitute white male rural, Southern, you know what I’m talking about, our suburbs, they constitute about 35%, 70%, 67%—I know they inflate, there’s multiracial, all that—but say 67 to 70% are white and half of that. So, you’re talking about 34 to 35% of that pool was dying at double their numbers.

And yet that was the one they targeted to get rid of them. And they did. They just quit. 45,000 of them. Then you go to the Pentagon websites, and you think who is not being recruited? And you can see it, that was 90% white males. Then you talk to retired officers and generals, and they email you or they’re angry at you or they trash you if you say this, and they have me. 

Then you ask them why the shortfall? They will give you every answer except the truth. They will not say that white males die at twice their numbers in the demographic, and we try to alienate them through these social programs. They’ll say, people are too fat. They have too many tattoos. They’re on drugs. They’re out of shape. We have to compete with private enterprise. It’s all a lie.

And he solved that problem, Pete Hegseth. There is no shortage now. All of them are back.

And he solved the problem as well of if you want to smuggle drugs into the United States and you’re in Latin America, we have a wall across the southern border now and there’s zero entry, then you have to come by sea. And he was waiting for them.

And they kill 75,000 people a year through imported fentanyl and fentanyl-like drugs. 

[Hegseth is] compared to what? I think George W. Bush ordered targeted assassinations of about 50 people. He never killed a U.S. citizen.

Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump have not killed more than 30 or 40 people, maybe more in Iraq in the first term or Syria. And they have not, to our knowledge, killed a U.S. citizen. And the very people who joked about it under [Barack] Obama are now wanting to impeach him.

And then the final thing he’s done very good: He’s broken up the idea that you only buy major weapons systems from Raytheon or General Dynamics or Lockheed or Northrop. These are all great companies. The people that run them are great, but they’re very expensive. $14 billion carriers, $75 million planes, $170 million fighters. So why not a million drones? Why not a million robotic drones on land? Why not a million drones in the ocean? Why not cheap missiles that people carry on their back?

So, that’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to break up that monopoly and get on the shelf practical quantity as well as quality.  

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