The Victor Davis Hanson Show
History of Income Tax Amendment 16 and News of the Week
Sat, 01 Mar 2025
Listen to Victor Davis Hanson discuss with cohost Sami Winc the history of Amendment 16, a new income tax in 1913. They also address the news on healthcare, the "Golden" card, Newsom's podcast, issues in immigration given a closed border, Jake Tapper's duplicitous new book on Biden's decline, and Gene Hackman passed away. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What is the historical significance of the 16th Amendment?
Next time, we're going to talk about the guns of August and what caused Europe to commit collective suicide in 1914 and the outbreak of World War I. And why did we get into it?
All right. Let's go ahead and take a break and come back to talk a little bit about things in the news. The funny or facetious and then some sad events occurred this week. So stay with us. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the Victor Davis Hanson show. So, Victor, could I just ask you one thing?
Because you were talking about Donald Trump and you said he's very smart and he's got a business cunning. And so but recently he's adopted the facade of the sort of mellow, contented old man. I love that. And he's sort of put Elon out there as that. that target to take all of the hard shots for him.
Do you think he admires Elon in a way of somebody who kind of sees himself in Elon when he was that age?
He does. You can't finish any description of Elon Musk. I'm exaggerating, but not necessarily that much. When he tells that anecdote. And then the rocket started to descend. And then this mechanical erector set arm grabbed it. Can you believe that? They grabbed a missile in mid-flight. Elon did that. And by the way, Elon, no one else can do it. Only you can do it.
And so, yes, he has genuine admiration. That's why the hatred of Elon is so bizarre. Because... Everybody understands that without Tesla, you wouldn't have an EV industry. It's a viable, working, reliable car, and the big three can't even emulate it. And then without Elon, you wouldn't have a space program. NASA has gone off the rails. I don't know what happened to it.
Without Elon, we would still be censoring social media, and the FBI would be working with Twitter and Facebook to try to weaponize an election. So I don't know what the anger is about him. Without Elon, we wouldn't even be talking about cutting waste. All he's doing is basically Donald Trump said Joe Biden went crazy. I was crazy, but he went crazier with the debt. I had the excuse of COVID.
He didn't. And then he said, Elon, you took over Twitter and they said that you had all this feather bedding and didn't you get rid of 90 percent? And Elon said, I not only got rid of 80 or 90 percent, it works just as well. Well, could you come over here? Yes, I want to come over here and do the same thing for the U.S. government. That's where we are. So, yes, he has a great admiration.
And yes, he's 78 years old. Yeah. I can tell you I'm 71 and my level of energy from 71 to 60 or 68 is very different, but it makes him more reflective. So yes, it enhances his message. He still tweets with capital letters. He still calls people bird brain and idiots and despicable and crazy and stupid, but less so. And, um, And he looks tired because he is.
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