Hey, welcome to the Bill Bennett show. It's thoughtful conversation about the news of the day, and we address the existential threats to America, and there are some, boy, you better believe it.

Today's our monthly special scholars and sense edition of the show, joining me today, Conrad Byte. He's an author, he's a columnist, he's a media contributor, and also with this, the very well-known Victor Davis-Hanson.

Senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, his focus, his classics, and military history. But first, the Santa's getting in. I'm hearing word that young kids gonna get it. Tim Scott's buying a ton of TV ads in Iowa. Amazing. Amazing. We shall see. There's some major confrontations coming up.

What I'd like to point to is, boy, an awful lot of the states, particularly red states, are really opposed to this early surgery, gender fluidity, surgery, making decisions at an early age. You want to change your sex. A lot of states are forbidding it. Texas most recently.

Federal government can away in here. Don't know. On a parallel track. Federal government may weigh in on the whole thing about transsexuals and sports. And again, a lot of states are passing laws saying, you know, if you're XX, you're female, if you're XY, you're male, that's it.

And your biological gender, whether you're XX or XY, determines what and where you can compete. We'll see what happens on those fronts.

We will take up a lot of things here with Victor Davis Hanson and Conrad Black. And I have questions for them, but it's always good to see what's on their minds. Okay, let's get to those guys.

You're listening to the Bill Bennett show.

Joining me now is Conrad Black and Victor Davis Hanson. Gentlemen, thank you. I usually begin with a question, but I don't know where to begin.

Best of times, the worst of times. I'll pass on the best of times. It seems to me the worst of times. Am I wrong?

There's their race of hope, but now they're terrible things. What's the worst of it, Conrad?

Well, I hate to be, you know, it's a non-American on the, you know, on the call. I hate to be negative about your country, but the world is distressed and most major countries in the world,

and no position to take high ground about these things, but the whole apparent, these things we've discussed for many months now, but the apparent incompetence and ineffectuality of the administration and the irresponsible conduct and these revelations of really shocking

and politicization of institutions that are supposed to be non-political and have to be if a constitutional democracy is going to work, and the determination of the great majority of the media, or at least the national political media, just a stone wall of an ignore it, and pretend it's a big fat nothing, as Weissmann says, which I think is other than the fact that he's a rather slender man, a pretty fair description of him.

And it is worries him. Now, my own view, and I guess the Trump supporter in residence here is the upside of it is, it looks like Trump is really scored, and it looks like the democratic card up the sleeve of these phony indictments they can bring forward through the politicized Justice Department are backfiring.

And I don't think that anything they do in respect to the rate in Mar-a-Lago with January 6, or the Georgia, you know, the interventions and the Georgia results and the last presidential election will be significantly more plausible or legally well based in the Stormy Daniels nonsense.

So, I mean, for better or worse, I think Trump is coming back more strongly than I had anticipated, and certainly than his opponents had, and you can see how distressed they are.

You can see it with Peggy Dunin and Andrew Sullivan, and most of the old familiar old anti-Trump people.

Now, am I talking, am I sitting here north of the border, presenting a vision of things that you people find incomprehensible or mistaken?

I wish they were incomprehensible.

I think we have to give more credit to the deviousness of the left.

I think they've got a lot in store for us.

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