Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Jack Fowler: Victor, you mentioned Tucker, and I saw this post this morning on X, and it’s “Tucker Carlson defends Graham Platner.” Quote, “Rather than respond to what his positions are, they’ve called him a Nazi because he had a tattoo that was not a swastika but was allegedly connected to the German military.”
Victor Davis Hanson: Wait, he said allegedly?
Jack Fowler: Allegedly. “They’ve attacked the guy and his personal life. They don’t like him because he’s not sufficiently supportive of Israel.” That’s Tucker Carlson on Graham Platner. So, just thought I’d lay it out there.
Victor Davis Hanson: So let me get this straight. The Totenkopf just means, in German, “death’s head.” Many militaries have it, but there is a particular way of portraying that death’s head. And yes, in the 18th century, Austrian and Hungarian hussars, those were the light cavalry, they wore a skull. But this particular typology is popular in European right-wing circles and in other white supremacist circles because it denotes the Totenkopf, I think it’s called the Verband.
That was the particular SS group that was responsible for the death camps, and they had it for a reason. They were there to kill people, and that particular insignia was worn by them.
And number two, there were Waffen-SS, that is, military SS groups, and one of the most notorious was the 3rd Panzer Division, and they had Totenkopf.
By the way, when the American soldiers saw those people and that they were Waffen-SS, and they tore off their shirts and they found their… because they tattooed their blood types onto their arms. And that was the giveaway. And they tried to erase them when they were surrendering, but they did not treat them very well.
They knew who they were. They knew they had murdered prisoners in Normandy. They knew all about how they had treated Americans. And they had that particular type of Totenkopf.
When Graham Platner said he didn’t know, that is completely contradicted by girlfriends who said that he said, “My little Totenkopf.” He knew. With people who went in there, he went there.
Then when he was asked why he did it, he said, first, “I didn’t know.” When that exegesis did not work, then he said he had post-traumatic stress syndrome and he was suffering from it when he did it. Then when that didn’t work, he said he was a victim of toxic military masculinity culture that had imbibed him with it.
In other words, he was lying because he knew what he had done, because he liked the idea of wearing it, and that’s why he told people about it and pulled off his shirt and took pictures of it.
When Tucker says allegedly, that’s simply not true, Tucker. It’s not allegedly. That particular version of a death’s head is tied particularly with SS groups that slaughtered people both in the Holocaust and prisoners of war. And he knew that, and he put it on there for a reason. And that reason is substantiated with all of his white supremacist stuff he was on.
And it’s not just that they’re looking into his personal life. They’re looking into his personal life because he keeps saying that they’re not going to find anything.
And every time he says he didn’t abuse women, some woman comes and says, “He jammed my arms behind my back. He pushed me. He locked me in a room all night.”
And then when he says, “I’m just an oyster man,” okay, this is politics. Let me see your oyster business. Oh, you’re a one-person oyster man? Oh, you have one client, your mother? You’re working on an oyster island that your father’s owned.
And then, “I know what it’s like to buy a house.” No, you don’t. You got a two hundred thousand dollar loan from your daddy.
So everything he says is not true.
And the next thing is when Tucker is defending him. Tucker’s a conservative. He still believes, I think, maybe I’m wrong, maybe he’s gone full Bill Kristol, but I have been given things that he sends out. I think I’m still on a list, and I look at it, and he’s very critical of open borders. He wants deportation. I assume he still wants energy development.
Graham Platner doesn’t want any of that. Nothing.
So what I’m getting at, Jack, is that the one issue that he may differ with Graham Platner is Jews. I mean, not differ, is Jews and their influence in the United States and Israel. And therefore, because that issue is the one issue that he’s upset but he’s not upset.
I don’t hear Tucker saying, “I don’t like Trump because of his border policies. I don’t like Trump because he deported people. I don’t like Trump because he cracked down on crime. I don’t like Trump because he’s pumping too much oil. I don’t want… I like Trump.”
No, it’s one issue. It’s the Iran war and the Jews made us do it. And that issue then overrides all the other issues. All the other issues pale.
I am a 90% conservative, but I hate Israel so much and the people who support it so much, I am willing to cancel out all the other issues and join this fanatic communist socialist. Makes no sense.
Jack Fowler: Yeah. One last thing on tattoos, Victor. I don’t have any tattoos. I will never have a tattoo. I assume, though, by the variety you see on the street and the number of tattoo parlors, there’s probably several hundred thousand tattoos you could get if you wanted to get a tattoo.
And to pick that particular tattoo out to put on you instead of having a tattoo of Kermit the Frog or something, a heart with an “I love you, Mom,” it’s kind of foolish for Tucker to pull the ‘allegedly’ thing.
Victor Davis Hanson: I only considered it at one time. I was, let me see now, I was like 47 or 46 and all my daughters’ friends at college had these strategically placed tattoos, on their foot or on their back so they could show it if they wanted. And they all had nose rings.
And my daughter came home with a nose ring.
Jack Fowler: Fun.
Victor Davis Hanson: And I said, “Okay.” I got both my daughters and my son together and I said, “If anybody gets a nose ring or gets a tattoo, here is what I’m going to do. I’ve always wanted a barbed wire tattoo around my biceps, and I’ve always wanted to wear a wife-beater T-shirt.”
“So here’s what I’m going to do. Every single day that I pick you up at school or I’m with you, I’m going to have two barbed wire tattoos, one on each arm, and I’m going to show them.”
And my son said something like, “Well, you don’t have big biceps.”
I said, “That’ll be even more pathetic, won’t it?”
And then I said, “If that doesn’t work, I don’t want to do it because I have sinus problems. I might have to get a nose ring.”
Jack Fowler: Got a diamond stud, yeah.
Victor Davis Hanson: And that was it.
The nose ring came out, and all three of them never had a tattoo.
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