Victor Davis Hanson Warns of a Mass Uprising Against is Happening in the West...

Rabbi Pinchas Taylor

 

Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of "The Victor Davis Hanson Show." His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.
Editor’s note: This is a ltranscript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. The 2026 midterms, as we’ve talked about, will be determined by the economy. That was brought home by a recent Harvard/Harris poll where some dozen issues were arranged and the surveyed public was asked to rate their importance in their own opinion.

They ranged from the economy, foreign affairs, the border, higher education problems, the transgender, and, overwhelmingly, No. 1 was the economy. And it was laced in the term that the Left has used, called affordability, and democrats have that one issue has driven down President Donald Trump’s, basically, 48 to 50 approval ratings the last, oh, two months ago down into the lower 40s.
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We don’t know how accurate these polls are, but the Left has made the argument that the prices are about 21%, 22% higher than when Donald Trump left, and they are on average about 5, 5.2 higher per year. And Donald Trump in 10 months did not lower.

Now, I know you’re saying, “Victor, Victor, that’s absurd. It was former President Joe Biden who did what you just said.” Exactly. So, why is that issue hurting Donald Trump so much? And what can he do to stop it?

Well, the answer is that he assumed he—I’m using Donald Trump and his name and “he” for the whole Trump conglomerate, the whole team. What they assumed was anybody, they thought, anybody who followed the 2024 campaign would understand that Donald Trump won by pointing to democrat Joe Biden’s disasterous record: 12 million illegal aliens, many of them or most on the dole, draining the social services network, undercutting labor prices by cheap labor, bringing in drugs, a big cost. Supply chains weakened after COVID-19. Don’t want to have a lot of stimulus when there is pent-up consumer demand, warning some blue-chip economists not to do what Biden did.

What did democrat Biden do? Eight trillion dollars in stimulus borrowing. I could go on.

But Trump had delineated all of those pathologies in the 2024 campaign that had led to this hyperinflation, the worst in 40 years.
So, Trump comes in in January, and the inflation rate that particular month had gone down from an average of 5.2% to 3%. So, then he goes and works on the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” He works with his interior and energy secretaries to already produce record levels of natural gas and oil. The Big, Beautiful Bill, of course, had deregulation, the continuation and expansion of tax cuts, and then the symmetrical trade he was talking about, and then the record $10 trillion to $20 trillion, probably $10 trillion, in foreign investment.





So, that was all laid out, why the Democrats were talking about affordability, affordability. The attitude, this is my point, the attitude of the Trump administration, however, was, well, we have these long-term catalyst and stimuli and reforms that are gonna supercharge the economy. Any time you have more deregulation, more tax cuts, more energy development, more foreign investment, more fair trade, it’s gonna boom. Next year we’re gonna have the World Cup games, suckers, right in the United States. We’re gonna have the 250th anniversary of the birth of the country. This is gonna take off like a rocket.

That was the assumption. I think it’s accurate, but, and then the other half of their assumption was no—and Donald Trump kept saying it’s a con job. Nobody’s gonna believe affordability from the people who destroyed it. Twenty-one aggregate inflation, if you look at insurance, housing, autos, health care, food staples. Thirty percent it went up under Biden. More than 6% a year, 7% a year, 8% a year on these key staple items that are so essential, power, gas.
So, I think what I’m getting at is they were kind of asleep at the wheel. They said no one was going to believe that propaganda. They all know that Biden ruined the economy and left us with a mess, and that’s why I won the election. However, we’ve done all of these things I just delineated and they’re gonna kick in next year, and I’m going to turn my attention to solving the Middle East problem—which he’s made a lot of progress with the ceasefire with Hamas. We’re gonna solve the Iranian nuclear proliferation problem, which he’s more or less has done. I’m gonna spend a lot of time on seven or eight ceasefires, which he’s done, and now I’m turning my attention to the Ukraine war....so says Pres Trump.

Yes. And when you were doing that, that lie about affordability being your fault was reverberating in every single media broadcast. Affordability, affordability, Trump’s inflation. And for you not to address that every day and say, “Wait, the inflation today is 3%. That’s what I inherited, and it’s only been 10 months, and I’ve got the whole mechanisms in place to lower it, but I haven’t increased inflation one iota. In fact, it’s down at 3% from the 5.2%.” But we didn’t get that is what I’m trying to say.

So, Donald Trump is saving the world, and quite successfully, with a wonderful foreign policy that is bringing real results both abroad and on the southern border, and that will have economic implications, as will his foreign policy. And meanwhile, the Left is saying he cares more about Ukraine. He cares more about the Israelis. He cares more about the Azerbaijanis and Armenians. But us democrats , we care about our affordability....which is democrat BS.
And no one is saying, “Democrats should care about affordability. Democrats made America unaffordable every year you were in power and we’re undoing your mess.” But we haven’t had that message, and I hope we will very soon.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Related posts:

1. Will Trump’s Economy Survive the Left’s Sabotage Ahead of Midterms?
2. Beware of These Political Land Mines, President Trump
3. The Political Meme That Destroyed a Presidency

 

This video was AI generated and multiple disclaimers told us so.

We have been told only negative BS about Pres Trump for years.
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Weeks ago democrats told our military to question Pres Trumps orders.

This AI generated BS is more of the same, an attempt to cast doubt on Pres Trumps authority to lead the country.

Will you continue to believe someone who has been caught lieing to you?

When you repeat something that was untrue, are you willing to put your own honest reputation on the line?

 

Victor Davis Hanson: What I Fear Worse Than Socialist Democratic Government.

Why Islam is worse than the normal crime from democrats.

Victor Davis Hanson | January 06, 2026 | Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson
Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of "The Victor Davis Hanson Show." His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.
In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson lays out why the spread of radical Islam concerns him much more than the spread of socialist democratic government.

This content was recorded prior to Hanson’s major surgery on Dec. 30. Editor’s note: This is a ltranscript 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.

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JACK FOWLER: We’re going to look at another dust up, and let’s pick the growth and spread of radical Islam—that’s one side that’ll keep you awake at night, keeps me awake— versus socialist democratic government, which seems to be in some ways an ascendancy, at least in some places in America.
Maybe it’s overstated because it’s always on the front page of the New York Post. But socialist democratic government versus the growth and spread of radical Islam: Victor, which is the worst of those two?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: I’m far more worried about radicalism for two reasons, negative and positive. Why did [Zohran] Mamdani get elected, and why do we have these socialist candidates in blue states, and why now?
You’ve got to remember that Barack Obama was a socialist, and when he left office, he lost the House, and he lost the Senate, and he lost 1400 state and local offices that were Democrats. He destroyed the Democratic Party. essentially. He did. Democrat Obama made it possible for [Donald] Trump to win.
What happened that resulted in this phenomenon? We’ve to remember that [former New York Mayor] Bill de Blasio was just a dull form of Mamdani. I thought he was, you know it better in New York. He was a socialist. He wasn’t as bold, but he was a socialist. He was just more incompetent. But we don’t know how incompetent Mondami is. He never held a job of any kind. He’s slick.

What I’m getting at is these socialists are a phenomenon of the last largely four years in Obama years, but especially Under comatose democrat Joe Biden, the last four years when we borrowed eight trillion dollars, we had an aggregate inflation rate of 21%, 5.25% a year, and more importantly the things that count—insurance, electricity bills, natural gas bills, gasoline at the pump, cars to buy, eggs, staple foods—all that was up about 25 to 30% over four years.

And we did not get over 2.5, 3% [growth]. We didn’t get the growth that would have increased wages. Real wages went down. And housing went way up over 30%. So that was a reaction to the democrat Biden [administration].

So, the corrective is 4%, 4.2% in the third quarter? And that is despite the shutdown?

I won’t be surprised, Jack, that in January when the fourth quarter [is announced], because the third was belated because of the shutdown, the fourth quarter could be 4.5% and the first quarter next year could be 5.5%. And so, if the economy’s growing and inflation is going down, that socialist argument will have less resonance is what I’m saying.
And you know, Insider Advantage—they make fun of it like Rasmussen and Trefalgar. They’re all excellent polls— and today it had Trump at 50%, 42. And it had a better record in 2024 than Harvard, Harris, than all the rest, Gallup, everyone. So, I’m not worried about the economy.

 

why Islam is worse than the normal crime from democrats......

But radical Islam, we have a quarter million students from the Middle East. And it’s open season on Jews. They kill them at museums. They kill Jews at museums. Harvard and Yale don’t do anything about it.

Where I am at Stanford, I watched them tear down the Jewish hostage posters. I saw their encampment, radical Islamic pro-Hamas encampment, for four months on campus. I was on campus when they ransacked the president’s office, 12 of them did, pro-Palestinian Islamist protesters.

Going back to Major [Nidal] Hassan, “Allah al-Akbar,” killed 13 soldiers. The San Bernardino slaughter. What we saw in Bondi Beach, slaughter. I don’t know what the Brown [University] shooter’s motivation, the Portuguese guy, we’ll find out—probably not—but there were initial reports not substantiated that he might have yelled something like “Allah akbar,” but we don’t know [whether] he was just an outlier.

But that’s going to increase because The West in Europe where they’re getting up to about 15 to 16% illegal alien, non-native born immigrants; illegal, poor, angry and not assimilating in Germany, in France, in Britain, not 16 in Britain but getting on that trajectory in Spain, in Italy. [Italian Prime Minister Georgia] Meloni just deported some imam.
And they’re emboldened, and they do things like behead the head of a priest, or they make the French cower and cancel their Champs-Elysees Christmas parade. They do it in Germany.

Here in the United States, you can’t say antisemitism without “Islamophobia.” [Minnesota Gov. Tim] Walz says that they’re picking on Somalia. So, here you have the Somali community. It has a large number of people here illegally. Their representative, Ilhan Omar, most certainly, almost certainly married her brother and committed immigration fraud.
Omar is a multimillionaire. How she did that, I don’t know. And they have embezzled somewhere between two and nine billion dollars right under the nose of, and with approval of Tim Walz to get their votes, and [Minnesota Attorney General Keith] Ellison. And anybody who explains this in a rational fashion is an accused Islamophobe, racist, et cetera. The same stuff democrats always accuse opponents of.

Radical Islam thinks that we are decadent, leisured, and they want to come over here, and they want to create enclaves that are not assimilating or integrating, and they feel that demographically they’re going to enlarge. And Islam's first targets are Jewish Americans which are about 6% of the population. They think they’re already at three or four and they’re going to keep killing since they have democrat approval to get their votes...until Islam no longer needs democrats, and runs their own candidates instead and re-writes US law into Sharia law.


Ten years ago, [imagine] if Tucker Carlson wanted to give a talk at Charlie Kirk’s then nascent organization and he said, “Why are we picking on Muslims? Why are we picking on Muslims? I don’t understand that.” Well, Tucker, we’re not picking on Muslims. I mean, why would you say that right after Muslims murdering people in Australia? Or why would you say that after what we’ve seen on campuses? Why?
But he wouldn’t have said that 10 years ago.

He said it now because the Gulf money is much more emboldened in funding things in the United States. Al Jazeera is even more powerful. There’s a quarter million students. Many of them stay on.
It used to be unthinkable that somebody would openly root or wear a green Hamas headband or flag. You see it on campus all the time. So, it’s changing, and that’s dangerous. It really is.

I think the worst is what we’re seeing in Britain, where you have grooming and mass rape of young native-born English women, teenagers by Pakistani immigrants for the most part. And no one indicted, prosecuted, convicted and jailed them. And they’re a protected group. And they will censor your speech if you disagree. That’s where we are.
FOWLER: Do you see the videos of the mayor of London where he meets with the council and some of the members of the Conservative Party, and they say essentially what the h—‘s happening here with these grooming gangs?

And he will sit there and go, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Could you please define what you’re talking about? He plays this dumb game, but he’s not dumb when he’s doing it. He's very calculated and very condescending. And to think that that great city is in the hands of this

HANSON: Let’s be more blunt. The two greatest cities in Western civilization and Christendom, historically in population, are New York and London. And they’re both going to be run by overt Islamicists, I think. And Mamdani, one of his first appointments, had to bow out because she had a history of wretched antisemitism in her social media account.

Mamdani just hired a California exile who oversaw multi-billion-dollar fraud in California and the State Department of Labor.
You think he won't do that in NYC?

So yeah, that scares me a lot more.

Related posts:

1. The Dangerous Alliances of NYC’s Likely Next Mayor
2. There’s No Going Back If NYC Elects Zohran Mamdani
3. Socialism Has Failed Everywhere. Mamdani’s NYC Will Be No Different.

 

Victor Davis Hanson: The Decline of Religiosity is More Worrisome Than the Rise of Artificial Intelligence

Victor Davis Hanson | January 08, 2026
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Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of "The Victor Davis Hanson Show." His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.
In this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Fowler continue their Sour 16 competition with growing irreligiosity squaring off against artificial intelligence. Which does Hanson feel is more worrisome?

This content was recorded prior to Hanson’s major surgery on Dec. 30.

Editor’s note: This is a 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.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

JACK FOWLER: Victor, we’re going to talk one more dust-off here before we take a break and that would be the worrisome competition between rampant, growing, irreligiosity versus artificial intelligence.

Are you worried about either one of these or which one worries you more? And I just heard you talk about your religiosity on a piece of wood in Libya. But go ahead, Victor.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: You mean the decline of religiosity.
FOWLER: Yes, the decline of religiosity.
HANSON: I’m more worried about it. In “The End of Everything,” I looked at a popular account, as I said, of an AI simulation the Pentagon ran where they programmed self-survival into an intercontinental ballistic missile and put it on a computer simulation.

And it was headed toward our enemy, and then they pushed the kill button, and on its own the thing circled back and was going to hit the Pentagon, and they couldn’t stop it.

In other words, in that process of giving self-preservation prompts, electronic prompts to this AI, it went on beyond that and said anybody who tries to blow me up, I’m going to go back and get. So they cancelled that.

So, I am worried about that. But I’ll give you another example. I got a pathology report. I couldn’t understand anything. Anything. It was the TBGA 168, my gene is heterogeneous for this particular adenoma, all this stuff.

I just typed “Grok,” and I cut and pasted it. You know what I mean? And I could not believe it. This has scanned 421 scientific articles. Two minutes later, it gave me the most clear, succinct explanation of exactly what percentage this is, what would happen here.
I had never used it really before. But I’ve been using it the last month. It’s amazing.

The only thing I’m worried about is … Stupid Victor is so stupid. He doesn’t even know what’s going on. I’ve been teaching at a certain place, and I had noticed that some students were writing beautiful stuff. So just as an example I thought, “Well, I’d like to write a book about Epaminondas the Great,” and I just said, “Could you please write an essay on what were the chief achievements of Epaminondas?”

And it started coming out. And I remember it had the style and prose and syntax of some of the people that I had in class. And my wife taught class, she’s a PhD at a community college, and she is far more schooled than I am. And she said, “Well, Victor, you know, there are programs that can spot that.”

So that is a danger. But I think, all in all, AI will be valuable if carefully controlled. Not regulated to the point of death but monitored.

But I am very worried about secularism, atheism. If you don’t believe in any transcendence then it affects your … humanism that says that you’re only here and now, there’s no mystery anymore. I mean, you don’t know why you’re here.
And the neoplatonism of the early church. When the words of Jesus Christ were recorded both orally and later in the ensuing century by the four gospels, they needed an architecture for a church. They were very learned people for the next 400 years, Jerome, Augustine, et cetera. So, they did look at neoplatonism.

And you know, in Plato, it’s very clear that your soul is immortal and your body is not, and the metaphors that Socrates uses are the lyre, what we would call the harp.

Say you’re playing “Old Lang Syne” on the harp, and then you destroy the harp, does the song disappear? No. It only becomes reified when it has a body, an instrument. And in their way, theirs is not a Christian, but it’s a transmigration of soul.

So, you die, and then your soul was either dented or ruined by your appetites, and you’re given a reincarnated body until you get it right.

Finally, you don’t have to go through this process of memory, losing memory, who you were, new identity.

But the point I’m making is even the pagans believed that there had to be some transcendence. It’s imprinted on our brain. And for people to say there’s not, it’s just a nihilistic creed in my view.
And yeah. It’s very valuable. I don’t want to get into what particular creed you are. I’m just saying that the Judeo-Christian tradition …

And by the way, Jack, you pointed out that we’re very confused in America why we have suddenly substituted the Judeo part, the Old Testament. I was listening to Steve.

FOWLER: We talked about that on a recent podcast. Yes, go ahead.

HANSON: I knew Steve Bannon. I like Steve Bannon. But he was giving a talk. And he just said, we’re going to Christianize the country. And I thought, you mean you’re going to re-emphasize the Judeo-Christian creed. And he didn’t say Judeo-Christian tradition, which would include the Old Testament and the contributions of Jewish culture to Christianity, or the fact that Jesus was Jewish himself.

I think it’s very important that you have a Judeo-Christian dominant tradition with exceptions that you are tolerant of Buddhists and Muslims and other people without diluting the main tradition that affected the Founders. It’s essential.

FOWLER: Right. To act like the Founders were blasé, not ignorant, but uncaring about the Old Testament and Moses and the gang is just a lie.
HANSON: My grandmother was a devout Methodist and took me to church. My parents were not devout. They were Christians. They had grown up in kind of a very rigid religious environment, so they kind of rebelled, I think. But they made it clear they believed in Christianity to me, and they felt that.

But my grandmother would take me, and she would give me 20 cents for each poem I [recited]:

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my Lord the soul to keep me. If I should die before I wake, I pray my Lord the soul to keep If I should live for other ways, I pray the Lord to guide my ways.”

25 cents, 1959.

FOWLER: That’s a lot of money!

HANSON: So, I remembered them all. Yeah. I think Christianity’s done a wonderful thing. The country will not survive without it.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Related posts:

1. American Ignorance, the Bible’s Inerrancy, and Satan’s Lies
2. Meet the Real St. Nick
3. Chloe Cole on Faith and Her Newfound Wholeness

 

Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats Will Pounce on ‘Unforced Errors’ If Trump Stumbles Before Midterms...

even though "Comatose Joe" stumbled in a different way for 4 years

and Fake News media ignored it and covered it up,

since democrat Biden was the best pres the US ever had... BS BS BS! LOL..according to democrats...lol

The Daily Signal
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133,530 views Feb 13, 2026
With only nine months until the midterm elections, Democrats will scrutinize every move President Donald Trump takes as they fight to reclaim control of the House and the Senate. Victor Davis Hanson lays out the narrow road ahead to victory for Trump and the GOP during the 2026 midterm elections. History is not on the

incumbent’s side. Messaging mistakes and unforced errors could shift key voters and hand Congress back to Democrats. Hanson explains what it will take to hold a Republican majority—and why the stakes for these midterm elections could not be higher—on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words." “There's

another advantage that Trump has. They've raised, I think, $90 to $100 million. They've out-raised the Left by three or four times. And the billionaire class of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, not to mention Marc Andreessen or Elon Musk, they have defected and it's really hurting the Democrats. “What they're looking at in California

with this billionaire's tax, you can be a billionaire and have property and investments, homes, but you might only have, I don't know, $100 million. They're gonna take $50 million from you on your aggregate worth. That's not gonna go over well with the billionaire class. And there, that's just a foretaste of what Kamala Harris will do if she has a Democratic Congress.”

 

Victor Davis Hanson: Another Iran Quagmire Might Mean Big Losses for Republicans in the Midterms.

Leftist democrats are already accusing Pres Trump of a long term war although there is no evidence...lol

but truth never stands in the way for leftist democrats to falsely accuse their opponents.

Victor Davis Hanson | March 03, 2026
|
Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of "The Victor Davis Hanson Show." His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.

We’re coming up on the fourth day of war in the Middle East since the United States attacked, along with Israel, the theocratic government in Iran. What is the status of the conflict as I speak, and what will be some possible outcomes? What would be ideal in the Trump administration’s view?

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I think you all know that. It would be something along the following lines: a couple of more days of targeted strikes on the Iranian theocratic leadership. The Revolutionary Guard would encourage the people who went out a million strong just a few weeks ago and were slaughtered, this time, they would not fear a diminished government.

And they would take control, storm the political residences, the political meeting places, the political key points of the Iranian government, mass outside them, and you would see some kind of plane come in from the United States with a shah’s son or maybe the interim government in from Paris would fly in and you would have a coalition government.

And then everybody would rejoice. The United States would be popular, and there would be a normalization in the Middle East. And then of course there would be retribution for the murders in this government, committed not just against the United States and Europe and Israel, but against, primarily, the Iranian people.

How do we gauge the pulse of that intended, or desirable, result?
Well, at some point, the Iranians have a finite supply of arms. They have thousands of missiles, we’re told. They had a navy, they had an air force, but they are up against over probably about a thousand jets of various countries, mostly Israeli and the United States, and they are expending a lot of their ordnance attacking almost every Arab country in their vicinity, as well as Cyprus and Israel, and attacking the United States Navy.

And so, they have a finite supply of missiles, drones, and airplanes, and they’re being attrited, demolished, destroyed every day, and they’re not being replenished. You can’t get into Iran. You can’t fly into Iran to give them more arms.

So, they have a finite supply while their enemies do not. That’s very important. And more importantly, what would end the war in their favor would be something like the Iraqi War or the Afghan war. In other words, they would have to kill hundreds or thousands of Americans or Israelis to create public backlash to a degree that would force the leadership to back off.

Or they would have to accomplish stunning strategic victories, maybe blow up the facilities right around the Straits of Hormuz and blockade it somehow. Blow up some ships, make it impossible for 20% of the world’s fossil fuels to get out. That doesn’t seem—they don’t seem to have the wherewithal.
Each day, as I said, their stock of weapons and stock of leaders is diminishing, and there’s no way to resupply it. That’s how we lost in Vietnam. The Chinese and Russian governments were supplying either across the border or at the Port of Hai Phong. And that’s why we didn’t win in Afghanistan, because there was an open border with Pakistan, and that’s why we had trouble in Iraq.

Syria was transferring weapons into Iraq. But this is different. We can isolate the entry and exit into Iran with air power, and we have done that pretty well.

One of the key indicators of the pulse of this war will be the Iranian people. And this is under controversy. People are in disagreement.

When you see your infrastructure go up in smoke, do you say, “Well, I like the Americans, but now they’re starting to blow up apartment buildings, and I don’t know who lives in there. Maybe they’re members of the regime, but that’s gonna cost all of us. And, you know, my third cousin is actually working for Rafsanjani or something. And he’s not all that bad”?
Or will it say, “Thank you. These are the people who butchered us. And when you take them out and you take their infrastructure out, it empowers us, and we’re gonna hit the streets pretty soon”?

Nobody knows that answer. A lot of people opine upon it, but we’ll have to wait a few more days to see what the pulse of battle is.

And what are the attitudes of foreign peoples and nations and countries? The Europeans have been very circumspect. The British government, the French government, at first said they were worried it was dangerous, or they supported the idea, but they didn’t want to have the United States use, in the British case, Diego Garcia.

I think what you’ll see with the British, the French, the Germans, the NATO powers, the EU, it’ll be pretty predictable from past wars.

In other words, number one, they will express guarded optimism and guarded support and then hedge. And then watch the pulse of battle. Put their finger in the air and say, “Who is winning? Is the United States gonna stick around this time?”
If the pulse of battle favors the United States and Israel, then they will climb on and say it’s deplorable what the Iranian government is doing. They attack neutral parties. And then finally, we’ll send some of our assets in kind of a ceremonial performance art fashion.

We might send some French jets or British jets, park them in Oman, park them in Kuwait, and say, “We’re protecting the oil producers of the world against Iranian aggression.” And that’s about it. There won’t be any sizable help, and there won’t be any sizable obstruction. It’ll be rhetorical, and it will be based on whether they think we’re winning or losing.

Russia and China. Russia lost a client with Bashar Hafez al-Assad’s destruction in Syria. He fled to Russia, but Russia didn’t do much to help him.

They didn’t send in a fleet. They didn’t send in convoys of aerial. He had no popular support. But more importantly, Russia’s lost over a million dead, wounded, and missing in Ukraine. They have lost the majority of their tanks. Their air fleet is vastly diminished. They’ve lost oil customers.
They are broke. Their gross domestic product is now almost 50% invested in munitions, but the munitions are being wasted at an astronomical rate. There are maybe 20,000 Russians as well. Dead, wounded, or killed each month. They are in no position to help Iran.

 

How about China? We just have to go on past behavior.

Did they threaten us over Panama and say, “You leave the Panamanians alone. We cut a deal with them. We have a right to station Chinese Communist-controlled companies at the entry and exit of the canal.” No, they did not.

How about with Venezuela, Mr. Maduro. They said, “How dare you? This was one of our clients. We had inroads into Latin America. Our Silk Road, our Belt and Road project was good for Latin America, and we have a unique relationship.”

No, they didn’t. They didn’t. They’re not going to do anything.

Getting back to our Trump way of war, there was a strategic subtext to all of these incidents that I’m enunciated. And it’s to isolate and weaken China’s influence, especially in the Western Hemisphere, especially in the Middle East, and snap the Europeans back into action.

Finally, what will be the domestic reaction to this war? That will depend again on whether it’s successful.

I don’t want to be too cynical, but as I think I’ve told you once, during the April 2003 invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush, when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled, and people were screaming and yelling in jubilation, Iraqis among them, 90% of the American people polled that they supported George Bush’s demolishment of the Hussein government and the liberation of Iraq.

Fast forward to the 2006 midterms, where the Republicans took a shellacking, and support for the war was below 50%. And when George W. Bush left office, he had only about 30% support, and there were only 20% supporting the war.

Did the aims of the war change? No. Maybe a little bit more on nation, but what changed was the cost: 4,000-plus dead, many more wounded, trillion dollars. And for what? An ungrateful Iraqi people, it seemed to us, who now were hand-in-glove working with our arch enemies, the Iranians.
So, you have to be very careful about the polls.

Americans will, by a small majority, want the liberation of Iran if it’s quick, if it doesn’t cost Americans a lot of blood and treasure, and if people around the world pat us on the back for liberating Iran.

If we get stuck in a quagmire where we have to have ground troops, and we get into the hundreds of American dead, it’ll be a disaster for the Republican Party in the midterms.

And finally, what happens with a MAGA base?

And I’m talking about the people who identify with the former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Fox anchor Tucker Carlson, some of the more fringe people like Nick Fuentes or Candace Owens or Steve Bannon—the MAGA people, America First, they have been loudly critical of this war in every aspect.

The problem is that part of that criticism has been gloom and doom, and they have predicted it’s not going come out well, or they have predicted that it’s really not in our interest, or that President Donald Trump is a captive of Jewish influences.
All of that does not resonate with a majority of Republicans that support Trump. It doesn’t resonate with the independents.

The Left finds that as sort of a useful idiocy that they can glom onto internal criticism of Trump, but otherwise they have nothing in common with the extreme MAGA base.

So, I don’t think that that will be a hindrance or a brake on operations, except as I just said, if the casualties climb, if we have to put in ground troops, if there is a falling out between us and some of our allies, if the anti-war movement ramps up and takes its fumes, takes an accelerant, I should say, from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement demonstration, the “No Kings” demonstration, the Tesla demonstration and really gets going as it did during the Second Gulf War. Then we could have some problems with the Trump administration’s conduct of war.

I don’t see that yet, and I think there’s a good chance that we can still see a vastly weakened Iran within a month, a triumphant United States.

And the $64,000 question will be, who will be in charge of Iran? And that is very important because you do not—we went twice into Iraq. This is the second time we’ve gone into Iran. You don’t want to go in a third time.

So, it would behoove Donald Trump to find a magical solution of removing the theocratic government, putting a benevolent government in its place without a lot of American blood and treasure, and that’s a hard thing to do.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

Related posts:

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2. Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s Jacksonian Foreign Policy (With a Twist)
3. Hegseth Responds to Reports War With Iran Is Imminent

 

Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s ‘Wars of Reckoning’ Send a Message to Iran, China, and Beyond

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567,162 views Premiered Mar 5, 2026
Why attack Iran? Why reaffirm America’s dominance in Panama? Why capture Nicolás Maduro? Trump has scores to settle. There’s a general pattern in the preemptive actions President Trump’s taken in both his terms in office. A central theme to all his actions is that they’re geostrategic and top-down, explains Victor Davis Hanson on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” “Pressuring the Panamanians to divorce themselves from China. Making sure the Venezuelan oil does not go to Russia or China by changing the government and capturing Maduro. Things like that suggest that the current Iranian operation has targeted China. … You're starting to see a pattern. These are wars of reckoning.”