Victor Davis Hanson: Newsom Blames Dyslexia, but Can Voters Read Between the Lines?

The Daily Signal
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123,225 views Mar 6, 2026
Coinciding with the release of his autobiography, California Gov. Gavin Newsom just had the worst February of any major want-to-be presidential candidate in modern memory. Newsom tries posing as someone who grew up poor and dyslexic in order to connect with minority voters better and to “dispel” his true image of being “a

nepo baby,” explains Victor Davis Hanson on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words. “So when he talked about he just ate white bread or he had all of these problems growing up—he said he had dyslexia—but the idea that Gavin Newsom was somehow parallel to Abraham Lincoln in a log cabin or JD Vance just doesn't work.”

 

Victor Davis Hanson: Is Conventional Wisdom About Middle East Wars Not Holding Up In Iran Conflict?....and a few other topics.......

Victor Davis Hanson

and The Daily Signal



113K views 1 day ago

 

Victor Davis Hanson: The Real Reason Iran Won’t Negotiate...lol...

They think they have enough nuclear missles to wipe us off the globe and they don't have to negotiate anything now, so F.U. !

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 a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” with Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes. This show was filmed prior to the start of Operation Epic Fury.

Jack Fowler: Victor, your thoughts if we don’t take action because Iran is, despite what happened a few months ago, the bombing of the enrichment and the nuclear facilities, they are constructing new facilities even deeper in some other mountain. But is there any doubt in your mind that if Iran goes unchecked for the next months or years, that there will not be a catastrophe from them having nuclear capability?

Victor Davis Hanson: No, you can’t negotiate with them because their whole currency is lying, and they’re fanatic ideologues. And they have a supernatural view of what’s going to happen, and they’re on the right side of Cosmic Divinity and all of these ideas. I think [former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi] Rafsanjani in a disputed statement, but I think it was accurate, said that Israel was a one bomb state, and that was the advantage that you got half the Jews in the world in one place, where all you needed was one bomb. So you can’t negotiate.

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I think their strategy, to tell you, was kind of a Muhammad Ali “Rope-a-Dope” where they were going to ride it out. And then [President Donald] Trump would be gone in three years, and people would be angry, and you’d get a Joe Biden, or better yet a type of puppet of the Left. But better yet, you would get an [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] or a “squad” member, or a [Gavin] Newsom or [Kamala] Harris, and then you’re home free to get the bomb.

Because they would not do anything. That was the strategy. I think it would’ve worked actually if Trump had let him off the hook. So now the question is the domestic support. When the statue [of Saddam Hussein] fell in April of 2003, I think most polls showed that George Bush had a popularity rating of between 80% and 90%.

There was a controversy over the carrier flag “Mission Accomplished” because there was a little bit of terrorist activity. I was in Washington at the Naval Academy, and I remember distinctly that Chris Matthews, I was watching CNN, who ended up despising Bush, was a big critic. He said, “We’re all neocons now,” on the air.

And then I remember Andrew Sullivan, who was sort of a chameleon in his political views, but mostly started out as, I guess, a British conservative, but ended up very left-wing. He was all for it. There was a guy who did little green footballs. Remember that little podcast? I knew the guy. He was a nice guy.

I rode a bike with him once and he was all in, and then all of a sudden the insurgency came. And the American casualties started and everybody adopted. And then there was a Vanity Fair on the neocons that they felt had been the architects, Richard Perle, David Frum, Bill Crystal, and all of them, had adopted, I guess you would call it my beautiful war and your lousy occupation.

And the scapegoat they focused on was [former Secretary of Defense] Don Rumsfeld. If you just get rid of Dom Rumsfeld, everything will be okay. What I’m saying is that domestic support will depend on how many American casualties, how quick is it over, and how effective are the results.

If it is over within three weeks, and there’s a revolution and they have some type of transitional government, unlike Iraq, then everybody’s going to say, I was for it all along. Even the ones that were against it.

If, on the other hand, they start shooting down planes or they hit an American base or they take out a frigate or something, they get a lucky shot on a carrier, and we don’t get a change and we stop, then everybody said I was never for it.

That’s the way people react, and the base is going be very tricky because the MAGA base, remember it was predicated on no forever wars. And no optional wars in the Middle East in reaction to Afghanistan and Iraq. And already Tucker Carlson, as you pointed out, I think in an email to me, has already said that Donald Trump’s war was evil.

And he crossed the Rubicon because, remember, during the Dominion voting controversy, right after Jan. 6, when Dominion forced the Fox Corporation to settle for hundreds of millions of dollars, and they had the interrogatories and the messages. One reason I think they wanted to settle is because the discovery phase of that lawsuit was going to show a lot of internal communication and outtakes and stuff.

But Tucker, do you remember? He was there, and he said, I really hate Donald Trump and I hate him. If you think about it, his first, I’m trying to remember, but I think I’m pretty accurate. This administration has nothing that can show, so he was a diehard critic. Then he came back into the fold, and he was credited with, along with [Donald Trump Jr.] to get JD Vance, who he felt was a kindred spirit.

Kind of neo-isolationist and his son Buckley went to work for him. And that was sort of the veneer of the MAGA base.

And then there were people like Candace [Owens] and the Fringe and [Nick] Fuentes and etc. But he’s already come out against it now and said it’s evil. So, he’s basically saying Donald Trump is evil.

And this comes on the heels of Candace Owens coming out with a documentary about Charlie Kirk’s wife, “Bride of Charlie” or something.

Fowler: Yeah, like the Bride of Frankenstein. Yeah.

Hanson: So, I think that fringe, those people are isolating themselves from the Trump movement, if I could say that. So, I don’t think he’s going to get a lot of popular right-wing opposition.

He’ll get opposition no matter what happens. No matter what happens, from AOC, the squad, Jasmine Crockett, all the candidates that are running for office. And you’ll have [John] Fetterman. I think he’s already said that he thought this was a good idea. You’ll see a guy like him or Mark Penn, a reasonable Democrat understand why [Trump attacked].

Ben Rhodes is already saying that this was a disaster. And this is the guy who was the architect of the disastrous Iran [nuclear] deal.

Fowler: Well, we were going be slaughtered because of the death of [Iranian General Qasam] Soleimani, right?

Hanson: We’ll see. Again, I think the base will stay with him.

I think independents will stay if it’s successful. And I think the Democrats are in a holding pattern, and they’re hoping—I’m not saying that out of maliciousness—I think they actually hope that it won’t work, even though that would put American lives at risk. Because from what I can read today, and again, I’m speaking on Saturday, what they’re posting, it’s not just that it was a mistake, but it’s wrong. It’s evil. You know what I mean?

Well, if it’s evil, then you want it to stop, and then you want to destroy evil.

But if you think the Americans, I don’t know what Tucker means when he says it’s evil. If there’s Americans in the way of fire, if you believe it was an evil decision in the sense of wrong, then you might say, I disagree with the decision, but now that it’s made, I want Americans to prevail and be safe.

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

Related posts:

1. Victor Davis Hanson on Trump’s Dream Iran Outcome
2. Victor Davis Hanson: Trump’s Jacksonian Foreign Policy (With a Twist)
3. Trump Briefly Lays Out Case for Possible Attack on Iran in State of the Union

 

Victor Davis Hanson: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Iran War Outcomes

The Daily Signal
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Mar 9, 2026
Critics have hounded the Trump administration for supposedly not clearly stating to the American public their most favorable outcome in the ongoing conflict with Iran. With the midterms less than eight months away, the pressure is on this administration to get the job done. And it can happen in one of three ways, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words:”

The Optimal Choice: What’s left of the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard will capitulate, opening the doors for a Western-supplied transitory government made up of exiles to lead the nation until elections can be held. The Impalpable Solution: The “Venezuela solution,” i.e., appoint a lower-tier, secular, dissident member of the former regime, like a general. The Worst Choice: Allow the mullahs to “stew in their own juices.” Bombed their nuclear and military capabilities off the face of the earth and then leave.

 

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Why 2026 Could Be the Most Dangerous and Transformational Year Since World War II | VDH

President Donald Trump has been the catalyst for a lot of the world’s current upheaval—Iranian threat decimated, Donroe Doctrine enforced in Latin America—and both members of his base and his opponents are making sure we know he’s to blame.

Three quarters of these conflicts, however, are reaching a resolution, explains Victor Davis Hanson on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”

“There is a good chance they could turn out with the United States in a preeminent position that we haven’t seen since at least World War II.”

The Daily Signal

and Victor Davis Hanson



959,865 views Mar 19, 2026

Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words" target="_blank">Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words

President Donald Trump has been the catalyst for a lot of the world’s current upheaval—Iranian threat decimated, Donroe Doctrine enforced in Latin America—and both members of his base and his opponents are making sure we know he’s to blame. Three quarters of these conflicts, however, are reaching a resolution, explains Victor Davis Hanson on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” “There is a good chance they could turn out with the United States in a preeminent position that we haven’t seen since at least World War II.”

 

Week 3: What’s Next In Iran? | Victor Davis Hanson

By all traditional methodology and criteria, Iran is now inert: naval and air forces eviscerated, missile defenses offline, and an army rendered largely useless, as no one is fighting on the ground.

However, tactical success is not necessarily equivalent to strategic victory. It is hard to think of a single battle lost in Iraq or Afghanistan, yet the United States lacked a plan for strategic resolution in either theater.

With this in mind, Iran’s current strategy is as follows: The mullahs can afford to lose their military because, ultimately, without U.S. troops on the ground, the regime will remain intact.

This, and many other factors, begs the question: Where does Trump go from here? asks Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”

“In other words, they're saying as long as we have oil, Kharg Island, and as long as we have these huge oil fields, when you get tired of pounding us into rubble, you're going go back to the United States.

Israel's going go back and be quiet, and we're going get all of our oil revenues and we're going have them.

“And we are going to buy from Russia, North Korea and China missiles, drones, recreate our own drone industry, and we probably have enough fissile material that you didn't get, and nobody could get. It's hidden deep in the mountains, that we will make bombs.

And this time we're going to use them because we understand what you will do next time.”

501,916 views Mar 23, 2026

 

Victor Davis Hanson: "BIG Changes Are Going To Happen in Iran..."

Rabbi Pinchas Taylor
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Join my Ark Online Learning Program Today! https://www.pinchastaylor.com/ark …

1,121 Comments

@SanphireJaide7

Yes, finish it now - or we'll all pay for it later. The people simply must grab this opportunity, or lose it forever.
291

@XtrmTJ97

Leave no doubt, Leave no possibility, Finish the job.
288

@FedupwithDC

That terrorist regime has been at war with America since 1979. A response from us is long overdue! Don't stop until they are eliminated. We SHOULD have done this in the 80s!!!

 

How Trump Can Set the Record Straight on His ‘No Endless Wars’ Agenda | Victor Davis Hanson

The Daily Signal
1.06M subscribers

Mar 31, 2026 #DailySignal
He should say, I didn't say I was against war or conflict. I said I was against endless Forever Wars. I'm talking about 20 years in Afghanistan and 10 and Iraq and the nine month bombing on and off of Libya by Obama. And so when I came in, I wasn't going to say no war because our enemies would take that as a Chamberlain-like appeasement, and they would take advantage of it. Today’s “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words:”

• US-Iran Messaging War EXPLAINED | Victor D... " target="_blank"> • US-Iran Messaging War EXPLAINED | Victor D...

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Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Could Crush Iran, So Why Doesn’t He?

There’s always two wars, as I mentioned on earlier occasions, a political war and a military war, once the conflict begins. But I didn’t discuss really what the political war is about. President Donald Trump can easily decimate Iran. He can knock out the water, he can knock out the sewage facilities, the power grid, the communications grid, and paralyze the entire country.

And that might even lead to the removal of the regime. But he is not doing that for political reasons. No. 1, he would get global outrage from even our allies, and that is a restraining influence. But more importantly, he wants to empower the Iranian resistance movement, and they need all of that infrastructure if someday they were going to come to power.
Victor Davis Hanson | April 01, 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.
today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.


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Now, I mentioned earlier that regime change was not an explicit aim of this administration when they went to war, but it was a collateral dividend that they hoped would occur by their earlier aims, which all weakened, existentially, the regime: cutting off the Houthis and the terrorist proxies, getting rid of their nuclear proliferation program, the ballistic missiles, etc., etc.

Wiping out command—that will all weaken it to such a degree that even if we were to stop without regime change and follow the agenda, they would stew in their own juice, and people would get very, very angry. We’ll get to that in another video. But right now, what are the constraints that Donald Trump has to deal with?

No. 1, the MAGA base says, “It’s a forever war. It’s an endless war. He broke his word.” We see Megyn Kelly making that argument. We see Tucker Carlson making that argument. Steve Bannon—a lot of people in the MAGA base.

But if you look carefully, he’s used force on many occasions. Took out Qasem Soleimani in his first term, the ISIS kingpin Baghdadi, bombed ISIS into oblivion, took out the Wagner program, the Wagner Group. Second term, he took out Maduro, 25 hours over—all of those were one-offers. He hasn’t had a forever war.

What he did learn is: If you say that you are against forever wars or endless wars, that can be interpreted by your enemies that you’re an isolationist. And therefore, you can increase aggression, and you’ll lose deterrence. So, it’s much better to be a Jacksonian and basically say, “We don’t want to nation-build, we don’t want to get into people’s affairs, but if you aggrieve us, if you’re aggressive, if you provoke us or the interests of our allies and us, we may retaliate in a way that you have no idea [what] will follow.”

It will be asymmetrical, disproportionate, deadly, and that’s what Trump is doing. And I don’t think that anybody historically would say 30 days of an exclusively air campaign is an endless war. But he has to worry about that MAGA base. Not in numbers—the numbers are 90%, 85% of the Republican Party supports him—but the people who don’t have large audiences, and they can be influenced as they look at the pulse of the battle.

Then he has to worry about the economy. One of his signature achievements was getting gas down to $2.50 a gallon in some states. I think in Iowa, it was down to $1.80 prior to the war. The price of oil has soared from $50 to $60 a barrel to $100 to $120 a barrel, and oil is one of the linchpins of the economy. That can hurt him.

And the news, the psychological news of war, and it could be regional and could involve the Houthis, it could involve the Gulf states, it could blow up, we might have to interdict supplies from Russia. All of that creates tension and uncertainty on Wall Street, the stock market, the bond market. So, he has got to be careful of that. That’s an impediment to a purely military campaign.

Then I mentioned earlier, he has the midterms coming up, and he can’t lose his legislative majority. If he does, you will see his last two years in office consumed by investigations of the Trump people, his family, his associates, and they [Democrats] will impeach him. You can count on that. They will not convict him, but they will impeach him.

And then, of course, there’s the Israel question. He’s working with a very competent ally. Seventy-five percent of their aims and our aims overlap. We’re both Western democracies. We have a common theocratic enemy that has attacked and killed hundreds, in our case thousands, probably, if you count the Iraq War, and the Israelis have the similar—but we don’t have necessarily completely identical aims.

Why? Because we’re distant and not that vulnerable yet, because they don’t have, yet, an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead. They will, but not yet. Israel is proximate and vulnerable. So, in their way of thinking, the idea that we would neuter or disarm Iran would be like shooting a bear in the shoulder and leaving him on the prowl. He is going to be angry and capable and furious, and he’s going to crawl or charge them. They are the people who will take the punishment. So, in their way of thinking, why would you go to all this trouble, and that’s not an explicit aim of your campaign, i.e., regime change? “It is our aim,” the Israelis are saying.

But that’s not influencing Donald Trump necessarily. He said it wasn’t an aim. He may change and announce he’s changed, but the idea that the Israelis are running things is untrue, but he has to be careful about that.

Finally, there are some other impediments, and those impediments are: if you put an American boot on the ground in the Middle East, everybody left and right becomes hysterical, and for good cause. They remember the first Gulf War. They remember a brilliant four-day war. They remember the liberation of Kuwait. They remember the march on Baghdad.

And what happened? We let Saddam [Hussein] stay in power. We had years of no-fly zones, and then we went back again, and we spent a trillion dollars from 2003 all the way into 2011, and we tried to have a consensual government. We lost over 4,000 soldiers, many more wounded and casualties. And then the Obama administration essentially, by 2010, 2011, said “I’m done with it,” and pulled out.

And now we have Iraq—sort of consensual, sort of not—as a proxy, sort of, sort of not, of Iran. And then we had a 20-year … misadventure in Afghanistan, and we remember that pullout, that horrible August 2021 pullout that led to 13 deaths and, I don’t know, 15, 20, 50—I’ve heard 50—we heard $70 billion of military assets left.

So anytime you go into the Middle East, Americans say, “Tell me when it has ever worked.” Did the Suez Crisis of ’56 work? Did the first Gulf War work and get rid of Saddam? Did the second Gulf War with the Iraq invasion work? Did Afghanistan work? Even did the bombing—we went and bombed the nuclear facilities, and now we have to do it again. It’s a quagmire. We don’t like the Middle East. That’s the American left and right, Republican and Democrat. That is a limitation. So, anybody who says, “I’m going to end this problem with Iran, once and for all, and neuter them, people are going to say,” “It’s in the Middle East, Mr. President.”

So, Donald Trump has to contend with the MAGA base, the crazy Democratic opposition, the midterms, the economy, definitely handling the charge that he’s too influenced by Israel, and the general repulsion of the American people for anything to do with the Middle East, militarily, and blood and treasure on our part spent for people we feel are either ungracious or ungrateful or not worth it in a cost-benefit analysis.

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

Related posts:

1. If Donald Trump Did What Obama Did, Media Would Cheer—So Why the Outrage Now?
2. What Susan Rice Really Meant by Her Retribution Threat
3. Victor Davis Hanson on Trump’s Dream Iran Outcome

 

How democrats hide their real selves but their social media posts tell on them.

See for yourself what they really think of you "uneducated" "deplorables" and other negative names which democrats
have for you "illiterate suckers" formerly known as middle class or working class voters.

From ‘Deplorables’ to Dress-Up: Why Democrats Can’t Win Back Trump’s Base | Victor Davis Hanson

The Daily Signal
1.07M subscribers


Following the Democrats’ crushing defeat at the ballot box in 2024, the DNC launched a postmortem to answer a very simple yet surprisingly elusive question: What went wrong? Their findings? On 70-30 issues,

Democrats landed on the 30 side. Their solution? Democrats aren’t changing their message—they’re just rebranding the mess. From Pete Buttigieg in flannel to Tim Walz playing hunter, the “working-class pivot” looks more like

political cosplay. Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to connect on issues that actually matter to voters. The bottom line: You can’t fake authenticity—and voters aren’t buying it.