Iran Crumbles, Critics Scramble: Trump’s Long Game Leaves the Media Exposed | Victor Davis Hanson

The Daily Signal
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Apr 14, 2026
We don't know what the ultimate prognosis of this war is, but if we take the long view, it's far more favorable to our interests than it is to our enemies. The media’s 24-hour ragebait cycle can’t explain what’s actually unfolding in Iran.

While critics swing wildly between calling Trump a “warmonger” and “weak,” the reality points to a regime that’s been militarily and strategically crippled. Meanwhile, adversaries like Russia and China are feeling the ripple effects, and NATO’s cracks are on full display. The long view tells a very different story—and it’s one the headlines won’t admit, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”

 

Iran Is Collapsing—But D.C., Europe, and Former Allies Want Trump to Quit
and Surrender the United States to Iran| Victor Davis Hanson

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and Victor Davis Hanson



316,900 views Apr 21, 2026
Will the 360-degree pressures that surround President Donald Trump force him to stop short of dealing the final death blow to the Iranian regime? I hope not. Why, after Iran has been militarily destroyed and has a restive population that could rebel any minute now, does Iran keep saying that it’s winning, and why do people put pressure on Donald Trump as if he’s losing? The answer is that war is not necessarily just about military affairs alone—it’s politics, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”

 

America at 250: Still Dominating the World—and Here’s Why the Left Won’t Admit It.

Leftists hate America and everything that America stands for ...especially FREEDOM.

Victor Davis Hanson • April 22, 2026




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

This year, on July Fourth, will be the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, as exemplified in the ratification, signing of the Declaration of Independence. A lot of people ask ourselves, why are we so exceptional? Why are we the only country with Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms IN WRITING? We are the only country of two where citizens can own firearms to protect their family.

Are we exceptional, or is this just American braggadocio? Well, if you look at some major indicators, it’s pretty clear that America stands like a colossus over the world today. Look at the economy. The U.S. economy is roughly a $30 trillion nominal economy in goods and services. It’s one-third larger than the Chinese economy. We hear a lot about Ascendant China, but it essentially means that one American is producing as many goods and services as four Chinese counterparts. Why do democrats constantly tell us how awful we are, yet democrats let in MILLIONS of illegals who came to America for a far better life than the socialist and communist dictatorships have to offer.
It’s a third bigger than the EU, which has about 70 million more people than the United States. If you look at its culture, if you look at Netflix, streaming entertainment, Hollywood, even in its decline, popular music, it accounts for about 75% of international box office receipts of all sorts.

Educationally, there’s a lot of global indices and they usually have the United States with eight to nine out of the top 10 universities. That kind of mimics the same economic standards that show that, at the top 10 companies in terms of international market capitalization, I think eight of them now are American.

In the case of the educational surveys, it’s usually Caltech, MIT, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc., in the top 10. But at the top 50, 40 of them are American.

If you look at politics, the U.S. Constitution is the oldest surviving blueprint for democracy-republic. All the others have either faded or they come in and out of existence, but ours is that continuity of one particular consensual government, and its foundational document is unprecedented in spite of US democrats and the United Nations trying to constantly destroy the US laws.
Finally, militarily, we have about 13,000 combat aircraft and their logistical support craft. That’s larger than China, the EU, and India put together. We have 11 fleet carrier groups. China is struggling to get a third. No other country has a fleet-size carrier and a carrier group. They have smaller carriers.

But then, in addition to our 11, we have nine amphibious carriers that are about the same size as most other countries’ fleet carriers. And we spend more money than most of the world combined in terms of defense budgetary.

Why did we enjoy all of this preeminence? Is it just because we have a continent-size country? Well, actually, Russia, then China, then Canada have larger territories than we do. Many countries have two oceans that border them. So it wasn’t just that we have a large area and we have natural resources.

Other countries have as many or more than we do. There has to be a secret that explains this global preeminence, and one of them, as I mentioned, is the Constitution. No other country has been able to emulate successfully our Constitution. It’s a very rare document.

It assumes that power will be collected in one particular person or one particular area, given human nature, and therefore it’s gonna check the accumulation of inordinate power through the legislative and judicial branches as being separate, each with power over the other to stop their aggrandizement of authority and power.
It has a Bill of Rights. Very few countries have a bill of rights that protect individual liberty against the state, which is outlined in the Constitution proper—the state’s authority—and then the Bill of Rights, refines or hones that in and gives precedence to the individual in terms of free expression, the sanctity of his home from search and seizure, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, etc.

In addition to the Constitution, the United States is not founded on a class system. There are no dukes or earls, where you’re born, who your parents were, how much land your grandfather had. That doesn’t really matter very much, or at least as much as talent. Democrats scream about no kings and America has none.

We are a meritocratic society, and we value someone, I suppose, based on their net worth more than we do their title. That sounds kind of plutocratic, but actually our system of rewarding individual success—measured by materialism or good works or philanthropy—is a much more effective barometer of talent than inherited privilege.

And so that, that lends a message to the people that anybody can make it in America in a way impossible in many of the European countries and, of course, elsewhere in the world.

We have, until recently, had a long tradition of the melting-pot, meritocratic immigration, and that meant that if you came legally and immigrants were diverse and they were of numbers of a size that could be assimilated and integrated, then it was a wonderful thing.
I mentioned the eight or nine companies in the top 10 by market capitalization. I should say that of those American eight or nine companies, four of them were founded by immigrants. So, it’s been a great boom to the United States.

And finally, we have a can-do individual culture. There’s two types of envy in the world: the envy of emulation—the good envy—and the bad envy of, anger or resentment that someone has more than you do.

The old morality tale that an American sees a Cadillac and asks somebody how he got it, rather than kicks in the tires or keys it like someone in another country would do in anger that someone has a nicer car than he does. But that does explain, encapsulate the American ethos of emulating people who are accessible rather than trying to tear them down.

We also are the largest really devout Western country in terms of the Judeo-Christian tradition that offers a brake on the appetites. When you have leisure and affluence that are the bounties of market capitalism and constitutional government, you can get decadent. You can get complacent.

In other words, our religious tradition—maybe emblemized by the Sermon on the Mount—says just because something is legal and just because somebody has the ability to do it, you should not necessarily do it because of moral and ethical considerations.

Are there dangers to this great American experiment of 250 years? Absolutely. An affluent and leisured society, unless it has familial or religious or community brakes upon the appetites, can become self-indulgent, lethargic—the lotus-eater syndrome—and fall into a slow decline.
We’ve seen that happen in Europe, the foundation of the Western tradition that is really descendant now in terms of economics, politics, culture, and its military.

Another great worry is fertility. The United States fertility rate has fallen just in 30 years from 2.1, the replacement rate, down to 1.6, as if life is too valuable, too fun, too enjoyable to waste it raising kids.

Any society that has a low fertility rate, the population ages, it shrinks, and it becomes risk-averse.

We also owe $30 trillion in aggregate national debt. We are running $1 trillion to $2 trillion annual deficits and, until recently, a $1 trillion trade deficit. These are unsustainable.

And they’ll require, first of all, a major cutback in entitlements and unfunded liabilities. And how we do that when we have a bread-and-circuses attitude, that people think the government owes them something rather than they owe the government, I don’t know, but it’s something we’re gonna have to deal with.

And finally, immigration’s gone haywire. We traded in the successful centuries-long, melting pot for the salad bowl—DEI. We have reverted to tribalism.

If we continue down that pathway, that your superficial appearance determines who you are, that it’s essential rather than just incidental to you, your identity as a human, then we’re gonna end up like every tribal society, which is failure and pre-civilization reversion.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

 

Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Called It ‘War Crimes’

—but Ignored Iran’s Real Crimes for Decades Since it was against the United States, and leftist democrats HATE the United States

Victor Davis Hanson • April 24, 2026

Sami Winc: You know, you listen to the news accounts of the U.S. military maintaining control of the Persian Gulf. And you know, so I say, for example, they’ve stopped ships and a cargo ship with a bunch of Chinese missiles, etc. And then you hear the Left saying, oh, they’re committing war crimes by controlling this gulf.

But in the undercurrent of all of that news coverage is that that’s what the Iranians were doing, even worse for years and years. And they weren’t just stopping something to stop military arms. They were hijacking and stealing.

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. They took British prisoners. They took hostages. Whenever they had a Democratic president, Obama or Biden, they were emboldened. It’s really disgusting to hear Ro Khanna this Democratic congressman saying that Obama was a great statesman, and they didn’t do—under Obama, they lifted sanctions, and that was where the first initial cash infusions came in.

So, they got all of this money. They were so embarrassed of what they were doing, they had to ship $400 million dollars, at night, in frozen assets. They unfroze their assets, then the Iran deal did not stop them from getting a bomb. It just delayed the trajectory.

So, Trump came in in 2017 and stopped it. Well, they didn’t even try to cheat because they thought he was crazy. After he killed Soleimani and Baghdadi and ISIS, Biden came in. The first thing he did is he removed the terrorist designation of the Houthis. He separated us from Israel. Hamas got that message. He did a deal with natural gas in Lebanon, and he empowered Hezbollah.

And then, with the Iranians, begged them to get back in the deal. When they didn’t do it, he rewarded their negativity by lifting sanctions, and that’s where that period of 21 to 24 is when they went up to 60% enrichment. So, we had this congressman there who just gets on Maria Bartiromo, and he just starts lying. And he’s been really one of the more unfortunate spokesmen because, unlike a Chris Murphy or Tim Walz, who are buffoons, he always starts this moral argument.

Another thing I think everybody’s getting sick of is they say, this is fascism. Trump is an accused fascist with no evidence. This is untoward—not that fascism is coming—they don’t define their terms. What do you mean by fascism? Did he cancel an election? No. Did he try to gerrymander? Well, not as well as the Democrats were doing. Did he use the government to go after his presidential rival? So, is he going to have Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom in five separate civil or criminal trials like Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Jack Smith? Going to do that? E. Jean Carroll? Maybe he’s going to try to get him off the ballot. Twenty-five red states, are they trying to get a Democratic-leading candidate off the ballot? Did he raid Kamala Harris’ house? Did he raid Joe Biden’s house? They hadn’t done any of that. Did the attorney general say, I’m going to put Steve Bannon, I’m going to put Peter Navarro in jail for not honoring a congressional subpoena, but I’m Merrick Garland, I’m not going to honor it? He hasn’t done any of that.
So, they don’t define their terms because if you look at what they did during the Trump years—and I haven’t gotten into the two impeachments, which we’re learning now that Michael Atkinson, the inspector general, he, hand in glove with Adam Schiff and Eric Ciaramella and Vindman allowed that first impeachment to proceed. And remember, in the first impeachment, this is very important, there were 15 or 16 people in the National Security Council in that room, and they listened to that phone call with Zelenskyy. It had no problem whatsoever. Some of them were holdover Obama people. Only Vindman did.

And Vindman didn’t even have the courage to become a whistleblower, so he called his pal Ciaramella. And then, based on hearsay. This is what I heard. And then Ciaramella was basically saying, I heard what he heard. And then he disguised his name and played the wounded fawn, so you couldn’t even talk about him. And then he lied, as did democrat Vindman, when they went in to Adam Schiff and cooked up the whole process. And then each of those three people lied and said they had never colluded. The inspector general knew they did, and he did nothing and allowed it to go on. And that was the second—that was the first impeachment, and that followed the day after the Mueller collusion collapsed. As soon as that collapsed, they said, take a deep breath. Now we go into impeachment. And they ate up the entire 2018 and ’19 presidential term of Donald Trump.

 

So, this idea that Trump is a fascist and the war’s fascistic—it’s on the side of people who want to be free. But more importantly, that’s a subtext. The main thing is these people have been killing us for 47 years, blowing up the embassies, barracks, shooting diplomats, trying to kill the president, trying to kill the secretary of state. They’re a horrific regime. They’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. They’re horrible. And they hijacked the Iranian illustrious Persian tradition. They’re an aberration, and they have no popular support...but leftist democrats keep lieing telling us that the US is losing in hopes of you voting against Pres Trump.
Everybody hates the leftist Iranian terrorists.. The Gulf hates them. Israel hates them. The Arabs hate them. The Europeans are too timid to express their hatred, but they are terrified of them and hate them. The Chinese don’t even like them. The Chinese are one of the greatest Islamic oppressors in the world. They have a million Muslims in camps, the Uyghurs. The Russians do not like Muslims. They leveled Grozny in the third Chechen war and killed 100,000 people, Muslim. So, their alliance with Iran is Iran is a useful tool. A useful idiot. They say, this is what we want you to do. We want you to sell us sanctioned oil, we’ll buy it off the books. You got to give us a discount, and then we’ll give you credit for our weapons. And then when we get those weapons, try to destroy Israel and any pro-Western country. And intimidate the Gulf states. That’s what their strategy was.

Winc: So, Victor, I was wondering about this. So, as we move forward, if we think about what Donald Trump needs to do, I think that warning the Iranians that they’re going to hit the bridges and the power plants, etc., just gets them out to, as you said, they don’t have any concern for people. And so, they’ll just bring their own women and children out to protect these things. My thought is—

Hanson: They will, but there’s hundreds of bridges in Iran.

I know.

So, you just say, we’re going to hit the bridges, and are they going to get people to come out every single day from dawn to dusk? No.
Winc: No.

Hanson: You don’t tell them. You just say, one bridge today, one power plant. I’m not going to tell you where they are. If they start shooting at tankers or if they send missiles at the Gulf States or Israel or our ships—our ships support, most importantly. And the point is that while everybody says the war’s going south, we’re losing, they’re going broke. And they’ve lost half a trillion dollars in a 50-year investment, essentially, in military, industrial, nuclear infrastructure and investment. It’s gone. They had over 12,000 targets. The Israeli-American air force. So they’re going broke, and the question is now, will they be able to delay, delay, delay before they give up their enrichment and any claims that they’re going to try to stop the blockade, or will the propaganda campaign in the United States so embolden them and be so successful that they can drag this out for months and then get the Democrats elected to cut off funds?

I don’t see that happening, but that’s their deranged strategy.

Winc: Yes, it is deranged, and yeah, if I were Donald Trump, I would just say, you can—even dallying too much. Take a bridge out, take a power plant.

Hanson: Donald Trump does not want—

 Don’t let him dally.
If you’re Donald Trump and you’re in the Oval Office, this is what’s happening: someone comes in, he says, I’m up for reelection. And we were a red state plus 10. But my polls show me, even. I was five ahead before this war. The Democratic propaganda is killing us. Another senator comes in: gas prices in my state are too high. When is this going to end? And the point is that Trump’s trying to do something for the next century.

If he can destroy this regime or destroy its ability to cause havoc, there will be a regime change. Not now. Just like the fall of the Berlin Wall. Once you destroy the edifice of communism, in that case, then the Soviet Union fell within two years, and Eastern Europe was free within six months. That will happen.

So, his view is that this is an existential moment because it’s going to change the entire Middle East. It already has. The Gulf states are now partners with Israel. And this is very interesting because if you look at the Democratic Party and the paleo-Right and Europe, they are more anti-Israel than are the Gulf states right now. No question about it. Want to guess who is in second place?

And this is ironic because a lot of the people who have been hammering Trump about the war on the Right, have financial ties with the Middle East.

a lot of the people who have been hammering Trump about the war on the Right, have financial ties with the Middle East.


And they are telling them, what are you doing trying to call off Trump? He’s trying to eliminate this threat right across the Gulf from us, that for 47 years has threatened to destroy us. And for the first time we’ve had an American president that might just neuter them permanently. So be quiet.

The whole thing is so misrepresented. And, you know, there was, I guess it was an MS—that’s what they call MSNBC now—I think it was an anchorwoman, and she was listening to some Democratic guests come on. And she finally said, so you are saying, as Jimmy Kimmel said, that you trust the Iranian government more than you do us. And you want to think, well, what do you trust, that they were telling the truth about nuclear enrichment? They just admitted they could make 11 bombs. Were they telling the truth about missile range? They said only 1,800 miles. It was going to go 2,500 miles all the way to Diego Garcia, if had it not been knocked down.
So that’s what they do, is lie. But this Democratic Party—it’s not the Democratic Party at all. It’s something different. It’s something weird. I thought it was just a Socialist party, but it’s almost becoming an Islamist party, because of the intense antisemitism.

 

Three Attempts, Zero Accountability: Who’s Really Fueling the Fire Against Trump? | VDH

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The Daily Signal

and Victor Davis Hanson


Apr 27, 2026
No president in U.S. history has been the target of three assassination attempts in which shots were fired by either law enforcement or the shooter himself. And yet this is Trump’s third time. Political violence doesn’t happen overnight. For almost a decade now, the Left has reified the idea that 1. Trump is “literally Hitler” and 2. that harming him is justified—Gavin Newsom and Robert De Niro talked about hitting Trump in the mouth. Shakespeare in the Park substituted Caesar for a Trump look-alike. Anthony Bourdain said he’d poison him. And that lowers the bar. And that means people like Cole Tomas Allen come out of the woodwork, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.”

 

Watters: Here's what REALLY went down...

when the violent leftist democrats tried to have the president killed.

The shooter said almost word for word what the public hears from democrats every day.

Fox News
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398,363 views Premiered 5 hours ago #fox #media #breakingnews
Fox News host Jesse Watters discusses the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and the responses from several Democrats on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime.’