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: Donald Trump gives a speech to the nation on the 2020 election and the involvement of our intelligence agencies and other bad actors and mayhem. Many of the networks did not carry it, disparaged it in advance, had to fact-check it, etc.
What’s your take on what Donald Trump said and your take on the spin or the intransigence of these liberal media—excuse me, leftist media elites?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I don’t think it’s—I mean, we’ve got so many things right now with the budget and the SAVE Act and Iran. We’ve got great economic news on inflation. GDP is pretty good. I’m still worried about the deficit, but that’s another topic.
I don’t know. When you address the nation, maybe it would have been on Iran, or maybe it would have been on the good news from the economy.
But that election—I understand he wants to remind people so that they don’t do it the next time. But I think the whole MAGA emphasis on actual Election Day cheating—and now we hear from Markwayne Mullin that there are 1 million unregistered voters who got ballots.
Fowler: He says there are 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in four Democrat-run states.
Hanson: Yes, four states. One million voters. That could have changed any of the swing states. They were illegal, and they knew it.
But the issue, I think, he should say is, “I’m not going to adjudicate 2020 because, by the time the ballots were cast, the system had been altered under the pretense of COVID.”
And now, what do I mean by that?
Then he could just go through the items that Molly Ball, in her triumphalist article—she’s a woman of the Left—bragged about. They changed the voting laws by going through lawsuits to district court judges and, in blue states, bypassing the legislatures.
What had traditionally been 30% absentee ballots was renamed and rebranded as mail-in ballots, and that became almost 70% nationwide.
Under the guise of COVID, they brought in rules that said you could register to vote without an ID or a driver’s license. They would give you an ID if you had—you could use a credit card, you could use almost anything. But if you didn’t have anything, they would give you a number, and then you could vote that same day. You could ballot harvest.
That changed, radically, the entire American electoral system in one direction—for the Left.
That’s what I wish he would concentrate on. I don’t know if it was legal or illegal, but the way they did it altered the way we voted.
If you look at population increases, there’s no way in the world that you would get so many people voting. More people voted in 2020 than in 2024. It was just outstanding. It was a sudden rise in voters.
We know now that Mark Zuckerberg spent $417 million to appropriate the work of election registrars in key swing states.
By that I mean he basically gave them all this money to put drop boxes all over their states that couldn’t really be accounted for, and money to sue to extend the acceptance of mail-in ballots—as here in California—for seven to 10 days, depending on the particular state, after Election Day.
So, it really ruined the system. It really did.
And we know it because Sen. [Elissa] Slotkin let the cat out of the bag when she was commenting on the SAVE Act. She said, you know, everybody’s going to have an ID. Everybody’s going to have to be preregistered. You still have a window where you can vote early if you wish. You can mail in a ballot, but it’ll be an absentee ballot. You’ll need an excuse like we used to.
Primarily, you’re going to be expected to show up at the polls, show an ID, and your name will be crossed off a list of previously registered voters. If you’re not registered that day, you’re not going to vote. If you don’t show up that day, you’re not going to vote.
And when she said, “Well, we can’t win elections like that”—that’s basically what she said. “We can’t … ”
Of course, she was right. They can’t.
So, that was the biggest piece of legislation, I think, that the Senate is dealing with. They’ve only got, what, 20 days before recess?
Fowler: Hardly any time.
Hanson: I don’t know why they’re not doing something about it. I know there are holdouts. Why don’t they go to Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski or Rand Paul—whoever it is. I don’t think he’s with the opposition on this one. Just say to them, “What do you object to, and how can we work to get your votes and get this through?”
Yeah. And, you know, JD [Vance]—he is the head of the Senate.
Fowler: He’s president of the Senate.
Hanson: Yeah, he’s president of the Senate, and he breaks tie votes.
I think Kim Strassel wrote a pretty tough article about him. I know both JD and Kim, and I like them both. But she had a point. Time is running out, and you’ve really got to galvanize the senators.
They’re not that close. Trump is a different type of politician. You want the president of the Senate—your guy—to go camp out in the Senate and count votes every single day, then find out how many you need and what they want.
You don’t want to go on Joe Rogan, or something, pushing your book while you’re vice president at this particular time, when you have a recess coming up.
My point is, if I were vice president and I were to write a book, I would have timed the publication date to coincide with the August recess. Then I would’ve spent every single moment—20 hours a day—on that Senate floor and on the phone making sure you got this passed.
Otherwise, it looks like a complete disorganized mess.
Fowler: Yeah. Kim’s Wall Street Journal op-ed begins: “Republicans were eagerly awaiting their Tuesday meeting with Vice President JD Vance, hoping he’d break Congress’s gridlock. They instead were notified of a scheduling conflict as Air Force Two winged to Texas.”
That’s where he went for the Joe Rogan Experience, where he bashed the Senate for its, quote, “procedural bull—-.”
And yes, he’s promoting a book.
Another tough article, along the same lines—and I think even stronger—came from Lee Smith in The Tablet. He compared Vance to Barack Obama. He also pointed out that Vance has now written a second memoir before even turning 45.
Very tough stuff, I think.
So, how much of it is deserved? I don’t know, Victor.
Hanson: I don’t know either. But I do know this: Right now, we’re in a fighting mode in the Middle East. Israel is giving us targeting information, Iran is attacking us, and the Gulf States are not doing anything.
It doesn’t seem wise to say that Israel can’t kill its way out of its problem.
As soon as Trump turned his attention to the Lebanese government and said, “Hezbollah is the reason why Israel is there. So if you want Israel out of Lebanon, you have to work with us. Now that we’ve defanged Iran and they don’t have any money, now is the time. You’ll never have a better opportunity to get Hezbollah out.”
Israel said, “If you don’t send missiles into us, we will withdraw.”
So, given everything I just said, I don’t know why you’d say that our only ally can’t kill its way out of its problem. That’s what I don’t understand.
On Oct. 7, there were 5,000 people. They were not just Hamas. They were members of all those Palestinian radical terrorist groups that sent volunteers. There were also tag-along people who just wanted to go kill, rape, and torture Jews, and they all went in there.
Take away that attack, and we wouldn’t be where we are now. It’s very simple.
I don’t see why people can’t see that.
Instead, you wait three weeks. You don’t go into Gaza. You say to them, “Give us back the hostages. Give us the people who committed the murders.” They don’t do it.
Then what are you supposed to do?
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