"This Trump Move Caught Everyone Off Guard!! | Victor Davis Hanson"

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:01]Is Trump ending America's forever wars or is Washington still judging him with an old way of thinking? Victor Davis Hansen says people are misunderstanding what Trump is doing. Now, in his view, this is not Iraq or Afghanistan. Again, there is no long wars, no big occupations, and no endless troop deployment. Instead, Trump's approach is more limited. short military actions when needed combined with pressure and then stepping back instead of staying for years. For him, the key difference is simple. Trump is trying to use force quickly and carefully without getting stuck in long wars like in the past.

[00:00:40]Now, listen to Victor Davis Hansen explain it in more detail.

[00:00:44]>> I went back and and read everything he said. He said, "No forever wars or no endless wars." I guess those were the two terms he used. And we're not fighting in the streets of Fallujah or in Helman Province the way we used to.

[00:00:58]So in some ways they they don't have any military le leverage. Nobody is even the left for all their strained efforts is not saying that we're losing the war as they did during Iraq or Korea, Vietnam.

[00:01:11]And that's because he so far hasn't engaged troops. So if you look at all of the engagements as president, the Solammani, the Al Alba Baghdaddy takeouts, the bombing of the ice, the destruction of the Wagner group attack, Maduro, last summer's flight in this summer. Um this is the longest one at we're right at the end of 5 weeks and u does that constitute a forever war that he said he wouldn't gay. We've lost 13 soldiers. Joe Biden lost that many scuaddling from Afghanistan.

[00:01:50]So I just look at the other wars that uh I mean the misadventure in Libya was 7 months no congressional authorization.

[00:01:58]They claim they didn't hit dual use infrastructure but they took out a lot of um cargo ships, port facilities, television stations in Tripoli.

[00:02:08]And um so I'm not sure that we have to wait that this constitutes uh a forever or endless war. And he's he has this entity this regime has killed more Americans than any other in entity.

[00:02:25]Their argument was there was no apparent threat. But the more we're learning about perhaps they had more in uranium and they had extended missile range and they were quite ready to attack all of their so-called Gulf partners. They were a lot more dangerous than they seemed and they never really ever had an apparent threat when they blew up.

[00:02:48]Nobody thought they were going to blow up the marine barracks, the embassies in Africa, the embassy in Beirut or try to kill Trump or Pompeo. There was never any heightened tension. They always do this episodically without warning. So there was a threat. The question, there's no military problem. If he has the military wherewithal to open the straight as Reagan did during the tanker war and in 2018 and 19 as US military did when they tried to do something like this. It's all political as you know better than I do. It's the midterms.

[00:03:23]It's the MAGA base. It's the counterrevolution survival. If he would if he loses the house, he will be impeached. They'll bring the entire Trump entourage under investigation.

[00:03:35]They will have a recredescence of lawfare. It'll be so we he's going to have to avoid that politically. And there's that means I think he has a self-imposed timeline. I don't know where it is. Maybe it's miday or the 1st of June. But he has to have at least a four or five month window where he can get oil prices will go down, the stock market will steady, interest rates might go lower, some of the the foreign investment might be reified, the deregulation and tax cuts so that if we were having this conversation in July, we would think back or August that the war is is over and the economy is good and then they can use their attention to stop this kind of crazy democratic IC agenda. But that's so what I'm trying to say is that the long the military has all of the solutions if they want to use them. It's just a matter of what political price, how high the political price is. And the long term, I think that's very important. The long-term outlook for Iran is not good. They probably suffered a half a trillion dollars in military and infrastructure damage, you know, acquired that infra 47 years. It's going to take them a decade at a time when the people can't afford food or gas and they're going to have to tell everybody in that restive country, we've got to rearm. We're going to continue. We've got to give billions to Arab terrorists, Hezbollah, these um Hamas. And then the Gulf states are scrambling, as we read, to expand, and these projects might take three to four years, but they're going to expand their Red Sea ports, their Gulf of A manport. They're even talking about going across Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Hifa. And if that's true, they could they can tell the Iranians, you're going to be irrelevant in a little while because far from holding us hostage, we can get 20 million barrels eventually out of the Gulf States without going through the straight and we could close the straight because you may be more vulnerable than we are now. So, the long term is not good for them. and they turned on their their so-called Arab friends or neutrals, whichever way we want to call it. And I don't Well, they they have a long memory, too. I think when he goes to China, he's going to tell the Chinese who get 80 who buy 80% of their of Iran's oil. 80% of the Iranian oil goes to them. That if they want their oil, they're going to have to pressure the Iranians as well. I think it would get their attention. Yes. Very quickly. And he could do he could he could do it in an art of a deal, not an adversarial way, and just say, "Look, you can't rearm these people. They're a threat to even your suppliers in the Gulf. You just can't come in here, but we want to eliminate this problem. So, you can go in here, and if you're willing to help us, we will not destroy Car Island. If you're not willing to help us, there might not be any oil for you anyway." Something like that. First of all, a lot of the stuff that's coming out of Iran, their their demands that the left lead uh latches on to, I don't think that's even for foreign consumption. And I think that's for internal consumption among that regime >> because now that the top 40 to 50 people are gone, you have we they don't know who's actually got the power whether it's the secular elected leaders or it's the military or it's the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or it's the the remnant theocracy and they're each mouthping off trying to outdo the other and being strident and uncompro uncompromising.

[00:07:13]So, it's very hard for us to know who's in control. But what we do know is that uh they're going to have to make a choice and they're broke and they have no defenses, so to speak. And the Chinese are not going to rearm them for free. They're going to either want money or oil. The same goes through Russia. We can control that. And then the people are going to sit there and they're not going to be very well off and they're angry and the regime is not in v vulnerable. We don't know what will happen in the next month, 3 months, four months, 6 months down. I don't think it's a very good scenario for them. Um, it it reminds me a little bit of what Reagan did to uh to the Soviets with the Persian missiles and Star Wars and he put the pressure on sanctions and everybody said, "Well, it didn't work or he was he's he's courting disaster."

[00:08:10]Then he went out of office and George Bush inherited the fall of, you know, the all of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it was Reagan who did it. So, I'm I'm not sure how long it could take, but I think it'll happen, but it might take a year or two or even three, but it's been it's been severely weakened.

[00:08:29]That's why I don't quite understand the left's argument. On Monday, Trump was on Tuesday, he was Neville Chamberlain, >> and they have no coherent message. And I think I think Trump, my suggestion for Trump would be rather than getting in a fight with the MAGA former MAGA influencers, he should direct all their attention to the left and say how incoherent these people are. He could write a tweet and say, "You guys have to decide whether I'm a chairman, but one or the other, please. I happen to think I'm Churchill, but you disagree." he could have a light-hearted exchange to show how stupid they are.

[00:09:11]>> The left, everybody should realize that when you look at all these examples of hypocrisy, it doesn't they don't see it that way. Their view is simply we are morally superior to you Neanderthalss and we are smarter and we are better credentialed and we are more moral and therefore we can use any means necessary for our exalted ends. And if that means being inconsistent or not caring about, you know, children because it's the more important moral is to make the case that Donald Trump is evil. I love that.

[00:09:48]Martha's Vineyards where they they bust the illegals into Martha's Vineyard and then they these these kind of Karen women and their puff jackets come and they have all these boxes of their former designer clothes, you know, Abberham and Fitch handme-downs and they put them neatly in a box and then they hand them to them and they point to a bus and say that Manhattan is awaiting you. So, they're playing with fire, but it's predicated on the idea that we're morally superior, so you wouldn't dare uh use the tactics that we're using. And then you get into this Obama uh phenomenon where he comes out, he flies out of his estates, his four states with his private plane, and then he weighs in on things.

[00:10:38]And uh reminds me of the filibuster when he said it was a racist relic. remember that they had the majority and they were filibustering. I have a pen. I have a phone. I have a phone. I have a pen. I can just, you know, that started the whole executive order rationalization.

[00:10:55]He did it. And then uh he said that the filibuster was a racist relic. And then he people said, "Well, wait a minute. When you were in the minority, you tried to filibuster Alto. You tried to stop his nomination vote. It wasn't racist then, was it?"

[00:11:12]And so and then Eric Holder, remember we said that, oh, Jeff Chess is too close to Donald Trump. Pam Bondi is there's no firewall.

[00:11:22]Soon as I heard that, I thought, well, RFK was the brother of JFK and he was attorney general and president. And then we remember Eric Holder said, "I'm the president's wingman."

[00:11:34]Wingman. And then when they put Bannon and Navaro in jail for refusing a congressional subpoena and Eric Holder was the first attorney general in history to be held in contempt over Fast and Furious and they sent him they sent him a summons. He just I'm not going to come. No way. Just like Mary Garland.

[00:11:52]No way. And then when the January 6th thing came out, every day Eric Holder, insurrectionist, treachery, treason, the whole thing, both of them. And um I just don't think anybody listens to either one of them, especially Obama. I think most people realize that all this division that we have on racial lines and the radicalization of the Democratic Party, it didn't start under Jimmy Carter. It did not start under Reagan, George HW Bush. Even George W. Bush, they hate it. It didn't start, it didn't even start under Clinton, this mchavelianist Clinton. It started under Obama. And he was the one that said Trayvon is a kid that, you know, looks like me, the son I never had. He's the one that said, you know, everybody knows the police pull people over for no reason. The beer summit.

[00:12:46]Michelle, downright mean country, never been proud. That whole stuff. And then all the rappers in the White House with their ankle braces going off. He was the one, remember what was his name? Love, the guy that was the bag man for Trump for Obama.

[00:13:02]>> Well, I'll tell you the Republicans be careful because this is what they're going to do. So, they're going to redistrict every Democratic majority purple state and they're going to pick effective Republican Congress people and they're going to put them in a new district with their rivals, Republicans, and they were going to cut in half the number. And these districts are going to look like spaghetti noodles.

[00:13:28]And then when the Republicans retaliate, they're going to say, "You're racist because you're eliminating gerrymandered districts for race. See, they don't believe that gerrymandering is bad. They only believe it's bad when Republicans do it. But they think it's very good to create automatic racial districts. The irony again, as I said before, is that they have pretty much ensured that there will never be a Barack Obama national candidate again. And look at the black community and ask yourself, how many black senators are going to make it to the presidency? Camela Harris? I don't think so. You think that Jasmine Crockett spouting all of that hatred and racial crap is going to be a senator in Texas? I don't think so. So, what is my point? When you put people into racially germandered districts that are hardleft, they play to their base and their rhetoric gets strident, strident, polarizing, off-putting, racist, and then they emerge as a folk hero. But then every time they try to go national or statewide, they can't win. Where if you just made the districts 750,000 people under geographical concerns, then when you had black representatives, they would be polished and effective politicians. They would know how to appeal to Hispanics, Asians, whites, everybody. And they wouldn't, you know, double down on reparations and race eras. and they wouldn't have Al Sharpton pictures and fair all that. And that's what that's what the gerrymanding and these special districts do. They radicalize minority candidates and they effectively make them impossible to be competitive on statewide races. That's why everybody says, "Well, we've got to get the Senate. We've got to make the Senate more diverse. The Senate's a bunch of old white men." Well, then if you want to do that, get rid of the germanding racial districts and have a farm team of effective politicians.

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