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. The Democrats have a new narrative, the Left in general does, that they are saving democracy from President Donald Trump. And that justifies “almost any means” necessary to achieve the end of destroying or preventing Donald Trump from governing effectively.
The problem with all of this is they are destroying democracy to destroy Donald Trump.
What do I mean? One of the issues that they are agitating is the redistricting of congressional districts in Texas and California now. And the general problem the Left has is, if you look at gerrymandering to make these jigsaw puzzle piece-like districts, the Left is way ahead of the Right. In other words, states that have proportions of 30% to 40% to 50% for Donald Trump do not have that level of representation in the Congress.
And there’s been sophisticated studies of gerrymandering. And it boils down to the Republicans are short some six to 10 seats in the House, based on the proportion of the national vote they have received.
The Democrats know that, but they’re angry about the Texas reapportionment and gerrymandering. And their attitude is: “We’ve already gerrymandered our states to the maximum. Don’t dare try to emulate us.”
James Carville said that they have to get tougher. That’s the new mantra: Gotta get tougher. Gotta get meaner. Sen. Cory Booker screams and yells and throws a fit about every three weeks in the Senate. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries picks up his baseball bat. There’s usually a video with “the squad” or representatives using the word “s—” or the F-word, kind of pornographic. Rep. Jasmine Crockett periodically calls Donald Trump names that can’t be repeated on air. But you can see the anger.
And now the new idea is that they haven’t been tough enough. They have been too tough.
There’s been three great scandals in the 21st century. The first was the Russian collusion hoax that was prompted by Hillary Clinton and facilitated by the Obama administration on its way out. That almost destroyed the Trump campaign, sabotaged his transition, and ate up 22 months of his first two years.
The second was the Biden FBI and CIA—but especially the CIA and the intelligence agencies—got 51 people, former intelligence authorities, to lie to the American people on the eve of the second debate to affect the 2020 election, and claim, falsely, that Donald Trump was lying about the laptop of Hunter Biden, that it was “fake,” that it was a “Russian production,” and Donald Trump then was colluding, again, with the Russians.
That was a complete lie. It was Hunter’s laptop. We know because the FBI had it in its possession and authenticated it.
And finally, the great scandal that the Democratic Party and the obsequious media knew that President Joe Biden was non compos mentis, he was not cognitively able to fulfill the office of the presidency. And they kept that from the American people, until they could no longer keep it, when he finally challenged Donald Trump to a debate and melted before our very eyes. Sort of like the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz.” He melted into a non-entity.
So, my point is, if you look at the Democrats, they have staged three great scandals to try to destroy the Trump administration and by extension, democracy.
They impeached Donald Trump twice. No one’s ever done that. They tried him as a private citizen. Nobody’s ever done that. They raided his home in Mar-a-Lago. That is a terrible precedent for an ex-president. No one’s ever done that. They tried to get him off the ballot in 25 states. No one had ever done that. There were two assassination attempts during the campaign. That had never happened before. They tried to debank him and make it impossible for Donald Trump to write a check, whether from Morgan Stanley or Bank of America, or any bank.
So, my point is this, when James Carville says, “We’re gonna get tough. We’re gonna get really tough. And we’re gonna let in Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., to get four senators. Or we might have to pack the court to 13 justices,” I’m thinking, “Well, you always were going to do that.”
You were gonna pack to 15. In fact, if you had not lost the House and Senate during the Biden administration, had you had a normal president that was in control of his mental and physical abilities, then you would have not only packed the court and not only, as you promised, let in two states, but in addition, you would’ve gotten rid of the Electoral College by the hook and crook of the national voter compact. And more importantly, you would’ve abolished the Senate.
So the problem, James Carville and Democrats, is that you have sabotaged democracy. And you’ve done things that no one has ever done before to an oppositional candidate, presidential transition, and president.
And now you’re furious because you’re on the 40% side of every issue that’s dear to you—from the trans issue to the border issue, to the crime issue, to the Green New Deal issue, to foreign policy. And you have no political power. You don’t have the White House, you don’t have the Congress, you don’t have the Supreme Court. And your institutional power—the media, academia, the foundation—they are under assault.
And so, you’re frustrated and you’ve created this completely false narrative that you have to get tough, and you’ve been very Marquess of Queensberry rules-like. In fact, the opposite is true, everybody. You have been the most vicious and the most abject subverts of democracy, all for the short-term gain of destroying Donald Trump. And now that’s boomeranging upon you. And you don’t like to see it happen to you—what you tried to do to Donald Trump.
And there’s a whole vocabulary, cross-culturally, for what is happening to you now. It’s called payback is a “blank,” karma, boomerang, do unto others as you should do unto you, only eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. But this is called retribution. And it’s fully earned for what you’ve done to democracy, as long as it’s legal and it’s necessary.
But you’re angry because you’re impotent, and you’ve created false narratives that Donald Trump is doing what you have actually done. And what is that? Destroying democracy.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
