America Awakes From Its Coma

Victor Davis Hanson, the renowned American historian and political commentator, has joined The Daily Signal as a senior contributor. This transcript has been lightly edited.

There’s been a whole change of mentality, from the trivial to the existential. We also learn these disclosures. Why now? Why now? Why did we suddenly learn from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that Joe Biden had had cognitive decline all these years, in which, to point that out was blasphemy.

And now, all of a sudden, we hear where we’re right all along. All of you were.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Have you noticed during this transition from the Nov. 5 election to the inauguration of Jan. 20, there’s been a whole change of mentality from the trivial to the existential. We can’t quite believe that. Mika and Joe Scarborough made a religious journey, as it is, to Mar-a-Lago.

Snoop Dogg once cut a film about shooting Donald Trump. Now he has endorsed him. And that is true all over the media. They just fired the head of MSNBC. Now we also learn these disclosures. Why now? Why now? Why did we suddenly learn from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that Joe Biden had had cognitive decline all these years in which, to point that out, was blasphemy?

Remember Peter Daszak? He was in Echo Health. He was the one who engaged in forbidden gain-of-function viral research. He was getting money from the NIH [National Institutes of Health], transferring it to the Wuhan Laboratory. But, even to say that was considered heresy. And now all of a sudden, we hear we were right all along. All of you were.

That there was gain of function research. That we did have a role in the Wuhan Lab. And guess what? Peter Daszak is barred now for five years from receiving one dime of federal health care. How about the FBI? They stonewalled, stonewalled, stonewalled. All of a sudden—suddenly, out of the head of Zeus—they tell us they’re going to abandon, abolish, get rid of their diversity, equity, and inclusion department.

And finally, Christopher Wray, in his last address to us, says, well, there are cabals of Chinese espionage activists and they’re in sensitive places. We have to be careful. Why didn’t he tell us that two years ago? Why all of a sudden is Mr. Trudeau stepping down? Why did the Assad dynasty collapse? Why does Hamas want to negotiate?

It’s eerie. We’ve never seen anything like it. Why did Joe Biden suddenly abdicate? He’s kind of abdicated from power. Donald Trump is the de facto—and he has been for weeks—president. We’ve never seen anything like it. The obvious answer is, the king is dead. Long live the king. People gravitate toward power, especially when power is expressed by winning the popular vote, the Electoral College, having control of the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and having issues that all polled over 55 to 60%. It was a mandate. And everybody wants to be on the winning side, in the sense, you root for your football team when it’s 10 and zero, and you don’t go to the stadium when it’s zero and 10.

There’s another criteria here and that is, a lot of people as they look back, see that what they did to Donald Trump—the lawfare, the Alvin Bragg, the Fani Willis, the Jack Smith, the Latitia James, the E. Jean Carroll, civil and criminal suits—they really were an aberration. They were a miscarriage of justice.

And when they’re compounded with the two prior impeachments, the trial of Donald Trump as a private citizen, the effort to get him off the ballot, the raid at Mar-a-Lago. A lot of people on the left in the media, in the Democratic Party, in the liberal circle itself are thinking if we were Donald Trump and we had suffered what we did to him and we were in power now, we know what we would do: Revenge.

So, they project that onto Donald Trump, and they try to reach out now, whether it’s the media settling defamation suits, or talk that even CBS will settle with Donald Trump. But I don’t think that’s necessarily explains all of this vast change of heart. This new mindset. I think people, as they look back, they think we were in a coma.

We were drugged. This was an aberration. Maybe it was the COVID lockdown. Maybe it was the George Floyd. Maybe it was the hatred of Donald Trump. Maybe—I don’t know what it was, but it was a four-year aberration. And now they’re coming to their senses and they’re thinking Joe Biden really was cognitively declined. A coup dismissed him.

That was abnormal. The border should be closed. There really is two main sexes, not three. Looting and shoplifting have to be crimes or society will not exist. What happened in Afghanistan, turning over $50 billion to terrorists. That’s not normal. That’s not the United States. Nor is putting “daylight” between us and Israel.

So, there’s a sense now that, Rip Van Winkle, like we’ve woken up. And Donald Trump wasn’t a monster. In fact, Donald Trump has common sense answers to all the things of the last four years. So we’re looking back and we’re saying we were mad. And now there’s a common-sense corrective and we don’t really care if it’s Donald Trump or not, but we’re going to go with the corrective and return America to common sense.

Thank you. This is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.

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