Victor Davis Hanson: Leftist Immigrants Want the Rib Eye but Hate the Host

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.

Victor Davis Hanson:  So my point is this: If in 2024 the Democrats ran with a socialist and felt the socialist was too far left so they had to fake it into making her am old-time Democrat, well, why would they think a communist would have better luck as a moderate than a socialist in 2028? And for that matter, look at 2020. 

They had a lot of socialists up there. They had Bernie Sanders, they had Elizabeth Warren, they had Julián Castro, they had [Pete] Buttigieg. They were far left of the Democratic Party. And what did they do? They brought in old Joe Biden from Scranton, the working man’s man, the guy who said that he didn’t want his kids living in a racial jungle. 

The guy who said that Barack Obama, was the first clean, clean, articulate Black person to run for president. Just horrible stuff he said. Put you all in chains, all that stuff. So they nominated him for the explicit purpose that he would be a moderate veneer and hide their socialism, and he won. He won. 

And so they don’t have any record of winning with socialism anywhere outside a purple state. We’ll see in Texas. Maybe we’ll see in Michigan with those two Senate races, but I doubt it. I’m not sure either one of them is gonna win. But I know that you don’t solve the problem of being too left by nominating a communist in 2028. 

So [Zohran] Mamdani is talking really big, big, big, big, big, big, big, you know, where this is the way of the future, but he can’t point to any purple states or red states whether it’s taking hold, and it won’t take hold.  

We saw a version of it. The Tea Party was very different. It incorporated a lot of mainstream Republican [ideas]. But it was angry about two things, spending too much money and Obamacare and RINOs.

But nevertheless, in that following primary, they nominated a lot of poor candidates for Senate. They could have taken the Senate back. Yeah. But they were tagged as too extreme. But they were not too extreme in terms of these people relative to right and left. 

These people are really out there. And do they think that’s gonna help them? Should ask Eugene Debs how he did in five elections. Maybe they can ask George McGovern how he did.  

Jack Fowler: We are talking about Michigan. The Michigan Senate candidate is Abdul El-Sayed, and he’s leading in current polling.  

Victor Davis Hanson: We’ll see.  

Jack Fowler: There’s a webinar that’s come out of him appearing alongside a convicted murderer, I’m reading Washington Free Beacon piece now, and a registered sex offender in a webinar with a prison abolition group endorsed—he endorsed any and all efforts to get people out of jails and prisons, and said locking up criminals was akin to robbing them of their freedom. 

And he said— 

Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah. Mamdani said he’s been a big success. Everybody who’s got money will leave New York pretty soon. And he said he took credit for the crime. He’s only been in office, what? Six months? And not even that, and he’s already bragging that he—the crime didn’t go down for him. 

It went down because Trump deported 400,000 criminals nationwide and closed the borders and got tough on sentencing, and that was a great gift to New York that Trump gave to them.  

Jack Fowler: Yeah. By the way, on that front, two things, Victor. I was at last week, Friday, Saturday, Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, a Ralph Reed organization, and Tom Homan spoke, and he came out on the stage, and as soon as he came out, this guy is just a rock star. 

I mean, everyone who appeared there was. And Trump spoke too, but Homan, there’s something truly authentic about him. But he was talking about going after these … they found 147,000 children now. And to think that the United States of America, under [Joe] Biden would allow all these children here, many of them to become victims of perverts, it’s a true national sin. 

And what [FBI Director Kash] Patel and Holman’s doing, it’s just a tremendous work.  

Victor Davis Hanson: It is. And that’s an untold story. Nobody talks about it. Yeah. Because left-wing people have exemptions. They can do almost anything. It’s not good for the Democratic Party to control all these institutions and excuse everything because it just emboldens them to be even more radical. 

Jack Fowler: Yeah.  

Victor Davis Hanson: You know, I gave an interview today to Voice of America, and we were talking about the difference between immigrants today and in the past, both aside from the fact of illegality in many cases. But one of the things that’s not being talked about, and  I know I’ll get criticized for this, but here it is. 

If you look at the candidates, [Darializa Avila] Chevalier, Chevalier, Chevalier, I should say, and AOC, and Rashida Tlaib, and Mamdani, and to go on. But the kingpins, they’re mostly first or second generation …  

Jack Fowler: Mm-hmm.  

Victor Davis Hanson: … first or second generation immigrants. And they come from areas that, to be candid and a little blunt, are failed miserable places, such as Ghana or the Caribbean or many Latin American countries or Mexico. 

And I could very much expand that list to almost 50 to 60% of them are. So they come to this country either with their parents or their parents came and they were born. 

And then they sense, they put their feelers up, their little antennae, and they learn very early on that if you trash this country, the left will protect you and advance you, and no matter how much money you have … 

AOC’s parents were pretty affluent. Ilhan Omar claims she was worth 30 million. Mamdani. Mamdani’s a multimillionaire settler colonialist from Uganda. And, when you look at all of them, they have nothing but  contempt. This [Chevalier], she says she wipes her hands on the American flag and all of this stuff. 

Then don’t come. There’s no reason you have to come. You came here because it was prosperous and safe, and it, there was not inbred tribal racism as in all these countries. Apparently, the people came with Ilhan Omar because they were on the side of the genocidal [Mohamed] Siad Barre. 

They keep saying genocide, genocide. The only person that really is a genocidal maniac was Siad Barre, the head of the Somali government, of which a lot of these immigrants’ parents were part of, including Ilhan Omar. Nobody ever says to her when she walks down the street, “genocide, genocide, your dad has blood on his, had blood on his hands.” 

Oh, no, he was only a colonel. He was a school teacher. He was instruct … No, no, no. You have the same latitude as when you call other people genocide genocidal. So it’s something we don’t talk about, but you know what it’s done? It has soured so many people you talk to about legal immigration. That used to be our strength. 

Jack Fowler: Mm-hmm.  

Victor Davis Hanson: And we’ve had so many wonderful immigrants, from Europe, Australia, Canada, all over the world, Mexico. And yet they came legally, they came in manageable numbers, they were diverse, they didn’t come in big swarms, and they didn’t try to immediately say to the United States, “You’re this, you’re bad. I want stuff from you.” 

And then this big lie that immigrants commit are less likely to be on federal or local assistance. Oh my gosh. And that’s been blown up and out of the air. Oh. With all billions of dollars of fraud, 80% more likely to be on assistance. 

We’ve changed our attitude about immigrants, especially when you have 16% of the population and 53 million here, and they don’t like the way the United States is. 

It’s like you say I’m having a, open house and somebody comes over to your house uninvited, and he wasn’t invited, just walks into your house and says, “Oh, the food is terrible. This is an ugly house. You’re a sexist. I hate this place. Oh, by the way, I’m gonna sit down at your table, and I like that rib eye over there, and then I would like that fine Chardonnay. 

“And what is for dessert?” 

And then when you eat and feast, you say, “I gotta get out of here someday, but I want … You know what? I think I’ll just, if you don’t mind, I’ll move into the back bedroom.” 

That’s what the attitude is. And the host says, “I can’t believe this.” 

But how many hosts would put up with that? Almost none. And then when you factor in the Democratic Party is encouraging this because they have a bankrupt agenda that appeals to 30 or 40%, so they’re bringing in millions of constituents, and then the moment they do it, anybody complains and “You’re a racist. You believe in the great replacement theory.”  

No, you do, Democrats. 

You’re the one that says demography is destiny and the new Democratic majority. Yeah. And believe me, if all these people coming in from Haiti were right-wing Cubans, can you imagine right now when the — well, after the Supreme Court said they could be deported? You’d have all these anti-ICE protesters protesting to drive them out.

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