Victor Davis Hanson: Paxton Has Problems—but Texas Democrats Have Bigger Ones

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript 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.

Sami Winc: Well, let’s turn to Trump. We know that he’s planning on barnstorming the country for some of the candidates and such. So I was wondering what you made of Ken Paxton, who said that that convention that he had in Dallas, Texas, dragged down his numbers. It’s dragged everybody’s numbers down. 

Ken Paxton was his man. Who? I mean, they caught him on a mic—or he didn’t say it formally. 

Victor Davis Hanson: He denied that. 

But he shouldn’t have told anybody that. Look, John Cornyn would have won that election, and he was a RINO. And he’s very embittered, like Tom Tillis is in [North] Carolina. And he voted with Trump about 85% of the time, right? 

But on the key issues, like the SAVE Act and those, he wasn’t with Trump, so Trump got mad. Paxton had a, what’s the word, colorful record, personal and professional. And he was not, as Trump said, a charismatic guy. But Trump endorsed him with the idea that Texas is not going to vote for a vegetarian when they’re famous for beef. 

They’re not going to vote for a green nut when they’re famous for oil. They’re not going to vote for “Jesus is nonbinary” when it’s an evangelical state. So I think that Paxton will win, but he’s a very weak candidate, I’ll be candid with you. And he doesn’t come across well, and they haven’t been campaigning. 

[James] Talarico is slimy and unctuous and smooth. He’s oily, and he’s taking his, “I never said that. That was a moment of exuberance.” Then every time you catch him in his real self, somebody ambushes him and says, “Who’s your favorite drag dancer, trans drag dancer?” 

“Oh, yeah.” 

And he’s like, “Uh-oh, I just gave a name as if I know all of them.” 

So he’s running as something he’s not. And when he gets elected, if he were to do that, he would go back to his socialist crazy roots, just like [Abdul] El-Sayed and everybody else. 

Sami Winc: Yeah, as the reverend at his church got caught on a mic saying— 

Victor Davis Hanson: You know what I’m most scared about right now? 

Sami Winc: What? 

Victor Davis Hanson: We just did some videos for “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words” about how the economy was booming. This was before The Wall Street Journal. I had so many comments on X and emails saying, “You’re just a sycophant. You know, come on, Victor, just admit that we’re in a depression. Don’t just give us this rah-rah. The economy’s horrible.” 

Nobody believes that. I wrote an article today, I mentioned on our website, about the ’92 election. The economy was strong. Not as strong as now, but it wasn’t bad like Clinton and Gore said. But they won on that. 

So I’m afraid that because we have not been talking about the economy, we haven’t explained the affordability issue: that it was 20% under Biden, 5.1% a year, and the only way you can get rid of 20% inflation over his tenure would have been a recession. And we’re not going to do that. And it was 30% for vehicles, fuels and staples. 

So the only way you can get out of those high prices is to cut the annual rate of inflation, which Trump did the first year by half, and raise wages, purchasing power, which he did. 

This year it’s complicated, but I’m afraid that with all this foreign investment and all this AI, and the end of the Iran conflict soon, and the crashing of oil prices, and this boom that we see, that it’s going to happen after they take the House. And they’re going to say, “See, you voted for us, and we got the price of oil down.” 

And that’s something everybody should watch. If anybody votes and believes them that they have any ability or desire to lower prices, you’re sorely mistaken. These are Islamists and socialists. They have bigger fish to fry than us. They want to change the United States into a socialist Cuba. 

Sami Winc: Yeah. And we looked at some of those stories in Seattle and California, where our socialist states are destroying it, especially with the homeless and fraud. 

Victor Davis Hanson: If they were honest, they should say this: “If you elect us, we can do for the United States what we’ve done in California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New York and Minnesota. And we can make every city in the United States look exactly like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago and New York if you’ll just vote for us. 

“That’s our plan because these are blue states and blue cities, and it’s a wonderful place, so vote for us.” 

That’s what they’re running on. We’re going to make California nationwide.  

Sami Winc: And you’ll applaud us when we get one crosswalk painted in seven months, just like Nithya Raman did. 

Victor Davis Hanson: We get Stonehenge. 

And we get Stonehenge. I have a reader, Gary. I never give his last name, so I don’t want to embarrass him. But I had said on this program, “What do you do with Stonehenge?” Right? Not one foot of track, but 170 miles, 78 miles or something, from Bakersfield to Merced. 

And he—I guess he Photoshopped it or he got it—and, well, why not have a Western pedestrian trail? Because he’s a landscaper guy, and he had these beautiful bridges over railroad tracks, like from Fresno to Bakersfield. 

And I thought about it. I thought, “Wow, that’s a brilliant idea.” Then I was reminded of that little animal walk in L.A., where they built a bridge so the wolves or somebody could not— 

And it’s been taking millions of dollars. They can’t finish it. But if they would turn it loose to a guy like Gary, and he could just landscape the whole thing as a private enterprise guy, then you could walk from Bakersfield. 

Of course, you’d have to put a police station every five miles because of California’s crime rate. And, you know, you’d have to say, “If you rob somebody, it’s not $950 or get out of jail free card.” 

Sami Winc: Yeah. Well, let’s look at states that are doing things, or just take a moment. I don’t know if you have something to say about this, but Ron DeSantis in Florida has designated CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Brotherhood and Antifa as terrorist organizations. 

So woo-hoo for Florida, I’d say. 

Victor Davis Hanson: He’s very good. And I don’t know who got the inspiration from whom, but Donald Trump announced that last month there were zero Muslim, Islamic people coming in as refugees. That’s how they come in. 

Basically, the argument is, “We destroyed our country with Islamism, and I want to go to a Western country and destroy it so it looks like the destroyed country that I left. So I want to come to France or Britain, the United States, and wave my Palestinian flag or my Iraqi flag or my Syrian flag or my Iranian flag because I’m a refugee. But I don’t want to integrate. I don’t want to assimilate. I do not want to acculturate.” 

And so Donald Trump—they’re really angry at him. “This is so—this is terrible.” But he just said, “We don’t have to let anybody—” 

And we’re not going to let in people—he didn’t say Muslim. He said people from these countries. They’re not going to come in. 

And when you look at what they’re saying, why would you want somebody like Ilhan Omar to come in, whose father was a colonel in a genocidal army under Siad Barre? 

Why would you want [Zohran] Mamdani, who was a settler colonialist in Uganda, where the community was 0.01%, and they own 60% of the GDP? 

And he didn’t say much about that [Yoweri] Museveni, or whatever his name is, the president of Uganda, has been there for 40 years without a free election. God, can you imagine? He’s a dual citizen. He’s a citizen of Uganda right now. 

Why doesn’t he say, “Well, I want to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, but because I have dual loyalties, I’m also a citizen of Uganda, I want to arrest the Ugandan delegation because they’re dictatorships. 

“But then, on the other hand, my family has a two-acre estate with a view of Lake Victoria, so we have to get along to get along.” 

Or why doesn’t Hasan Piker—you know, he said he hates the United— 

“Gosh, I hate the United States. You guys deserve 9/11.” 

Why don’t you just stay home? We don’t want you or any of your friends over here. 

Sami Winc: Yeah. Wearing—what was that? A maid’s dress? Hasan Piker was dressed up in a maid’s dress this week for his podcast. 

Victor Davis Hanson: Because he has an affectation for transvestism. 

Sami Winc: Yeah, cross-dressing. 

Victor Davis Hanson: Cross-dressing. 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org