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Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Laid Out America’s Comeback While Democrats Sat Silent

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Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Laid Out America’s Comeback While Democrats Sat Silent

Victor Davis Hanson / @VDHanson

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior contributor for The Daily Signal, is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and host of "The Victor Davis Hanson Show." His website, The Blade of Perseus, features columns, lectures, and exclusive content for subscribers. Contact him at [email protected].

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.

We had the State of the Union, as we all know, on Tuesday. I think all of us were a little apprehensive when we were told it would be the longest State of the Union. I happen to have watched Bill Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address.

I think it was an hour and 28 minutes. Trump was, depending where you start the actual measurement of the speech, I think it was about an hour and 48, 50 minutes. Twenty to 25 minutes longer. Bill Clinton’s was considered kind of a disaster. It was too long, and it was just what the Emperor Augustus called res gestae. Just a recap of all the good things he’s done.

So when I heard that, I was a little upset, but when you looked at the actual speech, he got what he had to cover, the bullet points on the economy. And there are many. I mean, inflation the last three months is way below 2%. And he inherited, remember, a five point, I think it’s a 5.4 average inflation rate under Biden.

It was 21 aggregate inflation over four years divided by four, and GDP was very strong. It was much stronger than people had anticipated. Job growth is not only strong, but it’s U.S. citizens for the vast majority of the new jobs that are created. Interest rates are down.

All of that … gasoline, as he pointed out. In a place in Iowa, it’s under $2. It doesn’t apply to here to us in California. We’re going to be seeing six, seven, and eight this summer because we drove out two large refineries that will be leaving California.

Nevertheless, he got what he needed to say at the very beginning, and then it wasn’t really a State of the Union address. It was more of a variety show. It was an interview when he brought all of these tragic cases of these people.

And they all had one thing in common: whether it was the family that was impacted by the illegal alien truck driver, or it was to show how so many people had been patriotic, or the sudden entry of the hockey team, or the tragic killing of the Ukrainian immigrant on a train.

It was all to show you two things: that we’re a wonderful patriotic country, and the policies of the Democratic opposition had caused, in some cases, these tragedies. And then the Democrats thought they were going to be very, very cute by boycotting. I don’t know. They said 73 or 74, but maybe only 60 actually boycotted.

They wouldn’t stand for any applause, no matter what the topic was, or no matter whether they agreed with it, and they were going to have alternate realities in reply to Donald Trump’s speech. And they were all a disaster, to be quite frank.

Gov. [Abigail] Spanberger of Virginia, she’s added all these taxes. She’s taxing anything that moves or breathes, and she’s talking about her affordability record. I think it was mostly about her.

She thinks, I think, that [Gavin] Newsom, [Kamala] Harris, [Pete] Buttigieg, they’re not viable candidates, and somebody like herself, a dark horse, might emerge in 2028. I don’t think she is. It wasn’t a very inspiring speech.

Alex Padilla, his reply was incoherent. It was basically that ICE has no business enforcing the law. I don’t know Spanish all that well, but when I can understand a lot of what he was saying, then he must not be speaking the Spanish that most people do, because I could understand a lot of it, and it seemed incoherent to me.

Then there was at the National Press Corp some weird alternate venue where people dressed up in costumes, and they were screaming and yelling and frogs and giraffes, and … Joy Reid. It didn’t make any sense at all.

And then, the final thing is they didn’t understand Donald Trump. The longest speech in history would mean what?

That they were going to come on Eastern time at 11 o’clock or even 11:30 by the time they got going? So nobody really heard what they were doing. And when they did have a chance to see and hear them during the actual address, they wouldn’t even stand up for the poor girl who was maimed and tragically disabled by the illegal alien truck driver.

They wouldn’t stand up for the Ukrainian mom who was there, who was lamenting the horrific murder of her child. They wouldn’t stand up for anything.

Nancy Pelosi, when they talked about outlawing stock, insider stock trading, she looked like she was mummified. It just wasn’t a good look for any of them.

And the polls reflected that. More people thought it was good, very good or moderately good than bad. About two-thirds of the people liked it. Even some of Trump’s favorability ratings, the Trafalgar poll had him coming up over 50%. So what shouldn’t have worked at that length worked actually quite brilliantly.

And there’s something about the Democratic Party, whether it’s Al Green with a sign that he had and disrupting the speech or Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib that are screaming “KKK” and “liar.” We used to think that when anybody disrupted a State of the Union, it was terrible.

And the last time we really saw a disruption was Al Green tried to break the cadence of Trump. Then, of course, we had Nancy Pelosi in the first term, who tore up the State of the Union address on national TV. Nobody quite ever would ever do that again. So my point is that the Democrats really look like they are.

It’s not that they look bad, it’s just that when you look at their field, Gavin Newsom, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], Pete Buttigieg, there’s no one there. There’s no there there.

And so, Trump really did pull off something that no one anticipated, that he was going to speak for nearly two hours. And yet, it was a lively variety show with points of triumphalism and happiness and abject sadness.

But, to finish, the Democrats thought they were so smug, but they had no idea what was coming. When he asked everybody to stand if they thought that they would prioritize American citizens over illegal aliens, they thought, “I’m not going to give this person the benefit of ever agreeing with it.” True, they didn’t.

But to the American people, the 50 or 60 million who watched, it wasn’t about Trump. It was just to reiterate that the policies under Biden were something that they didn’t approve of anymore because they were very unpopular. And what did they do? They sat down.

They wouldn’t even rise. They couldn’t even make that statement that their priorities are American citizens, and that just channels into what we’re going to see in 2026 in November, this next midterm.

There were so many soundbites. There were so many great opportunities in that speech for ads, campaign ads, and you’re going to see a lot of them in November.

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

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