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.
Jack Fowler: All right, Victor, I’m going to just—I’ll just give a drop here on what happened, and please comment. And then I have a very—it’s a little long of a read of the councilwoman from New York City who’s explaining, in her view—she’s a Republican councilwoman, Vickie Paladino—what is this really all about?
So yesterday, on Monday, pro-Palestinian protesters marched through the streets of a Jewish neighborhood in the city, of course, carrying the banners, flags, signs, Hamas, Hezbollah posters, “River to the Sea,” etc. Five hundred police officers had to be called. This is the new New York City. Victor, what’s your take on this?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I mean, it’s going according to [Zohran] Mamdani’s plan. I mean, he has Islamists come into [Gracie Mansion]. And he said that he would arrest [Benjamin] Netanyahu when he got there.
Most of the people that he has appointed, they have a social media history of being anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. He’s played race. He said he was gonna go after white neighborhoods. This is a white neighborhood. So I guess he’s fulfilling his pledge, and that’s what the people wanted. And he’s unapologetic about it.
When he tapped on that Ken Griffith—you know, got his camera close—he was basically drawing the line and said, we don’t want you here. Get out.
And then if you’re one of the protesters, say if you’re here on a green card, a lot of them looked like they were immigrants or students from the Middle East—not all—but you would say, well, this is what Mamdani sent me. That’s what he wants me to do.
And the police are not allowed to even touch a person that ICE is going for. So the New York PD, which is the best police department in the world, is now forbidden by Mamdani even to help the federal government.
So they get the general impression that New York is on their side, and they look at the wider atmosphere in the United States and say, well, what is the Left doing?
Well, there’s this guy in Maine with a Nazi tattoo, and he’s just a nominee. That’s great. And then you’ve got Benjamin’s baby, you know, Ilhan Omar. And you’ve got Rashida Tlaib yelling and screaming about Jews all the time. And then you’ve got, pretty much, an anti-Semitic campus in the United States.
And then you look on the right and you’ve got Candace [Owens] saying the Mossad killed Charlie Kirk. You’ve got Tucker [Carlson] saying he wants Graham Platner on his show. And that he’s got a World War II revisionist that says you know who started the war and pushed Churchill and Roosevelt into it.
So they get the impression that it’s not going to be—they won’t be culpable. There’ll be no consequences to go into a Jewish neighborhood and rough up—wasn’t that—you know New York so well, wasn’t that where Al Sharpton said we have diamond merchants in Crown Heights or something? He said that a long time ago. Crown something.
Crown Heights is a neighborhood. I’m not sure that that was—this may have been in Crown Heights last night. Yeah. I’m a little confused because—
Jack Fowler: That’s separate, isn’t it? That’s separate.
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, there’s another—I mean, we’re talking on Tuesday, but I saw something on X about there’s expected to be another protest in another largely Jewish neighborhood, Midwood in Queens. So this is very targeting and selective here.
I think people, Americans, they’re all united. They do not want illegal immigration. That polls 70%. But I think there’s a lot of people who say, you know, something’s wrong with legal immigration. We are not assimilating. We are not acculturating. We are not integrating legal immigrants. And we have 16% of the population was not born in the United States. And we have 27% of California not born—and we don’t ask anything of them. So we give licenses to Indian truck drivers. They can’t read.
I just got off of a four-hour drive from Palo Alto to here to the farm, and I can tell you, driving behind—you know, my wife was driving—but driving and watching some big truck with 20 tons on it just fishtail going 70 miles an hour in front of you, it’s pretty scary. And you go by and then—I mean, they’re just out of control.
And then we have, in my neighborhood, we have cartels, and they’re from people who are not citizens. And they’re from people who are citizens.
So I think it’s gonna—I think American people, they’re going to want people to have an ID to vote. And the SAVE Act that should have been passed. I hope it does. And then they’re going to say, we don’t want a million people anymore. We want 100 or 150,000 or 200. And we want to audit them. We want to make sure they know English. We want to know that they’re self-supporting. We want to know that they won’t be on federal entitlements, state entitlements.
Because it’s—you know, if the blue states don’t want that, then they should just handle—they should just, under the system of federalism, say, we want all the immigrants in our state. But don’t take federal funds for it. You pay for it.
And it’s so different than the people who came, the Greek American community, the Armenian American community, all these early—the Hungarian, the Polish—they were all immigrants.
There wasn’t a system that you were gonna—there wasn’t a sense you’re gonna come to the United States, and then you’re gonna be supported like the Somalis or the Afghan community. And then you’re going to be canonized as on the 30% ledger of the victimized, and you’re gonna get exceptions. And then you’re gonna immediately delve into politics. And, you know, it doesn’t make any sense.
And I think people are gonna demand a change. I really do.
Jack Fowler: The concept of, you know, “I pledge allegiance,” which the absence of the necessity of allegiance in many of these communities is just deeply troubling.
Victor Davis Hanson: It is. It is. You saw that with that [Abdul] El-Sayed running for the Michigan Democratic senatorial primary, when he said—I guess it was a hot mic recording—he said, now we have to be very careful about announcing any happiness with the death of [Iranian Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei, in my district. You know, my constituency, they’re gonna be very sensitive.
But basically, he was saying, I’m gonna be elected in Michigan on a close vote, and I need every vote of a Muslim American who’s eligible to vote. And they are very strongly in favor of the Iranians beating the Americans. That’s what I got out of it.
Jack Fowler: Yeah. Yeah. Victor, let me read here and please bear with me—you and to our listeners and viewers. This is a statement on X by Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, who is a Republican on the New York City Council.
And by the way, this last night was in Brooklyn—in Midwood in Brooklyn. Tonight in a Queens neighborhood, there’s expected to be another such action where there’s ranting about globalizing the intifada, etc.
So here’s what she wrote: “What’s going on across New York tonight is a disgrace, a sickening display that should embarrass every leader in our city government. A phalanx of 500 police officers should not be needed to protect a synagogue from a violent mob of masked jihadis carrying the flags of designated terror organizations. Make no mistake, this is exactly what Mamdani was elected to facilitate. It had nothing to do with free buses or public services or the working class or anything else lied about during his campaign. It was always about a revolutionary vanguard led by the Islamist Marxist alliance to bring chaos to their political enemies in naked power plays that are meant to clearly announce who’s now in charge here. When they say every issue is Palestine, this is what they mean. When they say globalize the intifada, this is what they mean. This is it. This is what New York now has to look forward to. And it’s going to get much worse for Jews, for homeowners, for businesses, for executives and banks and restaurants and everyone who isn’t part of their radical nexus. Nobody is safe. Everyone is targeted. And they will continue to escalate, likely until they start killing people, all as the mayor looks on and smiles.”
Very powerful and well-written.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to—they have majorities in these local blue-state enclaves. Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, New York, Boston. But the great majority of Americans don’t agree with what they’re doing. And as long as they keep in their enclaves, the people are live and let live. But once they go into other neighborhoods and try to terrorize people, or once they block—as they have stormed into airports—then you’re going to get a lot of angry people. And that angry group of people is the majority.
And how it works out to the midterms, if the war will end in two or three weeks, whether there has to be kinetic to end it, I don’t know. And he pivots to the economy and there’s a redistricting fight and these victories are in play. I’m not sure they’re going to win the midterms.
And I just think that there’s the counterrevolution of the MAGA people has not even ended yet. I know there’s been defections, but people are getting—there’s no alternative. You see, there’s no alternative to it because one party says, wind and solar, we don’t need to drill oil or gas.
Or crime—all these people have been getting out. They go down the street in Boston, they shoot, he’s been out. Somebody cuts the throat of a poor immigrant girl, he’s been out. All of them have been out. And the prisons are half full in some states.
So that agenda does not work, and people are not going to support it. And we hear the loud supporters. They make the news, but they’re not the majority.
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