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Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from 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: So, let’s start off with corruption in Maine. And here’s this—Steve Robinson posted this on X the other day. “Maine Democrats are actively recruiting voters who have never lived in Maine and never paid taxes in Maine.
“Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who previously tried to disenfranchise Maine voters by removing Donald Trump from the ballot, has publicly admitted that noncitizens are registered to vote in Maine. She’s refusing to give Harmeet Dhillon [from the Justice Department] Maine’s voter files so that the Department of Justice can prevent noncitizens from raiding our elections.
“And Bellows has partnered with the Community Organizing Alliance. This is a, quote-unquote, ‘migrant-run ACORN-style group created by the alleged Medicaid fraudsters at Gateway Community Services.'” Etc., etc.
You know, Maine was once a bastion of republicanism. It has important elections coming up, Victor, and we’re gonna talk about that separately with [Graham] Platner. But this is that infamous woman who tried to keep Donald Trump off the ballot. And she is a pure ideologue and in a position of power.
Your thoughts?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, I think there’s two issues here. One is Platner and the worry about him. The rumors are, and these are alleged rumors, but I think Mark Halperin mentioned them, that his long social media history, which is pretty crazy. Women need to wear Kevlar pants if they don’t want to be raped. White people, rural people are stupid and lazy. He’s a communist.
Fowler: All cops are bastards.
Hanson: All cops are … Yeah. And I don’t know how you can be on 100% disability for post-traumatic stress syndrome and then say you’re going to run for Senate because you’re disabled. But he’s doing that. And of course, no one has called him on it.
The other thing is if you have a candidate like that and you’re going to nominate him over, she’s not very moderate, the governor, but that he was going to win. And then once he’s in the general—Susan Collins, I know that a lot of the true-blue conservatives like us, Jack, get irritated with her, but she has to operate in the confines of Maine.
And I would say, I haven’t looked at her voting record, but I imagine—don’t you think it’s 75% or 80% with the administration?
Fowler: Yeah.
Hanson: On key votes, the SAVE Act and things like that, she disappoints, but she gets elected. And she’s smart. There’s no comparison between the two.
So, the point I’m making is that he is out of the ordinary. He also represents this new strain of elite, very wealthy—here in California, Tom Steyer is really off the scale, hard-Left, but a billionaire. We saw [Zohran] Mamdani. His two parents are billionaires. I mean, they’re not multimillionaires, but they’re very affluent. They’re from a very exclusive family in Uganda.
And then we go to Platner. He went to Hotchkiss School. He’s the son of a famous architect. His father was a lawyer. His mother is a restaurateur. So, he’s among the elite, and yet he keeps yelling and screaming about billionaires and millionaires. His parents are millionaires, no doubt. He grew up as a millionaire.
So, there’s a problem with him. And when you’re a Democrat and your heart says, I love this guy, but your brain says, he’s not gonna be electable under normal circumstances, then you opt for the change the system. And the change the system is what they always do.
James Carville outlined it. He said, when the Democrats come in, no more filibuster. No more Electoral College with a national voting compact solution to that. Four more Democratic senators under the Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico entrance. And pack the court. What does that show? He doesn’t have confidence in the Democratic message appealing to 51%.
They don’t have confidence that this guy can win. So, when they do that, they either open the border or they try to say that felons can vote or they try to change the system, and that’s what they’re doing, whether it’s off the radar or transparently in Maine because they have a problem.
And as I said, Mark Halperin reviewed his problems, and apparently, allegedly, there’s a lot more to come, Jack, about him. His record.
And it’s very ironic, well, not ironic. I should apologize for that. But the Democratic Party made such a fuss about Elon Musk’s Nazi salute. It wasn’t a Nazi salute. He saluted like we’ve seen everybody do that. Cory Booker, I think Elizabeth Warren. They all do it.
And they’ve said nothing about this Totenkopf death head, Third Panzer Division [tattoo] and also used as the Einsatzgruppen people at the death camps, and he knew. People have said, that were in his cohort, he knew what it was. He bragged about it.
He’s changed his story twice. He said, well, you know, I didn’t really know what it was until I ran for Congress, I mean, for Senate. And they told me what it was. And then he’s also said, well, you know, I was brainwashed. I imbued or absorbed this toxic Marine culture. And that made me do it.
So, he can’t tell the truth. And he thinks he’s going to win. Put it this way. 30 years ago, if you were a Democrat and you wore a Nazi tattoo for 20 years and people knew about it, that would exclude you from being nominated.
Today in the Democratic Party, the fact that he had a Nazi tattoo and he removed it will mean, A, the grandees will explain it away, or wink, nod, it will be something that will be of value because of the rising antisemitism.
It sends a message. It sends a message, and he’s reiterated again and again and again about Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, genocide, Israel, Israel, Israel, cut off—so that sends a message to the new Democratic Jacobin Party. And it’s not the Democratic Party anyway. It’s a Jacobin Party, a French revolutionary party. And they have institutionalized antisemitism. So, when a candidate sends those signals and we think they’re disqualifying, we’re in a time warp. That was 20, 30 years ago.
It’s not now.
Fowler: Victor, I want to—we have to talk about Tucker Carlson now. Here’s a headline: “Tucker praises Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner.” Quote, “I certainly appreciate his foreign policy views, and I appreciate how different they are from everybody else in his party. I haven’t met him yet, and I plan to meet him.”
Hanson: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How is he different than anybody else? He’s representative of the Democratic party, isn’t he?
Fowler: Other than [John] Fetterman, I guess so, yeah.
Hanson: I mean, everything he’s right with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and the older guard that has flipped like Nancy Pelosi and Schumer. They’re for that stuff now. He basically wants open borders, doesn’t care about illegal immigration, critical race theory, DEI, transgender, all of that stuff. He can’t get elected if he wasn’t.
He’s a green guy, no fossil [fuels]—all of that stuff. And the whole He-Man, white working guy, all in the tough talk, and often laced with profanities, all of that is just superficial pablum for this mythical white working class that’ll vote for him because he’s tough.
It’s kind of insulting to the white working class because the people that I see in my neighborhood that are white working class, are pretty well-informed.
Fowler: Yeah.
Hanson: But I don’t know what Tucker-
Fowler: Oh, you said F, I’m going to vote for you.
Hanson: Yeah. I don’t know what Tucker means, but if he says that he would prefer Graham Platner, and I guess he does, because he didn’t say at the same time, he’s an interesting person. I want to interview him. But of course, I’ll also interview Susan Collins because her record, even though I don’t embrace it all, has been more representative of my entire life in the conservative movement. He didn’t say that.
So, I assume that he likes Graham Platner not because his views are at odds—I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt—with the new hard-Left Democratic Party, unless Tucker’s gone the whole Bill Kristol route. I don’t know if he has or not. Or Max Boot route. I don’t think he has.
But he must like him because Graham Platner has been outspoken in his hatred of Israel, Gaza, genocide, all this stuff. And that, it seems to me, that that’s—and he’s had people on—he has appeared with people who have endorsed, and correct me if I’m wrong, I think he’s appeared with or he’s talked with people who have been classified as pro-neo-Nazi. Really, you know, there’s kind of the Darryl Cooper, I don’t know how you’d [say it], revisionist.
So, is that why Tucker is attracted to this new face in the Democratic Party? Because if you look at the totality of what he said, it’s no different than “the squad” or AOC. It really isn’t.
Fowler: Yeah.
Hanson: And I thought Tucker’s criticism of Donald Trump was, I am a principled conservative, and I voted for Donald Trump and campaigned for him and frequented Air Force One and Campaign One. And I was at Mar-a-Lago, habitué a lot. And I did this because I agreed with 90% of his platform. I thought that’s the reason why.
And I still haven’t been enlightened by anybody. Candace. Any of them. Why, if you disagree with him on a particular issue, like you classify the 60-day, and it hasn’t been 60 days of kinetic activity, it’s been 40 days, maybe less, against Iran. You want to classify that as a forever or endless war, that he campaigned against. Okay, that’s a legitimate opinion.
But why would you take one particular issue and then say, well, I thought it over and I don’t like that wall that’s growing on the border. I don’t like the idea there’s no illegal immigration. I don’t like the idea we’re deporting 500,000 criminals. I don’t like the deregulation, the tax cuts. They’re all an abomination.
No. It’s just you crossed me on one issue and I’m done with you. Unless they can cite others, you know, that you don’t like Trump’s language or you feel that his impulsiveness or when he wasn’t respectful of the dead, with Rob Reiner’s passing, or he uses the F-word on his—something like that. But you have to come forward with something that would nullify your whole life’s conservatism.
Fowler: It’s interesting because one of the criticisms from Tucker was—recent criticisms—was that Trump was the Antichrist. And then he was interviewed by The New York Times this past weekend who—and he denied saying it. And they showed the video he clearly—yeah.
Hanson: I saw that. And he said he didn’t know what the Antichrist was, so how could he say that? And that would suggest that somebody always says things he knows.
Fowler: Yeah.
Hanson: Tucker gave an interview with the mayor of Bethlehem, who flat out said that Christians have been fleeing his city because of Jewish pressure, when in fact one of the destinations they go is to Israel, and they’re fleeing Muslim intolerance.
So, you don’t need to know everything to say something. He did say that. The Antichrist—you know, he said he didn’t know what the Antichrist was. And as I remember in the Bible, I’m just doing this—it’s in John, I think. It’s in Revelations, too. The Greek word for it is pseudochristos. The pseudo just means false. The false Christ.
And I have a feeling, isn’t he referred to in Acts or Letters as the person who, as the end of days come, he’s gonna be popular and work miracles?
Fowler: Yes. Right.
Hanson: But he’s not satan or Lucifer. He’s some type of—he’s not referred to very much in the Bible. He’s some person who’s going to emulate Christ and try to deliberately fool people. And then rob them of eternity through his sin. And they’re following his sin as deluded people.
And so if he meant that, I don’t believe he doesn’t—he’s very religious, so when he says, I don’t know what the Antichrist is, when he’s talking about Trump as the Antichrist, and he said that Trump had used foul language on Easter, and that Trump was a very magnetic person, you get the impression he did know.
Because he was trying to, I think, say that Donald Trump led us, in what I thought was a moral crusade, but it was a pseudo-crusade. Maybe that’s what he meant. I think he did. I just don’t believe that someone that aware and well-read and familiar with Christian exegesis does not know what the antichrist is.
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