The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanon: The Left’s DOGE Tantrum

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

There is a growing outrage against Elon Musk, including threats to his life over DOGE’s work to find and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the U.S. federal government. On this edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” a Daily Signal original series, Hanson delves into the reasons behind this backlash, its broader implications and how the Left is making the “chemotherapy”, DOGE’s work, out to be worse than the “cancer”, wasteful government spending.  “We're starting to see, kind of, an outrage where people are threatening a life, even, of Elon Musk and defending all sorts of indefensible expenditures.” “One thing I think is lost in this messaging, this tough love, this effort to restrain the government is that, I think, the Trump administration and Musk must convey that. They must say we don't enjoy putting people out of work. We don't enjoy rounding people up, but we have to because these people, the Left, the Biden people, the Jacobins, they put us in that position. They were the ones that destroyed institutions. They were the ones that broke the law. They were the ones that are bankrupting us.” 00:00 Introduction to Tough Love Messaging 04:38 The Necessity of Tough Actions 04:42 Blaming the Left for the Crisis 04:53 Destruction of Institutions 04:56 Breaking the Law 04:58 Economic Bankruptcy For Victor’s latest thoughts, go to: https://victorhanson.com/ Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHqkXbgqrDrDVInBMSoGQgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk. Business. There's been a lot of commotion lately about the Elon Musk cuts and the Donald Trump rebranding of the entire administrative state. The narrative from the left is almost as if the chemotherapy to cure this problem that we are running multi-trillion dollar deficits is worse than the cancer itself. And we're starting to see kind of an outrage where people are threatening a life even of Elon Musk and defending all sorts of indefensible expenditures.

We should keep clear what's going on. It's much easier to give money out than to save it. That offends people. Giving them free money doesn't for some reason because it's an abstract, the taxpayer. Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hansson for the Daily Signal. There's been a lot of commotion lately about the Elon Musk cuts and the Donald Trump rebranding of the entire administrative state and bureaucracy. It's very strange that it's almost, the narrative from the left is almost as if the chemotherapy to cure this problem that we are running multi-trillion dollar deficits

and we owe $37 trillion. But the efforts to stop that financial bleeding, the chemotherapy is worse than the cancer itself. And we're starting to see kind of an outrage where people are threatening a life even of Elon Musk, and they're going hysterical and defending all sorts of indefensible expenditures. And so we should keep clear what's going on. It's much easier to let in 12 million illegal aliens and to destroy their border than it is the hard work of reconstructing a defensible secure border and trying to find 12 million people, 500,000 of which we think, I'm pretty sure, have had criminal records, and another million and a half have already gone through the process and we're facing deportation. It's much, much easier to spread money around and gain constituency and print it than it is to say that you cannot do that.

We have to be physically sound and say, we can't give money to this group or Stacey Abrams. We can't have her oversee $2 billion. That offends people. Giving them free money doesn't for some reason because it's an abstract, the taxpayer. We don't care about the taxpayer who the average household pays about $20,000. Again, it's much easier to give money out than to save it. It's much easier to put oil off limit to declare 650,000 acres of federal land immune from development, to shut down annual. to shut down Keystone, to shut down liquid natural gas transports. Then it is the hard work of opening them up, getting rigs in, trying to develop fuel reserves

and fuel production for the American people to have affordable energy. What am I getting out with all of this explanation is that the Trump administration inherited a revolution? They are trying to remit it. and bring America back not hard to the right, right back where it was before the madness started. But we have to keep in context that these revolutionaries destroyed institutions. They destroyed physical sobriety. They destroyed the border.

They tried to destroy the fossil fuel industry. They destroyed deterrence abroad. It's much easier just to say, I'm done with Afghanistan, take a billion-dollar embassy. I don't really care. take a $300 million bagam air price, $10, $15, $20, $50 billion of valuable military assets and infrastructure and hard work, just give it to the Taliban, then it is to restore deterrence. That is, to take the hard work and say, you better not do that Iran, you better not do that Russia and restore deterrence than it is to break it.

One thing I think is lost in this messaging, this tough love, this effort. to restrain the government is that I think the Trump administration and must must convey that. They must say, we don't enjoy putting people out of work. We don't enjoy rounding people up, but we have to because these people, the left, the Biden people, the Jacobins, they put us in that position. They were the ones that destroyed institutions. They were the ones that broke the wall. They were the ones that are bankrupting us. Were the restores? And restores, just like people who give tough medicine and pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy to people struck with cancer or congestive heart failure, it's a tough love. The medicine is very, very difficult. But we got

to remember that the medicine is different than the malady in the disease. Someone else caused these problems. And now somebody, for the first time in our hearing, history is trying to fix it. I'll leave you with this historical note. When Woodrow Wilson created the entire progressive project, oh, basically from 1913 to 1920, there were efforts to repeal the growth of government, the introduction of an income tax, but none of the Republicans, not even Calvin Coolidge could stop it. When Franklin Roosevelt nationalized many of the private pursuits and operations in this country with the New Deal. There were efforts after he left to repeal the New Deal, specifically the eight years of the Eisenhower administration. He couldn't do it.

When Lyndon Johnson, in a third iteration, created this huge great society and these huge cabinets, Richard Nixon could not undo it. Neither could Ronald Reagan. Now we're on the fourth iteration. This was the Biden effort to make us essentially a European socialist country. But guess what? Unlike previous Republican administration, for the first time a Republican administration says this will not stand. I'm going to try to stop this and undo us and take it back. And that is hard work. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. Thank you for watching today's podcast. And for more news like that. Subscribe to the Daily Signal. Maybe you can check out my own website at victorhansson.com

for podcasts, lectures, ultra-series behind a paywall, but more importantly, just daily columns that are accessible and free to everyone. Thank you very much.