The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats’ Refined Crudity—Not Trump Insults—Pose the Real Danger

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Not all “civil” behavior is harmless. Some actions, cloaked in sophistication or authority, can be far more destructive than overtly crude ones. From Donald Trump’s press interactions to the actions of journalists, university leaders, and political officials, Victor Davis Hanson distinguishes between crass and refined crudity—showing how the latter misleads the public under the guise of authority or expertise—on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” “No need to call Jasmine Crockett a low-IQ person or a reporter dumb or stupid or fatty. And I would call that crass crudity. And it's something that Trump does and probably should not do, and people have probably reminded him of that. But there's another type of crudity, I would call that crudity refined crudity. Crass crudity is openly overt, transparent, and condemned. But it's also rhetorical. It doesn't affect policies. It's the ways one reacts to criticism in Trump's case. But what is refined crudity? I wanna tell you, give you some examples, very different examples of what I would call refined crudity.” (0:00) Introduction (0:20) Trump's Crass Crudity (1:13) Refined Crudity in Media (2:16) Refined Crudity in Academia (3:59) Refined Crudity in Law and Politics (5:12) Refined Crudity in Military Leadership (8:04) Conclusion We need your help to ensure The Daily Signal can continue to counter the liberal media's lies with the truth. Support The Daily Signal’s work today by becoming a Signal Elite Supporter.    Your tax-deductible monthly gift will help:  👉Help us provide free access to Victor Davis Hanson’s video commentary 👉Fund investigative reporting on the stories the liberal media will not cover  👉Counter the liberal media's lies   👉Keep The Daily Signal free to the public  http://dailysignal.com/donate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our generous Signal elite supporters make this video possible. Please consider joining today. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. It's been a lot of attention to Donald Trump's rallies and his interactions with reporters, a political reporter. impromptu press conferences, and the gist of it is that Donald Trump can say things that are cruel. It's true we can. No need to call Jasmine Crockett an low IQ person or reporter dumb or stupid or fatty. And I would call that crass crudity. And that's something that Trump does and probably should not do, and people have probably reminded him of that. But there's another type

of crudity. I would call that crudity, refined crudity. Crass crudity is openly overt, transparent, and condemned. But it's also rhetorical. It doesn't affect policies. It's the ways one reacts to criticism in Trump's case. But what is refined crudity? I want to give you some examples, very different examples of what I would call refined crudity. The University of Southern California School of Journalism, the Annenberg Center, gives a prize for the top journalist in a nation.

This year they gave them to Rachel Maddow and John Stewart. That's refined crudity. Rachel Maddow said almost every night that she was on the air, Russian collusion, Russian collusion, Russian collusion. And when that was exposed as a fraud, she went right into Russian disinformation, Russian disinformation, Russian disinformation. John Stewart is not a journalist. He may be entertaining, he's funny, but he blows up and screams and yells about the lockdown. Does anybody really believe that these are even in the liberal tradition, liberal tradition of Walter Cronkite, the eponymous prize named for which its name, or Edwin R. Muro?

That's crude. How did Claudine Gay ever become president of Harvard? That's the flagship university in the world. Who appointed her? Why would you appoint somebody that had a very thin academic record, almost was denied tenure at Stanford University, came to Harvard, had no notable publications, and the publications that she did were under suspicion, and she was a known plagiarist. And then she got before the country in very refined tones and basically said that anti-Semitic acts, which were occurring with increasing frequency under her tenure, would be punished given the context. She couldn't identify. Can I give you another example of refined crudity? Refined crudity is allowing some 60 to 70 Somali immigrants to embezzle $1 billion from the people of Minnesota and then have the Attorney General Keith Ellison who lectures everybody about racism say, what's the big deal? They buy stuff as if it's okay to steal money just because you buy consumer products for yourself. luxury cars, vacations, send money back home.

Tim Walt said in reaction to that, I want more Somali immigrants, not we have to look at this community and we have to make sure they're following the law, and I'm worried that 75% of them are on state, local, or federal assistance. That's crude what they did. That's an insult to the people of Minnesota and to cloak it with this kind of enlightened, Enlightenment rhetoric or call people racist is even cruder. Then we get into the lawfare. You know what? It's really crude for people like Alvin Bragg and Latita James and Fannie Willis and Jack Smith and E. Jean Carroll to use this law to try to destroy a political candidate.

It doesn't matter whether what Trump did. It doesn't matter whether you like him or hate him. You can't in the United States cook up 91 indictments and try to destroy a person with 500 million dollars of aggregate funds and try him in blue precincts and hope to get juries that are prejudiced against him with judges that we know were biased. And this is in conjunction with raiding his home and going through his wife's underwear drawer. And yes, Jamie Diamond, they did debank the Trump family members. They really did. You can say it was just normal, but I think no one believes that. And then this is in addition to sober and judicious and refined and sophisticated lawyers saying that Donald Trump should not be

on the ballot in 25 states? The Supreme Court found that on concert. That is refined crudity. You know what else is a refined crude thing to do? If you're Mark Millian, you're a chairman of the Joint Chiefs, it is to diagnose as if you're a psychiatrist, your commander-in-chief is unhinged to call up your Chinese counterpart and warn him that if you were to get an order from your own commander-in-chief and you felt you, Mark Millie, and your, I don't know, expert opinion as a psychiatrist felt was unhinged, you would first call the communist Chinese. If you don't think that is crude, how about calling in regional commanders and saying that I'm going to break the chain of command in my advisory role? And you're not to do what the law says.

and report to the Secretary of Defense, if you get an order from him that's transmitted from the Commander-in-Chief, you're going to go from me, and I'm going to either approve it or reject it. What is that? That's almost a coup. And finally, if you're the chairman of the Joint Chief and as you leave office, do you really want to keep saying again and again that your former President of the United States is a fascist? Had he said that just a few months earlier,

when Donald Trump was president, he would have been subject to a court-marshal under Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And finally, you know, it is crude for six elected representatives and senators to tell a 1.3 million person active-duty military that they and their considerate opinion should question very carefully every order. there's literally millions of orders that are issued a day. But these people were telling our active military at great danger to their own careers because that's a very, very rare phenomenon that anybody objects and refuses to obey an order and is found to be judicious and proved right in that decision. It almost never occurs. And if it were to occur too frequently, we wouldn't have a military.

But to say all this under the guise of the consequences, Constitution, and to have Mark Kelly get out and give these sober and judicious assessments of how lawful and proper all this is when it was a really a rank call for disruption in the military with one professed aim, and that was to attack Donald Trump. And you know, it was even cruder to finish when I asked, can you please identify one order that Trump or his subordinates had given that you think would qualify. anybody in the active military to refuse, what did the seditious six say? No, I can't. In other words, it was a cheap political stunt, cloaked with elevated and lofty rhetoric about the Constitution,

but yet another example of refined crudity. Thank you very much, Victor Davis-Sanssen, for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe. to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.