The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Minnesota Somali Fraud, Illegal Trucking Scandals Share One Thing: DEI

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

**This episode was recorded before Victor Davis Hanson's December 30 medical operation** Whether it’s some within the Minneapolis Somali community racking in millions of dollars from government grants for fraudulent businesses or severely unqualified illegal aliens obtaining commercial truck driving licenses, these groups were “categorized by officials as on the victimized, oppressed side of the lecture. And therefore, they were not completely audited. Because, if they had been audited, the cries of racism, nativism, etc., prejudice, bias would’ve been voiced. And people didn’t want to be exposed to that,” argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.” These non-meritocratic DEI recipients are thrown into a self-perpetuating system that encourages them to continuously engage in illegal activity as they will never face consequences for their actions. When audits stop, deterrence dies—and corruption thrives. (00:00) Introduction to DEI Issues (00:56) Fraud and Exemptions in DEI (02:39) The Self-Perpetuating Cycle of Victimization (04:29) The Downfall of Meritocracy (05:23) The Future of DEI 👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠ Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027 👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1 👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've talked in the past about the problems with diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's been in the news lately because there's a common denominator between the 9 to 10 billion and climbing fraud among the Somali community in Minnesota. Here in California, we're looking at $60 to $70 billion fraud. They were all given exemptions. And the exemptions were subtle and insidious, but they were characterized that they were the victimized, oppressed side of the lecture. What happens is you must continually make the case that you are a victim. That alone will explain why you got this position, why you got this admission when you did

not have otherwise standard meritocratic qualification. Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hanson for the Daily Signal. We've talked in the past about the problems with diversity, equity, and inclusion, that's the rubric for what I guess we could call mandated equality of result rather than of opportunity. But it's been in the news lately because there's a common denominator between the 9 to 10 billion and climbing fraud among the Somali community, some of them, in Minnesota. Here in California, we're looking at $60 to $70 billion fraud involving everything from homeless funds that were misspent or through corruption wasted and unemployment insurance, et cetera, et cetera.

We have the problem with the truck drivers. We had 17,000 licenses given to illegal aliens in California and put many of us in danger who drive frequently on the California freeways. That's true nationwide as well. And then, of course, the unknown number, it's in the several million. somewhere between 8 and 12 million who came in under the Biden administration, but they were all given exemptions, is what I'm trying to say. And the exemptions were subtle and insidious,

but they were characterized that they were DEI. In other words, all of these different groups were categorized by officials as on the victimized, oppressed side of the lecture, and therefore they were not completely audited, because if they had been audited, the cries of race, racism, nativism, et cetera, prejudice bias would have been voiced and people didn't want to be exposed to that. What happens then when you have DEI, there is no deterrence. The particular groups that are favored on non-merocratic grounds feel that if the society at large does not audit them the way, whether that's immigration audits or welfare audits or unemployment audits or drugs. then why would they audit them under further circumstances?

So that creates a self-perpetuating, almost a self-motion machine, that they will continue to engage an activity for which they don't feel there will be any consequences and deterrence is lost. More importantly, if you are a DEI beneficiary, in other words, you applied to college and your SAT scores or your grade did not otherwise qualify, you, or you're a professor who plagiarized but was given a pass because of D.I. Grounds, then what happens is you must continually make the case that you are a victim because that that alone will explain why you got this position, why you got this admission when you did not have otherwise standard meritocratic qualifications. And that means you're always going to be on the hunt for victimization. If you're jury read and you can't do a podcast without spouting racist nonsense

and your audience is crumbling and eroding, then you say that you're constantly a victim of racism. If you're on the view and you have a one-dimensional view of race and you're boring and you're losing market share, you say it's because of another, yet another incidence of racism that you felt. The other thing that's problem with DEI, there are no qualifications now. Once you destroy meritocracy for one group, then all groups feel, well, these people were given particular advantages, so why don't we get them? And you know, the funny thing about it is we did have a kind of DEI for very wealthy people,

very connected people, the children of billionaires, the children of college deans who were given admission advantages or were hired in what we call the Old Boy Network. But meritocracy was supposed to be the anecdote. So DEI was in a very strange, ironic way, just the twin of the Old Boy Network, substituting race for money and influence that the Old Boy Network exercised. That was the fuel that that. Finally, there's a couple of final things. It's costly because once you add layer under layer under layer of non-productive people who are not teaching in the university, they're not doing research, but they're monitoring everybody's syllabus, they're looking for DEIOS among applicants, they are perched on hiring committees, they have a huge bureaucracy,

and they're non-productive. They're very similar to the commissar system in the Soviet Union that was very, not just a sin of commission that they were wasting resources and causing a lot of problems and killing people, but a sin of omission that by funding the comasars, you were not funding science or you were not funding Merocratic military schools, you were appointing military officers in World War II on the basis of their ideology rather than on their proven excellence on the battlefield. So it doesn't have a good history, DEI. And one thing that we're watching now as the Trump administration makes a very persuasive case that DEI violated the civil rights laws of the 1960s, specifically 64 and 65, and the Supreme Court ruling of 2003, there is no moral

legal support for it anymore, and yet we have this vast top-heavy infrastructure, this ossified, calcified DEI apparatus, and it's not legally or morally justified. So it's going to be very interesting to see what happens to the DEI complex, but let's hope that it dies on the vine at last. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hanson 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 victorhansson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.