The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson RETURNS: Surgery, Cancer Battle, and Minnesota's ‘Hypocritical Insurrectionists’

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

There is “no coherent principle” to the left’s ongoing “utterly hypocritical” “insurrectionary movement” in Minnesota, argues Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson in his first post-surgery video appearance. Nearly five years ago, these same people lambasted Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed 14-year Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by the U.S. Capitol Police on Jan. 6, 2021. The left cheered as hundreds of demonstrators were arrested for allegedly assaulting officers and carrying firearms. Meanwhile, they said it was perfectly OK for somebody like Alex Pretti “to go to a demonstration with a military-grade semiautomatic weapon, with extra clips, and just stick it in his waistband, visible sight of anybody, and then get into a brawl with law enforcement officers,” Hanson continues. “All of our most prominent liberals are saying the state of Minnesota has a right to do what? Occupy federal property? Attack federal officers? Prevent the enforcement of federal law? I thought the left didn’t like states’ rights. I thought they said that this was ‘insurrectionary.’” 00:00 Introduction and Personal Update 01:32 Health Struggles and Recovery 03:58 Minnesota's Street Insurrection 06:13 Hypocrisy in Law Enforcement 09:37 States' Rights and Federal Law 12:57 Conclusion and Future Discussions 👉 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

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off for a while, as you may have noticed. This is the first one I've done in over a month, so bear with me. I want to talk, though, very quickly today about what's going on in Minnesota. What I'm really disturbed about is the utter hypocrisy that we're seeing with this street insurrectionary movement. They have canonized Renee Good and Alex Prettie for resisting ICE officers, and they were tragically shot, and they become martyrs. Why did the left tell us that it was perfectly okay for somebody to go to a demonstration with a military-grade, semi-automatic weapon, with extra clips, and just stick it in his waistband, visible sight of anybody, and then get into a brawl with law and enforcement. Officers, at the same time, tell us if anybody had a concealed weapon anywhere on January 6th, they

needed to be put in jail. We were told that over 400 people were convicted or would be convicted of felonies for assaulting officers. They were sacrosanct. We're also told that five officers were killed on January 6th. We know that none were, none. All of our most prominent liberals are saying, the state of Minnesota has a right to do what? Occupy federal property, attack federal officers, prevent the enforcement of federal law.

I thought the left didn't like states' rights. I thought they said that this was insurrectionary. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. I've been off for a while, as you may have noticed. I had very quickly a mucanus adenoma, carcinoma. That's kind of a long name for a very rare non-smokers type of lung cancer. And I was kind of not diagnosed for most of last year. I had a problem with breathing, and people thought it was valley fever, pneumonia, long COVID, etc.

but I finally was diagnosed in September, October, and it was removed the last day of the year. And everything went well. The cancer was removed. There was no lymph node, and the whole lobe was taken out. I thought I was, I woke up very happy in the emergency room, but then I'm 72, and apparently there was an arterial aneurysm, and two veins popped.

So I lost very quickly a lot of blood and thank God for the skilled surgeon at Stanford. He got me right back in. They took out all of the things they had just closed and started all over again, opened up. And they found them just in time. I had five transfusions. And so this is all a long explanation why I wasn't back. I thought I'd be back in about three or four weeks, but I'm still pretty weak. I have anemia.

I've got to get my blood volume back up. and I have never had it before, but I have this atrial fibrillation. Fibulation, and it's kind of a new thing for me, but I'm working through that. As far as the carcinoma itself, there were good and bad signs. You know how it is. People say, well, it was kind of big, bad. It spread through the airspace is bad, but on the other side, it didn't get into limp nodes. and so they came to the consensus that these things come back about 40%, 60% they don't.

And now if I get better, they're offering me kind of a, kind of a, you know, it's chemotherapy, and it doesn't have a great success rate, maybe 5% increase. So I'm going to make that decision. I only mention that because I'm going to try to come back slowly and periodically, but I can't predict when I will be here, given these therapies that people are suggesting. I haven't made a decision yet. It depends on if I can get a little stronger. I want to talk, though, very quickly today about what's going on in Minnesota.

And I know people have talked to death, the insurrectionary nature of Tim Walts, and, of course, Mayor Frye, and Ellison, the Attorney General. But what I'm really disturbed about is the utter hypocrisy that we're doing. seen with this street insurrectionary movement. Now, what do I mean by that? There is no coherent principle, none. Let me just give you some examples of what I mean. They have canonized Renee Good and Alex Preti for resisting ICE officers, and they were tragically shot, and they become martyrs. Do you remember on January 6th, diminutive Ashley Bres? Babbitt, she was a 14-year military veteran, 14 years in the military. She didn't try to

attack anybody. She committed a misdemeanor by going through a broken window, and there facing her were armed officers. They didn't react. They didn't shoot her. Officer Byrd did at a perpendicular, shot her lethally. What was the reaction to the left? They demonized her character. They said she deserved it. They went through her entire past, and they said that anybody who goes, resist, federal officers should have known what's happening to them. Take Officer Bird himself. Did you know that no one knew who he was for months on in? The media, the government, popular culture, they all conspire to hide his identity. We don't do that in America with anybody who lethally shoots an unarmed suspect.

think Officer Chauvin and he didn't shoot anybody, but he was held responsible for George Floyd, and his picture was all over the papers in a nanosecond, but not Officer Bird. And yet we seem to know the names of the officers, both Hispanic, and I'm not going to name them, that were involved in these shootings of these two protesters, pretty and good. And the left tried to docks them. Take masks, for example. We were told that masks were absolutely essential, not just for health reasons, but sometimes demonstrators wore them.

And the reason we were told Antifa wears them is because they didn't want to have their identities put out into the popular discourse, and people would learn who they are and attack them. They don't offer any such latitude for ICE officers. They wear masks only for one reason, not because they want to be gloathe. or to hurt people under the mask of anonymity, but they do it so that you don't go after their families or they show up at their house. So the left has another completely opposite position on that.

Finally, how about guns? We were told again and again, this was an armed insurrection on January 6th, but no one was found armed within the rotunda or the capital itself. There were some reports that people in the larger demonstration on the ground, might have had a firearm in their car or one I think person might have had it on, and you would have thought all held woke loose. This was considered just outrageous that anybody would go, even one out of thousands might be armed. And yet in the case of Mr. Alex Prattie, he had a very dangerous type of gun,

a military-grade gun with a sight on it and two extra clips with perhaps over 40 rounds at his disposal tucked in to his, and we saw in one video, an earlier video, tucked into his waistband, and he had it right as he confronted officers. My interest is not necessarily in the tragic circumstances of his death, but why did the left tell us that it was perfectly okay for somebody to go to a demonstration with a military-grade, semi-automatic weapon, with extra clips, and just stick it in his waistband, an invisible sight of anybody, and then get into a brawl with a law enforcement.

At the same time, tell us if anybody had a concealed weapon anywhere on January 6th and they needed to be put in jail, I could go on and on. I'll just finish with a couple of observations. We were told that over 400 people were convicted or would be convicted of felonies for assaulting officers. They were sacrosanct. We're also told that five officers. were killed on January 6th.

We know that none were, none. Some, maybe four or five, committed suicide for unexplained reasons. One had a stroke by an officer Secknik the next day. But there was no such reference for the ICE officers in Minneapolis. People cheered on the fact that they were attacked and injured and hit by cars. This was just wonderful to do this. nobody had ever thought, well, wait a minute, we were championing the Capitol Police so they wouldn't be attacked. And the protesters were all arrested that did attack for the most part, and they were sentenced to long sentences, long jail terms.

I don't think anybody in Minneapolis will be arrested, indicted, convicted in jail for what they have done to ICE officers attacking them. I'll finish with state's rights. I thought the left didn't like states' rights. I thought they said that this was insurrectionary. You remember when Barack Obama, I think it was 2010, Mayor Jan Brewer of Arizona, she was just so desperate of the open border between Arizona and Mexico and the failure of the Obama administration to do anything to enforce their own federal law that she began crafting a state force to secure.

the Arizona border. What did the Obama DOJ do under Eric Coalder? They sued and they said this is state's rights that the federal government essentially has a right not to enforce their own law and no one can enforce it for them if they're not federal officials. So much for state's rights. And what do we see in Minnesota? All of our most prominent liberals are saying the state of Minnesota has a right to do what, occupy federal property, attack federal officers, prevent the enforcement of federal law, and if federal officers are in danger not to send out local or state or county support to help them? In other words, they're taking the state's rights argument right out of the playbook of

everybody in the long sad tradition from John J. Galhoun and Jefferson Davis all the way to George Wallace in 1963 sitting, standing in the door of the University of Alabama. These are states' rights people, kind of. When the federal government is trying to enforce free abortion everywhere, or they're trying to insist on gun registration and all of the states have to meet federal standards, or they're trying to make sure that everybody has a DEI, restroom, then everybody's for federal government, but not here in Minneapolis, not in Minnesota, not in the blue states. All of a sudden, these Democrats are reverting to their original form,

and we should remember original because the neo-Confederate movement was a democratic project. In other words, what we're watching in Minneapolis is an incoherent in one fashion, irrational attitude, theme, agenda where there is no consistent philosophy about law enforcement, about people who protest, about people who bring arms to these protests, about people who are shot, about the reputations of people who come in contact with the police. It's just simply whatever the left thinks is useful for the moment, they make the necessary adjustments. And it's not going to stop. It's not going to stop. And they feel that they've Donald Trump in an untenable position that if he brings in federal troops to enforce federal law

or to protect federal property, then he's a Nazis, a Gestapo. He's fascist. And if he doesn't, he's weak and cannot insist on law and order and treat Americans as Americans first and people of Minnesota or California or a particular state second. I'm going to be talking more about this dilemma in our next short video. But for now, this is Victor Davis-Hansson. Thank you for listening. This is the first one I've done in over a month. So bear with me, Victor Davis-Hansson 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 Victorhanson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.